What does this beauty spot have in common with the England 23 selected to play Ireland on Sunday?
The only other exciting news to report is that Ticht found an old version of AoD still extant.
On the telly this week
Friday 21st February
| Crusaders 33 – 13 Highlanders | 06:05 | Sky Sports Action |
| Wales U20 14 – 11 France U20 | 19:35 | BBC Two Wales / BBC Sport website/ BBC red button |
| Zebre 0 – 28 Munster | 19:35 | FreeSports |
| Edinburgh 41 – 14 Connacht | 19:35 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Ospreys 13 – 21 Leinster | 19:35 | TG4 / Premier Sports 1 |
| England U20 21 – 39 Ireland U20 | 19:45 | RTÉ Two / YouTube / Sky Sports Mix |
| Sale 36 – 3 Leicester | 19:45 | BT Sport 1 |
Saturday 22nd February
| Rebels 34 – 26 Sharks | 03:45 | Sky Sports Action |
| Chiefs 14 – 26 Brumbies | 06:05 | Sky Sports Arena |
| Reds 64 – 5 Sunwolves | 08:15 | Sky Sports Arena |
| Stormers v Los Jaguares | 13:05 | Sky Sports Action |
| Italy v Scotland | 14:15 | ITV |
| Bulls v Blues | 15:15 | Sky Sports Action |
| Wales v France | 16:45 | BBC One / S4C |
| Glasgow v Dragons | 19:35 | Premier Sports 1 |
| Ulster v Cheetahs | 19:35 | Premier Sports 2 |
Sunday 23rd February
| Wales v France (women) | 12:00 | BBC Two Wales / S4C |
| England v Ireland (women) | 12:45 | RTÉ Two / BBC Sport website / Sky Sports Action |
| Exeter v Northampton | 13:00 | BT Sport 1 |
| England v Ireland | 15:00 | ITV |
| Italy v Scotland (women) | 16:10 | BBC Alba / website / red button |
| Cardiff v Treviso | 17:15 | S4C / Premier Sports 2 |
| Scarlets v Southern Kings | 17:15 | Premier Sports 1 |
Ovally Balls 
Craigs – yep, slicing through stomach muscles requires a fair amount of recovery time itself. Me, I’m just horrified by the entire concept of childbirth. AN ALIEN!
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I’m sure that the treatment ‘selling’ is a huge problem in the US tbh.
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Thaum – I’m pretty horrified too tbh. It’s never looked like a good time to me. Although I had a nice time when Mrs Craig’s let me have some gas and air.
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I’ve probably told the horror story before of my friend in the US who was diagnosed with cancer in her late twenties and who – despite having the ‘best’ insurance – died in immense pain, and bankrupt (along with her husband), because she exceeded her lifetime insurance payout in her first treatment, although the docs convinced them that she could be cured by subsequent ones.
Do everything possible to save our NHS.
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Another person I knew was actually not bankrupted by cancer treatments, but only because she was a federal employee and therefore really did have everything paid for. She was still convinced to have horrible treatments when it was clear that it was only prolonging suffering, with absolutely no quality of life.
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Ha, misheard lyrics.
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Thaum – “Do everything possible to save our NHS.”
Our electorate now seem ok with the argument, “Why should a care worker pay tax to educate a doctor?” (the original was taxi-driver, but they do ok)
How long until these self-serving bastards will start to convince people of the argument, “why should a classroom assistants pay for the cancer treatment of a (insert well-paid job of choice)?” ?
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Ticht – indeed, I blame nobody but the electorate for the last election result. There was a clear choice, and they made the wrong one (in England, at least).
Now I’m away to bed.
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Let’s not play fast and loose with the term ‘electorate ‘.
I get it as I’m of the same inclination as to the shit going on in england politically but I’m a member of that electorate and voted against this government along with the majority.
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For clarity, our electorate are not okay with those arguments as a majority. Too many certainly, in my view.
I don’t even think that a majority of people who voted in this government would make those arguments.
I think enough would to get a right wing government into power with our voting system for a while, which is regrettable to me. But it’s not a majority and the latest GE was manipulated into being about something entirely different.
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Sorry, Dova, I meant of course that part of the electorate that voted for the Tory Shower Of Shit.
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“The truth is, and please trust me I am OK and safe now, I was raped and drugged and held captive over some days. Of course I survived. The recovery took time. There’s no light way to say it. But I can tell you in the last decade, the thousands and thousands of days I committed to wanting to feel the sunshine in my heart again, the sun does now shine.”
Fucking hell, this happened to Duffy apparently.
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Well, that killed it.
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Space(X) news:
I look forward to a gold rush, civil war and slavery. *In space!
*On Mars.
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Don’t forget the genocide of the indigenous population.
Those martians are in trouble.
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plus endless showings of ‘My Favorite Martian’.
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Graham out of rest of 6N. Baws. Hope none of our back 3 get injured.
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https://www.civilityinpolitics.org/index.php/news/
Good to see Floella Benjamin in the noms. Even better is Twitter celebrity Simon Hedges in the 3rd category. Am a big fan of his so it’d be unreal if he won.
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“Civility in politics” awards. Boring. This is more like it
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Mat Protheroe will join the Ospreys next season.
Won’t someone please think of Dan Evans?
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I hear rugby is going well down in Argentina.
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Looks like the Italy games are definitely off.
At this rate I can see others getting cancelled too with all the new cases springing up.
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Dova, I just read that the Olympics are under threat
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It seems pretty much out of control now. Cases popping up where they can’t even trace where it came from suggests it’ll be everywhere quite soon.
All a bit shit really.
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Terrible news:
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I’m sure this pandemic thingy is nothing Musk can’t solve with a submarine or something equally clever.
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What’s the story there, Tam?
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Down with pandemics
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‘Slough has been named the best place to work in the UK for the third year running in an annual report.’
*insert comment here*
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‘reasonable worst case scenario’ for coronavirus in UK: 80% of population infected, half a million deid.
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Ireland v Italy off. Hoping to reschedule but they don’t know when, like, see.
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Interesting that they haven’t postponed Dragons v Treviso yet, particularly when you think about what you can catch on a Friday night in Newport.
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ticht, there’s a guy called Trevor Bastard on twitter who runs the twitter account of Streatham Rovers FC, which satirises (non-league) football. It’s pretty good.
From there there have spun out a number of other characters – Robert Zands, Oliver Laughdugry, Sarah Oxford-Laughdugry and Simon Hedges among them. They take the mickey out of very serious remainer types and the kind of journalist/lawyer/landlord who insists on being right and policing other people to quite an extreme degree.
Hedges is the funniest. He’s a bit like a friend of mine who lives in the US now and says things such as ‘I didn’t leave the left. The left left me.’ In the States that’s probably ok because he’s a Democrat. In the UK it’s laughable as he was a Lib Dem.
Hedges set up a (completely imaginary) campaign called #BeKindOnline with a seagull mascot. In time he absconded with all the (imaginary) donations that the campaign had raised. The #BeKindOnline thing is a piss take of the “extremes are horrible and so impolite” thing we’ve been seeing a lot of – Bernie Sanders’ people were getting it the other day – and the idea that everything would be ok again if people and politicians would just be polite. Touchstones are the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony and Tony Blair.
So “he” gets nominated for this nothing award by the people “he”‘s satirising. And they put him on the shortlist without checking out who “he” was.
For me, it’s funny.
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Here’s an article about the Trevor Bastard Extended Universe:
https://theoutline.com/post/8466/trevor-bastard-extended-universe-twitter-art?zd=1&zi=nuc6dxl4
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@tomp
That is glorious.
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“Those martians are in trouble.”
Spent a teenage year or two with Ray Bradbury writing about that very thing.
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“Won’t someone please think of Dan Evans?”
Andy Howells and WalesOnline have done nothing else for years. The only respite was the wanking about Owen Williams being the solution.
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“…particularly when you think about what you can catch on a Friday night in Newport.”
Most everything except a rugby ball?
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Poor Ray. He never did get to finish that history of rugby in Newport he was writing because some spotty teenage bugger kept pestering him to write about bloody Martians.
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Jesus Christ. That TBEU stuff tomp linked to earlier has sent me to this Twitter thread. This full thread is potentially life changing stuff.
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I don’t have a twitter account so I don’t really know how to follow those threads, but the whole TBEU thing is quite spectacular.
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Tomp – that’s hilarious. Especially the 1980s orphanage firebombing. ‘the game was different back then’.
This could be a wealth of toilet reading material.
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Tam, my wife has just shouted me to look at the telly, Chez Fred in Bournemouth is featured in the Harry Redknapp tv show. Harry serving behind the counter.
Good advertising for them
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He produces some stuff for the real world:
https://bastardosports.bigcartel.com/category/stickers-and-badges
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Ha! I’d be wary of handing over any money to him for my takeaway.
He used to own an Italian restaurant in Charminster when I was a kid. One good thing he did was send his kids to a school in Christchurch called Twynham, a comprehensive. The one that went on to play for Bournemouth, Spurs and Liverpool is a year younger than me. At Under 13s we played them twice. Beat them sans Redknapp 9-0 – I scored one of the two goals i managed for my secondary school team. Then when he played it was 3-2.
There were stories that Harry taught him how to “do professional fouls” from an early age.
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Carlo Sartori’s son was in my year at school. Quite good at football.
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Now – that name is a blast from the past…. recall I heard that after soccer, Sartori had a knife sharpening business or was he a locksmith?
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So, to local issues. Embra v Legends tomorrow night, Yos I’m going to take a punt at our line up, we’ll see how close I get at midday
Schoeman, Wilemse, Berghan, Gilchrist, Carmichael, Haining, Crosbie, Mata
Pyrgos, van der Walt, van der Merwe, Scott, Bennett, Sau, Hoyland
Fenton, Bhatti, Nel, South, Barclay, Shiel (please dog let it be Shiel), Taylor, Hickey
If I’m close I’ll be happy with that side, Scott took a belt to the noggin last week and he had almost a year off with concussion, but word earlier in the week was that he will be available.
How are Cardiff faring injury and availability-wise?
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@trisk
Knife sharpening. Big family business apparently. I was at school with his lad for years and it was only as we were about to leave at the end of 5th year I realised he was born in Italy because he told me he was off to do his national service.
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