Football predictions...How did I do?

As promised (or should that be threatened) in my two previous posts, it's time to examine my ability as a football pundit, by comparing the predictions I made in August as to where each of the clubs in the English Premier League would find themselves at the end of the season with where they actually found themselves.

Reproduced below are the final league placings and alongside them in red, what I had predicted:

1. Manchester United (Man United)
2. Liverpool (Chelsea)
3. Chelsea (Arsenal)
4. Arsenal (Liverpool)

5. Everton (Everton)
6. Aston Villa (Aston Villa)
7. Fulham (Portsmouth)
8. Spurs (Spurs)
9. West Ham (Sunderland)
10. Manchester City (Newcastle)
11. Wigan (Man City)
12. Stoke (West Ham)
13. Bolton (Blackburn)
14. Portsmouth (Wigan)
15. Blackburn (Bolton)
16. Sunderland (Fulham)
17. Hull (Boro)

18. Newcastle (West Brom)
19. Middlesborough (Stoke)
20. West Brom (Hull)

Well, starting with the good points, I got four out of the top eight in exactly the right position, and - allowing myself a little latitude - correctly identified seven of the clubs occupying the top eight places, with only a now rather eccentric choice of Portsmouth to finish seventh spoiling my set.

Not bad.

But before get too carried away, let's go to the opposite end of the table. Of the three clubs I tipped for the drop, only one, West Brom, was actually relegated and even then, I got their position wrong. And whilst I'm pointing out inaccuracies, I also predicted that the Baggies would be joined in the Championship next season by Stoke City, who finished a very creditable twelfth, eleven points above the relegation zone and Hull City, who survived by the skin of their teeth and one incredibly precious point.

I also have to concede that as late as the day before yesterday, I predicted that Newcastle would stay up (oh dear) at Hull's expense.

Wrong again!

Other than that, I significantly overestimated how Sunderland would fare, suggesting that they would finish ninth, whereas, of course, they were still sweating profusely on the last day of the season.

Those glaring errors aside, I think I can accurately categorise the remainder of my predictions as being 'right desert, wrong tent', missing a number of bulls' eyes by one or two places.

In fact, I actually got more of my predictions spot on than the Daily Mail's Neil Ashton, who's article prompted me to consult the Throne's murky crystal ball in the first place. He only hit the spot with two suggestions, one of which was Manchester United, which, forgive the observation, but a blind man on a galloping horse could have foreseen.

Still, I'd better not give up the day job...

Those of you not as keen on football as I am will doubtless be pleased to read - if indeed you are still reading - that there will be no more posts on the subjct until next August, when I repeat this exercise for the season 2009-2010.

Oh goody! I hear you all cry...

Well done, Burnley...

As promised on Saturday evening, I'll be writing a longer football related post later on, but it would be remiss of me to fail to offer my congratulations to Burnley Football Club on their promotion to the Premier League, having beaten Sheffield United 1 - 0 at Wembley.

Having been by far the better side for the full ninety minutes, no-one but the most myopic Sheffield United fan could argue that Burnley didn't deserve their success on today's evidence.

So eight Lancashire clubs in next season's Premier League it is, then; there'll be a local derby every other week!

All we need now is for Preston North End to come up next season...

The Premier League denouement...

As I type these words at shortly after 9.15 on Saturday evening, those of you familiar with the world of English football will know that the next forty-eight hours will be the most exciting – and nerve-racking - of the season for the players and supporters of six clubs.

I say six, because after the nerve-shredding tension of the battle to stave off relegation is played out on Sunday afternoon, during which two of Sunderland, Hull City (who started the season with such promise), Newcastle United and Middlesborough will fall through the trap door into the relative oblivion of the Championship, comes the play-off final for promotion to the untold wealth of the Premier League.

Turning first to the battle to avoid relegation, it would appear that barring an entirely unlikely set of freak results, in which they would have to win, whilst all the others lost and in the process make up a deficit of five in terms of their goal difference, Middlesborough will be plying their trade in the second tier of English football next year.

So far so predictable.

But then comes the battle between the remaining three clubs, Sunderland, Hull and Newcastle to avoid the final berth on football’s Titanic. Whichever one of them eventually hits the iceberg, it will be a dark day for football in the north east, because all three of the combatants are from that part of the country. Yes, I know that when people refer to the north east, they are generally speaking about an area starting in Newcastle and ranging as far south as Middlesborough, but on what reading of geography is the city of Hull not in the north east of England?

For what it’s worth, gazing into the Throne’s rather murky crystal ball, I think that Newcastle and Sunderland will escape the drop by the skin of their teeth, whilst Hull will join Middlesborough and West Bromwich Albion on the unwanted journey south.

Meanwhile, on Monday afternoon, a game of at least equal, if not greater, importance will kick off at 4.00pm at Wembley.

That match is, of course, the Championship play-off final between Sheffield United and Burnley, with the victors securing a place in next season’s Premier League and with it the trifling matter of £50 million pounds or so of television money.

Living where I do, I know a good many Burnley supporters (more just recently than ever before; I wonder why…) and contrary to popular belief, very few of them eat bananas with their feet.

Interestingly, if Burnley are successful, they will become the eighth Lancashire club in the Premier League (0r 40% of its membership), joining near neighbours Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Wigan Athletic and the two Manchester and Liverpool clubs in the elite of English football.

What a contrast those riches would be in comparison to the footballing wilderness which is Yorkshire and the north east of England in general.

Fortunately, I will be watching all of those issues unravel as a neutral, but I dare say, having seen my club in both relegation danger and in the play-offs in previous years, that nerves are jangling tonight in those six towns and cities in northern England.

On a slightly different tack, those of you with longer memories may remember that on 12th August last year, I posted an item in which I predicted the way the Premier League table would look at the end of the season.

On Monday, I propose to hold my pundit status up to ridicule by comparing my predictions with what actually happened.
I can hear the gales of laughter already…

The prosecution of Ali Dizaei: a game of high stakes

I see that the CPS has decided to prosecute Commander Ali Dizaei for offences of perverting the course of justice and misconduct in a public office, arising out of an incident which occurred last autumn outside a London restaurant, during which he had arrested a man on what were, allegedly, trumped up charges.

Regular readers will be familiar with the stance adopted by the Throne in respect of those charged with criminal offences: all of them - whoever they are, however famous, or even notorious -are entitled to the presumption of innocence until such time that their guilt - if such is the finding of the court - is established beyond reasonable doubt. This, of course extends to Mr Dizaei every bit as much as it did to Steven Gerrard, about whom I wrote when he was arrested and charged with offences earlier this year.

As such, and with the matter now sub-judice, I do not propose to offer any further comment on the case itself; but there are one or two issues arising from it which do merit further discussion.

Firstly, I am sure that the decision to prosecute such a high profile individual - Dizaei is both the President and legal advisor to the openly activist Black Police Association, and as a Metropolitan Police Commander one of the most senior police officers in the country - was not taken lightly. Indeed, I'm absolutely sure that the lawyer responsible for deciding in favour of his prosecution, Gaon Hart, will have agonised over it endlessly. Only time and due process will show whether that decision was justified and we must await the final result of the prosecution to make that assessment.

Secondly, if I were Nick Hardwick, the Chair(man) of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), I would have sought the most cast-iron assurances possible from the team which investigated the case against Dizaei that they had left no stone unturned in their search for evidence. Because, and make no mistake about it, if the IPCC investigation comes up short, the resulting enquiry will be very uncomfortable indeed for Hardwick, who might even find his position untenable if the enquiry is severely criticised.

Thirdly, of course, this is a high-stakes case for the Metropolitan Police; a fact which will not have been lost on its Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson and the entirety of his command team, because not only was Dizaei acquitted the last time the Met investigated him, but as a consequnce of that acquittal, they agreed to pay him several tens of thousands of pounds and promote him to the rank of Chief Superintendent in order to persuade him not to sue them and to smooth his way back into the force.

If he were to be acquitted a second time, I shudder to think what the settlement 'price' would be; I just hope Her Majesty the Queen is still enjoying her normal, robust good health at the time, or his eyes might even alight on her position.

More seriously, though, I'm sure that the attitude of the BPA, as expressed by Alfred John, the Chair(man) of the London branch, who described the decision to prosecute Dizaei as 'outrageous' and 'the result of personal vendettas' is already causing Sir Paul more than a little concern, for reasons so obvious that I needn't waste my time by recording them here.

All in all, then, a game of high stakes for all involved; from Dizaei himself, who will face professional ruin if convicted, to the IPCC and CPS, who will face severe (and potentially career-ending) criticism if their work is found to be of a less than excellent standard and to the BPA which faces the potential embarrassment of the conviction of a man who is not only their national president and legal advisor, but in many ways the 'face' of their organisation and finally, the Metropolitan Police who will have a significant issue on their hands, whatever the verdict.

A game of high stakes indeed.

Self indulgent stat pron...

Quite astonishingly, on 14th May 2009, the Throne welcomed a reader from the Lebanon, making that benighted land the one hundredth country to host a visitor.

Just as astonishing (to me, anyway) is the fact that only slightly over 55% of my visitors are from the 'U'K, with visitors from the US accounting for over 22% of readers.

As traditionalists say in this part of England, "Who'd o' thowt it!"

(Rough translation for the uninitiated: "Who would have thought it?" or "They are a somewhat unexpected set of statistics.")

The true face of Ireland's theocracy...

The more I see and read about stories such as this and this, the more I go down on bended knee and thank God that I was not brought up in an Irish orphanage run by tyrannical and all-too-frequently sexually depraved Catholic priests.

Or, had I been born both female and Irish, that I was not judged to be a ‘fallen woman’ on what appears in many cases to have been the flimsiest of pretexts and as a consequence of that judgement, to have been incarcerated by vicious nuns for the remainder of my life and used as slave labour in one of the Catholic church’s Magdalen laundries.

Please do not misinterpret my first two paragraphs as an attack on Ireland as a whole, the Irish, or on the wider Catholic Church, because they aren’t meant to be any of those things.

What they are intended to be is an attack on the unaccountable Catholic theocracy which, it seems to me, had the whip hand in the governance of the twenty-six counties from the time of the partition, until as recently as twenty years or so ago.

And unless any of my Irish (or indeed any other) readers can tell me differently, this was a uniquely Irish phenomenon, because I am not aware that the Church was similarly powerful, or of any similar allegations being made about Church-run institutions in other predominantly Catholic countries, such as Spain, Portugal, Poland or Italy, or for that matter, the entirety of Latin America or the Philippines.

Of course an unacceptable proportion of children brought up in institution settings in this country and probably every other country in the world were subjected to abuse, both physical and sexual, by their so-called 'carers'.

But those carers were not priests, nuns or monks and none of them were able, with the tacit support of their senior hierarchy, to imprison and enslave women for the rest of their lives on the mere suspicion of moral turpitude.

None of them set themselves up as moral exemplars and demanded such grovelling deference from lay people that it all but smothered any opposition, labelling their few (and morally courageous) detractors as lunatics or heretics.

I am glad to see that the final traces of those theocratic shackles are now being removed from the people of Ireland and the publication of the report into that sixty-year catalogue of abuse and cover-ups prepared by the Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse, is another important step along that long and often painful path.

The final step, though, has to be the prosecution of those responsible for carrying out the abuse. Only then will the outrageous injustices, compounded by their being committed by the so-called Godly, finally be put to bed and seeing the reaction of some of their victims on the news today, I rather get the impression that they will not rest until their assailants and jailers are brought to justice.

And more power to their collective elbow, I say.

I wish to register a complaint...

A friend of mine emailed me the following gems yesterday evening and I thought they were worth sharing with a wider audience...

This was sent from Thomas Cook Holidays - listing some of the guests' complaints during the season.

(Survey by Thos Cook and ABTA)

"I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts."

"It's lazy of the local shopkeepers to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during 'siesta' time - this should be banned."

"On my holiday to Goa in India , I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don't like spicy food at all."

"We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our swimming costumes and towels."

A tourist at a top African game lodge overlooking a waterhole, who spotted a visibly aroused elephant, complained that the sight of this rampant beast ruined his honeymoon by making him feel "inadequate".

A woman threatened to call police after claiming that she'd been locked in by staff. When in fact, she had mistaken the "do not disturb" sign on the back of the door as a warning to remain in the room.

"The beach was too sandy."

"We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as yellow but it was white."

A guest at a Novotel in Australia complained his soup was too thick and strong. He was inadvertently slurping the gravy at the time.

"Topless sunbathing on the beach should be banned. The holiday w as ruined as my husband spent all day looking at other women."

"We bought 'Ray-Ban' sunglasses for five Euros (£3.50) from a street trader, only to find out they were fake."

"No-one told us there would be fish in the sea. The children were startled."

"It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England it only took the Americans three hours to get home."

"I compared the size of our one-bedroom apartment to our friends' three-bedroom apartment and ours was significantly smaller."

"The brochure stated: 'No hairdressers at the accommodation'. We're trainee hairdressers - will we be OK staying here?"

"There are too many Spanish people. The receptionist speaks Spanish. The food is Spanish. Too many foreigners."

"We had to queue outside with no air conditioning."

"It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel."

"I was bitten by a mosquito - no-one said they could bite."

"My fiancé and I booked a twin-bedded room but we were placed in a double-bedded room. We now hold you responsible for the fact that I find myself pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked."

Heaven help us!

Awe-inspiring England...

Regular visitors to the Throne will have noticed that I have recently begun posting pictures of the Cross of St George being flown that I stumble across on my travels around Lancashire.

The one depicted to the left was flying from the flag pole on top of the illuminated inner keep at Clitheroe Castle late last night. Whilst the photograph in question, taken on my mobile phone, doesn't really do the view justice - please believe me when I say it was a truly marvellous, indeed awe-inspiring, sight.

I suspect that I will struggle to find a better, or more fitting background for our flag, no matter how hard, or for how long I try...

Meanwhile the one flying from the top of RibbleValley Council offices that I posted about a couple of weeks ago has been removed. Let's hope it only a temporary absence.

On, on, you noblest English!

May I take this opportunity to wish all of my fellow Englishmen and women, and all my other visitors a very happy St George's Day.

I shall be shortly bobbing out for a good old-fashioned 'rinse' to celebrate the day in style.

Cheers everyone!

Irish health and English taxes...

Regular visitors to the Throne – how many posts have I begun with those, or similar words recently – will know that I maintain a keen interest in Irish politics and Irish affairs generally.

As a consequence this story from The Times, which was also widely reported elsewhere, came as something of a surprise, because I had never seen neither hide nor hair of it before in either the English or Irish press and I dare say very few other people at this side of the Irish Sea, except those working at the Department of Health, knew of it either.

What struck me about the subject matter discussed in the article was not the fact that our civil servants had somehow managed to pay too much to the Irish as our contribution to the healthcare of an estimated 50,000 Irish citizens who had previously lived and worked in this country and paid National Insurance contributions, but that we gave them anything at all.

And before I go on, please do not take my preceding paragraph as some sort of slight on Ireland or the Irish; it is most certainly not meant as anything of the kind.

What I do criticise is the fact that for forty years, British governments of both colours have seen fit to send large sums of money across the Irish Sea, which should never have been sent.

Quite simply, those fifty-thousand Irish citizens who came to this country, presumably in search of employment which they couldn’t obtain in Ireland, paid their taxes here in order to share in the benefits of the services those levies provided for the rest of us.

Similarly, their National Insurance contributions, paid to the British Exchequer, entitled them to medical treatment free at the point of delivery in British hospitals and doctors’ surgeries as and when they required it whilst they lived here; just as would be the case for people of any other nationality living and working here and paying their taxes like the rest of us.

However, in my view, as soon as those Irish citizens returned to Ireland and ceased paying our taxes and National Insurance contributions, they no longer had, or continue to have, any ongoing call on the services provided by this country for the benefit of its residents and citizens. In essence, those concerned paid for a form of insurance policy which was valid whilst they were living here; it was not and should never have been considered to be a savings scheme with their contributions repayable to the Irish Government on their return to the State. On any sensible view, once they returned home and stopped paying, the policy and the contract it represented should have been regarded as lapsed, leaving no further obligation on either party, and the Irish Health Service should have taken the strain.

Again, I don’t blame the Irish for this frankly unacceptable waste of (largely English) taxpayers’ money; they would have been stupid to reject what, as recently as 2007, was effectively a gift of 9,000 Euros or about £8,500 per annum from HMG for each and every one of those 50,000 people.

No, as I made plain earlier in this post, this gratuitous and frankly unacceptable waste of public money is the responsibility the successive British Governments who allowed it to persist unchecked for so long.

The time has come to cancel that particular national standing order forthwith, as it is not our responsibility legally, morally or medically to go on paying it.

The world's shortest fairy tale...

Exactly what it says on the tin...

Once upon a time, a guy asked a girl, 'Will you marry me?'

The girl said, 'NO!'

And the guy lived happily ever after and rode motorcycles and went fishing and hunting and played golf a lot and drank beer and scotch and left the toilet seat up and broke wind whenever he wanted.

The End

Unexpected England...

The eagle-eyed amongst you may have already seen that the rather unprepossessing building pictured to the left of this post is the headquarters of Ribble Valley Borough Council, in Clitheroe.

Unprepossessing it might be, but just take a look at the flag billowing uncontrollably from the top of the flag pole in the late March gales.

No, your eyes do not deceive you, it is the Cross of St George. And for those of you thinking that its presence is a one-off affectation, never to be repeated again, let me reassure you that the English flag flies from that pole on a regular, if not daily, basis.

How refreshing to see a borough council (mine, as it happens) prepared to fly our nation's flag; and what a stark and welcome contrast to the attitude of the many that dishonestly refuse to do so on the basis that it is a 'racist' symbol.

It almost makes me happy to pay my council tax... Almost.

God save the King or Queen...

Given my previous posts on the subject of the monarchy, I suspect my regular reader would be surprised if I wasn't to offer my two penn'orth on this story, which has been widely reported in today's papers, on television and, of course, across the internet.

To come to the point quickly, I wholeheartedly agree with the proposal that our future monarchs should be the eldest child of his or her predecessor, irrespective of their gender; and I would regard any suggestion that the status quo, (where the eldest son inherits, regardless of his possibly having an elder sister or sisters), should be maintained as being offensive to women in general and not least to our present Queen, who has performed the role in an exemplary fashion for the last fifty-seven years.

Indeed, her present majesty aside, haven't some of our best, or at least best known monarchs been women?

Who can argue that Elizabeth I was not at least as good a monarch as her father Henry VIII, or that he is better known to both posterity and history than she is? And yes, there have been bad queens - Elizabeth's elder sister Mary (known to history as 'Bloody' Mary, as a result of her enthusiasm for burning protestants to death) for one - but then again, Kings John, Charles I, his son James II (and VII) and George IV, were hardly star turns, either.

So far, then, so good.

I would not, however, make any such change in the line of succession retrospective, because there is no need to do so. Barring an unforseen disaster, we know that our next and next-but-one monarchs will be men, in the form of Prince Charles and Prince William respectively, so why bother shifting Princess Anne up the pecking order, when - barring that cataclysm - she is as unlikely to ascend the Throne as either of her younger brothers, or their children?

Moving on, some have argued that there is little point in making this change now, because we have bigger fish to fry in the shape of the gathering financial storm and further, that the reason this story has emerged now is simply that The Idiot is keen to keep coverage of the economic situation off the front pages. I have a degree of sympathy with both those propositions, but I would like to see the 'rule' changed as soon as it can reasonably be done, irrespective of the fact that the male line is secured for the next two generations.

Why?

Simply this. It is entirely possible, indeed probable, that Prince William will marry and have children within the next five years. I would like to see the change brought in before those children are born, because by doing so, everyone will know that irrespetive of their gender, his eldest child will become the heir apparent to the crown; a position which would avoid our going through the confusing and unsatisfactory procedure the Swedes did in 1980, when the then one-year-old Crown Prince Carl Philip was dislodged from the succession by his elder sister, the then three-year-old Princess Victoria, by a change in Swedish law.

Much better, in my view, to have the situation resolved before any of William's children are born, then everybody - including the Royal Family - knows exactly where the eldest child stands, irrespective of the gender of any subsequent children.

Turning to the position that the Monarchy finds itself in vis-a-vis the Roman Cathlic Church, the situation is a little trickier.

I agree that it seems unsustainable that anyone in the line of succession to the Throne who chose to marry a Catholic would lose his or her right to accede, when such a prohibtion does not apply to followers of any other religion, whether it be Islam, Hinduism, Judaism or Jedi Knight.

The problem, if indeed it is one in these increasingly secular times, is that the Monarch is also ex officio the Supreme Governor of the Church of England and as such, it is inconceivable that an individual who was a practising member of another relgion (or version of it in this case) could lead a second one of which he or she was not a practising member.

The upshot would be the disestablishment of the Church of England, a possibility recently described by that weird druid currently masquerading as the Archbishop of Canterbury, as 'not being the end of the world'. Then again, with his churches as empty as a hermit's address book and half his clergy unable to decide whether they are Arthur or Martha, I don't suppose disestablishment would be more than a hiccup on the CoE's catastrophic journey into irrelevant oblivion.

Then again, if Prince William were to marry his long-term girlfriend, Kate Middleton, herself a member of the Church of England, any urgency in having to address what would then be a theoretical problem in respect of the person of the monarch himself would be removed for at least the next fifty years.

Problem solved, then...

Steven Gerrard: innocent until proven guilty: update...

Just under three months ago, I posted this item, in which I wrote of my disdain for those who suggested that Steven Gerrard should not be selected to play for his country, or his club, because he had been arrested and charged with both assault occasioning actual bodily harm and affray following an incident in a Southport nightclub.

As I wrote then, there is a golden thread in English law called the presumption of innocence. For the benefit of the uninitiated, that means that any person (including famous ones) accused of a crime in this country, however serious, is presumed to be innocent of that crime until he or she is proved to be guilty of it by due process of law.

Three months on and we learn that the assault charge has been formally discontinued against Gerrard and his six co-accused due to there being insufficient evidence to justify the matter being taken to trial.

And whilst I appreciate that he still faces the affray charge, I wonder if the people - especially those journalists who really ought to have known better - who were calling for his exclusion from the England team when he was charged now realise how premature and downright unfair they were to do so.

Happy St Patrick's Day...

May I take this opportunity to wish my Irish readers a very happy St Patrick's Day.

Would it be impolite of me to ask, An bhfuil tú dálta fós?

Buy Lancashire Tea...

The Throne doesn't normally 'do' advertising; not because of any ethical difficulties in doing so you understand, it's simply that I didn't start the blog with that in mind.

However, I am making an exception today for one product: Lancashire Tea.

If you find yourself in a Sainsbury's store within the borders of the County Palatine in the near future, short of what we in this county call "brewing tackle", please go and buy some Lancashire Tea.

Why? I hear you cry; what's wrong with my usual fare, why should I buy Lancashire Tea instead?

For two very good reasons: firstly, it makes a rattling good cup of tea and secondly, and far more importantly, the owners of the company which makes it will contribute five pence from every purchase of the product to the SSAFA Forces Help (Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Family Association); an organisation committed to helping servicemen and women and their families, including their widows, widowers and dependents when they are in need.

So there you are. Next time you're doing the shopping, please buy some Lancashire Tea; you will be doing both your tastebuds and your country a favour.

It's been a while...again.

Once again, a particularly busy period at work has robbed me of the time and opportunity to post as frequently as I would have liked over the last week or so.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about having a demanding job, particularly so in the current financial climate, but working several twelve or forteen hour days on the bounce doesn't half eat into the time available for posting.

However, the latest project was successfully delivered to the customer on Friday evening, which should mean that I have more time to burden you with my ramblings over the next month or so.

Meanwhile, thanks for continuing to visit; you are always welcome.

Can we borrow Judge John Neilan, please?

What a pity Judge John Neilan sits in Irish courts, rather than English ones...

Do you think he'd consider a transfer?

Happy New Year...

May I take the opportunity with this, my 191st - and last - post of 2008, to wish all of my readers (shouldn't take long!) and other occasional, or even accidental visitors to the Throne, a very Happy and prosperous New Year for 2009.

Thank you all for visiting and even more so to those of you who have been kind enough to leave me your comments - even the critical ones.

I hope to see you all again in 2009, or when I've sobered up, whichever is the sooner...

Merry Christmas to one and all...

Well, all the shopping has been done, the tree has been trimmed and the relatives are arriving; so please allow me to take this opportunity to wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas.

I hope you all have an enjoyable day - I know I will!

Strictly compulsive viewing...

Well done to Tom Chambers who, together with his professional partner, Camilla Dallerup, has just been crowned Strictly Come Dancing champion for 2008.

It might be as camp as a row of pink tents, but I don't care; I thoroughly enjoy it and I have watched every single show avidly.

My personal favourite for the title (after Austin Healey was knocked out) was Rachel Stevens, who, over the course of the series developed into a quite superb dancer under the expert tutelage of her professional partner, Vincent Simone. But credit where credit is due; Tom and Camilla won the competition on the strength of a quite brilliantly choreographed and executed final 'show dance' which even blew the judges away.

Saturday evenings won't be quite the same now that the series has finished.

Reasons to be cheerful, part two...

Following up very briefly from my last post, last Friday's 'Christmas' drink with my pals went off without a hitch and much fun (and beer) was had by all.

And by way of a very welcome bonus, whilst wending our alcohol assisted way around Clitheroe town centre, I was delighted to see the Cross of St George flying from the castle flagpole, fully illuminated for all to see.

What's more, the flag of the English Nation (for such is what the CoSG is and what we English are) was still flying there at full mast on Sunday afternoon.

Proper order.

Jingle bells, jingle bells...

Well, it's coming up to that time of year again and I'm off out tonight (or should that be this afternoon, as we're meeting in the pub at 5.30!) with my pals for our (first) Christmas drink.

As you may have gathered, it promises to be a lengthy affair, with banter and mickey-taking aplenty.

As a result, postings may be a little thin on the ground for the rest of the weekend, as I work my way out of the doghouse with Mrs RToK...

The hounding of Maria Gatland...

I don't imagine it will surprise anyone to learn that the Throne has nothing but contempt for the blood-soaked criminals of the IRA, but I have to say that this story about the 'unmasking' and subsequent hounding from office of Conservative councillor Maria Gatland, a former member of that organisation, leaves me feeling distinctly uneasy.

Mrs Gatland was born in Dublin and joined the IRA as an impressionable young woman, convinced of the legitimacy of their campaign to drive the British out of Ireland and thereafter to forge a thirty-two county Republic.

Yes, joining an organisation wedded to violent revolution - and make no bones about it, that is precisely what the IRA was - was incredibly foolish and arguably criminal, but at the time she did so, she was barely in to her twenties.

To her credit, she quickly realised the true, murderous nature of the organisation she had foolishly joined, when in July 1972 IRA bombers killed eleven people and injured scores more in a series of bombings in Belfast and as a consequence, she left the organisation which promptly sentenced her to death for doing so.

Understandably, she then fled Ireland and came to England, where within four years, she met and married her husband, with whom she built a new life, eventually becoming a Conservative councillor in Croydon in 2002 with the aim of 'putting something back into the community'.

In other words, having utterly rejected the murderous violence of the Provisional IRA at the cost of attracting a death sentence for doing so, she set about building a new and respectable life in England. A full thirty years after the scales fell from her youthful eyes, she sought and secured election to her local council in order to serve her community and make it a better place in which to live.

Whilst I appreciate that Mrs Gatland had been, by her own admission, a member of an organisation which was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people and the torture of thousands more, both British and Irish, during the course of 'The Troubles' she had repudiated that membership within a very short period of time.

The question I pose is this; is there to be no rehabilitation, no possibility of redemption, for those like Maria Gatland (nee McGuire) who have realised the error of their ways and set about making amends?

Whatever anyone thinks about the IRA and those who were members of it, it took considerable courage - both moral and physical - for Maria Gatland to leave and condemn her former comrades for the callous murderers that they were, and in my view, thirty-six years down the line, she should be congratulated for that courage, not hounded from office amid a tidal wave of political point-scoring and nauseating righteous indignation.

A bit of trumpet blowing...

Back on October 15th I wrote this post, celebrating the fact that the Throne had received it's thousandth visitor.

In the same vein, I'm sure my regular reader will indulge me whilst I celebrate having received my thousandth visitor from this country alone, to say nothing of over two-hundred from America and just short of a hundred from Australia.

As I wrote in the October post, the figures may not be large by linked-blog standards, but they are both important and a source of some pride to me.

So once again, thank you all and please keep coming back!

Beyond parody...

It is widely recognised that there is no end to the inventiveness of defence lawyers as regards the arguments they are prepared to use to secure their client's acquittal, but this one from County Kerry must surely take the biscuit. Put briefly, two men were acquitted of drink driving offences, because it was shown that they may have inhaled alcohol fumes from their own urine at the police station, thereby affecting their blood-alcohol readings, whilst waiting to provide samples for analysis.

How long will it be before someone tries that one in an English court?

Kevin Myers on setting the Irish national agenda...

Another excellent piece from the Irish Independent's Kevin Myers, in which he asks why the vast majority of Irish people have allowed - and in some circumstances continue to allow - the tiny number of Republican extremists in their midst to set the Irish national agenda.

Please read it all, it is well worth doing so.

Today is Lancashire Day...

Today is Lancashire Day, marking the fact that precisely 713 years ago, the county sent its first representatives to parliament. To mark the occasion, the following proclamation was read out by town criers the length an breadth of the County Palatine:

To the people of the city and county of the Palatine of Lancaster. Greetings!

Know ye that this day, November 27th in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and eight, the 57th year of the reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Duke of Lancaster, is Lancashire Day.

Know ye also, and rejoice, that by virtue of Her Majesty's County Palatine of Lancaster, the citizens of the Hundreds of Lonsdale, North and South of the Sands, Amounderness, Leyland, Blackburn, Salford and West Derby are forever entitled to style themselves Lancastrians.

Throughout the County Palatine, from the Furness Fells to the River Mersey, from the Irish Sea to the Pennines, this day shall ever mark the peoples' pleasure in that excellent distinction - true Lancastrians, proud of the Red Rose and loyal to our Sovereign Duke.

God bless Lancashire and God save the Queen, Duke of Lancaster.

And as a proud and loyal Lancastrian, Amen to that, I say.

Lance Corporal Frederick Pickup, 1891 - 1916

My mother's family hailed from Rishton, a small town of about seven-thousand souls, some four miles north-east of Blackburn. At the time of the 1901 census, my great-grandparents were living in the town with their son, Fred and their daughters, Clara and Kate - my grandmother.

Clara - my great aunt, and the only one of the three still alive when I was born - went on to marry a man named Frederick Pickup; and they set up home together in Harwood Road Rishton, no doubt entertaining hopes of a long and happy life together.

However, with the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Fred enlisted in the East Lancs Regiment and was despatched to France along with hundreds of other men from Rishton and the surrounding towns, to fight for his King and his country.

As I posted here this time last year, L/Cpl Pickup was killed, aged just 25, on 1st July 1916 - the first day of the Battle of the Somme - leaving Auntie Clara, as we always called her, a widow at 23 years of age.

It is due to men like Fred and countless thousands of others (including another 196 from Rishton alone) who gave their lives, not only during the Great War but in other wars and conflicts, that we can still (just about) call ourselves a free country.

And it is in memory of my great uncle Fred and his countless comrades who died in our name, that I will be wearing my poppy and maintaining a two minute silence tomorrow at 11.00am with a mixture of humility and pride.

I hope you see fit to do the same.

He's done it!

Phew! Now that was close.

But Lewis Hamilton - an Englishman, of course - is the World Champion.

Congratulations, Lewis, your country is proud of you.

St Crispin's Day...

I suppose the fact that today is St Crispin's Day gives added resonance to this story in today's Telegraph.

As I see it, it amounts to suggestions from revisionist (and mainly French) historians, that we English won the Battle of Agincourt, which was fought 593 years ago today, by committing what would now be considered war crimes.

My initial reaction would be to use one of my late father's favourite sayings, usually directed at me as I complained that my football team had somehow been cheated out of a deserved victory by some (allegedly) nefarious means...

"Look it up in the paper tomorrow, son; the result will still be the same."

That saying never ceased to frustrate me, mostly because I knew he was right.

But having given the matter further consideration, allow me instead by way of a response to turn to a famous passage from Henry V by William Shakespeare; arguably the greatest Englishman who ever lived, dealing with the thoughts of the English on the eve of the battle:

WESTMORELAND.

O that we now had here

But one ten thousand of those men in England

That do no work to-day!

KING.

What's he that wishes so?

My cousin Westmoreland?

No, my fair cousin; If we are mark'd to die, we are enow

To do our country loss; and if to live,

The fewer men, the greater share of honour.

God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.

By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,

Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;

It yearns me not if men my garments wear;

Such outward things dwell not in my desires.

But if it be a sin to covet honour,

I am the most offending soul alive.

No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.

God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour

As one man more methinks would share from me

For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!

Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,

That he which hath no stomach to this fight,

Let him depart; his passport shall be made,

And crowns for convoy put into his purse;

We would not die in that man's company

That fears his fellowship to die with us.

This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.

He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,

And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

He that shall live this day, and see old age,

Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,

And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,

And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'

Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,

But he'll remember, with advantages,

What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,

Familiar in his mouth as household words-

Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,

Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-

Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.

This story shall the good man teach his son;

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remembered-

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition;

And gentlemen in England now-a-bed

Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Maintaining a strictly neutral and academic attitude towards this revisionist French nonsense I would comment thus: look the it up in the paper tomorrow morning, Frenchy; the result will still be the same!

A bit more stat pron...

My regular reader may recall that having put the flag counter on my blog in June, I allowed myself to entertain hopes of attracting a thousand visitors by Christmas.

I am very pleased to be able to report that the Throne recently streaked past that number more than ten weeks earlier than I had hoped.

My visitor numbers may not be large by linked-blog standards, but they are both important and a source of some pride to me.

So thank you all.

Should she stay or should she go...

There's an interesting story in some of today's Scottish papers, focussing on a suggestion made by Christine Grahame, the SNP MSP for the South of Scotland, that the remains of Mary Queen of Scots should be disinterred from their current resting place in Westminster Abbey and repatriated to Scotland.

She is supported in her view by a composer named James McMillan (of whom, I must confess, I have never heard) various historians and the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland.

What intrigues me is that Mary was so unpopular during her reign, punctuated as it was by at least one allegation of murder, that she was forced to abdicate in 1567, in favour of her then one-year-old son, James and flee to England to save her own life.

Unable to resist the usual attack on the perfidious English, Ms Grahame describes Mary as an iconic figure from Scottish history (no arguments so far) who was ultimately the victim of English plotting...

Err, no Christine, Mary was caught red handed plotting to overthrow Elizabeth and to seize the English throne and that is why a very, very reluctant Elizabeth had to order her execution.

Frankly, I have no strong feelings either way about Mary's final resting place. However, as all schoolboy historians now know, the infant son who succeeded her as James VI of Scotland subsequently inherited the throne of England on Elizabeth's death, becoming James VI and I and it was at his direction - the direction of (no pun intended) the last king of Scotland - that his mother's remains were interred in Westminster Abbey.

Perhaps he - her son - should have the final word as to where his mother's remains spend eternity.

There's no pockets in shrouds...

I suppose that by now, virtually everyone in the Western world has had a bad experience with a call centre; I know I have. But the story I reproduce below, which there's no surprise for guessing originates in America, must just about take the biscuit.

A lady died this past January, and Citibank billed her for February and March for their annual service charges on her credit card, and added late fees and interest on the monthly charge. The balance had been $0.00 when she died, but was by now somewhere around $60.00.

A family member placed a call to Citibank. Here is the exchange:

Family Member: 'I am calling to tell you she died back in January.'

Citibank: 'The account was never closed and the late fees and charges still apply.'

Family Member: 'Maybe, you should turn it over to collections.'

Citibank: 'Since it is two months past due, it already has been.'

Family Member: 'So, what will they do when they find out she is dead?'

Citibank: 'Either report her account to frauds division or report her to the credit bureau, maybe both!'

Family Member: 'Do you think God will be mad at her?'

Citibank: 'Excuse me?'

Family Member: 'Did you just get what I was telling you - the part about her being dead?'

Citibank: 'Sir, you'll have to speak to my supervisor.' Supervisor gets on the phone:

Family Member: 'I'm calling to tell you, she died back in January with a $0 balance.'

Citibank: 'The account was never closed and late fees and charges still apply.'

Family Member: 'You mean you want to collect from her estate?'

Citibank: (Stammer) 'Are you her lawyer?'

Family Member: 'No, I'm her great nephew.' (Lawyer info was given)

Citibank: 'Could you fax us a certificate of death?'

Family Member: 'Sure.' (Fax number was given ) After they get the fax :

Citibank: 'Our system just isn't setup for death. I don't know what more I can do to help.'

Family Member: 'Well, if you figure it out, great! If not, you could just keep billing her. She won't care.'

Citibank: 'Well, the late fees and charges do still apply.'

Family Member: 'Would you like her new billing address?'

Citibank: 'That might help...'

Family Member: ' Odessa Memorial Cemetery , Highway 129, Plot Number 69.'

Citibank: 'Sir, that's a cemetery!'

Family Member: 'And what do you do with dead people on your planet?'

And you thought our call centres - or should that be Indian call centres - were bad!

Ps. The title of this post is a Lancastrianism roughly equating to "You can't take it with you."

That'll teach them...

A good mate sent me this recently by email. It made me smile so much, I thought it deserved a wider audience...

According to a news report, a certain private school in Taringa, New Zealand was recently faced with a unique problem.

A number of 12-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom. That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick they would press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints.

Every night the maintenance man would remove them and the next day the girls would put them back.

Finally the principal decided that something had to be done. She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man. She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night.

To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, she asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required.

He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it.

Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.

There are teachers... and then there are educators...

FIFA: utterly spineless in the face of racism...

As I have written here before, the Throne will have no truck with racism or with racists, which is why I find the "punishment" meted out to the Croatian Football Association, following the abuse - consisting of monkey chants and the like - heaped on England's Emile Heskey during the recent international match at the Maksimir Stadium so depressingly inadequate.

The abuse Heskey endured was such that our FA made an official complaint about his treatment to FIFA, the world governing body for Association Football (or soccer for my North American visitors).

In announcing that it was fining the Croatian FA, a FIFA spokesman observed:

"Racism has no place in football. Fifa is determined to continue broadcasting this message around the globe and deploying all of the means at its disposal to eliminate this form of discrimination."

And in the next breath they revealed that the fine would be... £15,000. Yes, fifteen grand; about the same price as a new mid-range Ford Focus.

Pathetic enough, given the seriousness of the "Heskey" offence, but criminally inadequate when it is remembered that Croatian fans have something of a record in this area - they were fined a similarly trifling sum after their fans racially abused Turkish players during a match between the two countries at Euro 2008.

If FIFA was really determined to 'eliminate this form of discrimination', they should ensure that the sanctions for allowing behaviour of this sort to occur during international matches are far more severe.

My proposal would be that the first such offence should result in the offending national association being ordered to play all their home matches behind closed doors for the duration of an entire tournament, or a refusal to sell tickets to supporters of that country for the final stages of that competition. Moving on, a continued failure to learn he lesson would result in the deduction of of tournament qualifying points and finally, if the lesson has still not been learned, expulsion from international competitions, until the offending country's association could satisfy the rest of the civilised world that the problem had been permanently eradicated.

Somehow, I don't think fining repeat offenders fifteen grand is going to have the slightest effect on changing their fans' behaviour, because there is no incentive for the authorities in the nation in question to take the necessary steps ensure that it is.

Expelling them from international competitions and making them worldwide pariahs just might.

Excuses, excuses...

Sorry for the absence of posts for the last few days; I've been so monumentally busy at work that I have had little time for anything else, even at the weekend.

Fingers crossed I'll be posting normally again tomorrow...

Pricing itself out of the game...

I can't say that this story surprised me at all, because as my regular reader will know, I am a keen football fan. I have been attending professional football matches since I was eleven and have held a season ticket at my local club since the 1974-75 season. Indeed, the purchase of that ticket formed part of my Christmas present for a number of years; which brings me to the point of this post.

Those early season tickets cost the princely sum of £10.00. Granted it was well over thirty years ago and was the ‘junior and senior citizen’ price, but it was well within the reach of most people.

My son is now sixteen and his ticket – amongst the cheapest in the country, I might add – cost me £180.00, with my own being considerably more expensive, but still, when compared to those issued by other clubs, very good value.

But over the course of the intervening thirty-three years, I began to notice that fewer and fewer people I had seen attending matches for years and years seemed to be there for the next one, or the next; and all those people had one thing in common: they were all clearly ‘working class’ men.

I’m afraid the reasons for the loss of those fans are easy to pinpoint: the emergence of the Premier League/ Premiership, with it’s ever increasing player salaries and wall-to-wall coverage on Sky Television.

The first of those things saw admission prices rise sharply over the course of a couple of years (to cover at least part of those swelling wages) and significant numbers of people could no longer afford to pay them.

Those rises have continued year after year to the effect that it is now commonplace to be charged £50.00 simply to purchase a ticket and it is frequently much more.

I don’t think you have to be a mathematician to work out that a family man on a take home wage of, say, £300.00 per week would have to think very hard as to whether he could afford to attend the match, particularly when it would be considerably cheaper, not to mention warmer and more comfortable, to simply stroll along to his local (if it hasn’t closed due to the punitive duties imposed by the Chancellor) and watch it on the big screen over a few pints.

I’m afraid that football has been busily alienating its natural constituency – the working class male – for fifteen or twenty years now and those men are now lost to the game as a live spectator sport. They will never come back to it, because they and the game have moved on and because they can no longer afford to go; they get their ‘fix’ on the television instead – often in their own homes now, too, because the price of a Sky subscription is often cheaper than physically attending matches spread across the year.

Of course, with the arrival of oil sheikhs and billionaires from Russia and America, the game arguably no longer needs their money; it has undoubtedly ‘progressed’ from a pie-and-Bovril sport to one populated by what Roy Keane memorably described, or should that be derided, as the prawn sandwich brigade.

Does the change of the game’s character and the loss of those legions of its former fans matter, when nearly eighty thousand people regularly squeeze into Old Trafford, or sixty thousand are shoe-horned into the Emirates?

For me, the answer is an unequivocal yes.

The game can ill afford to lose any fans, particularly those from the working classes who have been its life-blood for over a hundred years. To price such people out of attending is short-termism of the most idiotic kind, because when the money currently swamping the English game dries up, as surely it will, and the arriviste fans disappear with it, who will the game turn to then?

Amir Khan: a stumble, not the end...

Sad to see Amir Khan, the Bolton-born boxer and role model for young Asian Muslims, beaten so quickly and comprehensively by Colombian Breidis Prescott at the MEN arena in Manchester last night.

Up until that knock-out (in less than a minute) by his more experienced opponent, Khan’s career in the ring had been one of undiluted success.

However, Amir – a Lancastrian, of course - is only twenty-one years of age and has plenty of time on his side to regroup and return to title-winning ways.

Very often, the most valuable lessons in life are learned though adversity and defeat; that is the challenge he faces this morning as he looks at his bruised face in the bathroom mirror.

I believe he is equal to it.

Agony. Pure, unadulterated agony...

This week, I have been mostly suffering from…

Gout.

Yes, that’s right, gout; that disorder suffered by blimpish, port drinking retired colonels and a certain much-married homicidal Tudor monarch.

Yes, that’s right, your eyes didn’t deceive you; gout. G.O.U.T.

And now that you’ve been able to stifle your giggles for long enough to wipe the tears of laughter from your eyes, let me tell the uninitiated amongst you (you lucky, lucky people) something about it.

It is, without doubt, quite the most painful thing I have ever experienced in my life and whilst modesty and a desire to allow you to hold on to your last meal prevent me from going into any further detail, allow me to say, I am no stranger to extreme discomfort including, amongst others:

1. Toothache – a mere bagatelle
2. Severe cramp in the muscles of the small of my back rendering movement impossible – a trifling inconvenience
3. Post operative infection – bit of a nuisance

Unfortunately, I am also no stranger to its predations. I suffered my first episode before the age of thirty and between that age and thirty-seven or eight, it struck me a further four or five times. In the intervening ten years, I’ve only been struck a further three times, possibly because I started eating more sensibly and got myself fit.

But it still came, nonetheless.

It always begins the same way. I wake up in the morning to a vague, tingling stiffness in the large joint of my left big toe. If caught quickly at that stage with the appropriate medication (thank the Lord for NSAIDs!), a couple of days later and I’m as right as rain. Left untreated, by the second day, the toe is too stiff and painful to move and even putting a sock on is a procedure, carried out through gritted teeth.

By the early hours of the third morning, the agony – there is no other word to describe it – is so intense that the weight of the bed sheets on it is enough to wake me up creased in pain and the mere thought of putting a sock on is too much to contemplate, let alone a shoe.

The first time it struck me, I honestly thought I had broken my foot in some way, possibly by having it run over by a lorry when alcoholically inconvenienced; that is how much it hurts. Indeed, I have often mused as to whether it would be less agonising to take a blunt, rusty old knife and cut off the offending toe without anaesthetic.

Apparently, the condition is more common amongst the more intellectually gifted. I couldn’t possibly comment about that, but what I am sure of is that I inherited the gene which makes me susceptible to it (it is essentially caused by an inability to rid the body of uric acid) from my late father, who was also struck for the first time in his early thirties. Just for good measure, my pencil slim elder brother is also a sufferer. Unfortunately for my son, one of my brothers-in-law is also prone to the condition, so if, as is widely believed, it is inherited, the chances are that he can also look forward to becoming a sufferer in about fifteen or twenty years’ time.

What then of Mrs RtoK when I am in the midst of an attack, unable to walk at more than a hobble, my face a twisted mask of pain?

I don't suppose anyone would be surprised tolearn that she generally laughs at me, tells me not to be such a wimp and to try giving birth if I want to know what pain really feels like!

No change there, then.

Now where did I put those pills…

Football predictions...

Well, all too soon, the holiday’s over and the sun and sand have once again been exchanged for the cooler, greener pastures of home.

I have to admit that whilst we were away, other than the odd look at the English papers, I didn’t really make too much effort to keep up with the news, so I thought that for my first post-holiday post, as it were, I’d have a look at another one of my passions: football. More specifically, the predictions made in the Daily Mail (which I read on the plane home) as to where the twenty Premier League clubs will finish come next May.

These are the predictions as made by Neil Ashton…followed by mine in red…

1. Man United (Man United)
2. Chelsea (Chelsea)
3. Liverpool (Arsenal)
4. Arsenal (Liverpool)

Not too much to argue with there, as to the clubs which will make up the top four and hence take the coveted Champions League places. My only quibble is that for all their loss of important players, I can’t see Arsenal being beaten into fourth place by a Liverpool team despite the acquisition of Robbie Keane.

Moving on…

5. Portsmouth (Everton)
6. Spurs (Aston Villa)
7. Everton (Portsmouth)
8. Man City (Spurs)
9. Aston Villa (Sunderland)
10. West Ham (Newcastle)
11. Newcastle (Man City)
12. Sunderland (West Ham)

Hmmm. Some interesting suggestions there. I can’t see Portsmouth finishing above Aston Villa or Everton and given Dr Thaksin’s current difficulties, Man City may be looking for a new owner with enough money to pay the wages at Christmas rather than dreaming about potential glory. I fear that Mark Hughes has jumped out of the relatively pressure-free safety of Blackburn Rovers into a financial maelstrom at City which could well see him leaving his new post before the nights start drawing in.

Other than that, the perennial suggestion that Spurs are launching a bid to force themselves into the top four is always a source of hilarity when it once again collapses in failure and to suggest that a poor West Ham team will finish tenth is taking London-centric reporting to new extremes of optimism. Sunderland, meanwhile will surprise a few people this season, whilst Newcastle will remain in steady mid-table position.

And bringing up the rear…

13. Middlesborough (Blackburn)
14. Wigan (Wigan)
15. Fulham (Bolton)
16. Blackburn (Fulham)
17. Bolton (Middlesborough)
18. Stoke (West Brom)
19. Hull (Stoke)
20. West Brom (Hull)

Intriguing. Dealing with the easier ones to predict, much the same as the top of the league, I suspect that the bottom three select themselves, for the simple reason that the gap between the Premier League and the Championship is now so wide, I cannot see any promoted club surviving until QPR come up, backed by the massive resources of Bernie Ecclestone, Lakshmi Mittal and Silvio Briatore.

That aside, there has been much talk in the press of a crisis at Blackburn Rovers in the wake of Mark Hughes’ departure and the transfers of both David Bentley and Brad Friedel. I have no doubt that they will slip from their seventh place of last season, but not as far as Ashton suggests. After them, I see their Lancashire neighbours in Wigan and Bolton - both clubs have strengthened considerably over the summer - followed by Fulham and Middlesborough, both of whom will finish several points above the relegation zone. Indeed, it wouldn’t surprise me if this season saw the largest ever gap between the tem relegated in 18th place and the one staying up in 17th.

Of course, these are only my best, relatively well informed guesses…I will return to my predictions at the end of the season to assess my crystal ball gazing and doubtless demonstrate my profound lack of ability as a pundit…

Off on holiday...

Off on my holidays now - back in ten days or so, when the Throne will be celebrating its second birthday!

See you when I'm back...

More stat pron...

Hardly earth shattering, I know, but I have just had my one hundredth visitor since installing the flag-counter in the side bar less than a month ago.

I was hoping - seriously - to have reached that number by Christmas and now I find that the Throne has been visited by readers from no fewer than twelve countries (ok, only once each from eight of them!) in a little over three weeks.

Dare I hope that the Throne will have celebrated its five-hundredth visitor by the end of the year?

Happy New Year...

In much the same vein as last week's Christmas message, may I take this opportunity to wish all visitors to the Throne a very happy and prosperous New Year for 2008.

Arise, Sir Leslie...

One of my all-time favourite actors, Leslie Phillips, now a venerable eighty-three years old, is to made a CBE in the New Year’s honours list.

Indulge me whilst I recount yet again the line from Carry On Nurse with which he is most often associated…

Attractive Nurse (addressing Phillips): “Doctor Bell?”

Phillips (looking at her lasciviously): “Ding dong!”

A comedy classic.

I have only one quibble: it should have been a knighthood; they have been given out for far less to people far less deserving.

Merry Christmas to one and all...

As I won't get the chance to do so again before tomorrow, may I take this opportunity to wish my reader and anyone else who has inadvertently stumbled across the Throne, a very merry Christmas.

I hope it brings all you wish for.

Well done, Alesha...

Well, I backed the wrong horse again...

I wanted Matt Di Angelo and his partner, (the delicious Flavia Cacace) to win the final of Strictly Come Dancing tonight, but it wasn't to be.

The show may be as camp as a row of pink tents, but I'm not afraid to say that I enjoyed every last minute of it.

Well done to the winner, Alesha Dixon - she was excellent throughout the series, bouncy, effervescent and very entertaining - she is a worthy champion.

Who would have thought that...

According to an article in today’s Daily Telegraph, men like to marry younger women.

Apparently, after a study conducted by Dr Samuli Helle of the University of Turku in Finland, the ideal age gap would see men marrying women about fifteen years younger than themselves.

Call me old-fashioned, but I think I can put the result of this research into rather fewer words.

No shit, Sherlock!

Today is Lancashire Day...

Assuming that my reader does not enjoy the privilege of being a Lancastrian, today, 27th November, is Lancashire Day. It was designated such in recognition of the fact that it was on this day in 1295 that the first elected representatives from Lancashire were called to Westminster by King Edward I (of happy memory) to attend what later became known as "The Model Parliament".

To celebrate the day, the following proclamation was read at Midday today by Town Criers throughout the county - the full County Palatine, that is, not the administrative rump left after the constitutional vandalism of 1974.

TO THE PEOPLE OF THE CITY AND COUNTY PALATINE OF LANCASTER: GREETINGS!

Know ye that this day, November 27th in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and seven, the 56th year of the reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Duke of Lancaster, is Lancashire Day.
Know ye also, and rejoice, that by virtue of Her Majesty's County Palatine of Lancaster, the citizens of the Hundreds of Lonsdale, North and South of the Sands, Amounderness, Leyland, Blackburn, Salford and West Derby are forever entitled to style themselves Lancastrians.
Throughout the County Palatine, from the Furness Fells to the River Mersey, from the Irish Sea to the Pennines, this day shall ever mark the peoples' pleasure in that excellent distinction - true Lancastrians, proud of the Red Rose and loyal to our Sovereign Duke.

GOD BLESS LANCASHIRE AND
GOD SAVE THE QUEEN,
DUKE OF LANCASTER.

Hear, hear, I say, and my best wishes to Lancastrians everywhere.

Save your local: drink more beer...

Hot on the heels of the rash of scare stories put about by the health fascists and their fellow-travellers in the Government who are never slow to recognise a tax-raising opportunity, comes some interesting information carried in today’s Daily Mail and latterly, on the evening news.

According to the British Beer and Pub Association, (hardly independent, I know, but bear with me) the consumption of beer in pubs is at its lowest level since the 1930s, and is down by virtually 50% since 1979.

Even factoring in the sales of that cheap, canned dross they punt out in supermarkets and off-licences and the like, the sale of beer is still down by 22% over the same period.

I don’t know about you, but I have always thought that drinking is best enjoyed in the company of others in a pub, not sitting at home, hunched over a collection of empty cans or bottles. I know many people will disagree with me, but - as you will have gathered - I regard the latter as potentially far more ‘damaging’ than the former, as the drinking could, conceivably, take the place of the social aspect and become an end in itself.

As such, we should be very worried about the demise of pub-based beer drinking; all the more so in light of the numbers of pubs which are closing their doors forever, or being sold off for alternative uses in both urban and -possibly more worrying, given the lack of alternatives - rural settings.

Do we really want to end up living in a country where a night out at the local becomes a distant memory, losing yet another aspect of our culture in the process?

As far as I can see it, the answer is to freeze the duty on beer sold in pubs - not on alcopops, not on wine, not on spirits and not on ‘beer’ sold in supermarkets (twenty-odd pence a can for Tesco’s ‘value’ bitter, for God’s sake!), in order to encourage people to have their evening ‘slackener’ in the pub with friends.

And to answer your question, I am a lager, or sometimes, a cider man and I make absolutely no apologies for it.

Happy anniversary, Ma'am...

Her Majesty the Queen and HRH Prince Philip celebrate their sixtieth wedding anniversary today.

Many congratulations to them both on their Diamond Day.

May there be many more.

Bad luck Scotland...

So the Scots fell agonisingly short yesterday evening of qualifying for next year's European football Championships.

They have my sympathy, because, across the length of the campaign -and again last night - they played well enough to have qualified.

I also have a good deal of sympathy with those Scotland supporters who point to the frankly ludicrous linesman's decision which saw the award of the injury-time free kick, from which the Italians scored their second goal, as the defining moment of the match. Quite what the Spanish official in question was thinking when he flagged for a foul by the Scottish full back is beyond me, other than to say he got it completely and indefensibly wrong.

However, that wasn't the only error by the officials on the night and it has to be said that two of the others directly benefitted Scotland; firstly when a second Italian 'goal' was disallowed for offside when the scorer was in fact onside and secondly when Barry Ferguson equalised for the Scots from an offside position.

All things considered, though, it was a good effort from the Scots, but sadly - and I mean that - not quite good enough and they won't now be joining England (fingers crossed!) in Austria and Switzerland next summer, courtesy, it has to be said, of the Israelis.

Come on England; surely a draw with Croatia at Wembley is within our capabilities... isn't it?

Gratitude...

A very personal post to begin with today, which I dedicate to the memory of a man I didn't even know existed until two years ago; my great uncle, Lance Corporal Frederick Pickup, who, together with 20,000 comrades, died (aged 24) on 1st July 1916: the first day of the Battle of the Somme .

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter learny od friends; and gentleness
In hearts at peace under an English heaven.

Rupert Brooke

Fred Pickup: like tens of thousands of others, gone, but not forgotten.

Wear your poppy with pride!

DNA database and the police...

Just a quick one. The Daily Mail will insist on referring to the DNA database as somehow belonging to or being under the control of the police. For instance, their banner headline in Monday’s paper read “Police hold DNA of 4.5m Britons.”

Well actually, they don’t; the police don’t hold any DNA records at all and nor do they have access to the database. It is held and maintained by the Forensic Science Service and it is they who ‘hold’ those 4.5m records, under legislation broadened by this government.

The only role the police play is the gathering of the samples - in line with the law as it stands - which are then loaded onto the database, and exploiting the results of any ‘hits’ from crime scenes.

No more and no less. Don’t blame the cops; it’s not their fault.

Physician heal thyself...

I read recently that the local community in the Norris Green area of Liverpool has expressed ‘concern’ that the killer of Rhys Jones has not yet been charged with the murder.

On the one hand, I can understand them; wouldn't every sensible person want the criminal caught?

But the police haven’t got a crystal ball and they are somewhat restricted by having to obtain evidence of someone’s guilt before he or she can be charged. And where do you suppose that evidence could, or should come from? CCTV? maybe, if they’re lucky.

But isn’t the real untapped source of evidence the people from that very community who either saw what happened, heard the offender bragging, washed his clothes, or helped the offender dispose of the weapon?

The police cannot operate in a vacuum; they require the assistance of honest, public spirited citizens who have witnessed crimes to come forward and help.

So instead of pointing the finger of blame at their police, perhaps the community in question should start examining their own consciences and provide the evidence which detectives are waiting for.

Lucky Sven...

Once again, the Throne has been a post-free zone for the last ten days due to the pressure of work.

I have, however noticed that Sven Goran Eriksson has been made the first Barclays 'Manager of the Month' of the new season.

Presumably for spending tens of millions of pounds donated by their highly dubious Thai benefactor and thereby achieving the dizzying success of three wins and two defeats out of five games.

I wonder what the managers of the four clubs which have had better starts than City think of that...

Mandela: Sorry, not in Parliament Square...

I see from today’s Times that a statue of Nelson Mandela is to be erected in Parliament Square in London alongside those of Churchill, Disraeli and Sir Robert Peel.

Oh dear.

Whilst I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that he is a statesman of seminal importance in the history of Africa and especially South Africa itself, I cannot see why his political achievements deserve the erection of this statue in London.

Allow me to explain. Churchill was our talismanic leader throughout the dark days of the Second World War; Disraeli was our Prime Minister during the height of our Imperial power and Sir Robert Peel was, amongst other things and as every schoolboy used to know, the founding father of the modern police force.

For those who do not see my point, it is this. Those three men played unarguably significant roles in the history of this country; not that of another one several thousand miles away.

In my view Parliament Square should only contain statues of politicians who have performed great services to and on behalf of this country, not those of their counterparts from overseas, no matter how great their achievements in their own lands.

Don’t get me wrong; Mr Mandela’s undoubted position in the pantheon of African heroes is deserving of the highest recognition... Just not in the form of a statue in Parliament Square.

Diana: It's time to move on...

As my regular reader will already be aware, the Throne is a staunchly monarchist blog and whilst there is breath in my body, so it will remain.

However, that said, I am utterly sick and tired of reading, or being lectured to, about the late Diana, Princess of Wales. For goodness sake, the woman died ten years ago in a wholly preventable car accident, and we, as an increasingly emotionally incontinent nation, should just get over it.

For the record, she was not a saint in human form, but a thirty-six year old publicity hungry woman whose admittedly high profile marriage had collapsed some years before her death, much the same as countless others.

It is surely high time that all the hoop-la over her demise was brought to an end, if only for the sake of the two people still alive for whom her memory is really important; her two sons.

To all the other grief-mongers who take such mawkish delight in ‘preserving’ her memory, I say that it is time to move on. Forget the ludicrous water feature in Hyde Park, which actually looks like an over-sized horse trough. Forget the ridiculous conspiracy theorists, such as Mohammed Fayed and the mind-numbingly dull Daily Express and allow the woman to rest in peace in that small part of Northamptonshire denied to her by her brother - he of the aggressive, self-serving eulogy and money making Diana theme park - in her final few years of life.

Please don’t get me wrong here, of course I am sorry she died. Sorry that a life was snuffed out at least forty years too soon. Sorry that two young boys lost their mother in such awful circumstances. Sorry for the way mass hysteria virtually paralysed the country for weeks after her death.

But I absolutely refuse to bow to the lachrymose, wailing mob of Diana worshippers, who still cling to her ‘memory’. Let’s face it, relatively few of them ever met or really got to know her and to suggest otherwise is simply dishonest. As a consequence, I find their continued ‘mourning’ both manufactured and not a little self-indulgent.

Leave the remembrance to her sons; it was their loss, not yours.

And for God’s sake, move on!

I'm with Sheffield United on this...

I see that Sheffield United are intending to sue their namesakes from West Ham for some fifty million pounds; a sum the former claim to be the financial loss they will suffer as a consequence of their relegation from the English Premier League at the end of last season.

Let me nail my colours to the mast: I'm with Sheffield United here.

I know the present board weren't there when the unquestionably deceitful Tevez deal was done and, more importantly, none of their fans knew anything about it. But the fact remains that those in charge at West Ham United at the time this deal was done deliberately and flagrantly broke the rules imposed by the League and then lied about it when they were exposed.

As far as I'm concerned, the club should have been relegated from the Premier League as a punishment, not simply fined, or even suffer a points deduction; straight relegation, however hard that is on their fans. A similar punishment, you may think to the one suffered by Bury FC, who were thrown out of last season's FA Cup for fielding an ineligible player

Sheffield united were cheated out of their rightful position in the toptier of English football. Those currently occupying their place should be made to pay the full price and if that's £50m, so be it.

It's been a while...

Regular visitors - if I have any left - will have noticed that the Throne has been silent for over three weeks. As usual, the main culprit has been a rather punishing work schedule, which until very recently saw me working regular ten or even twelve hour days every day for over a fortnight.

As a result, irrespective of the large number of stories upon which I would normally have commented, blogging became something of a lower priority than usual.

I am glad to say that the period of frantic activity on the work front (please don’t get me wrong, I enjoy my job and I know that makes me a very lucky man) has finally come to an end and so, hopefully, normal service will be resumed.

Until the next time…