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.