Six degrees of separation

Just been looking at blogs recommended by blogs that are linked to mine and after a couple of links I ended up here at what is easily the funniest blog I have read yet.

I shall be including pcbloggs on my links tab as soon as I can be arsed to do so.

And terrorism news of course.

Just a quick comment about Kevin Phillips's sale to WBA. I think it's pretty good business personally.

We have three short and quick strikers just like him but only Juan that can head the ball down to them.

Defending Inzamam

Historically Pakistan have had a somewhat 'colourful' history in regards to ball tampering.

However I personally don't see how on earth they can be done for tampering with a ball that is 55 overs old. Especially given that Pietersen was twatting it all around the park.

The ball was starting to reverse swing but then that would be expected after 55 overs. So in essence, there was no evidence of the ball behaving in an unnatural manner. However there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Darrell Hair might be biased against Pakistan. The tourists had objected to the ICC about his inclusion before the series had even started so their protest is hardly a counter-allegation.

In short, Pakistan kicked our arse on the first day and then hit out what could have been an innings victory score. However we managed to get stuck in and score the runs. They gained no advantage from what was believed to be a tampered ball and have understandably been offended by being branded as cheats.

It doesn't help to heal past wounds from similar incidents in test series' betweeen England and Pakistan in the past. This series had been played in good spirits (as had the earthquake hit series in Pakistan last Autumn)

This reminds me of other incidents in professional sport where serious questions have been raised about the official controlling the match but the focus from the ruling body has been on those who were penalised. It makes me think of all those shit referees England have had over the years, most recently an Argentine who'd been quoted as saying that he "Hated" England.

That's just what I feel like doing

I always want to speak out about the consant tirade of bullshit and scaremongering to do with terrorism.

However now I don't need to because someone else has done if for me

http://terrorism-news.blogspot.com/

Awesome!

What a start

I went to see Plymouth Argyle take on Sheffield Wednesday today because I wanted to take my mind off of what I thought was a certain defeat to Arsenal.

So imagine the shock when I looked at my phone and saw that Villa had taken the lead. I expected Arsenal to give an immediate reply followed by a complete thrashing (as they have done in the past). But they didn't. Instead they only just managed to get the equaliser.

Now many football fans would be disappointed with a draw after being in a winning position for so long but personally I think it was (in some ways) a better result:

To start the season with an away win against (in my view) the team most likely to win the title would have made things even more impossible for Martin O'Neill. Expectation at the first home game of the season (v.s. Reading on Wednesday) would have been astronomical and could have created an air of tension if the team failed to immediately deliver.

Also I think that the results on the opening weekend are at best misleading. The (stupid) international friendlies have acted like a golf handicap - the 'biggest' teams had more players away on international duty so their opening day preparations have suffered more as a result. Although Arsene 'Wenger' Whinger preferred to focus more on the amount of football played in his after match interview, the damage would have been more to do with the lost time and loss of mental focus than fatigue. After all, you prepare for a football game by training and playing football so a 90 minute game with two days rest would have been good for match fitness.

I'm just hoping that last seasons uncertainty at Villa Park has been replaced with an air of optimism and belief.

...Suppose I should say something about the Argyle game. They certainly seem to play better going forward with Holloway than they did with Pulis (Whose style of play was quite frankly dull as f**k). However it would seem that they've swapped their attacking inability for a defensive one. Every time Sheffield Wednesday went forward (which wasn't actually all that often) they looked like they were going to score. More than one chance missed by the narrowest of margins and I can't recall an occasion when there was a strong defensive intervention in the final third.

Also we were in the terrace (which is in its final season at Argyle) and it pissed it down in the first half. We had no roof and worse still no waterproofs. Needless to say the wife and I got well and truly soaked.

I still prefer terraces to seats though...

Chain Emails

Normally I make a point of not forwarding obvious chain emails but I thought I'd make an exception in this case as it's so damn funny and hits quite a few home truths:

For the cynic in all of us...




REST OF THE WORLD VERSION:

The squirrel works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building and
improving his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The Grasshopper thinks he's a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the squirrel is warm and well fed. The shivering grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

THE END



BRITISH VERSION:

The squirrel works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his
house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the squirrel is warm and well fed.

A social worker finds the shivering grasshopper, calls a press conference
and demands to know why the squirrel should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others less fortunate, like the grasshopper, are cold and starving.

The BBC shows up to provide live coverage of the shivering grasshopper; with cuts to a video of the squirrel in his comfortable warm home with a table laden with food.

The British press informs people that they should be ashamed that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so while others have plenty.

The Labour Party, Greenpeace, Animal Rights and The Grasshopper Council of
UK demonstrate in front of the squirrel's house. The BBC, Interrupting a cultural festival special from Edinburgh with breaking news, broadcasts a multi cultural choir singing "We Shall Overcome".

Tony Blair rants in an interview with David Cameron that the squirrel has
become rich off the backs of grasshoppers, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the squirrel to make him pay his "fair share" and increases the charge for squirrels to enter London city centre.

In response to pressure from the media, the Government drafts the Economic
Equity and Grasshopper Anti Discrimination Act, retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The squirrel's taxes are reassessed.

He is taken to court and fined for failing to hire grasshoppers as builders, for the work he was doing on his home and an additional fine for contempt when he told the court the grasshopper did not want to work.

The grasshopper is provided with a council house, financial aid to furnish
it and an account with a local taxi firm to ensure he can be socially mobile. The squirrel's food is seized and re distributed to the more needy members of society, in this case the grasshopper.

Without enough money to buy more food, to pay the fine and his newly imposed retroactive taxes, the squirrel has to downsize and start building a new home. The local authority takes over his old home and utilises it as a temporary home for asylum-seeking cats who had hijacked a plane to get to London as they had to share their country of origin with mice. On arrival they tried to blow up the airport
because of the British apparent love of dogs.

The cats had been arrested for the international offence of hijacking and
attempted bombing but were immediately released because the police fed them pilchards instead of salmon whilst in custody. Initial moves to then return them to their own country were abandoned because it was feared they would face death by the mice. The cats devise and start a scam to obtain money from peoples credit cards.

A 60 Minutes special shows the grasshopper finishing up the last of the
squirrel's' food, though Spring is still months away, while the council house he is in, crumbles around him because he hasn't bothered to maintain the house. He is shown to be taking drugs. Inadequate government funding is blamed for the grasshopper's drug "Illness".

The cats seek recompense in the British courts for their treatment since
arrival in the UK.

The grasshopper gets arrested for stabbing an old dog during a burglary to
get money for his drugs habit. He is imprisoned but released immediately because he has been in custody for a few weeks. He is placed in the care of the probation service to monitor and supervise him.

Within a few weeks he has killed a guinea pig in a botched robbery.

A commission of enquiry, that will eventually cost £10,000,000 and state the obvious, is set up.

Additional money is put into funding a drug rehabilitation scheme for grasshoppers and legal aid for lawyers representing asylum seekers is increased. The asylum-seeking cats are praised by the government for enriching Britain's multicultural diversity and dogs are criticised by the government for failing to befriend the cats.

The grasshopper dies of a drug overdose. The usual sections of the press blame it on the obvious failure of government to address the root causes of despair arising from social inequity and his traumatic experience of prison. They call for the resignation of a minister.

The cats are paid a million pounds each because their rights were infringed
when the government failed to inform them there were mice in Britain.

The squirrel, the dogs and the victims of the hijacking, the bombing, the
burglaries and robberies have to pay an additional percentage on their credit cards to cover losses, their taxes are increased to pay for law and order and they are told that they will have to work beyond 65 because of a shortfall in government funds.


THE END - isn't it !

Lib Dumb

Up until Kennedy was assassinated I'd always held the Liberal Democrats as the viable alternative to the government.

Now they're a complete fucking joke.

Last week Ming announced his new tax plans.

Firstly he intends to dramatically raise the threshold on tax-free income to just under £8000. I worked out that in order to be earning so little with the minimum wage, you'd have to be working less than 30 hours a week. Not being funny but it's hardly an incentive to work your ass of is it? People on low salaries will be reducing their working hours to put themselves under the tax line, thereby earning more money.

His argument for this is that those who earn the least spend a larger proportion of their income on tax. E.g. Council tax. I understand his point but he's completely contradicted it by then taking one of the aforementioned fix rate taxes and increasing it exponentially.

Car tax is stupid as it stands and it's even more stupid the way he proposes it. Just because a car is classed as being a low polluter it doesn't mean it actually is. People think Hybrids are good for the environment but in reality they're much worse.

The only fair system is to scrap car tax altogether and put up fuel tax. The more you pollute, the more you pay. Plus it should reduce government bureaucracy and more imporantly all the bastards that don't bother taxing their cars will have to start coughing up their money like the rest of us.

Well Lib Dem's you've lost my vote, I wonder how many others you've lost?... Not that you had many to start with.

Giant Nap

I'm still coming to terms with the fact that Ellis is definately selling Villa.

I'm not expecting/wanting things to happen in the same way as they did for Chelsea for the following reasons:

- Chelsea were already in the Champions League when Bates sold the club. Without Champions League football we can't attract the truly world class merceneries.

- Chelsea have overspent. They've paid too much for a lot of their players and most of the ones they've sold were at a loss.

- Villa have a youth policy

- Villa had fans before 1997 whereas Chelsea didn't (well not the amounts they now appear to have)

The soundbite I keep hearing is "Evolution not revolution". I couldn't agree more.

O'Neill might want to sign a decent winger and some creative midfielders but other than that there isn't a real problem with the players we already have. And nothing motivates quite like the threat of sweeping changes during the January transfer window.

Several players have hinted (And Angel has actually said) that O'Leary had fallen out with a lot of them and wasn't treating them right. His man management skills were lacklustre whereas O'Neill's are legendary.

To be fair to O'Leary for the most part he signed some good players. Bouma and Laursen will prove there worth this season, Sorenson and McCann have already done so and if Berger and Phillips stay fit I'm sure they'll offer a good contribution.

The problem was how he dealt with the players he had. As I'm sure Peter Crouch will testify, he was far too quick to give players the cold shoulder treatment and ruin any kind of confidence they'd built up. Berson had potential but O'Leary had decided early on that he wasn't the player he'd wanted and so let him rot in the reserves.

Not only that but O'Leary had an obsession with going back to what he had at Leeds (literally). At the start of the close-season he was trying to sign Bakke but Ellis was having none of it stating that he wasn't prepared to fork out for a player that couldn't even get into a Championship sides first XI. I can't think of an occasion when Ellis has publically criticised a manager in his employment. He's normally complimentary to them right up to the point where he sacks them.

But I for one have to give credit where it is due to Doug Ellis. Villa could have been in a better position without him but they could have been in a much worse one as well.
I just think that he should have left about five years ago instead of now. Up until then he'd consistantly managed to record a profit for Villa, one of only two clubs in the premiership, the other one being Manchester United.
We could have ended up like Leeds United or Nottingham Forest. But we didn't.

Lerner has bought a club for a fraction of the amount the Glaziers paid for United that has no debts and a potential to bring in far more money than it is right now.

I'm just ordered the new shirt as a celebration of the occasion... I'd buy a season ticket if I didn't live 250 miles away.

Doing it differently

Today's post comes from my wife's brand new Macbook.

I've not used a mac before but I have to say I'm impressed...

Want one!

Saying that if the boot camp installation of Windows XP doesn't go as planned I'll be getting one sooner than expected.

I'm a bit worried about the current situation at Villa. If the club isn't sold by the end of the week then I can't see us getting enough new blood in to keep us out of trouble before Christmas.

Hopefully an announcement will be made before O'Neill gets back from Europe.

Sweet F.A.

I would like to offer a sincere thank you to the Football Association.

If it weren't for their consistent incompetence, they might have actually hired Martin O'Neill to be the new England manager.

Luckily they didn't and he's now become the manager of Aston Villa instead.

If he's given a suitable budget before the transfer window elapses (which I think he will as it will strengthen Doug's selling position) and a takeover goes through before January then I firmly believe the good times will be on their way back to Villa Park soon.

Once again, thank you F.A.

On a seperate note, well done Doug. You've managed to hire the highest profile manager available... Or did someone else help?

UP THE VILLA!