Well, it’s all off the Flexible New Deal. Contrary to what I was led to believe by other people, it is TNG that I have to report to.

The New Deal Scandal site, and others, have  already shared their knowledge and experience of this “provider” (for example here)

I wonder if any of this relates to the contents of the Jobcentreplus Flexible New Deal document, “What you can expect and what we can expect from you.” (FNDI 10/09).

It begin with  two pages explaining what the FND is.

One page on what we can expect from you. That is  responsibilities we owe to the DWP and the ‘Provider’.

Then “What happens if you don’t meet your responsibilities”?”

Answer: Sanctions. Seven pages  ( Page 7 to 13), from a total of 14,  about them.

Ends with “How to make a complaint.”

On Page 2 there is some stuff about ’service standards’.

It would have been more useful if they explained how the Flexible New Deal is going to be delivered, what is consists of, and what responsibilities the ‘provider’ TNG, has towards its clients.

But of this, nothing. 

After months of relentless optimism, I’m having my first dark thoughts about Roy Keane.

Town 4 points from safety after just 17 goals in 17 games – and after another lacklustre performance on Sky against an average Sheffield Wednesday I’m starting to really worry for the first time.

Ipswich fans are, by and large, a patient and loyal bunch, most of whom are bright enough to know that some of the hyperbole stirred up by Keane and the media earlier this year was pie in the sky stuff…even if it was nice to go along with it over the summer.

But a vital first win against Derby, scrappy though it was, should have heralded improving performances and that all important run of wins.

But watching Town on Saturday, it was clear that Roy is still far from sure of his best team. Fans’ favourite Owen Garvan made a welcome return to midfield, but Lee Martin looked completely ineffectual in attack, while Tamas Priskin seems a shadow of the player who won over Watford fans with a hatful of goals last season.

Town fans are also yet to see the best from Carlos Edwards, who is neither cheap nor young, though Keane imports Delaney and the tenacious Leadbitter are at least coming good.

But with tricky games at Cardiff,  Bristol and a relegation 6-pointer against Peterborough coming up in the next ten days anything less than 4 points is going to see us in very big trouble indeed.

The board seem to be sticking with Keano for now, as they should – and I hope the fans will too. But as we enter this vital part of the season only wins before Christmas will do, or it will be a truly humiliating start to 2010 for a proud man and a great club.

Putting it mildly Roy Keane isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. In fact, for Ipswich fans brought up on decent-minded managers like Bobby Robson and John Lyall, he’s more like a cup of sick. But at least you know where you stand with Roy, he couldn’t be more transparent if he was made of clingfilm.

During this week’s hilarious press conference at Portman Road, Keane put forward his forthright views on the Henry handball controversy. Given his previous disagreements with the FAI, he may as well have brought in a large axe, slipped on a little bit of R Kelly, and set about it grinding it in the most energetic way possible.

But he does make a valid point about the incident which lead to the Irish winning a vital qualifying game against Georgia at Croke Park in February. Check it out for yourselves below. It would have only been slightly more bizarre if the referee had awarded Ireland the Nobel Prize for Physics than this penalty.

Roy Keane stops a press conference to confront a journalist and his mobile phone…

A lot said, a lot written but in the end nothing done. No replay, no hope, the Irish nation, and those of us who have moved away, mourn one of the greatest injustices in the history of football.

And how galling to have perhaps the best player to ever play for the country telling us to get over ourselves. Easy for you to say Roy Keane as you earn a comfortable wage for guiding Ipswich to relegation while the millions back home struggle to cope in the worst economic crisis in the history of the republic.

Qualification on Wednesday would have been a boost for a whole football mad nation. Who knows what the knock on effects of reaching the World Cup might have been for the people, for the economy for the future of our struggling nation.

Instead we were robbed at the hands of Thierry Henry’s will to cheat, the incompetence of a referee and linesman and the corruptness of FIFA.

How surprised are we to see no mention of the dubious handball on FIFA’s website and the utter silence of the most powerful man in football, Sepp Blatter who decreed that the World Cup play offs would be seeded just weeks before the draw, an illegal move if ever I saw one.

Now I must admit to being a little embarrassed to see FAI chief executive John Delaney plead for a replay on the basis of some precedent set in some obscure Asian qualifier a few years ago.

A replay was never going to happen but then we are all a bit desperate for something to cling to and the emotion of it all is raw.

But Delaney did make one good point in that this wasn’t a league or group game whereby the situation could have been redressed. This was a one off situation, a winner takes all scenario.

Ireland will not get chance to redress what happened on Wednesday. Instead they’ll spend next summer watching the greatest show on earth on TV.

And I doubt any Irish people, I know I won’t, will take pleasure in watching the World Cup next year, knowing it should have been us and not the French that are competing in South Africa.

Even the French themselves are embarrassed by it all. It is the great shame of a great footballing nation, world champions just over a decade ago, that they have cheated their way to the finals with the help of one of their greatest ever players.

And what gall for him to come out and call for a replay not long after FIFA and his own football association absolutely ruled out the possibility. A cynical PR move from a player once respected throughout the world but who will now be remembered as much for as his talent as for his will to win at all costs, even if it means cheating, handling the ball not once, but twice.

Surely this is a landmark moment in football. The calls for video evidence, extra officials, or something to cut this out are deafening and must be acceded too.

A system whereby a referee can stop the game a limited number of times to look at a 20-30 second play back on a controversial incident might work.

Failure to implement something that will prevent or at least lessen the chances of incidents like Wednesday’s happening again will only tarnish the game further and make a lot of people, me included, lose  faith in a sport that is increasingly allowing cheats to prevail.

Thanks for the service, but you were a little too greedy,

I don’t blame you trying to get more money,

but you know the clubs position with the debt etc.

Is coventry a bigger vehicle to get you to the premiership ?? 

no.

neither was Ipswich.

and unfortunately you may miss us, more than we miss you.

So thanks and good luck……  but no one player is bigger than the club !

By Michael MacLeod

ONLY a frail pensioner seemed to care for the whereabouts of hapless ex-Scotland gaffer George Burley today (Tues).

The out of favour 53 year-old has gone AWOL from his Edinburgh mansion having being kicked out by the SFA after a dismal World Cup qualifying campaign.

He was last seen on Monday morning, appearing dejected as he made his way to showdown talks with SFA supremo Gordon Smith at the Dakota Hotel in Lanarkshire.

Little did the ex-Hearts and Ipswich boss know that his fate was already sealed.

Yesterday an elderly neighbour popped by Burley’s home – perhaps to pass on her commiserations – but just like Burley himself, she was shown the door.

Originally published in Racing and Football Outlook

Issue: November 17-23 2009

Possibly even more intense than the real thing.

THOSE who were sensible enough to have put some of their hard-earned cash on the newsagent’s counter for a copy of this season’s RFO Football Annual will not have rued their decision to buy the UK’s punting bible.

Hopefully, though there were some readers who, for whatever reason, didn’t make it through to my piece in the book where the focus of my seasonal piece was what looked a good opportunity, back in the summer, to back Darren Ferguson’s Peterborough side to win this season’s Championship play-offs.

Back then, it really did seem as though a third successive promotion for Fergie’s boy was on the cards and, with the Posh priced at about 10 to make the leap to the Premier League, it appeared  a decent bet.

However, as we’ve since discovered, the truth is that Peterborough seem to have found their level and last week the club and Ferguson parted company.

I’m not about to suggest that with Ferguson gone, Peterborough are suddenly about to turn things round and charge up the table.
However, as we saw in last week’s column, the Championship is once again a very compressed competition in terms of the relative strengths of the teams in it.

When we look at the competition there is a large group of clubs who are viable contenders for a spot in the play-offs, working, of course, on the assumption that none of them are seriously going to threaten either Newcastle or West Brom for one of the automatic promotion places.
As I’ve said before, backing those two in the ‘Championship Winner’ market looks the biggest value bet in any of the UK outright markets.

Below that group of play-off contenders is another batch of clubs with Outlook Index ratings between 770 and 800 who are stuck in a bit of a no-man’s land, neither strong enough to contest a place in the top six but, thankfully for them, not as poor as the clubs down at the bottom of the table who form a separate group of their own.

Unlike the situation at the top of the table, however, the interesting thing about the sides at the bottom of the Championship is that the Index ratings and the league table, are in some degree of disagreement.

Much of the talk in the first part of the season concerning this little corner of the Football League has focused on Roy Keane’s dismal start at Ipswich and the man with the thousand-yard stare has had mixed success in translating his once unquestionable on-field presence to his career in the dugout.

So, while the Tractor Boys have a little bit of latitude from their current ranking in the Index, if that is extrapolated over the remainder of the season, it becomes clear that Keane has a significant problem on this hands.

My end-of-season forecasts have Town avoiding relegation but with just a single point in hand.

At the bottom are the particularly miserable-looking trio of Plymouth, Scunthorpe and the aforementioned Peterborough.

The price forecasts that I generate from the points forecasts suggest that while Peterborough and Scunthorpe are interesting from a backers’ point of view, Plymouth look like possible laying material, given that you can lay them to go down at around the 2.1 mark.

Coventry, Sheffield Wednesday and Reading are the sides who have the most to fear from a purely Index-based analysis, with all three currently having weak Index ratings allied to dismal Trend figures, two key indicators that it’s going to be a long and tortuous winter for their supporters.

In fact, the only thing that does eventually save clubs in such a condition is that there are clubs in even worse shape.

These type of bets aren’t really the most interesting and any prices that might eventually lead to a trading opportunity probably don’t warrant the effort.

Perhaps Peterborough’s new boss Mark Cooper – untested in the Football League – can turn things around but, for a bet, I’ll return to the Posh.

They currently look doomed and, if Ipswich persist too long with Keane, the current 6.6 about them going down could soon look huge.

Click here for current Championship relegation odds

The purpose of signing on is to enable the brown shirted minions to tick their little boxes and demonstrate to their masters that we, the unemployed are truly that, because without us they wouldn’t need to exist and although perhaps a contradiction they would be in our position.

I recently attended for my 11 week review with this dear lady called Comfort; the name did not live up to expectations. One of the questions related to further training was I or did I intend to undertake any further training, I suggested that I might register again with the Open University and study for a further degree. However, if I do this I need to gain their agreement and sign up to a learning contract as it might impact on my availability to work. Comfort wasn’t very impressed with my reply that having gained a degree whilst in full time employment, which didn’t cause my employer any problems that I am aware of  I certainly wasn’t going to ask their permission. But “rules is rules” and it will then become part of the jobseekers agreement – I think not.

I enjoy their assumption that they can threaten me with sanctions such as suspending my jobseekers allowance, I did point out to a spotty youth that as I wasn’t in receipt of the aforementioned charity donation therefore they could F.O.A.D. If it appears that they don’t have hold over you they become lost and powerless. There are times when I truly enjoy signing on if only to demonstrate that the individual can still cause discomfort.

I’m sure that my euphoria won’t last long but a short fix is better than none at all.

I want to give you guys a preview of a new project I’m currently working on.  I’ll soon be launching SoulShoot Photography which will be a dedicated area of my portraiture geared to Mods & Scooterists.

During the sixties my dad (Darrell) spent a lot of his youth on the back of a Vespa (a GS160 to be exact), cruising around and getting up to no good no doubt  His love of scooters is still in him today with him currently owning two Vespas and still attending local meets and rallies.  Of course, this era wasnt just about the transport, but the clothes, the music & just the way of life and this scene is still rife today all over the world with enthusiasts, like my dad still celebrating this culture that has stood the test of time.

Where I come in is that I, like my dad have always been fascinated by this phenomenon and so wanted to play my part in this culture and celebrate it by dedicating a part of my photography to producing some nostalgic, yet contemporary images for those guys that still live the scene, capturing personalities in their own environment.

I have my first shoot booked in for the weekend, so am really looking forward to seeing what we come up with.  I look forward to putting the images up for you all to see real soon.

In the meantime, if you know of anyone thats into this whole scene and that may be interested in getting some real cool portraits done, drop me a mail at info@soulshoot.co.uk

With the news that the rise in unemployment is slowing, I thought it would be a good chance to call in the nation’s unemployed managers to the Football JobCentre for a pep talk…

Darren Ferguson

Oh Darren, life’s a bitch eh? Two promotions in two years and a few months later you’re not wanted anymore.

Hard to please some people.

I’ve had a few people enquiring about you and I’d say you’ll be back in a job before you know it.  

Gareth Southgate

Hi Gareth… how you feeling? Oh dear, tissue?

Look on the bright side, Gordon’s not exactly doing well is he? And you did bring through some talented young players, like Adam Johnson.

Now, we need to send these p45 details off soon other wise we’ll hit the post strike.

Oh God, I shouldn’t have said ‘hit the post,’  I’m really sorry… would you like to compose yourself outside?

Steve Coppell

Nice to see you, how was your summer break? Would you like a biscuit? I’ve got Penguins, Hob Nobs, or just a plain digestive. Ah yes, I thought you’d prefer the plain.

I don’t envisage any problems getting you back to work, you did a fantastic job at Reading. However, we will be sending you on a training course: ‘Team Selection and Squad Management,’ might have some useful tips, I think.

David O’Leary

Hi there, nice to see you… again. The amount of times we’ve met now, I really feel I know you. How’s the wife?

How long have you been looking for a job now? 3 years?! Wow!

Have you thought about lowering your expectations a bit… League One maybe?

Not to worry job-seekers, I’ve got a whole host of possible jobs for you:

Peterborough

A vacancy! Darren need not apply.

Liverpool

I’m not sure they’ll be looking for a British manager, but this might come up before Christmas.

Anyone fancy working with Torres, Gerrard and…um, Ngog?

Hull

A struggling Premier League club, a perfect candidate for all of you! Well maybe not you, David.

Ipswich

If any of you actually want to incur the wrath of Roy Keane, you could go for  this one. Darren, your Dad  may have a few tips on how to deal with him.

In summary: chin up boys, you’re each one of 2.46 million people in Britain, so you’re not alone.

Evin Guvendiron tallies the Tigers only goal in D3 North quarter-finals loss

Two overtimes didn’t settle it, nor did the first five penalty kicks.  The 6th penalty kick gave the Shawsheen Tech Rams the Division 3 North tournament victory in girls soccer after their keeper made a save and the Ipswich keeper wasn’t as fortunate.

It goes down as a 2-1 quarter finals loss for the Tigers and a tough exit.  Shawsheen goes on to play Greater Lowell, a team according to the Lowell Sun, that they have already defeated three times.  The winner gets Georgetown in the North final.  The Royals absolutely crushed #1 seed Matignon 9-1 today (November 11th) at Lynn.

WHINER ALERT: I know what the MIAA letters stand for but at Shawsheen I’m thinking it could have meant – Missing In Action Again!

What actually does a school get for being part of that organization?  This was a tournament game, wasn’t it?  Missing as far as I could tell were; (1) player programs, (2) player introductions, (3) the national anthem, and (4) some sort of score clock. 

Oh, and the Shawsheen field doesn’t have any lights.  You start a game at 2PM around here, when the sun sets before 4:30 PM, you weren’t planning for much extended play.  Why not 1PM??

And where was the news coverage?  Why do Ipswich folks subscribe to the Salem Evening News?  Wow, next day they had a boxscore!  Ipswich Chronicle – Where’s your game story?  Waiting until Friday? 

Anyhow, I stood at the Shawsheen end through two halves and the first overtime and took pictures.  Devoid of a program, all I have are pictures of the part I stayed for.  Thanks to Ipswich AD Tom Gallagher for helping me sort out the names and numbers.

Here is my list of pictures;
Stephanie Sutherby dribbling toward the net,
Corner kick action in the first half shows Mary Krathwohl above the crowd,
Ipswich #5 - Lydia Earley
Ipswich #’s 3 and 21 – Grace Gardner and Bryn Golesworthy
Ipswich #24 - Courtney Long
Ipswich #21 - Bryn Golesworthy
Shot sailing over Hannah O’Flynn and the crossbar,
Bridget Fay near the goal.

Bypass the Benefit Delay Scandal

Jobcentre Plus gets correspondence sent to the below published address for the Suffolk (?) area:

Bury St Edmunds BDC
Thorpe Road
Norwich
NR99 1AD

It actually then gets redirected to:

Bury St Edmunds BDC
St Andrews St North
Bury St Edmunds
IP33 1TT

This is intentional to delay your appeal and your correspondence going to a decision maker.

Post a letter today to the actual Bury St Edmunds BDC Address via first class Royal Mail service it should arrive tomorrow or the following day.

Send it to the Norwich address (notice the NR99 postcode, this is a special postcode it doesn’t really exist) it can take up to a month for anyone from the BDC to process it (I have seen a document I sent to the BDC with a stamp confirming this).

Appealing?

Next time use the actual physical address not the Norwich processing centre address and they should be able to process it within a week.

Hope this helps.

The days of boring, rigid commercial/corporate phototgraphy is now a thing of the past.  Vibrant, exciting companies that are going places want to portray this atmosphere to their clients in both their print ads, in their web presence and even in their premises themselves.

Matt Brennan, owner of Grange Fitness, MB Fitness and Kickstart fitcamp in Ipswich wanted just this and so I was excited to work with Matt on this project.  Over a couple of shoots at his premises I photographed his team in a manner of poses and am really pleased with the outcome – and so is Matt of course!

The end product consisted of a set of ‘Trainer ID’ images for each gym to use on the web, on print ads and in the gym, framed!, A few comissioned photo art pieces which will be hung in the gyms and some images for advertisements to be used in the press and on flyers.

If you would like something similar for your company or have something specific in mind, please get in touch – I love a challenge!

To let know I’ll be offline this week. If you have any enquiries please feel free to email me on info@kylieeatherphotography.com.au and I’ll reply as soon as I’m back.  Otherwise  I’m available on mobile.

Thank you.

Before I go, can’t post without a picture. Here’s a quick one from last Sunday afternoon..

Signing on at the Jobcentre is vexing to say the least, in and out in less than five minutes. Runs like clockwork one might say; however try to deviate from the norm.

I started working for a nursing agency which requires a period of induction to ensure standards are uniform which is good for the clients, organisation and staff. We all know what is expected and how to meet those expectations. Unfortunately one of my training days is on the day that I sign on. I posed the question, “could I change my signing day due to training?” simple request and under normal circumstances a request easily accommodated. No, we are talking about bureaucracy here, “Friday is your signing on day, if you miss it you will need to be interviewed to decide whether the reason for not attending is valid”.

“But I’m attending a course”

“But you will have failed to attend and a decision will need to be reached by a senior manager”

Now for the best piece, “we will then decide whether your Job Seekers allowance continues or is suspended”

“But I don’t receive Job Seekers allowance”

“You will still need to be interviewed”

“Perhaps I shouldn’t attend the training day, would that help?”

“Now you’re being difficult”

Failing to attend either session is seen as difficult – Thanks Selema for your help and understanding.

An email of complaint rectified the situation but clearly the “brown shirted minions” are incapable of independent thought.

Have we bred a nation of idiots who are unable to deviate from the norm? Clearly there can be flexibility but only if one makes a fuss, it’s enough to make one reach for the Prozac.

History is written by the winners. I realised this after the David Haye-Nikolai Valuev fight last night.

Maybe, watching it on an illicit Polish video stream, I missed something patently apparent to the ringside pundits and HD morons watching at home with their bottles of Carling C2. Haye won the fight on a majority decision. Two judges gave it narrowly to Haye, one judge thought it was a draw. Whatever. Boxing judges don’t know shit. Most of the time they can’t even agree on what a punch is. It was close. I thought Valuev shaded it. But it was close.

Moreover, everyone thought it was close at the time. The guys on Five Live thought it was close, the BBC live text commentator thought it was close, Twitter thought it was close, the in-play betting markets thought it was close. (You might argue that any opinion I might have of the fight is irredeemably tarnished by the fact that instead of watching it, I was instead on Twitter, Betfair, BBC live text and Five Live, but I’ll just blank you.)

Look at the aftermath, though. If you read reports of the fight, such is the gushing over his “perfect fight“, “utterly outclassing and comprehensively outpointing the tallest, heaviest champion in history“, “turning a dangerous champion into a puppet on a string – a measure of his dominance“, that you’d be forgiven for thinking Haye had turned Valuev’s head into passata.

Yet this is the myth that will endure. More so because the fight could only be watched on pay-per-view and most people won’t have done that. Over time, due to the overwhelming weight of the written word, the view that David Haye dominated the fight will, despite being patent bollocks, develop into something vastly resembling ‘fact’. I should know, because I’m in the business of producing patent bollocks.

All writers are engaged in the crafting of what posterity will come to know as ‘truth’, but I think sports writers most of all. Our subject matter consists of small, autonomous lozenges of happening that have very clear start and end points. Things like Tony Blair’s legacy or the artistic merit of Rihanna’s back catalogue won’t be settled for many years, due to their shifting and protracted nature. Properly done, history requires distance. Foolish indeed is the writer who deigns to pass eternal judgment on events that are his contemporary; future generations have an annoying habit of wanting their say on these things.

Look. Look at all those men. Those horrible, horrible men. With their computers. This could be eight out of the ten most nightmarish scenes from history (Exceptions: burning of Joan of Arc, Srebrenica)

Sport’s not like that. Sporting spectacle can be turned into history as soon as it finishes, more often than not from the arena itself, by several dozen intense-looking middle-aged men. The process of forging sporting myth is one that can be initiated immediately, by those present. In fact, sport needs to be seen to be judged.

And this is a problem, because while in some ways the attached press corps are the best people to write about a sporting event, in many others they’re the worst. Let’s start with the simplest problem – practicalities. When a sporting event like the fight last night ends, you’ve got to file your copy within minutes. If the event takes place during the day, you’ve got a little longer, but you spend most of that time chasing up interviews. Imagine that. Can you imagine AJP Taylor having to submit his history of the Second World War within half an hour of it ending?

Germany enjoyed the better of the opening two years, but a crunching tackle by Churchill, followed by an ill-advised foray into Russian territory, proved the turning point. Rommel battled gamely and continued to pose a threat on the opposite flank, but the introduction of the US attackers after half-time was decisive. Truman landed the final blow on the stubborn Japanese resistance with two massive atomic bombs that killed at least 5,000 people.

A disappointed Emperor Hirohito said afterwards: “Those two late strikes at the end cost us dear. We looked to be in a good position when we took Singapore and the Philippines, but that’s war, I guess. We’ll just have to dust ourselves off and look ahead to half a century of making calculators.”

You simply can’t write impartial, detached, comprehensive, accurate history in a noisy room in a matter of minutes. You can have a damn good stab at it, which is what we do every week. And while we’re not bad, it’s hardly ideal, is it? Moreover, sports journalists don’t write in a vacuum. They know, talk to, consult, their fellow professionals. From this chummy little whirpool a clumsy quasi-consensus can easily emerge.

"Having used all three substitutes, Nelson was forced to carry on, despite suffering knocks to his leg, arm and eye in the second half"

I mentioned detachment. That’s the next problem. We’re all products of our environment, and sports writers pride themselves on their proximity to the action. That’s great when we’re trying to capture raw emotion, approximate the sheer depth of human feeling, paint a picture with words. We can assume Thomas Gainsborough visited his famous landscapes in person, rather than simply extrapolating from an Ordnance Survey map. But the narcotic rush of live theatre is counter-productive to the generation of sober testimony. It’s like trying to apply mascara while on horseback. The noble and genuine intention may be to focus on the matter in hand, but we’re so easily influenced by our surroundings. Emotional copy amplifies triumph and disaster, masks complexity, equanimity and the mundane.

You may well think I’ve been overstating the influence of sports writers a tad. These days, you argue, all top-class sport is filmed. It’s displayed to death, packaged as Christmas DVDs, wheeled out years later as ‘From the Archives’. You can simply consult it and form your own opinions.

To which I could retort: ah, but can you consult all of it? After an event finishes – with the exception of a very few sports – television editors filter out the vast majority of the action to make it bitesize and palatable. You can get the DVD of this year’s Ashes series and see Flintoff taking shitloads of Australian wickets and performing a succession of increasingly grandiose celebrations while team-mates mob him and crowds go potty. What you won’t see is ball after ball delivered short of a length, well outside off-stump, left alone and immediately forgotten. But that’s Flintoff’s career in microcosm, far more than a one-in-a-thousand inswinging yorker that cleans up a tailender like Nathan Hauritz.

And anyway, our viewing of sporting events from the past is hugely inflected by how history has shaped our existing perceptions of it. History tells us that Pele was a footballing genius, and we might well watch some Brazil highlights that bear this out. But just like the advert with the moonwalking bear, history has unwittingly focused our gaze on Pele to the exclusion of the other players on the pitch.

You see, we writers are slaves to narrative. We’re driven by the twin requirements of being fair and being entertaining, and the two are not always in concert. The fact is that David Haye won a close, scrappy, ugly fight on a decision that could really have gone either way. You could write that, and to his credit, someone did. But this doesn’t chime with the meta-narrative: plucky, cocky young Brit triumphantly vanquishes the aging ogre from behind the Iron Curtain. So you take a few liberties, convince yourself that when Haye was ducking and weaving for his life, he was just following his masterplan (codenamed Running Away And Not That Much Hitting). You convince yourself that Haye’s half-shots were ‘measured aggression’, that Valuev’s were ‘wild swings’.

I plead guilty to this charge. A couple of weeks ago I was at Plymouth v Ipswich. Plymouth scored first, Ipswich equalised through a howling defensive error. It was a huge slice of good fortune, and I remembered a quote that Ipswich manager Roy Keane had given during the week, saying that he had prayed for his team to do well. Bingo. I churned out the first three paragraphs of a report along the general theme of ‘God saves Ipswich’.

Only as the game went on, Ipswich were getting better and better. They were creating more chances, looking less and less the beneficiaries of outrageous luck as every minute passed. If they’d scored and won, I could still just about have justified the top line. But they didn’t. The match finished 1-1 and Ipswich had had slightly the better of it. With the clock ticking, I decided that telling people this would only complicate things, and pushed ahead with a report about how Ipswich were saved from ignominy and certain defeat by the hand of the Almighty. A tad disingenuous, but it’s so easy to do.

The problem is that the people who report the event are the same people that pass judgment on it. You only need to open the news section of a tabloid newspaper to realise that this generates highly entertaining prose with all the journalistic integrity of a wire-tapped sex toy. It’s not easy being fair, accurate, representative and artistic all at once. We’re doing our best to present the facts, honestly, but lord knows we’re creating a thousand fictions in the process.

My first day to sign on I committed the cardinal sin of being late. Brief apologies and try to make light of the embarrassment. No, that doesn’t work. “We will stop your benefits if this happens again”. “Well as you aren’t paying me do I really care? In a word; NO”. My comments weren’t receive well, even less so when I offered to go home. No I can’t go home, I just have to wait with all the other sad looking individuals – sorry, we are no longer individuals with responsibilities and status, now we are reduced to a statistic.

When I am seen the interview lasts all of five minutes, “what have you done to find work in the past fortnight, have you been in paid or unpaid work in the past fortnight?” having answered “No” I sign their form and leave in less than five minutes.

Was that it? No humour, no support, no interaction or meaningful dialogue. I seem to recall Charlie Drake had more fun signing on, but that was in the days of black and white television. Colour appears to have reduced to a grey mass.

For those who haven’t endured this process it is not only tedious but time consuming and one comes away from the experience wondering “do these people actually know what they are doing?” I don’t think so.

After becoming unemployed one should register the very next day, or when you finally meet your interrogator they want to know why the delay, even though I only left it two working days. Not sure of the process, still in shock just don’t cut it – “well you wont get paid for the missing days” do I care? No!!!

My initial interview repeats all the information already given in a lengthy telephone conversation; don’t they talk to each other? Clearly not. After repeating all my personal details such as income, dependents, outgoings, savings qualifications the information is sent away for a decision to be made. No the local bureaucrats are not able to make that decision, more “jobs for the boys”.

 No I am not entitled to any benefits, again why can’t they tell claimants if they have more than so much saved (it clearly does not pay to save) or a pension then you wont receive anything, perhaps this is just too easy and, and this feeds my paranoia about Big Brother they wouldn’t have even more personal information about the individual.

Like many I have recently been made redundant but the Health Service like to ease the pain by allowing me to retire early, which allows the benefit of two pay-outs. Much better that many. However and this is the rant.  I left early in May and received a phone call from my manager, which sounded as if she was eating her lunch, but time is precious and one should be grateful for some contact. Then from my last working day until I finished at the end of July no further contact. Did I smell or have a contagious disease? Who can tell certainly no one said. After my final day of employment I received my P45 in the post. No, no letter of thanks despite 33 years service and 25 years working for the same NHS Trust. It certainly made me feel unvalued and that my contribution was worthless; sadly this isn’t a rare experience, I don’t think managers consider the feelings of their colleagues but view them as a means to an end which enables them to meet their targets.

Next time before you go to Ipswich checkout the lastest offers for Ipswich.  As Townvoucher.com for Colchester, Ipswich central publishs discounts from local shops in Ipswich on their website.

http://www.ipswichcentral.com/ipswich_central_plus/current_offers

The Sorrow of Ipswich.

Local Conservative Councillor Steven Wells yesterday led an anti-Postal Strike Picket outside Ipswich Royal Mail Offices. (More info: here) Standing on the opposite side of the road to the CWU picket the Tory-led suits attacked workers. They demanded ‘their’ post. The demonstration was composed (according to Socialist Worker here)  of paid employees of Steven Wells’ company, Experience Direct.

Socialist Worker does not mention that Steven Wells lost his Ipswich Borough Council Housing Portfolio earlier this year. A sign of the esteem the local Tories hold him in is that he is now on the Community Improvements Committee (as a Substitute).

Those who seek a better postal service might be interested in this. Not long ago the Royal Mail commissioned a computer-based survey (Pegasus) in Ipswich. To improve deliveries it recommended employing much higher levels of staff.

Strange to say it was ignored.

Newcastle returned to winning ways after back-to-back defeats with a late victory over Doncaster last week. That 2-1 win came courtesy of Kevin Nolan’s 18-yard strike and his performance in that win earned him enough points to climb to the top of the overall Actim Index, overtaking Michael Chopra who drops to fourth.

The week’s best performer was Cardiff midfielder Peter Whittingham, who scored a hat-trick for his side in the thrilling 4-3 win over Sheffield United at Bramall Lane. That performance earns him the highest score of the week with a mammoth 73, which is the second best individual score of the season, behind Cardiff team-mate Chopra. He obviously takes his place in the Team of the Week and moves up seven places to second in the overall Index.

Watford had a fantastic time against Sheffield Wednesday, beating them 4-1 in the televised clash last Friday, and four of their players have forced their way into the Team of the Week as a result. Defenders Jon Harley and Adrian Mariappa, Arsenal loanee Henri Lansbury and Manchester United loanee Tom Cleverley all take their place in the select XI. The team is completed by Peterborough’s Joe Lewis and George Boyd, Coventry’s Ben Turner, Preston’s Billy Jones, Derby’s Robbie Savage and Cardiff duo Whittingham and Jay Bothroyd.

Managers can often be heard in post-match interviews saying the Coca-Cola Championship is a long season and there are plenty of games. And they would be right, as the players are already racking up the minutes on the pitch. Three players are sharing the most amount of time on the pitch and they are all from the same club. Nottingham Forest trio Chris Gunter, Wes Morgan and Lee Camp have all spent 1367 minutes sweating blood and tears for Billy Davies’ men this term. Meanwhile, Derby duo Stephen Bywater and Dean Moxey have been positively lazy, with just 1366 minutes of game-time. It must be something in the East Midlands water.

Famous for being lobbed from the halfway line for THAT goal by David Beckham and for almost denying England a route to Euro 2000 when he played for Scotland in the play-off, Neil Sullivan is still plugging away and this season, at the age of 39, he is the oldest player in the Coca-Cola Championship. Derby veteran Paul Dickov and QPR coach Gareth Ainsworth are the oldest outfield players to grace the pitch this term, aged 36. At the other end of the scale, Ipswich’s Connor Wickham is having a baptism of fire to his career, but he is adapting well at Portman Road and has played over 300 minutes, despite just being 16.

It was a great week for Nathan Ellington as his last-minute equaliser for Watford against Ipswich not only saw him score his first goal of the season, but also saw him climb a gargantuan 197 places up the Index. He still loiters well down the rankings in 409th, but it was an impressive week nonetheless. That is not something Crystal Palace’s Nick Carle can say as his Index score of -7 sees him slip a rather embarrassing 104 places in the overall standings.

View the latest Actim Index >