Tuesday 26 March 2013

Monday Moan 40


An Apology

Actually, a few apologies. First, for the non-appearance of the moan yesterday - caused by my having had an extended and very enjoyable weekend in Paris.
 
Second, for not being bothered to comment on such issues as this week's budget or the rather boring debate over regulation of the press and the royal charter - other than to say is anyone surprised that the majority of the UK press believes the current proposals are the first step towards the end of a free society? Talk about a predictable response.
 
Finally, for the late appearance today – caused by teething problems with the upload function of this site.
 
 

The meaning of quiet

          Quiet = making little or no noise. 

 
I travelled in one of the quiet carriages of the Eurostar last weekend in their standard premier coach.  Most train companies offer some guidance to their customers who travel in such carriages. Eurostar do not appear to do so. However, the most commonly used guidance amongst train companies is that customers should not make or receive mobile phone calls in this carriage, but go elsewhere if they need to call, that electrical equipment should be used in silent mode, and that if chatting with fellow passengers, people should do so quietly and with consideration for others.
 
The four ladies in the seats across the aisle from mine, who travelling to Paris for a weekend free from husbands and children, paid no attention to any of this.  I don’t think they stopped talking for more than 5 minutes during the entire journey.  And they weren’t just ‘talking’, they were ‘performing’ – trying to outdo each other and let everyone know how important they were, and how much money they had.  I wasn’t that interested in their relationships, their many foreign holidays, their au-pairs, or any of the other things they found it necessary to tell us about.  The amazing thing was that when they discovered that there was to be no free champagne, they didn’t want to go to the buffet car to get some – not sure if they thought it an affront to have to pay or an affront to have to be in the same carriage as people who couldn’t afford to pay.
 
And to think that I only paid extra to use standard premier so as to be away from the children who usually sit opposite me kicking my shins (until they receive the glare) and whining the whole time.
 

From our Paris correspondent

Paris at the weekend was wonderful.  Great city, great weather and above all, the best company imaginable.
 
So what follows are a few observations rather than a few moans.
 
Paris is easy to cover on foot – except that what looks like a short distance on a map always turns out to be further than you thought!  All that energy you have at the start of the day gradually disappears, as you think ‘just one more place to see and then we’ll call it a day’.  It’s always one place too far, in my experience.
 
The Louvre is one of the world’s great museums – absolutely no doubt about that.  It has some wonderful paintings and sculptures and is set in one of the grandest looking buildings you could imagine.  However, it is also a magnet for every tourist that ever comes to Paris – and over the years there seem to have been more and more tourists each time I have been there.  Most obviously, there are now hordes of coach parties, not just schoolchildren, but predominantly so. These children have next to no interest in what they are seeing. It’s just a great time to be away from home with their friends.  They either shout to each other wherever they are, or when weariness overcomes them they sit in groups in all the available places and play with their smartphones. They, like most other visitors, stop and look at virtually nothing as they plough from one major attraction to the next, where they crowd in front of the picture so that they can have their photo taken.
 
The free plans of the museum mark the spots where you can find those ‘major’ attractions (da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, Vermeer’s The Lacemaker, etc) – which means that these become the targets for the rampaging hordes. 
 
So, if you can do without seeing them yourself, head in the opposite direction and enjoy some quiet and space in the less crowded parts of the museum.  It’s well worth it.
 
The Paris Metro is easy to use and allows tourists and locals alike to get around the city very quickly.  
 
But that’s not to say all is perfect.  Arriving at the station for the Arc de Triomphe on Sunday we found our exit had been closed. There are at least 9 of them, so that didn’t seem to be a problem – we just headed for another. That was also closed – and it soon became obvious that all the exits were closed.  No doubt this is what the announcements in French had been saying, but most of the people milling about in the underground corridors were tourists and none the wiser about what was going on.  And by the time these unwary passengers had discovered that there was no way out they had already passed through the barriers from the platforms, so in order to get back in and go to another station they had to use another ticket.  My wife is not one to take such things without a fight and she discovered that the tickets we had used could be re-programmed by the ticket clerk to allow us another entry, but not everyone was so persistent and the re-programming took so long that it would have been impossible for everyone to have been processed in this way.
 
Still, at least the security closure meant that we got a great traffic-free photo when we eventually made our way back to the monument after a long walk from another station.
 
I don’t want to sound like I’m getting old, or anything like that, but it was not terribly reassuring to see machine-guns being wielded at major tourist attractions by soldiers who looked barely old enough to be on a week’s work experience.  I know it was half-term week, so perhaps that’s what they were?  Obviously we can assume they will have been trained on how and when to use them, but how do you give someone so young the experience to know how to deal with a security issue that would, by its very nature, be unexpected and probably overwhelming?
 
Finally, as on almost all occasions that I travel abroad, I found my own pathetic attempts to communicate with the locals in their own language were futile and, frankly, embarrassing.  It used to be that we thought the French, particularly Parisians, would never deign to speak to you in anything other than their own language.  Not so now – at least not in the tourist sector. The hotel receptionist, the Metro clerk, every waiter or waitress we met, even the Starbucks employees, although their inability to understand that I wanted cold soya milk and not have it heated and steamed like it was for a latte was just a touch irritating.  Most impressively of all the armed gendarme, who came over to tell us that we couldn’t sit and eat our sandwich on the wall of the building he was guarding, turned out to be very polite and with excellent English, when I recited my normal ‘pardon mais je ne parle pas francais’ line.
 
Wish I had studied harder at school.
 

Good value?

Apparently, we are supposed to rejoice that after months of wrangling, with deals nearly reached and then scrapped, with legal challenges made by those who feared they were being overlooked, and with work on the rest of the Olympic site progressing well, agreement has finally been reached on what to do with the magnificent and much-admired main Olympic Stadium - the venue that throbbed to the noise of 80,000 spectators for every session of last summer's sports extravananza.
 
It is to be turned into a 54,000-seater new home for West Ham United football club.
 
It seems that the breakdown of funding for converting the fabulous stadium looks something like this:-
 
  • the UK Government contributes approximately £60m
  • Newham Council loans £40m
  • the London Legacy Development Corporation loans £20m
  • there is unspecified funding from the Mayor of London
 
and West Ham contribute £15m.
 
Sounds like a good deal for the East End wheeler-dealers in charge of this relatively small and unsuccessful London football club, but I'm not so sure about the rest of us.

Monday 18 March 2013

Monday Moan 39

 

I know I shouldn’t smile, but ……..

An Aston Martin DBS costs around £180,000, or it did until production was discontinued.

A Vauxhall Corsa costs around £10,000 when new.

Last week an old and rather battered Corsa, fetchingly painted in various shades of pink, managed to run into the side of a sleek, black DBS whilst the latter was standing at a petrol station being refuelled.  The story had its funny side, of course.  The pink Corsa was being driven by a woman with pink hair, for example, and then there was a troubling degree of pleasure at seeing something so valuable damaged by something so cheap and unpretentious (ok, apart from its colouring).

But some other things troubled me about the story as well.  First, the DBS owner’s immediate assertion that the vehicle was a write-off, beyond repair.  Oh really?  Look at the picture and see how much damage there is, and then consider whether writing off such a valuable car with that amount of damage might possibly be one reason why your insurance premiums are at an all-time high.

And then there were the comments from Aston Martin, whose spokesman is reported to have said “The DBS is not of the understated elegance of a DB9, nor the youthful agility of the V8 Vantage. It is explosive power in a black tie, and has its own unique character which will equal that of James Bond.'    

I’m guessing this ‘quote’ must have been taken out of context, but even so, what on earth is it supposed to mean?  Don’t these people speak English any more?

 

From our Bavarian correspondent

So, Arsenal came away from Bayern Munich with a 2-0 victory rather than suffering the humiliating loss that many had predicted.  Going out of the competition on the away goals rule seemed particularly harsh, given that they actually won the game against all the odds.

Those odds were high.  Bayern have now played 16 games at home against English opposition in European competitions.  Only one other side has beaten them over 90 minutes (yes, I know this ignores Chelsea’s game last season, but over 90 minutes that was a draw; after extra time that was a draw; then Chelsea prevailed in a penalty shoot-out).  Anyway, which other English side has managed to lower Bayern’s  colours?  None other than Norwich City, who won there in 1993. 

Most of all, I loved the way that the pre-match atmosphere was described on the Bundesliga’s own website -  “The stadium has remained relatively empty [40 minutes before kick-off] – it’s too cold for the fans, who have seemingly opted to stay inside as long as possible whilst they eat their pre-match sausages …….” 

Sausages for the Germans, beefburgers for the British. What do Italian or Spanish fans eat before I game, I wonder?

 

It’s all a matter of priorities

Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce were caught lying about which one of them was driving when a speed camera registered that their car was being driven too fast.  

Toby Hayden battered his girlfriend at a cashpoint after the machine failed to allow him to withdraw any money.  He was drunk. He was serving a suspended sentence for a previous violent crime. He assaulted two police officers who turned up at the scene.

One of these crimes was, essentially, victimless – nobody got hurt, nobody suffered as a result of the illegal action.  The other saw assaults on anybody who happened to be there at the time.

All three of the accused were convicted.  Two of them were sentenced to time in jail. One of them was given a community service order.

Can you guess who received which sentence? 

No doubt my learned friends would be able to explain it all.  It’s all a question of priorities, I suppose.  Perverting the course of justice is just a more serious crime than beating up an innocent person on our streets and then assaulting the police officers who came to investigate. 

Or should we have just a tiny worry bead that the legal system is bonkers?

  

Standards and incompetence

A quiet lunch out in a hotel that advertises itself as "the perfect place to sit back, relax and enjoy the delights that we have to offer" should not feature in the Moan, should it?  Well, I’m afraid it does – and on two counts.

First, doesn’t anybody dress up to go out for a nice meal these days?  I know that nobody bothers with a tie and jacket, even for evening meals in rather nice restaurants.  That battle was lost a long time ago.  But I was still surprised to see that in a large party out for a meal to celebrate one of their number reaching the age of 55, t-shirts outnumbered both polo and rugby shirts amongst the men, and jeans were the unanimous choice of them all.

Second, what kind of an establishment invites you to take your tea and coffee in the lounge before checking that there is actually space in the lounge for you to sit?  Yes, you’re right - an incompetent one.

Monday 11 March 2013

Monday Moan 38

It all depends on your perspective

When I heard the story about Nani being sent off at Old Trafford the other night in the Manchester United v Real Madrid game, I initially assumed that it was one of Wayne Rooney’s more agile conquests who had managed to evade security in order to remonstrate with him about failure to pay his debts, or something similar.
 
It was only later that I realised my mistake and that the furore was about someone being sent off for a trivial offence at Old Trafford and that this had affected the result of the game.  Now, so many players have found themselves on the wrong end of dubious refereeing decisions at Old Trafford over the years that this hardly constituted news, except that in this case, unlike almost every other, it was a Manchester United player who had been sent off and not a visiting player.  Now that really is unusual!
 
How instructive was it to read the comments of former United players on this episode?  Well, Roy Keane, not one usually associated with being on the side of the angels, thought the referee was right - "I think the referee has actually made the right call. Everyone's upset about it and it's slightly unlucky, but it's dangerous play. Whether he meant it or not is irrelevant. It's dangerous play - it's a red card. You have to be aware of other players on the pitch. Does he think he's going to have 20 yards to himself? "  
 
On the other hand, Paddy Crerand, (for younger readers, he played for Manchester United from 1963-1971 and has since found himself unable to say a bad word about the club and has refused to have surgery for the removal of the red and white blinkers he was given as a leaving present)  apparently thought that "Roy Keane was in a minority of one. Not one person said it was a red card except Roy. Why do we not talk about the 99.9% of people who said it wasn't a sending off.”
 
Warming to his theme he added, “Why are we talking about Roy Keane - because he played for Manchester United? Well, let me tell you something. I played with Manchester United, I played in a European Cup final, Roy didn't. The referee was wrong."
 
If you want objective analysis devoid of personal bias or animosity then don't bother calling Paddy Crerand.  If you want old-fashioned vitriolic nonsense, then he's your man.
 

 

 

 

Vicky Pryce – taking it well

According to many in the media, the Liberal Democrats have been rocked by ‘sensational claims’ that Vicky Pryce, ex-wife of Chris Huhne and now failed plotter and convicted liar, confided in them two years ago.  According to that unbiased bastion of objectivity, the Daily Mail, this was “a nightmare for a party still reeling from sexual harassment allegations”.
 
It seems that Pryce has now claimed, in previously undisclosed emails to a journalist, that she told some important people in Liberal Democrat circles that her husband had done some bad things.

For example, she says she mentioned that Huhne had ‘behaved badly’ and said to others that there might be a scandal about to break over Huhne. That, it seems, is the substance of the 'sensational claims'.  Wow.
 
Pryce has admitted to a campaign of leaks and planted information designed to get back at Huhne for his treatment of her when they were married.  She has been, to all intents and purposes, a woman on a mission to exact what she thought would be delicious revenge.
 
For such an apparently intelligent woman it is amazing that she did not think through the likely consequences of her actions.  Had she done so then surely she would have realised that they were likely to see her go to prison as well as him?  And given this background, why is the UK media so keen to peddle other allegations made by her, in a crude and transparent attempt to drag as many people as possible into her ugly and spiteful world?
 
With any luck she will be sentenced today to a spell in jail, where she can reflect on her foolish pursuit of revenge and we can be spared from having to read any more about her.
 
 
 

Bolshie at the Bolshoi

The story of the acid attack on Sergei Filin, the Bolshoi ballet’s artistic director is full of some deliciously over the top diva-esque intrigue.
 
Bolshoi soloist Pavel Dimitrichenko has been in court this week and has admitted paying someone to attack Filin, but only to beat him up and not to throw acid in his face.  Sub-plots abound, with most of them seeming to involve Dimitrichenko’s girlfriend Anzhelina Vorontsova or her teacher and mentor Nikolai Tsiskaridze who was, apparently, none too pleased that Filin was given the top job rather than him.
 
I am not yet convinced that this is anything other than an elaborate hoax being played on us by the Russian media.  The story is almost unbelieveable and the casting questionable.  The biggest clue to the subtefuge, however, was to be found in the ‘court’ scene last week. Look at the person playing the part of the policeman guarding the suspect – nothing more than a camp ballet dancer in an unconvincing disguise, I think. 
 
 
 

Celebrate success

Arsene Wenger and his Arsenal team have been slated in the media this year for another season of failure.  Things are looking black for Wenger and the club. They face another season without a trophy. It is also possible that for the first time under his managerial reign – 16 consecutive seasons so far - Arsenal might not finish above Tottenham in the league. That really would be a mark of failure.  The crowing that comes from Tottenham fans on the rare occasions that they have managed to beat Arsenal during that time has been in stark contrast to the utter silence, indeed the complete invisibility, of those same fans on other occasions.  If they are to have a moment of triumph then goodness knows how they will manage to control themselves.  Enjoy it while you can, would be my advice.
 
But before everyone gets carried away with their perceived failures, let’s remember that no matter what happens this week in the second leg of their tie against a dominant Bayern Munich, Arsenal have survived longer in the Champion’s League this season than any other British team.  OK, not the most stirring of achievements, and some might argue that this is just a quirk of the fixture list, or that Nani has given them a helping hand, but Arsenal fans won’t care.  When you are starved of success then you make the most of the little things.  Just ask Tottenham fans.
 

Monday 4 March 2013

Monday Moan 37



Latest from Sainsbury's on wasting food

Sainsbury’s have kept their promise to investigate my complaint about wasting food (see Moan 36 last week) and have sent me this further response:-
 
“I’ve contacted the store and spoke to our Customer Service Team Leader, [……].  She’s sent her apologies for this matter and informed me our bakery department should close at 5pm on a Sunday.  She also said there has been a shortage of colleagues at our bakery lately.  However, this doesn’t mean our bakery department should close early.  [……] will therefore feed this back to our Bakery Manager, […..], when he’s next available.  He will investigate this further and work hard to try and resolve this as soon as possible.  We’ll also continue to monitor any further comments regarding this to see if anyone else has had a similar experience.  As this isn’t the kind of visit we want our customers to have, I’ve arranged for a £10 gift card to be posted to you for the inconvenience caused.  Perhaps you can use this to buy something nice on your next visit." 
 
Oh dear.  What to do now?  Obviously, the £10 voucher is intended to buy my silence.  It may not be a life-changing amount of money, but it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it? 
 
Indeed it is – and that’s a worry.  I wasn’t looking for compensation, I wanted an answer to why good food was being thrown away. Unfortunately, three replies later, I am no nearer getting an explanation from Sainsbury’s than I was at the beginning.  It doesn’t matter to me that they might have had staff shortages and so decided to close early the day I was there. I’m puzzled by the apparent mystery over when the Bakery Manager might next be available. But neither of these things are relevant to the issues I have raised unless Sainsbury’s were to be telling me that the actions I observed were in breach of their procedures and they wanted an explanation from the Bakery Manager before taking further action.  Nothing of this nature has been said, and so I assume that the actions I witnessed were perfectly OK as far as the company is concerned.
 
Powerless to extract a proper response from the company, I shall spend my £10 voucher on food which I will then give away to the first homeless person I see on the street outside.  A small gesture, perhaps futile, but it’s all I can do.
 
 

Not a protest vote?

So, the Eastleigh by-election result saw the Lib Dems retaining a seat against the odds – those odds including being widely ridiculed as a political force, mainly it seems for behaving like grown-ups and accepting responsibility by going into coalition with the Conservatives. The Lib Dems then made their task much harder by having an MP lie to protect his driving licence and continue to lie in order to try to stay out of jail – almost certainly to no avail. And then the forces of political opportunism threw in a late additional ball and chain for the Lib Dems in the massive form of Lord Rennard and multiple allegations that he has behaved inappropriately.
 
In fact, as with most by-elections, almost everyone could claim to have done well.  The Lib Dems actually won, UKIP got their best ever result in a by-election, the Conservatives failed to take a very winnable seat but did avoid complete catastrophe, and Labour managed to improve its share of the vote despite coming in a rather bedraggled fourth.
 
The thing that strikes me most about this particular by-election, apart from the fact that the Lib Dems won, is the nonsense of UKIP's loudly repeated statements that this was not a protest vote and that it should now be taken seriously as a political force.  These positions seem to overlook some  rather obvious facts.  For example, any party whose public face is represented by ex-Conservatives Nigel Farage and Neil Hamilton starts from a position of difficulty if it wants to be taken seriously. And given that the party’s popular appeal is based almost exclusively on its populist opposition to things rather than on any positive policies (anti-immigration, anti-Europe, anti-gay marriage, etc), its whole appeal is based on the notion of protest - why deny it?
 

 


What’s the point?

There were 14 candidates in the Eastleigh by-election. Yes, in addition to the 4 ‘main’parties, another 10 people paid out their £500 deposits and found 10 registered electors in the constituency who were prepared to sign their nomination form.  These 10 candidates mustered just 1,756 votes between them.
 
I know it’s a democracy and anyone should be entitled to stand for election provided they meet the various rules involved. But it’s all a bit of a joke isn’t it, when we are supposed to take them all seriously?    Or is that the point – it is just a joke?
 
Trouble is, it’s hard to know which of them is serious and which of them is just having a laugh.  For example, isn’t there a lot of commonsense in the idea that the European Constitution could be sorted out by going for a long walk, on the basis that walking is good for the constitution?  Surley you'd vote for the party that said that?  But would you vote for a party with a policy that if you got into an unfortunate situation and went slightly overdrawn and the bank slapped a £30 charge on you for being a couple of quid overdrawn, provided you repaid the money in a few days you would get that penalty charge back?  Doesn’t that sound like fiscal irresponsibility? Would you vote for the party that wanted to scrap the Bedroom Tax, because spare bedrooms are very handy for storing bondage gear, watching porn on the internet or sleeping with your pet cat when you can’t stand sleeping with your spouse/partner anymore because of their unacceptable behaviour in the bedroom?  And then there was the party that wanted to defend the right to asylum – presumably so that there would be somewhere to house the other candidates?
 
In the end I had to admire the party that observed that an election with 14 candidates was always going to squeeze its share of the vote. As a result, it didn’t view its 30 votes in quite as negative a light as you might suppose. In fact, it took heart from this solid foundation of support and declared that its new aim was to work for the last to be first.
 
Ambition and a target - that's what it's all about, isn't it?

 

A great career change?

A few months ago Frankel, arguably the greatest ever racehorse, retired after winning all of his 14 races. I wonder how many conversations there were in bars all over the country where punters said they wouldn't mind being retired to stud, being asked to 'cover' 200 mares each year, and being paid £125,000 a time for the pleasure?


It doesn’t always work out, of course.  He might be a failure in the potency stakes.  He might turn out not to be that interested in mares, having been trained to ignore them until now. Although I doubt that he’ll find himself being retired from stud and sent back to race again, as happened to another highly-rated horse once.
 
But let’s hope he doesn’t suffer the indignity of the stud we were shown on BBC’s ‘Countryfile’ yesterday, who was fooled into thinking that a replica horse was the ‘real deal’ and got so excited that the amorous session with the dummy lasted only a few seconds.  Of course, the fact that this particular stud failed to spot that his dream mare did not have a head or legs might make you question whether he deserves any sympathy.
 
And all this before the watershed.  Good luck to the parents who had to explain it all to their curious children.