Getting started

Really not sure about this. Mostly I am exactly what they say bloggers are - writers of letters to the editor who don't like their stuff being rejected! Well sort of. I do write to the Guardian and the Eastern Daily Press and I do smart a bit if they don't use it. But that's just vanity really. I was a hack so I should be used to the pain of the spike.

So what shall I write? Anything really. I shall try not to be a GOM even if I am chronologically and probably by inclination exactly that. I accept that coppers really are getting younger, they don't just seem to be. But I do wish they wore less stuff round their body and that more of it was helpful to ordinary mortals rather than threatening (GOMing already!). I do think Blair and Brown are right wing lunatics who have abandoned proper socialism. But I prefer a regulated free market to the alternatives - I just wish we would regulate properly like the Americans!

Talking of which, I quite like Americans in small and social doses but having worked for them and alongside them I would prefer them to keep their business attitudes and alleged acumen in North America. They are nothing like as busy as they give the impression, tend towards neuroticism, organise significant time off and, in their admiration for profit and entrepreneurism, allow monstrosities like ENRON, Worldcom, Bear Stearns, Lehmann Brothers and Freddi Mae and Freddi Mac and all the rest to grow fast, ugly and bust horribly.

I am pro Europe but not over everything. Like most people I do not trust bureaucrats and the EU has too many of them with too much power. I agree with union but I would like a root and branch clean up of the Parliament, its members and of the administration.

Sadly I concede that the Australians have the best cricket side in the world even now and that to a shatteringly great extent most 'English' cricketers need to get back to basics - like doing some work for a start! KP is a genius but flawed and will, like Compton, Gower and others of that ilk continue to frustrate us as often as he inspires us. We have to learn to live with it - he's the best weve got (and unlike Ramprakash, the best we never had, we seem willing to go with his flow). Broade is no Botham or Flintoff but he too is bthe best we have and could be a McGrath with the ball and a Gilchrist with the bat - give him room. Strauss is well good enough so all we need is the other EIGHT!