Football is my church

As another manager is sacrificed at the altar of the beautiful game there's no denying football is the new religion.

Premiership players are gods, chants replace hymns and the cathedral has been abandoned in favour of the home ground.

Worship is held on match days, Kevin Keegan is not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy, and Alex Ferguson is probably the pope.

Phil "the sacrificial lamb" Scolari has found this out the hard way thanks to Roman Abramovich's very convincing turn as Pontius Pilate.

Interesting that at a time when everyone else is apologising - bankers, the BBC, hell even Barack Obama - Scolari was out on his ear before he could even begin to grovel.

That's because the football gods are merciless - think Old Testament meets Rangers fans and you get the idea.

Failure demands action, not words - after all the Champions League is far more important than the global banking crisis, and so it is fitting that the Chelsea manger has been dealt a larger serving of public humiliation in his ruthless execution than Mssrs Goodwin, Hornby, Stevenson and McKillop were served by the select-committee.

The good news for Big Phil is that there's likely to be a second coming with another high profile job in top flight football almost a guarantee before the month's out.

Education, education, stagflation

Tony Blair in his 1996 conference speech to the party faithful, declared:

"Ask me my three main priorities for government, and I tell you: education, education, education."

Twelve years on and we're staring a scary and potentially prolonged spell of stagflation in the face.

"Credit crunch" is the cosy term for it.

I'm not an economist, but in layman's terms even I can understand the basic arithmatic of an extended period of easy credit + rising prices of global commodities = stagflation.

Pushing 50 per cent of youngsters into university is partly to blame for my generation's credit habit.

Without planning or budgeting for it families and 18-year-olds found themselves being thrust into higher education.

Which wouldn't be a national disaster, except that these days an undergraduate degree from a decent university will set you back anywhere in the region of £8,000 to £20,000.

For many people of my generation, adulthood was marked by the taking on of debt, so it's small wonder we're a credit card comfortable lot - personal debt is all we've ever know.

We learnt to borrow before we learnt to earn.

But it wasn't always like that, within recent memory the grant system still operated.

My friend Sarah and her brother James perfectly illustrate how quickly things changed, and how mums and dads had no time to plan, budget, or save for their kids' future.

Sarah is 24, her brother James is 30: He was given a grant and so was effectively paid to go to university, as a result he now owns a flat in London.

On the other hand Sarah was hit for tuition fees, then top up fees and without a grant she had to take out a student loan. Having graduated two years ago she is still paying her debts off and has no hope of owning property in the foreseeable future.

With the benefit of hindsight it is obvious that this change happened too quickly.

We are now approaching a higher education system similar to that of America, which is not inherently a bad thing, unless you introduced it overnight and did nothing to counter the culture of easy lending it created.

What difference does a bit more debt make if you already owe the bank £15k? When you don't earn it and money comes for free and you're 18 it's all fine - right?

Who was regulating the massively lucrative student banking sector?

With education offered up as an answer to all society's ills, not enough of us questioned the validity of our higher education choices.

Which must be painfully obvious now to those who took puppetry, complimentary medicine and media studies degrees and are labouring away in unrelated careers to shift those debts.

Expensive, inapropriate higher education didn't open doors, it shut them.

The GREAT North Run

So about three weeks before the event the training schedule was well and truly out of the window - I fell over and pranged my knee.

The Friday night before the race the healthy eating plan was a distant memory - I was four glasses of wine down in the pub.

The day of the race the music stopped - I realised my ipod was out of juice on the start line.

My preparations for 13.1m had basically turned into a comedy of errors, only with half a marathon of pain stretching out in front of me I was struggling to see the funny side.

Luckily, I discovered that to complete the Great North Run athletic prowess is unnecessary - think of it as a luxury - all you need is bloody-mindedness and a fantastic crowd of mental Geordies to line the route.

In the end I got round in a just about respectable 2 hours 28 minutes.

I say "I" but if I'm honest it was a team effort, and I share my medal with the Newcastle nutters who spend their Sunday cheering on Sweaty Bettys like me, particularly the good people of Jarrow whose welcome banner ("Jarrow welcomes the magnificent 50,000+") made me feel warm and fuzzy.

Thanks to those lovely people there wasn't a moment during the whole 13.1m when I wasn't munching biscuits, drinking juice, eating orange segments or being drenched with someone's garden hosepipe (in a good way).

My only complaints? A toenail that didn't make it to the finish line with the rest of me (too much information? Sorry), a wonky knee for the final mile and a message to the five people I saw running while chatting on their mobiles: If you've got enough puff to chinwag your way round you should be RUNNING FASTER.

Jeez.

Good news day

Ok, so today might as well go down in history as "torrential Tuesday" with rain pouring from the sky at almost the same rate government treasury departments across the globe hemorrhaged cash reserves - but at least it was a good day for Michael Jackson.

AFP took a break from updating us on our headlong fall into the financial abyss to bring us the news;
"MIT scientists move closer to 'artificial noses'"
http://tinyurl.com/3v65ft

That's right folks, Wacko Jacko could be sporting a new schnoz before you know it - what's not to love about that?

Bargain hunt

Bootle was a bleary eyed car boot - we were parked up and unpacking our tat by 7.05am.

And by 7.10am the vultures were circling Portia and me as the old hands took one look and realised we were first timers.

Bizarrely, the dress maker's mannequin was the first to go for a respectable £4, swiftly followed by Portia's Royal Dalton Schnauzer dog statue - I know, how could she - for a massive £5.

The dog turned out to be the day's big money, along with a pair of hockey sticks that we sold for £6 to a silent man who wouldn't look us in the eye.

After that we did a brisk trade in wind chimes (£1, frankly as the wind was starting to pick up I'd have PAID someone to take them away), bean bags, bangles and bobble hats.

Next door the bloke painting signs to order was doing a roaring trade - we particularly liked the charming "Dirty Nellie's Knocking Shop". Classy.

Opposite a pair of dodgy matching mullets were selling knock off perfume, I would have shared the image with you all, but Portia wouldn't let me sneak a pic on the grounds that they'd beat us up. She had a point - both Mr and Mrs Rough were wearing matching black leather jackets.

Then we met Bette and her friend, who bought four rolls of pink wallpaper for 80p:
Friend: "Bette will this pink do me downstairs loo?"
Bette: "Ohhhh, like a marvel."

Not everyone was so appreciative - I sold a sports bag to a bloke and said brightly, "you can put your shopping in that now" - to which he replied, "nah queen, I'm gonna put the rubbish in me car in it."

Despite drawing many admirers, the fetching blue and silver Italian leather wedges failed to find a new owner, along with the ski outfit. With hindsight I should maybe have realised that winter sports equipment wouldn't be a big hit in Bootle.

But then who knew that the Schnauzer would be such a success? Today taught me that there really is no telling what people will buy - or what they'll sell.

Our neighbour on the other side swiftly sold off all his stock, then took £500 in cash for his car and walked off.

We came in a bit short of that - making £75 between us, £40 of which was mine and has now been added to the Great North Run fund for Get Kids Going. That, along with generous donations from two good friends, Alan and Catherine, means I'm halfway to my £200 target.

I'm absolutely knackered now, but actually feeling quite pleased with myself: It's far too much work for £40, but it was fun.

Filling our boots at the big Bootle car boot sale

Typewriter: Check.
Anthology of 101 School Assemblies: Check.
Cocktail kit circa 1970: Check.
Dress maker's mannequin: Check.
VHS videos of Robin Hood Prince of Thieves and Ghost Busters: Check.
Crime against fashion neon all-in-one ski outfit: Check.

These are just some of the highlights of tomorrow's Bootle car boot sale.

An old friend and I are joining forces to get rid of our tat as we take on the bargain hunters of the North West, in what claims to be the region's biggest boot sale.

The pitch is setting us back £9, and in the unlikely event that we make a profit the money's going to the charity that I'm doing the Great North Run for next week - Get Kids Going.

It's a great cause which does a really good job helping disabled kids to get the best out of life, so if you can spare a few quid here's the link: http://www.justgiving.com/laurajones20

Having had to face up to the sheer volume of crap I've acquired over the years, I'm now of the opinion minimalism is the way forward.

Frankly, if anyone pays good money for that ski outfit (with matching bobble hat) I will struggle to keep a straight face and will be forced to inform the style police immediately.

I'll blog the grand total raised tomorrow, along with some pics of our exploits.

It's a 6.00am start in the morning - who needs sleep?

Rocking out

********The Soundtrack to this post********




You know times are hard when rappers and R'n'B divas are selling up their bling to make a buck.

The day after the world's biggest diamond was mined in Africa, news breaks that a US auction of hip hop bling has caused such a stir that its date has been postponed while experts catalogue the full gaudy array.

Naturally, all the papers went for it as a picture story: http://tinyurl.com/3g53ug

One angle, though, was left unexplored: Much was made of the cultural significance of the sale in terms of hip hop's standing as an art movement.

The Guardian couldn't help itself and dropped in a mention of "Smithsonian Institution's fledgling hip-hop archive".

So, if hip hop is now high art, and there are real collectors who are planning to pay tens of thousands for the bling rings about to go under the hammer, does this mean in years to come Michael Aspel and Eric Knowles will be pondering the value of the crown ring belonging to the late Tupac Shakur on the Antiques Road Show?

I do hope so.