What nationality is Andy Murray?

Oh dear, looks like he's going to continue to be referred to as a Scot.  Had he won, however, I promise you he would have been the first 'British' winner of a Grand Slam for 75 years.  I love the way the papers do this - Tim Henman, loser supreme in the Grand Slams, was always a Brit and never an Englishman, Greg Rusdeski was Canadian when he lost, and British when he won!  Funny old world. 

Blood on the Newsstands

I'm feeling very left out of things - as far as I know, no-one has tried to hack into my Voicemail.  There are so many 'celebs' and politicians popping out of the woodwork claiming that they've been victims, that I feel like Billy No-Mates.  What started supposedly as a single NotW 'rogue reporter' has grown and grown, and threatens to engulf more than just News Corp.

The Guardian, fresh from its Wikileaks triumphs, has led the charge on this business from the start, and today it wheeled out its big guns: as well as extensive coverage in the paper, Simon Jenkins was on the case, as was former Rupert Murdoch editor Bruce Guthrie.  Guthrie may be a former employee with an axe to grind, but that doesn't stop his attack being as effective as it is fascinating, saying that assurances from Murdoch '...should be taken with a pinch of salt - actually a whole shaker of the stuff'!.  Most interesting though was a Leader Comment in the paper, asking why there had been so little coverage of the employment tribunal decision back on November 2009 that awarded £800,000in damages against the NotW over 'a consistent pattern of bullying behaviour' while Andy Coulson was its editor - Coulson is, of course, the man who has now resigned from two jobs on account of his innocence.  I'd missed that judgement, and it seems that it wasn't widely reported, other than in the Guardian and a couple of other papers, because of the omerta that seemingly existed where papers don't write about other papers.  What?  If such a 'gentlemen's agreement' ever existed, it sure as hell is dying a spectacular death!

Vince Cable, the standing joke of the cabinet, might have blurted out that he had declared war on Rupert Murdoch, but he was seemingly only doing it to impress a couple of young female reporters - the Guardian, however, seems to mean it.  The paper talks about the 'element of fear' that exists around News International, claiming that MPs eased off on investigating the Coulson affair for fear of having their own personal lives 'turned over', that a Commons select committee 'meekly deferred' when the Chief Exec of News International declined to appear in front of them, and that the Met shied away from doing a proper job of investigating the matter.

Today's attacks on Murdoch's empire are the most vitriolic I can recall, and I don't see any sign that the Guardian intends to ease off.  It will be fascinating to see the ABC figures over the coming months - will the Guardian's campaigning stance win it more readers, and in particular, will it be at the expense of the Murdoch-owned Times?

The end for Loose Women?

Now that Andy Gray has been fired, and Richard Keys has resigned, it'll be interesting to see the fall-out in other parts of the television world.  As a friend said to me, presumably ITV's popular lunchtime show, Loose Women, will either be taken off the air or have a major re-packaging - after all, what the Loose Women say about men is infinitely worse than the unacceptable comments about a female football official made by Gray and Keys, and they do it openly rather than behind their hands!  Shame, I quite enjoyed it sometimes.

The ugly side of 'the Beautiful Game'

Whoever christened it the beautiful game was presumably under the influence of some sort of substance, as there can surely not be an uglier spectacle than the game of professional football.  I've expressed my view on this before, and won't labour the point - if you like you can read it at http://colinboagsblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/why-is-football-malign-influence-on-our.html - but recent events show that at the heart of football there is a very, very dark side.

The nasty piece of 'banter' between Andy Gray and Richard Keys showed that, irrespective of how hard it tries to present itself in a favourable light, there's a nasty edge to the football world, with lots of unreconstructed old boys still out there.  It's not so long since we heard Ron Atkinson's comments about a black player, and now we have the Sky presenters sharing their sexist remarks.  Sky has just shown another piece of Gray 'banter' and thankfully that one has cost him his job.



Well done to Sky Sports for acting promptly to discipline Gray and Keys, but they need to be reading the riot act to the rest of their staff - unacceptable views or language expressed off-air are just as unacceptable as those that sneak out due to a technical error.  When will these people realise that it's no longer OK to present a positive, squeaky-clean front to the world, while expressing unpleasant views in private? 

I'm sure that there will be cries of outrage that this is all just political correctness but it isn't, it's simply a victory for common sense and respect.  Wouldn't it be good to think that those gay players, who undoubtedly exist in professional football but are afraid to come out, might be able to do it without fear of homophobic chanting and abuse?  Once that happens I'll start to believe that football is truly cleaning up its act and eliminating prejudice from the game - until then I'll continue to believe that it's still as morally bankrupt as ever.

The 'blessed' Richard Thompson OBE

June Tabor always refers to him in such a way when she introduces one of his songs, and such is the man's pedigree, back catalogue, and reputation, that it's hard to argue.  At Salisbury City Hall he was in typically fine form, touring his most recent album, the Grammy nominated Dream Attic.  Sometimes he comes over here with just his guitar, and on other occasions he brings a band, and that is the case on this latest tour.  It's a matter of personal taste whether you prefer the acoustic or the electric Thompson - I'm in the former camp but that's not to say I dislike the latter.



You get value for money from a Richard Thompson show, and on this occasion he played for not far short of two and a half hours: the first set was Dream Attic, and the second was a greatest hits set, albeit as the man himself said, with a small 'h'!  Dream Attic isn't my favourite Thompson album, or at least it wasn't when I played the band version, but the album contains a second CD of acoustic versions of the songs, and that one's growing on me the more I listen to it.



Such is the depth of the Thompson back catalogue that his selection of 'greatest hits' was very different to what mine would have been, but I'm just an old folkie at heart!  My one complaint about the show - and it's an odd one to make about a guitar hero - was that there was too much guitar!  I love 'Can't Win', and I even love the guitar solos on the recorded versions, but why did the man feel the need to add an interminable solo onto the end of it - far better to have cut it short and played another song.  The multi-talented Pete Zorn is a fixture in most of Thompson's bands and it's hard to be in anything other than awe of the man's playing, but there was too much shrill soprano sax in this show.  The stars in the band were the rhythm section of Michael Jerome on drums, and Taras Prodaniuk on bass - they set a driving beat that carried things along at breakneck pace.

For me the stand-out moment of the evening was 'Sidney Wells' a typically dark Thmpson song about a serial killer.  As he said in the introduction, no evening is complete without a murder ballad!  It was wonderful played by the band, and the acoustic version on the bonus CD is even better.

Richard Thompson's tours are on my list as gigs that I must get to, and this latest concert was excellent, even if it didn't quite live up to the remarkable Mock Tudor, The Old Kit Bag, and Sweet Warrior tours of recent years.  If you get the chance to see him before he heads back to his adopted home in California.

Dead Man Walks

No, it's not a News of the World headline, just the announcement that Andy Coulson, for so long a Dead Man Walking in his job as David Cameron's Director of Communications, has finally gone.  With the incessant drip feed of revelations in the voicemail hacking scandal involving the NotW, Coulson had become part of the story, and that made his role simply untenable.  He stands by his previous words on the subject - in essence that he knew nothing of what was going on - and, while that surely casts doubt on his competence as an editor, we must take his words at face value.



The political story now is best summed up by a question: what's worse than having a fool as Prime Minister?  The answer is, a loyal fool, and that's what David Cameron has shown himself to be.  How on earth could he have imagined that it was a smart move to take Coulson with him when he became PM, with all of the NotW shennanigans going on?  Everyone with a brain in their head knew that it couldn't work out, and for Cameron to then issue a kind of vote of confidence earlier this week - saying that he'd given Coulson 'a second chance' - showed that his judgement in this matter was deeply flawed.  That then begs the question, if he can get it so wrong on this one, how can we ever trust his judgement again?

I freely own up to schadenfreude in this matter - I love seeing Cameron squirm, and it's even better when it is his own foot that he has shot!  More of the same please to help this lousy and untrustworthy coalition fall apart.

On a separate note, has anyone's life been enhanced by the press suggestion that Alan Johnson's wife might have played away with his police protection officer?  Johnson wanted to keep his personal issues private, and he wasn't allowed to do that.  I'm all for journalists being able to pursue a story, but this simply wasn't one that was worth pursuing.  Shame on those involved.

What a difference three weeks can make

Back at the turn of the year, we woke up to the news of an arrest in the Jo Yeates murder investigation.  What was shocking was the way in which the normal rules of crime reporting were ignored, with the suspect's name being revealed within minutes of the arreat taking place.

http://colinboagsblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/evil-eyes.html

That suspect was released without charge, but with his life scarred forever by the experience.  Today police have arrested a 32-year old man on suspicion of murder, but what a difference this time around.  They seem to have had the impertinence to do it without his name being leaked to Sky News - how very dare they!  The Sky reporter has just said - with more than a hint of annoyance - that the police are telling the press nothing other than that an arrest has taken place.  Good.

Who knows whether this suspect will eventually be charged, but if he isn't, then he at least has the chance to pick up his life without the world and it's wife knowing that he was once arrested.  If he, or anyone else, is eventually charged with Ms Yeates murder then that's time enough for us to be told their name.  It might not suit the 24-hour news schedules but it's a welcome return to some sort of decency in reporting standards.

Hacked off with the whole affair

It was Groucho Marx who said  'I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member'.  How would he have felt about the new club where you get elected without applying, and where there is no membership fee - in fact, if you're lucky, you're the one on the receiving end of a load of dosh.  The membership of this exclusive club is as secret as that of the Bilderberg, although from time to time names leak out.  Yesterday, the actor Steve Coogan was revealed as a member, joining the likes of Sienna Miller, Andy Gray, football agent Sky Andrew, Max Clifford, and Gordon Taylor of the PFA, with others, amongst them Paul Gascoigne and John Prescott, rumoured to be possible future members.

I refer, of course to the Glenn Mulcaire / News Corporation club, where it is alleged that celebrities' phones were hacked into.  According to the Guardian, it now seems that the private detective, Mulcaire, has submitted a statement to the High Court confirming that the suspended News of the World Assistant Editor, Ian Edmondson, asked him to do the hacking, and alleging that several other NotW executives knew about this.  He doesn't, apparently, name names, but if true this would blow a hole in the paper's defence that this was a one-off done by a rogue reporter, the former Royal Editor, Clive Goodman.

As mentioned before http://colinboagsblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/film-stars-tabloid-and-skullduggery.html the scariest aspect of the whole affair seems to have been Scotland Yard's inept failure to act upon paperwork that it seized in 2006.   Yesterday, campaigning Labour MP and keen blogger, Tom Watson, asked the Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, whether he was happy that the CPS is giving the government the right advice in this matter.  With the straightest of bats the AG said that it was the police's role to investigate.  It seems that the Met's Assistant Commissioner, John Yates, who has previously said that there was no need for any further investigation of the affair, has now written to the Director of Public Prosecution saying that all the evidence now should be re-evaluated, and the CPS asked for its view.

The political aspect to this is that David Cameron's Director of Communications, was the NotW's editor at the time that all this is alleged to have taken place, although he has consistently and strenuously denied that he knew anything about it.

This is like pulling teeth: slow and painful, but it needs to be done.  It finally looks as though more of the story will come out, and who knows, the club might be revealed to have more new members, and some of the existing ones might find themselves even richer!  As they say, this one will run and run! 

Punishing the cheats

My rugby wish for 2011 is a simple one: I’d like to see the authorities tell referees to take major steps towards eradicating the cynical cheating that is damaging the game.  Last weekend’s ‘Big Game’ at Twickenham attracted 75,000 people, but the spectacle they saw could have been so much better.  Referee Andrew Small, and it’s a tad unfair to single him out because he’s a good ref, and plenty of other refs have put in similar performances this season, took an age to yellow card anyone, and as a result the game made dire viewing.

Players were deliberately miles offside, and they were lying all over the ball at the breakdown.  When it became apparent that all the referee was going to do was issue a telling-off, of course they did it more than ever.  In these situations rugby players start to act like small children with a parent who threatens discipline but never acts.  You know the sort of thing: “Do that again and there will be no birthdays or Christmases ever again!”  Yeah, right.

The result of Small’s inaction was a first half that was pretty desperate stuff.  On the stroke of half-time he binned Bob Casey, and lo and behold the game got a bit better – not much better as this was two sides low on confidence playing tedious stuff, but it was still a step up from the first half.

If we want good flowing rugby then it’s easy: reduce the level of cheating and that’s what you’ll get.  For a few weeks it might involve twelve against eleven for a few minutes, but if that’s the cost of cleaning things up, so be it.  Once coaches had seen that the refs meant business, they’d act.

I’d also like to see the interpretation of a situation that merits a penalty try being strictly enforced.  The key word is ‘probably’ in the Laws – the penalty try can be awarded if the ref believes that a try would probably have been scored had the cheating not taken place.  In the second half of the Quins v Irish game Danny Care got binned for cynically slowing the ball down on his own line – you see similar occurrences in pretty well every game.  Quins fans would have reacted badly had a penalty try been awarded, but I’d have supported the decision.  Let’s have a few refs who take the line, ”He only cheated because he believed he was stopping a try-scoring move – that’s good enough for me”, and head under the posts.

During the second-half, Quins stand-off, Chris Malone, did something that rightly sent Sky’s Stuart Barnes off on one.  When Irish once again slowed the ball down illegally at the breakdown, Malone appeared to make a gesture to the ref’ suggesting that he show someone a card – the thought was dead right, but he was oh so wrong to do it..  Barnes made the point that rugby doesn’t need such football histrionics, and it’s hard to imagine that many would disagree with him.  I recall seeing an England international once take a deliberate dive, and the ref clearly said ‘We don’t need that in rugby, do it again and you’re off”, awarding a penalty against him.  That’s what we need if we are to stop rugby heading down the same cynical and unpleasant road that football has taken.

While I’m ranting, here’s another area I’d like to see sorted in 2011.  Gloucester’s England lock, Dave Attwood, is up before the Beak on a charge of alleged stamping.  It’s not for us to pre-judge the case against Attwood, but the circumstances are those that you see in every game.  Play moved on, and a player on the ground had a hold of Attwood’s leg, preventing him getting back into the action – in this instance another player was also trying to tackle Attwood without the ball.   Attwood was perfectly entitled to try to free himself, and we’ll leave it to the authorities to judge whether he went too far in doing it.  That, however, isn’t the point: two players blatantly cheated, and their victim is in the dock – where’s the justice in that?

In such situations –  and when you’re watching a live game you see a lot more than the camera picks up in a televised match – it’s hard to blame the officials as they’ve got enough on their plate following the action.  I’d like to see the citing officer’s role extended to encourage them to pick up on off-the-ball incidents – once a few culprits had copped bans then coaches would tell them to cut it out, and the game would be better for it.  It doesn’t need to be violent, cynical play is more of the threat to the top-level game than thuggery is these days.

I can hear the squeals of outrage from some old timers about this, and I’m sure that the argument will be that we’d take some of the game’s character away, but they’re just plain wrong.  Stop the cynical cheating and the game will prosper even more.

Happy New Year.

First published in The Rugby Paper on 02 January 2011 and reproduced with the editor's permission

Rugby predictions for 2011

With the New Year just around the corner, what will the rugby headlines be in 2011?

January.   Sarries announce the signing of a new half-back partnership in Anton du Beke and Wagner Carrilho.  Newly-appointed Director of Rugby, Will Young, says, “Some may see these as risky signings but we think that they can help us attract a new audience to Sarries – after all, what’s rugby about if it’s not entertainment?”

February.  Sky announces that the LV= Cup game between Leicester and Bath will kick off at 02:30 on the Monday morning, following on from its Superbowl coverage.  A spokesman said, “We think that families will welcome an all-nighter in Leicester and we’ll be handing out free cocoa to everyone who attends – it’s another first for English rugby.”

March.   The Six Nations decider between Scotland and Italy goes the way of the Azzuri, with England finishing fifth and Wales picking up the Wooden Spoon.  Rob Andrew announces himself ‘Happy with the progress that’s being made’, and says that it sets England up for a successful RWC campaign.  The WRU offers Warren Gatland a further extension to his contract.

April.  Sky’s Rugby Club devotes 58 of its 60 minutes to in-depth analysis of Munster’s  prospects in their forthcoming Heineken Cup quarter-final, with Leinster getting the remaining two minutes.   Subscribers are told that it’s now mandatory to wear a shamrock as part of the Sky Sports package.

May.  The Heineken Cup final is played at a newly ploughed Millennium Stadium with organisers saying that they think this has finally resolved the concerns about the quality of the playing surface. 

June.  Sale and Newcastle’s pitches finally are free of snow, so the backlog of Aviva Premiership games can be tackled.  The Premiership final is rescheduled for a second time and will be played in late August.

July.  The IRB announces a change to Law 20.6 on the put-in to the scrum.   In future the scrum-half will stand at the back of the scrum and place the ball in front of the No.8.  An IRB spokesman said “All this throwing-in nonsense was too complicated, and refs were finding it hard to understand..  As long as the opposing team doesn’t push too hard we think this new Law will work.  We’re looking for co-operation from the players on this one.”

August.  All twelve Aviva Premiership Head Coaches release a statement saying that pre-season has never gone better and that morale within their respective clubs is at an all-time high.  The RFU and premier Rugby announce a play-off system that will include all twelve clubs, thereby extending the AP season into late August, saying that player welfare remains an issue.

September.  England lose to Argentina, Georgia and Romania in the pool stages of the RWC, and fail to make the quarter finals. Just before garrotting Graham Simmonds live on air, Johnno says “What’s the point of us having the best coaching team in the world if that load of muppets are going to bottle it every time they run onto the park.  I’m moving the England training set-up to

Welford Road

as soon as we get back home, and no, I’m not going to resign.  Rob Andrew tells me everything’s hunky-dory.”

October.  New Zealand lose 42-3 to Namibia in the RWC final.  The All Blacks field a weakened side after their squad succumbs to food poisoning.  Graham Henry complains, “We think it was dodgy lamb that caused it – the chef was French so you can draw whatever conclusion you like from that. Only one side wanted to play rugby out there, and clearly all six of the Namibian tries should have been disallowed – I wasn’t happy with the ref’’s performance.  On the positive side, I thought that Dan Carter took his kick really well.” 

November.   The post-RWC influx of foreign stars hits the Aviva Premiership.  The incoming All Blacks, all now restored to full health after ‘Lambgate’, offer to run workshops for English referees in order to pass on their wisdom about the way the game should be ref’d.   Richie McCaw offers to ref’ a few games by satellite link from New Zealand in the spirit of cross-hemisphere harmony, and to show how easy it actually is.

December.  Edward Griffiths, with his new title of Impresario-In-Chief, announces that Saracens will no longer play rugby, and that more than 90% of the current squad has been released.  “Our management consultants have recommended that we focus on our core business of entertainment, and to be frank, rugby has become peripheral to what we’re all about.  I guess one or two of our fans will be disappointed at this, but we’ve offered them cheap tickets to Will Young’s next Wembley gig, so that’s all right.”  Technical Director, Brendan Venter, enthused “Will Young, bit of genius, bit of magic.  Three cheers for Will Young!”

I hope that your New Year celebrations turn out to be as good as you hope, and let me wish you all the very best for 2011.

 First published in The Rugby Paper on 27 December 2010 and reproduced with the permission of the editor

Diamond geezer vs the inadequates

How sad am I?  I spent an entertaining couple of hours yesterday watching the Commons' Select Committee quizzing Barclays Chief Exec, Bob Diamond, and the thing that came through most strongly was the intellectual gulf that separates a world-class executive from a bunch of MPs relishing their moment in the spotlight.  Diamond well and truly did them over - they didn't manage, despite their whingeing and bleating, to lay a finger on him.

Their rudeness was quite remarkable, matched only by their arrogance.  Had their 'victim' been the CEO of RBS or Lloyds then they might have had some argument for their approach - after all, the state owns a large proportion of those banks - but Barclays managed very well, thank you, without state support.  For me that means that those MPs had no right whatsoever to whinge about Barclays bonus payments.  For as long as Barclays remains free of state funding, the way it pays its staff is its own business - if it gets it wrong then that's a matter for its Board and its shareholders, and no-one else.  If you were an investor, who would you rather have looking after your money, Mr Diamond with his track record, or a bunch of here-today-gone-tomorrow MPs?

None of this should detract attention from yet another failure of the coalition.  I seem to recall that the banks were going to be squeezed until the pips ran dry over the issue of bonuses, but the ever-smug and arrogant Gideon 'George' Osborne's statement yesterday seemed to miss that bit out.  As ever, high on rhetoric and devoid of substance.

After Diamond's performance the BBC, never one nowadays to stress content over style in its news coverage, did some voxpops with the Great British Public.  Most of them focused on 'these bankers have had government money but are still paying huge bonuses', without any attempt to point out that Barclays hasn't had any of our dosh.  Why spoil a good story by sullying it with a few facts?  Personally, I'm more worried about the huge amounts of taxpayers' money being squandered by the increasingly sloppy Beeb than I am about the seemingly very well run Barclays Bank!

Winchester Woman

In Dundee they have a wonderful women's choir called Loadsaweeminsingin, but here in Winchester we have Loadsaposhweeminshouting.  There is a breed of woman, peculiar to Winchester, which seems to think that the world revolves round them, and them alone.  You meet them everywhere, and you can hear them before you see them.  You see, they shout a lot: "Cassandra, come back to mummy now", "Tarquin, put down that stone, it might have been touched by a common person". 

Supermarkets are one of their environments - Waitrose, followed by Sainsbury's, and if Piers has lost his job in the City, maybe, in extremis, Tesco.  These are essentially kept women.  Their mode of transport is a four-wheel drive, generally black with tinted windows, which they struggle to park, so they generally leave it diagonally across two or three spaces.

If one of them comes towards you on the other side of a swing door, beware, because they'll barge through without a moment's concern for whoever is on the other side.  Never, ever hold a door open for one of these women as the phrase 'Thank you' is one that isn't in their vocabulary.

One of their especially annoying habits is to put their shopping on the check-out conveyor belt, and then shout, "Oh, I've forgotten a couple of things, I won't be long, you don't mind, do you?" - the final question is, I assure you, entirely rhetorical.

On Saturday in Waitrose I finally cracked.  One of these Winchester women pulled the check-out stunt and tottered off on her heels to look for the pickled lemons that Gordon Ramsay's latest recipe demanded, leaving two of us standing like pickled lemons in the queue.  I took my trolley to the cashier and asked that he scan my shopping through.  This he gleefully did, but then Winchester Woman came back, and exploded!  "You pushed in - that's so rude" was how it started, but when I simply smiled and declined to get involved, she went on and on, becoming ever more abusive, and making a complete plonker of herself - though I suspect she saw it rather differently.  What I could see, but she couldn't, was that the rest of the Waitrose staff, and the other customers in the queue, were all smiling, and were clearly thinking 'Gotcha!'.

It would have been so easy to have a slanging match: I could have mentioned her bum, which did look big in her black leggings, or that she seemed to have mistakenly dressed in her 14-year old daughter's clothes, or her clearly dyed blonde hair, or the excessive amount of make-up she was wearing at 08:35 on a Saturday morning, but years of experience have taught me that nothing annoys Winchester Woman more than being ignored.  I restricted myself to a smile and "You have a good day, madam" as I was leaving and I tell you, she hated it!  She was last heard trying to call the manager to complain about the poor check-out lad, and probably about the fact that she'd briefly come into contact with reality.

Next time you're in Winchester, watch out for these creatures - there are plenty of them so you shouldn't have too much difficulty spotting one, or at least hearing her call.

Selling souls or saving jobs?

Let me make a confession: my name is Colin and I'm a salesman.  There, I've said it - I hope you'll still be my friend.  The reason I'm so reticent about it is that the British have a peculiar attitude towards selling.  In a nutshell we like to make salespeople the butt of quite a lot of our humour, and we can adopt an air of superiority towards them, but at the same time we're happy to fill the jobs they create.  Because there's the rub: most businesses wouldn't exist without salespeople generating the revenue and profit to keep them going.

I mention this because a friend made a comment the other day about a particular bunch of salesmen (and I mean men, or rather boys) and their unpleasant and raucous behaviour.  The comment was along the lines of 'I'm so glad I'm not a salesperson', and it made me stop and think.  There's a stereotype of the loud, brash,  loadsamoney salesman, and these lads apparently fitted it to a T.  Having said that, I've met plenty of exceedingly loud and annoying medics, extremely tedious lawyers, and don't get me started on the oddities of Estate Agents or Internet Developers! 

I suspect the problem is that salespeople tend to be motivated by money, and that grates with typically British reserve.  I spent 28 years selling: sometimes my title had sales in it, and at other times it didn't.  When I was a Managing Director - which is a grand title in its way - the reality was that I was still chief salesman in the company.  I may have done different sales calls on different and higher-powered punters, but I was still a sales rep with responsibility for the company's revenue targets.

It's different in the States.  There selling is regarded as an honourable profession, but then in the US it isn't considered gauche to be open about wanting to earn a lot of money.  In the US corporation where I spent a lot of my career, our sales recruits were almost 100% graduate, many with MAs or PhDs, and mainly from - and let's be a bit snobbish here - what were at the time the better universities.  They were attracted to sales for a number of reasons: the money was obviously a factor, as was the intellectual challenge of selling complex IT systems into the country's largest companies in sales campaigns that took several months to come to fruition, and the buzz of winning was a big thing for many of them.  However, the biggest factor by far was that their career couldn't progress unless they'd successfully sold. No-one at that time ever made it towards the top of that business unless they could boast a decent sales pedigree.

What's so great about selling - and it really isn't for everyone - is that it's a profession where you can't hide.  You're either making your numbers and succeeding, or you're missing your target and - excuse me using the 'F' word - failing.  In a world where the black and white of success and failure are increasingly replaced by shades of grey, sales maintains its standards.  Look at the problems faced by companies during this so-called recession (if you want to know about real recessions try the early 80s and the early 90s - I've seen it all before), and a lot of them can be laid at the door of a culture where failure seemed to have been abolished as being in some way unpalatable!  However it's dressed up, in business it's not enough to succeed, others must fail - by definition that's true, but people get uneasy when it's said.

A career in sales also makes people very resilient, and I suspect that follows through from their job into the rest of their life.  Selling teaches you to handle setbacks and rejection - you get more of them in a typical week than many people get in their whole career.  Some people can't handle that - they curl up and put their hands over their ears - but those who can, learn to pick themselves up, dust themselves down, and start all over again.

Watch David Mamet's play, Glengarry Glen Ross, and you'll get a handle on the elation and pain that salespeople cope with on a daily basis.  Of course it's an extreme view of the world of sales, but it's not that over the top - you can trust me, I'm a salesman.

When I told my mother I was moving over from being a techie to become a salesman her attitude was typically British - in essence it was 'I'll still love you despite that'!  I suspect a lot of her disquiet was down to her generation's understandable love of safety and security, and the thought of her son doing a job where there wasn't a guaranteed salary unsettled her. 

If you earn your money working in a business that makes things or provides services - and outside of what we snootily call the professions or the public sector, most people do that - spare a thought for the salespeople who are out there 'doing the business' to keep you in a job.  I make no apology for expressing it in such stark terms, but that's the reality of the business world - they may sometimes be loud, brash parodies of themselves, but we'd be in a sorry mess without them.

Should I be a man in uniform?

I've been trying to work out when it was that I became a postman.  I don't remember applying, and no-one has yet given me a uniform, but Royal Mail seems to have appointed me.  I remember the good old days when you had your breakfast interrupted by the arrival of the day's mail, and it was all for you.  At the same time, your neighbours got the mail that was addressed to them, but that's not how things have worked in our village for the past few years.



Yesterday was a typical example: as well as my mail I got a letter for my next-door neighbour, and the one next to them.  I also got some for people I've got to know quite well - they live at the same number as me but in a street that has a similar name to mine.  Oh, and I forgot to mention, it arrived about 16:00 - was it today's mail arriving early, or yesterday's that was late?

I order a lot from Amazon and they use a range of carriers.  I also go out a lot, so I leave a note saying that my kind neighbours are happy to take mail on my behalf and sign for it.  This works well for every carrier, bar Royal Mail.  For reasons known only to themselves, they won't be helpful and insist on taking the mail back to the local Post Office - if a neighbour sees the postperson and offers to take it on my behalf, they get rebuffed.

As a Labour Party member I should be opposing the privatisation of Royal Mail, but I just can't bring myself to do it any more.  The sooner that more private enterprise is brought in to our mail deliveries, the better it will be.  I once had reason to complain about City Link and the complaint was handled brilliantly, and the problem I highlighted has never been repeated, but Royal Mail is a different beast.  When I cracked and got the local manager on the phone to tell him that I'd retired as the local unpaid postman, and that the rogue mail would be held for seven days before being shredded, then he paid me a visit.  Apologies were profuse, and assurances were given, but they were utterly meaningless - I don't complain any more as what would be the point?

I doubt that it's the postpersons' fault - the screw is clearly being turned, and there are fewer of them being expected to do more.  However, that really isn't my problem, I just want MY mail delivered at a sensible time. Please?

Evil eyes?

I remember my mother saying to me, as she looked at the iconic picture of Myra Hindley, 'You can tell she's evil, look at her eyes." 



Let me tell you that if you focus in on anyone's eyes, as one of the Red Tops did with those of Joanna Yeates' landlord's in Saturday's paper, you can make them look seriously dodgy.  Touch up the picture to make the eyes even darker and the job's done - bang to rights readers.  Well actually, no, it means nothing at all.

Having done just enough Media Law to be dangerous, I'm gobsmacked at the coverage of the Joanna Yeates case, and it's been bad enough for Dominic Grieve, the coalition government's Attorney General to issue a warning (not much of a warning actually: being warned by Mr Grieve seems to be on a par with being savaged by a lamb).

I was sitting in a hotel in Norfolk when Sky News announced that police had  arrested a 65-year old man on suspicion of murder.  Being a naive type I imagined that the case was now 'active' under the Contempt of Court Acit 1981, and that the press would therefore have to be careful what they said.  Five minutes later Sky named the man as Chris Jeffries, and the tidal wave of rumour and innuendo started to roll.  What followed has been so disgusting that I cannot imagine that, should Jeffries (now released on bail) ever be charged, he could get a fair trial - where would twelve people be found who hadn't read the weekend's papers or watched television?

Today's Sunday Times, in its full 'thinking man's Sun' style,  is just one example of reporting that is nothing short of scurrilous.  It tells us that police were 'familiar with the property where Yeates had lived'.  Setting the scene as Clifton, described by Betjeman as the 'handsomest suburb in Europe', it goes on to tell of one of Jeffries' former colleagues (a teacher at £27,000-a-year Clifton College, and therefore a toff who is to be disliked) who abused a child in one of the flats.  It then stretches its innuendo almost beyond belief by saying that another resident is a cousin of a woman whose best friend was murdered 36 years ago, and that Jeffries was a teacher at Clifton College at the time.  

I have no idea of whether Chris Jeffries has ever even had as much as a parking ticket in the past - if he had then I'm sure that we would have been told by now - but he has had his reputation thoroughly besmirched in recent days, and he isn't the only one.  Yeates' boyfriend had to suffer a bit of the 'nudge nudge, wink wink' stuff himself and he was moved to issue a statement criticising the 'character assassination' of his landlord.  

The whole coverage of this tragic case stinks from beginning to end.  Did we really need to see the pictures of the grieving parents being taken to the scene where the body was found - you know, I'd managed to work out for myself that they would be distraught, and I didn't need some sleazy television news team to confirm that for me.

Am I cut out to be a journalist?  I think I am, but certainly not one of the pond life journos or editors responsible for the shabby coverage of the Joanna Yeates case.  Let's hope that Chris Jeffries has the will to sue some of the press, and that Dominic Grieve has the balls to start actions for Contempt against all news organisations that have transgressed.  Joanna Yeates is a tragic victim, but she isn't the only one in this whole sorry saga.

Happy New Year!