Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged

Oh, errr Missus!! That’s the Frankie Howerd moment out the way. The rubber in question is that wrapped around the wheels of Moto GP bike from next year. And it looks like all of it is going to be supplied by Bridgestone. I don’t like this, I didn’t like it in World Superbike and I don’t much care for it in F1. I have no objection to Bridgestone, I run them on my bike but not through choice, it came with Bridgestone and I have never changed front and back together so, as they need to be matched, each new tyre has been Bridgestone. I just don’t like control tyre rules. There isn’t a control wheel, exhaust, engine management system, suspension or brakes, so why tyres? I suspect that team budget is part of the reason but unless it can be shown to have contributed directly to bigger grids, then I don’t see that it will have added anything to the competition and just limited the rate of development.

It only takes an occasional week like this to remind me why I don’t stump up for newspapers or go out of my way to watch news programs on TV, I still hear a little on the radio on the way to and from work. But I’ve had a couple of days off work this week and been unable to avoid all the guff about some sort of impending financial meltdown? The main reason I’m ticked off at all this exposure is that it made me come as close as I am ever likely to come to having sympathy for politicians. So many people expecting the legislators to enact policy on the fly to resolve a problem that they do not come within spitting distance of understanding. There are as many opinions as there are people in finance, markets and economics, so who are you supposed to consult? On Wake up to Money on Radio Five, some American was set up against a Harvard professor of economics, so presumably someone with some standing, and he is arguing that the financial institutions acquisition of this, so called, toxic debt was a result of government legislation, or lack of it. Not having encyclopaedic knowledge of U.S. legislation I can’t say for certain that there isn’t a law saying don’t put your hand in the fire but I don’t hear about periodic epidemics of burnt fingers. The politicians are struggling to deal with the current situation due to limited understanding of the instruments involved and the nebulous nature of ‘confidence’, and aren’t helped by the siren calls to deliver the shaft to the, ill defined, fat cats. Certainly there are people who have been rewarded for making bad decisions, some in full knowledge of the potential consequences, but to believe that you can bring them to book is sheer folly and means that your eye is off the ball. If you let their institutions go to the wall, they will find new jobs, will their customers find new finance, new savings, new houses? Unsurprisingly I don’t have an answer but I know that the situation has to be dealt with as it stands today, and that probably means, as distasteful as it is, having to deal with some of the people who were responsible for creating it in the first place.