Ha ha.

Rumour has it that Hollywood are considering making a film about a Premiership footballer and his efforts to conceal an extra-marital affair.  It is to be called "Saving Ryan's Privates"!

Nobody told me!

I would like to think that this will be the final post on injunctions - but I somehow doubt it.  Somebody made the very interesting and valid point the other day that super injunctions carry within themselves the seed of their own destruction.  It goes like this - A takes a court action against B to prevent them from publishing something, and obtains a super injunction to that effect.  If B now goes ahead and publishes, they will be in breach of the injunction and subject to punishment.  But suppose C publishes?  They can't be in breach of the injunction, because they were not a party in the action, but provided they knew the injunction had been granted, they could be in contempt of court, and liable to prosecution and punishment as such.  But here's the catch - a super injunction, as you know (provided you have been paying attention) prohibits the publication of the fact that the injunction exists - so how is C (or D, E, F and the rest of them) to know?  And if they don't know, they can't be in contempt of court!  Interesting, eh?

What did I tell you?

So Sharon Shoesmith has won her claim for unfair dismissal, and the Court of Appeal has said that she was "summarily scapegoated" and made a "public sacrifice".  Don't want to boast, but can I say - you read it here first (see post of 11/10/09)?

Some have greatness thrust upon them...

It has been suggested that the press were justified in trying to publish the Ryan Giggs story, because it would have been exposing the hypocrisy behind his "nice boy" image.  Much the same was said about Tiger Woods.  But as far as I can see, Ryan Giggs never sought to put himself forward as anything other than a good footballer, any more than Tiger Woods sought to portray himself as anything other than a good golfer. To the extent that they were seen as whiter-than-white goody-two-shoes characters, this was down to the way the media portrayed them.  OK so they didn't gainsay it, but then you're hardly likely to stand up in public and declare yourself a philanderer are you?  Remember the old proverb - no man cries "Stinking fish for sale".  So we have the almost Alice in Wonderland situation where the media are using the persona they themselves have created for a celebrity as justification for attacking that celebrity when they fail to live up to it.  Talk about having your cake and eating it too!

36 years on...

So George Davis really was innocent (or at the very least, not guilty) - OK?

You either love it...

Have you heard that Denmark has banned the sale of Marmite?  Apparently they have a law (and in fact have had for the last seven years) which prohibits the sale of foodstuffs fortified with vitamins.  Seems a bit of a strange law, but Horlicks, Ovaltine and Farley's Rusks have already fallen foul of it.  Ex-pats in Denmark are up in arms - as one of them said "What am I supposed to put on my toast now? I still have a bit left in the cupboard, but it's not going to last long."  Better start sending them Marmite food-parcels!

Cat's out of the bag.

So it's Ryan Giggs - well that's a surprise (not!).  We've talked about this before, and I don't want to sound like a broken record, but in my view we are asking the wrong question.  Using Giggs as an example just for convenience, the question being asked is whether Ryan Giggs should be able to use the law to prevent details of his private life being published.  Whereas I think the question which should be being asked is whether the press should be allowed to potentially destroy - or at the very least damage - Ryan Giggs's life and possibly career just to sell newspapers.  The question of relevance comes to the fore here as well - we discussed this in relation to Max Mosley (see 26/7/08).  Ryan Giggs is a footballer.  What relevance does his sex life - extra-marital or otherwise - have to his worth as a footballer?  None that I can see.  Of course the really depressing aspect of all this is that it's all about money - the press want to sell more papers, the lady in question wants to sell her story to said papers, and I'm sure that part of Ryan Giggs's motivation in seeking an injunction was the protection of the money he gets from sponsors and advertising.  So there's no moral high ground here.  But I still think we're asking the wrong question.

Deep pockets not always enough?

So Roman Abramovich (owner of Chelsea) is looking for his seventh manager in eight years after peremptorily sacking Carlo Ancelotti on Sunday after a season which, despite the team coming second in the Premiership, had according to a statement from the club "fallen short of expectations".  So, can you buy success in football?  Clearly Abramovich thinks so, and certainly his money has assembled and maintains a squad of top-class players who will always be among the favourites, but football is a game where the better team doesn't always win (which is why the Americans don't really take to it) and you have to accept that sometimes you won't get what you think you deserve.  I don't think Abramovich has quite come to terms with that yet.

What a lovely day!

Rejoice, rejoice!  Firstly because we are all still here - the world did not end over the weekend as predicted by some Bible-nut in the United States.  And then the Wolves somehow - I'm not sure even they know just quite how - have managed to survive for another season in the Premiership.  So even though it's a cloudy, windy and rather chilly day, for me the sun is shining!

Ha ha

Apparently this was a genuine question asked of appliicants for a senior managerial position -
You are driving along in your car on a wild, stormy night. You pass by a bus stop, and you see three people waiting for the bus:
1. An old lady who looks as if she is about to die.
2. An old friend who once saved your life.
3. The perfect man (or) woman you have been dreaming about.
Which one would you choose to offer a ride to, given that you can only carry one passenger?
You could pick up the old lady, because she is going to die, and thus you should save her first; or you could take the old friend because he once saved your life, and this would be the perfect chance to pay him back. However, you may never be able to find your perfect dream lover again.
The successful candidate answered as follows -.
"I would give the car keys to my old friend, and let him take the old lady to the hospital. I would stay behind and wait for the bus with the woman of my dreams."

I think that's called "Thinking outside the box".

Do we need to know?

Privacy and super-injunctions again.  A member of the House of Lords used parliamentary privilege to reveal that Sir Fred Goodwin ("Fred the Shred") had obtained a super injunction to prevent details of an alleged affair he had had with "a senior colleague" being published.  Difficult to understand the logic.  It seemed to be based on the idea that as the taxpayer - you and me - have a substantial financial stake in the Royal Bank of Scotland, we are thereby entitled to know about the private life of the man who was its boss when it collapsed.  Can't see it myself.  If the suggestion is that this alleged affair in some way led to that collapse, then there might be some merit in making it public, but as far as I am aware, no such suggestion has been made.  So once again we seem to have a situation where the media want to publish a salacious story about someone in the news purely to sell more papers or garner more viewers.  I think people's consensual activities behind closed doors should be off limits.

Oh dear, oh dear....

Ken Clarke's in trouble for suggesting (or did he?) that some rapes are more or less serious than others.  We seem to keep coming back to the question of rape, don't we?  Put "rape" in the search box above to see how often it crops up.  I think Ken Clarke's comments were deliberately "misunderstood" by those with a political or other axe to grind.  Clearly the law does regard rape on a sliding scale of seriousness, otherwise all those convicted of the offence would receive an identical sentence whereas a cursory examination of rape cases shows this isn't so.  Once again we have somebody being castigated for telling an obvious truth.

I see no ships?

The Irish have a very one-eyed view of the past.  The Queen has visited Croke Park where back in 1920 the British Army and Police opened fire on the spectators at a Gaelic football match being held there, killing 14 people.  Surely a terrible thing, but little if any mention is ever made of the assassination by the IRA of 14 British intelligence officers that same morning and which almost certainly sparked the Croke Park incident.  Two wrongs sure don't make a right, but if we ignore the fact that there were two wrongs we shall never come to terms with history.  I also refer back to my post of the 16th June last year.

Well I never!

An interesting titbit to come out of the Queen's visit to the Republic of Ireland is that, until just four years ago, she was, under Irish law, the Queen of Ireland!  An Act of the Irish Parliament of 1542 provided that Kings of England should also be Kings of Ireland, and that Act had remained on the Irish statute books until 2007, when it was repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act of that year.  It has been suggested that this was an essential prerequisite to any State Visit by the Queen to the Republic.

Did you get it?

Just in case there are any of you still puzzling over yesterday's post, this was the identical score in the 1953 F A Cup Final, forever known as the "Matthews Final".  Trailing 3-1 with just over 20 minutes to go, Stanley Matthews, who had won just about every honour in the domestic game apart from a cup-winner's medal, inspired Blackpool to come back and win 4-3.  Actually Stan Mortensen, Blackpool's centre-forward might have felt justifiably miffed that it wasn't called the "Mortensen Final" because he scored a hat-trick, which I believe is still the only time this has ever been done in a Wembley final.

Remember?

Last Saturday - Blackpool 4 Bolton 3.  Now why does that score ring a bell?

Oh no, not again!

So Mohamed Al Fayed has not given up then?  Having apparently accepted that the inquest into the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales, and his son Dodi had drawn a line under the tragedy, he has now backed a film which rehashes a lot of the old conspiracy theories.  I suppose you could draw a parallel with the McCanns, who are equally intent on not letting the disappearance of their daughter fade from public awareness.  The difference I suppose is that the McCanns at least have the prospect, however slim, of a positive outcome, whereas Mr Al Fayed simply seems to be still looking for somebody to blame.  Both cases though demonstrate the awesome power of parental love.

You couldn't make it up!

Have you seen the story of the stationmaster who has been sacked for going down onto the tracks to remove a shopping trolley which might otherwise have derailed a train?  There may be more to it than meets the eye, but certainly at first sight it seem to be a worthy addition to our collection.

More than one string to their bow.

Talking yesterday about Violet Carson and her dual career as pianist and actress reminded me of the popular play "The Ghost Train", which was later made into an equally popular film starring Arthur Askey.  It was written in the 1920s by Arnold Ridley, who was to achieve fame much later in his life as Private Godfrey (the one always desperate to "be excused") in "Dad's Army". 

Have a go.

I don't suppose there are many of you out there who would have understood the title of yesterday's post.  "Have a go" was an enormously popular radio programme of the late 40s and 50s, hosted by Wilfred Pickles and his wife Mabel.  They went to community centres (usually church halls back in those days) all round the country and invited the locals to come and talk about themselves, perhaps do a little party piece, and then answer a few simple quiz questions for a small prize - hence the catch-phrase "Give 'em the money Barney", Barney being the producer.  It was essentially a warm-hearted programme - no one was ever put down or belittled, however amateurish their performance.  Point of interest - the pianist (who had the very difficult job of accompanying  not-very-good singers on spec) was Violet Carson, who went on to become Ena Sharples in Coronation Street.  Come to think of it, I bet there are plenty of you who don't remember her either - how time passes!

Give 'em the money (Barney).

I don't know enough about the workings of the NHS to be able to comment on the Government's plans for reform, but what I do know, as an ex-manager, is that the closer you can get control of the budget to the "sharp end", i.e. the people actually producing the product, the better. What tends to happen is that between the money and the producers of the product there are various layers of management which are concerned more with the budget than the product, so it's the product that suffers.  I was certainly of the opinion that if I had been in control of my own budget, I could have run my office better for about two-thirds of the cost.  So certainly the idea of giving GPs control of their budgets strikes me as sensible.

What might have been?

So AV has been read the last rites, but as a sort of postscript there have been predictions (posh word for guesses) as to what effect AV would have had on the 2010 election.  The suggestion is that the LibDems might have ended up with 90 seats at the expense of both Labour and (mainly) the Conservatives.  What this would have meant is that, although the Conservatives would still have been the biggest party in terms of seats, Labour and the LibDems between them would have had more seats, and so we could well have ended up with the famous (or infamous) "coalition of the losers".  Just think - Gordon Brown could still have been Prime Minister.  Now how scary is that?

Face facts.

I think the dramatic slump in the LibDem vote in last week's elections can in great part be put down to the unrealistic expectations of their supporters.  If you go into a coalition with just short of 60 seats together with a party with just over 300 seats, it would be foolish to think that you would have an equal say in that coalition's programme - you would be the junior partner, meaning that your views would be listened to, taken into account and, where possible, accommodated, but you would have to accept that it would be for the bigger party to take the ultimate decisions.  And yet it seems that many LibDem voters, activists and apparently even members of the Government thought they would be able to call the tune, and are now venting their frustration and disappointment through the ballot box.  I think Nick Clegg needs to lay it on the line for his supporters, and get them to wake up and smell the coffee.

R.I.P.

Seve Ballesteros - what a cruel world it is.

Make your mind up.

First we were told that bin Laden was armed when he was shot - we now learn that this was not so.  Then we were told that he used his wife as a human shield - now we learn that he didn't.  Then we were told that the US administration watched the whole thing on a live video feed - we now learn that they didn't.  First there was a fire-fight - now it appears there wasn't.  Is it any wonder that there are those who are not prepared to accept any information the US put out as true?

Cast out the beam in thine own eye...

Suggestion that vehicle owners will be sent fixed-penalty notices by the local council if litter is observed being thrown from their vehicle - irrespective of who actually threw it.  You know (or should do if you read this blog) my views on fixed-penalty notices generally but what occurred to me is - will this apply to bin lorries?  When I go my morning walk on a Monday, I invariably coincide with a bin lorry doing its thing, and more often than not there are little piles of rubbish left behind it in the road.  I can remember a time when the bin lorry was always followed by a man with a brush and a little dust cart, but those days are long gone.  So the question is - will the council be fining itself?

A fresh look needed?

In the light of where bin Laden has been living these past years, and where it appears many of his associates and supporters are, can we now finally admit that what we are doing in Afghanistan is fighting the wrong people in the wrong place?

You can't say that!

The Turkish government has published a list of some 130 words which cannot be used on the internet there.  Given that it is a predominantly Muslim country, it is perhaps not surprising that the list includes words like "nude", "hot", "gay", "passionate" and so on.  What caught my eye was that the list of forbidden words includes the word "forbidden"!

R.I.P.

Henry Cooper and "Whispering" Ted Lowe.  A sad time for sports fans.

Consequences.

The killing of Osama bin Laden by American forces clearly carries with it significant symbolism, but will it make the world a safer place?  I fear not - indeed in the short term, probably the reverse.  So the question has to be asked - was it sensible, was it necessary, was it justified?  To judge by their reactions, the majority of Americans would unhesitatingly say "yes" - I'm not so sure about the rest of us (but then, when has the US ever given two hoots about the rest of us?).  The main fall-out I feel will be the effect on US-Pakistani relations, which may well have been dealt a near-fatal blow.

More sticks and stones.

Transactional Analysis says that we each have three personae within ourselves - the parent (judgmental, dogmatic), the adult (rational, enquiring) and the child (emotional, compliant) and that when we engage in conversation with somebody we are speaking from one of these personae to one of these personae in the person we're talking to, and they are doing the same thing from their end.  If we rank them vertically - P-A-C on both sides of the conversation, then TA says that the ideal conversation, from the point of view of "being on the same wavelength" requires that the line from me to you is the same as the line from you to me.  If the lines are different then we've got problems - if the lines don't cross then we might just get away with it, but if the lines cross then we're in trouble.  Cameron with his "calm down dear" remark was clearly speaking parent to child (behave yourself!) and if the lady in question had reciprocated accordingly, that is child to parent (sorry dad) everything would have been fine, but her response was either adult to adult (I find that offensive) or possibly parent to adult (don't you dare patronise me!) and either way we have crossed lines with all the resulting hoo-haa.  I don't know whether Doctor Harris's book is still in print, but if it is, it's well worth a read.