A(n alleged) drunk drive in the Parks

So, Dan Parks has been arrested on an alleged drink driving charge. Hardly surprising - anyone watching him play rugby in a Scotland shirt would have thought he'd been at an all-day drinking session before taking to the field.

My only question from this BBC report on the alleged incident is this:

How the hell does someone who is so s*** manage to accumulate 47 caps?!

And we wonder why only won 16 matches in the last four years?!

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Tom Harris and the big, bad Tory

As is his wont, Tom Harris is attacking democracy yet again.

He has his knickers in a knot over this (rather excellent) speech given by MEP Daniel Hannan after Gordon Brown addressed the European Parliament this week.

Here's what Tom Harris had to say about it:

"Gordon Brown isn’t just Labour’s prime minister; he’s Britain’s prime minister, and for any UK politician to launch such a disgraceful, personal attack on his country’s leader — in a foreign country — is nothing short of disgraceful."

So, basically, if you are representing the UK abroad, you are above criticism? And in what way is Hannan's speech a "personal attack"? He sets out where the Prime Minister has gone wrong and points out the hyprocritical nature of his comments. It's what opposition politicians do!

This is the kind of drivel that I've come to expect from my occasional glances at Harris' blog. The kind of thing that he hopes the papers will pick up to raise his profile in the hope that the devil people know beats the anyone else in his Glasgow constituency next time round.

The worrying thing is, he's probably right - about his chances, not Dan Hannan. His comments about the speech are nothing short of jealousy of the coverage Hannan is getting on the blogosphere and concern that he might cut off the supply of Harris photos in newspapers. Unless people start to see his attention-seeking for what it is, he'll undoubtedly return to the House of Commons whenever the next election comes around.

(Note to Tom Harris - just in case you don't recognise it, this probably does constitute a personal attack).

It seems that criticism is of an "esteemed" leader is above some of our politicians. And that is a sad state of affairs.

Rant over.

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Utter shambles

I've waited as long as I can to write this, and I still haven't calmed down any. Or maybe I have a little - when I was planning it at a little after 3.45pm yesterday, the first words were all going to be expletives. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any that could aptly cover what I wanted to say about the utter shambolic disgrace that I watched at Murrayfield yesterday.

There hasn't been such a difference in performance level since Roman emperors decided they might like to see how the Christians performed in bare knuckle fights against lions. Men against boys? It was more like men against little girls who cried when the nasty men in red shirts took their ball away.

I've been to Murrayfield many times and come away disappointed - truth be told - on most of those occasions. But never have I considered, as I did yesterday, that it might be better to pack up and go home after 50 seconds of the second half. Thirty quid spent on the promise of excitement, of the expectation not of triumph but at the very least that the side would bother showing up. I set myself up for the fall and I do it every year, lulled in by the potential, the pride, the hope that one of these times things might fall into place.

It started so well too. The players lined up, the anthems played. They dropped the pipes for the second verse of Flower of Scotland, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck, a lump rose in my throat and I barely got the words out. Those two minutes of belief, of hope, of passion were as good as the afternoon got. And then they kicked off.

I really don't think I can do justice to just how awful the performance was. I'm writing this at 1.30am having left more than 8 hours since the final whistle went and I'm still fuming. I can't decide whether it was my naive belief in the players abilty or the sheer hopelessness and complete lack of direction with which they performed but I remain somewhere between angry and disappointed with the Scottish side. Wales were not particularly good. They were probably average at best. But they dispatched with ease a Scotland side that looked like they would recoil in fright any time a Welsh player approached them with the ball.

An advert at the end of the match summed it up for me. "Tickets for Scotland v Italy £20. Get yours today" it said. You'd have to PAY ME more than £20 to go back to Murrayfield again and watch that shambles.

I'd love to find some positives. And perhaps there are. But the only one I can find right now is that in six weeks time this will all be over and I can start hoping we'll be good next year. Until then some dark days loom.

Malc the pessimist returns.

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It's snow joke...

Every year!

Every year a tiny amount of snow causes absolute havoc on the roads in England and Wales. I mean, yes, it occasionally catches people out in Scotland too - obviously, I'm not trying to make out that isn't the case. But its the sheer scale of the chaos and helplessness that seems to grip the island when the first snowfall of the winter arrives - drives me nuts!

Maybe it was growing up in the north east of Scotland. I had a paper round for four and a half years. I think the newspapers failed to make it to "remote" Keith maybe half a dozen times in those four years. On every other occasion, they got delivered - including several winters in a foot and a half of snow. I had a great time - was always nice to be the first person - at 6.30am - to make footprints in the freshly fallen snow. And most of the time - if the snow was that bad - school was cancelled, though I don't remember having more than, what, a dozen days off for snow over my whole time at school.

I also visited Canada in January of 2005. Temperatures on arrival: -20c. While I was there, it fell as low as -35. Up to two foot of snow. Did you hear anyone there complaining? Can't get into work? Don't worry about it.

But not here. The common attitude seems to be "I WILL get there" which is the cause of the majority of the problems. That, and the fact that people still seem surprised that winter actually comes to these islands...

So, if you have any snow near you, do yourself a favour - so you don't end up on the BBC website. Think about your journey. If it is not essential, don't travel. And if it is, then be sensible, drive carefully and watch out for the ice.

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Train crazy

This makes no sense to me.

If we're are trying to encourage people to stop using cars and start using public transport, shouldn't we be cutting the costs of doing so?

A 6% rise in rail fares from January would certainly make me think again about using the train, especially since petrol prices are making their way back down.

As a student (with limited income) more often than not I take the cheapest option I can. Around Edinburgh I get the bus. When I'm through in Stirling I occasionally drive - or get the bus direct to the campus. There was a time when, travelling north to visit relatives I took the train. But now - especially when credit is a-crunching (the thirteenth day of Christmas...) I simply can't afford the outlay.

Economically and environmentally, this is a daft move.

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