Getting Away With It (All Messed Up)

In the heyday of the Renaissance in Italy, murder was a fairly run-of-the-mill occurrence, whole clans being wiped out (including women and children, extinguishing their genetic code from the Earth forever) in internecine squabbles, that is, if fratricide hadn't taken place already.  If war was an extension of politics by other means, as von Clausewitz had it, a stiletto in the back was the equivalent of a parliamentary motion.
That is all in the past.  When Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were acquitted in a retrial of the murder of Meredith Kerchner in Perugia, 'Foxy Knoxy' gave the impression of a smiling succubus, getting away with the ultimate taboo of taking the life of another and in a most gratuitous fashion.  To quote Griffin Mill's (Tim Robbins) defence lawyer, "They think you're getting away with murder."  Italy's Supreme Court was not happy with the conduct of the second trial and so, in the manner of Robert Bruce's education by a spider, Knox and Sollecito have been tried, tried and tried again.  Found guilty for a second time, if Knox is not extradited by the USA to Italy, effectively she'll have to spend the rest of her life within the borders of her home country as Italy is well-connected regarding legal treaties.  Big deal.  It's not like she is in the situation of Asil Nadir, rattling around the confines of the internationally unrecognised Northern Cyprus - she has a whole continental state in which she can subsist, a country bigger than all of Europe put together.  Not only that but her father is the vice-president of the local Macy's and she has all the financial support of her stepfather and mother.  $4m from a book deal about her ordeal in prison before acquittal isn't too shabby either.  Currently, she is studying creative writing in Seattle.  Maybe she'll follow O. J. Simpson's route and author something along the lines of If I Did It.  I can see Knox becoming a soccer mom (as which reputable organisation in America would hire a convicted murderer who refuses to face the music) exhorting her charges from the sidelines - just don't get on the wrong side of her or turn your back.
The future looks grim for Sollecito, picked up in the northern city of Udine apparently preparing to flee Italy. No wonder.  After recently hoildaying in the Caribbean, he faced several decades behind bars (again) - greater contrasts would be hard to come by.  Both he and Knox have the right of further appeal - unlike Rudy Guede who surrendered that right in opting for a fast-track trial in the hope that the prosecution would have their act together in such a short time; his gamble failed.  The continual legal dredging keeps dragging the Kercher family back into their grief, unable to have a definitive conclusion for their murdered daughter.

I Am (not) a Camera

I recently entered myself into "Telegraph's Got Talent" where the company searches out future stars of Telegraph TV, but I don't think I made the cut.  As Lemony Snicket would have it, there was a series of unfortunate events.  They day could haven't started any worse when waking up with stomach cramps, the further development of acid reflux today dismissing the potentiality of stress-related (I don't do stress-y illnesses, I just get tired and take a nap).  At around 2.25 p.m., I caught the train from Chatham to Victoria, getting into 111 Buckingham Palace Road at 3.25.  Plenty of time one might think to prepare for an audition at 3.45.  Yet after passing the initial reception at the bottom of the escalators, to enter The Telegraph proper one must be escorted by an on-site worker.  The security guard called up and asked me to take a seat in the Sky Lobby.  Ten minutes elapsed and I questioned the security guard about my contact, to which he blankly said they had told him they were coming.  Another eight minutes evaporated and I made a personal call to the editor of the Court and Social to come and collect me, which she promptly did.
My contact was overseeing the auditions and, allegedly, was just about to come and collect me.  They were over-running (maybe not such a big surprise with '15 minute' intervals in the TV Studio) and I was left to ruminate on my script further.
Largely collated from several other sources of reportage, compiled into a cohesive whole and with a dash of my own quicksilver added, it went as follows:

Thousands of rush hour commuters in London were mired in chaos last Thursday after a major London Underground control room was submerged by a tsunami of cement.

Shortly after 1.30pm, a large section of the Victoria Line covering central and south London was closed following the incident.

Unofficial images appeared to show entire shelves of signalling and relay equipment submerged in cement, shortly after Transport for London announced that the southern section of the line was closed due to “flooding”.

The cement in question was fast-setting and some varieties can set hard within a couple of hours.

The embarrassing mishap occurred when engineering contractors, Bam Nuttal, who are working on a long-term upgrade of the station, poured concrete into voids in excavations for a new escalator control room when it diverted through to the signal control room below.

The Victoria Line is one of the busiest on the London Underground network, and the section closed during rush hour covered most of central London, including stops at Oxford Circus and Victoria.

Nigel Holness, operations director of London Underground, admitted: “These works involved the use of water and cement which leaked into the room, damaging equipment.”

A spokesman for the RMT union verbally banged his fist on a metaphorical table on Thursday: "We await further information but what we do know is that LU technicians are on site now, working flat out to clear up the mess and get services back on line, proving once again that it's directly-employed public sector staff who are needed to deal with this kind of emergency, making a nonsense of Boris Johnson's Tube staff cuts plans."

It has emerged that as soon as engineers realised what had happened and after they had stopped, as reported, ‘effing and blinding’, workers were sent on a supermarket sweep of nearby stores to buy bags of sugar to stop the cement from setting as quickly, leaving some outlets out of stock.

Sugar is actually a well-known retardant of cement. Sucrose, which is mainly found in beet and cane sugar available in supermarkets, is probably the most effective cement retardant.

This is the sugar most people will put in their cup of tea or, if they are being naughty, on their breakfast cereal.

Transport for London said engineers worked "tirelessly" through the night to repair the affected signalling equipment, shovelling out as much of the concrete as possible.

To paraphrase one source, it was a fudge-up of major proportions, yet despite fears the line could have been crippled for a number of days, it was back to normal service the following morning. 

Rumours that the affair was intentional to ameliorate any future zombie apocalypse remain unconfirmed.

FIN

This would be my first time using an autocue, so no matter how much preparation one put in, it would be still be an alien experience.  Many others though would be in the same coracle.  By the time, the grey-suited candidate had finished his pitch, the clock pointed to 4pm.  At last, destiny was upon me.  But of course the sessions were only meant to last until 4pm.  My contact, the head of Telegraph TV and the autocue coach (after a brief introduction with the latter when he related his youthful experience of the Medway towns), went their separate ways and one of the team of the head of Telegraph TV was hauled away from his desk to assist me.  There followed my ad  hoc coach being taught how to use the autocue pad by the sound technician - I can say the flow of the autocue script was not the smoothest and stopping at some places, the lighting obscured some letters.  At least, my stomach ailment was filed away in a recess of my mind as I slipped into the Zone.  

On my first read-through, the locum advised for my switches in voice emphasis to be dialled right back and read through the standard bits seriously and deadpan the comic aspects.  When coupled with being asked to speak up, at a level below shouting and with these instructions accepted grudgingly, all trace of my personality was whittled away.  Maybe I dwell too much on Anchorman 2 (Ron Burgundy being not the best role model); it remains though that while I gave it my best in the circumstances, I did not give it my best.  How the Telegraph TV team are meant to sift through the entries (extended into a second week next Tuesday and Wednesday due to overwhelming demand) if flashes of individuality are so subliminated, I would not like to judge.  I caught a glimpse of my grey-suited predecessor smiling - maybe that was between takes.  I can't confirm that I infused any such charisma into my delivery with the final take being my second run-through on the autocue.  I also lisped 'metaphorical' rather than make the 'ph' a hard 'f'' and replaced the word 'cereal' with 'table' by accidental auto-association, seriously denting the 'wink-wink' aspect of the phrasing.  My stand-in coach gave the usual pat compliments one would expect to my immediate criticisms of my own performance, a male Amanda Holden to my navel-height trousers Simon Cowell.  Even if the field had not been extended, my entry will be rapidly deleted from Telegraph TV's computers as being not worthy of further consideration.  C'est la vie.  I must redirect my energies elsewhere when this stomach bug permits me the strength and inclination to do so.

A nice full-bodied Burgundy

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues joins the glorious pantheon of silver screen outings where the sequel outshines the original, slotting alongside names such as Terminator 2: Judgement Day, From Russia With Love and, er, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones.  It wasn't that Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy was a bad movie but it was bit hit-and-miss in terms of the gags.  Some hit the mark sweetly while others were obviously intended as funny but just fell flat.
Anchorman 2 (let's drop the Hollywood fashion for subtitles, though even this has been sent up here) skirts perilously close to some epic car-(or Winnebago-)crashes but always comes up with the goods - some are high-end, some are low-brow - consistently, it delivers.  It certainly has been a long time in gestation and I imagine Will Ferrell and his team have been notching up yoicks in notepads down the years to add to the brew and the film does across as as series of sketches.  Some skits in the trailer don't even make the final movie (mocking 1970s mainstream ignorance of homosexuality by associating a gay reporter with vampirism and Burgundy's dog being interpreted).  Yet there is also an exquisite satire play on CNN, Fox News and American news in general.  Ron Burgundy (Ferrell) comes to the conclusion, 300 years after Jonathan Swift, that "there's too much news."
Anchorman 2 scores highly on the number of cameo appearances made by A-list actors - the list runs and runs.  In addition to Burgundy's crew of Brick Tamland (Steve Carell), Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), Champ Kind (David Koechner), plus Burgundy's wife in Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate), there is Harrison Ford, Greg Kinnear, James Marsden, Kristen Wiig, Sacha Baron Cohen, Marion Cotillard, Will Smith, Kirsten Dunst and, uncredited, Jim Carrey, Liam Neeson, John C. Reilly, Tina Fey, Vince Vaughn (with both his character's arms somehow reattached) and Kanye West. As the vast majority of these appear in one set-piece scene, the movie is not over-burdened by competing egos and it all adds to the fun as you enjoy recognising all the stars.
Burgundy's new boss is the Australian entrepreneur, Kench Allenby (Josh Lawson), a cross between Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch, a man who has worked tirelessly his whole life to make $305 million from the $300 million he inherited from his father (a joke that works better on paper than it does on screen, as in most people's books making $5 million in a lifetime is pretty impressive).  Indeed, Burgundy is the man who led to the degenerating standards of American news, where Justin Bieber's drag-racing antics while under the influence of marijuana and prescription drugs merits top billing whereas people dying for their freedoms in the geo-strategic state of Ukraine struggles to get airtime.  As Burgundy declaims: "Why give people the news they need to hear?  Why not give them the news they want to hear?"  And by having  by signing off by wishing his audience, "A good night and an American night," the tawdry and affected patriotism skewers Fox News directly.
The 1970s fashion is as pleasing as anything in American Hustle that is making waves for how it has dressed its cast.    Ferrell even makes use of his training from Blades of Glory with a whimsicallly ridiculous ice-skating section.  Indeed, whimsy and nonsense is the guiding leitmotif, such as when Burgundy bottlefeeds a baby shark that he raises in a miniature artificial lagoon and this allows the pretty cutting satire to cruise under the radar (such as the fetish for car chase scenes where the anchor speculates wildly).  Anchorman 2 had all the ingredients that have led to unfunny disaster in other would-be comedies but for the large part it hangs together superbly.  It even rewards its fans with a post-credits sequence if you stay to the very end, as one would expect from such a film.  That's a respect one rarely gets in the audience.  I anticipate the DVD to see the extras.  4 out of 5.

Do you ken in a land down under?

Yesterday (British time), Stanislas Wawrinka was very much a man at work as he finally stepped from the shadow of 'The Greatest' (Tm) to become Swiss number one and further contradict Harry Lime that for all of their 500 years of democracy, Switzerland had nothing more to show for it than the cuckoo clock (which was Bavarian in origin anyway).  The moment the semi-final became a case of FedEx(it), my full sympathies lay with the man whose name sounds more likely to hail from Eastern Europe than his adoptive compatriot Martina Hingis, though he himself was born in Lausanne.
Myself and my work colleague Chris agreed that Wawrinka could be a dark horse for the Australia Open, so it wasn't a complete surprise that he lifted the trophy, but it was pleasant to see someone outside the top four win a major.  All the talk beforehand was how all the big hitters had hired ex-colossi of the game for coaches, following Andy Murray's lead with Ivan Lendl.  All this though has been turned on its head.  For sure, Raphael Nadal was suffering from back pain but the Spaniard's is a star that has burned brightly but quickly, like Pete Sampras whereas other players like Andre Agassi pace themselves better.  It is to be argued which is the best approach as Nadal and Sampras are two and three in the list of most majors, but such physical exertions destroy the body, allowing opponents like Wawrinka to steal a march when Nadal at his peak would have been expected to win.  Like with Roger Federer, time is running out for the man from Majorca to add to his slam haul.
This is Wawrinka's moment to revel in the seemingly impossible in superseding Federer in the world rankings.  It's been coming though, even when Wawrinka was no. 25 in the world and pushed Andy Murray to five sets in the first ever use of the Wimbledon roof, though he lost.  Last year, he defeated Murray comprehensively three sets to love in the US Open quarter-finals. It's no miracle that he now stands as the world no. 3, it's entirely understandable.  As the groan-worthy headlines must have said (as I don't read them) Stan is the man.  Like the French express train Stanislas, he has arrived but unlike that electric locomotive, he is very much giving service.

Say my name, say my name...

I've waited a long time to slip footballer Wes Hoolahan's name into a post and now that he's the subject of a bit of transfer to-ing and fro-ing between his current club of Norwich City and his old manager, Paul Lambert, now hailing of Aston Villa, the opportunity presents itself to say, "Who the man?  Hoolahan!"  He has undoubted talent with a ball on a surface of grass but his name is unsurpassable in the glory stakes - he's been a winner since the moment he was born.

Agent Orange

The widow of a secret agent took her own life with potassium cyanide her husband may have had around since World War Two conducting intelligence work for the Allies (particularly the Soviets).  Noreen Orange, 85, of Budleigh Salterton, Devon was battling skin cancer and severe back pain and was found dead in her bed last February by her horrified niece (Noreen and her husband were childless).  This case has arisen in the last day as a consequence of the inquest.  The coroner was unable to conduct a post-mortem because of the hazardous threat posed by the chemical which Noreen had left in a brown bottle next to her goodbye note.
According to the family, she feared becoming a burden on the family and going into a care home was equally abhorrent to her.  Her husband, John, had once hid in a loft in Vienna for half a year while doing espionage during the Second World War.  After the war, the 'possessive' former spy would often wait at the gate of their home, constantly looking at his watch, if his wife went out alone.  It was almost as if he needed to make a move away at very short notice.  They were an intensely private couple so it seems appropriate that the entire house had to be sealed off for weeks thereafter because of the highly toxic chemical, though her family say they don't think she intended this.

Soaked by justice

The news that a driver who soaked a family on their way to school is to be prosecuted is final vindication for all those who have suffered at the wheels of sadistic bastards.  Driving through puddles is fun (though it muddies up the sides of the car); driving through puddles to drench other people shows a sociopathic streak.  This driver is being hauled before magistrates under the Road Traffic Act after a passing policeman witnessed the incident.  Driving after the errant arsehole, he stopped the motorist, informing the later that he was being reported for careless and inconsiderate driving.  It came as no surprise that the loser was 22-years old.  It is often the case that male drivers under the age of 30 are frequently (but not always of course) guilty of anti-social behaviour.  Back in 2005, Jason Evans from Yeovil doused a workman in a deep roadside puddle and was charged £150.  His claim that it was an accident was undermined by his refusal to take a driver-improvement course, hence being penalised for £150.
In the manner of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels or Snatch, when reminded of this nasty action just by the presence of a large puddle by the side of a road, I envisage a grinning dickhead of a driver seeing a figure walking along the pavement and deliberately speeds up to drench the pedestrian.  That pedestrian turns out to be Vinnie Jones and after taking a few seconds to clock the impudence, draws out a shotgun that was hidden underneath his designer trench coat and starts blasting away at the departing car, which swerves and hits a lamp post, horn permanently depressed.  The condition of the driver is unknown, but that doesn't concern Vinnie.  He's meted out some redistribution and, after replacing his shotgun underneath his trench coat and clicking his neck, walks off.

Decisions, decisions

I placed two strawberries before Kimberley in her high chair.  She picked up both in her hands and then looked from one to the other about which one to bite into first.  when she decided (her left side won out), she compromised with her second bite being out of the other strawberry and continued to alternate between the fruits in her munching.

The opposite proving the case

Douglas Carswell MP has offered up a vignette of thought that has been given coverage by a national newspaper.  Of course, it was anti-EU stock-in-trade number.  Along with staying out Syria, Carswell has always struck me as a 1920s Isolationist (staying out of Syria, now, alas, seems eminently sensible with the evisceration of the moderate opposition but it wasn't always that clear-cut).  His contention is "Contrary to media myth [blah blah, says he, using the media], those demanding the Prime Minister take a tough line on Europe are not backwoods men from 'safe seats'. They are disproportionately those MPs from the marginals.  It is a statement of fact, not opinion. The size of the average Conservative MP's majority is, according to my calculation, 9,471. Yet the average majority to those 81 Tory MPs who voted for an In/Out referendum (before it became party policy) is a mere 8,276."
I love the dodgy methodology here but more so that he claims it is fact.  He denies it is an opinion before in the next sentence saying 'according to my calculation' (interestingly, no notes as to how it is worked out - just because a way can be seen, doesn't mean that is the method he used).  Leaving aside the blarney that a majority of more than 8,000 makes you marginal, the huge variation in pluralities (there are very few outright majorities) makes its a largely meaningless figure as it brackets someone with, say, a 2,000 majority with someone who has a 14,000 majority.  His talking of facts brings to mind Disraeli's line about 'lies, damned lie and statistics' - with the last one being the most deceptive.
Following Carswell's thread though is amusing though as he states "Perhaps [what happened to facts and not opinions?] those MPs in more marginal seats tend to be younger, and more likely to reflect the mood of Euroscepticism of the younger generation [who has measured that the younger are more Eurosceptic?]?  More likely, I suspect [another opinion?  Egads!] is that MPs in more marginal seats are more receptive to the views of the public. And the public is increasingly Eurosceptic [according to whom?]. Which is how democracy is suppose to work, if you think about it."
So, Carswell concludes with an appeal to logic after offering a barrage of surmising.  To quote the vulgar phrase, "If my aunt had a dick, she'd be my uncle."  But to give his kernel the time of day, he claims MPs in marginal seats are more receptive to the views of the public.  Again, leaving aside that marginals in the British sense are a product of a skewed electoral system and are marginal for historical reasons, if an MP was elected but found themselves with not enough votes as to make the constituency marginal, they obviously haven't been receptive enough to the views of the public, hence they should tone down their 'Euroscepticism'! Leaving the EU has regularly been shown across countless opinion polls of being the preoccupation of 2-3% of the public.  Trying to slyly counterpose 'democracy' with the unspoken EU, Carswell's argument actually implies that he and his cohorts are the ones ignoring democracy for their own pet peeve.  If they stopped banging on about Europe and focused on what people really wanted, they would make themselves more electable.  That isn't a 'fact' (and facts are only micro-theories) but it is logic.  If Carswell can be so, so wrong-headed here, anything he says about the EU has to be viewed with scepticism.  It really is a puff piece with which no-one should concern themselves.  The reason I do is that though it leaves satire dead and is too funny for words, it adds to the drumbeat over leaving the EU, which though not catastrophic would be a historical blunder.  Anything that protests that and the 'Upper Class Twits of the Year', however little read, is necessary.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

Elton John wasn't on the money with this song lyric as far as real life goes (commercially, of course, he was) as 'sorry' is often used as a throwaway without any real import attached to it and frequently used to end an argument, even if lacking in sincerity.  Lord Rennard though seems to believe that he does not need to apologise and its causing Nick Clegg palpitations as he was getting an inappropriate shakedown.
Just because the Crown Prosecution Service (which never take to trial any case where they believe exists less than a 50% chance of conviction) and an internal Liberal Democrat investigation by a respected QC have concluded that the charges against Rennard cannot be proved beyond reasonable doubt.  People can leave the High Court "without a stain on their character" (though that seldom really translates post-trial) after being acquitted because the jury could not agree that the defendant was guilty beyond reasonable doubt.  Not so with Lord Rennard.  His reluctance to apologise comes across because he was cleared on a legal technicality and this therefore excuses him.  Could it be though that he fears a civil case where the burden of proof is lower and a person can pay damages 'on the balance of probabilities'.  An apology, he may have been advised, would tip that balance against him.
Yet as I stated at the start (and as Nick Clegg emphasised on Today) people say sorry all the time without meaning it, even further diluting it by adding a clause of 'if'.  A formulation could be, "I regret that certain aspects of my behaviour have been misinterpreted and I apologise if any offence has been caused.  I will work to ensure that no such misunderstanding occur in the future."  Case closed and that is not being flippant, as that which is ranged against him remain allegations (without denying the very real grievances the women may possess) and anyone, in such a situation, must not be sunk by gossip and given the benefit of the doubt. Rennard's intransigence, possibly abetted by friends and allies (and friends in all walks of life can be guilty of offering the worst advice imaginable), is making the issue a running sore.  He needs to swallow his pride if he cares about his party.  His billing as an 'election supremo' does not make him an indispensable part of the Lib Dem electoral machine.  Despite being a 'small' political party, arguably they underperformed in 2005 (and not just because of Charles Kennedy's alcoholism) and though they gained vote share in 2010, they lost seats.  As politicians in the USA must, British strategy teams must work within the vagaries of a broken system and put down deep roots in strongholds, not broad and shallow roots across the whole.  Even if Lord Rennard was the lynchpin, he will continue to embarrass the Lib Dems until he says sorry.

Hammered

I'm currently something of a good luck charm to Newcastle United of their recent trips to the capital (as one NUFC website had it: "what is rapidly becoming our second favourite city.") as the team notched up a fourth consecutive victory in London.  Now, I can't claim to have been there for the QPR match last season, being unavoidably detained, but this season, the week I visit a ground the Magpies triumph there.
First there was White Hart Lane, where I fulfilled a self-promise to FC Sheriff play when they visited these shores.  A few days later, the Black-and-Whites (in their Brazil third kit) turned up and came away with a 1-0 win, courtesy of a Tim Krul masterclass in goal and a Loic Remy strike.  I wasn't there on the day itself due to the ridiculously early kick-off - 12 noon on a Sunday - as church business detained me.
Next up, Selhurst Park.  I'd watched Arsenal huff and puff and eventually blow Crystal Palace down just a few weeks before, but was treated to a very comfortable 3-0 demolition of the Eagles by the Magpies.  There were a few moments of anxiety but ultimately a very satisfying day out.
And then yesterday, at Upton Park AKA the Boelyn Ground (soon to become redundant as the occupants move to the Olympic Stadium - The Other Boeyln Ground).  West Ham United were coming off a crucial carving up of Cardiff City while Newcastle United had lost four consecutive games in all competitions, three of them at home and in the three league games, nary a goal had been registered for the Toon.  Mark Lawrenson, ex-Magpie coach and subsequent Magpie antagonist, would not have been alone in predicting a home win.  I, however, knew that with Yohan Cabaye in the squad, this day could be a very profitable one for the Geordies.  Also, what I surmise is that, being a hands-on coach, Alan Pardew likes a full week to brief and practise his first XI - last season, the thick and fast nature of Europa League scheduling played havoc with a small squad and Pardew's limitations were exposed again after the Boxing Day triumph over Stoke City when three games in six days resulted in three defeats.  A whole week to prepare against Man City meant United pushed them close (a Cheick Tiote goal being unjustly chalked off).  Pardew's team would do well here and finally lay the ghost of not beating Big Sham Allardyce since the large Samuel's unceremonious ejection from St James Park as manager.
Soon after kick-off, a fight broke out.  Not on the pitch but right in front of me, in the row ahead.  Two Hammers fans had just arrived to find one of their seats occupied.  Being season-ticket holders, they were aggrieved that this interloper would not move from the seat.  He also professed to be a season-ticket holder and was going nowhere.  He stood up not to be overawed and the three of them were eyeballing each other and accusations of 'f's and 'c's were soon flying.  Stewards, as I have witnessed before, are distinctly uneasy about ending fights in case they get clouted and were clearly reluctant here.  The barny escalated when a hat was swiped from the head and hurled to the floor, prompting a confined scuffle.  Eventually they beckoned the singleton to the end of the row to investigate his tatty piece of card.  That he and one of his antagonists were bald brings to mind the phrase of the follically challenged fighting over a comb, especially since all the man had to do was move to the empty seat right next to him.  This was the solution to the matter with a tense shuffling past, briefly interrupted because the full head of hair mate in the twosome had beached his legs against the chair in front until finally talked round by his bald friend.  At half-time the single bald guy made his way to the amenities under the stand and as he stood at the concrete thoroughfare between the seating and the services, he shouted, "I'll be making calls."  It didn't sound like he had the Samaritans in mind, rather some East End geezers who would rough up these two who had offended him.  That prompted them to leave their seats and follow their nemesis ("How you going to make those calls with your tongue cut out, you stinking piece of shit," is what I imagine was racing round their minds).  Only they returned for the second half.  Such is the passion of the Bobby Moore Stand, the most vociferous part of the ground.
The moods of all three of them would not have been much improved by what they had seen unfold.  After an initially bright opening, the Hammers corroded swiftly.  Newcastle, orchestrated by the peerless Cabaye, were cutting open the makeshift West Ham defence whenever the former went forward.  Cabaye was the stand-out performer, epitomised by his commitment and awareness, not just his talent - late in the game, with the Magpies defending a corner, he noticed no-one was guarding the near-post and trotted over there to protect from any attempt were one to made in that direction.  It was simple and commonsense but he was the only one with the nous to put himself there.  Given that Cabaye could buy himself out of his contract in the summer to force a move, selling him would be a wrench but to get £20 million or more would be an exceptional deal when he was only signed for £4.5 million.  Given Newcastle's crushing point lead over the bottom half of the table, little chance of a top four Champions League spot that would retain Cabaye and with interest ended in the cup competitions, I wouldn't mind too much if he was sold for top dollar in the closing minutes of the transfer window.
Inevitably, it was Cabaye who brought the breakthrough in the 16th minute, bringing anguish for those around me.  I was still on edge, knowing that with old boy Andy Carroll to come on, a two-goal cushion was needed.  It seemed only a matter of time as the Irons goalkeeper Adrian performed sterling stops.  In the crowd, people were muttering, "here it is, 2-0" and it duly arrived in the 33rd minute as Remy slotted in.  Earlier, Remy had been caught on the nose and bloodied his top.  Regulations state this is a health and safety risk and the shirt must be replaced.  The Newcastle kit man took Remy's shirt on the sideline after the physio had patched him up and gave him a new one.  Unfortunately, it was not 'Remy 14' but a nameless '5'.  Remy held out this erroneous shirt but the oblivious kitman had already jogged back to the bench.  So it was Newcastle's number 5 that scored the second.  After the half-time break, Remy emerged with a correct shirt.
I relaxed and Newcastle continued to home in on the Hammers' net.  The travelling fans were living it up, needling the adjacent stand with "Down with the mackems, you're going down with the mackems, down with the mac-kems, you're going down with the mackems."  (They had done this to Crystal Palace fans in late December and should they find themselves in similar comfortability against Fulham at Craven Cottage and strike up the same tune, then with only three relegation spots, the mackems will not go down).  The home crowd though turned quite ugly, transmitting itself to Adrian who howled in frustration at the collective incompetence of his team mates in a rare moment when they were closer to Krul's goal.  Cabaye bearded the Bobby Moore Stand, slowly walking to take a corner, a broad grin on his face.  It was cleared, yet before long, Newcastle were again surging forward.  One West Ham player had Yoan Gouffran at the edge of the pitch, but for an age he just stood there, not even forcing movement by making a tackle, thereby wasting time for West Ham to get back into it.  At this point ferocious boos cascaded down the stadium terraces at his indecision and even I found it intimidating. The legs of the man in claret-and-blue briefly buckled at this and Gouffran passed past him.  It is one thing to register disapproval at the end of each half at the team as a whole (something with which I disagree though) but to get on the back of a player in a vital passage of play and deluge this sole representative in ire is not going to help his decision-making or confidence.
West Ham somehow smuggled the messiest of goals in extra-time at the end of the first half - a bad time to concede for any team and at 2-1 it was game on.  Applause and boos mingled as the referee blew his whistle after 47 minutes. The desolation of some Irons fans was still strong in some, to the extent where one exclaimed '3-0' as if West Ham's goal had disappeared down a black hole.  He got irritating as he chanted '3, 3, 3' when Newcastle got close to the West Ham posts.  Irrespective that his negativity could only help Newcastle, whose side was he on?!?
Rejuvenated by that late goal, West Ham had more purpose and were making fewer mistakes.  Newcastle at times were rocking.  When Paul Dummett was brought on by Pardew, he may have been the only Englishman to score for the Magpies this season, but my internal feelings were 'uh-oh'.  He may have been given his chance to freshen up the defence but his naivety and lack of positional sense were immediately apparent.  West Ham continued to rampage.  Carlton Cole missed from the centre of the goal when it would have been easier to score.  Andy Carroll, when introduced, skied a lovely opportunity.  Finally, in the 94th minute, substitute Hatem Ben Arfa was fouled and as Cabaye stepped up, I thought, "he'll look to curl this in." Sure enough he did, with 94 minutes and nine seconds on the clock.  At last the game was safe and there was such an exodus of home fans at that netburst (though Adrian got fingertips to it, he couldn't prevent it), that there weren't any boos raised on the final whistle.  I stayed behind a little while to let the crowds disperse further and helped out two foreign lads who wanted me to take a picture with them with the ground behind them on their Union Jack-cased iPhone.  A good result and a good deed to boot from me as well.  It was once a saw of the London media that Newcastle could never win in the capital - how this has changed in the last seven months.

A new arrival

Zara Phillips has just given birth to the 16th in line to the throne pushing all those behind down a notch (from never becoming monarch).  Apparently, Mike Tindall was present at the bedside - let's hope that the man who is famously dismissive about his nose (it has been broken eight times in his career and looks like a pinched piece of plasticine) hasn't had a bit to drink, thus plunging his forehead into Zara's breasts while she was in labour and mistaking his newborn for a dwarf to chuck.

Not old, but evergreen

Another familiar figure - Roger Lloyd-Pack - passes into the great beyond and at just 69.  The tributes sing his praises in Only Fools and Horses, The Vicar of Dibley and Harry Potter.  Indeed, he left an impression in these, especially the first one.  Not so many talk of his lead role in the BBC sitcom The Old Guys with Clive Swift (from Keeping Up Appearances).  It wasn't particularly funny from what I saw of it, to the extent where I made the effort of switching over to another channel.  I'm surprised two series were made (a Blackadder transformation it seems was not effected).  However, I do remember the useful advice of never making a tomato sandwich in a toasted sandwich maker.  The water in the tomatoes boils as Swift's persona explains though as Lloyd-Pack's character said as he scalds his mouth, "But it's so tasty!"  Even on paper it's not amusing, yet it stays in my mind through the perfectly calibrated expressiveness of Lloyd-Pack's acting.

Banlieue battles

Banlieue 13 (English: District 13) was released in 2004 set in a Paris of the near-future where the suburbs are essentially cordoned off by the paramilitary police, as in Escape From New York.  With eerie prescience, like Ghost Town by The Specials in 1981 within the British setting for disturbances, the film foreshadowed the 2005 French riots.  With justification, writer and producer Luc Besson could release the sequel Banlieue 13: Ultimatum in the very year (2010) that the original was supposed to have taken place (three years on from its predecessor) . The parkour scenes in both films are incredible - no wires or CGI.  But still 2013 has now passed and the French government has yet to launch 'precision' bombing strikes as Ultimatum depicted.
This doesn't mean things are all rosy.  Social unrest has normalised to the extent that the interior minister was quite upbeat reporting on the New Year 'celebrations', where only 1,067 vehicles were set alight, three people murdered, five policeman injured and 322 people arrested - upbeat because the figures were down for the same period last year.  The scenario in Escape From New York and indeed in The Warriors, was tackled by Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his zero-tolerance campaign cleaning up Time Square et al.  French interior ministers, Nicolas Sarlozy and Dominque de Villepin, have tried similar crackdowns and failed.  Maybe because the malaise hasn't extended to the heart of the city as it had in New York, the determination to integrate the disenfranchised masses on the periphery isn't as wholehearted as it should be and merely focuses on punishing ne'er-do-wells.  London, Birmingham and Manchester had its problems with riots in 2011, but that was mainly opportunism from people who didn't care about the social order, not so much disenfranchised as brought up with a sense of entitlement that they could take what they liked, though communal tensions also existed.  Stockholm too has suffered riots.  But it has always quietened down afterwards - maybe for those living in the affected areas in seething despair, yet burnt out nonetheless.  In France, however, a remake of Banlieue 13  (I can't see there being a trilogy, given the sequel's ending) would not be too preposterous.

Master sleuth

What an explosive coup Sherlock pulled off last night - constant but well-paced surprises: Mary Morstan being a secret assassin seeking to leave behind her past life; Holmes' real name of William Sherlock Scott Holmes (I've never read the books); the return of Moriarty (yes, we did miss you); and, perhaps most shocking of all, Mycroft Holmes telling his brother that should Sherlock die it would break Mycroft's heart.  Killing Rupert Murdoch was the cherry on top.
It really built up the Murdoch-alike of Arnold Magnussen as mentally brilliant and equally devastating as a velociraptor.  Like the Devil, he is full of lies - saying he is not a murderer, just a businessman, on the very day that one of his blackmailed victims commits suicide. His mind palace is arguably more capacious than Sherlock's but as in despotisms, an empire can crumble after the death of its founder if everything rests on him.  Muroch of late has been a figure of fun, Steven Moffat restores to him his chilling reputation (as well as Moffat cheekily implying that look how brave he is by writing such a vicious portrayal).
The brilliant final twist of Moriarty coming back from the dead stops those Sherlock conspiracy forums being mothballed and the die-hard fans can speculate about how Moriarty survived a bullet to the head through the mouth (was what we saw a body-double or was what we saw the version told to John Watson by Sherlock, who then chronicled the latter on the former's blog; the possibilities will be endless).  There was the little teaser of Moriarty being inside a padded cell within Sherlock's mind palace - defeating him again might need recourse to this facet.  I hope it is only twelve months before we get a return as 24 months to get another fix would be beyond even Sherlock's fortitude, even if he was being a crack addict 'only' for a case.

The snarl of fear of the unknown

On Any Questions, Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather said that to look good in the polls, politicians have talked tough and manufactured the problem of EU migrants coming to Britain to claim benefits and are now desperately searching for solutions to that issue.  The EU is entirely right in that the UK will come across as a nasty country if it continues down this route.  But we are missing one big point - the right-wing press.
Since the Leveson report, the tabloids in particular have been a bit more careful in their targeting of celebrities and to compensate have piled all their fury into faceless agglomerations like 'immigrants' and the largely faceless EU.  If ever there was a case of tabloids running the country, this is it and the nation, inevitably, is going to hell in a handcart, not despite the tabloids but because of them.  They lie and the misrepresent and they pick one example of a miscreant and blow it out of all proportion to account for that entire swathe of population.  Of course, The Daily Mail has form in this regard as it used the same techniques against Jews before World War Two.  Fear of the outsider and anger at a complacent establishment are its stock in trade.  I wouldn't be surprised if the current owner was a descendant of Titus Oates, the inveterate maligner of Roman Catholics.
To wish to leave the European Union is not an honourable intellectual position as apologists on the right claim.  Not that it could never be such, but in the current hyperbolic 'debate' (where the exaggeration comes almost wholesale from the anti-EU brigade - Lord Dobbs, the Tory piloting the referendum bill through the Upper House called the EU "a pestilence."), it is a xenophobic-inflected form of madness that has been simmering away for twenty years when the Danes rejected Maastricht, prompting a Tory rebellion against Prime Minister John Major.  Tony Blair's government treated the EU with contempt domestically, repeatedly outlining its 'red lines' as if defending Britannia from a rapacious land across the Channel.  Only once did Blair lose his rag and give a devastatingly eloquent rebuttal to a member of UKIP who questioned why British money was repairing Hungarian drains (basically developing the infrastructure of weaker European economies will raise the prosperity of all).  Other than that Blair, a moral coward unless backed by a US president or the right-wing press, implicitly bashed the EU (if outwardly giving it his support).  Gordon Brown was an EU-sceptic from the outset when he became Chancellor of the Exchequer but one in the genuine sense of the phrase, rather than the current EU-phobes who masquerade as sceptics.  David Cameron was drawn from the same stock as Brown rather than Blair in this matter but has been dragged ever rightwards by those who want to return to the boondocks.  His failure to win a general election has hamstrung him in terms of respect but even a marginal victory would have left him as hostage to rebels as was Major (some of the right-wing press hoped this would be the case). 
So Cameron tossed his troops the red-meat of a referendum.  The cant about 'giving the people their say' is incredible.  The duplicity of the Tory politicians and press who merely see the referendum as a mechanism for exiting the EU but claim 'the primacy of democracy' is unparalleled in extent if not significance (even surpassing the Iraqi WMD claims in its wildness).  But of course, you can only temporarily silence a rabid beast.  The EU-phobes in his party and in the press wanted more.  Hence the bashing of EU migrants.
Tories are so discombobulated they can't even get their facts straight - Chris Grayling on Any Questions said that back in 2004, the UK was only one of two countries to relax their borders.  I'd love to know which one of Ireland and Sweden he was thinking of as 'the only other' country.  It may seem a small slip if you're discussing it with friends but it assumes a different proportion if you're the Justice Secretary - such facts should be ingrained into you.  And the laughable thing is, Britain was the keenest proponent of expansion to the East to 'dilute' the ever closer Union that France and Germany had in mind.  Now, the Germans and the French are viewed as valuable migrants and those populations to the East that we welcomed in are seen as supressing wages at best and scroungers at worst (and most commonest).
When politicians and commentators argue that they want a 'proper discussion on immigration', it has so abused by ulterior motives that it like the little boy who cried wolf - I am inclined to be distrustful of such discourse.  Covert Conservative Nick Robinson, the BBC's political editor, produced a programme on immigration last Tuesday.  It was very informative about public delusions (and therefore the unspoken dubious value of referendums, where people vote with their prejudices and their myths, if their voting is correlated to the subject matter at all).  A majority of British people thought that immigrants (of all description) made up a third or more of the British population when actually it is one-eighth and a majority also believed that immigrants took more out of the economy than they put in when the reverse is the case overwhelmingly.  It is getting to the stage where the teaching of history will be subject to restrictions (fine with the revisionist demagoguery of the Mail and the Express) because the past is a foreign country (as L. P. Hartley had it).
Professor Sir Paul Collier, an economist with the World Bank, recently wrote a book, Exodus: Immigration and Multiculturalism in the 21st Century.  His argument can be distilled in his conclusion: "History is not sanguine about the capacity of ethnic groups or religions to overcome their differences."  Despite defining himself as part of the liberal-left elite, his 'bravery' in 'speaking out against the consensus', makes him as much liberal-left as Bjørn Lomborg is an environmentalist (subtracting the 'environ-' would be a closer approximation of Lomborg).  Collier's iron law of history in fact makes him sound like a neo-realist rather than a neo-liberal. 
Collier was also disparaging about the role of diasporas in prolonging conflict in their home country, completely ignoring the positive effect they can have in ending conflict (such as Irish-Americans from 1993 onwards), preferring to attack such 'faceless' groups (where have I heard that before) rather than prominent corporations that facilitate the conflict-begetting contributions.  Rupert Edis, in reviewing Exodus, sounds like Enoch Powell in citing the Balkans and Rwanda as the direction of travel for Britain currently.  Edis also trembles at the recollection of the 2011 census that showed that London's "white British" population had dropped to 45% of the total, a joke observation given that it means "white British" comfortably outnumbers any other ethnic group and also ignorant of knowing that London would have died as a city long ago if it had not been for immigration.  Collier gives Edis free reign to do this, criticising "diasporas attached to dysfunctional social models." (Collier really hates diasporas).  Such models bring with them honour violence, Islamic extremism, abuses of women and homophobia in Collier's world view i.e. there is nothing positive about immigration culturally (he also states that stripping out the 'highly skilled', however so defined, means the economic impact is neutral).  That Collier can get away with such flawed methodology and prejudiced garbage is because the atmosphere is so febrile (the two Romanians arriving at Luton Airport on New Year's Day putting the lie to racist language of 'floods' and 'hordes' and incidentally they already had jobs here because of their skills).
Multiculturalism does not encourage and celebrate cultural separation - a clue is in the name: many cultures.  Multiculturalism fails where people misapply it.  Saying that a requirement of foreign immigrants to learn workable English is an infringement of their human rights belongs in the Swiftian echelons of satire rather than serious debate, yet it has been said.  A Malaysian classmate of mine at university told me of an Indian friend of his, who, though born in the UK, had an arranged marriage with a woman from the sub-continent.  Not only did this woman come over here to live, but she brought her parents and several further of her relatives as well - neither his bride, nor any of her family could speak English.  Yet, because they were part of the Commonwealth, there was not a problem about their settlement.  My Malaysian friend (incidentally part of British immigration figures - the kind of highly talented people this country wants to attract not alienate) said this would not be allowed in his country.  I agree with him and one can see how communities can become segregated through such loopholes in the visa system, though of course this was also an isolated incidence and neither is correlation the same as causation.  Bradford, often a test case for those hostile to immigration and their view of multiculturalism, has been augmented by immigrants for a thousand years from Normans, to Irish, to Germans, to Jews, something often overlooked.  Citing negatives from the other side does not prove your own argument - if anything it points to the weakness of your argument.  Yes, there needs to be a 'proper debate on immigration' and on the EU for that as well but fat chance we'll get beyond meaningless platitudes and hostility.

Off to the great slaughterhouse in the sky

As Michael Schumacher improves while remaining in a coma, Ariel Sharon slipped away in his.  Undoubtedly, the former Israeli Prime Minister was a war criminal (the USA and Britain have their own unpunished miscreants too), killing women and children in reprisal attacks during the 1948 war of independence - Sharon did not know the destroyed houses contained such innocents because he did not care to check or even care - and responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacres in 1982, again of women and children (and elderly men).  He also sparked the second Palestinian Intifada by provocatively going to the Dome of the Rock in East Jerusalem as he asserted his hawkish credentials while bidding for leadership of the Israeli right. This said, his stroke that plunged him into a coma was a tragedy for the region.  He was ten times the man Binyamin Netanyahu is and a hundred times the man Sharon's immediate successor, Ehud Olmert, is.  He and he alone possessed the clout and the respect to overawe the military and the settlers to bring a permanent peace.  His incapacitation goes down as a pivotal 'what if' moment, alongside the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, the early death of Kaiser Frederick III in 1888 and the murder of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.
A journalist for Ha'aretz newspaper said Sharon was not a man of peace and his conversion to a peace process was no 'Nixon goes to China' moment.  He utterly misreads his metaphor.  Nixon recalled that having 'lost' China, coupled with the pressure he exerted, the Democrats could never come to terms with Red China, but as the arch anti-communist, he, Nixon, could.  It was realpolitik of the highest order, as Nixon sought a counter for the Soviet Union in his triangulation policy.  Similarly, as proved by his knowing visit to the Dome of the Rock that would catapult him to be prime minister, Sharon was the complete Machiavellian.  He would not negotiate peace, he would impose it, on Israel's terms, as a permanent peace settlement was and remains the only security for Israel's long-term future.  Part of his strategy was a wall to prevent bombings in Israel - though it cuts into Palestinian land, it has barring one incident worked.  As a war veteran, the army could not undermine him or slight him as it did with Olmert; as the implacable foe of the Arab world, the settlers would have to accept his actions were in the best interests of the State of Israel.  It was a 'Nixon goes to China' policy.
Not that the settlers accepted it with good grace, just as they kicked up a dust when evacuated from the Sinai peninsula.  Removing the ridiculous single settlement of 2,000 Jews from the midst of half a million Palestinians was only logical.  The trouble is, those who have a settler mindset are already extremists who will never be mollified.  Some said that Sharon's devastating stroke and subsequent limbo life was divine punishment for his forcible removal of them from Gaza.  This is a monstrous and fatuous viewpoint and demonstrates that pandering to settlers, let alone expanding their number, is a failure of political nerve and grand strategy.
David Cameron said, diplomatically, that Sharon was one of the most significant figures in Israeli history.  That he was and sadly he didn't get the chance to redeem himself for his past crimes - for that we should not mourn his passing now but when he effectively died back in 2006.

What dreams may come

Most times, dreams of the sleep just drift into the ether, consigned to oblivion.  Fragments may survive in recollection for a few minutes after waking but these soon fade, like early morning mist as the coruscating sun bears down on it through the latter's ascent.  One dream which was incredibly complex involved a fairytale castle not dissimilar to Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, yet these are the only two details that remain in the memory for that particular rumination.  A more memorable dream springs from when I was between five and seven years old and I was being chased around my primary school by miniature tornadoes until they cornered me and I awoke from the nightmare.  As a teenager, I formulated a mafiosi attack on the CIA at an American airport.

The start of this dream (as far back as I can recall) involved a church outing for the Men's Group where went abroad, though oddly we were being picked up from Gillingham Park, where a Cessna Piper Alpha (or whatever that light aircraft is called) was landing.  Maybe the affront to the council meant that we had to conduct this departure in secret or maybe when things are under the radar they are more important and more personal to the people who know - dreams aren't meant to make sense but this enterprise was all very cloak-and-dagger for some reason, possibly to make it more exciting.  So there was a lot of preparation and even a flip chart book of artful pictures of the enterprise.  It got down to the morning when we were meant to leave and things starting going wrong as other groups kept turning up unexpectedly and then a reason about it being summer why this particular group had appeared although that detail is hazy.

That was the end of this narrative strand but not the dream as it, because of the secretive aspects, segued into a portmanteau scene from James Bond where we were chasing a Cessna Piper Alpha (again whatever) from the Licence to Kill part where Bond escapes from divers by harpooning the plane. This aircraft contains Max Zorin from a View to a Kill and Roger Moore’s Bond is chasing him in the submersible version of Little Nelly from You Only Live Twice, but he has Stacey Sutton (with pink scuba gear) as companion, instead of Barbara Bach from The Spy Who Loved Me. 

Maybe had the mini-submarine caught up with the plane, it would have launched a missile as in the last movie mentioned.  But my mind was distracted and my perspective was from a Daniel Craig/Sean Connery Bond taking a French Citroen with an elderly passenger inside.  The Bond persona was shed and I pootled around the streets of Leicestershire agreeing to convey her as she was on the way to see my grandfather who lives there.

I fail to link up with my grandfather but I still go to a church service where I meet Richard, a friend from the Gillingham church operating the sound system (an activity he has performed in his life at St Mary’s), present with his girlfriend, Sarah.  He says he has emailed about that builder request and I have yet to add him to Facebook (I only found out he was on Facebook last week – some people still eschew Facebook and I don’t delve, but this reminded me to do so when awake).  I say he has emailed my oldest email account which I never use now, whereupon Sarah chips in to say she told Richard this was the most likely thing to have happened.

Anyway, then the whole flow jacknifes back to the throes of the foreign adventure, I am in a Spanish self-catering apartment and we are discussing about naming my sons Harold and William (I have no sons yet) and I didn’t want my son to a name close to that of Prince Harry.  But then we are in a maternity ward and there are babies there.  As it is a hospital, there are people with injuries and deformities.  In the popular imagination , deformities can arise from radiation poisoning.  Suddenly we are in this Chernobyl-alike nuclear facility about to sealed off for hundreds in a sarcophagus locked by super-powerful electro magnets.  There are two of us guys trying to escape the Alien (Alien) - obviously here, I am recalling reading about the new survival computer game Alien: Isolation.  Also in this facility are Michael Fassbender from Prometheus as a Terminator (ultimate mash-up!), determined to kill both the humans but primarily the Alien (Skynet I guess not having a need for the animal unpredictability of the creature).  There are some Nutcracker-style (drawing on the Slavic theme?) psychotic androids (or at least that the closest description that still remains with me) trying to kill the humans but these are comparatively easy to elude.  The perspective keeps switching from the humans to the Alien to Fassbender’s cyborg.  Eventually, Fassbender launches two missiles at the Alien who is chasing the humans down this long turbine chamber, destroying the xenomorph’s hindquarters.  The humans escape in a jeep as the lockdown swings into operation, a final android destroyed by the lowering of a concrete beam as its top part hit the post and wrenched it clear of the integrated wheels it was on.  So the complex is sealed for the best part of a millennia.  Inside, the Alien has recovered and has genetically altered itself with one of the humans it has killed -  it now has a human head and other human aspects but on an Alien’s limbs and back.  This hybrid sets itself up as leader of the deformed, diminutive humans left inside and talks to one of the babies (these corporations are ruthless in who they leave behind) but is told it is asleep.  Even in a dream logic interferes and it couldn’t possibly be the alien genetically changing itself so radically like the Dalek in the Dr Who episodes Daleks in Manhattan and The Human Dalek – it must have been Fassbender’s cyborg.  It was here that the semi-incoherent narrative (well there was a flow of sorts) ended.  I had a massive sleep to incorporate this.  Leo Tolstoy believed that dreams come in the split-second before consciousness but I defy such a theory with such a complex story/stories.  In the past, I’ve also briefly woken up before falling asleep and resuming the dream.

Anyway, there’s a franchise in the making - Alien vs Predator vs Terminator.  Though Arnie has faced off against the Predator in a pyrrhic victory (the first film’s tagline that Earth has seen nothing like this before undermined by subsequent Predator films), the Alien is completely another matter and as the T-800 he would have extra advantages.

Living high off the Hog

It seems that prominent people that I regard with affection are dying with increasing regularity.  Maybe it is a sign of getting older and these people have formed a larger part of my cultural experience (than say Bobby Moore who died before I was really aware of him and thus is part of my cultural heritage).  Recently, it was Simon Hoggart's turn to perish, of cancer at just 67 years old (an age more generally associated with tinpot dictators such as Muammar Gaddafi and Kim Jong-Il).  Through his writings, he seemed imperishable, pontificating cogently and wittily for all ages but as George Harrison summed it up, all things must pass.
Son of Richard Hoggart, whose "The Uses of Literacy" was a set text for my A-Levels, Simon inherited his father's way with words and his most enduring fame in his own right will be as parliamentary sketchwriter for The Guardian.  I still remember his description of one Tory MP talking like "a modem", or lambasting Claire Short for histrionics over Gulf War II as she made it sound (according to Hoggart) like a missile of James Bond proportions was being fired from Downing Street at her constituency.  My abiding memory though is of Hoggart's excoriation of Stephen Byers (then Transport Secretary) in 2002 for brazenly lying and then welcoming "the opportunity to clarify matters." In brief, Byers was slammed for "admitting that he had stretched the truth to snapping point when he spoke on the Dimbleby programme last weekend. "That is obviously something I regret, and I welcome this opportunity to clarify matters," he said.  It's a useful line. "When I said I had no further territorial demands in Europe, I may have inadvertently given the impression that I would not invade Poland. I welcome this opportunity to clarify matters." "Father, I welcome the opportunity to clarify matters. I did chop down that tree."  It's Labour's new message: "Trust me. I admit I'm a liar!"" There was more gorgeous prose in this one column alone.  Of Theresa May (now Home Secretary), "She wasn't awful; just not good enough. Cliches dribbled down like sludge from a sump."  The infamous line from New Labour's Transport Department that 9/11 was a good day to bury bad news was turned on its head when it emerged that they planned to do the same trick on the death of Princess Margaret - "It got barely more coverage than any other such sad event at Slough crematorium. Could it be that Mr Byers actually wanted to come clean about the terrible train delays?  In short, had he not decided that Friday was a good day to bury Princess Margaret?"
Tam Dalyell, then Father of the House (and who celebrated his 50th wedding anniversary on Boxing Day 2013), gets a mention for his euphemism for more industrial language in that we're all... "stymied."  Hoggart quipped "It could catch on. "I suppose a quick stymie is out of the question?""  Unfortunately, such quick stymies became a way of life for Hoggart with high-class whore Kimberly Quinn.  I feel entitled to describe the former publisher of The Spectator so luridly for she was not just having an affair with the married Hoggart but also David Blunkett, then Home Secretary, at the same time, cuckolding her husband Stephen Quinn twice over (and Mr Quinn was the subject of the cuckolding of her first marriage).  Gems such as Kimberly Quinn on being asked by a crusty member of The Spectator why they were employing a communist as wine review, replying that he wouldn't sample just red wines, now comes across as pillow talk for Hoggart's other Guardian column on his thoughts.  Given how old he was when he died, this wasn't even a mid-life crisis but more an intelligent man being led astray by his loins when a beautiful younger woman makes herself available to him (and the world and its dog it seems too).  He often criticised the fidelity failings of others and that it was the job of newspapers to expose adulterers but he was found with a large sticky bar of hypocrisy in his hands and plenty of further evidence smeared all round his mouth, like a child caught in the proverbial tuck shop.  He was fallible.  We all are in one shape or form.
This though can only dim marginally my immense respect for the brilliance of his craft.  Another who died too young.

In Siberia, this is nothing

as was spoken by a Russian gangster in The Sopranos when two of Tony's cronies complained about the bitterly cold weather as they made him dig his grave.  In the USA, there is much talk of a polar vortex enveloping the country as if it is The Day After Tomorrow.  Temperatures falling as low as -38.3 degrees Celsius in Minnesota, while in Pennsylvania temperatures are falling as low as -26 Celsius compounded by a wind chill factor that could make it -39 Celsius.  It is so low that the figures for Celsius and Fahrenheit are virtually identical.
In Mongolia, however, they endure regularly such temperatures and once every few years it falls to -55 degrees Celsius.  Both Mongolia and much of the USA are at the centre of continents so there will be a dryness of the climate factor ameliorating the freeze.  What the USA is suffering is sunbathing weather for Mongolians, not least because even in the depths of winter, Mongolia is not known as the Land of Blue Sky for nothing.  If anything, the 30 degree differential in relatively coastal Newtown, Massachusetts is the big story going from 16 degrees to minus 14 in one day.

Bye-bye Euesbio

Now, there is no doubt about the greatest Portuguese footballer alive.  While Luis Figo may throw his hat into the ring, it was always really a contest between the man from Mozambique and the man from Madeira.  Curious that both should not have been born in the Iberian heartland.  When Cristiano Ronaldo became the individual who had scored most goals for the Portuguese national team, Eusebio, whose record CR7 had just broken, had a fit of sour grapes, saying he didn't score his goals against no-mark teams such as Luxembourg but against the very best, when selection for the World Cup and European Championships involved more stringent qualification groups.  Well, as Ronaldo still has many more years as a professional, he is likely to grab as many goals as to qualitatively be on a par with Eusebio.  Yet the debate as to who was the greatest will never end unless Ronaldo hauls his team to a World or European victory.

The Rescuers (not the Disney mice)

If this was a scene from a comedy, it would be indescribably lame, but as it has happened in real life, it takes on the mantle of an amusement factor.  The Russian-owned research vessel Akademick Shokalskiy was ferrying a group of tourists in commemoration of the centenary of the Antarctic journey made by Douglas Mawson.  Remembering Ernest Shackleton would have been more appropriate as their ship got stuck in pack ice (it's never really a good sign though being south of Australia on a Russian-owned research vessel - see the B-movie Virus featuring, among others, Donald Sutherland).  Never fear, a Chinese icebreaker steamed to the rescue, helicoptering the passengers off (the crew have to stay behind) and on to the awaiting Australian ship, Aurora Australis.  Having achieved this, the icebreaker, Snow Dragon, itself was trapped in the unseasonal summer ice, having all the cutting power of butter through a blowtorch (unlit) rather than vice versa.  What a ridiculous situation.  When ever spying powers are increased by law or through extra-judicial means, the phrase that gets trotted out is "Who will watch the watchers?"  Here though it is turned on its head, from omnipotent to helpless, as who will rescue the rescuers?

The Desolation of Jackson

Actually, that's not quite fair.  Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is a far superior film to its predecessor The Hobbit: A Mouth Full of Crackers, I mean, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (these modern titles are such a mouthful - back in 1980, no-one said Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back - call it Hobbit 2 and be done with it).  With much of the static exposition of the first film out of the way, we can get more into the meat of the adapted story.  This is not so say there is no padding - my friend Chris and I missed the first ten minutes (due to the arbitrary nature of Odeon advertising schedules - often lasting 30 minutes but here only 20) but it didn't really make a difference - our heroes were still being pursued by orcs and now a Gruffalo-like beast added to the chase (rather than quest) nature of the enterprise.  We could have missed the first 20 minutes and have been no worse off from the point of view of what was to unfold.  It was at this point that Hobbit 2 started to justify its running length, the story splitting into two where Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen) went off to the north to find some empty tombs, though more importantly link up with Radagast the Brown (Sylvester McCoy), only to discard Radagast when approaching the orc stronghold (so much for his involvement).  The other storyline consisted of Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and the dwarves (assorted actors) having all sorts of adventures trying to reach the mountain where Smaug the dragon (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch) resides.  At Laketown, which is reminiscent of all those communities in Nigeria and the Far East where the houses are on stilts above the water, there is a further cleaving of the plot, some dwarves missing the boat or staying behind intentionally to care for a wounded member of the party, while the others push onto the mountain.  Given the demands on my leisure time, I made the most of the experience, watching it in 3D (rather than opting for the 2D version), though it did become uncomfortable when the giant spiders made their entrance into the tale.
Viewing this on Thursday, it was my second dose of Cumberbatch and Freeman in as many days, with the former being on equally imperious and condescending form towards the latter as in Sherlock.  The tussle inside the mountain almost had an Alton Towers feel about it, as Richard Armitage's Thorin rode a river of molten iron, though disappointingly he jumped onto a dangling chain when his bucket went over the edge rather than taking a splashdown and uttering "Again, again!"  Cumberbatch also voiced the Necromancer, identified as Sauron by Gandalf, but there is no interaction with Bilbo.  Orlando Bloom pops up as Legolas the elf again, seeking to resurrect his career in the role that made his name and there is the entirely new character of Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) inserted into the mix to leaven the bromance (and give the male nerd contingent of the audience someone at which to gape).  Her presence hints at Jackson conceding that the original (short) book would not fill nine hours of reel.  Interestingly, IMdb credits Cate Blanchett as Galadriel, even though she doesn't make an appearance (was it in her contract to get a credit in each movie, like some TV actors who get listed in every episode but don't always make a contribution?).
Hobbit 2 ends on a double cliffhanger - Gandalf imprisoned while the orc army goes on the warpath and Smaug bursts free of the trap laid for him, threatening to lay waste to Laketown - which is a bit of an arse given that we have to wait a whole year (or in the case of Chris and myself, 11 months) to see the resolution.  TV shows don't usually make us wait this long between series, yet this is Hollywood - utterly devoid of imagination and fearful of an untested blockbuster flopping, they string out 'winners' for as long as they can get away with it (The Silmarillion will no doubt be a spurious trilogy).  Fair enough, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire was a book in its own right (minus the prefix), though this series will be a quadrilogy given that the final book is divided into two.  It was the same with Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, although J. K. Rowling's final installment was incredibly long and the bladders of children in the cinema would have been stretched.  All a far cry from when The Empire Strikes Back was groundbreaking (and one had to wait three further years to see the Galactic Empire finally defeated).  Why not adopt the model of The Avengers mega-franchise where each movie is resolved (more or less) within its running time?  The title for the last of Bilbo and co is The Hobbit: There and Back Again, which already sounds exhausting.  But I've committed so far; I might as well see it (out).

The deerstalker returns

Usually, the Fall is associated with the gaining of knowledge and the loss of innocence, but with Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock Holmes, the audience is still not the wiser as to how he survived his plummet.  Sherlock is back in riveting form - wasn't it always - and one of the best aspects of this new episode is the in-joke regarding all the real-life theorising as to how Holmes survived transposed into a geek club (The Empty Hearse) run by a former policeman foe of the great detective.  Three speculations were aired (two of which were preposterous as we saw Holmes fall without any rope attached to his back) and one cul-de-sac explored, but really all three could be bunkum.  I disagree that we don't need to know how he survived because that he just did is enough (just as how he could commandeer a motorcycle and two helmets - lucky the generous motorcyclist had a passenger and one of equal magnanimity - so effortlessly which is never explained).  Steven Moffat said after the last series concluded with Holmes looking on at Watson grieving at the former's grave that he knew how it was done, so Mark Gatiss must divulge the explanation over the course of the next two episodes (if Holmes' proposed one in The Empty Hearse - a play on The Empty House, like all the other episodes' slight alteration - is fake).
Cumberbatch's turn as a supercilious French waiter (not unlike John Cleese in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life) is hilarious and offsets the teeth-grindingly embarrassing scene where John Watson attempt to propose to his girlfriend (Martin Freeman's actual romantic associate/partner, as with Holmes' parents being Cumberbatch's père and mère).  The plot is very reminiscent of V for Vendetta with the bomb on the Tube Train under the Houses of Parliament and it was a bit silly that the Underground worker said there was no way a whole 'car (not 'carriage' apparently) to disappear between St James Park and Westminster before remembering late in the day that there was a sealed-off Tube station.  Also silly was the timer on the bomb - if you're detonating it remotely, why does one need a timer?  These things grated but the acting and the whole set-up brought it through as enjoyable.  Not a top-notch affair compared to the previous excellence of prior series but I expect standards to rise for the remaining two episodes.

2013 calendars - consigned to the recycling bin of history

It was John Fortune who was the last prominent person that 2013 claimed rather than the coma-induced Michael Schumacher.  74 in a modern, developed country is really no age at which to die, eighty years being a reasonable expectation for the middle-classes (the working classes have a greater tendency to indulge in unhealthy habits), though that makes 44 even more abhorrent (Schumacher is 45 years old tomorrow, if he makes it).  I remember fondly Bremner, Bird and Fortune's sketches from the late '90s and early 2000s and when I heard the news, I confused Fortune with the older Bird (77) as they were such a seamless double-act within the overall format of the show, while Bremner was more of a one-man impresario with his mimicry, all three welded together in the cause of political satire, being one of the few to 'survive' New Labour's early years (Spitting Image was so certain that New Labour would be so squeaky clean compared to the tired, old Tories, some of whom were very corrupt, that the comedy team wound themselves up before the 1997 election).
Another comedian contemporary of Fortune was Jasper Carrott.  I still recall vividly one iconoclastic line where he said that speed bumps used to be called sleeping policemen "but no-one slows down for a sleeping policeman in the road."  In that same show, he laid ferociously into the skiing set, with all their middle-class preening and priggishness.  It remains that to have a fatal skiing accident is a death peculiar to the rich or at least well-to-do.  Sonny Bono (ex of Cher) collided with a tree and died; Natasha Richardson (current at the the time with Liam Neeson) hit her head, got up and made her way to a hospital, apparently normal, before passing away suddenly from a massive brain haemorrhage, a condition known as 'walk and die' where the initial impact causes the brain to start bleeding until it becomes unstoppable.  What Carrott would have of Snow, Sex and Suspicious Parents (a spin-off from its stablemate Sun...) would have been exquisite were he still drawing in the crowds.  Even Harry Hill is no longer burping at such voyeuristic trash.  I once read that Schumacher was worth a billion dollars at one point, though that magazine hyperbole is intermingling with faulty memory.  Thankfully, Schumacher's condition has slightly improved but officially he is still fighting for his life.  The tributes to a man who was quite arrogant, if brilliant, when in his driving prime put Sebastian Vettel, his insufferable successor, in the shade.