…grayblog…

Category: current affairs

  • Rant

    I feel a rant coming on. But I can’t decide what winds me up most. So post some comments on any or all of the following topics, and if my rant juices are still flowing at the end of the day, I’ll let rip.

    Meanwhile, and risking accusations of being a BBC addict (or victim, if you prefer), may I suggest that you take a break and listen to Jonathan Marcus’s documentary series Age of Empire.

  • Brighton

    For those that think that football has no part in the community – 1,000 jobs. Aside from all the stuff I listed the other day.

  • Depressing

    A sad, and sadly all-too-true, article from today’s Telegraph.

    Brighton have spent £5 million they don’t have preparing the Falmer project, paying solicitors at the protracted public inquiry and bringing Withdean up to Football League standards. It costs £40,000 a match to rent and steward the athletics track as well as provide a park and ride scheme and yet it only holds 7,000 people.

    The club are losing money as each day goes by. If directors stopped writing cheques, no one would get paid. Obviously it cannot go on.

    If you care about football, even as little as I do, you should be worried by this. This has serious consequences for League football in the UK. If Brighton fail to get a new stadium, it will undoubtedly lead to the club’s closure, miracles notwithstanding. Next it could be your local club. The Gillinghams, Bournemouths, Port Vales and Exeters of this world are all in the same boat. It’s about more than just a football ground. It has social consequences that are all too often overlooked – a local football team is part of the community.
    Dark days.

  • Think

    This bloke is going to get a lot of flak for saying this – from some sections of society, he will receive more than flak, he will be vilified.

    The thing is, I think he is right.

    People from our part of the world saw this sort of thing at first hand with the murder of Sarah Payne a few years ago. Her body was found on part of the Brinsbury Agricultural College, near to the A29 in West Sussex. People were, quite rightly, shocked and outraged by the murder of the girl. But I think I was even more outraged by the senseless waste of time and money when literally thousands of people descended on the site to leave flowers and gifts. The police had to set up traffic lights to control the traffic and stationed officers there around the clock to police the event. The College had to set aside a field for car parking because there were so many cars there. The County Council had to clean up the flowers and toys and remove them for disposal. Somebody (I’m not sure who – probably the College) paid for some Portaloos to be placed there and serviced. And you couldn’t get flowers from any of the local florists – they were doing a roaring trade.
    It was utterly, utterly ridiculous. And to criticise it in any way was seen as heartless. An old school friend of mine went there with his wife and children to lay flowers. When I suggested to him that he would have been better to have given the money to a charity such as the NSPCC or ChildLine, he essentially told me that I was being selfish. His justification was that a child’s life had been needlessly taken and that it was his duty to mark that.
    I don’t see him leaving flowers every day at the children’s ward of the local cancer hospital. Or at the graves of HIV/AIDS babies in Africa. Or for the eight children around the world that die every minute from disease or malnutrition.

    [WARNING – sweeping statement ahead!] In my view, the problem with people today is that they do not look at the wider world. They don’t look beyond the immediate. Consequently, people do not think about the wider implications of their own actions. Also, they do not look beyond the headlines at the things going on in the world that are not major news.
    Generally, people do not think. At all. Thinking is an extremely attractive quality. It was and is one of the things I love most about Hels. Nearly all of my friends Think (it deserves capitalization) – a healthy dose of cynicism mixed with a little optimism and a dash of observation. An avoidance of the knee-jerk. A desire to avoid the headline grabbing sensationalism of much of the mainstream. An appreciation that nothing in this world is straight-forward, simple or easily resolved.

    And definitely not the sort of people to suffer mourning sickness.

  • Love pills

    How long do you think it will be before we start getting spam for oxytocin pills?

  • News round-up

    Just to prove that I do read more than the BBC news….

  • A call to all football fans…

    Say it with flowers.

  • A little bit of politics

    Simon Hoggart on Ken Clarke’s return to the front bench. via Darren. All hail the return of the most powerful weapon in the Opposition’s ammunition.

  • State of the Union

    OxBlog offers an analysis of the State of the Union address:

    If the amount of time given over to a single idea reflects its relative importance in the State of the Union speech (a reasonable assumption), then the most important themes in tonight’s speech, in descending order, are: the need to commit adequate resources to the military for the war on terror (87 seconds); that government will act against single-sex marriage (84 seconds); the administration’s commitment to strengthening families and religious communities, and to combat juvenile use of drugs (78 seconds); the government’s commitment to education and excellence for each child in America (72 seconds); that the world without Saddam is a better and safer place (69 seconds). The closing matter took 78 seconds, centered around the idea that we are living in historic times.

  • Facts or opinion?

    George W Bush and the real state of the Union. Worth reading, particularly if you are American and have a vote.