The Ministry Of Truth

Each December the man who is julesallen puts together a Cultural Review Of The Year, with contributions from friends, acquaintances and hangers-on.  The Director’s Cut of this year’s Ministerial contribution is reproduced below for your delight and amusement.

Written Word

I put together a fine share purchase agreement this summer: does that count?

Stage

I failed to set foot inside a theatre all year.  The theatrical world did not complain.

Cinema/DVD

I don’t think it was a great year for Cinema overall - The Dark Knight, Mamma Mia and Quantum Of Solace all made me pray for death to come - but I enjoyed quite a few DVDs.

The year started well, with me catching up with the brilliant Tell No One and The Lives Of Others on DVD.  Juno deserved its success and I thought Ellen Page’s performance was terrific.  No Country For Old Men was just excellent in every respect.

I really enjoyed 2 Days In Paris and Paris, Je T’aime.  I liked Vantage Point until the final 20 minutes.  Venus made me laugh a lot, as did Stranger Than Fiction and Priceless.  Rendition was a well made movie, notwithstanding the presence of Meryl Streep.  I surprised myself by liking Catch And Release: chick-flick producers take note - cast Kevin Smith in a romcom and even I’ll watch it.

My favourite movie of this year, though, was Lars And The Real Girl.  I only finally saw it on DVD in October but I loved every frame (even, surprisingly, those frames in which Emily Mortimer featured).  Ryan Gosling is one of the five most interesting actors working today and, while I’m automatically well disposed towards any movie that emphasises the importance of society and socialism, this was just a smashing story, well told.

Website

I’ve really enjoyed the writing on Popdose throughout its first year, a collective effort from a network of lovers of popular culture.  Lifehacker continues to feed my inner geek.  One of the many music blogs I visit, The B Side, introduced me to many new pieces of great music and the incredible life story of ‘Sir’ Lattimore Brown.

Above all, though, three websites made the US general election for me: Politico and FiveThirtyEight.com were invaluable resources, while Things Younger Than Republican Presidential Candidate (Oh, And Did I Forget To Mention War Hero?) John McCain was a daily treat that occasionally had me weeping with laughter.

Televisual Entertainment

I’ve all but given up on TV.  If I had my way the Ministerial Residence would no longer have a television: now I’ve finally learnt how to use proxy servers and torrents it’s just a big, irrelevant box in the lounge that used to insult my intelligence.

For lack of anything better to watch over dinner I sat through and quite enjoyed Reaper (E4) and Chuck (Virgin 1) but neither pulled up any trees.

30 Rock was and is immense, though why it’s taken Five so long to show the second series is beyond me.  Fortunately, copyright-bending technology means I’m already onto the third…

The only other thing I’ve gone out of my way to watch is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (More4).  161 editions in 2008 and about 120 of them were laugh-out-loud funny, which is a mighty strike rate.  I suspect Stewart is even more gutted than me that the show is on hiatus when someone threw shoes at Dubya…  It’ll be interesting to see if the producers can keep up the standard when their fella moves into the Oval Office.

I feel I should like Gavin & Stacey, as lots of people I respect rate it very highly.  However, every time I see a clip it leaves me cold.

Sport

For the first time ever I don’t have a single football memory from the year: the game has eaten itself and barely interests me anymore.  Padraig Harrington retaining The Open was great viewing; for a few hours on one Sunday in July, I became a tennis fan - the Wimbledon final was astonishing; it was lovely to see Paula Radcliffe win the New York Marathon, particularly after her insane insistence on completing the Beijing race despite being unable to walk had me in tears at 3am one Sunday; and the last lap of the season’s last Formula 1 grand prix was like something out of Boy’s Own.  (That said, I’m delighted the nonentity of a man that is Lewis Hamilton was beaten to the BBC Sports Personality award by Chris Hoy, who not only deserves it for his brilliant achievements but also seems actually to have a personality.)

Otherwise it’s the Olympics.  Lots of great moments - Michael Phelps, Christine Ohuruogu, Rebecca Adlington (you can take the girl out of Mansfield, but…), the rowers, the sailors, the breathtaking performance of our cyclists (I’ve become a big fan of Victoria Pendleton) - but the stand out was the performances of Usain Bolt.  Sometimes your brain can’t quite comprehend what your eyes are seeing and I had to re-watch his performance in the 100 metres final a few times before I believed it.  Thank God he appears to be clean.

Music

Best Album
Raphael Saadiq – The Way I See It
Mark Ronson has inexplicably built a career and reputation out of slapping some half-hearted horns on a karaoke backing track and claiming that this lends it a Sixties/Seventies Motown/Philly vibe.  Raphael Saadiq (Charlie Wiggins to his friends) shows the preening prinny how it’s done and has produced some blissful tracks that at times stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the output of Holland-Dozier-Holland and Gamble-Huff.  As the beatspermil.com review says:

The Way I See It is a good record to give to your dad, it’s a good record for making love, and it’s a good record for your wedding reception. And it won’t make you want to blow your brains out after you hear it at your fifth high school dance. Because this isn’t just a retro throwback – Raphael Saadiq has out-mastered the masters. Play it for your girlfriend – you’ll get laid.

Very Good Albums
The Killers – Day & Age: shouldn’t work but it does
The Last Shadow Puppets – The Age Of The Understatement: at times sublimely good
Snow Patrol – A Hundred Million Suns: strictly by the numbers but no less listenable for that
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss – Raising Sand: I hope this is a one-off because I’m not comfortable liking anything with which Plant is involved

Good Half-Albums By Those Who Could Have Done Better
Bon Iver – for Emma, forever ago
Neil Diamond – Home Before Dark
Ray LaMontagne – Gossip In The Grain
Ryan Adams & The Cardinals – Cardinology
Adele – 19
Elbow – The Seldom Seen Kid
Kings Of Leon – Only By The Night
Kaiser Chiefs – Off With Their Heads

Partial Returns To Form By Those I’d Long Since Written Off
R.E.M. – Accelerate
The Verve – Forth
Oasis – Dig Out Your Soul

Those Whose Back Catalogues I Have Explored In Depth For The First Time And Greatly Liked
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Chic

A year on and I still can’t decide about Duffy.

I’m going to shoehorn radio into this category.  I love radio but have despaired over the paucity of British commercial radio for years.  While BBC Radio 2 has diversified and widened its scope and - in so doing - become the most popular radio station in the country, commercial radio has responded by constantly narrowing its computer-generated playlists in an attempt to elminate any risk of alienating its core audience without ever attempting to attract new listeners.

Radio 2 plays 750-800 different tracks each week, whereas in the week to 27 September, Capital Radio played just 234 different tracks and repeated them an average of 9.7 times.

When Virgin Radio re-branded as Absolute Radio it bucked this trend.  In its final week as Virgin, it played 500 unique tracks and repeated them an average of 3.5 times.  In its first week as Absolute, it played 732 unique tracks with an average repetition of 2.4; in its second week it played more than 900 unique tracks with an average repetition of 2.  Whether this approach will work remains to be seen, but the station has become much more listenable at least for the time being.  I’m enjoying it while I can.  (Absolute also employs Iain Lee, whose Sunday night phone-in is the funniest thing on the wireless.)

Cultural Highlight

Undoubtedly, the US Presidential election result.  Enough has been written on that subject by far better writers than me (indeed, more than enough has been written previously by me): suffice to say I had a smile on my face on 5 November, 6 November, 7 November, 8 November…

I’ve quite liked how a fun-sounding little “credit crunch” has turned into the most profound failure of free market capitalism in history.  Still, never mind, eh?  We all make mistakes with other people’s money.

In the same vein, it was nice to see a few Chancers getting their comeuppance, even if another dozen filled each gap they left.  For example, Richard Branson’s increasingly tarnished marque was rejected by the people who bought his Megastores and the people who bought the radio station – meaning that he lost two massively lucrative trade mark licence fees in the space of nine months: that should make for interesting reading in the group accounts.  Oh, wait a minute: he doesn’t publish his group accounts, does he…?

Gideon Osborne was exposed by one of his Bullingdon chums as the Chancer he is after his Club Med freebie; the Barclay brothers got the caning they deserved by the serfs of Sark and promptly showed just how much they respect democracy; the twonk who co-founded the Carphone Warehouse eventually learnt that public companies are not private playthings, while that nice Conrad Black chappie is nine short months into a 78-month prison term for failing to learn that lesson himself.

And Jim Beresford and Douglas Smith, partners in the Doncaster-based Beresfords Solicitors, were struck off for ripping off hundreds of invalided ex-miners and their families to the tune of tens of millions of quid.  Shame.  My heart will bleed even more for them when those funds are traced and find their way back to their rightful owners.

Let’s hope 2009 holds a similar fate in store for Satan Cowell.

A late contender for cultural highlight came from Muntadar al-Zeidi who managed to hold Dubya to greater account with a pair of size nines than any of the American legislature, the American judiciary, the American people, the United Nations or the International Court in The Hague.  A marvellous piece of old-fashioned political protest.  I loved the fact that CNN reported it with the explanation: “In Arab culture, throwing shoes at someone… is considered an insult,” as though doing so in Pig’s Knuckle, Arkansas is a sign of affection.

Cultural Nadir

Manuelgate.  Seriously: WTF?

Michel Platini was a heroic player, both at club level with Nancy, St Etienne and Juventus, but in particular at international level where he was France’s talismanic midfielder throughout the 1980s, culminating of course in memorable French performances in Euro ‘84 and Mexico ‘86.

But to many of us who follow French football to some degree, there was a real sense that he went downhill pretty fast after that.  Firstly he seemed to have followed the course of so many other star French sportsmen, which is to open a bunch of restaurants and spend his life eating in them. He had a disastrous spell as manager of the French team, which coincided with that of Graham Taylor with England and had precisely the same level of success at Euro ‘92 and qualifying for USA ‘94.  Then finally as an expert studio pundit for Canal +, where his standoffishness, his arrogance (he only appeared alone with the anchor) and his clear boredom with the job (Lens v Sochaux anyone?) led to a standard of output which was about on a par with Glenn Hoddle, whom he resembles a little bit too closely in numerous other ways (though thankfully not on a superstitious level).

So we had a right to assume that upon his elevation to head of UEFA, we were going to get more of the same dross but with more ego to boot.

I have to say that much as I have found it hard to accept it and difficult to believe, from the beginning of Platini’s tenure, I have had a sneaking suspicion, which has gained in strength in the 18 months he has been on the job, that what he is doing is not only positive, fresh and bold, but also (with some misgivings) fundamentally right.

The main reason it has only been a sneaking suspicion (and one which I have found it difficult to voice) is that Platini has talked himself into being public enemy number one to English football.  He still has some work to do in shooting his mouth off and columnists as illustrious as the Observer’s Paul Wilson is referring to him as ‘increasingly barmy’.  Chief Executive of the Premier League Richard Scudamore can barely conceal his disdain for Platini’s views which he considers simplistic (and in many ways they are).  606 presenter Tim Lovejoy loathes him.

One thing’s for sure, there is a pattern to what Platini says that I find it difficult to contradict:

1) he believes that money is ruining the game, not helping it;

2) he thinks like a fan, not an administrator, but one who understands how football works behind the scenes;

3) he wants to act on racism in football, and

4) crucially, he doesn’t care about whether any of this makes him popular.

The reason for this post is that Andrew Hussey has written an article in the Observer today which I urge you to read as it picks up on the reality, rather than the soundbites alone.  In fact, you’re mostly better off ignoring the soundbites as apart from publicity, they rarely add anything.

Has Platini found his true calling?  And more to the point, can he actually achieve what he wants?

Again, it’s not just me, is it?

Should you actually deign to read this rubbish, you find that the text of the article bears little, if any, resemblance to the headline:

At least 12 top Premier League football stars are secretly gay.

The superstar dozen are even scared to confess their homosexuality to their team-mates.

At a forum to launch an anti-homophobia campaign, pundit and ex-England Under-21 star Paul Elliott, 44, said he knew 12 top current players who were gay.

The ex-Chelsea defender, who advises the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said he would never reveal the names.

Even by the standards of someone like pornographer Richard Desmond, owner of the Daily Star newspaper, this is pathetic.

Two things.

First, I’m getting an iPhone 3G.  And I’m not even paying for it!  Said thing of beauty is to be provided by my employers.  (Of course I’ll probably have to forfeit this year’s remaining annual leave entitlement, but…)

Second, The Moral Bankruptcy Of 21st Century English Football (Part Infinity + 1) and There Are Times It’s Embarrassing To Be A Lawyer (Part Infinity + 2), courtesy of The Guardian’s George Monbiot.

In the past few days, Sheffield Wednesday Football Club has dropped its [libel] cases against some of its fans. I am now allowed to write about the worst example of legal bullying I have ever seen.

The club has had serious problems, on and off the pitch, and many of its fans use an internet forum - owlstalk.co.uk - to discuss them. They make the kind of comments you would expect to find on any talk board, and which would normally be forgotten within 15 minutes. Two and half years ago the club launched its first suit. Only now have the people who posted these comments emerged blinking from the labyrinthine nightmare of English law…

Sheffield Wednesday went to court to demand the names and email addresses of 14 people who had posted comments on owlstalk. Here are some of the comments over which the club complained. “What an embarrassing, pathetic, laughing stock of a football club we’ve become.” “Another day, another blunder. I doubt even Leeds were in such a mess this time last summer, and look what happened to them.” “I am waiting with bated breath to hear who the Chuckle Brothers have signed after their trip to watch players abroad. With the amount of money they have to spend and the wages they can offer the best we can hope for is that little known Transvestitavian International I Sukblodov, who last scored in a brothel.”

Such comments were deemed by Sheffield Wednesday’s lawyers to be “false and seriously defamatory messages” which had caused grievous injury to the delicate flowers who ran the club. (They should try posting an article on the Guardian’s Comment is Free site.) The lawyers threatened “proceedings to include claims for injunctions, damages, interest and legal costs (which could be substantial)”. The judge threw most of the application out, but instructed the forum’s host to reveal the email addresses of four of the posters, whose remarks seem to me to be almost as trivial as those he dismissed. This took place a year ago, and the long shadow of the law hung over the posters until the club’s lawyers dropped the case last week.

Another case dates back to February 2006, when the club sent a warning letter to a fan called Nigel Short. When he received the letter he offered to apologise and to change his comments, but the club rejected this. He was able to fight it only because he found a lawyer - Mark Lewis of George Davies Solicitors in Manchester - who was incensed by this case and was prepared to represent him. “I’ve had two and a half years of worrying I was going to lose my house,” Short tells me. “It’s been hell. If Mark hadn’t done this no win, no fee, I would have been bankrupt by now.”

In November 2007, Short was diagnosed with throat cancer. The case continued. But on Wednesday September 3 he announced that his treatment had been successful. On Friday September 5, the club dropped the case and agreed to pay his costs. It issued a press release which suggested it had done so because of “Mr Short’s medical condition”. I asked the club whether it had abandoned the case because it knew that Short would now live to fight the action. It has refused to answer my questions.

Full case report of the fiasco here.

I dare say if I thought about it long and hard enough I could come up with some pithy pun or other on which to end this post - given my origins it would probably centre around an (entirely justifiable) insult towards natives of South Yorkshire.

As it is, I’ll suffice myself to say that the firm of solicitors instructed by Sheffield Wednesday Football Club, its directors and shareholders in the above matter was Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis, known colloquially as K&L Gates.

Decide for yourself whether you would ever entertain the notion of instructing such a firm.  The Minister will be taking his (admittedly limited) purchasing power elsewhere.

I know I recycle this riff more regularly than anything similar achieved to date by Noel Gallagher, but I’m really not sure English football can sink any lower.

And my anger at the moment is as much towards the fans as towards the self-serving cunts that now seem to own all of the country’s clubs.

If there is hope, it has been alleged, it lies in the proles.

So what did the proles of Newcastle do to demonstrate their anger at, er, their club owner running their club on financially prudent lines?  Did they rise up in solidarity and boycott the club’s next home game, as they said they would?  Did they bollocks.  Over 50,000 spunked £30+ each to watch the visit of Hull City - 3,000 MORE than at their previous home game while the Sainted King Kev was still in charge…

The vast majority of Manchester City’s fans, meanwhile, were all too willing to jump aboard Thaksin Shinawatra’s gravy train 14 months ago despite the man’s reprehensible political record.  Having waved that nasty little man off, with a couple of hundred million quid of beautifully laundered money in his pockets, what did they do?  They donned Arab dress to welcome another billionaire owner who knows nothing about football (you wait 127 years for a billionaire and then two come along at once…) with a questionable record on human rights and had some “comedy” £500 billion notes printed up to wave at Roman Abramovich.

Having just seen the name of the club they profess to love sullied by its association with a morally bankrupt man on the verge of a conviction for tax evasion and corruption, they’ve not only got into bed with another apple pie regime but they’ve lubed themselves up, too.

For the uninitiated, and according to Amnesty International:

The United Arab Emirates retains the death penalty…

In December 2007, the United Arab Emirates abstained in the vote in the General Assembly on resolution 62/149 calling for a moratorium on executions and, on 2 February 2008, it was one of the 58 states that signed a statement of disassociation with the resolution, placing on record their “persistent objection to any attempt to impose a moratorium on the use of the death penalty or its abolition in contravention to existing stipulations under international law”.

In all of the Emirates, except Dubai, flogging sentences are imposed on those caught having “illicit sex”…

Amnesty International has regularly raised with the authorities reports of persons – both Emirati and foreign - arbitrarily arrested and held incommunicado for prolonged periods of time, commonly in undisclosed locations where they may face torture and other ill treatment. Those responsible are usually said to be members of Amn al-Dawla (State Security)…

Other forms torture and other ill treatment documented by Amnesty International have included sleep deprivation, suspension by the wrists or ankles, severe beatings to the soles of the feet, the use of electric shocks to various parts of the body, and threats of sexual violence…

Women in the United Arab Emirates continue to suffer the impact of discriminatory laws and practices which affect most aspects of their life, including marriage and the choice of marriage partner, dissolution of marriage and child custody, and inheritance…

In the course of 2007, the government failed to respond to UN human rights bodies in respect to requests for access and on individual cases raised in 2006…

There are also reports of restrictions on the right to freedom of expression…

Political parties do not exist in the United Arab Emirates; political dissent is not tolerated and those targeted for arrest include Islamists or those critical of the human rights situation in the country.

All but a few of those fans so vocally initially opposed to the Glazers’ takeover of Manchester United seem to have come to terms with their new owners now that another Premier League title and European Cup are in the Old Trafford trophy room.

Liverpool Football Club is being turned into a laughing stock, their new owners having reneged on their pre-purchase pledge not to load the debt financing for the deal onto the club itself and proving themselves incapable (or, more accurately, personally unwilling) to finance the oft-promised new stadium.  A full 1,000 Liverpool fans summoned up the energy to protest at the weekend - after all, the club’s joint top of the table…

Suddenly, Deadly Doug Ellis is beginning to resemble Mohandas Karamchand Ghandi.

So fuck it: I’m out. Mr. Scudamore, Mr. Murdoch, Mr. Abramovich:

I’m not scared:
I’m outta here.

Tricky Dicky Williams waxes lyrical about Croatian manager Slaven Bilic in today’s Guardian:

“Wake up,” he [Bilic] instructed England after last year’s victory at Wembley. “You didn’t lose the game tonight because of the tactics. You didn’t lose because you played one man up front. We were simply a better team.”

He was at his best again yesterday in his hideaway across the border in Slovenia, where he takes the squad before matches in order to remove them from the temptations of Zagreb’s fleshpots. How much, he was asked, has his team improved since they last entertained England almost two years ago?

“Much better, in every possible way,” he said. “We are simply better players, we are better as a team. We’ve had more training sessions. Before that game in Zagreb we’d maybe had 20 or 30 training sessions together. Now we’ve had 150. My players are now two years older. The only guy that doesn’t help is [the 36-year-old] Niko Kovac, but only on paper as he’s playing the best football of his life and will do for another couple of years. All the other guys are no longer 21 but 23, which is important, and we are a better team.”

Bilic’s not entirely unjustified braggadocio aside, perhaps one of the reasons Croatia keep stuffing England is because - by the sounds of it - the Croatian national team trains together 60 times a year.

How many training sessions a year did Sven Gordon take?  Or Second Choice Steve?

And how often does Fabio Capello manage to prise the tarnished remains of the golden generation away from the clutches of the Premier League?

Guus Hiddink took South Korea to a World Cup semi-final in 2002 because he locked the 23 players in a training camp for four entire months before the tournament: they were the best-drilled and most disciplined team in the competition.

Q.

E.

D.

Brian Mawhinney, Brian Barwick, David Triesman: your boys are going to take one Hell of a beating.

1. Max Bygraves is still alive.

2. Mélissa Theuriau has got married and is pregnant (six months, a boy).

Initially on learning this news I resolved to kill either myself or her husband.

Then I discovered she’s married actor and comedian Jamel Debouzze, who was very good in Amélie, and I can therefore just about forgive them both.

Seriously, though, just one more time for the road……

3. No Country For Old Men is really very good indeed.

4. The Dark Knight is really not.

5. They’re making a sort-of-sequel to Streets Of Fire. Holy shit!

6. I am in love. Please allow me to introduce Pilar López de Ayala.

The Minister’s Wife’s biggest disappointment is the Minister’s predictability - cf. #1 on the Minister’s Laminated List for the past 17 years:

7. I hate being so predictable.

8. No matter how vapid, insane and unimaginably pathetic the Republican Party seems, it can always get vapider, insaner and patheticer.

9. No matter how vapid, insane and unimaginably pathetic the Labour Party seems, it can always get vapider, insaner and patheticer.

10. No matter how vapid, insane and unimaginably pathetic the Premier League seems, it can always get vapider, insaner and patheticer.

It’s good to be back.

But enough about me.  How are you?

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.

The normally fairly sensible Dominic Fifield makes one of the most risible ever comments in today’s Guardian football pages:

Abramovich… has been patient in the past, most notably in allowing Claudio Ranieri a season to prove his credentials, but he will be far from happy if this campaign ends trophy-less.

Patience is not sacking a manager four weeks into a season after he’s won you four trophies in three years, including back-to-back league titles.

Patience is not spending over half a billion pounds and employing three managers in four years.  (And he didn’t give Ranieri a season to prove his credentials - he gave him three months, after which he was a dead man walking.)

Patience is doing what Matt Busby, Jock Stein and Bill Shankly did at Manchester United, Celtic and Liverpool - creating scouting networks, developing homegrown young talent and building dynasties that dominated for decades.

Does anybody genuinely believe that Chelsea will survive as one of the “top four” for more than a couple of years after Roman and his wallet do one?

Meanwhile, and on a wholly unrelated topic (but prompted by yesterday’s earthquake that almost caused me to soil the bed) did you know that the theory of plate tectonics is barely older than The Minister, gaining widespread acceptance in geological circles only in the late 1960s?

I don’t profess to understand it at all, but it is something that has “always been there” in my life and taken for granted: there are tectonic plates, the plates move, when they collide earthquakes happen and when they split volcanoes erupt.

If you don’t believe me it’s all on Wikipedia, so it must be true.

To everyone I know, the theory of plate tectonics is a given - it’s the orthodoxy.  To retired geologists, however, it’s probably heresy (or at least it was to them when it emerged).

The topic was discussed on an unusually-interesting recent edition of In Our Time on Radio 4 and it was (apparently) a very controversial theory in the 1960s and initially strongly resisted by the geological establishment: to this day there remains a small rump of geologists who do not subscribe.

I’m not entirely sure of the point I’m trying to make, but I wonder whether we someimtes set too much stall in science as a way of “proving” or “disproving” things that are not necessarily provable.  Little is black or white, after all, and our standards of proof are only based on what we know at any given point in time.

Some people, as Bearded Baby recently pointed out, do not subscribe to the theory of evolution.  I disagree with them because there is - now - a raft of evidence to back the theory up.  But that wasn’t always the case and theories are - and always should be - open to challenge.

That I consider creationists to be borderline certifiable is based only on the prevailing orthodoxy of our times.  Darwinism became the gold standard, but Darwin was initially pilloried for his views.  Who is to say that another Darwin won’t be able convincingly to disprove evolution theory in a few years’ time?

I’m no scientist but I’ll stick with science unless and until something else comes along that makes more sense.  But it can’t be entirely healthy to close one’s mind entirely to scientific development and theoretical discourse.  It’s only because of mavericks swimming against the tide that our species has evolved at all.

Perhaps if our political leaders realised that they wouldn’t be so keen for thoughtcrime to be a legislative reality…

This feels weird.

It’s nine years since Tottenham Hotspur won anything. In 1999, I sat in a St. Albans pub watching Sky Sports with the Minister’s Wife and Domdeplume and felt every agonising minute of a dreadful match against Leicester City. Allan Nielsen’s winning goal - the only one of the game - went in just seconds before the final whistle, and I erupted.

This afternoon I didn’t make it the 50 yards to my local pub. I didn’t even upgrade our Sky subscription so I could watch the match from the comfort of our lounge. I had the Radio Five Live commentary on in the background but I certainly wasn’t glued to events; there was no cheering, booing, shouting, swearing, pacing backwards and forwards, jumping about or celebrating.

I am pleased that the team and the coach have won. I am genuinely delighted that the club captain Ledley King lifted the trophy - it’s hard to remember a player more loyal to the club since David Howells was run out of town by the inept Glenn Hoddle.

Similarly Robbie Keane has worked hard and played well for six years and deserves his medal, while Dimitar Berbatov is the most talented player to wear a Spurs shirt since David Ginola (a member of the 1999 League Cup winning team). Juande Ramos, meanwhile, has done a fantastic job in a very short period of time; without him, this win would not have happened.

But it’s impossible for me to forget that Martin Jol deserves some of the credit - 14 of the 16-strong Spurs squad today were at the club before he was dismissed - and it’s impossible for me to feel that the club’s current directors deserve any success at all, given the manner in which they choose to conduct themselves.

I can’t properly re-engage with Spurs until Enic and Daniel Levy do one. My hope tonight is that - if it means anything (and there have been too many false dawns in my 27-year association with the club for me to have much confidence) - this win might make the club more attractive to potential purchasers so that Levy fucks off back under the rock from which he crawled eight long years ago and takes tools like Damien Comolli with him.

But it’s an excellent result (beating Chelski never feels bad…) and the players and coaching team deserve congratulations. I’ve set the Sky+ box to record ITV’s late-night highlights but gone - for now at least - are the days when a win like this could sustain my good humour for months.