on a lighter note, i see that one of the few discerning members of the italian general public has seen fit to gob his fearless and irreproachable duce in the mouth with a die cast model of milan cathedral.
despite reports that the attacker is a nutter i cannot but heartily congratulate him on his choice of both target and missile.
Barack Hussain Obama — Nobel peace prize laureate? What’s that about then?
whilst i trust and believe that Obama is a different, and altogether more palatable kettle-of-fish than his deranged predecessor, this award, apparently the result of a nomination submitted to the committee only nine days into the recipient’s presidency seems, shall we say if not over-generous, then at least somewhat premature.
perhaps with no other worthy candidate to hand they simply lobbed it his way to avoid the inconvenience of having to record excess inventory in the peace gong department for this year. who can tell?
to his credit, i note that he has already pledged the prize-money to charity and hope that despite its unfortunate timing the award will in due course prove to have been well-merited.
mine’s a pint of creme de menthe Barack.
well we all like a laugh, but the report on the demise of mg rover takes the cake on so many levels i barely know where to start.
first: this toothless piece of tat has cost the hard-pressed taxpayer £16 million and yet has failed to finger a single wrongdoer.
second: the most strident critic of the report, and its subjects is lord mandelson, a guiding light in moral probity and my very favourite arbiter of truth and goodness. and the best he can do is tell them he thinks they should apologise.
third: this third-rate bunch of spivs, under the gaze, nay with the assistance of the government achieved a feat usually reserved for the more-gifted though similarly morally-bankrupt operators known as asset strippers.
to strip assets on this scale from a company long-recognised by it’s german owners to be a vast liability is a feat which almost by definition suggests impropriety. (how much is a car company which you can buy for £10 and get a vast interest free loan to run it worth? come on; the clue’s in the question.)
so how do these maggots justify taking over £40 million out of it while it’s dying on it’s arse?
hilariously, throughout the day, national news channels have referred to mg rover as the uk’s last remaining volume car manufacturer, whilst assorted industry pundits have sought to justify this plundering by suggesting that these “rewards” were consistent with the industry norms.
in reality, by contrast with the world’s genuine volume car makers, decades of woeful mismanagement had left the group looking like something under a railway arch. depressing to say the least.
how fortunate then that we now have such genius at our disposal in the financial services sector that we need no longer concern ourselves with such grubby enterprises as making things that others want to buy.
“where you been boy? oh, down the job centre?” ‘yeah. all centre, no job! but they’ve got new chairs; and a yucca plant. oh, and uniforms. musta cost a fortune!’
“come across john towers or any of his lousy cronies down there? no, thought not.”
okay, so we qualify for 2010 world cup finals. engerlernd, engerlernd, engerlernd! that’s what i say.
and we qualified without dropping a single point, 24 from 8, and with two matches to spare. now i grant you we emerged unscathed from a bunch of no-marks who would have struggled against our womens team but let’s not be churlish. a win is a win is a win.
in all fairness, who could fault the team’s record under the enigmatic Fabio Capello. i grant you the great man’s english is practically impenetrable to the native speaker but we don’t pay him to give lessons in elocution, now do we? and as fortune would have it our trusty squad, linguists to a man, seem to have understood which way the maestro wants them to kick it.
but i must concede i’m slightly less bullish about the finals next year, when, fresh (knackered surely) from the exertions (we are talking about football here, aren’t we? oh go on then let’s pretend it’s hard work for another minute otherwise i won’t know what else to write) of the 2009-10 domestic season our heroes will find themselves sweating in the heat of the dark continent as the gloves come off against the likes of italy, brazil, spain and germany.
still we can take comfort from the thought that most of the top players we hope to face in the later stages of the competition will have had similar build-ups to our own players, if only because most of them play their club football in the english premiership!
i’m almost sure there’s a pearl of wisdom glistening somewhere in this pile of drivel but, do you know, i just can’t be arsed to dig it out.
make an effort yourself, for once, muppet. 
following the football authorities’ entirely reasonable response to the blatant cheating of his player eduardo this week, arsene (i did not see it) wenger warns us that the introduction of tv reviews of play would be opening a dangerous door.
where to, froggie. somewhere where you would finally have “to see it” kicking and screaming if necessary?
i refer readers who have the honesty to “see it” to my earlier doggerel on the sickening subject of simulation in football.
they, like me are happy to call it cheating. and no doubt some rather-less polite names.
bonnet de douche mes amies.
so, the all-conquering aussies waltz off back to matilda clutching the coveted ashes trophy. all hail to the mighty ones, for they truly are the kings of the world!
what? oh shit, it was all a bad dream. in fact, after a series of lack-lustre test performances, these colonial ne’er-do-wells have been rightfully dispatched by their english betters back to the antipodes, there to ponder on the copious shortcomings which have led them to eat their words, unbarbied. very tasteless i’m sure.
as i recall, i remarked to a less-astute observer (are there any others?) midway through that magnificent final day “ponting has the look of a man who knows the game is up”.
to be fair to the little snapper, albeit through gritted-teeth (and on this occasion agreably battered lips) ponting took defeat like a man, and the great sportsman that he is. (at least i assume that’s what he did. the batting legend speaks at such a prodigious rate that i suspect, probably due to the poor health service development in his home country he was vaccinated with a sewing machine needle).
but i digress.
to tell the truth, in circumstances where common-sense would have seen more-educated nations repairing to their bungalows for extended bouts of wound-licking, these plucky if ill-advised, post botany bay, convict-bred also-rans have it seems, made the foolhardy decision to remain in the uk with only the prospect of further ignominious defeats in the upcoming one day series.
one has to admire their pluck, if not their intellect!
cheer-up diggers!
see ya! wouldn’t wanna be ya
what is it with this poxy england test side? they amass a huge lead and foolishly fail to enforce the follow-on. what the hell’s that about?
oh but they go on and arse this lack-lustre opposition from down-under. down-and-out more like.
bring’em on for the third test! where’s your bowlers you bunch of girls? left ‘em all back in ramsey street? easy street more like.
ship out diggers, the dingoes are pissin’ on your swag.
(none intended, obviously)
ta-ta!
well, swipe me, that’s one out of the blue!
could somerrdy point me tooow the bar twenty20 wages?
ayythankyoo.
yes, in an extraordinary turnaround our heroic test cricketers defied the pundits’ direst prognostications to salvage a magnificent draw in the first ashes test at cardiff.
after another series of dismal performances by the top order batsmen who should have dug-in and batted out the final day, defeat seemed only a formality: a matter of time.
but just when all seemed lost, step-in paul collingwood, never a favorite of mine but here displaying a dogged unwillingness to get out; an object lesson from which many of the ‘higher order’ batsmen could learn a thing or two.
in addition to his all-important occupation of the crease england’s number 4 amassed 74 invaluable runs before succumbing to an uncharacteristically rash shot.
his departure, surely the death-knell for the beleaguered englishmen brought to the crease renowned non-batsman monty ‘hit-it?-i’ll-be-lucky-to-see-it’ panesar.
but, stand by your beds! a star is born. to the amazement of onlookers, with only the minimum of assistance from number ten james anderson, our match-saving secret weapon poked and prodded his team to the glorious draw that nobody, even your esteemed correspondent had dared to hope for.
(kevin pietersen look and learn! sure you’re brilliant, no question but why are you so often just crap? pull your finger out.)
hooray. (refer to my previous post for this thursdays team selection: nobody can defy gravity indefinitely
while many commmentators have been pilloried for their criticism of kevin pietersen’s dismissal in the first innings at cardiff, i agree with them.
in fact, as i said last time “get a chance against the aussies you better pour-it-on”.
well we did (get a chance), and we didn’t (pour-it-on).
and the result of this failure is surely crystal-clear for all to see! the australians, by contrast, never miss an opportunity to exploit weakness, and therein lies the difference between us. these tiresome colonials show a streak of stickability a mile wide.
they aren’t just moderately interested in the idea of winning should the opportunity be kind enough to present itself: they go out onto the park with a determination to make it happen.
or perhaps that should be “bloody-well make it happen”. yes, i think it should.
and that’s why they’re walking all over us in this first test. realistically we probably need rain to come to our rescue. at the risk of sounding unpatriotic we don’t deserve it.
so lift your game. find some stickability and bat-out however much of three sessions you have to.
oh, and recall harmison for the second test. we badly need a somebody who can bowl plenty of overs and put a bit of fear into these upstarts.
kind regards, an englishman.