Falling On A Bruise

David Haye Thrills The 1%

2009-11-09T23:48:00.002Z

I never really took to Lennox Lewis as a Brit. One reason was the boxing gold medal he won for Canada at the 1988 Olympic Games but mainly it was the strange halfway across the Atlantic accent he had. Canadian at heart and a Brit for convenience was the much used term thrown at him.
Now, Britain has a proper Heavyweight Champion of the World in David Haye as he beat Nikolay Valuev at the weekend. How he won and if he deserved the verdict i have no idea because i, along with most of the country, didn't see it.
Haye is on a Sky TV contract and was on 5% of the sales from the £15 pay to view fee so he undoubtedly made a stack of money from it although only 700,000, or just over 1%, of the country saw him do it.
Good luck to him i say, if he wants to put money before the acclaim of the nation then that is up to him but i didn't meet anyone today who watched the fight and there was no excitement over his achievement.
This must be a consideration as the Government reviews the major sporting events which must be broadcast on free to air television.
The English Cricket Board have already commented that while they may be reaping a huge financial benefit from its deal with Sky, cricket has been deprived of a vast audience that potentially includes a future generation of players. Advertisers can't be best pleased either that the millions they spend is shown to such a tiny audience.
Every sport has the right to sell their 'product' to whomsoever they wish, but don't then complain that no-one watches and there pot of emerging talent dries up.
I expect David Haye to go on and make more money than he can count but to 99% of the country he will always be a poor second to boxers who may have a quarter of his talent and never win any belts but are household names whose fights people talk about the next day.

Now That's Not What I Call Music

2009-11-09T00:09:00.002Z

If America was to throw a concert for its 234th birthday next year, it could call upon a sparkling array of musicians and as long as they didn't invite any Country & Western singers, it would be well worth watching.
If the United Kingdom were to celebrate it's 303rd birthday next year, again, we could have a fine line up. Other places like Canada, Australia and Ireland could rummage around and find enough decent musicians to put on a decent Birthday bash but some places couldn't.
France for example. Great artists but god awful musicians but to be fair to them, they know that they suck so they don't even try which is what someone should have whispered into the ear of the Israeli who decided they would have a concert for Israels 60th Birthday celebrations last year. I saw bits of it on one of the Arts Channels tonight and even the musicians seemed embarrassed to be there.
This got me thinking, why are all the best musicians from only a handful of countries?
If you were to go back to the classical era, Austria and Germany ruled the musical roost but you would rather remove your ears with a butter knife than listen to a concert of the best Austria or Germany has to offer now.
One of the reasons would be that the places where the main group of bands and singers emerge from sing in the English language. Abba would have sunk without trace if they had sung all their songs in Swedish.
So today the top places for musicians would be America, Britain, Canada, Australia and Ireland and then it hit me. All these places are countries us Brits had turned over at some point as part of our Commonwealth land grab. It was the long lost silver lining that i had long sought for our brutal regime.
Okay, so being indirectly responsible for the emergence of Guns N Roses almost 250 years later doesn't make up for hacking our way through hundreds of thousands of the indigenous population globally, but its the silver lining that smarmy British bloggers can arrogantly point to in an attempt to say to seven eights of the globe that thanks to us and our colonies, musically, we are the best and you all suck. Phil Collins excepted of course.

Arsenal Fans And Colorado Rapids Fans

2009-11-05T22:39:00.003Z

It seems that my team Arsenal are the next club to be hauling up the Star Spangled banner above their Stadium as Stan Kroenke positions himself to make a grab for power. As Kroenke is named as number 164 in the Forbes 400 list of richest people in the World, us Arsenal fans can only say a big Howdy to the yank and wonder if Fernando Torres would prefer to move to the Emirates in the January or summer transfer window.

What it does mean is that Arsenal and its fans will now move in with the rest of the Kroenke family so what other team fans will we be joining. Hello St Louis Rams supporters, we call your sport American Football here which may become confusing.
Is that you i see hiding over there fans of the baseball team Denver Nuggets. I see you have already met the Colorado Avalanche Hockey fans. I expect we will be seeing much more of each other in the near future Colorado Rapids Football team. Pre-season friendlies and i imagine we will find our way to lend you a few of our lesser players. What's that? Do we have a striker that's not really cutting it and wouldn't be missed by the team that we could lend you? Nicklas Bendtner, these guys want a word with you.

Another of the English teams that have already joined up with American owners is Aston Villa who have taken Randy Lerner's money and actually made quite a decent fist of things if you ignore Emile Heskey. Their fans are now linked with the American Football Team the Cleveland Browns.

Liverpool fans have been campaigning to oust the American duo of George Gillett and Tom Hicks ever since they took over and now with them out of the Premier League Title race, the League Cup and as good as out of the European Champions League before the first weekend of November, things will only get warmer for the Americans. For now though they are in with the supporters of the baseball team Texas Rangers, and ice hockey's Dallas Stars.

Finally Manchester United fans and Tampa Bay Buccaneers supporters shared common ground when Malcom Glazer strode into Old Trafford and plonked his amusingly ginger facial hair behind the owners desk. What with the Man Utds managers purple nose it can be quite a colour clash when these two get together.
Anyway, Manchester United fans are easily the most despised in the country so by association we are legally obliged to boo loudly at you Buccaneer fans also. Sorry, its the law.

Hard Things Made Easy #2

2009-11-03T23:29:00.005Z

Do you remember sitting in French lessons at school reciting the days of the week and how to count from one to ten. Of course this would come in handy if you needed to meet someone at the Eiffel Tower at 6 on a Wednesday but otherwise it was pretty useless.
I would expect that, like me, you spent the best part of a year saying things in a weird accent and then forgot them. How about if i said to you that by the time it takes you to read this post, about 3 mins approximately, i could teach you to speak thousands of French words? Sacre Bleu as they say.
The thing to remember is that a good majority of the words that make up the English language are taken from the French, with the endings subtly changed.

How many words can you think of that end in -ible? Possible, incredible, visible. Knock off the -ible at the end and replace it with -ebe and you are speaking French. Possebe, incredebe, visebe.

Same with words ending in -able. Table, acceptable, debatable. Knock off the -able and say -arb instead so its becomes tarb, acceptarb, debatarb.

Easy isn't it, and here's some more. Words ending in -ent and -ant. Arrogant, assistant, independent, transparent all have the -ant or -ent knocked off and replaced with -unt so its pronounced arrogunt, assistunt, independunt and transparunt.

The way to pronounce words ending in -ary is -aire so stationary, necessary and secretary become stationaire, necessaire, secretaire.

Know many words ending in -tion and -sion? Pronounce it -seeon so position become posiseeon and condition becomes condiseeon.

To round off your thousands of words, find words ending in -ical and say -eek instead. So political is politeek and economical is economeek.

Remember, this is only a very rough guide and isn't the spelling and it only works with the spoken word. It is also important to get the emphasis in the right place which is generally where the change is made so it is independ-UNT, condi-SEEON, deba-TARB or econom-EEK.

There, as promised, you have just added thousands of words of a foreign language to your vocabulary (vocabul-AIRE) in less than 3 minutes.

Dr Nutt

2009-11-02T00:05:00.004Z

I've always found it a quirk of the British political system that a Government has to pick its ministers for Government posts from the members that have been elected. What we end up with is the man controlling the Health Department for example, with no background in Health and was previously a lawyer.
Obviously the Prime Minister cannot find a perfect fit for each position from among his elected members so to this end, the Government bring in 'experts' to give advice to the Minister and to help steer policy and to stop any monumental mistakes.
The problem is that experts, with all their experience and background, sometimes say things that the Ministers don't want to hear and why Dr David Nutt today finds himself sacked as the Governments chief drug adviser.
The Scientist made the judgement in a research paper that "Alcohol ranks as the fifth most harmful drug after heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and methadone. Tobacco is ranked ninth. Cannabis, LSD and ecstasy, while harmful, are ranked lower at 11, 14 and 18 respectively."
As the Government are in the middle of an attempt to reclassify cannabis, LSD and ecstasy as Class B drugs, and as they make billions from the alcohol and tobacco industry, Dr Nutt's comments were always going to be deemed less than helpful.
Experts do sometimes get it wrong as was shown with last weeks 'we are coming out of recession, oops, no we're not' debacle by the economy experts but I'd still take the view of an expert over that of a minister every time.
What Dr Nutt was actually saying was that although cannabis, LSD and ecstasy are undoubtedly dangerous drugs, there are actually some legal ones that are even more dangerous and damaging that need to be addressed as well.
We can disagree with him but personally i would assume that he knows more about it than the man who sacked him, Home Secretary Alan Johnson, whose background is in banking.
He was sacked, and was not the first expert to have been, for telling the truth as he saw it and means that the government is prepared to dismiss expert advice on the drug issue.
These scientists and scholars are not politicians and not supposed to tow the government line but the ministers should not take on independent advisers and then whinge and remove them when the advice comes back and it isn't what they want to hear.

Hell Of A Band

2009-10-31T21:50:00.001Z

"You know that scene at the very beginning of Nightmare Before Christmas" said The Dark Prince to me last month, "the one where Pumpkin Jack comes back to his Halloween World after a successful nights Halloweening and they have a concert". I replied that i was aware of it.
"That's what we need here" he stated, leaning forward from his throne and handing me an order to round up the best musicians presently residing in Hell for a Halloween Night Concert.
Never one to turn down a man armed with a pitchfork and horns, i set about getting together the best band from not so nice dead musicians.
Bass guitar was easy, girlfriend murderer Sid Vicious. Luckily he was on his way to Michael Jackson's house and the paedophile was more than happy to join the band as lead singer.
Finding a drummer was proving difficult, especially as hammer wielding mother killer Jim Gordon was still alive but there was only one man to hand the lead guitar to, Lead Belly. Never a man to talk to his relatives when he could shove a knife in them instead.
Still leaves me struggling to find a drummer so i guess i will have to fit a drum machine until a notorious drummer turns up down there.
First song up, Knocking on Heavens Door. Beelzebub will love that.

Experts Wrong Shocker

2009-10-29T22:13:00.001Z

Not one to make wild claims, at the start of the recession Gordon Brown said that Britain was best placed both to withstand a global downturn and to lead the world out of its slump. Being the Chancellor for a decade and having a good idea what state the countries finances were, most of us had no reason to disbelieve him. Us fools.
The United States has become the fourth G7 country after Germany, Japan and France to emerge from recession while we enter an unprecedented six straight quarter of falling output.
The majority of economists, financial experts and the Chancellor all predicted a GDP rise last week only to see a -0.4% fall turning instead.
The economy is now almost six per cent smaller than it was before the start of the downturn, meaning Britain is creating £90bn less per year than 18 months ago.
The same economists, financial experts and Chancellor who were upbeat about everything days ago, were said to be amazed and shocked by these figures.
The simple translation must be that haven't had a clue what's been going on since the start and they don't have any idea how to fix it. And these guys are the experts!
They shouldn't be trusted with a weather forecast, let alone an economic one.

Why Karadzic But Not Blair?

2009-10-27T23:23:00.004Z

Funny thing politics isn't it as the story of two recent leaders of small European countries is proving. While one is sat in the Hague facing charges of being responsible for the death of 7500 muslims while undertaking his role of Supreme Commander of the Bosnian Serb armed force, the other one, responsible for killing over a million Muslims while in his role of head of the British Armed forces, is being touted as a possible President of the continent.
Not to dismiss Karadzic's crimes, he deserves to be sat where he is and i hope he rots in a prison cell somewhere, but at least he can apply the twisted logic to his argument that his country was involved in a war at the time. Blair can make no such claim.
His own Attorney General, the top legal advisor the UK has, stated that there was only three possible legal justifications for launching a war. Self defence, humanitarian intervention or with UN Security Council Authorisation.
The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, told Blair that "Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran'.
When he tried, and failed, to get the Security Council Authorisation then any military action was outside of his own legal teams three justifications and therefore illegal.
So why is Tony Blair not sat beside Radovan Karadzic facing crimes against humanity or why is Karadzic's name not being put forward as a European Presidential nominee?
Blair certainly has a case to answer and he has said that he is prepared to be held to account by God for ‘those who have died or have been horribly maimed as a result of my decisions’.
The familes of those that have been killed or those who have been horribly maimed as a result of his decisions probably wish that they can get hold of him long before the big man upstairs does.
Despite all his crimes, Saddam Hussein was actually hanged after being found guilty of ordering the killing of 148 Muslims.
Karadzic rightly faces trial for overseeing the death of 7500 Muslims.
Tony Blair speaks falsehood after falsehood to launch an illegal war with kills over a million Muslims and pockets a multi-million pound book deal and launches himself for European President.
Yep, it's a funny thing politics but i'll be damned if i can see why Karadzic is on trial and Blair isn't.

New England V Tampa Bay

2009-10-25T17:16:00.002Z

American Football comes to the UK this evening with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the New England Patriots buttonhooking and intefering with each other at Wembley Stadium.
This is the third successive year that the NFL have brought a regular season game to London and tonight's game will be in front of a capacity crowd which shows that the game does seem to be gaining popularity over here.
Usually the only person we see rolling around on the grass at Wembley is Emile Heskey after he has just shinned one wide from a few yards out but tonight its the likes of Tully Banta-Cain being jumped on by a large group of men.
The Patriots are favourites apparently and i'm sure that the fickle English will cheer for them just because they have the word 'England' in their name.
An added incentive for us wanting to see the New Englanders stuff Tampa Bay is because the Buccaneers are owned by the Glazer Family who also own England's most hated team, Manchester United.
Buccaneer fans have been suggesting that the Glazers are siphoning off funds from the American Football team to prop up Man Ure who are a reported £700m in debt.
England in their name and playing against the team who are part of the Manchester United stable, it's a no brainer.
Come on you Pats, we want to see you roughing the kicker and using the Wishbone Formation whatever that is. Failing that, if there is a purple nosed Scotsman sat next to the Glazers, maybe you Buccaneer players can punt one into his swingers as he's the one taking all your money and spending it on the likes of Owen Hargreaves.

The BNP Bounce

2009-10-24T14:35:00.002Z

Following Thursdays appearance of the extreme right wing British National Party on Question Time, the results are in and it seems that Nick Griffin's Party has got the bounce it was after.
The YouGov poll for today's Daily Telegraph puts them up to 3% support from 2% previously, with 22% of Britons prepared to consider voting for them in local and European elections.
Nobody with half a mind should be feeling great about that so where did it all go wrong. He was a sitting duck, waiting to be exposed and ridiculed in front of a national audience, and yet he seems to have emerged stronger for it.
Firstly the whole hour was dedicated to asking the BNP leaders his thoughts, and then shouting him down and kicking him around before he had chance to answer. We didn't need Jack Straw shouting out that Griffin was a bigot or a racist ten seconds after he opened his mouth, we could hear that ourselves or at least we could if they give him chance to speak his piece. At the end of the hour, Griffin came out of it looking like the bullied rather than the bully.
Secondly, i would suggest that although the vast majority of the BNP views are abhorrent, three big ones that chime with a large number of voters are his views on Iraq, Afghanistan and immigration.
Iraq was an illegal war and those who initiated it should be charged with crimes against humanity, we should pull out of Afghanistan and there are too many people coming to Britain. I would estimate that at least two of these three strike a chord with an overwhelming majority of Brits and the very reason why the BNP may see a lift in its recruitment numbers.
None of the big three parties want to stick their head above the parapet with any of these three issues despite them consistently cropping up as areas of concern for voters. The BNP poll boost simply reflects British contempt for mainstream politics.
This Government has been all about the sleaze, the wars, the expenses scandals, the disregard for voters, the economy, the bankers, the bailouts and rising crime. The Conservatives before them imploded on much the same issues and it is expected that the next Government will be much the same.
Until the Government, or the other big two, are willing to tackle immigration or foreign policy, the only party that are saying what most people want to hear is the British National Party and no amount of the Lib Dems, Tories or Labour party shouting at the BNP leader will help when his accusers are also held in such low esteem by the electorate.

25 Years On And Still They Die Of Hunger

2009-10-23T16:47:00.003Z

There are not many television programmes that are so shocking and influential that they launch an international reaction and shame Governments into action but the first of two shown 25 years ago today did exactly that.
A couple of seven minute BBC news reports in 1984 revealed the full scale of the horror happening in drought hit Ethiopia and the pathetic sight of a population dying en-mass from hunger.
'A person dies from starvation ever 20 minutes' Michael Burke informed us along with the revelation that Governments won't help because Ethiopia is run by a Marxist regime and that Europe was sitting on a massive grain surplus as people died through lack of food.
The impact of Burke’s report left singer Bob Geldof so moved and angry with the world for standing by at such a time, he decided to do something about it.
Concerts, singles and a massive fundraising drive raised tens of millions in aid and Governments, embarrassed by their lack of action despite warnings over the previous 18 months, sent planes full of food and supplies.
The Government blamed the civil war and a corrupt Ethiopian Government but everyone else just saw people dying from hunger while our elected leaders stood idly by.
Shamefully, 25 years on and still people are dying of starvation in Ethiopia which begs the question, why, after a quarter of a century and hundreds of millions of pounds, is there still not enough food there to feed them?
Are we not giving enough? Is the food the money buys just treating the symptom but the cause of the almost annual famines remain untreated? Is the money not being wisely spent by the aid agencies?
I could point out that to see anyone starve to death while half the World are debating ways to combat over-eating is obscene and if we spent as much money on fighting hunger as we do on wars, then the world would be a better place but it seems that what we are doing, we are either not doing it enough or doing it the wrong way and have been since the beginning.

The Other Side Of The Aisle

2009-10-21T22:43:00.002Z

'Come join us, we have no women or gays in our movement' isn't much of an advertising slogan but it is the carrot that the Pope is dangling in front of thousands of disaffected clergy of the Church of England.
It seems that after years of approaches to the Vatican from Anglicans unhappy with the way the Church of England fairly treats women and gays, the Pope has issued a decree that allows them to skip across to the Catholic side of the Christian faith. The top estimate is around 2000 priests defecting with as many of their women and gay hating congregations as they can persuade to come over with them.
So just why is the Catholic Church so full of misogynists and homophobes? It all comes down to to the fact that Jesus had no female disciples and because Eve ate that apple. That Eve, the one created from her husbands rib who himself was made from dust by someone nobody has ever seen or heard. When your whole faith is based on those origins you kinda expect them to be a bit loopy.
Gay people are not liked because they are just sinners and gay sex is an abomination against God who set down Adam and Eve and had no problem with incest as they went forth and multiplied.
To be honest i am totally underwhelmed whether some churchy types want to be Catholics or Church of England but at least now i, along with the 99% of the British population that don't attend Church of England services, can instead not attend Catholic masses as well.

Poor Whitney But An Even Poorer Cheryl

2009-10-19T22:40:00.001Z

If there was ever a living advert for staying away from drugs it is Whitney Houston.
Arguably one of the greatest female talents of our generation, the years of drug taking has left her a pale imitation of the great vocalist she once was.
Her appearance on X Factor this weekend was shaky at best by her own high standards and the interview afterwards was painful to watch.
She looked confused, took an eternity to answer the questions the host, Dermot O'Leary, asked and shuffled uncomfortably while staring at the ground.
It could be excused as a sign of nerves, after all she is returning to the stage after almost a decade away but with her history you have to think that it goes much deeper than that.
I don't know if she needs the money or if she has other reasons behind her comeback, but if this is an example of what we can expect from her, she would be best advised to cancel it now before she turns into the Elvis of our generation and is remembered more for the humiliating struggle at the tail end of their careers rather than their heyday.
Something else this weekends X Factor showed was that you could see why Cheryl Cole was not so keen to sing live. And she has the nerve to criticise anyone else about their singing?

Feck! Arse! Drink! Girls!

2009-10-18T23:01:00.002Z

In the excellent Father Ted, Father Jack was a foul-mouthed, alcoholic priest prone to frequent lapses of violence and spending most his time passed out in the Parochial House.
I often thought that if the Catholic Church did have priests like him then it would certainly make weddings and christenings more exciting. I could even be moved to go along to find a pew on Sunday mornings to hear the drunken ramblings. Rather than Jesus loves you it would be more i love you, your my best mate you are followed by him throwing candles at the choir as they sang all things bright and beautiful.
Of course there are no such priests in the Catholic Church, at least not now that Father Edward Pilarskiego has been forcibly removed from his church in Poland.
The parishioners had enough of the Father spending the collection plate money on booze and cigarettes and displaying his grip of the more saltier words in the Polish language during drunken sermons and they dragged him from his pulpit and threw him out of the church. They then changed the locks on the church to keep him out.
I don't know if they will now find him the equivalent of a Polish Craggy Island for errant clergy but i'd love to see him make a visit to my local Parish. We need more drunken priests.

Support For The Postal Workers

2009-10-18T14:51:00.007Z

Imagine, if you will, working for a company that has just posted a doubling of it's annual profits. Now imagine your company saying sorry but no pay rise this year and we are introducing new work practises that will lead to wide scale redundancies. I don't think anyone could be surprised if you said you were a tad upset with the big bosses but what could you do?

The options are:
A) accept it and hope that you are not one of those who receive the dreaded call to the managers office.
B) stand up say hold on, you are making hundreds of millions in profit but you plan to introduce new working practises which will lead to thousands losing their jobs to make even more profit?

If you chose answer A then you can stop reading now and i wish you well and hope that you find alternative employment soon.

If you are still reading, which i would guess is the vast majority, then you chose option B.

So you pop along to the Union and say it's a bit unfair i may have to lose my job because the company want to make even larger profits and the Union say too right, i will go and have a chat with the big bosses. They come back and say sorry, but it seems the Politicians want to part privatise the company and obviously need to be seen to be making massive profits to entice in a buyer. The Union then go and spend 18 months in negotiations on your behalf to try and save jobs but to no avail, the cuts and changes are being imposed regardless.

The options now are:
A) accept it and hope that you are not one of those who receive the dreaded call to the managers office.
B) join in with strike action and hit the bosses in the pocket to force them to be reasonable and try to safeguard thousands of jobs, possibly your own.

If you chose answer A then you can stop reading now and i wish you well and hope that you find alternative employment soon.

Those who chose the second option would find themselves in exactly the same position as the UK postal workers find themselves today and why we may have to deal with our letters being a few days late.
If you are not a postal worker, or are married to a postal worker or depend upon the wages of a postal worker in anyway or have any sympathy with the little guy or people about to lose their jobs, then you can stop reading now.

Good, the selfish ones are gone and those left and have got this far down should be supporting the postal workers. Maybe send an email, i wouldn't bother with a letter, all the postal workers will be striking.

Corrupt Firms Can't Silence The Internet

2009-10-17T19:54:00.010Z

I have always been against any regulation being imposed on the Internet to try and control it. Of course this approach also leaves untouched some abhorrent sites but that's unfortunately the cost to continue with the anarchic approach. Governments, celebrities and big business hate it because it's a source of media that they can't control which means bloggers and Tweeters are not held by the same rules as the mainstream media, as was shown with amazing effect during the Trafigura affair this week.
Lawyers, Carter-Ruck, acting for oil trading company, Trafigura, were forced to abandoned attempts to stop the British press running a story about the fatal dumping of toxic waste in west Africa by the company.
The case began with the dumping of 500 tons of the waste in a landfill site in the Ivory Coast in August 2006.
Official estimates said 15 people were killed and tens of thousands left ill as a result. Trafigura denied any deaths took place but offered £950 to each of 31,000 people affected, without accepting liability.
A report written soon after the initial incident found based on the "limited" information to which it had been given access - the waste was capable of causing severe damage to human health.
When Trafigura learned that The Guardian newspaper was about to publish an article based on the report, the firms lawyers issued a 'super-injunction' blocking it.
They then tried to stop the British media from revealing that an MP had tabled a question relating to the report.
Stopped in their tracks, the Guardian then cleverly wrote a front page piece on how they could not write what they had planned to, due to an injunction from an oil company concerning an MP's question due to be asked in Parliament that day.
A quick scan of the MP's questions that had been tabled and soon Bloggers and Tweeters were posting and tweeting about to such an extent that it made the injunction useless.
Users posted so many comments and posts about Trafigura and the parliamentary question that the issue soon became top of Twitters list of popular topics.
In a statement, the lawyers agreed to drop the injunction stating that "there is no longer any purpose in the injunction remaining in place".
Proof of the power for good of the Internet coupled with a strong sense of injustice from the Internet users in battling corrupt firms and morally corrupt lawyers.
Now that it is out in the open, I'd like to see the oil company closed down for such a flagrant case of toxic pollution, it's assets sold off to properly compensate the people of the Ivory Coast and those involved tried for murder.

Cheating Cheryl Cole

2009-10-15T21:26:00.003Z

Cheryl Cole's career has recovered well since she was found guilty of assault in 2003. Luckily for her the charge of racist assault was dropped as the jury couldn't agree if Cole had called her victim a bitch or a black bitch as she pummelled her so it was just plain old assault on a toilet attendant or she would really have been in trouble. It's one thing to punch people but another thing if you are racist while doing it.
Since then she has managed to keep her fists to herself and has turned into a British icon and has landed herself a job as a judge on one of Simon Cowells karaoke programs, the same sort of show that started it all off for her.
While her husband was off having sex with hairdressers, we collectively hugged her to our bosom and gave her a cuddle but now the tide may be turning back against her again.
As one of the winners of Pop Idol, you would imagine she would be quite a good judge, having been there and done it all previously.
You would think but it seems that when the judge performs her debut solo single on The X-Factor this Saturday, her vocals will have been recorded earlier in the day, whereas the contestants are compelled to sing live leaving me to wonder how can they take her comments seriously when she mimes when its her turn to step up to the plate?
I've always felt a sense of dishonesty when pop singers lip sync. There was time when Milli Vanilla and Betty Boo were chased out of town for doing it but they don't seem to even try and hide it now. Britney was at it a while back and that's bad enough considering how much she charges for a concert ticket just to hear a recording of her singing.
As someone who basically makes a living from critiquing peoples' singing, that's a pretty bad move for Mrs Cole, it's admitting that the contestants are more talented than those judging them.
I can't wait for the first contestant she criticises to ask her if she would care to show them how it's done and hand her the mic. If only the toilet attendant had been so good at ducking things, she might not have ended up so badly beaten.

Gawd, Not Them Again

2009-10-13T19:04:00.003Z

American comedies have a fairly decent record this side of the Atlantic. Friends was a phenomenon but we have also taken to Cheers, MASH, Happy Days and even Frasier. All very funny but once a dark cloud hung over the star spangled banner. A black, Seinfeld shaped cloud.
It was the early 90s and the BBC announced a hot new American comedy that had taken the states by storm.
Anticipation grew and here it was at the peak viewing time, the show the BBC had cleared the decks for, Seinfeld. Anticipation caved, the BBC moved it to a later time slot, then onto its second channel and before the end of the first series it was doing the graveyard shift, shunted to the time slot usually reserved for art shows.
I don't know why Seinfeld tanked so badly here, but for me it just wasn't funny. It was smarmy, pretentious and whiny and apart from Kramer (who always reminded me of the doc from the Back to the future films), i just wanted to bang their heads against that fake wall Seinfeld stood in front of not being funny.
Rumours are that there is talk of reviving the programme. Don't do it America. The World is just starting to like you again after George W Bush, don't go throwing it all away by bringing back the other George and his gang.
If you are going to remake anything from your television past, bring back Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Internet Football

2009-10-12T22:39:00.001Z

There was an International football match on at the weekend, Ukraine v England.
Exclusively on the Internet as a pay-per-view event, the company selling it had an audience of 400,000 who were willing to pay the £11.99 to watch it.
An England game on Sky Sports draws a viewing figure of around 2m, while on the free ITV or BBC figures are around the 8m mark.
The Swiss company running it had billed it as a success and a glimpse of the future but the fans calling the radio stations i listened to today complained about the glitches in the feed and delays in the commentary.
Football could be facing the very same problem that Boxing had in the 90s and Cricket is facing today. It can either perform to a small audience but get well paid for it or a large audience but the financial benefits are not quite so good.
It doesn't take a genius to work out which way this will go, the pound signs are already spinning in the FA's eyes.

Giving The BNP Enough Rope

2009-10-10T22:20:00.004Z

The BBC has provoked controversy by giving the British National Party a platform for the first time on its top political programme, Question Time.
Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, is due to appear in two weeks time although who he will be seated alongside is questionable as MP's from all the parties are still undecided if they will appear on the show with him.
I can understand this, the man is a vile racist and bigot, but my thinking would be to let him spout off in front of millions of viewers. Put him front and centre in the glare of the spotlight with all eyes and ears trained on him and let him say what he thinks. From what we have heard from him so far as he spouts forth from the sidelines, he will hang himself if we give him enough rope.
Not that i think for a minute that he will come on and begin ranting against blacks or Asians, he will be much to wise to fall for that, but it will be impossible for him to keep the true colours of his party hidden during the evening.
It is much to easy to dismiss him as the leader of an extreme party with limited appeal to a small but vocal bunch of ignorant morons. The current thinking is that if they ignore him long enough he will go away but there will always be a small band of like minded souls willing to entertain his ideas.
I say put him on prime time TV and question him about his policy on immigration (pay them to go home), his view on capital punishment (bring it back) and defence (compulsory national service).
Ridicule will damage him and his supporters much more than just pretending he isn't there ever will.

Ignoble Nobel

2009-10-09T23:57:00.005Z

It is hard to think of a much more peaceful man than Mahatma Gandhi and it's probably hard to think of a much more unpeaceful man than Adolf Hitler but no prizes for guessing which of these two was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Common thinking is that it was the war he started that killed millions that did it for him in 1939. So close Adolf.
The choice of Nobel Peace Prize winners has always been a source of delight and this years winner, for 'extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples', is Barack Obama who of course is fully deserving of his prize for all he has done for World peace.
He's...erm...well he did...um...if it wasn't for him...huh...and that time he...hmmm.
Truth is the deadline for nominations for the peace prize was February 1, so the President won it for his achievements in the first 11 days of his presidency.
A suitable embarrassed Obama has admitted that he does not feel he deserves to be in the company of other Nobel Peace Prize winners, a notion that almost everyone except the Nobel Prize committee agrees with.
They seem to have awarded it to him for talking peace, while continuing to wage war. Those Afghan villages won't just explode by themselves you know, someone has to order those drones overhead.
Best thing he could do is politely decline the prize, humbly pointing out that he is unworthy and has much yet to accomplish. He gets all the credit, but shows that this is a joke of an award.
I would just like to take a moment to say that i want to see world peace, an end to war, no more famine and wealth for all in every nation.
There, and if that doesn't see me in Stockholm for next years presentation, plan b is to invade Poland.

You Not Looking At Me?

2009-10-08T19:53:00.002Z

There are some films that you are destined never to watch. Without trying, i have managed to never see Casablanca, Citizen Kane or Schindler's list. It was only a couple of years ago that i sat through the Sound of Music in its entirety. I made it 40 years before clapping eyes on 2001: A Space Odyssey.
All these films are regarded as classics and i should probably feel ashamed that i have never made time for Lawrence of Arabia but found it for Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
An Orange survey has revealed that The Godfather tops a poll of films that most people claim to have watched, but never have. It is followed by Dirty Dancing, The Shawshank Redemption, Taxi Driver, Gone With the Wind and It's a Wonderful Life.
Of these six, i will admit to not having seen Dirty Dancing and having watched It's Wonderful Life more times than is probably healthy. As for the rest i would say that those who haven't seen them are not missing anything in particular except the scene in Taxi Driver where the Robert De Nero character does the 'you talking to me?' scene which everyone has said to someone in the Travis Bickle style at some point in their lives even if they didn't know where it came from.
My general rule of thumb is that if the film includes the word 'Star' in the title, it can quite safely be left alone. Same goes for if the cast list includes the name John Claude Van Damme.

Let's All Move To Norway

2009-10-05T22:40:00.004Z

My plan has always been to take early retirement and go live in one of the Scandinavian countries.
Sweden probably as they have the nicest flag and Santa lives there but i certainly don't plan to spend my twilight years licking stamps with Queen Elizabeth's head on them.
Anyone looking to live elsewhere in the World, the Human Development Report is always a good source of information as it lists the best, and worst places, in the World and according to the 2009 rankings, its Norway we should all be heading towards as it takes the prize as the best place to live.
Australia is second and Iceland third, Canada fourth with Sweden seventh.
I love France (8th), and i would move there like a shot if they removed all the French first and Switzerland (9th) would be ideal if it wasn't for the frightening prospect of running into Phil Collins.
The United States is 13th with the UK 21st.
At the other end of the scale, Niger, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone are all to be given a wide berth although the continent of Africa should be avoided in general as it almost dominates the bottom end of the chart.
The 182 countries were ranked according to the quality of life their citizens experienced and as 3 of the top 4 are well known for their snow, it seems the secret to living long and prospering is to move somewhere cold.

Silver Lining To A Conservative Government

2009-10-03T23:47:00.002Z

It is a depressing thought that in around six months time, Britain will be under the rule of a right wing, Conservative Government.
The Labour Party may try and point to a wide range of reasons why it is being so unceremoniously booted out of office after 3 terms, but it all boils down to Tony Blair and the Iraq War.
Blair dragged his party to the right, cosied up to the most reviled American President in living memory and then sold us all down the river over Iraq. Labour Party membership is in free-fall and they lag so far behind the Conservatives in the polls that it is hard to imagine anything short of David Cameron retiring and Margaret Thatcher taking over to stop us suffering 5 years of Conservatism.
While it's hard to see any silver lining to this particularly black cloud, the one thing the left can cling to is that the blue party have promised to block Tony Blair becoming EU President.
That would be the same Tony Blair who sent UK troops into 5 conflicts during his 10 years and was pushed out the door by his own Party.
You have to admire his brass neck for even considering going for the job especially as he is widely considered as a war criminal by many across the continent who should be awaiting his turn in the Hague rather than angling for the top job in Europe.
It is hard to think of anyone with a worse track record who is less trustworthy to hand the job to, at least his god bothering partner in (war) crime(s) Bush had the decency to slink off into obscurity, Yes, five years under David Cameron and his Conservative Party is going to be unbearable but at least we won't have to suffer Blair and his ghastly wife with their smug faces appearing all over the media again.
That's the thought we should keep in our minds as we slip into the nightmare of William Hague acting as our nations Foreign Secretary.

Hard Things Made Easy #1

2009-09-30T22:50:00.004Z

I've never played Guitar Hero or any of those type of games but i'm all for them if they introduce guitar music to a whole new generation. Hopefully it will inspire a few more Green Days and Nirvana's and save us all from bland Simon Cowell influenced pop which bores me to tears. We went through that in the late 80s and i don't want ever want to go back to the days of Take That and Backstreet Boys dominating things.
What games like Guitar Hero don't do, is teach you how to play the chords needed to bang out a tune on a guitar. You may be able to play Sweet Child O' Mine perfectly on the X Box, but you are never going to be able to match Slash without years of practice. Frustrating i know. When i first got a guitar i wanted to turn the amp up to 10 and thrash out the riff to Holiday In Cambodia. Not so much playing ethnicky jazz to parade my snazz, more a bloody racket which had the parents shouting up the stairs to tell me to turn that noise down.
I had a very good teacher who would spend most of the time going through how to make an E Chord, then an A chord and finish off with a well known song that had those chords in and it is amazing how many songs are comprised of just a few chords. Every time you get your head around a chord, you add thousands of songs to your repertoire. I know perfectly good musicians who get by just knowing the main 5 chords E, A, G, C and D. The whole punk movement was built upon musicians who only knew these five so within a few weeks of practising, the moving between the chords is the trickiest bit, you have the tools to play along to pretty much anything by The Ramones, Clash, Sex Pistols or Green Day.
Many people are happy to stay at that level and strum along to their favourite songs, while others move on to add further chords to their arsenal.
What most people are keen to learn are the face melting guitar solo's which are the raison d'être of Guitar Hero. I don't know a quick and cheerful way to learn these apart from using sites like Ultimate Guitar Tabs to start with to find the Tabs which show you diagrams of where your fingers go and what strings to play.
My advice for anyone making the leap from Guitar Hero to a real guitar is to start with learning those 5 common chords and you will be on a par with many famous musicians who have made much of moving around within this range of chords.
Right then, hold down that E string at the 8th fret and 1..2..3..4...So you been to school for a year or two and you know you've seen it all.