Are rules made to be broken

 

Subject: Are Rules are made to be broken





There’s one thing which describes F1 Grand Prix motor racing, its its professionalism.

The race is compartmentalised into the preparation and the contest for a grid position, the rich and the famous strolling the start area walking amongst the gladiators of this sport both human and cars and then the start with all the cars funneling into the first corner and then the race is talked and analysed to death by the experts, many of them famous for being ex drivers. The technical detailers about the cars, the track, the tyres the down force, the bits and pieces that are designed by engineers in wind tunnels and all the personalities behind the wheels.

It’s this last element, the drivers and particularly the contest between Louis Hamilton and Max Verstappen which ignites the crowd and the huge world wide audience watching today. Hamilton multiple world champion, the man who has been the trend setter in F1 for the last eight years as the successor to the long rein of Michael Schumacher. Max Verstappan, the young pretender who’s phenomenal skills are complimented by an aggression which was honed by Verstappens father, Jos, who brought his son through his carting days and fed him the desire to win at all costs. We have seen this desire in recent races used to excess by using questionable tactics to outflank Hamilton especially on overtaking on corners. Today was no exception with Hamilton being forced off the track by a lunge down the inside of Hamilton’s car. To me it was a no brainier that the move was dangerous and didn’t allow Hamilton enough space to get around the corner but to some of the commentators it was simply racing.

The race has just finished but clearly on a technicality, one those technical rules which seem to plague, sometimes improve modern sport. One sees it in football where goals are disallowed due to a camera on the touch line, in rugby where try’s are ruled offside or the ball not properly grounded, wickets not given, catches questioned in cricket and now the decision based on which cars can overtake a safety car. The rules state “all lapped cars have to be allowed to pass the safety car before a race resumes” but in this instance they weren’t because as soon as the drivers in front of Max Verstappen had passed the safety car and Max was sitting behind Louis, the race director said the race can start.  On old tyres Louis had no chance to hold Max’s charge who swept by to win the race. The Race Director Michael Masi at this crucial moment had ruled against the rules and to my mind that has to be wrong.

The analysis

 Subject: The analysis

It’s only been three days since the end of F1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix ended in controversy. My opinion was that race rules had been ignored and therefore the result was incorrect and that Louise Hamilton should have been awarded the race.

A number of issues have arisen since the Race Steward's supported Michael Masi, the Race Directors decision in his words “to let them race”.

Formula 1 is a tremendously expensive sport with millions if not billions spent on design and testing before the cars even appear on the track. This motor sport circus with its global reach, where countries compete for the prestige of a race to be held in their country  and the cost of dismantling and reassembling the garages and accommodation at each track, every two weeks and some times, on subsequent weekends is not only a massive logistical achievement but very very expensive. The salaries of the drivers and the team principles run into millions dwarfed only by the factories and engineers working on this cutting edge technology where a millimetres extension of the panels or skirt surrounding the cars can significantly improve the cars performance. Each modification is governed by stringent rules, as is everything in the sport and it’s the importance to following the rules which has so infuriated people when the race rules were binned in favour of a gladiatorial race to the line.

Since it’s inception F1 motor sport has been run by wealthy motor sport enthusiasts mainly from Europe with the UK taking a leading role. Over the last 5 years the Americans with their eye on the cash cow of syndicated television bought out the European interest and put in charge their own flamboyant marketeers who’s interest in the sport is financial not its sporting ethics.

“Let them race” didn’t take into account the disparity of the cars expected to race. Hamiltons Mercedes’ had on old hard tyres which he had run from early on in the race. Verstappen had a new soft set of tyres which, under the Safety Car he had been allowed to put on, it was an all or nothing gamble which Red Bull with nothing to lose were, after the pit stop, a number of cars behind Hamilton. With only one lap of racing to go it was almost impossible for him to overtake the cars between him and Hamilton but by insisting that the cars in front him overtake Hamilton which then placed Verstappen on Hamiltons rear bumper and only then being told to race,  was a total breach of racing ethics as well as flying in the face of the rule book.

The fact “let them race” didn’t allow another rule, the imposition that the use of the flaps on the back of the car, which add 5 K to the cars speed and are used to enable cars to pass on the straight couldn’t be activated made Hamilton a sitting duck once Max had passed him.

From a marketing point of view this event, which was mega anyway went stratospheric with the teams locked in claims and counter claims no doubt making the shareholder of Liberty Media wild with joy but it all left a sour taste with those who enjoy the sport for what it was, not what it has become.

The one shining light in all this was the magnanimity of the Hamilton camp in acknowledging defeat, it is what it is. Both  Louis’s dad Anthony Hamilton and importantly Louis himself were models of generosity in a moment when they must have been gutted. The race was theirs, they had been in the lead from start to finish before one of the other drivers put his car into the wall and the race was stopped, with four laps to go. At that stage Louis was up the road and out of sight cruising to victory.

His demeanour as he fought the dismay at the way the race had finished, cheated out of an 8th World Championship was everything you would wish of a sportsman. Immediately  congratulating the winner of the race and the Red Bull team principle Christian Horner, he continued to look shell shocked as the frenzied disbelief at their luck as winners (by default) unfolded around him.

It’s sometimes said that only in defeat is the true measure of a man judged and Louis for who I’m not always as supportive, won me over, as I’m sure he did of the billions watching at home. This perhaps might be his crowning legacy

Where to draw the line

Subject: Where to draw a line.

The power of the trans-sexual lobby is oppressive and coordinated. People who voice opinions against 'gender equivalence' versus 'gender recognition', vis a vis biological proof, including a right for people to proclaim their gender irrespective of biological evidence has seen big ticket names pushed out of their jobs for fear of upsetting the ‘trans’ lobby.

The importance of the word 'coordinated' cannot be underestimated since as in many fields deep pockets are crucial be it the money to repeatedly present  a project to Councils and their Planning Departments to build on a greenfield site or to controversially oust an individual who has voiced opposition to a group, the individual is nearly always on shaky ground since  the group inevitably wins in the end. Like the bully in the playground the group draw in the weaker voices who are then coerced  to weigh in because the rules on free speech are just not applicable in many politically sensitive areas. Sensitivity usually trumps objectivity because the assumption is that sensitivity needs more protection.

The human rights act goes to great lengths to illustrate the pain of any sort of debasement of a human beings sense of their identity, their individuality, their consummate right to choose. As an individual I would support a persons right to describe themselves as they see themselves but when they gather to protest at other people who are not persuaded then anarchy raises its ugly head. Outing a visiting speaker on a debating platform or making life hell for a university lecturer who’s opinions clash with the group has become so prevalent that people outside the group wander in fear for their professional life.

There is no lower form of social assassination than rumour mongering, spreading false stories and innuendo, now made so much easier by modern communication platforms. The insinuation once laid in a tweet draws blood in the form of people who enjoy the name calling, especially when it comes without danger of retaliation. This modern equivalent of blood sports or the grotesque pillorying of deformed people at a peep show has been largely disqualified but has moved on to the abasement of people on social media platforms. Say anything you want, be it false or true and there is no referee or rule book to say when someone goes too far. In my own family there is a view not to trust the professional journalist or platforms such as the BBC, Sky, in fact any of the sources we traditionally went to to find our news of events across the world. This scepticism arises, as it does for our politicians because there is an undercurrent of distrust across the board. The disorder and the chaos we see plus the gulf which lies between cultures only redefines our feeling of insecurity and so we turn to a blog cast put out by a 'shock jock' personality such as Russel Brand with his manic, blokey appeal (he's one of us) and prefer to listen to his opinions which are as biased as Fox News. 

There are thousands of Russel Brands opinionating on everything from Covid to the cost of living and in many ways this is healthy but when people discard the professional for the chap in the pub we are in trouble. 

Mental anguish

 

Subject: Mental anguish.

By writing people try to put down thoughts about others in society and about society itself,  in fact writing is about the writers aptitude  to put themselves  into the lives of others comparing their own emotional circumstances with people in the news.

Each morning we wake up to read and hear of the trouble people are in across the globe, we can chose to discard this news or we can comment on it by providing our own perspective to the story. If we comment the thought which goes into the comment usually gets us a little closer to understanding the problem and the plight of those caught up.

Russian literature is full of this genius for writing about the human condition. The Russian condition was one of vast space coupled with harsh weather, it’s politics were of the contrast between extreme riches and poverty which interact in a way we could barely understand in the West. The insoluble divide between poverty and riches was described by their authors in different ways, as was the torment in the minds especially of the poor. The  novels of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky  and Solzhenitsyn were introduced to me, not through a literary class but through my youthful love of a Jewish librarian, who in my devotion for her and an overriding willingness to please, hooked me to these masters of human insight. Throughout the plots the characters reached an inevitable mental tipping point which embraced lives of depredation and depression often leading to desperate acts. We are taken on a journey by the author, well outside our comfort zone  and jolted  into a totally different reality.

In todays world at large we are not much further on, given our opportunity to alleviate so much of the mental suffering through science and social intervention our disconnect from others still drives some to despair  We know what needs to be said and done but the task asks a lot, especially if pleasure is found easier elsewhere.

Each news story is the tip of a social  iceberg, the carnage created by shells and bombs  in Aleppo is only the outward sign of the carnage delivered within. Those children and adults in Syria or Yemen, the Dalits in India,  even the drugged up kids in Warrington all deserve our consideration but of course the solution seems so out of reach, so immense so prolonged that we rather flip the program to some banal American sitcom.

Waking to birdsong

 Subject: Waking to birdsong

Waking up this morning to the sound of the BBC news on global affairs one is struck by the perilous nature of our world as we exit 2021 into 2022 and its hard to know which potential calamity is worse.

(a) Russia assembling its army on the boarders of the Ukraine, 

(b) the destruction wrought by global warming, 

(c) the financial consequences of debt caused by quantitative easing, 

d) the effects of Brexit on our fragile economy, 

(e) global supply chains dissolved  as trade sanctions are used to resolve poor decision making in the West over the last decade and 

(f) inflation to hit our pockets after years of almost negative inflation.

It’s a sorry story after the seemingly benign years following the end of the Cold War period. I suppose the turning point came with the banking crisis in 2008 when, despite a financial sticking plaster to save the banks from collapsing they simply reinforced their balance sheets, not their banking practices and the vulnerability of the west’s banking system was revealed. Successive doses of quantitative easing were required to disguise the fact that the books weren’t balancing and then China stepped out of the shadows to reveal how in hock we were to her as she manufactured 80% of our consumables. With the  imbalance of international cash flows and a reluctance by America to stimulate its own productive capacity a huge cash reservoir built up in China and started the Chinese world wide investment strategy called, “One belt, one road”

This financial colonisation process tied many poor nations to the cash cow that is China and like the dollar era, after the Second World War with lease lend, the claims made by the Americans on indebted nations like ourself, to tow the American line is now repeated by China with debt compliance through infrastructure projects which the poor countries require to enter the global export market with their raw materials which are needed by the advanced first world.

There have been equally worrying times in the past but today we have become very vulnerable by populist decisions made, on the one hand by weak government and on the other by tyrants.

As the common man or woman, events are largely out of our hands but we still have a voice and a vote as the surprise but refreshing trouncing of Boris's party yesterday proved. Was it a backlash on their duplicity, a disgusted cry to say enough is enough, let's put the grown ups back in power and Boris and his mob let loose to write their obituaries.

Perhaps the Imam hold the

 

Subject: Perhaps the Imam holds the key.

I wonder which woman this morning will wake up with a recollection that she was molested by a chap 30 years ago and turn to the press with revelations. We never hear what the molestation amounted to, was it a bit of 'slap and tickle' in the heat of an alcoholic evening when both parties were excited by the presence of each other or was it more forceful. Today a playful slap on the posterior at a party is deemed useful ammunition in a woman's arsenal to, when necessary, humiliate a man leaving men to conclude that the 2 metre Covid 19 rule should be applied to all manner of occasions. Perhaps the show Strictly Come Dancing is archaic, displaying as it does half clothed women, wrapped around their male counterpart in an exotic interplay of quasi sexual ritualism judged amongst other things for the tension between the dance partners.

It appears anything goes so long as the women is consensual but this one sided conceptuality is fraught with misuse and prejudice. How do we discipline men without disciplining women, how do we define when one or other crosses that line set by the court. Courts in their wisdom are always in catch up mode, fifty rears ago homosexuality was deemed an abomination whilst today we struggle with self determining gender appropriation. The use of current norms to determine whether an act 50years ago constituted an offence seems silly as does tearing down statues of people who were following the norms of their day. Genghis Khan was a man of his time, his deeds are the stuff of great conquest for some and nightmares for others but we shouldn't judge him in our time but his.

The silly but provocative sexual peccadillo carried out in the heat of intimacy recalled over decades can never be properly adjudicated but the social and reputation damage is huge. Perhaps the time will come that a triple locked chastity belt rears its ugly head again, both for men and women and only an 'Imam' holds the key.

Ho ho ho

 

Subject: Ho ho ho.



Ho ho ho, it’s that time of the year again but are we seeing “the last laugh is on us” !!

We are struggling to come to terms with the restrictions to our lives that the strains of Covid 19 are inflicting on us with ever more virulent virus adaptations spreading like wildfire throughout a world which largely it has been impotent to prevent given that our antibody injection effort is now being bypassed by the natures own evolution and adaptation, Omicron. The name represents the 15th letter in the Greek alphabet but it’s significance is in its use in mathematics in which it denotes the asymptotic rate of growth of a function, In the case of the virus, asymptotic denotes a condition where the the disease exists but shows no symptoms.  Highly transmissible, if for no other reason than you don’t know you have it it’s able to skip the formulated structure of a vaccine and makes us very exposed to the long term effects, both physical and economic as the work engine creaks to a stop with all the implications of underfunded social care starting to hit home. The effects on the economic virility of a country since no county is an economic  island, has not been factored in, or if it has the doomsday scenario is kept secret. Isolated self serving insulated communities rather than cities clearly have an advantage where the balance between what you produce and what you consume is crucial and usually is already a fact of life.

Reality can be a bastard. Each week faced with not having won the lottery, is a reality, getting infirmed as you get older, is a reality, being shunned by the girl next door is a reality, and so our new reality concerning the pandemic has to be accepted.

Our assumption that unlimited travel and untethered material consumption was somehow ‘a right’, given we could afford it had taken hold in the West and this assumption will be difficult to displace. Of course for many millions of people across the globe this was never their reality as they struggled to make ends meet. Inevitably  they are the ones most exposed to the effects of a pandemic because their access to medical care is often poor to non existent and whilst in developed countries we mark the progress of the pandemic with data on hospital admissions and deaths specific to  COVID, in the second and third world death is simply an absence of life and no statistics are kept.  People will continue to flood across the divide between the economically viable and the uneconomic but as most of the worlds economies are effected by the pandemic the decernibility, one to the other, will perhaps make the attractiveness of the journey less attractive.

This new world of mask wearing distance keeping has to confine Strictly Come Dancing to a thing of the past, just when I was being asked to admire two men dancing together.

Perhaps there are some benefits to this new life after all !!!

Nothing more than a con

 

Subject: Nothing more than a con.





Many years ago I had been inveigled into driving to Sun City, a two hour drive from Johannesburg, a glitzy project  
dreamt up by sol Kerzner to soften the extraction of many millions of Rands locked up in the individual bank accounts of South Africans who had been subject to the tenants of a  Calvinistic State, ruled by an Afrikaans church dominee who’s reading of the good book promised “hell and damnation” to those who transgressed Its teaching on the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Sol’s plan was to build a Gomorrah in one of the artificial states, Bophuthatswana which had been created during the days of Apartheid to substantiate the independence of the tribal African living outside the white shibboleth of South Africa proper. Bophuthatswana was reached by a drive through a scrubland of semi desert, a road flanked by boulder strewn  dirt,  populated by cactus and proteas, an unappetising aperitif before the jeweled  extravaganza named Sun City but colloquially, Sin City a glitzy marketing man’s dream where hyperbole was taken to extreme. From a pristine golf course, a green oasis in the desert to the concert auditorium for the stars who wouldn’t risk soiling their names by appearing in South Africa but happy to take the rands of those who lived their lives working in a country mired in global opprobrium. The piece de resistance was the gambling casino. This was the kicker for Sols money making dream since the Calvinistic life style decreed by the Afrikaner Church was one of abstinence and after 20 years of abstinence the people of Jobug simply wanted to party. 

The gambling casino was huge and looking down from the balcony running around the casino, backed by every conceivable restaurant and exclusive shop the punters were at play glazed eyed intent on the rolling numbers of the ‘one armed bandit’ the obsessed gambler feeding in next months mortgage payment on the mechanised spin of the wheels inside the machine pre-programmed to give a large return to the casino. The black jack tables, the roulette wheel, all designed to fleece the optimistic muppet who strayed down into the mob and threw his or her money onto the baize tables. 

I remember the dizziness and the nausea watching, the sense of feeling alienated from my fellow humans who incidentally included family.  It was a perilous moment of semi  insanity but it was my sanity which was being challenged by the sight of perfectly normal hard working people under the thrall of winning and winning big.

The Yorkshire adage “that you don’t get awt for nowt” rose in my throat and made me gag with apprehension. An old teaching that has stayed with me all my life was inoculating me from the mayhem below which was brought home in my second reading of the ‘Big Short’ written by Michael Lewis in 2010 where he exposed the absurdity of the financial markets, particularly the derivative market and the sub prime mortgage market. To enter this market first of all required the marketing and sale of house mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them and who were sure to default. This almost criminal act of persuading the poor to buy a mortgage was best illustrated by the open comment under interrogation by a Senate Hearing from Lloyd Blankfein the CEO of Goldman Sacs who declared the market was between “consenting adults” forgetting that one side of the trade was backed by glossy advertising material in which the poor punter was no adversary. 

The charade of financial probity was shot through by mathematical models which at the time were the load stone of financial investment. According to the financial practitioners, the way to avoid the risk of loss was to slice the bonds sold on the open market into a merry old mix of good, bad and downright awful so that the good carried  the awful in a disguise that even the traders didn’t know what they were selling.

Added to this deceit the traders were encouraged to bet against the bonds they were selling (shorting) and to add infirmary to a corrupting process they bought insurance on the bond if and when it became recognised for the valueless asset it was. So one piece of corruption was piled on another until the markets were awash with bonds of dubious value and the banks, who became in one way or another the final repository of these sub prime bonds weakened the banks valuation on what it thought of the value it held on its books.

No one has been prosecuted other than a few lowly traders, no big shots who’s main  defense was that they didn’t understand the mechanism of the sub prime market. 

The real tragedy lay in those who were co-opted into believing that they were buying their house only to discover ‘it was nothing more than a con’.  

Happy Christmas

 

Subject: Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas everyone. It's the end of a strange year, we shilled and sallied between optimism and despair as the pandemic attracted all kinds of variables and the human reaction to these variables. For many, I would assume most, it's been a business of getting on as best we could and not becoming afraid of what's around every corner. 'What will be will be' has to be the process which carries us forward and in some ways given we are all vulnerable it, should draw us in to a sense of our commonality rather than amplify our differences.

If we are lucky today will be a day of good food and good will but things could go wrong, if the joint burns or there is a silly fall out but our intentions always start out well on Christmas Day and reminds us how important love and forgiveness are, just as important as the stuffing is to the turkey.

A glass or two of mulled wine or something stronger is also in order as the presents are opened (if you have any) and your privy to the infectious excitement of children and talk of Santa Claus. To those on their own there is an equally precious peace and quiet, a reflection of our own world and the choice to escape through a telephone call or a video link across the world.

What ever it is for you, can I wish you  a Very Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

Coping with the day after

  

Subject: Coping with the day after.

Christmas Day is the celebration of the birth of Jesus a Christ.  It’s a time for children and for presents and the mythological figure of Santa Claus roaming the world on a sleigh drawn by reindeer's with toys for children. He is supposed to pop in on Christmas Eve, down the chimney and leave the presents under the Christmas tree in the lounge. His reward a mince pie and a glass of sherry, he was gone by the time we kids hurtled into the lounge/living room full of expectation as to what he had brought.

In my childhood, money was short so a stocking hung over the head of the bed crammed full of knickknacks and sweets and the Rupert Annual as the big prize. Later when living in much more salubrious times the presents were piled high as adopted in-laws, aunts, uncles, nephews  and nieces in South Africa gathered for a grand Christmas get together. The bedlam as the kids raced around their names called out by Richard, (Maries younger brother) who was the stand in for Santa rose to a higher pitch as the wrapping paper was torn off and the contents soon discarded in the hunt for the next present.  It seemed to me my Rupert Annual was a match for all that competitive present giving especially since the symbolism of receiving only a few presents seemed to make each one very special.

In a previous blog describing a trip to Sun City, I describe  my abhorrence of of gambling, suggesting it came from some deep sense of  insecurity that winning easily was rigged  in some way. If you had money and the economy was thriving as it was in South Africa then a flutter at the roulette table was a risk worth taking but in post war Britain you learnt to be careful with every penny. So watching the kids dissipate their their enjoyment from what was in hand, to  instead search for the next present and then the next seemed disconcerting to my European mind.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring, rather be content with today and let tomorrow take care of itself.