French Open 2015

So, Andy Murray is up against Joao Sousa in the 2^nd Round of the French Open. There’s scope for optimism since 44^th seed Sousa has lost all 5 of his previous matches against our British No. 1.

Murray has already beaten Sousa once this year, at the Australian Open in January. That was a straight sets victory. However; it will be interesting to see how it pans out today, since this will be the first time they have met on clay.

Andy beat Facundo Arguello in straight sets to reach the 2^nd Round. Joao Sousa overcame Vasek Pospisil.

My favourite Serbian female player, Jelena Jankovic (25), lost by straight sets in the 1^st Round to Bulgarian, Sesil Karatantcheva (106). That’s the second Grand Slam this year she’s been eliminated in the 1^st Round, having lost to Timea Bacsinszky (24) in straight sets at the Australian Open in January.

It’s amazing to me that this former World No. 1 has never won a Grand Slam Singles title. She’s only even reached 1 final, at the US Open in 2008 where she lost in straight sets to Serena Williams (1).

She did win the Wimbledon Mixed Doubles title in 2007. Her partner was Andy Murray’s younger brother, Jamie. However, I still hold out hope that she will eventually win the Singles title, because she’s a great player and very entertaining to watch.

She still has time. The oldest ever winner of the Women’s Singles title at Wimbledon was Charlotte Cooper-Sterry. She was 37 when she won the title way back in 1908. Jelena, born on 28^th February 1985, is only 30 years old, so she still has time.

You Fat Bastard

I’m reading Royston Vasey’s autobiography at the moment. Most people will probably know him by his stage name, Roy “Chubby” Brown.

Now, I’m actually a fan of Chubby. I used to listen to his shows on bootleg tapes as a kid in the seventies and eighties. Yeah, his language is foul; his humour can be bordering on the racist, homophobic and misogynistic at times. However, that’s all it is; humour, and there are times when Chubby is very funny.

Although I’m only a few chapters into the book, I have to confess to a few misgivings with it. The first is how he starts every chapter by talking about his battle with throat cancer. I watched my dad die of that horrible disease, so I’d never dream of trivialising it or understanding the devastating effect it can have on people’s lives. But by reminding us about it at the start of every chapter, it feels like a desperate attempt to garner sympathy before he tells us more tales of what a little shit he was. There’s no link between the cancer stuff and the chapter that follows. I’ve tried to make up my own, but these attempts have been tenuous at best, and required viewing the language used in its broadest terms.

The names of the chapters themselves don’t really fit either. For example, the one called “mother love”, has precious little about his mother in it. It just starts with a bit about the cancer again, then a few passages about his mother and how she walked out on her family before we get more tales about what a profoundly unpleasant kid he was.

If you wanted to put a positive spin on it, you might say that at least he’s honest. He’s giving it to us, warts and all, even if it does paint him in a poor light.

But I’m not sure I believe everything he says. There seem to be discrepancies – like saying he lived in a 2-bedroom house, and when his dad moved his girlfriend and her 5 kids in, the kids had his room, and he had the box room. So, where did his dad and his girlfriend sleep? He talks about “honour among thieves”, and “fair game”, and then tells us how he systematically stole from one of his friends. Also, he seemed to squeeze a lot into his fifteenth year, such as trying to join the army, running away from home, getting and losing at least half a dozen jobs, buying a car with his friend and driving it to Redcar; and when the car ran out of petrol they left it, saying they would go back the next door with a can of petrol and pick it up again. We’re then supposed to believe they didn’t know that they’d left it on a railway track. Also that year he ended up in a children’s home; got a job driving a dump truck around a building site; driving an old ambulance with which he ferried workers around another site. I could go on and on, and I’m not even halfway through the book yet.

As I said, I’m a fan of Chubby Brown. But that Royston Vasey bloke seems a right twat; and a bullshit artist as well.

Cameron's Feeling Confident

A shiver ran down my spine today. I read that David Cameron’s feeling confident. I know it was about negotiating a “better” deal for the UK in Europe; but I just can’t help myself. Every time that man feels confident I imagine a load of poor or disabled people dying.

Seriously; I can’t stop myself anymore. It’s gone beyond simple hatred to a kind of psychotic Tourette’s Syndrome. Every time I see his – or George Osbourne’s – face, I instinctively start shouting “tosser” at the television screen. Then I start getting progressively angrier as they avoid questions and refuse to give straight answers.

Maybe I should talk to my doctor about this.

Le Cercle

I’ve recently been doing some research online for a story I’m planning to write. The story concerns mind control, and – aside from the MK Ultra program – one of the most common organisations my searches are bringing up is Le Cercle; or Cercle Pinay.

I decided to look into this organisation, and I’ll write more when I’ve done more research. In the meantime, I recommend, if you have a few spare minutes, that you have at look at this lot yourself.

Ostensibly, Le Cercle is a foreign policy think-tank that specialises in international security. But time and time again I find allegations of connections with the CIA. The former Conservative MP, Alan Clark, actually wrote in his diaries that the organisation was funded by them. Of course, these charges may be false; but if they’re true, then I would regard that as a vested interest and would wonder about Le Cercle’s objectivity.

Le Cercle was established in the 1950s by Antoine Pinay, the former French Prime Minister; and Jean Violet, a French Intelligence agent. At that time, it was known by the name, Cercle Pinay.

The group has members from 25 countries, and meets bi-annually in Washington DC, United States. For some time now, Britain has held the Chairmanship. Some leading British members were: Anthony Cavendish, an ex-MI6 officer; Julian Amery, another former Conservative MP; and Brian Crozier, writer and founder of the Institute for the Study of Conflict.

In the 80s, influential German news magazine Der Spiegel mentioned Le Cercle in connection with regular attendee Franz Josef Strauss. Strauss had been the German Federal Minister of Defence until he was forced to resign in 1962 over a scandal involving the illegal detention of Rudolf Augstein, the magazine’s then owner and editor-in-chief.

The 90s saw the group come to public attention again. Jonathan Aitken, another former Tory MP and then Chairman of the group, was convicted for Perjury and jailed for 18 months. Reporters from a number of newspapers contacted Le Cercle members but they all refused to answer any questions.

Jumping ahead to today, the current group Chairman is yet another former Tory MP. This one is Norman Lamont, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer.

My natural loathing of politicians immediately conjures up shady goings-on because of the numerous ex-Tory MPs involved, and the questions it raises about them being involved with an allegedly CIA-backed organisation. However, I will keep these to one side until I’ve researched more.

I’ll write again when I have more to tell you.

More Facebook Fears

I have a profile on Facebook. I check my timelines regularly and comment two or three times a week. I’m careful to not give away anything too personal.

This so-called “social networking site” is in its 11^th year now, having been launched on 4^th February 2004. Amazingly, as of 2014, it had assets in excess of US$40 billion. Let me write that again: As of 2014, FACEBOOK HAD ASSETS IN EXCESS OF US$40 BILLION.

I’m not knocking it. Used carefully it can be an entertaining and useful tool. It can bring together people who haven’t seen each other for years; I’m sure there’ve been countless school reunions made possible by Facebook groups. It allows celebrities to connect with their fans. What I like best is the way it allows people to share photos from our common past.

My reservations with Facebook come from a problem as old as time. There’s always someone who will seek to abuse it and use it for nefarious purposes. Nowhere is this more clear and chilling than in the tragic case of Ashleigh Hall.

Ashleigh, from Darlington, County Durham, was the oldest of four daughters. She was 17, and in her final year of a child care course when she was raped and murdered by Peter Chapman. Her body was then dumped in a field near a Little Chef restaurant on the outskirts of Sedgefield, County Durham.

Chapman was born in Darlington in 1977. His grandparents raised him in nearby Stockton-on-Tees, where he was first investigated by police aged just 15. Four years later he was sentenced to 7 years in prison for raping two prostitutes at knifepoint.

In 2009, attracted to the bare-chested photos on his profile, Ashleigh “friended” what she thought was a 19 year old named Peter Cartwright. Unfortunately for her, this boy was, in fact, 33 year old Peter Chapman.

He persuaded Ashleigh to meet, and on 25^th October 2009, she left her home for the last time. Chapman arrived at their meeting place claiming to be young Peter’s father, and that he’d been asked to pick her up. What happened next really doesn’t bear thinking about.

I guess it would be easy to say Ashleigh was stupid for getting into that car. After all, her mother, Andrea, raised her not to talk to strangers. But I think that would be unfair on Ashleigh, because one of the most prevalent characteristics of true psychopaths is that they appear just as normal as anybody else, and can be exceptionally persuasive.

I cite this horrifying cautionary tale because it highlights the dangers – not just of Facebook – but of the entire internet. Unless you know them beforehand, you have no idea who that person is you might find yourself talking to online. That’s because online you can be anybody you want to be. For instance, I could create a profile portraying me as an athletic, teenage male model and youth player for Manchester United. Sadly, my reality is that I’m a middle-aged fat man who genuinely gets out of breath walking the ten feet or so to my toilet. But it’s so easy to do. There are no checks carried out on the people creating these profiles, and there’s a plethora of photos online they can upload and claim as their own.

Here’s a true story for you: A friend of mine went on one of those internet dating sites. He came to see me one day, excited about the woman he was exchanging emails with from that site. So excited was he, that he used my computer to log on to the site and show me the photo on her profile. I took absolutely no pleasure in telling him that the picture on that profile was, in fact, an old picture of none other than the singer, Lily Allen. Oh yes – this woman was that stupid.

As my shell-shocked friend looked on, I did a search and showed him the picture in its original home. It showed the young Ms Allen at a music festival.

My friend was furious. How dare she do such a thing? It was like false advertising or something. I then pointed out that, while the picture on his profile was genuine, in all fairness, it was more than 5 years old.

But that’s the way it is. The internet affords us an anonymity we don’t have in everyday social situations, and it allows us to project an image of ourselves that can range from slightly misleading to downright false.

I’ve written about this before. But I’m talking about it again now because there’s been another serious incident connected with Facebook.

This time, it was two sisters; Amy and Nicole Rice, aged 21 and 19 respectively. These girls, from Dublin, met up with two men they had been chatting to on Facebook. The men picked them up from a bus stop and took them to an apartment in Newbridge, County Kildare. Once there, things went bad fairly quickly. The men became aggressive, and when Nicole got up to leave, they pushed her to the ground and kicked her repeatedly in the head. Both sisters were tied up and had rags shoved in their mouths prior to suffering a beating so savage that at one point Nicole passed out; the men panicked, thinking she was dead, and started calling friends, saying they needed to dig holes in the Wicklow mountains because they didn’t know what to do with the girls.

Thankfully, the girls survived this ordeal. The men eventually let them go; threatening to kill them and their family if they reported the incident to the authorities.

So, my point is one that I’ve made before: Be careful about the people you meet online – especially you ladies. The man you’re arranging to meet could be not so much Brad Pitt as cess-pit.

United States of Hegemony

Henry Luce, the American magazine magnate, imagined the United States achieving world hegemony. In 1941, he declared that the twentieth century would be the “American century”.

I find this arrogance offensive. It engenders an image of a school bully striding into a playground and announcing that he owns the place.

I know Yank-bashing is the trend in some circles. It’s a big target, and has done little to improve its image over the years. However, until recently I have resisted the wave of derision aimed at what certain factions in Iran have called The Great Satan. After all; they’ve given us a lot of good things: Hollywood movies; Richard Pryor; McDonald’s; Coca-cola; Pizza Hut; Motown; I could go on all day – they have made many positive contributions to the world.

But...they’ve also done a shitload of damage. They’ve manipulated, bullied, threatened and destroyed in a seemingly perpetual quest for world domination. They’ve also tried to take credit for things they had no right to.

The biggest of these is their chest-beating over the Second World War. How many times have we Brits been told by Americans, ‘If it wasn’t for us you’d all be speaking German’?

Well, the truth is that it’s Russia we should be thanking for bringing down the industrial killing machine that was Nazi Germany. It was they who halted their eastward march and then pushed them back. It was they who began to break down Germany’s military might.

Russia was crying out for the US and allied forces to attack Germany from the west and force them to fight a war on two fronts. In typical fashion, the US made noises but failed to act. In 1941, President Roosevelt promised to aid Russia with raw materials, as well as financially. The New York Times reported that US shipments fell “far, far short” of what they promised. In fact, they delivered less than half.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbour, the US finally entered the war which had already been raging for more than two years. As 1941 rolled on to 1942 the Russians continued their plea to the Allies to establish a second front in the west. In July 1942 there was still plenty of American talk with no action to back it up. The Russians continued the fight with little help from those who would later take credit for winning the war. In a letter to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, President Roosevelt admitted that “the Russians are killing more Germans and destroying more equipment than you and I put together.”

Despite promises; public support and even rallies calling for the second front, British and US forces went off to North Africa, leaving Russia to carry on doing most of the work in vanquishing Hitler’s armies. By the time Churchill and Roosevelt met in Casablanca in January 1943, Russia had turned the tide and was driving the Germans back west.

Although at great cost, the Red Army marched forward, pushing the Germans back so that by the time the second front was finally established with the Normandy landings beginning 6^th June 1944 (a year and a half later than promised) Russia already occupied much of Central Europe, and the Germans were nothing like as strong as they were before. The war in Europe ended less than a year later, and America took the credit and snatched all the glory. However, that’s like somebody getting into the ring with Floyd Mayweather and beating him to the point where he can barely defend himself, and then I go in and knock him down and call myself world champion.

So, America, it’s not thanks to you that I don’t speak German. It’s actually thanks to Russia. So, spasibo, and auf wiedersehen.

The Election - My Two Penn'orth

God help us.

There are some dark times ahead for this country. The army of darkness has pulled off an unlikely victory and now they’re really going to have at us lowly plebs. I’m genuinely frightened.

So how the fuck did it all go wrong? Where’s the hung Parliament and the progressive coalition we thought we were going to get? How the fuck did the pollsters get it so wrong and how the fuck did David Cameron and his posh bastards not only get to stay in power, but also to win a majority?

Let’s start with the easy one first: Little Nicky Clegg and his Lib Dems. They’re saying that they went into that coalition with the Tory bully boys because it was best for this country. Bullshit. They went into that coalition because they wanted a taste of power; they wanted to feel relevant; and they were prepared to betray everyone who trusted them and to sell all their values like a cheap whore to do it. Yesterday they paid the price. David Cameron fucked them all ways till Sunday. Yesterday was the money for a taxi left on the bedside table.

Ed Milliband: Fucking hell; where do I start? First – his campaign wasn’t quite as bad as everybody expected. Most of us thought he was going to come across as an awkward geek; clumsy in word and deed. Apart from his little stumble on Question Time he proved us wrong. He actually made a pretty good fist of the campaign; coming across as confident, passionate, and maybe – and I emphasise maybe – a viable alternative to the evil henchmen of the Tory party. There really wasn’t a lot wrong with how he said it; the problem was what he said.

Going back briefly to that Question Time appearance, he drove a stake through the heart of his campaign when he said Labour hadn’t overspent when they were last in power. Frankly, that was a fucking stupid thing to say. Of course they overspent. Gordon Brown was so desperate to be considered worthy of the office of Prime Minister that he would have spent his kids’ pocket money if he thought it would help. As it was, he sold off our gold reserves as if from the boot of his car. Of course they overspent.

Then there was the EU referendum. That was the one that really killed off his chances of becoming Prime Minister. The people of this country want a referendum, and who is he to say they can’t have one? The idea of voting for a candidate is that you’re voting for someone who’ll do what you want. Why would you vote for somebody who’s definitely not going to carry out your wishes?

The British people don’t want to be part of some European Federation. When they voted in the 1972 referendum they were voting to join the common market, not a European super-state. But like every good idea – put it in the hands of the politicians and they’ll always screw it up. It’s just about the only thing you can be sure of with them. Immigration is another one: Fantastic idea – it has enriched this country beyond measure. But, again, the politicians got hold of it and messed it up. They had an open-door policy, but they didn’t bother to build up the country’s infrastructure to cope with the influx. So now, rather than seeing foreign nationals as a valuable addition to our culture, many regard them with resentment, and even open hostility, because they feel the country can’t cope.

Which brings me neatly onto UKIP: To quote Bruce Forsythe – didn’t they do well? But that was to be expected, because they were able to capitalise on a growing nationalist sentiment in this country and portray themselves as the party that was listening to the fears of the British public on immigration. And if we had a fairer voting system, they would be a formidable force in Parliament.

I watched the BBC coverage until six this morning, and the thing that annoyed me was that they never mentioned – even in passing – the massive swing to UKIP in the context of people voting against David Cameron. It’s like UKIP are the Lord Voldemort of British politics, and we dare not speak their name in case people think we’re racist.

A massive amount of people voted against David Cameron yesterday. More than 3 million people saw UKIP as the party they wanted to represent them in the House of Commons. How many of those people would have voted Labour if UKIP hadn’t been standing? I would argue that the political map would be a hell of a lot different today, and we might be looking at a new Prime Minister.

The British people don’t want David Cameron in charge of this country. They made that very clear yesterday. Unfortunately, they also made clear that they weren’t too keen on Ed Milliband either. What a tragedy that by voting the way they did, they got the very thing they were voting against.