Bring back the ticket touts

I've never entirely understood the anger felt towards ticket touts at major sporting events, particularly when it comes from people on the right. Touts are no worse than futures traders, buying something today, in the hope that it will be worth more tomorrow. If I see Cup Final tickets on sale for £100, say, and I reckon lots of people will pay twice that, why shouldn't I make that investment? Similarly, if I were a rich but lazy man, with no forward planning skills, why shouldn't I be able to pay over the odds?

But most people seem to disagree, and all sorts of mechanisms have been put in place to stop ticket touting at sports events. Which is a pity, because otherwise all those empty seats at the Olympics might now be occupied by people who've bought them off a dodgy looking geezer outside Stratford bus station.

I spent most of my working life in the cosseted public sector, and so I know nothing about the harsh realities of corporate hospitality days and freebies, but as I understand it, companies buy up loads of tickets so they can offer a nice day out to senior staff or possible customers. They can't always use the tickets, so they don't turn up, and just write off the cost of the tickets. Finding another way to use them would proably cost more than it's worth. If Britain still had a working infrastructure of ticket toutage, those tickets could be on sale, and we wouldn't be affronted by the sight of all those empty seats. Those dodgy looking geezers - valuable entrepreneurs - would make a little money, which would trickle down into the local economy of East London, creating a real legacy, and probably improving Britain's balance of payments


So, if anything can be learnt from the Olympics, let's make sure that we rebuild the threatened ecosystem of ticket touts. Abolish absurd over-regulation. Encourage the banks to lend more to dodgy geezers. There's no problem that the operation of free markets can't fix, apparently.

The curse of a literal mind (4)

There was recently a trailer for a programme on Radio 4 Extra that included the sentence: "He could only see her profile, but could see she had beautiful blue eyes".

Normal people, consider how lucky you are that you don't immediately think, like me, that at best all he could know for certain was that she had one beautiful blue eye.

And my mind is still trying to reconcile this headline from today's Guardian. Resting on a knife edge is particularly dangerous, and something only trained fakirs should attempt.

San Rocky de Lepe

I've blogged earlier about the situation at San Roque de Lepe, a Spanish football club which appears to be owned by the same people who own Charlton. With the news that Charlton's friendly against Sporting Lisbon won't now take place at the San Roque stadium, I looked up what's been happening.

Here's the fullest story I could find. Using my limited Spanish and my more limited business knowledge, it seems that the club owed €150,000, mainly to players, and that if that debt wasn't paid, the club would be relegated to the 3rd division. The Town Council of Lepe has organised a deal whereby local businesses have paid the debt. In return the (former) owners of the club have transferred 51% of the shares to the Council, which is therefore the majority shareholder. It is suggested that some of the British owners didn't want to retain ownership, and that is why the owners as a whole didn't pay off the debts.

So this explains why the Charlton match isn't being played there any more. Does it shed any light on what's going on with the ownership of Charlton? We've read that one director has left, apparently unexpectedly. Perhaps this means there's a split within the owners of the Addicks. This is all I can work out for now. I expect there will be more to come, but have no idea if this is good or bad news.

If anyone understands the Spanish story better than I do, please comment!

Jobs for the boy

How superior we thought ourselves when Azerbaijan hosted Eurovision and, in the words of Mark Lawson:

The host regime hardly enhanced their reputation for democracy when it turned out that the national entertainer given the chance to perform to a global audience of 120 million while the phone-voting took place was Emin Agalarov, the son-in-law of President Ilham Aliyev. Say what you like about Britain but, if Humperdinck had triumphed, we probably wouldn't have had the Cameron and Clegg kids lined up on the 02 stage as the 2013 interval act.

Imagine getting such an important job simply because you're related to someone in power! Meanwhile in the UK:

The Prince of Wales has been awarded the highest rank in all three military services by the Queen. [He] becomes a Field Marshal, Admiral of the Fleet and Marshal of the Royal Air Force.

which is, of course, entirely based on his experience and merits.

Equal marriage consultation

Now that the Church of England has produced its response on the proposal to enable same-sex couples to marry, rather than just have a civil partnership, it might be time to remind any concerned readers that the deadline for consultation is only 2 days away (14 June). There have been signs that the Government is going lukewarm on the proposal, so it might be helpful if the result of the consultation shows that most people don't agree with the Church's view on this.

The consultation is at this address: https://www.homeofficesurveys.homeoffice.gov.uk/v.asp?i=48356xhlqw It doesn't take long to fill in, unless you are particularly verbose.

The differences between a civil partnership and a marriage aren't very many or very great, but they can be important. Most people already refer to civil partnerships as weddings, and the partners as husbands/wives. The Government's proposals will close the remaining differences between the rights that the two relationships give. The proposals don't mean that the Church of England will have to offer same-sex wedding ceremonies. In fact, they intend to specifically ban any religious organisation from doing this, even if they want to. It's hard to see why the Church of England is so opposed to something that actually will have very little effect on its practices.

For me, it's a simple question of equality. Unless you believe that being gay is a sin and a perversion, surely you have to believe that gay people should have the same rights as anyone else.

But make up your own mind. Here's the Church's statement, and here's the view of the former Dean of St Paul's, who disagrees.

But remember, you've only two days left to comment.

Big Ben for President!

There's a lot of these around today, but what do you call them? I bet you're thinking Union Jack, but some of you, or some part of you, is thinking No, that's wrong, it's the Union Flag, it's only the Union Jack when it's on a ship and the wind is from the west and there's an A in the name of the month.

To which I say Bollocks, it's the Union Jack. That's what we the people have decided to call it, whether it's on a ship, or in the design of boxer shorts, or tatooed on my hairy fat arse. That's how language works. It's the people who decide what words mean, not any experts. Most people - despite the whingeing of retired admirals - call this flag the Union Jack, so that, by definition, is what it's called. So, sod off with your "Union Flag" nonsense. You should be happy that we like the flag so much we give it a cute name.

The unusual amount of swears in this post may suggest that I'm not a happy boy at the moment. That's true. This weekend I'm feeling as lonely as a shy vegan in Buenos Aires, what with all the Union Jacks and red white and blue bunting around. These are hard times to be a republican. No-one wants to be seen to be attacking an elderly woman, and by the time her useless son takes over the business he too will be frail and old, and will have an excuse for his irrational and petulant ways. We'll probably have to wait for the next generation for an incompetent monarch to restore the institution to its natural state of being reviled.

But someone has to say it, this weekend of all times: having a royal family is ridiculous and wrong. It's the ultimate in social immobility, the clearest possible demonstration of the class system that means clever working class kids may, if they're lucky, become teachers or lawyers, while stupid - really stupid, too stupid to be entrusted with a real job - upper class kids end up in the Cabinet.

Meanwhile, what do you call this?

Big Ben, you probably think, unless you're a retired admiral, in which case you already penning a letter to The Times insisting that Big Ben is the name of the bell, and it's a terrible offence, worthy of hanging, to call the tower anything other than The Clock Tower.

Bollocks again, I'm afraid. If we want to call the tower Big Ben, that's what it's called. But today I've read that some lickspittle MPs want to rename it the Elizabeth Tower.

Oh, I give up. You call it that if you want to. You'll probably get your knighthood if you're the lucky MP whose name is top of the list of supporters. But I'll still call it Big Ben. So will most of the people in this country and billions of people around the world.

Grouch over. Enjoy the long weekend!

Eurovision voting guide

The conventional thinking is that you have to be gay or pissed to enjoy the Eurovision Song Contest, but I've devised a way of keeping geeks like me interested. What you do, is score each entry according to the criteria below, and see who's your winner. You'll notice that musical excellence is not a factor. It's all about encouraging good practice and eliminating cheesiness. If you like cheesiness, just reverse all the rules. (I think that's what most national juries already do.)

1. Start by giving each song 10 points.

2. Add one point if the singer is female. (Or male, depending on your preference. If you're even more sexist than me, you can add points for shortness of skirt, tightness of trousers, etc.)

3. Deduct one point for use of a wind machine. (See left: the poor girl can barely stand up.)

4. Deduct one point for each key change. If the singing is so bad you can't tell if there's been a key change, deduct two points.

5. Deduct one point for each person other than the singer on stage. (The rules allow six people, which is why so many countries have five dancers. We should reward countries who are prepared to trust to the pure abilities of their singer. But what if there are two singers - twins, perhaps? See step 9.)

6. Add five points if the song is not in English. (Remember the days when songs had to be in each country's own language. Back then we only suspected the lyrics were all nonsense.)

7. Deduct three points for any song from the former Yugoslavia. (They'll all vote for each other, anyway, WHICH IS A GOOD THING: twenty years ago they were slaughtering each other. But they don't need our help now.)

8. Add up to a maximum of five points according to how much the singer and the song remind you of Kate Bush. (Again, you can tailor this to your own preference, choosing a singer you like. But I don't think you'll find many singers remind you of Nick Drake, for example.)

9. Deduct any remaining points if the singers happen to be Irish twins.

At the end of the show you should have a winner. But if it's Englebert Humperdinck, something's gone horribly wrong. So we need an emergency rule 10: deduct 10 points for any song in 3/4 time. Phew. Enjoy the show! But this does all seem a bit too much like hard work. I think I'll stick to plan A and just get pissed.