England's 2-1 win over Australia in the 2009 Ashes was an achievment that not too many cricket observers would have predicted at the start of the summer.

England may have beaten the West Indies in May but the West Indies were a lack-lustre outfit led by Chris Gayle, a man who had openly said that he 'wouldn't be so sad if test cricket died out'.

Gayle is a huge fan of Twenty20 cricket and the riches and excitement that the game offers were brilliantly showcased this year in the IPL in South Africa. As a big-hitting batsman Gayle's game suits Twenty20 perfectly, so it is no surprise that he has taken to it.

In truth Gayle looked like someone who would rather have missed the plane than played a test series in England at the beginning of May.

To be fair to him, the weather was bad, the crowds were poor and for opponents of Test cricket's continuation, the series against the West Indies was the signal that the end was nigh for the five day format.

Test Cricket doomed?

Even Kevin Pietersen, the former England Captain appeared unsure that Test Cricket had a long term future. In an interview with The Times he said: "I’d be a fool to tell you now that Test cricket will be here in 10 years’ time because I don’t know now."

So a pretty bleak outlook then. Not so if we look at the evidence from this year's Ashes series. Tickets were in huge demand for each test, the series was extremely competitive and once again the series captivated the media and the nation.

Twenty20 is definitely an exciting sport to watch, but it just does not have the same twists and turns that Test Cricket provides. A five match series of five day games is really a different sport to Twenty20, and while One day cricket may well suffer a decline, the future of test cricket now looks healthy.

Competition is paramount

The Ashes became boring for many cricket fans over the years, quite simply because of Australia's dominance. Since 2005 we have seen England win back the urn for the first time in 18 years, only to then lose it again 5-0 in Australia, and then reclaim it again in 2009.

Competition is key to any sport's enduring popularity, and whether you are English (or Welsh for that matter) or Australian I am sure you would agree that the series' competitiveness is very important to its future.

The IPL has flooded the the world of Twenty20 with cash, and some players may well chose to end their test careers early to take advantage of these riches; but one only has to look at the reaction of the England team to see what winning the Ashes means to them.

Money is a fact of life in professional sport these days, but even in the over-spending, bloated world of Premiership football, I would guess that most of the players would trade a year's salary for back to back league titles.

New audience for cricket

One of the arguments against Test Cricket continuing is that spectators are more interested in the shorter form of the game, and Twenty20 has without doubt introduced cricket to people who had little interest in the sport before.

This is a good thing, but for fans of Test Cricket Twenty20 will never be able to equal the thrills, spills and tactics that a test match brings. In football terms, Twenty20 is a bit like a penalty shoot out compared to the World Cup tournament of Test Cricket.

For any English or Australian cricketer, winning the Ashes will be the pinnacle of their careers, and on the evidence of this series it looks like it will continue to be the case for many years to come.

As long as things stay this way the crowds will surely follow, and Test Cricket will continue to flourish as it always has. Long live Test Cricket!

Conservative MEP Dan Hannan, has caused a political storm by openly criticising the NHS on America's Fox News.

Hannan called the NHS a "60-year mistake" and labelled it as the result of something planned during the war. He then moved onto the US saying:

"I find it incredible that a free people living in a country dedicated and founded in the cause of independence and freedom can seriously be thinking about adopting such a system in peacetime and massively expanding the role of the state when there's no need."

Political gamesmanship

David Cameron the Conservative leader dismissed Hannan as 'eccentric' and made it clear that these views were not reflected in Tory policy. He then added that "the Conservative Party stands four square behind the NHS."

Andy Burnham the Health Secretary went further calling Hannan 'unpatriotic', but then also adding: "What has happened within the last 48 hours is what Cameron has feared most because it lays bare the Tories' deep ambivalence towards the NHS."

This does seem a little cheap, seeing as most people admit that Cameron is committed to the NHS. Particularly considering that Cameron's own family has benefitted greatly from NHS services, when his son late son Ivan was cared for.

Labour understandably have used this occasion to launch an attack on the Tories, but saying that Conservative policy is anti-NHS is perhaps political gamesmanship gone too far.

Opening up debate

Can you ever imagine a British politician on either front-bench speaking their mind quite like this? Whether or not you agree with Hannan, what is certain is that he has opened up a debate on the future of the NHS, something that is long overdue.

The NHS is without doubt a wonderful national institution, but one that is fatally flawed. A National Health Service that is free at the point of delivery and serves everyone is a terrific ideal, but is sadly one that will always struggle to be fulfilled.

There has been much talk of NICE over the past few days, the independent body that approves treatments and medicines for use on the NHS. This is of course done on the basis of need but mostly on cost, just as any government department makes its budget choices.

Investment

This then inevitably means that some patients will miss out on their treatment of choice, because it is just too expensive sometimes to pay for them. As time has moved on, treatments and technologies have become more and more expensive, so this problem will not go away.

Labour have poured unprecedented amounts of money into the NHS, and they have made some progress, but GPs now work less hours than they used to and are paid more than ever. Surely this is an indication that not everything in the garden is rosy.

Outdated model

Political blogger Iain Dale gives his take as to why the NHS is constantly struggling to meet people's needs:

"It is because we are trying to make a 1940s healthcare system cope with the demands of a 21st century society. We cling to the idea that healthcare is free at the point of delivery, while conveniently ignoring the truth that in many cases it isn't, and it never can be. And yet at the same time we prevent those who are happy to pay for their care from doing so without then being banned from having NHS treatment. Until we come to terms with the fact that a 1940s structure can never service 21st century needs, we're not going to get anywhere." (read the full blog post here).

This really is the fundamental problem. How can we possibly expect the NHS to serve everyone equally when its model is outdated? Politicians need to start debating this issue, and crucially without playing party politics with it.

The NHS is not a political football to be kicked around by each party, and anyone who has had anything to do with it should have massive respect for what it, as an institution represents.

Problems lie ahead

In my personal experience, the staff in NHS hospitals are excellent, but the problem is that there just are not enough of them. This needs to change quickly, because as our population gets older and fatter the NHS will be more stretched than ever.

Dan Hannan may well be a political maverick that not many people agree with, but sometimes it takes eccentric individuals to stand up and speak their mind, in order to open up debates that no-one really wants to have. The NHS does its best, but it could be so much better.

So if we are going to make changes let's start making them now before things get even worse, because if we wait too long the NHS could cease to exist out of necessity, and nobody really wants that.



(You can watch the Dan Hannan Fox interview here)

Yesterday the names of the three people held responsible for allowing the death of Baby P (now known as Peter Connelly), were finally revealed.

We now know that Tracey Connelly, 28, her partner Steven Barker, 33, and his brother Jason Owen, 37, were responsible for causing Peter's death. We also know that Barker was convicted for the rape of a two year old girl.

We were led to believe that their identities were kept secret to protect Connelly's other children, but also to avoid prejudicing other active cases, so why have their identities been revealed now?

Children at risk

Surely Connelly's children will be at risk from being identified, and with their mother only receiving a five year sentence she may well be out in half that time. This presumably means that she will have to be given a new identity upon her release from jail.

If this does not happen then the risk of vigilante attacks is high, and so too the risk to her children's well-being. However, if Tracey Connelly does recieve this level of protection, then it is also likely that both Barker and Owen will too.

The problem here is that this level of protection is very expensive, and the public reaction to the government spending money on convicted criminals is not favourable at all. So the question must be posed why chose to identify those involved?

Why identify?

If it is because the public have a right to know who committed the crime then fine, but if this is the case then they should not be given new identities upon release. This is a massive waste of money, and if their identities had been concealed forever, this expense could have been avoided all-together.

In these kinds of cases there is always the temptation to paint someone like Tracey Connelly as a victim of sorts. We now know that she suffered abuse as a child and had a pretty awful upbringing, but this does not mean that what happened to baby Peter was inevitable.

If this were true then there would be many more child deaths resulting from abuse, but it just isn't. Too often teams of social workers are attached to those who have committed crimes, and they are given the option to blame what they did as adults on what happened to them as children.

'Broken Britain'

More often than not this gives people the easy way out, and this has to change. Politicians talk about 'Broken Britain', but attaching these labels to areas of society is not helpful at all.

It is as if a generation of people have been condemned to repeat the cycle of poverty, unemployment, abuse or any other detrimental cycle you can name, and there is nothing we can do about it.

Well this is patently not true. If politicians tell people that Britain is broken, people will believe it and stay resigned to their likely fates. However, if politicians begin to engage with poorer communities instead of chasing so called 'floating voters', we may just make some progress.

Communities abandoned

To take an example, in South Yorkshire Barnsley has been forgotten by the traditional political parties and people are looking for answers. This led them to elect a BNP candidate to the Euopean Parliament.

If the main-stream parties re-engage with voters here and show an interest in their needs, then this will change but it needs to happen fast, otherwise 'Broken Britain' will become a widespread reality of the politicians' own making.

The sad case of baby Peter Connelly, will I am sure be used to highlight what is wrong with today's society, but his death should not be exploited in this way. It is disrespectful to his life and just plain wrong.

What the case does show is what happens to someone when they are neglected. There is still time to help people in these situations and the so-called cycle of abuse is never inevitable, however much some people would have us believe that it is.

Today the the funeral took place of the last British soldier to serve in the trenches of World War One, Harry Patch.

Mr. Patch did not speak about the war until be was 100 years old, but since then he has often spoken out about the perils of going to war. Harry was by all accounts not keen on a full military funeral, so was it right to see such a fuss made over it?

For a man who clearly did not enjoy his time in the army it did seem a little inappropriate for the military to dominate his funeral. After all, out of his 111 years very few of these were spent in the army.

Link with the past

But of course this really misses the point. Today was not about the ordinary man Harry Patch, it was about our last living link with this historic event, the first world war. Harry just happened to be the last man standing.

So then it was perhaps inevitable for his funeral to be met with such pomp and cirumstance, and perhaps Harry would have understood this. Speaking of Harry Patch in this way sounds like I knew what he thought or what he was like, but of course this is wholly untrue.

This is precisley the problem. Recently some people have used Harry Patch to prop up their cause, most recently anti-war protesters, but Mr. Patch never endorsed any of these causes. All he did was stay alive long enough for people to think they owned a piece of him.

Poem

Perhaps the best coverage of Harry Patch's life came in the form of a poem written by Andrew Motion, the out-going poet loreate. The last verse of which is as follows:

"You grow a moustache, check the mirror, notice
you're forty years old, then next day shave it off,
check the mirror again - and see you're seventy,
but life is like that now, suddenly and gradually
everyone you know dies and still comes to visit
or you head back to them, it's not clear which
only where it happens: a safe bedroom upstairs
by the look of things, although when you sit late
whispering with the other boys in the Lewis team,
smoking your pipe upside-down to hide the fire,
and the nurses on night duty bring folded sheets
to store in the linen cupboard opposite, all it takes
is someone switching on the light - there is that flash,
or was until you said, and the staff blacked the window."

Motion's poem (which can be found here) tells the life story of a man who lived a normal life in South-West England. It obviously includes his time spent at war, but unlike most coverage of Harry, it does not confine his 111 years entirely to the trenches.

Never forget

To risk sounding as if I knew him again, Harry was not a willing soldier but did his duty, even being wounded in the process, but his death meant so much for so many people because of what he represented.

The First World War should never be forgotten and now that we have lost our only living link to this event, it is now more important than ever that we never forget the sacrifice that our soldiers have made and continue to make.

On Friday the Conservatives secured a 7,348 seat majority in Norwich North, making Chloe Smith the youngest MP at 27.

This used to be a safe seat for Labour but the way in which Dr. Ian Gibson was dropped by his party, meant that in reality Labour never had any chance of retaining this seat.

Like many MPs Dr. Gibson was caught up in the expenses scandal, for claiming for a flat in which his daughter lived rent-free before selling it to her for half its market value.

Regret

There is little doubt that Dr. Gibson would have regretted this, but his constituents still valued him greatly as an MP and did not want to lose him.

The decision then from Gordon Brown to tell Dr. Gibson he would not be allowed to stand as an MP at the next election, was not welcomed by the people of Norwich North.

One could argue that what Gibson did was not any worse than what other MPs did who kept their jobs. So why was he singled out? If the Labour leadership was connected to its grass roots then this decision would never have been made.

Brown attacked

The Labour MP Barry Shearman, has today decided to launch an attack on Gordon Brown saying he had until "this summer to show he's got the capability to do it." Shearman was at the forefront of previous calls for Brown to go so this is no real surprise, but calls for the PM's head will not go away.

Gordon Brown has failed as a leader and any Labour supporter must surely be despairing at the mess their party is in. Put simply there is no chance that Gordon Brown can lead the Labour party into a general election win in 2010.

So why are Labour persevering with Gordon Brown? It could be that no-one else in the party wants to be put their neck out in what is a difficult time for the country.

Defeatist

If they wait until after the likely election defeat, then the successor will be able to start again with a fesh slate, something they could not do now. But this is surely a depressing way of going about politics, when personal ambition becomes more important than sorting the country out.

By sleep-walking into an election defeat Labour are leaving the country in a vulnerable state. A lame-duck government is no good for anyone, especially when the economy is in such a dire state.

What is needed now is a general election, and the sooner the better. Britain needs a fresh start under a fresh government.

Like many long serving governments, New Labour has now run its course and change is needed urgently.

Carlos Tevez' move to Manchester City for £25 million is the latest in a long line of big money moves in football.

Back in 1994 Chris Sutton's £5 million move from Norwich to Blackburn broke records, but fifteen years on and Christiano Ronaldo has been sold for £80 million.

Sir Bobby Charlton called this figure 'vulgar' and it seems crazy that such an enormous amount of money should be spent on a footballer; particularly in a time of global recession.

Setting a precedent

Transfers on this scale are not of course the norm, but the reason why they matter is because of the precedent they set. Premiership teams pay astronomical wages to their star players and this puts pressure on the teams below them.

There have been exceptions such as Stoke City who have managed to stay in the top league without breaking the bank, but their stay may yet prove to be short-lived.

One just has to glance at the teams that were relegated from the Championship last season to see how times have changed. Norwich, Southampton and Charlton are all Premiership teams from the last four years, but ones who overstretched themsleves financially and paid the price.

The problem is that the more the top teams pay, the more the teams below them have to pay in order to keep up. Leeds United is an obvious example, where they went from Champions League football to League One in six years.

Reliance on one owner

The question must be asked; just how long can all of this go on? There have already been rumours of Premiership clubs struggling with finances and it is not particularly healthy for a team to rely on one single owner, as many Premiership clubs now do.

Chelsea have been running at a loss for several seasons and if Roman Abramovich decided to withdraw his investment, their business model would look decidedly shaky.

Manchester City are now the richest club in the world thanks to their owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyans, but again they are totally reliant on his investment.

Fans important

The fans at Manchester City will be happy about their new signings but should football clubs really be allowed to turn into play-things for their wealthy owners? The owners should remember that a club is nothing without its fans and right now the Premiership is in danger of losing its soul.

Much like the banking crisis that no-one appeared to see coming, football may too have to face a financial crash. Anyone who loves football will not want to see this happen, but unless financial caps are put in place for transfers and wages, this is a very real possiblity.

The governing bodies need to be aware of this and act fast, otherwise the hearts of many communities who love football are in danger of being ripped out by greed.

It emerged this week that The News of the World had allegedly been tapping celebrities, politicians and public officials' phones.

The reaction of the UK media (generally) was one of shock, with John Prescott appearing on almost every TV channel and radio station, clearly outgraged that someone may have read his texts. It baffles me that Prescott always has to shout when he is speaking into a microphone.

Of course it is not a good thought that newspapers have been conducting surveillance on people but to many within the industry, this news will not have come as a complete surprise.

Murky practices

The paparazzi and tabloid journalists always seem to know where celebrities will be, that is how the magazine Heat survives. Just think, without Heat we would not know what Cheryl Cole looks like without make-up! Dark days indeed.

It could be suggested that the reason they know the whereabouts of celebrities, is because they have intercepted their calls. But wait, all journalists have complete integrity don't they?

As an aspiring journalist myself, I believe that most do but there are bound to be a few rotten apples at the bottom of the barrel and it is these apples that often get the juiciest stories. So the temptation to play fast and loose with ethics must be tempting.

Political

This 'scandal' also has a political side to it. The Guardian is a left leaning newspaper that would presumably not want the Conservatives to be elected. Andy Coulson, David Cameron's director of Communications, is the former News of the World editor who resigned following the jailing of one of his journalists for phone hacking.

It could be suggested that The Guardian is trying to damage Cameron's reputation by painting Coulson as a man with no morals. The paper would probably answer this, by saying that the story is in the public interest and Coulson needs to be made an example of.

The problem at the moment is that there appears to be no hard evidence linking the former editor with the hacking. If this evidence does come out then expect Cameron to fire Coulson pretty quickly, but until then it looks like his job is safe.

McBride comparison

The reason Cameron is loathed to get rid of Coulson, is because he is extremely good at his job. However, with an election less than a year away the Tories will not want their well cultivated public image to be damaged, so even a hint of something fishy could see Coulson face the axe.

On the Labour side MPs have been trying to compare Coulson with 'Mr. nasty', Damien McBride (http://wilson-whatsitallabout.blogspot.com/2009/04/damian-mcbride-gives-gordon-brown.html) who lost his government job after trying to smear top Conservatives via an email campaign.

At the moment though Coulson does not quite measure up to McBride. In McBride's case the evidence of wrong-doing was produced and he swiftly resigned. It is understandable for Labour to play this card, but it is not as yet a particularly strong argument.

Identification

Another strand to this saga is the decision so far by The Guardian not to identify the journalists involved in the hacking. MPs will find this hard to take, particularly as the newspapers had no quarms about identifying MPs who allegedly fiddled their expenses.

If the newspaper has names then there is no reason not to publish them. If journalists are hacking phones then arguably, they deserve to be exposed by the press.

It will be interesting to see whether celeberity scandals feature less in newspapers over the coming weeks.

Last night Michael Jackson died from a heart attack at his rented Los Angeles mansion. A sad end to a tragic life.

Jackson had an incredible career selling over 750 million records, more than any other artist in history. Not since the Beatles has a music act been so successful on the world stage.

For many people in their twenties and thirties, Michael Jackson has been a constant, always in the news and often for the wrong reasons. The allegations of child abuse were particularly damaging to the star, although he was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Flawed genius

Another fascination was Jackson's changing face. Over the years Jackson changed from a good-looking black boy to a frail white husk. His apparent wish to change himself so drastically proved that fame and wealth do not always bring happiness.

What ever you think about Michael Jackson, he changed the world of pop music. You only have to listen to any music in the charts today to hear his enduring influence. Jackson was truly a genius, but as with many geniuses he was flawed.

When he annaounced his comeback at London's O2 arena, many people were unsure if at fifty he would still be able to be the Michael Jackson people loved, but no one could have predicted his premature death last night.

One step too far

Jackson had faced endless lawsuits over recent years and looked an exhausted man. The aim of the comeback looked like an attempt to get some of the fortune he lost back, and what his performances would have been like we will never know.

Not surprisingly the Paparazzi were obsessed with Michael Jackson, and even at his moment of death they huddled around the ambulance trying to see the star's dead body.

The coverage of Jackson's corpse being wheeled from a helicopter was in my opinion a step too far and it is a shame that news editors did not resist showing this.

Fickle media

News agencies are now waxing lyrical about Michael Jackson's many virtues but it was not long ago that many of them were condemning him for baseless charges. The media have always been fickle, but this does appear a bit rich.

Michael Jackson should be remembered for what he was, a musical genius who's music will outlast all of us. Through music he brought people together across the world, and whatever you think of him he was certainly one of a kind.