Old Brown Shoe vs Turnstyles Quiz

Tonight marked the inaugural Old Brown Shoe versus Turnstyles Challenge Quiz, with a special challenge trophy created for the occasion. The idea was that individual teams would represent their respective pubs and the three highest scoring teams for each pub would count towards the pub's total. The winning pub would be the one with the highest cumulative scores. Of course there would be prizes for the top two individual teams as well.

Given that there were many top-notch teams from the Turnstyles out in force, there was little surprise that the quiz itself was very closely fought. I mean, in all honesty, it takes a certain demented love of quizzing for you to turn out on a Monday night for a pub quiz. But the usual gang - Keith (this time with wife in tow), Dave and Vicky turned out hoping to do the Old Brown Shoe proud.

And we did, with the Shoe winning the face-off rather handily by more than ten points. In the individual team challenge, it was a different story, and we ended up in a tie-break at the end of regulation after a very solid Turnstyles team matched us by scoring an eight on their final round (which was coincidentally their joker round). We aced the three tie-break questions though, mainly due to Keith's surprising knowledge of different types of beetles, and Dave's predilection for 1970s music.

That resulted in Keith Prince going up and accepting the trophy and lifting it above his head as if it were the FA Cup which was utterly comical due to the fact that it was all of ten cm in height. Still, a spectacle of sorts, and a fitting end to an entertaining evening.

Failure and Imagination: J.K Rowling's Harvard Commencement Address

I was certainly intrigued by Harvard's choice of Harry Potter author J.K Rowling as the commencement speaker for 2008, but she delivered a wonderful speech - funny, personal and moving (but never cloyingly so), powerful, inspiring and a plain joy to read (I can only imagine what it would have been like to hear it). If you have not already done so, I can only urge you to read it:

Harvard Commencement Address 2008
Copyright: JK Rowling, June 2008

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I’ve experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world’s best-educated Harry Potter convention.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.
Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.
Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.
I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.
Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise. And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I’ve used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom: As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

I wish you all very good lives. Thank you very much.

My Take on DPM Wong

Following the farcical escape of Mas Selamat bin Kastari from the Whitley Road detention center over four months ago, there have been repeated calls for the government officials responsible for the lapse in security to be held to account. After a lengthy investigation, punishments have been meted out to the officials running the detention center, the guards who were responsible for securing Mas Selamat and the Ministry officials supervising the detention center itself. However, it is notable that senior officials in the Ministry, up to and including Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Home Affairs Wong Kan Seng himself, escaped unscathed.

The DPM has been quick to reject any calls for his resignation, stating that it was counterproductive to point the finger of blame, and arguing, somewhat disingenuously, that because those individuals who bore direct responsibility for the Mas Selamat escape were so many layers removed from him in the bureaucratic hierarchy, there is no way he could be held accountable for their actions. In a well-thought out Straits Times piece on the issue of ministerial responsibility, the writer pointed it out it was a rare rather occurrence, even in Britain, for politicians to resign due to a lapse or oversight (resignations due to a matter of principle is another thing altogether). Yet, at the same time, it is difficult to run away from the fact, personified by former US President Harry S. Truman, who had an ornament on his desk bearing the inscription 'the buck stops here', that as the ultimate decision maker, the Minister in charge must be responsible in a sense. The question is to what degree?

I had a conversation with a friend who defended DPM Wong, and suggested that it would be counter-productive for him to resign. On that front, I am in general agreement. One only need recall Japanese officers ordering their men to shoot themselves, or blow themselves up with grenades (so tragically portrayed in Letters from Iwo Jima) to underline the wastefulness, the futility and in some situations utter stupidity of throwing yourself on your own proverbial sword due to the loss of honour brought about by failure. Yet, at the same time, we do admire individuals, who when faced with a extremely severe situation of their own making, acknowledge their culpability and their mistakes, and take responsibility for it.

The analogy I wish to bring to bear on this situation is that of a corporate CEO. This is particularly apt given that our Ministers earn massive salaries which are specifically linked to what top tier executives from the private sector are making. If a large corporation, such as a bank, suffers a massive loss or general poor performance for a period of time, the CEO will have to resign. The recent sub-prime mortgage crisis is a case in point. In many ways, it was a one-off, and in a sense it was an unpredictable occurrence. Surely a CEO could not have anticipated it, and should not be held directly responsible for the losses? Shareholders beg to differ - as evidenced by the resignation of a number of CEOs from some of the top banks that have suffered big losses in the crisis.

So, we come back to DPM Wong. Yes, the Mas Selamat escape was an unpredictable one-off occurrence, and of course he could not have direct control over the detention center, the staff, and the specific circumstances in which the escape took place. But so it is with corporate CEOs during the sub-prime crisis with their own staff. The rule in the cut throat world of business is simple - you captain the ship, you bear the consequences. In adopting the corporate model for salaries to our top ministers, we cannot just offer the high rewards inherent in a demanding job with a high degree of responsibility - we must also adopt the high risks inherent in such a position in the event of failure, as the two are inextricably interlinked.

The conclusion for me is inescapable. If DPM Wong had been a corporate CEO, and the equivalent of a corporate Mas Selamat had occurred, I have little doubt that he would have had to resign. Given that, it is hard to argue against the fact that the buck has to stop firmly at his feet.

The Eagle Has Landed

It was back to the Old Brown Shoe for me after a bit of a hiatus. Our team name in full was actually The Eagle Has Landed (and Ronaldo is a wanker). The first part was in reference to Jason, an American colleague of mind at the institute whom I invited down for the quiz. It was just as well that we invited Jason, given Dave was still in England on holiday and Vicky not present as a result.

The bracketed section was in response to the protracted rumours that Cristiano Ronaldo will move away from Old Trafford to Real Madrid or any of the myriad clubs keen to have his services. Keith and I are Man Utd fans, but we both agree that all it would take for all this transfer speculation to be quashed would be for Ronaldo to come out and pledge his future to the club. His wishy washy statement that he would stay - for now - but he would love to play in Spain in the future smacks of nothing more than a mercenary attempt to play the market to get even more money that he is already making (a rather substantial 120,000 pounds a week).

But back to the quiz. We started with two decent rounds of 8 points, despite blowing a news question on the Chelsea Flower Show which we really should have got. But we were quite stunned to find ourselves a good 4 points behind because another team scored a perfect 20 in the first two rounds. That team - the Pussycat's Return was having an absolute stormer of a quiz, and by the end of three rounds, they had scored a perfect 40 points (after a full 10 on their joker). At that point it looked like our record points total of 57 was seriously under threat, let alone our chances of winning this week's edition of the quiz. We had scored a ten in the third round - our joker round - as well, but that still left us four points behind.

That lead was narrowed by a single point after the Pussycats finally showed signs of being human by dropping a point in the fourth round to our perfect 10 points. That left us heading into the Pot Luck round needing them to score only seven, assuming we could manage another perfect round. In the end, in a bugger of a round, both teams scored a respectable seven points, meaning that we lost to a phenomenal total of 56 points - just one off our very own record.

The Ultimate One Club Man Team

Club loyalty is that rarest of things in football today given the reality of big money transfers and big money contracts. This point has been underlined by the ongoing Cristiano Ronaldo transfer saga, with Real Madrid offering to smash the existing world transfer record and to pay him more than the club record 120,000 pounds per week he is already getting at United.

This post honours that rare breed of footballer that stays with one club for their entire professional career (to avoid argument some players might have played at a youth or trainee level for another club). I have also included current players whose careers are still ongoing, though I have generally attempted not to, given the risk, however remote, that they will lose their one-club status in the future. So here is the first team XI of that rarest breed of man - the loyal footballer:


Striker: Uwe Seeler (Hamburg)
Striker: Francesco Totti (AS Roma)

Left Wing: Ryan Giggs (Man Utd)
Central Midfield: Matt Le Tissier (Southampton)
Central Midfield: Sandro Mazzola (Inter Milan)
Right Wing: Giampiero Boniperti (Juventus)

Left Back: Paolo Maldini (AC Milan)
Center Back: Franco Baresi (AC Milan)
Center Back: Billy Wright (Wolves)
Right Back: Guiseppe Bergomi (Inter Milan)

Goalkeeper: Lev Yashin (Dynamo Moscow)

Bench: Sepp Maier (Bayern Munich), Tony Adams (Arsenal), Milton Santos (Botafogo Rio), Berti Vogts (Monchengladbach), Bill Foulkes (Man Utd), Chendo (Real Madrid), Tom Finney (Preston), Raul (Real Madrid)