Quintin Jardine's blog

I am reading this afternoon of players being made redundant or having their contacts cancelled by the administrators of Rangers FC. If I understand the situation correctly, even though they will be free agents, these people may be unable to find new employment in Britain and in many other countries because of the transfer window system that operates. If that is correct, then manifestly it is not fair. Aren’t there laws about restraint of trade? I hope that the football authorities will act properly, so that no-one has to go to court to assert his right to make a living.

This has been Party Conference weekend in Scotland, with both Labour and the LibDems holding their annual assemblies. They reminded me that there was a time when I knew by name, sight and reputation, every political figure of stature in the country. I suppose I still do, but it’s no claim to make, because there are so few of them, and they all belong to the same party. I am willing to bet that if, one year ago, Ed Millipede had met in the street a lady called Johann Lamont, or Nick Clegg had met a man named Willie Rennie, they wouldn’t have had the faintest idea who they were. Scotland still doesn’t, yet today, those two individuals are the leaders of their respective parties in my country, nonentities who came to their positions not by acclamation, but in Mr Rennie’s case by default, and in that of Ms Lamont, because she was put there by the trade unions, against the democratically expressed wish of the rank and file members who took part in the election. Although the Tory conference will take place at another time, I should not exclude its flag-bearer, Ms Ruth Davidson, from this parade of elected inadequates. Her fall to the top is due to the facts that, she is one of the few Scots Tories left who is not in the grip of senility, and her opponents were a man whose manifesto called for the immediate dissolution of the Party he sought to lead, (Murdo, surely you’ve come to understand now that turkeys will never vote for Christmas)  and a very nice chap who was seen by most to be, in the words of a now departed colleague of mine, ‘so wet you could shoot snipe off his arse.’

I heard Mr Rennie on BBCTV news last week, revealing that he had contacted his opposite numbers in the Labour and Conservative parties, to discuss tactics for opposing independence. A little later, Labour’s conference heard a confused account by Ms Lamont of why she was against it, and what if anything her lot might offer instead. (My understanding is that they don’t know, and so will follow tradition by passing the buck to a committee.) We have yet to hear from Ms Davidson, but I do not expect her contribution to raise the bar by a single millimetre.

In two years, sooner if Alex can be persuaded that it’s tactically sound, or if Cameron moves the goalposts and is stupid enough (or cunning enough, for by losing Scotland he will gain England) to impose his will, and I’m still around, I will vote ‘Yes’ for an independent, self-governing nation. I’m not interested in the ‘debate’ that’s to come. My decision is made and it’s from the heart. If you’d asked me a month ago whether I believed that I will be among the majority, I’d have said that I did not. But now that I’ve seen the collection of pigmies who are ganging up to oppose Alex Salmond’s vision, and Nicola Sturgeon’s vision, and Mike Russell’s vision, and my vision, and even (dunno why, but I neither like nor trust him) Kenny McAskill’s vision, of a Scotland no longer subservient to the English majority at Westminster, I am not so sure. I am coming to believe that when the electorate comes to see that the puny Davidson/Lamont/Rennie alliance is the best the ‘No’ camp can do, and that they have to rely on the support of their London leaderships, reeking as they do of self-interest, it will become more and more inclined to seize the moment, when it comes.

For me, the Daily Telegraph lost its soul as a newspaper a few years ago, when its custodians seemed to decide that it had to compete with the Guardian. Since then it has gone to hell, not, it seems, in the usual vehicle, a hand-cart, but in a  coach and pair. Such a policy is, of course, nonsense. The late and very great Bill Deedes, and his chum Denis, must be muttering into their celestial gins and tonic, even as I write. Telegraph readers are Telegraph readers and Guardian readers are Guardian readers, by instinct, up-bringing and inclination, and never the twain shall meet. They are sorted into their respective groups at birth.

The Torygraph‘s decline into terminal silliness has never been demonstrated more clearly than by its obsession with ‘Raisa-gate’ and its interest in whether the Prime Minister ever mounted a retired Metropolitan police horse that had been loaned to Rebecca Brooks, the Witch of Wapping. I suspect that if Dave was suspected of mounting Mrs Brooks herself, the paper could not have roused itself to greater frenzy.

I don’t get it, as Ed Miliband might say. If Mrs Brooks, whose husband is a racehorse trainer, volunteered to feed and care for a nag that had been put out to pasture, so what? If their friend Mr Cameron happened to trot it round the paddock, so what? I flat out do not believe the claim that there is a long queue of people waiting for the privilege of re-homing elderly police nags, but even if there is, why should Mrs Brooks have been barred from joining it, as this Leveson-inspired, dog-eating-dog nonsense seems to imply?  I, for one, don’t care, and I doubt that too many sensible people do.

What I do care about is the decline in journalistic standards that has accompanied the once-great newspaper’s decline into darkness. When Christopher Hope, its senior political correspondent, can write, ‘He apologised for allowing a “confusing picture” to emerge about his personal connection to the horse, which he had rode before the election with Mrs Brooks’ husband Charlie, a friend from their Eton school days‘, without having his bottom smacked for appalling grammar by Tony Gallagher, his editor, or by Benedict Brogan, the school bully, there is no hope.

I do wish, though that Dave would stop being sorry for things. Not so long ago he was apologetic after making people laugh by remarking, ‘How many tweets make a twat?’ (A decent question, given the out-pourings of some Twitter users.) Now he’s doing it again. Who is advising him, so badly? Make me thirty years younger and put me in Downing Street, as his spokesman. If Mr Hope had approached me and asked me whether the PM had ever ridden Raisa, I would have been inclined to reply, ‘Yes, and why not? The animal needed exercising and he volunteered. Now go away, stop wasting everyone’s time, and let the man get on with running the country, and plotting secretly to ensure Scottish independence simply by opposing it.‘

Sitting with Eileen this afternoon, she asked me what I’ve done today.

‘Well,’ I replied ‘I’ve sold you to a white slave trader.’

She sniffed. ‘As if that would make any difference. Where did you get that idea?’

‘From David Murray.’

I note from the front page of today’s Herald that ‘The’ Donald Trump is still at it. It seems that the First Minister’s refusal to allow him to dictate Scotland’s renewable energy strategy is a personal ‘betrayal’. Legal action is being threatened to prevent the installation of off-shore wind turbines which would he claims ‘spoil the view’ from his proposed billion-dollar golf resort, a scheme so hair-brained and ill-considered that even he must realise by now that he will drop a bundle if he carries it through to a conclusion. Clearly Mr Trump must know as little of the the law of Scotland as he knew of its climate when he put forward his project, if he think that threat will carry any weight.

I’m currently watching Newcastle vs Wolves on Canal+. Mike Ashley, the Magpies’ unpopular owner may think he’s changed the name of the stadium, but as far as the Spanish commentators are concerned, it’s still St James’s Park.

. . . if Motherwell beat Celtic this afternoon, just wait for the conspiracy theories to start.

A Spanish painter of rare talent.

http://www.manolosierra.com/index.php

RIP Frank Carson.

A couple of years ago, after boarding a Ryanair flight at Prestwick, I discovered that I’d left something in the lounge. The flight crew were very helpful and recovered it for me before take-off. I was so pleased that in a rash moment I promised the flight director that never again would I say anything rude about Michael O’Leary, its flamboyant chief executive. Sadly, I have found it very difficult to maintain that pledge.

First there was Ryanair’s outrageous behaviour in Spain, where they went head to head with the AENA, the state-owned airport management company, and with the Catalan government, looking to obtain ever higher public subsidies in return for maintaining routes out of Girona. While they were doing this, they were quietly moving services to Barcelona’s Terminal 2 which had become seriously under-used after the opening of  the new Terminal 1. You can bet they received preferential terms; any time you board a Ryanair flight through a jetty, you can be sure that someone else is paying for it. The whole affair dragged on for months; Ryanair never did withdraw from Girona, but it is no longer possible to fly from there to Scotland.

Now they’re at it again, in Scotland, using confrontational tactics in an attempt to bludgeon reduced landing charges out of BAA, the  owners of Edinburgh Airport, and countering its rejection with the threat to cut five routes and with them, 300 jobs. That was uttered by Mr O’Leary in person, on a no doubt flying visit to the capital. The problem he has on this occasion is that there was nothing to be lost in translation. No sooner had he made his threat than it was pointed out that four of the five routes in question did not yet exist, nor did a single one of those 300 jobs, since Ryanair has no direct employees at Edinburgh Airport, and accounts for no more than 20% of its turnover.

Those who watched the Scottish TV news a couple of nights ago, probably saw Mr O’Leary clowning for the cameras with one of his model planes, then heard him refer to the airport owners as ‘prats’ for refusing to back down in the face of his demands and concede a deal which would have started a stampede from the other 39 airlines who fly through Edinburgh. Those who didn’t switch off in anger would have heard Ryanair’s announcement that people who had booked on the aborted routes would receive a refund, but also . . . the really nasty part . . . that when it came to the cost of ancillary bookings, such as hotels and car hire, they were on their own.

Ryanair boasted recently in a press release that as a company it has €3 billion euro in cash reserves. If that is true, indeed even if it has added an extra ‘0’ to the real figure, (previous press releases have included a suggestion that standing passengers were to be allowed on Ryanair flights, so it isn’t beyond a spoof) then much, maybe even all, of that money has been squeezed from taxpayers in subsidies, and from the shareholders of airport operators weak enough to have given in to its threats.

Two weeks ago, in Barcelona Terminal 1, I witnessed a noisy but orderly protest by supporters of Spanair, the recently collapsed Catalan-owned budget airline. Their message was ‘Save Spanair — Ryanair out’. Instinctively I’m on their side.

However I have a nagging problem, and it is this. Ryanair actually does what it says on the tin. It’s cheap and it gets you there on time, in modern aircraft. Its performance and its illogical unpopularity are both down to one man, Michael Kevin O’Leary. A glance at his business record leaves no room for doubt that he is a fantastically gifted man. A glance at his public statements makes it just as clear that he can be his own, and his company’s worst enemy. Ryanair should be what it claims to be, ‘The world’s favourite airline’, not the most hated, as it probably is.

Have I broken my promise to that flight director? No, I don’t believe so. I’ve said nothing rude about Mr O’Leary; I have told the plain truth.

A couple of years ago, a large man made a resolution; he went on a diet and he foreswore strong drink. He stuck to it, and after three months the Big Man became the Thin Man.

Now I’m somewhere in the middle, and my regression has to be reversed before all that good work goes completely to waste, or rather to waist. The warning signs exist; I haven’t had a steak for over two years, but last night I had a hamburger, albeit a very good one, in 1869, L’Escala. So, as of today I am back in the old routine, watching what I eat, and most important, off the alcohol. I am declaring this publicly, so that any back-sliding will be seen as weakness, something I do not like to display. Regular bulletins will be posted.

‘Sometimes when I think how good my book can be, I can hardly breathe.’— Truman Capote

No comment.

I’ve followed boxing all my life, and when it comes to its doings I reckon that I know shit from Shinola, as the very old saying went. A boxer acting crazy is nothing new; half a century ago, Cassius Clay, as he was, invaded Sonny Liston’s training camp and behaved so bizarrely that he planted the first seed of doubt in his fearsome opponent’s mind. More recently, we had Mike Tyson’s famous threat to eat Lennox Lewis’s children, (LL didn’t have any at the time, but it was a great line) and his use of  his teeth as weapons, but Iron Mike sold tickets and pay-per-views by the million so nobody every threatened to ban him. But the guy Dereck Chisora, in Germany last week? I’m not so sure about him.

I am sure that if he’d issued such specific threats in a British gathering he’d either have been arrested or sectioned, maybe even both. If that doesn’t happen, as it still could, it seems to me that the boxing authorities shouldn’t allow the guy anywhere near a gym, far less allow him to fight, before he’s had a psychiatric examination. That won’t happen though, since clearly the dear old British Boxing Board of Control doesn’t have any, not any more. It allowed Mr Chisora to take a world championship fight even though he’d lost two of his three previous contests. When I was a boy a guy called Brian London was forbidden from taking such a fight on those grounds, and suspended when he did. Also, the BBBC seems to have turned a blind eye to the fact that Chisora has a recent conviction for assaulting his girl-friend,  for which he is under a suspended prison sentence. There was a time when an assault conviction ended a professional boxing career, but this one, on a woman, didn’t even draw a reprimand. Nor did his previous, for police assault and possessing an offensive weapon. Normally, seasoned observers would say Saturday’s brawl was a stunt, gone too far, to pump up interest in a fight between Chisora and David Haye, but given the evidence of the former’s erratic and provocative behaviour during the week, and his criminal record, that may not have been the case.

As for Haye, what of him? First of all, why was he there? Answer, he had been working as a TV analyst during the official fight, (Yes, there was one, in which Mr Chisora, who’s a bully, not a boxer, and tends to come unstuck against bigger men, was severely thumped.) for a station called Boxnation. That is owned by one Frank Warren. He is Chisora’s manager and promoter, and who has been condemning everyone involved ever since, loud and long. Yet the fact, as yet unexamined, is that Haye was in Munich at Mr Warren’s invitation and on his dime. And this is fact too; if a proper, legitimate fight between Chisora and Haye ever does take place, Mr Warren will make more money out of it than either of the combatants.

Cynic, QJ? Too bloody right I am.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/1460222470001/kevin-costners-remarks-at-whitney-houstons-funeral/?playlist_id=87937

Off to the Carnaval parade in an hour or so: a big winter event in L’Escala and across Spain. Think Mardi Gras on a Sunday and you’re there, only it’s a lot colder than in Rio and people dress accordingly. We had a  preview last night in Sotavent, as many of the participants arrived after final practice.I am expecting men in green sombreros, and at least one Jack Sparrow.

Personal experience has led me to believe that the world is run by people who have a very clear Plan A, one that invariably works well when the global economy is on an upward cycle and the world is full of Eskimos buying refrigerators, but who have no effing idea what do do when it turns in the opposite direction. In my ever-modest opinion, Ex-Sir Fred Goodwin and Still-Sir David Murray are two of those, big time. As for Always-Mr (Can you be stripped of Mr?) Craig Whyte of Rangers, he seems to know asset-stripping, sorry, company rescue, and that’s it; in fact he doesn’t seem to be very good at it. If he ever had a game plan, it looks as if it was shattered the moment that the administrators, men he appointed,  revealed that the Ticketus £24m, raised against future income, is nowhere to be found within the company. As I understand it, that sum is not a loan, and Ticketplus’s parent company says that it is not a creditor as such. Future season ticket sales are viewed as a de facto football asset, one which ‘Mr’ Whyte has sold, and which Ticketplus now owns, and will continue to own under any future restructuring. Two questions are begged. 1) Where’s the money raised if it’s not within the club? 2) Do we have an extradition treaty with Monaco?

The new manager of Leeds United? As just announced, Neil Warnock. Now there is a match made in heaven.

Thanks for that. These days we all need all the promo we can get. I’m sure that Hachette Australia will be grateful for your help. Promise; if I ever get to Brisbane, I’ll let you know in advance.

I’m pleased that The Loner worked for you. Yes, we described it as a standalone when it was published, but now I’m not so sure.