In a crowded field, the award for this year's snobbiest, most elitist Guardian letter may have already been won.

From a Guardian reader in Lancashire, on the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson:

I have no interest whatsoever in this bloke who tells an overpaid bunch of oiks how to kick a ball about. What if somebody really significant in the creative arts retired? Say Seamus Heaney declared he was retiring from poetry – would we get a supplement about that?

'Oiks'. Charming.

Just how far will Stephen Hawking take his boycott of Israeli academia?

Professor Stephen Hawking has withdrawn from the Fifth Israeli Presidential Conference, in order to support the academic boycott of Israel.

The conference organisers do not need me defending them. They're doing that perfectly well themselves:

The academic boycott against Israel is in our view outrageous and improper, certainly for someone for whom the spirit of liberty lies at the basis of his human and academic mission.

Ably supported by the Fair Play campaign:

Prof Hawking could have joined the Conference and explained his views on the conflict in the region, just as many other participants have done. By boycotting the conference, he has thrown away this opportunity and will help nobody.

But if he'll forgive me the indulgence (and the assumption that he's an avid reader of this blog), I've got a couple of questions.

Just how far are you prepared to take this boycott? Would you, for example, boycott the academics, and urge others to do so, who are currently working on a phase 2a dose-escalating trial to evaluate experimental stem-cell therapy in ALS, at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem?

As you know, ALS stands for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

UPDATE
Hawking trip NOT cancelled due to Israel boycott:

Professor Hawking's spokesperson has confirmed that he will not miss the conference in Israel due to a boycott, but rather because of health reasons.

So now the question is, will BRICUP apologise?

FURTHER UPDATE

Nope. He really is supporting the boycott. Thereby proving, yet again, one of Fox's Iron Laws of Politics: that it takes really clever people to be really, really stupid.

Now we must get behind Labour's MEP candidates.

First, the self-indulgent admission of interest. You are probably aware of the controversies surrounding Labour's selection of those who are going forward to regional member ballots to decide the lists for next year's European Parliament elections. Jon Worth and Peter Watt have best charted the issues. National and local press, and the rest of the blogosphere, have also covered (£) it extensively.

I, too, was one of those whose application was deemed not to merit even an interview (hyperlink to a mournful violent lament). I hadn't otherwise been interested in elected office since student politics days. But, with increasing talk in the Party of a desire to see people with certain, less obvious career and life experiences* as candidates, I thought I'd roll the dice in the MEP selection process.

Now we can all moan jusqu'aux les vaches reviennent (as I believe our European partners would say) but I believe that the most important thing to do is now get behind those that have been selected for selection, as it were. It is not as if the people in question aren't qualified, after all. And I'm sure that they are as uneasy about the selection process as the rest of us. No one wants to be thought of as having succeeded due to special favours.

To help me decide how I'll exercise my member's vote in London, I'll be asking  the candidates a set of questions which I believe will clarify their positions on some of the key issues - and potentially head-off any future selections controversy. I will be publishing their responses on this blog.

So:

1. The biggest challenge faced by the European project this year has been the Cypriot banking crisis. What is your assessment of the measures put in place by the so-called 'troika' to deal with this and what lessons have been learnt should similar crises arise in comparable euro-denominated economies?

2. A longer term challenge is that of reducing carbon emissions. It has been claimed that the cap and trade Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) has been undermined by the European Parliament's recent failure to agree to the 'backloading' of credits. In such a scheme, do you believe the 'cap' or the 'trade' feature to be the more important? Has the ETS reflected this importance? If not, what reforms or alternatives for regulating the use of carbon would you support?

3. A growing pan-European economy is dependent upon the flow, exchange and exploitation of information. This whole opportunity is becoming better known as 'Big Data'. What are the threats to this from EU legislation concerning data? How do we balance the potential for businesses and consumers with the need to protect privacy and maintain member nations' national security infrastructures?

4. Although no fault of any of those selected, it has become increasingly clear that the selection processes for the regional lists was unsatisfactory. In London, only 100 or so applications were made. For a job that has 8 vacancies and is worth a six figure annual salary, that's astonishingly low and points towards a lack of communication and promotion to the regional membership. How would you rectify this for the 2019 process? Whatever the numbers of members interested, is a pre-selection for selection necessary at all? Given modern campaigning and communications techniques, are short-lists for a regional list necessary at all? How could the regional party better facilitate the participation of more than eight people in the selection for 2019?

I'll look forward to publishing their answers here.


*Military, in my case. Though admittedly, there's no surprises on my CV, otherwise.

'Mummy! The #BBCQT audience gave me a clap!'

BBC's Question Time continues its 34-year run tonight, with an episode from Dover.

My enthusiasm for the show was rekindled a couple of years ago when it also became a regular Twitter event. The two-screen phenomenon has meant ordinary punters being able to add their two shekels' worth immediately - in return for 140 characters' worth of praise or obloquy - rather than just rage alone at those moments when the contributions tip over from robust and controversial into idiotic and pompous.

However, an especially irritating (post-broadcast) aspect of the programme these days goes mostly unchallenged. Some panelists seem to treat any approval they might have received from the audience as instilling them with a certain political or moral legitimacy. Which they then bang on about on their blog or in their column as if there could be no further possible challenge to their view of the world. All because they got clapped the previous Thursday in a town hall with some TV cameras in it.
 
These insistences usual go along the lines of "opinion X is ignored by [person or organisation] Y but when I expressed it on Question Time last week...", followed by a description of how rapturous the audience response was because the truth, as expressed by our intrepid columnist or celebrity, had finally been spoken. It's like a child in the park asking their parents if they saw that special handstand they just did and how impressed all the big boys and girls were.

Such self-regard is premised on the belief that Question Time audiences are somehow an accurate cross-section of the Great British Public - when what they in fact are is a cross-section of that part of the Great British Public that thinks turning up to express support for one's existing views should be not just the beginning but also the end of the democratic process, because of the apparently unquestionable correctness of what one thinks. So the Question Time studio is an echo chamber, with the audience merely a reflection of the panel. Just without the time, inclination or luck to have become a politician or professional rent-a-gob themselves.

To claim them as some sort of frustrated, silenced majority for your cause is like divining significance from me shouting excitedly at Loftus Road when QPR score. It satisfies my demand for an event I believe is all too rare but the fans opposite will feel quite differently about it. Not to mention the absent thousands who will also find no joy in the scoreline. And millions of others still who could not give a damn either way. If Harry Redknapp claimed in the post-match interview that all the QPR fans roaring with delight when QPR scored proves how popular QPR is throughout the land, he'd be thought of as delusional. Yet similar claims from Question Time guests abound: supporters in the studio of what I say cheered when I said something so the whole country must really like what I say.  I'm sure a warm round of applause from a Question Time audience, re-(tw)heated in the days that follow, must be very reassuring as the modern world refuses to match your model for it. But real politics, this is not.

To pick two subjects which seem to bring out the worst in both #BBCQT panels and audiences: when a guest tries to persuade an audience of socially-housed single parents of the virtues of the latest welfare reform, then they will be able to write about it as some sort of heroic venture; when they attempt to justify their views on the Middle East conflict to an audience of Israelis and Palestinians, then they will be able to claim some sort of significant contribution to a debate.

And when they start understanding that the programme is entertainment and not factual, then they will be able to better appreciate what role it has as a political weather-vane. None.

LIFE ON TABLETS: FIFA regulations.

Only Arsenal and Man City were happy with the new FIFA regulations requiring manager and team names to match by at least one syllable.