Without fear or favour

Fascinating to see Sir Alex Ferguson trying to get a journalist banned from a press conference - let me say, by the way, that Ferguson can ban me anytime he likes, as based on his past utterances, I'm one of those who would rather stick pins in my eyes than be in his presence!



Apart from the obvious question, 'What on earth makes him think he has the right to do anything like that?', it raises questions about how we as journalists report.  It seems that if you ask a question he doesn't like, or say or write anything that hacks him off, then your access to him is withdrawn.  That shows a misunderstanding of his role in my opinion - it's not him as an individual that people want to interview, but him as the holder of the position of manager of a football club.  Once he retires I suspect journalists won't be queuing to hear his words of wisdom.  Shame on the management of the club for not spelling it out him that theyre the ones who decide what his responsibilities are - it's another example of the fairytale world that football inhabits.  He should have been told years ago that the BBC is the national broadcaster of the UK, and if he doesn't co-operate fully with them then he's in breach of the terms of his employment.

It happens in other sports too.  I once wrote about the now-retired racehorse trainer, Jenny Pitman, that she'd 'had a poor season by her own high standards' - that was my way of saying that it had been a disastrous year.  You see, I wanted to interview her again in the future, so I had to tone it down.  In that case it didn't work!

Sunday morning comes and I'm on the tennis court when the phone rings: 'Get home as soon as you can, I've got Jenny Pitman ringing me going apeshit!'  I did, and she was.  Apart from a lecture couched in terms that would make a trooper blush, my fax machine kicked into life, and a list of every winner Mrs Pitman had ever trained started to pour out...page after page after page.  She then rang me back to check that I'd received it and asked me - again in the bluntest of terms - what was I [expletive deleted] going to do about it, and told me I'd never interview her again.

In the end, I did nothing, and she calmed down - and I interviewed her again in the future.  But it makes you think doesn't it?  If you were the sports editor of a regional, or the editor of a specialist sports, paper, would you publish and be damned, or would you tread very carefully for fear of losing the access you require to do your job?

Think on this the next time you read the sports pages: are you getting the whole truth and nothing but the truth, or a sanitised version of it?  I think I know the answer to that one.     

Pain and death

I'm opposed to blood sports - always have been, and, had you asked me anytime up until a couple of days ago I would have said that I always will be.  However, I've just heard an interview that has made me think.



Sir Mark Prescott is a racehorse trainer, exceptionally bright and articulate, a tad eccentric, and a big fan of hare coursing and bull-fighting.  Interviewed on Racing UK he made a comment to the following effect.  The difference between the countryman and the town dweller is that the countryman worries about suffering, whereas his urban counterpart worries about death.  Sharp, indignant intake of breath from me, and probably from you too.

He then went on to say that the countryside is a cruel place, and that death is a fact of life on a farm - the dogs are working animals and when they can no longer work are despatched, and all of the stock on the farm is bred to either be slaughtered, or used until their working life is done.  Farmers accept death, and those of us that are meat-eaters sign up to that contract.  What a farmer doesn't like is to see an animal suffering - the old horse gets shot, the sheepdog that can no longer work gets killed, and so on.  During the Foot and Mouth crisis farmers wept to see their herds being killed, even though they knew that was to be the animals' eventual fate - it was the suffering that upset them so.  However, the town-dweller is happy to get the vet to keep their old blind dog alive, even when he's bumping into the furniture, or keep their rabbit in a tiny hutch, remove their cat's claws so it can't hunt, and so on - they are happy to let their pet suffer because they can't cope with death.

He then went on to argue that there isn't that much between what he calls the 'rational anti' and the hunting enthusiast - both worry about suffering.  The anti worries that a hare might be torn apart by a greyhound, and the hunter worries about hares dying a slow, painful death in a field when it can no longer run.  The fact that intrigued me most is that the previous three heads of the League Against Cruel Sport all came to accept that hare coursing was, on balance, better for the welfare of hares than a ban would be!  When Sir Mark was an advisor to a programme about hares, the producer was staggered to find that the leading authority on hares and their habitat was the man who ran the Waterloo Cup - the premier hare coursing event in Britain.  The man who was most involved with hare conservation also set his dogs to chase them!  He knew, said Prescott, that the very few that got caught by the dogs were the ones that were the weak ones and which would, in any rate, shortly die - Darwin had a thing or two to say on that subject.



Am I now a blood sports fan?  No, of course not.  Am I now as violently opposed to them as I once was?  No, I'm not - Prescott's comments have given me cause to reflect on my position. 

The end of super-injunctions?

It looks to me as though social networking sites will sound the death knell for super-injunctions.  The rationale behind such legal moves is questionable anyway - does Article 10 recognising press freedom outweigh Article 8 which guarantees an individual's right ro privacy?  Eventually the courts would have made a decisive ruling, but the sheer number of challenges on Twittter, Facebook, and sundry blogs is such that the judges will, in future, be wasting their time granting injunctions - they don't buy privacy, merely an increasingly short amount of time.  It's one thing to pursue an individual for contempt of a court ruling, but can you pursue thousands of individuals?  It's Spartacus all over again

I won't repeat the names of those that have been granted super-injunctions - I don't yet feel brave enough to do that, and to be frank, the details of their peccadiloes doesn't much interest me - but anyone who wants to know simply needs 5 minutes and an internet connection.  Having now heard the names I wonder what all of the fuss is about.  If someone is in the public eye are they really daft enough to believe that martital infidelity or using prostitutes can be kept secret?  Anyone who does believe that deserves to be 'outed' on the grounds of rank stupudity!

In any event, the law has never been set in stone, and it has always changed with the passing of time and changes in social mores - what we're seeing now are changes driven by the digital age, and there are sure to be more yet to come.

They're AV'ing a larf!

On Thursday we're encouraged to vote, and amongst other things we're asked to decide on whether we prefer first past the post (FPTP), or AV.  This is a seriously tough one.

I'd prefer PR to FPTP, as it means that everyone's vote properly counts, but it isn't as simple as that in this case.  PR would mean that the Tories would never get a majority again, and that has to be a good thing.  So, surely I'll vote for the wathyered down PR alternative, AV, as the vile Dave and Gideon dislike it?  That would normally be the case.  However, the even more vile, and additionally duplicitous, Clegg and Cable want AV, so what's a man to do?

I'm afraid that on this occasion expediency will win out.  Cameron and Osborne are screwing things up so badly, and are so clearly out of their depth, that I think we can leave them to dig their own graves.  The Lib Dems have forfeited their claim to every get any sane person's vote again as a result of their stance on tuition fees, and their total reluctance to let principle get in the way of their desire to be part of the shabby coalition.  So here's what I'll do: I'll side with the Tories and vote against the Labour leader Ed Milliband, simply to ensure that Clegg, Cable and the rest sink even deeper into the poo.

Sporting greatness

I know that lots of people don't really 'get' horse-racing, but if you get the chance to see the replay of Frankel winning the 2000 Guineas it's well worth a look.  I've been a racing fan for longer than I care to remember, but I've never, ever seen anything like it.  These are the best three-year old colts around, and they are all good horses - some of them very good - but he simply toyed with them and won by as far as his jockey wanted.



He's trained by the great Henry Cecil - a man with a mix of genius and human frailty that the Briitish racing public finds irresistible.  To my generation he's simply known as 'god', and when he revealed that jockey Tom Queally had told him that there was more in Frankel's tank had it been needed, I nearly fell off my chair.  It would be great if Frankel went on to win again, but if he doesn't, then no matter - on the day that counted he was, I believe, the best horse I've ever seen.