Royal Mail Golden Stamps 3 #London2012

 Another three gold today so the Royal Mail were busy again, and were probably relieved that Rebecca Adlington didn't give them a late Friday night.

I'm not saying that appearing on a stamp was the added incentive that Katherine Grainger needed to turn silver into gold, but along with Anna Watkins this makes a welcome addition to the philatelists' collections.

It means that Aberdeen will get a SECOND golden post box to honour Grainger, the other was for Tim Baillee yesterday, and one in Leek, Staffordshire for Anna.

Of course next we have Geraint Thomas and Ed Clancy helping to defend their Olympic title which they won with fellow stamp appearing Bradley Wiggins along with Steven Burke and Peter Kennaugh. So Wales and the Isle of Man will get golden post boxes for Thomas and Kennaugh in Cardiff and Douglas, Clancy's hometown of Huddlesfield and Burke's of Burnley mean one for each of the Roses as well.

And finally Victoria Pendleton gets another Gold stamp for the ladies in the keirin. Stotfold in Bedfordshire should be getting a gold post box for Victoria's acheivement.

Gold at last for Kath #London2012

Always the bridesmaid...

...and then...

Today was the day that Katherine Grainger started in her fourth Olympic rowing final. After six world titles she had never managed to stand in middle of an Olympic podium. Indeed in all three of the last Olympics she has been in the second spot. Silver in the Quadruple Sculls in Sydney 2000, in the Coxless Pairs in Athens 2004 and again in the Quad Sculls in Beijing 2008.

But in the double sculls with the women who will become a pub quiz answer in years to come, Anna Watkins, she had long been tipped to end the drought of British women's gold on Olympic rowing lakes at Eton Dorney. Of course the other day Heather Stanning and Helen Glover took that first away from Kath.

But today on the rowing lake the two of them got off to a start leading from 100m out and never giving the lead away. Reaching the line with half a length advantage over the Australians to finally claim a gold for Kath Grainger.

Elsewhere at Eton Dorney today George Nash and Will Satch in the men's pair like the women's pair before them thought to have been a make up crew took bronze. While a second medal will be heading to Coleraine after these Games as Alan Campbell added to the Team Northern Ireland medal total with a bronze in the mens's single scull.

The women are so far leading the way in the rowing with 2 golds. But with the final day of rowing finals tomorrow we may see some more medals to go with the 2 gold, 1 silver and 3 bronze Team GB now have.

Wojdan Shahrkhani piece of Olympic history #London2012

It may have only lasted 82 seconds but in the first round bout of the women's +78kg judo a little bit of history was made this morning.

Shahrkhani at opening ceremony

Wearing a tight fitting black cap rather than a loose fitting head scarf Wojdan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shahrkhani stepped unto one of the two competition tatami to make a piece of history. The 18-year-old was the first female Olympian to represent the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.


Unfortunately  she lost to an Ippon, landing firmly on her back, from a throw from Puerto Rico's Melissa Mojica. 

However, I do hope to see her again in Rio in four years time, along with more female competitors from her nation.


Heaven knows what Andrew Brown from the Telegraph will make of this liberating moment of Olympic history, but take a look at what Caron has made of his comments on women's judo in general.

Cameron the Undeliverer - Is it time for Lib Dems to walk from Coalition?

So David Cameron is to drop Lord's Reform because he is unable to get the legislation past his backbenchers. There are also rumours about a similar thing has been happening to some other policies that are within the coalition agreement.

Now I'm not going to go into an argument here about how the Reform of the Lords is 100 years overdue, but its dropping is a catalyst to another story. I'm sure that Nick Clegg had a tough time with his backbenchers on issues such as Tuition Fees, Welfare Reform, the NHS and other issues. But by in large he has delivered those votes in the lobbies when it mattered, because when David Cameron said on the steps of Downing Street in May 2010 "We're all in this together" the Lib Dems accepted that.

The Conservative backbenchers seem to have forgotten that missive, they also seem to have forgotten that they did not win a majority back then and that a lot of the stuff that they wanted the Lib Dems have helped make happen at great cost to our membership, our vote and some say our political integrity. The last is a dubious point though. Yes we went into the election with a manifesto as did other parties. But when nobody could form a majority we entered negotiations with both the main parties to try and work out how we could help the country in that hour of need.

So a new document of intent was drawn up, the Coalition Agreement*. Now on political integrity to that the Lib Dems have been holding firm, but the Conservatives have been meandering, dropping parts of that here or there or publicly talking about how they will block the overtly liberal elements of it.

That shows weak leadership from Cameron and his whips office. That shows that he has lost control of his part of this coalition. It makes me wonder should the Lib Dems now just walk away from this Coalition and let Cameron have his way.

Of course then he will find it hard to get the majority he needs. There will still be rebels in his own party, bizarrely there always are in the blue corner of the green benches. But he wouldn't even have a majority in the first place.

The problem is would leaving a lame duck Prime Minister and a powerless administration for the next three years (we do after all have the Fixed Term Parliament Act) be good for the country?

No it wouldn't.

Would the country appreciate the Lib Dems maintaining their political integrity while watching Osborne burn trying to get any economic package through a minority House of Commons who disagree?

I seriously doubt it.

So the Lib Dems are caught between a rock and a hard place. We have a weak Prime Minister who is unable to deliver the liberal parts of the agreement, while we help deliver parts whichgo away or are opposed to Lib Dem policies, all the while looking like sell out, but not as big sell outs if we walk away now.

So it is time for David Cameron to step up, not step away. He has to forge ahead with the Coalition agreement implementation in the same way that Nick Clegg does. If he continues to be be unable to deliver, then we will have to look again at walking away.

Update Now I have already had some reactions that Lord's Reform was not in the Agreement, actually it was and it also was a Conservative manifesto pledge. The wording in the agreement is:

We will establish a committee to bring forward proposals for a wholly or mainly elected upper chamber on the basis of proportional representation. The committee will come forward with a draft motion by December 2010. It is likely that this will advocate single long terms of office. It is also likely that there will be a grandfathering system for current Peers. In the interim, Lords appointments will be made with the objective of creating a second chamber that is reflective of the share of the vote secured by the political parties in the last general election.

This looks largely to be what is in the Lords Reform Bill without the finer details worked out, which during 5 days of discussion was a matter that clearly there was some agreement in principle but not time to dot all the Is or cross all the Ts.

* Page 27 does mention Lord's reform and talk about bringing forward proposals after looking at it, largely in line with the Bill, because ALL parties were in agreement about the need in their manifestos.

Royal Mail Golden Stamps 2 #London2012

Day six sees the Royal Mail being busy. Three more golds today means 50% more work than yesterday as the next stamps had to be designed, printed and distributed, plus post boxes selected from a paint job, especially as three of them may have come out of the blue.

First up are Etienne Stott and Tim Baillee for their gold in a British 1-2 in the C2 slalom. Golden post boxes in their honour will appear tomorrow a second north of Hadrian's wall at Aberdeen for Baillee and one in Bedford for Stott.

Then we have Peter Wilson for shooting, who will have his golden post box will be in Sherbourne, North Dorset.

Number five of these Games is the man with five golds Sir Chris Hoy, along with Jason Kenny and Philip Hindes for the team sprint in the cycling. Their golden post boxes will appear in Edinburgh (Hoy), Bolton (Kenny) and Manchester (Hindes).

Talking of post boxes, here is the one in Chorley in honour of Bradley Wiggins.

Five gHOYlden rings! #London2010 #TeamGB

Victory salute

Today the cycling has moved from the road into the velodrome and what a day it was. World records fell in the Team Sprints to both the men and women's GB teams, though the later lost theirs minutes later to China, and to the men's 4000m team pursuit.

But there was drama in the first round of the women's sprint. Victoria Pendleton was deemed to have overtaken Jessica Varnish too early and this resulted in them being relegated to last in the round rather than progressing to the gold medal match.

The GB team of Geraint Thomas, Ed Clancy, Steven Burke and Peter Kennaugh (the other Manx man) then did what Mark Cavendish in the GB box said they would do and not only won but smashed the World Record for the 4000m team pursuit, they went long stints on the front and kept all four of them together until the bell lap.

Next up were the medal rounds of the sprints.

In the women's the Chinese took the line first...

...but...

...after the commissaires reviewed the footage they too were relegated to last in their round to only take the silver. Meaning that the German's took Olympic gold despite two other pairs actually breaking the world record on the day.

For the men it was GB v France and Philip Hindes was up against Gregory Baugé but completed the first lap just ahead, handing on to Jason Kenny and then Sir Chris Hoy who crossed the line in 42.600secs for a new World Record but for Hoy it was his fifth gold to go with 1km time trial in 2004, sprint, team sprint and Keirin in 2008, plus the silver in team sprint in 2000. He has now equalled the number of gold and total medals of Sir Steve Redgrave, one more medal this week and he will go ahead of Sir Bradley Wiggins Wiggo with most medals.

But not only was it the fifth gold for Sir Chris it was the fifth for Team GB in these Games.

Team GB tally for today 3 gold and 3 silver. Over to the pool to see if Rebecca Adlington can add to the haul tomorrow having qualified for the 800m Freestyle this morning.

#TeamGB's Golden Minute #London2012

Celebrating gold

15:37 is the time that Team GB won three medals all at once at two at Lee Valley on the white water course in the C2 there were two British pairs bookending the final six.

First off where Tim Baillee and Etienne Stott who absolutely blitzed the course going clean without hitting a gate in a time of 106.41, faster than anyone had gone in qualification or the semi final. They then sat in the bottom as the Chinese and Poles both hit gates and were outside their time.

Then the French pair Klauss and Peche came down hitting a gate but would have still been outside of the time of the Brits without the 2 second penalty. Team GB were guaranteed a medal but the Hochschorner twins Pavol and Peter from Slovakia unbeaten in the last three Olympic finals.

However, even the great Hochschorners managed to hit a gate and ended up 1.87 seconds behind the Brits. So now Britain were guaranteed gold as only David Florence and Richard Hounslow, the other British pair were left to come down. They were up on their compatriots at both the check points but went in deep on both the upstream gates in the final part of the course and ended up  0.36 seconds down with only the second clean run of the final. Even without penalties it would have been two medals to the Brits.

Two final hits and the moment of relief

Simultaneously at the Royal Artillery Barracks, Woolwich we were reaching the end of the double trap competition. 25-year-old Peter Wilson had qualified for the final 50 clays with a 3 shot lead. The last British gold medalist in shooting Richard Faulds who took the honour in Sydney in 2000 failed to make the final finishing 12th. But the Russian Vasily Mosin seemed to be his closest rival, although Swede Hakan Dahlby was the last shooter to miss a target he'd only qualified in fifth.

But Mosin kept the pressure up reducing the gap to 1 shot at one point. But Wilson regrouped and the Russian and opened the lead to 4 shots with six pairs of shots left while Dahlby caught Mosin up. The Wilson missed both targets to gasps from the home crowd. But he regrouped and kept ahead. But Dahlby overhauled Mosin but the last shots would go to Wilson in each round.

With two rounds to go Mosin missed one, but Wilson shot two to give him a two shot buffer over Dahlby going into the last round. The Swede hit both but so too did Wilson and just after success in Lee Valley we had another gold in Woolwich.

There was another medal guaranteed at the time these golds were won as Gemma Gibbons had already made the final in the Judo women's 78kg. Sadly shortly after having already beaten the world number one and other favoured judokas she lost out to the USA's Kayla Harrison.

Mind you 2 gold and 3 silver today and counting.