Always win when you’re singing

A former work colleague has just invited me to lunch next week. He’s suggested a pub near his office as it does a ‘descent sandwich’. I assume that’s one that goes down well?

Sometimes I just gets one of those tabloid moments …

Our local paper carries the story of a man aquitted of flashing at a pair of teenage girls at the local leisure pool. The man was accused of following the 14 year olds into the showers after using the pool, before dropping his shorts to reveal his erect penis.

Now if that had happened to me, or I hope my daughter, I would have gone straight to the pool management to tell them what had happened. But instead the girls visited the McDonalds restaurant opposite the pool and said nothing until their aunt came to collect them after they had eaten.

Now maybe I’m being unreasonable expecting the girls to have reported the incident immediately. I’m pretty sure that despite my appetitie, I could not have sunk my teeth into a Big Mac with the previous image in my mind! However the police had no such problems making an assumption which led to an innocent man being dragged into court and accused of being a pervert. One of the police officers involved in the prosecution had suggested to the court that a mature man who was not a good swimmer could only have been at the leisure park to get up to no good.

The pool is question is purely a leisure pool. There is nowhere to swim more than a few strokes, but there are plenty of flumes, rapids and other water park facilities. The accused man’s family were away on holiday and it was a matter of fact that he did not have sufficient holiday accrued to spend the fortnight with them. The court was told the defendant had never been in trouble before and the baker was a ‘gentleman’, who was well liked by the all female staff at the Co-op where he works as a baker. He had decided to try out the facilities after a hot shift baking last summer.

Perhaps we’re all as guilty as each other in this. Can enjoying a pool really make people assume that you are a pervert? What a sad level we have sunk to when a well-respected family man, who seems to have led a blameless life in a low-paid job, can be treated in this way.

This afternoon at PMQs, the Prime Minister announced that there would be a ‘zero per cent rise’ in spending in 2013-14. How strange to find that the son of the manse sees the glass as always being half full!

An interesting clash of health and safety vs risk-taking views today at St. Sidwells Primary School in Exeter over the subject of goggles in swimming lessons. The school are supporting the view of the British Association of Advisors and Lecturers in Physical Education (BAALPE), which states: “Head teachers should inform parents and carers that goggles can be a hazard and cause permanent eye injury“. The school are therefore insisting that goggles should only be worn by children who have a proven adverse reaction to chemicals in the water.

The Telegraph quotes Tracy Brock, a parents with a child at the school, who said: “I think it’s ridiculous. It’s health and safety gone too far. Part of growing up is playing taking risks. Children are being wrapped up in cotton wool now.” Mrs Brock continued: “If it carries on like this we are going to be breeding a generation of namby pambies“.

Well that’s an interesting view. Having seen the number of children who now wear goggles in order to paddle in the sea or even at one of the nearby municipal swimming pools, I wonder what sort of ‘namby pambies’ we are breeding who can’t bear to get water in their eyes?

Yesterday’s Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme saw Thought for the Day followed by a new slot - ‘I’m the Chancellor’. Yesterday the slot was filled by Peter Mandelson, who announced that the Comprehensive Spending Review would be postponed until after the next General Election. Mandelson said that he “believed that the Chancellor has made that judgement”, although from the reaction of the Treasury whoever had made the decision, it wasn’t the Chancellor. Mandelson is now Deputy Prime Minister in all but name, having usurped the role that Ms Harman thought she had won, but also the real Chancellor and Lord High Executioner too.

Alistair Darling has stayed loyal to Gordon Brown over the years. As he plodded on as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, he was reassured that when Brown inherited Blair’s post at Number 10, so Darling would also step into his boss’s shoes. But since being given the key to 11 Downing Street, Darling has been briefed against repeatedly. And when the current Chancellor tried to ‘do a Vince’ and warn just how things would get in that infamous Guardian interview he was shot down.

Earlier this month, Darling appeared to have won the battle, if not the war, when he beat off Ed Balls’ designs on his job in the last reshuffle. It soon became clear that this was a Pyrrhic victory in a mere skirmish. Balls has always been a close  we see that Darling’s success in staying in post was a mere pyrrhic victory. Balls worked as Mr Brown’s chief Treasury adviser for many years before becoming an MP and it seems that he has been given the green light to be Chancellor in all but name.

This morning, it was Ed Balls turn to be the Chancellor. In a somewhat breathless and rushed spat with Sarah Montague, he used every possible euphemism for ‘cuts’ and some that had not previously been thought of. ‘Everything’s paid, for’, ‘all guaranteed’, ’set out very clearly’, ‘extra money found’, ’setting out our propectus’, ‘clear accountability’, ‘making savings’ - all the buzz words where there, but with absolutely no content. However it was clear that as the man at the helm of education, Ed Balls sees himself at the very forefront of controlling policy at the spending ministries, if not the second ‘Real Chancellor’.

So who will it be tomorrow just before the 8 am news to politically cuckold the Chancellor? Roll up, roll up for Glenys Kinnock, Dawn ­Primarolo or Baroness Vadera - maybe not, as they are of the wrong gender. The way things are going, it could be a surprise comeback from Tom Watson. Even my own MP, who has made a seamless transition from über-loyal Blairite to über-loyal Brownite, need not be totally out of the running.

So stand by your radios tomorrow morning and await the latest episode of ‘I’m the Chancellor’. You never know - one day it could be you!

Before last week, had you heard of Sorana Cirstea? Or Gisela Dulko? How about Caroline Wozniacki or Maria Kirilenko?  Would you be surprised to hear that these women were considered the best players to be placed on Centre and Number One courts at Wimbledon? So were many avid followers of tennis.

Last week, former Wimbledon champion Michael Stich caused uproar when he suggested that the role of women tennis players is as much about ‘selling sex’ on court as it is about sport. Stich made his remarks in the context of a discussion about the unpleasant ‘grunting’ which is becoming more prevalent in the women’s game. He said: ‘Just play it back to the women. [Grunting] sounds disgusting, ugly, unsexy!’ Challenged that women are on court to win tennis matches rather than look sexy, Stich said ‘That’s what they sell,’ . The BBC commentator has since clarified his comments, saying ‘I promise you, I have never said women players are just in our sport to promote themselves as sex objects‘.

It seems that they don’t need to, as the All-England club are willing to do it for them. According to the Daily Mail(I know, I know!), ‘babes’ are getting to play on the top courts, with higher-ranked players, including the Williams sisters, Svetlana Kuznetsova and Dinara Safina (four of the top five seeds) have been sent to play on ‘outside courts’.

The All England Club have apparently admitted that physical attractiveness is taken into consideration, when the order of play is determined. Spokesman Johnny Perkins said: “Good looks are a factor“. He continued by saying that court selection is “a great big mixture of where the players are in the draw, who they’re playing, what their ranking is“, concluding “Box-office appeal has to be taken into consideration. It’s not a coincidence that those (on Centre Court) are attractive.”

At a time when British sportswomen are more than matching their male counterparts, it’s rather galling that the All-England seems to be suggesting that the ability of women to take centre stage on Centre Court is more a factor of their vital statistics than playing statistics.

I’ve never been one for the ‘My party, right or wrong’ line - and that certainly goes for my party’s unofficial ‘place to talk’ (excellent though I think Lib Dem Voice is). One of the issues where I think they’re getting it wrong is on the use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (otherwise known as RIPA).

Firstly, please stop the lazy description of ‘anti-terror legislation’. That’s a dog-whistle worthy of the Daily Mail at its worst. Local authorities aren’t even allowed to use RIPA ‘in the interests of national security’! Secondly, can we stop saying that every piece of information obtained from a council is an ‘FOI scoop’. Many councils, including my own, do make information available quite widely, without the need for FOI to be used. I understand that at least two newspaper groups now routinely use FOI, rather than just asking, because then they can pretend that the council or government department was attempting to keep the information secret.

 The purpose of RIPA was to mainly to regulate existing powers and when they could be used. The RIPA regime aims to ensure that directed surveillance is carried out in a manner which is human rights compliant. The use of ‘directed surveillane’ is defined under S26:

“Surveillance is directed for the purposes of this Part if it is covert but not intrusive and is undertaken (a) for the purposes of a specific investigation or a specific operation; (b) in such manner as is likely to result in the obtaining of private information about a person (whether or not specifically identified for the purposes of the investigation or operation); and (c) otherwise than by way of immediate response to events or circumstances the nature of which is such that it would not be reasonably practicable for an authorisation under this Part to be sought for the carrying out of the surveillance.”

Not all the of the five grounds set out under RIPA are available to all authorities. For example, local authorities can only authorise directed surveillance for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime or of preventing disorder.

The problem with getting over-excited about these sorts of laws is that it blinds you to when they are not being used. Now I hereby declare an interest. I am the Chair of my council’s Regulatory Services Committee and on Wednesday we considered (in public) a report on the council’s uses of RIPA. The powers can only be authorised by a chief officer and the policy for their use is governed by elected members. In the first five months of this year, the powers were used a total of eight times:

• four instances of installing noise monitoring equipment to establish if a statutory noise nuisance is being caused;
• one instance of covert surveillance on someone claiming housing and council tax benefits who is thought to be working;
• one to check on illegal use of residential premises for trading;
• two applications to BT for details of a line subscriber to check the truth of information provided on a Certificate of lawfulness.

As a local councillor, I come across many people who are having their lives made a misery by loud music and illegal trading. And I know that most people do not support benefit cheats any more than expenses cheats. Many of these methods of surveillance were available before RIPA was even thought of. Are these powers really disproportionate? But in search of headlines, the media continue to misrepresent  what RIPA allows local authorities to do . Under RIPA local authorities cannot intercept communications
(such as telephone ‘tapping’ or reading someone’s e-mails, texts or post) or enter anyone’s house covertly. These covert activities are quite rightly limited to those public authorities with a national security remit or which are operating against a level of ‘serious’ crime substantially above that tackled by local authorities.

The story in the Mirror (repeated in LDV) is doubly puzzling, as according to case law (C v The Police and the Secretary of State for the Home Department (14th November 2006, No: IPT/03/32/H)), RIPA is not necessary for surveillance of employees under certain circumstances. In this case, a former policeman wanted the Tribunal to rule against the police for failing to get a RIPA authorisation to do directed surveillance on him. The Tribunal stated that it only has jurisdiction if the surveillance is ‘directed surveillence’ under S26 of the Act. I add that caveat that I have searched for later case law, but cannot find it and this case was still being quoted as precedent in late 2007.

Doubtless there are some councils that are over-using the powers allotted to them,. But many are not. That doesn’t make news, so as on the issue of MPs’ expenses, the media seek to throw mud and catch as many as possible, innocent or guilty. Lazy reporting, bigger headlines - more bang for less buck. Don’t let us go the same way.

I love most sport, but I’m not really a fan of those where the main part is played by a horse, dog, car or motorbike, rather than a human. I do occasionally watch motor sport, but unlike others I wouldn’t miss it if it wasn’t there. I was therefore doubly impressed with myself for getting an F1 question right on Who Wants to be a Millionaire at the weekend!

One thing I really hate though is a bully, and Max Mosley has been bullying people in and around F1 for years. So I was not surprised to see the FAI statement issued this morning, in response to FOTA’s statement last night. The FIA say:

The warm weather this morning has led to the residents of Hertfordshire opening up their convertible car to enjoy the sunshine whilst it’s here. On the way in and out of Watford this morning, I noticed 12 cars with their roofs down. But there was something rather strange about the drivers. Seven were men and five women. But all seven of the men were over 50 and balding, whilst all five women had long hair - four of them blonde. All the women looked under 35.

What is it about convertible sports cars that means that they only appeal to women with long hair and men who are follicly challenged? Or are they the only ones happy to bare themselves in this way to the world? I didn’t notice how many cars could have had their tops down, but didn’t, still less observe their drivers. Are the men trying to regain a lost youth and the women showing they still have theirs? Or are older men and childless women the only ones who can afford such a car?