Little bitta English Premiership … women’s Six Nations.
Onna telly this week
Friday 16th April
| Northampton v London Irish | 19:45 | BT Sport 1 |
Saturday 17th April
| Sale v Gloucester | 12:30 | BT Sport Extra |
| Exeter v Wasps | 12:30 | BT Sport 3 |
| Ireland v France (women) | 14:15 | BBC iPlayer/Red Button; RTÉ Two |
| Scotland v Italy (women) | 17:00 | BBC iPlayer/Red Button |
| Newcastle v Bristol | 17:00 | Channel 5 / BT Sport 3 |
| Harlequins v Worcester | 17:00 | BT Sport Extra |
Sunday 18th April
| Bath v Leicester | 15:00 | BT Sport 3 |
Ovally Balls 
Blimey, a quick google for Tucker Carlson shows that he calls support for Georg Floyd, “an attack on civilisation”
The jury were “intimidated” into that verdict, according to him.
He’s accusing the media of “lynching” Derek Chauvin, without seeing the horrendous ironing of that comment, apparently.
Fox has to take full responsibility for letting a total ringpiece like that on their air
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George Floyd, even
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Tomp – cheers. I’m glad my previous rants on this subject have been forgotten.
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I quite miss the old Supersport TV coverage. I got into the Zambian premier league for a short time as it was often on in the lulls between rugby matches on a Saturday.
The best thing, though, was how they always used the nicknames of the English clubs in preview clips for upcoming games so it would be “Can the Toffeemen maintain their recent run of good form when they play host to the Cottagers?”
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ticht, they do take full responsibilty and he did have a cooling-off period a few years back when he was off air after downplayng white supremacist violence. However,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanberr/2020/08/29/why-fox-news-pays-a-price-to-stick-by-tucker-carlson/?sh=542b5f25ba9c
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Those revenue numbers are staggering and frightening. In more ways than just the numbers – how many companies are there that are happy to identify with a prick like that?
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So people will only watch that channel if it airs extreme racist views?
That’s the demographic the advertisers want to reach?
It looks to me like something is very badly broken if that is the case.
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GB News starts soon, ticht, so we’ll see how it plays out in the UK.
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I know, I imagine it will start right of right and only go to the right from there.
Andrew Neil and Piers Morgan will start by saying they are the “common sense” broadcasters, then they will start baiting “wokeness”.
It will be a total shitshow and will only serve to make discourse even more polarised than it is.
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GB News co-owner Andrew Cole to John McTernan when McTernan was a Labour Party advisor –
“You really are an offensive little man,” Cole wrote, according to McTernan’s bemused account to his Twitter followers. “Left-wing moron to the core. We do NOT want more illegals in this country and your views are so sickeningly extreme it’s astonishing you get any airtime.
“I truly despise people like you. Go back to your Left-wing Scottish highlands: or better still go and live in Merkel’s Europe. We do not want you.”
On the Gruan:
The Guardian is a “disgusting extremist rag”, he has written, while Bloomberg is “very suspect” and “almost unreadable”. “Journalism has one problem alone – political bias,” he explained on LinkedIn.
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I’m glad Chauvin went down but was bracing myself for an acquittal based on reasonable doubt given that they had to prove that it was murder rather than an accident.
I read somewhere that it was due to ‘malevolent afterthought’ or extreme disregard for human life. Must have been tough to prove something like that. Do we know whether Chauvin will appeal?
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Tight – just ignore it. The less outrage and coverage it generates, the better.
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These guys are normally good value and their most recent show is a neat guide:
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/know-your-enemy-the-rush-limbaugh-show-with-nicole-hemmer
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A public sector worker described as the “king of absentees” by the Italian press is said to have broken the national record by allegedly skipping work for 15 years.
Absolute legend.
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“Must have been tough to prove something like that.”
I thought there was a film.
“Do we know whether Chauvin will appeal?”
Some suggestion that media coverage etc might be used as grounds to do so.
There is of course still the sentencing and then the trial of the other three policemen which I would think is just as interesting in terms of setting precedent and any impact all this might have on police behaviour over there.
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it’s difficult to argue lack of intent when you’re filmed kneeling on someone’s neck for 9 minutes or whatever it was as they say ‘I can’t breathe’ then losing consciousness. Was he handcuffed too? Considering there were other police present it’s not like he was on his own & in fear of being attacked or something.
Considering this is the US though it’s a result, there have been weirder verdicts.
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Nobody’s mentioned Jim Steinman’s passing I see? Absolute legend. Love this bit from the Graun tribute:
He also announced that the Pandora’s Box album had been inspired by a scene in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights where Heathcliffe exhumed Cathy’s corpse and “danced with it on the beach in the cold moonlight”. It should be added that this scene seems to have existed entirely in Steinman’s head – nothing like it happens in Brontë’s book. But then, Jim Steinman seemed very much the kind of guy who might read Wuthering Heights and decide it needed amping up a little.
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A mate of mine loves Jim Steinman and is currently rather upset at his passing. Just to put it in perspective my mate also loves Chris de Burgh because “he invented soft rock”
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To me Steinman may well be the Ed Wood of music in his fantastical, fanatical over the top, balls to the wall productions, except that whilst Wood was manic and a failure, Steinman blew the shit out of rock music. I genuinely love his stuff and now learning that he was in volved with Sisters of Mercy is the icing on the cake. His stuff was completely over the top but that’s what was so great.
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Chris se Burgh is not in my collection.
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Cmw/Chimpie – but can you prove intent from that film beyond reasonable doubt? Rather than negligence and manslaughter*. I think this is where the ‘malevolent afterthought’ comes in but I wouldn’t be surprised if this came up in an appeal.
Anyway, a lengthy prison sentence is the right result IMO.
* this isn’t an argument either way but if I intended to kill someone, I wouldn’t do it slowly, in front of a crowd of filming onlookers. I can’t put myself in the mind of Chauvin unless he really just didn’t give a fuck either way which is perhaps the most likely scenario.
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@Craigs – My understanding is that “extremely reckless disregard for the value of human life” is one of the things that make it 2nd degree murder in the US rather than manslaughter. On the face of it this doesn’t sound that difficult to demonstrate in this instance though of course without any knowledge of the legal technicalities and precedent etc that make up what qualifies as such it is of course hard to say for sure. I would have thought Chauvin’s actions very clearly had a significant chance of killing Floyd, other people present (including notably Floyd and I think one of the other police officers yet to go on trial (?)) apparently thought so and informed him, he was in no danger from Floyd and Floyd died. Surely it would be open and shut if he hadn’t been a police officer?
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Cmw – I agree on all of that. Be interesting to see if anything changes long term.
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Seeing as I have oven, I’m doing my 5th bbq inna row.
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Have no oven
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no havee oveneee……………..
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Slade – How’s the chimney?
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Karl
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charred!
all quotes accepted by loss adjuster.
Fortunately we are on a ‘replace as new policy. In France (can’t remember how it works in the UK) the expert then deducts ‘vetuste’ (delapidations) – at an average 22%.
Hopefully the insurance co then accepts his recommendation and pays us 78% of the estimated repair/replacement value immediately.
I then hand over any invoices as I receive them – paying the invoice from funds advanced. When required payments accumulate to over 78% I apply to Ins Co for more money.
Seems like everyone knows/assumes insurance quotes are padded!
Now melding repairs into complete rebuild of kitchen/diner……………………..
Jackhammers arrive 3rd May
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I liked a bit of Steinman bombast, it was fun on the radio and telly.
I’ve probably been here before, but I can make a small defence of CdeB. I saw his debut on the Old Grey Whistle Test. Whispering Bob did a bit of embiggening and then the lad sang a couple of songs, acoustic guitar only. It was a ‘wow’ live moment because he sang with a big, emotive impressive voice and the tunes were good.
I duly bought his debut ‘…Castle Walls’ album and the thing was slathered in strings and syrup. Shame really. I still think Borderline is a cracking ballad, but there we are.
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Seems like everyone knows/assumes insurance quotes are padded!
When we claimed for our old greenhouse, we found a guy who had 2 companies. One gave a higher quote to guarantee that the insurance chose the other. He was the classic, lovable rogue personality type too.
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Don’t mind the occasional tune for CdeB. Although NOT Lady In Red. Did see him live many moons ago in one of the SECC caverns. Seem to remember he put on a very professional show – even Mrs BB was there (and getting her to a gig was as rare as Scotland wins at Twickenham).
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*Real Cricket Match Report*
WIXII (Luxembourg convention observed) vs Ben Johnson, Sunday 18th April, Yorkshire Gentlemen’s Club, Escrick Park
Prosaic answers to what seem like interesting questions:
Ben Johnson? Not an olympic drugs cheat, a character actor in Peckinpah westerns or a misspelt 17th century playwright. Also ten more of him than it sounds like there might be though my kids took some convincing on this front. Actually the former works team of a now defunct printworks. I think the original company still exists in some altered form, but not in the employing hundreds of people way and I believe the link between the company and the cricket club is pretty much entirely gone.
Yorkshire Gentlemen? The only person I know who plays for them is a Saffer so draw your own conclusions. Beautiful setting in the grounds of Queen Margaret’s School for Girls which is somewhere you wouldn’t want to be turning up to without your horse.
And why do The Yorkshire Gentlemen play their cricket at a girls’ school? The cricket club on the estate predates the school moving to the site. No other reason.
We normally don’t start for another week or two and this was a week before Ben Johnson’s league season starts so in some sense it was a warm-up match for both sides. Some debate as to whether it was a first class fixture (i.e. counting towards the all-time averages) as it was agreed that you couldn’t be out first ball and that both teams would bat the agreed 30 overs regardless of anything else. A view was taken that we’d wait and see, not of course that anyone would want to reserve judgment until we knew who had made the 25 not out that was the unusually low retirement mark…
Johnson won the toss and chose to bat and were off to a poor start losing a wicket to the first ball of the second over, new ‘fast’ bowler Asher Haynes taking out middle stump despite losing his footing and ending up in a heap as he let go. He took another soon after. This meant that the two batsmen at the crease were both players who sometimes turn out for us though they have also played a lot of cricket against us, particularly ‘Yorkshire Gentleman’ Phil Holland who while not quite acquiring nemesis status has often been a thorn in our side with both bat and ball and is very much at the top end of things in terms of people we sometimes call on to beef our side up. Holland raced to 24, but was then also bowled by Haynes leaving Anderson to continue to retirement in a more conservative fashion. The Ben Johnson skipper who was next in also made his 25* though he was a lucky man to do so, Welly leg-spinner Warlow dropping a caught and bowled, but in so doing knocking the ball on to the stumps to run out the other batsman backing up. Opening bowler Smith returned late on to pick up a couple of wickets, both the same player – first ball and not first ball. Ben Johnson closed on 147/6 which was respectable from our point of view.
It quickly became apparent that we were not going to be successful in our run-chase as we lost the two Smiths in our top three early on. Despite some strong hitting from Wells (18), who was playing on one leg against everyone else’s judgment following a ruptured ACL last year for which he is still awaiting an operation, the run rate was never really up there and we were 41/5 at the halfway mark. I was in soon after that and also found myself bogged down against some tight bowling on a pitch with uneven pace and bounce. I didn’t really get going until Holland came on, still really too good for me, but after an edge for four over third slip the previous over I managed the unlikely feat of hitting him back past his head for four, something I’ve never done before and am unlikely to repeat. I squirted and clubbed the rest of the way to 25, the only Welly batsman to get there though the third Smith might well have done so had he got in a bit sooner. A couple of the lower order got some quickish runs and we finished 109/9 off our 30 overs.
Ben Johnson were excellent hosts and it was a beautiful day at a lovely ground even if I did have to suppress the urge to break into the old country house to party like a weasel. Both teams probably got most of what they needed in terms of remembering how to play the game for the season ahead and of course it gained first class status in the end.
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Very good, CMW. Old Ben Johnson got you giving everyone a name.
Not sure breaking and entering at a girls boarding school is quite sensible so pleased you changed your mind.
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Some of it might not be quite correct as I don’t take the scorebook home, but Ben Johnson was in plenty of John Ford films as well as the Peckinpah ones and the legend is now fact.
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The Middle One was very disappointed I didn’t get to go into the school as she is a massive devotee of boarding school books. She insists she’s going there and has saved more than £60 towards this apparently inevitable eventuality. She was also at the forefront of the ‘Ben Johnson is a better player than all of your team put together’ quips so has probably finally realised she’s not going to be getting any help from me on that front.
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Dundee United beaten 3-0 last night. Stupid bastards.
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How can you play cricket is the age of covid? Still, you might actually catch something…
Nice read CMW -ta.
Ben Johnson was a very likeable actor. He took a heck of a larruping from Alan Ladd in Shane, but helped him in the end. And he helped Mighty Joe Young rescue all those poor orphans!
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Well, ROG into the top job (albeit strangely termed ‘head of team’) at Stade Rochelais – gonna be “weeping and gnashing of teeth” amongst those who had him – in their dreams – as their top target to replace van Graan (or Farrell – take your choice)
https://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/rugby/arid-40272176.html
Certainly, if they were looking at ROG and wondering – doubtful they could afford to pay off vG and La Rochelle
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Iksy, not sure if I mentioned it but I watched the Albert Finney film Gumshoe last year. It’s patchy but good* but there’s a lot of racist language in it. There was one scene in which Finney’s character calls Oscar James’s character Mighty Joe Young. I didn’t get the reference so had a quick google and found it wasn’t what I’d expected.
* Lots of good images of Liverpool and London in the early 70s plus some good performances. Fulton McKay as usual is very good value.
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@Iks – I think the general feeling is that there is considerably less risk to it (or at least no more risk) than there is with plenty of other things we’re already doing (going to work and to the shops, our kids going to school, taking the kids to the playpark etc). There’s no (or very little) car sharing, you spend the whole time outdoors (can’t use the changing rooms etc), you bring your own food and drink at the moment and so on. I guess the one thing would be the ball, but again how often are we all picking things up in everyday life that someone else has touched? For all the good it may or may not do it does get ‘sanitised’ every six overs at which point you all have to do your hands as well so we are definitely less likely to take a catch. Most of our team (though not me) have of course had at least one of their jabs. Obviously playing cricket is an additional thing that none of us have to do so it is introducing an extra Covid risk into our lives, but it feels like a very small one.
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I think I mentioned last season that the guidelines included keeping apart as much as possible on the field with specific reference to avoiding coming together for tactical discussions etc. Means I can tell the others to take their clever ideas and go forth and socially distance themselves.
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CMW, your Luxembourgeoises are (provisonally) heading over to Prague next month for a 4-way tournament against the mighty Czechs, the minnow Maltese and all-conquering Austrians. Proper international status and all.
It’s already got a wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Central_Europe_Cup
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I’ll be supporting the Maltese, obvious winners of the Central Europe Cup that they are. Nice to see some familiar names in the Czech team though.
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“Meanwhile, Premiership Rugby announced the shock resignation of Darren Childs as chief executive on Wednesday only 20 months into the job. Childs, an unpopular figure within the league, will join CVC – the private equity firm that owns a 27% stake in the Premiership, where he joins his predecessor Mark McCafferty.”
Nothing dodgy about this sort of thing at all, no, nothing to see here.
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That’s good news for Mr Childs. It’s a risk at the moment resigning from a job but he’s managed to land on his feet quite quickly. And at least he has some familiar faces in his position to ensure he’s not all at sea.
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In more corporate news, JP Morgan was in on the European Super League fiasco. Fortunately, they have a new guy on the team called Chuka Umunna and he’s well used to being involved with complete fiascos.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/inside-the-jpmorgan-finance-unit-that-masterminded-doomed-soccer-bid-20210420-p57kll.html
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‘your’ Exeter team to take on leaders Bristol, Friday evening:
15 Stuart Hogg, 14 Jack Nowell, 13 Henry Slade, 12 Ollie Devoto, 11 Tom O’Flaherty
10 Joe Simmonds (capt), 9 Jack Maunder
1 Ben Moon, 2 Luke Cowan-Dickie, 3 Tomas Francis, 4 Jonny Gray, 5 Jonny Hill, 6 Sam Skinner, 7 Jacques Vermeulen, 8 Sam Simmonds
16 Jack Yeandle,17 Alec Hepburn, 18 Harry Williams, 19 Sean Lonsdale, 20 Richard Capstick, 21 Stu Townsend
22 Harvey Skinner, 23 Ian Whitten
Backs back to full strength for the first time this season.
How much will Ewers be missed?
Should be a great match.
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The Bristolians:
Bristol Bears: 15. Charles Piutau; 14. Niyi Adeolokun, 13. Piers O’Conor, 12. Sam Bedlow, 11. Luke Morahan; 10. Max Malins, 9. Andy Uren; 1. Yann Thomas, 2. Bryan Byrne, 3. Kyle Sinckler, 4. Dave Attwood, 5. Chris Vui, 6. Steven Luatua (c), 7. Dan Thomas, 8. Jake Heenan.
Replacements: 16. Will Capon, 17. Jake Woolmore, 18. John Afoa, 19. Joe Joyce, 20. Fitz Harding, 21. Tom Kessell, 22. Ioan Lloyd, 23. Alapati Leiua.
No Sheedy, Radrada, Hughes, Randall or Earl. Exeter’s to lose.
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