Well, what do I call it: Alma Mater, Borstal, Personal Prison, Privileged Background (as in Key to Lifelong Success In Life) take your pick, none is appropriate

Earlier tonight I replied to a correspondent whom I should like to call a friend but can’t really as I have never actually met him. He had emailed to point out that he was somewhat puzzled by an aspect of a previous entry. Well, I don’t really want to go into that entry as in my reply I was more candid than I can be here. But I should like to mention one of the things he and I have in common is that we both went to the same school. It was (fanfare, please) the Oratory School which now likes - spuriously - to style itself the ‘Catholic Eton’, but that tells you nothing more than that even boarding schools are now resorting to marketing men who will come up with any kind of bullshit to pull in the custom.

Apparently, Cardinal Newman, who founded the school in Edgbaston, Birmingham, hoped he could start and run a school which was as good as Eton, but that is a long, long way off actually being a ‘Catholic Eton‘, and when I was there, from 1963 to 1968, it seemed to me to have more in common with Dotheboys Hall, than Eton. (And by the way, given that Eton has something like 1,000 pupils, what exactly is so special about being an ‘old Etonian’? There must be several million of them by now which rather dents any claim to exclusivity. Just a thought.)
The OS, as we referred to the school when I was there, has undoubtedly improved in the intervening years, but then it had to. It was generally accepted that if your son was too thick to get into one of the other ‘leading’ RC public schools - Stoneyhurst, Ampleforth or Downside - you tried your luck at the Oratory, which always needed the dosh and would take virtually anyone, especially the rejects.

I don‘t know where all the money was going, apart from ‘missing’, but it was a very hand-to-mouth existence if I recall. The food was between bloody awful and almost inedible, the heating - what there was of it - was turned on on November the 1 and turned off again on March 31, whether or not it was cold - and it usually was -, there was hardly any hot water and we were still ‘beaten’.
Some wiseacre or other once observed, and it has become some kind of wisdom, that living in such conditions ‘develops character‘. No, it doesn’t. And the claim is only made to defend the utterly indefensible. We had the usual gamut of characters, from a second master called ‘Dr’ Williams, a Welshman who claimed to have played rugby for Wales and cricket for Glamorgan, but had done nothing of the kind, as was easily established by my housemaster (Fitzalan), a Tony Tinkel, and the other housemasters. Then they found a correspondence course in economics in the boot of his car - he ‘taught‘economics - and realised he was just keeping one step ahead of the class. They confronted him with all his bullshit - I got all this from Tony Tinkel himself - and that was it: he was off.

Another character was some bogus major who turned up every Tuesday to run the school CCF (I think it stands for Combined Cadet Force) and who suddenly disappeared with as much petty cash as he could lay his hands. Other masters were a Mr Cornwell, who taught Latin and seemed as batty as a fruitcake, a maths teacher who was barely over 5ft tall - or was it barely under 5ft tall? - and who was teased incessantly, so much so that several years after I left he topped himself (though there might have been other problems, too, I don‘t know). There were some good teachers - I particularly enjoyed chemistry taught by Tony Mallet - and liked Mr McCowan, who taught us physics. It wasn’t all Decline And Fall stuff.

The headmaster for my first four years was a Dom Adrian Morey, who was also housemaster of Junior House, which was a mile away and to which all first-year boys belonged, and Christ could he beat hard. It was his practice in the summer to take all the Junior House boys swimming after supper and on our way to Junior House, and we all had to swim nude. And with the best will in the world I cannot give an innocent explanation for that. But this was 50 years ago.

The chaplain, a Father Norman Millard, also apparently had sex with some of the boys, but I only found out later. I think he was eventually defrocked, but I can‘t be certain on that. Yes, some got a good education there - the outgoing Lord Chief Justice was at the OS a few years before me, and Edward Leigh, MP for Higher Loamshire or somewhere, was in the year below me. But don’t believe anyone who insists that having had a ‘public school education’ ‘gives you an unfair advantage’. It does nothing of the kind. The best you can hope for is to be a little more nicely spoken, but even that is now going by the board.

Anyway, The Bat, a Lancashire lass born and bred is proof that anyone can sound ‘posh’ and have airs and graces if they want to and try hard enough. I ran away three times in my first term, but it wasn’t difficult as we only lived eight miles away. Then my brother and I were day boys for the rest of the year and the following year (which was a pain, because lessons didn’t end until 7pm - there were only about six day boys, but around 250 boarders - and we even had to go to school on Saturdays, though as we did prep (homework) at school there was none of that at home. But then my father was posted to Paris and I became a boarder. I was dreading it, but as it turned out it wasn’t too bad - awful food, cold water and no heating notwithstanding - and I had quite a laugh, though admittedly an education is supposed to consist of something just a little more than ‘having quite a laugh’.

Everyone - everyone! - in my year became a prefect of some kind - house or school - in their fourth or fifth year, but I wasn’t considered responsible enough. But that didn’t bother me: I got three A-levels at the end of my fourth year, but returned for a fifth year to ‘improve’ them (I didn’t), but being the only guy at school in my fifth year with A-levels (there were quite a few thickos in my year who hadn’t been farmed out to work in some estate agent’s office who had failed their A-levels and returned for a fifth year to try to bloody get some), I invented ‘sixth-form privileges’, and it never occurred to anyone to call my bluff. So I would swan around having hijacked all the prefect’s privileges - leaving your jacket undone and using stairs and corridors forbidden to others - with none of the responsibilities. Not bad. Perhaps the other chap who went there and reads this would like to comment and possibly put right some of the bollocks I have undoubtedly talked and even add a few reminiscences of his own. Any chance, Barry?

If you are desperate to find out more about the Oratory, here is it’s Wikipedia entry. My advice is to reject half of what is written there out-of-hand and treat the rest with a large pinch of salt. In fact that would be true of any claims made by any public school as well as more or less everything which appears in Wikipedia. More about the OS (from me) on request.

Las Albadas Day 6,729 - In which rural Spain in high summer gives the Antarctic a run for its money. And my splendid literary career starts here: meet Morag McTwee

NB (Written May 31, 2014) Given some concerns expressed to me about the contents of a previous version of this entry, I would very much like to point out that the extraordinary weather I experienced, described below, was wholly exceptional and unusual for the time of year. That, you will gather, is why I described it in the first place. So please don’t be put off visiting Albados, Els Ibarsos, or anyone or anything else connected with those two places. I thought the concerns were wholly valid and accordingly I re-wrote the piece to, I hope, allay those concerns and get rid of any part of it which might, perhaps, have been distressing. I thank you.

This is ridiculous. I’ve just driven four miles back from Els Ibarsos to get in a little shopping and happened to notice on the in-car outside temperature thermometer (aren’t modern cars marvellous, no wonder a new one costs a bloody fortune - you’ll gather that I have never owned, let alone bought, a new car) that it was a wonderful, holiday-making, reassuring bloody 8.5c. And this over halfway through May, with just one month to go till mid-summer when the ‘days get shorter’. Heavens be praised, when I got back here to Seth’s, the temperature was higher - 9c - according to the fabulous in-car outside thermometer. However, I am assured weather such as this is a once in a century occurrence.

. . .

A not very well-kept secret is that I have literary pretensions and intend to try my hand at fiction writing once I can no longer have to earn my crust through honest work and am reduced to existing on the pitiful amount the state will pay me by way of a pension. All things being equal (i.e. if I am not shown the door earlier by Lord Rothermere and his henchmen) that will be from November 21, 2014. Why not do it now, you delusional phoney? I hear some of you ask. Well, the answer is quite simple: that kind of thing needs time and application, and scooting between London and Cornwall, four days in The Smoke and three day ‘down in the country’ (I think that’s what some people call it, though for the record: I go up to London and return to Cornwall, not the other way around) affords neither the time nor the application necessary to do the kind of thing I intend doing properly.

I have in the past written two novels, one of which, in hindsight, was bollocks, the other, however ‘good’ or ‘bad’ it is, I am reasonably proud of (even if to date no one has actually ‘got it’). The one lesson I have learnt producing those two, a crucial lesson, is that writing is a full-time occupation. Writing each, even the bad one, I treated as ‘work’, regularly sitting down to write in six-hour stints. Others might be able to do that kind of thing in ‘creative’ bursts, but I can’t. I have to treat it as a task, as work to be taken seriously. And you have to be completely ruthless in saying: right, that’s it, leave me completely alone for six/seven hours. And that isn’t possible at the moment.

Naturally, I will look like a complete tit if, when I do retire, I do absolutely bugger all despite noble intentions but at least I shall not make - or even be able to make - lame excuses. Incidentally, one of the reasons I write this blog is simply because I like writing. In my case it’s a substitute for talking, yapping, call it what you will. For many years, from about 1980 until 1995, I kept what is conventionally called ‘a diary’, but it wasn’t a diary at all, more something like this (except for a few years of highly personal stuff when I split from a girl I’d been going out with and immediately regretted it. Trouble was, she didn’t).

I started it after reading East Of Eden by John Steinbeck and in the introduction he described (if I remember correctly) that for a while he suffered a form of writer’s block and that his editor or agent, I don’t remember which, gave him a hardback A4 lined ledger and suggested that at the start of each day he should spend a little time writing on a left-hand page by way of limbering up and then proceed to write his novel on the right-hand page. Ah ha, I thought for a writer (as, delusionally, I thought of myself) who doesn’t yet write, that might be a way in.

It wasn’t, of course, or wasn’t for quite some time, but do now have, tucked away somewhere (in Guy’s house next to Paddy’s in St Breward) about 10 or 12 A4 ledgers full of my scibble and scribblings. To date I haven’t attempted to read any of them which means that they never will be read by anyone). Which is all a very long-winded way of introducing you to Morag McTwee. The link is that The Bat could well be a good model for Morag.

Here’s a thing: every week The Doctor saves the world in 45 minutes. No more, no less. Marvellous. And whatever happened to Norries?

Here’s a paradox: when you’re 10, 12, 13 or 15, you watch Doctor Who and it all makes perfect sense. Well, he’s a clever one! you think. Then you don’t watch it for many years - school, college, trying to hustle women into bed and, occasionally, work all get in the way - until a little later in life you start watching it again. And that’s what I did and still do (when I can) with my daughter who is now 16, 17 in August, and my son who is 13, 14 in May.

When they were younger we had a routine on Saturday nights: have supper, then settle down in front of the TV at about 6.30/6.45 to watch ‘the Doctor’ get out of another seemingly impossible situation (he always does, you know). If I were a spy, or an explorer or anything like that, the kind of chap who quite often finds himself in sticky situations, I would most certainly make sure I had a television scriptwriter team, because these guys and gals are incredible: they always find a way out. It’s a mystery to me why the Foreign Office has seconded several of the brightest of them finally to sort out the Israel/Palestine situation or how things can end peacefully in Syria. Anyway, Saturday night was the same, except that my daughter had gone shopping in Truro with the Girl Guides - she’s aiming at her Shopping Badge - and then had to be collected from Bodmin Parkway to be taken straight to her part-time job at the Kings Head in St Kew Highway where she earns a little on the side - actually, rather a lot on the side - as a waitress cum barmaid cum washer-upper cum whatever else they ask her to do.

So she wasn’t there. But I sat down at whenever last Saturday to watch the latest Doctor Who episode and my son sat behind me, ostensibly in front of the computer because he ‘wasn’t interested in watching Doctor Who’. Soon, however, I felt his feet settle on the arm of the sofa behind me and he was as engrossed as I was. I must be honest, but I doubt I would watch on my own, and watching it with young Elsie and young Wesley is not just part of what I like, it’s pretty much the reason for doing it. Anyway, we watched it together.

This week the episode featured, naturally, the Doctor and his new assistant (played by Jenna Louise Coleman, my favourite by far so far and were this not a family blog but one which is, for a change getting a family entry, I would record as unequivocally as possible just how much I should like to give her one, or, being the very definition of a modern man, how much I should enjoy her giving me one. I’ll admit, Freema Agyeman came close, but for me she didn’t convey the raw ‘shag me and shag me now’ desirability of young Jenna Louise.) There were also three black guys, kind of interstellar scrap metal merchants, and - well, it’s funny: I’m not the world’s most obvious liberal, but it still warms the cockles of my heart to see black actors on TV in roles in which they are simply characters not ‘black’ characters. Maybe I’ll explain that in another blog.

Tonight they were just that. Being ‘black’ had fuck all to do with it. Zombies, or what appeared to be zombies, turned up aboard the Tardis - at first there was just one, then a whole gang of them, and were, in fact - I think - the black characters and Jenna Louise - swoon - ‘in the future’ who were burned to a crisp but then, in fact, weren’t at all because the Doctor had ‘turned back time’(he’s a card, that Doctor, and make no mistake, guv). Anyway, it was all sorted within 45 minutes - does the Doctor know he as only 45 minutes to save it all? So Wez and I watch the episode, and at the end of it I turned to Wez and admitted that I didn’t have a bloody clue what was going on and how it was all resolved.

Wez, though, was right on the ball and managed to convey quite succinctly and without being nasty, as only young teens can convey quite succinctly without actually being nasty to us elderly folk just how bloody stupid and slow on the uptake I was. ‘It’s obvious,’ he snorted, and if he didn’t actually snort, he might well have done. Well, obvious to some. Tomorrow, I might get him to explain to me - and even resolve, because I still don’t think it’s been yet done - the Schleswig Holstein Question, because that, too, has me baffled, but I’m pretty sure it’s already pretty obvious to him. All we need is for the Tardis to materialise just outside Lübeck and the Doctor to become firm friends with Bismarck and that’s Syria sorted.

. . .

It would be difficult, not to say odd, to try to explain how I reached this last thought but here’s my question: how many of you know someone called ‘Norrie’? To be fair anyone who had tuned in from the U.S., Russia, Canada, The Emirates, China or other place not yet touched the genius of British imperialism gets a pass. It would not surprise me if you didn’t know what the hell I’m talkng about (quite possibly, not for the first time, either). But folk here in England, Wales, Ireland and - natch - Scotland do not. And to that I shall add anyone tuning in from Canada, New Zealand or that island just to the west of New Zealand (I think it’s called Australia): if you don’t know anyone called ‘Norrie’, or don’t even have a clue about what I’m talking about, your are officially banned from this blog. ‘Norrie’ is a Scottish short form for Norman (as far as I know. Perhaps it’s also a short form on Tyneside and the far North West. But for some reason I find it quite evocative. I personally have only ever once come across someone called Norrie.

He was one of the other guys (of five of us, and I had by far the worst room) who shared a house in Gosforth, Newcastle (pronounced ‘Gossforth’). This was in 1978 when I was working as a reporter for the Journal in Newcastle. Norrie was, if I recall, a salesman/trainee executive for a paint manufacturer, but as that last seems so unlikely, not to say almost gratuitous, I’m quite prepared to accept that I’m quite wrong and won’t in the slightest be offended if you say so. The house was owned by I can’t remember who, but she had, apparently, taken a shine to me, because around Christmas 1978 she returned in high spirits - i.e. three sheets to the wind - from a works Christmas party, came into my room and got quite amorous. A shag was on if I had wanted it, but I didn’t want it, at least not with her. She didn’t take it well. Anyway, that was the first Norrie I’ve personally come across.

Another was the uncle of a former flatmate of mine. His name was Norrie Drummond, and the flatmate was Alan Drummond. Norrie was a young music journalist in the Sixties, but then, by the late Seventies, early Eighties discovered that his bird had flown. He was, according to Alan, a raging woofter (I’ve drunk a little too much port while composing these, my latest words of wisdom to be in any position to pay much attention to our modern politically correct niceties, so all I can do is apologise to raging woofters worldwide if I have offended you). But while he was working (for the South Wales Argus, as I was) in the late Seventies, he was living with a woman, who according to Alan was a dyke (and please accept a similar apology - see above). They were, it would seem, each other’s beards, and in those days, sadly, you still needed a beard. I can’t actually substantiate the claim, although when Norrie once rang and ask for Alan, he was not only very pissed but did sound very camp.

. . .

You’ll find 800 odd words here as I ramble on about why those who want to ‘get rid of politicians’ and ‘get rid of bankers’ aren’t playing with a full deck. How about ‘getting rid of time’? I’ve decided to run two blogs as the same time, but can’t yet work out how to label them.

Germany’s ditch-the-euro Afd more popular than God! Scores 113pc in global survey! Watch out Angela! And the Government finally takes action on the growing epidemic of self-importance

The trouble with surveys is that at one and the same time they can be enormously misleading, highly informative, hugely subjective and generally a jack-of-all trades in that their results can be used in all kinds of ways. If I conducted a survey and found that of 1,000 people who responded a massive 76 per cent of them were in favour of toast being available on the NHS, I might well go ahead and claim: ‘More than three-quarters of all Brits want your GP to make you breakfast’. That would most certainly strike us all as complete nonsense, although, interestingly, if there were a faint - very, very faint, about one in a trillion trillion trillion - chance of that statement, in fact, being true, basing that claim on the results of my survey would still be bollocks, for a great many reasons. The only legitimate conclusion one can draw from the results of my survey is that of 1,000 people questioned by me, 760 were in favour of toast being available, which tells you nothing very much except that 1,000 people were feeling exceptionally bored when I approached the with my clipboard.

Faced with such a bizarre statistic (‘Never in the history of surveys has toast been more popular. World In Action finds out why’) sceptics would most certainly ask all sorts of questions: how were those surveyed chosen? Do they have a vested interest in the making of toast (father’s a baker/mother sells toasters)? Were they drunk at the time? Were they all Brits? How many people approached over and beyond the 1,000 who responded told me (who was conducting the survey) to fuck off and stop wasting their time? There are endless questions, and if you really are interested in the science, practice and protocol of when, where, how and why to conduct surveys, what different kind of surveys can be conducted, for what purpose and what can be done with results thus obtained this blog really isn’t for you.

I’ve been rattling on about surveys and what a load of cack their results can be if we don’t handle them with extreme care because I’ve come across a survey conducted in Germany which makes interesting reading (if you are interested in the things that interest me, that is - when, at work, we get letters from readers who begin by telling us ‘Reading about so and so, I was reminded of an amusing incident that happened...’ you can be absolutely bloody certain that there is nothing at all in what follows that will tickle the funny bone of any reasonably sane man or women in the slightest). It appeared in the Bild, usually trailed as ‘Germany’s Sun’, but, in fact, modeled by its original publisher Axel Springer on what was then the Daily Mirror long before the Sun started up. But calling it ‘Germany’s Sun’ will give you a fair idea of who its readership are. (And Bild is a broadsheet, by the way, not a tabloid, and oddly it works rather well.)

What Bild did was to mimic a general election - one is due in Germany this September - in view of the founding of a new ‘political party’ (though I like to think of it - and, whatever they say, UKIP - as pressure groups). That party is Alternative Für Deutschland, which, broadly, wants an end

Bloody hell! Now look at the kind of thing that’s appearing from nowhere!
put to all the German taxpayer-funded bailouts for the Med countries (they have started calling them Rotweinländer - red wine countries) and for Germany to return to the D Mark. It is still, however, in favour of Germany remaining in the EU and would even countenance a small eurozone made up of ‘more responsible’ countries. Phonelines were opened at 8am and closed at 6pm and readers were asked to phone in an register who they would vote for if there were a general election.

Here are the results:

• Union (CDU/CSU): 42pc

• Alternative für Deutschland (AfD): 19pc

• SPD: 17pc

• Bündnis 90/Die Grünen: 7pc

• FDP: 6pc (Incidentally, the FDP - more or less the Lib Dems in trendier specs - almost always - like the Lib Dems - do badly both in surveys and at elections and it is always touch and go as to whether they will cross the 5pc threshold. They always do, of course, because the Germans can be quite kind and like to help a man when he’s down)

• Die Linke: 5pc (generally communists who can’t or don’t want to call themselves communists/spotty students who can’t get a shag)

• Eine andere Partei (Sonstige): 2pc (any other party - Ostfriesenwitz Gemeinschaft/Freibier Gesellen/Die Klo Partei, that kind of thing)

• Piratenpartei: 2pc (The previous disaffected lot, now superseded by the Afd)

A previous survey had established the the AfD was likely cross the 5pc threshold necessary to win seats in parliament, but Bild’s 19pc for the party - 2pc more than for the SPD, broadly Germany’s Labour Party, is of a different order entirely.

So my first caveats: that 19pc is strictly of all those Bild readers who could be bothered to ring in to take part. So, for example, it does not include those who might have thought the whole exercise something of a gimmick and so did not take part (an obvious point, of course, but still worth explicitly making). Then it would be worth knowing the political and cultural views of those who responded, which, of course, we can’t and don’t. That, too, is relevant. If in a survey of Wogs Out! members a whopping 89pc were in favour of everyone who was not of the purest white skin tones being kicked out of Britain, we wouldn’t be at all surprised and the only worthwhile question to ask is: why were 11pc not in favour? But the survey would tell us absolutely nothing about the general attitude in Britain to immigration over the past 100 years. I don’t mean to get hoity-toity about Bild, but you are unlikely to find its readers discussing the finer points of psephology of a night in the pub.

Is there anything Bild’s survey can tell us. Well, to state the bleeding obvious, more of those readers to took part (see above) say they would vote for the ‘let’s leave the euro’ Afd than would vote for the ‘let’s keep the euro’ Opposition SPD. One might venture to suggest that a head of steam is most certainly building up in Germany over the taxpayer funded bailing out of the red wine countries, but, well, it really is difficult to quantify.

The only sensible observation is the one our politicians always make when they do badly in an opinion poll: ‘Look, as far as I’m concerned the only poll that matters is the one of our electorate on polling day’. Afd is thought to draw its support from across the board, and it is fair to assume that all three main parties - actually, in Germany, it should now be all four as Die Grünen do quite well these days - would see some of their supporters deserting them and expressing their anti-euro frustrations. If more established pollsters come up with results suggesting that AfD support is growing, the most likely effect would be for the CDU/CSU, the SDP and the FDP to consider amending their euro policies accordingly. Whether they would do so, of course, is another matter entirely. Because for all their efficiency, the Germans do have the occasional blind spot.

. . .

The Home Office was in touch late last night and has asked me to perform a public service. And I agreed. It seems there has been some concern in recent months that one John Ward aka The Slog and a self-styled debunker of more or less everything which takes his fancy is in danger of becoming far too self-important. ‘Self-importance’ (which doctors know as loquens bolloccitis) is not, in itself, dangerous and is quite a common affliction. Extreme cases, however, can cause concern

and might need treatment. Symptoms of this condition include a puffed-up chest, a bigger head than normal, a degree of paranoia (which can vary in intensity) and a pronounced choleric temperament, although sufferers are not usually violent. Those afflicted also tend to surround themselves with mirrors and also talk a lot about ‘their sources’, which research has shown are largely delusional.

Knowing my slight acquaintance with Mr Ward and that of late I have had dealings with him, and that I regularly publish a blog on the net, the Home Office has asked me whether I would, on its behalf, agree to carry regular bulletins on the state of Mr Ward’s condition and his blog. I am, of course, only to glad to do so, and if there’s a knighthood in it for me at the end of the day, so much the better.

So I shall do my best to keep an eye on Mr Ward and his witterings on his blog and keep you all posted.

Don't ever think you're clever, ever. Ever.

I don’t think I have self-esteem problems (but nor am I, I hope, conceited) but one ‘moral’ lesson I have tried to teach my children is that ‘there’s always someone cleverer than you. Always’. Others are that ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch’ i.e. you get nowt for nowt, ‘if it sounds too good to be true, you can bet your bottom dollar it is’ and ‘try to keep an open mind’. I know full well that it’s futile and that, like me, they will learn their lessons the hard way, but every parent likes to protect his ‘young ones’ as long as possible, not realising that they are a lot older in many ways than we think.

The lessons above I told them when they really were still young: I always prefaced it by saying that they might not yet know what the bloody hell I was talking about but to remember it anyway. Perhaps it is only me who seems to bump into people who are by far cleverer than me, but these days I try to anticipate and mitigate any disadvantage by trying never to underestimate anyone.

For example, years ago I lived in Milan for five months and one day, while leaving the (I think Loretto) underground station - the system only had two lines in 1973, now it has four - I spotted a small crowd near an exit. I went to see what was going on and found it was the old three-card trick, sometimes the three thimble trick. In this case the chap doing it had three small pieces of wood, one with a stamp on the underside and each had a rubber band around it. I watched for a while.

At one point one guy shouted ‘stop’ (in Italian, of course) and then took my hand and planted it firmly on the piece of wood he reckoned had the stamp on it so that it could not be changed. Then he went through his pockets and bet something like 20,000 lire (which was around £20 I think.) And - of course - he won. And - of course, as I was supposed to by being psychologically involved in it all by having my hand clamped down on the ‘winning’ piece of wood, I thought I could win, too.

I had noticed that the the rubber band around the piece of wood with the stamp on its underside was crooked, whereas the rubber bands on the other two pieces of wood were straight. ‘Easy,’ I thought in the way complete fools think, ‘I’ve sussed it. I don’t have to even try to follow the chap as he shuffles the pieces of wood around to keep an eye on the one with the stamp. All I have to do,’ I thought in that way complete fools think, ‘is look shout stop and then look for the piece of wood on which the rubber band is crooked. And that will be the one.’ Immensely pleased with my cleverness I let the chap shuffle the pieces of wood around, paying no attention at all to which might be the one with the stamp. Then I shouted ‘stop’. And then he said ‘OK, give us your money’.

By the way he said it, the contempt in his voice that another sucker had been hooked, told me that I was just another sucker who thought he was cleverer. Rrealising this, I didn’t wager nearly as much as I planned to wager. I just pulled out 5,000 lire, handed it over, pointed to the piece of wood on which the rubber band was crooked, but I already knew it wasn’t the one. And of course it wasn’t.

The guy didn’t even look at me. I felt about six inches tall. Why did I even bother handing over money? Well, all I can say is that it didn’t occur to me not to, and that I thought I had slightly saved the day by handing over far less than I was going to. But I now realise that had I not, I would probably have been taken to one side, given a good kicking and then had everything of value on me stolen. That’s when I first decided not to underestimate anyone, but of course it takes years to learn such a lesson completely. And I’m not even too sure I have even learnt it yet.

 . . .

This is all a long-winded way of getting round to my SIPP (self-invested pension plan) and the shares I chose for it. Or rather one share.

Until about 2006 my private pension - my pitifully small private pension - was with a completely useless company called Abbey Life. I had taken out the pension with one company, but as is the way of these things, they are sold on, then sold on again, and then again until total no-hopers like Abbey Life are in charge of the money which is supposed to keep the wolf from the door when you are in your dotage. (And, by the way, Mr Ward, I can’t afford to buy and sell gold. Admitting you had ‘sold all your gold’ as you did a week or two ago was a novel way of shooting yourself in the foot, but you carried it off no bother.) I heard about SIPPs and decided I couldn’t do worse than bloody Abbey Life. So I withdrew all the money I had with them I was able to withdraw and opened a SIPP.

That’s when I did a little thinking. This was towards the end of the boom years (a boom wholly based on people borrowing money to spend on the back of ‘ever-rising house prices’ and a feeling of affluence created by China selling a great many goods at ridiculously low prices in order to get a toe-hold in the market), and I felt in my bones that the good times were going to come to an end. They always do (and incidentally, before someone writes me off as a dour pain-in-the arse pessimist the same is true of bad times: they always eventually come to an end). So I asked myself: if times are hard, many business quoted on the stock exchange will do badly and their share price won’t grow. But what kind of business actually does better than it usually does in a downturn. And then it hit me: pawnbrokers do.

I did a little ‘research’ (a hi’falutin word which can mean anything from tracking down the Higgs Bosun to looking up a bus timetable) and found that a pawnbrokers called Albermarle &; Bond were quote on the stock exchange. So I bought in, at about 157p a share. And boy was that good - for which read lucky - timing. Over the next few years they doubled in price and were at over 300p just a few months ago. And all the analysts, or most of them, at least, said ‘strong buy’. Boy did I feel smug. There’s was me a rather clever stock picker. But not quite clever enough. Had I really been clever, I would have sold at 3oop. But I didn’t. They would carry on climbing, I thought.

They didn’t. They started coming down again, inexorably. I kept an eye on the price and kept telling myself that wise investors - yes, I even thought of myself as ‘an investor’ which strictly speaking I was but... Wise investors are in it for the long haul. That’s true enough but no one actually ever know how long a long haul should be. So I held off selling as the prices kept falling, from 250p to 220p and then to 211p.

That’s when I cracked. I was still ahead, so why not. I sold the lot. I then googled news reports on Albermarle &; Bond to find out just why their price had fallen again so much. And the answer was simple. In 2006, when I discovered them and bought shares in the company, there were only three largish pawnbrokers, so they all had a healthy slice of the business. After 2009, when the bad times started, others realised there was good money to be made from the misery of others and pawnbroking outlets sprung up everywhere. So there was less business to go round and Ablermarle & Bond’s profits suffered. Simple, really.

And the price of ABM’s shares at close of business today, April 26, 2013? Fucking 230p. Oh, well, c’est la vie (he said through very gritted teeth).

Thin-skinned or what? I am banned from a blog called 'The Slog' for not cheering loudly enough

It is odd how thin-skinned those folk are who like to set themselves up as our conscience but do not necessarily get the universal acclaim to which they think themselves entitled. They get rather uncomfortable when they realise we are not all cheering and that some of us have taken to booing. On such is John Ward, aka The Slog whose blog you can find here and who is a self-styled 'deconstructor of bollocks'. He is, though, not quite as keen on such deconstruction when his own bollocks is at risk.

I've written about him before and there doesn't seem a great deal of sense in repeating what I said. This entry is just to record a reply I've given to a comment Mr Ward left on my most recent comment. I am posting it here because he has now banned me from leaving comments, so you - and anyone else going there - won't find it on his site. He accuses me of having 'multiple IP addresses' (which sounds vaguely sinister though I can't think why) and of being 'a troll'.

This was my reply:

If I have multiple IP addresses it will because I go on the net from here (home, when I am here), work (when I am at work), my stepmother's down the road (when I am at my stepmother's) and my brother's (when I am at my brother's. At each location I use a different laptop/desktop. I am not 'a troll' and nor do I see the enemy around every corner (it was once 'reds under the beds'). I don't think one could get a ciggy paper between my views on the worth of the euro and the EU (although I believe on Britain retaining membership for the simple reason that we have a better chance of influencing the direction it takes in rather than out) and Mr Ward's, but on a great many other matters - what might constitute 'wit', his take on Johnny Foreigner and just how seriously we take ourselves (all those 'sources' - I really can't compete) we are poles apart.

For one thing I hope to God I don't have quite as high opinion of myself and am not quite as self-important as Mr Ward. I wasn't so much 'banned' yesterday as my markedly inoffensive comments being removed without explanation. It seems that like a dog up our street Mr Ward likes to dish it out, but he can't take it. As for my blog, I have two. One here on the Wordpress site which I revived after visitors here clicked on my name to see who I was; and my main blog at http://pfgpowell-1.blogspot.co.uk/ which has been running for more than three years and has attracted one or two comments, though not from the usual round of fawning acolytes as here - around ten at the last count, and they don't vary in their rather juvenile appreciation of what appears here.

Whether or not it contains anything of interest is not for me to say. Judge for yourselves.

The question on everyone’s lips: did they? (No, not shag – discuss Leveson business! Some people!)

A short, rather ridiculous statement which the Guardian carried, but which I’m sure has appeared elsewhere (i.e. that I saw it in the Guardian is neither here nor there) is a useful jumping off point for commenting on an issue which will roll on and on before anything much is settled. Oh, and legions of well-heeled lawyers will become even better-heeled in the process. The issue is, of course, the Leveson Inquiry. The short, rather ridiculous statement came from an up-and-coming young brief involved in the inquiry who was on Leveson’s payroll (so to speak – she was part of his team). But a bit of background might help (though not of the whole shooting match – if you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about and want to know try here (the official site), here (a site which takes a rather more jaundiced view) and here for the details. From here on I’m assuming you do know what I’m writing about.

Leveson had his team of lawyers and all those witnesses giving evidence against our evil press (and in many case urging that all current editors and those with even half a mind to climbing that particular greasy pole should be shot and their bodies buried in lime) also had their briefs. One such lawyer batting for Lord Leveson’s side was Carine Patry Hoskins. Another taking was David Sherborne, the lawyer representing the actor Hugh Grant. (What, I hear you ask, is that the same Hugh Grant picked up by the LA vice squad for hiring Mrs Estella Marie Thompson, who went by the name of Divine Brown, to suck his dick in his car on Hollywood Boulevard? Yes, that’s our lad – it was in all the papers. So guess who isn’t as sweet on our British newspapers as once he might have been? You get just the one guess.

To be fair to Grant it wasn’t the stories about him getting head which upset him but that assorted newspapers had found a way of hacking into a mobile phone to listen to any messages which had been left on them. And Grant’s phone was one the tapped into regularly.) In the broadbrush way these things are described, Patry-Hoskins – a double-barrel name never hurts in Old Blighty, especially if you are making your way in one of ‘the professions’ – and Sherborne were on ‘opposing sides’ and should not have discussed their Inquiry work. And there’s no suggestion they did.

Thing is are now ‘an item’ – ‘going out’, ‘going steady’, ‘boyfriend and girlfriend’ – and that has raised several eyebrows as well as led to suggestions that the chances they obeyed the rules and didn’t discuss the Inquiry are not very great. Patry-Hoskins – divorced with one marriage behind her – and Sherborne – divorced with

two marriages behind him (I hope Patry-Hoskins is a sensible gal because one divorce might be misfortune, but two is getting to be a bit of a track record) insist they did not become ‘an item’ until last October, after the Inquiry finished. Alert hacks then discovered that they were, possibly, being a little economical with the truth in that they had been away on holiday, spending time together on the Greek island of Santorini in August.

And now to come to the short, ridiculous statement: Patry-Hoskins insists that at the time they weren’t an item, but (she ‘told friends’) they had gone away to Santorini ‘to discuss the possibility of a relationship’. The question on everyone’s lips is now, of course: but was shagging involved? I mean you don’t have to be in a relationship for a bit of how’s your father, and if you’re going to negotiate – they’re lawyers, remember – the terms of the relationship you are considering having – you’re surely not doing it 24/7. There must have been a bit of downtime and a bit of downtime, a drink or two, no deadlines, loads of sun, relaxing, gorgeous girl, gorgeous guy, well . . . Or am I being just a tad cynical?

On the other hand two intelligent, mature adults might well know how to resist undoubted temptation and behave with the decorum expected of two representatives of Her Majesty’s legal industry. Yeah, right. And if you’re really as anal as having first to ‘discuss the possibility of a relationship’, why go all the bloody way to Santorini? Why not settle for a chat over a few shandies and two packets of cheese n’ onion in the Dog and Duck? If nothing else it would be a lot cheaper. The state of Patry-Hoskins and Sherborne’s relationship was first reported in both the Daily Mail and the Sun and then taken up by other papers. And given that once Leveson had inquired, he then published a 2000-page report which was not much to the press’s liking, it is unsurprising that they have jumped on a ‘possible conflict of interest’ with glee.
Here is an excerpt from a leader in the Daily Mail which gives you some indication of how sanguine they are that it might no longer be business as usual:

 As counsel to the inquiry, Mrs Patry Hoskins was required to be scrupulously impartial. Mr Sherborne’s role was quite the reverse. He was employed by Hugh Grant and other celebrity hacking victims to attack and denigrate newspapers at every opportunity.

Mrs Patry Hoskins had access to confidential information supplied under compulsion by media organisations, cross-examined several of Mr Sherborne’s clients, and helped formulate some of the thinking behind the Leveson report.

Her dealings with Mr Sherborne should have been strictly at arm’s length. Indeed, under Bar Council rules, both lawyers should have informed Leveson of their relationship – which neither did – and at least one should have withdrawn. Frankly, this affair shows how incestuous, self-righteous and hypocritical the legal profession can be.

Along with doctors, they are one of Britain’s last great unreformed institutions – self-policing and impervious to external criticism.

That’ll learn them! There are few things quite as impressive as a newspaper leader in full, fulminating, outraged mode. Magnificent!

. . .

It would be farcical were it not so tragic, but a Somerset businessman made up to £50 million by selling fake bomb, drug and people detectors to Iraq and Afghanistan. They were completely useless. He based them on a novelty – for which read ‘joke’ – item from the U.S. which as marketed as a device for finding lost golf balls. By the sound of it the novelty item was something you would give our golf-playing dad, husband, boyfriend or son for Christmas as a jokey present. The businessman, James McCormick, bought the golf ball finders from the U.S. for $20 each, repackaged them and then sold them to Iraq and Afghanistan for up to £27,000 ($40,000) knowing they are completely useless. He was able to carry on selling them for several years. The very first thing that occurred to me when I read the story on the BBC website was: did it not occur to anyone actually to test them, to hide an IED or drugs and then see whether the device would detect them? Apparently not. Several senior Iraqi officials who knew the devices were bollocks but who were bribed by McCormick to keep quiet have since been jailed. So perhaps – perhaps – the explanation might be that word came from these guys up high to us the new device and everyone thought tests had already been done. But I’m being charitable.

A warm welcome to all Russian visitors (who seem to be increasing in numbers) - Теплый прием всем российским посетителям (кто, кажется, увеличиваются в числах)

Я, кажется, получаем много посетителей из России сегодня, таким образом я думал, что я мог бы поздороваться. Я не знаю то, что привлекает их к моему блогу или какие отдельные записи интересуют их, но они долгожданны, как - все остальные, и они также долгожданны, чтобы сказать их друзьям.

Я сделал их любезность произведения этого на русском языке, но потому что я не говорю на русском языке, я должен был использовать один из онлайн-перевода, теперь доступного, который, наряду со способностью свистеть, чтобы несомненно отличить нас от наших предков, когда они все еще живут в пещерах и понятия не имели, что чеснок улучшает аромат очень многих блюд. Фактически, я думаю, что Вы согласитесь со мной, что это была бы полная ерунда предоставить нашим предкам каменного века сервис онлайн-перевода так не было тогда все еще такой вещи как Интернет, не было таких вещей как портативные компьютеры, настольные компьютеры, таблетки или smartphones, на котором человек каменного века, возможно, был в состоянии получить доступ к Интернету.

О, и использование сервиса онлайн-перевода объяснит, почему то, что Вы читаете, весьма вероятно частично непостижимо. Но все это - длинное, долго, длинный путь от моей причины для того, чтобы писать этот вход, который должен просто сказать: добро пожаловать во все из России.

That for all those of you, like me, who don’t write Russian, let alone speak it, is a message to Russian visitors translated courtesy of the several translation services available on the net. I’m pretty sure it is just so much goobleddgook (Без перевода), but not being a Russian speaker I really don’t know. For all I know it merely says, in a variety of different ways using a variety of different idioms: I agree to download Google Chrome and install it as my default browser. Say what you like about Al Qeada and they might be a load of murderous bastards who don’t have a clue who Rihanna is, but at least they don’t trick you into downloading their bloated software when you’re not looking. (Incidentally, for those who don’t know, this Blogger service is made available for free by Google. It’s not as though I can’t bite the hand that feeds me like the best and rest of them.)

PS I’ve just checked and Без перевода means ‘without translation’ which doesn’t help very much. So for all those who don’t know ‘goobledegook’ is a word we use to mean ‘nonsense (ерунда), bollocks, bullshit etc.

In which our hero demonstrates beyond doubt that we often have far too much time on our hands. And things aren’t looking too bright for one of Mr Putin’s more high-profile critics. My advice? Avoid the tea

This is something I cobbled together after a trip to Spain last year. I rather like it, but that doesn’t mean that you will. Suck it and see, as they say. File under Artsy-fartsy.

. . .

Who is it safe to piss off in Russia and who is it wisest not to? Well, I can’t say who one can rub up the wrong way with no fear of reprisals, but it is becoming ever more obvious that Valdimir Putin, c/o The Kremlin, Moscow, is a lad best kept your side. That seems to be a lesson Chelsea’s very own Roman Abramovich has taken to heart but which Boris Berezovky didn’t.

Another of the money men apparently sailing close to the wind is Alexander Lebedev, who owns London’s Evening Standard, but lives in Moscow. Incidentally, he is always described as a ‘former KGB agent’ but I’ve always felt the word ‘agent’ to be so vague as to be almost meaningless. For most of us it conjures up the image of a highly trained killer who wouldn’t think twice about accepting a drink from you, then screwing your wife, but I understand the reality is rather different, that is to say pretty bloody mundane.

I don’t for a minute doubt that these guys aren’t capable of making a pot of tea with radioactive baloney (or whatever it was they used to kill the guy who ran ten miles every day), but 99pc of their time is spent pouring over lists of holidaymakers arriving in Moscow and St Petersburg and deciding who it might be worth trying to flog a timeshare in a mooted development in Odessa. Maybe that was the kind of ‘agent’ Lebedev was. The only other things I know about him is that he and his son Evegeny have managed to get the Standard back into profit, despite now giving it away, and the Lebedev pere is up on a charge of ‘hooliganism’ for punching someone on life TV. (See – if he’d been a real agent rather than a pen-pusher he would most certainly have karate-chopped the man and found himself on a murder charge.)

One man who has not been doing his very best to keep in Mr Putin’s good books is Alexei Navlany. In fact, he is most definitely a thorn in Mr Putin’s side and he is reckoned to have cost Mr Putin an ‘overwhelming’ majority at the last set of elections. He was also a leading light in the street protests which followed the election and the regular blog he writes also doesn’t win him to many brownie points with the Kremlin – calling them ‘corrupt’ is one of his milder claims.

Mr Navalny now finds himself charged with corruption and has appeared in court in a town called Kirov, which (I read is 550 miles north-east of Moscow), quite some distance for us Brits for whom a 40-mile trip down the road is an unwelcome schlepp. (For the record my weekly commute from Cornwall to London and back is 234 miles each way and I’m glad I have to do it just twice a week. It’s not that bad, but I’m glad it’s not much longer.)

Obviously I am in no position to judge how solid, on the one hand, the case is against Mr Navalny or, on the other, how trumped up the charge is. He is said to have embezzled 16 million roubles from a timber firm for whom he was working as an advisor. He claims the charge is nonsense and one simply trumped up to discredit him. The thinking is that were he charged with some other offence related to his political work, it might seem to obvious and that getting him into clink on a charge of corruption would not only get him out of the way but would also damage his credibility.

Then there’s the matter of a new law which has been based banning those with previous convictions from standing for election. But (and I am obliged to be fair here, despite what I think is more likely than not), all I can do is report what I have read on various news websites. But it does seem – this is my taking off my ‘impartial’ hat – that not being on Mr Putin’s side doesn’t pay many dividends if you happen to live in Russia.

Does Germany now really have an alternative to the standard euro bollocks? Who knows? But a fanfare please for . . .

Well, the die has been cast and it now only remains to be seen whether the much-trailed Alternative für Deutschland will become a political force to be reckoned with or just another nine-day wonder.
 The party is demanding – the Germans tend to ‘demand (‘Wir fordern…’) where we

 rather more diffident Brits might ‘suggest a change in policy’ - that Germany withdraws from the euro and re-introduces the D Mark.
There are related demands but they are all more or less centred on the euro, growing dissatisfaction with handling of the euro crisis and a related unease with the EU. The new party’s website list number of supporters – an impressive list if you are impressed by academic qualifications and academia generally – but they do seem to be almost all men. I counted only three women. Here is a potted list if the party’s demands taken from its website with my translation:

Wir fordern eine geordnete Auflösung des Euro-Währungsgebietes. Deutschland braucht den Euro nicht. Anderen Ländern schadet der Euro. (We demand an ordered dissolution of the eurozone. Germany doesn’t need the euro and it is damaging other countries.)

Wir fordern die Wiedereinführung nationaler Währungen oder die Schaffung kleinerer und stabilerer Währungsverbünde. Die Wiedereinführung der DM darf kein Tabu sein. (We demand the reintroduction of national currencies or the creation of smaller, more stable currency unions. The reintroduction of the D Mark cannot be a taboo subject.)

Wir fordern eine Änderung der Europäischen Verträge, um jedem Staat ein Ausscheiden aus dem Euro zu ermöglichen. Jedes Volk muss demokratisch über seine Währung entscheiden dürfen. (We demand the European treaties are amended to make it possible for every member state to leave the euro. Every nation must be able to make a democratic decision on what its currency should be.)

Wir fordern dass Deutschland dieses Austrittsrecht aus dem Euro erzwingt, indem es weitere Hilfskredite des ESM mit seinem Veto blockiert. (We demand that Germany forces the introduction of the right to leave the euro by blocking further contributions to the European Stability Mechanism.)

Wir fordern daß die Kosten der sogenannten Rettungspolitik nicht vom Steuerzahler getragen werden. Banken, Hedge-Fonds und private Großanleger sind die Nutznießer dieser Politik. Sie müssen zuerst dafür geradestehen. (We demand that the costs of the so-called bailouts are not carried by the taxpayer. Banks, hedge funds and big investors are the beneficiaries and they should be first in line to carry the costs.)

When I last mentioned AfD, I pointed out that in my view it is essentially a rather different organisation to Britain’s own UKIP, but it does pose the same threat to the established parties many of whose traditional supporters might be disenchanted with Germany’s self-imposed role of trying to sort out the euro crisis. And that might well mean protest votes come September when the countries goes to the polls. Certainly, all three parties (who are all staunchly behind Angela Merkel’s policies on solving the euro crisis, one of AfD’s major gripes – what representation do those who don’t agree with Merkel have in parliament? they ask pertinently) do not seem to be underestimating the potential threat posed by Afd.

Patrick Döring the general secretary of Germany’s third party, the FDP, is quoted as saying: ‘I even find it disturbing that a body can be formed which is able to give the impression that Germany could change its currency without damaging the savings and wealth of her citizens just like that. It’s a little more complex.’ One of the CDU’s head honchos in Hesse, Christean Wagner, has said: ‘Leaving the euro, which the AfD is demanding, would be a leap back into the previous millennium. To make leaving the euro the central tenet of your manifesto demonstrates: these are yesterday’s people.’

Döring makes a reasonably good point, but Wagner sounds a little desperate. Even weaker is this from the SDP’s president of Lower Saxony, Stephan Weil, who notes that he doesn’t believe the AfD’s stance is ‘very promisng’ and that ‘most people’ knew ‘what Europe and the European Union offered them’.

Where others have warned that the new party will be a refuge for dissidents from both the extreme Right and extreme Left, but AfD seems to be aware of this danger and has insisted that former members of the NDP, the Nationaldemokratishe Partei Deutschlands who would call themselves national socialists if it were not a criminal offence in Germany, will not be allowed to join. To which I can only say: good luck. That pledge is more PR than anything else as rooting out former (or even current) Nazi sympathisers would be a full-time job.

As, of course, would be rooting out left extremists if they thought joining up would in some way prove useful to the cause. The AfD has announced it will put up candidates for September’s election so we can expect a great many dirty tricks as the other three play it safe and resort to skulduggery to neutralise them,  whether or not they pose a real threat. I predict that at least two of the AfD’s candidates will step down because their opponents have revealed tax irregularities in their affairs; one will have his past as a rent boy exposed, will brazen it out, but will eventually give in to party pressure to throw in the towel; one will defect to another party; and one will be exposed by the Spiegel as a BND plant. Or was he? Yes, it will be that kind of murky shenanigans: however much I love them, rather like their national football side, the Germans turn dirty remarkably quickly when the going gets rough.

Another, to my mind relevant, criticism of the Afd – and one which can also be levelled at UKIP – is that its other policies, on transports, say, or health, education, welfare and the rest, don’t seem just ill-defined but non-existent. Getting Germany out of the euro seems to be the alpha and omega of its existence, and in that sense it and UKIP are pressure groups rather than political parties.

As you all know only to well, I am just another internet loudmouth and have absolutely no special knowledge on these matters. Bear that in mind when I say that however much I might applaud the sentiments of AfD, I am sadly inclined to predict that by this time next year it will be a minor footnote in history. But the very existence of the party might lead all three of Germany’s parties to rethink their policies a little if in opinion polls leading up to September’s vote AfD gives a reasonable account of itself. And if that does lead them to treat the whole euro mess with a little more thought and humanity, at least the AfD will have achieved something.