936 days ago
I am coming to the conclusion that in this increasingly crazy world, New Zealand is the largest open air asylum on this planet. For this week, the University of Otago on South Island has named as its sportswoman of the year Laurel Hubbard. Remember her?
1039 days ago
Despite being 43 and the oldest “woman” in the field, Laurel Hubbard has a big advantage over all the other competitors. She is a man. Or rather she was until eight years ago when she transitioned. So for 35 years unlike all the women in the contest, her training was not interrupted by periods and she was naturally stronger. Indeed she was a very strong man too, competing at the highest levels in men’s weightlifting.
2225 days ago
He gets a tough question and the man sacked as a journalist for making up a quote but who is now our Foreign Secretary replies in Latin with an apposite quote from Tacitus and we are all supposed to think how jolly clever is Boris. But then he says the dumbest of things...
2607 days ago
Back in the summer at the RIO Olympics how the BBC and others were outraged when all those nasty foreigners suggested that the amazing medal haul of Team GB on the cycling track might perhaps have something to do with our athletes being, er, driven by something different? It was okay for us to suggest that Chinese swimmers might be doing the same as they were just dirty foreigners. But the BBC knew that we Brits played it clean and this was just foreigners being bad losers. Fuck the lot of them, fucking foreigners either cheats or bad losers the lot of them.
2803 days ago
As elite sport demands that it retains its £450 million four year Olympic budget or even increases it, supporters base their case on two pillars. One is ridiculous and the other is based on bogus data.
2804 days ago
Tessa Jowell was the woman who publicly ditched her husband David Mills as he became embroiled in a Silvio Berlusconi corruption scandal. Mills was exiled to my father's village of Shipston where the socialist millionaires kept a country farm as a compliment to their North London mansion. Jowell got to stay with the urban sophisticates. Out here in the boonies folks did not buy the seperation story as la Jowell kept on making appearances up here and, lo and behold, after Tessa's political career came to an end there was a miraculous reconciliation with Mills. The political elite actuallythink that we are so stupid that we buy this sort of horseshit don't they? Now Tessa makes the most bonkers of claims regarding TeamGB and its Olympics success.
2804 days ago
I have to admit that I started to get into the Olympics and was up late cheering on the gallant Hockey lesbians, Mo Farah, old Nick Skelton et al. But has this medals haul stopped me being an Olympics cynic as I look back on the legacy of London 2012 - the real one not that which we were promised? No. And more importantly, why is the press insisting that the medal haul has put the Great back into Britain. It has not. This is just Government and media spin paid for with cash extracted via a tax on the stupid. Panes et circuses 2016
2806 days ago
Britain has splashed out £350 million and won a stack of medals at the Olympics. naturally the Guardian's lesson from this is that we should spunk billions picking industrial winners and we will all be rich. Gold medals for all. Jeepers do folks like Martin Kettle never read history books?
2807 days ago
I was waiting this to happen just at it did four years ago as I reported HERE. The EU has claimed that it sits at the top of the Olympic medals table with Team GB, currently second behind the US, submerged into team Evil Empire.
The EU table shows that the Evil Empire has won 223 medals at this year's Games – including 78 golds – compared to the United States' 84 and China's 51. Team GB - on 50 medals and 19 golds - disappears.
Remember that it is your taxes that funds such a pointless exercise. Do you think that in the streets of Athens they are cheering
2810 days ago
I start with a couple of landmarks reached today. Six months without a fag and four weeks to the due date for the birth of a son. Then a guilty confession, I am watching the Olympics. Then onto discussing two companies where the only questions are when does the money run out and what price the next bailout placing: FastForward (FFWD) and FastJet (FJET)
2822 days ago
In an article earlier today I suggested that my good friend David Lenigas was a slam dunk to win the individual gold medal in the new Olympic Sport of share ramping. But I was concerned that the recent poor form of long term stalwarts of the Roos, such as Pirate Pete Landau and Andy Carroll, means that the Auzzie team in the freestyle share ramping relay event was in deep trouble. Indeed...
3981 days ago
It was a year ago today that the first article appeared on this blog. Most blogs fold after a period of months but I am still here. And to celebrate a glass of bubbly for breakfast! The toast “to you dear readers for continuing to read this site”
A year ago my life looked unimaginably bleak. At a personal and health level it was a mess and I was days away from leaving Rivington Street and t1ps the company I founded. To the victors the spoils and so it was repeatedly asserted that all t1ps’ problems were of my making and that new management was turning it around. Yes I have read the interim results released at 6PM on Friday. Hmmmm. You might say that but I could not possibly comment.
That however was a former life for me. My line in the sand was drawn in September. By then I knew who my friends were. To folks such as Richard Poulden, Abbe Aronson, Darren Atwater, Steve Moore, Clem Chambers, Monisha Varadan, Chris Potts, Amanda Van Dyke, Lucian Miers, Chris Booker and Zak Mir I am forever in your debt. To you I say “cheers” – another toast.
I chatted yesterday to most of the above and life has changed pretty dramatically. At the Real Man restaurant we were losing £5,000 a month when I took it on officially in September. There is now just one of the staff at that time still working here and I have hired and fired aggressively and made a stack of other changes. Having just enjoyed our busiest Saturday in memory we are now happily making a profit, our customers like us and we serve far better food. That was achievement one. I guess that “new management line” is true sometimes. Miaow.
Achievement two was getting the UK Investor Show organised in just a few months and it went well. Now with my friends at ADVFN we are well on track to deliver an even better show on April 5 next year. And I now rather suspect we will be the only show featuring master investors happening next spring. Miaow.
But perhaps the biggest win has been in writing. It is what I do best (although I can knock out a fantastic Risotto con salsicce e funghi these days as well). The launch of the www.shareprophets.com site has exceeded expectations. After 50 days it has half as many registered users as we managed to attract in one year at UK-Analyst. More join every day. And gratifyingly more and more writers seem to want to join the team and write for us. Another two will debut this week. Meanwhile other websites…no that is enough miaows.
But www.Tomwinnifrith.com is my real love. It started as therapy but being able to write exactly what I thought without some corporate hissy fit ensuing soon became an addictive drug. The fact that I use the odd naughty word or talk about birds does not appeal to everyone – notably Google and PR prude Kay Larsen of College Group – as you may remember here and here.
But it is me. I do use naughty words. I do find myself drifting into the vernacular of my favourite TV show (The Sweeney) now and again. And I do have strong views on Israel, welfare scroungers, the EU, global warming and civil liberties. Why hold back? I had been gagged for so long that the release was joyful and still is.
But there was also a release in that I ceased to by a City insider and became an outsider. As such there was no need to kiss arse – anyone and everyone was fair game. The past year has shown me that not only is it fun to constantly expose and poke fun and to say what you want but that I can earn a reasonable living doing that and looking after Real Man Pizza. There is no need to hold back. While I might have been tentaitive at first I am now in 5th gear and will not be slowing down or getting softer in my approach.
And so looking back I reflect on those who have brought inspiration and pleasure to me:
1. The visit to Butrint (photo article)
2. Damian Conboy of Alecto hooking up with the Playboy PR girl
3. Kay Larsen PR prude at College Hill
4. Sefton Resources & Jim Ellerton – thanks Jim you have made my year ( see you in court Bitchez)
5. Taking a contrary view on the Olympics
6. Vroula – the fascist Greek athlete and defending her right to free speech
7. The visit to the Berlin Jewish Museum
8. Standing by St Paul’s for Lady Thatcher’s funeral
9. The start of the AIM Cesspit campaign
10.Going on stage with Nigel Wray and Nick Leslau at UKInvestor show – feeling I was with friends.
11. Being complimented by the Goddess
12. The Guardian and deluded lefties everywhere
13. The Baker of Zitsa
14. Albania - National Leave your Gun at home day
15. Financial PR firms & the AIM Cesspit - another fight picked
I am sure that I have missed out a few highlights.
At a personal level, many of you met my partner at UK Investor Show. She may be an utterly deluded lefty. No okay she is an utterly deluded lefty but she has been a rock at all times. She even now knows who Joe Cole is and that Mark Noble’s veins are claret and blue. What more could a man ask for?
Thank you all for reading this website over the past year. Year two starts on Monday. What will it bring?
Best wishes
Tom Winnifrith
4007 days ago
A few weeks ago I reported to the Irish Olympic Committee that I had run 100 metres in sub 10 seconds. Since Ireland has never won a sprint gold, the lads were over from Dublin pretty quick to see me. They expected evidence of this claim like seeing a lean mean running machine. Instead they found a slightly overweight 45 year old man smoking a Marlboro light. I said that I had in fact run very fast down the garden path that morning and had calculated that I was a sub 10 second man but did not have my calculations to hand.
They were a tad disappointed. They did not call me a liar. But when some other folks said that my initial claim was a lie I could not argue. I have not actually done a sub 10 second sprint in my life.
And this brings us to US Oil & Gas which reported to the State of Nevada that its Ebiana-1 well was trucking along at a “producing rate of 60 bopd” prompting officials to visit the site. Produce at 60 bopd and there would be stacks of oil on hand (that is a lot of oil). But there was sod all oil on site. And so US told officials that it was “only a calculated rate” and there were no calculations on hand
4052 days ago
It looks as if we will be playing at home in an 80,000 seat Olympic Stadium for 99 years starting in c2016. Like everyone who supports West Ham I have mixed feelings. Green Street may be a shit hole but it is our shit hole.
I shall miss the various cafes where you can have some exceedingly unhealthy food before and after the match. I shall miss the Queen’s dive though it is. I shall even miss my Jamaican barbours. And I shall miss Upton Park. For all its faults it is a ground with atmosphere. I have some very happy memories of the place.
But if we can start to fill the Olympic Stadium West Ham will have the financial muscle to be a Big Club and I know this will sound like heresy to some West Ham Supporters but I’d like to win something now and again. The question is can we fill an 80,000 seat stadium. Right now we sometimes struggle to fill a 34,000 seat stadium. There are c26,000 season ticket holders. If we are serious we need to double that number.
And that means that we need to engage a charismatic manager who can start RIGHT NOW to reach out to the wider community in East London and Essex and who will make a long term commitment to the club. If the contract of fat Sam is renewed in May then we can look forward to three more years of football which does not turn anyone on and three years with a manager who will not be there after 2017. And who does not have the charisma to reach out and get folks signing up for season tickets, etc.
If West Ham is serious about becoming a top six club it has to hire someone NOW ( well in May) who can deliver a seven year plan not only on the park but also in the wider community. There is only one man who can do that and that man is. Paulo di Canio.
4091 days ago
When a company issues an RNS headlined “Trading Statement” there is always a heart in moth moment as you open it up – is this a profits warning? No such concerns today with Blinkx (BLNX) which has announced that after an exceptional first half, trading in the third quarter remains strong and hence it will beat full year forecasts. The shares have raced ahead by 26% to 86.25p but are they now more than up with events? Is it time to bank gains?
The statement is brief but reads:
“In November 2012, blinkx announced that it had an exceptional first half, driven by the early integration of recent acquisitions and the effects of the US elections and London Olympics. Today, blinkx is pleased to report that trading in the third quarter continued to be strong. Therefore, the company expects to be ahead of targets, with revenue for the full year in the range of $180M to $185M.
4192 days ago
And so, 51 Tory MPs showed they have some principle and voted against their party. Call Me Dave Cameron is now mandated to reject the 6.8% proposed EU budget increase. Will he show backbone? Will he show principle like when he promised us all a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. And then, er … defined promise in a Nick Clegg manner and changed his mind? All will be revealed.
But in honour of our great leader this week we invite suitable captions for this picture – “I vow to thee, my Country”:
4199 days ago
So the Olympics cost the UK £15 billion or whatever but didn’t the politicians tell you that there would be a golden legacy? They were, of course, correct. Today it has emerged that Chime Communications (generated £30 million from doing PR for various aspects of the Games) is to buy a firm largely owned by Lord Seb Coe (organiser of the Games) for up to £12 million. Lovely, there is your golden legacy for you.
Move along nicely Sir. Don’t ask questions. The Olympics were a huge success for all concerned and have left a golden legacy for Britain. No buts. No ifs. Do not create a T-shirt protesting about this. You will note that Willy Hague MP has a shareholding in Lord Coe’s company. You should not question the State with naughty T-shirts or tweets, you never know where you will end up.
In honour of this golden legacy today’s photo is:
4243 days ago
The headline screams out from columnist Alison Pearson in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph. Does anyone actually believe this rubbish? Or have we been so brainwashed that Big Brothers will be hauling me off to Room 101 for pointing it out. Well I shall risk it anyway. La Pearson states:
“Patriotism not being a source of toe-curling embarrassment may be one of London 2012’s enduring legacies. Britons waved their flag, and found that they liked it. The need to be cool was displaced by the wish to be warm. Figures out yesterday show that crime was down in London by 6 per cent. Only nine people were arrested at Olympics venues. Attendance at the Proms themselves hit a record 93 per cent.
Of course, helpful smiles may blow away with the first churlish gale of autumn, but what will remain is the knowledge of what can be achieved when the genius of our people is harnessed.”
Let’s start with waving the National Flag. Most ordinary (I do not use that word in a disparaging sense as you will see below) folk in Britain have never had a problem waving the flag. They have been British and proud of it.
4249 days ago
I am awed by the resilience of the athletes competing in the Paralympics. In many ways I admire them so much more than the drug cheats and money obsessives who starred in the main Olympics. These men and women embody in so many ways what participative sport should be about. And so please do not doubt that I respect and admire them hugely. But, I have a few questions and nagging thoughts which I wondered if I dared air in public since they will attract inevitable abuse and condemnation but I do so anyway. They are questions no one seems prepared to ask but I wonder if others might actually feel the same way.
The case of Oscar Pistorius, the South African sprinter who also competed in the main Olympics raises two questions.
4252 days ago
As the true financial cost of the great circus starts to sink in, you will hear more and more about the “legacy” benefits of the games. These gains will be intangible so impossible to actually quantify but do not ask awkward questions, Big Brother says there are great legacies and so pay attention and agree. One of those legacies was meant to be that our kids would become so enthused by the top notch sport that they would all take up regular exercise and so become a lot faster, fitter, etc, etc, etc.
Oh dear. According to a report in today’s Daily Mail
4259 days ago
And so I am back in Airstrip One. After eight weeks without wearing a seat belt, smoking where I wanted and not being photographed by a camera everywhere I went, Big Brother was on the case pretty quickly. As I wandered onto the station I prepared to climb stairs to the platform. Blue arrows marked the side to go up, red circles marked the other channel. Is there a bye-law on this? What happens if I dashed up the red button side? Was there a man at the top preparing to send me down again? How did we cope before we were told which side of the banister we had to walk?
There was a sign telling me to hold the banister as I climbed the stairs. Another sign telling me not to use my mobile (not that I have one) as I ascended or descended. And a third sign warning me that the stairs might be slippery if it is raining. No shit. Give Network Rail a Nobel Prize for Physics for working that one out. What is the penalty for walking up the wrong side holding a mobile and not the banister?
4262 days ago
it has never been proved that cyclist and 7 times Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong took drugs. Fellow cyclists accused him of cheating but he never failed any of 200 blood or urine tests. But he is to be stripped of all of his titles and banned for life. Germany’s Jan Ullrich won the tour in 1997 and was a runner up in 2002…to Armstrong.
In February this year Ullrich did fail a doping test and received a two year ban. But he was not stripped of any titles. And so the history book will show that a proven drugs cheat now won two (not one) Tours while a non-proven one now won zero (not seven) Tours. Go figure.
4273 days ago
It would be churlish of me not to admit that the Olympics brought joy to many. The faces of the athletes and the volunteers smiling and cheering and of many in the crowd were uplifting. For all my cynicism about money and drug cheats (the latter already vindicated in the ladies shot-put), a cynicism which is undimmed, I admit the Olympics made many folks happy, at least temporarily. However, we now come to the financial impact. It is clear now that for London as for every other Olympic City this was a financial disaster. £9-15 billion pissed away and the real economy tanks for the duration. Not good. We now, as taxpayers, pick up the tab.
To soften that blow you are already – as predicted here – seeing our political elite (led by David Cameron) blathering on about legacy benefits ( which are of course all impossible to measure) as if to pretend that the overall financial impact was not as bad as nasty mean spirited people like me suggest. Over the coming weeks and months I expect to be writing regularly as one “legacy benefit” after another is wheeled out and then is easily shown to be illusory. But we have two early runners and riders in the “bogus legacy benefits stakes.”
The first is the idea promoted by Dave Cameron and Seb Coe that the Olympics will encourage kids to take up sport, be fitter, etc, etc. Well er… that is not really true is it?
4275 days ago
This is not a reference to the Banksters. They will take another Greek haircut in due course when Hellas eventually defaults. Today it was my turn for a Greek haircut. This is an odd neighbourhood of Athens. We have a corner store (not actually on the corner but 3 doors down) manned by a nice Lady from Bangladesh. Needless to say she is open all hours, the Greek stores are not. Perhaps racist triple jumpers from the Nazi Golden Dawn party would care to explain why this lady’s presence is so bad for the Greek economy?
Next door is the hairdresser. She insisted on me taking an action shot. Well she gesticulated. Thank heavens she only spoke a few words of English. And so after “Olympics…London.. smile” to which I replied “all too awful” which she did not understand I enjoyed a haircut in silence.
4276 days ago
Okay, things have improved for the Australians at the Olympics. I see they are now up to ninth in the medals table just behind Hungary and a couple of golds behind the county of Yorkshire. But as I pray for sporting success for Italy, Kazakhstan, Japan and Holland this is still not a great result for the world’s most sporting nation. And with that in mind, plus the news about which reformed talentless 5 piece girl band will be fronting up the closing ceremony. This week’s caption contest features the picture above.
As ever the prize is a Piss off Argentina mug which can also be bought from our online store here.
4277 days ago
The 4 PM bus from Zitsa to Ioannina arrived on time having just completed the reverse leg. Precisely nil passengers got off. Going back the bus was far fuller. This time the driver had for company both myself and a little old man aged about 93 who reminded me of Geriatrix in Asterix the Gaul. No doubt this little old man also claimed to be ten years younger.
And so here are the economics of these two bus trips:
Costs: drivers wages for 90 minutes plus time until his next journey, depreciation bus bought in 2004 (see below), diesel costs covering 60 mountainous miles, brake fluid costs, central overhead at bus company. I am not sure what that totals but I bet you it is far greater than revenues: 5 Euro 40 cents.
If Ken Livingstone was running this bus company
4279 days ago
I knew this tweet would come. I was waiting for it. The EU is a predictable body. And so here goers, an offering from some cretinous apparatchik of the Evil Empire. Here we go:
EU_London2012 @EU_London2012
Remember Beijing 2008 EU 87 Gold medals!! Will EU break this record? #london2012 Rank (19:10 LDN): EU 61, CHINA 34, USA 30 #EU #teamEU
Er yes.. In the streets of Paris they are cheering the success of TeamGB, right? Has Germany won any medals today? Dunno. I better go and ask some of the Greeks watching the games, I bet they are cheering the krauts on enthusiastically. Remember it is your taxes that pay some the wages of the moron who tweeted this and indeed who was paid to set up the twitter name @EU_London2012.
Does he or she actually think the citizens of Europe give a damn about this? While we are on the subject, I wonder how many EU Officials are in London right now “working” on our behalf of games related business.
4281 days ago
The Olympics has caught fire for me at last. Do not get me wrong, I have nothing much against Australians. Okay, half of them are descended from convicts and most of the rest claim to be Greek. They are a bunch of philistines. And you would not want many of them (apart from Clive James, Germaine Greer and perhaps Peter Tatchell) in your pub quiz team. Why is it that the few really smart Australians feel the need to emigrate?
But generally they are an okay bunch. It is just that when they win at sport they are insufferably bad winners. And, damn it, they are normally pretty successful on the sporting field. I reckon that in 44 years on this planet I have suffered enough Australian sporting triumphalism for one lifetime and so I admit to taking an extreme vicarious pleasure in Aussie sporting humiliation.
4281 days ago
It seemed like a good idea at the time. It was 2.30 PM at Butrint and the man said that the Greek border was only 20 kilometres away. Am I man or mouse? Within a couple of hours I rather wished that I had decided that I was a mouse. Those 20 kilometres were 20 Greek/Albanian kilometres. In other words 30 kilometres. It was 40 degrees. My rucksack seems to weigh a tonne and bites into my shoulders. And having peered down the road to check that it was flat, I discovered after a bend at 5 kilometres (i.e. just out of eyeshot from the start) that it was uphill all the way. Oh, as a bonus for the last 10 kilometres the road turned into a gravel track. But the real problem is that my trousers are falling down.
4285 days ago
Albeit with a delay, I pick up on the news that back in Airstrip One the old bill have knicked some 17 year old saddo from Dorset for tweeting to Tom Daley ( a flop for Britain in the men’s synchronised 10 metre diving) that he had “let his father down.” Daley’s old man died of cancer last year.
I agree that the comment was tasteless. But on what grounds was the saddo knicked and let off with a caution? That he had hurt Daley’s feelings? That he had shown a lack of taste? Well if this is the case might the old bill launch a dawn raid on the small number of folk who under numerous aliases post comments demanding my complete ruin on the ADVFN/iii Bulletin boards? Hoping for someone’s demise is tasteless and I might claim that my feelings were hurt. Tell no lies: sometimes they are.
Before the Old Bill gets ready to launch that Dawn Raid ( and of course they would not bother because I am not a celeb and the laws on these sort of things – well there are not actually any laws but the ones the Police create by using an incredible interpretation of laws meant to tackle real issues – are only for celebs), I am kidding. I cannot see that any actual crime has been committed by the saddo. When a country gets to the state where you can be knicked and cautioned just because the authorities deem what you say to be tasteless if not illegal, or because they just do not like what you said, it is time to get very worried indeed.
4285 days ago
I realise that it is unpatriotic to criticise the great circus but I once again find myself feeling both angry and vindicated by two facets of Olympic emptiness today, and I am not discussing Mark Cavendish’s medal haul here.
First up as I sat digesting a meal of heart and liver (grilled, small portion but I had a meat craving) I found myself watching the Olympics swimming. I have previously written that you would have had to pay me vast sums to go to watch these races and that view has not changed. While I marvel at the athleticism of the competitors, swimming is right up there with watching paint dry as a spectator sport. But when the TV cameras occasionally panned out to the wider crowd (an error for which they will not doubt be punished by Boris) there seemed to be a very large number of empty seats. Forgive my cynicism but were we not told several days ago that there would be no more empty seats?
Big Brother says everyone loves the games. Big Brother says there will be no empty seats. Okay, I get it. As it happens my room number is 101 and so, in Orwellian style, I am prepared to accept that there are no empty seats and there never were any empty seats
4289 days ago
Those folks who are, for whatever reason, fascinated by watching: table tennis, swimming, the drugfest that is track and field or whatever, tried incredibly hard to pay vast sums to go to the Olympics. Most failed to get seats. And as they turned on their TV’s today there were….stacks of empty seats. They are pissed off and are taking to twitter and facebook to express their rage. What do they not understand? The Olympics is just not about little people. The plebs are merely there to fill the cheap seats and justify the billions of quid spent on this event by getting terribly excited. You thought you would be treated with respect? Get real.
The seats were, of course, allocated to corporate sponsors or snaffled up by the marketing departments of big City firms and the like. So they are in the hands of people who have no real interest in sport who may well then invite others with no real interest in sport to accompany them. If they can’t find a home for the tickets? Well it is not their money that paid for them so just leave the seats empty.
As I have explained before, I would pay NOT to go to an Olympic event
4289 days ago
The Olympics are now underway. I am meant to go with popular opinion (or what the Government spin machine makes us believe is popular opinion) and say how dazzled I was by the opening ceremony. I am afraid I cannot. Of course it was pleasing to see so many happy young faces and the choreography and special effects were very impressive. But in terms of historical accuracy there were enough omissions that Beta minus would seem a charitable score. And the vision of what is special about modern Britain made me think what a vacuous sort of place we live in. We may have a lot of I-Pods, ageing celebs and a multi cultural awareness but do we really stand for anything of lasting note today? Some of the content was genuinely cringe making and my instant reaction was to take a two mile sea journey from my Corfiot summer base and claim political asylum in Albania.
By the time the Athletes started parading I needed a certain degree of anaesthetic in the form of cheap wine. Sadly not excellent Chapel Down wine. When an all-black team appeared behind what looked like the Irish flag it took me a little while to realise that we were only at C ( the parade seemed to last an eternity thanks to the inclusion of about 80 new countries that I had never heard of before) and that it was in fact the team from Cote d’Ivoire. And yes I then realised that the green, white and orange are in reverse order. I could not work out why some countries dressed their athletes like tour guides while others seemed to have borrowed a line of shell suits from a £1 shop in Liverpool. When a German VIP started giving the straight arm salute to the team from the Fatherland I got really baffled. Who said that the Krauts did not have a sense of humour? What were the Czech team doing wearing multi-coloured wellington boots? Is that part of the national costume or a joke about the British weather? Was it the team from Lichtenstein or Luxembourg who turned up in jeans so that they could go hang out and blend in with the young people in a Romford night club afterwards? By L, it was all a bit of a blur.
4290 days ago
I wrote HERE yesterday about how a Greek bird had been banned from the Olympics for suggesting there were too many Africans in Greece. That is racist and she must go. Well whatever, I disagree.
Meanwhile back in London where the games are now purified and in Olympian spirit we can celebrate the brotherhood of man, with unqualified sanctimony, the Lebanese Judo team has demanded that a curtain be erected in the training hall so that they do not have to see the Israeli athletes. They can smell them but not see them. That of course is not racist. The Israelis are only bloody Jews after all. I wonder what would have happened if the Lebanese Judo team had demanded that a curtain be erected so that they did not need to look at any athletes from Africa?
4290 days ago
In the week that Londoners get to a) have their lives wrecked by the Olympics, b) get to see celebs whizzing past in their special limo lanes, c) become the bull’s-eye target for Al Qaeda and d) start to work out how much this is all going to cost, our caption contest can only feature one of those responsible. Cripes. Blimey. Jeepers.
It is shagalong with Mayor Boris Johnson
My entry is
4299 days ago
Health Officials never tire of telling us how to run our lives and seeking ways of flushing taxpayer’s cash down the toilet. Rarely does it have any effect other than to add the flab that is Central Government and all its works. Today’s claim (plucked from thin air and with absolutely no evidence to support it whatsoever) is that the imposition of VAT on 5 a side soccer will make Britain fatter. You doubt that health officials are daft enough to make such a claim? It is in the Daily Telegraph so it must be true. I quote:
4301 days ago
I am sure that some of you are gripped by the impending Olympics. Perhaps you are turning out to watch some fat school kid carry the torch past your house, or carrying your own fake torch in a local celebration. The Government media machine tells us that we are all being swept up by a wave of enthusiasm so helping bring us together as communities and as a nation. Count me out. The whole event offends me in almost every conceivable way. I know that I am not entirely alone in my way of thinking. One person whose thoughts are always interesting and almost always correct (a reverse Polly Toynbee) expressed their strong views on this matter to me yesterday. So that makes two of us. I am sure that whatever the spinmeisters of City Hall and Whitehall say, there must be more.
For what it is worth, when the Government spin machine keeps on repeating that the whole nation is gripped by Olympic fever, my instinct is to assume that it is not.
4332 days ago
I have just had it explained to me what attending the Olympic swimming involves. I am trying to work out how much I would pay NOT to attend.
Apparently you have to start with a train journey through the parts of London Lucian Miers knows well. The tubes will be jam packed, sweaty and horrible. You then emerge and form an orderly queue before entering an arena you cannot leave until lunchtime and even then only for a brief interlude before the swimming resumes.
There is no smoking in the arena. And no movement lest you disturb the swimmers. You cannot bring in your own food and drink but must pay hugely over the odds for refreshments provided by sponsoring companies. Unlike at Lords, I fear that attempts to smuggle in decent quantities of decent wine will be unsuccessful. Watching swimming is mind-numbingly dull at the best of times but under such conditions it sounds like sheer torture – surely there is something in the Geneva convention about this?
