Richard Baum

I take back what I said yesterday about secretly wanting England to lose. It was horrible. Awful stuff. It might be amusing to think back on in a few years when Jose Mourinho or Martin Jol or Fabio Capello or (and let’s face it, he’ll probably be given the job by the buffoons in Soho Square) Steve Bruce lead us to World Cup 2010. But right now the founders of football have been pipped to qualification by a team who managed to beat Andorra 1-0. And on a pitch like a farm track despite spending nearly a billion quid on the stadium.

Thankfully McLaren has gone now, paying the price for the type of tactical bewilderment that had every fan in the nation screaming at the TV in despair. But it’s small comfort.

5-4-1 has never, in any match in history, worked. Unfortunately the England manager, the coach in what is supposedly the biggest job in world football, considered it appropriate to consign the team to hoofing the ball and allowing Peter Crouch to head it down to a Croatian for the first half. Idiocy, plain and simple. And now I have to reconsider my plans for summer 2008.

Thankfully there are things going on in the ward that distract me from the tumbling stumble-monkeys wearing the Three Lions with something approaching nonchalance. And many of these were discussed at the Lib Dem Group meeting last night. Such as…

- The planned extension to Forest Bank prison. We are investigating these plans with colleagues in Salford to find out more, and will be working with residents and our two Councils to get involved in this decision.

- Butterstile Children’s Centre. Again, let me say that all the work we are doing on this is on behalf of the residetns of surrounding streets, and the children using the site. We remain as committed as ever to securing a Children’s Centre for the ward, but need to make sure it’s done properly so that the best outcome happens in the end. And part of that is the site visit from Planning, which has been rescheduled now from 18th December to 17th December.

- Retreat Fountain. The granite replacement to the glass white elephant is now more or less done. Although it’s not what we wanted, it’s better than nothing and at least we can say farewell to the scaffolding and barriers after far too long.

- Prestwich Local Area Partnership. The next meeting of the LAP will take place next week, on Tuesday 27th November at 18.30 at Sedgley Park Primary School (on Kings Road / Bishops Road). The open forum part of the meeting, where you have the opportunity to raise any local issue to your Councillors and our partners, is between 19.45 - 20.30, although the whole meeting is open to the public if you want.

We talked about lots more too, but my mind keeps wandering back to the moment Steve McLaren decided to complement a back four of Richards (toddler), Lescott (2 caps), Campbell (73 years old and slower than a NASA shuttle transporter) and Bridge (rubbish) with a goalkeeper who had never played a competitive international before. Was he on the phone to HMRC giving them parcel delivery tips at the same time?

Such blithering incompetence at the highest levels of international football makes me feel a hell of a lot better about myself.

Rick