Seasons greetings

You know the rest

Another hotel room millenium plaza Dubai

A room as big as an apartment, but an antediluvian attitude to Internet charging. When will these. Places realise it needs to be free?

This weeks hotel room - ramada encore, Doha

There were an extra 17,000 people in Doha for the climate change conference. This place is ok. Clean, bit in the middle of nowhere, ok.

That's about all to,say

How

Are the mighty reds only 4 points off the champions league places? And 2 behind Arsenal? Strange season

This week's hotel room- Ritz Carlton, Kuala Lumpur

Fine as always. This place will be perfect when the management realise the wifi should be free (and fix the frankly shit quality)' and the restaurant realises we are not all on holiday. Some of us are here to work and don't have a n hour for breakfast.

Man City move for Suarez

How many strikers do they want?  We've only got one. 

Sanity in the USA

The re-election of President Obama is a victory for common sense.  It is not that he is a perfect politican and therefore deserved to be re-elected without opposition.  It is that the opposition was so detached from reality, so racist and misogynist, so self-serving as to be a parody of the "conservative" and "Republican" traditions.

Even the celebrating Democrats are hoping it will lead to re-emergence of a more rational debate in which truth and facts (such as abortion and evolution) are not treated as opinions.

I hope that the UK Conservative party, who appear to have learned a lot from recent Republican strategies learn something from this election (and not just that you can do very well if you gerrymander the boundaries) and we start to have rational politics again too.

My particular bug bear (though I have many) is the immigration policy that isolates us from genuine students, with their skills, ambition, contacts and (rather importantly these days) money.  When even the Economist calls a policy crazy you have to consider your views if you claim to be a rational pro-business party.

 

This week's hotel room - the Lansdowne, Hastings

Right on the sea front.

This week's hotel room: Ritz Carlton in Kuala Lumpur

Very nice.  The only thing to complain about (since someone else is picking up the bill) is that like many hotel rooms it is pretty difficult to keep it light and bright.  I think they want us to be in the bar.

Justice for the 96.

Thatcher's Britain was a different one to now. It's taken a long time, but at last we can start to have a reckoning for hillsborough. At the memorial at anfield it is clear how many of the victims were the old and young, so should never have been accused of hooliganism. Those days many people loathed football fans - now it is mainstream. It took so long because people doubled up on the lies. Without that it would have been seen as a terrible tragedy caused by some errors of judgement. A few people would have been disciplined and maybe lost their jobs. Instead some face gaol and the families have had a generation of undue pain. Oh so avoidable.

First day of autumn

I woke this morning and wrapped the duvet round me. Temperature has dropped, and summer is really on the way out. Oh, and more rain.

after the gold rush

Well done to Andy Murray for wining the US Open Tennis, his first grand slam.  We are in the brief period between a golden summer and resumption of a gruelling winter of football.  But what a summer.  The Tour de France, the Olympics and Paralympics, Andy Murray.

There has a been a spring in the step of Brits this summer, when it finally dawned that Olympics was not going to be a fiasco but was going to be brilliant.

I wonder if there will now be a political knock on?  The coalition themes of broken Britain, a can-do-nothing country, with all of our glories in the past seem completely out of step with how Britain feels at the moment.  The coalition has traded on misery to excuse any policies they think appropriate.  I wonder if these policies will be accepted in can-do, after the goldrush Britain.

September 2012/3

The past year has been one of stagnation. Of illness, drift and just getting through. Hoping the next 12 months will be better.

and that's the season

once again by the start of August we are out of the Premiership running.  Attractive though Brendan Roger's style of play is, and difficult though the early fixtures are, this is not good enough.  We have offloaded a bunch of players, so the wages bill will be reduced.  But we have bought sparingly, and the team is basically not good enough.  Promising though some of the youngsters may be, we are now down to one world class player in Suarez.

I suspect that the owners are playing a long game and waiting for FIFA rules to impose a level playing field on finances.  But that is still years away, and we wait to see whether it will actually happen.  In the meantime, we are restricted to playing for cups again this season.

It is now a long time since under Rafa Benitez we were pipped at the post for the Premiership.  This will be 4 uncompetitive seasons in a row.  We are now a (top of ) mid table club playing on our history, and no longer real contenders.

last week's hotel room

The Saraha Beach Hotel, Skanes in Tunisia (near Monastir).

Not what I am used to, but i was on holiday.

The last word

The word magazine has closed. I only subscribe to two magazines; the word and the economist. Now it will be just one.

9 years was a good innings for a niche music and lifestyle magazine. It was a great read and a great online community. I shall miss it

This week's hotel room Hilton Istanbul

Very nice in a 1960's sort of way. Huge with amazing views of the Bosphorus. But not from my room. Really what you think of when you think of a Hilton. But with Turkish electrics.

This week's hotel room

Radisson Blu Kennilworth, in London.  Not quite as big as this picture makes it seem.  But it is London.  And outside is the British Museum.  And a lot of rain.

This weeks hotel room Radisson blu Palais Vienna

Gosh it is hot here. And they have run out of power adaptors - my fault I should have brought my own. It is on my checklist, but I thought "they are bound to have one". Otherwise jolly nice. Free minibar - with one coke, one water, one beer. Again not to complain=free.

Banks

It is not just Barclays illegally colluding to fix bank rates. The same is going on in the USA.

When are people going to get jail time for this rather than just corporate fines, that customers end up paying? Jail is the deterrent, not the loss of a bonus.

After the collapse of the banking system why has no one been charged with fraud? It is about time.