Much verbosity about nothing
Stressed, busy and self-important, I haven’t much to say for myself at the moment.
I’m delighted Manchester United won the title – they are worthy champions and though I have seen only the sort of highlights offered by MotD2 this season, they have appeared to be the most complete team I’ve seen in England since Liverpool’s record-breaking and championship-winning side of 1978-9. They have been superb going forward but also fantastic at the back, a skill all too often overlooked these days.
It was also magnificently apt that Ryan Giggs should lift the trophy, score the goal that settled the title and equal Bobby Charlton’s club appearance record. Gary Speed might have played more games, Alan Shearer might have scored more goals, but it’s unquestionable that Giggs has been the most influential player in the history of the Premiership (and we all know English football only began in August 1992).
Even the most unlikely records fall eventually, but it’s hard to imagine any other player will win 10 league titles in his career, never mind 10 titles with one club. In a sport where even the most insignficant event is hyped to the skies, Ryan Giggs is a genuine legend.
The one thing the Liverpool team of 1978-9 didn’t do was win the European Cup – despite being European champions for the past two seasons, they were knocked out in the very first round of the competition, by the reigning English champions and eventual cup winners Nottingham Forest in the only all-English tie in the competition prior to it being opened up to losers, also-rans and teams finishing in mid-table. While some will disagree, I for one hope that United’s imminent trip to Moscow results in a better outcome.
The Minister’s Wife and I have just finished watching the DVD box set of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip. It more than withstands a second viewing. I remain awestruck that NBC wouldn’t give it a second series. It was too often self-referential and smug – but it was also written, acted and directed with uniform excellence.
I know some feel that the series was let down by the perceived lack of quality of the sketches on the show-within-the-show but, on a second viewing, the sketches echo what I have seen of Saturday Night Live – 40% are lost in cultural translation (Nancy Grace may be a worthy comedic target but she’s unknown in the UK), 40% are imbued with appallingly puerile, frat house humour and 20% are very good and very funny. On those rare occasions that it has been shown in the UK, SNL has been served up in an edited version, exclusively presenting the 20% of sketches worth repeating. More than once I’ve sat through SNL live and barely smiled, let alone laughed.
That issue aside, it was a great show and I’m depressed to have reached the end of its particular line.
Aaron Sorkin might help his cause if he didn’t insist on trying to prove twice in every line of dialogue that he’s the cleverest boy in the class but he’s undeniably an excellent storyteller. As a damning indictment of standards in television, it’s hard to believe a series this good can be canned after just a few months when Big Brother is still going strong after almost a decade and Simon Cowell is worth a gazilion pounds.
I’m also staggeringly depressed having reached the conclusion that – short of a catastrophic unforeseen event – Posh Boy Dave is entirely likely to win the next election. This increasingly limp and inept Labour administration is out of steam, out of ideas and out of touch. While, to paraphrase Polly Toynbee, many people held their noses and voted again for Labour in 2005, the party will – entirely rightly – not be given any further benefit of the doubt. Governments are rarely popular in mid-term but true decomposition seems to have set in – this is no blip.
Though Brown is making an even bigger hash of things than anyone thought possible (and I will hold my hands up and admit to an error on this point: I concede that he is woefully underperforming even my lowest expectations), it’s impossible to forgive self-created dramas such as the risibly self-defeating fights he is picking on matters such as cannabis and indefinite detention. If the country really wanted Paul Dacre as its leader The Daily Mail would sell five times the number of copies it actually does.
While Gordon Brown increasingly resembles 1995 vintage John Major, helplessly swept along by events and “in office but not in power”, my biggest opprobrium remains reserved for Tony Blair. 1997 will go down as the biggest missed opportunity in post-war British political history and one of the opportunities he most spectacularly blew was the overhaul of the national electoral system.
Despite having conceded the principle of proportionality for elections to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, Stormont, the Mayoralty of London and the Greater London Authority, Blair was apparently so arrogant as to believe that his party would never and could never get itself again into the same sort of national mess it created for itself in the early 1980s.
Despite last month’s electoral humiliations, one statistic holds true: even at his most popular and with his opponent at his weakest point, PBD only got 44% of the national vote. That Bloody Woman never got more than 43% of the vote at a General Election.
If the Westminster chamber was elected proportionally, it would be almost impossible for the Tories to sustain a majority of seats without forging a coalition that – short of a massive upswing in the BNP’s electoral fortunes – could only moderate their socially divisive extremism. There remains in the UK electorate a natural majority in favour of at least a form of “social democracy”.
If Blair had thought to look beyond the end of his nose, he could have pushed to wipe out the Tories as an electoral force at the time that party was tearing itself apart and making itself absolutely unelectable with leaders such as Iain Duncan-Smith and Michael Howard.
Instead, Tony Blair was a selfish, self-serving coward with all the foresight of a slug. I only hope he gets what is coming to him in his attempt to become the first President of the European Union.