England's Ashes win gives Test Cricket a healthy future

England's 2-1 win over Australia in the 2009 Ashes was an achievment that not too many cricket observers would have predicted at the start of the summer.

England may have beaten the West Indies in May but the West Indies were a lack-lustre outfit led by Chris Gayle, a man who had openly said that he 'wouldn't be so sad if test cricket died out'.

Gayle is a huge fan of Twenty20 cricket and the riches and excitement that the game offers were brilliantly showcased this year in the IPL in South Africa. As a big-hitting batsman Gayle's game suits Twenty20 perfectly, so it is no surprise that he has taken to it.

In truth Gayle looked like someone who would rather have missed the plane than played a test series in England at the beginning of May.

To be fair to him, the weather was bad, the crowds were poor and for opponents of Test cricket's continuation, the series against the West Indies was the signal that the end was nigh for the five day format.

Test Cricket doomed?

Even Kevin Pietersen, the former England Captain appeared unsure that Test Cricket had a long term future. In an interview with The Times he said: "I’d be a fool to tell you now that Test cricket will be here in 10 years’ time because I don’t know now."

So a pretty bleak outlook then. Not so if we look at the evidence from this year's Ashes series. Tickets were in huge demand for each test, the series was extremely competitive and once again the series captivated the media and the nation.

Twenty20 is definitely an exciting sport to watch, but it just does not have the same twists and turns that Test Cricket provides. A five match series of five day games is really a different sport to Twenty20, and while One day cricket may well suffer a decline, the future of test cricket now looks healthy.

Competition is paramount

The Ashes became boring for many cricket fans over the years, quite simply because of Australia's dominance. Since 2005 we have seen England win back the urn for the first time in 18 years, only to then lose it again 5-0 in Australia, and then reclaim it again in 2009.

Competition is key to any sport's enduring popularity, and whether you are English (or Welsh for that matter) or Australian I am sure you would agree that the series' competitiveness is very important to its future.

The IPL has flooded the the world of Twenty20 with cash, and some players may well chose to end their test careers early to take advantage of these riches; but one only has to look at the reaction of the England team to see what winning the Ashes means to them.

Money is a fact of life in professional sport these days, but even in the over-spending, bloated world of Premiership football, I would guess that most of the players would trade a year's salary for back to back league titles.

New audience for cricket

One of the arguments against Test Cricket continuing is that spectators are more interested in the shorter form of the game, and Twenty20 has without doubt introduced cricket to people who had little interest in the sport before.

This is a good thing, but for fans of Test Cricket Twenty20 will never be able to equal the thrills, spills and tactics that a test match brings. In football terms, Twenty20 is a bit like a penalty shoot out compared to the World Cup tournament of Test Cricket.

For any English or Australian cricketer, winning the Ashes will be the pinnacle of their careers, and on the evidence of this series it looks like it will continue to be the case for many years to come.

As long as things stay this way the crowds will surely follow, and Test Cricket will continue to flourish as it always has. Long live Test Cricket!

Let's have a proper debate about the NHS

Conservative MEP Dan Hannan, has caused a political storm by openly criticising the NHS on America's Fox News.

Hannan called the NHS a "60-year mistake" and labelled it as the result of something planned during the war. He then moved onto the US saying:

"I find it incredible that a free people living in a country dedicated and founded in the cause of independence and freedom can seriously be thinking about adopting such a system in peacetime and massively expanding the role of the state when there's no need."

Political gamesmanship

David Cameron the Conservative leader dismissed Hannan as 'eccentric' and made it clear that these views were not reflected in Tory policy. He then added that "the Conservative Party stands four square behind the NHS."

Andy Burnham the Health Secretary went further calling Hannan 'unpatriotic', but then also adding: "What has happened within the last 48 hours is what Cameron has feared most because it lays bare the Tories' deep ambivalence towards the NHS."

This does seem a little cheap, seeing as most people admit that Cameron is committed to the NHS. Particularly considering that Cameron's own family has benefitted greatly from NHS services, when his late son Ivan was cared for.

Labour understandably have used this occasion to launch an attack on the Tories, but saying that Conservative policy is anti-NHS is perhaps political gamesmanship gone too far.

Opening up debate

Can you ever imagine a British politician on either front-bench speaking their mind quite like Hannan has? Whether or not you agree with him, what is certain is that he has opened up a debate on the future of the NHS, something that is long overdue.

The NHS is without doubt a wonderful national institution, but one that is fatally flawed. A National Health Service that is free at the point of delivery and serves everyone is a terrific ideal, but is sadly one that will always struggle to be fulfilled.

There has been much talk of NICE over the past few days, the independent body that approves treatments and medicines for use on the NHS. This is of course done on the basis of need but mostly on cost, just as any government department makes its budget choices.

Investment

This then inevitably means that some patients will miss out on their treatment of choice, because it is just too expensive sometimes to pay for them. As time has moved on, treatments and technologies have become more and more expensive, so this problem will not go away.

Labour have poured unprecedented amounts of money into the NHS, and they have made some progress, but GPs now work less hours than they used to and are paid more than ever. Surely this is an indication that not everything in the garden is rosy.

Outdated model

Political blogger Iain Dale gives his take as to why the NHS is constantly struggling to meet people's needs:

"It is because we are trying to make a 1940s healthcare system cope with the demands of a 21st century society. We cling to the idea that healthcare is free at the point of delivery, while conveniently ignoring the truth that in many cases it isn't, and it never can be. And yet at the same time we prevent those who are happy to pay for their care from doing so without then being banned from having NHS treatment. Until we come to terms with the fact that a 1940s structure can never service 21st century needs, we're not going to get anywhere." (read the full blog post here).

This really is the fundamental problem. How can we possibly expect the NHS to serve everyone equally when its model is outdated? Politicians need to start debating this issue, and crucially without playing party politics with it.

The NHS is not a political football to be kicked around by each party, and anyone who has had anything to do with it should have massive respect for what it, as an institution represents.

Problems lie ahead

In my personal experience, the staff in NHS hospitals are excellent, but the problem is that there are just not enough of them. This needs to change quickly, because as our population gets older and fatter the NHS will be more stretched than ever.

Dan Hannan may well be a political maverick that not many people agree with, but sometimes it takes eccentric individuals to stand up and speak their mind, in order to open up debates that no-one really wants to have. The NHS does its best, but it could be so much better.

So if we are going to make changes let's start making them now before things get even worse, because if we wait too long the NHS could cease to exist out of necessity, and nobody really wants that.



(You can watch the Dan Hannan Fox interview here)

Is the Baby P case a reflection of 'Broken Britain'?

Yesterday the names of the three people held responsible for allowing the death of Baby P (now known as Peter Connelly), were finally revealed.

We now know that Tracey Connelly, 28, her partner Steven Barker, 33, and his brother Jason Owen, 37, were responsible for causing Peter's death. We also know that Barker was convicted for the rape of a two year old girl.

We were led to believe that their identities were kept secret to protect Connelly's other children, but also to avoid prejudicing other active cases, so why have their identities been revealed now?

Children at risk

Surely Connelly's children will be at risk from being identified, and with their mother only receiving a five year sentence she may well be out in half that time. This presumably means that she will have to be given a new identity upon her release from jail.

If this does not happen then the risk of vigilante attacks is high, and so too the risk to her children's well-being. However, if Tracey Connelly does recieve this level of protection, then it is also likely that both Barker and Owen will too.

The problem here is that this level of protection is very expensive, and the public reaction to the government spending money on convicted criminals is not favourable at all. So the question must be posed why chose to identify those involved?

Why identify?

If it is because the public have a right to know who committed the crime then fine, but if this is the case then they should not be given new identities upon release. This is a massive waste of money, and if their identities had been concealed forever, this expense could have been avoided all-together.

In these kinds of cases there is always the temptation to paint someone like Tracey Connelly as a victim of sorts. We now know that she suffered abuse as a child and had a pretty awful upbringing, but this does not mean that what happened to baby Peter was inevitable.

If this were true then there would be many more child deaths resulting from abuse, but it just isn't. Too often teams of social workers are attached to those who have committed crimes, and they are given the option to blame what they did as adults on what happened to them as children.

'Broken Britain'

More often than not this gives people the easy way out, and this has to change. Politicians talk about 'Broken Britain', but attaching these labels to areas of society is not helpful at all.

It is as if a generation of people have been condemned to repeat the cycle of poverty, unemployment, abuse or any other detrimental cycle you can name, and there is nothing we can do about it.

Well this is patently not true. If politicians tell people that Britain is broken, people will believe it and stay resigned to their likely fates. However, if politicians begin to engage with poorer communities instead of chasing so called 'floating voters', we may just make some progress.

Communities abandoned

To take an example, in South Yorkshire Barnsley has been forgotten by the traditional political parties and people are looking for answers. This led them to elect a BNP candidate to the Euopean Parliament.

If the main-stream parties re-engage with voters here and show an interest in their needs, then this will change but it needs to happen fast, otherwise 'Broken Britain' will become a widespread reality of the politicians' own making.

The sad case of baby Peter Connelly, will I am sure be used to highlight what is wrong with today's society, but his death should not be exploited in this way. It is disrespectful to his life and just plain wrong.

What the case does show is what happens to someone when they are neglected. There is still time to help people in these situations and the so-called cycle of abuse is never inevitable, however much some people would have us believe that it is.

Harry Patch's death cuts our last living link to World War One

Today the the funeral took place of the last British soldier to serve in the trenches of World War One, Harry Patch.

Mr. Patch did not speak about the war until be was 100 years old, but since then he has often spoken out about the perils of going to war. Harry was by all accounts not keen on a full military funeral, so was it right to see such a fuss made over it?

For a man who clearly did not enjoy his time in the army it did seem a little inappropriate for the military to dominate his funeral. After all, out of his 111 years very few of these were spent in the army.

Link with the past

But of course this really misses the point. Today was not about the ordinary man Harry Patch, it was about our last living link with this historic event, the first world war. Harry just happened to be the last man standing.

So then it was perhaps inevitable for his funeral to be met with such pomp and cirumstance, and perhaps Harry would have understood this. Speaking of Harry Patch in this way sounds like I knew what he thought or what he was like, but of course this is wholly untrue.

This is precisley the problem. Recently some people have used Harry Patch to prop up their cause, most recently anti-war protesters, but Mr. Patch never endorsed any of these causes. All he did was stay alive long enough for people to think they owned a piece of him.

Poem

Perhaps the best coverage of Harry Patch's life came in the form of a poem written by Andrew Motion, the out-going poet loreate. The last verse of which is as follows:

"You grow a moustache, check the mirror, notice
you're forty years old, then next day shave it off,
check the mirror again - and see you're seventy,
but life is like that now, suddenly and gradually
everyone you know dies and still comes to visit
or you head back to them, it's not clear which
only where it happens: a safe bedroom upstairs
by the look of things, although when you sit late
whispering with the other boys in the Lewis team,
smoking your pipe upside-down to hide the fire,
and the nurses on night duty bring folded sheets
to store in the linen cupboard opposite, all it takes
is someone switching on the light - there is that flash,
or was until you said, and the staff blacked the window."

Motion's poem (which can be found here) tells the life story of a man who lived a normal life in South-West England. It obviously includes his time spent at war, but unlike most coverage of Harry, it does not confine his 111 years entirely to the trenches.

Never forget

To risk sounding as if I knew him again, Harry was not a willing soldier but did his duty, even being wounded in the process, but his death meant so much for so many people because of what he represented.

The First World War should never be forgotten and now that we have lost our only living link to this event, it is now more important than ever that we never forget the sacrifice that our soldiers have made and continue to make.