I devoted my weekend primarily to sport for two reasons. I enjoy watching excellence, especially when it is exciting with a close finish although sometimes when the later happens I cannot bear watch.
I also believe that individual and collective team performance has a greater significance than sporting achievement when it demonstrates the power of an individual or group of individuals to overcome adversity by hard work and will power, in addition to natural talent and developed skill.
I believe that as our understanding of the universe increase and the sub atomic particle smashing experiment which has commenced operationally in Switzerland reveals the origin, and deepens our understanding of matter, together with the shift to understanding more about the working of the brain and its control of perception, understanding, memory and sensation, we will come to be able to prove that mind can control matter in ways beyond all present understanding. This will lead to a pantheist understanding of God and a human mind creation of the devil and black magic.
There were good examples of what I mean in the coverage of the four sports of interest over this weekend: Tennis in a Davis cup world qualifier; Cricket in the County Championship involving Durham and the Sunday play off as who will play in the last pro 40 season 2009; Football with Sunderland playing the Boro and Newcastle away to West Ham where the manager also walked away from the club because he no longer had control over which players joined and left to the club; and then the Ryder Cup in gold which Europe has won the last three bi annual encounters, the latter two one side affairs.
There was other TV of interest with the X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing, and Tess of D’Urbervilles, and on Sunday the preliminaries to the Labour Party Conference.
I have recently been hard on young Andy Murray for his lack of commitment to Britain, the concept, borne from his alleged Skittishness and anti Englishness. He may be become able to win one or more of the Grand Slam competitions, France, Australia, USA and Wimbledon and become recognised as the World's Number One, especially as he has youth on side, and without identifying himself as a Britisher and gaining the support and an adulation of the British public in general. He may make a lot of money as a consequence. He may also exhibit national pride and recognition if Scotland becomes an independent nation, but as a Scotsman, especially if his nation gains its independence during he next decade, and which is likely to become even more of a political issues if the forthcoming by-election is won by the Scottish nationalists with a significant majority. But I believe he will regret, as the years pass, and his playing days are over, that he did not attempt to endear himself to the British public as a genuine Britisher. You do not have to be British to achieve recognition and approval of the British public and there is a long line of World Class male Tennis players who achieve this. The most interesting of these, someone who alienated sections of the British media at times, was you must be joking John McEnroe, who has become an elder statesman welcomed each year back to Wimbledon
I became concerned at the attitude of Andy Murray towards the Davis cup contest with Austria he mentioned that he was not 100 percent fit but hoped to be so. I also recognised that while he has become one of the top players in the world the rest of the British team as singles players are second raters, although his brother is a good doubles players with potential.
Having watched parts of his two performances this weekend winning his two singles games, I am prepared to modify my opinion in that he did all that was required and appeared genuinely appreciative of the support given to him by the Wimbledon crowd. It was not his fault that the rest of the team was not up to the task and lost their three matches. One swallow does not make a summer, so we shall wait to see.
Charles Clark is a former Cabinet Minister who held a number of important positions in the Blair Government and now believes there should be a quick resolution of the whether there should be a new Labour Leader, and Prime Minister or not, and John Prescott was Deputy prime Minister throughout the Tony Blair Premiership and is highly regarded by insiders as the man who was pivotal in keeping the Party together and Gordon in the Cabinet rather than open warfare between Blair and Brown over the Premiership. Polly Toynbee is the highly regarded Guardian political writer and all three expressed important and thoughtful comments during an half hour debate in advance of the Labour Party conference this week.
The facts are these. In recent decades no party with one exception has managed to overcome the kind of unpopularity presently experienced by the Labour Party and Gordon Brown personally, with one exception, the Conservative Party in the early 1990's who got rid of their most successful and highly regarded leader, Margaret, now Lady Thatcher, and then went onto win the next election. Since the subsequent loss to Labour they have tried a number of different leaders in the hope of finding one who could win a general election. There was agreement between those on the "platform! that the general public is not yet convinced that the present Conservative leader is the right person. However the message of the these facts is that the Labour should replace Brown with someone who can win the next general election but then look for someone else to take the Party forward. The political argument being that while the outcome might be a loss, with change this is not as likely as it will otherwise be.
At heart of the present situation is family and individual finances and the need for people not to feel threatened and feel that their position is advancing. Labour had been good on protecting the most vulnerable but failed with the majority in the middle while the wealthiest got wealthier giving themselves more and more in bonuses which led in turn to take greater and greater risks by loaning money to those with the least ability to pay it back. As with the windfall energy tax system there are longer term risks associated with taking populist measures now, but there was unanimity among the activists and others in the programme audience that something had to done and shown to be effective to tackle the present lack of confidence and justified belief that the present system is unfair. The Prime Minister will need to make the speech of his life this week and even this is unlikely to save him if the by-election is lost. This was a point strongly made by Diane Abbot in the evening political show on Thursday which impressed others on the programme. The underlying issue is the lack of confidence in his ability to regain public support regardless of what they are saying to media and will say at the conference.
Returning to sport the second issue of interest this weekend was whether Durham could progress to winning the county championship. They could only draw against Kent on Saturday while Nottinghamshire leapt ahead with a win to 178 points, Somerset are now second with 170 and Durham third with 168, closely followed by Hampshire with 160 and Lancashire 152, Kent 151 and Sussex 151. The points system is such with 8 maximum bonus and 14 for a win 4 each for a draw that the permutations are endless. If Durham wins at Kent with the maximum bonus points they will have 190 points. If Nottingham can only draw with maximum bonus points they will also have 190 points, but Durham would be champions because of six wins out of 16 games against 5. Somerset are also at home to Lancashire and if they win with maximum bonus will have 192 points and take the championships if Notts only draw. The games commence on Wednesday and I am glad I did not book the trip to Canterbury as there is so much else on and I fear it would have ended in disappointment. With Surrey relegated to division 2 and Middlesex remaining, the possibility also being relegated, the possibility arises of three of the traditionally big four:- Yorks, Lancs, Surrey and Middlesex being in the second division of the championship. How times have changed. If Yorks go down the cause will have been Darren Gough and the approach he took to the 1 day and 20 20 competitions.
I planned to eat a roast chicken dinner later to day in the hope that I would complete writing for Saturday without the usual tiredness after having a lighter lunch of a small dish of pasta with cheese sauce and a banana. However I decided to attend to the plants which requiring cutting out the dead material as well as some watering. Soon I will start to clear containers in preparation of Spring bulb planting, and a glass of red wine and then later the remaining four pieces of anchovy on dry crackers. I am sure those in the Greek labelled tins are not anchovy by small sardines. However the consequence this and the political programme and watching the TV resulted in changing my mind and leaving the football and the Ryder cup for Sundays' writings.
One of the distractions was Strictly Come Dancing. I have been hopeless at ballroom dancing. I have a number of painful memories about my efforts as an adolescent and a young to learn to dance not appreciate the extent of my lack of coordination with together with self consciousness was a great inhibitor. I thrived on the informality of contemporary dance from the rock era onwards. I used to watch the original Come Dancing series and the attempts to maintain the interest of the changing generations, primarily by the females wearing more and more scanty and sexy clothing although the two are not the same. The reincarnation of the programme matching professional dancers with celebrities from sport, acting and TV presentation proved a brilliant idea form the first series with some surprising outcomes, notable Darren Gough and Mark Ramprakash. Sadly the publicity surrounding the show led to the revelation that Mark had a long standing affair and the break up of his marriage of 14 years and family of two daughters. The marriage of Eastenders former star Letitia Dean broke up while she appeared on the show due to differences about wanting a family. Former presenter of the Show Claudia Winkleman separated from her husband because of differences of view about their work commitments, There was also accusation and country accusation between two male and one female professional dancer Flavia Cacace. So there has been a downside to the weekly exposure on peak time family viewing Saturday and Sunday nights.
It is surprising that so many offer to make a fool of themselves when clearly they lack the essentials to progress even with the world class partners and support structure provided by the BBC. The programmes combines a nostalgia for the times when dancing was dancing with the present day fascination with the lives of personalities behind their well known roles to-date.
I also believe that individual and collective team performance has a greater significance than sporting achievement when it demonstrates the power of an individual or group of individuals to overcome adversity by hard work and will power, in addition to natural talent and developed skill.
I believe that as our understanding of the universe increase and the sub atomic particle smashing experiment which has commenced operationally in Switzerland reveals the origin, and deepens our understanding of matter, together with the shift to understanding more about the working of the brain and its control of perception, understanding, memory and sensation, we will come to be able to prove that mind can control matter in ways beyond all present understanding. This will lead to a pantheist understanding of God and a human mind creation of the devil and black magic.
There were good examples of what I mean in the coverage of the four sports of interest over this weekend: Tennis in a Davis cup world qualifier; Cricket in the County Championship involving Durham and the Sunday play off as who will play in the last pro 40 season 2009; Football with Sunderland playing the Boro and Newcastle away to West Ham where the manager also walked away from the club because he no longer had control over which players joined and left to the club; and then the Ryder Cup in gold which Europe has won the last three bi annual encounters, the latter two one side affairs.
There was other TV of interest with the X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing, and Tess of D’Urbervilles, and on Sunday the preliminaries to the Labour Party Conference.
I have recently been hard on young Andy Murray for his lack of commitment to Britain, the concept, borne from his alleged Skittishness and anti Englishness. He may be become able to win one or more of the Grand Slam competitions, France, Australia, USA and Wimbledon and become recognised as the World's Number One, especially as he has youth on side, and without identifying himself as a Britisher and gaining the support and an adulation of the British public in general. He may make a lot of money as a consequence. He may also exhibit national pride and recognition if Scotland becomes an independent nation, but as a Scotsman, especially if his nation gains its independence during he next decade, and which is likely to become even more of a political issues if the forthcoming by-election is won by the Scottish nationalists with a significant majority. But I believe he will regret, as the years pass, and his playing days are over, that he did not attempt to endear himself to the British public as a genuine Britisher. You do not have to be British to achieve recognition and approval of the British public and there is a long line of World Class male Tennis players who achieve this. The most interesting of these, someone who alienated sections of the British media at times, was you must be joking John McEnroe, who has become an elder statesman welcomed each year back to Wimbledon
I became concerned at the attitude of Andy Murray towards the Davis cup contest with Austria he mentioned that he was not 100 percent fit but hoped to be so. I also recognised that while he has become one of the top players in the world the rest of the British team as singles players are second raters, although his brother is a good doubles players with potential.
Having watched parts of his two performances this weekend winning his two singles games, I am prepared to modify my opinion in that he did all that was required and appeared genuinely appreciative of the support given to him by the Wimbledon crowd. It was not his fault that the rest of the team was not up to the task and lost their three matches. One swallow does not make a summer, so we shall wait to see.
Charles Clark is a former Cabinet Minister who held a number of important positions in the Blair Government and now believes there should be a quick resolution of the whether there should be a new Labour Leader, and Prime Minister or not, and John Prescott was Deputy prime Minister throughout the Tony Blair Premiership and is highly regarded by insiders as the man who was pivotal in keeping the Party together and Gordon in the Cabinet rather than open warfare between Blair and Brown over the Premiership. Polly Toynbee is the highly regarded Guardian political writer and all three expressed important and thoughtful comments during an half hour debate in advance of the Labour Party conference this week.
The facts are these. In recent decades no party with one exception has managed to overcome the kind of unpopularity presently experienced by the Labour Party and Gordon Brown personally, with one exception, the Conservative Party in the early 1990's who got rid of their most successful and highly regarded leader, Margaret, now Lady Thatcher, and then went onto win the next election. Since the subsequent loss to Labour they have tried a number of different leaders in the hope of finding one who could win a general election. There was agreement between those on the "platform! that the general public is not yet convinced that the present Conservative leader is the right person. However the message of the these facts is that the Labour should replace Brown with someone who can win the next general election but then look for someone else to take the Party forward. The political argument being that while the outcome might be a loss, with change this is not as likely as it will otherwise be.
At heart of the present situation is family and individual finances and the need for people not to feel threatened and feel that their position is advancing. Labour had been good on protecting the most vulnerable but failed with the majority in the middle while the wealthiest got wealthier giving themselves more and more in bonuses which led in turn to take greater and greater risks by loaning money to those with the least ability to pay it back. As with the windfall energy tax system there are longer term risks associated with taking populist measures now, but there was unanimity among the activists and others in the programme audience that something had to done and shown to be effective to tackle the present lack of confidence and justified belief that the present system is unfair. The Prime Minister will need to make the speech of his life this week and even this is unlikely to save him if the by-election is lost. This was a point strongly made by Diane Abbot in the evening political show on Thursday which impressed others on the programme. The underlying issue is the lack of confidence in his ability to regain public support regardless of what they are saying to media and will say at the conference.
Returning to sport the second issue of interest this weekend was whether Durham could progress to winning the county championship. They could only draw against Kent on Saturday while Nottinghamshire leapt ahead with a win to 178 points, Somerset are now second with 170 and Durham third with 168, closely followed by Hampshire with 160 and Lancashire 152, Kent 151 and Sussex 151. The points system is such with 8 maximum bonus and 14 for a win 4 each for a draw that the permutations are endless. If Durham wins at Kent with the maximum bonus points they will have 190 points. If Nottingham can only draw with maximum bonus points they will also have 190 points, but Durham would be champions because of six wins out of 16 games against 5. Somerset are also at home to Lancashire and if they win with maximum bonus will have 192 points and take the championships if Notts only draw. The games commence on Wednesday and I am glad I did not book the trip to Canterbury as there is so much else on and I fear it would have ended in disappointment. With Surrey relegated to division 2 and Middlesex remaining, the possibility also being relegated, the possibility arises of three of the traditionally big four:- Yorks, Lancs, Surrey and Middlesex being in the second division of the championship. How times have changed. If Yorks go down the cause will have been Darren Gough and the approach he took to the 1 day and 20 20 competitions.
I planned to eat a roast chicken dinner later to day in the hope that I would complete writing for Saturday without the usual tiredness after having a lighter lunch of a small dish of pasta with cheese sauce and a banana. However I decided to attend to the plants which requiring cutting out the dead material as well as some watering. Soon I will start to clear containers in preparation of Spring bulb planting, and a glass of red wine and then later the remaining four pieces of anchovy on dry crackers. I am sure those in the Greek labelled tins are not anchovy by small sardines. However the consequence this and the political programme and watching the TV resulted in changing my mind and leaving the football and the Ryder cup for Sundays' writings.
One of the distractions was Strictly Come Dancing. I have been hopeless at ballroom dancing. I have a number of painful memories about my efforts as an adolescent and a young to learn to dance not appreciate the extent of my lack of coordination with together with self consciousness was a great inhibitor. I thrived on the informality of contemporary dance from the rock era onwards. I used to watch the original Come Dancing series and the attempts to maintain the interest of the changing generations, primarily by the females wearing more and more scanty and sexy clothing although the two are not the same. The reincarnation of the programme matching professional dancers with celebrities from sport, acting and TV presentation proved a brilliant idea form the first series with some surprising outcomes, notable Darren Gough and Mark Ramprakash. Sadly the publicity surrounding the show led to the revelation that Mark had a long standing affair and the break up of his marriage of 14 years and family of two daughters. The marriage of Eastenders former star Letitia Dean broke up while she appeared on the show due to differences about wanting a family. Former presenter of the Show Claudia Winkleman separated from her husband because of differences of view about their work commitments, There was also accusation and country accusation between two male and one female professional dancer Flavia Cacace. So there has been a downside to the weekly exposure on peak time family viewing Saturday and Sunday nights.
It is surprising that so many offer to make a fool of themselves when clearly they lack the essentials to progress even with the world class partners and support structure provided by the BBC. The programmes combines a nostalgia for the times when dancing was dancing with the present day fascination with the lives of personalities behind their well known roles to-date.
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