Not long until the World Cup

 Not long until the World Cup

The world of football is approaching this World Cup with a good deal of well-founded fear and trepidation. Quite apart from the minor concerns surrounding its location, its choice of country and its wildly unseasonal timing, there are so many outside considerations that have to be taken into account. It could prove to be one of the most successful World Cups in recent history but the pall of controversy that has now fallen quite disturbingly over a World Cup in Qatar just doesn't sit right for some of us.

The traditionalists would have you believe that one of the most prestigious and glamorous of international tournaments should have been resolved at the beginning of July rather than a week before Christmas. This just feels barely credible since most of us have come to regard the World Cup as a hugely enjoyable extension to the regular domestic club season all over the world. But here we are on the final day of October, the clocks have just gone back an hour in Britain and the rest of the football world is still wrestling with its conscience. 

But it's not as if we hadn't prepared for the forthcoming football banquets in the Middle East. UEFA, in its infinite ignorance according to some, have experimented too far. We have now seen a whole host of exotic locations for football's global top table and perhaps we should be conditioned to the eccentricities of those who make these strangely surreal decisions on football's future. In theory, there is nothing inherently wrong with Qatar as the host of this winter's World Cup but then you hear the complaints, the madness of it all, the deeply questionable morality issues that have underpinned all the preparations for this World Cup.

In 2002 South Korea and Japan brought an endearing charm to the World Cup with their quaint Oriental traditions and customs, the pagodas and temples and, of course, their football. South Korea progressed sensationally in that year's tournament and almost reached the Final. Eight years later in South Africa, the horrific evil of apartheid and racial hatred paled into insignificance as South Africa, patriotically backed by the effervescent Nelson Mandela, made us all feel very good about each other. The nation of the beautiful veldts and the Springboks made the memorable noise of the vuvuzelas and the country revelled in the reflected glory.

Four years ago Kylian M'Bappe became the most dangerous, gifted and natural goal scorer France had produced since the likes of Thierry Henry, Just Fontaine and Raymond Kopa. France will be in Qatar as World Cup holders and hoping that their footballing heritage will stand them in good stead for this edition of the World Cup. The French have always given us gastronomic feasts of attacking football. You'd hardly expect anything else. But whether the seasoning and garnish will be present to complete their sumptuous approach work remains to be seen.

And of course England will be in Qatar because England always qualify for both Euros and World Cup tournaments. For a number of years now England seem to be thrown into qualifying groups that would make a majority of park footballers salivate with joy and lick their lips. But we then all laugh at the predictability of it all, England sailing serenely into a major tournament and then lulled into a false sense of security. In Qatar, England will be in familiar territory but in circumstances that may be alien. They may have been in French vineyards and Italian piazzas and among Spanish siestas but the deserts of Qatar could find them flummoxed, perhaps out of their comfort zone and longing for British tomato ketchup.

But England will always have their Gareth Southgate, a man so polished and progressive in his thinking that you'd think butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. There is something of the erudite student about Southgate that always reminds you of a university don swotting up for a history exam. The beard is still an integral part of his persona and the air of the barrack room lawyer is still as palpable as ever. Southgate is no court room inquisitor although there is nothing judgmental about him. He does though conduct himself at Press conferences with all the diplomatic restraint of a man who just wants the best for his national team.

On November 21st England open their group qualifying World Cup match with the kind of game against the USA that still sends awkward shivers down England fans spines. In the 2010 World Cup group game in South Africa, England manager Fabio Capello looked like a man who had just discovered that somebody had stolen his bottle of Chianti. When England striker Wayne Rooney started mouthing unpleasant sounding accusations against his England supporters you almost sympathised with him. A side held to a goal-less draw by Algeria still sounds like a minor grim apocalypse. Disaster struck.

It hardly seems like it of course but older England supporters may still be haunted by Billy Wright's England 72 years ago. Back then of course English football thought it was somehow brazenly superior to every footballing nation across the globe. There was a snobbish insularity about England's football, a stubborn refusal to recognise the rest of the world. But in 1950 the USA, who were barely on nodding terms with a football let alone play the game, pulled off the most astonishing win in World Cup history. Even now the sight of billions of Americans tuning into their radios for what seemed the impossible dream can only be imagined and much to their stunned amazement that the USA had beaten England 1-0 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

England then play Iran, who are at the moment a country once again in military turmoil, a country tormented by the memory of tin pot dictators and nothing even remotely redemptive. The Ayatollah still casts a pernicious shadow over Iran and war is something the people have become tragically accustomed to. Still, football does have an innate capacity for bringing nations together, for harmonising the dissenting voices, pacifying the violent thugs and the murderous minds. England should beat Iran quite comfortably but then we are talking about England here.

And finally England play their last group game against Wales. It's hard to believe that the last time Wales reached a World Cup, Bill Hayley and the Comets were still rocking around the clock. Then gentleman John Charles towered over the World Cup of 1958 in Sweden and the valleys were melodious again. Wales almost stopped everybody in our tracks when a stunning Gareth Bale free kick gave them the lead in Euro 2016 against England. England ran out as winners though the hearts were beating like trip hammers.

We've all heard about Qatar's disgraceful human rights record, its aversion to alcohol, its criminal stance on homophobia and its general sense of what can only be described as perhaps naivete. This is their first time as hosts of a World Cup and it's hard to know what to make of a country that still thinks of football as some kind of expedient political tool to make its voice heard around the world. The smell of corruption seems almost repulsive at times and the chances are that judgments of their World Cup suitability may have to go on hold. But we'll all be there on all social media platforms, heated phone ins, TV, radio, Smartphone and any device that just happens to be at our disposal. 

World Cups don't get any more contentious or polarising as this one in Qatar. Your thoughts turn back to Manchester City's owners and those who control the purse strings at Newcastle United. Arab sheikhs and the vulgar rich of both clubs are almost a dominant sight in the Premier League. We await the arrival of now the vastly populated men's World Cup in Qatar. If you're ready, then we shall begin.

National Chocolate Day.

National Chocolate Day.

You do know what day it is today, don't you? You must have had it written in your diary for ages. You must have been longing for this day for quite a while and let's face it you deserve to enjoy this day for all its worth. There must have come a point when you thought it would never arrive but everything comes to those who wait. So you popped into your local newsagent or sweet shop, scrutinised the vast selection and variety of chocolate bars and you just couldn't resist the temptation. Go on treat yourself. You've been eating chocolate for as long as anybody can remember and now seems as good a time as ever. 

Today Ladies and Gentlemen is National Chocolate Day and what better incentive is there to spend at least half an hour salivating at both dark and milk chocolate, those timeless classics that have sat invitingly on supermarket shelves, local corner shops and those big, sweet emporiums where whole acres of row upon row of chocolates look ever so appealing and mouth-watering. It is one of those irresistible indulgences and delightful treats we all need when times are stressful, the workload has been both punishing and overwhelming and you just need to wind down during the day. 

Ever since those early days, when those cocoa bean plantations first provided us with the first tantalising glimpse of chocolate, most of us would make no secret of the fact that all of us need such guilty pleasures. There's Mars, Milky Way, Snickers, those glorious boxes of Celebrations and at the end of the most expensive market, Thorntons. There were the countless bars of Dairy Milk, Hershey's in the USA and my personal favourite Bourneville, the chocolate bar that simply melts deliciously in your mouth. It is the most common and recurring theme during our lives because we all need that ultimate taste sensation.

So, let's hear it for the humble chocolate bar, a symbolic reminder of our childhood, the perfect reward for the young child who had done so exceptionally well in his or her multiplication tables in maths, earned five stars for knowing the capitals of the world in geography and then painted a magnificent landscape in art. You must remember it, surely. Head down in your exercise book in your school classroom, sweating industriously at English comprehension and essay writing, agonising over science and then working off school dinners with a thorough work out in PE.

You cast your minds back to your formative days in primary school when the end of your day was punctuated beautifully by that first taste of chocolate. It almost felt like an introduction to something that would resonate in your life indefinitely. We were surrounded by sweet shops when we were young and they were always within easy access to your route back to your parents home after school. We crossed those big roads in Ilford, Essex, tenderly holding the hand of our mother and then nagged mum into submission. It almost felt like an early rite of passage at such a young stage of your life. 

At the time of course most children must have thought it was somehow compulsory, a vital necessity since the day itself had been a hard, gruelling slog and besides we just needed to relax with something sweet and truly lovely. In fact it is hard to imagine how any child could have survived their first years of toil and drudgery staring at endless blackboards and then wincing when the chalks scraped across the board with almost infuriating regularity although we did make allowances for it eventually. We knew of course that the sweet shop would become our regular haunt.

Chocolate more or less defined who we were as kids. We greeted with delight that first birthday cake, layer upon layer of chocolate cream smothered with yet more lashings of chocolate oozing from the cake. Little did we know it at the time but chocolate became an important moment of our lives, a seminal day filled with love, family and friends, a time to gather at parties, weddings, barmitzvahs, cinemas and restaurants where slabs of chocolate would dominate desserts. We'd nibble away moreishly away at bags of chocolate eclairs while feasting our eyes on the latest Bond movie.

Years later of course we would be reminded of the health dangers and drawbacks of eating too much chocolate. Our parents, always doting, would tell us repeatedly that chocolate would rot our teeth, increase the likelihood of obesity in later life and make us sick if eaten to excess. A Mars a day made you work, rest and play but subconsciously it also represented something that would have a far more damaging effect on our waistline. We didn't know it at the time but chocolate was really bad for you and we should really stop eating it because if we didn't we'd put on substantial stones of weight, looking podgy and rotund.

But chocolate has to be associated with any of our religious festivals be it Sukkot and Simchat Torah in the Jewish religion, Ramadan for the Asian community and, above all, Easter eggs and Christmas. We'd like to think that chocolate will always be around for us because it just has and always will be. It is a consolation and comfort when times are rough and a hot chocolate drink from the drinks machine.

British commercial TV channels have become synonymous with everything we may have watched as kids. There was Black Magic, the box of chocolates so seductively packaged that men would go to all lengths to seek the approval of their girlfriend or wife. Dairy Milk Tray and, After Eights in mint flavour were always available on my wonderful grand-parents 1970s hostess trolley and it was also very much a shared, collective memory that all of us could think back on with unalloyed affection.

And yet Bourneville were also immensely popular chocolates in my grandparents cupboards, mountains of dark chocolate that just stimulated the senses and made you almost a connoisseur of chocolate's finer textures. So today is National Chocolate Day, a celebration of exquisite choc flavours, your tasted buds enjoying instant gratification and satisfying your appetite immediately at the end of a meal. Oh, we can never tire of chocolate. Let the chocolate fest begin.

Rishi Sunak is the new Prime Minister.

 Rishi Sunak is the new Prime Minister

It had none of the glamour or razzamatazz of Tony Blair's arrival at 10 Downing Street, the pioneering and radical spirit of Margaret Thatcher, the tobacco and pipe of Harold Wilson nor the cheerful confidence of a smiling Edward Heath but Rishi Sunak will, we must hope, bring his own very special qualities to the office of Prime Minister.

Today Sunak as has now been well reported, is the first Asian Prime Minister to hold this most of unenviable of jobs and now a man entrusted with the ultimate responsibility of taking charge of the least coveted of political positions. The last couple of weeks or so have totally drained the country of every ounce of energy and our engagement with those who wish to lead the country with honour has now been soured by a whole sequence of financial misjudgments and irrational thinking.

But the man who became one of the most prominent figures at Goldman Sachs and clearly knows his times table, multiplication, division, long division and has an obvious prowess with money, will now enter 10 Downing Street as one of the most immensely knowledgeable figures in the world of high finance. This man certainly knows his way around company audits, balance sheets and bewildering columns of numbers with his eyes shut so a now embattled economy can now see a much clearer view of the future.

And yet the country is still wrestling with doubts, anxieties, scepticism and nothing but negativity. You'd have thought we'd chosen the right person for the job by now since most of the nation seems to have been held hostage by sniping critics and those who maintain that the country is still going to hell in a handcart. But the naysayers and whingers are reigning supreme and there are so many grievances, end of the world declarations in the air that you'd have been forgiven for thinking that the world is disappearing down a very dark tunnel and never likely to recover at any time shortly.

Some of us are beginning to wonder whether we'll ever find that perfect combination of intelligent leadership and sensible financial prudence so essential to those who aspire to live at 10 Downing Street. Sunak seemed the most likely candidate for the job even before Liz Truss had got her feet under the table. But Sunak was pushed back into second place and little did we know then that the Tory party were just at sixes and sevens, dithering, fumbling and just gambling on the best-case scenario.

Within a fortnight the Tories have imploded, exploded and now finds themselves desperate for resurrection in a way that might just haul the country back from the precipice. The facts and figures will stare out at Sunak from the moment he gets out his calculator and then restores some kind of credibility when all would appear lost. Interest rates are soaring into the stratosphere and remnants of the shambles left behind by the previous Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng still remind you of a scientific experiment that went dreadfully wrong.

For now though Sunak has quite obviously called for both unity and stability, time for a sharp intake of breath and no panic. There is no need for a series of emergency measures to paper over the cracks but it does seem clear that if Sunak can't re-discover the feelgood factor and the promise of sun lit uplands then we're probably back at square one. There is a sense here that we are now at a critical point in the country's economic fortunes. We could go in this direction as opposed to the other but then decisions could be made that still leave a bitter taste in the mouth.

It is at this point that the combined forces of the opposing Labour party now decide to air their objections. Of course, they want a General Election because they're convinced that only Labour are capable of formulating brilliant economic policies. They would, wouldn't they? But the problem is that we are now in the land of childish petulance, a world littered with pointless jealousy and envy. Labour has now been the Shadow opposition for well over a decade and any sense of injustice and resentment is perfectly understandable. Sadly, though Sir Keir Starmer, their leader, may not have the credentials for Number 10 anyway because there's something missing and they can't put their finger on it.

So here we are on the day Rashi Sunak became the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. We all remember the last time a Tory prime minister outstayed their welcome. Margaret Thatcher was booted out of 10 Downing Street by the Doc Martins and leather jackets of the Tory bovver boys. They told her to go in no uncertain terms and she reluctantly accepted her fate. Sunak, for his part, is the youngest Prime Minister of recent times and there are bound to be teething problems but there are those of us who are just heartily sick and tired of all this nonsensical bleating and whining. At some point things have to settle down and sound commonsense prevail. For those of us demanding some kind of clarity and resolution, things may have to get worse before they get any better. It's over to you Rishi. 

Government blood letting.

 Government blood-letting.

It's all getting gory, gruesome and most unseemly. This morning Liz Truss, now the former Prime Minister, must have flung open her curtains or blinds and amid all the maddening chaos of it all, simply taken herself off to a dark, empty room while gathering her thoughts and trying to put everything into some kind of sober perspective. The trouble is that all of those ferocious critics of her Prime Ministerial tenure just won't let it go. Politics is a merciless, barbaric business where nothing that even comes close to sentiment, forgiveness, leniency or any shadow of remorse can sort this one out. 

For a while Truss must have thought she'd landed the kind of dream job that others would simply envy for the rest of their lives. The Tory party, under siege for almost the entire year, were pinching themselves when they elected Liz Truss as the new Prime Minister. She was respectable, positive, always upping the ante, well intentioned and looked as though she'd captured the hearts of Britain. Then the honeymoon period  turned into one blazing row and everything fell apart at the seams quite catastrophically. 

First to be given his P45 and the marching orders out of the back door was one Kwasi Kwarteng, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Now it's common knowledge that any incoming Chancellor should have an accurate head for figures, mathematical calculations, pricing levels all the while juggling with huge sums of money with almost effortless ease. Almost overnight though one mini- Budget announcement from Kwarteng almost brought about a terrifying international incident. He'd well and truly upset the apple cart. 

Before long, there were scenes of anarchy, mass aggression, flailing fists, shoving and elbowing in a way that was simply unprecedented. Of course there were always the jocular jibes, the facetious jokes in the House of Commons tea room and those childish insults that almost bordered on blasphemy. Bad behaviour between both Tory and Labour parties has always been legendary but this was truly appalling. Truss was history, we were repeatedly told, a waste of space, incapable and indecisive and not really knowing what she was supposed to do. 

Poor Liz Truss didn't stand a chance. Events overwhelmed her and her days were numbered. Soon the loyal colleagues she thought she could depend on, were sharpening knives, ganging up on her with menacing intent and then telling her to leave by the back door. The dust may have settled now but now we face the latest episode of this abhorrent freak show. Another Prime Minister will step up to the plate within days and this time though it won't be a long, drawn out and protracted business. 

On social media platforms we were treated to hilarious revolving doors where once a black door at 10 Downing Street once was. The point had been made. Sadly and embarrassingly, Truss was Prime Minister for 44 days, the shortest term in office of all time but we already knew as much and so none of us were surprised. Yesterday though Truss bravely faced the flash of cameras and a savage mauling from those who wanted her to leave as soon as possible. If this had been a high-profile boxing heavyweight match the towel would have been thrown into the ring well before Truss had had time to adjust the microphone.

The trouble is that from a global point of view, the rest of the world probably regards Britain as a laughing stock, the one nation that produces only feckless, irresponsible, incompetent and useless politicians with no backbone. The beginning of the end came when Truss was grilled by the tabloid and broadsheet newspapers about the incomprehensible nature of the mini- Bridget. It is hard to know why the swingeing tax cuts that Kwarteng had just announced hadn't been the ones the nation might have been anticipating.

In fact when the numbers were crunched and the costs analysed, the whole of the country seemed to explode with fury. Once again nothing seemed to add up correctly, the rich became criminally wealthier and the poor working class were left staring into the abyss, worried sick at the frightening prospect of fuel and energy prices soaring through the roof and vital decisions being made about whether to forego essential food and drink. And that's before considering whether they'd have to turn up the heating. 

So what of the future of the United Kingdom in the short term? Across Britain's green and fair lands people are strapping themselves in for one turbulent ride. The end of the world scenario hasn't quite been acted out and we're all in this one together. All that Britain needs at the moment essentially is a Prime Minister who lasts for longer than the six o'clock evening news. At the moment the whole of the Tory cabinet is involved in some rough bout of tug of war. The headless chickens have yet come home to roost but the gut feeling is that sooner or later patience will run thin and nobody will be able to find a solution to a seemingly intractable problem.

Still, by this time next week we should know whether Penny Mourdant, now one of the favourites to win the Tory leadership contest, Boris Johnson, dare we say it with a straight face, or Rishi Sunak finally emerge with the top job. A week in politics may have seemed a long time to those who think along those lines but longevity in the role of a Prime Minister now seems a distant memory certainly in recent years. We all wish the next occupant at 10 Downing Street well. The journey begins here and you'd better get it right because the comedy script writers are ready and waiting.

Another Prime Minister bows out.

 Another Prime Minister bows out.

Surely we are now in Guinness Book of Records territory. It's hard to believe that British politics has ever seen a moment in time like this one. You may wish to consult Google or read the excellent book on every Prime Minister since the post became a viable one. But this latest shock horror story almost seems scarcely possible even by the often scandalous standards set by either the Tories or Labour party. It happened today and you must have heard the news. 

Today Liz Truss, who had quite literally been in office as Prime Minister for roughly eight weeks, resigned this morning after quite the most inflammatory, explosive although metaphorical punch up last night in the House of Anarchy. Salty obscenities were turning the air a somehow appropriate blue, swearing on a monumental scale was heard, expletives were lobbed like grenades, four letter words became all the rage and hostility put in quite the ugliest appearance possible. 

For well over the month Liz Truss, now formerly the Prime Minister, had been subjected to a relentless bombardment of poison, vitriol, hatred and the most vicious of insults. You'd have thought she'd robbed several banks, terrorised a neighbourhood with offensive language and then attacked all sensibilities with her overly aggressive behaviour. But the fact remains that Truss will now go down in the history books as the most temporary Prime Minister of all time. In fact if we didn't know any better, we could have sworn that we were just dreaming. Perhaps she was a caretaker and somebody had forgotten to give her a bucket and mop after the children had finished school for the day. 

The truth is that the whole of the Tory party are now in a chronic mess. There is a real sense of well ingrained conflict, an air of division and discord rarely seen in public. What we have here is a political party at war with each other, a party that is at its confrontational worst, internally tearing itself to shreds and then pointing accusing fingers at each other when things get completely out of control. Quite clearly this is a childish game of Musical Chairs or Pass the Parcel. Surely the lowest common denominator has been reached and the country finds itself in complete turmoil. We may think we've seen it all but things have now got to a critical head where something has to give.

The aftermath of this latest political outrage reminds you of the much-loved comedy TV programme Dad's Army which seems to have been repeated at least a million times throughout the years. Sadly though this is no laughing matter although you'd have been forgiven for thinking that it was. A once thriving democracy now finds itself bickering with each other, shouting at each other, passing the buck and then wondering if it'll ever see or hear the Voice of Reason again. 

And this is where we find ourselves going around in ever increasing circles, politicians chasing their tail, hating, haranguing, blaming him or her, reprimanding everybody in sight, yelling obnoxiously at each other, scratching each other's eyes out before then pushing, shoving and bullying each other. It is quite the most unbearable horror show you'll ever see. All commonsense has boarded a plane and flown to some exotic island hundreds and thousands of miles from Britain. You quite genuinely couldn't make this one up. Let the political bawling and brawling stop from here onwards. Or should we allow them to wallow in each other's misfortune.

Now here is the most incredible development in this unfolding Greek tragedy. There are strong rumours that recent history will regurgitate itself like some unsavoury episode of a graphic soap opera. Boris Johnson lurks in the undergrowth like some hungry, vengeful force. Just when you thought it was safe to look at things from a normal perspective then one single moment from history is poised to re-surface. 

At the moment the dust is settling on this quite remarkable day for modern politics. One of Liz Truss's illustrious predecessors once got into the back of her limousine with tears in her eyes and permanent grudges against all those Cabinet colleagues who had once so brutally stabbed her in the back. Margaret Thatcher had, quite possibly, outstayed her welcome at 10 Downing Street but at least she had actually been given carte blanche to carry out all of her policies and promises. 

You find yourself casting your mind back to all those Prime Ministers who came and went, distinguished and not so distinguished. Poor Winston Churchill, although warmly acclaimed as a military Second World War hero and natural leader, found, much to his amazement, that the people had just tired of his cigar smoking, so called pomposity and complete disregard of those who were still struggling to make ends meet. He was a Prime Minister for a while but the image was now a distorted one and nobody could forgive the snobbery, the growling disdain for the working class and the celebration of the wealthy and privileged.

Of course there was Disraeli and Gladstone, Stanley Baldwin, Clement Atlee, Harold Wilson and Edward Heath, Jim Callaghan, John Major and perhaps the most influential of them all, Tony Blair. Blair was smooth, charismatic, proactive, fiercely supportive of the young and the modern generation. But Blair was dragged unwillingly into a war with Iraq that he may have felt had nothing to do with him personally. Blair was vocal when he needed to be, both constructive and decisive. There was always something homely and reassuring about Blair that may have worked against him at times. 

So to the present day. Tonight there will be an air of fractured fractiousness in 10 Downing Street. The curtains will be drawn sombrely and not for the first time. Larry the Cat may decide to hide under a nearby bush nervously awaiting the next lurid tale. The autumnal leaves are now eddying and swirling around quite significantly as if acutely aware at the sheer magnitude of this ongoing story. The nation will go to their bed stunned and dumbfounded. Even French president Emmanuel Macron has sent the most heartfelt of wishes. Macron sincerely hoped his cross-Channel ally would find some semblance of stability. Britain will now attempt both damage limitation and hope that something does turn up eventually. 

   

England knocked out of the World Cup 1974 in qualifier

 England knocked out of the World Cup 1974 in qualifier.

It was one of those fatalistic nights in world football that can never be erased from the mind however hard we try. Some of us were wading through the complexities of primary school and emotionally demanding academia. In a sense 1973 was that last transitional year before being thrust into that frightening world of adolescence. Of course, you were scared and knew that football had already entered your consciousness since England were playing their last group qualifier against Poland. What was there not to look forward to?

At school, life was all about standing attentively at religious assemblies staring in wonderment at those familiar hymns that were now fading rapidly into an indecipherable, crumpled yellow that simply disappeared from any clear view. Then there was the discordant piano, the ropy old record player that morphed into Country Dancing lessons on a Friday afternoon. There were those challenging climbing frames and thick ropes hanging languidly from the ceiling as intrepid seven-year-olds came to grips with the PE equipment in the main hall. It all seems a long time ago and generations in the past. 

So what do we know about October 1973 apart from that crucial World Cup qualifier between England and Poland. We knew that England had a rock solid, seemingly reliable defence with Bobby Moore, still the regal emperor at the heart of the England defence, Norman Hunter, rugged, masculine, full of down to earth authenticity, grounded, down to earth, no nonsense and uncompromising. Emlyn Hughes was all whole- hearted energy, desire, a voracious appetite for battle and dependably industrious. Paul Madeley was tall, dominant, calming and reassuring as others might have lost their heads.

But the night didn't go according to plan and none of us knew why. We'd seen England swing the bulldozer against Austria in a September friendly of that year. The visitors were demolished, flattened, beaten into anonymity and never seen again for years afterwards. So it did seem logical to assume that when Poland came to Wembley for that final World Cup qualifier everything would be nice and easy. No sweat and no problem whatsoever. 

Then the haunted figure of Sir Alf Ramsey, the England manager, made what would be his final curtain call for England. The man who had guided his victorious England side to their only World Cup so far seven years earlier was on the receiving end of cruel vilification, an impatient, irascible man who may have seemed rude and standoffish to those who couldn't quite understand him and maybe unnecessarily abrupt if anybody asked the wrong question. But Ramsey was neither objectionable nor rude because he was just misunderstood. 

When the final whistle went and England had discovered that they wouldn't be taking part in the World Cup Finals of West Germany in 1974, Ramsey just shrugged his shoulders philosophically, pulled up his coat collar and tried to pretend that this wasn't the end of the world. But the FA hierarchy had had more than enough and Ramsey left the world stage, an isolated, private man alone with his thoughts.

It couldn't be denied that England hadn't tried to beat Poland since clearly they had done everything but and the blame surely lay elsewhere. Colin Bell, known affectionately as Nijinsky after the thoroughbred horse, for his tireless scurrying, scampering and extraordinary mileage covered during a game, battled gamely and spiritedly and Tony Currie always looked like the suavest of midfield players, composure in both feet and a positional awareness that made everything he did look effortless and poised. 

At the heart of England's attack were some of the most consistent goal scorers that the old First Division had ever seen. Mick Channon was lithe, athletic, capable of scoring goals of remarkable quality and quantity for Southampton and also England. Martin Chivers was simply a stick of dynamite in the white shirt of Spurs, powerful, purposeful, always threatening and a permanent nuisance to defenders.

Sadly though everything unrivalled for England and Ramsey that night. For years English football had laboured under the misapprehension that they were the greatest thing since sliced bread. Nobody could match them, beat them at the game they had allegedly invented and besides this was England. Twenty years before the match against Poland, an equally as boastful England had been destroyed with a 6-3 defeat by the inimitable Magical Magyars as England gulped and swallowed their pride. Hungary had sent out the message to England as did Poland 49 years ago. It was time to think again radically and dramatically. 

And this is where England will now come back into the reckoning to the present day. There are no World Cups to qualify for England since the Three Lions booked their flight to the deserts of Qatar ages ago. Now this is the crux of the problem. England have always had mere lightweights to negotiate when the groups are announced for either a World Cup or a Euros. It was rather like blowing feathers when you know that the hardest of nuts should be there to be cracked. 

We are now just six weeks ago from England's first World Cup group match against the USA on November 21. The chances are that England will probably do just enough to overcome the Americans. And yet soccer in the USA has now achieved a quite phenomenal popularity. This is far from the emphatic and expected victory for England that it might have been 40 years ago. Besides, what had happened to England 72 years ago in Belo Horizonte when the whole of England and football had expected a thumping massacre.  The USA beat Billy Wright's England 1-0 in a World Cup Finals quite astonishingly. It did happen and we weren't hallucinating and imagining it.

Then Iran and Wales await Gareth Southgate's England and the weight of expectation will once again hang heavy. We all get deliriously excited and animated every time England qualify for a World Cup. But this time we could be entering into the unknown. In a couple of weeks time, the Premier League will be temporarily suspended while the cream of English football finds itself entertained by filthy rich sheiks, sultans, perhaps oil barons and Saudi potentates of obscene wealth.

Nobody is losing sight of where England are at the moment. We've all become almost boringly conditioned to the English mentality and mindset. We know we're competent, skilful and much more easy on the eye than might have been the case in those wilderness years of the 1970s. Now England have developed a game modelled on the delightful short passing game of Germany, Brazil, France, Italy and Argentina. 

Their game has a classical feel to it and England are now a much more rounded, cultured force to be reckoned with. Their football has a much greater clarity, togetherness, harmony and unity about it. But tonight we will dwell albeit briefly on the night in October 1973 when Brian Clough's Polish clown had made a complete mockery of the England football team. It was a deeply disappointing night and one we'd rather forget as just a blip. Roll on Qatar and a World Cup victory a week before Christmas. It would indeed be the perfect celebration.

The latest from 10 Downing Street

 The latest from 10 Downing Street.

If you didn't know already we are now at the stage of musical chairs at the House of Comedy, aka The House of Commons. All reality has been officially suspended and nobody can quite believe any of the latest developments at Westminster Towers. It could rightly be compared to a Whitehall farce and quite a number of doors have been slammed and trousers have fallen to ankles. It could get even worse than it already is but how much further down the slippery slope can we possibly get?

Last night the Tory government were in a chronic state of disarray. We thought we'd seen everything but even Boris Johnson could never have envisaged this fiasco. These are troubled, potentially catastrophic times for the Conservative party and the new Prime Minister Liz Truss quite literally looks like a startled rabbit in the headlights. Some of us must wonder what on earth is going on but the truth is we're all in a state of grim darkness.

Yesterday Kwasi Kwateng became the former Chancellor of the Exchequer when he got the bullet from a very bemused Prime Minister who still conveys the impression of a novice wet behind the ears, somebody who looks as if they need to be introduced to a completely new way of life. There had to be an instant adjustment to what must feel like a terribly hostile environment. But Truss, you suspect, will have to hit the ground running because if she doesn't do so now she may have to look for alternative employment.

Liz Truss has now held the office of British Prime Minister for just over a month or so and, to quote  footballing parlance, she's having a stinker. We're barely into the first half and it's all in the balance. So far she may have scored some of the most embarrassing own goals ever seen and everything has gone completely wrong. Do we think Boris Johnson has had the most incredible last laugh and would probably tell us that he knew that something like this would happen?

The oft quoted buzz phrase is that Truss has tanked the economy, blasted it to smithereens and now found herself covered in rubble, desperately scrambling around for something to cling to, a remnant of hope perhaps but even that appears to have gone. She's toyed with the entire system, back tracking on everything from corporation tax, windfall tax and every other conceivable tax you can think of. 

In simple terms the wealthy landowners and posh plutocrats will be rubbing their hands with undisguised glee, swimming in oceans of prosperity and then looking on with that familiar air of snobbery and condescension. They are now turning their nose up at the pathetic peasantry who remain beneath them every time they add a new gravel driveway and more marble columns outside their palatial property in suburbia.

More importantly you are now informed that prospective homeowners searching around for a decent mortgage, can now forget their commendable ambitions. It's not going to happen. The young professionals and conscientious couples who may be looking to settle down have now had to resign themselves to a modest maisonette or bungalow just off the main high street. Of course, this shouldn't be regarded as the end of the world but to put it bluntly that's all they're going to get whether they like it or not.

So here we are. It's the weekend after the most horrendous month or so of disgust, outright condemnation, incessant criticism and toxic arguments behind the scenes. Whatever your political persuasion this is not a good time to be either on the Tory backbenches, cabinet ministers seats or those irate ministers who just want to get rid of Liz Truss. Poor Truss is now being attacked from all directions, her image questioned, reputation blown sky high and very few on her side.

The problem is, or so it would seem that any successor to Boris Johnston as Prime Minister was always likely to experience a withering anti-climax. For the last couple of weeks Liz Truss has been touring the length and breadth of Britain trying desperately to whip up some kind of enthusiasm and support. But those props have been whipped away from her since the very act of changing your mind when it comes to important policy decisions is tantamount to Russian roulette.

At first it looked as though she had got it absolutely right but then it was discovered that she'd pressed all the wrong buttons. Judgment and suitability for the job of Prime Minister became the overriding consideration and foremost priority. Truss though kept hesitating, fluffing her lines, sounding confident but privately confused, now a severe liability and utterly dispensable. The responsibility, overwhelming at the best of times, of leading the country is slipping from her grasp.

For the rest of the weekend you suspect, a considerable amount of navel gazing, soul- searching and stunned bewilderment will leave her in a room alone with her thoughts with her supportive family for company. But then she's left with a frightening sense of feeling disowned by her own party. It is rather like sitting in a corner of a living room on your own and just being shunned by the guests at any party.

Last night the BBC, the official voice of the Establishment, showed us striking images of former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Of course, it belongs to another far distant decade and we are now talking about the 1950s here. Macmillan is seen mischievously shuffling through government papers and taking enormous pleasure in sacking and then appointing new faces within his Cabinet. But something must have resonated with Liz Truss because quite suddenly she thought she'd overheard something that Macmillan had once said and then dug out a phrase that he'd made almost 70 years ago.

Truss stated that the country had never had it so good but then realised that were no trolley buses on the road and most of Britain wasn't experiencing widespread rationing. And yet she still looks rather less than convincing at Press conferences, in dire need of an image consultant and lessons in presentation. What may work in her favour though is that she might be given the luxury of more time. Besides, there can be no logical replacement for her even if she is unceremoniously kicked out of Downing Street.

The new Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt is currently getting his feet under the table at 10 Downing Street and life goes on regardless. Hunt is a highly experienced businessman who must have a natural aptitude for maths. Hunt's recent record both in and out of Government has been the subject of much heated debate but at the moment he looks to be the only Cabinet minister who may be lucky enough to hold onto his job. But we send kind regards to the third female Prime Minister Liz Truss, a woman who must be longing for Christmas because that would represent a holiday and break away from political hellishness. Oh, to be a leading politician. The aggravation and hassle can only be imagined. All the best Prime Minister.

The Eurovision Song Contest

 The Eurovision Song Contest

Now we all know why Ukraine won't be holding next year's Eurovision Song Contest. The harrowing and horrific images that continue to appal and shock the whole of the world, let alone Europe, serve as a simple reminder of man's inhumanity to man, woman and children. The nightly bulletins of war- ravaged buildings, the charred ruins of a broken country, torn by disaster and destruction, fill us with an unspeakable dread that simply defies belief and renders us both stunned and speechless.

Yesterday a blazing fire took complete hold of the now besieged Ukranian suburb of Lviv, schools, government buildings, hospitals, shops and more importantly residential districts just shattered, fragmented masonry, brickwork scattered into a thousand pieces and a once proud community just inconsolable, dying, dead, severely maimed and injured. There are no signs of the tyrannical monster who is President Putin of Russia relenting, giving up on his murderous quest for world domination.

And yet there were silver linings for this proud, independent country. Earlier on this year Ukraine, with the full and emotional support of the world watching on TV, won this year's Eurovision Song Contest. In any other ordinary year this wouldn't have been source of interest or enduring fascination. But the whole of the country is still being battered, pummelled, pulverised and flattened into oblivion. The truth is that very little in the way of Ukraine's essential infrastructure is still intact and there's certainly no venue that could possibly accommodate something so culturally diverting and entertaining as a Eurovision Song Contest.

So the decision was taken to move operations to this year's Eurovision Song Contest runners up country. Move forward into the spotlight the United Kingdom. The bearded Sam Ryder, full of the milk of human kindness, politely accepted second place and considered himself privileged to be part of the Ukranian Eurovision Contest winning team. He smiled broadly, congratulated the winning song and just gallantly accepted defeat. But even Ryder knew that circumstances were so extenuating that it was only a matter of time before the United Kingdom would be required to hold next year's contest.

And then it became official. It would either be Liverpool or Glasgow. Other major British cities had been considered but it was Liverpool or Glasgow. In one short announcement Liverpool got the final vote. For a while you wondered why before then realising that Liverpool remains one of the most musically innovative of British cities and there could be no doubt whatsoever that on merit, their credentials could never have been questioned.

So it came to pass that Liverpool will play host to one of the most cherished and in the eyes of the silent minority, one of the most idiosyncratic yearly music events in Europe. It is the kind of music that has perhaps been cruelly mocked over the years for its emphasis on the bizarre, the novel and the unusual. The derision is clearly misguided if you were to listen to the competition's most ardent enthusiasts but next year the Eurovision Song Contest will return to British shores. 

Your mind travels back to the United Kingdom's more recent and chequered record in the contest. For reasons best known to officialdom and hardened Euro sceptics Britain have become the long- standing music hall joke among the great and good. The last time the United Kingdom seriously troubled the scorers of Eurovision judges was that momentous night when they actually won it. Katrina and the Waves 'Shine A Light' in 1997 captured the hearts of the most impartial outsider so much so that most of us can still remember the song 25 years later as if it were yesterday. 

But Eurovision is good, old- fashioned fun, frivolous in the extreme, cheesy when the mood takes it and full of kitsch with a pleasing nod to eccentricity. Back in the 1960s Cliff Richard was edged into second place with 'Congratulations' while a bare footed girl by the name of Sandie Shaw from Dagenham, Essex gladdened and uplifted us with 'Puppet on a String, a much-deserved winner.

It would take Britain over a decade to clinch first prize. Two girls and two boys going under the name of Brotherhood of Man treated us to quirky dance steps, flared trousers, girls wearing fashionable berets and the most infectious of ditties. 'Save All Your Kisses For Me' became amusingly catchy, typically Eurovision and remained in our heads for the rest of the 1970s but how we embraced its message. Eurovision would almost become rooted in our long- term memories even if we were reluctant to admit as much.

And then during the Eighties when pop music reached its most enjoyable period of disco superiority two more boys and girls came to our attention. Perhaps the most common theme running through the United Kingdom's participation was the girl boy, girl boy girl combination. Bucks Fizz were, rather like Brotherhood of Mann, brilliantly matched, a group with perfect pop chemistry, harmonising perfectly and never taking themselves too seriously. 

Half way through 'Making Your Mind Up' the girls Jay Aston and Cheryl Baker whipped away their skirts flirtatiously and teasingly, revealing the lighter side to the contest which had always been present anyway. Bucks Fizz emerged as thoroughly convincing winners that year but that was 1981. The intervening years have yielded very little to get excited for the United Kingdom. 

For years the dulcet tones of Sir Terry Wogan have accompanied the Eurovision Song Contest but even he became totally disillusioned with the wild scoring discrepancies that left the United Kingdom with no points and egg on their faces. But then Sir Terry departed the BBC commentary box and for the next decade or so the United Kingdom struggled to reach double figures invariably finding themselves languishing near the bottom of the pile. 

But last year a gentleman by the name of Sam Ryder, not to be mistaken for the legendary golfer who gave us the Ryder Cup, brought us 'Spaceman', instantly memorable but maybe not quite good enough as such. None of us though had bargained on the presence of the Ukraine and before we knew it the realisation had dawned on us. In a matter of hours a warm current of sympathy ran through the audience and everybody was converted. A country at war and desperate for recognition had rendered all of us tearful. After dominating the first round of scoring, the whole of Europe gave Ukraine the full complement of twelve points. 

Sadly though the horrors and abominations which have now become a daily tragedy in the Ukraine now meant that the country couldn't possibly welcome Europe to its fair and beautiful city. But Liverpool remains prepared for Eurovision's customary diet of the awful, the pathetic, the mediocre but in the same breath, the glorious and uplifting. 

While the bombs and gunfire rage into the night of an autumnal Ukraine, Liverpool will lend an empathetic voice to those who hide in bomb shelters in fear of their lives. The city that gave us the Beatles and Gerry and the Pacemakers will wrap a comforting arm around its European neighbours and re-assure us that life must go on and the Eurovision Song Contest will always be there as an antidote to madness, destruction and unforgivable violence. Bring on the contestants. Liverpool awaits with a friendly reception. 

Gunners firing on all cylinders

Gunners firing on all cylinders

The top of the Premier League is reminiscent of that time in our lives when an unknown football name suddenly came to prominence and Arsenal discovered a pot of gold where others were simply scrambling around for silver and bronze. It hardly seems like 20 years ago now since Arsene Wenger arrived at the old Highbury with a magic wand, the Midas touch and a unique set of footballing principles that would hold good for what seemed like an eternity at times. 

This weekend though Arsenal reminded you of a familiar mirror image of themselves where the distortions of recent times have now found much needed clarity and validation. Of course, the current day manager Mikel Arteta would never be claim to be the modern-day version of Merlin the Magician nor some supernatural force capable of creating miracles overnight. But the facts and statistics simply don't lie. Arsenal are this morning top of the Premier League a point ahead of their inevitable rivals Manchester City who already have the Ordinance Survey Map as a contingency measure should they take the wrong turning and bump into some tangled clump of weeds.

At this stage of the season the Premier League season begins to look like a charcoal drawing without any colour or paint. The sharp contours and basic outlines are still there but this is one ongoing and perhaps laborious project that is far from fruition and needs some understanding. Arsenal, for their part, are doing everything that may be required for potential Premier League champions having lost only one of their opening matches to Manchester United and even then they probably felt robbed at Old Trafford.

But Arsenal have laid down their template and it bears a remarkable similarity to their managerial predecessor Arsene Wenger. When Wenger arrived at Highbury 26 years ago Arsenal were heading towards cul-de-sacs, no through roads and nowhere in particular. We knew that under Bruce Rioch they had a military approach to training since Rioch was very disciplined and did try to convert Arsenal into patient, attentive squaddies.

Then Wenger arrived and before long a dramatic revolution had been enacted, Arsenal beginning to play like a team of highly skilled craftsmen whose relationship with a ball was much more than just a fleeting glance across a road. Wenger demanded flair, expression, a fluid artistry and a natural aptitude for holding onto a ball before patiently building blocks of passing, clever one touch passing that led to delightful goals. 

Wenger transformed Thierry Henry from a workaday winger at Juventus into one of the Premier League's greatest goal scorers of all time at Arsenal. He converted Marc Overmars and Anders Limpar into joyously irrepressible wingers who punctured gaping holes into opposing defences with their natural ability to run at defenders, turning and twisting full backs ruthlessly and unapologetically as if they weren't there. Soon Arsenal were winning Premier League titles as if they were going out of fashion.

When George Graham left Highbury he left behind him those vital pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that would also serve Wenger so admirably. The back four of Lee Dixon, Steve Bould, Nigel Winterburn and the outstanding Tony Adams had already won the old First Division in 1989 with that famous last gasp second goal from Michael Thomas at Anfield where Liverpool thought they'd done enough to clinch the title.

But then Wenger came along and for over 20 years the football that he'd leave behind him would be dripping with free spirited, independent thinking, open, expansive football, a game that was ahead of its time, free flowing, liquid, ostentatious, quick witted, impulsive, off the cuff and brightly innovative. It was football that had a gold-plated quality and geometric patterns that rippled across the then new Emirates Stadium like water on a lake. It had a softness of touch and flexibility that only the most deluded Arsenal fans could have dreamt of when Billy Wright was manager at Highbury during the 1960s.

Arsenal would win FA Cups, Premier League titles, and remain in the Champions League in record breaking fashion. There was the Invincibles team who would string together a remarkable 49 game unbeaten run only broken by their fierce rivals Manchester United. Arsenal were a joy to watch, a side of purist theories and a winning mentality that seemed to go on for year after year. 

Then Wenger, after an illustrious and unforgettable era left and things of course took a turn for the worse. Arsenal then began to look extremely vulnerable, fragile and naturally destabilised. The moorings had been let loose from its anchor and Arsenal began to sink into a temporary mediocrity. Unai Emery came and went rapidly and without regret. And, finally Arsenal began to see the error of their ways.

Their old midfield player Mikel Arteta had served his apprenticeship at Manchester City as assistant coach to Pep Guardiola and after guiding Arsenal successfully to a Europa League place last season, Arteta is now the governor. For Arteta this season may have come as the most pleasant of surprises since none had really expected Arsenal to be nearly as good as they now are. 

Last weekend they beat their North London rivals Spurs in a comprehensive and convincing victory at the Emirates Stadium and the feelings are positive rather than negative. The victories over Crystal Palace on the season's opening weekend, Fulham, Bournemouth, Leicester City and Brentford have fuelled the belief that anything is possible for Arsenal this season. 

Admittedly the standard of opposition hasn't been of the world beating variety and the cynics will already point out to the undeserved defeat at Old Trafford as a sign that, aside from the United defeat, the Gunners haven't really been severely tested. But there is a much closer rapport between the players and the coaching staff, a collective will rather than a disparate, detached feel to the squad. This could be the start of something extremely exciting.

The back four of Zinchenko, Ben White from Brighton, Martinelli and Gabriel further forward with Bukayo Saka, a now thriving Arsenal academy graduate who scored against Liverpool yesterday. Saka is lively, lethal, productive, hunting and foraging around for goals whenever the ball reaches his feet with a voracious appetite. The signing of Brazilian wonderkid Gabriel Jesus from Manchester City may prove an inspired masterstroke on Mikel Arteta since Jesus is just the kind of striker Arsenal have been pursuing since Thierry Henry, lethal up front and a goal scoring machine. 

After Arsenal had beaten Liverpool yesterday at the Emirates Stadium Arteta, the Arsenal, of course erred on the side of caution. Naturally Premier Leagues are never won at the beginning of October but the Premier League's brief break for the World Cup in Qatar towards the end of next month will probably be the ultimate litmus test for Arsenal. Injuries and losses in form could throw the whole Premier League into a harsh perspective during the World Cup but at the moment Arsenal will follow the right directions, keep their speed to a minimum and just enjoy the moment. It is good to see the whole panorama and landscape rather than nothing at all. Best wishes to the Gunners from the Emirates.

Days after the end of the holiest day.

 Days after the end of the holiest day.

A couple of days after the holiest day in the Jewish calendar and the world of food and drink has never tasted so good. For those who take digestion and daily nourishment for granted this may sound quite bizarre. But Yom Kippur remains one of the most challenging if ultimately rewarding days any Jew can possibly experience. You starve yourself for 25 hours and then discover that all of that stomach rumbling abstinence and discipline hasn't left any adverse or damaging side effects on your health. In other words you're still alive, well, functioning and firing on all cylinders, healthy and ready to go again.

Admittedly, Yom Kippur will never be regarded as one of the more pleasant days in your life since nobody would willingly go without a day of eating and drinking if they could possibly help it. But we're all prepared for the year ahead in the Jewish calendar which probably still seems funny at the beginning of October. There are no New Year Jewish resolutions or a stubborn determination to get fit and lose weight but we do like the end of the Yom Kippur fast when it's actually permissible to stuff yourselves with as much food as your heart desires. And so it is that we move forward to the present day and the here and now. 

Where were we? That's it. We're in much the same pickle as we were before the High Holy Days. A new Prime Minister had just been appointed and of course Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the second had sadly died. While that was going on we were still confronted by the abominations and horrors that are still raging in Ukraine. If it isn't one thing then it has to be another. There are never any dull events because if that was the case then perhaps we'd question the status quo. 

When Liz Truss took charge of the country as our new Prime Minister some of us were just resigned to the fact that surely things couldn't get any worse than they already were. Previous PM incumbent Boris Johnson had taken us on a turbulent roller coaster of emotions that left most of us dumbfounded with incredulity and sometimes laughing our heads off at the insane absurdity of the Johnson leadership. There must have come a point when most of us had thought that enough was enough. But it did seem to drag on interminably and now we're stuck in the middle of a mess that may take ages to mop up.

Essentially Truss has been left with the daunting task of digging us out of a hole, rescuing us from a most dire predicament. As a comparative novice at the helm of one of the toughest jobs you could ever be lumbered with, Truss has, if you were to believe some commentators, just exacerbated a problem that was already there in the first place. So it now becomes abundantly clear that Truss isn't that much of a marked improvement on dear Boris Johnson. It could hardly get any worse or so we thought. But it did and it has. 

In the wake of the Tories party conference in Birmingham all the mood music and vibes are far from favourable. Truss is being deafened by the boisterous big boys and girls who are now calling for her to go promptly, pronto, if it all possible, now. So where should we start? It's normally the beginning but this is very much an ongoing process that could sharply deteriorate within the next couple of weeks or so. Things are unravelling at a quite frightening speed and buckle yourself in for yet more turbulence at the highest level of Government.

There was Kwasi Kwarteng, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer who probably thought the job would become the poisoned chalice that most of his predecessors had been expected to deal with. He was no Ken Clarke or Sir Geoffrey Howe from yesteryear but he was immensely qualified for the job and everybody thought Britain was in safe and capable hands under his financially astute control of our money.

But here we are just over a month or so into their new jobs in the Cabinet and the Tories are behaving with all of the childish petulance of the proverbial Punch and Judy show. Everybody is blaming each other and nobody wants to accept any that may be coming their way. The flak is flying, Judy is taking some terrible punishment from Punch and his sausages and it's all rather embarrassingly silly, unseemly and not a good watch. That is not the way to do it. 

So what seems to be the main crux of the problem. The long and short of it is that the Tories have announced measures that will make life almost unbearably difficult and painful for us. There are tax cuts but not the kind most of the British public would have anticipated. Put simply the wealthy elites will get just considerably richer than they already are and the working-class proletariat simply poorer by the hour, day, minute, week, month and year. 

By now most of us are familiar with the intricacies of the windfall tax, the cost of living crisis and above all the survival of the fittest. The implication is of course that a vast majority of us will be feeling the pinch this winter and must be prepared for the power cuts that plunged the United Kingdom into the dark chaos of the mid 1970s. The whole of Britain has been told to brace itself for one of the coldest, most miserable and frighteningly uncomfortable winter in recent history. So it might be advisable to buy packets of candles and plenty of torches just in case somebody suddenly switches off the electricity without our permission. 

And just to make matters even more intolerable and awkward, there is the one section of society who must never ever be neglected. Britain's pensioners have given admirable service to the country throughout decades and to imagine their desperate plight doesn't bear thinking about. Most of them are alone, neglected, struggling to keep warm and just shabbily mistreated. Now though they must be our top priority, our main consideration since the old have been horrifically sent out into the cold if not quite metaphorically. It remains a shameful state of affairs that has to be immediately addressed.

Then there's the energy and fuel imbroglio, a small matter of the country's welfare to be going on with. Petrol prices have soared to an astronomical high and the extortionate price of milk came as a major shock to some of us. We've all been given the choice to eat or heat, an ultimatum that should never have been given the time of the day let alone thought of. So if you're thinking of turning up the central heating this winter and foregoing the essential necessity of good, hearty dinner of egg and chips then this is not the time to panic. 

The truth is that the buck, as they say, stops at the Tory government. Do they stick or twist? Are we now in a state of damage limitation or will our top, eminent economists and industrialists simply tell us to just keep calm. We are now in a land of percentages of the nation who may be in the wrong tax brackets and then those who may have to resign themselves to a Dickensian scenario where the costermongers, the chimney sweeps, the underclass and the oppressed just bite their poverty-stricken lip.

At the moment Liz Truss is almost a lost cause before she's had even the barest chance of leaving her mark on the British landscape. Everywhere the landowners and aristocrats, the grocers and bakers are patiently awaiting their fate. This is quite the most unprecedented time in our lives. We thought we'd seen everything but quite certainly not. It is a good time to be alive and always will be if only because drama keeps knocking on our door and we keep telling it that it may have to take off its shoes before it enters into our living rooms.

You're reminded of a long and much-loved TV soap or sitcom whereby every episode comes up with some original twist on the previous one. This long running sequence is losing its edge, its sense of intrigue because we can all anticipate the next plot. Now the theme is a recurring one and faintly distasteful since nobody gave the Tories the right to do whatever they felt was right for the economy.

So here we are on the Friday, the day that recently proved what could be the decisive turning point in Britain's fortunes. For it was on this day a fortnight ago or so that Kwasi Kwarteng made that serious and portentous statement about the country's finances. It was the day when it all kicked off. Labour went berserk quite naturally, the Lib Dems thought they were imagining things and most of the rest of the nation threw up their hands in complete horror and mortification. Get rid of Truss before they take to the streets of London. Set the wheels of democracy into motion. It could all get very inflammatory, hot headed and tempestuous. We await the immediate future with bated breath. Hold on Britain and Middle England and the United Kingdom.

London Marathon

 London Marathon

And so it came to pass that on an early October morning when autumn makes her most visible and gracious presence felt that thousands upon thousands of people spill out across the capital city of London and celebrate like they've never done before. It's unusual to say the least since they used to acknowledge this moment of the year back in April when the cuckoos were still finding their voices and the tulips were on the point of bursting out in technicolour profusion.

This morning, 41 years after its first appearance on the streets of London, the London Marathon held us spellbound, completely overcome with emotion, astonished by the sheer magnificence of it all and insisting that the London Marathon would become a permanent fixture every year. It took one man, a certain Chris Brasher, surely one of our finest of all athletes, to be the choreographer cum organiser of the most inspiring, inspirational, joyous and most harmonious street runs ever seen in the capital city.

It's been well documented now that the very first Marathon was shared honourably by a leading athlete and a waiter carrying a tray. But that was 1981 and since then the London Marathon has become one of the most established and impressive sights you could ever hope to see. It is a wondrous spectacle, surely the best organised sporting event in Britain and transcending both class, religion, social position and any other hierarchical obstacle that may come our way. 

The London Marathon is exclusively designed for the masses, everybody, the country, the county, the shire, the village, town, city and any postcode of any description. It ticks all the right democratic boxes, makes you feel good all over and just gets you here. When Brasher was pondering the idea over 40 years ago he must have felt that there was a yawning gap in the British sporting calendar which had to be filled. He knew that across the world Marathons had been going since the beginning of time but could never understand what all the fuss was about when, suddenly, a London Marathon became his brainchild, his creation.

So after 41 years of punishing, gruelling, intensive often painful foot running starting at Greenwich, London and finishing at the Mall, another edition of this now deeply revered race finished with all the bells ringing, horns blowing and thousands of medals bouncing around participants necks. In previous years the likes of Mars sponsored the Marathon and we all thought this was some bizarre contradiction in terms since surely chocolate was bad for you and you'd put loads of weight on and it just didn't seem right.

But when the tape came down at Greenwich and the club runners had shared pleasantries with the familiar celebrities, it all seemed to make sense. This was sport at its most welcoming, tolerant, inclusive, consenting, accepting, never leaving anybody out. The London Marathon was all about diversity, racial harmony, egalitarian values, promoting both brotherly and sisterly love. It was about running, jogging, smiling, pushing your body to its limit but also enjoying those precious moments of togetherness and solidarity.

You knew when the London Marathon was about to start because this was a cue for a huge outpouring of charitable benevolence, people running for dementia, cancer, Parkinson's disease or the local hospice. This was the one time of the year when nobody seemed to care how young or old you were.  There would be effusive laughter fit to burst, the wheelchair athletes would be roundly acclaimed and cheered while those in fancy dress costumes would be recognised almost instantly.

And that is the recurring theme of London Marathon day, a chance to set your best time on your watch or just admire the cream of world athletes breaking records while your auntie would pass you a piece of Dundee cake if you were flagging. So it was that the massive multitudes gently broke into a trot before breaking into a quicker run as Greenwich was left behind and the whole of London would line the railings just to wave Union Jacks or yell good natured encouragement to Uncle Peter.

Amid a riot of colour and a sea of faces, they spread out across the genteel back streets of Lambeth, through Woolwich before eventually crossing the river to Docklands, a vast, sprawling maze of corporate dotcom companies and a railway system of its own. The London Marathon can easily identify with Docklands because this was the place London could once rely on all its vital commodities from all over the world. To some extent that dependence on the bare necessities of life still exists but not quite on the same scale.

Then the London Marathon winds and twists and meanders and stretches like one huge elastic band being pulled right across the capital. Hordes of people dressed in Spiderman, Batman, Minions, pink afro hair styles and frilly skirts would file their way around the course in the most leisurely and respectful fashion. Nothing seemed out of place and everybody was determined to enjoy every single moment of the day. 

By the time the club and fun runners had finished their personal Marathons, the professional athletes were already at Blackfriars, the Embankment and where the river Thames meets the outskirts of the West End of London. They were all here, the accountants, the lawyers, the solicitors, the dentists, the supermarket shelf stackers, the cab workers and the friendly members of staff in those supermarkets. They were followed by the postmen and women, the milkmen and women and the office workers who are engrossed in their computer spreadsheets, designing websites and working their fingers to the bone.

Now we come to the crunch, the business end of the Marathon, the moment when Olympic, Commonwealth, World and European Championship stalwarts, the athletes with times to beat, make a breathtaking sprint for the final tape. This year was no different to any other London Marathon. The Ethiopians and Kenyans were still in dominant form and conquering all comers. They usually do because they are by far the sleekest, fastest and smoothest runners in the world. 

Over the years we were told that when they were young they would run to school from their local village and think nothing of clocking up the miles. They would then run back home after school and that was the logical progression. First, they would win medals and trophies at yearly sports days and then become upgraded to club or regional champions before the world came along and that was their oyster. 

So it was that Kenya's Amos Kirputo would win the London Marathon, lunging across the winning tape in record time and a whole army of men and women wrapped silver foil all over him, before holding up exhausted athletes who were completely bent over and just clinging on to anybody who happened to be available. They would remember the immortal words of that famous Olympic soul Baron Pierre de Courbertin who believed quite categorically that it was the taking part that counted and nothing else.

In second place would be Ethiopia's Leul Gebresilase who looked as though he was running on empty but wouldn't have minded ending up in the Lake District. In third was Belgium's Bashir Abdi who would have been quite happy nip off to the Yorkshire Dales for a day such was the encouragement from the crowd. Time of course had now become immaterial since Marathons are all about fun, frivolity, running across bridges, past traffic lights, neat rows of shops and houses, a bewildering blur of activity and much merriment.

For the women Yalemzerf  Yehualaw won the ladies Marathon for - yes- you've guessed it, wonderful Ethiopia followed inevitably by Kenya's Joyciline Jepkosgei and in third place Ethiopia's Alemu Megertu. Now the most highly regarded of our wheelchair athletes came powering their way towards the finishing line including Marcel Hug and Catherine Debrumer from Switzerland and once again David Weir of Great Britain quite triumphantly and deservedly.

Another London Marathon had passed into history and another stunning autumn Sunday had reached its conclusion. It had been a day like no other, a day for remembering who we are and just how capable we are of completing 26 miles around London's noble streets. Against a ghastly backdrop of war and murderous aggression in Ukraine, a small corner of London had restored our faith in human nature. Bravo.