Another year that has passed too quickly comes to an end.  Has it been a vintage twelve months for cinema?  Well, not unless we have been transported back to the 1950s or at least the 1970s.  The movie year concluded for me on 28^th December with Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows.  Moriarty makes his full bow after an unseen cameo in the first instalment.  Yet the moment early in the film when Reichenbacher is mentioned, I knew the archvillain’s lifespan would not exceed the running time of the picture.  There were sections that surprised myself such as the early revelation of the face of Moriarty which signalled that Rachel McAdams’ character was doomed, although it was strange to kill her off when the film had barely begun.  Moriarty’s masterplan to unite military-related industry under his aegis and then kickstart a major European war in order to become a highly successful profiteer, was opened up to me in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (having not read the Conan Doyle novels, he would be extremely prescient if he had predicted World War One).  As a Guy Ritchie flick, if a gun is seen in Act One, it will be invariably used seconds later, forget waiting for Act Three.  Other scenarios were well telegraphed, such as when Holmes is comatose on the German train, the injection that he had used to stimulate Watson’s dog was given to the eminent doctor as ‘a wedding present’.  For a whole minute, I was thinking ‘the wedding present, the wedding present’, until Watson exclaims “Of course, the wedding present.”  Indeed.  Game of Shadows was alright and enjoyable, but not spectacular – multiplex fodder.

The ultimate multiplex franchise of recent years came to a close with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two.  It was a fitting end and there were moments that elicited ‘oh’ from me.  Not Severus Snape proving that he was an undercover good guy.  From the start, there was an element to Alan Rickman’s performance to indicate that he was not all that he seemed (my sister who read the books but before she had embarked on the seventh, dismissed this theory – well, who’s right now!).  The nature of Harry Potter’s scar was a huge revelation.  The epic final battle(s) had genuinely thrilling moments.  The epilogue decades into the future was very touching.  When the movie was first released, I was there at the head of the queue at Chatham Odeon on 15^th July so that no-one would ruin any aspects of the plot for me.  As the crowd waited for the doors to open, a vast gaggle of school kids were disgorged from a nearby coach and I quailed at the thought of having this noisy rabble pack the cinema as an end of year treat by their teachers.  Thankfully, they went past, on their way to Dickens World – an attraction which now probably makes most of its money from school visits.

In August, while Altaa was away in Mongolia, I saw Cowboys and Aliens.  With Daniel Craig speaking in short, staccato sentences, I initially presumed that his character might have been tailored to avoid exposing a dodgy American accent but later it is a creditable, if neutral, effort.  Harrison Ford is terrific, making one pine for what he could have given for the better part of the last decade when his career languished in the doldrums.  This film is a superior piece of storytelling, in addition to the incongruity of the Wild West and outer space.  The high concept is frontier town meets final frontier.  Before I witnessed it, I must admit I was sceptical.  Even so, it raids every cliché of the American outback – dusty, one-street towns, straggly bandits, Apache Native American war parties – and, in that zeitgeist phrase, ‘retools’ it.  There is even an upside-down steamer boat, like a Mississippi Huckleberry Finn-era Poseidon Adventure.  As for the sci-fi, the aliens are essentially our worse selves.  As their mother craft takes off, another homage, given that it is redolent of the opening of Star Wars Episode IV when you think “how much more of this ship is there?”  At first, the film adheres to horror convention, not showing the monsters so as to let the mind conjure the most terrible, but the story narrative as it is, the hostile aliens have to be seen eventually.  The distinctive feature of opening up the chest for protrusions to grope out recalls both Alien and Total Recall.  Overall, there are some neat twists throughout and the action scenes are well-handled.  This is, without any doubt, Jon Favreau’s best directorial work to date.

One of the dangers of updating a well-loved classic (over-used term, I know) of literature is that, in the process, one can lose the magic that made the original so special. It can apply to films – I dread the proposed, pointless remake of Robocop and JJ Abrams’ liberties place his Star Trek movie firmly outside the canon of the rest of the franchise (preferably in a parallel universe) – but to more august books and plays, shameless pandering to modern audiences more often than not leaches out what once was timeless.


Against my better instinct, swayed by the TV guide’s gushing tribute as ‘one of the highlights of the festive season’, I tuned in to an update of The Borrowers. There was a fine cast, the most prominent being Christopher Eccleston, Stephen Fry and Victoria Wood, all playing their roles expertly and the design and conceptualisation could be sublime, such as Arietta and Spiller hiding in a Nativity scene arrangement or an entire Borrower city in an abandoned Tube station. One might query therefore what made me consider it an hour and a half I shall never get back. My wife held an even stronger negative opinion.

A selected crowd of reviewers on Radio Five (Live) were near universal in their fulsome praise. Near universal? The most senior of these opinion-formers, whilst still confessing to enjoyment, had the caveat that a modern setting means relevant technology of the age with which to expose Borrowers definitively. For myself, it was not just a horrendous plot hole but the decision to ignore it completely was an insult to my intelligence.

In fact, pitfalls in the narrative were myriad as if stumbling around a dungeon composed of oubliettes. Once Pod Clock and his wife were captured, what scientist worth their pay grade does not even take a photograph of his specimens, let alone set up a video camera nearby to maintain constant surveillance of their behaviour (yet a little boy has the ken to record it on his iPhone). And to place them in a large, glass beaker without a lid of some description defies all common sense. Mummified spiders were in frozen attendance in this laboratory and arachnids would have had no difficulty in escaping, though, despite knowing next to nothing of their abilities, the captive Borrowers are plonked here. A secure guinea pig hutch can be (like a video camera) inexpensive. When thwarted with more historic inevitability than a Marxist tract (or Tom and Jerry), the humiliated boffin knows where his quarry in the form of the little boy lives. This is not followed up, however. The list of such deficiencies to the narrative was seemingly endless in the defiance of logic.

Logic is something of which Stephen Fry usually makes great play. Maybe he chose to overlook it in order to relish delivering lines as a biologist. Fine comic actor and raconteur that he is, Fry’s ubiquity is grating, as though one might be worse for wear after overdoing it on the namesake’s confectionery. This, QI, The Bleak Old shop of Stuff, a prominent talking head on Billion Dollar Hippy, other innumerable interviews, hosting radio programmes on the subject of technology, the spoken word and others and regular relays of his tweets by followers – it is no surprise that Private Eye chose to lampoon him as a cross between a Middle Eastern despot and Russian strongman in his dominance and ‘reporting’ that there were “growing international calls for a ‘no-Fry zone’.” Indeed. One can have too much of a good thing.

Of course, he was excellent in his role, as were all the cast but, ironically, that was to the detriment of the story. The characters supposedly the ‘heroes’ of the piece were insufferable and playing it to pitch perfection merely heightened how irritating their personas were – a mixture of arrogant stubbornness and vainglorious bittiness, with a dash of outrageous sneakiness.

The overt emotional manipulation was odious to myself and my beloved, not landing any connection to the point where one rooted for the ‘villains’. The little boy that helps the Borrowers is, by his actions, one step removed from feral youth. So his mother died and his father is out most of the day and night, struggling to make ends meet and his gran is about to be evicted and, and… To quote Wilde, one would need a heart of stone not to laugh but the boy’s obstreperous wilfulness makes it a bitter chuckle. Victoria Wood as the gran, inexplicably, undergoes a total personality reversal from hating the borrowers to expressing gratitude to them. So her sovereign coin is returned and then sold but think of all the grief that need not have happened had it not gone missing in the first place. Hearts of gold but not flesh-and-blood beating ones.

Possibly a child would have been less attuned to these failings, but then why screen it from 7.30 pm, concluding at 9 pm? Lunatic scheduling! Could it be that it was hoped the adults would be so engorged on food and tipsy on alcohol they would be oblivious to the flaws? Or that the nation reflected the luvvies gathered in the Radio Five studio in delighting over the superficiality of it all? Wouldn’t you feel cheated if sparkling wrapping paper turned out to be the gift? The TV guide was almost right. This was of the festive season – the present you didn’t want.

Ploy of the Rovers?

As the English Premier League enters its busiest (I would say self-destructive, given the performances of most PL players in the summer tournaments) part of the season, there is much that is ill with the game. The misguided Anfield defence of Luis Suarez’s offensiveness towards Patrice Evra with words that hold a racist connotation. John Terry being charged with racial aggravation and FIFA’s stumbling approach to reform, unless you are Manchester City-affiliated there is little Christmas cheer (and even they have to contend with a Europe League plod in the new year).


Eccentric and callous club owners drive fans of those afflicted teams to distraction and nowhere – in Lancashire – is this more apparent than at Blackburn Rovers. While turkeys don’t vote for Christmas, it seems chickens do for relegation. Venkys, the owners of Rovers who have bought the club using leveraged loans, have kept Steve Kean, presumably as a lightning rod, though like much of their other initiatives this has been a failure. Kean’s bluffness against the torrent of abuse he receives from the stands is valiant but he is not up to the job and holding out for a payoff is not at all noble. He won’t resign, Venkys won’t sack him. It is maddening, even to a neutral. He has had 38 games – the equivalent of a whole season – and his team has amassed a meagre 32 points over that run, which is trapdoor form. This born number two should not have been manager in the first place but Venkys workings made North Korea look like a rational, well-ordered state.

The betting is that Mark Hughes will not be long in waiting to return to the club for the third time (first as player, then as manager). So much for Hughes walking out on Fulham because he believed that the London club lacked the cash to fund his ambitions. He touted himself as a big-club manager but no-one he thought worthy of his self-regard has picked up the phone. Whoopsy! Maybe he should have stayed at Fulham for another season. If he comes to Blackburn, he will be taking a backward step, illustrating starkly his failure, in a bid to relaunch his managerial prospects. He had good times at Blackburn after initial fire-fighting. With the financial situation of a club up to its eyes in debt inflicted by the owners, it would always be a precarious highwire act of fighting off the tug of gravity. Rovers have punched above their weight for a long time (on gate receipts alone) but a spell in the Championship could be a long one.

Less sublime window, more Sublime Porte

Turkey’s hysterical reaction to the French parliament decision to make illegal the denial of the massacre of Armenians by Turks in World War One and its aftermath is a symptom of lingering authoritarianism. Just as Turks cannot accept that their intervention in Cyprus could be construed as anything other than noble, a certain militarism has infiltrated the pores of Turkish society. The French may be playing to the gallery of half a million French Armenians as elections loom, but how is it any different to the Turkish law which makes it a crime to call the genocide ‘genocide’. Winston Churchill called it an ‘administrative holocaust’ years before that term became associated with Jews in World War Two (which to distinguish is given a capital ‘H’). It is well attested by many parliaments and independent historians.


While the Germans were forced to come to a reckoning with their shameful and heinous acts, like the Japanese ruling class with their own refusal to acknowledge war crimes of the Imperial Army of Nippon (some prominent politicians call World War Two a war of ‘self-defence’ as do several school textbooks), the Turks have never really come to terms with their own horrors and have inculcated in the education system that everything that has happened was for the best. Repeated military coups and the nationalist ideology of Kemal Atatürk have infantilised the Turkish political rubric, but it is immature to deny responsibility, even if all the participants are long dead (moreover, Atatürk, the only undefeated Ottoman general was desperately striving to create a Turkish unity and identity to counteract the Greek military advances in the early 1920s – times have changed). An ethnic Armenian editor was assassinated in Istanbul by a nationalist agitator for challenging the law on this and the murderer was acclaimed as a hero by many inside Turkey.  Britain has apologised for some of the wrongs of its past. Turkey should grow up or soon its attitude among nations will be the diplomatic equivalent of turkeys voting for Christmas.

Interestingly, despite the hardline stance of South Korea’s president, as a ‘conciliatory gesture’, the south will not go ahead with Christmas lights along the armistice border. Maybe, in such uncertain times for their northern neighbour, it is more not to make South Korean military bases more visible to air attack.


The Guardian, being the Groniad, declared that North Korea was the world’s only communist monarchy. This misses the fact that Nicolae Ceaucescu adopted, in the 1970s, the royal symbols of orb and sceptre, in effect becoming a king to augment his despotism. Moreover, not all monarchies adhere to the succession of the first-born, as Cuba has demonstrated with Fidel Castro succeeded by his younger brother Raul. A correct statement would be that North Korea was the world’s only current primogeniture monarchy. What is unusual is that, for the first time, a communist country has gone through three generations of one family as successive leader.

It was reported that Kim Jong-Il died of a heart attack on his personal, armour-plated train. I wonder if it was as a result of surfeit of wild boar (as opposed to lampreys). What would really seal his royal status would be if he popped off while pooping, echoing the British and Hannoverian George II and indeed that other ‘king’ Elvis Presley.

I wonder how many days the North Korean Communist authorities waited before daring to release the news that Kim Jong-Il was dead.  Usually they get the succession sorted out beforehand, so it is likely Kim Jong-Un is a certainty to take over from his father – whatever crimes against humanity he will commit, he is unlikely to try to sneak into Japan on a false passport to see Tokyo Disneyland, as Kim Jong-Il’s elder son attempted.

State of the Geordie Nation

The deal for striker Modibo Maiga between Newcastle United and Sochaux has been struck out, after the Malian player failed his medical. That NUFC are wary is understandable after the Michael Owen ordeal. The club, however, are short of proven hitmen, with Demba Ba accounting for more than half the goals, Leon Best having not found the net in the top flight since mid-September and full-back Ryan Taylor having more Premier League goals than Peter Lovenkrands and Shola Ameobi combined.


Then again, if the squad is not augmented (although it does need to be), it may keep some of the current members in club colours for a while longer. Andy Carroll now looks an outstanding sale for £35 million, even if all the money went into the club, none earmarked for the squad. That he was injured for a long time meant that Kenny Dalglish’s philosophy was more or less stamped on Liverpool by the time he recovered his fitness. It is all reminiscent of Real Madrid buying crocked defender Jonathan Woodgate (though Real got their revenge and their money back with Owen). The departures of Kevin Nolan and Jose Enrique are harder to justify in terms of team strength, if not boardroom politics and letting Joey Barton leave on a free transfer is because the board were too arrogant and paradoxically thin-skinned to accept his passion. The Toon had ‘problem’ players in the past – Craig Bellamy, Laurent Robert, Olivier Bernard – but those there were tantrums, the club and Bobby Robson especially always had a way of reconciling them.

There is ‘talk’ that Cheik Tiote, Fabricio Coloccini, even Tim Krul, might be sold for hefty price tags to bring in cheap as chips players as replacements, just as there was ‘talk’ that Carroll would be sold. The board call this the Arsenal model, but Arsene Wenger in his pomp never let players leave in their prime unless absolutely forced to and on such occasions – Nicolas Anelka, Marc Overmars and Emmanuel Petit (the last two as a ‘double’ signing fro Barcelona) – he obtained eye-watering sums. Only recently, with the so-called trophy drought, has Wenger found it harder to retain star players. The NUFC strategy is not the Arsenal model, it is the Wigan model, much as Mike Ashley, who has no class and for whom money is all, would hate to admit. Trouble is, Wigan Athletic are going through their golden age and every year that they are not relegated, is a prolongation of this gilded era. Newcastle United are a far bigger club – the stadium could hold more than half of the total population of Wigan, while the Athletic can barely muster a crowd that Bashar al-Assad would not hesitate in killing were they to protest against him – with a far greater history. Brushing with relegation every season so Ashley can make moolah out of his mid-life crisis investment is not exploiting the potential.

It is all of a piece, though. Derek Llambias seems to be going gene-splicing therapy to make himself a total shit, all vestige of humanity removed. He treats fans like a card-sharp caught at the casino he used to work at. He should take care to note what happened to Joe Pesci in Martin Scorsese’s Casino. Wiping St. James Park completely out of the stadium’s name on a spurious case of raising money, when it breaks all rules of marketing (in a bad way) and that the owner is the tenth richest man in English football and ninth in the Premier League was the most egregious act since Newcastle bounced back from the relegation induced by Ashley having four managers in one season. And this, on when they insisted on affixing sportsdirect.com before St. James Park, that under their reign (of terror) the name would stay, but it has been proven in court that they are pathological liars. As a result, how can anyone believe them that they stopped going bankrupt. The Shepherds and Halls were dancing on the edge of a volcano, but Sir John Hall didn’t acquire the nickname “Margaret Thatcher’s favourite businessman” through being too reckless with cash. They would never have allowed the goose that laid the golden eggs for them to be killed off (witness the spending freeze during Glenn Roeder’s tenure after the capture of Obafemi Martins). No-one though these two families could be exceeded in venality but it has not been more true of the saying ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’.

Typical Gillingham (of the Medway variety) - an ultra-modern revamp of the train station isn't even finished yet and already someone's smashed one of the windows into a fractal spiral (and they probably don't even know what fractals are!!!). How did civilisation attain the heights it has achieved when meatheads are so prevalent?  Maybe those with higher intelligence use the grunts for the more menial tasks to reach these peaks - Aldous Huxley's alphas and betas controlling the deltas and epsilons - but it's hardly conducive to cohesive society, witness the summer riots.  Common humanity suggests that, no matter the political regime, those inclined to torture and brutality will always find a way to channel their desires, legally or illegally.
Or the window could have been cracked by a careless workman...

Ending a weekend in the cells

After a pleasurable X -Factor party at Jamie and Keiko's where the hosts and guests (including ourselves) sought to encourage mirth among the rest by coming up with flip remarks about the whole show, followed by a double-screening of new to BBC3 American Dad, Altaa and I departed, having missed the worst of the rain. We pitched up at West Kensington tube station, which I think has quite a suburban feel, despite being in central London, as evinced by the Fort Knox-security to get to Jamie and Keiko's apartment. Outside the barriers were three police vans, which suggested a high-end operation in the vicinity - I didn't think it would actually be on the platform itself.
A drug dealer and his moll were surrounded by five coppers, whilst a further one looked on, noting down details in a bookpad. They retrieved from a rucksack two whiskey bottles of the Jack Daniels variety, from which one could infer that the warning to drink responsibly would have been ignored. Below where the amber liquid had been, one police officer put on a glove to take out some rather crumpled pieces of tin foil - one passenger safely on the other side of the rails (next to us, no less) was giving a running commentary to his girlfriend and with theatrical rhetoric he announced "crack cocaine!" With the woman taken away and the junkie's jacket searched, Mr Smack somewhat incongruously asked to go home to West Brompton, to which the response of the boys in blue was "you're going nowhere." Ba-boom, tssh - he walked straight into that one.
If anyone is into crack cocaine in West Brompton, London, you now know why the price has risen, as one of the supply sources has been interdicted for some months/years. Please don't rob any extra homes before Christmas though - the best present for yourself would be to get some professional help.

Return of the nasty party

Obviously, David Cameron does not read Peter Oborne’s columns. The commentator has taken Number 10 to task for not putting family-orientated policies back in Whitehall bureaucracy that New Labour so assiduosuly stripped in favour of individual rights (at the expense of social cohesion). On another occasion, the prime minister was in defiant mood when he said there could be no comparison made between the summer rioters and the financiers who had laid low the world economy (that’s right Dave for the latter were far more destructive). His target was the BBC but The Telegraph ran it under Oborne’s byline too. And then on Thursday 8th December, Oborne said that Cameron was a strong leader because he had inner reserves of strength to be weak and not rock the European boat, that the PM was standing up for the UK’s national interest and not his own, let alone his party’s. He affirmed his genuine Eurosceptism through being critical of the Euro but in such times no-one could begrudge that. I wouldn't say he's always right - who is - but he is definitely respectable.
Yet Dave caved in to the Europhobes and their self-appointed leader Boris Johnson. Britain was the only one not to sign up to a communiqué, not a treaty but a sense of direction when all 26 other members did. Cameron’s argument that Britain was not in the Euro so had no need to attend Eurozone finance meetings lost weight when Nick Robinson (secret lemonade drinker as well secret Tory supporter?) pointed that only 17 members of a 27-strong union had the single currency, yet nine non-members still signed up. The PM just blathered about it was right that Britain was not in the Euro, ducking the question altogether.
The thing is Cameron has not just been out-manoeuvred by President Nicolas Sarkozy (with whom many will agree, when he talked about Britain holding everyone up over financial regulation when it was financial regulation that led us to the impasse), who wanted to exclude the UK from the proposal, but also by his parliamentary party. Cameron thinks he has avoided a referendum on Britain’s relationship with the EU, in which he would be in the invidious position of having to defend but if you appease an aggressor they just want more. The Europhobes are delighted by the prospect of a two-speed Europe as if gives them the option to try and force a vote on Britain’s changed status anyway. They are like the inter-war US isolationists that were so damaging to American foreign affairs and ultimately the world. The consistent references to Norway and Switzerland - international non-entities -highlight their true aim – complete withdrawal from the EU. Both countries have far smaller economies allowing to focus on one industry alone – Norway will still gain massive North Sea oil and gas revenues long after British fields have run out and the Swiss have world-famous banking. Indeed, Norway and Switzerland are part of the Schengen free borders arrangement. What do you say, Fraser Nelson; let’s give up our border controls and be like Norway and Switzerland?
As for the financier who said that being isolated was like missing the Titanic as it left dock, first of all he would say that given that his business would have suffered (I wonder how much tax he actually pays as well or is he a non-dom) and secondly one does not run a foreign policy through quips unless you are Robert Mugabe or Muammar Gadaffi. The Archbishop of Canterbury has already called for a financial transaction tax, variously called the Tobin tax or the Robin Hood tax. Bearded leftie some would say, but how could you expect Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham (Cameron and George Osborne) to endorse it. The PM says he could not possibly adopt it unless it was worldwide (i.e. it’s pie in the sky) but let’s see how hard he presses for it at the G20, where a worldwide agreement could largely be enforced. Then his true colours will emerge.
The future of Britain lies either as a servant of the USA or as a partner with European colleagues. Unlike Thatcher or Major, let alone Heath, Cameron has pushed us to the periphery. Oborne seems to believe that Cameron has done well, nay, been ingenious, insomuch as he’s avoided a party split and/or the fall of the coalition government by not going the whole hog and demanding repatriation of many ‘powers’, while allowing other EU countries to try and save the Eurozone if they want. The PM will most enjoy reading Oborne’s column today should he choose to do so. Maybe Oborne is happy that Cameron doesn't pay attention to him, given his subsequent fulsome praise. But I think Cameron is storing up trouble, for by feeding the xenophobic beast, he has merely whetted its appetite. Moreover, the phrase “if the whole world is wrong and you’re right, it’s time to look in the mirror,” while not always true, looks particularly apposite, given that four of those who signed up, promised to let their parliaments examine the ‘deal’ before giving the go-ahead. After the backbench rebellion on EU membership last month, that prospect would have terrified Cameron. To reiterate, this was not a treaty, just an agreement on a future direction. Oborne believes Cameron has achieved what was thought impossible, an idea which may have influenced his previous article affirming that the PM should side with the national over the party interest. British influence is permanently reduced and the rules drawn up will still affect us (now with no-one to even defend the indefensible actions of The City and get a compromise) - I wonder how many times US presidents will be calling Number 10 after this? We shall see how all this plays out for the future but the fat cats and their Tory friends have got an early Christmas present. Too much chocolate makes you sick though.

Some commentators like to present the north-west of England as the heartland of football, a claim to rile other regions with long-established and cherished histories of the sport. With both man Manchester clubs (sorry Rochdale, you’re not one of them) exiting the Champions League, the backlash can begin. The two Mersey sides – Liverpool and the Liverpool Reserves, whoops, bit of Bill Shankly creeping in there; I mean Liverpool and Everton – didn’t even make the grade to enter European competition and aren’t doing great now, the Anfield outfit most pertinently given that more than £100 million has been invested in the squad in less than a year. Furthermore, three Lancashire teams – Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers and Wigan Athletic – occupy all three relegation spots and, noting their size of each, there are no guarantees that they would bounce back straightaway if any or all were to fall through the trapdoor. This heart(land) is diseased.
In top European football, the responsibility rests with London to deliver for England, even though none of its clubs have won the European Cup (though Chelsea and Arsenal have both finished runners-up in recent years). For Manchester City, this is a blip as the priority until May is becoming Premier League champions. Even for Manchester United, despite failing in a group of ridiculous ease, they have gone one better than the last time they were out of elite European competition before Christmas, finishing third, not fourth as they did in 2005, thereby dropping into the Europa League. With their domestic travails (trailing in the Premier League with insipid performances, losing at home to second tier Crystal Palace in the League Cup and drawn away to Man City in the FA Cup), this could be their best chance of a trophy this season because they were not going to overcome Barcelona in 2012 at the top table.
Man Utd’s conquerors Basle (from Basel) deserve this after the former very luckily overcame a 3-2 deficit to the Swiss at Old Trafford to make it 3-3 in the last minute. They add to the exotica of the knockout stages with Apoel Nicosia becoming the first Cypriot side to make the cut. England’s UEFA coefficient vis-à-vis their nearest rivals Spain should not be too badly dented as both associations saw two clubs progress and two exit. What is interesting is that Italy is back. Three of their teams make the last 16, while Udinese pushed Arsenal close in the 3rd qualifying round. Despite Inter Milan winning the Champions League in 2010, Italian football has been in the doldrums. In fact, Internazionale getting their hands on the ‘cup with the big ears’ is the main reason why this season Serie A had four entrants to the European cream of the crop, when previously and from August 2012, they will only have a trio, losing out to Germany who will be more nervous now, with only Bayern Munich and Bayer Leverkusen making it to the resumption in February.
Zenit St Petersburg and CSKA Moscow will be the representatives of Russia in the knockout section and their tandem will do a far better job of promoting their country on the European stage than that of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev. Under their tutelage, corruption has flourished in the Federation so vigorously that they can’t even rig an election properly. It is reminiscent of the incompetence in Zimbabwe and Iran with their botched attempts at ballot fraud. It is unthinkable that Putin won’t be president next year (not least because he is still relatively popular), but United Russia, the political party that he leads (yet, intriguingly, is not a member of), has suffered a bloody nose with a drop of 15% support of the ‘electorate’ since last time. Mikhail Gorbachev, a man with 2% approval ratings in his homeland, once again makes the wrong call, on this occasion demanding a re-run of the vote. That will merely allow the authorities to get it right in stealing the plebiscite. The protests in Moscow are not even on the same scale of the Orange Revolution, let alone Tahrir Square. It was smart of the police to let them go ahead and arrest them, so they can be identified in the future. Putin’s Russia looks shabby yet it is no danger of toppling yet.

Today is the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor (Honolulu, contrary to popular perception, was untouched, if not unmoved). A Day of Infamy. Tomorrow, is the office drinks party in Rochester. That shall be another day of infamy. I’ll hazard a guess that the carnage will only be comparable to that in Hawaii only on an Airfix scale model. Of the Death Star.

Oh, the weather outside if frightful but with the economy inside it's no more delightful

I love the snow – the deeper, the crisper, the more even, the better. In December 2010, Medway was stuck in a knot of storm weather that deposited more than a foot of snow in two days. It caused chaos, especially in the transport sector, where grit almost ran out, vehicles frequently flipped (so much so that Newsroom Southeast had their opening montage with an upside-down car in a drift – rather more pointed than the usual bland images stitched together) and Heathrow was virtually closed. It is claimed that it contributed to half a billion pounds being wiped off national GDP.
Given that last figure and the economic chill of that we are subjected now, I will forgo a meteorological one, to give us a chance of skimming outside of a recession. There again, the Eurozone could bring the whole world down, bad weather or no. The talk of a ‘financial compact’ to sort out the structural weaknesses, makes me think of make-up covering up a myriad of sins – Germany needs to give up some cherished ideals, such as not printing money as a way out of the crisis.
As the mascara streaks as the heat is turned up, the zits that need some Clearasil action are the rating agencies. Honestly, what are they for? They are home wreckers by being nation wreckers. Standard & Poor, not content with downgrading the USA in August causing financial turmoil, are now insistent on doing it again, warning gloomily against investing in any member of the Eurozone for as a whole they might soon be downgraded. They want to be ‘ahead of the curve’ as they, along with Fitch and Moody’s, were behind the curve in giving top-notch ratings to products that were, in reality, junk. Thus having played a key role in the credit crunch and Great Recession, S&P are now trying to prolong it in a clumsy attempt to protect their reputation. Trouble is, their reputation is already shot and their cack-handed subsequent self-serving measures risk becoming self-fulfilling. Any company that is of a size to invest in sovereign debt can do credit checks of their own. It’s time to legislate the ratings agencies out of existence – the US will be sympathetic and the Eurozone may see it as one of necessity.

Following the Fox down its hole

As is known commonly, progress for some is regression for others. Those in charge of BBC3 (digital channel of the year, probably awarded solely on the programme they did chronicling the British Army in Afghanistan) have decided to follow this line of thinking, having straplines of the next show, five minutes before time on the previous show. On Points of View, despite a flurry of complaints, the head of BBC3 said that “Straplines are here to stay.” So much for listening to other people.
Part of the problem is that they hover on the screen for so long at completely arbitrary parts of the narrative of the programme they invade. On American Dad last night, an important part of information was obscured by the strapline advertising Family Guy, until the very last moment. This is despite Family Guy savaging Fox TV in one episode for the latter’s own straplines a couple of years ago. Does the head of BBC3 even watch his own imports? Given the regularity of repeats and thus the airtime given to this ‘innovation’, is this why the funding to bring over new Family Guy in jeopardy? Closing down the avenues of dissent is a sure sign of a narrowing mind.

Milestone

500 posts – it’s only taken my good self a little over five years to reach this mark. There have been hiatuses of months followed by intensive posting day after day. To chunter or not to chunter? Yet the question is a matter of time and convenience. If people read, let them read. If they don’t, then at least I have a digital repository of my thoughts should I ever have cause to refer to them.