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[Nov. 4th, 2009|01:32 pm] |
ARSENAL FANS ARE FEARFUL FOR THE FUTURE OF THEIR CLUB screams the first line of this Times article. Russell Kempson then spends the rest of his article, as well as this q&a, contradicting himself. Despite the doom-mongering opening line, what Kempson actually thinks is that Silent Stan "seems to be...trying to make sure that [Fat Man Utd Supporting Uzbek Cunt] Usmanov cannot buy the club by purchasing as many spare shares as possible". So..er..perhaps there is not so much of a cause for concern after all eh.
Leave the inane and inaccurate Times " football journalism" to Tony Cascarino please. |
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[Oct. 21st, 2009|09:48 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | ma stuff | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Weezer - I Want Your To | ] |
I forgot to mention it earlier but, prompted by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) fromthecity mentioning hers, I got my MA results back and passed. Sort of yay as I was two marks off a merit and, really, should've done lots better. Unfortunately my dissertation was pretty rubbish but what can you do now, it's all done.
Also, yesterday I won £25 on the Premium Bonds.
However, I still do not have a job. |
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[Oct. 5th, 2009|11:58 am] |
Since it's raining outside and I've already done some cleaning and I'm unemployed and slightly bored then I may as well update about my weekend. Friday I went to the Glasshouse Stores in Soho; fuck me, Sam Smith's red wine is awful but you can't really moan too much as it's also very cheap. I had a good time anyway.
Saturday my hangover was a four or five; not too dramatic anyway. I was going to go and have drinks with somebody but they had something else to do so I largely sat around all day, watching illegally streamed football and reading the Economist. Until fiveish anyway, when I met a friend and went to the Faltering Fullback in Finsbury Park for some beer and the Man Utd game. They were rubbish. Anyway, came home, had more wine, cooked myself a nice dinner, watched Match of the Day for the first time this season (!) and went to bed earlyish.
Sunday was the football. Despite my loathing of early afternoon Sunday kick offs - being in the pub at noon on a Sunday feels well wrong - Arsenal were magnificent going forward and Cesc Fabregas quite superb, so that made it all worthwhile. Then back to pub to watch a predictably dull Chelsea - Liverpool game; more wine, rubbish dinner and then bed to wake up today hangover-free. Wahey, I dislike Monday morning hangovers. |
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[Sep. 29th, 2009|04:18 pm] |
Daniel Finkelstein Tweets about Gordon Brown's speech; "this isn't a game changer, let me put it that way". What does he mean? If he's talking about the election then, well, no conference speech is a "game changer" when it comes to a general election. Can anybody really remember a conference speech being so successful that it ends up propelling a particular party onto election success? I mean, there might be one, I'm not as much as a politics buff as some of you - there's a backhanded compliment - but I can't recall one. There have certainly been party conferences out of which particular parties have come out with a stronger poll lead but I'm not sure that adding a few percentage points in opinion polls qualifies as "game changing".
The most memorable party conferences revolve around sorting out internal party disputes (Labour in 1985, Thatcher strengthning her position in 1981) or leadership issues (Cameron in 2005) or being in Wales and not knowing the national anthem (haha John Redwood). So perhaps Finkelstein is referring to the leadership issue. But did anybody, bar maybe j_rentoul, really believe that the leadership was up for grabs at this conference? It seems an uncharacteristically lazy comment from somebody like Daniel Finkelstein anyway. |
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[Sep. 16th, 2009|02:15 pm] |
Getting involved in student politics: a warning.
Unemployment is slowly driving me mad, I need things to do. Interview - for a similar job that the guy in the link above has just been sacked from - is on Saturday (well before the football starts, don't worry) thank god. I'm quite pleased that I spent my university life getting drunk and trying to kiss girls instead of waving a flag and shouting about Israel. For one thing it makes me a better person, for another it means I do not have an unenviable record to try and hope nobody digs up. |
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[Sep. 7th, 2009|05:14 pm] |
This is pretty contemptible, though seeing as it's the brainchild of Nadine Dorries and probably the bloggers involved then that should not be much of a surprise. Damien McBride is, let's be clear, a complete tool and an cretin for even thinking up a smear campaign let alone writing it down. If Dorries wants to take legal action then that is perfectly reasonable, she can do what she wants. But to send two bloggers to serve writs at somebody's home and somebody's workplace - especially if the latter is a school - is just pathetically childish. It's the sort of half-baked notion of revenge that somebody would come up with drunk, only to dismiss it when they realise that (one) they're a Member of Parliament and should at least try and maintain a tiny bit of dignity and (two) that they're not twelve fucking years old. What a stupid, horrible little cunt Nadine Dorries is and what awful, smug little pricks Guido Fawkes and the other one are. A pox on all their houses. |
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[Sep. 7th, 2009|02:31 pm] |
Poll #1454341 The Great Mix-CD Debate.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 30Mix CDs should be for |
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[Sep. 4th, 2009|01:39 pm] |
Spelling the name of your own publication wrong - that's a bit rubbish. It's lucky that the rest of the magaz - sorry, newspaper is so good. Apart from the finance and economics section: however much I try, I still can't understand it. Despite my B at AS-Level economics too. |
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[Sep. 2nd, 2009|07:54 pm] |
I'm not a violent person, I've never hit anybody in my life. I did, however, come very, very close to making a start last night as some ridiculous cunt in the toilets at a club I was in decided to start taking the piss out of one of those slightly depressing toilet attendants. We had an argument, I called him (somewhat ironically) "a middle-class twat" I got quite cross. Vodka may have played a part but hearing somebody being told that they needed to "be more interesting" to earn the measly fucking pound he was going to be given actually pissed me off far more than is probably worthwhile.
I handed in my dissertation! It's a bit shit. I now have nothing to do for the next couple of weeks (at least). What shall I do Livejournal? I've asked this on Facebook already; answers were disappointing at best. |
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[Aug. 31st, 2009|04:41 pm] |
Moan moan. I am grumpy and I don't really know why. It probably has something to do with the pathetically mild cold I have, which means I'm tired and have a sore throat and my moaning levels automatically increase by about six hundred percent. It also probably has something to do with Bank Holiday ennui, especially August Bank Holiday ennui because this basically means it's the end of summer. Though since this summer saw my relationship end, lots of rain and I basically didn't go anywhere, you'd think I'd be pushing it in a van and waving goodbye to it. But soon it's going to be cold and my house is going to be colder and it's going to be dark at 5pm and I'm going to watch football and not be able to feel my feet and I dislike winter.
I do hand in my dissertation tomorrow, that's a good thing. Though that's a bit rubbish as well but I think that about most of what I write and sometimes it turns out to be quite good. Not this though, this is a rubbish Livejournal entry. I am going to go to Amazon and make myself feel better with the purchase of some history books I think. |
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[Aug. 19th, 2009|02:21 pm] |
Apologies for not being here much recently, I've been in a dissertation induced coma for two weeks. Or so it feels like. I have now written twelve thousand words about the Republican party and Latino immigration and it's rubbish but I have over a week to make it good and at least I've done (most of) the hard work.
In other news, Arsenal are giving out free scarves on Saturday to get the atmosphere going/get rid of a shipment of unwanted scarves or something. I said I'd help lay them out on Friday. Should be easy enough, there's only fifty-seven thousand seats they need to go on.
Shit. |
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[Aug. 6th, 2009|05:03 pm] |
My friend works in advertising and asked me if I wanted to go to the Emirates and be part of the crowd scene for a new Nike advert based around Theo Walcott that was being filmed today. Since the only better thing I had to do was to work at my dissertation, due in at the beginning of next month and currently eight thousand words away from being completed, I said yes. Fuck me, filming commercials is an excruciatingly dull, repetitive business. Theoooooo - his full name - wasn't actually there so just under a hundred of us, squeezed into a corner of this vast ground, had to pretend to do completely unrealistic things, such as celebrating a goal that Theo had set up and looking disappointed when Theo lost the ball after a promising run (this was easier to 'act'). It was interesting to see the thing being filmed, for about ten minutes, but I'm not sure I'd hurry along to anything similar again. Unless there was free booze. I'd do anything for free booze mind. I did get a free shirt but it's a bit big and I don't really wear football shirts anymore. They are good for the gym though and for fancy dress parties in which you have to be a Tube station.
So yes, look out for me in the next Nike advert. I'm that one there. No, there. For a brief milisecond. Oh you've probably missed me, don't worry about it. |
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[Jul. 29th, 2009|09:37 am] |
Woah there Simon Heffer, don't get yourself so worked up. You seem awfully angry over the fact that David Cameron hasn't come out all guns blazing, angry finger pointing, Dispatch Box jabbing at PMQs in defence of private schools - the key issue of our time.
Or perhaps one of the four or five other vaguely unimportant things that people write to Heffer about and which he accuses Cameron of neglecting. Clearly saying this sort of thing - "I know I am not alone in this: many of you write to me every week to say the same thing" - means almost nothing. It's selection bias; people think "oh I hate that Labour are attacking private schools, who shall I write to? Shall I write to Seamus Milne or shall I write to the columnist who has views that reflect mine?". Simon Heffer thinks that Cameron should be campaigning to slash taxes, reject Lisbon, defend private schools and bring back hunting (mental). So do some other people. They write to him, they comment underneath his post, he agrees with them and it's just a big, pointless echo chamber of right-wing views that reflect the priorities of a few people who all probably live in the same village of Wiltshire.
It's funny. Some of the left wouldn't recognise the David Cameron that Heffer talks about because they want to think of him as a posher, rounder-faced, slightly less masculine Margaret Thatcher. I don't think he's anywhere near as right wing as her but in his pre-election caution and unwillingness to add detail to skeletal policy ideas he does indeed resemble her, something that Heffer should know rather than invoking that old Tory right bogeyman of Ted Heath. I'm currently reading the rather excellent When The Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies by Andy Beckett and there's quite a lot in there about somebody people in the late 1970s Tory party called "Cautious Margaret". I don't think many people would associate Thatcher with the word caution nowdays. Still, the Tory right were getting impatient with even her in the last 1970s too so Cameron, emphatically not Margaret Thatcher, probably doesn't have a chance. |
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[Jul. 27th, 2009|09:20 am] |
Sarah Palin to the media:
'"How about, in honour of the American soldier, you quit making things up?" she said to the gathering of television camera crews and reporters at the event.'
Oh just fuck off will yo - oh, you are! Goodo. |
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[Jul. 17th, 2009|12:10 pm] |
David Shayler there, in the middle of a "severe breakdown" apparently (but the Mail are still quite happy to run the piece). Anyway, I hope this is what happens to every other 9/11 conspiracy "theorist" out there. It's one small step from thinking the Jews did it to living on a farm with a man called Clive. |
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[Jun. 22nd, 2009|09:12 pm] |
Finally, Chris Dillow looks at something important and explains why I like booze so much:
'In particular there’s a correlation between having blue eyes (pdf) and being shy. Because of this, the authors found that people with blue eyes are significantly more likely to agree with the statement “I drink alcohol to feel more comfortable in social situations.”'
I have, as I probably should've explained above, quite blue eyes. And a fondness for alcohol, though I suspect most of you would've realised this by now. Having said that, aside from a house party on Saturday, I've had a very quiet June, probably because there's no football anymore and my liver (and wallet) could do with the break. I am going to see some cricket on Saturday though so hopefully it'll be sunny and I can sit with a beer and pretend I know what the bloody hell is going on in front of me.
Definitely, definitely going to do some dissertation work this week and not just doze in the garden because it's sunny.
O I saw Ann Widdecombe today. She is very small, quite lopsided and looks like she'd be unable to get up if somebody pushed her over. So I briefly considered doing just that. |
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[Jun. 15th, 2009|08:42 am] |
Myself and Bex went to Aldeburgh yesterday, because it was hot and sunny and her Sky was broken. It was so nice! I had fish and chips on the beach and then a huge ice-cream and we wandered up and down the beach and sat in the sunshine and it was just ace really.
That's probably the most interesting thing I've done in a while. During the week I've been working/not doing anything at all towards my dissertation (it's so far away god but I'm starting this week honest). Last weekend I was going to walk from Islington to Limehouse along the side of the Regents Canal but I only got as far as Hackney and then I met a friend and sat in the pub for three hours. That's pretty much all I did last weekend. Much as I love the sport, it seems that weekends without football are much less stressful and drenched in booze. Probably a good thing there's a little break then. |
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[May. 18th, 2009|09:18 pm] |
Annoying lack of historical perspective from Sir Patrick Cormack earlier today: "Veteran Conservative MP Sir Patrick Cormack likened the mood in the Commons to the mood in the nation for the Norway debate - said to be the moment Conservative MPs realised that Neville Chamberlain had to be replaced as prime minister." Oh don't be so melodramatic. Just after the Norway debate Western Europe was invaded by the Nazi Germany. The expenses claims of various MPs may be eye-rollingly annoying but they're not quite as bad as the Battle of Britain, whatever some politicians who've just had to repay thousands of pounds might think. |
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