Another Nightmare For Harriet Harman
Who could possibly look more foolish than Harriet Harman? Whatever her words, her appearance in an outlandish splash of fake rocks and cheap party dress or city suit of whatever sort makes her look utterly, utterly beyond any credibility at all.
If she has a communications advisor (which she must have – at least a dozen|) then what sort of incompetence is this? Her words are nonsense. Her meaning is impenetrable but her appearance?? No politician should suffer from such an amateurish and humiliating presence in this day and age. I am sure that she has a sincere intent but what better example can there be of over-management to the point of disaster?
Walking The Dog 10
Morning mist, a September Sunday in the valley between Sutton Poyntz and Osmington.
The sun is already high in the south east. 
But in the steep sided valleys, mists meander around in the growing warmth.
Autumn colours are beginning to develop and the mellow fruitfulness is in full bloom. One of the many local birds of prey pulls off from teasing the lowly rooks and flys up to a taller perch.
The grass is soaking wet with dew as if a huge cloudburst had just passed by . Everywhere there are hundreds, thousands of glittering cobwebs. As your angle of view changes on a moorland bush another hundred thousand catch the light and another and another.
High above, great V-shaped skeins of canada geese are heading south west for the Lodmoor and Radipole reserves. As I raise my imaginary Boss over-and-under and swing onto the leader they break formation. They tumble and dive, all order destroyed. Like a pack of Messerschmidts and Focke-Wolfs set upon by Spitfires and Hurricanes, they spray apart in random escape
Portland is invisible but there is a flotilla of racing sailboats in the bay and a pair of jetskis zooms past at full throttle. The Weymouth lifeboat, out I hope on exercise, carves a huge half mile circle of wake. In the background a giant tanker stands guard at the harbour entrance
It is time to play mountain goats and so right to the very edge of the precipice run the dogs. A moment’s pause then down they go slippering and skittering in pursuit of another rabbit.
Now Is The Time For Recrimination – Before They Get Away!
I am delighted to see that The Times and now, this morning, Andrew Marr, are joining me in calling for bankers to be brought to account. The “Thunderer” even said that “heads must roll”. Roll they must, many of them, until the baskets are full and the streets of the City are running with blood. The executions should take place in public so that the greedy thieves and scoundrels who have pillaged our economy can be subject to public humiliation and villification as they meet their doom.
I will carry the metaphor no further but the dread and fear that should now be ruining the weekends of the chief executives and chairmen of the banks should be little different from that of the French aristocrats awaiting the guillotine.
We must insist that those individuals who have taken multi million pound bonuses from banks, funds and all forms of financial institutions that are now insolvent must be able to justify the payments in the same way that a director of a small business that had gone bust might have to explain his drawings to a liquidator. In many instances money will have to be recovered.
Whether guilty of personal wrongdoing or not, the chairmen, chief executives and non-executive directors who have presided over this catastrophe must take responsibility and go! The same sanction must fall on the heads of the regulators.
Lord Adair Turner, Chairman, and Jon Pain, Managing Director Retail Markets, who both accepted poisoned chalices at the FSA only last month may have some excuse but the rest of the board should be summarily dismissed, not even allowed to resign.
Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have been extraordinarily unequivocal in many of their statements this week. We want to know much, much more detail about the “mechanisms” that will put in place to restrain the banks in future. If the taxpayer has saved your business then in future you will not be gambling on ludicrously complex financial products that only you understand and for which you set the rules. We prefer that you lend £100,000 to a small business rather than £10 million to a virtual roulette wheel.
“There a million stories in the Naked City”. Now is the time for “le dénouement”.
I Must Go Down To The Sea Again…
My first few weeks in Weymouth are brim full of experiences, pleasures, delights and precious few disappointments.
Here I am, nestled away in the delightful village of Sutton Poyntz in a deep cleft in the chalk hills in the biblically named valley of the River Jordan. Behind me, to the north (for an old sea dog always looks towards the water!) is my mountain. In fact, my recent purchase of an Ordnance Survey map has revealed that it achieves only one quarter of the height needed to qualify as such. Believe me, when you climb it, as I do most mornings, it seems plenty high enough. I used to think the miles that I walked with Capone and Carla around Chichester Harbour meant I was fit but in Dorset there are hills!
To the south is the most stupendous view across Weymouth Bay to Portland. The Jurassic Coast tumbles away towards Lulworth. The monstrous cliffs of Portland join the town’s Esplanade along the great shingle isthmus that is Chesil Beach and the sky, usually blue, reminds me every minute that I must be close to paradise.
It is not always a peaceful scene and I look forward eagerly to some vicious winter storms. Last weekend, Portland was hosting its speed trials and, sure enough, a 40 knot wind was blowing across Chesil Beach. The wind and kite surfers sailing parallel to the road were clearly outstripping the cars and the breeze was very much more than brisk.
I parked up, released the beasts and we set off to walk west over the shingle spine. The wind was as fierce as any I have known. Carla whimpered. Capone struck on. I struggled. Chesil shingle is large pebbles, difficult to walk through and with the blast in our faces almost impossible. As my head peeped over the crest I remembered what real wind means. Reaching the top I could lean my whole weight into it and riding the gusts, stand like Kate Winslet at the sharp end of Titanic, supported on air, resplendent in space.
We stumbled down the far side, an awe inspiring sight before us. Eight foot monsters pounding down. Spray flying thirty feet high. The majesty of the ocean before us. The huge, roaring, raging, thundering of the shingle dragged back in the undertow. A lump in my throat, my tears mixing with the stinging spray. The overwhelming, compulsive, massive power of it. I am part of an island race. The salt must run in my veins because this is being alive. Nothing can be more complete, more absolute, more real. Time stands still while the incomparable terror and beauty of nature displays itself.
The walk back is much easier with a helping hand up the hill and in the lee of the shingle mountain the wind now feels gentle and modest. This is why I came to the ocean. This is what feeds my soul.
I remember more than 20 years ago standing on the north coast of the island of Iona with my four month old son in my arms and being similarly overcome. If this is what Weymouth offers me in the first month then i am here for life.
Today, it was blissfully calm. The sea at Bowleaze Cove was as flat as the millpond at Emsworth. Above a million feathers of high cirrus cloud, slightly below, scudding cotton wool puffs, dark at the edges, a Dali-esque caricature of a sky but real not surreal. This is my new home and I love it!
…And He Can Walk On Water
Or so Peter Mandelson would have us believe! Congratulations to him. If he can do it so can I. I can reprise him too. My first ever published article in the national press (The Independent) toyed with my confrontation with the man himself at the junction of Ledbury Road and Westbourne Grove. 
It must have been about 1994. I think around the time of his mortgage scandal. I was gently cycling southwards and as I crossed over this dishevelled, unshaven and grumpy looking character loped along the Westbourne Grove pavement and wanted to cross. The look he gave me when I didn’t give way was enough to freeze the blood of any parliamentary minion and only then did I realise who he was
My abiding memory is of his crumpled shorts – so crumpled. As if they’d been screwed up tight in his fist before beng worn.
And at the instant I think to myself “hasn’t he aged?”, I know the same must be true of me. He has done so with dignity and now looks more the statesman than the aggressive spin doctor.
All hail Peter! You’re back. And in fine fettle!
The Eagle Has Landed
I have now found my feet in Weymouth or, to be more accurate, the delightful, picturesque village of Sutton Poyntz – and what a place it is!
This is the view from the “mountain” behind my house. Any words are simply an injustice…
So this is my first post in weeks. At last my broadband is on and my office is beginning to come together.
Expect much more soon!
Gypsies, Tramps, Thieves And Estate Agents
The property market is, once again, difficult for everyone. In recent weeks we have even been asked to have some sympathy for that most despised group of parasites, estate agents – but I have none. Truth is that their “profession” is a necessary evil and in good times as in bad it is only those with some standards and, maybe, a little integrity that are worth dealing with.
In the past twelve months I have had comprehensive experience of the estate agents in and around Emsworth, Portsmouth and Chichester. There have been one or two who have been a pleasure to deal with, who have been professional, efficient and helpful. Others have been uninterested and disinterested, unethical, inefficient and some are little short of crooked.
First, the positive. There is one firm that shines out as example to all others – Henry Adams. I have not bought, sold, rented or let a single property from them but I have viewed many and I can truthfully say that every transaction has been smooth, easy and as it should be. If only I could say the same for the rest.
Borland & Bound of Emsworth, Charlotte and Alison in their lettings department are liars. If you stalk the internet property sites, as I know how to do, you can catch the new properties immediately they come to market. If you’re quick on the draw the truth becomes evident. Agents which pick and choose who they sell or let to and at what price. Whether it is their sister’s best friend’s cousin’s daughter or their next door neighbour’s husband who they share a bottle of cheap white wine with every Wednesday afternoon, there are dishonest people out there that you cannot rely on to deal with you properly. Borland & Bound told me for a week that they just couldn’t get hold of the landlord to arrange a viewing. 
Then I met another prospective tenant outside another property who told me that they’d viewed the Borland & Bound property the day before. Borland & Bound then told me they’d had a “bad” reference on me. I ask, from who, on what authority, when did I give you the information or source from which to take a reference? Is that the best bullshit you can come up with? I wonder what the truth is?
Then there was “Zone” of Chichester. What dreadful 1980s-type “brand” is that and can anyone take a firm with such a name seriously? I had to try to because some unsuspecting property owner who had exactly what I wanted in Bosham had made the mistake of hiring this firm and apparently causing it all sorts of problems. After all, business would be so much easier, wouldn’t it, if it wasn’t for those dreadful people we call customers?
It was so much trouble to arrange a viewing. Five or six telephone calls were never returned and eventually produced the reaction that “we might be able to arrange a viewing in a week or so”. “Please don’t pester us. You’re probably not the sort of tenant we want because you’d be on the phone all the time”.
Eventually a viewing was arranged but when I called to ask for directions I was told “I’m far too busy. Ask someone in the street”. Then surprise, surprise, “the landlord has a prior offer”, “the property is now off the market”.
It must be unpleasant to have to demean yourself, to lie, to cheat, to deceive but perhaps some of these estate agents enjoy their work. I can think of no other explanation.
Olympic Glory
If you haven’t been moved by our outstanding success in Beijing then you have a heart of stone. The commitment, dedication, pride and intensity demonstrated by our sportsmen and women is an example to us all – and that, of course, is the purpose of sport.
The most incisive fact behind all this is that in 1996 in Atlanta, Team GB won just one gold medal. In 1997 lottery funding started. Now, 11 years on, that investment has started to pay off and it seems self evident doesn’t it? Our superstars who are now leading the world, were then just beginning their interest in sport. We have provided proper funding and they are repaying us in gold.
If international sport can replace war and if sporting success can inspire individual success in business, in education, in science and in society then we have a model that deserves even greater support. In itself it justifies the lottery whatever concerns one may have about government sponsored gambling. Our sportsmen and women must now be guaranteed proper funding in future whatever source it comes from.
Peter Reynolds 