Well I hope not. Maximum 15 points from 5 games with a 4-0 win at Tranmere, but with two home games coming up even more wins are a strong possibility.
The only downside is Leeds United are matching Charlton's pace. Now Leeds, with apologies to the good citizens of Leeds, are not Britain's best loved team. In fact they are way up there with ManU, Chelsea and Arsenal. This maybe truer for those of a certain age who remember the Don Revie years, which admittedly were a long time ago. So we need Leeds to drop points before we do if we want to keep this heady feeling at the top of the division.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Sunday, August 23, 2009
4 games 12 points
The perfect start to the new football season. Charlton, not at their best, beat Walsall 2-0. They still managed most of the possession and were ahead in all the stats except for fouls which Walsall won by a long way. The only other team with a perfect record in Division Three is Leeds. As they say in boxing, one of them has to lose the O. Let's hope it's Leeds, who still in my mind carry all the darkness of the Revie years. OK, I watched "The Damned United" last week.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Three games - nine points
Last season was one to forget, ending in demotion to the old Division 3 for the first time since I was a boy, which was a long time ago. Well at least we get to play with neighbours Millwall again.
This season has started with a bang. Three wins with two of those on the road. There was our usual loss and early exit from the league cup, but it was a ManU style second team playing. The first game was a 3-2 win at home against Wycombe Wanderers with an encouraging sixteen and half thousand crowd. Next came a 2-0 win in Hartlepool and round off our first three wins (four if the last match of last season is included) three thousand supporters took the short trip over the river to see Charlton beat Leighton Orient 2-1.
Can this keep up. After the last few years it makes a pleasant change.
This season has started with a bang. Three wins with two of those on the road. There was our usual loss and early exit from the league cup, but it was a ManU style second team playing. The first game was a 3-2 win at home against Wycombe Wanderers with an encouraging sixteen and half thousand crowd. Next came a 2-0 win in Hartlepool and round off our first three wins (four if the last match of last season is included) three thousand supporters took the short trip over the river to see Charlton beat Leighton Orient 2-1.
Can this keep up. After the last few years it makes a pleasant change.
Two Sundays east of the airport
If you follow the small road, Lat Krabang Soi 54, from Onnut Road it becomes a much larger new dual carriageway and you will find Wat Hua Khoo on the right side at a junction of two canals. Outside the temple is a good place to park and skirting the temple walls to the south will allow you to access a walkway along one of the canals. Along this canal, and sorry as I have no names for the klongs in this area, you will find a number of other paths on side canals.
Although very close to the new Bangkok airport, because we were walking parallel with the runways there was hardly any aircraft noise. This are is still very rural with ponds for raising fish and a vegetable grown in water that usually ends up in soups. The klongs are used for transport but it is fairly thinly populated out here. The walks shown on the Google Earth graphic below add up to about 16 kilometres.
Back to football and walking
Over the last year I haven't posted either about my football team or walking along the Bangkok klongs. The football was because it was such a horrible season from the beginning and the walking because I did fewer and spent too much time on UK politics.
Well I have still kept up walking new klongs although far from regularly but the next post will cover the last two Sundays east of the new Bangkok airport. With football Charlton are having a great start to the season so I will start posting results again.
Well I have still kept up walking new klongs although far from regularly but the next post will cover the last two Sundays east of the new Bangkok airport. With football Charlton are having a great start to the season so I will start posting results again.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Whatever happened to...?
There was a time not that long ago when you knew it was a Labour MP speaking on TV because he wore a red tie. Tories sometimes wore a blue one and Liberals any colour they liked, but for Labour a red tie was mandatory.This changed with New Labour. They no longer wanted to be reminded of the past, the history of the party. Red stood something. It was the colour of the worker's flag. It was the colour of the blood shed by generations of activists going back to the Chartist and before.
As the various Blairites and Brownites start to creep away from their previous positions I wonder if the red tie will make a comeback. We are now seeing them dump the 'New' and just calling themselves Labour and even the banned word socialism cropped up today, so maybe we will. (And yes Ken Livingstone, I noticed the yellow tie you have been wearing. A little bit of tradition please!)
Saturday, July 18, 2009
It’s going to get worse! The Americanisation of British politics.
I’m not sure when it really started. Was it Maggie bringing in Saatchi & Saatchi for the 1979 election? Certainly by the time Blair was aping Clinton with sound bites, spin doctors and the 24 hour grin we were well on our way. Even Blair’s career path of university to law to politics was the standard American one. Now I have nothing against America, I worked for US marine companies for most of my working life. I am even a republican in the sense that I would rather not have a monarchy. But I do not envy the US political system. Now, like them, the difference between our two major parties can be hard to define.
Recently I have begun to feel we were out doing the Americans at their own game. It’s the increase of twenty-something potential and actual election candidates who have moved directly from university to a political career. This isn’t only happening with our own party, but also with the Tories and Liberals. Although I don’t always agree with him the Ken Livingstone interview on the Labourlist blog does highlight what’s going on. See two of his answers below.
Q. “Do you mean Old Labour with a capital O and a capital L or…”
KL. “Both! The main weakness of the so-called New Labour project was that it was too young and too graduate middle class. I was surprised how many old right-wingers who had spent their lives trying to stop me ended up supporting me because of how bad things had got.”
Q. “You know you can be young and graduate and working class and on the left of the party…”
KL. “I’m sure there is one somewhere. But in the run up to the 1998 Borough council elections in London, they introduced al these tests. Instead of being selected, you had to write statements of your values and management experience. But it wasn’t just the left wing that was stripped down by that; it was the working class people, black and white. I thought that was absolutely disgraceful. Blair and Brown between them took a functioning, broadly working class party, but one that was also strongly middle class, and reduced it to a shell. They closed down all the channels by which working class people could express themselves, through their unions and their local parties. If they hadn’t closed down the Labour party in that way, they might not have made the catastrophic mistake in carrying on Thatcher’s ban on council house building, And they’re now surprised that working class people are angry? What fuels the anger of those working class voters is that their kids have got nowhere to live.”
We haven’t really seen this since WW2. Before that there were rural seats that were passed down through aristocratic families, but by the 1945 election many of the new MPs had been in the forces before. Even those who wanted a political career like Churchill 40 years before that started with another job.
These new members of the political class are the evil spawn of Blair, Cameron and Clegg. Blair had a pretend job in law while attempting to get into parliament. Cameron didn’t even do this, going straight into the Conservative Research Department. Clegg looks like he saw the opportunity to enter UK politics via Europe.
But what do these and the new crop bring to the table; what experiences have they had which will help the country move forward? I try to see something positive in the youth of these people and New Labour’s parachuting in the likes of Georgia Gould, but it’s not working for me. Just look at the photos of the posters in the left column of Labourlist’s home page. It scares me that these are our next Labour Party representatives. (Apologies to those who don’t feel they fit my description.)
What the expense scandal should tell us is that we can’t afford to have this type of candidate. The political class must know that eventually the public will revolt and not just by not voting, or by voting BNP. Maybe a study of the French revolution will give them some warning. The people are very angry.
Recently I have begun to feel we were out doing the Americans at their own game. It’s the increase of twenty-something potential and actual election candidates who have moved directly from university to a political career. This isn’t only happening with our own party, but also with the Tories and Liberals. Although I don’t always agree with him the Ken Livingstone interview on the Labourlist blog does highlight what’s going on. See two of his answers below.
Q. “Do you mean Old Labour with a capital O and a capital L or…”
KL. “Both! The main weakness of the so-called New Labour project was that it was too young and too graduate middle class. I was surprised how many old right-wingers who had spent their lives trying to stop me ended up supporting me because of how bad things had got.”
Q. “You know you can be young and graduate and working class and on the left of the party…”
KL. “I’m sure there is one somewhere. But in the run up to the 1998 Borough council elections in London, they introduced al these tests. Instead of being selected, you had to write statements of your values and management experience. But it wasn’t just the left wing that was stripped down by that; it was the working class people, black and white. I thought that was absolutely disgraceful. Blair and Brown between them took a functioning, broadly working class party, but one that was also strongly middle class, and reduced it to a shell. They closed down all the channels by which working class people could express themselves, through their unions and their local parties. If they hadn’t closed down the Labour party in that way, they might not have made the catastrophic mistake in carrying on Thatcher’s ban on council house building, And they’re now surprised that working class people are angry? What fuels the anger of those working class voters is that their kids have got nowhere to live.”
We haven’t really seen this since WW2. Before that there were rural seats that were passed down through aristocratic families, but by the 1945 election many of the new MPs had been in the forces before. Even those who wanted a political career like Churchill 40 years before that started with another job.
These new members of the political class are the evil spawn of Blair, Cameron and Clegg. Blair had a pretend job in law while attempting to get into parliament. Cameron didn’t even do this, going straight into the Conservative Research Department. Clegg looks like he saw the opportunity to enter UK politics via Europe.
But what do these and the new crop bring to the table; what experiences have they had which will help the country move forward? I try to see something positive in the youth of these people and New Labour’s parachuting in the likes of Georgia Gould, but it’s not working for me. Just look at the photos of the posters in the left column of Labourlist’s home page. It scares me that these are our next Labour Party representatives. (Apologies to those who don’t feel they fit my description.)
What the expense scandal should tell us is that we can’t afford to have this type of candidate. The political class must know that eventually the public will revolt and not just by not voting, or by voting BNP. Maybe a study of the French revolution will give them some warning. The people are very angry.
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