Provision does not require ownership.
Topic: Politics
Remember the last time that you had a really lousy time in a restaurant; rude service, poor food, dirty tables, unhygienic lavatories and over-priced drinks? Remember how you swore that you would go there again and give their accountant more money, cross your fingers and blithely hope that things would get better for your next visit?

Didn't you? OK, please yourself then. Perhaps you're one of those normal people who decided to take their business elsewhere. Like anyone would actually.

Well that's the problem with the NHS in a nutshell. You don't need to know anything about fundholding, waiting lists, citizens' charters or brain surgery. You just need to know that you pay for it in a way that’s totally different to the way you pay for everything else in life. That’s enough to make you realise that it’s doomed. It was poor under the Tories and after nearly nine years of a Labour government it’s still poor. And that’s after huge increases in tax. Why is this?

Well dare I say it, but maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that you can’t take your money away if you’re dissatisfied? Not if, like most people, you can’t afford private care. You have no threat. Targets can come and go, but the poor punter doesn’t have a choice.

I know that many people reading this will argue that the NHS was underfunded under the Tories. Maybe it was. I have no idea what the ‘correct’ budget should have been. Neither do you. Perhaps you think it would improve with more money now. Maybe it would. I don't know. But if you’ve followed the newspapers or just looked at their Jobs sections, you’ll realise that there has been a big increase in hospital administration. Was this really what the voters wanted when they booted out Major in 1997?

When health is politicised, but not privatised, politicians will still attempt to improve it. But without a free market, the mechanism to ensure that the money is well spent is very indirect. If you don’t like what the politicians are doing to the Health Service on which your life depends you can vote them out at the next election in up to five years time, but wouldn’t you rather have the option to take your business to a better performing service now?

Many Britons are proud of the NHS, believing that it’s right and proper that everyone should be able to get treatment that’s free at the point-of-service. I can understand that. So it’s fine by me if you want to make it free for everyone. But that doesn’t mean that the government needs to own the hospitals or employ any of the doctors and nurses. Provision doesn't require ownership. They are totally different concepts.

Anyone who’s travelled to the US knows this intuitively anyway. The last time I went there I had a travel insurance policy that I'd bought at the Post Office. It covered me for potential medical costs up to $10m. That is what I needed. I was under no illusion that the British Post Office actually owned any hospitals in the US, nor that it employed any doctors there. I just knew that it had made arrangements to pay for its policyholders to receive treatment should they need it. Why can't the NHS work like that either? Why can't I have insurance coverage guaranteed by the government, but with me having the choice of various competing insurance companies to select from? Hospitals that employed too many administrators and too few nurses would slowly lose custom to those who did the opposite. And this would give the health providers the incentive to cut paperwork and focus on hiring those who actually roll up their sleeves and care for the sick, instead of paper pushers. That’s what I’m interested in paying for.

It’s hard to discuss the NHS. Over the years it’s gone beyond rational discussion. But discussion is need if we’re to change it so that it saves more lives than it does. Don't take my word for it if you don't want to. See what the Observer's Health Editor said in 2001.

Why the NHS is bad for us, by Anthony Browne – Observer Health Editor 2001

In the meantime, I must weep for the opportunity that the Tories have wasted to promote this philosophy. Hague had no chance of winning the 2001 election. The voters were clearly in a mood to punish the Tories for the Major era for years to come. That was the ideal time to promote the idea of reform. It takes years for voters to consider radical change. So it’s tragic that the opposition party didn’t make the case years ago.

Update to 'What price Romance?'
Topic: Misc.
I got a reply to my e-mail today. I should explain that my e-mail to her was more strongly worded than the last post may have made clear. I went as far as to say that most women are boring.

Hello DY

Thanks for your reply inside you provided me with a missing puzzle piece I hadn't thought of, so I am very grateful.

You are of course quite right about the politics, current affairs note. I do discuss things with my friends but they are always light hearted, being in a creative industry, it tends to be more about art, peoples perceptions, and of course relationships. I don't read magazines, and somewhat disillusioned with history repeating itself quite so often I no longer read the newspapers either. The media seem to be obsessed with whipping up the general public into a permanent state of frenzy, I'm still waiting for the killer bees of 2004 to attack!

I am trivial, I am flighty, I would rather talk about human nature and anomalies than discuss a good book (don't read those anymore either), and perhaps I am becoming a paler version of myself and have let a lacklustre attitude creep in. My conversations are very samey, the content has little that is new too myself in it, to bring to the table. I do however have a great sense of humour and the best friends in the world.

However you are right I do need to shape up or ship out! So thank you for highlighting that I shall endeavour to do better!

As to the money, in previous years I funded an ex-boyfriend for two years whilst he re-trained. Now years later I am a single and poor as a church mouse as my circumstances changed. This which means although I don't overtly want a mans money, I struggle to keep up financially and it is a cheek that I should look for a relationship at all when I can only buy one round a week if that!

What I meant was in the circles within which I move at present, social and business wise, I meet both young and old successful men who have found they enjoy their own company more often than not. Having a female around is ok for an afternoon, perhaps even a whole day, but that's enough! I do understand their
perspective. I just like those rare types like myself who enjoy company the majority of the time rather than minority.

I think it is a reflection of living in an affluent area, where if you get bored you just get on a jet and have an adventure, alone or with your mates.

So please don't take offence to what I have written. I probably don't deserve a relationship because I cannot fund one, but we all have dreams.

Kitten x

What price romance?
Topic: Misc.
Do you read lonely hearts ads? I do, mostly for amusement value. However I also think they provide insights into a society and its culture. I've noticed in British ads for example that any mention of race is generally placed by someone who wants to date someone of a different one (lots of black women wanting white men) while in the US, it's mentioned by people wanting the same (SWF wants SWM).

I also can't help noticing when women use the words 'solvent' to describe their target man. Technically I qualify, as my assets exceed my liabilities. But it still rankles me to see the word in an ad, as it suggests that something beyond companionship is being sought.

At Craigslist London, the personals are full of American women looking for British men. Most are in the US and are planning a trip to Britain in the future. I can't understand why they don't just wait until they get here. What's the point in worrying about it six months in advance? But the personals page is also used by frustrated people to ask what is wrong with the opposite sex. Today I found a classic example:

http://london.craigslist.org/w4m/152630472.html

A 40-year old single woman asks: "what’s so wrong in wanting to share what’s happened in your day with a partner, to want to spend time getting to know someone without leaping into bed. What happened to good conversation being fun enough?"

I've never written back to someone on that page before, but today I decided to do so in order to explain something very obvious to me - that heterosexual men do like sharing what's happened in their day and having good conversation. They have male friends with whom they can do that. What they can't do with those male friends is leap into bed. QED?

In my case, I would love to have more conversation with women, but the topics I like talking about are things that most women don't talk about. With my male friends it's poker, politics, military history, the economy, conflict in the middle east, the horses and football betting. We virtually never talk about the things that feature in women's magazines - nutrition, haircuts, fashion, emotions or sex. I guess we find the external more interesting than the internal.

But that wasn't all I said to the frustrated 40-year old. I simply had to point out that she'd mentioned money in the first sentence "We all know there are those men who have enough money...". She couldn't write eleven words without slipping it in. No wonder she can't find what she's looking for. If you're going to discriminate on grounds of wealth, then at least be subtle about it!

Other issues in the Middle East
Topic: Politics
I've had some curious reactions to my post about Syriana below. It seems some people think my feelings about the film were 'predictable' because of my support for Israel. This puzzles me, because Israel isn't mentioned in the film. None of the action takes place there.

I have tried to explain that there are other issues in the Middle East apart from the Israel/Palestine conflict, but some of you don't believe me. Perhaps you need to read it from someone other than me. So I suggest that you read this Al-Jazeera article about the UN initiated Arab Human Development Report of 2002.

Do read the whole thing.

Syriana
Topic: Misc.
On March 20th I wrote "I've little or no desire to see the issue films of George Clooney, as I don't want to be subjected to their biased point of view" and never got around to explaining what I was talking about. In case it wasn't obvious, I was referring to "Syriana" and "Good Night, and Good Luck". Today I changed my mind about the former.

I was in part prompted by an article by Max Boot in the LA Times, in which he argued that several of the earlier films in which George Clooney stars make the opposite case to the views he expresses in person. It was something I had noticed myself with respect to Three Kings, a film that pointed out the pointlessness of defeating Saddam Hussein in 1991, only to leave him in power on the dubious grounds of 'stability'. I also found it disturbing the way that so many of the Iraqi characters in that film scream 'Where is George Bush?' when their uprising against Saddam fails to get American support, despite previous promises.

So I went to see Syriana and came out ... bewildered frankly. I loved the visuals - the streets of Beirut, the vast expanses of desert in the Persian Gulf, the huge oil refineries and so on. It was also interesting to see the dynamics of the Pakistani migrant workers who are treated as second-class citizens, except by fanatics who aim to recruit them as suicide bombers. Alas however, I fear that most people will come out thinking that they have seen a cogent polemic against western oil interests in the Middle East, when actually that's the weakest part of the film.

SPOILER WARNING - A key plot line is the US plan to assassinate a young Royal from an oil-rich state who intends to turn his country into a pluralist, secular state where women are educated and allowed to vote. This man is a neo-con's fantasy! Yet he gets killed because the US would rather have his much younger brother in power. How does that make sense? Someone that young could never be relied upon to stay loyal. His opinions could change at any moment. And the killing of the older brother at the end is so 'high-tech' that only the US could have done it. Surely the brother would figure that out? It's just nonsense. The argument is made that the younger one is more open to having US troops on his country's soil. Why would the US care about that when it's already walked out of Saudi Arabia? The only time that the older brother makes a remotely anti-American remark is when he says in public that Middle-East countries should reform at their own pace rather than at one set by Washington. If I were an American politician I would welcome that being said in public by a sincere reformer, as it would make it more likely that he would be accepted by his own people.

By all means see it if you have a few hours to kill. But be prepared to come out completely confused. The film would have made a great deal more sense had it been made about 20 years ago. Shame nobody made it then.

Pushbots
Topic: Poker
I learned a new word yesterday - 'pushbot'. I found it in a thread concerning the use of 'bots' (i.e. robotic players) in Party Poker one-table Sit'n'Gos (SNG). Essentially they appear to be able to make money using a very crude binary 'all-in/not all-in' formula.

There seems to be a lot of anguish about their existence. To me it's amusing that a very basic computer program can be profitable at no-limit hold'em. It undermines any claim that no-limit is the 'man's game'. Obviously it isn't if computers can win at it.

There have been all kinds of reactions ranging from indifference to a conviction that the bots must be banned. If I were concerned that my livelihood were threatened, I would move to games where the blinds increase more slowly and the initial chip allocation were larger. If online sites do wish to remove the threat of bots, then they should adjust their SNG structures accordingly.

Meanwhile, does anyone else think that a 'pushbot' would stand a better than average chance in those televised six-handed comps we see on TV? I'd back one at five-to-one on some of the line-ups I've seen play.

A quick and simple defense of Thatcherism.
Topic: Politics
I caught a few old pop videos from the early 1980s on television the other day and found my mind wandering back to a time when unemployment was high and Britain seemed divided between those who thought Margaret Thatcher was the devil incarnate and those who thought she was the saviour of Britain.

Many still hate her and feel that she did damage to the UK in those years. But I wonder what such critics think of the following crude defense of her actions. Suppose you were one of those who destested her policies. What would you have done differently? I reckon your list would look very familiar to anyone who has lived in Germany and France for the last 20 years -

Subsidy of coal mines - Done in Germany

Maintenance of Trade Union power - Done in Germany and France

Employment protection legislation - Done in France

State shareholdings in major industries - Done in France

Generous welfare payments - Done in Germany

Resist foreign takeovers - Done in France

Aid to depressed regions - Done in Germany (massive transfers to the former east)

And what has been the result of this? Both France and Germany have much higher levels of unemployment than Britain. And both are far more divided societies. Germany is still divided between east and west, despite 16 years of reunification. France has 20 per cent youth unemployment - 40 per cent in the ghettos. The large Muslim and African immigrant population feels utterly cut off from mainstream society. The country has been hit by two separate periods of rioting in the last year.

I don't know why the current Tory leadership is trying so hard to distance itself from Thatcher's legacy. France's disintegration shows that the alternative to Thatcher's short sharp shock was a long agonising decline.

The thrill has gone.
Topic: Poker
Note: If you're not a regular visitor to the Gutshot club or its website, then the following will make little sense to you. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.

Observant followers of the Gutshot forum will have noticed that I have not posted since the end of February. That was the moment when I realised that the fun had been squeezed out of it, for myself and several friends, by a relentless tide of nastiness from one rather sad individual. Since my withdrawal, others have been on the receiving end of the abuse. Here is a piece of world-beating hypocrisy and stupidity from a March 27th entry concerning my friend Allan Engel:

'Evil Engel thinks he's the Lone Ranger with Willy Purle, Plug and Comic Boy fighting wrong wherever it is typed on a forum. Of course logging in under a false name and abusing Gutshot and Mr Lloyd is all part of noble fight....

Got that? Allan Engel is a Lone Ranger, along with three other people!??! And isn't it awful that he posts under an alias? Who does such a thing?

Matters reached a new low yesterday when this person said this concerning 'Catman':

'Catman tells us this just before a photo of the famed Marbella Fiasco, a delight indeed as he breaks down like a little girl who lost her parents.'

He's talking about the a Channel Four documentary in which Catman did indeed break down ... rather like a grown man who had lost his parents. Both died in the year prior to filming and that was made clear in the programme. His father had in fact committed suicide following the death of Catman's mother. Hardly comic material.

I made Gutshot aware of this and the offending material was removed. But now this troll is claiming that it never happened. Specifically he writes:

I have never made snide remarks about the death of anyones parents on an internet forum. You accuse me of something that has already been sorted out by The Catman and Baby in private.

Judge for yourself. By the way, if anyone is prepared to crawl through the sewer that this person's posting history, let me know if you find a post that contains any poker content at all. There might be one, but I can't think of any from memory. Don't get your hopes up.

And don't expect consistency either. That March 27th entry informs Allan: 'I granted Mr Young a truce a while ago, something it looks like you don't know about, he's free to post without mocking by me. If he does not want to, thanks for the memories.'

Allan was indeed aware of what I had been told. But he correctly surmised that it was not a truce, as the exact wording of the message I got was:

Mr Young I shall leave you alone for a while, enough people take the piss out of you without Baby tearing you a new arsehole every week.

Be lucky

which Allan and I both instantly recognised as what Islamic scholars would call a Hudna. That is to say that it is a truce with a time-limit (note the words 'for a while'). In any case, not long after I received note of the Hudna, this appeared on the forum (Feb 28th)

You know full well why I dislike you, we have done it to death, you treat people(dealers, casino staff, players you don't rate) like shit and you are a hypocrite. I am prepared to draw a line under it, but if you want to continue fine, Baby won't dodge a challenge.

Thanks for saving UK poker.

The above followed a post in which I made it perfectly clear that my attempts to preserve poker in the UK had failed, and that it was TV's Late Night Poker that rescued it from decline. Presented, again, with the declaration that I mistreated casino staff and dealers 'like shit', I gave a list of 8 Gutshot dealers and asked which of them had a problem with me. Given that I always get welcomed by the dealers at the club, I looked forward to finding out. Alas, answer came there none.

I hesitated to write about this sad troll on my website, but eventually I decided that someone had to point out the sad decline of a once-fun forum. New contributors will come and go. But if abuse of the order that I, Catman, Dom Sutton, Engel, Commie Boy, Jamie, Gryko and Roland have been expected to tolerate carries on, then many will wonder why they are providing free content in return for abuse. The troll thinks this is all part of the deal and tells one victim:

You always come back for more Dom, Baby is like the custard slice, you just can't resist.

Some of us are closing the cookie drawer for good.

Various poker thoughts.
Topic: Poker
Online Game Selection

A review of a book by Phil Gordon in Bluff magazine starts with the words 'If you never throw away the best hand, you're calling too much' and continues 'If you never get caught bluffing, you're not bluffing enough'. To these I would like to add DY's rule of online game selection 'If you don't think your opponents are complete morons, you're in the wrong game'.

I have a reputation among some of my critics for being a bit arrogant and condescending. So it's a surprise for me to realise in the last few weeks that a key fault of my online play hitherto has been crediting my opponents with a modicum of intelligence, instead of treating them as total idiots. I first noticed this in my NL play, but later found it to be just as true in limit. I decided that to improve my results I needed to focus more on value betting. It's where all your profit comes from online. In the case of limit poker, I think it's the main thing that UK players who dabble in it fail to appreciate.

Most UK players who try limit report back on how hard it was for them to bluff or get people out of the pot. While I have been in many tough limit games, it's generally true that people call too much in them. But it's not enough to realise that you should bluff far less than you would in pot/no-limit. You must also realise that you should react to this by betting hands that you would never think to bet in big-bet poker. This is where the British get it wrong I think. They think they have lost because of their failed bluffs and the outdraws they have suffered but the real culprit is their unwillingness to make the extra value bets with one-pair on the turn and river that a limit professional would make.

Here is an example:

In a recent six-handed game, I'm on the button with K-10. Two people call before it gets to me and I raise. The blinds fold and the limpers call the raise. On a flop of A-9-3 rainbow, they both check to me. My note for one of them says that with top pair he always leads into a raiser. When they check I decided to bet. I am not under any illusion that anyone will fold an ace here. But I could easily have the best hand and it suits my purposes to get rid of someone with a weaker holding.

They both call, which is a surprise. The turn card is a 10, giving me a pair of tens. Again they both check. I'm still confident that I know for sure that one of them doesn't have an ace, but am worried that the other might, since there was no reasonable draw on the flop he could have been drawing to. So I check behind. On the river they both check again. This time I feel sure that I'm ahead. In the past I would have just checked this hand down. But now I want to earn more. I think it very likely indeed that the one on whom I had a note is holding a pair of 9s and that he will call me down because I checked the turn. So I bet the 10s on the river in the expectation of being called by something worse. In the event, that player did indeed call me. I showed the 10s and he mucked. I can't say for sure what he had, as the VC hand history doesn't show it, but I'm confident it was a pair of 9s.

The Showdown Poker Tour.

A new European-based poker tour starts soon. It's the Showdown Poker Tour. I've nothing against a rival tour to compete with the EPT, but I'm puzzled how this is going to work out. I think it could do well if it pitches itself at a smaller buy-in range than the EPT, but instead it seems to want to go the other way. Its Lithuanian leg is €5,000. France is €7,500 and Germany, where I would love to play poker, is €10,000! Where is all this money supposed to come from? If they can find a way to get runners then great, but am I alone in thinking they have bitten off more than they can chew?

UPDATE - I looked at the Showdown site again and found that Betfair will be running satellites for the inaugural €5,000 London leg at Gutshot, as will the Gutshot online site itself. That may help for that event. But I'm not sure how they can fill the others. The €2,000 event I played in Vienna did not sell out and turnout was down on last year, despite satellites on Party Poker. Pokerstars seems to be the site that can make the most difference and they certainly won't be involved, as they back the EPT.

If only 230 or so people will go to Vienna for a €2,000 event, what are the prospects for a bigger event in Lithuania?

The days are just packed!
Topic: Misc.
I had the privilege of meeting the 2027 WSOP champion today - Mr Jake Brian Banner Hawkins. His mother and father were in town for the #1,500 main event at the Victoria and I met up with all three at the local Marriott. He's a delightful little boy of five months now. It was great to catch up with Keith and Katharine. Favourite moment of the meeting was when Keith noticed his son staring at the window (right of picture) - 'He's fascinated with those blinds' he said. 'Like father like son', I thought.

Later on I made a long awaited trip along the central line and down the northern line to Tooting Bec, that magical tube station immortalised by Jo Haslam at Acehighwins. I wanted, of course, to see the stickers with which she decorates the posters on the escalators and to bask in the magic of the place for myself. First impressions were positve.

But as I walked up the central staircase gazing at the posters on both sides, I began to worry that something was wrong. I couldn't see any stickers at all. Could it all have been a hoax? Had she been lying all along? Or had I turned up on the wrong day, when new posters were put in place, before she had a chance to cover them. I was getting downcast until I saw this:

At last! It's the pig with the cake in his stomach. I've finally seen one of her stickers in situ ... truly a day of achievement!

Does TV have all the best writers?
Topic: Television
I wasted two hours of my life last night watching the third movie in the 'Matrix' trilogy. Don't ask me what it was about. I've really no idea, as it was so boring my mind wandered throughout most of the action. I thought the first of the series was excellent, as it had some novel ideas. It's a shame they didn't end it there.

So many film makers seem to think that special effects can make up for a lack of ideas. They can't. I've been lent some great lower budget films by my flatmate recently and found them far more satisfying. Do see 'Max' (John Cusack and Noah Taylor), 'Nine Queens' (Argentinian) and 'Bullet Boy' (low budget British film, set in Hackney). You won't be in a rush back to the cinema again. When you don't have the budget for special effects, you're forced to think of interesting plots.

All the best writing seems to be in television now. Last year I went to Blockbusters and my local lending library several times and found myself ignoring most of the films there. Instead I rented Series 1-5 of the 'West Wing', 'The Jewel in the Crown' and Season 1 of '24'. I've also enjoyed 'House', 'CSI' and 'Desperate Housewives' on TV. Unlike today's movies they aren't aimed at teenagers or naive social activists.

When looking at a list of the films nominated for the Oscars this year, I realised that I had only seen one of them: the Wallace and Gromit film! I'm mildly interested in seeing 'Capote', as Philip Seymour Hoffman is excellent in almost everything he does. But I've little or no desire to see the issue films of George Clooney, as I don't want to be subjected to their biased point of view. On the subject of which, full marks to my sister for walking out of 'The Constant Gardnener' due to its anti-corporate bias. I've never walked out of a film before the end, but have great respect for those who do.

Now with added RSS.
Topic: Misc.
I've been looking at the settings on my blog and discovered that I can enable something called RSS. I don't really understand what it is, but I recall James Butler writing to me to say that I should get an RSS feed. About 20 minutes later, after my failure to establish one, he wrote back to say that he would no longer be bothering to read this site if I couldn't be bothered to quit the stone age. That was several months ago.

I've no idea what this RSS thing will do. According to Tripod - "Non-paying users will have a more basic page generated for them". As I am on the free service, don't expect too much.

Try harder.
Topic: Misc.
The actor Bruce Willis recently said in an interview that the US should invade Colombia to stop the production of cocaine, because its supply to the US was "a form of terrorism".

I quite like Willis as a person, as he's refreshingly right-wing by Hollywood standards. However I can't help thinking that the facts support the opposite conclusion; that it would be fairer for Colombians to demand an invasion of the US. That's because I have a different view of who the victim is in the drug trade.

It's common to think that drug users are the people who suffer from drug use. They are victims of course, but their suffering comes about through their own choice and is a by-product of something that they find rewarding. The people who suffer most are those innocent people in the countries where the drugs are produced, whose society is made ungovernable through the corruption of the police, judiciary and government caused by so much wealth flowing into the hands of criminal gangs. They are the people whom I feel sorry for, not the idiots who have heart attacks after years of using cocaine. The latter know the risks and have a choice. The former have none.

On stability in Iraq.
Topic: Politics
"We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

That was President John F. Kennedy.

No mention of 'exit strategies'.
No mention of 'stability'.
No mention of 'legality'.
Just an unapologetic and defiant declaration of the need to fight for freedom.

I am sometimes held to have been 'wrong' about Iraq, because of the continuing violence there. While I did not forecast the savagery that has persisted, I remain convinced that the war has been right. And the savagery that persists, in a peculiar way, shows that some people do understand that I'm right. Those people are the terrorists themselves, who grasp that a successful, prosperous and free Iraq would be a mortal blow to their long term plans, because prosperity and freedom would divert muslims from victimhood and the quest for jihad.

While I would like stability for Iraq and indeed anywhere else, I must again stress that stability for me is a necessary but not sufficient condition of success. Stability is only meaningful if it applies to a just society. And whatever you may think about Iraq now, it is more just. If you only want stability, go to Auschwitz. It's tremendously stable. But it's associated with the greatest injustice of all time.

Moreover, stability is an illusion. Nothing is ever static in the affairs of man. What we've learned from decades of containment is that in the end, it's the container who gets contained. The rogue states play games with weapons inspectors, bribe UN officials to release funds for illicit purposes and while this illusion of stability is maintained, the free world slumbers in a false sense of security until disaster strikes and it's forced to fight - just as in 1939. I don't want that to happen again.

If you haven't already read it, check out the essay 'Stability, America's enemy' in the essential reading section of the left hand sidebar.

No gloating until I get back, please.
Topic: Misc.
I'm off to Vienna this afternoon with the intention of playing the ?2,000 E-WSOP main event, so blogging will be light or non-existent while I am away. This is the comp I've always wanted to play, but never felt like pulling up for. However I've done very well in the last six to nine months and it's now only a small proportion of my bankroll. Although I don't play anywhere near as many comps as many of those who are going, I am happy that I have an edge in the game. I won two comps online last week (one with 400+ runners, another with only 70) and I won a two outright last year and from memory came second in another, with a few other money finishes. Not bad given that I play so few of them.

But before leaving, I have to remark on the strange 'gloating' messages I have had recently. I'm not against gloating per se. In fact I have encouraged it before.

But some of the gloats I've had aimed at me recently make little or no sense at all. In particular, the person who said that the election of Hamas had been "a Bit of a slap in the chops for you" clearly didn't read what I wrote on Dec 21 last year:

https://members.tripod.com/overlay_uk3/sleepless/index.blog?entry_id=1312774

which concludes:

"Fundamentalists can shout empty slogans like 'Islam in the answer' and never be disputed as long as they are kept out of power. Islamism must be given the chance to fail, democratically."

The same person also tells me "What you expect of Islam is never going to happen". Well I can't see the harm in trying! Because the alternative of doing nothing is so much worse. And if you really believe that muslims can't adapt to democracy, then Europe has as much of a problem as Iraq does. Bosnia and Turkey are likely to be admitted to the EU in the next ten years or so!

I'm also puzzled by the civil war jibes about Iraq. I appear to have more faith in the common sense of the average Iraqi than such critics. But again, if I'm wrong then Britain has as much of a problem in the long term as Iraq does. For all the people who insist that the Shia and the Sunni cannot get on together, I've yet to encounter one who goes on to wonder why then this country allows muslims of both groups to live here.

And while we're on the subject of 'civil war', can we at least be clear that for there to be an Iraqi civil war, then both sides must be Iraqi? In the case of the most repugnant suicide attacks, it's clear that many of the bombers themselves have come from outside Iraq.

As for the snipes about not responding to my right-wing critics (!!) who say that I'm overlooking the threat to America's dominance through its Imperial Overstretch and loss of world reserve currency status, I have explained before why I don't discuss this. It's because it brings back painful memories of something I did over ten years ago. As I explained to James Butler not long after I started this site. Specifically:

https://members.tripod.com/overlay_uk3/sleepless/control.comment?a=add&entry_id=154994

in which I related how I was required to prepare a talk about a subject of my choosing for a public presentation course while I worked at Midland Bank. Bizarrely I decided to talk about 'Decline of the United States'. As I later wrote:

Several years ago I was worried about it too. I even went as far as to buy a bestselling book about it: Paul Kennedy's `Preparing for the Twentieth Century'. And nicely gathering dust it is too. In the four or five years since I've bought it, I haven't read more than one paragraph. I did however read another doom-and-gloom book by William Rees-Mogg and James Davidson called `The Great Reckoning'. So worried was I by the predictions of its chapter about urban America (titled `Drugs, delusions and the imperial culture of the slums') that when I needed to prepare something for a presentation course at Midland Bank, I delivered a talk on `The Decline of the United States'.

I cringe now to think that in the decade or so since I gravely told my audience of the forthcoming collapse of the US, the country went on to record nine consecutive years of economic growth. Didn't they know that they were supposed to suffer economic disaster? The cheek of those damn yanks! And I was so solemn too.

After the briefest of recessions, the US economy is now growing at over 7 per cent! For an advanced economy, that is a truly incredible result. I guess in part, I'm trying to spare Butler the embarrassment I now feel. Don't dig any deeper James, you'll only regret it! He writes: `But how much longer will it last? When the money runs out and the heathens batter their doors down then they won't be as happy as their TV persona would suggest. Yet again he is obsessed with the decline of empires. In particular the one he has read about the most. In James' world, all odes lead to Rome.

I've heard of this idea of the decline of the dollar. I've read about Imperial Overstretch. I've bought the book, drank the Kool-Aid, and worn the T-Shirt. I just hope nobody has a picture of me wearing it! It's too embarrassing.

All the best until I get back!


*See also: https://members.tripod.com/overlay_uk3/sleepless/index.blog?entry_id=109560