Category: Longform
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Chasing youths with carving knives
How my journey into care work was a serendipitous outcome of my search for meaning and purpose beyond the confines of traditional work. At least, that’s according to Google NotebookLM, based on my Curriculum Vitae series of blog posts.
Clear and obvious error
After watching and re-watching the same three-second clip of nothing happening for so long that here in the UK we had to put our clocks back another hour just to have enough time to finish the game, the match referee (Ross from Friends look-a-like David Coote) turned to face what he knew would be a worldwide audience of millions of armchair experts like me yelling “VAR! WTF!” at the screen in front of us. You could see in his face and his body language that he knew just like us it was ludicrous. Another referee sat in a business park office just down the road from me had told him to review his original decision - that nothing had happened - because the ref had made “a clear and obvious” error of judgment.
The late penalty awarded by VAR and converted by West Ham and England’s Jarrod Bowen should duly result in the termination of the losing manager’s contract. That’s football. This VAR rubbish isn’t, but we have to live with it for now.
This particular fiasco neatly sums up the entire ETH tenure. A clear and obvious error, if ever there was one, and yet we are forced to watch repeat after repeat, week after week of him getting it wrong. Team selections, tactics, transfers, substitutions. A bald man somehow getting balder every time the full time whistle blows.
If only United had a VAM. A Video Assistant Manager. Another (more capable manager) sat in a nearby office watching the game on a screen like you or me, who could intervene at key moments during the build-up to the game (team selection), during the game (tactical changes and subs), and off the pitch (transfers, man-management) to a whisper into Ten Hag’s hairless ear: “Hold on, Eric. I think that signing Antony for £80m is a clear and obvious error” or “Hi Eric, Maguire’s a fucking liability mate” or “Eric, pal. We need to talk. Onana?” I could go on but you get the drift.
Now, I know everyone rightly hates VAR for ruining the game, and it would be unfair to blame ETH for ruining United. But VAM would make it much more entertaining.
Another Door Closes
Our twenty year old fridge door failed. It refused to stay closed anymore. Hinges had gone.
After a couple of weeks battling with adhesive magnetic door locks designed for something else, I did the most manly thing I could think of. I called an engineer.
The NEFF man arrived and did the job in a matter of minutes for £172.
It’s been an expensive couple of months fixing doors, old and new.
Palace Match Report
Watched the United game (on my laptop) yesterday, having missed the Southampton and Barnsley games.
A big improvement on the Liverpool debacle, especially in the first half.
Dalot playing as a LB, DM and playmaker/midfield general all at once was as unexpected as it was impressive.
Eriksen starting, to maintain the creative link he made with Mainoo against Barnsley we’re told, was also unexpected, but it too somehow worked. Drifting left to cover Dalot rather undid his link with Mainoo, though.
Rashford benched, supposedly for “rotation”, went against all known football management laws about not changing a winning team and playing players who are in form and scoring goals.
It almost worked as Garnacho (who always looks like he has a goal in him, if nothing else) replaced him, but hit the bar with a thunderous effort from wide of the penalty box.
When the subs came, they undid all our tactical and positional advantage, perhaps as much due to Palace’s positive changes as United’s later nearly self-defeating swaps. Ugarte was a downgrade on Dalot and less of a creative menace or goalscoring threat than the unfairly maligned Casemiro might have been. Rashford, and then Hojlund, couldn’t hold the ball up or link up the play like Zirkzee did. But by then our shape had gone and Palace were on top.
Lucky to come away with a draw in the end, thanks to an incredible double save from Onana and wasteful finishing from Eze, although we should have won the game in the first half an hour.
Digital Leader
Hoping we found a good solution to help big kid’s Digital Leader application.
He found it difficult to focus and get his head around answering the questions in a sensible (let alone helpful) way.
Instead, I recorded him speaking about the devices and tech he uses, how he helps his little brother and his parents to play games, and how using new apps like Duolingo has helped him to learn Spanish (when previously he hated Spanish lessons).
Google automatically transcribed his speech and copied it to Google Docs. There I edited out the ums and ahs and pasted it into his Discord chat with me. Then he copied it out by hand on to the application form.
🤞
Impossible demands
Starmer is cynically setting up the NHS to fail in order to present private healthcare as the fix.
Starmer: a man way of his depth when dealing with the NHS https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/09/13/starmer-a-man-way-of-of-his-depth-when-dealing-with-the-nhs/ Starmer's speech on the NHS yesterday offered view of a man unprepared for office who sends out incompetent messages to those who now work in the organisation he leads and who has no comprehension of the economic environment in which he must manage healthcare.
It's not surprising that now the UK public is seeing Starmer in action that his popularity is falling.
Death cult
OBR: We have to kill old people and starve the children of the poor in order to keep funding our expensive wars and ensure the rich get richer.
Labour: Let’s get to it!
The Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast for the national debt is a worthless exercise by economically illiterate fantasists https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/09/13/the-office-for-budget-responsibilitys-forecast-for-the-national-debt-is-a-worthless-exercise-by-economically-illiterate-fantasists/ The Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast that UK debt will rise to 300% of GDP in 50 years because they think it impossible that taxes can rise above current levels, even though state spending will reach 60% of GDP in their opinion. All they prove is their own lack of imagination and competence by doing so.
Funny old game
In the good old days, football was a simple game. You had eleven players and a substitute numbered 1 to 12, no shirt advertising, a referee and two linesmen, a manager, a trainer, a physio, a scout or two, tea ladies, drinking culture, long hair and perms, the club chairman, a board of directors, a club secretary, a groundsman, a stadium in the beating heart of the town or city, fans, standing room only, electric atmospheres, matches on Saturday at three o’clock, live coverage on the radio, match reports in the Pink Final after the game, and highlights on Match of the Day at 10:30 the same night. Tradition and history.
These days, it’s big business. You’ve got a hundred players in the first team squad, shirt number bingo sponsored by online sports betting companies, the reserves, the academy, a women’s team, out on loan, transfer windows, exiled due to poor man-management, five, seven, nine subs to choose from, a referee and a substitute referee, assistant refs, refs sat in an office in a business park (a clear and obvious error), refs at home, refs in the studio, refs in the crowd, a manager, a head coach, a goalkeeping coach, various other specialist coaches, multitudes of doctors, physios, psychologists, data analysts, worldwide scouting networks, dieticians, head chefs, gambling addictions, agents, chief executives, directors of football, technical directors, presidents of business, heads of legal, heads of state, matches at any time from noon to after the last train home, an advertiser’s stadium out of town, sitting room only, live streaming all day and all night. Profit and sustainability.
At one time, a manager of a football club could expect to run all aspects of the club to a lesser or greater degree, or at least have a major say in how it was run. Nowadays, managers, or coaches, are often restricted to, well, coaching players in training and on match days, and speaking to the media before and after games. They are seen as specialists rather than all-rounders, and more specialists from the world of corporate finance are brought in to fire the tea ladies and keep the manager - sorry, coach - fully focused on his job and not get distracted by wheeling and dealing in the transfer market, player contracts, or appealing points deductions for spending beyond the club’s means.
United
Indeed, this is how United plc’s Dan Ashworth keeps Eric ten Hag successful on the pitch. Oh, wait. I’m no fan in particular of Jamie Carragher, but he might have had a point when described United last season as one of the most poorly coached sides in the Premier League. United’s usual set up is a chaotic mismatch of players out of form, out of position, out of confidence, and out of luck. Individual errors rule the day, and most of the players look lost and like they’d rather be in the physio room or gambling rehab. We rely totally on one player - Bruno - to create chances and score. This is a colossal failure of recruitment, of management, of coaching, of captaincy, of teamwork.
Fergie took six seasons to win the title after twenty six years of hurt, and three seasons after winning the cup in 1990. His team often looked like it wasn’t making any progress, but the cup win did see a consistent marked improvement season on season (13th to 6th to 2nd to 1st). Ten Hag produced a masterful cup win against all the odds, although perhaps City’s players were caught off guard expecting an easy win after United’s lucky semi-final win against Coventry. Every season Pep has them playing in a clearly identifiable system and is never afraid to switch players or tactics.
Ingerland
It’s funny to hear Morgan Gibbs-White talk about Ingerland’s new interim manager Lee Carsley and describe his qualities as basically being a father-figure. Most top-level professional footballers are with their clubs from the age of eight, and likely spend more time than most kids away from their families and any normal childhood - living the dream, nonetheless. You can understand why they would value this kind of man-management, someone who will stick up for them no matter what.
Ten Hag hasn’t got that about him at all. He’s lost a whole load of players in one way or another because he didn’t have the heart or the head or the guts to stand by them when they needed him. De Gea, Maguire, Wan Bissaka, Casemiro, McTominay, Sancho, Antony, Martial, Rashford, Greenwood.
The spineless corporate bosses meanwhile took an age to decide the safest bet was to keep ten Hag. Failure is expected and gives them half a season at least to bed themselves in and some new players, too, in time for a new manager. If he does well, then they made the right decision. If they had appointed a new manager he might have failed, too, with the current players, and that would have reflected badly on the corporate bosses.
At least we’re not Chelsea. Telling your captain that he’s not technically good enough. Successfully scraping through the play-off round of the Conference League. Moneyball gone mad (although they could have a decent team in three seasons…).
TV Show of Interest
Finally got around to watching the pilot episode of Person of Interest last night. Took a little while to get going and I almost gave up. Not a comedy at all, but I couldn’t help feeling it was somehow a little like Minority Report meet Police Squad!, and not in a bad way.
Only another 102 episodes to go…
Academics in Europe are continuing to work with Chinese counterparts on “clearly problematic” artificial intelligence #AI research in areas like biometric surveillance, cybersecurity, and military fields, a new analysis has found. https://sciencebusiness.net/news/ai/europe-still-working-china-military-and-surveillance-uses-artificial-intelligence-report
____This is why I chose to rewatch #PersonOfInterest recently. By the end of season 3 a true hellscape is unleashed.
Spuds Up!
We harvested the last three of eleven potato bags at the weekend. A decent crop, and very tasty.
Highlights were regular watering and earthing up (using homegrown compost) with my kids, and big kid’s tenth birthday party where his friends got to (among other fun activities) harvest the first three bags and take home a potato bag each.
Fond memories of going potato picking with my mum in the Lincolnshire Wolds in the early 1970s.
