Nature wrecking havoc

The last two or three days have seen the weathermen (and women) forecasting a dire day today in terms of wind and rain. We were lucky this time round as it has been the east of England that has seen the worst of it although even they were let off lightly compared with our continental cousins, Spain and more particularly France being very badly affected. At least 50 people have died in Europe as a result of the storms. I don't know whether this weather system is the same one that had caused the recent devastation in the little island of Madeira, especially around its capital Funchal.

I'm guessing now as I have not read up on it but I believe that a major reason for the UK having had a cold winter is the fact that the jet stream which normally brings the succession of depressions that yield the mild wet winters in our latitudes is further south than it should be. So my assumption is that the storms surging through to the south of us are occurring in those places because of the jet stream displacement as well. The recent wet summers in the UK have also been blamed, at least in part, on the jet stream being in the wrong place and not allowing the Azores high to build in over us. So what is going on?

All the foregoing of course is dwarfed by the horrendous earthquake that has devastated part of Chile. As I type this on Sunday evening the current death toll is 708 according to the BBC News Website. Absolutely awful. And this so soon after the horror of Haiti. I've just looked at the Shelterbox website and see that they are currently mobilising a response team to go to Chile to assess the situation.

This does seem to have been an extraordinary year so far in respect of the damage caused by the forces of nature.

End of month, my cold gone, spring coming

Well hear we are then, the last day of February and the cold I've been plagued with for the last few days nearly gone. This is getting into the good time of year for me with noticeably longer days and although hardly tropical there is the sense that any further cold spells shouldn't be prolonged. Apart from the snowdrops which have been excellent in my locality this year other flowers have understandably been reluctant to get going. This valley was famous for the cultivation of daffodils and many of the fields have been abandoned but the daffodils still come up and are an amazing sight but mostly not quite yet. There are wild daffodils too if you know where to look and there will be swathes of wood anemone to come in certain places near the river. The south west is even more special in spring!

Not looking good for Gordon Brown

Although nobody seems to have landed a knock out punch yet on Gordon Brown he certainly seems to be reeling following the allegations in Andrew Rawnsley's book and the aftermath. I never doubted Brown was a bully boy and liable to really violent outbursts of anger. But does it matter if a Prime Minister is boorish, bullying, socially inept, a liar, psychologically unable to accept he has made mistakes? I'm afraid it does.

Brown now has further revelations in Rawnsley's book to look forward to as well as appearing at the Iraq Inquiry next week and with three leaders debates to come before we vote. Will he keep it together or will he crack is the question. I'm not a betting man but I think he will be defeated at the polls whenever they come.

The Piers Morgan / Gordon Brown love-in

Last Saturday I did a blogpost about the then upcoming Gordon Brown interview with Piers Morgan. I've now seen a slightly abbreviated version of this programme on the internet. In Saturday's piece I said " Personally I don't have a problem with viewers seeing a different Gordon Brown"; I'm now regretting that comment! The interview, let's face it, was blatant electioneering and really should not have been broadcast in the run up to the election. Was it Sarah Brown trying to pull the PR strings? Interesting that the director kept cutting away to the fond wife loyally backing her husband. And it went out on Valentines Day, a bit more than a coincidence perhaps!

It seems to me that she is desperately deploying her skills to portray Gordon as a warm people loving family man. I don't doubt for a minute his feelings towards his wife and children but to what degree should this aspect of his character be shared with the public? For the sake of balance I believe that the TV cameras have been in the home of the Camerons. I guess that we will see more of the 'touchy feely' stuff from our politicians as the years go by. Back to Sarah Brown: she introduced her husband at the last two Labour Party Conferences, this was quite interesting and innovative the first time round but I could see that she had set herself a precedent and that it wouldn't have the same spark when repeated and I blogged about this before. As a one-off to 'humanise' her husband it seemed not a bad idea but repeated it is just banal.

Mr Brown admitted flashes of bad temper and put it down to his impatience to get things done He might well say that but the truth is that he is a bully boy, a control freak, a person who would happily see his own henchmen briefing against other Labour politicians, a compulsive liar when he needs to be, in fact not really a nice man at all. Yes I feel sorry about his eyesight problem and his personal family tragedy but do we need to be reminded again about all this.

In the Piers Morgan show Brown was pretty relaxed (allegedly he had been trained for it by Alastair Campbell!) and appeared to be full of bonhomie. However it is the three one and half long party leaders' interviews that will have a greater effect on the voting public particularly as they will be much much closer to the election itself. I think that the Morgan programme will soon be forgotten.

"When I'm Hurtin'" sung by Al and Isla Grant

It is of course Valentines Day tomorrow and I think that this beautiful little love song from husband and wife duo Al and Isla Grant fits the bill. I hope that you enjoy it!

The Brown interview tomorrow

So tomorrow (Sunday) folk will have a chance to see the more human and caring side of Gordon Brown we have been told. His old pal and cheerleader Piers Morgan will chat to him on ITV - I believe that Mr Morgan is doing a series of these interviews so Gordon's is not therefore a one-off. The difference of course is that GB is this country's Prime Minister and there just happens to be a General Election coming up in the very near future!

The piece of the programme that has been heavily trailed is where Brown displays his emotion when talking about the early death of his daughter Jennifer and naturally commentators are having or will have much to say about this. Cynics of course will say that this has all been set up so that Brown can get the sympathy vote whilst his supporters - and there are some - stress that what most people see is only one side of our PM and that he is much more personable than most believe.

Personally I don't have a problem with viewers seeing a different Gordon Brown, he might get a short lived and small bounce in the polls but I doubt that any benefit will last. I don't think that Brown ever went to the Tony Blair School of Acting - his character isn't subtle enough to do pretend emotion. No you will see genuine grief tomorrow and so you should. I remember that Wednesday in the House of Commons when at PMQs he had genuinely warm words to say about Cameron, the news of the death of Ivan having been announced earlier that day (or possibly the night before, can't remember exactly). I know that PMQs weren't continued and that David Cameron was understandably absent from the House.

Although I have every sympathy with Brown and his wife Sarah over their personal tragedy this doesn't in any way shape or form influence my belief that he is not the right person to lead this country and that much of his behaviour is totally unacceptable. The Piers Morgan thing might do him a little bit of good but I think that will be totally negated by the three leader debates to come.

One thing I'm sure about: come Monday morning the mainstream media and the bloggers will be having a good deal to say about one Gordon Brown!

Toyota woes

The Japanese car maker Toyota is suffering from the wrong sort of publicity at the moment. So reliable are its products as a rule that they normally don't merit any column inches at all but now problems with accelerator pedals on certain models and brakes on others have raised enough concern to warrant massive numbers of recalls so that the problems can be fixed. I don't own this make but I drove one belonging to someone else decades back and I have ridden in another very recently and have always felt that they were very well engineered and screwed together and they seemed just about the least likely make to have reliability or safety problems.

A couple of thoughts then about the unhappy position the company finds itself in:

• To its credit Toyota appears to be open and honest about the problems with, as one would expect from the Japanese, the boss making an apology for all to see. This contrasts with recalls made by western manufacturers who would often try and say that a problem didn't exist and would only react properly following plenty of public pressure. Maybe not all of them but I particularly remember Renault who had produced a poor design for a bonnet catch on some of the 'Clio' models with recorded instances of bonnets flying up as the car was speeding along. They attempted to do some buck passing but I think in the end grudgingly arranged a recall but not until after very adverse reports on the BBC's 'Watchdog' programme. This was about three years ago I think, I don't have a personal axe to grind on this never having owned one - I just wanted to point out that other manufacturers have had potential accident faults in their designs.
• The technology in today's cars is very sophisticated and my 24 year old jalopy seems to be from the stone age in comparison! But is all this cleverness really necessary? Take the accelerator pedal on my car - it connects through a cable to a bit of linkage that opens a flap on the carburettor thus allowing more petrol/air mixture into the engine and speeding up the vehicle. Very basic and does the job. The thing that bothers me about today's cars is that many of the simple functions that work perfectly well are being replaced by more complicated procedures which I would have thought would be quite expensive to replace once faults develop. I'm amazed that today's cars are as reliable as they are but should things go wrong you will need a healthy bank balance to get the repairs done. This leads to a favourite gripe: the way some cars are scrapped long before they ought to be just because some piece of space age technology needs replacing but the cost in relation to the car's value makes it an uneconomic process.

As I said before: all credit to Toyota for holding up their hands with regard to the design faults.

Three cheers for Fabio Capello

I've pointed out before that I don't have much interest in sport and I am also not into the lives and loves of such people as pop stars, media personalities and highly paid sportsmen. So who, other than his wife, John Terry is alleged to have slept with is of little concern to me. What is important in this instance though is the undenied story of Mr Terry having a relationship with the girl friend of an England team mate Wayne Bridges. I'm commenting on this because of the action taken by England's team manager Fabio Capello. For me Capello has ticked all the boxes and is like a breath of fresh air: he dealt with the issue of Terry's captaincy very quickly, he made the right decision in my honest opinion, he did the sacking face to face and he didn't tell anyone else prior to Terry being informed of his fate. He then immediately announced who the new captain and vice-captains would be.

So often of late one hears of those in a position of being able to hire and fire squirming out of their responsibilities. I'm thinking of the way the BBC dealt with Jonathan Ross for example where he seemed to be given just a mild rap over the knuckles over those phone calls. Then there are those senior politicians who don't deal with sackings in a proper manner. What really gets me though is when someone finds themselves dismissed from their employment via a text message on their mobile: what a personal insult!

Bravo Mr Capello! You have shown others the right way to go about managing people.

Tony Blair and the Iraq War

I've just been watching some of the video of Blair's evidence at the Chilcot Inquiry on their website (well someone has to do it!). As usual Blair comes over quite convincingly but I don't think that I have the time or stamina to sit through six hours or whatever it is. There is so much one could write on the subject but I'll just make a few comments via bullet points:

• Whatever conclusions are reached by the Inquiry at the end of the day I don't think those who felt strongly about the war at the time (I mean both pros and antis) will change their viewpoint. It is very much like the two sides in the hunting debate or the climate change debate once someone has an entrenched position that is it. Additional evidence is unlikely to sway them in the other direction.
• When Blair became PM in 1997 I don't think he had thought about foreign policy much but when he paid a visit to Kosovo things changed. Witnessing the situation over there he decided that an interventionist policy was needed where there were occasions of that type. Some people referred to Blair as Bush's poodle with reference to Iraq but I beg to differ. I think that Blair developed a missionary zeal and assuming that Saddam had WMD and wasn't going to disarm then Blair had no problems in invading Iraq.
• I think in his evidence on Friday - I didn't get to that bit watching the video this evening - Blair mentioned the figure of 100,000 Iraqis dead as a result of the war. Estimates vary a lot, some have used this lowest figure whilst others have used greater numbers up to one million in fact. I think that Blair volunteered his figure without prompting and I am wondering whether he was trying to spike the questioners' guns. If he got in the 100,000 dead in his evidence first then it might be overlooked that this was the very lowest estimate of several.
• Blair tried to lay the blame for the problems in Iraq post invasion on those pesky Iranians coming in and spoiling the party. No Mr Blair, it's you and Mr Bush who are culpable - before the war there was some sort of strategic balance between Iraq and Iran, post war there was obviously an imbalance in the situation, effectively a vacuum where Iraq is concerned. It is perhaps not too surprising that Iraq's hated neighbour wanted to exploit the situation. The coalition was not prepared for the aftermath, they should have been - no excuses.
• Blair tried to make a strong point about Iraq possibly supplying terrorists with WMD post 9/11. Whether this might have happened one day I don't know but there was zero evidence of any connection between Saddam and Al-Qaida. This reminds me of the fact that following the 9/11 attacks Vice President Dick Cheney set up a special unit to try every way possible to find a connection between the two. I believe that many many Americans were misled into believing that Iraq was somehow involved in 9/11 thus giving extra legitimacy to the invasion.

Much more could be added to this blogpost but I'll leave it at that for the moment.