So here they are: the eight managers who won the main trophies or league titles in English football in the 2011-12 season …and what happened to them twelve months down the line. I guess the table speaks for itself. Well done Charlton Athletic and Chris Powell.

I bloody love the Eurovision Song Contest, me. Always have. I love the campness of the event, the absurdity of the voting and the way that any song which isn’t 100% Eurovision gets swept under the carpet. I love how people get all worked up about the fact that decent songs from unloved countries (like the UK) get no votes, while dreadful 90s-influenced disco tracks from tiny eastern European states get a whole string of douze points.

There are rarely any songs which live on in the memory more than a few days after the event. But who cares? Probably the last great Eurovision song was Fairytale by Norway’s Alexander Rybak in 2009. This is great not because it’s a mainstream hit, but because it’s the kind of joyous, catchy song which you only get in the Eurovision Song Contest.

Anyway, with just over a week to go until the 2013 finals, and a Spotify playlist to hand, I can report that this year’s contest isn’t going to provide the soundtrack to the summer. As usual. But it is going to be fun. As usual.

Runaway favourite with the bookies is Only Teardrops by Denmark’s Emmelie De Forest, which is quite unremarkable. The best thing it’s got going for it is that it’s from a Scandinavian country, one of two regions of Europe which have enough local solidarity to stand a chance at the final hurdle (Sweden won last year). She looks presentable enough. Oh, and the song sounds like Shakira, so nobody will find it too alienating.

The main competition – according to the bookies – is from Ukraine’s Zlata Ognevich with Gravity. Again, not exactly distressing on the eye.

There’s a standout song for me, however, which is none of the above. No, it’s not the UK’s Bonnie Tyler, bless her. I saw one of her early Top Of The Pops appearances on BBC Four the other day, and wondered what she’d have thought back then if she’d known she’d be in the Eurovision Song Contest thirty-five years later. Best of British and all that, but the song I think is worth looking out for is Birds by Anouk, representing The Netherlands. It’s got an almost sixties psychedelic vibe about it …and it’s really good. Whether it’s happy-clappy enough to win the competition is another matter, especially as The Netherlands doesn’t have a strong voting bloc of countries behind it. But despite its handicaps, the bookies certainly aren’t writing it off, and nor am I.

Well, it took a couple of hours to be sure I hadn’t forgotten everything (and I’m still not sure I haven’t), but here’s my 100 Favourite Songs of 2012 as a Spotify playlist. I tried to limit myself to three songs from any one artist (and almost succeeded). If you don’t have Spotify, you’re missing out. If you do: enjoy.

A Great Northern River by The Unthanks
After Dark by Paul Buchanan
Alexandra by Fixers
And I Will Kiss by Underworld
And the Sun Will Shine by Claudia Brucken
Anything Could Happen by Ellie Goulding
April Fool by Patti Smith
Ayla by The Maccabees
Bay Of Skaill by The Magnetic North
Black Trade by The Unthanks
Blue Jeans by Lana Del Rey
Broken Mirrors by Chromatics
By The Waters by Paul Weller
Caliban’s Dream by Underworld
Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen
Candles by Rufus Wainwright
Child I Will Hurt You by Crystal Castles
Chocolate Boy by Guided By Voices
Cosmic Trip by Air
Doom And Gloom by The Rolling Stones
Downtown (feat. Petula Clark) by The Saw Doctors
Ég anda by Sigur Ros
Enjoying the View by Metroland
Fin de Siecle by Paul Buchanan
Flesh And Bone by The Killers
Flutes by Hot Chip
Forever I’ve Known by The Maccabees
Grew Up At Midnight by The Maccabees
Haunted Jukebox by Saint Etienne
Holland Road by Mumford & Sons
Home Thoughts From Abroad by Rumer
I Will Wait by Mumford & Sons
I’m Getting Ready by Michael Kiwanuka
It’s O.K. John Joe by Dexys
Joy by Tracey Thorn
Kill For Love by Chromatics
Last Days Of Disco by Saint Etienne
Laura by Bat For Lashes
Lava by Air
Lion’s Den by Dry the River
Lost When Found by Soviet
Madness by Muse
Mind the Gap by Metroland
Misty Mountains by Richard Armitage
Mountains by Emeli Sandé
National Anthem by Lana Del Rey
New Ceremony by Dry the River
New France by Orbital – feat. Zola Jesus
Next to Me by Emeli Sandé
Noltland Castle by Lau
Now by Dexys
Old Fools by Admiral Fallow
One Big Moment by Orbital
Open Up Your Arms by Ren Harvieu
Over The Border by Saint Etienne
Parade by Air
Popular by Saint Etienne
Really Great World by Fixers
River by Tracey Thorn
Runaways by The Killers
Running by Jessie Ware
Saint Monday by Lau
Sara Smile by Rumer
Sea Fog by Keane
Seek It by Richard Hawley
Seven Stars by Air
Shipbuilding by The Unthanks
Silenced By The Night by Keane
Something New by Girls Aloud
Song Of The Lonely Mountain by Neil Finn
Stromness by The Magnetic North
Supremacy by Muse
Survival by Muse
Tell Me A Tale by Michael Kiwanuka
Tessellate by alt-J
That’s Why God Made The Radio by The Beach Boys
The Bird That Winds The Spring by Lau
The King of Rome by The Unthanks
The Lights by Mull Historical Society
The Mysteries of Love by Claudia Brucken
Then and Now by Pat Metheny
This Belongs to You by Pat Metheny
Through The Night by Ren Harvieu
Torsa by Lau
Tree Bursts by Admiral Fallow
Trimdon Grange Explosion by The Unthanks
Trust by Sin Cos Tan
Two Children by Paul Buchanan
Valentine by Fiona Apple
Varðeldur by Sigur Ros
Varúð by Sigur Ros
Via Flaminia by Land Observations
We Are Young by Fun. – feat. Janelle Monáe
We Take Care Of Our Own by Bruce Springsteen
We’re All Leaving by Karine Polwart
Weather In My Head by Donald Fagen
Weights & Measures by Dry the River
White Light by George Michael
Wildest Moments by Jessie Ware
You Are Young by Keane

In a few days’ time, most of the country is going to get to elect a well-paid public official called the Police & Crime Commissioner for their area. I cannot resist the temptation to put forward my own thoughts on the subject, and the candidates here in Cambridgeshire. Make of this what you will; with information about the post being very thin on the ground, I hope it helps in formulating your own thoughts on the matter.

What is the Police & Crime Commissioner?
The police service in this country is one of the last great unreformed services, although given the changes which have been made in education and health in recent years by successive governments, whether you agree that reformation is always desirable is another matter. However, a recent poll shows that two-thirds of us have little confidence in central government’s running of the police. Putting an “independent” elected individual in charge of directing the service in each area seems like a reasonable improvement, but it comes fraught with danger. The public occasionally elects idiots to councils and central government, but at least those roles aren’t “solo” ones like this. Elect a fool (or a secret radical) to this post, and they could create havoc with local policing for four years.

Why are most candidates standing as “political party candidates”?
Frankly, I haven’t heard a good explanation for this, other than it might give people a quick way of identifying what a candidate might stand for. Nearly all of the “party” candidates are coming out with the same line that “I’m standing as myself, I’m just as independent as any of my rivals, and there’s no directive from the party”, so what is the point? The result will be that it puts independent candidates at a huge disadvantage, because the local parties have been able to spend time and money supporting “their” candidate. That just seems plain wrong to me, as it does to a number of members of different political parties I know, who have decided not to campaign for “their” candidates in this election. Several months ago, one party was brave enough to put forward a candidate who was not even a member of that party (which is extremely commendable) …and then seemed to change their minds, and selected someone “in house” instead.

The Election
There are five political parties putting forward candidates, and all have selected white, middle-aged (or older) men. There are two independent candidates, again middle-aged men. I’m not even going to mention the candidates’ parties from here on, because I simply don’t think that should be taken into consideration. I’ve read what little information has come my way (see references at the end) and I’ve listened to what I think was the only broadcast forum on the election, which was on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire’s Andie Harper’s Mid-Morning last week. It’s available to listen again here until polling day. I’ve also followed a lot of the conversation online over the past few days.

Amongst the least impressive candidates, in my opinion, were those from the three main political parties, who – both on the radio and in print – seem obsessed with having a go at each other and their parties’ records in government. On the radio, they were like kids bickering. The independents, and indeed those from the smaller parties, have gained a lot by letting the others get on with it.

I live in Cambridge, which swings every way politically, yet I have only had one (yes, one) leaflet through my door, which came a few weeks ago. Another candidate was given part of his political party’s regular local newsletter to put forward his point. With many politically active people being against the whole idea of this public post, it’s hard to believe that more than a tiny, single-digit percentage of Cambridgeshire residents will go to the polls having assessed the candidates properly. There’s also a whole group of people urging others to actively spoil their ballot paper to register a protest against the whole exercise. I don’t believe in this, because I think it opens up the way for someone to sleepwalk their way into a well-paid position which we’re all paying for, most likely someone representing one of the main political parties.

One thing to note is that this election is using the supplementary vote system, used in the Mayoral Elections in London and elsewhere, which I doubt many people will have come across before – so even amongst informed voters, there’s likely to be a lack of preparedness. With this system, you get an optional second vote. Assuming no candidate gets more than 50% of first choice votes, the two most popular candidates go through to a second round, in which they also get the votes of people who had them as a second choice but whose first choice has been eliminated.

Although there are flaws with this system, it can be good if you support a candidate who you think is unlikely to win, and you think that there are really only two candidates likely to win, one of who you strongly prefer over the other. Normally you might not vote for your preferred candidate at all, instead choosing to vote for one of the candidates who is more likely to win, especially if the other favourite is somebody you want to keep out. With the supplementary vote system, you can vote for your genuine choice, knowing that if (or more likely when) they fail to get in the top two places, your second choice will come into effect, assuming it’s one of the two leading candidates.

This will work in different ways for different people. It might favour the independents (certainly it would if there was only one, not two), although perhaps not enough to cause a surprise. Let’s suppose that the voting follows council elections, and that Conservative and Labour candidates are likely to lead the way after first-choice votes are counted. If you’re an “anyone but the Tory” voter, which has characterised part of the electorate for many years, you can vote for your genuinely preferred candidate in the first column, and the Labour candidate in the second column, knowing full well that if your candidate proves to be an also-ran, you’ve still managed to vote against the Conservative candidate. In that scenario, in a single-choice election, there would be a number of people who might have felt compelled to vote for Labour from the outset, despite it not being their genuinely preferred choice.

Who are the candidates?
The BBC Radio Cambridgeshire debate was well moderated but told us very little, I felt, other than conferring an even greater degree of seriousness and independence on the candidates from outside the three main parties through their detachment from the squabbling. You can read the formal election statements from the seven candidates here, but they’re a bit bland, as you might expect. Everyone wants to see more bobbies on the beat, less money spent on contracted-out services, etc, almost as if it’s a race to see who can shout “G4S! G4S!” the most frequently.

The most impressive piece of research I’ve seen came from Cambridgeshire Neighbourhood Watch, who actually formulated a good set of questions and posed them to each candidate. I’d urge you to read it if you have the time. However, some of the stuff I’ve picked out from there (and elsewhere) is below. It’s not meant to be a particularly independent analysis – if I haven’t liked a candidate, I’ll say so!

Ansar Ali has been on the Cambridgeshire Police Committee and the Cambridgeshire Police Authority for much of the last 20 years, so he knows his stuff. He seems to be very realistic with his plans, and says: “I don’t intend to be prescriptive and much will depend on the outcome of the budgeting work that is going on at the moment. Much of the current Policing Plan is good”. He certainly comes over as a very safe choice, especially for anyone concerned with the risks of unexpectedly electing a maverick to the post.

Sir Graham Bright was a Member of Parliament for Luton from 1979-97, and I guess unsurprisingly from a former politician, there’s been very little from him other than just ‘playing it safe’. His aims and policies are very generalised, and feature almost nothing with which most people would disagree. However, just this weekend he amazed the many followers of local blogger Richard Taylor by arrogantly and bumptiously dismissing requests for a public interview.

Paul Bullen is a Cambridgeshire magistrate who unfortunately had to phone in his contribution to the radio debate and who hasn’t been able to answer the Neighbourhood Watch questions either. Nor does he have his own website, from what I can see. There doesn’t seem to be anything particularly alarming about him, but I really don’t have that much to go on.

Stephen Goldspink has been the only candidate to put a leaflet through my door, so hat-tip to him for that. A Peterborough councillor until this year, he has some unusual views (to seek “a mandate from the people of Cambridgeshire that every police station should fly the cross of St. George”) and some forthright ones (“a zero-tolerance attitude to petty crime and antisocial behaviour” and to “purge Cambridgeshire police of political correctness”). He does sound a little bit angry with the world, although some people may not think that’s a bad thing.

Farooq Mohammed is presenting himself as the conciliatory candidate between the public and the police. A restaurant-owner with no experience of public office, he puts that forward as a genuine advantage. He has also come up with the eye-catching commitment to take no salary for the first two years of the post, instead funding a “breakfast club” idea for primary school children in deprived areas. He stresses the need to get as many special-interest groups as possible involved with the Commissioner’s role.

Rupert Moss-Eccardt is a former County Councillor who has also worked on the IT side of policing. He does come across as being slightly skeptical about the whole P&CC post, saying “Whether it is right or wrong to elect Commissioners, the point of the electoral process is ultimately to let every citizen decide how they assess the Commissioner’s record and express their judgement at the ballot box. It may not suit the ego of some politicians but it is far more important that the Chief Constable and his people do a good job than for the Commissioner to interfere for its own sake.” He also says that “a single Commissioner is deluded if he sees him or herself as the source of all wisdom and innovation”.

Ed Murphy is a former Parish, County and City Councillor in Cambridgeshire and a former member of the Police Authority who led it in appointing a Chief Constable and Deputy. He supports reducing the cost of the police secretariat through an amalgamation with other forces, and says he will work on crime reduction down to “street representatives”. Another skeptic about the post, he says: “It is time (Police Authorities) were replaced, but the timing is wrong and Police and Crime Commissioners are unlikely to provide the solution.”

In Conclusion

I can’t say I’m thrilled about any of the candidates, although I’m sure if they’d had more time and money to get their views across, one or two might have risen to the top. A couple don’t seem to like the idea of the post that much, and a couple don’t seem to like the idea of the public. That doesn’t leave much to choose between. However, of what’s left, I’ve been impressed by Farooq Mohammed, although Ansar Ali looks like a solid choice. I think I will opt for one of those, perhaps with Ed Murphy as my backup vote from the candidates who we must assume are more likely to win. Best of luck with working out your own views. With turnout likely to be tiny, I suppose our votes count more than in any other election, so I’m determined to cast mine.

References
Cambridgeshire Neighbourhood Watch questions to candidates
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire candidates debate
Formal election statements from the candidates

Candidate website: Ansar Ali
Candidate website: Sir Graham Bright
Candidate website: Farooq Mohammed
Candidate website: Rupert Moss-Eccardt
Candidate website: Ed Murphy

Disclosure: The nice people at Virgin Media sent me a working copy of what looks like the final version of their TV Anywhere iPad app at the end of October 2012, shortly before the public launch date. In return, I was encouraged to review and discuss the app online, which I am happy to do.

So, what is the Virgin Media TV Anywhere iPad app?

This new iPad app is part of Virgin Media’s “TV Anywhere” service, which will eventually (I believe) be a comprehensive integration of services and devices, enabling Virgin Media subscribers to watch TV on a range of platforms, and for the devices to interact with each other. At launch, a few pieces of the jigsaw will be in place. For PCs, there will be a list of live channels available to watch, along with a library of “on demand” content; for the iPad there will be a more limited set of channels, and a feature to control home TiVo boxes. I’ll be looking at the iPad app here.

The elephant in the room

Thanks to the BBC iPlayer, and corresponding apps from the other terrestrial channels, we’re all used to watching live and archived content on the iPad. Sky TV subscribers have just about every other channel the important sports and movie channels available to them through the Sky Go app. So does the Virgin Media TV Anywhere iPad app do the same for Virgin subscribers? No, it doesn’t. Not at launch, anyway. There are 30 live streamed channels available, but that’s it they’re not the big ones which we sports and movie fans would have wished for. Despite what the name of the app suggests, a Sky Go equivalent for iPad users it isn’t. Yet.

What is the Virgin Media TV Anywhere iPad app good for then?

As the screenshot above shows, the main feature is as a substitute for controlling the Virgin TiVo box on your main TV screen. Yes, the Virgin Media TV Anywhere iPad app enables your iPad to become a TV remote control.

Is that it?

Yes, it is really – for now at least. But bear with me, because it’s beautifully done, and after using it for a day or two, you’ll wonder how you ever controlled your TiVo box using a handheld remote. You’ll also get really irritated when you realise someone’s taken the iPad to another room and you’re stuck with the old-school remote control. Just taking the TiVo menus “off screen” is a big advantage. Browse the TV guide, see what you’ve got recorded in “My Shows”, check out programme synopses and all the other stuff the TiVo guide gives you, all without affecting what’s on your TV screen. All that stuff about the cast and crew, or the “if you like this?” links – all become so much more attractive to use on the iPad screen. Searching for stuff is even more of a win, thanks to the iPad’s keyboard. No more arduously trying to type words using numeric buttons.

What’s the implementation like?

Visually and ergonomically, it’s been done very well indeed. The iPad’s crisp display adds to the quality feel. Technically, it’s excellent – the response of the system is almost instantaneous. It’s really quite hard to suggest improvements: maybe it’d be nice if the button top right which accesses the forward, reverse and other remote control buttons was a little larger. There are also gesture-based controls, which could be a cool feature, but I haven’t had time to explore this yet. The iPad app can replace the existing Virgin TV Guide app (which was never written properly for the iPad anyway) for programming recordings on the TiVo box. This capability is available even when you’re away from your home network.

I’m having more thoughts all the time about the Virgin Media TV Anywhere iPad app, so check back for updates. I’ll attempt to respond to any of your questions or comments below, or contact me on Twitter at @cherryhintonblu.

I’ve just successfully (from what I can see) installed Windows 8 on my MacBook Pro, upgrading from the previous Windows XP installation. If you’ve found this page looking for troubleshooting tips, I’m sorry to disappoint you, because I had no troubles whatsoever. But if you’re looking for reassurance that it can be done without any heartache, I can only say that we had no problems here.

My setup was as follows: 2010 MacBook Pro, running Windows XP SP3 on a Boot Camp partition of 150Gb. We’d never upgraded past XP because the Windows installation was almost exclusively used for games, and there’d been nothing to date which had tempted us to drop over £100 on Windows Vista or Windows 7. However, the somewhat keener pricing of Windows 8 made it a different proposition – thank you to Apple, Google and Linux for lowering the bar on the price of operating systems. I always believe in “clean installs” of operating systems (making the PC seem like a brand new one), so I carefully backed up what little data we had on the Windows partition before starting (there was very little, fortunately).

Then I went to Microsoft’s UK store on the Windows XP installation, and downloaded Windows 8 Pro for a very reasonable £24.99. It took quite a while to download, as you’d expect, but almost the only thing I was asked during the process was whether or not this was a “clean install” or whether I wanted to migrate the data from XP. There was a procedure which went through assessing what, on my existing setup, might not be compatible with Windows 8, but the only item on the list which gave me cause for concern was the graphics driver. I didn’t really want to find that Windows 8 would give me a blank screen or something like that; however, I took a chance and decided it didn’t matter. Then it was just a question of following the setup prompts, and that was it; a couple of hours later, I have the nice fresh Windows 8 setup you see above running on my MacBook Pro. I’m quite keen to see how Windows has evolved in the last 11 years.

Update: sorry, completely forgot to mention I had to install the latest drivers too. Go to the Boot Camp Assistant in OS X and create a CD or flash drive with the drivers on. Eject the CD, fire up Windows 8, insert the CD and it will auto-run the installation.

Butch Harmon on Sky TV described it as “the greatest golfing spectacle ever”. Mike Atherton in The Times went even further, saying it might rank as highly in all of sport. It’s now seven days since Team Europe came back from the dead to win the Ryder Cup, and I still can’t believe that I was there.

It started back in June 2011 when my brother sent me an email pointing out that there was to be a random ballot for tickets for the event, and that there was no harm in us trying. Of course, I didn’t get any. Then, a few weeks after being turned down, came a completely unexpected email from the US saying there’d been a second round of the ballot, and I’d not only been given the option of four tickets, but for the whole six days too! The trip was on. As was eleven months of increasingly childlike excitement.

Apart from Tony, Sav and Gibbsy hadn’t needed to be asked twice. The team for the trip to the USA was assembled. And so it was that we found ourselves on the practice tee at Medinah, two days before the tournament proper, watching the world’s best players and wondering just how we’d got this far.

To be honest, the practice days were only useful to scope out the course. There was very little worthwhile golf to see. But on the Friday morning, after a 4:55am start, we knew that one good place to be was the grandstand behind the fourth green …and what a great call that turned out to be. It would be one of the few places on the course which would leave the European team with pleasant memories that day, led by an incredible McIlroy chip-in. By the end of the afternoon, although there’d only been a couple of genuinely disappointing defeats for Europe, there was doom and gloom all round. It wasn’t just that we were 5-3 down, it was the manner of the American victories. They were, quite simply, way too comfortable.

The atmosphere, however, was unforgettable. And although outnumbered hugely, the European fans were magnificent. Curiously, I think it comes from the football culture. The tradition among European sporting crowds is to wait for one or two of the sharper members to come up with a song (or more accurately, a chant), and then all join in, making the crowd seem way more amusing and witty than most of the individuals within it. American crowds tend to just let supporters shout things out, with the result that – sadly – many of the exhortations are ignorant, and some even offensive. The only American group chant tends to be the tedious “U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A”, which at this event was quickly put to bed on numerous occasions by small groups of European fans responding with chants like: “One song… You’ve only got one song…”

Needless to say, we had many great singalongs all week, especially on the third tee grandstand on the morning of day two. However, the European fans were outdone for impact during the build-up by the astonishing skywriting display (which we later learned was provided by Paddy Power) which stunned supporters on both sides into silence. Nobody seemed to have seen anything like this before, and it was an amazing start to the day. It was also, unfortunately, one of the highlights, as the Americans increased their advantage. By the halfway point of the tournament, towards the end of the Saturday afternoon, the score was 10-4 to the home team and many people were wondering if it was going to be worth turning up the next day.

The copious amount of beer going down on the course seemed like some consolation at that stage. Then a chink of light shone into the gathering gloom of what had until then been a really hot day. Steve Stricker missed a six-foot putt on the 18th to give Donald and Garcia a win that neither pair probably deserved. Then Ian Poulter stroked in his fifth birdie in a row to give him and McIlroy a storming victory, and the score was “only” 10-6 going into the final day. More importantly, the team and the European fans started to feel a lot better about themselves. No, we probably wouldn’t win – of course we wouldn’t – but at least we might end Sunday getting increasingly close to a respectable score. We tucked into that night’s absurdly unhealthy American cuisine with more gusto than had seemed likely a few hours earlier.

The meal out on Saturday gave us the chance to thank the wonderful Judy Henderson, who we’d had a chance encounter with at the hotel and who had taken us under her wing for the week. Hailing from near Washington, DC, Judy is a massive golf fan who attends tournaments worldwide, often as a volunteer driver, and she offered to take us to and from the course on competition days when she wasn’t working. Meeting her was a delight for all of us in our group.

Travelling from the hotel to the Medinah course on the Sunday morning, it’s fair to say that Judy was in brighter spirits than her European passengers. But the day’s events were to surprise everyone. We camped out by the side of the 6th fairway this time, and watched all 12 singles matches come through in increasing incredulity, as Team Europe not only started getting increasingly close to a respectable score, but even gave glimpses that it might even be game on.

The events of the rest of the day are golfing history. We spent the last two hours sitting on a bank by the 13th green, watching a huge video screen across the lake. European supporters suddenly seemed to be in the majority everywhere. When Martin Kaymer’s putt went in, the crowd was ecstatic. I’ve never hugged so many strangers. We immediately piled over to the 18th green, where the party was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. There were songs for every player (“one Belgian golfer, there’s only one Belgian golfer”) and we sang and shouted ourselves hoarse.

I still can’t quite believe I was there.

A Top Ten of Things from the Ryder Cup 2012

1. Martin Kaymer’s putt to win the match. Of course
2. Singing and partying around the 18th green for the next half-hour
3. Rory McIlroy’s chip-in on the 4th on the Friday
4. The jaw-dropping surprise of first seeing the skywriting aeroplanes
5. Justin Rose’s last three holes to beat Phil Mickelson on the Sunday
6. Phil Mickelson’s sporting response to Justin Rose’s last three holes
7. The atmosphere on the third green grandstand prior to play on the Saturday
8. Ian Poulter’s approach shot to the 18th on the Sunday
9. Ian Poulter’s five-birdie finish on the Saturday
10. Having our shirts photographed by so many Americans

Honourable mention too for American Express, whose cardholders’ tent offered good cider, nice TV screens and (best of all) the only decent toilets on the course. My top sponsor award goes to them.

1. Team (Great) Britain (and Northern Ireland) didn’t do as well as everyone thinks at the Olympic Games.

OK, controversial one to start with. We did good, no? Well, maybe. Certainly we smashed the pre-games medal target set by our own Olympic Association. However, those who analysed the country’s prospects more thoroughly (particularly Infostrada, whose research was bought by media outlets worldwide, including The Times) reckoned we’d get 64 medals, almost exactly what “TeamGB” eventually delivered. The main difference was the number of gold medals, which vastly exceeded the predictions.

Infostrada’s forecast didn’t take into account “home advantage” though; they said this wasn’t something which could reliably be factored into the analysis. But it was clear that home advantage did play a part in improving UK competitors’ performance; too many of them said so for this not to have been true, however unquantifiable the impact. So whether or not home advantage gained us 2 extra medals or 20, the athletes would have failed to meet the forecast without it. And the significant number of athletes who moved up a place or two thanks to the crowd support probably explains those additional gold medals. But not enough moved up from 4th and 5th in the world into the medal positions. This may have been the UK’s “greatest team ever”, in terms of where we ended up in the medals table, but I don’t think the athletes as a whole outperformed expectations in the way many commentators are taking for granted.

2. We’re better than ever at “sitting down sports”.

Whether it involves bikes, horses, rowing boats or yachts, nobody is better than the British at the sports where the competitors spend most of their time in the sitting position. Or, as it’s also been pointed out, at the events which aren’t so much sports, but just using ingenuity to travel from A to B. We got almost half of our medals (31 out of 65) in these sports, leaving Australia (14 medals) and Germany (12) trailing as a speck on the horizon. They at least made an effort though; the Americans and Chinese didn’t even get out of the starting gate.

Usain Bolt vs Jason Kenny vs anyone on a horse? Sorry Usain, these are the real speed merchants.

3. We need to work out how it all worked out so well.

Yes, they hugely overspent, but they did predict how much they were going to overspend by, if that makes sense. What needs to be learned from the London Olympics is how this project went so well when big ones usually go so badly. I think that it might have been down to certain individuals having a vision and the power to see it through, rather than it being designed by committee. Which is why we could still never stage a decent football World Cup.

4. The Closing Ceremony was a late own goal.

It’s not unreasonable to say that our female athletes were the role models of the games. So we cringed when supermodels were wheeled on (literally) in the Closing Ceremony. What next? Cheerleaders?

And after the Opening Ceremony had shown “ethnic” art like Indian-inspired dance so effortlessly part of our culture, two weeks later its role was to give Eric Idle something alien to point at. At times it was like they were trying to say “right, that’s all over with, now get back to your Daily Mail everyone”.

5. The newspapers read it all wrong.

Well, many of them did. Firstly, there were those who sneered at the Opening Ceremony, realised they were totally at odds with 99% of the population, and quickly shut up. Determined not to make the same mistake, they unquestioningly lauded the Closing Ceremony (“What A Finale!” – Daily Mail front page) when the population at large was thinking quite the opposite.

Then there was the question of tickets. With so many people crying out for tickets before the Games, most newspapers pretended to be slightly embarrassed by their unrestricted access. They carefully explained that they’d decided to send people with no interest in sport (Coren, Gill etc) for our entertainment. Halfway through, it was decided that the previously ticketless public were managing to get seats after all (wrong!) So back to Plan A, and their columnists were allowed to publish articles saying how tough it was having to visit three events in one day when you weren’t interested in any of them, and how nice it was to leave early without feeling you were wasting any money. Big mistake. The likes of Giles Coren may delight in winding up their readers, but the self-obsessed drivel they penned during the Olympics made me hate them with a genuine passion. And I had tickets.

6. I couldn’t pick a top ten moments from the Olympics.

I couldn’t even narrow it down to a top twenty.

OK, I’ll stand up and admit it: I’m a podcast addict. Whether it’s highlights of radio programmes I’d never have been able to listen to when broadcast live, or shows made by people who would be too niche or too daring for radio, my iPhone is full of them. Some of the most enjoyable speech programmes I’ve ever heard, including Danny Baker’s pioneering (but eventually aborted) attempt to make a living from podcasts, have been through this medium. I think that the podcast’s time is still to come, believe it or not, if Apple gets its act together and finally makes it easy for people to charge for the things. Would I pay to listen to intelligent podcasts such as The Guardian’s football weekly or the comedy of Collings and Herrin, should they ever make up? You bet I would. Not that I’m complaining about them being free, mind you.

What prompted me to write this, however, is the sad demise of my favourite podcast of all, the one whose unannounced appearance on my iPhone always cheered me up: the Word Magazine podcast. This was one of those initiatives which was primarily designed to complement and promote another medium, in this case Word Magazine itself. Unfortunately, in 2012, the magazine folded (to much dismay amongst its subscribers, and presumably even more from its staff), and the podcast went with it. The regular hour’s chat must have been an enjoyable exercise for its protagonists, the magazine’s founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth, because its impact on the title’s sales would surely always have been questionable. They certainly sounded like they loved doing it.

The Word Magazine podcast ran for five or six years, and totalled 242 episodes. Many shows featured musicians talking about their careers in a way I just couldn’t see happening anywhere else. Ellen and Hepworth had the experience, enthusiasm and expertise to get so much out of their guests. One of the most memorable shows didn’t feature a musician at all, but the aforementioned broadcaster Danny Baker, almost immediately before he was diagnosed with cancer (from which he thankfully recovered). It was obvious from the start that all Baker needed was a cue, and off he’d launch into the most extraordinary stories from the seventies and eighties. That’s just what the Word Magazine podcast gave him. Although Baker gets plenty of broadcasting time, it’s rare to hear him talk about himself like he did on this show.

When they closed Word Magazine, they really closed it. The fantastic website just disappeared overnight, exactly as they’d announced it would. Now we just have the Internet Archive to remember it by*. Fortunately, they didn’t close the Word Magazine Podcast site; part of me (probably more in hope than expectation) wonders if this was because they might – just might – one day resurrect the Word Magazine podcast, perhaps on a subscription basis. If they do, I’ll be first at the iTunes Store with my credit card.

In the meantime, I’ve just downloaded all 242 episodes and archived them onto a couple of DVDs. Apparently there’s over 7 days’ solid listening there. I think I’ll ration myself and spread my “second listens” over the next few years.

*We do also have its user community-created successor, The Afterword.

I’ve always been interested in local democracy, but having been involved recently in objecting to an, er, objectionable building development, I decided it would be interesting to find out more about local decision making, and go to a public Council meeting – the first time I’d done so in 20 years living in Cambridge. I’m not particularly proud of that record, but if I’ve met 500 people in this city over the years, I’d bet that the number of them who’ve been to a Council meeting would fit into my living room.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find that the public who turned up to the South Area Committee on 16 July couldn’t fit into the meeting room at Cherry Hinton Village Centre. I assume this was unusual, as there are larger venues in the area. The South Area Committee consists of the nine City Councillors from the three wards across the south of Cambridge (Cherry Hinton, Queen Edith’s and Trumpington), as well as the single County Councillor from each ward. It meets every couple of months, and a range of local issues are discussed by the Councillors, officials and public, and voted on by the Councillors. On this occasion, the committee members were joined by 30-40 members of the public.

For 19 years I lived in Cherry Hinton, and my idea of how involved the public wants to get with local decision-making has probably been skewed by what I experienced there. Basically, the residents of Cherry Hinton don’t want anything really. That doesn’t mean they’ve “got it all” – indeed, quite the opposite, compared to much of Cambridge – but they don’t seem to be very demanding of their Council. The propaganda sheets which come round from the local political parties there contain a seemingly endless succession of useful but tiny improvements which have been obtained by Councillors on behalf of the residents: a bollard or two here, a hanging basket there; all very commendable, but hardly likely to inspire the public to get involved in local policy-making.

So who were all the members of the public who turned up to this meeting? They didn’t come from Cherry Hinton, but from the ward to which I moved last year, Queen Edith’s. These people had three things they wanted to talk about: parking, parking and parking.

Some of them were very angry indeed about the lack of action from the Council over many years, and clearly frustrated that they weren’t being heard. Few things get the English more exercised than the impact of the rest of the human race on their own homes, and in Queen Edith’s, parking is a Very Big Issue Indeed.

But more of that later, because the first major item on the agenda was policing, and setting police priorities. Inspector Poppit of Cambridgeshire Constabulary went over plenty of statistics, and suggested that most of the tasks set as priorities for the local force had been discharged. He played a dead straight bat to everything, and looked for all the world as if he’d rather be out catching criminals. I liked him a lot.

Inevitably, he was asked for more data, and more reporting, even after he patiently explained that compiling more in-depth statistics on subjects as complicated as violent crime could be misleading (as much of it is domestic), not to say time-consuming. The Councillors got their own back by saying that all the ‘priorities’ which he’d suggested had been discharged should instead be continued, and they gave him a new one too. The Inspector barely reacted. You can read the report he presented here.

Then we got onto parking. There were a couple of Council officials present, including Graham Lowe, Parking Services Manager at Cambridgeshire County Council, who talked about a Parking Review for the area which was currently being undertaken. This aims to set general policy, and seems still to be at an early stage, but it gave a lot of local people the chance to jump up and ask: “What about the parking in my road?” To be fair, they all had a point. Some of the roads in Queen Edith’s are a nightmare to navigate and are, in the words of one resident, largely “an Addenbrooke’s overflow carpark”. The man from the Council talked in very general terms, and said that one or two “micro-projects” were being looked into, and were being pursued separately from the Parking Review. However, he suggested that the “due process” for requests for yellow lines can take a year, and anything being looked at now would be unlikely to be implemented in the next six months. For members of the public not used to the glacial speeds at which local democracy crawls along, this is always a moment which leaves them speechless. To time-served Council staff, it’s just The Way Things Are.

Several ideas were mentioned by members of the public, such as banning parking in certain roads for a short period in the middle of each day, which would stop the all-day parking from Addenbrooke’s and Hills Road Sixth Form College staff. The man from the Council didn’t respond to any of them, but I did catch him use the word “asset” at one stage, possibly suggesting that parking in residential roads was an “asset” to the city. He certainly didn’t imply that he was in any way sympathetic to the people who were complaining that they’d been raising the issue for ten years or more with no response. If the meeting was a chance to question the Council Officer about parking, it was an abject failure. The plans which will be proposed in the Southern Area Parking Review will be interesting, to say the least, but I have a sneaking suspicion they might not provide the relief which residents of Queen Edith’s are seeking. There is some serious anger mounting here, because if the Council is not going to be acting for the wishes of the residents, just who is it acting for?

The third major part of the South Area Committee meeting was where the Councillors look at a range of proposed environmental improvement schemes, add up the cost, compare it to the money available, and decide which ones don’t get done. Although this was an interesting section, most of the public left at this point, mainly because it didn’t involve parking, and perhaps because they knew they were only going to be observers. There was plenty of stuff about things like painting railings though, so the Cherry Hinton Councillors got much more animated.

Seven schemes were on the table, ranging from £35,000 to surface a path to the misGuided Bus stop in Trumpington, to £3,500 for some bollards in Cherry Hinton High Street, which will soon be appearing (along with a proud Councillor standing next to them) in a photo on the front page of Your Cherry Hinton Councillor Team Focus Review or whatever it’s called. The projects totalled £90,000, and the Councillors had £41,800 to allocate, so half of the projects would have to go. However, after some deliberation, the Councillors appeared to approve most of the projects, but allocate only a proportion of the required budget to each, with the hope that various bodies might chip in the rest. I guess they know what they’re doing.

At this point, a break was called (strangely late in proceedings, as there was only one item left, a planning issue), and I decided to call it a day. I thought it was quite fun, and great to meet a few people who I follow on Twitter, such as prolific local blogger Richard Taylor and Chris Havergal from the Cambridge News. I do admire the Councillors who work so hard to get themselves elected to spend so much time on these thankless committees, and I think we should appreciate them more. That said, there were many examples tonight of why local democracy is such a slow-moving mess, with so many competing bodies (City Council, County Council, permanent Council staff) all seemingly at odds with one another, and with too many vested interests to do what’s best for the area and – more importantly – its residents. At the root of it all is politics. This City, like every other one, is full of talented people who would love to be involved in the local democratic process, but who will never be, because they have no interest in joining a political party or getting involved in its machinations. It’s a real waste.

(Oh, and the dragon? It was there at the meeting. Don’t ask.)