Ed Milliband

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 I bet very rarely but over the last three years have come out with a profit of £1.67p on about fifty £2 bets.
I am on a disastrous run however after backing Argentina to win the World Cup, Birmingham City to beat Wigan last Saturday and David Milliband to win the Labour Party leadership campaign. I also bet on the Tories to win the general election outright and Pakistan to beat England in the final match of their one day series.
 I only allow myself to bet £20 per year and am now down to a paltry £5.33p in my account. I never bet on the horses because having worked for The Tote for several years I know that some races are fixed. Indeed it would appear that gambling is such big business these days that in sport fixing is endemic these days. With the advent of spot betting you can place a bet on almost anything and a well known former England international, who I had previously greatly respected, admitted to kicking the ball off the field for a throw in at an agreed time. There is only one way to deal with these cheats and that is to ban them for a lifetime in participating in any sport.

 If anyone out there has a cast iron, non bent, certainty for me then please leave a comment. More on Ed Milliband after he makes his first speech at the Labour Party conference tomorrow.

Athletes Put Their Foot In It.

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I am appalled that many of our top athletes are refusing to go to the Commonwealth Games in India. If, and fat chance that it ever would have happened , I had been asked to represent my country in such an event I would have paid for my journey and accommodation  even if I had meant  hitch hiking there and living in a tent.
 Of course the Indians have messed up big time but that was almost inevitable given the fact that they refused to treat it as just another event instead of demonstrating that they could compete with their great rivals China. If you have never been to India then the culture shock that comes with visiting the place is enormous. Appalling poverty exists side by side with massive wealth and filth and squalor are everywhere. Those athletes who want luxury facilities should think for a  moment about those building the place that probably live in leaky shacks, without running water facilities and toilets.

 The late and much respected left wing journalist James Cameron made a documentary series a long time ago about the differences that exist in the society and the poverty and injustices that are regarded as the norm there. One unforgettable scene showed him on a train, which was long, hot and overcrowded and, except for the first class occupants, without toilet facilities. To overcome the problem when anyone wanted a shit they would make their way to the front of the train and hop off and defecate by the trackside. The train was so long and moved so slowly that by the time they had done their business there was still ample time to jump back onto one of the rear carriages.

 I'm afraid that modern athletes are too cossetted and too highly paid and whilst they are quite happy to accept the glory and the dosh for  running for "Team Britain" at the major championships like the Olympics and the European and World championships the Commonwealth games offers them neither the money or the glory of these other events.

 So shame on you golden girl Jessica Ennis and the triple jumper with the the red hair and designer gear and all those  like you. I for one will not be cheering you on to glory in the future. My heroes come from a time when athletes weren't even paid. Jim Peters collapsing yards from the tape at the marathon in the Commonwealth games and Don Thompson the long distance walker preparing himself for the humidity of his event in some distant corner of the world by boiling kettles to create a steam filled environment in his bathroom where he trained for a year. They did it because they were dedicated, wanted to compete for their country and came from an age where participating and not winning was the thing.

 Thank God that I have, on principle, never bought a lottery ticket to line the pockets of  these pampered motely crew who, when it suits, represent "Team Avarice".

Bob Marley

 Here is an artist that was universal in his message who spoke for his people, his generation with power, magnetism and most of all honesty. The first time that I heard him I felt that tingle that very few singers give to you. His music raises the spirits and brings me to tears. I am now over 66 and in my life only very rarely have I been privileged to hear a singer who is a giant amongst people. Such was Bob Marley.







 I was privileged to spend a short time in Barbados where the people are joyous and knowledgeable. This small island encapsulates all that is best in the world where people are shown respect and races mingle as equals and the scenery is stunning. As well as the beaches, that feature in the travel brochures, there is jungle and ravenous mountains. If I were to pick a paradise on earth then this is it. Everyone is a friend and a helper and if crime exists I certainly never saw any. Marley is of course idolised out there but when you mention his name they immediately come up with the following song of his.

John Paul II - The Evil Pope

Image via Wikipedia - most of the child abuse occurred on his watch.

 Having been brought up as a Roman Catholic (I am now an atheist) it is in some ways sad to see the deterioration of the Catholic church. In fact there is a general deterioration in most of the Christian religions around the world and the Church of England is also decaying at a rapid rate.

 My doubts about Catholicism first began when I was taught about the infallibility of the Pope. What a load of nonsense - we are all infallible and, correct me if am am wrong dear reader, but did not the bible say so?
 I remain however a firm believer in the teachings of Jesus Christ. If mankind had followed his teachings and moral code we would not exist in the cesspit that the world has become today, and has been throughout history.

 My father to his credit, who was a deeply religious, though not saintly man, decided, after my brother had been cruelly treated by the nuns at Holyrood School in Swindon, to send me, believe it or not (no pun intended) to the local primary school where we lived at Wootton Bassett which was a Church of England  faith school. I was allowed to miss assembly and religious education lessons and after a wonderful first year with a caring and kind teacher I was then catapulted into a year with the teacher from hell who was a miserable and nasty old spinster. The rest of the time though was idyllic and I blossomed under a series of male teachers who opened my eyes to the world and educated me so well that I passed my eleven plus with ease and went onto a couple of grammar schools. These were elitist establishments that seemed to have the single aim of promoting the brightest and the best and, not surprisingly I fell behind but was again rescued by two teachers who taught education in the widest sense and encouraged me and stimulated my mind. They taught me two things that I have never forgotten: always ask why, and never believe anything that you are told.

 However I have, as usual diverted from my theme. As I was removed from a catholic education my father insisted that I attended out of hours religious education lessons where the catechism was remorselessly drummed into me. I came to see it for what it was which of course was indoctrination of the worse kind. And then along came Pope John I. A man from a humble background, who was apparently a compromise choice, he set about updating and liberalising the church. I adored him and truly believe that he was a saintly man.

 Since then however the church has reverted to type and a series of dogmatic and conservative Popes have failed in their duty to bring more people to the faith. One thing that I cannot understand is why Pope Benedict the present Pope, is getting such a bad press. He is no different to his predecessor Pope John Paul II, who was an arch conservative, and on whose watch much of the child abuse occurred. He was also responsible for stifling the activities of liberationary priests in South America who were fighting against the totalitarian and cruel dictatorships that existed there.Those same countries are now run by the worst kind - the drug barons. In fact I would go so far as to call him an evil man and yet he drew huge crowds and was universally acclaimed. How the church needs a man of the character of Pope John I today. But I fear the dye is cast and the church will continue to lose millions of its worshippers.

 As for the unholy alliance of protesters from Paisl;ey and his bigoted church through to rent a protest Peter Tatchell I suspect they are in it for the publicity and where were they when John Paul II came here?

   

The Battle of Britain and the Debt we owe to the Polish People.

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 There have rightly been celebrations this week of the anniversary of the Battle of Britain. My father worked for the Air Ministry during the war and his role included liaising with the Polish airmen who had come to this country. It is a little known fact that during the Battle of Britain the Polish lost more airmen and shot down more German planes than we did.
 Those that oppose the immigration of the Polish to this country in recent years should be ashamed of themselves as we owe our freedoms as much to them as to our own brave airmen.. We are, thank God, building one Europe now and we are united instead of fighting one another. Long may it last.

Blues Give Liverpool a Football Lesson.

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Largely due to Liverpool's goalie Pepe Rainer and an inability to score from a number of chances by the Blues Liverpool came away from St. Andrews on Sunday with a very lucky point. Roy Hodgson, whom I admire greatly, admitted that it had been a tough game and defended his star striker Fernando Torres from heavy criticism.

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 Alex McLeish, Birmingham's manager, has transformed the team since his arrival in January 2008 after he relinquished his post as Scotland's manager. Relegation at then end of the 2007/2008 season was a disappointment but the club quickly bounced back to the Premiership the following year with automatic promotion at the end of the 2008/2009 season.

 In his first season back in the Premiership he set about consolidating the defence by snapping up Roger Johnson and Scott Dann from Championship teams Cardiff City and Coventry respectively. In addition he bought Barry Ferguson from Rangers to take on the role of midfield general. All of these have been spectacularly good signings as was Lee Bowyer who was out of favour at West Ham, to add grit to the team. The signing, on loan for a season, of goalkeeper Joe Hart was also a masterstroke and he is now not only Manchester City's first choice goalkeeper but England's as well. But perhaps his most remarkable coup, as a manager, was to bring Stephen Carr out of retirement after he had been rejected by Shrewsbury Town.
He has been a revaltion at right back and for the last wo sesasons is probably playing the football of his career and is also club captain..

 As a result the team gave very few goals away and Blues, despite being favourites for relegation, finished ninth which was their highest ever Premiership position. Other purchases in those early years included David Murphy at left back and James McFadden who can play in attack, wide midfield or just behind a lone striker.

 Other additions to the squad included Michel a talented midfielder from Sporting Gijon in Spain and Fahey, yet another midfielder from St. Patricks' in Ireland. Also a young winger, Shroot, was brought to the club from non league football and Jay O'Shea, again from Ireland and Enrico Valles to add to the club's growing Spanish speaking contingent..

 Something of a mystery surrounds Michel who Mcleish pursued for over a year but since arriving at the club he has been given very few first team opportunities. Only McLeish knows why this is the case but he has hinted that the player is not ready for the English game. Whether the player will have a long term future at the club or be returned to Gijon, where he was a regular first teamer only time will tell. He must, however, be very frustrated at his lack of first team opportunities.

 The summer of 2010 was used largely to add attacking flair to the team who had suffered from a lack of goals during the previous season. Ben Foster came from Manchester United for £6 million on to replace Hart and Serbian International Nikola Zigic came for a similar fee from Valencia where he failed to establish himself in the first team. At this stage I think it is fair to say that question marks hang over his future at the club as so far he has been used sparingly and although a massive 6' 8" seems to lack power in the air although he can pass well but lacks any kind of pace.

 Based on his growing development since joining the club and a magnificent performance on Saturday it is hard to see how anyone can currently replace Cameron Jerome as the club's first choice centre forward. He has his critics and has so far not scored a great number of goals although a tally of 11 last season was absolutely vital for the club. He is still young, has terrific pace, which frightens defenders, gives 100%, runs the channels, is selfless and creates chances for others. Matt Derbyshire who has a fine goal scoring record has come in on loan from Olympiakos for a season to add firepower, with a view to joining the club permanently.

 The last day of the transfer window saw the arrival of Alexander Hleb from Barcelona on loan who is a world class creative midfielder and Chilean international left sided player Jean Beausejour who had a fine world cup together with Czech international and Moscow Lokomotiv captain Jirasek to provide defensive cover. None of these player have yet made their first team debut.

 There is no doubt that Mcleish has performed a superb job with only Murphy, Michel and perhaps Zigic looking doubtful signings at this stage. Blues play an attractive passing game and defend resolutely but by no standards have they yet played exciting attacking football although McLeish appears to be looking to correct that this season. There is much debate amongst supporters that he favours a 4-5-1 formation too much and some of the debate can be seen here at Singing the Blues . Having recognised the outstanding job that he has done the only other criticism that I would level at him is that he fails to tactically adjust the team, during a match - something incidentally that Jose Mourhino is superb at - to combat the opposition when they are exploiting aspects of the game, instead of which he tends to be reactive such as adding a striker after we have gone behind.

He has also vastly improved the scouting network and the youth academy who after a generation finally seem to be producing some potential first class players. I am looking forward to the rest of the season and think that at long last we may not only finish in a high position in the Premier league but also, given reasonable luck in the hat, go on long cup runs and even to a final.

  

Liberal Democrats Slaughtered In Exeter

Image via Wikipedia - Waiting in death row.

 In their first test in a sizable urban constituency in Exeter the Lible Democrats lost over 11% of their vote after voting in several wards in the city on Thursday. It seems that disenchanted former Liberal voters switched directly to the Labour Party.
 This before the swingeing cuts and tax increases that the ConDems have made have even taken effect.
As predicted on this Blog a few days after the general election Nick Clegg, a known right winger with Tory views, is taking his party to electoral disaster.

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 And not only are the voters disenchanted with the Liberals, in Sandwell the deputy leader of the Conservative Party on the council has switched to Labour, so opposed is she to the massive cuts to the shool building program in her area.

 The swingeing cuts that are to be introduced are a recipe for disaster which almost certainly in the view of many economists are likely to push Britain into a double dip recession with the losses of millions of jobs in the public and the private sectors. Barack Obama in America however is taking the opposite line to correct his struggling economy by investing in $10 billions worth of public expenditure to stimulate the economy and create jobs.

 Whilst Cleggy may not have been fooled by the Tories many Liberal voters are deserting the party as the Tories, as ever, with their hate of public services set about dismantling state benefits and expenditure. We have been here before, in the nineteen eighties, when Thatcher embarked on the same policies and caused misery and brought poverty to millions and when people took to the streets in protest. Clegg, at a stroke, has effectively turned the Liberal Democrats into a right of centre party and he is stuck with the consequences as no Liberal Democrat will have the balls to bring him down. They are effectively locked into their deadly embrace with the Tories for five years until the electorate make them a minor rump party for generations to come once again. Meanwhile there are terrible times ahead for most of us.

Figs.

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I have been suffering from constipation for some time, in fact ever since I gave up drinking beer a few years ago. The current puritans in our society who want to ban everything that people enjoy, such as smoking, drinking, taking their shopping home in a carrier bag and standing up at a football match, to name a few, have no idea of the dangerous side effects of much that they advocate. We are losing many of our cherished freedoms to do what we want in this country and I suspect that there will soon be a tax on farting to appease those zealots who are concerned about global warming.

You can be sure that the ConDems far from giving us back our cherished civil liberties will very soon announce a host of measures that will restrict peoples right to live a decent life. Anyway back to figs.
I was recently in Croatia, where figs seem to be abundant - growing in parks and in the wild and selling for a few pence (Kuna's) a kilo.

Dear reader they have been my salvation and I am now in a position where a daily shit on the loo is not only practicable but and enjoyable experience too. Since returning to the UK I have there fore been on a fig hunt. Not only are they very difficult to find  but also outrageously expensive. I have just returned from a shopping expedition to Waitrose where I had to pay 49p each for the buggers. There was a day when I thought that having to put a penny in the slot at the public loo was expensive but at 50p a time I will have to assess whether I return to my former constipated state or pay 50p a day for the pleasure of sitting on the loo.

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The One-Time Pad

 This is the curse of all intelligence agencies because unless a copy has been compromised and is in their hands it is not dechiperable. They usually come in the form of a document with about sixty pages of which there are only two copies. When the sender wishes to get a message to the recipient, which should be short so as to avoid a technique for checking the most used letters in the alphabet, he or she transposes a letter of the alphabet which they wish to send for a substitute letter on the one time pad. An example follows:-

 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
 LFCGKLDXPVNEHLOIZTGLVRUIOPC

 For each word that I wish to send I use the above only once. So if I want to send THE, I would send VXK.

If the next word that I want to send is TIME I would go to the next row in the one time pad, for example:-

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
VBZZFGRDXNHWQHHLNBTNZQKHG

and send VXKTXWF (THE TIME). Note the use of no spaces. Once the message has been sent both the sender and receiver should destroy their copies. Simples, if not the following from Wiki, that most helpful organisation ever to embrace the Internet, is more comprehensive and definitive than the above:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad

Lost Hits.

Some songs, which are classics of their time, for some reason are never, or rarely, given air time. Hera a couple  that I have always felt are ageless and deserve a wider audience. The first has a haunting quality and has always stuck in my mind, like the best tunes do. It is, "When you are a King" by, "White Plains" and should have been an all time classic. The other is better known but has that same enigmatic quality that the great records have.

News On The Spying Front

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I read, with regret, that a  Gareth Williams on secondment to MI6 from GCHQ has been found dead in mysterious circumstances in London. My sources tell me that he was a brilliant cryptographer and, in my experience, it is the first instance that I can recall of anyone from GCHQ being on secondment to MI6.
 I can only speculate that as MI6 operates abroad that he was decrypting something "on the fly" that needed to be done immediately, cutting out the time to send the information back to GCHQ for processing.

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 Funny old game the spying world. GCHQ used to recruit some of the most brilliant minds from Oxbridge who were mainly mathematicians to use in cryptographic work. Although brilliant these people had no common sense whatsoever and could not be trusted to cross a road or even catch a train on time.

 There was a period also when every Times foreign correspondent worked for MI6. As for MI5 I suggest you trust nobody. Their usual tactic is to infiltrate organisations where individuals were considered loyal and trustworthy friends by their colleagues. A typical example was that the chairman of CND in central London passed all the information, including names, on that fine organisation to his masters, the bastard.