I’ve been completely drawn away from everything by the best tennis match since last year’s Wimbledon final. This is extraordinary.
The raw power of Nadal against the exceptional shot making of Verdasco.
Watch the fifth set, live, here.
The longest match in Australian Open history. Five sets. Two tie-breakers.
Fernando Verdasco has come from almost nowhere to give the world number one and Wimbledon champion a complete run around at the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne. His shot making was extraordinary.
It’s hard to imagine this was a player Andy Murray was expected to destroy a few days ago, having beaten him the first five times they played. But, as we know, that wasn’t to be and his game has soared.
Where has that come from? It was like watching Roger Federer in his pomp. As much as I enjoy watching Rafa Nadal play, Federer v Verdasco would be a site to behold.
Certainly, it was the best tennis match since last year’s Wimbledon final between Nadal and Federer.
Seeing Nadal cross the net at the finish was a nice touch, he knew how easily it could have gone the other way.
I still can’t imagine why the organisers of the Australian Open think it’s ok to keep the players on court until well past 1am, but I’m grateful to have seen it.
To the delight of the media, Gordon Brown’s phone went off in a press conference at the Davos World Economic Forum this morning. Much laughs all round. Twice.
Sunder Katwala has a feature in the latest New Statesman suggesting that the Liberal Democrats should join a coalition with Labour for the run-in and then campaign together in 2010. Gordon Brown is Prime Minister, Nick Clegg becomes his deputy and Alistair Darling makes way for Vince Cable at the Treasury.
To his credit, the president of the Fabian Society more or less talks himself out of the idea before the end of the column. But he suggests that such a coalition would be the only way Brown could survive as Prime Minister following the election and the best way to maximise Lib Dem influence.
The theory goes the Liberal Democrats would be in a lousy position after the election, regardless of the result. In a hung parliament with Labour the biggest party, they would not countenance propping up a PM who lost his majority. And they would never go into coalition with the Conservatives if they were the biggest party.
To make it happen, Labour drops ID cards, commits to electoral reform along the lines of AV voting and fixed term and shares out the big departments.
But surely this Labour Government would never do such things? Much of it’s home affairs legislation in the past five years has made right-wingers balk. And the Lib Dems would still be propping up an apparently dead-duck administration.
Most importantly, a sizeable portion of the party’s 63 MPs – not least possibly Nick Clegg himself – would likely find themselves more at home in the Conservative Party.
Aside from the fun of making the coming election more competitive, there is no way this will happen. (probably.)
Surely someone should tell Gordon Brown how infuriating it is when he doesn’t answer questions? He’s getting worse at it, replacing answers with tired sound bites which all the polling tells us are not working.
It shouldn’t be this difficult. Many of the Conservative ideas should be easy to pull apart or at least criticise convincingly. They aren’t proposing to ‘do nothing‘. The public may agree or disagree with the plans, but people can see ‘do nothing’ is not true, regardless of how many times Brown repeats the line for the evening news.
This all means David Cameron gets three of four free hits every week. He’s not even having to try very hard to land the punches. Of course PMQs isn’t really relevant outside the village, but I think it does set the tone. It determines the way the media view the Brown v Cameron dynamic.
The more times he dodges the ‘do you still claim to have abolished boom and bust’ from Cameron, the more times the media is going to ask him. They’ll also ask his ministers, over and over again, anything to find someone who’ll slip up and give them the line.
Just in an effort to make this competitive and more entertaining during the long run-in to the election, surely Brown’s operators can up their game?
Oz and James Drink to Britain is, simply put, the best programme on TV at the moment. A brilliant, irreverent look at the British drinking culture, the show is so refreshing.
Whenever the media, and particularly the BBC, look at drinking it’s always doom and gloom. Just on this morning’s news some cretin produced the idea that a woman who drinks two glasses of wine in an evening is ‘technically binging’. Rubbish.
Nobody thinks getting drunk and disorderly is a good thing. Nobody thinks drinking daily, for years on end, until you have liver cancer is a good thing. If you feel the need to have a fight after a few drinks, that was already there. Alcohol doesn’t have to make you violent.
But, blimey, drinking is a good thing. Beer (proper beer) is good, wine is good. Trying new things is good. Having fun is good. And that’s why Oz and James is a winner.
Maybe I’m just channeling the inner 45-year-old, but drinking to explore seems like a fabulous thing to me. This programme is already inspiring me to plot a gentle pub crawling holiday in the country and it’s driving me into the arms of CAMRA.
Tonight, they toured Ireland. Rolling through the Irish countryside, getting beyond Guinness to a decent range of Irish ale, having a laugh and learning new things. Brilliant television.
Watch it on the iPlayer here. Happily, it’s available on series catch-up, so will stream for at least a few weeks because there’s still four more glorious episodes to come.
A very American-style petition dropped into my inbox overnight – ‘No Fourth‘. An obvious response to John Prescott and Alistair Campbell’s new Go Fourth website, the site screams:
Violent crime is increasing and our Police forces are burdened by paperwork. Our Armed Forces are overstretched and underfunded and the brave men and women who fight to defend our freedom are put in danger by poor equipment and inadequate vehicles.
The quoted links are the author’s own; he uses perfectly reputable media to make his point. But it’s all so unnecessary.
The site explicitly claims to be privately sponsored and not affiliated to any political party. But its agenda is obvious and the petition comments make clear most of the people contacted and signed up are Tory members. That’s fine, but with every major pollster showing a lead of more than 10 points, why go so negative?
Independent Labour efforts online are already faltering. Labour List is still struggling for oxygen, Go Fourth is just too embryonic to tell. The Conservative base is verygood at online, another reason why No Fourth just seems silly.
Negative politics works, it’s the only reason politician’s of all sides engage in it. But there’s probably 15 months till the election. No need to be throwing the eggs just yet.
On balance, I’m inclined to think the BBC has probably made the right call on whether or not to broadcast the DEC appeal for Gaza.
More importantly, having made the call, the editors at the BBC can’t let themselves be bullied into changing their postition. This is a very sensible view from Tom Harris MP who doesn’t agree but will live with the decision.
The BBC has taken a lot of hits in the past few years, particularly in the post-Hutton era. I often feel it’s lost the confidence to take the difficult decisions, to stick to an editorial line it believes is correct.
On any rational level, it can be appreciated the DEC appeal could raise questions of impartiality. You can agree or disagree with that view, but so much discussion around the Israeli-Palestinian question takes an immediate leave of rationality.
It’s faulty logic to compare the Gaza crisis with the Tsunamiappeal or the handful of other occasions the BBC has allowed such an appeal on its air.
At the end of the day, broadcasters (and the BBC in particular) have an incredible power. With that power comes a responsibility to be careful what gets on the air. The DEC can and has taken out ad campaigns across many forms of media: it’s message will get through.
The BBC is right not use its pulpit on this issue. Now it just needs to stay standing up-right under fire.
I hate tennis some days. How does Andy Murray lose in five after looking invincible all year and jogging through the first set of his fourth round match against Fernando Verdasco?
At least KP can still bat, even in a pretend match. I just hope they’re being extra-careful with Freddy if he has been withdrawn. I already fear for the the Ashes, and losing Flintoff would just be the final nail in the coffin.
Not expecting a second golden summer of British sport.
Just occasionally, the BBC is prone to hiding superb pieces of work on the News Channel in 30-minute slots that I fear few people ever watch.
Jeremy Paxman had one of those this weekend. His Our World documentary, meeting three veterans of the wars Britain is still fighting, was one of those. Paxman often gets criticised for the way he goes after politicians, making it easy to forget he’s actually a gifted interviewer.
But here he meets a paratrooper, a TA member now back in civilian life, and a soldier who sacrificed his sight to save six of his friends. He uncovers real insight about life on the front line and the difficulties of adjusting to a civilian life when many members of the public neither understand nor genuinely care about what has been done in their name.
Fortunately, the brilliant BBC iPlayer means everyone has another chance to see the programme. At the moment it’s available until Saturday evening.
