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TALLRITE BLOG You can write to me at blog2-at-tallrite-dot-com |
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“Ill-informed and
objectionable”;
“You poisonous, bigoted, ignorant, verbose little wa*ker.” (except I'm not little - 1.97m) Reader comments |
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Myspace Clocks, Video Clocks, Flash Clocks, Fun Clocks at WishAFriend.com |
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ISSUE #213 - June 2011 [397+1001=1398] |
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Daily poll on President Obama’s
popularity; date is
on the charts.
(Click to get the latest version.)
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Change of modus operandi. As of June 2011, I will post blogs as and when I write them (ie like every other blogger does) instead of storing them up for one big bang. They will however continue to be grouped together per month for archiving purposes. |
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Bitter and Sweet Tale of Israel and Palestine - 14th June 2011 The history of modern Israel and
Palestine But it's not entirely honest. I was recently given “The Lemon Tree” by Sandy Tolan (2006) to read, by a friend who considers I lean too far in the Zionist direction and so need a bit of extra education.
A Jewish family, the Eshkenazis, which has narrowly escaped annihilation during the Second World War, emigrates to Israel in 1948 to escape from a still Judaeophobic post-war Bulgaria. Meanwhile, the newly created state of Israel has been immediately attacked by the surrounding Arab countries bent on its annihilation at birth. But the latter quickly find themselves on the losing side, and as a consequence in the face of Israeli military might, many Arabs are expelled or flee from their homes to become today’s permanent Palestinian refugees. (To date, no-one agrees on the degree to which this exodus resulted from forced expulsion or voluntary flight.) One such family is the Khairis, who have lived in what is now Israel for centuries; in fear of their lives, they desert their house, in whose garden the patriarch recently planted the eponymous lemon tree. Some weeks later, the newly arrived Eshkenazi family move in to what has become an abandoned property and look with delight upon the lemon tree. The book then describes the lives of the two families as the tensions and further wars between Israel and the Palestinians develop, and inevitably the sincere and fiery son of one encounters the thoughtful if bewildered daughter of another. Less inevitably, they become friends (not lovers) over several decades, who try to explain and to understand each other’s viewpoint, but fundamentally without changing their own. Like the fruit of the tree they are each so fond of, the story is bitter and sweet at the same time. Eventually, the Eshkenazi daughter moves out of the Khairis' former home, and with the support of the Khairi son makes the house available for the education and mutual understanding of Arab and Israeli children. This touching and true human story provides the framework on which the history of Zionism and the emergence of modern Israel is described against the backdrop of Palestinian history and nationalism. Historical facts are copiously footnoted augmented by a lengthy bibliography (total 113 out of 536 pages) in an attempt to be totally factual and impartial, but this also provides scope for some subtle deceit. Numerous source documents and websites are referenced, but it is notably difficult to link particular statements in the book to particular sources because there is no one-to-one correlation and the intervening footnotes muddy the water further. And yet, as you work your way through the book, you slowly begin to detect a constant if subtle pro-Palestinian anti-Israeli bias, one which seems to slowly grow as the book progresses. Specific instances are listed and discussed at the end of this post. As a result, to form as balanced a view as possible of the events described some kind of antidote is required.
The Arab-Israeli dispute is characterised by an innate unwillingness of supporters of either side to seriously study the arguments that favour the other side, perhaps for fear of being persuaded. Nevertheless, these two great readworthy books, taken in conjunction with each other, are an enormous help to overall understanding of a very complex conflict situation, for which sadly no end seems in sight. Some instances of The Lemon Tree’s bias
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Ticking Anglo
Irish Bomb - 12th June 2011
Why did Anglo Irish Bank sell off its highly
profitable, well-capitalised, deposit-rich
Who are the mysterious depositors whose hundreds of
millions of €uro There is an interesting little angle to the self-destruction of Anglo Irish Bank in 2008 that seems to have caught very little public attention, yet it has implications that are potentially explosive.
Banking Roller-coaster Anglo Irish then splurged through the Noughties on a wild and blind rollercoaster of property speculation and property lending in Ireland and elsewhere, and securitisations, mostly funded by countless equally speculative billion-€uro loans from major banks in Germany, France, Belgium, Britain, America and elsewhere. Anglo Irish also developed the practice of shifting deposits and liabilities in and out of the bank at annual audit time to deceive the auditors as to the financial rot that was growing within the bank and also to hide its directors' personal financial shenanigans. Meanwhile, the heavily remunerated financial regulators in all of these domains, who are paid to keep a weather eye on foolish behaviour by their banks, snored on soundly, awakening only to avail of bounteous invitations from those selfsame banks to dinners, champagne, sporting tournaments and other worthy jamborees . Anglo Irish, especially, was on a roll. It was even ranked as the world's best performing bank out of 170, by bank risk management consultants Oliver Wyman at the 2007 World Economic Forum in Davos (though curiously they've since deleted this chart from their site); they had also held up Anglo Irish Bank to others as a banking “supermodel”.
If you're a senior banker, it doesn't get much better than this. But so much for the hubris. Nemesis arrived in just a year. Global Financial Collapse When Lehman Brothers, America's fourth largest investment bank, suddenly collapsed on 15th September 2008, it spread disarray throughout the world's financial systems. Ireland was not immune. Anglo Irish was one of six Irish banks (the others being Allied Irish Bank, Bank of Ireland, Irish Life and Permanent, Irish Nationwide Building Society and the Educational Building Society) whose creditors started calling in their loans, but whose hugely over-extended balance sheets, built on smoke and mirrors, were hopelessly unable to meet these demands. So it was that on the Sunday night of 28th/29th September, a phalanx of Irish bank CEOs , all of them in a state of profound panic, raced to the Government Buildings in Dublin's Merrion Street, demanding an immediate meeting with the Taoiseach Brian Cowen and his Finance Minister Brian Lenihan (who had been in Cabinet barely a year). Mr Cowen (with the delicious nickname Biffo - Big Ignorant F**ker From Offaly) was a small-town solicitor who never practiced and Mr Lenihan was a barrister who practiced law for only five years; both were dynastic politicians who entered parliament relatively young (24, 37) as replacements TDs (MPs) when their respective fathers (also TDs) died. In other words, neither had any training or experience in finance or economics or indeed had ever had to suffer the vagaries of the world of private business; neither had ever created a single job nor had to meet a payroll. Indeed, the Irish Cabinet was stuffed with such minor lawyers, pub-owners, farmers, teachers; the only minister with any actual real-world business experience was the Environment minister from the Greens, Eamon Ryan, and all he had done was run a bicycle shop for a few years. Bank Guarantee So the banking CEOs told Biffo and Mr Lenihan that the their banks had run out of money and - crucially - out of the associated liquidity otherwise afforded by deposits, and were incapable of meeting their financial obligations. Therefore the banks and Ireland's entire banking system would collapse the following Monday morning unless the State guaranteed all their creditors - all deposits (retail, commercial, institutional and interbank), covered bonds, senior debt and dated subordinated debt (lower tier II). Otherwise, they said, there would be no money in the ATMs, and no money to pay anyone's salary - in the public sector in particular. Mayhem would ensue as people across the land tried to force banks to hand back their deposits. Money and investment would flee the country, which would be instantly bankrupted. Poor Biffo and Brian. Picture the scene. They had no idea what the bankers were talking about, and from their position of ignorance no way to argue with or against them. Faced with a situation for which they were utterly untrained, inexperienced and unprepared, they were completely bamboozled and underwater. What was being demanded was a financial commitment of taxpayers' money of greater dimensions than had ever been made in the history of the State, or indeed any state if considered on a per capita basis.
But that's how the deed was done, how the Irish Government kowtowed to the self-interested will of a bunch of frightened, scabrous bankers, on that fateful night, a night that will live in infamy, a night that today's Irish children, babies, foetuses and the yet unconceived will pay for through their sweat and treasure until and beyond their old age. Omerta But this post is not about that particular scandal, but about another that took place within Anglo Irish Bank, the worst offender of all the banks, barely three weeks earlier, on 5th September 2008. That day, in a move that to date has received scant media attention, Anglo Irish signed a virtually irrevocable sales agreement with the Valartis Group, which describes itself as “a Swiss financial boutique with significant private banking business as well as asset management and investment banking operations”. In other words a bank which prides itself on a strict code of Sicilian-style omerta. Under the agreement, Valartis bought Anglo Irish Bank (Austria) AG for €141 million, but as an extra inducement Anglo Irish kindly (and inexplicably) lent the wealthy Valartis €24m. Valartis renamed its new aquisition Valartis Bank (Austria) AG, which to this day remains a Vienna-based Austrian bank. It reminds its depositors that
In other words, the omerta continues. Since Anglo Irish, according to p72 of its 2010 Annual Report, ended up with a profit of €49m on its transaction, it might argue that this was a worthwhile deal for a bank in dire financial straits. Private Deposits Yet that Austrian subsidiary was holding no less than €570m in private deposits, and unlike its parent did hardly any lending - just €34m. This was at a time when lack of liquidity (ie lack of deposits) was the principal reason that Anglo Irish was just three weeks away from total collapse, only to be averted by massive intervention by the hapless Irish taxpayer at the hands of a financially illiterate Government. Moreover the subsidiary was also exceedingly well capitalised, with €92m in capital, almost five times the statuary requirement of €19 million, with a very strong capital ratio of 39%. Unsurprisingly, it was also profitable, delivering an 18% increase in pre-tax profits to €13˝m for the year to 30th September 2008. Who knew all this? Well, eight of the Anglo Irish top brass sat on its supervisory board, including chairman Sean Fitzpatrick himself, former finance director Willie McAteer and former chairman Peter Murray. These eight far outnumbered the two lonely Austrians sitting on the management board.
Is it conceivable, therefore, that the senior managers of Anglo Irish - in particular Mr Fitzpatrick (right) and CEO David Drumm (left) - were unaware of how close their bank was sailing to the edge of Niagara Falls? That disaster was only a few weeks away? If you believe that, you believe in the tooth fairy! So why would they sign away a bank that was deposit-rich with its juicy €570m, highly liquid, strongly capitalised and very profitable? Or more pertinently, who, exactly, are those depositors who placed over half a billion €uro in one of the most secretive banking jurisdictions in the world, never mind in the EU? Deposits that quietly broke free of any control or oversight by Anglo Irish or by the Irish State, to end up in the distant embrace of Valartis? As Cicero so perspicaciously asked over two thousand years ago, “cui bono?”; who gains from such an arrangement? Or in more recent times, we could turn to the 1976 movie “All the Presidents Men” where Deep Throat memorably advised journalist Bob Woodward that if he wanted to understand the Watergate mystery he should “follow the money”. Unfortunately, thanks to Austrian and Swiss banking omerta, we cannot “follow the money”; we can only speculate. But “cui bono?” enhances our speculation. Clearly any Irish person
would very much want to put such deposits well beyond the reach of official Irish eyes and hands. Especially if, for example, you were - like Messrs Fitzpatrick and Drumm - heavily indebted, on a personal basis, to Anglo Irish and others. What better route, therefore, than to hurriedly hive off that subsidiary (along with your savings as part of its sumptuous half-billion deposit book) to a wholly separate organization distinguished by a similar culture of omerta, even if it meant throwing in, say, €24m as a sweetener. So who would such depositors comprise? I have no idea, but we can make speculative guesses, on the basis of both “cui bono?” and “follow the money”. For starters, could the list include these men and perhaps some of their closest friends:
Definitely not! As Irish resident citizens taxable on their worldwide income, they would be obliged to reveal their deposits in Valartis' Austrian subsidiary to the fiscal authorities, in order to declare the resultant interest and dividends for taxation purposes. Since there is no public knowledge of such revelations, clearly none of them belong on the list. Do they? Bomb Ticks On
I wonder will we ever know who they really are. This is surely a ticking Anglo Irish bomb.
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Aid Prolongs Poverty in the Developing World - 4th June 2011 Aid to the developing world is unaffordable to Ireland (and other bankrupt states) and anyway always does more harm than good over the long term, for all parties. I was invited last week (30th May) to appear as an audience member on a weekly Frontline programme of political discussion put out by RTÉ, the Irish State broadcaster. The theme was twofold:
My invitation arose from a letter I had published in the Irish Times about poverty-reduction, way back in 2005. Extraordinarily, the relevant RTE researcher keeps such stuff on file and is able to retrieve it, and it's not the first time he has referred back to my ancient witterings. With data culled from a blog post last March (“The Madness of Voluntary Redundancy”) on redundancy and another from 2004 which featured Ethiopia (“Multiple Mass Killers”), I made the following points, more or less, in two goes with the microphone. I was astonished at the amount of positive feedback I received after the programme, from both audience members and privately, expressing agreement with the thrust of what I said:
It is equally monstrous to wilfully add to this burden by gifting money Ireland does not possess to other people. And that is to not even point out that aid to the developing world has proved to be an utter disaster. Other than sporadic pockets of success, there is absolutely nothing to show for the hundreds of billions that have been poured into poor countries over the past 60 years since the Second World War, other than to instil and propagate a dependency culture and fill the pockets of kleptocratic tyrants. Take Ethiopia. In the 20 years after Bob Geldof and Live Aid in 1985,
In other words, Ethiopia's personal misery at least doubled, and by some counts quadrupled. For Ethiopia’s problem was never lack of money, it was lack of democracy under successive tyrants and lack of open markets. It is the story of Africa. The Western world has made donations of taxpayers’ money (a mere one trillion dollars, actually) to assuage their guilt for prohibiting free trade access of third world producers to protected Western markets. My contributions may be found here at Minute 39:44-41:15 and 51:40-52:30. There is a reason that aid can never do more than trim at the edges of poverty, and that reason is human nature. Imagine you are the chief of a jungle village mired in poverty and disease. One day, an Irish aid worker arrives and offers help. Perhaps he/she will
After say five years, the Irish aid worker sees what fantastic progress has been made. Not only are the villagers healthier and wealthier, but they have learnt to do most of the above list by themselves. So the aid worker says great, what a wonderful success, this village can now stand on its own two feet. My job is done, so it's now time for me to move the aid to the next village to work a similar miracle. Well, what do you think the village chief is going to think when he learns the aid flow will stop and another chief will get it instead. He will be enraged; he will do everything he can to keep the aid flowing. In fact, not being stupid, he will have long seen this coming and so will have made sure that his villagers are NOT healthier and wealthier. There may be many ways of doing this, but the simplest is to just pocket the aid himself. That's merely human nature. (Even aid workers themselves can be similarly tempted.) Whenever you create incentives for certain types of behaviour, it is certain you will get more of it, whether good or bad. That is why long-term aid can never work and has never worked other than in isolated pockets. Foreign aid destroys, not enhances, wealth - and by the way the indomitable Melanie Philips thinks so too, as does the IMF. Dambisa Moyo, a renowned former Goldman Sachs economist, declares that “aid is an unmitigated political, economic and humanitarian disaster”. Foreign aid is a main reason why Africa is a grimmer place for the vast majority of Africans today than when it was under the white colonialists' thumb during the last century. And it is equally why open markets and free trade always increase wealth, because the incentive - and the capability - then lies in producing goods that customers want and then selling them. This would work equally for Africans if only those former white colonialists in Europe and America would allow it to. But no, they prefer to close their lucrative markets and subsidise their own loss-creating industries (especially farming) in a myriad of ways. This keeps the poor poor not only the developing world over which so many crocodile tears are shed. It also keeps the poor poor in the West itself by punishing success, rewarding failure and pushing up prices (to which of course the poor are the most vulnerable). If the current recession forces democratic countries to cut back on their foreign aid and to open their markets to cheaper food and goods from the developing world, it will be ultimately to the benefit of both parties. Sadly, the second half of such a bargain is unlikely to be fulfilled. Too many vested interests.
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Issue 213’s Comments to Cyberspace
- - - - - W H O A M I ? - - - - - Quote: “The whole world knows who I am. I am General Ratko Mladic . . . I defended my people, my country . . . now I am defending myself. I just have to say that I want to live to see that I am a free man.” [Yeah, right!]
Ratko Mladic in the UN War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Quote: “Don’t you know who I am?”
Dominique Strauss Khan, then boss of the IMF,
Quote: “Happily, we live in a country where, thanks to the presumption of innocence, one cannot show men or women at this stage of proceedings handcuffed.”
Party leader Martine Aubry, leader of France's Socialist party She doth protest too much.
France is a country where suspects can be held without charge
I do not recall Ms Aubrey expressing outrage when Bernie Madoff, - - - - - B E I N G O F F E N D E D - - - - - Quote: “The first applicant may have taken offence at the presence of a crucifix in classrooms, but the existence of a right ‘not to be offended’ has never been recognised within the Convention. In reversing the Chamber's judgment, the Grand Chamber does no more than confirm a body of settled jurisprudence (notably under Article 10) which recognises that mere ‘offence’ is not something against which an individual may be immunized by law.”
A remarkable generic judgementby the Grand
Chamber No-one has a right to be protected against offence.
The atheist complainants,
Ms Soile Lautsi and her children,
- - - - - I R E L A N D - - - - - Quote: “Is feidir linn.” President Obama, in Ireland to visit his ancestral village of Moneygall in Co Offaly, copies the Queen (see below) with a bit of Irish. The phrase means his favourite cliché “Yes, we can”.
Curiously, the presidential couple failed to visit
Once there, he established himself as a slave owner, Perhaps a super-injunction kept Ballyshiel off the visit itinerary. Quote: “A Uachtaráin agus a chairde” [“President and friends”]
Queen Elizabeth II's first public words in
Ireland are in Irish. Quote ... Quote: “While we cannot change the past, we have chosen to change the future ... [We are] able to bow to the past, but not be bound by it”
Both President MacAleese and the Queen Quote: “Ireland is facing economic ruin.”
Morgan Kelly, professor of economics at
University College Dublin - - - - - B I N L A D E N - - - - - Quote: “It [bin Laden's blood] will remain, with permission from Allah the Almighty, a curse that chases the Americans and their agents, and goes after them inside and outside their countries ... Their happiness will turn into sorrow, and their blood will be mixed with their tears.”
Statement by Al Qaeda, Quote: “Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader. He was a mass murderer of Muslims. His demise should be welcome by all who believe in peace and human dignity.” A peculiar assessment by President Obama. Who else? - - - - - I S R A E L - - - - - Quote: “The Palestinian Authority must chose either peace with Israel or peace with Hamas. There is no possibility of peace with both.”
Israel's prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu Quote: “If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document ... Civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.”
Richard Goldstone, the (Jewish) judge from
South Africa
His disgraceful, dishonest, fact-denying report
Melanie Philips rightly skewers the charlatan judge.
But the UK Foreign Office, as ever operating its
policy of low-level anti-Semitism, - - - - - U S A - - - - - Quote: “If you're complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting 8 miles a gallon, you know [LOL], you might want to think about a trade-in.” President Obama's answer to oil prices soaring over $100 a barrel.
Interestingly, you would have to
go back forty years
And anyway, how, for cash-strapped citizens,
Or else by “trade-in” Mr Obama was
simply Now that would be a solution! Quote: “Do we use the term ‘intervention’, do we use ‘war’, do we use ‘squirmish’; what is it?” Sarah Palin shows that Mr Obama is not the only nutty politician in America.
She decides to invent a new word
as she philosophises over Quote: “We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We’ve got better stuff to do. I’ve got better stuff to do. We’ve got big problems to solve.”
President Obama, on being forced by Donald
Trump to release
And what exactly were his “better stuff [and] big problems to solve”?
Well, immediately after his press conference,
These events were obviously much
“better [and] bigger” In fairness, he was also approving the assassination of Osama bin Laden. - - - - - F R A N C E - - - - - Quote: “The art of philosophy is only worthwhile if it is an art of war ... Philosophy is war not debate”.
Bernard-Henri Lévy, France's celebrity philosopher, Sarkozy in turn bounced Cameron and Obama into it. Why don't we get screwball philosophers like this in the Anglosphere? - - - - - F O O T B A L L - - - - - Quote: “F*cking what? What? F*ck off.”
Manchester United footballer Wayne Rooney
This, he later helpfully explained, So that's OK then. - - - - - K L E P T O M A N I A - - - - - Quote: “Is the president of the Czech Republic a pen stealer?”
Online tipster
Brett Michael Dykes thinks
Here's the video evidence. See what you think.
- - - - - I T A L Y - - - - - Quote: “When asked if they would like to have sex with me, 30% of women said ‘yes’, while the other 70% said ‘what, again?’”
Silvio Berlusconi, prime minister of Italy, What is it that attracts women to this ageing billionaire?
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| See the Archive and Blogroll at top left and right, for your convenience |
Now, for a little [Light Relief]
“”
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Gift Idea |
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Good to report that as at
FREED AT LAST, |
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BLOGROLL
Atlantic Blog (defunct) Blog-Irish (defunct)
Jihad
Religion
Iona Institute
Leisure
Blog Directory
My Columns in the
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What I've recently
But it's not
entirely honest in its subtle pro-Palestinian bias, and therefore needs
to be read in conjunction with an antidote, such as See detailed review +++++
BP's ambitious CEO John Browne expanded BP through adventurous acquisitions, aggressive offshore exploration, and relentless cost-reduction that trumped everything else, even safety and long-term technical sustainability. Thus mistakes accumulated, leading to terrifying and deadly accidents in refineries, pipelines and offshore operations, and business disaster in Russia. The Macondo blowout was but an inevitable outcome of a BP culture that had become poisonous and incompetent. However the book is gravely compromised by a litany of over 40 technical and stupid errors that display the author's ignorance and carelessness. It would be better to wait for the second (properly edited) edition before buying. As for BP, only a wholesale rebuilding of a new, professional, ethical culture will prevent further such tragedies and the eventual destruction of a once mighty corporation with a long and generally honourable history. Note: I wrote
my own reports on Macondo +++++
A horrific account of:
More details on my blog here. +++++
After recounting a childhood of convention and simple pleasures in working-class Aberdeen, Mr Urquhart is conscripted within days of Chamberlain declaring war on Germany in 1939. From then until the Japanese are deservedly nuked into surrendering six years later, Mr Urquhart’s tale is one of first discomfort but then following the fall of Singapore of ever-increasing, unmitigated horror. After a wretched journey Eastward, he finds himself part of Singapore’s big but useless garrison. Taken prisoner when Singapore falls in 1941, he is, successively,
Chronically ill, distraught and traumatised on return to Aberdeen yet disdained by the British Army, he slowly reconstructs a life. Only in his late 80s is he able finally to recount his dreadful experiences in this unputdownable book. There are very few first-person eye-witness accounts of the the horrors of Japanese brutality during WW2. As such this book is an invaluable historical document. +++++
This is a rattling good tale of the web of corruption within which the American president and his cronies operate. It's written by blogger Michele Malkin who, because she's both a woman and half-Asian, is curiously immune to the charges of racism and sexism this book would provoke if written by a typical Republican WASP. With 75 page of notes to back up - in best blogger tradition - every shocking and in most cases money-grubbing allegation, she excoriates one Obama crony after another, starting with the incumbent himself and his equally tricky wife. Joe Biden, Rahm Emmanuel, Valerie Jarett, Tim Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Steven Rattner, both Clintons, Chris Dodd: they all star as crooks in this venomous but credible book. ACORN, Mr Obama's favourite community organising outfit, is also exposed for the crooked vote-rigging machine it is. +++++
It is really just a collation of amusing little tales about surprising human (and occasionally animal) behaviour and situations. For example:
The book has no real message other than don't be surprised how humans sometimes behave and try to look for simple rather than complex solutions. And with a final anecdote (monkeys, cash and sex), the book suddenly just stops dead in its tracks. Weird. ++++++
It's chapters are organised around provocative questions such as
It's central thesis is that economic development continues to be impeded in different countries for different historical reasons, even when the original rationale for those impediments no longer obtains. For instance:
The author writes in a very chatty, light-hearted matter which makes the book easy to digest. However it would benefit from a few charts to illustrate some of the many quantitative points put forward, as well as sub-chaptering every few pages to provide natural break-points for the reader. +++++
The author was a member of Britain's V Force, a forerunner of the SAS. Its remit was to harass Japanese lines of command, patrol their occupied territory, carryout sabotage and provide intelligence, with the overall objective of keeping the enemy out of India. Irwin is admirably yet brutally frank, in his descriptions of deathly battles with the Japs, his execution of a prisoner, dodging falling bags of rice dropped by the RAF, or collapsing in floods of tears through accumulated stress, fear and loneliness. He also provides some fascinating insights into the mentality of Japanese soldiery and why it failed against the flexibility and devolved authority of the British. The book amounts to a very human and exhilarating tale. Oh, and Irwin describes the death in 1943 of his colleague my uncle, Major PF Brennan. +++++ Other books here |
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After
48
crackling, compelling, captivating games, the new World Champions are,
deservedly,
England get the Silver,
No-one can argue with
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