Fifth Decade

Rumours are that now the FIA have re-elected a President whose primary public image is one of messing about with prostitutes, that the next move is to begin a global campaign to allow kerb crawling motorists to reclaim their fines for engaging the services of prostitutes. Max Mosley, the sad FIA President, has publicly said many times that he sees nothing wrong in engaging prositutes because they are “freely consenting adults”. Clearly a majority of the representatives of the motoring clubs that make up the FIA have come to the same conclusion.

Presumably, they did not think that messing about with prostitutes is morally repugnant nor a support for human trafficking, drug use, or the criminal underworld, or even an abuse against women. Neither it seems did they worry about their own members from the many countries in the world in which prostitution is illegal.

Apparently, many of the member clubs who supported Max Mosley receive money from the FIA. As any prostitute knows first you take the money, then you provide the required service - in this case to Max’s satisfaction.

Are we to conclude then that the lunatics are running the asylum?

If you are a woman, or a social worker dealing with the consequences of the abuse of women, or a feminist, or someone who believes in equality, or someone who has moral fibre, or who has religious affiliations, and are also a member of a motoring organisation then perhaps you should pressure your own motoring organisation to act proactively to do something to reverse this ego-driven abuse of power.

Just to remind you how it all started: the News of The World published a video showing Max Mosley, FIA President and son of the pre-war British Fascist party leader Sir Oswald Mosley engaging in a sado-masochistic orgy with three prostitutes in a concentration camp setting. The FIA represents the views of the world’s drivers in discussions with governments and other interested parties.

This week every other news item seems to be about some luminary, or thinks-he-is-a-luminary, exhibiting remarkable powers of denial over reality. Here are the shockers that most immediately come to mind:

Zimbabwe

Robert Mugabe is clearly in denial about having been defeated in the recent elections. Not only has the result not been made public, it’s actually been made into a state secret! Having said that, the ruling Marxist Zanu-PF party are making preparations for a re-run. Except nobody knows if that is correct or not, since the results have not yet been released, two weeks after the election was held, and one week after the results should have been released.

Latest news is that 23 constituencies will have a recount (because the electorate got it wrong, obviously) despite there being a time limit of 48 hours in which to lodge a recount request, which can only be issued after the results have been released, which they still haven’t been! Naturally, one suspects these specific 23 recounts have been planned because within the last two weeks, Mugabe supporters have been busily establishing they are the constituencies which need the fewest votes to be re-written, and have managed to rewrite them by now.

Finally though, the leaders of the countries surrounding Zimbabwe seem to be considering ending their state of denial that anything needs to be done in Zimbabwe and are actually saying things that should have been said years ago.

South Africa

In South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, that well known advanced intellect who was busily claiming there was no crisis in the ANC leadership as he sped to defeat at the hands of his rather more charismatic colleague - yes I know that could be anyone so I’ll be more specific and say defeat at the hands of his colleague, Mr Zuma, for leadership of the ANC - has now been saying there is no crisis in Zimbabwe either (never mind the electoral irregularities, starvation, 100,000% annual inflation, 80% unemployment and general economic collapse that has pushed 3 million refugees into Zimbabwe’s neighbours’ lands).

Even more, Megabrain Mbeki has gone on record to say that it was in the law that Zimbabwe could hold a run-off election. Yes, Thabo, but first of all they have to release the results of the first one! How else do you know they need a run-off?

Monaco

Changing tack to look at someone who hasn’t exactly been caned in an election (just caned) is Max Mosley who has been busily protesting that he has done nothing wrong in procuring the services of five hookers for a five hour orgy of sado-masochistic concentration camp style German language corporal punishment and sex. Someone ought to give Mr Mosley an education in the ways of the world, the law, and morality.

Prostitution supports the drug industry, human trafficking, and other unsavoury and associated criminally connected pursuits, and the women involved seldom sign up to it as the long-awaited fulfillment of their childhood dreams. Yes, Max Mosley, you did do something wrong.

London

In the town of Max’s recent denouement, another nobody-cum-luminary, Alastair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the UK Finance Minister) who knows how to do what his boss says, is in denial about the strength of response of the UK Government to the sub-Prime crisis. He was on the BBC TV news on Saturday trying to pass the blame for the lack of response from the banks to the Bank of England’s recent 0.25% cut in interest rates. They have not all reduced the mortgage rates they charge borrowers.

Well, what did he expect? The ramifications of the sub-Prime crisis are far larger than can be fixed by a quarter point cut: the US Federal Reserve reduced rates by 3.0% and fed over $200 billion into the banking system across the board in exchange for (some of) the bad sub-Prime based collateral that is at the root of the problem. The UK Government just pledged a large portion of that sum to a single bank that would have otherwise have gone bankrupt.

But he’s clearly in denial about a quarter point cut being enough - the banks have to rebuild their reserves, and will be doing this in any way they can - a wider savings rate to mortgage rate differential, higher charges, more charges.

So, there we are, an unusually high tally of high-ups who need to do some mental press-ups to avoid having to wear hold-ups or hold dress-ups. Yes, it’s a giant cock up by the stuck up for the fucked-up.

I hope it’s a hiccough.

The nice thing about Formula 1 is its unpredictability. Well, this weekend, anyway. Never mind the unusual shenanigans happening off the track in Chelsea dungeons, on the track we are having quite a year. Quite rightly the Crown Prince of Bahrain insisted nothing would be allowed to distract us from the racing, despite all the salacious gossip in the press worldwide.

At Bahrain, there were one or two surprises. Swiss based BMW Sauber now lead the F1 Constructors Championship. Robert Kubica gained pole in a car that was clearly not the fastest at the event. Raikkonnen didn’t win. Massa did. Kovalainen beat Hamilton and got the fastest lap in not the fastest car on the circuit. Toyota actually beat their customer team, Williams. And the start was not chaotic. Presumably all that wind they experienced today - about 20 to 30 kmh gusting along the pit straight - distributed the sand fairly evenly and so the expected advantage of being on the racing line on the grid was not as great as it might have been.

OK, Hamilton cocked up big style at the start. He admitted to Autosport later that he hadn’t been able to put the mapping into “launch mode” quickly enough. I thought there were supposed to be no driver aids this year? So what’s all this talk about then?

Anyway, he was gobbled up by the pack quicker than you can crack a whip, falling from 3rd on the grid to 10th place by the end of the first lap. It didn’t help that he miscalculated just how slow the Renault was out of that corner and so ran into the back of the renegade in the Renault on acceleration, dropping himself down to 18th after pitting for a new nose. If he hadn’t have fluffed the start though, he wouldn’t have been anywhere near the middle of the pack. Looks like he’s having the kind of experience most other newcomers to F1 have in their first years in slower cars. For most of the race he was lucky to be racing with the Fisichella Force India over 13th place. 

Looking at the scores on the doors, McLaren have gone backwards since the beginning of the year scoring first 14, then 10 and now just 4 points as a team. Ferrari on the other hand has got better and better, with scores of 1, 10 and today top marks with 18 out of 18. BMW meanwhile have been more consistent, edging forward bit by bit with scores of 8, 11, 11 so far this season. BMW’s slow but deliberate progress clearly comes from the calm way that merry Mario Theissen runs things. More to come, I think.

So, now we have to wait three weeks for Barcelona, where we will see if any teams have made any leaps forward, or by standing still be going backwards. Up until now they have been away from home, and although teams as rich as Ferrari can ferry failed engines to their factory for analysis and problem solving in the week between the Australian and Malaysian GPs, most teams do not have such a $500 million budget. So, most changes - particularly to everyone’s aerodynamic packages - have had to wait until the return to Europe before they can be installed.

Hopefullly, the ITV commentary team will learn to observe and talk about what is actually happening next time, and not bore us with inane tales of gossip picked up around the paddock while something interesting is happening on the track. The usual character is of course to blame - Martin Brundle is, as always, superb. If only his colleague would watch the monitors while he is talking we might get some synchronisation between what he is saying and what we can see happening for a change.

Apparently, some of Barack Obama’s long standing financial backers have some rather strange connections with a Middle East businessman. Now, it may all be nothing to do with Mr Obama himself, but he has reportedly written letters on behalf of one of these people to gain favour with officialdom and been in receipt of land, loans and a favour or two.

So, if Obama wasn’t acting against the law himself, was he greedy, ill-advised, naive, stupid, or just inexperienced? There certainly seems to be some very strange goings on going on. As someone trained in spotting potential money laundering, the arrangement between the backer and the source of funds is typical of those we are encouraged to look into in the world of finance.

What I find strange is that when googling for “Obama mistake” one of the best sources of information is not a US newspaper, but a UK one, The Times.

Why is the US press giving Obama such a soft ride? It reminds me of the soft ride George W Bush got in the run up to his second term of office, and we all know now that was a mistake: if the press had asked more searching questions and acted as journalists, rather than as a political support machine maybe the US and the world would not have gotten into so much of a mess over the last 4 years.

I mean, who has gained from the invasion of Iraq? The only Western establishments that have benefitted have been the oil companies with the high oil prices giving them massive new profits, and companies like Dick Cheney’s old firm Haliburton who gained millions from new Army contracts for support services.

The cost? Osama bin Laden is still at large in Afghanistan/Pakistan where he has been since before the invasion of Iraq; the Iranian President, Ahmed I’m-a-dinner-jacket, can drive from Baghdad airport and walk in the streets outside the high security Green Zone that Georgie’s boys are helicoptered into and out of on PR visits to US bases and other places in Iraq; President Hugo Chavez has enough money from huge oil prices to throw his weight around in Latin America, threaten Colombia and fund the FARC and who knows what else, Americans around the world are pretty much disliked everywhere they go (at least they report to feeling very unwelcome in most countries they visit - and I mean Western countries here); the US dollar continues to fall; inflation is rising, causing interest rates to rise which causes house prices to come crashing down and bring the sub-Prime scandal into the harsh light of day.

So, the US press needs to ask more questions before they adopt a favourite (he certainly does that Big Speech well, doesn’t he?) as they seem to have done here. Obama might be the sound-bite kid, but it’s supposed to be a free press not the PR department for Corporate America. Real journalism seems to have become marginalised, subsumed by corporate greed.

And that can’t be good for anyone.

So, they’re going to Nationalise the failed Building Society come Bank, Northern Rock. Bad decision. Should have let it go bust. Why? Because of what Biology teaches us.

Evolution. Survival of the fittest. Those who take risks, or are unable to compete effectively and independently, die out. Those that do not take dangerous risks, those who are stronger survive. So it is with companies as it is with animals, plants, and other life-forms.

In the wild, if you make a mistake, you are punished for it. If stock market listed companies make a mistake they are also punished. So why are banks different?

Northern Rock started out as a Building Society. Its members decided, for a small windfall shareout of the reserves kept by for safety’s sake, to become a listed company, and received large numbers of shares for free. The board shared in the spoils with share option schemes that kept them taking risks in order to maximise profits - but therein lies the rub: there was only an incentive to take risks, there was little incentive to play it safe.

For years they took a risky approach to lending, and had run foul of the Trading Standards Office many times for playing fast and loose with their lending policies and business practices. They liked lending to iffy borrowers because of the higher nominal margins available to them. Everything was done to maximise profits - but that’s something a lot of companies can be accused of. The difference, and the decision to Nationalise Northern Rock by turning it into British Rock only reinforces this view, is that Banks will be bailed out by HM Government. I’d be surprised if the EU were not very cross at this idea though.

When non-banking companies lose enough money, they go bust or are taken over. They are not rescued by the government (except perhaps in France). This keeps executives in those companies in check, they do not take the highest risks, they look after their reserves, they do not gamble the company on the premise that the government will bail them out if everything turns sour.

This is good for those companies, good for the government, and good for the taxpayer.

So why are Banks any different? Well, their supporters (who often want to keep on making millions every year from the high and government underwritten risks they take) say that banks underpin the whole economy, that letting a single bank go will crash the system.

Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they? Anyway, the Northern Rock is not a pure bank along the lines of one of the main Clearing Banks, which are rather more important to the economy.

Northern Rock only underpins a few thousand mortgages and savings accounts. There are dozens of these small banks, and one less will make very little difference. After all, Building Societies have been merging for years without affecting the economy unduly. Many other lenders would gladly have taken over many of the NR’s mortgages, even the savings accounts, so customers would have been mostly unaffected. Except for their free shares which might become worth what they paid for them - nothing. But surely, isn’t that the risk they took when they voted to become shareholders?

Greed. It’s the undoing of so many. Beware of it in your own life: it has sharp teeth. Except if you are a bank, of course.

Imagine your local authority stopping collecting rubbish because the landfill was full. This isn’t some nightmare scenario, in many parts of the country it’s a matter of a dozen or two months away, while in Naples in Italy it’s actually happening right now .

Due to mismanagement and “brushing the dirt under the carpet” so to speak, Naples’ landfill sites are now full and the local authority have stopped collecting it. One hundred thousand tonnes of rubbish lie in the streets, rotting or burning as concerned citizens take things into their own hands.

At the moment, the UK is only just beginning to talk about doing something and has no real policy on refuse disposal: it’s just transported somewhere else so it can pile up out of view in a landfill site in the middle of the countryside. Shakespeare’s “Green and Sceptred Isle” dumps more household waste into landfill than any other EU state. That’s more than 27 million tons of waste hidden in this way each year - 7 million more than any other EU country. Germany, which has a population 25% bigger than the UK, puts just 10m tons into rubbish tips each year - 63% LESS than the UK.

An area of 109 square miles of the UK countryside is now landfill and landfill space could run out in just nine years time. If nothing is done very soon, 2016 will see the biggest pile of rubbish on British streets since the 1970s. A pile that would never stop growing.

The problem isn’t just one of how to deal with the waste that is collected. Britain also produces more waste per head of population than many of its European neighbours, with an average of 592 Kg per person per year, above the EU average of 577 Kg.

The UK also lags behind in the amount of waste recycled, with an average figure of 18%, half the EU average of 36.4%. Only Greece and Portugal recycle a smaller proportion of their rubbish than does the UK - but then they create about 33% less waste in total to start with and are in the Top 5 least waste-producing EU Nations.

You might say that the British have the worst waste disposal strategy of any EU country. You might think that someone would have cottoned on to the fact that something needs to be done. Well yes, but the first ones to do something were the, err, oft maligned EU…

EU laws commit Britain to reducing the waste the country creates, to recycle more, and to bury less in landfill sites. Greenhouse gases emitted by these creeping eyesores that stink and sweat as they feed vermin and bacteria on our rotting throwaways add up to 3% of UK total emissions.

And as I said, they stink.

So, what are British politicians doing about it? Gordon’s goodies have decreed that it should be possible for local councils to charge per bag collected, rather than as part of the overall local council tax bill. Cameron’s crazies are against it, mostly because they didn’t think of it first, one suspects, and anyway, they are against everything that comes from the Labour Party these days, even the good ideas such as the ‘Pay as you throw‘ call for waste disposal.

British local councils are begining to tackle the problem, many of them because their landfill areas will be full long before the year 2016. So let’s have a look at a typical one, one that is doing better than many others, and compare it with a town of similar size in a country that manages to have NO landfill sites at all.

First off, look at the example of Basel in Switzerland. In 1993 the city collected over 65,000 tonnes of household waste. The next year, after the law introducing charging per bag was introduced, the rubbish collection city wide added up to barely 40,000 tonnes, a reduction of 38%. Nearly every year since then has resulted in a further reduction in waste.

What happens is that people become very annoyed at any items in shops with needless packaging - and let’s face it, most consumer related items do have way too much packaging. Even if you don’t agree with per bag collection charges, you probably dislike superfluous cardboard, plastic and foam inserts as much as the next person: it’s such a faff to have to dispose of.

Now the Tories complain that charging per bag will lead to more fly tipping, which is probably true. When the city of Basel introduced it, public bins suddenly became much fuller, bags of rubbish were left in strange places, some out of the way places did become eyesores. But an overnight 40% drop in rubbish collection must leave a lot of money in the refuse collection budget to tidy up such messes.

Most people are law abiding and do comply though. For those who are not, the Swiss decided to introduce a “garbage police” who can search through rubbish for personal details such as envelopes, letters, anything that can identify the individual household that filled the unauthorised bag. You would be surprised at what people throw away. These people are then taken to court and fined.

So, what’s happening in the UK? Peterborough has about the same population as the Swiss town described above, and is actually good at recycling - for the UK. Defra have produced a table of how well different parts of the UK are doing on waste and recycling. It makes for interesting reading (HTML, XLS).

Peterborough City Council (pop. 163,300) collected 89,277 tonnes total household waste in 2005/06 of which 31,717 tonnes was recycled, one of the highest rates in the UK. Practically all of the not-recycled waste collected ended up in landfill sites, but available landfill space in Peterborough is due to run out by about 2010. Besides these two methods of waste handling, just a bare 17 tonnes was incinerated, and none of the energy released from this burning was reclaimed. These figures are not uncommon across the UK.

The EU Landfill Directive has set decreasing annual landfill targets for local authorities and will impose fines of £150 for each tonne of waste that is landfilled above those limits plus its share of a £500,000 daily fine imposed by the EU if the nation collectively exceeds its total target.

“Peterborough must drastically reduce the waste it sends to landfill to meet EU targets. Landfill should be 24,000 tonnes less than today by 2013 and 40,000 tonnes less than today by 2020…. Around a third of all councils in England operate alternate weekly collections as they are proven to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill by increasing recycling.”
- Peterborough City Council

This can’t be too healthy in my opinion. Basel takes an alternative tack and collects normal household rubbish twice a week. The majority of this is then incinerated with the energy released being used to heat thousands of homes and provide other energy in the town.

Peterborough are moving towards incineration as a means of disposal, although they call it euphemistically an “Energy Resource Recovery Facility” which is described thus:

“An Energy Resource Recovery Facility combusts mixed waste and recovers energy by making steam. This can be used directly for heat as well as to generate electricity. Materials are also recovered: metals for recycling are removed at the end of the process, and the leftover ash can be used as a raw material, for example in road making.”
- Peterborough City Council

Incineration must be a hot topic in the UK politically, but I don’t know why. In Basel the plant has been operating for years without environmental problems, and actually turning waste into heat and energy is a pretty well received process locally, in an area in which the Green party has real, elected power.

I am not saying that the Swiss example should be followed to the letter, but I am saying that there are others in the world who are solving the problem of waste effectively. You should ask your local authority what they are doing on this issue. And next time you’re out shopping, why not consider how much packaging the product has. All things being equal, buy the product with less waste.

If you don’t like the idea of making a fuss or doing anything positive, just look at the streets of Naples and remember that’s the future for the UK if nothing is done. The rats in the street won’t then be the politicians at election time, it’ll be real rats, scampering across your town, your estate, your neighbourhood, and into your kids’ playgrounds and dens.

Do you really want that?

South America is a place the US clearly took its eyes off since 911, and look at what has happened since.

Hugo Chavez in Venezuela (another Gaddafi if ever there was one, worse than Fidel Castro who at least had the interests of his people at heart) and now of course, all the troubles in Bolivia started by Evo Morales. Not content with Nationalising most of anything that made money, such as the oil industry which is was developing Bolivia’s Natural Gas reserves, Morales has now pushed a vote through to change the Constitution so that universal pensions can be given to the over 65s.

Now most people would ask why Bolivia doesn’t already have pensions for the over 65s, after all, most democracies do. But Bolivia is a pretty poor place overall, and like so many South American countries power is concentrated in the hands of just a few rich families who, let’s be frank, don’t think anyone else should get a look in.

So, Morales has pretty good reasons for feeling aggrieved, but what is worrying is twofold. First of all, he seems to be very much under the influence of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, not really the best thing in itself. But secondly, his manipulation of democracy is rather a bad example and shows a total disregard for the system.

So, what bad deed did he do? Only blocked members of the opposition from entering the Parliament buildings when the vote on the Constitution took place, so that his wished for changes could go through! He even admitted later that without the mob rule he could never have got the Constitution changed. Of course not: how will giving money away that has not been planned for benefit the country over the long term?

Imagine blocking Parliament in London so only members of the Liberal Party could vote. They might have a point that this gave them a fairer opportunity to represent the views of the millions of people who voted for them - usually in second place of course. They might even say they could then change the system to one of  Proportional Representation so the permanent two party system could be broken up for good. But they couldn’t say they made the change democratically.  And nor can Morales.

Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how laudable your aims are, how good your goal is. It matters how you reach it, because it is the journey, not the destination, that defines the future.

There seems to be a complete glut of disasters happening in the Government right now, the latest of which being the two missing CDs containing 25 million records of 7.2 million families and their Child Benefit claims. That came after the row over detention without charge nonsense which nobody other than the government supports.

Before that there was the Northern Rock disaster, in which the government bailed out the ex-Building Society turned “Mortgage Bank” with an open cost of some £30 billion potentially over the long term.

There are loads more too. To be honest, the Northern Rock fiasco was caused by slack policy in the USwhich created the sub-Prime scandal, and nothing to do with Gordon at all. Having said that, he did have the choice of letting the Northern Rock go bankrupt, and he decided he wouldn’t. Bet the fat cat boss of Northern Rock who made himself a millionaire from windfall profits when the carpet baggers sold off the family silver didn’t mind being rescued like that.

Funny thing though, Fat Cat bosses of privatised and semi-publicly owned businesses such as the Northern Rock always clai they need to earn such high salaries “because of world competition for top executives which means we have to pay them the market rate”.

Like hell you do. They aren’t the same at all. They get bailed out when they create a monumental cock up. Private bosses get sacked.

Of course, neither situation is a disaster for the boss that caused the problem through his daft decisions in the first place - oh no, whether private through and through or public servant to private philanderer, they always seem to end up with contracts that guarantee them five year’s worth of salary as a Golden Handshake or £10 million, whichever is the larger.

But I digress. This is supposed to be all about Gordon, remember? Well, there’s a very good reason, I believe, why Gordon’s on the rack right now.

It’s called Revenge. Revenge of the Sir Humphreys.

Gordon Brown was probably Britain’s most successful (and longest serving) Chancellor ever - certainly in living memory. He did a great job, and by having had a deal with Tony to not be moved out of his job in any reshuffle, he actually learned his way around the civil service pretty well, learned all their tricks, cons and subterfuges, and learned how to counter them all.

Not only that, but unforgivably, he stopped them spending money! Their own money (in their eyes), which they were entitled to spend how they wished through dint of being a civil servant charged with spending the money of the taxpayers.

Imagine all the times Gordon trod on people’s toes, slowed down their plans, and even interfered in internal matters! Remember that big spat Gordon had with the Civil Service over pensions a year or two before he took over from Tony?

Well, now the chickens have come home to roost. Gordon’s out of No. 11 and into No. 10. Well, his office has changed, if not his living quarters. Apparently the flat at No 11 that is for the Chancellor is bigger than the one that goes with being Prime Minister at No. 10, Downing Street. Since Tony had a bigger family than Gordon, he bagged the bigger flat at No. 11 which meant Gordie moved into No. 10 to live in some years ago - and now he’s working from home again.

Only problem is, he cannot control the Civil Servants any more, and every chance they get they’re letting one loose. They’re revelling in his discomfort and pain.

I just wonder how long it’ll last though. At some point all the accumulated bad things they stored away for years will run out, and Gordon will suddenly start to look all competent and in charge again, just in time for the next election campaign.

From Gordon’s point of view it must be a bit like a trip to the dentist. Murder having the tooth out, and painful for a short while, but my goodness is it better in the long run when the toothache goes away!

Sir Humphrey may live to regret the way things are going…

Microsoft is working to adapt a basic version of XP so that it is compatible with the nonprofit One Laptop per Child (OLPC) Foundation’s small green-and-white XO laptop.

The OLPC machine uses low-powered technology with limited processing power, no Hard Drive, and little memory but has a target price of $100 per laptop to enable users in the third world to partake in the digital age. Currently the price is $188 as further savings have been difficult to make without larger volumes of sales to drive component prices down.

How replacing the free, lean Linux based Operating System with a Microsoft controlled stodgy and resource hungry OS that has to be paid for can be seen as a boon for anyone other than Microsoft is beyond the ken of anyone who understands the principles of charitable giving.

Microsoft’s knee jerk reaction as a “Johnny come lately” to every market they didn’t think of first is probably what they imagine to be “innovation”. This lack of strategic vision is why their share price has underperformed the market for years.

If I was a shareholder I’d vote to hand the reins over to someone who knows there is more to business and technology than playing “follow my leader” and leveraging a monopoly position to try to force out competition from every niche, niches created by people with more imagination and often better business ethics to boot.

MS have admitted they have spent a “non-trivial amount” of cash on this project already, and it is unlikely to be profitable for them, but just like in other markets the wealth they have amassed through their monopoly behaviour is used to prevent these markets developing freely.

The still unprofitable XBox was launched to limit the PlayStation/Nintendo machines’ ultimate market size, the Zune to compete with the iPod, Internet Explorer was launched to kill off Netscape, Office Online was launched to damage Google’s online aspirations, MS Office was given exclusive links into MS Exchange Server to kill off Apache and Linux, need I go on? There are examples upon examples.

Undermining opportunities for advancement for the poor and underprivileged though is a new low for Microsoft in my book. It’s tantamount to competing with your local church’s weekly collection by saying “pay into our bowl, not the charitable one!” in order to further corporate objectives.

It’s been quite a year. McLaren attacked and fined by the FIA claiming they had access to Ferrari secrets - an Oxymoron if ever there was one. Revelations from Ferrari that things are only illegal when they are, err, discovered to be - so the illegal floor they used to gain an aerodynamic advantage with when winning in Australia was, err, not really illegal… hmm.

We had a new circuit layout at Spa - previously one of the world’s most interesting, and feared, circuits of the year. Now the circuit has been totally neutered with the effective removal of the La Source hairpin and the construction of the Eau Rouge bypass and unsurprisingly Spa subsequently produced one of the year’s most boring races because of these changes. Bernard, really!

For all the controversy though, we have had one of the closest years of racing ever. With just one race to go, we have three drivers who could all walk away with the Championship tomorrow. That would have been impossible during the Schumacher era - not because of Schumacher’s on the track talent, which itself was prodigious when not under pressure, but because he always got contractual number one status, something that is actually illegal under the rules. It was never tested though despite many team mates, including both Johnny Herbert and Eddie Irvine, having confirmed this on record by saying there was no true sharing within the team. For instance, MS could take their car data and use it for himself, but they were prevented from using his. Rubens Barichello famously described himself as “Driver 1b” after he eventually realised which way the cookie always crumbled.

Ironic that this weekend the Max Mosley FIA witch hunt against McLaren demanded that an FIA scrutineer should sit on the McLaren pit all weekend to “ensure fair treatment for Alonso”. This is after Alonso’s outburst at the last GP in China where after qualifying he could not accept that he was beaten by rookie Hamilton, instead throwing a hissy fit and ripping a door off its hinges in the McLaren motorhome and shouting to the press that he had “received unfair treatment” which is his standard response to being beaten fair and square.

Of course, Alonso is dead against this. He has publicly said that he “doesn’t think such a move is necessary.” Of course he doesn’t. If he is beaten this weekend, which seems not unlikely, he will not be able to claim he only lost because Hamilton got better treatment than him! Hoist by his own petard… but so Mediterranean. I’ve beaten people like that before: they can never accept someone else is better. And Hamilton is way better.

So, will Raikkonnen regret leaving McLaren? Will Alonso regret joining? Ron Dennis will probably regret signing him, the world’s most expensive ever driver. Ferrari will probably regret their control of the FIA was so openly demonstrated this year. Max Mosley will probably come to regret many of his actions this year, not least of which will be his childish and self-belittling public attacks on three times World Drivers Champion and Grand Prix winning team chief Sir Jackie Stewart (now retired) when Mosley reportedly described dyslexic Stewart as a “certified half-wit” while at a lunch with journalists.

The only man to probably have no regrets this weekend will be Hamilton. He may have been white hot molten iron previously, but he has now passed through the F1 mill of deceit, intrigue and politics, coming out as weapons grade forged steel. His reputation, at least, is secure.

And as Nietschze said “That which does not kill me makes me stronger.”