What Would Fred Perry Have Thought?
As I worked on my computer or drove around the country, I would often have the radio on. I can remember listening to BBC Radios 2 and 5, as they covered Wimbledon in the 1980s and early 1990s, when Fred Perry was one of the summarisers. He was very good and talked eloquently about the sport he loved.
Fred Perry died in 1995, so he never saw Andy Murray, although he may have seen Tim Henman.
I do wonder what his thoughts would have been, if he’d seen Murray’s win yesterday.
Andy Murray Shows The BBC Were Wrong To Move To Manchester
Andy Murray’s win is the lead story on BBC Breakfast, but he can’t appear in the studio with the trophy, to give out a very strong feelgood factor that we all need, as the program comes from Manchester.
If ever that ill-thought out move was exposed as a mistake, it is today. The BBC will have to make-do with a video link from the All-England Club at Wimbledon.
I won’t give odds on one of the BBC’s rival getting Murray and the trophy on air.
My Greatest TV Sporting Moments
On BBC Radio 5 last night, they were asking what listeners most important memories of televised sport were, after Andy Murray’s win at Wimbledon yesterday on the seventh of the seventh to end seventy-seven years of disappointment.
Here’s mine.
Laker’s Match in 1956
I remember watching this and especially the screen the BBC showed when the match had ended early because of England’s victory. Read more.
Stirling Moss winning the 1957 British Grand Prix
In fact it was a shared win, as his car broke down and he took over that of Tony Brooks. Read more.
Stiring Moss winning the 1960 Monaco Grand Prix
This must rank as one of the greatest ever Formula One wins by a British driver, as Moss held off three much more powerful Ferraris in his Lotus-Climax. Read more.
Tottenham winning the FA Cup in 1961
This of course gave them the first Football League/FA Cup double since the 19th century.
Mandarin winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1962
Why I was watching this on an afternoon in March, I don’t know, but it was probably because I was off sick from school with the affliction from which I still suffer. It was a masterful ride by that old fox Fred Winter, who kept one of the cleverest steeplechasers to the inside, all round the course at Cheltenham.
Bruce Tulloh Winning Gold in Belgrade in 1962
Few others would include this, as he was not a great runner, but using supreme tactics and going from 800 metres out, he won the European Championships with ease. He showed that if you want something enough, you can get it. Read more.
England winning the World Cup in 1966
I was with my parents in Felixstowe and as we didn’t have a television, I saw it at our next door neighbours.
David Hemery winning Gold in Mexico in 1968
This was an amazing performance and I can still hear David Coleman’s commentary. Read more.
Mary Peters winning Gold in Munich in 1972
This was another amazing win and I’ve written about it before.
Red Rum’s third victory in the Grand National in 1977
Although, I remember the 1973 race, this one is more poignant as I can remember C screaming her head off at the television, as she cheered him home. Strangely, this memory was at the same venue as Moss’s victory in 1957.
Mo Farah’s Double Gold in London in 2012
This can’t be left out, as I’ll never see anything like this again. I did try very hard to get tickets to go, but when the ballot was held, I didn’t have any money, as my house hadn’t been sold.
If I write this list again, Murray’s win yesterday will definitely be included. Although it’s quite likely, that he could exclude this memory by perhaps winning Wimbledon a few more times.
Slow High Speed Rail
The Dutch and the Belgians have abandoned their new Fyra high-speed trains and are replacing them with coaches hauled by TRAXX locomotives as is reported here.
The Fyra was supposed to run at 250 kph, but they have proved to be very unreliable. On the other hand the TRAXX-hauled coaches are probably limited to about 200 kph. So they will have a high-speed line called HSL-Zuid, which has been designed for up to 300 kph, with trains on it running at well below that speed.
It’s a bit like putting the the Class 90s and the Mk 3 coaches you get between London and Norwich, on the East or West Coast Main Line. Some of course, used to work there twenty years ago, so they are a bit clapped, but they are generally more reliable than Fyra, which has been nicknamed the ALDI-trein
In fact here’s an idea!
I’m sure we’ve got some old Class 90s and a few rakes of coaches, we could lend to the Dutch and the Belgians. But there are various problems in that Continental trains are bigger than ours and I don’t think they’d fit the platforms. They also wouldn’t be able to work all the high-speed line as some parts and the rest of the Netherlands doesn’t use 25kV like the UK and most of Europe.
It would appear the Dutch and the Belgians, with the help of a basket case of an Italian train maker, have dug themselves an enormous hole. Now they are going to get themselves out of trouble, using an engine built in Germany by a Canadian company.
I wonder how many civil servants and politicians have been fired because of this fiasco?
We may have done a few things wrong with the trains in the last fifty or so years, but we’ve never created anything as bad as this!
The Hitchin Flyover Opens
It was only in May, that I took a couple of pictures of the construction of the Hitchin Flyover. It is now open for test purposes and a few passenger trains according to this story from Network Rail. There is a good time-lapse video of the construction in the Network Rail article.
It’s Hot Out There!
I’ve got the air-conditioning on with the curtains drawn and it’s still 24.7°C in my living room.
But the air-conditioner is showing an air temperature of 30°C on my roof.
I’m watching Murray against Djorkovic and I do wonder if Murray is playing the psychological card by not wearing a hat. After all logically, as someone born a lot further north than his opponent, you’d think, he wouldn’t be able to take the heat as well!
Some Sense On HS2
There is a report on the BBC, which says that a new station could be built at Old Oak Common to link HS2 and Crossrail. Here’s the first two paragraphs.
Views are being sought on plans for a High Speed 2 and Crossrail station in west London, as part of a scheme it is claimed could create up to 90,000 jobs.
Greater London Authority is consulting residents on the plan for Old Oak, which it says will generate jobs and see thousands of homes built.
I think it’s a good idea and I suspect many others will too, especially, as it will allow the creation of lots of much needed new homes and jobs in the capital.
Other points include.
- This station would take the pressure off Euston as many passengers coming from or going to the North on HS2 would probably prefer to change to Crossrail for the London end of their journey.
- Would less traffic through Euston mean that the need to rebuild Euston station and its dreadful connections to the Underground, could be sensibly delayed?
- If there is less pressure on Euston, the need for Crossrail 2 is probably less.
- It creates a one change connection between the North and Heathrow Airport.
- If a Thames Estuary Airport is built, then I suspect that would be linked to Crossrail, so that is just one change too.
- This plan creates a link between large areas of West London to long distance rail services, especially if the West London and North London lines were to be improved.
But it does show even more that we need some holistic planning, which sorts out London, its railways and airports for the next thirty years or so.
If you look at the area on a map, you will find that the area is served by several railway lines at present including the Great Western Main Line, the West Coast Main Line, the London Overground and even the Central and Bakerloo Lines of the London Underground. There would also appear to be large areas of industrial land, that would probably be ripe for development.
Is It Time To Leave Lloyds TSB?
If I was a Lloyds TSB customer, who was being summarily moved to another bank, like the Co-operative Bank or hived off into a subsidiary that was being privatised or perhaps sold to a sovereign wealth fund, I would not be pleased. In fact, given the shenanigans at the bank in this area, over the last couple of years, I would have been long gone.
This disregard of customer wishes is akin to buying a new Sony television and then when it is working well, getting a letter to say, that your new television is being swapped for a Samsung, for no good reason.
It is a matter of my human rights, that I choose where I keep my money and it has nothing to do with the government.
I don’t think that I’m the only person, who thinks like this and it will be interesting to see how many customers Lloyds TSB lose.
Today there is a story on the BBC web site, about how the banks are lining up to take part in the sale of the government’s stake in Lloyds TSB. This will only make matters worse and I suspect, a once-great British institution, will end up in the hands of foreigners.
I certainly will have nothing to do with the Lloyds TSB sale and if it was decided that every UK citizen, should get a few free shares, I’d just say thank you very much, cash them in as soon as I could and then spend the money on something more worthwhile.
Freeing Up Disk Space On Vista
I found this useful article.
Zopa Starts Loans To Sole Traders
Zopa is now moving into new territory by announcing business loans to sole traders. The details are here. Here’s Zopa’s reasoning as reported by the article.
We’ve chosen to start our business loans with sole traders for two reasons:
1. We saw that there were few opportunities for smart sole traders, with a good credit and trading history, to access good-value loans.
2. Sole traders are often looking for loans of a similar size and time period as our personal loan borrowers so offering these loans doesn’t require big changes for our savers to the way they choose to lend
So will it make any difference to the risk of investing in Zopa?
I don’t think it will make much difference at all, especially as I suspect the profile of the sole traders they lend to, won’t be far removed from a typical Zopa personal borrower.
The only problem, I can see is that to support this new area of lending the Government is injecting millions into Zopa. What effect will this have on the rates lenders like myself get, I do not know or wish to predict!
The Anonymous Widower 