I’ve written a number of times about the new Apple store about to open in our town here in the West Country of England. While looking out for local information on an opening date, the following email arrived for me this morning from Apple :

If you look at it carefully, you’ll see it’s precisely geo-targeted. There’s no mention of a town or city, just the shopping complex : Princesshay. No-one outside a couple of counties would know what this was. So how did they do it?

Putting on my Sherlock Holmes deer-stalker hat, I’ve concluded the information must have been gleaned from my membership of Apple iTunes, possibly from credit card details. Even so, that’s very precise targeting and shows what can be done in the age of the internet.

We have known for a while that Google is seeking ways of marrying person-specific advertising with worldwide IP television. Apple seems to have beaten them to it with city-specific advertising by email.

Some might call it spam, but I’m grateful for the information.

Well, we never use cliches here at Syntagma. Nelson’s Trafalgar refrain is all over the papers today and on everyone’s lips — but not ours.

After musing briefly about whether to go to Paris to watch the Rugby World Cup Final between England and South Africa today, I decided against it. An autumn day in the French capital in the middle of a transport strike, cool temperatures, cool Parisians and hundreds of thousands of rugger fans is not as enticing as it might sound at last-orders in the local pub.

However, England’s greatest fan, Prince Harry, will probably be there, together with his South African girlfriend, Chelsy Davy, who will need all her diplomatic skills not to cheer every Springbok score. That match will be as interesting as the game itself.

Prince Harry at the semi-final when England beat France

Syntagma predicts an England win. The team will be two points adrift with seconds of the match to go. Jonny Wilkinson will receive a pass outside the Springboks’ ten-yard line, look up at the posts and kick a perfect drop goal to take the match by one point.

How do I know this? It happens every time : in the semi-final last week, and in the previous final in Australia four years ago. It’s now an established tradition. A British version of Groundhog day.

And Syntagma’s prediction for the Formula One World Championship in Brazil tomorrow? Lewis Hamilton, 22, will win in his rookie season, making sporting history in the process. He reminds me of that line in the film, Chariots of Fire : “God made me fast, and when I run, I can feel his pleasure.”

Who says the English are no good at sport? Actually, I think that may have been me.

I don’t normally get caught up in the spasms of patriotic fever that grip the nation whenever England or a GB team reach a major sporting final — which thankfully is quite rare.

However, Saturday’s Rugby World Cup final in Paris between what was recently a no-hopers’ England team, and the seemingly unbeatable South Africa, is catching everyone’s attention, not least in that sleepy hollow of scholarly values, the Syntagma office.

One of the reasons is that in the next few days the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, is about to enact one of the great betrayals in history — signing the shamefully dishonest and authoritarian European Constitution while reneging on his promise of a referendum.

This act by Brown has been described by the all-party House of Commons Scrutiny Committee as “akin to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler in 1938″.

The rugby final provides a distraction for the dire political events happening not so many miles away in Lisbon. So, while Syntagma wishes “the lads” well in Paris, we simultaneously call down a multitude of plagues on the houses of all those involved in the Great Brussels Stitch-Up.

Oh, and I should mention that Englishman Lewis Hamilton could become Formula One World Champion in Brazil on Sunday.

We wish our great sportsmen the best of British over the weekend, while to our unsporting politicians, deep, unremitting gloom.

So next week Gordon Brown is to sign Britain up to the European constitution, while simultaneously reneging on a manifesto promise to give the people a referendum on the issue — simply because he knows he will lose it.

Are any of those actions justifiable in a moral universe, let alone a fully franchised democracy? Do I need to answer that?

Brown’s claim — and Tony Blair’s — is that the new document is different from the one they made their promise on. That is despite everyone who has examined both agree that up to 95 percent of it remains the same, especially the legal framework.

Brown further claims that Britain is protected by four “red lines” beyond which he will not go. These are policy areas such as foreign affairs, legal policy, etcetera.

It has a sniff of cordite about it. Back in the 18th and 19th centuries British soldiers wore red tunics and were known as Redcoats. When surrounded, outnumbered and in dire straits, they would form four red lines and stand in the famous British Square formation. By holding their nerve, and with great discipline, they would lay down a deadly barrage of fire against the enemy, whether it was Zulu or American.

Quite often they would break out and win the battle. Sometimes they were overwhelmed and fought bravely to the last man. Whatever resulted, the Square was always a last desperate position.

Now Gordon Brown is defining this island nation as “four red lines”. Nothing more to show for two thousand years of history and an empire upon which the sun never set. Such defeatism is pretty hard to take.

New Labour, a political party of social Marxism and clunking incompetence, is finally getting its revenge on a Britain it has always despised. Armed with a new Scottish Prime Minister who allowed Scotland a referendum on independence, it refuses England, which is 85 percent of the poplulation, a plebicite on its freedom — from Brussels.

If you’re in Britain, support a referendum now.