Oil Crisis Hits Home

I've been feeling a little smug as the credit crisis wreaked havoc on the financial markets.

Unlike our esteemed PM, I not only talk the prudence talk, I walk the prudence walk too. So our finances have been pretty much oblivious to the unfolding crisis.

Mortgage woes. Increasing rates. Declining choices.

No problem. We are on a long term fixed rate mortgage that's already overpaid.

Negative equity worries.

We paid a big deposit on the house.

Job security fears.

I'm freelance, so perpetually at risk. No change there. The mortgage over payments would give us a couple of years repayment holiday if required.

Reduced opportunities for credit.

We don't have any need for loans, and I've got enough credit on my cards to buy a very decent car. Mainly courtesy of Egg who gave me a £15,000 credit limit without offering me the chance to request a limit during the application process. A sign perhaps of the root of a lot of the current problems.

So, from a purely selfish perspective, all good. If anything the credit crisis might be a chance for me to exploit a buyers market.

The oil crisis isn't quite such a non-event for me. We are a two car household so rising prices are bound to have some effect.

Yet the big car is a very efficient diesel, and the little car is primarily used to get me to the train station for the commute to work.

Which means a relatively limited impact on me so far.

That may be about to change!

I'm pretty keen on environmental issues, so I should be glad that some people seem to have reached a tipping point and are ditching the car in favour of public transport.

The only problem being on my route to work there's already no spare capacity. The last thing I want after another crap day at work is a rugby scrum just to get on a crowded train for the journey home.

You might think the obvious solution is to run more trains, but there are track capacity constraints.

The best solution is to make the existing trains longer. A lot of the trains on my route are three carriage, when the platforms are built for six carriage units.

I suggested to the rail company they might want to lease more trains. They told me they can't afford it. Which makes me wonder what it takes for them to make a profit, when they've already got the punters crammed in like this...


If the oil crisis means more of the above, I might finally start to have some sympathy for the average motorist, so long as they promise to stay in their cars!

Grumpy Old Paxman - M&S and Me

It may not have escaped the notice of my few regular readers that not only am I becoming even more of a grumpy bastard recently, my political thoughts appear to be making steady progress from fairly left-of-centre towards the point where Norman Tebbit starts to appear over the horizon.

Not a thrilling thought!

Equally disconcertingly, I now find myself in agreement with professional controversist Jeremy Paxman on a subject so gratingly middle-class even Hyacinth Bucket would be ashamed. Namely the declining quality of Marks and Spencer's products.

Paxman had M&S underpants in his sights. The subject of my ire is a relatively new pair of plain black shoes purchased for work purposes.

When buying shoes for work, I'm generally looking for something smart, unobtrusive, and sensible. Gucci loafers are not in my thoughts.

Only once can I recall owning a pair of work shoes I had any real enthusiasm for, and that was an accidental purchase. A pair of Rockports bought on a US holiday at the same price in dollars I'd have paid in pounds back home in rip-off Britain.

On my return they became my work shoes by default.

Having size 10 feet, the lightness of their sole was a thing of beauty to me, and I mourned their demise, but I was fucked if I was going to pay the going rate in the UK for a replacement pair.

As winter descended upon us, I decided my current work shoes were showing their age and another re-heeling didn't seem justified. Given that I'm trying to prioritise time over money at present, the quick and easy solution seemed to be a visit to the M&S store.

Sure enough, they had exactly what I was looking for. Albeit slightly overpriced, I felt, at £50.

I was somewhat surprised to discover that fifty quid doesn't even entitle one to a cardboard box these days, as the shoes were plonked straight into a plastic carrier bag.

At first they performed exactly as expected. Until, that is, the rains came...

I should point out that my daily work commute consists primarily of car and train, with roughly a ten minute walk between office and train station. Therefore in total the exposure to the elements consists of less than half-an-hour each day.

With that in mind, the rapid deterioration of my not-so-cheap shoes pissed me off more than a little.

Within weeks they'd begun to stain white, necessitating frequent resprays with waterproofer, and a nightly polish.

Within a couple of months, I was starting to get a damp feeling in my socks by the end of the journey home.

After three months, as I was already contemplating a replacement purchase, the sole gave out and invisible leaks were replaced by a hole the size of a 5p piece.

I won't be back in M&S for a while.

It seems to me that the ceaseless drive to keep down prices in the face of competition is driving more and more companies into cutting corners to the point where quality is abandoned in pursuit of another 2% saving.

Not just on the high streeet. My work encounters with Indian IT outsourcers could fill a volume or two with tales of anguish, but that's for another day.

My shoe woes have been soothed by a most unlikely source. Amazon are now selling shoes - more specifically a huge range of Rockports at generous discounts - and my sub-standard M&S pair have now been replaced by these Rockport Conors for a mere £4 more.

The sole isn't quite as light as the earlier ones, but it has some sort of patented spring mechanism, which makes the walk to work feel like a rather pleasant trampoline exercise.

More importantly, they don't fucking leak! Take note Stuart Rose and M&S...

Shannon Matthews Safe; Charles Darwin Spinning In Grave

Shannon Matthews the missing 9 year-old from West Yorkshire is safe. Which is obviously great news. I always get the feeling after 48 hours in these cases that if the kid hasn't turned up, the police will be looking at either an accident or murder.

So it's great news she has been found, apparently well after being missing for more than three weeks, and I am genuinely delighted for her family.

Yet it's hard to shake off the horrible feeling that her abduction opened a window into a society that shouldn't exist.

The family life of her mother, Karen Matthews, makes Shameless look like Brideshead Revisited. The statistics are mind blowing.

Age 32. Seven children. Five different fathers. Bloody hell!!

If the average British worker was as productive there would be no recession fears, no deficit worries, no trade gap. We'd be world beaters!

Should Karen fancy her chances as an entrepreneur, I'd suggest she looks into setting up an Internet dating site. She obviously has expertise in the meeting and mating market.

In a way you have to admire her inventiveness and time management skills. How she managed to get time for a social life once she'd got to four or five kids, while still in her twenties, is a puzzle to me.

It must really hurt for couples struggling to have just one kid they'd love unconditionally - marooned on NHS IVF waiting lists that measure in years - to be exposed to an alternative word where kids are produced on a production line, with little apparent regard for their welfare or the likelihood of giving them a stable upbringing.

On a more practical level, it must be galling for families where the parents both work but struggle to make ends meet due to child care costs, to witness a culture where work is a swear word and kids are utilised as a means of enhancing social security benefits.

It seems to me we've reached a point where flawed government policies, allied to a culture that really is shameless, has turned Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection on it's head.

If you are smart, motivated, and hard working, the odds are you won't have the cash, or more crucially the time, to raise a big family. This is especially true where the woman is keen to continue working. There aren't many Nicola Horlicks around!

Conversely, if you can't be bothered working, but think the world owes you a living, having loads of kids seems to be the fastest legal route to boosting your income.

The inevitable consequence of this situation is that survival of the fittest ceases to be the norm.

The smart and hard working will be out bred by the feckless, whilst simultaneously being screwed for an ever higher percentage of their income to fund the offspring of the benefit junkies.

All of which sounds perilously close to a Nazi-esque view of the world. Which makes me very uncomfortable, but I cannot see where else current trends are taking us.

I'm absolutely in favour of protecting the weak; a high standard of comprehensive education; free health services; and Gordon Brown's oft quoted desire to end child poverty.

However it's clear to me that current policies are not going to achieve that aim. There has to be a better way.

I've got some post-budget thoughts on the general economy, but here's a quick hit in the area of Child Benefit.

Currently child one gets a higher weekly allowance and all subsequent kids are paid at a reduced rate. Why not continue the taper so that child three gets less than two, etc? I'd imagine that by child four, condoms or The Pill would be a much more prominent part of the conversation with any prospective partners.

This could be kept revenue neutral by increasing the payments for kids one and two, so no stealth tax here.

I can't claim this as a perfect solution - and it has definite echoes of China - but it's a step ahead of current policy which is a licence to breed without any regard for the consequences.

When Robert Met Shaun

So maybe I was a bit harsh on that Robert Marsden guy. All problems and not enough solutions.

To redress the balance, may I respectfully suggest he takes a lead from Shaun The Sheep, and shapes up a little.

Hint: Whole episode is funny, but it really picks up around 4:30 when the Stallone influence kicks in.

Tough Love Now!

Spotted this story doing the rounds today, and could scarcely believe it.

Robert Marsden, age 40, weighs 41 stone and requires daily visits from carers. Due to his enormous bulk, it sometimes becomes difficult for the carers to move him. So they have to revert to the established procedure and call the fire brigade for assistance!

Which means TEN firefighters in two fire engines are dispatched to his house to shift him. This has happened FOUR times in a single week.

I have no problem with the carers summoning assistance. Otherwise sooner or later someone is likely to end up getting hurt. A friend's wife had her knee ligaments damaged when the hospital she worked in failed to provide proper lifting equipment, so I'm well aware of the dangers.

On so many other levels this is very wrong.

For starters, why does it have to be the fire brigade who are called out? Surely this is a golden opportunity for getting private enterprise involved.

Someone like Reliance - who do prisoner transfers - would be a good candidate, though with their record they'd probably end up going to the wrong house, or inadvertently heaving the guy away and dropping him at Barlinnie.

Maybe one of the airport baggage handling companies could take the contract. They are used to lumping heavy inanimate objects around. Perhaps the prospect of being exposed to their tender hands would motivate Mr Marsden to rediscover his mobility.

Taking my flippant free marketeers hat off, let's get down to the fundamental issue.

This guy is forty, unemployed, spends most of his day in bed, needs daily carers, and regularly requires the assistance of the emergency services. He claims he does not understand 'what the fuss was about'.

Well let me enlighten him. The fuss is about the fact he contributes nothing, while living off state benefits and routinely draining the state coffers due to his ridiculous weight. The state coffers funded by the rest of us who actually get out of bed in the morning and go to work.

Unless he does something to improve his condition there's no prospect of that drain diminishing, or him ever contributing a penny in tax until the day he dies. He is, effectively, a parasite gorging on the rest of us.

'My weight isn't something I like to discuss. It comes up in every conversation I have. I am tired of talking about it.' he says.

Credit where credit is due, at least he doesn't try to hide behind some mysterious medical condition. He is fat because he eats lots, and expends no energy.

How does he maintain his gargantuan weight? Given his obvious lack of mobility, he can't be routinely popping down to the shops for two litre bottles of Coke and family packs of crisps. The food must be brought to him; presumably by his carers or family.

Isn't this an obvious opportunity for some 'tough love'? Why are we paying for this guy to stay fat with the assistance of the local council, when all it's doing is prolonging his nonsensical condition.

Instead of Doritos and Monster Munch, why not just stick him on a lettuce and carrot diet until he is thin enough to get his own food?

No doubt human rights legislation would have something to say about that, but what rights are someone really entitled to when they have eaten themselves into a state of utter helplessness?

There are schoolkids in Scotland being told they can't study the courses they wish to because the council can't afford to fund them. Surely their rights are more important when it comes to allocating council cash?

The only positive thing I can see in Mr Marsden's current state is if he can't move, he can't be sat beside me on a train or plane.

If the carers can't give him some tough love, at the very least, the next time the fire brigade are called out, they should make a stand and nail his kitchen door shut.

Mood: Pissed Off

Finally got some decent time in at the tables this week, and rapidly wished I hadn't bothered.

It's been a long time since I've played Pot Limit Omaha to any great extent, and having read Rolf Slotboom's book I was interested in trying out some alternative strategies.

Which led me to fire up a couple of small buy-in games to ease me back into the action.

Within a few orbits I find myself UTG with double suited aces. Bingo. The table has already proved to be very LAG with several serial raisers.

Perfect for testing out Rolf's strategy. Albeit I'm bought in for the max, rather than a short stack.

All goes exactly to plan. I call, someone raises, several callers, and one of the serial raisers repots it from the small blind. Absolutely perfect. I manage to ship almost my entire stack in pre-flop.

Only the reraiser calls. With 9 high single suited!! Absolutely bonkers. There might be tournament situation where stack sizes, blinds, etc. make this a valid play, but in reasonably deep stacked cash its suicide.

Of course he makes a straight and stacks me. Looking back I was only 60/40 to win this hand, but if he wants to spend his life getting it all-in as a 6/4 underdog then that's just fine with me.

I can see how Rolf's strategy works - particularly when multi tabling - but it just didn't feel as much fun as playing lots of flops, and I happen to think my edge against donkeys like this is better than 60% so I don't think I'll be following it too closely.

The book is well worth a read though - if only to get inside the head of the short stackers.

I then proceed to lose several more buy-ins with classic Omaha stuff like top FH v flopped quads. Ho hum.

Next night I revert to No Limit Hold Em, and proceed to get queens outflopped by underpairs or suited aces (when I flop top set) three times in ten minutes whilst four tabling. Expensive.

Down a couple of buy-ins I claw it back to one buy-in down as bedtime draws near, and am congratulating myself on my tilt avoidance, when I pick up aces and manage to build a $240 pot and get another idiot all-in on the turn when he re-reraises me with a flush draw and gutshot. I'm roughly 3/1 on this one, until the gutshot hits on the river.

Nothing too statistically abnormal about any of this, but a real blizzard of bad luck. Not good when prepping for a big trip to Vegas.

I'm also having problems outside the poker world. I recently cancelled my Setanta sports subscription, after the mandatory 35 minute navigation of their IVR and queueing system, only to be continually harassed by SMS, emails, letters, chasing me up for a non-existent debt.

The final straw came this morning, when yours truly, nursing a monumental hangover after a big night out, and in the midst of changing a truly horrific dirty nappy, was interrupted by a call from Setanta chasing up this 'debt'.

Many moons ago, before I got into IT, I worked in customer services for a financial services company. My job involved dealing with a lot of problem cases, and I shovelled a lot of other peoples shit while doing my best to resolve customer complaints.

With that experience behind me, as a customer I always try to differentiate between the person I am dealing with and the organisation they represent. In that respect Setanta must rank somewhere alongside the Portuguese police in competence terms. They are an organisational shambles.

However the dude on the phone today was such a prick - wilfully unhelpful, and in complete denial about how they'd cocked it up - that I totally lost it with him, and gave him the full infuriated customer tirade.

Funnily enough he was from a Scottish call centre, so he actually understood everything I was saying to him. A rare occasion where an Indian might have benefited from not having a clue about my accent.

I managed to avoid swearing, or any personal insults, so he had to listen to my complete unabridged opinion on what a woefully inept organisation he works for, before I hung up on him after demanding he escalate the call as a complaint.

I think this one could run and run.

That Liverpool Trip

Weekend over, brother successfully married off, and chugging away at average chips in the Mansion $100k guaranteed, so time to do a quick catch up on that Liverpool weekend.

To catch up on the full weekend in detail would probably be more worthy of a Truckin episode than a blog post.

Friday was unmitigated drunkenness, both on the trip down, and once arrived in the city. I stayed sober for the first part, since my job was to do the organising and planning.

Once in Liverpool and ensconced in the first pub, I rapidly caught up, courtesy of double JD and coke chasers.

The whole night became a blur, though I can vaguely recall noting that my suitcase had been disturbed, before collapsing into bed at around 4am. It was only next morning, in a severely befuddled and hungover state, that it dawned on us that our apartment had been visited by a sneak thief.

We were now minus a couple of iPods, mobile phones, some cash, clothes, and other sundries.

Extremely pissed off as we were, it didn't stop us heading off to the Tranmere v Scunthorpe game. English football is very branding/marketing driven, which means that the English League One is really their League Three - the more senior two being labelled The Premiership and The Championship.

Consequently I wasn't expecting great football, even though Scunthorpe were league leaders and champions elect.

Sure enough the ball must have been black and blue by the end of 90 minutes, as Scunthorpe ran out deserved 2-0 winners.
What amazed the Scottish contingent among our party was the amazingly lax policing of the game. Despite the party atmosphere, there was an element in the Scunthorpe support who were clearly bent on trouble.

The hardcore probably amounted to no more than about 15 'casuals', with their numbers swelled by hangers on, or less organised neds.

In Scotland any trouble in grounds is swiftly dealt with. Indeed disorder within the grounds is now almost non-existent.

Conversely at Tranmere there were numerous incidents in the first half that saw punches traded between stewards and fans, with the police response ineffective and generally confined to dragging a few miscreants to the nearest exit and chucking them out.

Still I wasn't too fussed as I waited outside the ground after the game, chatting to Joe, whilst we awaited the arrival of the rest of the group. Directly to my right was a police CCTV unit, a couple of mounties were nearby, as well as about a dozen uniformed police on foot spread over about 80 metres of the street.

My relaxed attitude changed, as totally out-of-the-blue I was knocked sideways by a blow square on the jaw.

wtf!? reeling from the shock I tried to get my guard up, expecting more punches to follow, but after a few seconds I realised the action was already over though I had no idea who had punched me.

Joe was staring in amazement. One of the guys we'd seen being chucked out of the game had smacked me on the jaw as he walked past. I hadn't seen him coming, and I had no idea where he'd gone.

With so many cops around I was expecting an immediate reaction, but they all seemed to have been struck blind, and the attacker and his mates had already disappeared into the small crowd around the supporter buses.

Still, I was fuming, and stomped over to one of the uniforms on foot patrol. The conversation went something along the lines:

'One of those idiots just walked up to me and smacked me in the face. What you gonna do about it?'
'Would you like to make a complaint sir?'
'Get him fuckin arrested!'

Which is how Joe and I found ourselves accompanying a couple of cops to the entrance of a Scunthorpe supporters bus, to pick out the guy who attacked me.

A few of the guys on the bus were giving us verbals, making crybaby gestures etc. and one guy was leaning off the bus and calling me a 'grass'. I wasn't for holding back and was giving plenty in return along the lines 'Does he think he's a hard man, sneaking up on someone and hitting them when they aren't even looking? Is that all he's got. He not even a good hooligan, he couldn't even knock me down. He's got nothing.'

About now it started to get comical. Everyone we spoke to was obviously a bit bamboozled by my Glaswegian accent, and from the look on his face Mr Grass clearly hadn't expected to get back more than he was giving on the verbals front, and certainly not from a Billy Connolly soundalike.

The local police obviously weren't expecting it either, and quickly ushered us away from the bus, but not before we'd pointed out the guy to the cops.

At this point there was quite a delay while a fairly young copper took a statement from me. It soon became apparent that the local police were not willing to make a stand.

The young cop - who had the decency to at least seem embarrassed by the ineptitude of the operation - explained the inspector in charge of policing wasn't willing to commit enough bodies to ferret the guy off the bus.

The other guys on board wouldn't co-operate and they didn't have the manpower to do it by force. So, we've got a crime, a witness, a suspect, but no will to arrest and prosecute.

I was mightily pissed off, and went off on one about how useless their tactics were. What's the point of being there if they can't maintain order, and can't arrest those who cause disorder, etc..

The cop seemed genuinely apologetic, and even mentioned they were short of cell space so even if they arrested him, they'd have nowhere to put him.

'Well, I suppose sending him back to Scunthorpe is punishment in itself', I responded.

Once I'd calmed down a bit, I was ready to head off alongside my brother and a few of the other guys from our group who'd appeared by now.

At which point I noticed the guys on the bus were watching, and there was some jeering and sarcastic waving going on.

Ding! I stomped over to the bus, and could see the assailant about 2/3 of the way back. The rest of his crew had opened the emergency door and were shouting abuse through the half opened exit.

If only there'd been a tape running at this point! I pointed at the attacker then pointed at my jaw. 'Is that all you've got? Get down here and try again!'

He went, as we say in Scotland, mental. Eyes bulging, nostrils flaring, trying to hurl himself at me as I stood beneath the door of the bus. His mates holding him back, whilst themselves frenziedly hurling abuse back at me. My brother mentioned later that they looked coked up to him.

I couldn't make out a word they were saying but the general sentiment was clear. From the corner of my eye I noticed a copper closing in on me. 'Get your CS gas ready', I told him, before returning to the serious business of giving the guys on the bus, and the one in particular, pelters. 'wankers, fucking morons, scum, etc...'

They were incandescent, like a baying pack of hounds, but none of them was willing to get off the bus. Which was maybe just as well for my general welfare, but in the heat of the moment I'd totally flipped and was ready for anything.

The local coppers were aghast, and eventually under threat of arrest I was ushered away by my brother and shoved into a taxi back to town.

The whole confrontation at the bus door probably lasted about 50 to 60 seconds maximum, but I was laughing about it for the rest of the weekend, and still am now.

These guys like to act the part, but in reality they are nothing. Hitting people without warning is hardly iron man stuff - to me, it's on a par with mugging old ladies - and when someone flips and squares up to them they are all piss-and-wind.

Not much else to add about the weekend, except to mention a bizarre occurrence on the way home.

The train had a 50 minute stop scheduled at Preston, which fortuitously coincided with the kick off time for the Kilmarnock v Celtic game. Someone suggested we might be able to find a pub with Setanta Sports, so we could watch part of the game.

Rather surreally, the first pub we found in Preston turned out to be a Celtic bar. Complete with hooped drinkers, Henrik Larsson and Pat Bonner posters on the wall, and a Wolfe Tones concert advertised for the next week.
So it was that we got to see the first half of the game where Celtic formally - and belatedly - clinched the SPL, albeit the league has effectively been over for months.

Then it back to the train, where we were soon joined by a grungy student girl and her vile dog, which stank out the carriage for the remainder of the journey home.
If we weren't in such a good mood - having drained the onboard beer supplies as news of the late winner at Kilmarnock arrived - I might have been tempted to have a word, but decided to let it pass.

Partly because of my mood, and partly because I was at a loss for what to say. Somehow 'gonnae stop your dog farting' just didn't sound like a realistic request.

Don't Go Back To Liverpool

I wish I had more time to fully write up the trip report from the weekend, but festivities, speech writing, and work are all getting in the way.

It was like one long pilot for a very dark comedy. Think Very Bad Things meets The Football Factory.

For now, the executive summary:

Friday:

- drunkest train journey ever
- night on the town
- burgled by Scousers (iPods, phones, cash, etc. stolen)

Saturday:

- crap football
- attacked by a Scunthorpe casual (slightly puffy jaw sustained)
- night on the town
- the Scousers try again

Sunday:

- slow train to Glasgow
- worlds most flatulent dog
- more football casuals

On the plus side, I've won four entries to the Mansion $100k guaranteed courtesy of BlondePoker. Currently trying to edge my way towards that juicy $24k first prize, though just had an accident with AQ on a Q high flop.

Manifesto

The May election campaign in Scotland is well underway, and the polls are pointing to an uncomfortable time for the ruling Labour Party.

The suggestion is the Scottish National Party – proponents of independence for Scotland and the break-up of the United Kingdom - are on course for victory.

Not the outcome Labour had in mind when they introduced devolution after Tony Blair's first election victory.

With the campaign in full swing, the papers are full of predictions of what an SNP win would mean - ranging from the optimistic to the alarmist, as might be expected in a partisan campaign.

The truth is, I suspect, it doesn't much matter who wins the election. Nor does it matter who wins the impending Labour leadership campaign, nor the next UK election.

I've come to the conclusion that no politician, or political party, has the capacity to impose any meaningful good or harm on the electorate or the economy any more.

Such are the timescales for change, and so great the mechanisms in place to restrict the rate of change, that any political movement is a spent force long before any significant impact of their policies can be felt.

An excellent example of this comes from the world of transport. I am writing whilst travelling northwards on an ageing GNER 125 train, a model first introduced in 1976 – during the last Labour administration - and still in full service.

On arriving at Glasgow Central, the train will terminate – unable to travel further due to a missing link in the Scottish transport network – Glasgow Crossrail – which has been mooted for over ten years, still awaits approval, and probably won't be completed for another five years at least.

Similarly, should I wish to drive around the outskirts of Glasgow, I'd be unable to complete the circuit on motorway alone, since the 'missing link' – the final phase of the M74 – is once again mired in bureaucratic delays caused by endless legal challenges.

The projects are not flights of fancy, but core elements of the Scottish transport infrastructure.

The lifespan of these projects eclipses the lifecycle of any political movement – whether it be the Thatcher or Blair years.

Compare and contrast the fortunes of UK (or Scotland) plc with that of recent UK commercial success stories such as Tesco, Royal Bank Of Scotland, or the recovering Marks & Spencers, and it's clear that big organisations benefit from clear and decisive leadership where freedom of action is paramount for the success of the executive team.

Governments no longer have that freedom of action. Much as Tony Blair may be condemned for his Presidential style, he doesn't have the clout to force through change – whether good or bad – at a rate rapid enough to induce transformative changes on the course of the nation.

There are back benchers, pressure groups, unions, and lobbyists, all with sufficient clout to wield legal challenges and other tactics with enough vigour to bring the most radical ideas to a grinding halt within a morass of legal, financial, and administrative restrictions.

The planning system in particular slows progress to a grinding crawl.

Even if the SNP do win the Scottish election, and the inevitable independence referendum that would follow, the likelihood is Independent Scotland would simply inherit many of the legal and administrative mechanisms of the UK.

British civil servants would become Scottish civil servants, the judges would remain the same, the laws may change over time but would be founded on the same framework upon which UK law was built.

All of which lends the entire exercise an air of fruitlessness and wishful thinking.

For any change to be a success would require the sort of extreme surgery that veers so far from the accepted democratic norm it simply would be unthinkable for any mainstream politician.

What is needed is a root-and-branch reform of the entire political, legal, and administrative systems,

A wiping of the slate and rebuilding from the very foundations of the nation. The introduction of a political system where those chosen to govern were empowered to govern with the same powers of decision making and speed of implementation that a modern Chief Executive wields over their organisation.

Furthermore they should be given a mandate to govern not for four or five years, but for a minimum of ten. Enough time to make a genuine difference.

All of which may be music to the ears of Jack McConnell or Alex Salmond, but they are not the sort of people I have in mind for the post of First Minister, Prime Minister, President, or whichever other term would be chosen for the political head of an independent Scotland.

Instead, I'd want to see someone with the proven acumen to run a huge organisation successfully and innovatively. A Fred Goodwin, Terry Leahy, or Tom Farmer – given a framework to operate within and incentivised by clearly defined economic targets.

Take for example national Gross Domestic Product. The trend rate is about 2.0%. Why not a £1m bonus for each tenth of one percent the GDP exceeds trend by during each of their years in office?

Sure they would earn enormous amounts over their term should they beat the target by any meaningful margin, but the rewards for the nation would be dramatically in excess of their bonus, and spread throughout the land.

A good chief executive knows when to make decisions, and when to delegate them. The running of the major departments such as health, education, and policing would be delegated to professionals with the appropriate expertise, bought in from wherever necessary.

All of which sounds, I'm sure, more than a little fanciful, perhaps even delusional.

'So what?', I say. Years of mundane leadership, and mediocre thinking have dug us into a pit from which there appears little hope of escape at present. I find myself agreeing with David Blunkett when he says the world we live in is sinking under the weight of its own vomit.

Is what we have now the best we can genuinely aspire to? Is there not a better path to be followed?

What I'm proposing would be seen by some as dangerously close to an elected dictatorship, but in some ways that's just what is needed.

Politicians have an overwhelming imperative to get re-elected. When the initial medicine tastes bad, and the public patient baulks at the treatment, they lose the will to persevere with the full course.

Tough love isn't on their agenda; winning votes is.

A longer term, more empowered leadership would be able to force through initially unpopular policies with longer term beneficial effects. It could be bolder, more decisive, and unafraid of short term electoral demands.

Alas, I don't expect any of this to come to pass. Which means for now all I can do it continue to make the most of my own lot.

For now that means persevering with my own life plans to enable my family and I to set our own course outwith the traditional career and financial milestones.

At the moment I'm happy that I'm doing a pretty decent job of that, but it doesn't stop me wishing the country as a whole could step up a gear and improve the quality of the society we live in.

Back On Track

I hope!

Finally posted a winning session last night. A mighty $50 profit.

Which isn't great, but it's a start. Particularly when you consider:

I started the night losing a buy-in to a 2-outer when a known wildman/bluffer type tried to make a move on me.

I chopped a pot against Mr Cannot Fold when my set v his two pair was negated by the board making a straight.

Just a few hands later on another table, my AA fails to defeat JJ when the board makes a straight. Again!

ffs those last two felt worse than genuine bad beats. Once is bad, twice in a few minutes just makes you think it's time to give up and become a professional bingo player.

All of which made a profit - any profit - feel like a victory of Olympian proportions.

So I laid my $400 of missed opportunities to bed, and settled for what I had.

The other thing I noticed last night was the dramatic decline of traffic on Tribeca as their phased migration to iPoker got underway.

I'd imagine for a week or so the remaining Tribeca sites will become almost unplayable, but conversely iPoker will start to climb the Poker Site Scout rankings.

When the migration is complete it should be an even happier hunting ground - alas on a poorer GUI. I'm hoping the poorer user experience will be compensated by the old adage that good players hate bad software, so perhaps sharks will be even thinner on the ground.

Clearing The Decks

Just wanted to put up a quick post before commencing battle tonight.

The last couple of nights that I've played have been a real downer. I've left nine successive tables in the red.

Which has been enough to erase a decent monthly profit, leaving me precisely $1 to the good for February.

It's fair to say I can now conclusively draw a line under a pretty good streak that lasted from December until last week.

Looking back on the losing sessions has been quite instructive. I didn't get stacked once across any of the tables. It's just been a succession of missed flops and outdraws leading to a steady bleeding of chips.

Having spent half an hour looking at the biggest pots I lost, there is only one where I think I made a bad move. I 'floated' on the co-ordinated flop - having missed my hand - with the intention of trying to win the pot if a scare card fell on the turn.

The perfect scare card did indeed fall, but my attempt to steal was met with an all-in reraise from an obvious big pair. So, not a terrible move, but clearly the wrong opponent to try it on.

Which also goes to show the value of flopping sets against big starting hands. So many people cannot fold an overpair in any circumstances.

Other than that it's just been a case of flopping draws that miss, not hitting sets with middle pairs, and being the victim of a nasty sequence of flush draws hitting for opponents.

Nothing too drastic, but cumulatively enough to have me in the doldrums to an extent.

Back to the table tonight, with a faint hope the poker gods owe me a few decent flops.

A Selfish Perspective

There's been plenty written elsewhere on the fall out from the UIGEA, and obviously many of my American friends are going to find themselves increasingly restricted in their freedom to play poker, as the sanctions bite deeper.

Losing Neteller is clearly a huge blow.

That said, from a selfish perspective I'm not entirely convinced it will have a detrimental effect on my game. Recently I've been playing earlier in the evening and there seem to be ample supplies of European donks at the tables.

Indeed the geographic reach seems to be moving east with more Poles, Russians, and Israelis appearing to supplement the Irish, British, Scandinavians, and other Western Europeans.

So, the loss of US fish maybe isn't such a crushing blow. What's interesting to me is whether the new entrants will bring a similar proportion of good players to bad, or whether there will be a period where there is a higher proportion of newbies, and fewer good players.

Clearly there were a large number of US players playing a serious amateur, or semi-pro type game, who are now unable to access all the sites I can.

It's a question of whether there are now proportionately less sharks than fish in the pool I swim in. At the moment I have no clear opinion either way on this, but it's a point worth considering.

Something else I'll be interested in is just how far the UK government goes in meeting US demands for information. The international financial services market is ultra competitive and London guards it's position jealously.

The UK government has been keen to bolster London by marketing it as a financial centre for online gaming companies, due to their anticipated growth rates.

So, how will Gordon Brown - current Chancellor, and Prime Minister in waiting - react to the howls of protest from the mega institutions who have been hit with DOJ subpoenas?

He will realise there must come a point where many of these companies will choose to up sticks and head for more accommodating regimes, be they in Germany, Switzerland, or the Far East.

The US is developing quite a reputation recently for trying to impose their will on other financial markets, without providing reciprocal arrangements.

I'm sure the likes of Peter Birks will cover this in greater, and more knowledgeable, detail than me, but the thought does occur a lot of nations, and mega corps, must be getting to the point where, in the immortal words of Father Jack, they tell the DOJ to 'Feck off'.

Writing anything about the US at present is a fraught subject, since it's easy to be tarred with the anti-American label.

I like America. I've only been twice, but I had a great time on both visits. I liked the people, the cities, the attitude.

What puzzles me, and many other Europeans, is that such a powerful nation chose to elect such a fundamentally flawed regime.

At a time when the draft dodging, coke snorting, drink driving, company wrecking, chimp impersonating, miserable excuse of a president is sending yet more troops out to die in a pointless and unwinnable war for democracy - whilst simultaneously driving a coach and horses through the US Constitution - the economy is faltering, the currency declining, and the new economic powers of the Far East steadily buying up American assets, one might imagine politicians had bigger fish to fry than online poker.

Because let's be serious. Online poker is a big thing to those who play it, but in the grand scheme of things it pales into insignificance beside rigging elections, and possibly sentencing people to death on the basis of coercive evidence and hearsay!

So while we might all hope that the City of London, the WTO, and the UK and other governments finally grow sick of the current shenanigans in the online poker world, ultimately they are a small part of a much bigger picture.

One which only the American electorate can restore to something approaching normality.

Between Iraq and a Hard Place

Is anyone remotely surprised at the diabolical mess the Iraqi government made of the execution of Saddam Hussein?

They had him under their control for one hour, and that was enough for him to be abused, filmed, and the film leaked to the world media.

In an instant transforming him from oppressor to oppressed, and actually giving him a chance of achieving his goal of going down in history as a martyr rather than a dictator.

It takes a special brand of incompetence to make a murderous despot look good - but they managed it.

In a few frames of grainy camera phone footage, we were treated to a concise summary of why the entire Iraqi campaign has been a pointless waste of lives and resources.

The Iraqis are incapable, and unwilling, to form a democratic government. They may say that's what they want, but clearly it isn't.

Instead of a totalitarian regime headed by a single tyrant, we will soon have a shambolic oligarchy, which in time will likely subdivide in the manner of The Balkans, into smaller states arranged along religious or ethnic lines.

Which will contribute further to instability in the region, and strengthen the hand of Iran and Syria.

Meanwhile Turkey will hardly thank The West when the almost inevitable Kurdish state is founded on their border.

No wonder Bush and Blair are so reluctant to expose themselves to direct questioning. They are likely counting the days until their respective escapes from responsibility.

Were they to be questioned, would they find it within themselves to state the unstateable? Things were better with Saddam than without.

Which is not for a second to deny the enormity of his crimes; but are those of his successors any less?

Some countries are incapable of governing in a democratic manner. Evicting Saddam from power was like firing Super Nanny as head of your local nursery for being too strict, and replacing her with Michael Jackson and Bubbles.

Out of the frying pan, into the fire, in a conflict which will continue to claim many lives for a long time to come.

Feck Off Festive Season

Back to work tomorrow, for the first time since mid-December. I'll be lucky if I can remember my password.

This hasn't been a festive season to fondly recall, for a number of reasons.

In the space of three weeks I managed three hospital visits - including one full on flashing lights and sirens episode - and two visits to the emergency doctor.

The cause of two of the hospital visits is already well documented. The third came last Saturday, when my dad called from the local post office to say he was feeling unwell.

When I got there he was out-of-breath, dizzy, and had the complexion of Pete Doherty after a week long bender.

'Just take me home for a lie down', he said. 'Call an ambulance', I told the lady behind the counter.

This is typical of my dad. With a severe heart attack, and a triple bypass on his medical record, you might imagine he'd err on the side of caution, but he won't be told.

Last Christmas after experiencing chest pains, he drove my mum to work and sneaked off to the local Accident and Emergency Department without telling anyone - thinking he could have a quick check up and be back home before we realised he was missing.

When he got there, his symptoms resembled another heart attack and he was soon hooked up to an ECG - necessitating a gruff phone call to me to go and collect mum when she finished work.

Fortunately they were able to confirm he hadn't had another heart attack, and he was released twelve hours later.

This time, he was kept in overnight. It seems he reacted badly to a recent change in his medication, causing his blood pressure to plummet.

Prior to this I'd already had one visit to the emergency doctor with K after she started experiencing severe neck and head pains. A call to NHS Direct had them covering everything from meningitis to possible post-op complications, and they booked her in for a visit.

Much to our relief if turned out to be nothing too serious, and she was soon on the mend.

The final visit came on New Years Day. E had a very restless night and by early morning was running a very high temperature - so hot she was visibly reddening like someone with nasty sunburn.

When I checked her temperature it was showing 39.7C which put it in the top band of 'high fever' on the chart. Another call to NHS Direct, and another visit to the emergency doctor, who diagnosed a viral infection and prescribed some medication to get her temperature down.

So, again nothing too major, but scary nonetheless.

Which leads me almost to be relieved to get back to the inevitable backlog at work.

Three weeks off work should mean rest and relaxation, instead it's been sadness and a fair degree of stress.

2006 couldn't end quickly enough for me. I'm already formulating plans to ensure 2007 and beyond have better things to offer.

Site Admin and Donald McVicar

I've been tidying up the blog template recently. Much as I'm a techie to trade, HTML isn't one of my core skills so I enjoy pottering around a little for a change of scene.

A while ago I added an RSS news feed for Glasgow Celtic, using the facility available from The Scotsman newspaper.

The Scotsman is, in theory, one of the 'quality' papers in Scotland. However a recently published front page article and opinion piece had me so fuming at their blatant institutional bigotry and shoddy journalism that I decided to drop their feed.

I've replaced it with one from that paragon of journalistic integrity, The BBC.

My old sparring partner Donald McVicar was also in the news recently, after referee Kenny Clark admitted on The Whistleblower website that he had wrongly denied Celtic a blatant penalty that could have put them 2-0 up in the recent Rangers game, which was subsequently drawn 1-1.

I think it's important to recognise the positive aspect of this. Referees are only human. They do make mistakes. What bothers me is they usually refuse to admit them.

So, it's good that Mr Clark has been big enough to own up to his error - even if he was the only person in the ground not to have thought it a penalty at the time. Indeed, so blatant was the trip, Stevie Wonder could have spotted it.

What continues to bother me is Donald McVicar insisting that Kenny Clark had a good game overall.

Oh really? In the first minute he missed a deliberate stamp by Alan Hutton on Aiden McGeady, as he lay prostrate on the ground. At least a yellow and possibly a red card offence.

Early in the second half he missed a brutal and blatant assault by Charlie Adam on Lee Naylor that left Naylor bleeding from an ankle injury that needed five stitches after the game.

This sort of wild tackle from behind is a straight red in any major competition. In the more lenient Scottish arena, it should still merit at least a yellow. Clark didn't even give a foul.

Adding insult to injury, as Naylor lay in obvious agony, he chided him for apparent time wasting or play acting. Since when did football players start carrying theatrical blood capsules in their socks?

So, applause to Donald and Kenny for owning up the most heinous error, but a return visit to Specsavers for them both, to help them spot their other deficiencies.

Should Have Kept My Mouth Shut

It was Gary Player who famously said 'The more I practise, the luckier I get.'

By applying Gary's theory, I have deduced that I can't be practising enough. Though perhaps I have only myself to blame, since I recently taunted the poker gods with my observations on how bad Tribeca players are.

As I observed at the time, pride comes before a fall, and quite a drop it's been.

The frustrating thing is, I've been generally playing well(see below for one aberration), not getting tilty, and making steady gains, only to see them demolished in a succession of mega pots.

The abbreviated highlights for the weekend so far:

- All in pre-flop AA v KK, K on flop (81% favourite)
- All in TT v 77 on a 9 high flop, 7 on river (88% favourite)
- Multiple instances of flopped set v bigger flopped set (what are the odds on us both flopping sets?!)

Or, to express it differently. My losses for the weekend matched the three biggest pots I lost. In two of which I was better than 4/1 to win when the cash went in, and in the third I flopped second set v top set.

Which isn't a bad beat, but is pretty unfortunate. Long term getting it in with a flopped set has to be a winner. Particularly when you note how many people cannot fold overpairs in any situation.

When you have two players in one night apologising for how lucky they got, and seeming to be sincere, it's a sign things aren't going so well.

One of the apologisers was KK guy from the hand above, who proceeded within about an hour to quadruple through in a series of big pots where he hit the flop, and as he pointed out himself 'some people just can't fold'.

One hand I am annoyed with myself over came towards the end of this run, when I raised with AK and got one caller. Flop AKT, and my standard bet was raised all-in for a big overbet.

The obvious worry here is QJ, or perhaps TT, but equally I've seen people make that move this weekend with A3, in the genuine belief they are ahead. I've also seen the same move made with a complete bluff - and anyway, I've still got a slender number of outs if I am behind.

Of course he DOES have QJo, and my outs behave in a statistically correct manner by failing to appear. Sigh. At least he was one of the smaller stacks at the table.

What makes this hand even more frustrating is I'd dodged several treacherous situations previously, including putting down AA to a guy who thought Q8 was gold - as indeed it was when he turned trip 8s.

In no fold em Hold Em, it really is vital to catch cards. It's even more vital to have them hold up when you do. Of course it's all about the long haul, tortoise and hare, etc. but sometime this game can make that long haul feel more than a little tortuous.

Who Said Satire Was Dead?

The fact

The fiction

Well done eTims for highlighting the absurdity of the Artur Boruc situation.

At a time when fifty crimes a day are going unpunished in Scotland because the Procurator Fiscal can't be bothered prosecuting, it's interesting to see where their priorities lie.

It appears pandering to neanderthal bigots is less hassle than pursuing genuine criminals.

Bollard Tilt

I was planning some NLHE fun last night, until I took a call from Mrs Div.

"You're going to hate me", she blurted through the tears.

She needn't have said any more. I already knew the rest.

Well, that's what car insurance is for I suppose. In truth the damage isn't too bad, and, as the old cliche goes, nobody got hurt.

A hefty dent in the passenger door courtesy of an unnoticed bollard shouldn't pose too many challenges for the body shop.

There was no way I was fit to play NLHE after that news. The insurance premium rise would have paled into insignificance alongside what I could easily have donked off given the chance.

Instead I did the sensible thing, and launched another invasion of Brazil.

After several failed strategies involving cunning pincer movements, air bombardments and naval blockades, I stumbled upon the best strategy for winning a jungle campaign.

Build loads of infantry and artillery and march straight in, blasting the hell out of everything that gets in your way.

Relentless, brutal, merciless. It felt good. Strangely therapeutic.

Net result for the evening, our nice shiny new car has acquired a dent, but I'm benign dictator of all South America. Not a bad result I suppose.

Peaks and Troughs

If my Party Poker virginity was lost on Friday, Sunday was a veritable orgy.

I'd done ok on my first few days, winning fairly steadily on the Friday night Bad Beat $2/4 tables, and regular $2/4 tables on Saturday. As I'm anticipating playing a load of hands here, I splashed out on Poker Tracker and imported the hands I'd played to date. My BB/100 hands was sitting at a little over two.

I found a post on the 2+2 site that suggested anything over two was pretty good, and approaching four = crushing the game. I know the sample size is way too small, but I'd felt on Saturday I was just getting to grips with the Party style, and I believed I could move that number higher. So, I was feeling pretty confident as I logged in on Sunday afternoon for a quick session.

About 2 hours later, the BB/100 showing on Poker Tracker was negative. It was a massacre, and even though I hit a few suckouts, I had only myself to blame. My problem wasn't not getting good cards, it was getting good cards and either missing the flop completely and trying to bluff out the little fishes, or hitting it, but someone else hitting it better. I felt like one of those guys who falls into the river in a Piranha movie. I was savaged.

The worst hand was raising with AJ from the button, against several limpers, and hitting a flop of JJ2. Woowhoo!! Trip Js and an A kicker. Can't ask more than that? I called a bet from an early position, aiming to keep everyone in so I could take more off them once the big bets came on the turn. The turn was a blank, yet suddenly I found myself in a raising war with Mr Early Position.

Stupid me just kept ploughing on, unable to see what was staring me in the face. I figured he'd slow played something like QQ from early and I was still ahead, but of course he'd limped with 22 and flopped a full house! Poker 101 - beware of full houses when the board pairs. I was playing like an idiot. I just couldn't see that I could be beat, even if some of the hands that did beat me were a little unlikely.

The session ended with me down about $92. Yes!! I LOST $92 on Party Poker in less than 2 hours. I couldn't believe it.

I snarled and growled my way through dinner, while the cogs in my head whirred and clanked. There was no way I was going to stand for a beating like that. Apart from anything else, I'd a duty to report it on here!! So I needed to even things up.

Session two of the day, and I was much more focused. I hit a few good hands early and picked up some momentum, but I kept myself under control and didn't get carried away when the flops missed me. Several hands I folded may well have been best but I was playing the percentages, and noone was going to stop me winning. The session lasted 2 hours 49 minutes, and I logged out as soon as I hit my goal. Yes comrades, I made a profit. My second session was $97 to the good, for a grand total on the day of $5 profit. Now that's what I call variance.

The more astute among you will have noticed that works out at $1 an hour profit, but boy did it feel good!!

I was really hyped after that. So hyped in fact that I couldn't sleep. I lay in bed for hours fuming over the stupid hands I'd played in session 1, and my mind drifted to other things that make me mad. If I was to list them all, we'd be here for eternity, so here's a couple of things that have pissed me off recently.

1. Sir Mark Thatcher. It's been an open secret that the bumbling dunce traded on his mother's name to make money from arms deals and other shady enterprises. Now it's undeniable. He admitted being involved in a mercenary coup that could have left hundreds of people dead. All for the sake of money. Yet what does he get? A quarter million pounds fine, and a suspended jail sentence. The man is worth sixty million pounds for heavens sake!

Mind you, he might have enjoyed prison a bit too much for my liking. The buggery and punishment beatings might have reminded him of fond times at public school.

Oh, and of course he gets to keep his baronet title too, which he inherited from his father, who was awarded it by John Major who admitted to awarding it under duress after "powerful representations" from "more than one source". So much for an egalitarian society.

2. Imagine working as a sports journalist. Getting paid good money to write about one of your favourite subjects; travelling the world on expense account junkets to follow your local team; meeting your heroes - maybe even becoming friendly with some of them; guaranteed tickets to all the biggest events; and all this just for penning a few words about football, golf, rugby, boxing etc.

So how do some of these idiots manage to make the job seem so difficult? Take, for example, Keith Jackson. Keith writes for the 'Daily Record' - known to the more discerning as the 'Daily Retard'.

Keith managed to unearth a story so hot he slapped an 'Exclusive' tag on it, and gave it the most prominent position on the sports headlines page. Celtic's new Nike strip would break the club traditions, it was already being considered at boardroom level, and was sure to be controversial. Except, of course, it wasn't. Because the strip didn't exist. It had been mocked up by a 14 year old boy as a joke; and had been circulating on the internet for 3 MONTHS, prior to Keith's 'exclusive' story.

I use the word 'story' deliberately. For this article has more in common with Pinocchio than it does with a genuine news story. The Daily Record - a newspaper without news; or a future.