My parents are concerned about what will happen to Radio 2 after the departure of Terry Wogan from breakfast. They were not happy to hear that his replacement will be Chris Evans. My parents originally stopped listening to Radio 1 when Chris Evans took over the Radio 1 breakfast show. (Quite how they tolerated Steve Wright before this is beyond me though.)

I get the feeling that they will stick with Radio 2. Chris Evans is a very different broadcaster to what he was ten or fifteen years ago and has apparently pleased most people with his performances on Radio 2 so far.

While Terry Wogan’s last show was the one that caught all the headlines, the end of two other radio programmes will be far more disruptive to my routine. I was not a listener of Terry Wogan’s, though I don’t suppose I am really part of his target audience.

The end of Adam and Joe

Much bigger news in my world has been the end of Adam and Joe’s programme on BBC 6 Music. They are raising the drawbridge at the Big British Castle for an indefinite period while Joe Cornish focuses on his new career as a film director.

This programme has been a core part of my week for the past two years. It is also unusual because due to its Saturday morning time slot, it has been the only thing that has managed to get me to wake up at a decent hour on a Saturday.

Adam and Joe have an excellent knack of doing a type of humour which is silly but not stupid — a balance that very few manage to strike. This made it ideal listening for the start of the weekend. It was perhaps something to gently lift you out of a mild hangover. The accompanying podcast was also excellent for lifting spirits during your journey into work.

Their gentle humour was mixed with sharp observations on popular culture. Increasingly, towards the end of the programme’s run, listener contributions were a larger part of the programme. Combined with the programme’s elite listening force Black Squadron and the STEPHEN! phenomenon, there was quite a tight-knit community feel to the show.

This was no doubt helped by the fact that it was on BBC 6 Music, jokingly referred to by Adam Buxton as “the secret station”. Even though it was the most popular programme on the station by quite a long way, due to its location in the outer reaches of select DAB sets, Adam and Joe’s was a cosy and understated programme. It is difficult to imagine Adam and Joe’s programme working so well on another, larger radio station.

Adam and Joe’s replacement will be Danny Wallace, who is not quite in the same league. It will leave a huge gap in my Saturday mornings. What else can I listen to? Saturday Live on Radio 4? Sorry, not for me. Jonathan Ross on Radio 2? Possibly. Or will I return to my old ‘default’ radio station, Radio 5 Live, for Danny Baker and Fighting Talk?

Changes at Radio 5 Live

Speaking of Radio 5 Live, that is the source of the other big change to my radio routine. Richard Bacon has vacated the late-night slot to take over from Simon Mayo, who is moving to replace Chris Evans on Drivetime at Radio 2.

I was a fan of Richard Bacon during his first stint on 5 Live in the weekend late-night slot, and he continued to delight when he returned to the station to do weeknights. Given his background, he is surprisingly good at dealing with big issues as well as light-hearted stuff.

He is also unafraid to use humour. It could be so embarrassing (and some would probably say it is), but I think it works well. The interesting bit after 12:30am was entertaining and brave. I can’t think of many other presenters who would get away with completely doing away with news for half an hour every day on Radio 5 Live.

I am greatly regretful that I never managed to get my hands on one of those badges. It was nevertheless an honour and a privilege to listen.

Richard Bacon’s irreverence is what makes him good as a broadcaster, but it’s difficult to see how he can leverage this in his new mid-afternoon slot, one of the most important in 5 Live’s schedule. Most disappointingly, it will be on during the daytime, meaning that I won’t be able to listen to it.

The replacement in the late night slot will be former Daily Sport editor Tony Livesey. I will reserve judgement until I hear the programme. I gather he is actually quite good. But if I don’t take to it, I might take the unusual step of switching to a commercial radio station during weeknights to listen to Iain Lee on Absolute Radio.

Richard Bacon’s move is part of a wider shake-up at Radio 5 Live, which also sees Gabby Logan getting a daily slot. With the day going from the Nicky Campbell Speak You’re Branes hour to Victoria Derbyshire to Gabby Logan, it’s not difficult to see why some people have started to nickname the station Radio 5 Lite.

It’s not quite the quality station I loved just a few years ago. Just now Radio 5 Live seems utterly bereft of ideas, aside from attempting to stealthily change it into a 24/7 Mark Kermode station. At least Up All Night is still good.

If I was being uncharitable, I might suggest that the presenters that remain at the station are the ones who are prepared to make the move to Salford when the station relocates there next year. The logic behind moving a radio station that covers news (most of which happens in London) to Manchester is still beyond me, I have to admit.

On the bright side…

It’s not all bad news on the radio front. In addition to his new daytime Radio 5 Live slot, Richard Bacon has a Saturday afternoon programme on 6 Music. He promises to take some of the jollity of his late night 5 Live show to 6 Music. But who listens to radio at that time? Not me.

I might make space in my Sunday afternoons for 6 Music though. Jarvis Cocker will have a new programme alongside the already-excellent Freak Zone.

But weekend mornings will still be a problem. And I’ll need a new comedy podcast to replace Adam and Joe. Does anyone have any suggestions? (Not Collings and Herrin — I tried it, and it was crap.)

That is the explanation being given to the counter-intuitive finding by Ofcom that the proportion of 15–24-year-olds using Facebook has decreased in the past year. Facebook as a whole is still growing. But the problem is that it’s now full of parents and teachers, and it would be deeply uncool to be using a website like that.

In the same week, a Nielsen study has shown that teenagers don’t use Twitter. It has been long suspected that they never did use Twitter in large numbers, but now there are figures to prove it.

That came just weeks after a 15-year-old doing work experience made a splash with Morgan Stanley who were trying to get a grip on what the future might look like. Matthew Robson said, among other things, that Twitter is for old people only.

It probably comes a surprise to some. Even Mashable implies it wouldn’t have believed it if it hadn’t seen the figures. I am sure there are lots of people out there who imagine sites like Facebook and Twitter being full of youths donning virtual hoodies and organising virtual knifings. But young people are not so easy to pin down. The Ofcom report declines to tell us what young people actually are spending their time online doing, although we know for sure that they are online in their droves.

Mine is the first generation to have grown up with the internet. And like every shift in in youth culture, from rock and roll to video games, it gets people thinking about the possible downsides of growing up in a new environment. So they say that the internet gives you a short attention span. Or it dehumanises community life and leads to suicide.

I was recently emailed by a reader and occasional commenter here, Fran Walker. She was curious to know, what with me being a youth and all, if I have a life outside the computer?

As the worry of tinies not being able to interact with other humans, and the problems this may later lead to, is current news, it makes me wonder how you get on, as I regard you as one of the first of the “totally familiar with computers generation”? My son, who is 39 and lives in Taiwan, uses them for specific tasks, dislikes emails, prefers phone calls, and was in the first lot at school when computers were introduced, but he had a computer free childhood before that (say before 12 or 13), whereas, I suspect you had access to your parents’ computer since you can remember?

Like, I suspect, most people my age, I do indeed have a life outside of the computer, although it’s true I spend a lot of time on it. Partly this is because most of my work requires me to use the computer. Then, much of my spare time is consumed by the search for work, which is easiest to do on the internet.

There is also the plain fact that I love being connected to the internet for a whole host of reasons. Most of all, it brings me into contact with so many people I otherwise would not have. And it enables me to contact existing friends easily and comfortably. As Shane Richmond pointed out in his response to Vincent Nichols, the internet “enriches communication, it doesn’t destroy it.”

It is definitely the case that people in my generation are more familiar with computers. When I was young my parents had a BBC Micro, although it was quite old-fashioned even then. As far as I was concerned it was only really good for playing quite rudimentary games, when I could have been playing more sophisticated console games.

We only really got a contemporary computer in the late 1990s, and access to the internet came after that. By that time I was into my teens, so I can definitely remember a pre-internet era. I think for my generation, there were still a lot of people who didn’t have experience with the internet until they were fairly old.

I certainly remember when we started using the internet at school during my standard grades, aged about 15 or 16, there was at least one person in my class who had never used the internet before. Mind you, it’s true that I remember it so vividly because it was so unusual.

People often pose the hypothetical question, “could you survive for a day without the internet?” I recently went away for a short break, and I probably spent longer away from the internet than I have done for years.

Mind you, I expected to still be connected. But thanks to O2′s shaky 3G service it wasn’t to be. That was quite annoying because I wanted to contact people through Twitter. But it wasn’t the end of the world. I had a lot to do anyway, and was focusing on doing the things I wanted to do on my break.

As for voluntarily foregoing access, I think it would be difficult but not impossible. Certainly, one of the first things I do when I get up in the morning is check the internet, and it’s one of the last things I do at night. Would there be any point in not checking? I don’t think so.

A thought experiment like this is not terribly useful. You could try to “survive” a day without the internet, but what would it prove? Could you go for a week without reading your post? Or a month without reading newspapers? I certainly couldn’t survive a day without listening to the radio — I would go round the bend very quickly if I was deprived of it. Is that healthy or unhealthy?

For my generation, having a life outside the computer is no problem. Certainly, I spend a while on the computer. But many people might spend that time watching bad television or getting steaming drunk down the pub, which is much less healthy than spending your time reading Wikipedia.

But — and this is where I start to show that I am at the older end of the “youth” bracket — there is a but. My generation is not the first to grow up having not known a pre-internet world. In fact, I haven’t even had access to the internet for half of my life. So the real people to ask about the worry of an internet-obsessed world would be those who are currently 10 or under, and have never known a pre-internet home or school.

However, I would predict that, like Elvis’s dangerously swinging pelvis, we will come to view as quaint the fact that there was ever any concern.

This morning, three stories by three of the media’s top F1 journalists have provided food for thought. Take, for instance, Kevin Garside in the Telegraph:

Not so poor Dave Ryan, the middle-ranking manager who left Sepang carrying a heavyweight can, the kind of load you might expect a senior executive to bear. Not at McLaren evidently. Well, not yet anyway.

McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh says he is considering his position. Given the knife protruding from Ryan’s back, it would appear that any imperative to walk the plank did not seriously trouble the conscience of the team’s high command.

Ryan is a time-served McLaren fixer, a no-nonsense Kiwi 35 years with the team who can find his way around the paddock blindfold. He is normally an enforcer of policy not the author of it.

Ed Gorman in The Times:

It is easy to imagine Hamilton and Ryan making things up between themselves and going into the room and saying something they should never have done. But the part that stretches credibility to breaking point is the idea that after Melbourne and before the pair were summoned back before the stewards on Thursday in Kuala Lumpur, that no-one else in the team was made aware of what they had said and what was going on. It is important to appreciate that when Ryan and Hamilton went back to the stewards in Sepang they both continued to lie and to stick to their story from Melbourne. This has been confirmed both by McLaren and the FIA. It beggars belief that, in a team like McLaren which has been taught by Ron Dennis to think in a complex and often self-defeating way about even the most simple problems, that this critical issue would not have been more widely discussed by senior management before they went back in and approved by those people (or maybe not approved by some of them).

And Maurice Hamilton in The Guardian:

Is Ryan, who has been suspended by McLaren, being made the fall guy?
That would appear to be the case. Having known Ryan for more than 25 years, there is no one more honest or straightforward in formula one.

How much danger is the new team principal Martin Whitmarsh in?
He appears to have fallen at the first hurdle thanks to his lack of support for a man who has served the team faultlessly for 34 years. Ryan has widespread respect. On this basis Whitmarsh’s judgment is now being questioned.

This all leaves a serious question mark hanging over the McLaren team. Those that know Dave Ryan say he is an honest man who does what he is told by senior management. He has loyally served the team for 35 years. For me, that was one of the most staggering things about this story — that someone with so much experience could make such a serious error of judgement, and that someone would do anything to jeopardise the reputation of the team they have worked for since the 1970s.

I have to admit that last night as I reflected on McLaren’s latest foul-up, I was going through previous events in my head. All those times when McLaren’s version of events turned out not to be true. There have been plenty of them. I usually gave them the benefit of the doubt. But now, I am beginning to suspect foul play.

You may say that all teams and drivers lie and cheat in sport. This may be true, but it doesn’t make it any more palatable. What annoys me about the fact that McLaren are constantly caught with their pants down is the fact that this is the team that is constantly banging on about its honesty and integrity.

At least Jean Todt didn’t hide the fact that he was unsporting. He just shrugged his shoulders and said that’s what it takes to win. Ferrari have offended me a lot over the years. But they haven’t offended me as much as McLaren offend me today.

If there is even an ounce of truth in the hunch that the journalists have, McLaren are finished as a sports team. They will struggle to regain the trust of the fans unless there is a wholesale change at the top of the organisation.

It is bad enough to mislead the authorities. But it is a lot worse if the team then uses one of its most loyal workers as a scapegoat. Some have noticed the uncomfortable echoes of what happened to Mike Coughlan — so it would bring the events of Stepneygate into a new light as well.

What I find interesting is that the example he uses to “rebut” the theory is exactly the same example used by Max Mosley in a recent interview with the BBC. This suggests that the FIA is now running a coordinated campaign in order to re-establish its credibility as governing body.

It sorely needs that campaign. With the multitude of increasingly bizarre penalties handed out throughout this season, trust in the FIA’s systems have taken a hammer-blow. The only thing that has become clear this season is that there is no way of knowing what will get punished and what won’t.

Fans no longer trust the FIA, as you will see by dropping in to any blog or message board. Many in the media no longer trust the FIA’s stewards. Increasingly, drivers are calling for urgent changes to be made to the stewarding system. Teams have decided that enough is enough and have formed FOTA to counter the FIA’s madness. And yesterday, even Bernie Ecclestone slammed some of the penalties recently handed out by the FIA.

It looks like the only people who have any trust in the FIA any more are the FIA themselves. And any government that has lost the trust of everyone is clearly no longer fit for purpose. Now, the FIA is erratically throwing out increasingly bizarre ideas to change the face of F1 from tip to toe. Many of the changes, most notably a standardised engine, are completely antithetical to the idea of grand prix motor racing as we have all grown to know it, and Max Mosley’s vision of F1 is sure to alienate most fans.

It is a sign of the mismanagement and desperation of the poisonous and discredited little man at the top Max Mosley. He should have left his post after the Indygate debacle in 2005 when Max Mosley, in consort with Jean Todt, refused to compromise to allow the race go ahead. Since then, Max Mosley has never had my favour and the events of this year have further underlined my feelings.

Earlier this year, at the height of the sex scandal, he promised that he would step down at the end of his term next year. But as I noted at the time, he promised to resign in 2004 then changed his mind. True enough, the signs now are that he will continue on as FIA President. It is clear that he only promised to resign to help him get through the General Assembly vote. This makes him a liar. What a terrible person to have in such a powerful position.

Let us not forget that at the end of last season, the well-respected permanent steward Tony Scott Andrews left the role which had been seen as a relative success. In his place, a new consultant to the stewards was appointed. That man was Mosley’s mate Alan Donnelly. Donnelly’s company, Sovereign Strategy, based in an FIA-owned building, used to list Ferrari as one of its clients on its website. The Ferrari name mysteriously disappeared when Donnelly was appointed in his new role.

Mosley and Donnelly are now trotting out the following “proof” of why the FIA is not biased in favour of Ferrari:

You just need one example to debunk that theory: at Monaco the stewards noticed that on Raikkonen’s F2008 the wheels had not been fitted before the three-minute mark as allowed in the regulations. So the stewards penalised Kimi with a drive-through in a track where you can’t overtake.

That would be an inadequate argument anyway, as I already wrote when Mosley came out with it on the BBC. But it is even worse than that. As Don Speekingleesh pointed out in the comments, the Sporting Regulations clearly state that such an infraction should actually result in a driver starting from the back of the grid.

Article 38.5 of the Sporting Regulations (PDF link) states:

When the three minute signal is shown all cars must have their wheels fitted, after this signal wheels may only be removed in the pit lane or on the grid during a race suspension.

Any car which does not have all its wheels fully fitted at the three minute signal must start the race from the back of the grid or the pit lane. Under these circumstances a marshal holding a yellow flag will prevent the car (or cars) from leaving the grid until all cars able to do so have left to start the formation lap.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic. Alan Donnelly’s own “proof” that the FIA is not biased in favour of Ferrari actually appears to support of the conspiracy theory. It is clear that, according to the letter of the rules, Kimi Raikkonen should have started the race from the back of the grid. As it was, with just the drive-through penalty he never fell lower than 6th before crashing into Adrian Sutil.

What a mess the FIA is in. It is no wonder stewards’ decisions are so erratic and unpredictable. The FIA do not even appear to know what their own rules are. This is shown in the FIA’s embarrassingly wrong-footed attempts to debunk the Ferrari International Assistance theory. What a cock-up.

The Formula One Inside Line With Maurice Hamilton and Ian Phillips

Okay, so it’s not the catchiest title, but the podcast itself is excellent. I assume it is similar to The Guardian‘s F1 podcast which was also fronted by Maurice Hamilton and Ian Phillips. For whatever reason the newspaper isn’t responsible for the podcast any more, but it lives on independently.

Maurice Hamilton and Ian Phillips are well-known voices to listeners of BBC Radio 5 Live’s coverage of Formula 1 races. I can tell you, ‘The Inside Line’ is not an exaggeration when it comes to this pair. They certainly know what’s what in the paddock.

The Canadian GP podcast contains everything I have come to expect from this podcast — an incisive review of the race’s major events, and an insider’s take on the paddock gossip. Here, the experience of Maurice Hamilton’s decades writing about F1 and Ian Phillip’s journalistic background combined with the insider knowledge attained in his role as Force India’s Director of Business Affairs comes into its own.

This podcast contains the clearest explanation of the simmering war between Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley I have heard yet. There is also an explanation that every team in the paddock and everyone else involved wants a Concorde Agreement except the FIA. And the threats of a breakaway are quite real. And Luca di Montezemolo did mean to say that Max Mosley should step down. Ian Phillips explains why very well, and I’d recommend you go and listen to the podcast for the full explanation.

Then Maurice Hamilton’s connections allows him to bring us the fact that Bernie Ecclestone and Luca di Montezemolo were spotted having lunch together in New York. It’s pretty clear now that something is happening, and the discussion in this podcast has made that more clear than anything else I have read in the past few weeks.

This isn’t the first time The Inside Line podcast has come up with the goods. Of course, this year’s Monaco Grand Prix will always be remembered for the rotten luck that Adrian Sutil encountered. Who better, therefore, than Ian Phillips to get literally the inside line on the race’s top story? And being stationed in the Force India garage meant that they got a good interview with Adrian Sutil as well.

That podcast also contained a pretty trenchant criticism of Max Mosley’s letter that was sent out in the run-up to the Monaco Grand Prix. To top it off, Ian Phillips had more information on the controversial press conference that was perceived to be rigged in Max Mosley’s favour, with Gerhard Berger reading out a prepared statement.

Clearly, the star of the show is Ian Phillips. But even when he was away, the podcast still came up with the goods. Because the person who stood in was no less a person than Mike Gascoyne, Force India’s Chief Technical Officer. He was surprisingly good in his analysis of the Turkish Grand Prix as well.

That weekend Maurice Hamilton got the credit for the “one car teams” theory that was beginning to emerge. That was because he repeated it on the Chequered Flag which is heard by more listeners. But listening to The Inside Line podcast, it’s clear that the theory actually originated with Mike Gascoyne.

If there is one problem with the Inside Line podcast is that it’s clearly recorded a bit too early for a full analysis of the race to take place. Often mechanical problems will be glossed over as it is still unclear why a driver retired. Some more time may be needed to allow the dust to settle. But there are probably time constraints as no doubt everyone involved in the podcast has other commitments to wrap up, flights to catch and so on.

However, by my reckoning there really is no better way of getting a feel of what’s really happening in the paddock than this podcast. It doesn’t have the same backing that the Chequered Flag gets from the BBC, so The Inside Line is not so well known. But it deserves to be heard by as many Formula 1 fans.

But today that injunction was refused and the newspapers has hit back with a double-whammy. In addition to republishing the original video, the newspaper has uploaded two audio clips that depict Max Mosley speaking English in a mock German accent. One of these is the already infamous quote, “Zey need more of ze punishment I sink.”

The purpose behind publishing the new audio clips is to counter Max Mosley’s claims that the only reason he spoke German during the session was because some of the prostitutes themselves were German. This is at the heart of Mosley’s attempts to disprove claims that the session had a Nazi theme. But it does not explain why Mosley would be speaking English in a fake German accent.

It is very interesting that, as Pitpass noted last week, Max Mosley is not suing the News of the World for libel. You would think that if the allegations were false then Mosley would have little difficulty in winning a case against a newspaper which has put forward such over-the-top and cartoon-like allegations. This would particularly be the case in the UK which has famously strict libel laws. The fact that he is not suing for libel makes Mosley’s denials seem pretty empty.

Max Mosley appears mostly to be concerned about the invasion of privacy which the FIA has described as “apparently illegal”. It is worth remembering that less than a year ago such apparent illegalities were of no concern to Max Mosley as long as it assisted him in his personal vendetta against Ron Dennis.

As Grandprix.com reminds us, the World Motor Sport Council met in September to discuss a list of text messages and phone calls between Mike Coughlan and Nigel Stepney. The validity of the evidence was brought into question. Here was Mosley’s response:

The World Council’s only concern is whether that list is accurate and truthful. We are not concerned with whether there are issues over how that is obtained. Unless there is evidence that it is forged or inaccurate, we will take it on its face value. We do not enter a debate about Italian law; we have neither the time nor the skills for that.

Funny how he sings a different tune today. Max Mosley’s defence appears to be crumbling.

Today’s events, however, represent a real legal stumbling block for Max Mosley. The injunction was refused on the basis that the video is already in the public domain and you cannot reasonably expect to remove it from the public domain. This is the same argument that has been used by those who are arguing for Max Mosley to resign. It is a good point.

However, as Craigblog points out, it is nevertheless surprising that this ruling went against Max Mosley. Had the injunction been granted, it would have sent out a strong message to everyone about the use of this video.

Now, media outlets have effectively been given absolute free reign to use it. As we have seen, the News of the World has now taken the opportunity to upload new clips. And at lunchtime today I was amazed to hear the original video clip being played in full on BBC Radio 5 Live. If the video was in the public domain in the first place, today it is in the public domain deluxe.

Meanwhile, it has been announced today that the FIA General Assembly will now meet on 3rd June. This will include a confidence vote which will be held as a secret ballot. I would be amazed if Max Mosley were to win the vote. Meanwhile, the FIA will be lumbered with a lame duck President for almost two more months.

The letter has been taken apart by Ollie, Negative Camber and Clive.

One the face of it the letter is a confession. However, he denies the “Nazi connotation”. This might be key if Mosley wants to survive as FIA President. It is generally agreed that if it was a mere sex scandal, people would not have been so offended. It is the alleged Nazi element that has riled most people.

But can we be convinced that there was no Nazi connotation? Planet-F1 says that Mosley could be heard on the video saying in a German accent, “She needs more of ze punishment.” And according to Clive,

not only were the participants dressed in Nazi uniforms, but at least one was attired in concentration camp pajamas.

Whatever Mosley’s explanation that this is not a Nazi fantasy is, it had better be convincing.

We now come on to another uncomfortable point of the letter, which is Mosley’s seeming implication that the fact that this information came about as a result of a private investigation somehow exonerates him. We can see that this is what Mosley believes as he continually puts the blame for his current predicament on those who did the investigation, and not himself for behaving in the way that he did.

Regrettably you are now familiar with the results of this covert investigation and I am very sorry if this has embarrassed you or the club…

I shall now devote some time to those responsible for putting this into the public domain but above all I need to repair the damage to my immediate family who are the innocent and unsuspecting victims of this deliberate and calculated personal attack.

How utterly outrageous. Max Mosley’s family are not “the innocent and unsuspecting victims of this deliberate and calculated personal attack.” They are the innocent and unsuspecting victims of Max Mosley’s offensive behaviour.

I have said often enough that an invasion of someone’s private life is not acceptable. I do not for one second subscribe to the News of the World style of journalism. Samuel has been particularly vocal in the comments to a previous post here. For instance:

Western democracies defend the right of privacy for everyone. The devil himself should have the right to maintain his private life private. I firmly believe in civil rights so for me Max is the only victim. Period. For me it’s the end of the story.

This may be true, but the fact is that nothing can be done about that now. It is a sunk cost. The damage has been done, and Max Mosley’s privacy has been invaded. Wringing our hands about that will do nothing.

We now have to face the apparent reality that Max Mosley has hired prostitutes for an allegedly Nazi-themed sex orgy. The motor racing community has to ask itself: now that we have knowledge of Max Mosley’s behaviour, is he an appropriate person to be running the FIA? And the answer must surely be ‘no’.

Mosley himself knows this. It appears as though he will not attend the Bahrain Grand Prix. Bernie Ecclestone revealed that the Bahraini Royal Family would not appreciate it. No shit, Sherlock.

So will they appreciate it in 12 months’ time when Formula 1 next races in Bahrain? Will the King Juan Carlos appreciate it when F1 moves to Spain in a few weeks’ time? We can go on throughout the calendar. No-one will appreciate it. This severely restricts the ability of Formula 1′s powers-that-be to do the deals that are essential to the survival of the sport. For this reason alone, Max Mosley must resign.

But as if that was not enough, the rumours that have come out since then have rubbed salt into the wound as far as I’m concerned. You can be assured that Max Mosley is not embarrassed about these rumours, and indeed he has partially confirmed them, without a hint of shame, in his letter.

It demonstrates everything we know about Mosley’s arrogance, unsavoury thirst for power and complete self interest that he refuses to stand down as FIA President. Not only that, but he now apparently wants to stand for another term as FIA President! You would never expect Mosley to do the honourable thing, but this just takes the biscuit.

Then there is the fact — which Mosley parades in his letter — that he has received “a very large number of messages of sympathy and support from those within the FIA”. This just demonstrates that the FIA has been filled with Max Mosley lackeys and yes-men over the past decade and a half.

If for anything else, Max Mosley has revealed himself to be unfit for the role of the FIA’s Presidency due to his failure to face up to the truth and for his despicable attempts to blame others for his own wrongdoings.

It is clear that Max Mosley has brought the sport of Formula 1 into disrepute. There can be no doubt about this. This was, you will recall, the same thing that McLaren were found guilty of last year in Max Mosley’s personal, vendetta-driven “spy(sic)gate” farrago. I await the $100 million fine landing on Mosley’s desk. But of course, under Mosley’s direction, you can never expect the FIA to hand out punishments consistently.

Update: Max Mosley is now claiming that the only reason he was speaking German was because some of the prostitutes were German.

First of all, the media have used the fact that Hamilton was unable to drink water as a convenient explanation of his poor form. It has to be said, the nadir is this headline in The Daily Excess Express: Thirsty work but Lewis shows bottle.

What all of these stories fail to mention is the fact that Robert Kubica was also unable to drink his water because it was too hot. He joked that he might as well put tea in the bottle instead. Additionally, Kubica had been ill all week. All of this didn’t stop him from finishing second in the race.

Not only this, but Fernando Alonso also had a problem with his drink! On the Renault podcast this week they made the same joke about tea. Admittedly, Alonso’s performance was not so stellar either. But it goes to show that this water problem does not make Hamilton as much of a hero as the British press is attempting to make out.

Water problems do not only afflict drivers in Malaysia. In the Australian Grand Prix, in similarly hot conditions, Heidfeld’s drink mechanism completely failed before the beginning of the race, as you will see in the liveblog from that race (discussion 5:27 onwards). Despite this, Quick Nick was good enough to finish 2nd.

In short: nice try, British press, but the excuse just doesn’t cut it.

A different explanation was put forward by Maurice Hamilton in a blog post for the Top Gear website.

This was not Lewis Hamilton’s weekend. He woke on Saturday morning to an unspecified personal problem ‘I’m not telling you about it but it’s something I’ve learned to deal with’ and his day – and subsequently, his race – went downhill from there.

The only other place I have heard this mentioned was very briefly on the BBC’s Chequered Flag podcast, which is co-presented by… Maurice Hamilton. The nature of Lewis Hamilton’s problem is sketchy. David Croft suggested it may just be that he got out on the wrong side of his bed. But if there is something more serious occupying Hamilton’s mind, that may be a more plausible explanation for his scruffy weekend. It certainly explains why he was on top on Friday but decidedly mediocre from Saturday onwards.

If Lewis Hamilton does have a problem in his private life, he has my sympathy. But a great driver knows how to cope with such things. I remember when Michael Schumacher’s mother died. Personal problems do not get much bigger than that. Yet the next day he took the race victory in Imola.

If you think I am judging Lewis Hamilton harshly here, you are right. So what is the point I am trying to make? Well, it brings me on to Negative Camber’s second post and the accompanying rant that can be found on this week’s Formula 1 Blog podcast.

It is difficult to fault Negative Camber’s point that it was premature of British journalists to start comparing Hamilton to legendary drivers like Jim Clark and Ayrton Senna. It still angers me to this day that Matt Bishop said on the radio that Hamilton was in a league with Fangio, Clark, Senna, Schumacher — and no-one else.

It was just such a ridiculous thing to say. It simply devalues the achievements of the four truly great drivers that Bishop placed in that ‘top tier’. It does absolutely no justice to the legacies of Fangio, Clark and Senna.

And Bishop said that just three races into Hamilton’s career! We hadn’t even seen Hamilton win a race yet. In fairness, he has since achieved that. But we also hadn’t seen him drive a wet race — and we’ve since seen him fail that challenge. We also hadn’t seen him face a championship battle — and we’ve since seen him fail that challenge.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg. It now seems to be taken as read — in the British press at least, though not so much in he rest of the world it seems (I wonder why!) — that Hamilton is one of the greatest drivers ever to have lived. Negative Camber is right to say that if you are going to treat a driver like this so early on in his career, you should expect little less than perfection. You expect to see a Schumacher-grade performance week-in, week-out.

Of course, Schumacher had his off days, as does every other human being on the planet. But this is the point. Careers are made of ups and downs. They are not made in one season, and they are certainly not made of three races.

At some points during a career, a driver will find himself in a good car, in good circumstances and with luck on his side. This was the situation with Hamilton, at least in the first half of 2007. At other points, a driver will find himself in more challenging circumstances and luck won’t quite go his way. And that is when you find out if a driver really is worth the hype.

The point is that it’s swings and roundabouts. Lewis Hamilton had a problematic pitstop during the Malaysian Grand Prix. This was the most convincing of the explanations of Hamilton’s below-par result put forward by the British journalists.

Now, I have seen a lot of people saying that he was “destined” for a podium were it not for that pitstop problem. This could well be true. Hamilton was, after all, ahead of Kovalainen before the first round of pitstops. But if bad luck cost him the podium, good luck would also have won him it. Massa’s spin automatically promoted Hamilton one position. In F1, you take the rough with the smooth.

Moreover, the press raves about Hamilton being a prodigious passer. Yet he struggled for several laps to find a way past Webber and Trulli. Extending the “what if” argument, I could just as easily say that Hamilton would have been destined for a podium if he was able to pass Webber early on in the race. The fact that he didn’t get that podium place was down to his lack of skill.

Complaints about the bad luck of the pitstop also ignore the possibility (and I admit that it is just a possibility, before anyone starts moaning in the comments, but at least I acknowledge both sides of the story) that the problem could have been caused by Hamilton’s driving style. We have seen Hamilton struggle in terms of tyre management a few times now. I think it is notable that most of Hamilton’s major mechanical failures have been tyre-related. He obviously pushes them too hard.

In Malaysia, we saw some bad wear on his left front tyre. The pitcrew had trouble getting his right front tyre off. It is feasible that Hamilton’s driving style could have been the root of the problem.

When you begin to point out the defects in the story that has been built by the British F1 storytellers “reporters” the standard fallback is to enthuse about his “amazing rookie season”. No doubt about it, Hamilton’s rookie season was indeed amazing. The stats speak for themselves.

But who was the most successful rookie before Lewis Hamilton? Jacques Villeneuve, that’s who. The circumstances are quite similar actually. Both drivers took four wins (although Villeneuve did so when the season had fewer races), both drivers gave their more experienced team mate a run for their money and both drivers were in what was almost certainly the best car at the time.

Arguably, Jacques Villeneuve’s task was more difficult than Hamilton’s. Hamilton was groomed for the position for over a decade and methodically made his way through the standard route to F1. Hamilton’s last destination before F1 was GP2, a series that is specifically designed as F1′s feeder series.

Meanwhile, Jacques Villeneuve took the less conventional route via CART IndyCar. These are very different cars to F1 machines. We have since seen a succession of drivers make the move from CART or IndyCar to F1. All of them were disappointments by F1 standards. Indeed, after his rather good first two seasons, Jacques Villeneuve’s F1 career was one long spiralling disaster.

There is no dispute as to whether or not Lewis Hamilton is good. Everyone knows that Hamilton is good. The question is this: Is he good in a Clark, Senna or Schumacher sense? Or is he good in a Jacques Villeneuve sense?

The answer on 27 March 2008 is that we simply don’t know. Hamilton may very well turn out to be this generation’s Senna. When that happens — and we will only know after a few more years — then I will be celebrating his success. But it is disingenuous to say today that he is this generation’s Senna. There is simply no way of knowing if that is the truth.

Now consider the possibility that Hamilton isn’t this generation’s Senna, contrary to what the British journalists have been saying. Then what? The journalists, having colluded to make a mountain out of a molehill in order to further their careers, will then have serious egg on their collective face. Then they will have to come up with their excuses. And we all know what happens then. In traditional British media style, they will rip Lewis Hamilton apart.

So when I sound a note of caution about Lewis Hamilton it is not just because I am a party pooper. It is basic common sense that stops me from comparing Hamilton to the likes of Senna and Clark until he has truly established himself as being worthy of such company.

Because if he underperforms from now on (and it is an if), the British public will be ready to rip him apart for the crime of being good rather than great. And how awful would that be?

Where does blogging come into this? Well, there is an old debate about whether blogs, podcasts and the like are competing with and / or threatening the future of traditional media outlets.

My normal response to this is that the debate is a red herring. Blogs and the MSM can complement each other, but they do not often compete with each other. The point is to recognise where your competitive advantage is.

The mainstream media has the resources to cover a story properly, from all the angles. They can afford to hire trained journalists. In short, their competitive advantage is in balanced reporting. This means that if I turn to the section of the newspaper headed “Formula 1″ I expect to see a Formula 1 report, not a barely disguised Lewis Hamilton report.

And don’t give me this “of course the British papers will follow the British driver” tosh. Formula 1 drivers don’t represent countries — they represent themselves! F1 has never been a sport about nationalities. Despite the dominance of Ferrari, Italy has never won a scratch in an F1 season. F1 is a sport about teams of constructors and individual drivers.

Normally you would turn to the blogs for the polemics and the opinionated rants. But it is clear to me that, in Britain at least, the roles have been reversed. British F1 fans have nowhere to turn for an unslanted professional take on events. Now it is up to the bloggers to step up to the plate.

I’m not just saying this. Despite what I have said in this post, I have become less irate about the British media’s coverage over the winter. This might be because I have become immune to it having been subjected to it all last season. But I have another theory — I have subconsciously stopped looking to the mainstream media as my first destination of F1 news and opinion. I wasn’t even aware of what the British journalists were writing until I read Negative Camber’s posts and heard his rants.

In the past I always listened to the BBC’s Chequered Flag podcast first. Sometime, without consciously realising it, I swapped to listening to Sidepodcast and Formula 1 Blog’s podcast before listening to any mainstream media offering. This must be because I am getting a better overall view of events from the amateurs than I am from the professionals. What a sorry state for the British media to be in.

Of course, this is nothing new. Bernie Ecclestone’s carping criticisms are par for the course whenever any circuit’s contract is coming up for renegotiation. Melbourne has most recently been feeling the heat.

And ever since the Australian Grand Prix moved to Albert Park back in 1996, environmental campaigners and pressure groups such as Save Albert Park have been trying their best to do away with the race. This report of a recent radio interview with Ron Walker highlights the increasingly hostile attitude that many Australians appear to be taking towards the Melbourne grand prix.

Due to its apparent political unpopularity, the race’s organisers have been trying their best to articulate the case for keeping the race in Melbourne in terms of the economic benefits and the race’s popularity in terms of attendance figures. But in the face of mounting pressure their case has begun to fall apart.

Increasingly it looks as though the race organises have been massaging attendance figures in order to project a better picture than is really the case. According to a report on Pitpass a few weeks ago, the “official” attendance figures include freebies, school excursions, corporate tickets and even competition prize tickets that haven’t been used! Despite the use of a variety of schemes to encourage people to attend, grandstands can look pretty empty.

A recent story published in The Age has raised some eyebrows in Australia. The newspaper wrote a report highlighting some home truths about Australian Grand Prix attendance.

Among the interesting information in the report is the fact that the organisers do not even know how many people attend the event. Nevertheless, organisers advertise it as “the best-attended grand prix in the world”, citing a figure of 301,000. Meanwhile, the Save Albert Park campaign group, using a more open and transparent process, have worked out that the “official” figure has been inflated by as much as 45%. Most astonishingly, the “official” figure is said to include “drivers, car mechanics, grid girls, hospitality staff, and even race bosses”.

As you can see if you have visited The Age website, the story now comes complete with a honking great “clarification” in bold writing at the top. According to Crikey, the way this has been handled is causing consternation among the paper’s staff.

The word around The Age newsroom is that after reporter Ben Doherty’s story was published, he was called in to editor [Andrew] Jaspan’s office to meet Grand Prix executives and answer their queries. This is extraordinary. Traditionally, editors shield their reporters from this kind of pressure, unless there is a clear case of error or misconduct. Even then, it is the editor’s role to deal with the interested parties.

Furthermore, the “bullshit” clarification does little to undermine the story. The very length of the clarification is apparently unprecedented.

The case for the Australian Grand Prix remaining in Melbourne appears to be fairly flimsy. In the face of increasing public dismay about taxpayers’ money being spent on the race, the race’s organisers appear to be adopting strong-arm tactics in order to keep a lid on the debate.

They used to call it a “great place for a race”. But are the days of Albert Park as an F1 venue numbered?

Any thoughts on this? Would you be sad to see Melbourne go? What possible alternative venues are there for the Australian Grand Prix?

H/T Colin Campbell

People who are opposed to immigration like to say that “they take our jobs”. (Let us, for the time being, leave aside the fact that they also “give us more jobs”.) But so does everyone who enters the labour force. 16-year-olds for instance. Yet you do not (usually) hear anybody advocating quotas on the number of children born.

The only people who generally do advocate that people give birth less are environmentalists wary of a Malthusian catastrophe (a phenomenon that various people have believed has been imminent since the late 18^th century but has never happened). These environmentalists are people who are often lambasted by the very people who oppose immigration for similar reasons.

But today MigrationWatch appear to have advocated just that. Or at least, they have advocated it for those mucky foreigners. That is the only reading I get out of this quote (emphasis mine):

More than a quarter of babies born in Britain have at least one foreign-born parent, it emerged this week, up from just over a fifth in 2000. It is a striking statistic that in some quarters, predictably, provoked alarm. “Many people simply don’t understand how this could have happened without anyone being consulted,” Sir Andrew Green, chair of the rightwing anti-immigration group Migration Watch, wrote in the Daily Telegraph.

Without anyone being consulted? Is he suggesting that it is somehow the government’s job to impose a limit on births? Since when did there have to be a consultation before people are born?

This is sick stuff. As if it wasn’t abhorrent enough that they should seek to tell private individuals where they can and cannot live, they now appear to want to tell people when they can and cannot give birth.

It is like a policy from a hopelessly totalitarian government like China’s. The one child policy of China is widely condemned. But seemingly for MigrationWatch it would be A-okay to introduce something similar in Britain.