It's been around 5 months since my last blog so I thought it was about time I got back into it. I've had a busy time of late and it won't get any slower until May 19th when the exams are over. But I'm sure I'll manage to find time to keep writing these blogs as a nice distraction.
But anyway my first topic in a while is the General Election that officially started today. Politics in Britain is rather depressing at the moment, we are stuck in what is effectively a 2 party system between Labour and the Conservatives. It's a terrible shame because the Liberal Democrats despite having what appears to be a rather feeble leader would provide the change British politics require. This is sadly ironic as the party who look set to win the Election are advocating change.
I've just seen a speech by David Cameron courteousy of BBC News and I'm going to be honest and frank with this, he's an arrogant douche.
However Mr Brown fails to inspire confidence in me and most probably the general public too but despite that I would vote for him over Cameron.
As I said it's a shame about the Lib Dems as I think they at the very least offer the only real change to Britain, either bad or good. Nick Clegg just seems incapable of attracting the necessary popularity although that seems to be a curse affecting the party as a whole.
Well thats my political input for now I'll try blog a little more regularly than i have in recent months but until next time...
Tuesday, 6 April 2010
Saturday, 28 November 2009
Racing speed away in confident win
I thought I'd write a rather tabloid headline just for the shiggles of it. I'm currently watching the Scotland Argentina match and religiously checking BBC sport's football updates. Ok so i may not be particularly good at any sport but by god do I love it. I'll watch any sport and do the classic British thing and usually support the losing side. As a Scot i tend to avoid my national team though, we're not known for our sporting success. One stat of many disappointing ones is the football team has been to the World Cup 8 times and without fail 8 times we have failed to make it past the first round including picking up the only team to go out in the first round without losing a game.
But I digress, a few hours ago the juniors (hockey team) crashed to a 6-1 defeat against Racing 2. To be honest we weren't brilliant and a combination of sloppy errors for a few players (myself included) didn't help. We started brightly but after an early scare looked a little rattled. They played it quite wide and a cross in and lots of movement meant someone lost their man and proceeded to calmly nutmeg me as I followed the play. The second goal wasn't much better as a cheeky tip in looped over my head and i turned just in time to watch it agonisingly clip the post and roll in. We conceded another before half time to go in to the break 3-0 down, it didn't look good either. Thankfully we finally found another gear after the break and finally started to create. Unfortunately I let the side down somewhat by getting megged a second time allowing one of their players to tap in at my far post, 4-0. There was reward for our efforts as Daniel finally got some good ball up the field and found enough time to square the ball to Matt as the goalkeeper charged, Matt duly slammed the ball home into the empty net. The game started to turn our way and we had numerous chances to score but they all passed us by. Then disaster, another ball in and Oli did well to just stop a tip in on the line albeit with his stick then his hand. Penalty flick....He placed the ball down, Simon's call of ready was greeted with a nervous nod and lots of excessive, erratic movement on the line...SAVED! Not a brilliant Flick to be fair, just off to my right and it was a comfortable save. From then on I finally started playing well with a few strong saves. It wasn't to last. I just got my stick to a hit on the left of my D only to look up and see one of their players slam the rebound home at the far post. 5-1. With 10 minutes left we surged forward looking to convert a second time, but they broke confidently again and faced with a 3 on 1 they could not fail. 6-1. To our credit we kept surging but it wasn't to be, the whistle went. Full time.
Hope you've enjoyed my report admittedly its blurred with story style writing and my memory is shocking so some of the details may be wrong. Just in time I've finished and Scotland have lost 9-6...bummer.
Hope you've had a good Saturday and enjoy the rest of your weekend!
But I digress, a few hours ago the juniors (hockey team) crashed to a 6-1 defeat against Racing 2. To be honest we weren't brilliant and a combination of sloppy errors for a few players (myself included) didn't help. We started brightly but after an early scare looked a little rattled. They played it quite wide and a cross in and lots of movement meant someone lost their man and proceeded to calmly nutmeg me as I followed the play. The second goal wasn't much better as a cheeky tip in looped over my head and i turned just in time to watch it agonisingly clip the post and roll in. We conceded another before half time to go in to the break 3-0 down, it didn't look good either. Thankfully we finally found another gear after the break and finally started to create. Unfortunately I let the side down somewhat by getting megged a second time allowing one of their players to tap in at my far post, 4-0. There was reward for our efforts as Daniel finally got some good ball up the field and found enough time to square the ball to Matt as the goalkeeper charged, Matt duly slammed the ball home into the empty net. The game started to turn our way and we had numerous chances to score but they all passed us by. Then disaster, another ball in and Oli did well to just stop a tip in on the line albeit with his stick then his hand. Penalty flick....He placed the ball down, Simon's call of ready was greeted with a nervous nod and lots of excessive, erratic movement on the line...SAVED! Not a brilliant Flick to be fair, just off to my right and it was a comfortable save. From then on I finally started playing well with a few strong saves. It wasn't to last. I just got my stick to a hit on the left of my D only to look up and see one of their players slam the rebound home at the far post. 5-1. With 10 minutes left we surged forward looking to convert a second time, but they broke confidently again and faced with a 3 on 1 they could not fail. 6-1. To our credit we kept surging but it wasn't to be, the whistle went. Full time.
Hope you've enjoyed my report admittedly its blurred with story style writing and my memory is shocking so some of the details may be wrong. Just in time I've finished and Scotland have lost 9-6...bummer.
Hope you've had a good Saturday and enjoy the rest of your weekend!
Thursday, 26 November 2009
Catch up Session :)
So I haven't blogged in a while so thought i should probably catch up with everything. I'm gonna split this blog into sections of stuff so if u get bored u can just skip to the next bit :)
First has to be the sport and last weekend went quite well. No hockey so i wasn't involved in anything myself but Rangers and Newcastle both won and are top of their respective leagues which is rather good. More importantly Scotland recorded a 9-8 win over the Aussies last Saturday in what was arguably one of the best displays of defensive rugby in the past 10-20 years. It might not be pretty but it seems to suit the Scotland team and this focus should also be applied to our struggling football team. Under Smith Scotland's football wasn't pretty but we got goals when it mattered and defended brilliantly so hopefully when the SFA appoint the next manager they pick someone who knows how our side should play. Unfortunately the midweek football didn't go so well with both Rangers and Liverpool being knocked out of Europe. Neither side deserved to progress so I don't think its that big a loss.
The news has been keeping me rather cheery too. A study in Spain found that drinking lots of alcohol actually managed to decrease men's chances of coronary heart disease. More funny than the study itself was the end of the article on the BBC website where the British Health people had made a desperate attempt to discredit the study like by doing that it was going to discredit the binge drinking society in the UK. Fat chance. I'm getting tired of all these health studies anyway, I swear everything gives you cancer now. How come cancer is so prevalent now anyways? I have a funny feeling its not all down to red meat or other types of food.
School has been a bit useless too a combination of reports, talking to teachers today and the looming threat of exams means I'm starting to feel the heat (and should probably be working instead of writing this). My application should have gone off yesterday so wish me luck, and good luck to those applying now too! Shock horror of yesterday was that I didn't get too stressed running Yearbook for once, finally starting to feel we are really on track and everything is starting to come together. CAS is gonna be a pain, I've not talked to Gwyneth about it yet but apparently we have to do a portfolio on our CAS work and loads of other rubbish which is just irritating. I'm refusing to go do Amnesty, sure I'm for Human Rights and all that jazz but I've committed to Yearbook and that isn't going to change. Not a particularly decent time for them to dump this on us either, it's a week till our mocks for crying out loud. Ok rant over.
TOK presentation was nerve wracking as anything and despite a slight fess up with the order it was all good and thanks to Alek who put up with me enough to get through it without harming me for being a pain in the rear end.
Friday means another futile attempt at Biology that seems to finally be getting gradually better. The three free will undoubtedly be filled with work/revision after a metaphorical kick up the arse from one or two teachers at report day. Saturday means the last hockey match for a while here's hoping we can end it with a win but it's against racing 2 so it's more likely to be damage limitations from the off.
Sorry this one feels like its been quite long but i had a lot to talk about. Have a good weekend everyone and I'll try write about something other than sport next time. Something controversial like suicide, which means talking about Enke the German goalkeeper who killed himself last week...
....damn!
First has to be the sport and last weekend went quite well. No hockey so i wasn't involved in anything myself but Rangers and Newcastle both won and are top of their respective leagues which is rather good. More importantly Scotland recorded a 9-8 win over the Aussies last Saturday in what was arguably one of the best displays of defensive rugby in the past 10-20 years. It might not be pretty but it seems to suit the Scotland team and this focus should also be applied to our struggling football team. Under Smith Scotland's football wasn't pretty but we got goals when it mattered and defended brilliantly so hopefully when the SFA appoint the next manager they pick someone who knows how our side should play. Unfortunately the midweek football didn't go so well with both Rangers and Liverpool being knocked out of Europe. Neither side deserved to progress so I don't think its that big a loss.
The news has been keeping me rather cheery too. A study in Spain found that drinking lots of alcohol actually managed to decrease men's chances of coronary heart disease. More funny than the study itself was the end of the article on the BBC website where the British Health people had made a desperate attempt to discredit the study like by doing that it was going to discredit the binge drinking society in the UK. Fat chance. I'm getting tired of all these health studies anyway, I swear everything gives you cancer now. How come cancer is so prevalent now anyways? I have a funny feeling its not all down to red meat or other types of food.
School has been a bit useless too a combination of reports, talking to teachers today and the looming threat of exams means I'm starting to feel the heat (and should probably be working instead of writing this). My application should have gone off yesterday so wish me luck, and good luck to those applying now too! Shock horror of yesterday was that I didn't get too stressed running Yearbook for once, finally starting to feel we are really on track and everything is starting to come together. CAS is gonna be a pain, I've not talked to Gwyneth about it yet but apparently we have to do a portfolio on our CAS work and loads of other rubbish which is just irritating. I'm refusing to go do Amnesty, sure I'm for Human Rights and all that jazz but I've committed to Yearbook and that isn't going to change. Not a particularly decent time for them to dump this on us either, it's a week till our mocks for crying out loud. Ok rant over.
TOK presentation was nerve wracking as anything and despite a slight fess up with the order it was all good and thanks to Alek who put up with me enough to get through it without harming me for being a pain in the rear end.
Friday means another futile attempt at Biology that seems to finally be getting gradually better. The three free will undoubtedly be filled with work/revision after a metaphorical kick up the arse from one or two teachers at report day. Saturday means the last hockey match for a while here's hoping we can end it with a win but it's against racing 2 so it's more likely to be damage limitations from the off.
Sorry this one feels like its been quite long but i had a lot to talk about. Have a good weekend everyone and I'll try write about something other than sport next time. Something controversial like suicide, which means talking about Enke the German goalkeeper who killed himself last week...
....damn!
Saturday, 21 November 2009
The News
So I'm just back from babysitting and sitting on the couch watching a rather good Children in Need (donate please!). And as my ritual dictates i have to check BBC SPORT and Facebook now that i have internet. However I took a little foray into the world of BBC NEWS. Sometimes there are stories that make you laugh and there was one of those tonight.
The HMS Scimitar stationed in Gibraltar has gotten itself in trouble with Spanish authorities for using a buoy for target practice with colours similar to those used by the Spanish navy. Now i won't say spoil sports but still... Haha. So a slap on the wrists from the Spanish authorities and one sheepish apology later means that they'll just do it a bit closer to Gibraltar.
The British Navy weren't the only ones in trouble with Easyjet announcing the withdrawl of all their in-flight magazines after it was discovered that the magazines contained fashion photos with models posing by the Holocaust memorial. Oops!
Elsewhere in the news the End of the World has staged its comeback, yes the Hadron Collider is now repaired and testing is expected to resume in coming weeks. So expect a lot of scientific blurb in the papers and by blurb I of course mean the journalists who will end up writing about it talking a load of tosh about it. To be fair they'd need a PHD in every kind of scientific degree to come anywhere close to understanding what the hell the magnets are actually gonna do and/or discover.
Another cheery news story is that the Tamiflu resistant strain of H1N1 has reached the UK so we'll all die soon :D. Whether its the Hadron Collider, Swine Flu or the Mayan prediction, we're screwed, I'm beginning Natures got tired of us and we're all getting the boot :)
But enough of that I'm going back to Children of Need....have a good weekend everyone!
The HMS Scimitar stationed in Gibraltar has gotten itself in trouble with Spanish authorities for using a buoy for target practice with colours similar to those used by the Spanish navy. Now i won't say spoil sports but still... Haha. So a slap on the wrists from the Spanish authorities and one sheepish apology later means that they'll just do it a bit closer to Gibraltar.
The British Navy weren't the only ones in trouble with Easyjet announcing the withdrawl of all their in-flight magazines after it was discovered that the magazines contained fashion photos with models posing by the Holocaust memorial. Oops!
Elsewhere in the news the End of the World has staged its comeback, yes the Hadron Collider is now repaired and testing is expected to resume in coming weeks. So expect a lot of scientific blurb in the papers and by blurb I of course mean the journalists who will end up writing about it talking a load of tosh about it. To be fair they'd need a PHD in every kind of scientific degree to come anywhere close to understanding what the hell the magnets are actually gonna do and/or discover.
Another cheery news story is that the Tamiflu resistant strain of H1N1 has reached the UK so we'll all die soon :D. Whether its the Hadron Collider, Swine Flu or the Mayan prediction, we're screwed, I'm beginning Natures got tired of us and we're all getting the boot :)
But enough of that I'm going back to Children of Need....have a good weekend everyone!
Thursday, 19 November 2009
The FIFA World Cup 2010
Why yes this is 2 in one day aren't you lucky :)
So the World Cup Qualifying is officially over (almost) but there may be one more sting in the tail. Ireland's intention to ask FIFA for a rematch caught many, myself included, off-guard. Although fair enough they have been denied a place at the world's biggest sporting event by a blatantly illegitimate goal. Personally I can't see a rematch on the cards, as much as I'd love one. Like many others I do think it would be unjust on France who have been incredibly sporting about the whole affair, they are certainly not the first country to have scored a controversial goal (Maradona anyone?) and they certainly won't be the last.
But to the lucky few who did make it through this World Cup sees a chance for a few of the lesser teams to play on the world's stage. Algeria and New Zealand feature again after almost a 20 year absence each. Australia return with the hopes of success similar to those in Germany last time around. Chile played some brilliant football to qualify above the misfiring Argentina in the South American qualifiers. I think those teams could be the ones to watch in the tournament. None lack talent and all are capable of outplaying many of teams in the tournament.
The favourites will most likely be the same as usual though, Italy, Holland, Brazil and Spain are all in the mix and in my opinion at least Germany who should they perform well as a team are capable of beating any of the afore mentioned teams.
The one downside to this World Cup is that my beloved Scotland have once again failed to qualify. After the heartache that was Euro 2008 i was certain we would make it to South Africa and even more so when i saw our group. However our performances lacked spark and the complete change in tactics proved disastrous for the now ex-manager George Burley. The 3-0 drubbing by Wales proving to be the final straw for the SFA.
Next summer will be an interesting one no doubt and I think I'll end with a quick prediction. England if they play well will get to the semis but no further. I think Brazil will put previous failures behind them and reach the final but lose to Spain 3-1.
So it would look something like this:
1st = Spain
2nd = Brazil
3rd = Holland
4th = England/Italy
So the World Cup Qualifying is officially over (almost) but there may be one more sting in the tail. Ireland's intention to ask FIFA for a rematch caught many, myself included, off-guard. Although fair enough they have been denied a place at the world's biggest sporting event by a blatantly illegitimate goal. Personally I can't see a rematch on the cards, as much as I'd love one. Like many others I do think it would be unjust on France who have been incredibly sporting about the whole affair, they are certainly not the first country to have scored a controversial goal (Maradona anyone?) and they certainly won't be the last.
But to the lucky few who did make it through this World Cup sees a chance for a few of the lesser teams to play on the world's stage. Algeria and New Zealand feature again after almost a 20 year absence each. Australia return with the hopes of success similar to those in Germany last time around. Chile played some brilliant football to qualify above the misfiring Argentina in the South American qualifiers. I think those teams could be the ones to watch in the tournament. None lack talent and all are capable of outplaying many of teams in the tournament.
The favourites will most likely be the same as usual though, Italy, Holland, Brazil and Spain are all in the mix and in my opinion at least Germany who should they perform well as a team are capable of beating any of the afore mentioned teams.
The one downside to this World Cup is that my beloved Scotland have once again failed to qualify. After the heartache that was Euro 2008 i was certain we would make it to South Africa and even more so when i saw our group. However our performances lacked spark and the complete change in tactics proved disastrous for the now ex-manager George Burley. The 3-0 drubbing by Wales proving to be the final straw for the SFA.
Next summer will be an interesting one no doubt and I think I'll end with a quick prediction. England if they play well will get to the semis but no further. I think Brazil will put previous failures behind them and reach the final but lose to Spain 3-1.
So it would look something like this:
1st = Spain
2nd = Brazil
3rd = Holland
4th = England/Italy
First Blog
Thought I'd give this blogging thing a go, I've seen a few others and think I might as well broadcast my opinion to anyone who cares. I rather fancy myself as a writer of some sort and won't be surprised if I become a journalist/author. Last summer i did think of pod casting but that's way too much effort when I can just talk like this.
Ok random rambling over. The purpose of this blog is basically to let me give my opinion on current news sport etc and just generally talk about things that are on my mind. Hopefully I'll manage to talk about some important things that are may at times even verge on interesting.
Here's hoping you all enjoy the blogs I think I'll aim for one a week :)
Oh and I'll try be a little more cheery too :)
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