He's at it again...

I see Graham Poll is getting himself in the papers, again. After a dismal World Cup performance, and his alleged behaviour on Saturday refereeing Chelsea vs. Spurs, the ego in black red-carded Everton player James McFadden last night in the Carling Cup match against Arsenal. The reason he was red-carded? Abusing an official.

Now, I have no problems with referees trying to put some discipline in to the game. It is something that needs to be addressed, but likewise swearing happens all the time and to start making random sending offs for it is going to lead to nothing but controversy.

Still, if the FA decide that Poll's ego has become too much for the game, they could demote him to the Championship League or expel him all together. Here's hoping it's the latter...

The tide's turning...

But will things change?

Well, the results of the US mid-term are just about in, and it looks as if GW and his party have suffered a bit of a bloody nose. The loss of the House of Representatives for the first time in 12 years, along with the anticipated change in the Senate, means that the Republicans are on the back foot and at first analysis it looks as if things are going to improve, however a brief look at the facts here can dispel that notion.

Quite surprisingly for the Telegraph, they have a blog posting "revealing" media bias during the mid-term's campaigning, as if it was an untoward occurrence. Wake up and smell the roses! All media companies have an agenda, normally instigated by their Chairman or equivalent, to paint a picture that matches their own colour on the political spectrum. Although the BBC often gets a lot of abusive from the right for its bias, the real issue is the News International brand of newspapers as whomever the Sun has backed to win the UK general election has ultimately won. This shows the power that the media can have over parts of the population.

In the ideal world, all media would be like Switzerland - neutral and good at making chocolate.

Crikey, it's been a while

Well, I had a week off posting not because I lost interest but because I was slightly busy.

The house is a complete bomb site at the moment as I try to assemble furniture (Lewisham council's recycling truck must be overloaded with cardboard waste from me) and we had my sister and her partner's wedding over the weekend. Plus there were interviews for that elusive job.

But I am back now, although with a strained back from lifting heavy furniture incorrectly. Remember people, bend the knees not the back!

My political leanings

I will be honest, I have been worried about some of the political thoughts that I have been having recently. They were quite novel for me, what with environmentalism and what-not filling it. I therefore decided to checkout the Political Compass to see where I stood.

This site poses a series of statements to which you then have to say how strongly you agree or disagree. To prevent fence-sitters, there is no neutral box so you are forced to have an opinion either way. The results are then plotted on an x-y graph, where the x-axis is how left- or right-leaning your economic views are. The vertical axis represents how authoritarian you are, the higher up the scale, the more of a bossy boots you are.

Two examples cited on the website are Maggie Thatcher who was quite far to the economic right and quite authoritative (based on her assumed scores) and Adolf Hitler, who was naturally nearly through the roof when it comes to authority, but was way to the economic left. Anyone with an understanding of pre-WW2 Germany, will agree that is a true assessment.

So without further waffling, my results:

As I expected, I am slightly to the economic right - after all a free market means free people*. What was suprising though, was that I was totally neutral. I had expected me to be tending towards the authoritative side. A bit of a revelation.

* Except in China, where the free market has not meant the people are freed, however in reality the markets there are not truly free, so the mantra sticks.

Your voice is needed!

The FA is conducting a survey to determine the future of grassroots football accross England. Anyone that completes not only has a say in how the sport is run in the country but also gets into a draw to win various prizes (I am hoping for friendly tickets myself).

The way I see it, the future of English football is to get kids at young age having the fantastic balls skills as seen on South American and certain European sides. England for years has produced players that are "hard", they push around the opposition and when they go down, they get right up again and keep running. The problem is, ball skills are sometimes left behind so that anyone that is slightly above normal skill is labelled a wonderkid.


Not that I want to see anything like this mind.