• And we're into the second part of qualifying – doesn't look very promising for the McLarens. #
• Watched five of the last ten hours of 24 Season 8. It's been a good season. Apart from the early Dana Walsh storyline. Which was horrible. #

• Another week, another rollercoaster ride of work, some TV catch up, general exhaustion and some WoW. #
• However, splashing into the flow of life – I swapped my car registration over today to my new plate. Looks rather swish… #

A bit late, but it’s been a hectic week.

Compared to some of the corkers of the early season, this was a tepid affair. So, let’s get the necessary out of the way before moving on to the real talking point.

Vettel decided to try and drive Alonso into the wall at the start, letting Massa through. This not only screwed his race, but also Button – who then had to hit the anchors hard into turn one and an excellent start was instantaneously turned into a loss of position. He would have otherwise finished fourth, and you have to say that Button looked to have the legs of Hamilton since an excellent performance in qualifying. A decent strategy on the tyre stops reclaimed a place, so he finished fifth – but he deserved better. Hamilton circulated quite anonymously for fourth.

There were two further issues of performance. Webber underperformed horribly – poor qualifying and then a poor race to trail home in sixth. With that car, anything other than a podium is a poor result. And for a championship challenge, that simply won’t do – the momentum of the previous race lost. The second issue was the lamentable speed of Mercedes, who are rapidly going backwards. One suspects they’ve got into a quagmire of setup difficulties trying to cater for two drivers with radically different techniques.

McLaren haven’t been doing much better – the dominance of the period around Canada is now a distant memory and they are definately the third team behind Red Bull and Ferrari. You have to say that if Hamilton is to take the title, it’s going to be a route of fully maximising everything which the races have to offer – maybe a podium, maybe fourth – but until some performance appears, McLaren won’t be winning. Button, you feel, just doesn’t have the raw speed to compensate for the performance deficit moving forwards. He’ll get caught.

So, back to the real action. Which is of course about team orders. Namely Massa moving over for Alonso. Ferrari’s protestations after the race were faintly comical, if not insulting to people’s intelligence. The stewards found them guilty of the offence, and that is a Good Thing. Now we wait to see what the WMSC do with the referral – and if they have the balls to enforce the letter of the law. Although we all know that the spirit has long since departed. The politics came to the fore after the race, and made for some compelling viewing on the F1 Forum after the race.

The interest is what this has done to Felipe Massa. Massa should have won the race. Period. He got the start, defended against Alonso mid-race and that was it – you don’t overtake in Germany. To yield the lead to a driver who had done a worse job now sets a precident and degrades Massa’s status as a top-level driver.

This might seem harsh. Drivers are employee’s of the team. Thus should do as they are told. But people don’t tune in to watch the teams, they tune in to watch the drivers. It’s a singular truth in a sport which is largely driven by the performance of the team, less so the individual – apart from flashes of brilliance, like Button in the earlier part of the year in wet conditions, a driver is dependant on his team for his ultimate performance. As such, they should know which way their bread is buttered. This is one school of thought.

The other school, and the one I subscribe to, is that as soon as a driver yields – and remember this was not the sharp end of the championship – he is damaged goods. He’s lost the mental edge of competitiveness. Rather like Coulthard at McLaren, Massa is now seen as a number two driver. Rather like Barrichello, until he frankly wanted to puke on his contract, he took the money and the nice car, without a prayer of winning the championship. A driver with balls, who wanted to win at all costs, would have taken the win and then sorted the mess out afterwards – which might very well have been very uncomfortable, but in my view would be infinitely preferable to the alternative.

The alternative being that Massa is now Alonso’s bitch. And deep down everyone knows it.

• Settling down for the German Grand Prix. First time all weekend I've not been doing "something"- time to bring up the driver tracker! #
• Unfortunate for Button that he had to get out of the throttle to avoid a wild Vettel – lost three places. #
• So, where has Massa's pace come from? Alonso acting like a petulant child who has had his toys taken from him. #
• No-one can be surprised that Ferrari told Massa to let Alonso though, but it leaves a bad taste. #
• You have to say that it was a tepid race – but Ferrari's actions re: team orders have made a wonderful post-race discussion on the F1 Forum. #

I read my HTC during my long walks – and today we’ve got news that the biggest trade union has backed Ed Milliband, rather than his more polished brother David.Not entirely surprising, but against perceived wisdom.

Behind them lies Ed Balls, a man who I’d never get tired of punching. Whenever I see him on the television, I just want to put an axe into his face. There’s an unusual blend of arrogance and smugness, even for a politician. Behind Balls is Andy Burnham, who is Mr. Common, but also argues quite poorly when interviewed. And even further behind Burnham is Diane Abbot, who is even more obnoxious than Balls and a poor advertisement for women in politics.

I think it’s safe to say the winner will come from the brothers Milliband and Balls. And you can further narrow that to the brothers Milliband, unless the grass-roots loses all semblance of sense and wants to put in a potential PR disaster and whom Cameron would run rings around. Balls appears to adopt a strategy of extreme criticism, and very little else – he’s an attack dog, not a man to be at the helm of a policy body.

Not to say the other two candidates are without flaw. Ed Milliband and Ed Balls disgraced themselves by distancing themselves from the Iraq war, immediately after announcing their entry to the race. Despite being good Government men and endorsing both the war and the reasons behind it. In other words, they either were cowards and didn’t express their disagreement to the point of resignation, or they had absolutely no morals and kept quiet to stay in power.

David Milliband doesn’t appear to have many vices. Unfortunately he doesn’t appear to have a lot of charisma either, and this could be a problem. Perfectly presentable. Perfectly reasonable. Probably very good in a debate – but is he going to capture the willing participation of the public? Arguably Cameron didn’t, but he was up against Brown who was the political equivilant of a dead horse’s head, severed and put in the bed of the general public.

Cameron now however has the opportunity of power to build his credentials. He’s also got the shroud of yellow provided by the Liberal Democrats. The public have bought the line that Labour bankrupted the UK economy, and tough action has to be taken. I certainly also subscribe to this, although some of the policies put through since seen more opportunistic than strictly necessary. But it’s certainly true that the public sector is way too bloated. He may very well forge a reputation as a man who gets things done and saves UK PLC. And that can be a very powerful.

So, back to Labour. David is a bit bland, Ed Balls is on the harder left of the party – and thus too far to the left of general public opinion. This leaves Ed Milliband, and whom I personally looked to be the man most likely to reverse Labour’s fortunes when all the runners and riders were declared. Younger, and more importantly younger looking, a bit more of a tint of the left to move him away from Cameron, he could do much to get the public to take a punt on him.

My vote, and this is simply as an observer of the race, would be Ed Milliband.

Unlike the last race, my finger has been on the practice pulse.

Unfortunately, it looks like a two horse race between Vettel and Alonso on consistent pace. Webber looks to be a step behind, but in front of the other contenders. The query, to my mind at least, will be full tanks – when I think that the McLaren’s may very well claw back some of the pure performance disadvantage.

The wild card will be the durability of the softer tyre, and how the driver can make it last. If there’s minimal issues, then I think it’s going to be game over at the first corner. If not, then the picture isn’t going to shake out until fifteen laps in – and if, let’s say, Button can make his tyres last longer he may very well be able to vault to a podium position. Hamilton underperformed, by his standards, in qualifying but it would be foolish to rule him out of the podium. Massa may very well have a faster car, but he isn’t a faster driver and I think that may very well count.

Unfortunately, however you slice it, Vettel and Alonso just appear to have too much of a performance advantage to see any other one-two than these two – unless they manage to take each other out in a first corner squabble.

• Another week, another dose of lots of work and the rest of it running the guild in World of Warcraft. It's all been a bit of a blur. #

• Heard Kylie's new album. Aphrodite is stunning track, but the rest of it is a bit tepid. #
• Just watched the very first Jonathan Creek, only a decade late. Good stuff. #

Whilst you couldn’t describe me as left-wing in terms of politics, I rather do enjoy reading guardian.co.uk whilst walking for it’s fairly intelligent opinion. Even if a lot of it is bunkum.

Whilst The Times Online had long-since fallen into poor journalism, long before the Murdoch paywall, The Guardian Online is still a fairly good read. It’s certainly not as good as news.bbc.co.uk for actual news, the BBC doesn’t do much opinion – and dry facts simply don’t hold your interest whilst walking a few miles.

But I was somewhat horrified, as the front page loaded onto my HTC, to find one of the front page stories was about the latest woes of the iPhone 4 and how it would be covering a news conference live at 18:00. Since when did the vanity of one consumer electronics device corrupt this badly?

• This week has so far melded and merged together – largely through a lot of work to get through both in and out of hours. #
• Very tired, but it looks like an early start tomorrow at 4am to sort out some load balancers. #