Layer 393 . . . FIFA, Football, World Cups, Qatar, Radical Reform, and Plenty of Serious Stuff

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England is having a tough week.

Freezing temperatures and massive snowfalls are causing the usual chaos - with roads, railways and airports disrupted, and in several places completely closed.

The bid for the 2018 World Cup hit the buffers, with only 2 FIFA votes out of 22 going England's way. To add insult to injury the vote for 2022 has also been sewn up, with Qatar being handed the prize, in spite of nobody knowing where it is, in spite of it having NO decent football stadia whatsoever, in spite of it having no top-class football teams or indeed players, in spite of vitually no-one in the country ever having attended a single football match, and in spite of daytime temperatures in the country being so high that every new stadium will need to be fully covered and air conditioned.

OK, I made that last bit up. But is it any more ludicrous than the other stuff, which is all true, as far as I know. And by 2022 global warming will probably have raised average temperatures in Qatar to around 120C. Clearly a new breed of footballer will be required - one that has the water retention and the stamina of a camel.

Russia won the right to stage the 2018 event, and good luck to her and all her sail in her. The good news is that the USA failed in its bid to host 2022, having lost out to the mighty Qatar. Where the hell is Qatar, anyway? (Said he in his best Palinesque voice.) And who's in charge of it? And how did it manage to win?

We now know that bribery has been taking place on a massive scale - but even so, isn't this just a bit . . . blatant? Or are we supposed to believe that FIFA genuinely has a mission to bring football to the Middle Eastern masses? Wouldn't it have been a good idea to make sure they have democracy first? Or have the G20 countries already fucked it up for  democracy and its supposed benefits?

Personally I'm not sad that our fabulous ambassadors - Cameron, Beckham and the other little prince - have failed in their mission. Imagine all the gloating and backslapping that would have gone on if they'd succeeded. With unimaginable consequences for the future of the game in England. More of the same? YES PLEASE!

It's now time for all sane and sensible people who are disgusted with the way that football in England is currently run to stand up and campaign for radical changes to our ruling body, to our system of coaching & development of young players, and most of all to the ownership of the clubs - which ought to change towards the model being promoted by Arsenal, and already pioneered by the likes of Barcelona. (see previous Layers)

Maybe Beckham, Cameron and our entire Royal Family could now take on the mantle of ambassadors for radical reform to the entire structure and management of football in this country. And only when that's been achieved should we go back to FIFA and say, please sir - we'd like some more.

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High-stakes theatre

An amusing and spot-on column here by Barney Ronay in the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/dec/01/world-cup-2018-bid-sepp-blatter-fifa

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Emma John is also funny and worth a read:

The Ashes 2010: Speed up Sky's slow-mo and ditch the bikinis on x30

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2010/dec/02/the-ashes-2010-sky-x30 

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Meanwhile, back at the serious stuff:

Hutton's fair pay review won't make any CEO's pips squeak

The idea that balanced public sector salaries will inspire FTSE 100 chiefs to follow suit is as likely as a doughnut-eating shark

by Zoe Williams

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/01/hutton-fair-pay-review-ceo

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WikiLeaks is holding US global power to account

The WikiLeaks avalanche has exposed floundering imperial rule to scrutiny – and its reliance on dictatorship and deceit

by Seamus Milne

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-embassy-cables-us-global-power

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Lords reform: Britain needs a better upper house – and not just a second Commons

Packing the Lords with donors and cronies is a disgrace. Reform must keep the good, but strip away the bad and ugly

by Timothy Garton Ash

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/01/britain-needs-house-of-lords-reform

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Student protests: Both students and markets are upending the case for cuts

Economic crisis across Europe and growing opposition at home are starting to cut the ground from under the coalition

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/24/students-and-markets-undermine-case-for-cuts

by Seamus Milne

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Layer 329 . . . Schools of the Future, Education, Gove, F1, Spiritual Intelligence, The Spirit of Football, the World Cup, and South Africa.

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The government's economic policies are, as expected, so disasterously misguided, ideological and awful it's been necessary for the sake of personal sanity & also stable blood pressure to stay away from all consideration of them for a few weeks, and conveniently take refuge in football, tennis and now the cycling extravaganza - the Tour de France, which this year is particularly intriguing and full of sub-plots and ploys to get the favourites split apart over several difficult stages right at the start of the event. The next two weeks, especially in the Alps and the Pyrenees, should be very watchable.

The politics of education, however, keep sucking me back into the revolting reality of a government determined to pursue its ideological objectives at the expense of real education, the needs of children and of course the teachers and support staff who will now be condemned to work in old, badly designed and under-specified premises - all because The Banana (Gove) wants to build his "free schools".

There's no doubt that the Building Schools of the Future scheme was over-bureaucratic and wasteful, but instead of just instantly scrapping it Gove could have set about modifying and simplifying it, and making it work a lot better.

But no - the man wants his Free Schools. He wants his education "market". He also wants, I presume, new schools to be built as cheaply as possible, using standardised cheapo architecture, and prefabricated structures. If an old building is completely falling apart he'll no doubt reluctantly agree to replace it as long as the replacement is a boring and off-the-shelf design that facilitates maximum speed of construction and minimum standards of space, fixtures and fittings. And he'll argue that this is all the nation can now afford. How convenient.

We have to be thankful that he's at least made a complete prick of himself in the way he's gone about his announcements of the cuts - giving out false and misleading information about which existing projects are for the chop, and which towns and cities will no longer get the excellent schools they've been promised.

He's made it clear the "savings" will be used to fund the Free Schools that will be run by cliques of parents and commercial "providers". Having established a "model" of schools run by pushy parents and their tame business partners, this will no doubt then be imposed on existing schools, along with the abolition of local authorities. Some might see this as not a bad thing, given the cravenness of LAs and their willingness to sacrifice children to the 'Standards Agenda' imposed by central government. Some might say what is their fucking point anyway?

The idea of new smaller "free" schools run by community activists might almost be acceptable if they were to be of real benefit to children by offering a type of education that's not available in the mainstream factory schools (and so-called "Academies") where test and exam results are the be-all and end-all. However, it's all too clear that what's being proposed are merely small "crammers" which will cater for parents who want even more emphasis on academic attainment and "discipline", and more pressure on children to be taught to the tests - sit down, shut the fuck up and memorise even more of this shit if you really want to get to a top university.

Cynical, moi?

If you'd like to read a more balanced and rational appraisal of what Gove's been up to then try this Ed Balls column in the Guardian - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/08/school-building-michael-gove-balls
This piece could have been written by any number of Balls' unpaid 'interns' and various arse-lickers, but in essence it's all valid.

Me - I'd just like to see Gove kicked to death as publicly as possible. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

The man has zero understanding of children and their educational needs, and zero understanding of - let alone interest in - what a fair and equitable education system might look like - one in which all children have equal access to good teachers, premises fit for purpose, and aims of education that include the development of the whole child, the creation of a love of learning for its own sake, and the development of children's capacity for creativity and imagination.

Government by bananas like Gove, of schools lashed together for relative peanuts, with attainment aims devised by neanderthals, can only result in further generations of under-educated primates, instead of future generations of thinking beings who embrace life and are capable of transforming our stupid society.

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The occasional individual who stands head and shoulders above the sea of mediocrity we see all around us needs to be cherished and applauded.

Ahead of last weekend's British F1 Grand Prix there were several favourable comments about the quality of the two (British) guys who currently lead the drivers' championship.

Oxzen has commented previously on the emotional and spiritual intelligence of Hamilton and Button, and here's Hamilton in a Guardian interview with Donald McRea talking about fame and its consequences,

"It's not the easiest thing in the world to deal with. Over time you learn to accept it and handle it in the best way. You have to be very patient and very polite. And you have to be the least selfish person you possibly can be."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/jul/06/lewis-hamilton-british-grand-prix

In the same paper Button is described as having enormous talent but also a great deal of maturity and a sense of what's real and what isn't. He's also praised for his attitude to his work and his well-balanced personality.

You don't get those things through academic attainment or through attending high-pressure crammers. You get a nation of ego-driven, non-actualised, boring, materialistic, uptight, unspiritual emotional retards, which pretty much sums up the type of people who rule the roost on this little island.

Take our footballers, for example, and also the people who run football in this country. Please.

Harry Pearson commented last week on the fact that the World Cup Final was to be controlled by British officials, since our small team of referees and linesmen have apparently done so well in this World Cup.

"It is surely plain after 60 years of achievement that places us on a par with Sweden and Belgium, that we can't play football properly . . .

"Instead of trying to paper over the negatives of our game, let's for once build on the positives. Stop all the talk of coaching, tactics and formations and simply abandon playing international football altogether to focus all our considerable resources on training the world's finest match officials.

Webb, Cann and their compadre, the as yet unsung hero Mike Mullarkey (who I believe will also give good flag should the opportunity arise) are indeed England's men of the tournament, exuding a professionalism, self-belief and steely determination our footballers could only mumble on about in the squeaky, resentful voices of teenagers who've been caught on the school playing field with a shoplifted bottle of Cyprus sherry and a packet of Lambert & Butler.

For English watchers, the Brazil versus Chile game last week was a pivotal point. During the course of the first 45 minutes it rapidly became obvious that the emphasis of our national game was shifting before our eyes. "Good decision by Howard Webb," warbled Peter Drury with the sort of throaty majesty he normally reserves for calling out "Ronaldo!" moments before the pouty Portuguese lone parent blasts a volley 30 yards over the bar. "Oh, excellent advantage there by the man from Rotherham."

Jim Beglin was quickly in on the act, effusively praising assistant Darren Cann for "a great flag" that denied Chile a possible goal. Back in the studio Gareth Southgate, blinking crazily like somebody trying to transmit an unabridged Morse code version of Anna Karenina using his eyelids, was in total accord with his Irish colleague: "And that's a great flag from Darren Cann," he said after the incident replayed, as Andy Townsend nodded wisely and murmured something about "putting down a marker" for the final.

I was watching the game with a German friend and the sudden excitement about the match officials didn't escape his notice. "Darren Cann is fantastic!" he exclaimed merrily. "He is England's man of the tournament," he added with what I suspect might have been something approaching a chortle. "In fact, with that absolutely super offside decision I believe he has maybe overtaken Wesley Sneijder and Diego Forlán as the most eye-catching individual of the World Cup thus far."

It is one thing for the English to be taught a football lesson by the Germans – some truths we take to be self-evident and all that – but when they start giving us a severe thrashing in the sarcasm department it really is time to consider burning your passport. I suppose I should count my blessings he wasn't in the room when Gary Lineker revealed that Paul the Psychic Octopus was "actually born in Weymouth".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/jul/08/world-cup-howard-webb

Jim Beglin, by the way, is the world's most boring "expert" commentator bar none, except maybe for Eurosport's very own drone on the Tour de France, Sean Kelly - though in Kelly's case the boredom comes from the awful monotony of his delivery rather than having sweet fuck all of any interest to say for himself. What a blessing when Beglin was ill and unable to co-commentate on the Spain v Germany game.

That game, incidentally, was terrific - played in exactly the right spirit, especially by Germany, who never succumbed to the temptation of trying to win by kicking the Spanish out of it. In fact the Germans have won huge admiration for their efforts to emulate the Spanish in their style of play - open, fluid, expressive, intelligent, and at times exhilarating. Arguably they have been the most entertaining team of the tournament, with their 4-goal demolitions of Australia, Argentina and England. Most neutrals will surely have relished the Argentines and the English being taught a lesson in how to play properly and empathetically as a team, instead of playing like a bunch of Maradona-style prima donnas.

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In contrast to this, the Dutch were disgusting in the way they spoiled the Final by setting out to clog the Spanish out of the game - to win by any means necessary. The very opposite to playing with grace and with respect for your opponents. This was a truly stupid strategy. By all means compete strongly - but for fuck's sake without cheating and violence, without tripping and shirt-pulling, and a total lack of spiritual intelligence.

Thank goodness for Johan Cruyff - the keeper of the flame as far as intelligent Dutch football is concerned. Cruyff immediately condemned the way the Dutch had played. "They played very dirty. This ugly, vulgar, hard, hermetic, hardly eye-catching, hardly football, style . . . They were playing anti-football."

In the Guardian, Paul Hayward commented,

"Creativity . . . does not mean trickery, though there is some of that. It means orchestral passing. Spain exclude the opposition from the game. They have mastered the art of circulation and space manipulation. At Barcelona's urging the nation's team turned their backs on power and automation in favour of agility and self-expression."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/jul/13/spain-world-cup-final-holland

Britain is still a country whose education and training policies are based on the triumph of power over creativity, and turning young people, including young footballers, into automatons who follow orders and who never think for themselves. Obedience to bosses (coaches) and systems is all - as if the best football isn't about the self-expression and the creativity of the 11 individuals out there on the pitch, and their ability to create astonishment and delight in their audience.

Modern English footballers are akin to our world-famous boy bands - creatures of the managers and entrepreneurs who put their teams together for commercial profit above all else. Music and football without spirit - cold, ruthless, cynical, soulless and uncreative.

Meanwhile, let's hope the likes of Spain and Germany continue to rock and roll.

Also South Africa. As Dominic Fifield said in the Guardian, one of the very best and the most heartwarming moments of the entire tournament was watching the South African players joyfully singing and dancing their way into Green Point stadium in Cape Town, "which neatly summed up the colour and exuberance of their approach".

What a pity none of the England team did any of that before they slouched off home. Playing and winning, and even losing, with joy, imagination, grace and dignity. We have so much to learn from South Africa.
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Layer 328 . . . A Win and a Loss, A National Disgrace, and a Game in Crisis

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Summer's truly here. It's still 27 degrees at 10.30 pm, and out in the garden there's still blue in the sky, with children's voices drifting through the semi-darkness from distant houses and gardens. It's the first really hot evening of the year.

The unexpected good news is that the English cricketers have defeated the Aussies for the third time out of three this week in the 5-game one-day tournament. Ponting looked pig-sick at such a comprehensive series defeat.

The expected bad news, if you're any kind of realist, is that England have been thoroughly trashed by Germany and knocked out of the World Cup. The writing was on the wall in letters ten feet high, and it duly happened. The commentariat should feel thoroughly ashamed, having tried to talk up England's chances of winning these past few days. The pundits were rubbish. They never had a shred of evidence to support their assertions that England would win - not just this one match, but the final also.

So how was your England v Germany party? Or were you one of those who prefer to suffer in solitude and silence - alone with your TV and free to rant and swear . . . and despair. Fortunately for me, my children invited themselves round to watch the game on my HD TV, and I had the pleasure of having grandchildren around to distract me from the awfulness of England's efforts.

It's not that I'd expected England to win - far from it. In a way I don't even care if they win. But what I do expect is to be entertained by a team playing imaginatively and competently. And did I expect them to do that? Of course not. Grandchildren are much more entertaining.

Not only are England a bad team - they're just a collection of past-it and never-had-it individuals. In many cases they're well past it.

It's a law of nature that the first to mature and blossom will be the first to fade and wilt. At the age of 16 Rooney looked like a bloke of twenty something. He's now prematurely balding and playing without pace or panache. Most of the others are well past their sell-by dates too.

It has to be said also that their preparation, tactics and management were abysmal. Joe Cole had 28 minutes on the pitch in this last game, having had virtually no match practice in the group games. How on earth was he supposed to do well?

Peter Crouch never even made it on to the pitch in ANY of the games, in spite of being the team's most prolific scorer for some two or three years. Capello ignored him from start to finish in these finals. Instead he threw Emile Heskey, who never scores, into the action after it became clear that it was a question of either score goals or say goodbye. Defoe looked sharper than Rooney but it was Defoe who was substituted for Heskey. Lunacy.

Chris Waddle popped up on the radio, ranting very effectively about all the stuff we know is wrong with English football - its organisation, funding, management, coaching methods and so on. Well said Chris. Check out the Radio 4 Today (Monday) website for a replay of Waddle's points, and passion. Round about 8.30.

Also:


http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8767000/8767126.stm

Will anything now change? Will English football (ie the Premiership) become anything other than an offshoot of the City and the Stock Exchange? Of course not. The selling off of football clubs to ruthless capitalist bastards who somehow manage to get control of the clubs with shedloads of debt which they somehow load on to the clubs themselves will continue to happen. That's why the Premiership exists - to make money for wise guys, insiders and fat cats. Why on earth would anyone in charge of this set-up volunteer to change it when they're getting personally rich because of it?

So well done Germany, with your supporter-owned clubs, your low admission charges and your sensible wage structures. You may not have the most watchable domestic football in the world, but you still produce quantities of intelligent, competent, thoughtful, well-motivated  players who play a damned fine game of football. You played well, scored 4 excellent goals (again) and gave the neutrals something to cheer, unlike Brazil and Portugal. Let alone France, Italy and England.

Japan for the Cup!
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Layer 327 . . . The World Cup Runneth Over, and Lessons We Must Learn

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Two weeks in, and it's half way house. The group stages are complete and we now know the 16 teams that will compete during the next two weeks en route to the final.

Not France (disgraced and shambolic). Not Italy (out-played - and serves them right for electing Berlusconi). For the first time ever the two previous finalists have been knocked out at the group stage.

England have come through by the skin of their undeserving teeth. Played three games against very average opposition and scored only two goals. And it's not like the Slovenian team were markedly worse.

The commentariat have been stupidly positive about England's efforts against Slovenia. The truth is that apart from Milner's superb cross that led to Defoe's shinned goal there was still a complete lack of wit, imagination, creativity and originality, let alone skill, in their play. It's all very well going on about greater effort and passion, but these alone won't win anything.

I heard an interesting theory that pre-tournament training at altitude (especially at the end of a long and tiring season?) can actually make your players MORE tired and LESS sharp in the short term. Let's hope this is the explanation for the complete uselessness of the likes of Rooney, Lampard and Gerrard, and that they'll now begin to re-acclimatise and return to whatever passes for normal, given that Rooney hasn't actually scored for England for literally years.

In boxing they talk about fighters losing their "hunger". Young boxers invariably come from mean city streets where use of the fists and physical strength are the sole means for many young men to guarantee a sense of self-worth and self-esteem - as a means of enforcing their will and desire.

England's footballers - this 'golden generation' - have never been 'hungry', either literally or metaphorically. Over-paid, over-coached, over-praised - their biggest issues are fearing mistakes and remembering what they've been programmed to do. Footballing robots. Hence lack of initiative, lack of spontaneity, lack of creativity.

Even as school kids they're over-coached and taught to follow orders. They fear being dropped from the team if they disregard the coach's instructions. Older readers might remember some notable players who hardly ever played for England because they were deemed to be unreliable and eccentric. It's a question of balance.

Nowadays you step out of line at your peril, even if you're John Terry. Pay attention kids - look and learn. Keep your mouth shut. Your ideas are not wanted, not welcomed, not needed. Industrial management has come to international football. Systems are all. Management strategies and policies rule - OK? England's manager gets £6m a year. It's City culture versus the spirit of the game.

Even the Brazilians seem to be suffering. Their game against Portugal was a disgrace. 0 - 0!!

And so sad England stagger on, with a desperate commentariat doing their best to see positives where there are currently virtually none. Today's the day of the Big One - England v Germany. Again.

Have England recovered from their altitude training? Will Rooney rediscover his mojo? Will Capello be smart enough to play Crouch and Joe Cole? Will Johnson and Milner fulfill their potential?

Maybe England should learn from the Japanese. Oxzen has already commented on the Japanese ( Layer 320). When England played them in a warm-up game last month it took a couple of unlucky own goals to defeat Japan - since England were completely unable to score a goal for themselves. It's worth repeating:

"The (Japanese Samurai) idea seems to be that with genuine effort, experience and application anyone can become good at performing skills and arts that demand high levels of fitness, balance, coordination, anticipation and flair. The Japanese football team seem to have taken hold of this attitude. Shame about the English."

In their last group game the Japanese team scored not one but two superb goals direct from free kicks - the only country to score a spectacular goal from a free kick in this World Cup. Honda managed to smash his kick through a narrow gap created by a Japanese player moving out of the wall, and Endo curled his kick beautifully right around the Danish wall later in the half, after Honda had faked the Danes into placing their wall too far to the left. And this was with a ball that's supposed to be unbendable and practically uncontrollable. It was wonderful to behold.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n46e-2IHStg

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/world_cup_2010/matches/match_43/default.stm

Here's another Honda special:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lOZ-n-afY0

The other outstanding thing about Japan's play has been their ball control, again with a ball that's supposedly hard to control. Towards the end of the game against Denmark Honda in particular showed a staggering ability to take the ball in his stride and do things with it that only the likes of Ronaldo are supposed to be able to do. The way he created the third goal, and handed it on a plate to his colleague, was an absolute joy.

My conclusion is that if the Japanese can go from nothing at all to such high levels of skill in just a few years then England should take note and start asking how they can begin to emulate the Japanese.

How to stay calm in a tight spot? How to maintain full concentration? How to play without fear? How to apply imagination, spontaneity and creativity, and add them to discipline, effort, application, skill and determination? How to create empathy between team members? How to improve physical coordination?

Forget Total Football. Bring on Zen and the Art of Football, or Taotal Football.

PS Oxzen is sick and tired of listening to Eurocentric commentators being patronising about Asian and African teams, in a kind of watered-down Ron Atkinson way. Someone should pay attention to their comments and really take them to task about it.

PPS On Desert Island Discs this morning - Tony Adams - "As a young player I didn't know how to deal with life outside of football. The outside world was scary. So I drank." Spiritual Intelligence?

To his credit, Big T now talks about being an 'emotional cripple', and praises others for being emotionally intelligent.

"I now try to live usefully and walk humbly".

He also chose as his favourite track, "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life." Good man.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnmr

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Don't forget the return of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00srjdl#synopsis

Half a day left to listen to the previous programme.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00srjdl.

Layer 326 . . . A Gathering Storm, Voodoo Economics, the Budget, the Banks and Will Hutton

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It feels like the lull before the storm. Summer's here; people are gearing up for their holidays, shopping as usual, having barbeques, watching endless dull matches broadcast in glorious HD live from the World Cup . . . and endless edited 'highlights' of these low-scoring, tedious, defence-dominated affairs. England are crap. Scotland, Wales and the Irelands aren't even there. Wimbledon fortnight starts tomorrow. The weather forecast is good.

Except on the economic front, which most people recognise and experience as the financial and personal wellbeing front. We're talking here about people struggling to stay in jobs and striving to keep up with household expenses. People with no savings; people with large debts. The cold front is approaching, with gale force winds likely throughout Britain, and much of Europe.

The economic storm is going to begin on Tuesday, with the coalition's first 'emergency' budget. You weren't aware there's an emergency? Do try to keep up.

It's an emergency conjured into existence by right wing politicians and their media friends who seem to be winning the battle to convince gullible people that governments can no longer maintain spending on public services at current levels, even though the loss of thousands of public sector jobs will deflate demand in the economy and throw even more people out of jobs in the service sector and what's left of the manufacturing sector. And so on, in a downward spiral. It's the Shock Doctrine, which thrives on 'emergencies'. It's Disaster Capitalism.

It's the same old Thatcherite/Chicago School remedy of slashing public spending on decent public services - all dressed up as "necessity" because of what the "financial markets" might do to us. Voodoo economics still rule, OK?

There was a time, when the financial crash first happened, that Keynesian economics looked likely to regain predominance, but that was before the European Right (including those in Germany now) began to see a way to keep on keeping on, with the banking sector permanently bailed out, guaranteed and subsidised by we, the people, and no-one even demonstrating against it.

In this we begin to look like post-Soviet Russia, with the people only too happy to keep schtum provided there's 'stability' in the country under a recognisable and somewhat 'legitimate' political elite who seem to know what they're talking about. It's a kind of heads in the sand politics, under a Westminster coalition of public schoolboys and Oxbridge graduates doing all the things they've been taught to do by their Chicago School trained professors in their PPE lectures, seminars and tutorials.

Will Hutton continues to shed light on all of this in his Observer columns. Here are some extracts from last week's column, which focuses on banking, posted here in the hope that the reader will hyperlink to Will's column and read it in its entirety:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/13/will-hutton-banks-crash-refuse-reform

The banks have refused to mend their ways. Beware the next crash

After the crisis there were cries of 'never again'. But the glacial pace of reform leaves us all in imminent danger

It was the biggest bank bail out in British history, and it came with scarcely believable costs. A trillion pounds of tax-payer support; a trillion pounds of lost output. After a disaster of this magnitude you might have expected some collective soul-searching by both banks and government. There has been far too little. Instead we risk a repeat – our banking system is as disconnected from real wealth generation as ever.

The return to business as usual – bonuses, trading in derivatives, the organising of banking as an exercise in which money is made from money – is breathtaking and depressing. And so, given the recent buoyant profit figures reported by our banks, is the easy money.

Labour delivered the minimum reform it could get away with, subcontracting responsibility to the Financial Services Authority. As the crisis broke in May 2008 it commissioned an inquiry populated entirely by industry insiders, chaired by the now chair of Lloyds, Sir Win Bischoff, to examine how the City could become more internationally competitive. When it reported a year later, it recommended little or no change. The conclusions were tamely accepted by the most risk-averse group of senior politicians in the Labour party's history.

The poverty of action is inexcusable.

Without substantial and far-reaching reform a second crisis is almost inevitable within 10-25 years. And next time we would be overwhelmed as a country.

Most industries that had undergone such a near-death experience – along with such a high probability of a recurrence – would be taking precautions. Not banking. Instead of building up its reserves aggressively, it is carrying on paying salaries at pre-crash levels.

As worrying is the lack of reform to the business model of banking built up over the last 10 or 15 years. Barclays, RBS and HSBC each boasts more than 1,000 subsidiaries – most of which are secret vehicles created to warehouse lending or direct financial flows in artificial ways, whose purpose, as one official told me off the record, is essentially deception – to avoid tax or regulation or whose complexity is designed so that in an emergency all a government can do is write a blank bail-out cheque.

[In other words, the fucking banks have got us over a barrel, and there's nothing we can do about it. The Masters of the Universe have got planet Earth right where they want it.]

The IMF don't say it, but it would just take a market rumour and there would be panic. British banks have £1 trillion wrapped up in derivatives – a business that Nouriel Roubini, the economist who predicted the crash, thinks should be as closely regulated as guns because they are no less dangerous.

But progress on financial reform – nationally and internationally – is glacial. Part of the reason is the fiendish complexity that western governments allowed their banks to create, and part is the jealous defence of alleged national banking interests by governments. But nobody should underestimate the banks' own powerful interest in resisting reform – and their lobbying is powerful and well-financed.

The status quo is bad news not just because of the risk of another crash. British banks shamefully neglect enterprise, entrepreneurship, investment and innovation. Only 3% of cumulative net lending in the decade up to the crash went to manufacturing; three quarters went to commercial real estate and residential mortgages. Lord Adair Turner, chair of the FSA, says that collectively manufacturers borrow no more than they deposit with banks. De facto, it is a sector from which the banks have largely disengaged. The result – devastated industries and sky-high property prices.

Reform has to be multi-pronged. Almost everybody accepts that banks need to carry more capital, except getting international agreement on how much is close to impossible.

Britain needs more banks, transparent banks and safer banks that really contribute to the British economy – and it needs to have the chutzpah to go it alone if necessary. The coalition government, Cable says, is committed to change, and a banking commission to investigate what and how is about to be announced. The question is whether anyone will have the courage to do what needs be done.

..........................................................

Will's column in today's paper says:

There is no logic to the brutish cuts that George Osborne is proposing

The chancellor constantly cites Sweden and Canada as models, but at least they tried to energise their economies

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/20/budget-cuts-george-osborne

This week's budget brings on an awesome economic and political moment. The former Labour government had already committed to a greater and faster reduction in the budget deficit than any British government in modern times. The coalition government wants to do more; to nearly eliminate a structural budget deficit of 8% of national output – some £116bn – in five years. Moreover, it wants spending cuts to take 80% of the load. No country has ever volunteered such austerity. It is as tough a package of retrenchment as the IMF imposed on Greece, a country on the brink of bankruptcy. It is twice as tough as the famously harsh measures Canada took between 1994 and 1997. It is three times tougher than Sweden's measures between 1993 and 1995. In British terms, it is immeasurably tougher than what we did after the IMF crisis in 1976 or after the ERM crisis in 1992.

If we are going to embark on such a course, there has to be a national consensus that it is right. What is proposed, if we are to believe the pre-budget speeches and leaks, is the closest to an economic scorched earth policy we will ever have lived through. If it is to work, we have to be prepared to accept not just enormous economic sacrifice, but to regard it as legitimate. There has to be complete honesty about why the measures are being taken. The reasons have to be unanswerable. The economics must be unimpeachable. The measures themselves have to be extremely skilfully implemented and seen to be fair.

This is not the case just now. Of course the structural deficit has to be eliminated. But Britain has time to make the change. Sweden took 15 years to lower some departmental spending by 20%, not the five years the government plans. We are not in the position of Greece. Britain has a diversified economy. Our cumulative national debt is not large by international standards. Uniquely, the term structure of our debt is very long – around 14 years. Most of this year's debt will be sold to British domiciled individuals and companies, so the international sovereign debt crisis has much less impact on us. The level of interest on the national debt in five years' time as a share of national output is more than manageable. These are the truths about the situation; to claim otherwise creates distrust.

I don't think either coalition partner is aware of how high the stakes are being raised, the degree to which they are unnecessarily backing themselves into a corner, and how much the ground has to be prepared before launching the country on the unprecedented path they plan. For example, each of the counter-arguments I have raised needs to be carefully argued against, not shouted down by hysterical remarks about the sovereign debt crisis or references to private lectures from the not infallible governor of the Bank of England.

The lack of necessity over what is planned could knock the Lib Dems back to where the Liberal party was in the 1950s – a party of the margins – and irredeemably rebrand the Conservatives as the nasty party. The revival of liberal conservatism and the hopes raised by this unique experiment in coalition government will collapse.

George Osborne's aggression is hard to understand. The forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility show that the outgoing Labour government's plans were both credible and more than tough enough to arrive at budgetary sustainability. To go beyond them with between £24bn and £50bn of extra spending cuts and tax rises, as is rumoured for Tuesday, is unconscionable and will rightly be challenged. The ground has not been laid; the economics are dubious even for deficit hawks; the support tiny; the implications dire.

It is not too late for a change of course or, at the very least, to reproduce the best of what the Canadians and Swedes did. In neither country was deficit reduction portrayed as a necessity to keep a triple A credit rating on government debt, nor as a vendetta against a "bloated" public sector, as the coalition has suggested. Rather, the measures were sold as a vital period of pain in order to create a platform for much-needed public spending growth in the future.

Osborne is said to have studied the Canadian experience, hence his call for a period of national consultation between Tuesday's budget and the autumn's spending review, copying what was done in Ottawa. The trouble is that the terms of the consultation preclude any genuine consultation; the assumption is that spending is bad, the state needs to be smaller, nothing is more important than a triple A credit rating, and the British way of life has to change.

It is folly. Not every penny of public spending is well spent. There has to be restraint and the deficit must be lowered. Wages, pensions and welfare transfers must take a short-term hit, as they did in Canada and Sweden. But the government should also be investing in our future. It should be raising taxes on those best able to contribute. Every department should share in the pain.

I am surprised at the Liberal Democrats. They have an obligation to their party, their tradition and the coalition to argue more fiercely for a better presented, fairer, more legitimate and more balanced approach to deficit reduction than the one that is promised. And what is proposed is no good for the Tories either. Number 10 and the Treasury believe the worst can be offset by aggressively low interest rates and more quantitative easing. They will work to a degree. But what is proposed still risks everything. Politicians pay the price with lost office. Millions of British will pay a higher price – the needless squandering of their lives.

.......................................................

Back on the football front, Terry Eagleton wrote this for the Guardian,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/15/football-socialism-crack-cocaine-people

Football: a dear friend to capitalism

The World Cup is another setback to any radical change. The opium of the people is now football

If the Cameron government is bad news for those seeking radical change, the World Cup is even worse.

If every rightwing thinktank came up with a scheme to distract the populace from political injustice and compensate them for lives of hard labour, the solution in each case would be the same: football. No finer way of resolving the problems of capitalism has been dreamed up, bar socialism. And in the tussle between them, football is several light years ahead.

Modern societies deny men and women the experience of solidarity, which football provides to the point of collective delirium. Most car mechanics and shop assistants feel shut out by high culture; but once a week they bear witness to displays of sublime artistry by men for whom the word genius is sometimes no mere hype. Like a jazz band or drama company, football blends dazzling individual talent with selfless teamwork, thus solving a problem over which sociologists have long agonised. Co-operation and competition are cunningly balanced. Blind loyalty and internecine rivalry gratify some of our most powerful evolutionary instincts.

In a social order denuded of ceremony and symbolism, football steps in to enrich the aesthetic lives of people for whom Rimbaud is a cinematic strongman. The sport is a matter of spectacle but, unlike trooping the colour, one that also invites the intense participation of its onlookers. Men and women whose jobs make no intellectual demands can display astonishing erudition when recalling the game's history or dissecting individual skills. Learned disputes worthy of the ancient Greek forum fill the stands and pubs. Like Bertolt Brecht's theatre, the game turns ordinary people into experts.

Like some austere religious faith, the game determines what you wear, whom you associate with, what anthems you sing and what shrine of transcendent truth you worship at. Along with television, it is the supreme solution to that age-old dilemma of our political masters: what should we do with them when they're not working?

Over the centuries, popular carnival throughout Europe, while providing the common people with a safety valve for subversive feelings – defiling religious images and mocking their lords and masters – could be a genuinely anarchic affair, a foretaste of a classless society.

With football, by contrast, there can be outbreaks of angry populism, as supporters revolt against the corporate fat cats who muscle in on their clubs; but for the most part football these days is the opium of the people, not to speak of their crack cocaine. Its icon is the impeccably Tory, slavishly conformist Beckham. The Reds are no longer the Bolsheviks. Nobody serious about political change can shirk the fact that the game has to be abolished. And any political outfit that tried it on would have about as much chance of power as the chief executive of BP has in taking over from Oprah Winfrey.

.................................................

Any diehard readers who have come this far can now enjoy Sabine Rennefanz's column on Merkel's Paralysis:

Germans are awaiting the fate of their hopeless coalition with resignation. The obituaries are in

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/15/angela-merkels-coalition-paralysis

All the hopes of the German government now rest on Mesut Özil and Thomas Müller. They aren't members of the cabinet, they're the new stars of the national football team. If anybody could, they might turn the destiny of Chancellor Angela Merkel's hopeless coalition.

If they win the World Cup in South Africa, the whole country will party relentlessly and nobody will worry any more about the disastrous government. At least that's a possibility. It has worked before: poor governments have carried on thanks to a wave of football fever. "Drink beer, watch football," said one Christian Democratic Union member of parliament the other day, when he was asked by a journalist how to survive the following weeks.

Germany has a similar coalition to Britain's: an agreement between the conservative CDU and the liberal Free Democratic party.

There has been constant infighting, disagreement – chaos. Cabinet members refer to each other as "Gurken" (cucumbers) or "Wildsau" (wild boar). Merkel's once ideal partner, the pro-business FDP has turned out to be a nightmare.

While the CDU has become a modern conservative party with a strong interest in social equality, gay rights and environmental protection, the FDP is stuck in the 1980s and is a single-topic party: it wants to cut tax, or at least block tax rises. Under the guidance of its erratic leader, Guido Westerwelle, the foreign secretary, its members happily ignored the pressing problems of the international financial crisis.

And up to now, the coalition has managed to disagree on everything – the budget, health reform, how to help the struggling carmaker Opel.

The most recent low point was last week, when Merkel and Westerwelle presented what they called a "saving package". They want to save E80bn by 2014, mainly by cutting social spending, and support for poor parents and the long-term unemployed. It read like the wish list of the FDP. There was an immediate cry of outrage – and not only from the opposition. CDU members found the package socially imbalanced, they said, claiming that wealthier people do not contribute at all. About 20,000 people demonstrated at the weekend against the proposed cuts in Berlin, and the papers published obituaries of the coalition government. "Aufhören!" ("Stop!") reads the cover headline this week of the German news magazine Der Spiegel, above a picture of a troubled-looking Merkel and Westerwelle.

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Layer 320 . . . More on IDS, Work, Pay and Pensions, David Laws, Magazines, Trivia, and Books of Your Own

.
As I was saying on Friday, Iain Duncan Smith is certainly talking the talk. On today's Andrew Marr programme he showed with his sweating upper lip and his lack of charisma why he's not natural party leadership material. BUT he explained very well why he thinks it's right to make the benefits system much easier to understand for claimants, and why it's right to make sure that nobody who takes a job should immediately lose their housing and other benefits.

It's the responsibility of the State, in other words, to make damned sure that nobody who takes a job should be worse off than they are unemployed - and in fact the system needs to ensure that people get to keep most of what they earn, on top of their existing benefits, for some time before benefits are gradually and incrementally withdrawn. By which time, we can expect that people will be settled into worthwhile jobs in which they also enjoy others' company and a place in the wider world - enjoy being part of a team, perhaps - even if their salary is pretty modest and their position fairly humble. Believe it or not, it IS possible to get job satisfaction in spite of being on low pay, or in a part-time job - providing you believe in the usefulness of what you're doing and you feel a valued member of a team.

Not that IDS said any of this job satisfaction and fulfillment stuff today, although he has done elsewhere. I hope he takes the trouble to emphasise these aspects of his strategy as time goes by.

No - he only had time to state the case for ensuring that work is not only worthwhile from a financial point of view, but also the need for government to ensure that people can clearly see that it will be worth taking on low-paid and/or part time work if it's available, without fearing immediate loss of benefits, without which they can't even keep a roof over their heads and put food on their table.

Obviously all of this ought to be seen as socialist policy - for the state to make sure that everyone is guaranteed the basics of life in return for a willingness to work -  but if IDS wants to claim it for Liberal and Progressive Conservatism, then that's OK with me, since New Labour couldn't see the need to offer it.

....................................................

Dear, oh dear, David Laws. There was a bit of a hint in Layer 302, just after the general election, to keep an eye on him, but nobody could have predicted that he would be so quickly outed as . . . completely lacking in integrity and honesty. For a multi-millionaire like him to NOT own or rent his own flat in London is . . . incredible. Especially when he could have claimed for it on his MP's  expenses! Maybe he thought he was being kind and generous by handing over so much 'rent money' to the person that people will no doubt be calling his rent boy.

................................................

I hate magazines. I hate the paper they're printed on. I hate their advertisements. I hate the  pages of adverts for ludicrously expensive watches, clothes, food, cars, furniture, holidays, sunglasses, cameras, perfume, televisions, airlines, banks, booze, computers, jewellery and a thousand other things I'm not interested in and don't want to buy.

I hate their stupid articles. I hate the restaurant reviews, the lifestyle features, the celebrity fawning and pimping, the diets, the recipes, the trivia . . .

In last week's Guardian Weekend magazine, which I rarely read, I noticed in Oliver Burkeman's "Mind & Relationships" column ( "This column will change your life") his thoughts on why trivia is important . . .

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/may/15/change-your-life-trivia

In yesterday's magazine his column was headed

Make a book of your own

Don't know where to store all those random bits of information you scribble on Post-its, and then lose?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/may/29/change-your-life-information-storage

I highlight books compulsively, bookmark websites, tear out magazine articles and scribble quotes on Post-its, with the vague idea they'll be inspiring or useful at some future point. Then I reshelve the books, forget about the websites and mislay the Post-its.

I suspect I'm not alone. We tend to lack good systems for storing the kind of information that can't be assigned an immediate, specific purpose, even though it may be the most important information. The gas bill gets paid, then filed, while the life-transforming philosophical insight gets jotted on an envelope and promptly lost.

What to do with this category of information is one challenge of the modern field of "personal knowledge management", but 18th- and 19th-century literate types had a pretty good answer: the commonplace book. John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Coleridge and Jonathan Swift all kept such books, copying down proverbs, poems and other wisdom they encountered while reading. So did many women, often excluded from public discourse at the time. By appropriating others' nuggets, writes cultural historian Robert Darnton, "you made a book of your own, one stamped with your personality".

In a recent Columbia University lecture, the writer Steven Johnson drew parallels between commonplace books and the web: blogging, Twitter and social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon are often held to have sparked a renaissance of the form. (His focus is the way some iPad apps obstruct this, by forbidding highlighting.) As with commonplace books, this linking and sharing creates not just a hodgepodge, but something coherent and original: "When text is free to combine in new, surprising ways, new forms of value are created… We have all the tools at our disposal to create commonplace books that would astound Locke and Jefferson."

Yet the reason I've started keeping a real, pen-and-paper commonplace book is that the social power of the web, awesome though it is, doesn't confer the same benefits. There's something important about exploring ideas privately as well as collectively.

The real challenge of handling stray nuggets of information isn't how to collect and organise them. Commonplacing is about internalising that information: engaging deeply, processing it so that it becomes part of you. Writing by hand seems to help; so does not instantly sharing everything. If the web is a wild, furiously creative ecosystem – a rainforest, say – the commonplace book is a private vegetable patch. Different things grow best in each.

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Countdown to the World Cup
Already I'm irritated by people driving around with an England flag or two (Cross of St George) flapping from little posts mounted on their car and van windows. What is point?

We have to face facts. The team that will represent England is crap. By the eighth minute in today's game against Japan they were a goal to nil down, thanks to being unable to defend a simple corner. They were still one nil down by half time, and hadn't even looked like scoring. Lampard missed another penalty kick, thanks to completely scuffing it.

By the end of the game they still hadn't scored, in spite of much huffing and puffing by the likes of Bent, Gerard and Heskey, all of whom were crap. Thank goodness they will now be forced to play Rooney partnered by Crouch in S. Africa.

Unfortunately for Japan, their excellent team scored two more goals - unluckily in their own net.

By coincidence there was a screening of The Last Samurai on TV last night. In it the Tom Cruise character is humiliated when he's first introduced to sword-fighting, but by the end of the film he's slashing, chopping and stabbing with the best of them.

The idea seems to be that with genuine effort, experience and application anyone can become good at performing skills and arts that demand high levels of fitness, balance, coordination, anticipation and flair. The Japanese football team seem to have taken hold of this attitude. Shame about the English.

.............................................

The UK's contestant (who came last) in yesterday's Eurovision Song Contest apparently says it's been the best experience of his life.

That's the spirit. Next stop Johannesburg.
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Layer 194 . . . Fair Play, Delights and Rapport

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Fair Play

It's not often when you watch a live football match on TV that you experience a moment of sheer joy that has you yelling out or jumping up in ecstatic amazement and excitement - and this goes for whichever team you support (as if sitting on a sofa constitutes support!), or whatever match you're watching. Those moments of terrific surprise and delight when somebody or some team does something so beautifully and so unexpectedly that it sends a shock through your nervous system so as to cause an involuntary spasm of shouting, cheering and swearing – such moments tend to be very few and far between, especially if you're English and you enjoy football.

To have it happen three times, then, in a match - and what's even more amazing, in a match involving England - is a rare treat. To see an England team completely dominate and outplay another team ranked in the world's top 10 is – well, unknown. Almost. I won't forget the 5 – 1 thrashing of Germany, in Germany. And so it was when England defeated Croatia 5 – 1 at Wembley last night, and in doing so qualified for the finals of the World Cup in South Africa next year. Job done. Capello 8 – Others 0.

What a guy. Talk about emotionally intelligent! He doesn't fake or exaggerate excitement, or anger, or disgust, or frustration – and if he feels those things he doesn't necessarily try to stop himself from showing small signs of them either. What you see is what you get, and what we have is a team manager who's a real man – a mensch – who can keep a check on his dominant emotions without completely covering them up or denying they exist.

According to Leo Rosten, the author of The Joys of Yiddish, a mensch is “a person of integrity and honor, someone to admire and emulate, someone of noble character. The key to being “a real mensch” is nothing less than character, rectitude, dignity, and a sense of what is right, responsible, and decorous”.

Capello's a three-dimensional human being who's a thinker and a planner, a plotter and an analyst, a calculator and a strategist, as well as someone who knows how to relate to the people he's leading and managing, both as professionals and as human beings. He has intellect, plus emotional, social and spiritual intelligence, in abundance and in harmony, in contrast to every dork of an England manager you can possibly remember, with the honourable exceptions of Bobby Robson, dearly departed, and maybe Ron Greenwood and Alf Ramsey.

He doesn't try to be overly pally with them, like the Rain Man - the Wally with the Brolly - who shall remain nameless, who so shamefully and so spectacularly fucked up on the job, finally crashing and burning in a corresponding fixture with Croatia two years ago, a game that England unbelievably lost 2 - 3 at Wembley.

Capello is polite, and courteous, and professionally distant, as he should be. But he also knows how to coach, how to explain things, how to empathise, how to enthuse, and how to motivate. But not in a gung-ho up-and-at-em ridiculous pumped-up adrenaline-rush kind of a Keegan or (ahem) 'Turnip' Tayloresque way. (I still have to smile to myself whenever I remember dear Graham's little gems – Do I Not Like That!, You've Just Cost Me My Job!, etc)

http://www.saidwhat.co.uk/quotes/sport/graham_taylor
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/graham_taylor.html

“Very few of us have any idea whatsoever of what life is like living in a goldfish bowl, except, of course, for those of us who are goldfish.”
No – forget I said smile - laugh uproariously out loud.

Two of the goals last night gave a quiet little buzz of pleasure – when Lennon jinked his way through to a penalty and Lampard efficiently slotted his kick, and when Rooney also unspectacularly threaded the ball past the goalkeeper after the hapless chap had dreadfully mis-kicked to our unmarked striker. (A real shame for the poor goalie – his superb 'keeping had kept the score down to only 2 – 0 at half time when it could easily have been 5 – 0 by then.)

The other three goals were all superbly made and superbly taken headers that flashed into the net – very “English”, as Bilic, the Croatian manager, might have said. Cue ecstatic celebration. To be fair to Bilic he later admitted his team had been humiliated and destroyed.

Whenever someone asks me which team I support I have to admit I don't really 'support' any team. What I do is watch with interest, and hope to enjoy some brilliant action – thoughtful, disciplined and passionate teamwork, great skills, effective defending, dynamic attacking and brilliant goalscoring. I hope to see the game well played, with lots of goals, and victory going to whichever team deserves to win.

I know people who are passionate supporters of a particular team – certain Millwall supporters for example – who don't give a shit about the quality of the football or the justice of the result. Winning is all that matters, no matter how badly the game is played, no matter how dire the football. It's 'my team right or wrong', which is pretty much the way they play the game of life. Within their own little world, their family and their mates can do absolutely NO wrong, and they'll support them and fight for them no matter what, against all comers if necessary.

Sadly such people often only get really excited in life when they're seeing their team win a match, or when they're having a fight or a 'bundle' on 'behalf' of their team or their mates. They might admit to themselves that their team deserved to lose, and they might mention it to their mates down the pub, but they'd never let on to an 'outsider'.

Thankfully, though, there are many more people who have a sense of 'fair play', and who will even feel some odd little sense of satisfaction when their team loses a match, on the basis that the useless f****** b*******'s deserve to be beaten up and defeated. Lots of English people don't like winning if it's a result of cheating or unfair tactics, and lots of us don't even like winning if the victory is undeserved.

But even those of us who are the least partisan and the least nationalistic feel some sort of emotional attachment to our national and our city or town teams, and we get enormous amounts of enjoyment when 'our lads' do their jobs as well as they did them last night.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/sep/09/world-cup-qualifier-england-croatia

It's the women's turn this afternoon – 5.00pm BBC2 – England v Germany – European Nations Final.

Bafana Bafana? Crazy name, crazy guys:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_national_football_team

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PS Try to record the sounds you make (by using some mechanical or electronic means) as you read the following quotes, because I guarantee you will never laugh so much again in your entire life. If anyone ever doubts the power of words and language to affect our moods – here's the proof. Have some tissues handy to dry your eyes. Do NOT read this if you're in your office, supposedly working. But DO make a recording of your laughter the first time you read it because nothing's ever as funny the second time around.

http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/Palms/6687/managers.html

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Life's Little Delights

Yesterday on the Today programme there was a discussion about what delights us in our day to day lives. Oxzen had always been a strong believer that the capacity and the ability to experience delight is a strong marker of spiritual intelligence. It's the little things . . .

Here's a description of the book called Delight that JB Priestley first published in 1949 – taken from the Amazon website -

“In the years following the Second World War, there didn't seem much to smile about, but as JB Priestley illustrated in the classic "1949 Delight", there are many joys to be found in even the simplest things. This charming book comprises a series of short essays, which all depict a simple pleasure - the smallest things in life that Priestley delighted in at that bleak time - a notion that chimes perfectly with the current national mood. Just some of the simple things Priestley enjoyed include; fountains; a walk in a pine wood; a new box of matches; Sunday papers in the country; reading in bed about foul weather; suddenly doing nothing and waking to smell bacon . . .

Priestley's sense of humor and literary flare are in evidence on every page. Each self-contained essay is a joy to read and will no doubt bring a little 'delight' to the reader - just as Priestley originally intended sixty years ago. In 'timeless mornings' Priestley muses, 'There is one kind of morning in early summer that is for me very special, the most delightful of all mornings. The sun is up and blazing somewhere but not visible yet down here, where there is a lot of gold mist about and the birds are singing from lost thickets.' The new 60th anniversary edition of "Delight" contains the full, unabridged text of over one hundred of Priestley's personal joys and pleasures.”

On the Today programme Alexei Sayle, the one and only, the wonderful, said he delights in re-reading old copies of guides to restaurants and bars that no longer exist.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Delight-J-B-Priestley/dp/1905080670

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/p/j-b-priestley/delight.htm

http://uk.tv.yahoo.com/07092009/19/paxman-brand-reveal-delights.html

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Rapport

I have a new theory that the secret of his success is the 'rapport' that Capello has developed with his players, and it's also what readers have with a writer like Priestly, or whoever their favourite authors happen to be. To have rapport with someone doesn't mean you have to like or admire that individual. You may have reservations about them as an individual, and you may even dislike some aspects of their behaviour or their ideas. But what you do have is the ability to be on their wavelength, and to be able to communicate or empathise from a basis of shared assumptions about life or about the nature of the task you're working on, or whatever.

To experience 'flow' is hard enough as an individual. For two or more people working together to experience it simultaneously whilst engaged in a particular project, or activity, or game, is almost impossible unless you have rapport. I suspect that what great coaches can do is build rapport, between themselves and others, and between other individuals.

It's a shared sense of what's right and what's wrong, what's effective and what's not, when to do something, and when not. It's part instinct, part empathy, part logic, part knowledge, part understanding, and part intuition. We need rapport that's both inner and outer, within oneself and with others. It's a coming together in three dimensions. It's harmony and resonance, like voices in a choir or strings on an instrument.

Or players on a pitch. England's play last night had a 'flow' to it. They're finally starting to play as a team whose members have a proper rapport. After years of failing to play well together, people like Lampard, Gerrard, Lennon and Rooney are beginning to 'gel' and harmonise. It's partly down to experience, and partly down to the consistent messages and sets of beliefs and understandings that a good coach or manager is able to instil. It's the fine tuning as well as the correct choice of strings, instruments or players. Without rapport and flow nothing is achieved. You can have great skills and individual flair, but without rapport you tend to go nowhere.

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Obama and his Congregation

Like a priest talking to his parishioners Barack Obama yesterday met with, and spoke to, the Congressmen and women and the Senators of the House of Representatives who may or may not be willing to vote for his health care proposals. It seems he made a great speech, or delivered a great sermon, whichever way you prefer to look at it. It seems like a great effort to establish, or re-establish, some rapport with the teams that must function properly together if anything is going to be achieved, and if the country is to make any progress towards becoming more civilised and properly democratic. The country voted for change. Will it be allowed to have it?

30 million Americans can't even get health insurance, let alone are able to afford it. 46 million of them have no health insurance whatsoever.

Check out clips of his speech here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/10/barack-obama-healthcare-address

“We did not come here to fear the future. We came here to shape it.”

Full text of the speech here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/10/barack-obama-healthcare-reform-speech-full-text

Michael Tomasky's blog on the speech:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2009/sep/10/barack-obama-healthcare-big-speech

Tons of comments on it already.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama
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Other Random Musings

Abdullah Abdullah

In case you haven't been paying attention, this is the name of the hapless guy who lost out in this week's election for the presidency of Afghanistan. How lucky is he! However, he's now complaining that the vote, and the count, were fixed. Some people just don't know when to shut the fuck up and just be grateful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_Abdullah

I'm always fascinated by these guys with double names, like Boutros Boutros-Ghali – people so good they name them twice. Imagine Obama Obama, or Barack Barack. Which would it be?

Brown Brown. Cameron Cameron.

I remember Billy Connelly once making a comment about posh people in Scotland having surnames as first names. Like Cameron.

This naming business is really bizarre. What happens to people, that they want to actually change their names? The most famous examples are when people change their religions, or suddenly adopt a religion. On the other hand, why should we stayed lumbered with names we don't like?

Oxzen Oxzen. Definitely a ring to it.

John Cooper Clark

I  think I wrote about JCC some time ago, and yesterday I came across a poem of his on Spotify that you should listen to if you ever get so angry with someone you want to beat them up and call them a twat. It's called Twat. Just type Twat in the Spotify search box.

http://www.cyberspike.com/clarke/twat.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS5QMT-JUt4

Dion, Dion

I know I've mentioned Dion before, but I'm going to put in another plug for King of the New York Streets because I think it's possibly the best anti-drug song ever written. It's not didactic – it just sets out what it feels like to be someone living a coke-fuelled life, thinking he's the boss and the head honcho of his neighbourhood, or whatever, and ends with a blank statement - “This attitude comes from cocaine lies ”- the delusions of that particular drug. The refrain goes, “I was only sixteen years, so what could I have known . . . . ?”

The very best thing about the track is that it ROCKS. You want to listen to it on account of the great rhythm and the driving groove, plus the great vocals. Catch it on Spotify and YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMYT3DoMOPU Steve Cropper's wearing the same sweater he wore on the Booker T/Green Onions video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOCW8brdBaE&feature=related

The lyrics are hard to find on the Internet, but you can see them here:
http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2009/05/layer-156-musical-interlude-vision-for.html

http://johnnyyen.blogspot.com/2009/05/dion-king-of-new-york-streets.html

http://www.diondimucci.com/main.html
http://www.diondimucci.com/king_albums/dm_notes.html – a great piece of rock n roll writing by Dave Marsh. Read it at your leisure.

Dave Marsh

Here's another great example of his writing – about Springsteen:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=sLJZ84jaxhsC&pg=PA518&lpg=PA518&dq=%22dave+marsh%22+%2B+dion&source=bl&ots=gimIMO0Xpd&sig=xdH7E24gFbIwsLfxpQfgWSvFRA4&hl=en&ei=2OqoStDUEOaZjAf22-GCCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6#v=onepage&q=&f=false

“Marsh is also a member of the National Advisory Board of PROTECT: The National Association to Protect Children.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Marsh

http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/dmarsh_1001.htm   -  The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made.

This man has TASTE! Feel the rapport.
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