Hit rock bottom, breaking new ground through it

The latest developments at Newcastle United are another hammer blow to the support. Chris Hughton is a decent man and a good coach, but, should he guide the club back to the Premiership, he has a very poor record against top-flight teams (his only victory being over the team that finished last season bottom of the Premier League heap). However, he is the best manager that will work under the regime of Mike Ashley, who is by turns vindictive, mendacious and incompetent. When a team suffers a defeat there is always potential redemption with a good result in the next game; when a manager is useless, there is always hope that one day they will be replaced; but there is no hope when the owner is like Ashley and no-one can afford and/or wants to buy the club. The latest development (which is anything but ‘developing’ unless in the sense of a poor and struggling country) is to rename the stadium St James Park ‘to maximise revenue’ (if that was true, there are dozens of actions that Ashley could have not done to do so). This may be understandable in the case of a newly built ground where history has yet to take hold such as the Emirates for Arsenal, the JJB (now DW) for Wigan Athletic or, cringingly, the Walkers Stadium for Leicester City (among others), but not at a place with more than a hundred years of past memories. It’s like renaming St Stephen’s Tower (housing Big Ben) the Swatch Tower to ease the taxpayer burden of maintaining the Houses of Parliament. But then Ashley’s tenure has not just been car-crash ownership, it’s a multi-car pile-up on a motorway, the victims being the fans (injured) and the club’s Premier League status (clinically dead). It shows that it takes a heck of a lot to relegate an established top-flight club. And things are not going to change for the better anytime soon.

When dreams take flight

Made use of Orange Wednesdays for the first time in ages (but the Orange Men skit seems to be no longer running - another victim of the recession as Orange retrench?) and we saw Up. A gloriously simple title for a cleverly expansive flick. Up is an intelligent film but one where EQ emerges more strongly than IQ. It is not afraid to ask dark questions but Touy Story pondered such forays more deeply.
At the heart of this latest Pixar offering is light-touch absurdity. If you can buy into a house being hoisted into the air by hundreds of balloons, them for example, dogs possessing collars that translate their thoughts into English (or indeed such hounds possessing a smattering of culinary talent) should not overly raise eyebrows. Naturally, anthropomorphism is a key component therefore, without being intrusive. The moral, aside from not meeting your childhood heroes, was against obsession (and, latterly, implicitly critical exhortations of materialism) and how it can be detrimental to the things that really matter. This defeated the villain but not the ultimately heroic old man.
There were smart little touches to apprecaite alongside the pleasure of the grander set pieces. A selection consists of the wife's funeral taking place in the church she was married in, the chief construction developer laying a proprietorial hand on the agte post to the old man's property after a clash spun out fo control, as well as the canine cluster each being named after letters of the ancient Greek alphabet, except the friendliest who is just Doug (Dog?); there is a detail to keep you thinking after the ending that even the villain might escape the severest of punishments, to resolve the narrative without being too cruel (and one remember that children are as much the audience here as adults).
Up is a warm-hearted, generous story that manages to be iconoclastic and up-to-date in tis mix too, deserving all the plaudits and box office it will certainly receive.

Another classic moment from Channel 4 News, from the same guys who brought you a woman reporter being goosed on live TV during the 2007 floods. This time, on the main bulletin item, a woman was outside BBC television centre explaining the story and a fat man in a cream jumper and looking not unlike the comedian Mel Smith, strolled behind the female journalist talking to camera and smiled smugly over her shoulder. He then waddled over to her other side, hands firmly in his pockets, casual as you like and beamed again in an understated way; understated since this was a very over-the-top way of getting on national TV. We then cut away to some clips of the top of the bill story, before coming back to the reporter interviewing a protestor. And look who hoves back into view, up to his old tricks. I'm surprised none of the production crew present hectored him into pissing off. Maybe they did, but, if so, it did not deter him and his self-satisfied expression, as he became the main visual point of interest during these scenes. Thank you Channel 4 News for this moment of the absurd.

It may seem belated congratulations to Jenson Button, but I did mention it on my my first Facebook 'what are you doing' field for some months merely minutes after I watched my first F1 Grand Prix in years. It was certainly thrilling, crashes on the first lap, the whoomph of flame as Kimi Raikkonen was for a split-second barbecued by fuel from a wayward hose being ignited, Lewis Hamilton battling from 17th to 3rd and, of course, Jenson claiming his champion's title with exciting manouevres to go from 14th to 5th. Last year, on Hamilton's victory, I spared a thought for the forgotten British man of F1. Well, he and his team might be a shooting star, destined to burn brightly but briefly (witness Brawn falling down the pecking order as the other teams became more clued up on the double decker diffuser), yet Button made the most of it and, with those early wins, deservedly so. Well done to Brawn GP and Ross Brawn for their constructors championship after rising from the ashes of Honda tot ake it.

Pays the bills

After marriage, the biggest change in my life is my job. In fact, I have swapped jobs twice now. Back in April 2008, two days before Altaa arrived for the first time, I began my foray into telemarketing. After a day and a half of training (midday Monday and all of Tuesday), on the Wednesday my new employment began in earnest. I was working for New Appointments Group (NAG), by far the best job recruitment agency I have been involved in, in support of the Telegraph Media Group. Essentially, I was selling subscriptions of the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs to people who have signed up in the past, but subsequently lapsed in renewing it or to those people who have had contact with TMG in the past (say by booking a holiday) and provided the details that would allow them to be called. The latter group were a lot harder because they were only occasional readers of the Telegraph at best. They could be quite abusing on the phone, though I, by and large, did not get as much as some other people, especially the women employees. The most amusing angry comment was in my first two weeks when someone said “newspapers are all run by criminals.” Considering Conrad Black had just been convicted and sent to jail, it was hard to disagree, especially further back with Robert Maxwell, while Rupert Murdoch is hardly a savoury figure beyond probity. One of the other women who had come in with NAG was told “you’re all a bunch of fascists,” which makes you wonder why someone would get a Telegraph subscription in the first place, though over the months you could get some people were really quite innocent about the political affiliations of the Telegraph. I myself had initial reservations, but the sheer improvement in terms of job status was enough to assuage this. If the newspaper I was promoting was anything more downmarket than the Telegraph I might have had to quit.
One of the pleasures of the job was seeing all these quirky addresses such as Steeple Bumpstead, Heol Nazareth or Eureka Road. On such location in Scotland was called the Nith Quadrant which sounded like something out of Star Wars; as the person on the other end was speaking with a heavy accent, they might as well have been a wookie. Mentioning this to a colleague next to me and impersonating a wookie sound, he said of the Scottish voices “and that’s just the women.”
It wasn’t solely selling the Telegraph. Occasionally, we were shifted to promoting Barclays Bank to get people to have a one-to-one meeting with a financial advisor from Barclays. This was a lot harder because whereas people can be blasé about buying a newspaper, when it comes to their finances, they can become a lot more defensive. The bank was paying one million pounds to TMG if they could get a certain number of ‘quality’ leads. The key word there is quality. One guy smashed all expectations about targets and we were all amazed, until it transpired that he had actually been committing illegality - this was along the lines of talking to a daughter who would sign her mother up to be called by Barclays to arrange the meeting. Quite a few of us had strayed into that dodgy area, until we were told in no uncertain terms not to do it. They guy who had inadvertently committed massive fraud got a severe ticking off and sent home early that day. He did return the next day but his results were nowhere near as impressive. Quality also meant not just persuading reluctant people to accept a call from Barclays since the real value was in getting them to the face-to-face encounter so they could have financial products pushed at them. This line of work wasn’t very pleasant. The work felt more sleazy, there were no bonuses (nominally yes, but the targets were always too high for everyone) and it was more boring, because it was more of set script - the same fifty words over and over again, whereas there was bit more of a cut-and-thrust with selling subscriptions, a bit more of a conversation, with going forward and parrying. There were opportunities for revenge. The clients did not have to go to a Barclays branch for a get-together; Barclays were prepared to send out agents to personal abodes. I got a man from the Shetlands on the other end of the phone and he was quite adamant that as there was no Barclays presence on the islands, it wasn’t necessary, but I got him to agree because I was also insistent that Barclays would send out an agent to meet him on the boat. I can just imagine this be-suited Barclays worker in an outboard motor boat, windswept and lashed by spray from the sea as he goes out on their mission.
Days after my birthday in 2008, there was an opportunity to escape what was increasingly dreary work and get a permanent position for Births, Deaths and Marriages page in the Daily Telegraph. I almost bungled it when on the last days of submissions I forgot my CV at home and had to get my dad email me a spare copy he luckily had on his work computer. I even got the name wrong of my interviewer, who was Caroline, but that did not hinder my chances greatly when I achieved considerably above 40 words a minutes (on two finger type) with only one mistake. My greatest bar was when Caroline, consulting my CV, asked if I might not be off after a few months to a better job and after giving my assurances that I was here for the long-term, at least one year, maybe two or three, it was plain sailing. Caroline called me and another girl called Mandy in; there were three internal positions available, but by only beckoning two of us in, I was fearful. Caroline said “We would like to offer you the job.” I was waiting for the ‘but’ yet it never came. So on that Friday in July, as I walked out of the interview room having walked in expecting the worst, we were applauded by the whole fourth floor which was a kind thing.
After training and probation, my position became official on 1st September 2008 and I’m still here more than one year later. I don’t think it’s too controversial or will affect my employment to comment on it now, but best to be on the safe side by leaving it so long. It doesn’t change my opinions of the Daily Telegraph reportage - characterised by contempt for the EU and all its works (though there are a few good people who stand up against integration), contempt for the Labour party (though there are a few good people who stand up against left-wing nonsense) and contempt for the BBC (though there is Radio 3), with more than the occasional salvo aimed at public sector jobs, Barack Obama and the climate change consensus. My views are naturally counter to these opinions; however, what I do is of a decidedly apolitical tone. I would have serious qualms were I offered a place on a non-’quality’ paper and many of the stories before the comment sheets in the Telegraph are bipartisan in their appeal. If I want to have a laugh, I do read the reparative (to my mind) stalls set out around the leader column. Boris Johnson is the most famous of these though also the most disappointing. Ken Livingstone criticises him for being a part-time mayor, yet actually he’s a part-time Telegraph columnist, with each piece containing two sentences of meat amongst a multitude of fluff - perfectly amiable at a dinner party, distinctly lightweight in a national newspaper. I’ve got to be circumspect when proffering the produce of my critical faculties with regard to figures who could easily deem that I am ‘surplus to requirements’, even if expecting a reasonable final warning missive (given that I have knowledge of aspects of the internal apparatus). I largely appreciate the contributions (genuinely) of George Pitcher, Christopher Howse and Tom Leonard. Benedict Brogan is a class act. The leader column, essentially the voice of Will Lewis, can be the source of a good chuckle - advocating abolishing the minimum wage, while a few weeks later saying that dukes need more support; even if the latter idea was whimsical, it was still a self-parody for a paper with contributors who consider £75,000 per annum to be a poor London wage or interviewing a man earning £150,000 a year over his threat to emigrate over the raising of income tax bands for the rich, since he’ll have to pay “ a few hundred pounds more” to the government. But outside these formulations, which do allow dissenting penning from time to time, is the seriousness of an upmarket paper. Of course, the MPs expenses exposé was a classic public service duty of journalism. And now, having wittered on for more than 1,500 words, I bid you farewell, until next time.

Commenting on how long it's been since her last album, Shakira confessed to being an unproductive producer, needing someone to drag her from indecision. She quipped "I'm like Halley's Comet. I appear every four years." Er, no. The comet in question passes near Earth every 75 years. Not even Madonna would contemplate recording over such a span. Shakira, just because your hips don't lie, that doesn't free the rest of your body from committing unintended untruths. Your breasts may be like foothills rather than Kilimanjaros, yet are still impressive in context, but unlike these mini-mountains - that you can move - you can't alter the trajectory of this other heavenly body.

While it is largely disappointing that England could not complete a clean sweep of wins in their qualifying group, with the defeat in Ukraine, the default compensation is revenge. Barring the greatets ever result in Andorran football's history, when they play the Ukrainians in a few days, Croatia are eliminated from particpating at the World Cup of 2010. As you do unto us, so we do unto you (no matter how unintended the scoreline in Dnipropetrosk). Then again, we've done you a favour. With the global recession's damage still very much with us, you wouldn't have wanted to pay for an expensive plane ticket to South Africa. Nor would you have wanted to spend part of the summer with eyes glued to a TV screen culminating in eventual disappointment. We'll send you a postcard (or not).
But to qualifying, it is a bit irritating that not just Spain, but also a very moderate (but very disciplined) Germany will finish with more points, while The Netherlands also have a 100% record. Still, England should finish top scorers in Europe. And you would hope that the Englsih defence will not be so complacent when the matches do count. In Sir Bobby's last full season in charge, Newcastle United played for 80 minutes with ten men (like England) at Villa Park against a vibrant home side and emerged with a 0-0 draw. Even with the Little Russians (as they were known in Tsarist times) missing a penalty, that was beyond England. Matthew Upson needs to partner John Terry against Belarus, in what essentially is a friendly, to give Rio Ferdinand something to think about without shredding the Manchester United defender's confidence. Let's have soemthing to shout about ahead of prestige friendlies in November.

I don't know how many British viewers have noticed, but over the last few months there have been a recent spate of repeats that even BBC 2 would balk at. I'm talking of feature films, notably Mr and Mrs Smith, Poseidon and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Now, I know these are crowd pleasers, but are there royalties so little or have we reached saturation point in numbers of films that schedulers' minds are overloaded and can only retreat into a few guaranteed crowd-pleasers, rather than scanning the spectrum of filmology? The multiplicity of channels cannot cover all bases of such deja vu coincidence.
The Departed was a case in point last night. Not one of Scorsese's better films, but pretty tightly directed. Certainly not Best Picture but maybe worthy of a Best Director Oscar (I can't remember the competition that year, which tells its own story). The only trouble is (spoiler alert) that once Jack Nicholson's principal villain dies three-quarters of the way through, the dramatic tension gradually loosens, like a balloon slowly deflating. I am not totally aware of how faithful a remake it is (having seen a bit of the original Hong Kong movie), so it is possibly Nicholson's screen presence that dominates over Leonardo diCaprio and Matt Damon (among a stellar cast), making their dilemmas not so important once he is gone. The coda tries its best, but it's far too long. There are also some contrivances: of all the female police shrinks in all of Boston, diCaprio's and Damon's characters have to fall in love (and into bed) with the same one; I'll just leave this incriminating evidence on my desk in almost plain sight so my adversary will inevitably find it as I leave him in my office alone. Ultimately, it is the unsatisfactory ending that is truly damaging because until then it was a pretty decent silver screen offering, rendered merely decent.

In a recent article, outlining how “Foreigners” (that is to say, more specifically, EU nationals) would not be charged retrospectively for any speeding fine they incur whilst on British roads, since the weakness of sterling makes chasing them up not cost effective, The Daily Telegraph was in thunderous form. Any fine (or any sort) over 70 Euros will be pursued and the money collected will go to the national government of the offender, but the poor pound’s financial strength means EU national drivers in this country who break the law will fall below the 70 Euro threshold and their governments will not benefit. Therefore, only drivers fined on the spot by police will suffer. To illustrate the pan-European nature of this initiative, the Telegraph produced this list of countries: “Austria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Holland, Netherlands, Romania…” Hang on, scroll back, what was that. Holland, Netherlands. Let’s ignore, the lack of the definite article that the writer felt the Czech Republic needed. I do believe that not only was Holland out of alphabetical sequence there, but it is merely a province of the Netherlands and, while often used as shorthand for this Benelux member, to have it side by side, out of order, with the Low Country just compounds the error. Back to the maps, hacks!
It’s a shame that The Daily Telegraph hides its apologies in a dark recess of its pages. All papers really should have the humility of The Guardian and have a corrections and clarifications section. Now some might choke on their frappucinos to associate The Groniad with humility (and they have a point), but this part of the paper is one of the most enjoyable areas, since the editor is nominally independent and waxes witty on innumerable occasions. A recent joy was an arts piece contents sidebar, citing the name of an interviewee. “Unfortunately, the 16th century Ottoman admiral was unavailable for comment,” however, a real artist was. One of my all time favourites was “We were being unduly harsh when we said that regional support for the Tories had been ‘skewered’. The word we had meant to use was ‘skewed’.
We must not be too harsh on those who work to tight deadlines. Shoichi Nakagawa, the former finance minister, only had access to so much alcohol before he had to make another public appearance. After one particularly slurred appearance, an Iphone App game was created, whereby Nakagawa had to dodge journalists questions while being on a less even keel than the Mary Rose in 1545. Now, he’s been found dead in his Tokyo home, despite being only 56 years old. With a prescription of sleeping pills, it seems he took the Heath Ledger way out of accidental overdose (not Michael Jackson’s exit since we all know that was ‘homicide’). Of course, it’s a tragedy for his family and friends and good wishes must be felt for them, but those in the spotlight must take the hit when they embarrass themselves, as David Letterman is doing. Let us remember him for his quote during Japan’s general election (in which he lost his seat) earlier this year to his constituents, that he was giving up drinking for “the sake of Japan” - in English, he appears as unfortunately gaffe-prone as ever, given that sake is the national drink of Japan. Let us hope that it sounded better in his native Nipponese.

The Copa Cobana Games

Well Rio de Janeiro in winning the International Olympic Games for 2016, for the first time anywhere in South America, following on from a third triumph for London. It was just the tonic the movement needed, comparable to UEFA choosing Poland/Ukraine over Italy for the European Championships in 2012. It emphasises the broad horizons of the Olympics. Disappointing for Barack Obama it may have been, but Chicago finishing fourth, probably had little to do with him, since the International Olympic Committee probably had sour memories of Atlanta in 1996, widely believed to be the most bungled Games in its modern history and the massive corruption involved in securing the Winter Olympics for Salt Lake City in 2002. US opponents of President Obama will grumble that now the USA will not have staged the Summer Games for almost a quarter of a century (if they win 2020) and point the finger, even though they would have shown their true unpatriotic heart by hoping that Chicago did not win so as to damage Obama. But this is not the time to think of recriminations in the USA. This time belongs to you Rio. Long may the parties continue.