A night at the airport - Etrop Grange, Manchester

I'd visited Etrop Grange for meetings many times, but never stayed. I was only staying this time because of the threat of bad weather before my flight. A lot of people had the same idea. The food was excellent, the room comfy, service attentive and England won 8-nil. A good deal and surprisingly cheap. Apparently you can park your car here for the duration - there is a pick up service for the less than 5 minute journey to the airport.

This week's hotel room - Ramada Encore, Doha

Relatively basic, but they do simple things right and it is nice to be back.  Just wish it was nearer the client.  Petrol station outside does snacks, room service and restaurant here are fine.

And that is the season

Beat Spurs, lose to Southampton.  No ability to grind out a result.  Consistently out fought.  No ability to pull together a run of form.

We had a chance to challenge for Europe, but we will be lucky to finish higher than last season's 8th.  Have the Mighty Reds progressed since Dalglish?  I can't see it.  Meanwhile a poor Manchester United have steamrollered the Premiership by their ability to do those same things.

Here is to next season.

This week's hotel room

The view from the Gloria Hotel, Dubai.  Room was nice but I've shown that before.
I must at some point in this trip get away from work long enough to actually leave the hotel room.


 

I am not a Spambot

Idly writing a comment on another blog (I have 2 books, 2 presentations, one course, and a marketing document to write so of course I am commenting on other blogs!) and had to prove I am not a robot by filling in Capatcha.

Recently I have struggled to buy things online because of Internet Banking Security (I didn't notice I had caps lock on, and ended up blocking my card), and at an ePOS machine (didn't have my glasses on so didn't realise until too late that I was using the wrong one of 2 nearly identical cards).

It makes me wonder how long it will be before the Spam and Hacking bots are better at getting through Internet security than the average person.  And then what are we going to do?

(The first person to say I am getting old will be correct)

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.