Dave Kean

Today was an emotional day, it’s the third birthday since mum succumbed to breast cancer and she has been on my mind a lot. Today I got a card from dad, he wrote in the card

“Happy Birthday. We are very proud to have you as a son”

This has been a rough day, this evening after I opened the card was especially tough.

Most of us don’t get very far in life without experiencing the death of someone we love. Now I’m in my 40’s people seem to be kicking off at an increasing rate. In the last decade friends have passed, lost spouses, been killed in car crashes and died of cancer. It’s quite the toll when I think about it. I’ve gone to more funerals than I wanted to and probably fewer than I should have.

I lost the last of my grandparents 18 months ago. Other than my parents my grandfather was the person I was closest too in my family. He lived a wonderful life, lived it on his terms, showed unconditional love and his house was usually the first place I’d visit when I arrived in England for a visit.

My father, brother and myself are all non-believers (despite the best efforts of a few friends and colleagues) and I do think that perhaps we could have learned something from the life instructions that religion can offer. A good argument could be made that most religion really started out as a way of trying to understand death a little and maybe make sense out of the loss of a beloved.

When Mum passed a couple of years ago after a long illness I was devastated. I had nowhere to put my pain, no place to show it other than maybe in the shower or in the car. People would ask, “How are you doing?” and I would reply that I was fine and not want to make any more of it than that. I learned to welcome small talk so I could skip describing my grief.

The reality is this has been life-altering. We recover, we get over the initial pain but life is not quite the same. Often it’s the little things that bring it back. One of the more constant reminders is when I call my parents house and dad answers the phone. For the last 25 years dad  almost never picked up, mum always answered with the cheerful and slightly surprised sounding “Oh hello David” before launching in to what ever family gossip of drama she felt I needed to know. I call dad most days and there is a part of me that still expects mum to be on the other end with her distinctive opening.

After watching mum fight cancer for three years before finally succumbing I discovered we must give grief its time and place, and that period may be so much longer than most of us are comfortable with in a world that moves with the pace of this one today.

Sitting talking to a friend of mine tonight, it has been a very long afternoon and evening.

We race cars against each other and have done for a long time; we talked of what makes racing so special for those who get it.

I don’t think I’ve ever slept well the night before a race. No matter if it was a minor club road rally or a round of the European Rally championship, not being able to sleep was there every time.

The restlessness was down to one thing, fear. I’ve done close to 300 races as a competitor and it’s always been there.

Sport is made special in part because of that fear.

It’s not the fear of physically hurting ourselves if we mess up and send the car into the trees; both of us accept that as part of the sport. Same with playing rugby, everyone who runs out on a Sunday afternoon up accepts that sprains and dislocated shoulders come with the territory.

It’s the fear of being put to the test, and finding ourselves falling short of what we could do. Not exactly a fear of failure, it’s a lot more than that. It’s more the test itself.

I love racing, it’s the precision mixed with brute force. The rush is addictive and the people almost universally wonderful. The top three or four most satisfying and memorable events for me are not the championship clinchers or the wins, they are the days where I believe that car went about as fast as it could with my mediocre talent.

In the Maine Forest Rally in 2002 we came away as fastest two-wheel drive car and a huge class win. Same event the following year and we crashed out, but the race itself was far more memorable. In 03 that car went as fast as it could over one particular stage, we left nothing behind and were totally committed. As close to perfect as we could be, and that was more satisfying than winning.

This may not make total sense, but the fear that keeps me awake is more than straight failure, racing is good at forcing you to deal with failure. It’s more the fear of the process, of the test itself and being found wanting.

Every time I was getting ready for the start, pulling on the race suit and thinking about the day ahead I’d look for a reason to not start. I never actually took an excuse not to start, but it’s been there every time.

Occasionally it would go well and I’d get a glimpse of what greatness in a car looked like. There would be a corner or two that I’d go as fast as it was possible to go, occasionally it would be for more than a corner or two. In Maine it was for an entire 8-mile stage.

It’s a feeling of reaching that far beyond the ordinary, and that moment of personal satisfaction is made all the better for the fear of the test.

“What I’m interested in is the big poll on 6 May, when people really have to choose five more years of Gordon Brown – the uncertainty, the bickering, the haggling of a hung parliament – or a decisive clean break with the Conservatives.”  David Cameroon

Is it really as simple as that? Perhaps it is, but a hung parliament could potentially force debate and compromise. With a huge Labour majority these are things that have been missing for the last 13 years.

After the Labour landslide victories in the ’97 (179 seat majority) and ’01 (167 seat majority) general elections there was no requirement for Labour to worry what the opposition had to say. The last election in 2005 was not quite as overwhelming a victory, giving Labour a still substantial 66 seat majority.

For the last 13 years Labour had a very comfortable working majority, with the loyalty to the party rather than the electorate it’s meant unpopular legislation can still be railroaded through in comfort with the minimum of debate. There have been once or twice that the party whips have had to do a little work, but the MP’s understand where their loyalty lay.

The opposition is relegated to a rather noisy, but ultimately inconsequential role.

There is no check and balance to the government and they are allowed to operate with relative impunity.

Looking back to 2001 and 2002, having a 167 seat majority when some very controversial laws and motions were being revised (extended detention without charge, ID cards and the war in Iraq) meant that the wants and desires of the electorate were not necessarily considered.

Looking at it in a rather simplistic way I do think that a functional pack made up of a couple of the current parties could be a good thing for government and would certainly add a check to the system that has been missing since the tine Conservative majority of the mid 90’s. A Labour-Lib Dem pact (anti-Conservative more than anything else) seems the obvious alignment. The Lib Dems are philosophically a lot closer to Labour than the Cameron and the Conservatives. To give some additional credit to Nick Clegg, he’s done a rather good job in differentiating the party from the big two during the last year and taking a lot of the ground in the political center Under the leadership of Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy the party seemed a little further to the left than today.

It’s been an interesting week in the UK, Lib Dem Nick Clegg clearly won the first debate.

For me this was because he used straightforward language and stayed away from the forced sloganeering that permeates politics. He did not have anything really new to say, but was consistent and it was not exactly the venue for spontaneous announcements. However Gordon Brown may have given Nick Clegg his new slogan: “I agree with Nick”. The PM used this seven times during the first debate.

A poll published today put the Lib Dems in the lead with 33 per cent, one point ahead of the Conservatives and with Labour trailing on 26 per cent. This polling suggests that a hung Parliament is increasingly likely and that the role of the Lib Dems would be to make a pact with one of the major parties to form government.

Philosophically Labour seems like the natural partners and it’s very possible that Labour is actively working towards that end.

Clegg seems to have found some additional confidence and has made some strong statements. He’s plenty of time to get this wrong, but so far I’m impressed.

“The general election campaign is starting to come to life for the simple reason that a growing number of people are starting – and it is only a start – to believe, starting to hope, that we can do something different this time,”

“That the old tired choices that they have been given by the old parties of the past no longer need to govern the way in which we run politics in the future. I think that is tremendously exciting.”

The system

I was asked about the difference between the British and US systems, they are both “first-past-the-post” with a couple of important differences. In the UK, it’s one winner – one seat. The party with the most seats in the House of Commons forms government.

In America the winner of each state usually wins all of that state’s electoral votes, but those votes are distributed in proportion to the population (yes a couple of states divide the electoral votes, but lets ignore that). There is proportionality built into the system that’s missing from the House of Commons.

However, the biggest difference between the British and American election systems is that in the U.S., people vote for a leader. In the U.K. people vote for parties. The party then appoints their leader and the electorate has no say in that. If the party has the largest number of seats then their leader becomes the Prime Minister.

This is why Tony Blair was replaced by Gordon Brown with no election taking place. Blair stood down as party leader and was replaced by Brown. The electorate was not consulted (nor was it required) as it was an internal party appointment.

I think most people have a happy place; one of mine is the North Downs in southern England. A couple of weeks ago among all the pressure and emotion I made a couple of hours for myself to walk along the North Downs Way near Guildford from Newlands Corner over St Martha and back the long way. It’s couple of hours with a decent amount of up and down.

While I was out walking I noticed the daffodils were making an appearance. This means it’s spring.

The changing of the seasons means different things to different people. For me spring brings hope of the summer to come, change from the grey winter to the bright sunshine and inspiration for the future.

I’ve never needed the spring the way I do this year.

It’s hard to explain and I’m still working through a lot of things. I am not ready to put all here just yet.

For the last however many years I’ve held a lot of resentment and anger deep down, and it’s time to let go. The last few weeks have been hard, really emotional and its felt very raw.

It’s got to the point where it was part of everything I did; it took away from me and the people in my life. It’s time for change, Time to let go of the anger and resentment, and it’s time once again to be the person I know I can be.

I’ve started to make the changes to make things right, I need to rediscover faith in myself, in my decisions and start to believe in who I am once again. With that I can be myself and give myself to the important people in my life.

While walking over the Downs I felt the warmth of spring, and it felt really, really good.

A lot of people (me, Jackie Stewart, Eddie Jordan and all of my more informed racing friends) though Lewis Hamilton was going to crush Jenson Button this year.

So far that’s not happened and I started looking through the results of the first four races and was rather surprised. I accept its early days, we are not even a quarter of the way through the championship and the weather has certainly played a part in mixing things up a bit. None the less it’s rather interesting to have a quick glance down the results.

Bahrain

Race – Hamilton 3rd, Button 7th

Qualifying – Hamilton 4^th, Button 8th

Practice – Button 5^th, Hamilton 6th

Australia

Race – Button 1^st, Hamilton 6th

Qualifying – Button 4^th, Hamilton 11th

Practice – Button 4^th, Hamilton 7th

Malaysia

Race – Hamilton 6^th, Button 8th

Qualifying – Button 17^th, Hamilton 20th

Practice – Hamilton 1st, Button 3rd

China

Race – Button 1^st, Hamilton 2^nd (fastest lap)

Qualifying – Button 5^th, Hamilton 6th

Practice – Button 1^st, Hamilton 3^rd

Coming into the year it was though by many that Button was a good race driver, but ultimately Lewis Hamilton was quicker over a single lap, and that’s not been the case.

This is going to be pretty simplistic as I don’t have the energy to really break the numbers down and pull out my stats text books (there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics) to prove my point, but here we go.

First is the faster over a single lap argument that has been all over a couple of blogs by Hamilton supporters to prove he’s the best.

Combining qualifying and practice Button was faster than Hamilton 75% of the time (6 out if 8).

Personally I feel practice is a little irrelevant. With the limited testing this year it’s a chance to try a few things out and get some laps on the car, but it is head-to-head data and we can’t ignore it totally.

Looking at qualifying only we see the following “average grid position” from each driver.

Button – 8.5 (ignoring Malaysia – 5.6)

Hamilton – 10.25 (ignoring Malaysia – 7)

Button has on average out qualified Hamilton by almost two (1.75) grid places over the four races. Take out the deeply weather affected Malaysian GP grid and it’s a little better for Hamilton, he’s “only” beaten by an average of 1.4 grid positions.

Being subjective for a moment, Buttons two wins have come in part because he reacted to the conditions better and produced a great race strategy. This has become more important with the heavier fuel loads and making tires last. Reacting to the conditions earlier today in Shanghai led to an early swap to slicks and then a decisive change to intermediates saved him a couple of stops over Hamilton. Those two stops were the difference between the top and second step on the podium.

No question Hamilton’s drive through the field was terrific, especially the battle with Vettel as they climbed though the field together. However Buttons win would have been far more dominating had he not been forced to relinquish a substantial lead to the safety car.

I still think that Hamilton is potentially quicker than Button over a single lap, but qualifying and practice have not supported that assumption. I’d like to revisit the numbers in a few races and see what’s going on then.

Today the one important stat is the race for the drivers’ championship, and there Button leads Hamilton 60 to 49 with lots more racing to go.

Gordon Brown admitted he made some mistakes when he listened to banking lobbyists and loosened regulations on their clients. Like the banking regulators in many other countries they put the banks interest before that of their customers and the public in general.

After becoming PM Brown has said that regulations should have been tighter around the world, however his statements during an interview in ITV’s Tonight program contradict his previous position that as chancellor he did everything he could and the banking crisis was largely the fault of American regulators.

Of course David Cameron jumped straight onto this with: “Gordon Brown told us two things: he said this all came from America and he said his judgment was right in every regard. He is now saying that those two things are not true, that there were big mistakes made here in Britain in the regulatory system that he designed.”

Brown followed his admission that he screwed up by listening to lobbyists with “So I’ve learnt from that. So you don’t listen to the industry when they say, ‘This is good for us’. You’ve got to talk about the whole public interest.”

In another interesting admission during the interview he said he’s not very good at the whole PR side of politics. And this is news to whom exactly?

Interestingly after this interview aired the election polls tightened a little. There is now 4% (down from 5% yesterday) between the two major parties in some of the polls. Polls once again show that a minority or hung parliament is a distinct possibility.

Following on from the two big boys the Lib Dems published their manifesto yesterday. Somewhat ironically, the party that’s been the loudest critic of the big banks and their role in the economic downturn chose the heart of the City of London to have their press launch.

The overall message seems to be “trust us”; there is no marketing wet dream slogan to stand behind. The party described this as a “serious document for serious times”. The Lib Dems have been preaching the “change for people” and “building a fairer Britain for a number of years, and quite successfully at times too.

First examination and the party seem to have put a lot of effort into differentiating themselves from the Conservatives and Labour. Perhaps more work on showing how they can actually afford their promises would be nice.

The biggest “bribe” is no income tax paid on the first 10K/year. Add in raising pensions in line with earnings or inflation (why this is not done already just disturbs me) and the usual more police/smaller classes promises and it’s a large hole in tax revenue and additional costs that has to be filled from somewhere.

There is some tax raising proposals in the mix. First was to tax homes above 2 million pounds, followed a levy on bank earnings to help pay for the support they’ve had over the last year. Some tax credits for higher earners were also to be scrapped under the Lib Dem plans.

There are notes about public spending cuts and some nice tables at the back. Restrictions on public sector raises along with stopping the ID card program, not replacing the Trident and a few other things are part of the opposed cuts. Not sure if this adds up to the 15-17 billion a year required to pay for the promises.

Interestingly there were no pledges to keep income tax or VAT at current levels. In fact the manifesto makes it clear that tax raises may be required to reduce borrowings, but that it’s a last resort and the big focus will be on cutting spending. One big point of differentiation was talking directly about the deficit and that the borrowed money has to be paid back somehow.

The public sector savings proposed are substantial and first glance makes it tough to confirm that the numbers add up, this does create something of a credibility issue, but if the party set out to make sure people knew they were different from Labour and the Conservatives they did a nice job.

The BBC has Paxmans full interview with Nick Clegg here. Paxman comes off as being his usual direct self, while Clegg took a little time to get in track, but did OK

David Cameron stood in front of the crumbling, but iconic Batersea power station and  framed the launch of the conservative manifesto as giving power back to the people (Tooting Popular Front and Wolfie anyone?) by asking the voters to join them in forming the next government.

Once I got past the jargon (Labours was refreshingly buzz-word free) I felt much like I did after perusing the Labour manifesto yesterday. Once again there is a lot of effort talking about how tomorrow will be different from the last few years, but with no compelling vision for what the country will look like in 2015 if we were to believe.

The sharing government part comes from a proposed “Big Society”: a combination of decentralization and social responsibility. The idea as I saw it was that the electorate will be able to take over public services, choose the run their own school or hospital as a trust. No detail is given as to how that could happen,

“The Labour way assumes that only Big Government can solve our problems, but the alternative to Big Government is not no government: its good government, effective government”

Labour and the Lib Dems have both claimed VAT will have to rise to pay for Tory tax cuts and spending pledges. The NI rise, affecting anyone earning over £20,000, will hit small businesses “especially hard”, costing, according to the document, up to 57,000 jobs in small and medium-sized enterprises.

The Conservatives and Labour traded barbs over taxes (this is good, they get that the economy is the central issue). Labour proposes a 1% increase in National Insurance (social security for my American friends) for those earning over 20K/year. The Conservatives are not totally against the rise, but have pledged to raise the threshold for the higher contribution to 35K/year.

Cameron said nothing about keeping taxes where they are; both income tax and VAT (sales tax) were not mentioned. The Conservatives have said that the 6 billion/year hole left by pushing out the National Insurance raise will be met by efficiency savings. In an organization the size of the civil service that should not be a difficult figure to find, but the question comes why has it no been done before now.

This is one of my biggest problems. Labour offered some public sector workers guaranteed minimum wages. Call it what it is, a bribe. The conservatives pledged a public sector pay freeze for all but a million of the lowest earners (how many public employees are there in the country?)

Politicians the world over forget whose money they are blowing on legions of managers for the NHS (more managers than hospital beds…), quangos overseeing public services and civil servants micro-managing public services.

“Together we can even make politics and politicians work better. And if we can do that, we can do anything. Yes, together we can do anything. So my invitation today is this: join us, to form a new kind of government for Britain.”