Nil nil

The best 0-0 draw in Spurs' history without a doubt. I wish I'd been there; the crowd were awesome, and Tottenham's maturity as a football team was evident for all to see. It's very nice to see today how matches like that bring out the best in commentators. Prose that is a pleasure just to read, almost lyrical in places.

From the Guardian, 10th March 2011.



Phil McNulty on the BBC: "The demolition of holders Inter Milan on a thunderous night was a demonstration of Tottenham's threat but Redknapp may take even more satisfaction from the way Inter's neighbours were sent out of the tournament.... Who would have thought erecting a defensive wall of defiance would deliver such pleasure and provoke such scenes of jubilation?

"So it proved as Spurs survived a Milan performance that carried much of the pace and intensity absent from the first leg. As time ran out and Milan became even more desperate, the obstacles in front of keeper Heurelho Gomes grew bigger in stature and number by the minute....

"Life was lived on the nerves from first minute to last, with Redknapp standing sentry in his technical area almost permanently and joined on a regular basis by trusted lieutenants Joe Jordan and Kevin Bond. It was not a night, nor an atmosphere, for sitting serenely in the dug-out."

Steven Howard in the Sun: "FIRST, the agony. And then the ecstasy. It was another one of those rollercoaster nights for Tottenham fans. The agony of enduring 90 minutes where it seemed that at any moment the dream of attempting to match the historic exploits of the Glory, Glory boys of the 60s could go up in smoke...

"...the greatest sound of all was the final whistle. After four straight home wins and 14 goals, finally a goalless draw. And it tasted just as sweet. Spurs were through. Arsenal were out. And Spurs supporters were still in one piece. Just."

Jason Burt in the Telegraph: "There are still moments in the storm. There are moments when the release of tension simply results in a desire to stand motionless. Henry James Redknapp was a study in such behaviour on Wednesday....

"“Life is a roller-coaster,” Redknapp said when asked about how he would celebrate. “I’ve had my ups and downs”. And sometimes the ups lead to a more sober response than the downs - it’s a mark of many leading managers, including Carlo Ancelotti - and he followed that mould last night. In a quieter moment hopefully he also afforded himself a smile for he has transformed the fortunes of a club that was bottom of the Premier League table when he arrived three years ago. He deserves the praise....

"Spurs didn’t play particularly well, they weren’t allowed to, and maybe that is what caused Redknapp’s irritation. If so, it smacks of a professionalism also. Everyone is talking about the need to avoid Barcelona. But those left in this competition will also be privately whispering another team they would be keen not to face. No-one wants Spurs. No-one wants to face Redknapp."

Shaun Custis, in the Sun again: "Spurs' job has traditionally been to entertain and lose gloriously while Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United get on with the serious stuff. The times they are a changing. Redknapp claimed Spurs were not built to defend but he is conning us all. They have learned how to do it and they do it very well."

Richard Williams in the Guardian: "For Harry Redknapp there have been many big occasions in football but none, for a real football man, bigger than this night. Milan, seven times winners of the European Cup, under the floodlights at history-soaked White Hart Lane, confronted by the white shirts of the descendants of Blanchflower, Smith and Jones. A match with Brazilian artists, Dutch magicians, a Croatian wizard, stalwart Englishmen....

"Redknapp paced the technical area with his usual preoccupied air as a more purposeful Milan made the best chances of the half, drawing sprawling saves from Heurelho Gomes, watchful leadership from Michael Dawson and a clearance off the line from William Gallas. Against this barrage in a game of ceaseless movement and clattering energy, Spurs could point to little more than Rafael van der Vaart's bar‑skimming 30-yard free-kick.

"Milan huffed and puffed but by the end they were, in the words of the original Harry Hotspur, no more than dust and food for worms. Hotspur was dying at the time. Redknapp's Spurs could not be more full of life."

Prose to fit a sumptuous occasion.

Poppy burning

I can't say I agree with David Cameron on this. A member of Muslims Against Crusades burned two plastic poppies during last November's Armistice Day ceremony. Yesterday he was fined £50. In my view he should not have been. The act was outrageous to some; indeed it was intended to be. But outrage at such acts is the price we pay for freedom of expression, which is still one of the key characteristics that distinguishes this society from many others. In this particular instance we actually lag behind the United States where flag burning, despite Americans' veneration for their flag, is a constitutional right. You can't say that about many things where genuine freedom is concerned.

While we are right to pay homage to those who have fallen fighting for our freedoms, we also have to acknowledge that some of those who fell, particularly in recent years, have given their lives in much less morally certain ventures, and while their bravery should be saluted, the cause in which they fell should not. Opinion is genuinely and deeply divided on the merits of some of our recent wars. Outrage may be genuine, but, if outrageous acts are stifled through the use of the law, it only serves to block moral debate and make equally outrageous ventures more likely in future. We are currently considering whether and how to use force against Gaddafi's regime. A week ago Cameron was all too eager to commit our forces again in a gesture which would have made them risk death, being burned, maimed or humiliated and most likely given Gaddafi a perfect foil for uniting his people on his side. Reminders of the moral ambiguity of such ventures, as well as the possible human cost, serve to prevent them happening unnecessarily. I hate what Emdadur Choudary did, but he should never have been taken to court, let alone fined.

The Pope is coming to Britain: two dilemmas.

The Pope is coming to Britain, which causes me two dilemmas. I doubt he cares. I don't figure on his radar. But he does figure on mine.

I don't think he should have been invited. I don't think he should be invited to anywhere in the world until he has put the hierarchy of the Catholic Church completely to rights over the issue of sexual abuse. For the record, I don't the church has done anything more than it has been forced to do by publicity and the horror of the outside world. I don't think they have changed their basic view that the reputation of the church (reputation - ha!) must be preserved by all means, and if that means ignoring law breaking and the most disgusting and immoral behaviour then so be it. I still think they see this as a PR exercise, not a moral one, and I find that just as disgusting as the original crimes.

Recently evidence has been put forward in defence of the current Pope that in more junior days he tried to do something about one priest in particular, but was thwarted by higher authorities in the church. That doesn't cut it for me. Faced with gross abuse like this, "obeying orders" is not a defence. He let them stop him doing anything. The deliberate and persistent covering up of these crimes over a long period of time still haunts the church, and will continue to do so as long as they remain so secretive. A good deal more transparency is necessary.

The church has now said that such crimes, if committed nowadays, should be reported to the police. But it has not met with universal agreement. Apparently bishop Grings of Brazil responded by saying that he thought it should still be a matter for internal church discipline. And that has received no reaction from the Pope. The reaction should have been swift and loud: "If you ever fail to report a case of child abuse to the police, you will no longer be a bishop". But no, we have had nothing.

You can't actually stop people abusing children. I have had my own brush with the issue. When I was a social worker in Cambridge, I sent children regularly to an assessment centre, the head of which was given a twenty year jail sentence in 1997 for having abused the children in his care. (As far as I can ascertain, none of the children I sent there were abused.) It took a while for suspicions to harden into action, but the County Council eventually did something about it. The Catholic Church on the other hand has had to be pushed all the way. And it's still pushing back.

Taking an opportunity to put the whole affair behind him, the Pope managed to make it clear just how archaic the thinking of the church hierarchy is. It speeded up the process for investigating priests accused of child abuse, but, crucially, did not make it obligatory to report such crimes to the police. Which century do they think they're in?

And it is notable that they did not give the issue of child abuse by priests its own declaration, which it surely deserved, but included it as part of a decree in which among other things,they upgraded the sinfulness of trying to ordain a woman to a "more grave delict", a tastily ancient phrase for saying it's one of the most horrible things you can do. And putting that in the same document is a slap in the face to every choirboy that's ever been felt up by a randy Catholic priest, not to mention the pain given to the female half of the world's population by the Vatican's misogyny.

So it's pretty clear where I stand. The Pope should be given a raspberry wherever he goes, till he does something that says the church is taking this as seriously as it deserves. But that brings me to my two dilemmas.

The first is that I want to protest when he gets here. I want to go somewhere where my presence tells him that his presence here is contemptible. But the only organised protests that I can find are those beholden to the National Secular Society, and others', alternative agenda. I'm a Christian and I do not want to be associated with those who would tar all religious with the same brush. But the response of religious bodies who disagree fundamentally with the Pope's actions seem to be too wishy washy by half. They have criticised the secular protests for being too confrontational (I agree) but they do not appear to have organised an alternative. Can anybody tell me different?

And my second dilemma is with regard to my Catholic friends. I have several, all good people. I have debated the issue with them before. I have always been absolutely clear that I have no problem with Catholic people as such, but I do have a problem with the structure of the church and the vindictively patriarchal nature of some of its hierarchy. But with most of them I find it very difficult to get this distinction across. They do not see a distinction at all; an attack on any part of the church is taken as deeply wounding to them personally. They're all nice people and I do not see how to take this forward, because I cannot in all honesty think of the Pope and some of his underlings as anything but contemptible.

Lewes Cycle Challenge

I'm taking part in the Lewes Cycle Challenge. Organisations take part, and the idea is for them to get their employees on to bikes, if only for ten minutes during the period of the challenge, which is 10th to 26th September. I was going to upload a picture of me holding a cupcake, but my image button has gone awol. Not sure what the cupcake has to do with it, but it tasted very nice.

We're going to be making our major effort on Septenber 20th, which is the day after International Talk like A Pirate Day, so we're pirate theming it. Look out for photos, if that button has come back by then.

Inglorious and a bit fishy; and a question

Inglorious refers to media (both social and commercial) treatment of William Hague over the last few days. What has been done is not only inglorious but shameful and unhelpful. The story has concentrated on the salacious details of sexuality which has served to hide a more pertinent question. The more pertinent question is now being expressed but largely overlooked in the wave of reaction that follows his personal statement.

There are three features to the story - sexuality, privacy and judgement. Homosexuality should not be news, but it is, largely because it sells millions of newspapers to the mentally challenged half of our country. I don't give a stuff whether Hague is straight, gay or a bit of both. I also don't care if he has cheated on his wife: that's an issue for them, not for the rest of us. He says he hasn't. Fine, let it be.

It is shameful that Hague has now been driven to making a statement that reveals his and his wife's private - I emphasise that word, private - grief. I know that there are a lot of people who have put them in that position who unfortunately won't feel the slightest remorse. Politicians lives will always be public, but somewhere there is a limit and we have strayed beyond it here.

But underneath all that froth, and the somewhat sanctimonious response when the true details of the Hagues' situation came out, there is a genuine and serious question. It may not be a big question, but it is a question. Is Hague's judgement as good as we thought it was? At the time of the hotel incident he was shadow Foreign Secretary. He is now Foreign Secretary. He is an important enough person for us to ask small questions about.

He admits now that it was an error of judgement to share a hotel room, because he did not think through how it would look. That's a minor issue. As has been said, if you really are having a secret affair, the last thing you do is share a hotel room. It's how it *looks* that escaped Hague's notice. To me that incident is a cause of puzzlement more than anything. It seems to be generally accepted that sharing a hotel room is a normal thing to do. In some classes and for some purposes that will be true. People share at conference time, for instance, because of the lack of affordable hotel space. But you can bet your life Hague won't be sharing at conference, and never has since he's been an MP. It was a campaign trip, I understand, so it wasn't a hair shirt issue about saving public money, which some people have suggested it was. Hague is one of the Conservatives' biggest guns; he spearheads their election campaigns because he is so popular. They look after him. They plan his trips really carefully. He was also, if I remember rightly, one of the best funded opposition politicians of the last government. So why on earth did they not book enough rooms to go round? Maybe somebody will tell me that this is normal for high status, high value politicians. I don't see it, though. Which leaves a question mark over how on earth did it happen that Hague ended up sharing a room. That is, in the end though, probably more likely to be in the "of interest to the public" category than the "in the public interest" category.

What is in the public interest though is how Chris Myers got his job as a special adviser. He became Hague's third when everybody else was limited to two. Being driver to the shadow Foreign Secretary is one thing. Being special adviser to the actual UK Foreign Secretary makes you one of the most powerful people in British politics. To get that job, and to get it specially created for you means that you should be somebody really special. But Myers' qualifications, while not as poor as some have suggested, don't appear to be stellar. So it is legitimate to ask Hague to justify his judgement. It is legitimate to ask how he arrived at the conclusion that Myers was the person best suited to the job, and how he got dispensation to create the post needed for the appointment. Because our Foreign Secretary has a tricky and demanding job to do and we need to know that he has the judgement for it. But that has been buried, and is likely to stay buried among the slop that the media, including the social media, have poured over the episode.

Cavity wall insulation - a cautionary tale

I see the government is giving more priority to home insulation, and in fact diverting money from other forms of saving to boost insulation. We had cavity wall insulation done a few months ago in the depth of winter. The insulation is fine, I would recommend it. It makes a noticeable difference in some parts of the house. But the experience of the installation was not, and my experience of that leads me to say, if you have cavity wall insulation done, don't use Mark Group. There are plenty of alternatives around: here's a place where you can find loads, if you don't want to take up offers from your energy suppliers.

The reason why is as follows. When the salesman from Mark Group came to visit us, he told us that it would be necessary to install a vent in the living room as we have a fireplace which is still in use. We were concerned about this and asked for more information. He gave us two specific reassurances. The first was that the vent operated mechanically in such a way that it was shut to the outside cold unless it was needed when the fireplace was in use. The second was that the vent was covered with a mesh fine enough to prevent slugs from getting in.

We only discovered once the vent was installed that neither of these things is true. The installers told us in fact that the vent is legally required to be left open, and to be without a fine mesh so as not to interrupt airflow. The result is a constant flow of cold air into the room. But they confirmed that the vent was a legal requirement if insulation was added to a room with a fireplace in use.

The effect on our living room was dramatic. It did not help that this happened during one of the cold snaps last February. The living was the warmest room in the house and it became the coldest. Ours is a small semi-detached house. Downstairs we have a kitchen and a living room. We live in the living room. If the salesman had been truthful about the nature of the vent, we would in all probability not have gone ahead with the purchase. As it is, our living room has been made completely unsuitable to its purpose at some times of the year due to the misinformation clearly and deliberately given to us by the salesman.

I wrote to Mark Group to complain, and got a visit from a technical expert who confirmed that the vent had been properly installed. I mad it clear that that was not the problem. The problem was the mis-selling. So he went away and said he'd talk to somebody else.

It took a couple of phone calls to remind them that somebody else was supposed to be doing something. eventually I spoke to the next person, and we had a decent conversation. I was already clear in my mind that there was nothing practical they could do. The only way the vent could be legally removed would be to block up the fireplace, and thus lose one of the major amenities of the house, or to suck all the insulation out of the walls again, neither of which was appealing. So the only obvious route was for them to offer us a reasonable amount of compensation. The main thing was for me to be convinced that they had taken my complaint seriously. They did admit in writing to what they called a training issue with the salesman, which was OK. But I gradually came to think that they were not taking me seriously, as each stage in the process had to be kicked off by me reminding them with a phone call that I hadn't heard from them for a while. I began to think that in fact they might be deliberately taking things lowly in the hope that I would get fed up and forget about the complaint.

In the end they offered me £50 compensation. This is for making my living room not fit to live in for a portion of the year. In a second letter they made it clear that £50 was their final offer. I rejected it.

I don't mind about the money. I do mind that a company can employ a salesman who quite deliberately and wilfully misrepresents the product they're offering, they can understand that that action has foisted on me and my family an insoluble problem, and then they still think that the best way to deal with the resulting mess is to take a long time and then offer the least they think they can get away with.

So, do get insulation if you want. Just don't use Mark Group.

Mind you, my experience with them is nothing compared to this couple's. Note the same technique, a final offer of a derisory sum by way of compensation.

Is it possible to change the way people do things

Not when it comes to driving apparently.

The BBC reported last week on Britain's most dangerous roads, as enumerated by the Road Safety Foundation. As one might expect, half of Britain's fatal accidents happen on one tenth of our roads. The answer to this, according the Foundation, is to spend money making the roads safer. It never occurs to them to make the drivers safer. A particularly telling point is that "most crashes happened at weekends during the summer in dry, daylight conditions" which kind of suggests that the roads themselves are not at fault. They may be twisty, they may be narrow, they may be bumpy, but there is nothing dangerous about them if the drivers on them would just............. slow down a bit. And keep their eyes open. So many of us seem to think that there is no need to concentrate on the road while driving as fast as we can possibly go; the radio, the mobile - even if handsfree, the conversation of passengers and, for heaven's sake, looking at the scenery all rank more important than actually looking at what is happening on the road in front of them.

I have two suggestions, which would be a lot cheaper than the improvements suggested by the Road Safety Foundation. The first is to erect large signs all the way along the dangerous roads: "If you drive here the way you usually do, you are twenty times more likely to have an accident".

That of course relies on drivers being sensible, which is unlikely. So my second suggestion is signs that say: "If you drive here the way you usually do, you are twenty times more likely to find your insurance going up."

Neither is likely to do the job. It would be nice if one of them did though.

The Road Safety Foundation also responds to what I am tempted to call "Parsons' law of monetisation", which states that the more widespread any phenomenon is, the more likely its financial cost is to be reported, and the less likely its human cost. There is no mention on the Eurorap report page of twisted bodies, mangled limbs, orphaned children. But there are several mentions of the cost of the suggested changes and the potential savings to the Exchequer.

Perhaps I'm being unfair to the RSF. It does report its purpose as being to reduce road casualties by acting on all three components of the system - roads, vehicles and behaviour. But there's no mention of behaviour in this report. Shouldn't there be?