clawsfour

Busby Babes show the way

It's only four games into the season and I'm already fed up.

Not with the team, the manager, or, heaven help me, the board. But with the fans.

In the first three games our young side played some dazzling football and were unlucky to lose two of those games. Yesterday we played less well but were unlucky to be losing at half-time and could easily have been two or three goals to the good. But this time the so-called fans started to boo the misplaced pass as early as midway through the first half.

I am heartily sick of people who want to exact their desire for revenge against the Chairman (for who knows what) against the young players in the new look Saints team.

Let me just remind these petulant boo boys (and I bet they're mostly blokes) of just one thing...

The team Matt Busby had built from the club's successful youth policy seemed destined to dominate football for many years. Such was the power of the Babes that they seemed invincible. The average age of the side which won the Championship in 1955-56 was just 22, the youngest ever to achieve such a feat. A year when they were Champions again, nothing, it seemed, would prevent the young braves of Manchester United from reigning for the next decade.

thebusbybabes.com

Cameron talks piffle

Conservative leader David Cameron has said he will be as radical a social reformer as Margaret Thatcher was an economic reformer.

In a book about him due out on Monday, Mr Cameron pledged to heal what he called Britain's "broken society".

Glad to see Boris Johnson, Conservative mayor of London is backing DC to the hilt - or is that the hilt in his back.

"If you believe the British press, the youth of today is aimless, feckless and hopeless, addicted to their PlayStations, lacking in respect and lacking in the emotional discipline needed to cope with a big match occasion.

"If you believe the politicians, we have a broken society, in which the courage and morals of young people have been sapped by welfarism and political correctness.

"And if you look at what is happening at the Beijing Olympics, you can see what piffle that is. Do not adjust your set: that really is a collection of smiling, well-balanced young British people, giving pleasingly self-deprecating accounts of how they have managed to haul in medal after medal after medal."

Boris Johnson

It may be true....

..but not now Tessa. Not Now.

Government going through a sticky patch.

Olympic games comes along.

Team GB is doing rather well - very well. It may be that just a little of the Olympic feel good factor will spill over into life in general and people will start to feel better about themselves. And it's then that people start to care more about their neighbours and start voting Labour again.

OK - a bit wishful thinking, but it is certainly true that people don't vote Labour if they think the country is going to hell in a handcart, whether we are in power or opposition.

So, assuming that just a smidgen of Olympic fairy dust was about to fall on Gordon Brown's shoulder, the last thing we needed was for for Tessa Jowell to open her gob and blow it all away.

"There is absolutely no more government cash for Games."

says Jowell. And no Olympic fairy dust for the Government.

Face-off in the States

As the polls in the States close again, the Republicans have unleashed a (they thought) powerful attack site against Barack Obama.

Modeled on Facebook, BarackBook shows a whole range of 'friends' of the Democrat candidate and seeks to damn him by association. The site itself is a pretty poor parody of Facebook, and as an amteur production makes the Republican use of the net seem, well, amateur. Even worse for McCain, the offical facebook application which points to BarackBook has been over-run by Democrats.

BarackBook is, however, a one-stop shop for the major Republican attack videos. Once people have got over  wetting themselves with laughter at the ineptitude of the McCain geeks, those pages may gain some traction. Although this attack site isn't landing punhes yet, it's still in the ring.

Whoohooo

Saints win away.

Do I care about how well they played? Who the chairman is? Who the opposition were?

None of the above. We won.

No nepotism please. We're British.

I must be just be feeling a little irritable this morning. Not enough caffeine.

Anyhow I've just seen that the blessed Harman is proposing that MPs should not be allowed to employ their own children. This is a direct response to a couple of minor scandals swirling around the Tory party - or rather scandals swirling around minor Tories.

A good plan. Closes the loophole, teaches the Tories a lesson. Win, win. NO IT'S NOT! For goodness sake.

Politicians are held in pretty low esteem - unfairly - we all know that. The way to recover esteem is not to introduce bonkers legislation (see post below for my views on that) as a sticking plaster but to have fair legislation which creates transparency around the activities of MPs.

Banning working age children from working for MPs is just mad. What about step-children or foster children. What about nieces and nephews, spouses, parents. The bloke you met in the pub last week. A long-lost mate from Friends Reunited.

There should be proper audit controls of expenditure of public money. Where a Member of Parliament chooses to employ a member of their own family, they (and their family member) will have to accept that there is likely to be scrutiny form quarters other than just the Audit Office. But to ban people employing a family member is just wrong.

Crikey, next Harman will be saying that the Monarchy shouldn't be hereditary. Hmm - now there's an idea.

A Doctor for the Apple

Apologies to non-Apple non-Mac users, but bear with me.

When Apple launched it's new (relaunched its old) online service MobileMe at the same time at launching the new 3G iPhone, there was, frankly, a complete shambles. The service didn't work, then it did, then it didn't then bits of it did. Over a period of about five days the Apple brand went from towering heights amongst its loyal core support to, "where can I buy Microsoft?"

Now Steve Jobs, Apple's MD, has responded with this internal memo - presumably designed to to placed in the appropriate media.

Team,

The launch of MobileMe was not our finest hour.  There are several things we could have done better:

– MobileMe was simply not up to Apple's standards – it clearly needed more time and testing.

– Rather than launch MobileMe as a monolithic service, we could have launched over-the-air syncing with iPhone to begin with, followed by the web applications one by one – Mail first, followed 30 days later (if things went well with Mail) by Calendar, then 30 days later by Contacts.

– It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store.  We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence.

We are taking many steps to learn from this experience so that we can grow MobileMe into a service that our customers will love.  One step that I can share with you today is that the MobileMe team will now report to Eddy Cue, who will lead all of our internet services – iTunes, the App Store and, starting today, MobileMe.  Eddy's new title will be Vice President, Internet Services and he will now report directly to me.

The MobileMe launch clearly demonstrates that we have more to learn about Internet services.  And learn we will.  The vision of MobileMe is both exciting and ambitious, and we will press on to make it a service we are all proud of by the end of this year.

Steve

Now who else do we know who would benefit from saying

The recent past has not been our finest hour.

10p tax rate, and car tax plans not up to usual standards of fairness - we needed to spend a bit more time with our calculators.

It is better to make sure things work right than launch new ideas.

And it is bonkers to launch so many new ideas at once. At least one will go wrong and obscure the rest.

I need someone to get a grip on this. Where is Alistair Campbell?

But the bottom line is when it comes to a free and fair society, there is only one choice. Labour.

100 days is a long time in politics

100 days of Boris. Who would have thought it?

I am appalled to hear that Ken Livingstone has already started on his campaign with some of his former Tankies to be reselected by Labour to run again as Mayor (will he run as an Independent AGAIN?). However, it is worth just reflecting of his first 100 days compared with Boris. It would be even more interesting to compare the first 100 days of Ken as a Labour Mayor.

I've taken the Ken list pretty much unedited from the archives of the Mayor's office. He obviously struggled to make it to a nice round 100 achievements in 100 days. That's why you find things like "Appointed Nicky Gavron Deputy Mayor" creeping in as an achievement.

For Boris I've had to rely on Conservative Home. And even there I had to leave out the more platitudinous (if that's not a word it should be) - Boris turned up for work, Boris brushed his hair without help, etc.

Some blogs appear fascinated by the fact that some of the 100 days list from Ken's time have disappeared from the current site. Who gives a shit. If I was an incoming Labour Mayor I would certainly remove  information referring to the previous incumbent. It's available on the archives - if I can find it, so can you - if you need it.

More interesting in some ways is what Conservative Home consider as achievements during Boris' first 10 days. Not much in quantity, for sure. And in quality? 7 out of the 22 achievements are appointments. No bad thing in itself. Bringing in your team is probably the single most important thing a Mayor can do in his or her first few weeks.

But the rest is littered with not very much. The two stand out items are probably increasing the living wage, and cancelling the oil deal which has been funding cheap fairs for the poorest on London transport.

Anyhow here's the list. Anyone with Ken's list for his first 100 days as a Labour Mayor.....

The world turned upside down

Johnson endorses Obama campaign

Says it all really.

It's footie time again

Sod politics.

Saints 2 West Ham 2. Ok, it was only a pre-season friendly, but we didn't get get stuffed by a premiership team. Can't wait for the season proper.

Oh - and just in case you are thinking of voting Tory, just take a look at labour.org.uk and the minimum wage ticker.

Let me rephrase my opening two words. Sod Cameron.