Tests for oldies - in short

There's a government plan to impose eye tests for driving licence renewals for the over 70s. Seems reasonable. My current licence expires in January 2026 and I think I'm required to renew every three years, although the present law is that I self-assess as being able to read a numberplate at 20 meters, with some other criteria like peripheral vision.

But maybe there are other aspects of citizenship on which us oldies should be required to prove mastery.

Brain tests for voting:

1. If you don't read, or watch, the news on a daily basis, you don't get to vote. Also if you spend more than 20 minutes a day on Twitter, TikTok, Instagram or Snapchat. Actually, come to think of it, maybe that isn't just for pensioners.

2. Memory test - can you remember the names of the last two Prime Ministers?

3. Politics 101 test (multiple choice): Who elects the Mayor of London? Is it (a) people living in London or (b) the Muslim Brotherhood?

4. Economic literacy test (multiple choice): If the government prints twice as much money, but the amount of goods and services in the economy stays the same, what will most likely happen to prices? Is it (a) they go up (b) they stay the same (c) they go down or (d) No-one knows?

Is there an argument for no-platforming Trump?

If the UK news organisations got together and decided to no-platform Donald Trump, we would never have to listen to his offensive nonsense. We wouldn't know that he thinks London is imposing sharia law, that he has solved a thousand wars, climate change is "the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world" and telling us "your countries are going to hell."

Obviously I can switch off the TV or go to a sports channel but I'd like my "news" not to be just a mouthpiece for a lunatic. There is real news around the world, we don't need to listen to his insulting remarks about the UN - his hosts. I'm not generally a violent man but I do sometimes just want to smack him in the face.

I'd expect my recommended action would be used by him to tell us how we are against free speech. But we wouldn't know he'd said it, so it wouldn't matter.

Obviously I'd have to no-platform him too, but where's the fun in that?

Would you like me to?

For those of you familiar with YouTube, you'll know that "shorts" are now all the rage. This is the first of of my "short blogs". There'll be another tomorrow.

I'm getting on a train...

...to Tallinn. Or at least thinking about it.

It's a hell of a long way. Fortunately, The Man in Seat 61 is on hand to help plan the journey.

As you can see, we'll (I say 'we' because at my advanced age I think I need a companion) have to take a long, but potentially exciting, route from Western Europe to the East then on to the Baltics. Here's a summary of my travel arrangements:

• Days 1 & 2, travel from London to Warsaw by train. Via Brussels and possibly Berlin
• Stay overnight in Warsaw.  "The Polonia Palace Hotel is excellent"
• Day 3, travel from Warsaw to Vilnius by train. This involves a change in Mockava in Lithuania, takes about 12 hours and costs €25
• Stay overnight in Vilnius.  "The inexpensive Stay Vilnius hotel is a 6-minute walk from the station". That's my kind of walk
• Day 4, travel from Vilnius to Tallinn by train, through Riga and changing in Valga. Another 10 hours

Sounds pretty straightforward, yes?

Of course, I could just get a direct flight from Stansted on Ryanair but where's the romance in that?

Nigel, why do you want to go to Estonia? I hear you say.

It's all about digital ID. When Tony Blair's government proposed compulsory ID cards back in the day, I was vehemently opposed to it. I thought it an intrusion on privacy, prone to forgery, Big Brother encroachment, generally illiberal. They didn't come in because the following coalition government ditched the proposals. But there is now talk of digital ID and it's possible my (and the public's) view has changed. Of course digital is intrinsically different to a paper version; we already have a myriad of digital identifications on our phones and we willingly give our details to the likes of Google and Apple. The government is moving towards a gov.uk wallet app for smartphones, able to contain driving licances, passports, birth certificates, Universal Credit accounts and the like. I don't think the intention is to make it compulsory but you can imagine that's the direction of travel. In time it might become a requirement for employment checks and immigration status. The Data (Use and Access) Act has already established the Office for Digital Identity and Attributes (OfDIA), which aims to ensure that digital identities are secure, trusted, and widely accepted across various sectors.

I'm sure there will be concerns about privacy and data security but I suppose you have to trust the government machine will sort this out. 

An oft-quoted exemplar is Estonia, where the digital ID card  is more or less mandatory and over 99% of government services accept them - for banking, taxes, voting, healthcare, signing documents, registering companies for example

What we don't know is how it works for the Estonian on the street, how happy they are about it, what are the pros and cons. Hence my desire to get on the train and go meet them.

Or - I could just check some of the liberty/human rights country comparisons.

Freedom House gives Estonia a global freedom score of 96/100, breaking that down as: Political Rights 39/40 and Civil Liberties 57/60. Estonia is very good on most measures of human rights and freedoms. It’s among the best in Europe on civil liberties, political rights, press & internet freedom, education, and quality of life on Freedom House's metrics.

So it's reasonable to suggest that the imposition of digital ID cards has not infringed the freedoms and rights of its citizens. Maybe we shouldn't be scared of them (the ID cards, not the Estonians).

I'd still like to see for myself. I'll check the train times.

This is not right

The Ballon d'Or is a discredited, dysfunctional, overblown, secretive PR exercise for football. Yesterday it came up with the most egregious decision in its 69 years of existence.

Was Ousmane Dembele the best footballer in the world in the last 12 months? It's arguable and generally (this an important point) the award goes to a player of a team which has won something, often the UEFA Champions League, but it's undoubtedly true that the player who contributed most to Paris Saint-Germain winning the 2025 Champions League was goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnaruma. Without his heroics in the semi final against Arsenal, PSG wouldn't have even have made it to the final. But the voters (more on them in a minute) love attackers and a goalkeeper has only won it once - Lev Yashin in 1963.

But this wasn't the worst decision.

Third place in the Ballon d'Or Féminin went to Alessia Russo. She won the Euros with England and the Champions League with Arsenal.

Second place went to Mariona Caldentey. She won the Champions League with Arsenal.

First place went to Aitana Bonmati. She won nothing.

But she got the sympathy vote because she recovered from viral meningitis earlier in the year, which gained her support, in the few months prior to voting, from the football chattering classes - a process well known to Oscar voters. I knew she would win; there's a strong Spanish-speaking constituency, a dominant Catalan influence and the sports writers who vote think Barcelona are the dog's bollocks of the soccer world. Bonmati has now won the award for three years in a row. Arsenal will beat Barcelona in the Champions League final again next May and she'll still win it a fourth time.

And the whole process is embarrassingly Eurocentric. No winner of the South American Copa Libertadores has ever won it.

The voters are one sports reporter from each of FIFA's 211 member countries. I tried to find out who the England person was this time but it seems bound up in secrecy.

You can probably tell I'm not happy.

Footy updates 2025/11 - the Tractor Boys get lucky

This weekend's match forecasts:

Brighton 2 Tottenham 2 Result: 2-2
Not a bad result for Spurs because Brighton are a decent team but they probably would have expected more.

Blackburn 1 Ipswich 3 Result: Match abandoned after 80 minutes at 1-0
This rain-flooded pitch abandonment probably comes as a great relief for the Tractor Boys. Their centre half Jacob Greaves was sent off and Blackburn scored from the resultant penalty. Will the match be replayed or just the final 10 minutes or so? I don't know, but see below.

Sheffield United 0 Charlton 1 Result: 0-1
Promoted Charlton having an encouragingly steady season, although this scoreline probably says more about hapless Sheffield United, who have zero points from six matches

Wycombe 0 Northampton 0 Result: 2-0
Wycombe climbing the table from a poor early position

Manchester United Women 1 Arsenal Women 4 Result: 0-0

I don't think I've ever seen Arsenal's women fail to score; we fall behind leaders Chelsea - not for the first time in recent years

Arsenal 0 Manchester City 2 Result: 1-1

A bit disappointing, given our dominance, but at least we're still above Tottenham

Tunbridge Wells 2 Whitstable Town 2 Result: 1-2
Whitstable are climbing the table. They are just three points off the leaders but have played two games fewer because of their FA Cup run. Promotion prospect?

And here's a fun fact:

[source: Football Web Pages]

Shout out to all you Whitstable fans!

Correct results: 2 out of 6

Correct scores: 2 out of 6

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Upcoming midweek matches:

Tuesday - Southern Counties East League Premier Division

Whitstable v Snodland

Wednesday - EFL Cup 3rd Round

Tottenham v Doncaster

Port Vale v Arsenal

Wigan v Wycombe

************************

Back to the Ipswich match; here's what ChatGPT says:

If the game is abandoned before the 75th minute (i.e. before 75% of normal time is played), the result does not stand. The fixture is replayed in full at a later date, starting from 0–0 regardless of the score when it was abandoned.

If the game is abandoned after the 75th minute, the EFL board can decide to let the result stand, but usually they still order a replay unless both clubs agree otherwise.

Clearly, Blackburn would argue that with only 10 minutes plus possible added time to go, they're 1-0 up and Ipswich down to 10 men, the chances are they are going to win and the score should stand as the result. Ipswich would say they could easily get a penalty or score from a set piece, there's no certainty. And Blackburn are responsible for the state of the pitch.

There is no situation where a game could be arranged to play out the final 10 minutes.

I reckon either they replay in full (and Ipswich get extremely fortunate) or it's declared a result and Ipswich go to court.

Youthful regression

I just listened to Béla Bartók's Music For Strings, Percussion and Celesta. It's literally years since I listened to any of his works and it was great to re-experience the pure joy of his music after all this time. I used to be a fan of mid 20th century music (this is from 1936) - Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Hindemith, Copland, Messiaen, Vaughan Williams amongst others. I feel I may have wasted some later years playing computer games and neglecting my cultural base.

I'm going to make a playlist.

Bartók again: Concerto for Orchestra, my favourite of his works.

Hindemith: perhaps the Concert Music for Strings and Brass; there's nothing like a bit of brass. Hindemith was a prolific composer and he wrote sonatas for pretty much every orchestral instrument. I've never played his Trumpet Sonata and I don't think I've ever heard it. I really should give it a go (listening I mean, not playing).

Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time is special for its wartime context; a difficult listen but I can immerse myself. It really needs a quiet, non-football meditative evening.

In my youth I used to sometimes spend any spare cash buying long playing records (vinyl) and one of my favourites was Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1. I'll find a performance to listen to.

Charles Ives was a very odd American composer, early 20th century but stylistically adventurous. I remember his The Unanswered Question and I sought that out on YouTube. It has a trumpet solo, so that's a plus. Wikipedia tells us, based on Ives' own words:

Against a background of slow, quiet strings representing "The Silence of the Druids", a solo trumpet poses "The Perennial Question of Existence", to which a woodwind quartet of "Fighting Answerers" tries vainly to provide an answer, growing more frustrated and dissonant until they give up. The three groups of instruments perform in independent tempos and are placed separately on the stage—the strings offstage.

I've always thought of the trumpet as the ultimate in asking about life, the universe and everything!

I also discovered a YouTube channel by Thomas Ligre, where he plays 20th century classical music whilst the music score scrolls on the screen. This is magic! Totally up my street; I've subscribed and, if you are kind and leave a comment, I'll bring you some more.

Here are the opening bars of the Ives, as it appears on the video:

Not much happening, I hear you say? Wait, the trumpet will ask the question soon.

I'm regressing to my youth.