Journal Entries
pitch notes 2
Posted Nov 16, 2007
Lots of talk about uncontested scrums and other lunacies on 606 and other sites. And that the field is congested. So new?
The current bout of legal nitpicking will not address the core dilemma of rugby for the last thirty years, that people have got much bigger and faster and will carry on doing so for a few decades yet.
The same number of bigger faster players are competing fro space on the same pitch that their smaller slower (less damaged) ancestors were doing only 30 years ago.
And the one piece of human phsiology which hasn't changed in that period is human reaction time. The time it takes for the outside half to see the incoming speartackle and avoid it, or for the centre to line up his man and perform what used to be known as a 'swerve', or alternatively a 'side-step' in the days of Dawes, Gibson, Speser and Duckham. And was a wondrous Nowadays we are trying to fit a quart into a pint pot.
The one piece of legislation which hasn't been touched in over 100 years is the minimum size of the pitch.
I therefore propose a widening of the international pitch by at least 10 metres for a trial period of five years.
The results would be very enlightening - fun too. And the injury lists currently bedevilling world rugby would also begin to shrivel as their main cause - repeated impact - became a losing strategy compared to spreading the ball to the new generation of Shane Williamses and Gerald Davieses who would reclaim the wing from the rhinos currently churning up the touchlines.
As a result of that incentive, refereeing this dangerously labyrinthine sport would become easier.
Everyone's a winner.
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Latest reply: Nov 16, 2007
Notes From 606 rugby
Posted Nov 16, 2007
I agree that uncontested scrums and lifting inthe lineouts make a mockery of rugby.
And that the field is congested.
The current bout of legal nitpicking will not address the core truth of rugby for the last thirty years, that people have got much bigger and faster and will carry on doing so for a few decades yet.
We are trying to fit a quart into a pint pot.
The one piece of legislation which hasn't been touched in over 100 years is the minimum size of the pitch.
I therefore propose a widening of the international pitch by at least 10 metres for a trial period of five years.
The reuslts would be very enlightening - fun too. And the injury lists currently bedevilling world rugby would also begin to shrivel.
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Latest reply: Nov 16, 2007
SETI Dilemma
Posted Oct 26, 2007
The search for intelligent extra-terrestrial life is based on the assumption that radio-transmitting civilisations are indefinitely sustainable. That an electro-concrete society can develop into the gleaming autocracies of the Sci-Fi writers' imaginings.
In fact, the ability of a society to transmit evidence of its own exitence may well be limited to a few hundred years. An instamatic flash in the vast Wembley stadium of the cosmos.
We may not be here long enough to co-incide with that pulse as it travels through space and time. Or able to see it. But it is important to look, because that's the sort of animal we are.
What we do if we do see it is another problem. The kind of society able to transmit for long enough for us to recive would very likely not be one which had destroyed itself by rabid libertarianism or war. It could either mean that democracy was a finite stage on the road to dictatorship or to something else..
There would be plenty willing to make the case that if dictatorship was the only means of preserving technological civilisation, that we might as well skip a few generations and go for it now.
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Latest reply: Oct 26, 2007
Rhys Jones Playground
Posted Sep 17, 2007
An adventure playground opened today in memory of murdered Liverpool schoolboy Rhys Jones. Heartbreaking, because too late. Heartwarming because maybe this represents some acknowledgement of the need to cater for the needs of children before trying to make money from them. Of seeing them as human beings, not a horde of alien invaders or a target market.
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Latest reply: Sep 17, 2007
Good Old 'Bonkers' for Mayor - You're Having A Laugh..
Posted Jul 16, 2007
When the Tory party has quite finished its little joke, will it please roll out its real candidate please? Unless, of course, they are serious, in which case, this is a serious insult to Londoners.
Now is surely time for Liberal Democrat MP Simon Highes to come to the rescue of the unshakeable tory voter. He would definitely give Livingstone a better run for his money than this famous buffoon. Much loved though he is.
But Hughes won't run, because he knows full well that Livingstone will win, and will do so because he is by far the most popular candidate, and is widely seen as having done an excellent job of putting London back on track as a world city after a generation of rudderless meandering, and of delivering a series of measures which ordinary people welcome, including the congestion charge and the bendy buses - which are hardly ever used by those who criticise them. He is never less than straightforward, and speaks a recognisable form of English, unlike most politicians.
Livingstone's popularity with ordinary Londoners is the best kept political secret around, no matter what the Daily Mail Rentamob say. And this is the main reason why there are no serious conservatives willing to face up to him. They know he would wipe the floor with them. If Livingstone was as unpopular as the usual suspects say, there would be a queue to put the boot in. Instead, we get this affable clown who will probably bottle out at the last minute and land poor old Stephen Norris with the job of clearing up the mess as usual.
Which, to the electorate of London, is what is know as a diabolical liberty. Boris doesn't care about London. He is looking for a bit of a laugh, and this is his idea of one. He is the Tory party's anti-Ken suicide bomber. Only he gets to write the book afterwards.
The other aspect to this is the glaring sympathy emerging between new prime minister Gordon Brown and Ken Livingstone. After wasted years of fighting the government, Londoners will not jeapordise this lucrative partnership no matter how many lorryloads of puppies the Tory PR machine throws at them.
Apart from looking like a puppy in a paint advert, people like Johnson because they think he's honest. His famous 'shambling' reeks of perpetual apology for something. And people like it when someone seems to apologise to them. Just as Australian teenage girls seek to charm through perpetually asking permission with the rising inflectives of every sentence?
But in reality, what is it that Boris is being honest about and apologising for? As a tory politician, what else can it be but for the bankruptcy of the Tory ideas account? Whatever boarding school experiences pummelled those mannerisms into him, he comes across as the walking embodiment of Tory obsolescence, and his toff credentials are the sporran on the bridegroom, the deerstalker on the laird, the Range Rover in the forecourt, the top hat on the Piccadilly Johnnie. He is perfect for the part.
The trouble is, that throughout a lengthy election campaign he will therefore be a continual advert for tory uselessness- for the fact that it has no reason to exist other than to perpetuate itself. Has David Cameron lost his senses? Would anyone vote for someone with that much tactical savoir faire?
It's only day one and the first Boris gaff has been sighted.
"18-metre long socialist frankfurter buses" should be abolished he says, referring to the new public transport system which replaced London's iconic 'Routemaster' buses. This will lose the vote of everyone now waiting one third of the time it used to take to get on a bus, and those shlepping prams, shopping, zimmer frames, even bikes and furniture. "Socialist", says Boris, as if people cared. According to him, they now like something socialist. Well done Boris.
Meanwhile, rabid London radio hitman Nick Ferarri has taken a lot of flak for withdrawing from the Tory candidature. This is very unfair to him. Not only is it wrong to expect the Third Estate to partake in government, but it is surely honest of Ferrarri not to stand for the Tories when his natural party would be the far-right British National Party.
All right-thinking folk should applaud the miserable poisonous bullying piece of lowlife for this scrap of principle. If that's the reason for his decision.
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Latest reply: Jul 16, 2007
Little Richardjohn
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