Football and the existence of God - nice quote

'No, I don't believe in God. I mean, in Spain all 22 players always say a prayer before entering the pitch. So if God existed every match would end in a draw.'

Attributed to John Cruyff.

A nice quote if not logically correct (it could be that God regards football as being unimportant for direct action).

Lessons from Machiavelli

'A man who becomes prince with the help of the nobles finds it more difficult to maintain his position than one who does so with the help of the people. As prince, he finds himself surrounded by many who believe they are his equals, and because of that he cannot command or manage them the way he wants. A man who becomes prince by favour of the people finds himself standing alone, and he has near him either no one or very few not prepared to take orders.'

Machiavelli, The Prince, (1981, London, Penguin), pp.67-8.

Does this help explain the relative success of PMs who initially achieve power via popular mandate (e.g. Thatcher and Blair), and the difficulties faced by those who achieve this position via internal party means (e.g. Major and Brown)?

Proof, if further proof be needed, of the fact that the classic texts still have a role to play in helping us understand politics.

Twitter and Egalitarianism

I've recently, and slowly, been getting into Twitter. For those of you who do not know it, it allows you to post short (140 character) updates (similar in fashion to status updates on Facebook), and allows you to follow other Twitter users updates, and these may include celebrities (Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry, for example, are converts to it) as well as one's friends, families and colleagues.

Celebrities often allow people to follow their updates, but often do not follow other peoples' leading Toby Young in The Spectator this week (21st Feb 2009, p.62) to argue that Twitter 'only looks egalitarian' but should 'drop the pretence of being socially democratic' as it is hierarchical underneath. The chief reason for this (Stephen Fry being a noticeable exception to this rule) is that 'the interest shown by the hoi polloi... in celebrities is not reciprocated.'

Is this really fair? Where do Twitter (or for that matter Facebook or MySpace) really make a strong claim to being socially democratic? They allow anyone to use their web facilities, but do not purport to a social philosophy. I am interested in hearing what Jonathan Ross is saying, and it does not surprise me that he is not that interested in me; but I enjoy the fact that I can follow his tweets.
Also the web is simply not the democratic thing that some people claim it is, and often people, by making claims that things such as twitter are claiming to be 'egalitarian' are simply creating straw persons. What the web does well is to allow people a medium to contact one another, what it cannot do is overcome the very structures of society itself.

End of the suit?

Whilst in London at the end of last week I came across Irena Sedlecka’s excellent statue of Beau Brummell in Jermyn Street. Brummell argued that the well dressed gentleman should never be noticed by the singularity or flamboyance of his dress and so pioneered a simple more elegant form of dressing that was radical in its time. The problem that this message has for the modern day is that in an overtly casual age, is the suit and tie wearer standing out from the majority of wearers and therefore guilty of bad dress? Are we (and I like to place myself in this group) therefore the people who he was rebelling against (i.e. if Brummell were alive today would he be more Abercrombie and Fitch than Gieves and Hawkes)?

'Say what you will, there is something fine about our old aristocracy. I'll bet Trotsky couldn't hit a moving secretary with an egg on a dark night. '

PG Wodehouse

As always, PG manages makes his point well!

Polite notices

In the past I have always thought that the 'No Ball Games' sign was the most annoying occurrence in modern life (heaven forefend that kids be able to kick a football around on your precious patch of grass) . Its rival for me at the moment is the 'polite notice' - e.g. 'polite notice please have your change ready when you get on the bus', or 'polite notice please do not smoke in this area.' Who are the writers of the sign to say if the sign is polite or not? This is surely something that we should be the judge of – just say what you want to say and let us place it within our own schemes of courtesy thank you very much.

Perhaps it is now acceptable to write or say anything so long as it is prefixed with the words 'polite notice'. e.g. 'Polite notice all our customers are the dregs of society', or 'polite notice none of your sort here', and so on and so forth.

Any ideas?

A rather striking sight between the Mill bridge and St Paul's - does anyone know what it is and what its purpose is (I'm not being a philistine here - being interesting is fine in and of itself - i'm just curious)?