Four years ago

Because four years ago I took my then six-year-old daughter swimming, having had to drive to Bradley Stoke rather than walk to our local swimming pool. Back then there was no family changing at Thornbury Leisure Centre; even now, if the plans are accurate - and I should check this - it’s not much better. I suppose it’s logical; any refurbishment not involving a 100% conversion to family changing will result in a bias towards the female changing rooms; which is a shame as I’d like to take my daughter more often.

Four years ago, on a Friday evening, we jumped into the Bradley Stoke pool and before I can make my usual suggestion of warming up with a couple of lengths, she’s off. Flying along with a ragged front crawl she’s half way before I can even respond, turning back she switches to the breast stroke. Then again, this time more streamlined - she always was the better swimmer; lessons, you see - and I have to make an effort to keep close. On this occasion there was no letting her touch home first, and when she did so my daughter looked back at me with a big smile. “You’re keen!” I said on catching up. “I’m Rebecca Adlington” she replied, “and I’ve just won the gold medal.”

Whine like you mean it

The anti-Olympic dirge has lessened from its opening crescendo of complaint aimed at Olympic traffic lanes, they’re back to whining about everything - truly this is the age of social media. There are times you have to throw your hands in the air - exasperation, not surrender - I get it, you don’t like the Olympics. And fair enough, the heavy-handed enforcement of commercial rights has been unedifying, the level of security frightening; it is, I find, a little too close for total enjoyment; I’m one of those hoping it can go off without anything really bad happening.

But my daughter doesn’t see this, she’s really excited, and one who doesn’t normally care for sport. Her attention is drawn to whether Usain Bolt is still the fastest man in the world, whether her original inspiration, Rebecca Adlington, will win again. And the enthusiasm of one ten year old trumps the practiced cynicism of countless others every time; the rest of you can shut up, I’m going to enjoy myself too, or at least try.

Stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before

You say Labour, I say Libor. It’s hardly original, yet one feels the need to state this as another scandal that happened under the previous government. Leveson, it is true, expanded to be so general as to catch everyone in its net, and the result has been people with only a passing interest instinctively blaming the current rather than previous administration. This you feel is the driving force behind the calls from Ed Miliband and Ed Balls for a “wide-ranging” judicial inquiry to cover all bankers’ activities. Any such investigation will allow the Labour party to bury its culpability amongst a slew of other unpleasant deeds; muck spread equally is to the detriment of no-one in particular.

If there needs to be a wider look at the way banks conduct their business, let this be separate to a focussed examination on one specific area of known wrong-doing. Let’s not distract ourselves from the 2008 conversation between the now former Barclays CEO, Bob Diamond, and the Bank of England deputy governor, Paul Tucker. Diamond makes it quite clear to Tucker that other banks were lying about the rates they would be charged for borrowing and asks him to relay this to the senior Whitehall figures he'd alluded to earlier. The deputy governor repeats a reference to the level of the Whitehall figures as “senior” and suggests the Barclays rate didn’t need to appear as high as it was.

In vagueness they are damned. Diamond’s note doesn’t record an explicit request to “lie about Libor”, yet this appears to have been the inference subsequently made by the now former Barclays COO, Jerry del Missier. Ambiguity at this level springs from a knowledge that what is being asked for is wrong. What we need to know is who was asking? What we need to avoid is an attempt by the Labour party to bury the issue in a morass of endless and irrelevant detail.

Bella bella

In sports journalism parlance the only difference between “honest” and “crap” is the result. Last Tuesday England put in one of their more honest performances; one suspects they’ll need an extraordinarily sincere performance to come through against the Italians on Sunday; applause for the Italian player who claimed - with a straight face - that England would start as favourites. If by some miracle England beat Italy they meet Germany in the semi-final, and we all know what happens then. Yet there’s always hope, were Italy really that good against Spain or were Spain starting slow? And when I think about it, for 60 or so minutes Germany didn’t look too convincing against the whipping boys Greece until, remembering they were “in it to win it”, they started to play like their usual selves. But first things first, let’s concentrate on tomorrow’s game; I find England are ranked sixth and their opponents twelfth... that makes us twice as good... we ARE the favourites. These are the FIFA world rankings - where dreams can come true.

Bad medicine

There is a deficit in this country that can be tackled through a mixture of cuts and taxes; the latter not being particularly good for growth, attention has focused on the former. This is nothing that the private sector hasn’t already experienced; whether through pay cuts, redundancies or the cutting of employer pension contributions. A similar exercise is underway for public sector workers whose own pensions tend to be more generous, and the decision made that proportionally more of the burden would fall on those most able to pay; it’s not a label I particularly care for, but this is often called ‘progressive’. Over several months there have been strikes from various public sectors, each convinced that someone else should pay. Today it was the turn of doctors; their own unintentionally amusing take is that they are disproportionally affected. It’s as if they’re not aware - not even the liberals amongst them, of whom I know a few - that this is the whole point.

Not totally crap

Spot the difference.

It must have been the excitement of Sunday’s Netherlands versus Portugal game, a game where I found myself hoping both protagonists would lose; the Netherlands because they’re the Netherlands and Portugal because they’re Ronaldo, and for a short time - when Denmark took the lead against Germany - this was possible. Or maybe it was confusion from all the above. I put them on the chair, went into the kitchen (I can’t even remember what for), returned to the living room and sat on my glasses. They’re ‘designed’ to come apart when pulled out of shape but I'm a little too much. Anyway, I am several years late to the opticians; thanks to the adjustable font size on my Kindle it wasn’t until I read The Handmaid’s Tale in classical format (previously known as a book) that I realised quite how bad my eyesight had become, or rather it was then I resolved to do something about it. That was several months ago, to leave it any longer would be pushing it; there’s only so much trust I can place in Sellotape.

And if I thought two teams I don’t care for was exciting, how exciting will it be to see England beat Ukraine tonight? They are fighting, lest we forget, for the right to be beaten by Spain or Italy in the quarter-finals. England have impressed by being not totally crap, except for 15 minutes in the 2nd half against Sweden when they were totally crap. Not even Harry Redknapp’s desperate attempt to keep himself on the back-page - by mouthing off even more than normal and getting himself fired - can deflect from the euphoria of still being in a competition over a week after it’s started.

Thatcher!

Margaret Thatcher - The Musical, it’s only a matter of time. Not actually what I wanted to scribble but a random thought on the “is she or isn’t she (a feminist icon)” maelstrom that was. The film however was an age ago; the arguments, stale, packed away awaiting their final outing. I’ll not wait; on this subject I need to scratch an itch, though it’s hardly original. The answer to the question is “yes”. Those who answer “no” seem to fall into a number of groups:

1. Those who miss the question. A person needn’t be a feminist to be a feminist icon; in the same way one needn’t be gay to be a gay icon.
2. Those with the dogma, the syllogistic fallacies common to student-level politics; socialists are feminists therefore feminists have to be socialists. Oh dear.
3. Those lacking a sense of history. Some might find the misogyny of today’s “lads mags” and the “girl power” message of not so long ago phony and dispiriting; I know I do, but it’s a breeze compared to the 1970’s.

The answer to the question is “yes”, albeit in a historical context and understanding the meaning behind a core creed of gender equality. This isn’t, as popularly stated, a belief that women are every bit as good as men, but that women are every bit as capable. ‘Good’ to my mind encourages unhelpful boxing of positive attributes to one’s own political beliefs. Equality demands impartiality, ‘capable’ allows neutrality. Whether for good or bad, irrespective of policy or her own conviction, the UK’s first - and to date, only - female Prime Minister, symbolised the possibility that a woman could reach the pinnacle of her chosen career, and at a time when “a woman’s place” could be spoken of without any sense of irony. If that doesn’t make her a feminist icon, I don’t know what does.