Here is a good post from Enigin PLC about not giving in which I found to my liking: http://www.eniginscampaign.com/2010/07/01/the-persistance-of-an-enigin-family-member/ Not giving in can get you in to BIG trouble, of course – both emotionally and financially speaking. But then again, giving in can leave you feeling dissatisfied…that if only you had tried that bit harder you might just have been able to accomplish what you set out to do… Naturally, everyone has their own limit of when they should give up. Some people are more easily knocked down by others, while others will never ever stop trying to achieve something for as long as they live. And there in lies the problem: you could spend your entire life trying to achieve something and then never succeed. Does that mean that you have failed miserably and should have known to stop a lot earlier? That everything you did up until then counted only as a waste? Well, no, not if you ask me. You gave it your best shot didn’t you? Which means that you have learned something along the way, even if it was only that you are an extremely stubborn person who has things they need to work on… Some people cope better with rejection than others. While some can accept failure and move on to a new challenge relatively quickly, others can not. It hurts them to just give up. And I think there is something to be learned from both groups of people and everyone in between, after all variety is what makes the world go round and if everyone never gave up / just gave up when things got difficult, probably nothing of any good would have ever been achieved.

While BP should not avoid harsh words for its reaction to the devastating oil spill, it is dangerous for Obama to suggest tough punishments for a company that funds millions of British pensions and whose future will have serious consequences for Britain’s economic recovery process. Even though David Cameron has defended BP on his recent state visit to Washington, he has not made it clear that if BP is subject to even greater costs for the oil spill it will only have negative connotations for the British economy.

The inability or ’unwillingness’ British leaders to criticise America is mainly due to this perceived notion of a ’special relationship’ between the two countries. Anything which could upset this apparent ’mutual’ bond, even it is just an offhand comment about a US official could threaten the foundations of the transatlantic alliance.

However, there is also a much deeper reason for Britain’s steadfast commitment to the US. It is due to Britain’s continued alienation from continental Europe. The European Union, which is still resented in Britain, can now challenge most of the laws passed by Whitehall when it sees fit. Cameron, like Brown, Blair, Thatcher and all the way back to Churchill, wants Britain to remain at the top of the table with regards to its international political influence. Britain’s role in Afghanistan and Iraq in the wake of fierce opposition from European countries is living proof of this. Naturally, an alliance with the world’s foremost superpower is a ticket to maintaining Britain’s global prestige, but whether it is of any great benefit to the British people is most likely up to debate.

Phone fear is the worst, but worse than phone fear – what I mean by ‘phone fear’ is when you are in a crowded public place and your phone rings and instead of answering it like a normal person you freeze up and start talking as if someone has a gun against your head – is people who have no phone fear; we’re talking yuppies, women working in Beauty PR, men in suits with far too much hair-gel and youngsters who have just discovered the joys of the mobile phone. Ugh.

The odd thing where my phone fear is concerned, though, is that I get it even when I’m out in the country and no-one is around. Take the other day for example, I was wandering around a nature reserve with only cows, sheep and a kestrel flying overhead for company when my phone rang–I picked it up and said “Yes, hello?” and as soon as I did so I became aware (or so my phone fear told me) that the cows were staring at me, the sheep were bahhing about my rudeness and the kestrel overhead was spying down at me with its beady little predatory eyes. And it got worse–

The more I tried to act normal, the more the cows made tiny grunting noises and the more tight and suspicious the kestrel’s circular flight became. In the end I had to cancel the call and it turned out to be the right decision because the animals reverted back to their harmless selves.

I will never answer my phone in front of a cow ever again.

Whenever I get nervous I tend to get a strange feeling that immediately makes me think of P.E. at school. (The sports lesson with our teacher, the one who eventually retired to sell weight loss treatments ). More specifically, it is the moment when the boy in front of me steps away, running towards the long-jump, and I become the boy at the front of the queue. I’m nervous and shaking all over. Behind me I can hear the mocking chants of the boys who are good at the long jump. The more they mock me, the more the energy seems to seep out of my legs. Then the teacher says “Go!”

I run, or I try to. But all the time some weird force seems to drag at my arms and legs, trying to pull me back to the front of the line. This only goes away once I’m half-way down the runway, about ten metres or so from the wooden board which marks the place where the field stops and the sand-pit begins.

Hitting the board sets me free. As soon as I’m hurtling through the air (I use ’hurtling'loosely; generally I just looked like a daddy-long-legs that had been smacked through the air towards an open window) I’m about half as light as I was on flat ground. Weightless and smiling, I land in a big heap and the nerves and bad feeling explode out of me across the sand.

I miss the long jump for that reason, but if I ever get so nervous I don’t feel like I can cope I try and remember being airborne and landing. If you need to, you should think back to a place in your past and do the same.

Fourteen of us boys are in the changing rooms and expected to get naked and changed in to swimming trunks the size of napkins just like that, as if the unveiling of one’s pubescent genital parts to a mass of boys who have just learnt sarcasm should be considered ‘a good thing’. Today is swimming, and for three hours we’ll be stuck racing back and forth, linear and dull, because our teacher Mr Thomas doesn’t like any ‘mucking around’.That means there’s lots of mucking around, only instead of it being stationary it’s integrated in to our lengths, as we mock Mr Thomas and discuss how he does his Laser hair removal (like all swimming teachers, the man has freakishly smooth legs).

There’s one part that’s good, though, and that’s collecting the brick. Each boy takes it in turn to drop the bright red brick in to the pool. It gets dropped deeper and deeper as we go, so that the boy who starts is happy and the last boy to go is terrified.

I am the fifth to go. That means a depth of around three metres. Not much, but the brick is near the grid that sucks water through so hard that you can feel it on the way down. As I go under, down in to the murky blue, I feel it pull at my hair, or I think I do. I’m scared that if I get too close it’ll get trapped and I’ll die a slow, violent death.

I get the brick with no problem, and as I kick away from the depths I feel something rush in to my lungs. Not water, but it feels like it. It’s fear, I know, and some excitement. I don’t go swimming very much nowadays, but maybe I should. Maybe it’d be good to reclaim it.

One of the most popular shows on television back in the seventies was, ‘The Sweeney’. It was by no means the first police drama to come along, but it was certainly the most accurate one to date. Before this, the police had always been portrayed as being ‘squeaky clean’, however ‘The Sweeney’ was to change all that. Corruption and bent coppers were a popular subject in the show and this gave the whole thing a gritty and realistic feel. It also added a little bit of glamor to the classic bobby job, a lot like the medical dramas of today have suddenly made locum jobs for doctors a little bit more appealing.

Note: - I would just like to make something clear. I am not saying that all policemen/policewomen are corrupt! But I am not naive enough to think they are all as pure as the driven snow. Cops are just human beings like the rest of us; there are good ones and bad ones.

John Thaw was brilliant as Jack Regan and Dennis Waterman changed police dramas forever by constantly calling him, ‘Guv’. Have you ever noticed how everyone calls their boss ‘Guv’ in police shows now? The other thing that made ‘The Sweeney’ so great was the style. The characters wore some really cool suits and the cars in the show were just great; who can dislike the old Capri’s or Mk I Cortina’s of the 1970s???

Of course, the icing on the cake was the belting intro tune. It has to be one of the greatest police show themes ever!

So if that tickles your fancy, stay tuned and see what I come up with. I know I will be surprised!