Political Penguin

I’m going to disagree with Phil on this one but more from the perspective that he’s admittedly not a Formula 1 follower and has probably picked up on this through the reporting of the mainstream media.

The only tenuous argument to suggest this to be the case is that Tiger Woods is of an Afro-Caribbean background and so is Lewis Hamilton and they’re both in sports dominated by predominantly white males. I’m not going to discount the potential spin off that Lewis Hamilton could become a great role model for for young Afro-Caribbean males but I would put it in a different context which probably illuminates on my own perspective of issues of race.

Unlike many who have suddenly been awoken to the existence of Lewis Hamilton I’ve actually been following him for many years. Mainly because I’m a supporter of McLaren Mercedes who he drives for and so I get all the magazines that have been highlighting his development since a young age as one of only a handful of drivers who the team have been sponsoring through their driving careers.

What effect he will have, at least hopefully from my perspective is to raise the interest in Formula 1 in Britain which for over a decade has been flagging. Partly due to the dominance in that period of a certain Michael Schumacher which ironically elevated the interest in Formula 1 in Germany to unheard of levels but equally because despite we as a country holding the largest number of Formula 1 drivers championship crowns, the crop of drivers we’ve produced of late have been at best mediocre.

Going to do a bit of a run down, sorry if you disagree but purely my own take on it. The big hype the last few years was all around Jenson Button. Sorry, seems like a nice enough guy but he just doesn’t have it from pretty much every angle you consider. David Coulthard, too much into the lifestyle, just doesn’t deliver. He had exactly the same car as Mika Hakkinen during the seasons that he won the World Driver’s title and was way behind, not even a good enough support driver in the second season losing the constructors title to Ferrari. Damon Hill, well yes he won the Drivers title but did he infuse people with his ability, no, because to be fair he wasn’t that good a driver, he was simply lucky that the year he won he had a car that was so supremely superior to everyone else’s that he only had his team mate to beat and that was Coulthard. Almost forgot Eddie Irvine. I thought he was great from a personality perspective but still nothing outstanding as a driver and of course had the problem of being partnered with Michael Schumacher where he was outclassed as a driver even despite rumours of contractual agreements.

No, to see the last time there was a British driver with some real pulling power that infused the crowds then you have to go back to Nigel Mansell and again he wasn’t a truly great driver. He had a habit of breaking the cars with an overly aggressive driving style which probably accounts for only one title although it should have been two.

I’m going to say that Britain has lacked a truly great talent in Formula 1 since James Hunt, an innately talented driver with an admittedly larger than life personal life but definitely one of the great drivers.

It’s nice to see Formula 1 getting some more attention in the press but sad as it might seem it would only take a crash or two or a couple of breakdowns for all this media adulation to turn to criticism. I sometimes wonder about why the British media acts in this way.

I went into this season having Hamilton as my favourite driver, not only because he’s driving for my team but for the first time in over a decade and a half it was refreshing to be supporting a British driver for a change.

I didn’t want to expect much because it’s a big step up from GP2 racing to F1 but so far he’s exceeded all my expectations and that makes me rather happy. His drive last year from last to first in the Turkish race was probably one of the best in the history of GP2 where cars are much more equal and the difference is very much more down to the driver than in F1.

What I didn’t spot in the media is the little fact that since the Bahrain GP on Sunday he has now beaten every single driver in the field in an actual race which is nice.

My predictions for the season. Well, it would be nice to see him as world champion but I won’t expect it because it’s never been done before but what I do expect to see is that he will come to dominate the team. Despite having a double world champion as a team mate, irrespective of whether Fernando Alonso gets more points by the end of the season.

Hamilton is simply a lot smarter, understands the professional corporate mentality of McLaren to a much higher level than Alonso and so for me I will look forward to finally being able to support a British driver for a change and what colour his skin is is irrelevant to me.

I’ll finish on what roughly Ron Dennis the boss of McLaren said about him (can’t be bothered to look up the exact quote). That McLaren aren’t doing this as some stunt to have the first black driver in Formula 1. He’s there simply because of his sheer talent and ability, his race/ethnicity is irrelevant, McLaren are in Formula 1 to win and that’s why Hamilton is there.

As regular readers will know Mrs Penguin went away for the weekend with a friend and I had a brief experience at being a single parent.

Admittedly I wasn’t alone the whole weekend, my parents chipped in when I had to go out and do a few things but jobs like getting him off to sleep, making breakfast, changing and getting him to sleep were very much in my realm. Plus of course things like gardening, washing up, clothes washing and ironing – well sort of.

I managed to get all these jobs done but notably without any actual time to myself. I think that the whole weekend afforded me a sum total of 2 hours free which I used to simultaneously watch the Bahrain GP and make a start on my Lego star destroyer. Sorry, that should be my son’s Lego star destroyer, I am of course just building it for him.

However that was an interesting experience. Actual personal time to one’s self is next to non-existent with a small child when you are on your own. I’ve learned one thing from this experience that the last thing I would ever want is to be a single parent. I can remember the time back in the 90′s when the Tories were vilifying single-parents as being a bunch of sponging layabouts living off benefits and of course the routes of all societal evils, they don’t say much about them these days, after all they’ve found asylum seekers to fill that gap.

I suppose if you are lucky, have a good understanding employer you might be able to be a single parent and work while the child is at school but in the first few years unless you’re on a high income and can afford costly childcare then it is simply impossible to not fall into a position of dependence on the state unless grandparents can be drafted in. It’s certainly not an enviable existence when you consider it.

Anyway, I coped, Little Penguin was happy but the late nights when I normally get my free time weren’t possible because he wanted to curl up and sleep with me. I only failed to do the ironing, not out of laziness but simply that despite being rather nifty at most things electrical I haven’t got a clue how to work the iron so I gave up.

That said, a very interesting and eye opening experience, well worth it.

Sorry that should be Terminator. Bit of fun for tonight I picked up over at Tom’s site.

I do wonder if Cameron’s new cuddly party will be picking up some tips from the Governor of California on penal systems.

Who knows, maybe he’ll invite Cameron for a little walk around his sparkly new death chamber?

Just a brief post to explain that over the next 36 hours or so blogging will be slow. Mrs Penguin has gone for a weekend away with a friend and I’m enjoying the wonders of being a single parent for the next day and a half. Actually I have been since yesterday afternoon hence no response to various comments on the previous post last night.

Will get round to replying to them in the next hour or so while I have a little free time but anyone who’s after an immediate response after that will have to wait for any bit of free time I can muster between now and tomorrow evening or simply just have to wait till then. Sorry for that.

There’s been a bit, well, a lot flying around the British political blogosphere about poor practices when it comes to comment moderation. People deleting the odd post here or there that they don’t agree with but as much as I’ve witnessed a few instances of this myself I do not believe that I have seen it done on such a large scale as this.

I introduce you to this blog. It’s the site of Paul Uppal the prospective Tory candidate for Wolverhampton South West. It’s not been going long, a couple of months but there are some interesting things to note. Up until about 3 hours ago the site had a large quantity of comments on it. We’re talking nearly 30 comments to an article in some cases. A lot were critical of Mr Paul Uppal and a Mr Carl Husted who apparently runs the site for him.

Now I’ll be honest, I haven’t really bothered with the site myself and only really had a good look at it last night when certain issues were brought to my attention but at some point in the past few hours hundreds of comments have miraculously disappeared from the site, including my own solitary contribution to the discourse.

Equally comments made by Mr Carl Husted who incidentally is the Tory’s candidate in the Park Ward of Wolverhampton this May that refer to issues and criticisms raised have also disappeared.

Here’s a little taster of what’s no longer available. What Carl Husted said regarding the critical comments on the site.

Oh, and my little contribution to the discourse, now of course no longer available.

My personal favourite is this quote:

“Also to put an end to the lies that comments have been deleted from this website. They haven’t. Stop repeating this lie you silly boys. You are liars and I can prove that no comments have ever been deleted from this website at any point.”

Well they have been now, hundreds of them. Of course the nice comments from good supportive parasites like PratTory are left plus the comment saying “Good site” that dear old Carl obviously hasn’t realised is comment spam as it says something nice.

What can we learn from this? Well, simple. Tories have proven themselves once again to be able to dish it out but simply can’t take it themselves. The first sign of criticism and they eliminate any sign of it.

One has to question what belief people who are quite happy to undertake such practices have for the notion of free speech. Or is it a case of free speech for some but not for others?

[I removed one word of profanity from the post on reflection]

Was interested to read this over at Bob’s site. I’m not sure if it’s me but there seems to be a bit of a theme going among the right-wing elements of the blogosphere to try and attack Gordon Brown which raises an issue or two.

Firstly though, this whole website being registered presumably for the purposes of a Gordon Brown leadership campaign and a few interesting issues that it raises in itself. Now I was a bit bored myself the one night about a month ago and went fishing for Gordon Brown leadership sites and came up with the one that Dizzy has identified. Personally I thought nothing of it as there was no content present so didn’t feel inclined as to mention it. What’s also out there are various other URL’s registered along a similar Brown leadership theme by other parties which could be anything from ready to go spoof sites to simply some cyber-squatters trying to pull a fast one and make a bit of money by holding on to the domains, probably the latter and they’ve almost certainly wasted their time and money.

However this does raise an interesting point about how new-media sits with existing legislation regarding any kind of political campaigning and as much as some might want to try and use this as a way to attack Brown, at best we are all just victims of the vagueness of the existing legal framework.

Considering a normal election campaign using more traditional methods of leaflets and posters on lampposts it’s not that hard. Leaflet goes off to printers, they print it, they bill you, you declare the cost in the election expenses. Posters, well the same for the printing but the cost of the boards have to be declared or if reused a value has to be put on them and declared.

There is however a problem with this that directly relates to the issue raised in this case. In the case of leaflets, those delivered after the date the election has been called have to be included on the expenses. These leaflets may have been prepared weeks before but they still have to go down. In the case of posters the same is usually true that they’ve been pasted up weeks in advance to the actually date of the election campaign. However where as the cost of preparing boards and the value of them should be declared as do leaflets prepared in advance but delivered within the timeframe of the election campaign proper, leaflet delivered before do not and do not have to carry the full election legal imprint.

We do have a rather poor legal framework when it comes to declaring expenses and indeed donations be they in hard cash or in kind. I’m reminded back to the 1997 General Election where the Tories used a local firm in Wolverhampton who’s owners were supporters to get their staff during work hours to sit and fold all their leaflets, something that certain members of the staff refused to do. Was it ever declared as a contribution in kind? I highly doubt it and in all fairness I wouldn’t care if it was or not. It’s almost impossible to track and record every bit of contribution in political activity. Do we declare all the hours campaigners put in delivering leaflets, or in my case designing the sodding things and contributing my own labour in printing them? No because it’s just not possible.

So really it has to be said, and the criticism isn’t directed at Dizzy here, he’s just reporting something of no particular interest or relevance. The criticism comes for Iain Dale for trying to jump on something and promptly falling off. As much as it would be facile to claim that my work in preparing leaflets for a candidate should be included on their election expenses, then if someone has been working on a website for Gordon in anticipation of his leadership campaign then the argument is equally as facile.

I’ll leave on this note. There seems to be a lot of Tories trying to get at Gordon Brown. I’m perplexed as to the reason why. Surely they want him to be the next leader of the Labour Party, parading opinion polls that show their baby faced leader as being streets ahead against him. Or, perhaps maybe they realise that while David Cameron may be enjoying his time courting the media when it has turned against the present Prime Minister, that when it comes down to the real gritty politics of policy and delivery, that their leader is a lightweight, disingenuous coward who already buckled at facing Gordon across the despatch box in the past and if his resorting to trying to compare the present Chancellor to Stalin is truly the best he can come up with then he’s sadly lacking.

Reason – Lots of really important stuff to do.
Real reason – Free time being taken up by playing Zelda and building this that I got for my birthday.

Sorry, will get back to the serious stuff when I have a moment.

This one goes out to prove that the combined organisational power of both Amazon and HMV can’t match that of a single blogger.

While both these companies were unable over the period of many months to acquire a copy of Zelda – The Twilight Princess for the Gamecube and with all outlets in my locality completely sold out with no prospect of new stock. The lovely Mr Tyger came up with a copy for me.

So a big thank you to Tyger for making both Mr and Mrs Penguin very happy.

Yes, I know it’s late but just wanted to post it. Contains lots of swearing so not for the children.

Three blogs added to the roll. Guido Fawkes 2.0, Howlingspoons and Pickled Politics. Finally getting back to the blogging stuff after a little break and catching up on things.