A rugby great calls it a day

There's a saying in rugby, 'Once a Wasp, always a Wasp', but there will be many Gloucester fans hoping that doesn't apply in the case of the recently retired Phil Vickery.  'Vix' spent by far the greater part of his career playing in the West Country for the Cherry and Whites, and he's a legend in that part of the world.  Injury has finally taken its toll on him and his comment that his body now faces 'a lifetime of maintenance' hints at what this veteran of four major neck operations has given to the game.



Down Gloucester way the men that matter on a rugby field are the forwards - they're the big lads who shove in the scrums and do the hard work to win the ball, allowing the backs to score and get all of the glory!  Amongst the forwards it's the front row, the two props and the hooker, that are particularly revered, and Vickery's name is right up there in the pantheon of Gloucester props: Mike Burton, Phil Blakeway, Malcolm Preedy, Andy Deacon, Trevor Woodman, and now Phil Vickery.

A farmer's son from Cornwall, Vickery joined Gloucester in 1995, and rapidly earned himself the nickname 'The Raging Bull'.  Over the next 11 years he played 145 times for the club, and he was one of Gloucester's three Rugby World Cup winners in 2003, being awarded the MBE for his efforts.  In total he also won 73 England caps, and went on two British and Irish Lions tours, winning five Test caps.  However, all of this success is overshadowed by one aspect of Vickery's character: he is a 100%, died-in-the-wool, top bloke, revered by rugby fans across the globe - I've never heard a bad word uttered about the man.

If you want to know why he was The Raging Bull, watch this hit in an England shirt - it's on the great French forward Olivier Magne.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGpgZv61Jss

Every Gloucester fan has their special Vix moment, either on the field, or simply talking with him before or after a match - he always had time to chat to the supporters.  I have two abiding memories of Vix in a Gloucester shirt: the first was him scoring this marvellous try when the sudden delusion that he was a winger overcame him and he went in from a long way out - props don't score tries like this as the faces of the other Glaws players show! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXHRozZZ2kE 

My other moment was archetypal Vix.  In a crucial game against Wasps, two of their players, Lawrence Dallaglio and Paul Volley clashed heads in a truly sickening way - the sound echoed across the ground.  Although he was in the heat of the action, Vix simply stopped, was the first person to get to Volley, and took out his gumshield to prevent him choking.  His work done, he was straight back into the game.  Rugby fans remember things like that after they've forgotten the final score (especially true of Glaws fans in that game!).

In a thread on Shedweb, the Glaws fans website, there are memories galore of Vickery's time at the club:

- interviewing him for 20 minutes but having just a few moments of useable material because of his industrial language

- breaking his arm in a game but refusing to be replaced, and continuing to do his job as a prop, including lifting at the line-out

- appearing on the dreadful 'Mr and Mrs' gameshow and confessing to having cried when Take That split up (Phil, tell me you were joking, please)

- a Glaws fan meeting Vix and the other Glaws Rugby World Cup winning prop, Trevor Woodman, in a supermarket - it was in their bachelor days and they were sharing a house at the time.  Two props, two trolleys laden with food - they moved to let him through and there wasn't enough space between them such was their size!

A signed photograph of Vickery, Woodman and our third World Cup hero, Andy Gomarsall, in their Glaws shirts on the morning after the Final, dreadfully hung over, on the beach holding the Webb-Ellis trophy, is in pride of place in my study, and the reception they got at the next Gloucester home game after their return will live in my momory forever. 

The final word is best left to Bob Fenton who runs Shedweb and who has met Phil on many, many occasions: 'Vix turning up at mini tournaments and happily getting involved, handing out medals, chatting, posing for pictures and so on.  A top, top guy. The game is a little bit poorer without him'.

Writing exercise wk 4

The writing exercise about the Southsea fire.

"Police have launched a mobile phone appeal after a Southsea dinosaur was destroyed in a blaze.

An unexplained fire in the small hours of this morning destroyed the model dinosaur on Southsea common.      Police were alerted by Fire and Rescue crews who attended the incident.

A police spokesman appealed to members of the public whose mobile phone footage could help to resolve the mystery of the cause of the fire.

Bad weather is hindering forensic experts in their search for clues."

A red-letter day

It's not every day that sees the launch of a new national newspaper but this week saw the first appearance of 'i', the new daily from the same stable as The Independent.  As a died-in-the-wool Guardian reader, I've never thought much of The Independent: try as it has done, it has never really carved out its niche, seemingly falling between different stools at differing times.  However, I liked i and think it has a chance to succeed, but at what cost to its parent is an open question.

On day one it led with 'The housing crisis of Coalition Britain', but it's p5 before there's space for its lead story.  P2-3 are 'The News Matrix', which tries to summarise major stories in around 40 words...it's a bit like 'The Week' inasmuch as it tries to give busy (or lazy) people the news in easily digested chunks - it calls its readers the 'time-poor'.  The big story that Iran has been slipping bags (literally) of cash to Afghanistan merited 35 words and it gave a commuter just enough information so that he or she wouldn't feel exposed should the water-cooler conversation take that turn.  It also includes snappy bullet points designed to start conversation in the office or at home: do you know the least clever city in the US (straight from The Daily Beast), and its celebrity chef hate chart, showing which TV cook dislikes which of his or her rivals. 

Inside pages have a peculiar mix of serious and absurd: are Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street a gay couple, sits alongside a piece about Nazi Germany's foreign ministry and its support for genocide.  We have 'The Opinion Matrix', which again could come straight out of the pages of The Week...not an original word of text but rather all lifted from papers around the world.

i readers will be computer literate: we have the blogosphere section, and, of course, @i which is a collection of Texts, Tweets and emails.  Television is a big thing for the paper, and again the aim is to guide the time-poor's viewing: if you like American Crime you'll like these programmes, if Reality TV is your bag try this lot, and so on.  While you're watching your prescribed schedule of programmes, eat your cost-conscious 15-minute Singapore Fried Noodles (again the recipe is lifted from a recently-published book).

And so it goes on, business is covered in - you've guessed it - The Business Matrix, and weather is big - a whole page covering the major cities where, presumably, i readers are thought to live.

Sport is big too, and its coverage is good: snappy, of course, but well written, with the better writers from The Independent all getting an outing.

I said I liked i, and I do, and I especially liked the 20p price tag, although whether it can be maintained at that level has to be open to question.  The big question for me is 'Whither The Independent now?'  It already has the lowest circulation of any of the serious papers, and you have to wonder whether its offshoot might not just be the final nail in its coffin.  The paper is designed to be 'The Independent for commuters' and I'm sure that it will be successful, but for its content it relies upon its parent's writers, and if they weren't affordable, then i couldn't exist. How many Indie readers will desert the parent in favour of the precocious child - having its circulation numbers further damaged is the last thing the Independent needs!  Can i win readers away from the Indie's rivals?  Actually, I think it can - if I was faced with an hour or more on the train, morning and night, I think I might just fork out my 20p to read it on the journey to work, and then probably buy the Evening Standard on the way home.

It will be facinating to follow the progress if i in the coming months - I wonder whether there's a brighter layer of Daily Mail readers who might just be attracted to something slightly more cerebral than their current reading?

Qualified Privilege

Last week's Media Law lecture was fascinating.  The defence of Qualified Privilege is one that journalists, especially investigative reporters, fall back upon, and the notes on the website ( http://journalism.winchester.ac.uk/?page=228 ), the BBC College of Journalism ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/journalism/law/reynolds-defence/the-impact-of-the-case.shtml ), and in Mc Nae's are sufficiently good for it to be a waste to simply repeat them here.

However, the area where alarm bells rang for me was an aspect of the Jameel case.  In that case The Wall Street Journal had reported that a Saudi company, Abdul Latif Jameel, was being monitored by the Saudi authorities at the request of the US.  The company complained that the article implied that it was involved in funding terrorism.  The paper couldn't prove its allegation so it fell back upon the Reynolds Defence that what it had done was in the public interest. Initially, Jameel won the case on the grounds that the phrase 'responsible journalism' was a subjective one, but on appeal the decision was reversed, with Lord Hoffman saying that he wasn't sure what 'subjective' meant in this context other than that it was being used as a term of disapproval....'the standard of responsible journalism is as objective and no more vague than standards such as 'reasonable care' which are regularly used in other branches of law ... so the standard of responsible journalism is made more specific by the Code of Practice which has been adopted by the newspapers and ratified by the Press Complaints Commission.'



What rang the alarm bells was that this could be seen by journalists as an invitation to try to use this to justify anything that they fancy writing, whereas the test will remain whether the public interest is truly being served.  The Jameel case, although hugely significant, doesn't remove the need for publication to genuinely be in the public interest - trying to use this as a defence after defaming a footballer or a pop star because the revelations about their private life were supposedly in the public interest would be highly unlikely to succeed - Jameel is to be used as a precedent for defnding serious matters, not frivolous ones.

Why is football a malign influence on our society?

When I dropped those words into a recent post I was well aware that it would tweak some tails, and so it proved.  I guess that I therefore should at least offer some sort of a justification for a view that some might consider to be extreme.


I took a walk through our village playing fields not so long ago and there were a couple of kids' football teams playing a match.  I should preface the next bit by saying that I fully accept the charge of being an old codger that will inevitably be laid at my door.  Those kids were about eight or nine, and the language from them, and their adoring parents, was absolutely foul.  Equally, the referee - someone, I remind you, who gave up his Saturday morning so that there could be a game - was being roundly abused by both players and grown-ups alike.  Respect for the officials should be one of the basics in any sport, and football has lost it totally.  Watch any pro' game and you'll see the ref' being harangued by players - it has become the norm, and it stinks.  If a kid has no respect for the referee, why should they have respect for their teachers or any other figures in authority?  Some deny that such a link exists, but I think they're wrong.  Follow the following link if you think there isn't a problem.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/get_involved/4541798.stm


The cheating in football, both at an amateur and professional level, has been institutionalised.  Two players go for the ball and it goes out of play: they both know which way the throw-in should be given, but both claim it, and it happens every time.  They do that because they see the 'pros' doing it, and kids ape what they see in the top-flight game.


I haven't been to a professional game for about 30 years, since I got caught in a tunnel at Hillsborough when things kicked off after a Sheffield derby.  That was shortly after the Aston Villa supporters came to town and had a race across the bonnets of the cars parked outside the Town Hall.  I thought then, 'Why?' and I think much the same way today.  I know all of the stuff about the problem of football hooliganism being less of an issue than it was back then, but if things are so good, why are fans segregated and herded from the railway station to the ground surrounded by police, and why are there such restrictions on the sale and consumption of alcohol?  The fact is that the authorities have got better at keeping the lid on things, but don't let that fool you inot the thinking that the underlying problem has been resolved. 


A friend of mine - respectable woman, pillar of society, chair of local magistrate's bench, etc. - is a Man U supporter (Scottish, never lived in Manchester, so she fits the bill perfectly), and another friend, who is a Villa season ticket holder, took her to Villa Park when Man U came to town.  When Man U scored she leapt to her feet and cheered, whereupon a steward appeared and threatened to have her kicked out for 'provocative' behaviour.  What on earth is that all about?


Then there are the players.  I'm spared the task of singling out one or two dodgy examples because there are so many of them.  Overpaid prima donnas, with role models hard to find.


When my daughter was about seven she started to take an interest in sport and I had this fear that she would come home one day and say that her hero was...here you can insert the name of any of the particularly unpleasant footballers that feature in the tabloids on an all too regular basis.  It was simply unthinkable that should do that, so I started to get her interested in rugby.  


Let's get the hoary old chestnut out of the way first.  No, rugby isn't a middle or upper-class game.  Head off to Gloucester and stand in the Shed - I've no doubt there are some middle-class types there, but it is predominantly a working-class sport in the city.  They have a semi-pro football team but it gets a crowd measure in hundreds (on a good day) whereas Kingsholm, where Gloucester Rugby play, regularly gets a capacity crowd of 16,500.  OK, it's not Old Trafford but many Championship sides would take those sort of numbers.  The home and away fans mingle - there's plenty of banter, but violence is utterly unthinkable.  Beer is widely available inside and outside the ground - plenty of people have more than one or two during a game, but again there is no trouble. 


There's a police presence of course, but you won't notice it.  When Leicester City play there are more than 100 police on duty with reserves on stand-by: when Leicester Tigers play there are no more than half a dozen, mainly directing traffic.


On the field the players respect the referee: a word out of place and they get marched back 10 metres, or they get sin-binned or red carded. They call the ref' 'Sir' and at least have the decency to look as though they mean it.  After the game the players mingle with the fans in the bars and no request for a photo or an autograph has ever been turned down in my earshot.  It is expected of the players that they play a role in the community, and that they behave well - some let the game down, but they are the exceptions not the rule.


The violence in rugby is plentiful, but it's on the pitch.  I read something some years ago that reckoned that there was an inverse relationship between the level of violence on the pitch and the likeliood of it breaking out in the crowd.  When I see football players diving to the ground clutching a limb and trying to con the ref' into awarding a free kick, I tend to hoot with derision.  Some of the contacts in rugby are fearsome: a 15 stone winger running flat out and being tackled by another monster - the sound of the collision can be heard all across the ground - but more often than not they pick themselves up and do it all again.  The physios reckon that a game of Premiership Rugby has the same affect on a body as being involved in a car crash...and these guys do it every seven days!  As for diving: I once saw it in rugby and the ref stopped the game, and said 'We don't do that - if you do it again you're off, penalty against you'...as I say, I've seen it once.


 Football fans that I have taken to rugby games by and large have loved it.  Yes the Laws are incomprehensible, but that doesn't get in the way of the spectacle, and the atmosphere is great.  If you're a roundball, wendyball - there are some other terms that rugby fans use to describe football but I'll spare you them on the grounds of political correctness - fan, give rugby a try: you might just be surprised.

Finally, I've just read these words on BBC On-line on the reasons for Wayne Rooney deciding to stay with Man U, make of them what you will:  "However, fierce anti-Rooney banners in the stands during the game, the sinister visit of a gang of hooded members of the Manchester Education Committee group of hardcore fans to his Prestbury mansion, and an ominous death threat scrawled over the facade of a local Nike store had made Rooney think hard about his stance, and the consequences of a mega-money move to arch-rivals Manchester City."

Funny old world, isn't it?

What is an apology, and what is it worth?

Last Thursday Chris made a throwaway remark about how much newspapers hate having to apologise.  It didn't make much of an impression on me at the time, but it came back to me when I read the somewhat grudging and bizarre apologies by the Mail On Sunday and the News of the World to a woman called Vanessa Perroncel.  



I hate football - I actually believe it to be a malign influence on society, but enough for now of my prejudices - so although I was aware of the publicity involving John Terry, Wayne Bridges and Ms Perroncel, I took little interest in it.  Overpaid, over-sexed, and not very bright footballing prima donna behaves stupidly is on a par with 'dog bites man' in my book, so I deliberately ignored the whole kerfuffle.  However, in contrast to so many professional footballers, Ms Perroncel clearly isn't anyone's fool, and it's to her eternal credit that she pursued the rags in question and wrested an apology from them.

The wording of the apologies is very strange.  In essence both papers said: '...we published some personal information about Vanessa Perroncel concerning an alleged affair with the footballer John Terry. We have since been informed she would have preferred this to remain private and it was untrue in any case. We apologise to Miss Perroncel for any distress caused.'

Firstly, who wouldn't want details of their personal life kept private?  OK, Katie Price / Jordan and a few other nincompoops who take the papers' and magazines' money, but they are surely the exception to the rule?  But then the papers in question add the bit about it being 'untrue in any case'!  These apologies were hidden away so that many readers would probably have missed them, but if they had they'd possibly still be baffled by the newspapers' apologies: were they for exposing details of Ms Perroncel's private life, or for printing untruths?

Listening to Ms Perroncel on Radio 4 this morning she was clear that the problem was caused by John Terry's original attempt to get a 'super injuction' rather than simply fronting things out - she described it as a 'big mistake'.  Listen to her, she's a bright woman standing up for herself brilliantly (in her second language too!) - it's fascinating and you can hear it about 2h 22m into the Today programme.  The journalists and editors involved must be very proud of themselves - let's hope that it cost their papers dearly and maybe cost a few of them their jobs too.

In Max Mosley's libel case, Mr Justice Eady said: "It is not for the state or for the media to ex-pose sexual conduct that does not involve any significant breach of the criminal law. That is so whether the motive for such intrusion is merely prurience or a moral crusade. It is not for journalists to undermine human rights … merely on grounds of taste or moral disapproval."  Add to that the fact that what was published has actually now been revealed to a greater or lesser extent as a work of fiction, and some real questions about the freedom of the press are raised.

The Life and libel

Today's session with Ian Anderson on Defamation and Libel took me back twelve years to the 19-day libel action brought by horse-racing trainer Lynda Ramsden and her husband Jack, and former Champion Jockey Kieren Fallon against the much-lamented Sporting Life newspaper.  In an article published in May of 1995,  after the horse, Top Cees, won the valuable Chester Cup handicap, a comment column written by Alastair Down was entitled 'Contempt for the punter'.  In it he alleged that in a previous run, at Newmarket three weeks earlier, the Ramsdens and Fallon had been 'cheating' and that the horse hadn't been allowed to do as well at it might have done, presumably to protect its handicap mark for a later day.



Former trainer Lynda Ramsden

In this particular case it was unusual in that it touched on an area that I know a little bit about - I'd interviewed Jack Ramsden on several occasions, and had spoken less frequently to Alastair Down.  I had no doubt that Down was sincere in his view, but I was equally sure that it was a crazy thing to have written, and I was always of the view that the Ramsdens and Fallon would succeed in their action, and so it proved.

Jack Ramsden liked their horses to be ridden from off the pace, finishing with a flourish: that way if they were good enough they'd win, but not by too far, and if they weren't good enough then they didn't win.  The Ramsden horses were predominantly handicappers and only a fool would let them win by miles, or race prominently and fade late on.  Both of those approaches lead to the horses handicap mark (which determines the weight that it will carry in future races) going up sharply, and would therefore detract from its chance of winning again.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with running horses that way - in fact, I'd argue that to do anything else is daft.

The jury watched Top Cees' Newmarket race on more than 100 occasions, and it was no  surprise when the plaintiffs won their case, costing the 'Life' £195,000 in damages, although with costs their bill was probably over £700,000 - a tidy sum at 1998 prices.

The paper's defences were justification (that the allegation was true) and fair comment, and neither had, in my view at the time, the slightest chance of succeeding.   Fallon, whose career has been dogged by controversy, went on to become Champion Jockey, and Lynda Ramsden retired from training shortly after the trial, although Jack now sits on the board of Chester racecourse where Top Cees had his biggest success.  The Sporting Life was merged with The Racing Post just three months after the libel trial and disappeared off the shelves.  Top Cees was injured in the 2000 running of the Chester Cup but survived and was retired.

It took almost three years for the case to come to court, it cost an arm and a leg, and it put a number of people through dreadful stress - was it worth it?  For the plaintiffs it was because they had been libelled and needed to clear their names, but the cost to the paper was enormous and entirely avoidable.

Ryanair your favourite airline?

It's not the favourite of Robert Tyler, who was so hacked off with the way that he was treated that he set up http://www.ihateryanair.co.uk/ where he lambasted the budget airline in the most strident terms.  Finally, it all got too much for Ryanair and its combative boss, Michael O'Leary (pictured below), and they complained to Nominet, the organisation that manages all web addresses in the UK. 



The upshot was that the site was closed, not because it was disaparaging about Ryanair, but because it had links to other sites selling travel insurance and currency exchange, and had earned the princely sum of £322 from those activities.  The site was ordered to be handed over to Ryanair because it took unfair advantage of the company's name, which is part of its trade mark.  The judgement from Nominet must have been greeted with mixed feelings in Dublin, and it seems to epitomise a pyhrric victory: the company now has managed to close the .co.uk site, but in the process many, many more people now know of Mr Tyler's activities.  In addition, whilst the .co.uk site has gone, everything has simply moved across to http://www.ihateryanair.org/
minus the paid links.  Furthermore, Nominet's judgement is that 'criticism websites are essential in a democratic society', and that 'in a free and open society internet users should generally be able to post comments on their recent experiences or on current events, as long as such postings do not fall foul of the law' - in other words, if a company lets you down, feel free to tell the world about it in factual terms, and as long as you stop short of defamation, or make money through using that company's name, you'll be OK. (In fact, had it been a .com site, the fact that £322 was earned probably wouldn't have resulted in the site being closed, because the rules are different there).

Tyler is not a man who pulls his punches, and in bemoaning the fact that he had lost on a 'technicality' he said  'Never fear, we have already moved the site to it’s new home on www.ihateryanair.org and will continue to provide you with all the latest on how this pathetic excuse for an airline will attempt to extract cash from you through sneaky hidden charges, fly you to places that are not where you actually want to go and leave you stranded when the cr*p hits the fan,"!  Remind me never to get on the wrong side of Robert Tyler.

This judgement is a vindication of an individual's right to use the internet to disseminate information and facts about issues and complaints to the widest possible audience.  It also clarifies what can and can't be done - whilst Nominet's judgements aren't part of the legal system, this one sets a precedent that will give guidance to other website owners.   

As is so often the case in libel actions in the courts, one wonders whether, with the benefit of hindsight, Ryanair might not have done better to let this particular sleeping dog lie?  Tyler's site was largely preaching to the converted up until now, but chunky stories in all of the broadsheets have given him a wider and much more credible forum.

What a disappointment

There's disappointing and then there's desperately disappointing, and the new Bellowhead album 'Hedonism' falls firmly into the latter category.  It does so because it was high on my list of the most eagerly awaited albums of 2011 - after all, their previous efforts showed them taking traditional folk and ballads in a new and innovative direction and they hadn't a bad track to their name.  And then this!




The problem is simple and proves that democracy can be very over-rated.  Bellowhead have 11 members (I think) and they are the best live band I have ever seen, and I've seen plenty of good ones over the years.  The first time I saw them I sat in utter disbelief that something as radical and vibrant could still be done to old tunes.  However the band dress it up, Bellowhead is a vehicle for the extraordinary talents of Winchester's Jon Boden and, to a lesser extent, his colleague John Spiers - they tour as a duo, Spiers and Boden, and are sensational.  The rest of Bellowhead's members are highly talented multi-instrumentalists, but there isn't another Boden amongst them. 

Too often on Hedonism the feeling is left that everyone is being given their calculated share of the action, and sadly it detracts from what should have been a great album.  There are also a couple of total stinkers amongst the tracks on the album: as an example, 'Little Sally Racket' shouldn't ever have been let loose for public consumption.

For the first time I found myself wondering whether Bellowhead has legs as a project, and whether Spiers and Boden backed by a dozen session musicians wouldn't be a better idea.  I still have the earlier Bellowhead albums to fall back on, and there are some bits of Hedonism that do match up to that standard - invariably they are the ones where they stick to what they are excellent at, and bin the experimental side of things.

It won't stop me going to see them live - in fact I am doing precisely that in November when they play Salisbury City Hall - but equally, it won't alleviate my dreadful disappointment at the patchy album they've just released.   

Cable & Clueless

This is the moment: the big test for the Lib Dems.  Deal with it in an honourable way and the moral high ground is theirs to repossess and their party might just be saved, but if they show that clinging onto power rather than principle is what motivates them, then they could and should be plunged into the outer darkness of political oblivion.

I refer you to http://www.nickclegg.org.uk/education.aspx - a site that might not be up for long so read it while you can.  In case they pull the site, here's a quote to ponder upon:  "Liberal Democrats are the only party which believes university education should be free and everyone who has the ability should be able to go to university and not be put off by the cost."  Run that by me one more time Nick and Vince, and explain away your new stance on the issue.  And please, please don't trot out the hoary old chestnut that things are worse than you imagined - they aren't and only a fool will fall for that heap of baloney.



Refuse to back this evil Tory policy and you might, just might regain the trust of the many, many people who voted for you because they couldn't bring themselves to vote for Dave, but bottle it and, in my opinion, you're finished once and for all.  There's a generation of voters who will never, ever forgive you.  My grandmother never forgave Winston Churchill for sending the troops in to quell the Tonypandy Riots in 1910 (he didn't, but never let the facts stand in the way of a good story!), and she cursed him until her dying day.  I think this tuition fees fiasco could linger in the minds of a whole generation who will not be surprised that the Tories could devise such a plan, but will despise the Lib Dems should they support it.

Now's the time, Clegg and Cable, to cr*p or get off the pot!

Changed a lot since the Jethro Tull days....

Excellent session with Ian Anderson on Media Law on Thursday.  However, I do wish he'd occasionally stand on one leg, play the flute and wipe away the snot with his sleeve - maybe he's just not keen to re-live his Jethro Tull days? 



I liked the format of his session which was heavily practical, based on the case of the two men who robbed the post office and shot the dog.  The first thing I realised was that writing news is different from the sort of features and match reports I do.  Listening to the third years I could immediately recognise that news reporting is a skill that needs to be learned - I've started to listen to radio news in a different way over the past few days.

I made the point at the start of the course that I reckon avoiding libelling someone is largely a matter of common sense, and I now also believe that the same probably applies to avoiding prejudicing a trial.  The key point of the session was how to recognise risk, and avoid blundering over the fine line.  Producing pieces referring to the robbery, but as if they were at different stages of the investigation / charging process, was fascinating, and the main lesson for me was to understand just how close to the wind we could sail without coming unstuck.

The main points that stuck were understanding when a case became legally 'active (when the police make an arrest, issue an arrest warrant, magistrates issue a summons, or when charges are made), and the seven things that can be reported pre-trial:

- names, ages, addresses, occupation
- charges
- name of court and magistrates
- names of lawyers present
- date and place to when / where adjourned
- bail arrangements
- whether Legal Aid was granted

Also, understanding the requirements of reporting in court: Fair, Accurate, Contemporaneous and no sound or image recording of events.

It was good to be pointed to the excellent BBC College of Journalism site - I can see it getting some hammer in the coming weeks and months.

The enemy within

Listening to David Cameron's bubble bursting yesterday, I hooted with laughter when he pleaded with us all to pull together.  As John Crace pointed out in the Guardian, the last time anyone said 'Your country needs You' it was Lord Kitchener and an entire generation got wiped out!  Worryingly, Cameron used the phrase twice...the body count could be high!


I was recently reading Ian Clayton's excellent 'Bringing It All Back Home', and the passage that stuck in my mind was when he quoted a previous Tory Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, describing the miners as the 'Enemy Within'.  Clayton's father, a miner, who had lost a couple of brothers who had answered their country's call in the Second World War, and whose grandfather, also a miner, had lost four brothers in the Great War, aimed a kick at the screen and never watched the television news again until the day that he died.

Cameron looked tired and rattled - it took Tony Blair many years before he started to show the strain of office quite as clearly as 'Dave' has managed in just five months.  The cracks in Cameron's leadership are starting to show, and his coalition's honeymoon period is coming to an end.  If the 'wrong' Milliband can get his act together quickly he might just be able to save us when the inevitable General Election comes.

Grinding through Teeline

That's how I've spent the past couple of days, going back over what was taught, but this time doing it at my own pace.  It's more than 30 years since I was formally taught anything that matters and it's been interesting to see how I best work.

The first thing to say is that two-hour Teeline sessions without a break just don't do it for me, and it appears that I'm not alone.  Talking to teachers and lecturers that I know, coupled with a bit of internet research, it appears that the consensus view is that somewhere between 45 and 60 minutes is the optimum time to teach - after that and the Law of Diminishing returns kicks in.  If you've a two or three-hour session, the advice seems to be to break it up and let the students grab a coffee, pop to the loo, get a breath of fresh air, talk to each other and so on - in other words, encourage their minds to wander off the taught subject so that they return to it fresher and with renewed enthusiasm.

Grinding through the Teeline book yesterday, I found that is exactly how it works for me: I get much more done in three 40-minute sessions than I would in a single two-hour session - that's obviously how my mind works best.  Besides, after two hours of non-stop Teeline I'd need to have all sharp objects kept well out of my reach!

If we stick with the macho two-hour slots (why not miss lunch and just hammer through for a straight five hours?), then I'm going to stand up every 45 minutes or so and have a wander around, for no reason other than the fact that I'm still rehab'ing from an arthroscopy on my ageing knee, and two hours of sitting down becomes damned uncomfortable!

I remember Rick Stein once saying, when he was laughing at the breed of young chefs who shout, f' and blind, hit their sous-chefs, and generally set out to demonstrate just how much excess testosterone they have in their systems, that the view seems to be that 'You're not a real man until you've been hit with a Sautoise thrown at you by a Michelin-starred chef'!  I'm afraid I feel a bit like that now and I've decided that from here on in I need to learn Teeline in the way that works best for me, and that involves taking the occasional break.

Workforce some horse!

If you're not a horse-racing fan then you'll probably have missed it, but yesterday saw two of the most brilliant bits of sporting excellence I've ever seen.  When Workforce won the Prix de 'Arc de Triomphe, the most important European race, in Paris yesterday, it represented a triumph of mega proportions for his trainer, Sir Michael Stoute, and the ride that Ryan Moore gave the horse was coolness epitomised.

Workforce won the Derby in brilliant style back in June, but when he took on the older horses in the King George at Ascot in July, he was so bad that there were only two possible conclusions to be drawn: he was either a dreadfully poor Derby winner (not every generation can be brilliant), or he was off-colour in some way.  The 'Arc proved that it had to be the latter reason, although Sir Michael had subsequently find nothing wrong with the horse after the King George - it's an old racing cliche, 'They aren't machines'.  To train a horse to win the Derby, suffer such a huge disappointment in July, but then get him back to his absolute best in early October, is training of the highest calibre, proving again that 'genius' isn't an over-statement when it comes to Stoute.

Ryan Moore may be Champion Jockey, but his PR skills leave a lot to be desired.  However, he can be forgiven that if he produces rides of the quality of the one that he gave Workforce.  The 'Arc is a rough race and yesterday's running was no exception, but Moore kept him out of trouble, the horse was good enough and brave enough to go through the gaps when they appeared, and then responded to every one of Moore's urgings on the run to the line: it was simply poetry in motion.

Thankfully for me, out of Sir Michael's 200 or so horses, I managed to get Workforce on the list of the dozen I asked him about when I interviewed him back in February.  That meant that the Racing Post Guide, for which I write, had a decent couple of paragraphs on Workforce - it's the stuff of nightmares to have spoken to its trainer but failed to get his comments on the Derby and 'Arc winner!

A shopping mall masquerading as a city

I spotted a crowd in Winchester today and couldn't resist popping over to see what was so exciting.  It was the opening of a new Primark store, the replacement for the departed BHS, in our own white elephant, the Brooks shopping centre.  Of course, our mayor was there, resplendent with his chain of office, gladhanding the Primark executives who'd come to town for the occasion. 

Quite why any of our city dignatories should ever look pleased with themselves is beyond me.  They preside over a city that doesn't have a butcher, a greengrocer, or a fishmonger and, unless things have changed in recent weeks, a single locally owned shop on the length of the High Street from M&S to Barclays Bank!  When challenged their response on the first point is that M&S and Sainsbury's sell meat, fruit and fish - that may please them but it's a pretty inadequate defence in my opinion.  As for the locally-owned shops?  Pontius Pilate lives again in Winchester as they throw up their hands and say that no local business wants a shop on the High Street, or that it's all the landslords' fault.

The fact is that some small businesses do want to move in, but the landlords simply won't have them, preferring to offer the premises to chains.  What should the City Council do about this?  The answer is simple: work with the landlords to ensure that adequate shopping facilities are made available for the citizens of Winchester.  Do we really need three faceless coffee shops offering their over-priced capuccinos, while small, locally-owned coffee shops and delis can't get a look in?  I have a friend - my business partner in http://www.bellapuglia.co.uk/ - who has been trying for years to get better premises for his wonderful deli and coffee shop, Tom's on St George's Street - he could write a book about the travails that he has had. 

It doesn't need to be this way.  I was recently in Louth, in Lincolnshire, a town much smaller than Winchester, and it has three or four butchers, several greengrocers and a couple of fishmongers.  The town centre bustles with locals out doing their shopping in the old-fashioned way - the way that we all say that we admire so much when we go to France or Italy!  You're spoiled for choice when it comes to coffee shops offering great value, and their own home-baked cakes and pastries - oh, and prices are a lot lower too.

Instead our Council seems hell-bent on making Winchester look like every other High Street in the land, and it's a disgrace.  They have grand plans for another faceless shopping centre at Silver Hill - one of the brighter things about the recession is that it has temporarily spared us that!  Why haven't they insisted on a food court within the plans for that shopping centre, to be restricted to small, locally-owned shops?  Only they know the answer to that one!

They always reckon that we get the rulers we deserve, and in the case of Winchester that's probably correct - our lethargy in electing the same cabal time and time again has resulted in the destruction of our city's character and heritage: shame on us.  Our local rag, the Hampshire Chronicle has, in my view, failed us too.  If ever there was a campaign waiting to be started, it's 'Save Our City Centre', but for reasons known only to itself, it either hasn't spotted it, or daren't do it.  I wonder whether the editor fears a lack of co-operation from the powers-that-be if he rocks the cosy boat?  Surely not? 

Oh what a night....

It's hard to properly explain to an outsider quite how deep is the enmity that Gloucester Rugby supporters feel for Bath Rugby.  Imagine Man U and Liverpool, Pompey and Saints, or Celtic and Rangers, but without the need for segregation, alcohol bans or mindless violence and you get pretty close.  At its heart it's a class thing: Glaws supporters see Bath as fitting a stereotype of Barbour jackets, green wellies, and Waitrose, whereas they are working class and proud of it.  They're wrong on every level, of course, but when did reason and fact play its part in tribalism?  Ironically, Bath supporters save their true loathing for Bristol rather than Gloucester, but that's no matter.

Last night Gloucester travelled to the cess pool that is the Recreation Ground - how can such a beautiful city have such dreadful facilities for spectators - and they comprehensively spanked Bath's backside.  Glaws were better in every way and it resulted in a night that will live long in Gloucester memories.  Suffice to say that alcohol was consumed in some quantity in my house, and the world seems an altogether better place this morning - I swear that I was still smiling when I awoke from my slumbers!

We couldn't have had a better stepping stone to the coming weeks of European Cup rugby and it might just be what kick-starts Gloucester's season.