Fifth Decade

Many pundits have apparently been getting at Lewis Hamilton in the British tabloid press. I gave up reading UK newspapers some years ago they invent and write what they want just to sell advertising, no longer the truth as was once the case. But that’s another story.

Whatever, the situation certainly hasn’t been made any easier by McLaren who have completely mucked up Hamilton’s race stategies lately, perhaps because they are giving the second year rookie just too much slack. I mean, he even chose his own teammate this year. Then there’s the McLaren race strategy record which seems to be stuck on “Try to win every race” rather than ‘Focus on the long view and win the Championship”.

That’s very strange because last year Hamilton was Mr Consistency, and was peacefulness and calm personified. This year he has transformed into the rookie that he patently was not last year. This year, the Mr Consistency badge has been taken over by Robert Kubica, who has managed to lead the championship already despite being in a slower car than his rivals.

The problems seemed to begin in those last two races last year, when Lewis only needed 4 points from the 20 available in the last two races to clinch the Championship. Instead of playing it safe, and going for those points, Lewis and the team focussed on winning, winning, winning, on seemingly showing the whole world how superior Lewis was - at all costs.

OK, anyone can make a mistake in their first season, but you would have expected such a harsh lesson to have been learned back then, and not repeated again in 2008. You can clearly see that Kimi aims for every last point: he clearly did learn from last year.

But there we were in Canada, with Lewis not content to just be first, he seemed to be attempting to lap everyone as well. Naturally, he is a gifted driver, and can do things in a car that many others cannot, but clearly he should have been told by his team about the red light, if they didn’t drum it into him before the race. So many drivers have been caught out by this silly rule this year.

So, there we were with Lewis going for track position even in the pit lane when it was clear the other cars were on a lighter fuel load and so not really a threat to him despite being in front coming out of the pits. That was the team’s fault, of course. They have the strategic displays of possible outcomes on their laptops, they should read the race better and provide Lewis with better info in a more timely manner. Like, er, shouting “Red Light!” a bit earlier, perhaps…?

Anyway, after the ten grid position penalty was imposed, it should have been clear that the team should not be focussing on a win in France, but on gathering more points. It seems they took the risky option again though, allowed Lewis his head, and while overhyped and possibly over-confident, the unrestrained Hamilton once again tried to barge into the lead from thirteenth on a track renowned for being difficult - if not next to impossible - to overtake on.

Pre-race interviews with Lewis Hamilton himself clearly showed his over-confident, rap-star influenced ego poking through, and a strategy of light fuel load and soft tyres added to the disbelief that there was any focus at all on winning over the course of the season, rather than just at this race.

Post race interviews with Martin Whitmarsh show this emphasis is unlikely to be changed by anything he will do or say to Hamilton. The McLaren Managing Director went on record saying that Lewis “has got to believe that he can win in Britain and come out on equal points.” Again, no mention of the long haul or the Championship, just another attempt at full points again, like scoring 8 or 6 points is somehow failing.

The team really should be giving Lewis more direction, and more capable direction at that. Still, maybe they are and Lewis listens more to his “friends” now. In one pre-race interview he was talking of a text message he received from a great friend before the race about how greatness comes not from winning a race from the front, but from the rear and fighting your way through. A shame that person didn’t remember how difficult passing at Magny-Cours always is…

Churchill said that “Politics is the art of the possible” and maybe that’s a lot more transferable than we think. But maybe Whitmarsh just doesn’t have the broad grasp of things that Lewis needs him to have. Whitmarsh seems to be no chess player.

No wonder Anthony Hamilton looks glum in the pits these days.

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.

Have you noticed how in the US you sometimes find Black Americans complaining that “Yes, there will be some racism with some white people not voting for Barack Obama” while at the same time they completely miss the fact that they themselves as a group are voting almost overwhelmingly along racial lines and avoiding voting for Hillary Clinton?

If you look at any breakdown of voting in the Democratic Primaries, you’ll see that the Black vote goes en masse to Obama, the white vote and the female vote are more evenly split between the two candidates. In North Carolina for instance, the Black vote went with Obama 9 to 1; the non-Black vote went 58% to Hillary.

Now, is that comment from a Black politician about racism in white voters hypocrisy or racism itself?

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.

I was just reading an interesting story in MacFormat magazine about the NHS. They’ve spent a load of dosh (they can’t do anything without spending a load of dosh, apparently) on bringing themselves into the online age with a couple of applications - Choose and Book, and the even more expensive Electronic Patient Record system.

Anyway, they’ve spent £5,600,000,000 to be exact. That’s £5.6 billion. Plus £64.5 million on top. Like a kind of tip…

The story unfolds on Page 8 of the April issue of the mag “Safari users failed by NHS” and describes how NHS online schemes are unavailable to thousands of Mac users because the NHS systems only support Microsoft Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers.

Health Minister Ben Bradshaw was queried in the House of Commons by the Conservative’s Stephen O’Brien about the £64.5 million Choose and Book appointments system and replied in a written answer using what can only be called Microsoft-speak:

Because of the number of browser versions available to internet users, priority has been given to certification of the application against the most popular browsers in the first instance.

Well, that is strange. I thought there was such a thing as Internet Standards? You know, rules like we have for driving - drive on the left, steering wheel on the right, accelerator on the right, clutch on the left and brake in the middle. Standards that when used mean that any manufacturer can build a car that works on the road, and that any driver can use without having to learn a new system.

On the internet there is a set standard, even a set of standards, and the best websites use what is known as “Standards compliant coding” which basically means they only have to design and code for one International Standard. It is then up to the browser writers to comply with those agreed standards. This saves a lot of money for developers.

I mean, why develop for many different systems when you could develop for just one global standard?

Ah, but that doesn’t help Microsoft sell their software does it, because when there are standards that anyone can use, there is no way to lock them in to having to buy Microsoft. Microsoft have a long history of sabotaging international standards, as we have just seen with the ISO voting process for Microsoft’s OOXML file format when there was already a perfectly adequate ISO standard with far wider acceptance in the Open Document Format (ODF).

That’s exactly what they have done with the internet. In order to force users to buy their Operating Systems they incorporated features into their browser that were sufficiently different to the agreed standards to make life difficult for those with different browsers. In fact, in many ways Internet Explorer does not read standards compliant websites awfully well at all - it’s a flawed browser on many levels, not least of which being security, something of a concern where our health records are concerned.

It’s the waste that gets me though. How on earth could the government spend £5.6 billion on any computer system at all? And then not have it fully working? That’s a lot of tax money. It’s a lot of free prescriptions. It’s a lot of patient beds, a lot of life-saving equipment. Oh, I forgot, it’s also a lot of profit for Microsoft and its supporters.

Well, at least we know what the NHS considers most important then.

Not so long ago the term for a mis-managed, non-performing, shambolic and rather-laughable-if-it-weren’t-so-sad country was to call it a “Banana Republic” because that was often the main export of such countries, their location frequently being between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn where bananas are most easily grown.

Except in Zimbabwe. All the productive farmland has been confiscated and given to Mugabe henchmen with no idea of how to grow anything. Well, no matter how often you stick electrodes into the ground it won’t produce any crops. Beating it with sticks produces no shoots of recovery. Not even bananas.

Surprising, really, since Robert Mugabe the incumbent President and Lord of Chaos in what was once the Jewel of Africa is clearly going bananas. But his cronies are too scared to tell him.

The recent elections in Zimbabwe are a typical example of what is wrong with the country: lack of transparency, a denial of reality, and the inability to take personal responsibility. The delays in publishing results are laughable: they have been posted outside the relevant polling stations since counting ended last weekend! The patience of both the populace and of the real winner of the election, Morgan Tsvangirai are laudable.

With 100,000% a year inflation, 80% unemployment, and average life expectancy for women of 36 years of age, if Mugabe is re-elected the whole world will know that he has fiddled the result. And the longer it takes for the results to be released, the more sure we all are that perfidy has been at work.

Of course there are many quotes of him saying “I could not sleep if I fiddled the result” - but when he said that (and I heard him on film on BBC News), he put emphasis on the “I” in the statement, implying he would sleep fine if such dirty work was (as always) done by his henchmen. There is no blood on his hands, he would say. He is not responsible for any of the torture, murder or inequality in the country.

Mugabe’s hands are white, not dirty. It is just his trail that drips with the blood of his country.

Seems to me we’ve heard all this before, and we’re going to hear it all again. Big men in big powerful positions who just can’t resist the temptation of a bit of sex on the side. Why do they do it? Why do they put the success of their whole careers, lives, and families at such risk? Why is it always men who make politics so sleazy? The latest rumpus involving Elliot Spitzer is a typical example.

In Japan, the girl would have been called a Geisha, and it would have been completely OK - apparently, even some wives pay for their husbands to visit a Geisha house as a special birthday present. But in Japan, it’s done with a little more decorum, baths, massages, tea ceremonies and other civilising influences that take place over sometimes a 24 hour period or even a whole weekend, perhaps with very little actual sex involved.

It seems in the US where some powerful people have little patience for such civility, Mr Spitzer is reported to have paid $4,000 for sex with a pretty, petite brunette, part of an “Escort Agency” involved in Prostitution. In Japan, the idea is apparently for the man to feel like a King; in the US model, perhaps as British heart throb Hugh Grant liked to find out, things can get pretty dirty.

If you look at the recent record, we’ve had successive Republican politicians involved in scandals involving gay sex, extra-marital sex, and now a Democrat dragged down as well.

If people want clean politics, why don’t people elect a female President? I can’t see a woman straying from the straight and narrow as much as a man. We men are too easily tempted. And men at the top of the ladder of power only get there because they’ve got big Cajones.

Perhaps it’s hardly surprising that having big Cajones brings a few other effects, too…

To paraphrase Frankie Goes to Hollywood:

Cajones!
What are they good for?
Absolutely nothing
Politics,
Having sex,
Everything that you can get,
Cajones!

Democrat’s are in an unenviable position right now. Two excellent candidates, either one of which would make a great President. But both pretty equally matched in the delegate hunt right now. So, which one do voters like the best?

But perhaps the question really should be which one is most likely to win against the Republican nominee?

Currently, it seems Obama gets about 80% of the African-American vote, which gives him a significant advantage in the Democrat Primaries as African Americans are more highly represented in this Party than in the country at large. Most African-Americans vote Democrat. But Nationally, across the US they only make up 18% of the entire vote. This creates a challenge.

The Democrat nominee will need to appeal to more than just their special interest group to get elected when confronting the GOP and the supporters of John McCain. Voting for Obama may be counter-productive in the race for the White House. In the Primaries, his African-American supporters give him an advantage that will be much diluted in the National Vote. And rumour has it that Evangelicals (who usually vote Republican) are voting in Democrat Primaries to skew the results to favour a Republican win next time - making it a two stage election process: Round 1, make sure you get the weakest National candidate elected; Round 2 when the election proper arrives, switch back to your natural party and win.

If you don’t believe me, look at Ohio. This State is supposed to be representative of the wider country, and here Clinton beat Obama 60 to 40. That should send out a few alarm bells. Obama may be the best at winning the Primaries, but may be the worst bet to win the Presidency. And that could let the Republicans in - again.

Does any Democrat supporter seriously want that?

Sometimes you can see leadership written all through some people. It colours all of their actions, their interactions, and their fundamental reactions. Leadership is something you either have, or you don’t. It isn’t about what you know, it’s about who you are. It isn’t how you do things, it’s about how others react to those things. True leadership is like the Midas touch.

And Nick Clegg doesn’t have it.

In Parliament today he managed to split his party on one of the main issues where previously there had been agreement. He managed to sow discord where previously there had been harmony. And why? Not because he wanted them to vote against their principles, not because he wanted them to vote this way or that way, but because he actually told them not to vote at all! Not content with playing the wimp hand, he then proceeded to try to force them to his will using a three line whip.

Not surprisingly, 3 Front Bench spokesmen resigned and 15 of “his” MPs ignored his commands as the tide ignored Canute all those years ago. Oh dear, I thought, the Lib Dems have a right one here. But then I thought that over the LibDem leadership election, too: neither candidate had as much charisma as a dead slug, so it was inevitable that something like this would happen someday.

What is it with British politics these days? Don’t politicians like strong leaders anymore? The Conservatives have overlooked Ken Clarke again and again when he is one of the few men who could have gotten them elected by now, and the LibDems have passed up on an excellent leader in the form of Vince Cable, a true performer. Vince Cable is so good that he overshadowed both Cameron and Brown, and I think they were both a little scared of him.

But who’s going to be scared by Nick Clegg? Well, based on the fact that almost a quarter of his party MPs don’t even do what he tells them anymore, I would say nobody. I mean, he’s just so Last of the Summer Whiney isn’t he?