This stuff should come with a health warning from the nursery, seriously, my wife gets an allergic reaction to it and comes out all blotchy and that means who has to contend with getting on for 30 metres of the crap? Yep, yours truly. I’m sure it seems like a good idea at the time, a nice warm spring day, much like today, you make an unwary trip to the garden centre and bingo, you’re back home with thirty of the little bastards for sod all money. This stuff is so cheap because the garden centre fully expects to recover the revenue on this loss leader as you go back time after time to buy ever more powerful hedge trimmers to cope with the pox that’s overrunning your previously pristine garden. It’s very seductive I’ll admit; can’t be arsed to rip out that concrete post mounted rusty chain link fence? Just pop in some leylandii and in a couple of years it will be satisfactorily hidden and for about 3 months you’ll think you really gave those bastards at the garden centre the shaft, what will getting it so cheaply. But in no time at all the borders will have disappeared and half of the grassed area and the other half will be brown due to the leylandii sucking all vestige of moisture from the whole of your post code. Something needs to be done, as the stuff is now over 2 metres high you’ll need something to get you up there and when you’re up there you’ll need something to do it some damage. Off back to the garden centre. Sadly they don’t seem to do a line of flame throwers so you’ll have to do with a hedge trimmer, which you will have to operate, much of the time, above your head and stretched out as far as you can possibly reach, which won’t be far enough as it’s nearly as wide as it is high. Muscles I didn’t know I had? Don’t get me started. You’ll find yourself waving this ersatz light sabre around on a regular basis from now until ice cubes start thriving in hell. Are those rusty chain link fences really such an eyesore after all?

This stuff should come with a health warning from the nursery, seriously, my wife gets an allergic reaction to it and comes out all blotchy and that means who has to contend with getting on for 30 metres of the crap? Yep, yours truly. I’m sure it seems like a good idea at the time, a nice warm spring day, much like today, you make an unwary trip to the garden centre and bingo, you’re back home with thirty of the little bastards for sod all money. This stuff is so cheap because the garden centre fully expects to recover the revenue on this loss leader as you go back time after time to buy ever more powerful hedge trimmers to cope with the pox that’s overrunning your previously pristine garden. It’s very seductive I’ll admit; can’t be arsed to rip out that concrete post mounted rusty chain link fence? Just pop in some leylandii and in a couple of years it will be satisfactorily hidden and for about 3 months you’ll think you really gave those bastards at the garden centre the shaft, what will getting it so cheaply. But in no time at all the borders will have disappeared and half of the grassed area and the other half will be brown due to the leylandii sucking all vestige of moisture from the whole of your post code. Something needs to be done, as the stuff is now over 2 metres high you’ll need something to get you up there and when you’re up there you’ll need something to do it some damage. Off back to the garden centre. Sadly they don’t seem to do a line of flame throwers so you’ll have to do with a hedge trimmer, which you will have to operate, much of the time, above your head and stretched out as far as you can possibly reach, which won’t be far enough as it’s nearly as wide as it is high. Muscles I didn’t know I had? Don’t get me started. You’ll find yourself waving this ersatz light sabre around on a regular basis from now until ice cubes start thriving in hell. Are those rusty chain link fences really such an eyesore after all?

Since the emotional disappointment of the last two England games I have been thinking, maybe with a little more clarity about McLaren’s position and performance and that of the England team. One of my very first posts was to bemoan the likely appointment of this man, and this being the case, it is difficult to criticise when he manages to live down to my expectations, no technical or tactical nous, no media savvy, no man management skill worthy of an international manager. He is now being portrayed as a figure of derision in a very similar way to Graham Taylor, however there is one significant difference here in as much as Taylor was appointed, with a fairly solid record of success, to general public and media approval and reasonable expectation, which he then failed to deliver on. Latterly on his watch, I am convinced, the performance level of manager and team were influenced by press criticism, not just the substance but the tone also. Was the expectation of the press that performance would improve due to categorising the manager a ‘turnip’? Or was the only desiderata; sales of newspapers, any other consequences being insignificant?

The parallel here seems to be that, if media invective can degrade a decent manger and team to a poor one, what are the consequences going to be for the current manager and team when starting off from such a low baseline? Despite the support being offered by Terry, Gerrard, Hargreaves and Robinson, and others which I didn’t hear, does he really have the respect of the players? Their mouths say ‘yes’ their performance says ‘Steve who? Was that the guy who used to carry Sven’s spare pair of glasses?’.

And finally, I don’t know what it is that Brian Barwick does in the FA but it must be more than just appoint managers of the national team and therefore he must do the other stuff very well. Nevertheless, as goes McLaren, so goes Barwick. The overseer of the process that appoints someone as unsuitable as McLaren has to share equal responsibility and the FA cannot stay it’s hand no matter what Barwick’s performance in other areas may be.
McLaren watch; still remains 180 minutes of England football.

I suppose that means numb nuts survives to continue to make England the laughing stock of international football for a while longer, yet this result may still be the end of him. The table is so tight as it stands at the moment that goal difference could still come into it and unless we light up Estonia for at least twice tonight’s tally then it could still come back to bite McLaren.

I’m sure, if he has any apologists, they will point out that the substitutions tonight were a little better thought out than at the weekend, Dyer made a difference and Nugent scored, though Defoe spent more time offside than on. And Downing played the full 90 and did nothing but squander possession.

We did come out and play a much more up tempo game in the second half, a much more English game if you will, we will have to wait until June now to see if the sad old dog can learn this ‘new’ trick.

My estimate; 180 minutes from getting his arse handed to him if Barwick can put England football ahead of his ego. First choice?? I wouldn’t make him first choice ‘2nd assistant sponge lifter’© Spike Milligan RIP

Could there be just 45 minutes left in the England managerial career of McLaren, looks like it to me. We should be running these characters off the park, literally. They should not be able to turn around whilst in possession of the ball, without two England players being there to take it off them, the tempo at the moment is quite manageable for Andorra. Gerrard aside there seems to be little energy on display, Downing’s delivery has been abject and if he wasn’t McLaren’s pet he wouldn’t be coming out for the 2nd half. We’ve failed to get Lennon involved, he could pick it up onside the England half and still create havoc but he’s virtually a non-factor. The full backs could make an impact wide but they each have a winger ahead of them and as they move inside it just reduces the space available for Rooney and Johnson even further. If McLaren is not going to take off Downing then Cole needs to go, play Hargreaves a little deeper if a little cover is still required, and bring on Defoe.

But let’s see some energy

Well that’s me all set up, booked day off work on Monday so I can stay up all night Sunday-Monday to watch the season opener, must check the weather forecast for St Louis, the prospect of a rain out is too much to contemplate.

Set up my Fantasy Baseball team at Fantasy Baseball UK, if anyone is looking for a free Fantasy Baseball game have a look at;
http://www.fantasybaseballuk.com/

1st team is free, subsequent teams £4.99 for the season.

Not really sure why I do this, didn’t have time to do research prior to setting initial roster and don’t have time to properly track progress through the season, should anyone wish to pay me £30k p.a. to stay home and watch MLB TV and research player stats I’d be happy to consider taking their money.

I am a baseball fan, I understand that, in this country at least, this makes me some kind of deviant, nevertheless there is nothing that makes me more inclined to couchpotatoness than the national game of the US of A. Besides the self evident hand to eye coordination of a bat and ball game, in most games there is an undercurrent of tactical manoeuvring being fought out and, maybe most surprising to people to have not watched the game, a fair amount of physical contact. The physical contact side of the game has ended many careers and blighted others but is an integral and expected part of the game. This aspect of the game usually occurs at 2nd base when a player trying to reach that base will attempt, with few restrictions on how he goes about it, to try to stop the fielding teams player on 2nd base from making a good throw to 1st base and allow the fielding team to make a double play and record two outs. The other place for bruising is at home plate when one of the batting teams players will try to get home and record a run, the fielding teams catcher, who has a fair amount of protection, usually ends up having to withstand the impact of one of the hitting team who is either trying to dislodge the ball from the catchers grip impact or may try to move the catcher off home plate by sliding in at full tilt with a full complement of studs showing.

It’s not, necessarily, a quick pick up, the tactical side can be subtle and there is a mountain of jargon to decipher, but if you can stick with it for a while, as simply a bat and ball game, the rest of the game might just draw you in. Go on, give it a shot, what’s worst that could happen? The season opens Sunday, 1st April, New York Mets @ St Louis Cardinals and is televised live on five. The Sunday night games are particularly good for anyone new to the game as the presenters, Jon Miller and Hall of Fame, former player, Joe Morgan are always prepared to show their expertise by explaining why who did what or what they should have done but didn’t and even why they didn’t do what they did and what they did instead and why it was wrong, er I think.

Go on give it a go, if you won’t do it for the baseball itself, do it for Channel 5, they need the advertising revenue!

Have I missed something? Has the Labour Party found a new way of slipping out news that they don’t want scrutinised too closely by announcing it between 1a.m. and 2a.m. on the morning the clocks go forward to B.S.T? Still I would have thought that there was more than enough unpalatable announcements that they could have made during this missing hour but they appear to have used it to amend the rules of the forthcoming leadership contest. Fortunately I’m here to make everyone aware that the leadership contest is now a handicap race; how else can the news that Brown’s campaign is to be run by Jack Straw be interpreted? Maybe the only other choice for the job was Piers Morgan, I hear he was fired, again, recently. So, on this assumption, can we expect John McDonnell’s challenge to be run jointly by Bill Clinton and Bill Gates? Bring it on!

Whilst the debate goes on about the necessity, or otherwise, of British Summer Time in general, I want to know if it is a good thing in particular, in particular this year. A bit late to start the debate now as we are 75 minutes into it already, but was this the best move? Whilst it brings us an hour closer to three points for the England football team in Andorra(surely?! Pretty please?), the time when we are going to have to listen to that klutz McLaren again is also that much nearer also, when, in the normal course of events, we could have spent another hour of, say, cutting toe nails, cleaning crud from behind the cooker, finding a plank, and then watching it warp, anything really, to the delay the time when we have to, again, listen to chucklehead bang on about there being no easy games in international football, how difficult it is to play against a team that gets 11 men behind the ball, how we are approaching the end of what has been a long season, key injuries, still in the process of gelling as a team, inadequate management……..no, forget that last one, that’s what everyone else says, that’s what everyone else has been saying from the get go of the McLaren incumbency. There is little chance of it happening but he might as well go now, there was a period that he should have been allowed to see if he was going to get lucky and the problems which had beset the England team were going to be resolved by the removal of Beckham and his three ring circus. Hasn’t happened and he has had all the opportunity an international manager can expect, though not as much as any international manager would want ,to get the team going at something like the level their individual abilities would suggest ought to be the case. There have been training camps, friendly matches and competitive matches and in just about all the team has played down to the expectations of the McLaren management capability. It cannot all be his fault, the players clearly have a responsibility, but having said that, with the group of players available to him, I could have coached the team to achieve the points return from the Euro 2008 qualifiers. I mean, c’mon! When we are looking like we have the chance to break the deadlock and take all three points the first tactical move towards achieving this is to change your right back? What’s that about?

The FA won’t lose face by kicking his sorry arse into touch at this stage of proceedings but if it takes failing to qualify for Euro 2008 in order to ensure that we start the qualification for World Cup 2010 with a new manager, I’ll take that deal right now. Where do I sign?

As someone who used to play cricket, not at any high level, and still enjoys the game from the comfort of an armchair I assumed, when I first heard that the death of Bob Woolmer, that I would have some coherent thoughts to record but learning that the investigation is now a murder enquiry I’m not too sure this is the case. I am old enough to remember him as a capable but, as far as I recall, not tremendously exciting batsman for England and Kent. Went on to be a far more interesting coach, but when interviewed I was always left with the impression of him being serious about cricket, but also quite serious about himself. People who claimed to know him far better than my cursory knowledge of him via the media say differently. All seem entirely confident that he would wish the World Cup to continue, even Alan Donald, who for himself said that he felt it should not, and maybe it is this that spurred Malcolm Speed to, hastily, confirm that it would and in so doing gave great comfort to corporate sponsors and holders of lucrative TV contracts. The people whose voice does not appear to have been heard on this subject today is that of the family, one can only hope that they have been consulted as it is hard to conceive that his death is not in some way connected with the game.

…if you disregard all those future ones he’ll dictate to Ed Balls. I would love to have something deep and pithy to comment on but just have the impression of Brown playing with himself for 50 minutes whilst jerking around all the rest of us, a rather upsetting symbiosis.

I wonder if Brown yet realises how much he is going to miss this annual powerplay should he become the next Prime Minister? It is the ultimate demonstration of overlordship, not just over the people of this country, but his cabinet colleagues, he may well find that he wields far less power as PM. Even if he finds a future Chancellor, prepared to be kept on a very short leash, it still won’t be the same. He certainly has a prime candidate to dangle on the end of this leash, step up to the plate Mr Ed Balls. Please note that is twice I have mentioned Mr B and not a cheap gag in sight, it’s a real struggle though and one that his political opponents and media commentators will only resist for so long as they don’t have my fortitude. I have heard Balls interviewed a couple of times and as an Oxbridge/Harvard man seems strangely disinclined or incapable of explaining the complexity of Govt. economic policy, maybe he doesn’t want to be perceived as talking down to us? Give it time, he’ll get the hang of it. Her was on Five Live this afternoon and Alan Duncan, I believe, chucked a rather gratuitous insult at him and he wasn’t even sure if he’d been dissed let alone having a comeback. Still, I’m sure all those treasury mandarins, joyful at the departure of Brown, will see him right.

So does that make Blair = Trotsky? After being an irritant to Brown for many years he’s about to receive the political ice pick that will make his ears burn. But let’s not extend this infantile analogy too far, maybe more interesting to consider the woefully imprecise use of language by the former head of the civil service? Does the fact that he thought he was speaking off the record, or so he would have us believe, excuse such a crass simile?

Lord Turnbull, perhaps you could fill in a short questionnaire to help our comprehension?

Gordon Brown is; Georgian? Dead? Had a major city named after him? Czar of All the Russia’s (in all but name)? Had millions of his own population put to death in his name? Family name is really Dzhugashvili? Made incompetent command decisions during The Great Patriotic War?

No? What, none of these? OK, I’m struggling little here Lord Turnbull, perhaps you could enlighten me? He was a bit stroppy with you on occassions; he seemed disinclined just to spew out his Civil Service brief? Thank you for that, clearly more than adequate justification for comparing him to one of history’s greatest mass murders. Thanks for clearing that up for us, I certainly know who I’ll be voting for next General Election.

I’m no lover of politicians in general or Brown in particular and I’m quite happy to indulge in any amount of mud slinging and character assassination, that’s my prerogative, but not that of retired civil servants. I really don’t need to hear this crap from someone who should be at home in their very comfortable, suburban dwelling, counting his index linked pension and contemplating what it is that he’s actually achieved since receiving his Oxbridge degree?

Freddie Flintoff got pissed; irrelevant. It is so much simpler than this, he was up at stupid o’clock in the morning in the middle of a tournament in which he was representing his country. The involvement of alcohol is incidental. I’ve heard reports in the last couple of days, some say there was a curfew, some that there was not, so the only distinction here is whether he was letting just himself down or himself and his coach down. This incident is in no way comparable to the post Ashes excess, he had put in a huge effort and performed up to the highest expectations and the job was done. Conclusively.

Take your punishment, climb up on the wagon, go out and support your teammates and push your performance back towards the levels that your talent suggests and then, when the job is done, win or lose, if you still feel the need, go back to bending your elbow.

There does seem to be a section of the media which thinks that this escapade is a reflection on Fletcher, I suspect that this same section of the media, if pressed, would also blame him for the snow flurries we’ve been having recently. Hey guys, if you want rid of him be a man about it and say so, in unequivocal terms, in the meantime, stop stirring up the shit and flagging everything and suggesting that others should take note, with the implication that they should can Fletcher, whilst you write about how he was the best coach the we’ve had in recent times and how the baby is being thrown out with the bathwater. Hypocrites.

Aren’t cell phones great? I appreciate that this is not news to the majority of the populace as, on average, I understand that the latest figures indicate that we have about 416 mobile phones per head of population. Billions of pounds/dollars/euros/yen etc. must have been spent on development of the technologies and capabilities that result in today’s offerings. So might it not have been worthwhile chucking a few cents at development of an accurate and linear battery meter? Every new phone I get I, naively, expect this to have been addressed, certainly not so on Nokia’s E65. After about 28 hours battery meter shows 3 of 6 bars, I send one text message and I am warned I have a low battery, one bar left, should there not have been approximately 6-8 hour progression from 3 to 1? Why is it still beyond the wit of electronic engineers and software developers, who have shown their mettle in cramming enormous capability into a very small form factor, to produce a battery meter worthy of the name. I understand that there is widely variable drain on the battery due to the variety of use that the phone can be put to and it may be that the nature of Lion batteries is that there is a steep drop off as it reaches the end of it’s capacity but if so this must have been profiled and should be capable of being allowed for? C’mon, I would be as well asking an astrologer when it’s going to expire as relying on the meter.

It’s seems that I’m soon going to be riding exactly the same bike as Valentino Rossi, how cool is that? Well, pretty lukewarm actually, when I say the same bike, I mean that our bikes will share a component it seems, but you will struggle to find it in any performance parts catalogue. It seems that ‘The Doctor’, just like yours truly, will be obliged to display a number plate when racing in this country if the Westminster fuckwits have their way. It would seem that the proposed legislation continues to progress towards requiring all motorbikes in this country, no matter where they are used, to be registered and display a plate. And what is the raison d'être for this nonsense? Unregistered mini moto and monkey bike riders who do not display a number plate and prove themselves to be a pain in the arse to all and sundry. That such personages exist is a given but just how will the piece of ill thought out piece of legislation address the issue? How? Does Westminster fuckwit imagine that the targets of this legislation do not realise that they are being a pain in the arse, and once this state of affairs is revealed to them then they will change their behaviour, display a plate, start doing voluntary work, join the Church of England? Errrrr no, not happening, not now, not soon, not by the time I can go on a skiing holiday in Hades.

This piece of proposed legislation does serve to show how out of touch with reality the Westminster village has become and, in the immortal words of the renown sage Sir Humphrey Appleby, demonstrates their concern with activity as substitute for achievement.

Just about fought off the man flu, what a guy.

Yes, remarkable as it seems, Vista continues to flourish on my machine. Did have a bit of a hiccup but think it would have occurred regardless of the OS. Been trying for a while to use Paragon’s Partition Manager to partition and defrag my drives and can’t get it to go, have the latest Vista compatible version, 8.5, but it would do neither. Turns out that the Vista compatible Trend Micro Internet Security software locks the drives and stops Partition Manager doing it’s stuff, but doesn’t tell anyone that it’s doing so, it tells you all about all sorts of other, mostly trivial, stuff but not this rather fundamental issue. Still, all sorted now. Just got to get to the bottom of Nova Backup now and get access to the stuff I thought I had wisely backed up. Still keeps me out of mischief, mostly!

Phone battery performing a bit better after second charge but even charging a battery seems to not be straight forward. Put it on charge after reaching the gutted halibut stage of life and it charged for about an hour and then stopped charging, took it off charge for about 10 mins and put it back on charge and lo, a further hour+ charge went into it and it looks like the performance will just about match that of the 6280, but still not as advertised, i.e. 50%+ improvement. T9 text input does not operate the same as on the 6280 and I have yet to find any settings to change this. Signal reception continues to be problematical, on the up side, connection to my WLAN is a snip but continued surfing on a phone is going to hasten my next visit to the opticians.

Now got my TV hooked up to the PC and have to say Media Centre is very sweet, maybe not a revelation to anyone with Sky+ but for me it’s a great little toy but the recorded programs sure suck up a huge amount of disk space. As time goes on and more and more programs are kept, it won’t be long before I need to add to my 320 Gb hard drive and it’s only about a month ago that I got this and though that it was more than I was ever going to need, by a considerable margin. Was just watching the Zimbabwe-Ireland match before doing this, one of the very best games I’ve seen, not the best teams, not the best cricket, not the biggest crowd, just one of the best games. Would have been nice to record it, but I suspect that recording in it’s self would have accounted for 40-50 Gb. Could be looking at terra byte drives in the not too distant future!!

Still got a cold, could be man flu.

I should have known that my interaction with technology today was too good to be true. My latest Vista upgrade installation celebrated 48 hours of uninterrupted uptime, something of an improvement over the usual 48 minutes that it seemed nearer to averaging since inception. I am, I hope, a fair man, albeit through gritted teeth on occasions, and must admit that had I approached MS, with the problems I had been having, in the first place, then my experience with Vista would have been a much happier one from the get go. On reflection I was too ready to believe, with at least some justification, that MS had rushed out another over priced, over hyped, bloated, unstable heap of warm and steaming manure, and who would want to be in the vicinity of such a structure when it falls over, as it did previously on a regular cycle. A further assumption on my part was that the technical support that would be on offer shortly after launch would be minimal and in extremely high demand, however when I got through, after a not unreasonable period, the lady in the Indian call centre offered excellent advice and with very little prompting offered to ring back whilst a further installation was carried out. Since that time I have not had a single BSOD or lock out. What an unexpected revelation!!

However it does seem that technology is a zero sum game after all. After banging heads with Three over the renewal of my cell phone contract with them, frankly being lied to on at least two occasions, my new phone, a Nokia E65, turns up, a day late, and, like Vista before it, it looks like the canine’s dangly bits. Unfortunately it smells like them as well. The menu structure is not the usual intuitive offering that I’ve come to expect from Nokia; what I have come to expect from them, on Three, is abysmal battery performance and despite claiming an increased life of talk and standby time, over my 6280, of at least 50%, the battery is now on it’s last legs after showing full charge at 3 this afternoon. But maybe the most disappointing aspect is it’s inability to receive the weak signal that Three has around here, again, significantly worse than the 6280.

And I have a cold as well you know.

Should anyone know what it is that goes into this thing I would be grateful if you could keep it to your self. I'm sure I consumed one of these culinary delights many years ago and found it pallatable so when, with limited choice on offer, I purchased another yesterday I wasn't ready for what lay inside. Having fought through the carapace I was presented with congealed, grey slurry which looked like minced offal and mechanically recovered 'meat'. If that was what I wanted I would have gone to the nearby burger chain! I know the Scots have a thing about offal but I'll take my haggis with anyone but this is an export too far! You've been warned.