Sergey Karjakin: Putin's challenger for the world chess title

Like all sports, chess has a way of mirroring the conflicts in wider society.

The Fischer vs Spassky match of 1972 was a wonderful metaphor for the Cold War, even if the gentlemanly, quietly dissident Boris Spassky was never a cypher for the Soviet Union.

In the 1980s the volatile Garry Kasparov was a perfect symbol of glasnost and perestroika against the model Soviet citizen Anatoly Karpov.

"We already have a world champion: we don't need another one," the young Kasparov was once told by the authorities.

Now Segey Karjakin's qualification to challenge Magnus Carlsen for the world title brings another conflict into the limelight.

Because Karjakin was born in Crimea's capital, Simferopol, in 1990 and represented Ukraine until he was poached to play for Russia. In July 2009, President Dmitry Medvedev made Karjakin a Russian citizen by decree.

Which makes him a sort of chess-playing Zola Budd.

Since then, as Radio Free Europe shows, he has become a born again Russian:

From his adopted home, Karjakin has been a staunch supporter of the Kremlin and Russian policy in Ukraine which has seen Moscow forcibly annex the Crimean Peninsula following the ouster of former Russia-backed president Viktor Yanukovych and then support a separatist conflict in the east that has claimed more than 9,100 lives. 

Following the Russian operation in Crimea in 2014, Karjakin posted a photograph of himself on Instagram wearing a T-shirt bearing an image Russian President Vladimir Putin and the caption: "We don't leave our guys behind."

The only time I seem to lose my cool on Twitter is when people who ought to know better show sympathy for the Putin regime. He is all but a Fascist dictator and on the borders on Europe.

He was allowed to annexe territory in Georgia and then Ukraine with barely a word of condemnation from the British left.

Yes, the situation in the Crimea is complicated. Historically, it was part of Russia but was transferred to Ukraine as part of his programme of blurring ethnic boundaries to discourage nationalist risings against the Soviet Union.

So you can make a case that the Crimea should be Russian. But the idea that shared race and culture justify military action that breaks international law is an odd one for the left to embrace.

Meanwhile, I suspect Karjakin has a good chance against Carlsen. At the very least we shall find out how good Carlsen really is,

His challenger in the last two world championship matches, Vishy Anand, never gave the impression that he believed he could win.

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Leicester march to Stop the Badger Cull 21 May

Full details on Badger Action News.

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Dr Sarah Hill, the Lib Dem PCC candidate for Leicestershire

The Harborough Mail has an interview with Dr Sarah Hill, who will be the Liberal Democrat candidate in next month's police and crime commissioner here in Leicesterhire:

Market Harborough resident Dr Sarah Hill, the only woman in the contest, said: “The last (Conservative) Police Commissioner spent over £1 million per year on their office. 

“By minimising the costs of the central office, I want to spend more money on operations, putting more resources into the frontline where the public needs them.” 

Dr Hill, a former Robert Smyth pupil and current Harborough District and Leicestershire County councillor, said the last Police Commissioner spent too much on employing people in strategic and consultative roles. 

She said she is standing on a platform of challenging the status quo by reducing central office costs and creating a more visible presence of 
police on the streets. 

“The biggest complaint I get from local residents is that they don’t see as many police officers as often as they used to” she said.

Last time, having agreed to their introduction under the coalition agreement, the party did not field a candidate in many of the contests.

Mark Pack brings news that things are better this time.

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Report of the investigation into the Chilham derailment published

Readers may recall that I was a passenger on a train that was derailed near Chilham in Kent last summer.

I tweeted a photograph from the train and blogged about the experience the next morning, with the result that my name was briefly all over the media.

This Daily Mail article is a good example, though how they discovered my age I do not know.

The Rail Accident Investigation Branch report on the derailment has now been published. It says the accident took place at Godmersham, which it did, but for some reason all the reports at the time talked about Chilham.

You can download the whole report from its webpage. The summary says:

At around 21:40 hrs on Sunday 26 July 2015, a passenger train derailed after striking eight cows that had gained access to the railway at Godmersham in Kent, between Wye and Chilham stations. 

There had been a report of a cow on the railway an hour earlier, but a subsequent examination by the driver of the next passing train did not find anything. There were no further reports from other trains that passed before the accident occurred. 

The train involved in the accident was travelling at 69 mph (111 km/h) at the point of impact. There were 67 passengers on board plus three members of staff; no injuries were reported at the time of the accident. 

Because the train’s radio had ceased to work during the accident, the driver ran on foot for about three-quarters of a mile towards an oncoming train, which had been stopped by the signaller, and used its radio to report the accident. 

The accident occurred because the fence had not been maintained so as to restrain cows from breaching it, and because the railway’s response to the earlier report of a cow on the railway side of the fence was insufficient to prevent the accident. 

In addition, the absence of an obstacle deflector on the leading unit of the train made the derailment more likely.

I will admit that, as a railway enthusiast, I found being caught up in this accident a little bit exhilarating.

It wasn't until the next morning that I thought about how dangerous it could have been if we were fouling the other track and a train was coming the other way at just the wrong time. In fact someone I knew died in just such circumstances at Great Heck in 2001.

So a big thank you to the driver, whom I spoke to that evening, for his efforts to keep us safe.

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