Articles with the Tag england

Cricket, Gezellig Cricket

Oh Those Crazy Cloggies, Sport
Published on

netherlands-cricket

The Netherlands takes on England today, but not at football for once.

After their defeat of Scotland, the the mostly amateur Dutch cricket team [full team list] have been tipped to be surprise upsetters at this weekend’s inaugural Cricket World 2020 Tournament, where’ll they’ll play against experienced, professional teams like India and the West Indies. It’s as though Barnstaple FC somehow got into the Champions League.

Today they take on England, but they’re not worried. Dutch captain Jeroen “Piglet” Smits:

“We are not intimidated by playing at Lord’s,” he says. “We are Dutch. It’s a historic day for Dutch cricket, and we want to make history that day.”

The cloggies certainly have got some gumption. They deserve to do well for that alone. I wonder what the Barmy Army will make of Cloggie fans?

hollandfans2

Hup Holland!

What If Gordon Won’t Go?

Health, UK politics
Published on

castlereagh_death1

I have cardiology appointments and a dialysis session for the rest of the day and no access to wifi so no blogging from me till much later, if at all and anyhow the media, especially the BBC, seem to have cold feet and have backed off Gordon Brown.

For the moment only. Nick Brown, PM’s top henchperson and Labour chief whip, must surely be running out of nasty little journalistic secrets by now. It won’t be long before the hounds start baying again.

It also can’t be long before Gordon has another phone-throwing tantrum or does himself or someone else a mischief. Even the loyalists might jump if he’s visibly cracking up. But would they? The line from no 10 this morning is that he’ll “have to be carried out of No. 10 in a box”.

It wouldn’t be the first story of ministerial madness in British constitutional history: this morning I’ve been reading about the early 19th century war minister, the notorious Viscount Castlereagh, of whom Byron quipped:

” Posterity will ne’er survey
a Nobler grave than this:
Here lie the bones of Castlereagh:
Stop, traveller, and piss!

The man who ordered the Peterloo massacre suffered from a form of severe paranoia that first led him to challenge the then Foreign Secretary George Canning to a disastrous duel and eventually to cut his own throat in despair.

But Lord Castlereagh wasn’t a serving PM, only a minister. There was no constitutional crisis as such. That got me wondering – what is the precedent should a British PM become sectionable while in office? Who makes the call? The Cabinet? Parliament? What about the Queen? What if he were to refuse to even see a doctor? What should happen then – should psychiatrists be sent to No. 10 to forcibly examine a Prime Minister?

A patient can be sectioned if they are perceived to be a threat to themselves or other people. Generally, a patient can only be sectioned if two doctors and a social worker or a close relative of the patient believe it is necessary. One of these doctors is usually a psychiatrist. The other is often a doctor who knows the patient well. However, in an emergency one doctor’s recommendation may be sufficient. An approved social worker also has to be involved in the assessment, and has to agree that being sectioned is the best course of action for that patient. The social worker then makes the application for a place in secure accommodation for the patient.

What if Brown were to refuse to leave office at all? The convention is that a PM can hang on for up to 15 months after a general election would have been due, but it’s only a convention and he’s always got the Civil Contingencies Act, which allows the government of the day to declare an emergency – it decides exactly what an emergency is – and to suspend democracy, override normal checks and balances and all local democracy – to rule by fiat, essentially – as the nuclear option. What could be done against that?

It’s an interesting constitutional problem and one I need to do a lot more reading about.

Exeutnt Exit The Chipmunk Queen

Meta, UK politics
Published on

Hazel Blears has resigned, to spend more time with her family. Poor bloody family.

Update

That was very well timed of her, to go just as the breakfast media had pretty much concluded that all that was needed to shift Brown was one last heave. The sisterhood are getting their revenge – Hewitt, Smith and Beverly Hughes yesterday, Blears today. But will it be enough? Will Harriet Harman also have to go before someone close to Brown has the guts to stop threatening and actually stick the knife in?

II

I predict the next to jump overboard will be either Tessa Jowell or Caroline Flint. Come on, then, ladies.

III

I’ve changed the blogpost title; was trying to be clever. Fail.

When Middle England Attacks

Funny, Sleaze, Tories, UK politics, Video
Published on

Just because they don’t shout doesn’t mean they don’t want to lynch you. Watch troughing Tory Andrew McKay MP get taken apart over his expense claims by his politely furious constituents :

His face is an absolute picture. I might’ve been a little less contemptuous of McKay had he got up, told them to go forth and multiply, and walked out with his greedy and amoral head held high.

But he can’t get away – he’s spent so long playing the Tory grandee he’s permanently stuck in character. He has to sit and listen to people tell him what an asshat he is, because to do otherwise would conflict with his mistaken gentlemanly self-image. Look at his expression: it has the studied rigidity of the baddie brought to book in an Enid Blyton school story.

Exceedingly enjoyable. I’d like to see every MP made to sit and watch it several times a day for several days at least once a year, on their own time, no expenses payable. Can’t wait for the next one, for this surely is the start of a longrunning series.

Alas Smith & JonesMcShane

Corruption, New Labour, Sensible Liberals, Writing
Published on

I really must stop starting my morning paper-reading with the Guardian, if only for the sake of my health. I was already feeling a bit nauseous and then I read this gobmackingly crass opinion piece from Joan Smith:

I am sick of my country and this hysteria over MPs

Until now, I have not written a word on this subject.

She had my back up right there. Joan Smith? Who she? How very gracious of her to address us..

Smith‘s a fully-paid up member of the metropolitan politicoliterati. A journalist, dramatist and detective novelist, formerly married to Eustonite and Marx’ biographer Francis Wheen, she’s now the partner of the ex-BBC journo and NUJ activist, Labour MP Dennis McShane.

That would be the Dennis McShane MP who claimed 20 grand a year for the cost of running an office conveniently located at home – in his garage in this scruffy suburban semi?

mcshane-office

I’m sure it was all legit, but was it in the spirit of the rules? Who knows:

…one fellow Labour MP privately said he was ‘very surprised’ at the scale of Mr MacShane’s claims given that he does not have to pay to rent an office. ‘I pay £6,000 a year in rent so if he doesn’t have to pay that, it sounds like a lot of money,’ said the MP.

This Denis McShane:

    Voted moderately against a transparent Parliament.
    Voted moderately for introducing a smoking ban.
    Voted strongly for introducing ID cards.
    Voted very strongly for introducing foundation hospitals.
    Voted strongly for introducing student top-up fees.
    Voted strongly for Labour’s anti-terrorism laws.
    Voted very strongly for the Iraq war.
    Voted very strongly against an investigation into the Iraq war.

More….

McShane’s right there in the vanguard of the New Labour, do as we say, not as we do, war-criminal brigade. Obviously Smith has her own opinions but presumably, as partners, Smith and McShane are sympatico on many things. So we could surmise where she’s coming from, even if she hadn’t already damned herself with her own words:

In this uniquely poisonous atmosphere, years of conscientious public service count for nothing; decent people are being terrorised out of public life and the perverse consequence is likely to be their replacement by a motley collection of minor celebrities, attention-seekers and outright fascists. Democracy itself is under threat, not because a handful of MPs have behaved greedily but because the public reaction has been (and continues to be) hysterical

An hysterical public that can’t be trusted to vote, obviously. Smith says that we, that’s you, me and J. Arthur Blokeuptheroad, are violent, sanctimonious automatons being manipulated by the press. Probably not untrue in certain cases. But when you’re addressing Guardian readers, accusations like that don’t go down very well. It gets worse when she invites us to compare MPs and their expenses to 9/11:

Being “monstered” may mean that you have to leave home for a few days and put up with being the butt of jokes in pubs. Some bounce back or rehabilitate themselves through tragedy, as Goody did when she discovered she had terminal cancer. But when the target is our elected representatives, most of whom have not done anything terrible, the consequences are grave. The sense that we are in the midst of a crisis has been stoked by banner headlines – it is as if 9/11 has happened every single day for the last two and a half weeks…

The coverage and vilification MPs are getting because of their own actions is a tragedy comparable to death from cancer or the news coverage resulting from 3,000 deaths a day for 19 days, she says. There’s spin for you. You understand my nausea.

True to her apparent Labour leaning Smith is not only blind to the moral nuances of life she’s hard of political hearing too :

…one of the weirdest aspects of the witch-hunt (for that is what it is) is that I haven’t heard anyone accuse the vast majority of MPs of doing their jobs badly.

Oh no? HELLO!

There’s a couple of million complaints right there. The public’s been forcefed a lot of crap for a long time by their supposed representatives and corruption’s the waffer-theen mint that’s made them justifiably explode as they have done at Smith in comments.

Lots of people have benefited from the MPs allowances, however indirectly; all she’s doing is using her privileged media platform to whinge ‘you’re all horrible and I hate you’ because she, like many others, sees her cosy life threatened. Fallout from the expenses scandal is inevitable. There is bound to be. Even though some of it may be misplaced, as long as it happens to people like Joan Smith I shan’t be bothered.