As I’m w*rking this evening, only time for a quick update on the televised matches.
*Or possibly the one who said they preferred the short ones.
On the telly this week
Friday 6th December
| Enisei-STM 12 – 28 Castres | 16:00 | epcrugby.com |
| Agen 3 – 73 Bordeaux Bègles | 19:00 | epcrugby.com |
| Edinburgh 31 – 20 Wasps | 19:35 | epcrugby.com |
| Bath 17 – 34 Clermont | 19:45 | BT Sport 2 |
Saturday 7th December
| Northampton 16 – 43 Leinster | 13:00 | Channel 4 / BT Sport 2 |
| Lyon 28 – 0 Treviso | 13:00 | BT Sport 3 |
| Toulon 37 – 17 London Irish | 13:00 | epcrugby.com |
| Worcester 34 – 28 Dragons | 15:00 | epcrugby.com |
| Bristol 37 – 11 Stade Français | 15:00 | epcrugby.com |
| Zebre 27 – 24 Brive | 15:00 | epcrugby.com |
| Leicester 59 – 7 Calvisano | 15:00 | epcrugby.com |
| Ulster 25 – 24 Harlequins | 15:15 | BT Sport 2 |
| La Rochelle 24 – 27 Glasgow | 15:15 | BT Sport 3 |
| Munster 10 – 3 Saracens | 17:30 | BT Sport 2 |
| Ospreys 19 – 40 Racing | 17:30 | BT Sport 3 |
| Bayonne 11 – 19 Scarlets | 20:00 | epcrugby.com |
| Cardiff 54 – 22 Pau | 20:00 | epcrugby.com / S4C |
Sunday 8th December
| Gloucester 26 – 17 Connacht | 13:00 | BT Sport 2 |
| Sale 20 – 22 Exeter | 15:15 | BT Sport 2 |
| Toulouse 23 – 9 Montpellier | 15:15 | BT Sport Extra |
Ovally Balls 
Chimpie – Bhopal puts a lot of things in perspective. Absolutely awful thing to have happened.
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Can’t. Bring. Myself. To. Do. Any. Work. For. These. Fuckers….
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He wanted to stop, but these things are so fast that it takes about 6 miles to slow down. They’re basically space rockets with wheels.
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He’d have been half way to Mars before he realised what happened.
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Just found out that Ol Musky called one of his kids ‘Saxon’.
New respect for that man!
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Saxon Musk?
Sounds like a particularly badly thought out bargain basement deodorant.
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I think the Tom Waits interlude sucked the breath out of the blog. I’m half tempted to post some Leonard Cohen to redress the balance.
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So tomorrow is the ‘charity day’ at work where the company donates money to charity, everyone dresses up and starts drinking at breakfast and celebrities come.
Tbh I wasn’t looking forward to it (my general misery and it sounds like a grotesque version of Red Nose Day in The Office) but looking at the list of celebs it looks like I’ll be meeting Serge Betsen, Rory Underwood and *gulp* Kelly Brook.
I’ll ask all 3 the biscuit question.
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Looking, looksy, looks
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Been reading some Czech history and came across a musicologist and writer and, later, a Communist-era apparatchik called Zdenek Nejedly – one of his works was “The Communists—Inheritors of the Grand Progressive Tradition of the Czech Nation”.
Anyway, I said to my missus that his him was funny – my translation was “no food” which I took to mean “hungry” but she said it really means “inedible”. I mentioned this to some of my students today and they said it’s a good name but there are funnier.
There’s Skočdopole (“Jump in the Field”) and Hroch is the same as the word for hippopotamus (this guy’s a hippo: https://www.versobooks.com/authors/820-miroslav-hroch)
But the winner was this guy’s surname https://www.cka.cz/cs/svet-architektury/seznam-architektu/ing-arch-sourek-michal. The translation would be Mickey Scrotum.
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I suppose it’s better than Dicky Scrotum….
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Tomp – there was a guy at a place I used to work at called Igor Fuksmen. He appeared over and over again on lists of system owners (each time to much hilarity) and I once got an automated warning that an email with his name in it contained profanity.
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I remember watching Bhopal documentaries and reportage that placed the scandal full in the public eye decades ago, and at a level where Union Carbide had nowhere else to go other than shame and compensation. And then everyone looks elsewhere and they do fuck all.
It keeps running around in my head that Invasion of the Body Snatchers wasn’t about aliens taking over America, but about America slithering its tentacles into everywhere else because of unconditional trust and media domination.
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And in further gloomy thoughts, this election reminds me of Thatcher’s second and third term combined, with Corbyn emulating Foot’s shabby tramp inviting a good kicking from an S&M electorate aching to punish a convenient Aunt Sally, and themselves.
I remember thinking that no one in their right minds could re-elect Thatcher. Electing Johnson jumps the shark but it is going to happen, and the darkest stain for me will be on the Labour Party for ushering this into reality.
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Leave the biscuit question be Craigs. Take hostages instead.
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With apologies for repeating myself, but my favourite ex-colleague’s name was Phil Officer.
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Ah a steal, like in the old days but done at a trot not a gallop.
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I dunno, Iks, I think it will be close and could even give Labour a small majority.
Reasons for hope: everywhere Spaffer goes, there are protesters, and people heckling him. Everywhere Corbyn goes, there are large crowds and he succeeds in engaging with people, most unlike Spaffer. Voter registrations are way up, especially amongst younger voters.
I’m sending the Jonathan Pie video that Ticht posted the other day to everyone I can think of who ‘just can’t vote for Corbyn’ and might let the Tory in here.
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@tomp
My Dad has been looking into our family tree. Looking at the late 19th century it appears that we are descended from a family called “Octagon”. These lot were very poor, probably fairly recent Irish immigrants so my pet theory is that they may have been illiterate and really called O’Naughton or O’Loughlin or summat, but the bloke doing the census couldn’t understand what they were saying, plus they couldn’t write it themselves. So he wrote down what he thought he heard them say.
I need to go on Who Do You Think You Are to confirm.
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Nice of Ticht to put his private whisky collection up for sale…
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Bollox – put the link in!
Too much (or not enough) whisky…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-50672313?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/scotland&link_location=live-reporting-story
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I’d go on that but would fear that I’m related to a bastard Irish magistrate who told the poor to fuck off when they asked for a small reduction on their rent.
“A landlord class, descendants of, and successors to, the Elizabethan and Cromwellian planters exacted from the Irish farmers the last possible penny in rent. Failure to pay on the appointed day meant starvation on the roadside or the emigrant’s ship to America.
“(The saying “rent for the landlord or food for the child”) demonstrates clearly what in the opinion of the Irish mother, were the most pressing needs.
“Landlordism reached the peak of its infamy around 1880. Donegal had its Lord Leitrim; Tipperary its Woodcock Garden, while the tenant-farmers of Clonakilty district had to deal with Bence Jones of Lisselane; Francis Bennett, Magistrate; and Miss Hungerford of the Island. Rents were high; prices were low. Evictions were the order of the day.”
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Yos
just watched Blues? Pau
So, Ben Thomas.
Is he the Messiah?
He looked very assured.
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Thaum
Everywhere Corbyn goes, there are large crowds
I was part of a large crowd on Saturday in cold, damp, windy West Wales. He is a very good public speaker, and was apparently even more lovely, post-event, talking with the local organisers. He shook my friend’s hand and now his arthritis is cured! (my friends not JC).
And then there’s his initials.
In the bag.
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Turns out I knew the local man confirmed dead in the eruption. Met him when I worked in the chartered club, played pool with him a couple of times and played golf with his brother a number of times. Also know his dad. Hayden, the dead guy, was a nice bloke but I guess working on the tourist boats that went out to Whakaari (White Is) had an inherent level of danger. He had been on the boat that caught fire a few years ago and was highly commended for his actions in that instance.
I wonder if we’ll see Jacinda in the restaurant today… we’re a bit busy at lunchtime but she might get a table if she’s still in town this evening.
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TomP – I have at least one absolute bastard in my family tree. Probably a lot more, by sheer weight of numbers.
On the other hand, apparently I’m descended from Gráinne Ní Mháille. Now there was a woman.
On the other side of the family, it seems they were all sheep-rustlers.
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Some very senior media people need to have a good think. Johnson is asked a question about an emotive issue by a TV reporter, he doesn’t answer, refuses to look at the picture, pockets the journalist’s phone (I honestly cannot believe he did that) and finally looks. The Tories send Matt Hancock, Health Secretary, to the Leeds hospital that was the place the picture had been taken. There’s a bit of a stand-off. The BBC and ITV Political Editors note on Twitter that senior Tories have told them that one of his Hancock’s advisers was punched by a protestor.
The adviser wasn’t punched.
Meanwhile, over the weekend the Sun, the contemptible Sun, publish a web of dangerous Far Left and some dead French “post-modernist” philosophers crackpots that are going to take over the country should Corbyn win. Remarkably (and I mean genuinely remarkably), this information was sourced in part from a group called Aryan Unity.
Some journalism is good. The stuff that doesn’t treat it like a horse race or a boxing match. The journalism that knows stuff. Like Hannah Miller from ITV North West: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4xwIH8sYic
And this is a serious interview with Emma Dent Coad, MP for Kensington, who may end up losing her seat this week:
https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/12/defend-emma-dent-coad
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ElS – sorry to hear that. Such a shocking thing to happen. Apparently the entire Bay of Naples is still very much volcanically active.
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Any doctors in your family?
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TomP – Marina Hyde was pretty good on the phone incident today.
And this is interviewer with more ovallyballs than anyone on the Beeb:
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Good, isn’t he?
Reminds me of a young Gav with his neat all court game and, particularly, his running style. Can play 10 and 15 just as well as he plays 12. We’ll see a lot more of him.
Legend.
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I’m sorry to hear that, El Suavo, it’s a terrible loss of life.
This pales besides it, but I got your Christmas card, thanks very much, it cheered me up, not that I was low about anything, but it was a nice surprise, thanks, mate.
Re the Liverpool fans and their Labour banners at the game the other day, I read today that Anfield has been ruled out as an international venue for next summer’s warm up matches for Euro 2020, due in part to Liverpool refusing to cave in on their ban on Sun “journalists. They were said to have been given an ultimatum of “no Sun, no game” and Liverpool said, “no game”.
There is a lot to like about Liverpool FC.
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I’m coming out of retirement to play in a charity match next year. This will be my final ever proper match.
I’m going to be awesome.
Just need a bit of fitness work. Skillz need no work.
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Stop me if I’ve told this one before, but our English teacher was talking about names one day and how they often came from the trades people had done in the past, hence Smith, Cooper, Fletcher etc
He also said old Norse-based names often reflected characteristics, citing a guy named Sweat-in-bed,
though that is obviously a translation
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BRB – I went to see Corbyn speak during the 2017 campaign. Yes, he is a good speaker, and hell yes, he knows how to engage with ordinary people. Compare and contrast with Spaffer and May, who have all their ‘public’ events in closed, pre-vetted environments, and still manage to fuck up massively.
Went to see Emily Thornberry speak a couple of weeks ago, and she was also very good. She definitely passes the ‘like to have a pint (or five) with’ test; she has a wicked wit.
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I hadn’t read this article by Daniel Trilling about the contemptible Sun piece when I posted earlier, but here it is:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/09/sun-publish-far-right-conspiracy-theory-labour
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Sorry to hear that suav
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Thaum, the interviewer could have perhaps told the fuckwit that despite nine years of austerity polices and draconian cuts, the national debt has increased from £1Tn in 2010 to £1.8Trn, an 80% increase under his government’s stewardship, or from just over 60% of GDP (which is about the maximum recommended) to well over 80% of GDP
That money went somewhere.
They are really shit at the things they claim to be good at https://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_national_debt_analysis
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I used to work with Wayne Kerr.
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Yosoy
Just need a bit of fitness work. Skillz need no work.
You are THE HASK and I claim my free dumb-bell.
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Ticht – I know, it’s a losing battle convincing people that the Tories always, always, always increase the debt. They simply don’t believe it.
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I used to work with Leong Dong. He was a right prick, too.
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Probably you all know the etymology of the word Tory, but here’s a reminder:
I can’t find any evidence that ‘toe-rag’ is of the same origin, but I continue to believe it anyway. :-p
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Ticht,
Klopp:
“I’m on the left, of course,” Jürgen Klopp notes, as relayed by journalist Raphael Honigstein in his new book about the Liverpool manager. “More left than middle. I believe in the welfare state. I’m not privately insured. I would never vote for a party because they promised to lower the top tax rate.”
And the great Shankly:
“The socialism I believe in isn’t really politics. It is a way of living. It is humanity. I believe the only way to live and to be truly successful is by collective effort, with everyone working for each other, everyone helping each other, and everyone having a share of the rewards at the end of the day. That might be asking a lot, but it’s the way I see football and the way I see life.”
And about Jock Stein’s Celtic:
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@yosoy
The number of families living at a single address suggests they didn’t have the right income to be doctors so it’s unlikely.
Once grammar schools became accessible after WWII it it did lead to a glut of my family members becoming teachers, for reasons unfathomable.
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BB, there was another whisky collector thing in the news recently https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-50516099
I keep a couple of bottles for special occasions, but I really don’t see the point in collecting the stuff, it’s for drinking with friends, or with people who will become friends.
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Everton mid-80s side gets better every year. Andy Gray excluded. Well, Big Nev Southall and Peter Reid mostly. No idea about the others.
Also, Man Utd legend Gary Neville joining the dots between the rhetoric of some politicians and acts of racism at football games.
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A musical interlude, just ‘cos:
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It’s Canadian artists’ night:
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‘I once got an automated warning that an email with his name in it contained profanity.’
Scunthorpe council had no end of trouble with email filters at one point
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