Category: The Dark Side

Mea culpa?

Time was when cricketers walked, snooker champs owned up and, yes, golfers retired when they broke a rule. The gentlemen’s code, as far as I know, never extended to tennis or any of the foootball or hockey variants – in which hoodwinking the ref has become de rigueur, nay a practised skill. Remember Bloodgate and the iconic Dean Richards? But luckily hawkeyed gadgetry is slowly replacing the human eye and on Friday a telly viewer caught Tiger woods cheating – not on his latest blonde this time but on the fringes of the 15th green during the US Masters. He later stated he’d chosen to ‘drop’ a couple of yards back to get a better lie. No behavioural change there then.

Do I care? Should you? Not really, except to bewail the loss of honesty among our heroes. But, hey! All’s fair in love, sport and war and you can’t trust a superpower to play nicely with his drones anymore .

Do one, yer silly mare!

It’s an annual phenomenon: the scrubberfest at Aintree, exhibiting some of the social and sartorial fashions of modern Merseyside; ironically known as Ladies’ Day. And who should gainsay them, one asks? A brave man indeed. It’s only to be feared that the PC brigade will insist on a Gentlemen’s Day – when no doubt the even less becoming Merseyside Male would take centre stage.

Racegoers react during the John Smith's Mildmay Novices steeple chase on the second day of the Grand National meeting at Aintree

NIMBY politics

HMS AstuteIt’s rather a facile option for small countries to declare themselves ‘nuclear free’. Denmark has done it and the SNP will do it on behalf of a ‘free’ Scotland. But such posturing ignores the realities of life in the 21st C. (Every day for example Denmark may choose to buy electricity from neighbouring countries which run nuclear power stations – only confirming the hypocrisy of its policies.) Militarily, the western alliance (or NATO) ‘protects’ both territories by dint of their membership (unless the Scots go 100% neutral) and uses nuclear weapons to secure such protection. So when Iran and North Korea threaten Europe, as well they might, will the Lilliputians expect special dispensation from nuclear attack or eventual occupation? Maybe,  but only total political neutrality will guarantee that. That’s the dilemma. They surely wish to be seen as supporters of European values and defenders of their own – but not, it seems, at any price or ‘in my back yard’. And would any rogue state misguided enough to launch a nuclear attack respect the nuclear neutrality of such defenceless people? I doubt it.

Easter and The Telegraph Pay-wall

Easter without The Telegraph? 

Resurrection of some buns, and bunnies by the score?
Is this the point of Easter, or is there something more?
Yes hot cross buns may be the thing which oddly give a clue,
To why we celebrate this fest, though meanings are perdue.

Continue reading “Easter and The Telegraph Pay-wall”

The dangers of banking

A lot of financial experts and other commentators are up in arms about the Cyprus Solution, which slaps a 40% ‘fee’ on savers with more than 100,000 euros in a couple of local banks. ‘Poor, unsuspecting savers’, allegedly. Many of them are British pensioners lured to Aphrodite’s Isle by a mouth-watering 5% tax rate; and even more are Russsian emigres from whom (à la Russia’s President Medvedev’s enigmatic quoation from Lenin) “the stealing of what has already been stolen continues”. Unknown

Now I’m not anti-capitalist, nor pro-communist but I do wonder how this arrangement is remotely less acceptable than forcing innocent tax-payers to pick up the tab for the profligacy of bankers; because the thing about banks is that we usually rely on them to stay in business and not to mess with our money, but when they fail, we the savers bear some responsiblity for having chosen to let them use it. It’s a business arangement gone wrong – between consenting partners, not between banks and their ‘victims’.

Of course I sympathise with the British pensioners whose retirement bubble has burst so spectacularly – surely the Bank of Cyprus, if not the Laiki bank, was ‘reliable’? It probably was, for many years. But if I were a eurozone taxpayer I would strongly resent having to bail it out when tens of thousands of depositors, attracted by the offer of tax holidays in the sun, held on to their funds.

Getting the low-down

I took a wee foray north again today, only to find that flying out of Edinburgh can be a challenging experience. Some passengers are ‘selected’ to undergo a full-body-scanner check – which except for exhibitionists (especially the extremely well-appointed) is surely a sufficient invasion of one’s privacy – followed by a ‘voluntary’ questionnaire seeking personal information including one’s religion. Unfortunately there seems some doubt whether the staff always get round to mentioning it’s voluntary.

Continue reading “Getting the low-down”

Home rule for everyone

I pop up to North Britain now and then, cybernautically speaking, to see what The Scotsman has to say. And today I see that some denizens of the Northern Isles would prefer to go it alone, perhaps as a Crown Dependency à la Isle of Man, rather than remain part of an independent Scotland. That would scupper the new Scotland’s financial plans which are based on oil galore, much of which is in the ‘territorial waters’ of the Northern Isles.

Which set me wondering whether this modern fad for home rule shouldn’t be allowed to benefit any community with enough wonga ‘of its own’. Knotty Ash, awash with treacle. Cornwall, replete with pasties. You get the idea. What about Knightsbridge and its resident billionaires? There could be hundreds of little Liechtensteins all over the country, independent in all but reality. Slackey Bottom would ally itself to Monaco and have the best casino ever.

Just a thought.