Yakking for Argyll

The row over the Scottish Government placing contracts in Asia for the production of Saltires has been illuminating. Makes you realise that the SNP is the only party which can never place contracts of any kind outside the country if there is a native company capable of delivering.

The clarifier here was that it was Saltires. You just knew at once that the SNP, by definition, is about growing Scotland and Scottish businesses and cannot ever go seeking the cheap deal in low wage economies.

What it has to do is work to get Scottish public sector tenders to come in at realistic prices rather than the feather-bedded inflationary ones that have tended to be the norm in this sphere. No bad thing.

Gordon Brown lost no time in conveying his feelings to the BBC on Russell Brand’s and Jonathan Ross’s competitive lapse of taste. Brand resigned. Ross was suspended. Taking a judgmental position, however, on the unimaginably awful life and death of Baby P is a different matter. Due process rules in this case. Brown may be a Desperate Dan-jowled bully but he’s essentially a self-serving and gutless lightweight. Let’s never again hear the crap about him having a moral compass.

Before the off at Interlagos yesterday Martin Brundle asked Bernie Ecclestone, ardent milker of the cash cow he has made of Formula One, why it was that so many championships in recent years have come down to the last couple of races. Bernie kept a straight face and said that it was because the competition was so close.

Ah! That would be why the rules change every couple of years to add more weight to the star riders and level the field a bit. There are TV ratings to be considered and sponsors to please - and who’s going to put themselves out to watch a foregone conclusion.

The subtext of Brundle’s question was: ‘OK Bernie, we all know the score and I’m asking this question in public to be a bit of naughty boy - which you like - and because you and I know that I’ll accept any duff answer you give. After all, your success pays my salary.’

Look at the facts. Some strange and probably indefensible penalties have been applied to Hamilton and to McLaren at critical times this season. The outcome? Ferrari win the Constructors Championship - good to share these things around, Stops disaffection. And they know they have Bernie to thank. Patronage is always a strong card.

An actuarial assessment would say that Hamilton is good enough to claw his way back from a few imposed setbacks and make the last couple of races good nail-biting audience-magnets. And he should win anyway.

But all does not go as anticipated at Interlagos. Our hero is in sixth place, not the fifth place that is the minimum he needs to take the championship. The car in front of him driven by Timo Glock then loses significant speed in the last lap but Lewis still cannot pass him. Then at the last corner, Glock’s Toyota slides to the edge on the right and Hamilton goes past to take fifth place and the championship. McLaren will now be OK about losing the Constructors.

An entirely fictional scenario sees Bernie realising he’s overcooked the pudding and that if Hamilton does not win it will lead to the strange penalties imposed earlier being re-examined in the fire of public anger. So he makes a quick phone call to Toyota - as the supremo who can punish and reward at will - and calls in a favour.

Entirely fictional, of course. If one were to believe even part of it, the Formula One circus would seem no different from Professional Wrestling - but that’s a different class of sport.

Support rallying - that’s a real sport.

Look - Jonathan Ross is the senior broadcaster, the iconic boundary-pusher, pretty much a cult hero to those newer to the industry. Russell Brand - and who, including himself, ever thought good judgment was an arrow in his quiver - was performing for an audience of one - Jonathan.

Watch the clip - you cannot get away from it these days whatever channel you’re on. Russell is focused only on impressing Jonathan, in bonding with the master. Jonathan - who will have known well that this was Russell’s driver, egged Brand on in this tribute to his own significance.

Brand resigned - and in doing so worked hard to excuse Ross, describing him as the most generous spirited man and the least malicious you could find. He blamed only himself for not thinking before he opened his mouth.

Ross is still hanging on in there, the catchlight in his eye reflecting the glint of the Beeb’s lucre. Ross did know better. His stellar presence, his actions and his contributions drove Brand well beyond the point of defensibility. But he’s busy saving himself. Brand made his resignation statement personally to the cameras. Ross has issued an apology through his lawyers.

Personally I’ve always liked both of these highly original comedians. Now Jonathan Ross is finished for me. Anyone can get into heady circumstances and go over the top - although few would lose it so totally as these two did this time. Few of us would save our own skins at the expense of our friends. How can Brand have been wrong and Ross not wrong?

In his own way Brand is an innocent. There’s nothing innocent about Jonathan Ross.

‘An embalmed jelly baby’. Magic.

What Mandy can do, Iceland can do. George Osborne played a dirty trick on Peter Mandelson - and look where it landed him. Now Iceland’s got it’s own back for our Government (sic - sick if you like) using anti-terrorist law to grab UK assets of Iceland banks.

Today, thanks to the online Iceland Review (before the piece got pulled) and the Mail on Sunday who saw it in time to publish in hard copy form - we can read parts of a phone conversation on October 7th between creepy Android Alastair Darling and his Icelandic counterpart.

You;ve got to read this. If you haven’t seen it, leave me a comment here. I’ve kept today’s press cutting and, if I can avoid For Argyll’s scrutiny for long enough, I’ll personally type our for you the bits the Mail published this morning. After all, they knocked off part of the Iceland Review’s transcript so I might as well knock off part of what they knocked off, if you follow me.

Anyway, if the shower at Westminster have their way with this GCHQ Big Brother database that’s going to watch and record every single thing every one of us does - we might as well make hay…

But back to the point - get to read this thing. Look for - not the obvious fact that Chancellor Sweetheart had been privately certain for months that the Iceland banks were going down - but his manners! He is the Government’s senior guy holding our money box, talking to his equivalent in Iceland - and he sounds like a snappy little schoolyard bully. Statesmen-like he ain’t.

And back to the BIG point. This revelation just proves what I’ve thought all along. Gordon Brown and his darling sidekick were rabbits caught in the headlights of a road accident. They could do nothing in time. Their dithering wasted billions while the country panicked when they wouldn’t follow Ireland into a 100% savings guarantee - or even get theirs up to its miserly £50k in good time. And God knows what’s going to happen when they ’spend their way out of trouble’. (Ordinary Joe’s won’t get credit to try that lark at a personal level these days.)

Now Ireland - there’s decisive. They were the ones who saw what it was going to take and, as well as the analysis, they had the judgement that it had to be quick. They had what the unbeloved and soon forgotten (if you’re not an Iraqi) George Bush called ‘cojones’. Gordon had a flapjack.

Think of the psychology of the man. Look at the picture. Consider the oddities. An ace pilot on a weekend with a friend in Nevada takes a small plane up for a quick recce to do with his next adventure. He goes missing. Nothing of any kind is found even after prolonged and complex searches - including heat seeking - over the huge area where he was known to be flying. Commemorative ceremonies are held. End of? The conspiracy theories begin.

Suddenly a hiker in a remote area of California - not where Mr Fossett was known to be heading - comes across some small fragments of clothing and some very clear ID documents - all clearly named Steven James Fossett: his Pilot’s Licence, some credit cards etc. One credit card had a little burn-and-curl damage in the top left corner, conveniently not obstructing the name of the cardholder in any way. And just to add reality, there were some dollar bills around. Steve Fossett could afford to throw away a lot of dollar bills. Think about it all.

If you were on a weekend break in the desert and taking off for no more than a quick jaunt - would you tuck your Pilot’s Licence in your pants? Would you take your credit cards? Will you be landing at a huge secret shopping mall in the desert? Is your host back below likely to nick your cards if you leave them in your bunk?

Next excitement - wreckage found, spread over a wide area.
Wreckage identified as the plane Fossett was flying.
Plane seems to have hit hillside head on, hence dispersal of wreckage. Not conclusive.
What good pilot couldn’t set the plane on a collision course and parachute out in time?

Then - ‘human remains’ found in the wreckage. OK. It really was Fossett.
Ah… but - latest announcement: the remains are ‘minimal’ but enough to establish DNA.
Then they’re identified as only ‘a fragment of bone’. All to play for again.

Wouldn’t Fossett be just the boy to be capable of sacrificing a fragment of bone from an appropriate part of his body - a finger or toe, perhaps?

I think he’s out there somewhere, living a new life and having a laugh at how well it’s all working out. And I think Richard Branson knows all about it.

Can’t you just see the two of them? Old ballooning mates - used to gambling with their lives for thrills and achievements the rest of us couldn’t imagine - planning one gigantic sleight-of-hand trick with all the skills and resources at their command.

Couldn’t be done? Think of the murdering Lord Lucan and his chums. Couldn’t it be done?

Tomorrow they’ll probably find the rest of him - but you never know. What do you think? That I’m a heartless ghoul? Could be.

Why can’t we be more intelligent about assessing the impact of resigning ministers? It means something if the good ones go. But why furrow the brow for the chaff?

Current Housing Minister Caroline Flint is said to have had to be persuaded not to resign by the so-called ‘ginger chipmunk’, Hazel Blears. Transport Secretary, Ruth Kelly has already gone- in something of a flounce at having her ‘thunder’ (Sorry - thunder? She matters?) stolen. Blair friend Margaret Hodge, the Culture Minister is expected to go. Beverley Hughes, the current successor to Hodge’s former job as Children’s Minister, is also said to be read to quit.

Well - so what? These are all low-rent performers and together they don’t add up to a single good minister

Beverley Hughes has already had to resign over ‘unintentionally misleading’ people over the Home Office approving visa claims from eastern Europe despite warnings they were backed by forged documents.

Hodge had to vacate her former post as Children’s Minister in bad odour over her appalling record in failing to protect vulnerable children from abuse when she was Labour Leader of Islington Council, prior to becoming an MPi.

Caroline Flint is the archetypal cold-eyed Labour apparatchik, incapable of anything but mouthing the party line against all comers and all questions.

Ruth Kelly was far from being a successful minister in every department she served. Her one achievement was typically self-centred - outfacing Tony Blair when he once wanted to move her out of Education. Blair was weak at the time and couldn’t afford the hassle. The only thing she’ll be remembered for is the feature she apparently shares with Princess Stephanie of Monaco - high levels of circulating testosterone.

Now, if only the lowest-rent minister of them all - Dawn Primarolo (she of the v-e-r-y– s-l-o-w–s-p-e-a-k-i-n-g in case we plebs can’t understand things she clearly does not understand herself) could be persuaded to feel the stirrings of rebellion and resign too….

And don’t let’s forget Tessa Jowel - ‘managing’ the Lodon 2012 Olympics!

And there’s Harriet Harman, playing the feminist card with all the dogma and no commonsense. Her greatest energy - her only energy - is poured into advancing her own career. She’s alleged to have said on the night of Labour’s Glasgow East defeat by the SNP, ‘This is my moment’. If it is, it won’t last long.

But let’s keep the ‘ginger chipmunk’. She’ll never be a leader but she could become something of a national treasure, with her rare straightforwardness.

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As someone who has already complained about Dunoon’s “interesting” attitude to large capital projects on this website, to read the headline today on forargyll.com regarding “competition” for funding for regeneration in Argyll between our five major towns is deeply distressing. No-one seems to be taking the council to task on this, especially those with a vested interest in Dunoon’s continued corralling of funding. I can’t help but think that the process which pits each of the town centres agin each other must be deeply deeply flawed, especially if one bidder for the funding can distort the process so wilfully.

I think the other issue here is that one centre (go on guess which one!) has an added advantage that it has been named as the Marine Gateway to the National Park, and as we all know, those projects which are associated with Scotland’s first national park are considered by funders (and the consultants who work for them) as of an order of magnitude more attractive.

Seems to me that all this creates an unseemly, muddled and muddied spectacle and does Argyll no credit — unlike Swamp Soccer of course, which may be unseemly, muddled and muddied, but it is great for our reputation as a county. Perhaps the council should raise their furrowed, woolly brows and look at changing the terms of reference like those soccer boys did for Strachur, otherwise they’re in for a stormy time (well, from me anyway).

Related articles

• Dunoon seen to obstruct progress in Council regeneration funding initiative for Argyll’s main towns
• The Imminent Trashing of Dunoon Pier

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When the US government is prepared to spend this sort of cash it makes you wonder what they could have spent the money on before the crisis. Given that there are just over 300 Million people in the US, George ‘Dubya‘ Bush is going to be spending $2,500 per person to support a banking system which has been fatally undermined by the folks that we trust to run it prudently.

Unbelievable. For that sort of money I am guessing the US could write off world debt, solve global warming and  save the whale in one fell swoop. Instead good cash follows bad cash into the maw of bad banking practice.