I KNOW, I know, many of you could think of worse people to compare me to. Walter Mitty the fantasist or maybe Alf Garnett the opinionated xenophobe are just two for starters, but "unless I'm very much mistaken", Murray Walker looks the most probable from where I'm sitting today.
You know what the great Murray Walker was good at, and it wasn't his excitable breathless commentary. It was the commentator's curse – the legendary way he jinxed the leading driver in any race.
"Mansell is now so far in front he has the race in t
he bag – oh, oh, look at that! Mansell has flown off the chicane and into the ditch, he's out of the race! What a tragedy," or some similar exclamation is what one expected when Murray took the microphone.
Well, last week I did a Murray Walker. I made a commentator's curse – I said David Cameron was getting the hang of this leadership palaver. How wrong could I be?
This week, Cameron announced how he wanted to reform the House of Commons by giving power back to the people. I smelled a rat with my own eyes and it was a stinker (that's a Murrayism, for aficionados).
Having fixed parliamentary terms, broadcasting parliamentary proceedings on YouTube, text-messaging the public about Bills and offering Commons debates through public petitions will not end scandalous expenses claims or give us faith in politicians. Holyrood has fixed parliamentary terms and yet has its fair share of chancers and frauds.
Then Cameron suggested cutting the number of MPs – something I'm all for – but let's be honest, it would suit Cameron's party to do this as it would reduce the pro-Labour bias as it has generally far smaller urban constituencies. This was not policy, this was opportunist spin.
All of that said, Gordon Brown has played the same game too – encouraging talk of electoral reform (that he despises) within the Labour Party and hinting that it might be in their next manifesto. Let me remind readers that the sole reason for sitting members of any political institution supporting proportional representation is that it makes it far, far harder for the public to kick them out.
Be it Cameron or Brown, much of this sudden commitment to reform is nothing other than partisan advantage and age-old political posturing that makes us all jaundiced of politics.
The way to end the expenses scandal is very simple and it can be summed up in one word – shame. If every expenses claim had to have a receipt which could be viewed by the public, then erroneous claims will end because no politician will want to endure the public shame that some are enduring now.
For politicians, less scrutiny means more abuse – all we need to do is reverse that equation.
As Murray Walker once said, "with half of the race gone, there is half of the race still to go" and David Cameron should remember that. If he is to rise above the Blairite spinning, he must be statesmanlike, not partisan and he must think his policies through so they last longer than the next day's headlines. If he doesn't, he'll fly off that chicane right into the ditch.
A happy fattyA conference in Edinburgh has been told that overweight Scots are so fed up being demonised and stigmatised by judgmental doctors and nurses that they avoid routine check-ups or scans that might detect real life-threatening illnesses such as cancer.
As an overweight cigar-loving pipe dabbler who likes the odd glass of Chateau Musar or a pint of Deuchars between my Giovanni's fish supper or some pan-fried duck, I have had the same pangs of angst-ridden guilt myself. If it was not for my swimming I'd be scared to look at a mirror in our oh-so-slim, fashion-conscious world.
Thin neurotics should leave us happy fatties alone – their sad hectoring only gives us stress – and it's stress that kills you, not the fat. In most countries of the world fat is a sign of success.
Fare assessmentIf you don't go beyond your comfort zone it's very easy to take the commonplace for granted – not realising it is exceptional. Living in Edinburgh is, in the grand scheme of things, a pretty comfortable zone and I suspect we think our cabbies are nothing out of the ordinary.
Well, the more I have travelled the more I have found our taxi drivers to be exceptionally good – far better than in most other cities. In the past few years my work has taken me to London, New York, Paris, Berlin, Frankfurt, Abuja, Washington, Reykjavik, Port of Spain, oh, and Glasgow – and Edinburgh cabbies have been more reliable and friendlier than the lot. So I am pleased to see a survey has ranked them in the top five, beating most world capitals. Driving through Edinburgh's tramworks can't be fun so how they are still smiling I don't know. If only they were just a little cheaper on weekdays.
The full article contains 846 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
