Hallam's Journal

So, more on the arrest and detention of a member of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, by counter-terrorism police officers, for the crime of doing his job.

This BBC article is a pretty good analysis, saves me typing out more than I need.

See, those of us who oppose giving The Man more free rein to lock people up for no fucking reason, this is EGGZACKLY what we were talking about. And those of you (you the public) who went "ooh, well they need these powers because these are WEALLY WEALLY BAD PEOPLE, they are TERRORISTS and want to KILL US you know", this is the point at which you should feel a little bit sick in your stomachs and start thinking "oh shit what have we gorn and done". This is the point at which you should be realising that your assumption that The Man would only ever lock up Actual Weally Weally Bad People aka Terrorists (you can recognise them because they have beards and long robes and preface all their sentences with "durka durka", trufact) was one of the more UNFORGIVABLY STUPID things you have ever thought. You give 'em these powers, they WILL use them. Because why not? I mean, you would, wouldn't you? Jump through all these annoying hoops, or use your voucher for One Free Special Branch Dawn Raid?

You gots to read the small print. You gots to actually look at what these "counter-terrorism powers" are. Look past the label "counter-terrorism". What powers are you giving away? Because that label "counter-terrorism" does not mean shit. And it hurts to know that people are so easily fucking led that they do believe that label means something. It doesn't surprise me, but it just hurts to know this is the way things are. Fancy a tortured, wanky, sick-making, teenage militant metaphor? Well I don't give a shit, you're getting one anyways. Here you fucking go. The railroad to hell is built of unintended consequences (the rails), laid onto the wishful thinking of the naive (the sleepers). Cos you were fucking asleep, weren't you? And you've laid a good little railroad. Well done.

Abuse of power is tempting. And habit forming.
Remember, everyone, that people who love power don't tend to love it a little bit. They love it a whole damn lot.

I'm fucking off to Norway.

Very sad news that I read this weekend about the suicide of David Foster Wallace. On Brunchma, ticket_monkey pointed us towards this speech, the commencement address that DFW gave to students at Kenyon University in 2005.

It's also one year since Colin McRae died. Someone with a completely different set of achievements, of course. I didn't intend to compare them: it just so happens that the two losses are in the same post. I guess we can say that someone can give us something by a life's work of doing as well as a life's work of thinking and writing; if we feel like making a habit of pointless truisms, that is.

It's exactly 14 years since Brazilian racing driver Ayrton Senna was killed during the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola.

( some of you will know the story anyway )

So, I guess we can think back on the loss of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger, and also feel grateful that Heikki Kovalainen survived his crash, and that his family and colleagues have only had to suffer brief gutwrenching uncertainty, not final and irreplaceable loss.

Antonio Puerta didn't make it.

I was watching the game on TV.
You see that something is wrong, and the players are clearly extremely anxious, and you think "I hope the guy is alright", after all he only seemed to faint, and you think "the other players did seem very frightened by just a faint, I do hope the guy is alright". And the next day you hear that he suffered a heart attack, so you look for some news, and the English news outlets are poor on foreign sporting news so you go and read Marca with your poor Spanish, which is good enough to understand that Puerta collapsed again in the dressing room and suffered several heart attacks on the way to the hospital, that it was ventricular fibrillation, currently under medical control (and if it isn't controlled then it results in death). And you read, slowly, in your poor Spanish, that he had passed out on two previous occasions, but it was hot those times, so everyone just thought he had fainted in the heat, but the match against Getafe was in the evening, and it was not hot, and that is why his colleagues were so anxious - it is not hot *now* so something must be seriously wrong and have been seriously wrong.

If I had not been watching the match I would not be so sad now. When you saw the man fall down, you do not like to hear that he is dead. Not a fan of Sevilla or anything, just watching a game on the telly. And from reading the medical bits, reminded of a friend who also died, suddenly, of a heart that suddenly went wrong. Although this is about how sad it is that this young sportsman died, of a heart that suddenly went wrong. And how terrible it is that there are illnesses where the main symptom, the thing the patient first presents with, is sudden death.

I knew we'd lose as soon as the draw came out. The mojo belongs to Martin, not to us.
We played well. We "gave a good account of ourselves" as the cliché goes, leaving it right until the last minute of extra time before imploding at the back in classic Leicester fashion.

I felt faint after Henderson saved Gareth Barry's penalty. Bit my fingers sore for our last chance corners.

I am simply sad that we lost. Just sad. I'm proud of everyone for playing so well. That (apart from the defensive collapse at the end) is the way we should play - hard working, harrying, pushing forward, using width. We have to work hard because we're never going to be up to the eyeballs in skill. When a bit of skill comes along it's lovely and special. Once in a long while a truly classy player like Muzzy Izzet comes along, and we treasure them every minute that they're with us. Sometimes I wonder whether I took those years for granted. I kept myself aware all the time that it was a very special time to be a Leicester fan. And really, now is not so bad a time. We're starting to get into shape. Starting to put together performances like last nigh. I hope we keep on with it - I hope the manager says the right things to make it happen in the league.

(  waffling about the table )

Next time perhaps you'd better stop me before I start talking about the table.