Here's to you Robinsons

I admire the dedication of the secretary of Stockport and South Manchester CAMRA who has just completed a twenty year crawl of 300 of the 370 pubs tied to the Stockport brewery Robinsons.

As the number of breweries producing cask beer expands and rediscovered and new styles of beer are launched, it's easy for established breweries like Robinsons to be overlooked or even dismissed as "boring" or "stuck in their ways".

Living in Stockport, I am of course familiar with Robinson's beers. Unicorn is a decent amber, fruity bitter. All the brewers with a tied estate in Manchester produce a mild but only Hydes and Robinsons still have light and dark ones. Robinsons Hatters mild is a delicious beer when on top form, its caramelly flavour reminiscent of the Wilsons Mild I was lucky enough to drink just before the brewery shut in the late 80's. And Robinsons Old Tom Strong Ale is rightly famous, especially in cask served by handpump or by gravity from a pin behind the bar in the winter months.

Fighting over the Falklands

Not being an Argentinean nationalist, I find it hard to understand the fervour of their territorial claim to the Falklands. Neither do I get Argentina's objection to the Royal Navy sending a ship or the RAF one of its officers (Flt Lt Wales) to tour the South Atlantic. Argentina and Britain's contest over the islands is about economic and strategic control of the area, irrespective of the flag waving on both sides. 

The Argentinian government is planning to refer the dispute to the United Nations and the Argentinan Football Association has renamed its First Division after the General Belgrano, the warship sunk by the Royal Navy in the 1982 conflict that followed Argentina's invasion of the islands. (I have also never understood the objection to the Royal Navy sinking an enemy ship in a war, whether you supported that war or not).

The chances of another war over the Falklands are slim, not least because Britain is too tied up militarily in Afghanistan to deploy a Task Force to retake them. The Argentinian government's sabre-rattling is also a matter of winning votes, just as the military junta tried to shore up its rule by invading in 1982.

Many people who support self-determination seem to have a blind spot over the Falklands. They may be Godforsaken, windswept islands where sheep outnumber the people but there is little doubt that their inhabitants want to remain part of Britain. That ultimately is what matters, not spurious stuff about the continuity of the Argentinian state with the Spanish Empire or who occupied the islands first.

Dickens at 200

Today is the bicentenary of the birth of the novelist Charles Dickens.

Like many of my favourite novelists - Conrad, Orwell, Patrick Hamilton - Dickens' genius lies in creating a world from what he saw about him and peopling it with characters many of whom have become bywords for a type of person (Scrooge, Miss Havisham, Pecksniff).  His serialisation of his works and the massive public interest in each new chapter can be seen as a precursor for the TV soap opera.

I know the charges against him - a particularly Victorian sentimentallity (lampooned by Oscar Wilde's with his famous remark about the death of Little Nell), daft names (although they were taken from gravestones) and repeated use of plot devices like rediscovered wills and people who are secretly related to each other.  He is though the only nineteenth century English novelist I can think of who combines superb description with laugh out loud humour. No other writer in the English language has had his or her works adapted for film and TV as much either, a testament to the the characters and plots he created in his novels.

The Lancaster bomber and me

I watched the BBC programme Bomber Boys last night, in which the actor Ewan MacGregor and his brother, a RAF pilot, looked at Bomber Command in World War II, and in particular the Avro Lancaster bomber.

I've got several personal connections to the Lancaster bomber. A.V.Roe was born in Patricroft, Eccles where my grandad grew up and set up his aircraft company in Ancoats, Manchester where some of my Mum's family lived. The Lancaster was test flown at Woodford Aerodrome in Cheshire, not far from my home town of Stockport. My grandad also worked as a toolmaker at the Metro-Vicks engineering factory in Trafford Park which during the war switched production to making parts for the Avro Lancaster. As a child in the 70's and 80's, I made models of pretty much all the American, German and British aircraft of World War II, including the Lancaster. I have also seen the last remaining flying Lancaster at airshows at Woodford.

Ewan MacGregor and his brother discussed the impact of the RAF's area bombing tactics in last night's programme, travelling to Germany to meet survivors of the 1943 Hamburg raid which killed over 42,000 in a firestorm and the similar attack on Dresden in 1945 in which an estimated 25,000 people perished. I find it difficult to imagine any circumstances where the indiscriminate bombing of civilians might be morally justifiable. The MacGregor brothers clearly struggled too in balancing their admiration for Avro's engineering achievement in building the Lancaster and the undoubted bravery of the young men who flew them with uneasiness when presented with evidence of the death and destruction they wreaked on the ground. 

Cover ups, conspiracies and speeding tickets

The news that the oily Lib Dem Chris Huhne is being charged along with his ex-wife with perverting the course of justice raised a small cheer this morning. But the real question is why politicians don't learn from the experiences of others. A mixture of arrogance and brass neck I suppose.

If Huhne is found guilty, he faces a couple of years in prison. If he had just taken the points for speeding, he would have lost his licence for a few months. At the time of the offence he was a MEP, with expenses even more generous than those of MP's, and could easily afforded to take taxis from the airport when he flew in from Brussels or Strasbourg.

Similarly, if Jeffrey Archer and Tommy Sheridan had responded to tabloid allegations, of paying off a prostitute and swinging trips to Swinton respectively, with a short denial or no comment rather than launching libel actions, neither of them would have swapped their political careers for stints in HM Prisons. As Richard "no whitewash at the White House" Nixon learnt with Watergate, it is the attempt to cover things up that brings you down in the end.

Someone who believed in conspiracy theories might link Huhne's confrontations with Tory colleagues in Cabinet with his impending trial and possible imprisonment.  But that's just too far-fetched, isn't it?

RIP Angelo

The boxing cornerman Angelo Dundee, who had died aged 90 in Tampa, Florida, is best known for having trained Muhammad Ali.

The first time I went to the United States was in 2002. It was a baseball trip along the East Coast from Baltimore to Boston which included a couple of days in New York for games at Yankee Stadium and the Mets' then ballpark, Shea Stadium.

After the Yankees game, we were sitting on the coach waiting to head back to Manhattan when a small, elderly guy appeared from the direction of the stadium, surrounded by a group of fans. The friend who was on the trip with me is, unlike me, a boxing fan and knows everything there is to know about the fight game. He immediately said, "It's Angelo Dundee!" I must admit I didn't know the name then but he soon filled me in on who he was.

I only caught a glimpse of Angelo that day but it evoked that New York sub-culture, best captured by famed sports journalist Jimmy Cannon, of baseball, boxing, card games, trips to the racetrack, bartenders, fedoras and Cuban cigars. I'm glad that he not only got to celebrate his 90th birthday last year but was also able to attend the 70th of his greatest protege, Muhammad Ali.

Primary questions

Mitt Romney's win in the Florida Republican primary has put him back in the lead in the race to become the party's nominee in November's presidential election.

I've got a basic understanding of the primary process but there are still a few questions I'm not sure on.

Primaries are run by and paid for by the states, with differing rules as to who can take part. In some states you have to register as a supporter of a party to vote in its primary, in others I think anyone can (except voters registered as supporters of another party: I think that's what closed, open and semi-open primaries means).

Has anyone legally challenged the right of states to run closed primaries? Can smaller parties like the Greens take part in the primaries by reaching so many registered voters? What is the difference between being a registered voter and a member of a political party (if indeed you can be the latter, either at national or state level).

The nominees of the political parties are chosen at a convention. Florida is described as a "winner takes all" primary which I take to mean that all the Florida delegates to the Republican convention are bound to vote for Romney. Do other states allow proportional representation of all the candidates in their delegation to the convention, and if so how?

The Democratic party is also running its primary elections at the moment, which are understandably attracting less media coverage: in Iowa, Obama got 98% of the vote against a handful of fringe candidates. Has any incumbent President ever been unopposed in seeking the nomination of his party? If so, would the primaries still go ahead with one candidate? At what stage in the process is it possible for a candidate to have gained enough delegates for his or her nomination to be a formality at the convention? Do other states still have primaries when the result is already decided? Have there been cases of delegates who vote against the primary result at the convention (similar to faithless electors in the Electoral College which elects the President)? Are "superdelegates" (elected officials who attend the convention ex-officio) free to vote for whoever they want?

Any answers from experts on US politics gratefully received!