Everything will be all right tonight. Everything will be all right tonight. Or so I keep telling myself, as Ulster prepare to turn and face the strain of Leinster at the RDS. Let’s hope that Ulster can put Big Brother under pressure. It’s simple, really: all we have to do is win. But hope, boys, is a cheap thing, cheap thing: we are the dead.
While Ulster have lost Stockdale to injury, one South Effrican is back for us.
But one of Them has apparently recovered from yet another head injury.
Give me steel, give me steel, give me pulsars unreal
In other news – newsman wept (with joy) as he told me – a familiar face is returning to Cardiff.
Someone’s back in town the chips are down
I just cut and blackout
I’m under Mulvihill’s influence and my honour’s at stake
Today is David Bowie’s birthday, in case anyone was wondering.
Onna telly this week
Friday 8th January
| Glasgow v Edinburgh | 19:35 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Leinster v Ulster | 19:35 | TG4 / Premier Sports 1 |
| Bath v Wasps | 19:45 | BT Sport 2 |
| Sale v Worcester | 20:00 | BT Sport Extra |
Saturday 9th January
| Zebre v Treviso | 13:00 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Newcastle v Gloucester | 14:00 | BT Sport 2 |
| Griquas v Cheetahs | 14:30 | Sky Sports Arena |
| Exeter v Bristol | 16:30 | BT Sport 2 |
| Western Province v Sharks | 17:00 | Sky Sports Arena |
| Dragons v Ospreys | 17:15 | S4C / Premier Sports 1 |
| Cardiff v Scarlets | 19:35 | S4C / Premier Sports 1 |
| Connacht v Munster | 19:35 | TG4 / Premier Sports 2 |
Sunday 10th January
| Harlequins v London Irish | 15:00 | BT Sport 1 |
Saturday 16th January
| Glasgow v Edinburgh | 17:15 | Premier Sports 1 |
Ovally Balls 
@ticht
Two questions:
a) is your daughter still thinking about doing a PhD?
b) if so she is interested in getting fully funded to do something in the digital economy, perhaps with a sustainability/people/ethics angle at a university based in London?
I have a collaborator looking for people in the above. She’s great – design engineer by background, branching out into all kinds of interesting stuff.
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Craigs, isn’t that the story of most ‘modern’ political parties. Stuffed to the gills with pollsters, advisors, lobbyists, analysts, soothsayers, naysayers, yes-men, arse-lickers, policy wonks, wonky policies, schemers, scammers, cronies and the corrupt, flotsam and jetsam of failed corporate wannabees, dogmatic intolerants and a sprinkling of sparkly-smiled, immaculately coiffured snake-oil salesmen to give gloss to the dross?
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OT, thanks, and yeah she does want to do a PhD, I’ve just shown her your post.
However she wants to pursue her interest in mental healthcare, so is more looking at projects in that field.
Thanks again for thinking of her though.
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Did we do this already?
James Lang and Glen Young are leaving Quins to join Edinburgh next season and this morning’s news is that Coo Face is going home to Glasgow from Wuss.
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@ticht
Not a problem. Fingers crossed – hope the right thing crops up for her!
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Ticht, fleeing the English clubs in anticipation of Scotexit?
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@tich. Saw that yesterday.
Think Lang is good news. Young no idea about, seems a like for like for Davidson which all seems odd.
The weedge really need Weir I think.
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Along with a few others
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Fair play to Tomas Francis leaving Exeter – they have done well for each other.
There is writing on the wall ‘tho as I think he is dropping down the order at the club.
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Deebs, haha, I hope so.
Chimpie, I haven’t watched Quins much of late but I’m told Young is a bit lightweight but he’s a very good lineout operator and very handy in the loose.
His tackle stats are Johnny-esque too.
Cockers will put a stone on him in the gym if he’s deemed lightweight.
I thought Lang did pretty well in the game v Wales, he seemingly wants to concentrate on playing 12 rather than being a utility player and back up 10.
What I wouldn’t give for Marcus Smith to move to Edinburgh.
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I see that serious political debate hasn’t been threatened with homework. Whoever said Refit’s right is right as is Refit.
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Deebs – of course but the perception of the Dems seems to be extreme. Especially when compared to GOP.
Not sure why tbh.
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cos they’re dog-darned commies
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The Little One goes to a nursery school when the global pandemic doesn’t make it a particularly stupid idea for her to do so. Last week they contacted everyone and if you still wanted your child to attend you had to make a very strong case for them to be able to go. So far so sensible. Little One obviously isn’t going and the numbers there were properly kept down. Today they’ve written to everyone again. They’re still advising that you should keep your child at home, but making it very clear that they can attend if you would like them to (no justification required). This is because the Department for Education have decided that they will not pay for any funded children who don’t attend. This covers the vast majority of 3 and 4 year olds in England for at least some of their childcare as everyone gets so many free hours. The nurseries effectively can’t afford for people not to send their kids. The Little One still won’t be going, but the situation is ridiculous.
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Interestingly enough, somewhat bizarrely, a friend recently gave me a recent ish copy of the Marxist review, with reports on the Green New Deal, as proposed by Ocasio-Cortes and Bernie Sanders. They have some fairly left wing views, tbh.
I think that some of the programs that Biden is talking about concerning renewables, and the targets for introduction, as well as the support and re-education for those communities and individuals that currently earn their income from fossil fuel based industries are only achievable if there is a massive redistribution of wealth. Think he is promising things that he or (most of ) his party have no intention of delivering, but if they are going to, it may be not too far off the mark to paint them as communists.
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Sbt – is there a section where people who don’t want to work are supported? I heard that but it was flagged in my bs filter.
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Mrs CMW got in touch with the nursery to ask if there was any way we could claim the Little One was going there without her actually doing so to make sure they got the money for her. Apparently a load of other parents asked the same thing. Turns out that by having told us we can send her there they do now get the money*. That leaves the ‘only’ downside being that a few (thankfully not many) more people are now sending their kids.
*This is a relief to us on another front as it means that Mrs CMW will definitely get the money for ‘funded’ childmindees whether they come here or not which could have become an issue.
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‘the support and re-education for those communities and individuals that currently earn their income from fossil fuel based industries are only achievable if there is a massive redistribution of wealth.’
There’s been a massive redistribution of wealth from lower incomes to the already wealthy in recent decades, which only seems to be getting greater. Somehow it’s ‘communism’ when it flows the other way.
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All sounds suspiciously commie-ish CMW.
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it was all about the commies when I was a nipper in the 80s. The fall of the USSR ruined that for a while.
Now if you suggest having a functioning health system that provides actual healthcare you’re a commie.
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@Chimpie – During the original lockdown childcare providers got the money even if they closed to everyone bar keyworkers and vulnerable kids. Think it was something to do with stopping the spread of the deadly virus, that sort of thing. This time they don’t. Nobody knows why (Priti Patel certainly wasn’t explaining why ‘the rules’ are less strict yesterday) although I guess the decision last time round probably was too communistical or something.
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Anyway I thought what people wanted was “career politicians who say and do the things they think people want”. Got to be electable. Cough.
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Something that is sort of communisty but isn’t really working is that state funding of childcare for 3 and 4 year olds. It would work fine if they actually paid the going rate though (or if they preferred they could provide the childcare rather than paying not quite enough for it).
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I’m still reeling from this revelation of craigs’s that there seems to be a Democratic party machine. Why have i never heard of this before?
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Anyway, “diagonalism” is where it’s at if you’re that way inclined:
https://bostonreview.net/politics/william-callison-quinn-slobodian-coronapolitics-reichstag-capitol
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““diagonalism” is where it’s at if you’re that way inclined”
I’ve already done dividing fractions today thanks.
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@cmw
I am currently having significant disagreements with the way the curriculum expects primary school teachers to teach multiplication and division. Too much faffing. Get to the point.
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@OT – The multiplication exercises my daughter in Year 3 is doing certainly go on interminably, long after she’s got the point. Some of the stuff the older one is doing doesn’t strike me as very worthwhile, but most of it so far is OK. I’ve probably got more frustrations with some of the things they have to do in English to be honest.
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Tomp – ‘snot my opinion. I was talking about Mericans. Although, it sort of is my opinion too.
They have a habit of picking the worst kind of candidates. Obama was an outlier but even he had to beat Hillary who was seen as the next best candidate. And she’s fucking awful.
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OT/CMW – for some reason my kids love this shit. I don’t know why but I can put them in another room whilst they learn maths.
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Craigs could become a bison ranger:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/13/wildlife-rangers-in-uk-jobs-offer-no-bison-experience-required
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Bison ranging via accountancy. Pretty sure Monty Python thought of that first.
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Compare and contrast with the Republicans who stand in their primaries and who get selected for the nomination, craigs. Their last 4 nominees have been an easily-manipulable idiot crusader, a man who never saw a problem he couldn’t bomb, a private equity sociopath and Trump.
It was more that it’s a common way of talking about the Democratic party leadership. This is from the painfully centrist Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/bernies-rage-against-the-machine/473763/
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@BRB, all wise men come from the East, my lad, and the wisest from East of Cardiff!
I love Liam, because he is a great rugby player, and also because he is a rough diamond from a working class background.
I watched his red card incident, and at first I thought ‘oh come on, that is hardly one of those reckless flying missile clear-outs’. But then I saw the slo-mo and it was head on head. He really needs to show more awareness, giving him the benefit of the doubt that he didn’t see what was in front of him (I’m not convinced of that).
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@tomp
Obama was a Democrat.
Ahem.
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@cmw
As if by magic this has just appeared on the internet. This is exactly the point I was making earlier!
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Through gritted teeth I’ll say “Iran deal” for Obama and for the other one:
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@tomp
Let’s just say there’s a weird pro-bomb lobby that has members in both Republican and Democrats. I really have no idea why they are obsessed with bombing (most recently Iran) but they are.
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Don’t want to lose troops and Iran was theirs and was lost. It’s the Cuba of the Middle East.
There’s a terrific chapter in Richard Lachmann’s First-Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship all about the US military, In very short, they’re shit and can only win wars in places like Granada. Plus, they’re milking the state for everything they can get. I’ll look up the figures about high-ranking officers in a bit. It’s ridiculous.
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Tomp – what OT said. Also, I didn’t mean that the GOP were better. Clearly not. They’re a bunch of nut cases (sorry Beadle).
But if we’re going there, I’m the last election the Dems had a weirdo billionaire (Bloomberg), a wannabe native American (Pocahontas) and a woman who made her career being tough on drugs offences (OTs fave Harris). Some choice given that Bernie was always an outsider.
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@OT – you may be more up against it than I am then as they quite like column addition, subtraction etc at our kids’ school.
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Iks
@BRB, all wise men come from the East, my lad, and the wisest from East of Cardiff!
Erm, that would include London. And that’s clearly wrong.
Hillary Clinton was also very much on the bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran bandwagon. If there’s one thing to say in Trump’s favour, it’s that he didn’t start any new wars in the Middle East – or actually, anywhere else either. A disaster of a president for anyone living in the US, but not so bad for foreigners. Well, at least those forriners who weren’t seeking to enter the US, or (gasp) already there.
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@thauma
That’s right. The first US president since Carter not to start a foreign war I believe.
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That’d be forriners with a ‘funny tinge’, of course. He seems to be A-okay with white Scottish and Slavic immigrants.
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OT – hmm, Carter was also a one-term president. Coincidence?
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In case the phrase on that whiteboard doesn’t work its magic and bring Brookter back I guess someone had better post this (I know Lehrer is on about something of its time, but it still has to be done):
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Can’t help wondering what counts as starting a war.
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CMW – that bore an astonishing resemblance to the Alice’s Restaurant Massacree.
I found the opposite when I was doing my algebra homework and Dad (an engineer, so pretty good at maths) was ‘helping’ me with it. The system I was taught was pretty straightforward, but Dad insisted on writing out, longhand, let x = the number of red beans in the jar, and y = etc etc, and his solutions were much more long-winded.
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