All entries for Tuesday 16 June 2009

Football Fixtures Link

Writing about web page http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulfletcher/2009/06/secrets_of_the_fixture_compute.html#097608

Just wanted to signpost this brilliant BBC football blog post which talks in some depth about the issues and tribulations surrounding the compiling of the football fixtures.

I’m really curious to see the full list of teams who are linked to other teams and why.

: 16 Jun 2009 23:02 |  Tags: Football |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

EU Myths

Follow-up to The Internet Ranter's Worst Enemy – Fact Checking from Hollyzone

After the recent EU elections in which the people of the UK split into three camps (those who couldn’t be arsed to vote, those who voted with all the enthusiasm of a catatonic sloth, and racists) I’ve decided that my indignation at the general failure of humans to fact check needs to be focused on something more European in flavour.

I do love EU myths. Some are hilarious, and usually involve banning something which is contributing to the British obesity crisis. Some are deeply worrying and involve people baring their prejudices against those with the gall to be slightly different to them. Some are clearly driven by an almost demented dedication to not noticing that the world has moved on, and usually involves older folk getting very het up about the metric system even though most children these days would struggle to tell you how many pounds there are in a stone.

Actually, hand on heart, I’m not sure how many pounds there are in a stone. I think it’s fourteen but I’m not sure. Kilogrammes are much more logical.

This is really only a surface stratcher of a post, but if anyone can suggest to me some suitably insane EU stories for us to look into together that would be nice. Obviously some are true or have a basis in truth, as this interesting BBC article demonstrates but many involve so much grabbing of the wrong end of the stick that the stick itself is feeling extremely violated right now.

On nom nom.

I personally like the “vegelate” myth which suggested that the EU would force Britain to rename ‘our’ chocolate “vegelate” because it has vegetable fats in it. In fact the truth is that this was a name created by the French, seemingly in a bout of snootiness which belies their Francophone association with Nestle, purveyors of poor quality chocolate. It was never intended for the UK to have “vegelate” enforced on it.

However what the story does teach us is when faced with an opportunity to have verbals with the French or become paranoid about the EU, most British tabloids will become paranoid about the EU. Sorry France, not so scary any more, unless the rest of Europe’s with you…

: 16 Jun 2009 18:00 |  Tags: Internet Myths |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem