2017
March 3 2017
Ok, I've had enough. I have loved motor sport and of course F1 since 1957. I have now seen pictures of all the car launches for this seasons. A season that is going to be so much more exciting because.......................you can name someone who has said it.
Well I've looked at pictures of these launches and to my untrained eye all the cars look the same but in different colours. That is not exciting. In fact it is downright boring.
What is more, to my aesthetically untrained eye, they are all incredibly ugly. The front wings with so many ridiculous bits of metal, much beloved by Ted Kravitz but not, I would suggest, by many lovers of motor racing, are particularly ugly. The barge boards at the side add nothing to the looks while the fin at the rear looks like a great place for sponsors to display a video as the cars go past, at least giving the spectators something exciting(ish) to look at for an hour and a half.
Christian Horner told us last year that the cars will be 5-6 seconds a lap faster. Apart from the innate ramblings of Brundle and Croft, we won't notice that. In fact if they are that much faster it will only be because of an increase in the aerodynamic downforce and more tyre grip and that is also boring. I would suggest Mr Horner purchase a deckchair from Fernando's Deckchairs to the Gentry and plonk it alongside the bullet train where he can watch machines show incredible speed while glued to the rails.
Lewis Hamilton seems to think driving these cars, and here I would have to disagree with his words, will be a physical challenge. I think, Mr Hamilton, that being driven by these cars, which is what happens these days, may well be a challenge physically but so, to some people, is the waltzer on Southend Pier. Seriously, I do not believe that one hundredth of a second improvement in this year's lap times will be down to the driver and if it is, it doesn't show to my, rather famous now, untrained eye.
Motor racing, the concept of man conquering a machine and getting it to go around a predesignated course faster than anyone else, went out the window long ago, on several counts. Firstly, if Mexico last year is anything to go by, you can choose your own course. In the good old days, yes I knew that phrase would come up somewhere, if you cut a corner, whether you gained an advantage or not, that lap was disallowed. OK, maybe at Sebring in 1959 if you were a cheeky bugger you could get away with it but then once you've discovered your Vespa “minicar” parked outside your first floor hotel bedroom and explained this to the hotel management, you can get away with most things. In my mind Lewis Hamilton and indeed Max Verstappen were a lap behind everyone in Mexico. They missed a corner out. Full stop. End of story. They didn't miss it because of an obstruction or anything, they missed it because, as a driver, they failed to drive round it. They lacked, for that one moment, maybe longer who knows, that vital skill so important to a racing driver.
Secondly, Formula 1 is not, or perhaps should not be, a championship for designers. I am quite sure that Adrian Newey, like Chapman and others before him, is a very clever chap but he, and they, have destroyed, in my humble untrained view, the sport of motor racing. I am quite happy for someone to set up a designers championship and driverless cars show how clever these engineers are. I won't watch but if people want it, let them have it.
As I said I want to watch a driver, man or woman, be able to take a car up to its limit and not allow a car to take him or her to its limit. OK, rant over but if anyone at Liberty Media would like a more extended thesis on my opinion, I am available. Oh, and here's a surprise in the modern world: free of charge. I loved this sport and I feel very sad that a new generation cannot enjoy what I did but am not the least surprised that they don't. Excitement is not all about speed and engineering brilliance.
The photo shows 6 Formula 1 challengers from 1958, a year when the title was won by one point and Autosport was a magazine that reported on the races as though they were races not as part of a reality show. I could tell the cars apart very easily, I could see the drivers at work and the cars would slide around corners. I suppose they didn't look that fast though.
March 10 2017
There is, I think, a special attribute needed to be a politician. Well, maybe not just a politician but a cabinet minister. That requirement is to believe that every one else is stupid, will never remember anything you have said or written before and will just accept you are right because you wear smart clothes and make pathetic jokes at the expense of people not in your party.
I am of course talking about the budget and the performance of Philip Hammond. This was his first budget. It was a short speech and it didn't have many new taxes in it. But one it did have broke a promise made in the Tory manifesto in 2015 when “Our Dave”, in his shirt sleeves to show he was a people's man, promised there would be no rise in tax, National Insurance Contributions or VAT. Dear Mr Hammond, therefore, decided to increase National Insurance Contributions, hereinafter called NICs.
Every political commentator spotted immediately that this broke the promise Cameron had made and yet dear old Hammond, who may have had an organ transplant (the brain) at some time, ignored this fact. Later in the day his colleagues in the Treasury tried to pretend that although the promise had been made when they enshrined that promise into law, they didn't actually say Class 4 contributions wouldn't be raised and so it was OK.
Now I don't know about you but if a promise is made, it is that promise which must be kept not the law that didn't actually satisfy the promise. Young Phil obviously didn't know this and his leader forgot to tell him. Anyhow Theresa may be the Prime Minister with overall responsibility but this was Phil's idea so there.
During his speech Phil had said that “a well-functioning market economy is the best way to deliver prosperity and security to working families and the litany of failed attempts at state control of industry by Labour leave no one in any doubt about that”. Feeling people didn't know how witty he was, he added, “except, apparently, the right honourable gentleman opposite, who is now so far down a black hole that even Stephen Hawking has disowned him”.
Well Phil, by the time the papers came out the next morning you were so far up your own arsehole that even your gastroenterologists couldn't find you.
The whole reason for increasing the NICs for the self employed is simple. The government have spotted, without the aid of Mystic Meg possibly, that more people are becoming self employed and these people pay less tax and NICs so the government revenue is falling. At the same time they need to spend more on health, education and care. Please note I said need to spend not that they are actually doing so but never mind.
Phil, his Hammond organ now on vibrato, decided that the government could achieve a richer tone by taking more money off these self-employed people by increasing their NICs, just as they had promised not to do. This was, said Phil, pleading to those who are still of the employed category, to make things fairer.
Now here we have the two major flaws, and the example of “I can say anything Joe Public because you are so stupid”, in Hammond's argument. Firstly there are certain differences between self-employed and employed that some would judge are not fair anyway. Don't get me wrong, as someone who has been self-employed now for over 25 years, I am not suggesting these should change but the self-employed do not have sick pay, holiday pay, maternity or paternity pay to the best of my knowledge. Furthermore they do not get a higher rate of pay when they have to do overtime and they also have to buy all the equipment they need to do their job. That's fine as it is. We all know this when we opted for self employment but to suggest that increasing NICs will make things fairer beggars belief. Unless, and here is the worry, in the next budget in November he has plans to remove all the above benefits from the employed making things even fairer. That must be it. I spotted it Phil and this would also fit in with the second major flaw in his plan.
With his organ now on pianissimo, or possibly completely unplugged, he forgot to tell all of us that those employers who use the self-employed or freelance staff, don't pay NICs for them either whereas they do for their employees. Neither do they provide sick pay and the other benefits that they must for their staff. Why should we not make these employers, some of them very big corporations (and probably run by conservative supporters), pay a fairer amount too. Because if we want a fairer system then these national treasures of our society, these money grabbing corporations should also contribute.
It would appear not. The JAMS (those who are just about managing in Teresa May's Britain) can be taxed higher but the Corporations Underpaying Normal Taxes must be treated sotto voce by our trusty Hammond.
Oh and one of Phil's other funnies, apart from this tax rise that doesn't break any promises, was that he said he was putting aside “£70m to keep the UK at the forefront of disruptive technology such as biotech, robotics systems and driverless vehicles, a technology I believe the party opposite knows something about” What a wit he is. The funny thing is Phil, having seen the headlines and heard what people think of this tax hike, I'm thinking that it's probably easier to do a U-turn when you have your hands on the wheel and, at least, driverless vehicles can't get caught making stupid emissions.
March 17 2017
Well what do you know, a U-turn as predicted, slightly in jest, on these pages last week. The government does listen, how wonderful. Well, no. Actually the government realised it would be defeated so it quickly changed its mind.
I was though singularly unimpressed with the performance of both in the House on Wednesday. Firstly can I just say that Teresa May has brought equality to the dispatch box. No one, listening to her, could ever believe she was not on the same level as those men who preceded her. She is just as pathetically bad. During the questioning from the leader of the opposition she had the cheek to say, turning radiantly to her supporters, that he hadn't seemed to have got the hang of this as he was supposed to ask her a question. Loud guffaws from her supporters.
Personally I wouldn't blame Mr Corbyn if he decided it wasn't worth it because when he does ask a question, he doesn't get an answer. She just tells him what he would do, what his party has done or makes a pathetic joke trying to humiliate him.
Now Mrs May makes a big thing about every child having the chance to go to a good or outstanding school. Forget that bit because I have been eating good food all week having revised my definition of good so that everything fits that category. But can you imagine if a child is asked at school how to spell a word and the answer is “well let me tell you some words you couldn't spell when you were at school”. Or asked to write an essay on the reasons for the start of WWII and said well it started because somebody wanted more power and you'd know all about that. The skill of a great politician is to be able to state their case, make their point, possibly point out the failure of the oppositions plans (not their past history) and keep any banter in good humour. Denigration does not make a great nation and May and Hammond, and other conservatives, are no better than Trump on this.
John McDonald said the chancellors reputation was in tatters. That's fine, it is. Jeremy Corbyn said the government was in chaos. That's fine, it is. Angus Robertson went close to the mark with his “"screeching, embarrassing U-turn" but it was very clever. In case you missed that, he wasn't referring to the screeching voice of our PM, he was making an analogy to a handbrake turn and the screeching tyres, wasn't he?
You see the thing is Mrs May and Mr Hammond, what if a child was watching your performance and they think it is fun to humiliate another human being because all your friends would laugh. Is that the education you want to give to each child? God knows there's enough of that on mainstream TV
And although I totally accept that Laura Kuenssberg is a very intelligent, erudite person, should she really be telling the government they are breaking their own promises. Come on, Laura, let's have factual, impartial ….........oh wait, it was.
March 24 2017
The modern attitude to life, news and self-centred egotism revolts me. Following the cowardly killings around Westminster this week, the BBC ran a story telling of the outrage shown by many people at those who would stop to take pictures of the injured rather than trying to help. You might also ask what is the morbid fascination of taking said pictures anyway. I am on the side of those who complained however, the BBC is obviously not.
When the story was breaking that afternoon they consistently kept putting up pictures and short video clips from members of the public showing the devastation and carnage. The question I would ask is, if the BBC wasn't so willing to show these sick clips and photos, would Joe Public still take them? In some cases the answer would still be yes and there are those twisted people who will also gather round a tragedy. But there are also those people who, as Andy Warhol predicted, would like their 15 minutes of fame. They want to see their photo, their video on TV, on a respected (haha) news channel.
The BBC and other news organisations should really get a grip on what they are there to do. Of course they should report the events of what happened but the intimate stories of human suffering are unnecessary in these cases. In certain instances, as with Michael Buerk in Ethiopia, such reporting can open people's eyes to a humanitarian disaster that is going on. But reporting on what happened in and around Westminster was not such a disaster. It was an act of terrorism and it resulted in a tragic loss of lives but knowing and seeing the suffering cannot, in any way, improve the situation.
I later read that Katie Hopkins, who I understand is some sort of twat (oh sorry predictive typing, I tried to type celebrity), said London was cowing, not united and so on. Who honestly cares what she thinks? London is London. Life will always go on. Tragedies happen and not just terrorism ones. Did we stop using tube trains after the Moorgate disaster which killed 43 people. No, I climbed on one less that 5 hours later. The Harrow and Wealdstone train crash in 1952 killed 112 people. We continued to use trains. What is more we have far more brilliant minds and brave police officers protecting us against terrorism than a train disaster. Essentially, Ms Hopkins, and I have just seen a photo of you and was a bit surprised to find out your age, you looked like a contemporary of Dame Joan Bakewell, human existence is fraught with disasters, whether avoidable or not. We cope, have always coped and will always cope. I think I must now apologise for putting the intelligent, charming, respected Dame Joan into the same sentence as Ms Hopkins but say it as you see it is my motto. Oxymorons happen, although, in my humble opinion, you may lack the sharp, pointed part.
Again though my concern is not with the ordinary, normal hard-working folk of London who yesterday went about their business, perhaps sadder for those who lost their lives and those are still suffering, but behaving as normal. My concern again is for the media, the news organisations who have managed to drag out a story for well over 48 hours. If anyone wanted to look at us as a country and see if we were behaving normally, and looked at the media, they would think not.
If as happened, you break into your normal schedules, have non-stop footage of live reporters here, there and everywhere, you are not behaving normally. Think. The terrorists must never win so remove much of the publicity you give them. Like those sad people who send you, or upload, their photos and video clips, the perpetrators and executioners of terror do not deserve to be known. I don't care who this man was, where he grew up, how many names he had; all that matters is he is now dead. Whether the special branch, the secret services have anything to learn is also up to them. News reporting should be about reporting news. Seeing pictures of dead, dying and injured is not news reporting. It is, in a very real sense, pornographic. It could deprave and corrupt others who see it as a way to glory and fame.
