An Angry Rant About The England Football Team

You know how I'm usually the person who calls for restraint and to give managers time? The one who says that managers get to much blame for poor performances? Not this time. Fabio needs to go - ridiculous starting elevens (Heskey up-front next to Rooney... twice. Upson when Carragher was available, Ledley King who clearly wasn't going to last ninety minutes), ridiculous substitutions (WHY was Gareth Barry, a defensive midfielder, still on the pitch when we were two goals down? And then Heskey... for DEFOE? And why the hell was Milner taken off?); ridiculous over-loyalty to players (Rooney and Lampard played every minute of every game, and were pathetic); ridiculous formations (remember Rooney in left midfield in the the USA game?); and to top it all off, ridiculously poor performances from supposedly elite players in the biggest competition they will ever play in.

 I don't care how much it costs, we need to start over - let's get a manager with proven international credentials (Guus Hiddink?) and tell him to start with a blank slate - no-one is an automatic selection any more. We should pick our best player (probably Rooney, although you'd never know it from this tournament) and build the whole team around him - players are only selected based on their ability to help Rooney score goals. Either that, or go with my previous idea of using the team that wins the Championship that year. 

OK, Rant over. No, wait, no it isn't! Have you heard all the England players? They're blaming the no-goal, and saying that the scoreline doesn't reflect the tempo of the game. Why are they being allowed to get away with this? The team played crap, and they LOST BY THREE GOALS, not one! Fabio should be doing a Marcello Lippi and apologising. The scary thing is, Germany weren't even that good - we gifted them at least three of their goals. Argentina could probably have scored seven or eight. It's time to start again. We may not be the best footballing nation on Earth, but we're better than THAT.

A Short Explanation of Why British Politics is Messed Up

So I was speaking to an American friend, who was asking why electoral reform was so important, and what was wrong with the system that we had. I came up with this example as the best way of explaining it:

Imagine you live on a desert island. (Not like the one on Lost - this one doesn't have a make-up department) On the island with you are 99 other people. You decide that, in order to survive, you will need a group of ten people to be in charge, with one of those people further selected to be the Chief. So, you have an election, right? Everyone votes once for their preferred candidate, and the five people with the most votes get to be the ruling council, and the one with the highest vote total gets to be chief. This makes sense to everyone, and is very simple to organise.

The British electoral system is NOTHING like this.

Let us return to our island. Imagine, if you will, that we are having our election once more. Only this time, instead of having 100 inhabitants, there are 1000. So, let us expand our number of representatives to 100. Now, we have a problem - 100 people are unlikely to be able to reach a consensus through discussion alone, and so we introduce a system of voting - if a representative likes an idea, they vote yes, if they don't, they vote no. An idea requires more 'yes' votes than 'no' votes to be passed. The representatives are still voted for by the population, with the 100 people getting the most votes getting to be representatives, and once more, the person who has the highest vote total gets to be Chief.

The British electoral system is A BIT like this.

Once more, back to the island. We still have our thousand voters, our hundred representatives, but now, the people are spread out a bit, and so the representatives are assigned to a specific geographical location. The people who live round the waterhole get to vote for one representative, the people who live on the beach get to vote for one representative, and so on. The Chief is decided by all the representatives getting one vote for who among them they would like to be in charge.

The British electoral system is KIND OF like this.

For the last time, we return to the island. This time, the areas that elect a representative are all different sizes, with the largest comprising five times as many people as the smallest. People who don't subscribe to one of three sets of largely interchangeable sets of values have no chance of becoming representatives. When, inevitably, someone from 'The Big Three' is chosen as a representative, their ability to disagree with the other people who say they hold those values is almost non-existent, reducing them to little more than puppets. The three value sets, despite being broadly similar, are so antagonistic towards one another that any idea proposed by anyone will only be agreed upon if the people who came up with it have more representatives than anyone else, and so are able to force it through. Any discussion is treated more as an opportunity to score points off other people, so much so that the second largest group of representatives has the official title of 'The Opposition'. Oh, and the chief? The leader of the biggest value set gets to be Chief... no matter how many votes he got, regardless of what the population of the island think of him.

The British electoral system is EXACTLY like this.

Except that we don't live on a desert island. It rains. All the time.

Now do you understand why we need electoral reform?

Thank Goodness I'm Never Miked

So this story really bugged me.

Basically, Gordon Brown spoke to a woman briefly on camera, and then got into a car, and got frustrated about his inability to answer the woman's questions succinctly. He made a few remarks, including calling her a 'bigoted woman'. Unbeknownst to him, his microphone was still on, and the Sky news crew decided to broadcast it, and play it to the woman in question.

I'm not going to talk about my views on the Prime Minister, but I promise you that who I'm going to vote for has nothing to do with my opinion on this incident, which put briefly, is this: this was a low-down dirty trick by Sky News that was all about sensationalism and nothing about journalism. The clip should never have been broadcast.

Gordon Brown was having a private conversation about a woman he had met for all of thirty seconds, with close advisors. I work at a High School, and I have said plenty of things about the kids that I work with which, if played to their parents, would cause me to have to do a heap of explaining. Do I always mean them? No. Usually, they're said in the heat of the moment, and there is a reason the conversation is private. Sky News invaded Gordon Brown's privacy, and they should be apologising profusely themselves.

How does playing this clip serve the country's best interests? How does it do anything but cause scandal and gossip about an incident that frankly, doesn't matter. I'm sure David Cameron and Nick Clegg have said things just as bad in private, and I think they should have a right to.

To put it simply, I'm pissed off that this is the level that our newscasters have lowered themselves to. Shame on you, Sky News.

To A Volcano

Nature looked up, and saw,

That we were all taking her just a little bit for granted.

"I've put up with it for years." She said,

"And frankly I've got bored.

"You people need to understand that I placed you here.

I provided you with food.

And water.

I gave you things to build your houses with.

And animals to marvel at.

And all you care about is getting from Place A to Place B as quickly as possible.

I don't know why. I made Place B, you know - it's just as dull as A."

And Nature looked at the planes, belching their way across the sky,

Filling her eyes with smoke,

And staining her new white dress until it was

Quite, quite brown.

And Nature said. "That's enough of that."

So Nature opened her window, and threw out the contents of her chamber pot.

And all the planes were grounded.

In The News This Week...

So just some quick-hit thoughts on this week's news - me and the beloved are off to a wedding in about an hour. This is the last milestone before our wedding, and so we're doing our best not to be in a constant state of freaking out.

For those of you who enjoy schadenfreude (something of a tautology there), our flight back to Edinburgh is smack-bang in the middle of the Newcastle/West Ham match. I couldn't have actually planned it any worse. I'm trying to figure out if wearing my scarf while watching the recording will give them retroactive good fortune. Anyway, on to my thoughts (apologies to Facebook readers if the links don't work - you'll have to check out the original):

Joanna Lumley Saves Gurkhas - Next Week the World!

So this week, Joanna Lumley single-handedly secured the right to settle in Britain for any Gurkha who retired before 1994. I mean, there might have been some lawyers involved at some point, but I'm pretty sure they were just window-dressing. It was clearly dear Joanna who did all the hard work.

It probably had a lot to do with the way they protested, too. One of their signs read "Please do not Discriminate Gurkhas" This tells me that these chaps truly are British - nice and polite. After the protest, they probably all had a nice cup of tea.

Still More MP Insanity

Another day, another hundred ridiculous expenses claims. My fiancee suggested that instead of a second home in London, Parliament should just have a big dorm that all the MPs could stay in when they were in town. I couldn't think of a good enough argument against it. The only potential difficulty is that MPs might actually spend some time in their constituencies, and we'd all realise what useless layabouts they actually are.

Woman Gives Birth to Sextuplets

This story is pretty interesting, not least for the fact that according to the BBC news story, 30 medical staff were involved in the delivery, which took five minutes. How did they all fit around the bed?

Toddler Buys JCB for £8,000 on eBay

Aside from the terrifying fact that a three-year-old is better at using eBay than I am, the really upsetting part of this story is that the parents aren't actually going to buy the digger - poor wee girl. We're hearing more and more stories of children using technology they shouldn't. There is clearly only one possible outcome here.

Grading MPs' Expenses Claims

With all the row over recent expenses claims, it's my belief that people are missing the real point - what's matters is not whether claiming the expenses was justified, but whether or not they got cool stuff with the money. I am perfectly willing to accept an MP claiming £40, 000 on expenses if he spent it on a jet-ski, but £2,000 on carpet cleaning? What a waste.

With this in mind, I have set out to grade the various expenses claims offered by those who seek to represent us.

Alistair Darling - D

£2,339 on 'magnolia carpets'? Really? For that kind of money, you could have at least got an interesting colour. Unless you meant Magnolia as in the movie, in which case it's probably just an uninteresting mishmash of stuff that people pretend to like because it makes them look smarter than they are. Also, if you're going to spend £765 of other people's money on a bed, you could at least do better than Ikea.

Hazel Blears - C

£5,000 on furniture in three months - based on the apparent MP predilection for Ikea furniture, Hazel has probably bought 787 Jeff chairs.

Andy Burnham - B

Not sure how much he claimed for, but he did write a note claiming that a divorce would be imminent if his expenses claim was not processed quickly - probably because he hadn't bought enough chairs.

Paul Murphy - A

Spent £35 on a toilet roll holder. People say that this was an extravagance, but he had to make sure it matched his platinum towel rail.

John Prescott - A

Paid for his toilet seat to be repaired twice in two years. I don't need to add a joke here.

Bob Marshall-Andrews - A

I may have no idea who this guy is, but after he spent £1,300 on an intercom, brass name plaque and other 'entryway adornments', I do know that he has a nice door. By the way, what on Earth are 'entryway adornments'? A sign saying 'You don't have to be unethical to work here, but it helps!'?

John Reid - A+

Spent £29.99 on a 'black glitter toilet seat.' He's not planning to invite John Prescott round any time soon.

David Willets - C

Claimed for £80 to 'change light bulbs in bathroom'. Under this logic I recently claimed for £20 for 'Putting rubbish in the bin'

Douglas Hogg - A+

Spent £2,115 to have a moat cleared. Recently won award for 'Best Conformer to Conservative Party Stereotype'.

Nick Clegg - B

Claims for calls to Colombia and Vietnam may explain Mr Clegg's recent tendency to carry around large quantities of suspicious white powder, and his increased popularity in the Commons.

Chris Huhne - E

Regularly claims for milk, chocolate biscuits and 'fluffy dusters'. How often do you need a new fluffy duster? Either he has a very dusty home, or he is some kind of silicon-based lifeform that enjoys eating dusters. The jury's out on that one.

Sir Menzies Campbell - A+

Spent around £1,500 on a new king-sized bed. Are you taking notes, Alistair Darling?

Can a Bag Really Have A Weight Problem?

I'm currenty speeding from O-Hare airport (which, during my brief stay there, I discovered is named after a famous fighter pilot. Just thought you'd like to know.) onboard a small minibus, which has been christened with the somewhat overdramatic title of 'The Lincolnland Express'. My flight from Minneapolis, where I was staying with my family, was fairly painless. As ever in my travels, it was the eve of the day of travel which provided the excitement. Coming from Edinburgh to Pennsylvania, it manifested itself in lost tickets and my travelling companion locking his bags in an unoccupied flat. The night before I left Camp to head to Minneapolis, somebody got fired, and I got hopelessly lost in the forest. All par for the course, really.

The fiasco this time revolved, of course, around my packing. I arrived in Minneapolis with one bag. My parents had brought another one over with them when they visited my Minneapolis family earlier this summer. Following so far? In addition to this, I had with me a backpack, and my parents brought my laptop with them in another backpack. Actually, come to think of it, there's a satchel packed into one of my suitcases for when I get to Illinois, but mentioning that would just confuse things.

Confused yet? Good. Now, as I was saying, I had my two large bags, and my laptop backpack, which was to bee my carry-on. All other small bags were stowed away in the larger bags. I spent about 20 - 40 minutes packing all my stuff away, which wasn't easy - fitting a year's worth of stuff into two bags can be pretty tricky like that. About 10:00 PM, my aunt pointed out that, even though I was flying domestic, it was probably still a good idea to take my passport. Good point, I thought. I'm ahead of the game, I smiled smugly. I opened my bag, and took out my lockbox. "It's right in here." Unfortunately, the lockbox was locked. Guess where the keys were? Inside my backpack. In the bottom of the bag I'd just packed.

Crap.

So, I unpacked that bag as best I could, scrabbling my way to the bottom of the bag. I pulled out the backpack, and guess what? No keys. Uh-oh. I repacked the entire bag (not an easy feat) and then turned to my carry-on laptop bag. I unzipped the side-pocket, and, of course, there they were. I unlocked my lockbox...and my passport wasn't in there. Great. I started to get the sinking feeling I'd had before, except that last time it had involved lost tickets, and had resulted in a last minute call to two airlines, and a very hectic weekend. I didn't have anything like that time, as at that point I had about eight hours till my flight left. Me being me, of course, I didn't tell anyone that I couldn't find my passport, as I was terrified of looking stupid. With the other prospect being the utter derailment of an entire year of schooling, it was good to see I had my priorities correctly sorted. I proceeded to check through my carry-on multiple times, both my large bags, unpacking and repacking the four or five times, before searching the entire house, all the while striving to 'act casual', so my relatives didn't twig that something was up. Having spent about an hour doing this, I checked my carry-on bag one last time. And there it was - right where I could have sworn I'd looked about twenty times.

DUH!

But the fun doesn't stop there. Oh, no no no no! Because, having finalised everything that was in the bags, I remembered that there was an limit on the weight of my checked baggage. So off we went again, wheeling out the scales, and futilely trying to balance a very large case on what seemed like a very small set of scales. Depending on the scales used, both cases seemed to range from just under the allowed weight of 50 pounds to about twelve pounds over. This prompted a frantic display of packing and repacking, culminating in me abandoning a bag in its entirety, and replacing it with a larger one. After about an hour, we figured both bags were roughly about maybe 50 pounds.

So this morning, my cousin accompanied me into the airport, so that if anything was too heavy, I could load him down with non-essentials to bring me back under the weight limit. We queued up for some time, before finally reaching the check-in desk. I dumped my first bag on the scales, and waited with bated breath...47 pounds! I exhaled loudly. Now for the next one. I groaned as I saw the dial read 52 pounds. I frantically started calculating what I could leave behind. I could get more bodywash in Urbana, right? Nobody needs such a big towel - maybe I could make do with a facecloth till I got a new one. Did I really need that pot of marmite? What about...

My panic-stricken reverie was interrupted by the check-in associate smiling at me, and saying 'Oh that's fine. Two pounds is nothing really."

What? "Are you sure?" I asked, almost as if I wanted to argue with her. (At this stage I'm not entirely sure I didn't - I'd got myself all hyped for an argument, and now she was backing out - who did she think she was?)

"Absolutely. Don't worry about it." I could have kissed her.

I didn't, of course. We are at Threat Level: Orange, after all.

I Know What I Did This Summer...Part the First

So, it's been a while.

Camp is now done. And it was officially awesome.

We finally got to America, after a series of farcical cock-ups. First the airline lost my reservation, then they found it, but couldn't confirm it, and then the check-in lady at Glasgow just gave up and decided to let the people in Heathrow fix it. I had a pretty low opinion of her by this point, but that plummeted after the following conversation:

Me: Could I have my passport back?

Her: I gave it to you.

Me: No, you didn't.

Her: Yes, I did.

Me: I don''t think so. [checks pockets, and asks travelling companions] No, I'm sorry, you definitely still have it.

Her: [v. sarcastically] Oh, well maybe I'll just check under my seat then. [she does so. she finds it] Oh.

Me: Yeah.

I mean, really.

When we got to Heathrow, through a series of more screw-ups, I ended up havinig to completely check-in again, and go back through Security. This could have taken about an hour, but I managed to blag my way into the Speedy Check-In, cutting out 90% of the queue. Nice.

Still, it could have been worse - the lady at Glasgow managed to actually cancel my friend Clare's reservation from Heathrow to Newark.

I think the moral of this story is clear - never, ever fly BMi Baby.

When we finally did get to America, the fun hadn't yet finished. They nearly had to divert us to JFK because of a bomb threat, and then when we finally did land, the man at immigration managed to stamp the wrong visa on my passport. Idiot.

Roger, of course, managed to get himself left at the airport, after forgetting to fill in a form at customs. Using his traditional flukey luck, however, he somehow managed to get picked up by the Camp Director of a different camp, who gave him a lift to the hotel we were staying at, so he arrived before us. Crazy.

Anyway, I have to go to the beach now, so I shall update you on what happened next at a later date. Suffice to say, with me and Roger involved, it was just a little bit farcical.

In A Bit Of An Odd Pickle...

So I thought my mistake was ridiculous.

Well, Roger has raised the bar in madness tonight, challenging me to reach new heights in idiocy.

We're staying in my flat in Edinburgh tonight, as we're flying out of Glasgow tomorrow. Roger has been in Edinburgh for the past couple of days, so he dropped his stuff off at my flat on Friday...or so he thought. It was at this point that everything started to go wrong.

Roger got the wrong flat. I told him we lived in Flat Three, which, logically, he assumed must be on the third floor. He went up to the third floor flat, which is actually number five. At this point, he probably would have realised that he had the wrong flat, and tried the one downstairs. Except that in Edinburgh, Flat 5 is also Flat 3f1, which was what was on the door. So Roger asked if he could leave a bag for Sandy.

At that point you would expect the woman who answered the door to say that she had never heard of Sandy...except that she's foreign, and she thought he said 'Andy', who does live upstairs.

So Roger left the bag upstairs. But that should have been fine, right? Because we could just go up and get it when I got here and we realised the mistake. Except that the people upstairs moved out today, before I got here. So now we have Roger's bag locked upstairs, and we're waiting for a man from Grant Management, who own the flat, to give us the authorisation to call a locksmith to break in.

All very silly. Here's hoping he calls soon.

I Am, Actually, An Idiot

I'm sure this will come as little surprise to most of you.

Quick check on Friday night:

"Passport."

"Check."

"Visa"

"Check"

"Other Visa"

"Check"

"Plane Tickets."

"Uh..."

Yes, that's right, folks, I have lost my plane tickets. How? I have no idea, but I've managed it. We've tipped the house upside down, but to no avail. I talked to a lovely lady at Camp America, who clearly really didn't want to deal with this. She said she would ring me back when she'd sorted it.

One day, I will go on holiday, and not lose something. Not this time, though.

UPDATE: Sorted out an e-ticket. I love Camp America.

The Least Productive Five Hours of My Life

So today I went and got my Visa for going to America.

That sentence makes it all sound easy. Well, actually in fairness, it was pretty easy - in the sense that there was very little effort involved. Which, to put it simply, was the problem.

Let me explain. In order to stay in Ameriqua for longer than thirty days, you must have a visa. Simple enough, right? Except that, as far as I can tell, there seem to be about seventy six different kinds of visa. And those are just the ones I could be bothered to count. They seem to have every eventuality covered, so if you're a 19 year old Jamaican gardener, who's looking to increase his collection of porcelain dolls, they probably have a visa tailored just for you.

I could whinge about the huge numbers of forms you have to fill in, and the ridiculous questions they ask you, (for interest's sake, and to avoid inconvenient rumours, I answered 'No' to the question 'Were you involved with the genocide in Nazi Germany') as well as the bizarre decisions on which forms you have to fill out, (there is a special form that all men, and women from 'Axis of Evil' countries have to fill out, just to check you're not a terrorist. Clearly European women are biologically prevented from being terrorists.) but I'm not going to dwell on those. Instead I'm going to focus on something much more important. How mind-numbingly boring the whole thing is.

So I arrived at the embassy in London at One o' clock. PM. In the afternoon. I was greeted by the same happy security guard who's greeted me every time I've been. (Admittedly only three times, but spread over three years, and all on different days.) He's a stereotypical cheery Londoner, who's quite large, and loves taking the mick out of people's passport photos. I know this, because he does it to everybody. He softens the blow for girls, though, by adding 'you look lovely now' afterwards. I'm sure this would be nice...if you hadn't just heard it said to the eight people ahead of you. Last time I saw him, he was wearing a big puffy jacket that made him look like the Michelin man. I think I'll call him Larry. Next time I see him, I'll ask for his autograph. He probably has photos to sign. I'll tell him he looks lovely now.

Once you get into the embassy, through the requisite security checks, (which always manage to make me feel guilty...even if I've done nothing wrong) you get into the main hall, and are given a number. This number is to be treasured, because it becomes your identity for the next few hours. And by few, I mean many. After about ten minutes, you get called up to a window, where you hand over some forms, tell the nice man what kind of Visa you want, and then go and sit down.

Where you stay....for the next four hours.

The kicker is this, though. You have no idea how long it's going to take to process your application. A computer calls out the numbers, but it seems to be in a totally random order. Everyone's applying for a different kind of visa, as well, so some people take a lot longer to process than others. This means you have to be constantly on the lookout (hearout?) for your number being called. This isn't helped by the computer system displaying what looks like a queue of whose number is going to be called next, but is, in fact absolutely nothing to do with anything. The number 017 stayed at third in the queue for two hours. I know, because I counted.

So anyway, you have these breathless expectation thing going on. So there I was, trying to read my newly-purchased copy of V for Vendetta, (yet another comic I'm going to have to figure out how to pack - curse you Alan Moore!) but every time a number was called starting with 'four hundred and...' I would look up, suddenly hopeful, only to have my hopes dashed. The real depressing point is when they start calling the numbers sixty places after you before yours. That's just soul-destroying.

After about four hours of frantic nothing, you finally get called to your 'interview', which consists of a consular agent making mindless chit-chat while he stamps your forms. This takes about thirty seconds. And that's it. Thirty seconds. I was almost begging him to pull out the difficult questions, the real mind-benders, the ones that would make me die inside. But I didn't. Because I'm not stupid.

So after all that, (and a long wait to sort out delivery of my documents, during which I enjoyed hearing the woman at the desk complain for ten minutes about how she needed a cigarette. Well, I say enjoyed...) I got out of the embassy at half past six in the evening. Which was actually a pretty short visit.

Wow, that was a long post. Well, I'll finish off by saying that not only did I visit the American Embassy, I also ate lunch at Subway, and dinner at McDonalds. I could only be more American if I had a bagel for breakfast.

Actually, I think we might have some around here somewhere...