tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72811555575543955102024-03-14T04:58:15.074+00:00Cooney & BlackFleet Street veterans Bryan Cooney and Jim Black welcome you to their new venture: an interview website aimed not only at restoring confidence in a much-maligned Fourth Estate, but also giving you, the public, a real insight into the famous and how they conduct themselves. Cooney & Black, originally a sports website, has broadened its base and now also embraces the worlds of films, theatre, music and books. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.comBlogger79125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-76388712493485397502014-07-09T13:28:00.000+01:002014-07-09T13:28:16.434+01:00AGE OF STUPIDITY<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">By Brian Hannan</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">ALIENS never learn. Every year, round about this time, they invade Planet Earth.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sometimes, they rise up from within, having buried themselves deep within the earth millions of years ago, waiting for an alarm clock to ring from outer space.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">They used to focus on the United States, but now, clearly conscious of how important the overseas market has become to Hollywood, they have an air of interplanetary tourists, and might decide that instead of blowing up the White House, they should take in the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben or (as in<i>Transformers: Age of Extinction</i>) the Great Wall of China.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In this film, aliens have gone decidedly upmarket and in the middle of one battle the camera freezes so that we can register skyscraper-high posters advertising <i>Vogue</i> magazine or Tom Ford clothing. A <i>Victoria’s Secret </i>bus is inexplicably caught up in the carnage.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In the past, aliens could be seen off by giving them a dose of the cold or its modern equivalent, a computer virus, or by an ordinary bloke who is just too clever for them. But, these days, we are more likely to enlist the help of other aliens, such as here, headed by Optimus Prime and his gang of <i>Dirty Dozen </i>sound-alikes.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Curiously, at the start of this <i>Transformers</i> movie, the good aliens, as a result of shenanigans so ridiculous I won’t waste space explaining them, are actually bad aliens.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Mark Wahlberg is the said ordinary bloke, though, after years of deceptively convincing acting, he has reverted to his previous shouty persona. There’s a sultry teenager (Nicola Peltz), her make-up done by a girl of ten, and, shades of <i>Armageddon</i>, a boyfriend Wahlberg intensely dislikes but has to work with.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And there’s a ship. There’s always a big ship in this kind of blockbuster, often dragged along the ground like a Neanderthal knuckle as a weapon by the warring combatants.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In movies like this, Hollywood generally gets away with the “bigger is better” argument, but I think we have to draw the line at “longer is better.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This is an epic two-and-three-quarter hours (the same running time as <i>The Dark Knight Rises</i>) but with all the gravity of a meringue.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I have a sneaky feeling that in the past Hollywood used to employ the Logic Police. But when franchises get this long past their sell-by date, it is clear there is no point employing any logic.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Screenwriter Ehren Kruger was educated at the Jefferson High School for Science and Technology where, presumably, he was taught to baffle people with science.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The plot, such as it is, involves Stanley Tucci. He’s paid double for looking both stern and smug, (never mind that, Kelsey Grammar, another bad guy, thinks acting is growing a beard and not twitching) as a billionaire bad guy who sees the error of his ways and is then forced to drag around a “seed” that is the equivalent to an atomic bomb (work that one out).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Without logic to get in the way, our ordinary bloke is able to penetrate a top-secret, most highly-guarded factory and also to loiter uninterrupted on the enemy spacecraft.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Mostly, people run, or shout, or in the case of the Peltz, look doll-faced. Aliens run and shout, but luckily, so far, we have not been treated to any female aliens. Maybe next time. Perhaps <i>Victoria’s Secret </i>was the hint.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-77874186348618023932014-07-03T15:56:00.001+01:002014-07-03T15:56:53.419+01:00KEVIN COSTNER CONTINUES TO CONFUSE<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">DYING divorced middle-aged guy (Kevin Costner) returns to Paris to attempt a reconciliation with his estranged teenage daughter (Hailee Steinfield).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">He has been away for so long his flat is occupied by squatters, whom the law says he cannot eject till Easter.</span></span></div>
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<span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1404396813248_3246" style="font-size: 14pt;"><span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1404396813248_3245" style="font-family: Times New Roman;">He buys his daughter a purple bike only to discover that was her favourite colour when she was little. To overcome her resistance he enlists the help of the owner of a taxi firm, who has two teenage daughters.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The ice is broken when, shades of <i>The Bodyguard</i>, he rescues her from being molested at a club. He teaches her to ride the bike. An Italian associate obliges said daughter with a pasta recipe.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">One of the squatters is pregnant and Costner attends the birth, aware he was absent at his daughter’s birth. Best of all, he finds a drug that prevents the spread of his cancer and reconciles with his ex-wife (Connie Neilson). Having been told he would never see Xmas, the movie ends with him under the Xmas tree.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The trailer for <i>Three Days to Kill</i> was a bit remiss in explaining the family complications. Costner is also a CIA assassin. His boss (Amber Heard) looks like she’s auditioning for <i>Sin City</i>, all sleek lipstick and bustling cleavage, with a part-time job managing a strip club.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">She has diverted him from full-on daughter reconciliation by promising him an experimental drug to stop the onset of his cancer, but every now and then, usually (and inconveniently) when he is about to shoot the enemy, he collapses.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">She is whip-smart. ‘You’re not my type,” says Costner. She replies: ‘I’m everybody’s type.’ Why she needs him is anybody’s guess because she’s pretty good with a gun. His daughter’s boyfriend’s dad turns out to be a big bad guy.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The main villain is called The Wolf and his henchman The Albino, even though he is bald and otherwise lacks that condition’s physical prerequisites.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The taxi owner is a semi-bad guy, whom Costner kidnaps when he wants help with his daughter. The recipe-spouting Italian is another kidnappee. A bottle of vodka is required to combat the side-effects of the drug. The plot, should your brain still be in one piece after absorbing the above, concerns Costner tracking down The Wolf who sells dirty bombs.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">There is enough gunfire and explosions – an opening shootout in Sofia, a set-piece in the middle of the Paris traffic and a finale in a deluxe rooftop apartment – to just about qualify for an action picture.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">But the movie just cannot make up its mind what it wants to be. The reconciliation is touching enough and Costner steers his lost soul with some conviction.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Steinfield, memorable in the remake of <i>True Grit </i>(2010) is a cliché away from every movie teenager. There are enough oddball characters - the taxi owner and the head squatter - to give it some flavour, although the Paris backdrop is too upfront - the Eiffel Tower, bateaux mouches on the Seine, and bike-riding sequence taking place at Sacre Coeur.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">But the two movies just don’t mesh. Costner has long since lost the box office cachet that made the Oscar-winning <i>Dances with Wolves</i> (1990), <i>Robin Hood Prince of Thieves</i> (1991), <i>JFK</i> (1991) and <i>The Bodyguard</i> (1992) such big hits.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Too many flops (<i>Wyatt Earp</i>) and odd choices (<i>The Postman</i>) damaged his status. His last starring role was in 2008. You probably last saw him in supporting roles in <i>Man of Steel</i> (2013), playing Clark Kent’s dad, or <i>Shadow Recruit</i> (2014), the miserable attempt at rebooting the Jack Ryan franchise.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">He even turned to television – <i>Hatfield and the McCoys</i>. Hollywood has a poor record in looking after its senior citizens (50 is old these days for a male star - unless your name is Clint Eastwood - and Costner is 49). There are so many washed-up old stars you could name a tsunami after them.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">But if you’re looking for reinvention, France is the place to go. Luc Besson’s company Europa was behind <i>Taken</i>, the action movie that turned Liam Neeson into an international action star.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Besson is an accomplished director in his own right – <i>The Big Blue</i> (1988) was a huge success in France and a cult hit in the States, ditto <i>Leon</i> (1994) and <i>The Fifth Element</i> (1997), which starred Bruce Willis. So it’s not hard to guess that Costner thought he could follow suit, only the film would have to be tweaked a bit to provide more of an emotional core.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Besson is most famous in France as the writer-producer of the three record-breaking <i>Taxi</i> films featuring quirky characters and car chases. He wrote and produced the two <i>Transporte</i>r films that specialised in car chases and shootouts.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><i><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Taken</span></i><span style="font-size: 14pt;">, you might remember, is also based on daughter-reconciliation. The big difference between Liam Neeson and Kevin Costner in the action stakes is that you would not want to cross the former.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Costner’s movie persona is a cross between Gary Cooper and James Stewart, the decent guy who won’t give up. Neeson always possessed a dangerous air, so the transition to out-and-out tough guy was no stretch but Costner is less believable.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Next up for Costner, though, are two sports-based movies and with memories of <i>Bull Durham</i>(1988), <i>Field of Dreams</i> (1989) and <i>Tin Cup</i> (1996) – three of my favourite movies – he might just get back to winning ways.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-49130258936510533642014-06-27T15:23:00.001+01:002014-06-27T15:26:47.895+01:00TO THE RANGERS YOUTH PLAYERS, COACHES & STAFF - SOME SALT TO RUB INTO YOUR WOUNDS<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">By Ben Palmer</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">When Kenny Miller rejoined Rangers for a third time, it wasn't met with the typical narrative fans have displayed when discussing the Glasgow side in the past few years.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">For a Rangers fan, was it met with anger? Perhaps. Miller has already two bites at the Rangers cherry, and at 34 his soon to be false teeth may not manage it. Why should he deserve another?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">For a Celtic fan, not them all I must state, was it met with the laughter and mockery that they have emitted when discussing their Glasgow rivals in recent years? Again, perhaps. McCoist re-signing an old buddy who was is surely now on his last legs; I can understand why that may be met with a giggle.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">For Scottish football observers it may have been met with the typical sigh that comes with every piece of news from Edmiston Drive. It's not one of relief though, it's one of disbelief and frustration. Will the Rangers saga ever end?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">These perceptions of Kenny Miller's third signing for the Gers may well be true. But a common denominator amongst all reactions to the signing was sheer confusion.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">When Miller scribbled his signature for a third time in the Ibrox boardroom, a former Rangers youth player, Charlie Telfer, was doing the same thing up at Tannadice.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Acknowledged widely as a talent, a beacon of hope for the talent which Rangers may need in just a year’s time to challenge in the Scottish Premiership, is gone, instead trying to further his career a division above.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">This theme of confusion is a direct derivative of Ally McCoist's transfer dealings. Why on Earth was a young talent going out, when one on his last legs was coming in?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Kris Boyd's signing this week looks set to revive this confusion. Boyd, the season after one of his most impressive – endeavour and activity wise – is taking a step down to once again pull on the Royal Blue.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Although his striking prowess will result in an abundance of goals in the second tier of Scottish football, the signing beggars belief if anything.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">At 30, Rangers have signed a No.9 on his dénouement, his final years are imminent. McCoist, however, must know what he is doing having deemed 25 year old Andy Little surplus to plans.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Having averaged a goal every two games at Rangers since his début back in 2009, McCoist saw no place for Little in his plans to get Rangers over their final hurdle since liquidation – on the pitch at least – and back into the Premiership.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">When Rangers begin their pre-season at Highland League side Buckie Thistle's Victoria Park next Thursday evening, not only will it be a confusing sight to see a team building for the future consisting of a strike-force with a combined age of 64, but it will be a hard sight on those who are indeed building for the future.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Once Rangers went under, it was a chance for the youngsters to break into the side, Fraser Aird made that jump, but the lack of company is unsettling. The work of the Rangers youth coaches not being utilised at the end of the natural conveyor belt: an Ibrox in the Scottish Premiership. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">McCoist letting Callum Telfer and Andy Little jump ship created a graze, Kenny Miller's signing burst open the wound, Kris Boyd is pouring the salt.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Kris Boyd and Kenny Miller may well score dozens between them this year, but with retirement on the scope, and the younger promising generation disappearing, McCoist's transfer dealings may not be as shiny as first hoped.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-44807979934164574592014-06-25T21:14:00.001+01:002014-06-25T21:14:25.524+01:00THE FIRTH OF NOWHERE<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">COLIN FIRTH and Reese Witherspoon are billed as the stars of <i>The Devil’s Knot</i>. </span></span><span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0px;">This is Atom Egoyan’s documentary-style account of the trial of the teenage West Memphis Three, accused of the diabolical murders of three eight-year-old boys in 1993.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The movie is involving, but people on these shores may struggle to keep up as the director assumes a familiarity with the notorious case, and his dispassionate style verges on sedation.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">A small town, riven by grief, fear and hysteria (the murders are thought to be the work of a Satanic cult), is well drawn. The police are more human than normal, the shock on their faces at discovering the bodies testament to that.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The movie takes some liberties with the facts; for instance, in reality, the bodies were discovered the next day, but since movies require more tension, the hunt lasts days.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">But with so many characters bobbing around, Firth and Witherspoon were clearly parachuted in to lend the movie some focus.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Perhaps Firth was attracted to the name of his character – Ron Lax – or owed someone a favour. Firth has been struggling to follow up his Oscar-winning turn in <i>The King’s Speech</i> (2010). Hollywood had him pegged for comedy (as Hugh Grant’s slightly smarter brother, perhaps) but <i>Gambit </i>with Cameron Diaz was a flop.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Firth prefers serious work, but few people were attracted to <i>The Railway Man</i> or <i>Arthur Newman</i> or <i>Main Street</i> (bonus points if you have heard of the latter) and he was in the supporting cast (albeit in a pivotal role) of<i>Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy</i>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s hard for a British actor (apart from Daniel Day-Lewis) to be taken seriously in Hollywood. Liam Neeson’s rebirth as an action hero is courtesy of the French. Otherwise, the cream of British acting talent normally surfaces as a villain.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Blame floppy-haired Hugh Grant for changing perceptions of the capabilities of British actors. The hard-edged performances of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole and Michael Caine are now a distant mirage.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Firth has coped by turning himself into an American, as he does here, with a fine head of hair and a passion for antiques (he is introduced at an auction bidding thousands of dollars).</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">In one sense, he has the central role, as an investigator giving his services to the accused for free. And that would be great, if the director let him play the crusading private eye.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Instead, Egoyan is as interested in the impact of the murders on the community and on the police and the accused and their parents and the victims’ families and the judge and…you get the idea.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The title is apt. It’s the very devil finding space for Firth and Witherspoon. They end up being a distraction. Stars are meant to get more time onscreen.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">To make sure we don’t forget they are there, the director resorts to showing them exchanging glances (for no meaningful reason) in the courtroom, or for Firth to loll about at the back of the court (of a rather officious judge, would you believe).</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ron Lax did uncover important evidence, but since the climax of the movie takes place in a courtroom, where an investigator has no place, the movie struggles to include him.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Worthy projects have a nasty habit of turning into career cul de sacs.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Firth is next up in Woody Allen’s <i>Magic by Moonlight,</i> where he plays second fiddle to Emma Stone, and <i>Before I Go to Sleep</i> (second fiddle to Nicole Kidman). To keep his career on track he has wisely pulled out of the role of the voice of Paddington Bear.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Witherspoon is in the same boat, both movie-wise and career-wise. After winning an Oscar for <i>Walk the Line</i> (2005), Hollywood stuck her in romantic comedies. <i>Mud</i>, her last serious turn, attracted good reviews but little box office.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Here, as a victim’s mother at least she gets to emote and, in another creative liberty, turns amateur sleuth. One last point, this has a 15 certificate, but contains one of the most shocking images of children I have ever seen.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-46235131330978990652014-06-24T16:22:00.001+01:002014-06-24T16:27:05.372+01:00EXCITING - BUT THIS WORLD CUP HAS NOT YET ACQUIRED EPIC STATUS<div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">BY JIM BLACK</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">FORGIVE me but isn’t it about time a little more realism was introduced into the World Cup.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Include me among the multitude of television watchers who are savouring the excitement and drama of Brazil 2014.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">There has been goals aplenty, no shortage of memorable moments and occasional sheer brilliance. But while the finals have been compulsive viewing for those of us who worship “the beautiful game,” it also has to be said that some who earn their livelihood commentating and reporting on such events have gone slightly over the top.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The finals have already been hailed as great, but those who use the word epic are being a little less than circumspect, in my humble opinion.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Being of an age to remember 13 past World Cups – albeit I have only a hazy recollection of the grainy black and white television pictures of 1962 finals in Chile when the game was disgraced by the so-called “Battle of Santiago” featuring the host nation and Italy – I can think of others, notably Mexico 1970, that were more exhilarating.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Perhaps it is simply a case of the passing of time appearing to make what has gone before a little more appealing than it truly was, or have we have come to expect too much?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">We were assured in advance of the opening match by those TV “experts” who salivate at their own self-importance that the world’s very best players would elevate us to heights never previously reached.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">I refer to Neymar of the hosts, Argentina’s Lionel Messi, Portugal’s solitary man o’ war Christiano Ronaldo, Italy’s Andrea Pirlo and Uruguayan Luis Suarez, in particular.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">But at this point in time only one of the five has truly delivered. Let me declare straightaway that I consider Suarez to be an odious individual, given that he is prone to “cheating” and sinking his teeth into opponents. But my dislike of the man cannot be allowed to disguise the brilliance of his ruthless destruction of an England team that chose to convince itself that injury would negate Suarez’s threat.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Scorer of both his side’s goals, Suarez delivered on the hype. Messi has still to do so fully while Ronaldo will not have the chance beyond the initial group stages and Pirlo may also make an earlier than expected exit from the tournament.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Pirlo, peerless against England was largely anonymous in the next match against Costa Rica. True, Messi scored two wonderful goals to drag Argentina to victories over Bosnia and Iran but for much of the time he failed to dominate the play in the way that his predecessor Maradona did.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ronaldo, recently voted the best player in the world, produced one flash of spellbinding trickery against the USA, but he too failed to light up our television screens in the manner that had been predicted, albeit injury may have been a factor in his and Portugal’s failure to cope with the Germans’ ruthless efficiency and the Americans’ work-rate and enthusiasm.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Neymar, meanwhile, has been compared to Pele in almost hushed tones. On the evidence of his and Brazil’s performances against Croatia and Mexico it must be hoped that the volume remains turned down for the time being at least.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Few such claims of greatness were bestowed on the Dutch in the run-up to the finals. Yet in their opening match against the holders Spain the likes of Robin van Persie, Arjen Robben and Wesley Sneijder were a joy to behold – true masters of their craft.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">There was an immediate temptation to tip Holland as probably winners at last after the heartache of being beaten finalists on three occasions. But what might have happened had Spain scored to go two-up? Holland’s subsequent displays against Australia and Chile also leave question marks as to their staying power and mindset to play as a team.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">So, which country will emerge triumphant at the magnificent Maracana Stadium in Rio on July 13?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Germans, ruthless against Portugal and decidedly unimpressive against Ghana, will no doubt be there or thereabouts, given their World Cup record, tenacity and military-like discipline and organisation.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Will Brazil overcome the frightening level of expectancy that has reduced some of their players to emotional wrecks and deliver a fifth world cup triumph?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Can Belgium’s hugely talented squad, strongly fancied as dark horses, gel as a unit? Will the French stay focussed and build on their impressive wins over Honduras and Switzerland?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Are Argentina more than just a one-man team? Do Italy and Uruguay have the necessary strength-in-depth to prevail whichever one of them survives in the wake of their unexpected defeats by Costa Rica?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">With a raft of matches to be played there is still time for Brazil to host a truly epic Wold Cup. But for the time being the 2014 finals have been hugely exciting, thanks largely to a high rate of scoring. Its right to be acclaimed as more must be judged in relation to the performances that led to these goals.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">One thing is certain though, come the winter chill on a Saturday afternoon spent watching Scottish Premiership football and we’ll all be reminiscing about the Boys who were at Brazil.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Still, there’s a chance that Ronny Deila may bring a smile to our faces by baring his backside when Celtic complete their stroll to the SPFL championship title around the middle of January.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">We can also eagerly anticipate having a laugh or two at the annual Hibs manager crisis when Scottish football’s Frank Gallagher, the utterly shameless and blameless Rod Petrie sacks the latest incumbent and blames chief executive Madame Defarge, aka Leeann Dempster!</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-66212036659769922462014-06-21T13:07:00.002+01:002014-06-21T14:34:07.193+01:00IS "DOUBTFIRE" BRAVE ENOUGH TO END GERRARD’S CAREER?<div style="text-align: center;">
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<b style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>“STEVEN GERRARD? Well, he’s had a terrible end to the season. He appears to have gone at every imaginable level.</i></b></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><i>“Ever since he gave away the goal against Chelsea in the Premier League, he’s been awful. Roy Hodgson is always saying what a good player he is. Hey, good players play well when they have to.</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><i>“When the team needs them, they tend to step forward and flourish. What did Luis Suarez do when Uruguay needed him? He scored two goals! And he was only 70 per cent fit!</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><i>“England needed the real Steven Gerrard against Uruguay…there was only one trouble: he wasn’t there!”</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">WE should, of course, ignore the temptation towards gratuitous gloating.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">But the facts are incontrovertible: England have provided us with, on what has become a biennial basis, a classic sob story that fills a few million handkerchiefs.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">With Costa Rica beating a perfunctory Italian team on Friday evening, the English effected another inglorious exit from another major football tournament - almost before the players had time to break in their multi-coloured footwear.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The obligatory autopsies were performed on our television sets. But I’d suggest these were pretty insubstantial, even inadequate. The medium that should be specialising in definitive post mortems once again quailed and quivered at the door of the mortuary.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">BBC and ITV sent the world and his brother to Brazil, dipping into exchequers rather than budgets to support sybaritic lifestyles. Yet, so many of these highly-remunerated ex-footballers failed, some spectacularly, some incoherently, to tell the English nation what went wrong. I was anxious to hear an unalloyed version.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">One reason why English players are flying home comprehensively ahead of schedule next week was delivered, rather forcibly, in the introduction to this blog.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The words came from a man who seems comfortable with speaking his mind, no matter how many egos might be offended in the process.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Nigel Clark was the Football Editor at the Daily Mail in that newspaper’s pomp in the late Nineties. I used to call him the Wise Old Owl because he provided a compendium of knowledge about the game and understood those who played it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">He grew up in an age where the freedom of speech had not been overtaken by the twin terrors of censorship and political correctness. He worked and travelled with men like Sir Alf Ramsey, Brian Clough and Malcolm Allison. They knew him and respected him.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Let’s return, then, to his acerbic summary of Gerrard’s contribution to England’s 2-1 defeat. It’s only the beginning of a criticism of a national team that Clark has been following for six decades.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Gerrard is not alone in the dock of his court of justice: the Liverpool player has accomplices, none more so than Roy Hodgson.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Hodgson, whom Clark likes as a person, finds his credentials examined in an equally forensic manner. “We’re in this sorry position because he picked the wrong team at the outset,” Clark insists.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">“You can’t win with a side that goes forward but can’t defend. You should pick a centre-half who can organise. So, why leave John Terry out? Suarez’s second goal emphasised the stupidity of that. Do you imagine it would have been scored had Terry been around?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">“Look, Phil Jagielka is all right as a footballer, but basically he’s a midfield player who has been converted to centre-half. When a high ball comes at you like that, the first instincts of a centre-half is to back peddle, Jagielka obeyed the instincts of a midfield player and allowed Suarez freedom to run on.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">“Terry would have dealt with it, put the ball in Row Z of the nearest grandstand. He is far more able to read things, defend and organise.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">“He has been a leader and a captain all his life but, because of what I believe to be a rather petty squabble (involving the Ferdinands), Hodgson decided to bomb him out and opt for the quiet life. Hodgson believed he was doing the moralistic thing but he ignored the basic mantra of football: you pick your strongest team.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">According to Clark, however, England’s defensive frailties go far deeper than that. “Yeah, if you’re going to attack, you’ve got to defend. England can’t do that. Ashley Cole is a better left-back than Leighton Baines. He might even, in some eyes, be a horrible bloke, but he’s a better footballer. Baines could not tackle a deep fried Mars Bar!”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Nor is Baines’ full-back partner, Glen Johnson, exempt from scathing opinion. “I’ll repeat: you can only attack if you can defend. Everyone knows that down the years that Johnson hasn’t got what it takes to defend.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Clark feels that the £3,500,00-a-year Hodgson may confound expectations and stay in the job (he evidently has already been offered a two-year contract extension. Isn't it great to see the dear, old FA have their foot firmly on the ball?).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">But he still can’t understand why the manager put his philosophy into reverse gear. “The thing is the players call him Doubtfire. There’s a bit of respect gone there. Could that be significant?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">"Roy’s always been a very organised manager, he’s always been considered a safe pair of hands, yet the greatest surprise was to go gung-ho in this competition. And just look at the run-up: we struggled against Honduras and Ecuador. It told you we’re not very good.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The criticism becomes even more detailed. “Frank Lampard was brought over for morale - Roy thinks his legs have gone. Now, I would have thought that might be the case over 90 minutes, but surely not for 30-minute segments.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">“ You wanted an old head in there directing operations at 1-1. The solution would have been to put Lampard on. Instead, Roy wanted to go for a winner: he gambled and lost.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">And Wayne Rooney? “I think Roy’s been stupid. You play your best players in their best positions. You don’t suddenly find Uruguay punting out Suarez to play wide right or left, do you? Roy thinks he has players who can multi task. It’s not on. Players generally have to be told what to do because they tend to be a bit thick.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Costa Rica, who have already qualified for the next stage of the competition, provide Hodgon’s final opposition. Can England go out with some manner of compensation?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Clark is not confident about that. “English football is based around determination and organisation, and we must use these things to make ourselves hard to beat. If you don’t concede goals, you don’t get beaten. We’ve shipped four so far.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">“Look, no-one has ever said that Hodgson was a great manager. He certainly never did anything spectacular at Liverpool, did he? I certainly wouldn’t put money on us beating Costa Rica.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">`”But I think what Hodgson must think long and hard about is whether Gerrard plays again. And, remember, this: they put him in a role just in front of the back four - it was supposed to suit him. The sad thing is that he wasn’t even in the Uruguay game.”</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-70493009002802492582014-06-16T20:47:00.001+01:002014-06-16T23:10:45.207+01:00JUSTICE WOULD BE SERVED IF BLAIR WAS JAILED<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">By Mark Cooney</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">TONY BLAIR - very few sane people would associate his name with truth and justice.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The disingenuous nature of this man led to the violent deaths of more than 100,00 Iraqis, a normally hospitable and generous race who represented no threat to us.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For decades, their only instinct has been to survive.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But then they were caught in the crossfire of a monstrous dictator who ruled them with an iron fist, and two scheming Western governments who ostensibly sponsored their destruction - babies and all.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Today, the Iraqis find themselves once again trapped by their geography and history in a cauldron of violence and hate.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">With political, religious and tribal uprisings sweeping the Middle East, they don't even have the comfort blanket of peace in order to pick up the pieces of their lives destroyed by death and destruction.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Old tribal vendettas have re-emerged and exploded into bloody civil war.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">While Iraq’s majority Shia and minority Sunni tribes fight for control of the region, the al-Qaeda splinter group, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), has comprehensively rekindled the flames of sectarian bloodshed in recent days. Amidst this carnage, a fourth faction, the Kurds, are on the verge of realising a long-held dream by taking control of Iraq’s northern region.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Blair’s contribution to the chaos is once again to step into the spotlight and declare that the latest insurgency has nothing to do with him.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">He has further twisted his blood-stained dagger into the hearts of Iraqis seeking justice by reiterating his spurious claims that he didn’t initiate the crisis over there. Far from it. In fact, in waging a devastating war on the country, he claims he did the right thing.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The Labour Party’s former golden boy has said that Iraq would still be a major problem even without the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003. He insists the US-UK invasion was not to blame for the current apocalypse.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In an essay on the Middle East crisis (<a href="http://www.iraqinquirydigest.org/" target="_blank">Read it here</a>), Blair insisted that we had to “liberate ourselves from the notion that we caused this”. Note the “we”.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And, in another unconvincing televised ramble, he added: ”Even if you'd left Saddam in place in 2003, then when 2011 happened - and had the Arab revolutions going through Tunisia and Libya and Yemen and Bahrain and Egypt and Syria - you would have still had a major problem in Iraq.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">That claim has already been disputed by some diplomatic heavyweights, including Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain's ambassador to the US between 1997 and 2003. In a newspaper interview, he said the campaign strategy against Saddam Hussein was "perhaps the most significant reason" for the current sectarian violence.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">"We are reaping what we sowed in 2003,” he claimed. “This is not hindsight. We knew in the run-up to war that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would seriously destabilise Iraq after 24 years of his iron rule.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And Lakhdar Brahimi, former UN representative in Iraq, also disputes Tony Blair's analysis of the conflict, saying ISIS did not exist before the 2003 invasion. Rather, it grew out of the bloodshed and the regional instability created by Bush and Blair.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">He has already said several times in the past that the West's indifference to Syria would put it at risk of being a failed state and that it would spill over into neighbouring areas.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">When asked by Channel 4 News if he agreed with Tony Blair that the West should once again send in the troops, Mr Brahimi said: "Military intervention? Not again, please. I doubt if military intervention from the outside again is the right thing because you know how these things start, and how they finish."</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Asked if Blair was correct in his assertion that the current slaughter would exist even without the 2003 invasion, he replied: "I'm afraid he's wrong. We would probably still be in an extremely bad place, but nothing like we have now. You wouldn't have al-Qaeda going around. I mean, al-Qaeda taking over three cities in two days...that's unthinkable!</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">"A lot of people in the region who were interested in listening to Mr Blair don't listen anymore."</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Something of a handicap for a Middle East peace envoy.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What is also for sure is that without Blair and George Bush’s trigger-happy attitude, there would be a lot more Iraqi citizens alive today to testify against these claims of innocence.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There would also not have been thousands of British and American parents saluting their sons and daughters returning in coffins, having served their purpose in the eyes of the politicians.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There have also been strong accusations that the Ministry of Defence under equipped our soldiers, which is why their American counterparts nickname the British Army “The Borrowers”. They weren’t given the right tools to execute a very dirty job. The fact that they were not properly protected in a war zone was morally reprehensible.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, does this one rate as a war crime? That’s one for international law to decide if it ever bothers to catch up with this morally bankrupt globetrotter.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There would almost certainly not be a whole generation of orphaned children growing up with appalling injuries and a lifetime of horrific mental traumas. And who can blame them for growing up with a serious grudge?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In his typical phoney manner, Blair pleaded in the run-up to the invasion that he just wanted to help the Iraqi people and that the troops were going to “win hearts and minds”. Instead, they put bullets in them.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Saddam was hanged for his three-decade murder spree (and perhaps other more convenient reasons). But, following the invasion and slaughter, Blair was bestowed with the distinguished mantle of Middle East peace envoy.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">On that kind of recruiting logic, could Kim Jong-un be next in line for UN Secretary General? Is it any more absurd or distasteful?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If it the whole scenario were not appalling enough, Blair has become exceedingly rich off the back of the invasion.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Rather than demonstrate some humility and accountability, perhaps even a smattering of repentance, he continues to enjoy the glare of the public eye, travelling the globe first class to give handsomely-paid speeches to all who will listen to his self-serving version of world events. He is now a multi-millionaire.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Perhaps repeating the same old nonsense to audiences is cathartic for him, and helps relieve him of some of the guilt burden that most of us would carry heavily. But he gives the impression that he possesses neither guilt nor shame.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">He ignored the will of the British public, many of whom still fully believe the attack on Iraq to be illegal. Instead, he cartwheeled out of international obscurity and onto the world stage to fully support Bush’s plan to invade. Brothers-in-arms, or, at least, brothers-in-bomber jackets.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">He sent UK forces to join the US-led invasion in violation of international law.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">America’s favourite poodle sold it on a pretext of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. It didn’t. But now he says they might have got them at some point in the future.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As for Blair’s “hearts and minds” pledge? Well, it was left to charities to count the bodies (and the body parts) in the streets and market squares.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Perversely, Blair expected us all to triumphantly celebrate the glory of Britain in “liberating” a country and installing “democracy”. He was wrong.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Moreover, this narcissistic egomaniac hoped we would all laud him as a great leader and world statesman who had helped make the world a safer place. Another massive miscalculation.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This week Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond, who wants to end England’s 300-year rule over Scotland in September’s Independence Referendum, said: “Tony Blair has now claimed that the invasion of Iraq was about whether or not Saddam Hussein remained in power. Eleven years ago he said it was about weapons of mass destruction.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“He is guilty of breathtaking amnesia on his reasons for invading Iraq and clearly hopes everybody else will conveniently forget his 2003 decision, the consequences of which have played out over 11 years, with hundreds of thousands dead.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“We have reached a position where Western powers’ ability to intervene in any conflict – even in a just manner – has been totally undermined by the legacy of the Iraq disaster, with a damaging loss."</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Blair’s denials and delusions suggest he believes only God should judge him.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">He has blood on his hands alright, but he’s cleansed himself of all responsibility.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The next time we see Tony Blair, let's hope it's in front of a judge, or, better still, behind bars.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-87247541185435907042014-06-16T19:43:00.000+01:002014-06-16T19:49:35.788+01:00WHY HOLLYWOOD LOVES A DEATH STORY<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px; letter-spacing: 0px;">By Brian Hannan</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">AT least you know the ending! The three-hanky weepie <i>The Fault in Our Stars </i>was a big hit in America, outgrossing Tom Cruise blockbuster <i>The Edge of Tomorrow</i> on its opening weekend.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Getting audiences to cry is no mean feat, especially in these cynical days when cinemagoers tend to be a lot more savvy about movies manipulating their feelings.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">When I tell you the characters meet at a cancer support group, you might be already reaching for the sick bucket. But fear ye not! Based on a bestseller (natch) by young adult author John Green, the movie does not go down the soppy route, using a combination of acerbic wit and unconventional characters to win over hearts, minds and credit cards.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Bearing in mind how Hollywood has played the crying game in the past, the movie makers need not have worked so hard at trying at keeping the movie fresh. Even so, this movie does employ some well-known tricks.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Love Story</i>, the king (queen?) of the soppy stories worked because neither Ali McGraw nor Ryan O’Neal had achieved stardom. They had not acquired annoying tics, nor had we pored endlessly over their love lives.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hence, they appeared more real. Both were real cute. Heaven-sent looks, though, do help the heaven-bound as Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort can testify in <i>The Fault in our Stars</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It was all a far cry from socialite Bette Davis in <i>Dark Victory</i> in 1939, which started off the whole rollercoaster of lucrative sorrow.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Davis was not first choice - Greta Garbo chose <i>Anna Karenina</i> instead. But Davis provided the sharp-tongued template.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Sweet November</i> got made twice – in 1968 with Sandy Dennis and 2001 with Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves – unfortunately, it was not Reeves who died, although sometimes his acting was so stiff you could not tell.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Leo McCarey liked his 1939 <i>Love Affair</i>, starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer, so much he remade it 18 years later as <i>An Affair To Remember </i>with Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sometimes the box office bell rang so loud the audience just switched it off – Julia Roberts was riding very high when she came down to earth with a bang in <i>Dying Young</i> (1991).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Men are good at dying, too. Tough guy James Caan (<i>The Godfather</i>) got his big break in a made-for-tv movie <i>Brian’s Song</i> (1971) as a football player on the way out. Robert DeNiro did the baseball version in <i>Bang The Drum Slowly</i> (1973).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Of course, some guys can never take dying seriously. Think of Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman in <i>The Bucket List</i> (2008). Or the Pythons in <i>Life of Brian</i> – taught from an early age that if they get strung up on a crucifix to burst into song.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Even John Wayne (himself dying of cancer) got into the act in <i>The Shootist</i> (1976), but audiences stayed away, preferring the big man to go suddenly like he did in <i>Sands of Iwo Jima</i> (1949) and <i>The Cowboys</i> (1972). Hollywood preferred the first – giving Duke an Oscar nomination.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Like any other genre, you have to shake it around a bit, so the twist in <i>The Doctor</i> (1991) was having William Hurt as an icy example of the species warming up a bit when he became a patient.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In <i>My Sister’s Keeper</i> (2009), the protagonist realised she has been born to keep alive her afflicted sister and decided (greedily) she wanted to keep all her organs to herself, thanks very much.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sometimes all you had to do is put two charismatic stars in a film and keep the audience guessing which one was under a dark cloud; witness Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey in <i>Beaches</i> (1988), confusing the audience as to who was in the premature departure lounge by having Midler sing the theme tune.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The twist in Akira Kurosawa’s <i>Ikiru</i> (1952) was that the candidate for the hereafter was an ordinary bureaucrat who had already had every ounce of charisma surgically removed.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But death might yet do us all a good turn. Hollywood is always one trend away from financial stability, and the success of <i>The Fault in Our Stars</i> might spell the end of super-heroes and lowest-common-denominator comedies.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Who knows? We might get a decent drama.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-68650107391897218112014-06-14T14:39:00.000+01:002014-06-14T14:41:24.852+01:00BT DONOR JK ROWLING SHOULD NOT BE SUBJECTED TO CYBER ABUSE<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">By Ben Palmer</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Before I start, for fear of a cyber lambasting, it is imperative that I state that this is not a piece discussing the pros and the cons of Scottish Independence.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Neither is this a statement of which side of the referendum I will vote for. For this piece, that is irrelevant.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">I make these points, because it is becoming increasingly palpable that any addition to this debate is met with a flurry of coarse derision.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Whether it be the Better Together or Yes campaign that is being vouched for, the hounds of the opposite movement snap immediately at the often innocent claims.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">But, with No Grey Areas being a politically neutral website where all reasoned opinions are welcomed, I must add that I believe these refutes are being dealt out more frequently by the Yes campaigners. It is a subliminal display of their excellent use of social media to group together the backers of Scottish Independence into one, passionate, bunch.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Better Together campaign has been virtually non-existent in terms of public display, at least to my personal observations – their snapping is rather muted to that of the opposite, Nationalist, camp.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">This brings me to the well documented donation of £1 million by Harry Potter author JK Rowling of her behemoth wealth to Better Together, something which should have been unanimously applauded.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Someone in the public eye openly stating which side of the debate she was on. She wasn't cowering away as so many others are. Except Sean Connery, of course, who swayed in with his part from his home in Monaco and a couple of Americans called Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">In the direct attention span of the UK, Rowling's donation wasn't even to the level of which the Yes campaign received from their most generous backers, the lottery winning Weir family, yet she has been met with the critique of a treason committing criminal.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Despite being told to: “F... off” a plethora of times on Twitter, to where exactly I'm not sure, the most ludicrous condemnation of her charity I saw was her being told that: “nae one gives a f... about why you think we're better together,” and to: “Piss aff.”</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">I can handle the poor grammar, we're all guilty of that on social media, but that one tweet sums up every single wrong about this debate.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Whilst Rowling put out her polished and stylish inclusion to the argument, she was met with dumbfounded criticism and lack of impartiality.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">I'm not saying that someone's viewpoint cannot be questioned, or outright ridiculed, but a perfectly legitimate stance on a debate which will be strung-out and intricate, to be met with such venom, is wrong.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">I understand that people desperately want Independence, and that others are 100% against so, but the lack of open-mindedness and willingness to accept that others have a viewpoint is worrying.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">A debate is when opinions are battered back-and-forth, decorated with statistics and arguments. The Independence Referendum is referred to as a debate, but it is slowly becoming a brawl.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Better Together and Yes movements obviously have a pair of stark wants, but there needs to be a degree of discussion between those on either side of the Independence Referendum fence.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">As there are so many stuck in the middle, the fence may be better referred to as a wall to hold up all the bodies for which the two campaigns are battling for. But for those perched on it, there is no authentic opportunity to weigh-up the pros and cons. You must join a camp, get stuck in the crossfire or forever hold your peace.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">This is the most important decision to happen to my country since I've been born, and with little over three months until the big day, it looks as though instead of a split union, we may end up as a split Scotland with enough stuck in the middle to make Humpty Dumpty feel awkward and nervous.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The result that determines this split? I hope it isn't both.</span></span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-38978489065526835332014-06-13T19:43:00.002+01:002014-06-13T19:48:12.179+01:00WHY I'M STARTING TO FEEL SORRY FOR WAYNE<div style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">SYMPATHY costs nothing but, for some strange reason - no doubt associated with my crazy career - I’m never too liberal with it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So today’s question is: do I feel sorry for Wayne Rooney? Or, more accurately: do I feel sorry for multi-millionaire Wayne Rooney?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Well, here’s one straight from the Surprise, Surprise catalogue. Yes, I do.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hey, the World Cup is off and running and people can hopefully concentrate on the football rather than the urban protests that have provided an uncertain backdrop in the long run-up.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But I fear all cannot be well on Rooney’s doorstep. It seems open season has been declared on him. He’s been getting it in the ear from Gary Lineker, Paul Scholes (his old colleague at Manchester United) and, soon, is due a performance assessment of a different nature from a former prostitute.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If the producers of Big Brother have their way, Helen Wood will recall his alleged three-in-a-bed sex exploits.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Poor lad: he’s got nothing going for him, has he? He’s got £250,000 a week and he doesn’t go without, if you know what I mean. What else is there in life?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Well, for starters, there is this World Cup in Brazil. It’s an important one for Rooney. To employ highwayman-speak, he’s got to stand and deliver. Whatever, he goes into action against Italy with the weight of the world balanced on his shoulders.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Forget Lineker and Wood. I reckon Scholes, the guy who for years worked and played beside the Liverpudlian in Manchester United colours, has been successful in inserting a shaft of doubt in Rooney’s mind by saying that his best days may be behind him.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, has this former wonder kid, at 28, gone past his sell-by date at a time when he should be uprooting forests of football trees?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Has he fulfilled his potential? I think he has. He’s been lurking about our game for 12 years now since making his professional debut for Everton aged just 16. He’s scored a multitude of goals and stood the test of Premier League durability: he’s made great donations to the cause of Man Utd, and also been England’s best player for the last ten years.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">You could comfortably argue that he’s not an undisputed genius like Lionel Messi. There have always been question marks hovering over his head - the way he lived his life, his weight, his hairstyle!</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Look, we would have been raving about him probably had he moved to Real Madrid or Barcelona. Maybe his career would have gone in a different and more positive direction.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But the fact is that he’s stayed around his homeland for so long; we tend to become a bit bored with players like him when that happens and begin to stick pins in effigies. That’s what has happened here.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Possessing the neck of a bulldog, he’s got issues with weight - he’s the type who goes out of condition very quickly - and he probably won’t make old bones as a footballer. I can’t see him performing at any level at 35.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">You might say it’s over the top to say he’s over the hill. But Scholes is close enough to the situation to put a decent handle on it. Indeed, he’s probably not a million miles from being right, because Rooney’s had all those tough years. And there’s only so long you can do that.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As for the Scholes issue, he’s spent all his career without a good word to say to the media - and now he can’t stop talking.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I wouldn’t think that his dig was intended as a spur. I think it was somewhere between telling the truth and - call me an old cynic - him doing something controversial for his Paddy Power app line.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I imagine he’s been coaxed into doing this; someone’s said: “We don’t want any of that drivel you get in the newspapers: we want something that’s got a bit more meat on the bone. You’ll never have a media career unless you start shouting out.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, Scholes has shouted for England. The thing is he has another career - as a coach at Manchester United. I’d vote for the job of fly on the wall when pre-season training starts at Carrington. Scholes versus Rooney: a catch weight contest.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Has Rooney been affected by what’s been said? I’d say he has, considering his revelation that they never been close and never had each other’s telephone numbers. If it wasn’t affecting him, he should have said nothing. It seems it’s been preying on his mind.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I would seriously doubt whether he will be able to banish this cloud of negativity that has enveloped him. His performances last season were okay in a bad United team: I feel his performances will be likewise in an ordinary England team.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Many people think he’ll have a great World Cup to make up for all the previous disappointments, but I can’t see it. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I tend to sway towards the Scholes contention. He's not the player of a couple of seasons ago when he was hot to trot and the name on everyone’s lips.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Scholes, remember, sees him in training, knows what his condition is like. And that has always been a worry - Alex Ferguson has referred to it in the past. I can remember reading that he could lose his physical condition in a fortnight.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Mind you, when all is said and done, I don’t think England will survive their section. As I say, I bracket them in the 'B' division. And, if they come home early, the fans will need to blame somebody. I imagine Wayne would be a prime target should that happen.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Deep down, I hope he proves us all wrong and has a wonderful World Cup. If not, he may need any sympathy that’s out there. Mine included.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-79776849900574630542014-06-11T17:14:00.001+01:002014-06-13T12:55:33.571+01:00SO NOW WE’RE RACISTS, BLATTER? IT’S TIME FOR SEPP TO BE HUNG OUT ON A FAVELA CLOTHES LINE<div style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">BY BRYAN COONEY</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">MY No Grey Areas colleague, Andy Ritchie, often suggests there are some people in this world to whom you could not give a red neck, even with the application of a blowtorch.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">He’s right on the money, of course. There are men and women who are resolutely resistant to self analysis and any degree of embarrassment. They refuse to acknowledge incriminating circumstances and appear purblind to damning evidence.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sepp Blatter is one such pathetic person.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Not long ago, the Sunday Times revealed serious corruption at FIFA regarding the 2022 World Cup bid of Qatar: it was the embodiment of investigative journalism, an acclaimed antidote to the deliberations of the Leveson Inquiry.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Detailed, forensic stuff, worthy of any pathologist’s report, it thus became a contender to be the sports story of this, or probably any ot</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">her, year.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Now, the stench of chicanery has never travelled far from the front door of football’s ruling body over the years - there have been regular, disturbing, fairly nauseous emissions of putrefaction along the way.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But an inspired Sunday Times team finally sourced the whereabouts of the alleged sewage farm, not to mention the alleged sewage farmer, one Mohamad Bin Hammam.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The baton of alleged guilt was figuratively handed on a serving platter to Blatter and his organisation. His next course of action should have been simplistic in the extreme. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">All he was required to do was his job, marshalling the forces of justice - and perhaps even retribution - in order that justice was served.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">He should have thanked the Sunday Times for executing a job he and his minions should have been doing since he replaced the risible figure of Jose Havelange 16 years ago.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But, this was the world of FIFA, the corporate, corrupt, contaminated world of FIFA. Blatter and Co knew what lay underneath the old Axminster. Many others knew it. So, why would he wish to focus halogen lighting on the imperfections?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, the Swiss septuagenarian responded with a message plucked from the gutter, if not the sewer: he accused British journalists of being discriminatory and motivated by racism.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Had this man no sense of shame, no sense of the differential between right and wrong? No, this was Joseph Blatter to whom we were referring. He exists in a fantasy land of his own creation and should be equipped with a technicolour dreamcoat.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Okay, if we must, let’s give some credit where it’s due. You cannot command the presidency of FIFA unless you possess the feral cunning of an urban fox.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Blatter believes himself to be the original Mr Fox. Importantly, he is familiar with the stultifying rules of political correctness. He feels that flourishing the racism card is the ultimate deterrent to those with investigative noses.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Accusations of racism tend to stifle and ultimately suffocate debate, because no-one truly wants to be subjected to this smear test. Just as important, however, the racist card also assists the guilty to nurture and pursue their perversities.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But alongside the foxiness there is also arrant foolishness. He has allowed his FIFA omnipotence to insulate himself against reality. I imagine that this is one occasion when the accusation is seen for what it is - a worthless and pathetic smokescreen.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sponsorship and racism: words that are scarcely ideal bedfellows. The bedlam you may hear is the sound of the backers distancing themselves from his crass remarks.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">How long before they distance themselves from the blue riband tournament itself.</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And how long before those nice young men in their clean white coats come to take him away, after his latest diversionary tactic: interplanetary football? If he's serious, he's certainly inhabiting another world of delusion.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Whichever way you look at it, Blatter's miscalculation has been gross on a galactic scale.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It infuriates me that matters have arrived at this juncture. Today, we should be speaking about the 2014 World Cup which is kicking off in Brazil. We should be celebrating the feast that is upon us - and the behavioural patterns of the potential dinner guests.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What we want to know is: will Luis Suarez show on the world stage what he has been showing on the more parochial platforms of England? Can Andrea Pirlo begin to dismantle Roy Hodgson’s best-laid plans? And, could this be the ultimate coronation for Lionel Messi?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Yes, we should be concentrating wholeheartedly on the Beautiful Game. For the moment, until the action begins, there is a focus on its ugly sister. Or, to be factual, its ugly brother - that dreadful little martinet from Switzerland.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I must confess to a bit of jealousy hereabouts. How I would have loved to have been involved in all this. Until I retired through illness back in 2001, I was head of sport at the Daily Mail. We prided ourselves on penetrating the heart of matters, particularly in football.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Therefore, if we spotted anything of a dubious or indeed iniquitous nature, we used to kick backsides rhythmically and regularly. Such a policy was not flavour of the month in some quarters. Some people who should have known better were openly hostile.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I remember Howard Wilkinson, of the Football Association, confronting me as he emerged from the gents’ toilet at London’s Savoy Hotel. He had a question - as well as a gargantuan cigar - on his lips. “Obituaries, obituaries, obituaries. Whose obit is it going to be next?” he inquired.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">“It might be yours,” I responded.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">At a Football Writers’ dinner at the Royal Lancaster Hotel, I met the then Liverpool manager Gerard Houllier. I cannot say I was overly impressed, particularly when he began to harangue me about the way the paper approached football. “You don’t seem to like the game,” he said.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“The game itself is not a problem,” I retorted. “It’s just that I don’t like some of the people in it.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">That last sentence, more than ever, is applicable to a guy called Sepp Blatter. I trust they will hang him out on a favela clothesline very shortly.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">He may be resistant to the threat of a blowtorch, but his dismissal is somewhat overdue.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-65966704225949913452014-06-08T18:51:00.001+01:002014-06-15T02:17:42.711+01:00'IMPARTIAL' BBC ERECTS IRON CURTAIN AROUND GLASGOW'S PACIFIC QUAY<div style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">By Mark Cooney</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">THOMAS JEFFERSON erected the pillars of a democratic society when he stated: ”Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Fast forward 200 years and the comment by the third President of the United States is starting to sound profoundly naive on these shores.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The impartiality of a country’s media is a cornerstone of democracy. In the 21st Century, people no longer just seek the truth, they demand it. But in "reporting" news related to the Scottish Referendum vote this September, the BBC and London-owned Scottish newspapers increasingly appear to have adopted the journalistic values of Pravda.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There is a growing rumour (make that growing resentment) in Scotland that the BBC is not impartial. In fact, it looks grossly partial on one specific issue; the Independence Referendum.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I grew up believing that Auntie always told the truth and was fair to both sides of any story. I thought the only narrative it preached was fact. I especially believed it was not aligned to any political agenda or to any cause, other than telling us all how things really are. It was almost ingrained in my mind that the BBC’s mantra was to present the facts and let the adults arrive at their own judgements.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s comforting to the human soul to know that someone in this complex world will always tell us the truth. We like to know we are defining our opinions based on cast-iron facts. And we thought they were facts because the BBC said so.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But, together with the Scottish mainstream papers, we are witnessing growing evidence that it is presently trying to control, twist and stifle the debate in favour of a Westminster status quo. With just three months to go to voting day, the BBC has already joined sides with the English State it knows and understands.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">To mislead the people of Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales on such a seismic event is unforgivable. Through its blatant strategy of promoting one side of the political spectrum at the expense of the other through selected news reports, biased interviews and the closing down of public comment on its web pages, the BBC has shattered its own fabled impartiality. In Scotland, at least.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The enviously high bar of editorial standards that Auntie once set herself are now so low that not even Mister Fantastic on a soup only diet could limbo under it. Her publicly-funded corset has fallen around her ankles. And that’s more than a bare cheek, it’s public indecency.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Firstly, there is the glaring lack of any real cross-examination of unionist advocates’ statements on news and debate programmes, while in contrast there are very well prepared grillings facing any champion of independence, with questions often designed to wrong foot them.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The BBC’s presenters, particularly Andrew Neil, Jeremy Paxman and Andrew Marr, have been treating independence interviewees as the main "target" on their shows and subjecting them to both barrels. Overly aggressive, dismissive and sneering, they launch a barrage of follow-up questions, often only to be left defeated by a smarter person with a better argument. (Check Referendum-related videos on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akfN7bO_2Bc" target="_blank">YouTube</a> and decide for yourself).</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There’s even been a sense of shadenfreude from several BBC presenters when they think they’ve got the indie guest pinned on the studio ropes. It’s noticeable and it's unsavoury.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Of course, it's encouraging to see presenters performing with intensity when questioning pro-independence folk. That's what good journalists should be doing. But the contrast in the mild mannered and shallow questioning of unionist politicians’ statements is stark.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Perhaps they could ask the Labour hierarchy why anyone should trust their economic arguments after they alone oversaw the collapse of the UK’s banking sector, which has been attributed to Gordon Brown’s and Alistair Darling’s utter disregard of industry regulation.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Something that stands out on these BBC programmes is the patronising manner in which the presenters and their studio guests from Westminster almost refuse to acknowledge the SNP as the democratically-elected government of Scotland.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It has been chosen by the people of Scotland to run our country in a competent manner and to represent the interests and wishes of ALL its citizens. They’re not just "trying to grab a bit of the limelight" as one barely known Tory minister accused an elected SNP MSP on Question Time.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The BBC is not giving us veritas on BOTH sides of the argument. Indeed, its presentation of the debate is almost beyond satire.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Rather than wake up to the fact the people of Scotland are no longer cozened and publicly redressing the obvious imbalance, the BBC has instead responded to increasing complaints by throwing a tantrum and closing down comments on its Scottish web pages.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">These are the actions of our national public broadcaster in the 21st Century. It’s a defensive action that has polluted the waters of editorial transparency. But the BBC’s charge list doesn’t end there.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Think about the membership of the arch unionist business club, the CBI, which has been a registered "No" voter. Think about the dumbing down of Newsnight Scotland in its relaunch as "Scotland 2014". The show is presented by Sarah Smith, daughter of former Labour leader John Smith and a lady who has deep Labour roots. Should the BBC not, at the very least, be trying to be seen as impartial?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Meanwhile, academics in Scotland have studied the BBC’s news output and noted there were many more unionist-led stories than independence-led, and that unionist claims were given far greater prominence than those on the nationalist side.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">A recent major BBC Scottish history programme series was also accused by historians of having a very anglo-centric narrative. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">After, of course, the producers omitted damning evidence of English oppression and barbarity, and a country forced against its will into the Union in 1707 by a small band of Scots nobles who were rewarded with gold and English lands.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Programme advisors, some of whom were eminent historians, distanced themselves from the 10-part series before it was finished. The BBC promoted it as a kind of ultimate guide to Scottish history. But the academics challenged its accuracy, to say the least.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As well as saying it was too anglo-centric, the failure to front it with a historian has also been heavily criticised by professors and the public. Instead, a prepared script by the BBC was given to an archaeologist to narrate. The chosen presenter has also publicly admitted he is pro union. Academic advisers quit before programmes were completed.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Professor Allan Macinnes, of the University of Strathclyde, resigned from the series' advisory board after its first meeting. "I thought the whole production was dreadful," he said. "The first script I got was so anglo-centric I couldn't believe it.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">"It was written on the basis as if Scotland was a divided country until the Union came along and civilised it.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">"At the time, England was divided, France was divided, Germany didn't even exist. I would like to see a wider European context.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Why did the BBC ignore the advice of these historians? And why did it not choose a more authoritative figure to present it? Like a historian perhaps?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Does the BBC have any major news anchormen or women, or history programme presenters in Scotland who are not pro union?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And it’s not just the BBC. It has been revealed that the vast majority of Scotland’s daily newspapers also have a strong unionist agenda. Again, impartial is not a word Scots would readily use to describe most of our country’s written press.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Pro-union stories get maximum coverage, with every angle covered to the third degree that it’s almost becoming Monty Pythonesque in its absurdity. The "No" camp can make any nonsensical claim about the effects of independence and its given generous air time and column inches.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">A former Labour defence minister makes a fantastical assertion that an independent Scotland will actually lead to the World Order being disrupted, and it immediately becomes headline news. But rather than the claim being thoroughly investigated and then soundly discredited, it was promoted as a serious possibility through large sections of the media.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Well, if the consequences of voting for independence is Peebles being dynamited off the map by an intergalactic terrorist in a Portsmouth-built Death Star, there isn’t much we can do to prove otherwise. It’s just one of those unknown unknowns, as Donald Rumsfeld would have mused.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">At the same time, a positive pro independence story, such as a unionist MP saying Scotland would be much better off running its own affairs in its own country, is often challenged by all and sundry, or reduced to a lower ranking news item, or not even published.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In January this year, the BBC Trust found BBC Scotland guilty of having misled the public after a Reporting Scotland item misrepresented an Irish politician in relation to a story on EU membership post-independence.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Raymond Buchanan, who reported the item for the BBC, resigned days before the Trust announced its intention to carry out an investigation.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Despite the guilty verdict, BBC Scotland management refused to apologise and have yet to issue any correction.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There can be no doubt that stories harmful to the "No" campaign are being heavily censored by our media. Positive news for the "Yes" side is being curtailed.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We know this because we all live in the third Millennium these days and can find the facts and stories published elsewhere at the click of a mouse. There’s a world of data out there.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I’d like to tell Auntie that sometimes in Scotland, in clement weather anyway, we pick up interesting stuff on the wireless and telegram. We now even know that three guys in a cramped washing machine landed on the moon in 1969, that there are repeats of Bullseye on the telly and that 95% of other countries in the world are now independent.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Banning public comment on Scottish politics is an anachronism. Why would the BBC want to do anything that would discourage the people, the source of its licence-fees, from letting the national broadcaster know what the nation thinks? Isn’t that anti-news? Is it, dare I say it, bias?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Channel 4’s recent excellent coverage of the Referendum makes the BBC’s immature communication attempts look akin to an episode of Teletubbies - albeit everyone in Teletubbyland is treated as an equal partner.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The BBC, sometimes known as a "national treasure", often boasts about its world renowned image as the purveyor of truth.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Here's an excerpt from its own charter:</span></div>
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<i style="letter-spacing: 0px;">"Impartiality lies at the heart of public service and is the core of the BBC's commitment to its audiences. It applies to all our output and services - television, radio, online, and in our international services and commercial magazines. We must be inclusive, considering the broad perspective and ensuring the existence of a range of views is appropriately reflected."</i></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">On September 18, the people of Scotland will vote on the Referendum question on whether we think Scotland should be independent, like much of Planet Earth.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.comUnited States37.09024 -95.712891000000013-36.4181565 99.052733999999987 90 69.521483999999987tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-73877612088139158062014-06-08T14:53:00.001+01:002014-06-11T21:07:07.263+01:00A DAY TOO FAR: HOW THE HUBRIS OF HOLLYWOOD BURNED FINGERS<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UDgVvo_sw-o/U5i2ExphrMI/AAAAAAAAAPU/dzOXwwK6ZlY/s1600/robert-mitchum-longest-day.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UDgVvo_sw-o/U5i2ExphrMI/AAAAAAAAAPU/dzOXwwK6ZlY/s1600/robert-mitchum-longest-day.jpg" height="318" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">TODAY, No Grey Areas introduces another important signing - one to excite film buffs everywhere. Brian Hannan is author of <i>The Making of Lawrence of Arabia</i>, <i>The Making of The Guns of Navarone</i>, <i>Hitchcock’s Hollywood Hell</i>, <i>Hitchcock at the Box Office</i> – all of which are available in print from Amazon and Kindle. In his timely opening blog, he reminds us of how things can go wrong, even for the most famous of Hollywood executives.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">IMPORTANT anniversaries have been usurped by marketers.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Accompanying last week’s 70th anniversary remembrance of the D-Day landings was a wide scale revival of <i>The Longest Day</i>, featuring an all-star cast including John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and Sean Connery.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">A Glasgow company, Park Circus Films, which is behind all those occasional big-screen showings of old favourites, has been promoting Steven Spielberg’s <i>Saving Private Ryan</i> and Samuel Fuller’s <i>The Big Red One,</i> starring Lee Marvin.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">More cynically, a 50th anniversary showing of <i>Zulu</i> has been shifted from January (when the film originally premiered in the UK) to June 9 to take advantage of the sentiment surrounding soldiering.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">War is partly to blame for what appears now like an incessant rash of movie anniversaries. The first movie to take major advantage of the celebration of a historic military event was <i>Gone With the Wind</i>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">In 1961, to mark the centenary of the beginning of the American Civil War, MGM reissued the Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh classic.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">It wasn’t the first time the movie had been reissued. It was the fourth. It had already been re-released in the US in1942, 1947 and 1954, each time sending the public back to the box office in droves.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The gap between showings was based on a Hollywood notion that a new generation of filmgoers popped up once every seven years. The film was a much bigger hit than anyone expected, one of the top ten films of the year at the box office.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Hollywood being that kind of place, everyone wanted to jump onto the reissue bandwagon with exceedingly mixed results. The idea – prevalent nowadays - that a film being ten, 25 or 50 years old was sufficient reason for a box-office rematch lacked marketing heft back in the 1960s.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">But there was one significant historical event that could generate exceptional hype – D-Day. The 20th anniversary of D-Day would take place in 1964. There was only one problem. The Darryl F. Zanuck picture <i>The Longest Day</i> had just been released in October 1962.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">It was the number three film of the year in America in 1963 and was so successful there, held over so long in the bigger cinemas, it still had not played in hundreds of small theatres.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">But Zanuck thought the anniversary too good an opportunity to miss. So he curtailed the film’s release, cancelling contracts for future showings, withdrawing it from cinemas in February 1964.It had been shown in 4,400 cinemas, less than half of the expected final number.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">He was not the only one to sniff the lucrative potential of the summer anniversary. One of the three main television networks offered a record $4m for the movie if it could premiere it on June 6.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Zanuck reckoned his movie was worth more and started a massive build-up to anniversary celebrations climaxing in a special showing on June 6 to a select audience of military and civilian leaders as a large-scale reissue got underway.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">It was set for major cinemas in New York and Los Angeles. Nearly 500 cinemas, some of which had shown it on initial release, backed Zanuck’s judgement.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The public, it turned out, was not waiting with bated breath. Zanuck had gone a “day too far.” In all his arrogance, he had overlooked three things.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Firstly, a different perspective had been cast on war by Carl Foreman’s grittier <i>The Victors,</i> starring George Peppard and Albert Finney. Secondly, it went head-to-head with another reissue – David Lean’s multi-Oscar-winning <i>Bridge on the River Kwai</i>, which pummelled it at the box office.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Thirdly, the American public saw the tub-thumping for what it was – marketing hype. In one of Hollywood’s most catastrophic misjudgements – file under “hubris” – a film that was racing ahead of the box office pack trailed home with its tail between its legs.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The reissue barely grossed $2m, half of the box office of <i>The Victors</i> and <i>Bridge on the River Kwai</i>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Strangely enough, that did not stop Fox taking another punt at a reissue in 1969, the 25th anniversary of D-Day, where, even more curiously, it brought in far better returns.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-12648921381394722742014-06-06T17:11:00.001+01:002014-06-11T21:08:31.647+01:00CORRUPTION & AK-47s: FIFA MUST RIGHT ITS WRONGS<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qqjEp_ybVu8/U5i3GNJWc6I/AAAAAAAAAPc/yIAfOR7cSX4/s1600/straving-child.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qqjEp_ybVu8/U5i3GNJWc6I/AAAAAAAAAPc/yIAfOR7cSX4/s1600/straving-child.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">BY BEN PALMER</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The last two World Cups are the only ones that I can realistically remember.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In 2002, I was only 6, my memory limited. For some reason though, I can still remember a fresh faced Brazilian kid lobbing David Seaman. That’s another matter, however.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The Adidas Teamgeist ball is my fondest memory of 2006 and my first real World Cup memory. The ball that only had 14 panels – for a 10-year-old it was captivating, it’s just a pity I couldn’t play with it!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The South African tournament will be remembered due to those Vuvuzela’s, or “Bloody Vuvuzela’s” as they were known to the majority of the public. The nauseating noise was loathed by all, but it spawned an atmosphere that will never be forgotten.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">These proverbial heirlooms of the World Cup ancestry were well documented in the build-up of each tournament, so do we really want to be remembering AK-47s in the approach to Russia 2018?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Brazilian authorities have announced that there will be 157,000 police and soldiers providing <i>security</i> at the event – a quick Google search of “Brazilian Police” shows that the general consensus of Brazilian uniform isn’t exactly reassuring.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Officers attired in black bulletproof suits, with automatic rifles as an accessory; the epitome of safety!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Just days away from the opening ceremony of the first Brazilian World Cup since 1950, and there’s a larger sense of anxiety rather than excitement. The nation's Government, led by Dilma Rousseff, is under-fire for blowing $11 Billion on the tournament - $62 Million per game despite a near 20% poverty rate.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We’re looking at a World Cup which will be hindered by an indisputable sense of injustice. Murals being painted all over the country's Favela’s convey just how the nation’s backbone views the hosting of the tournament: it’s a nuisance, unnecessary and downright stupid.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There is no going back now though, so surely FIFA can learn from its mistakes? Surely the ruling body of the most popular sport on the planet can see the pain it is causing? Surely then, Qatar must be scrapped?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Russia’s turn, however, comes before Qatar and the 2018 event is in doubt also, with England being viewed as the potential back-up should the Russian attempt fail.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">FIFA can set a precedent now. Revelations last week show that the Qatari World Cup was indeed “bought,” so surely FIFA can right a wrong?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In 2026, countries from the Americas can host again – do we want to be going into it with a legacy of corrupt money having been the foundations of our last World Cup?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The youth of today need to know the World Cup for its animation: the wonder-goals, the overly scientific footballs, the cultures of countries, not the negativities which look set to swamp the 21</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><sup>st</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> century incarnations.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Qatar didn’t even bend over backwards to host the World Cup, they entered their pin number. Now it is up to FIFA to reverse this monstrous transaction.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-6334982438263484702014-06-04T14:02:00.002+01:002014-06-04T14:03:04.414+01:00MAKING A DOG'S BREAKFAST OF MOTORWAY MENUS<div style="font-size: 16px;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">BY JIM BLACK</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">NEVER mind who killed Cock Robin. Forget about who framed Roger Rabbit. What I want to know is who is responsible for the disappearance of Little Chef?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The perpetrator of this ghastly crime should be hanged, drawn and quartered.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Where once Little Chef could be seen adorning the frontage of prefabricated buildings serving as enticing eating places for the weary traveller, from John O’Groats to Lands End, now stands monuments to the 21</span><span style="font-size: 8.7px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><sup>st</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> Century’s new age of fast food joints and coffee houses.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Having recently completed the near 1,200 mile return journey from Inverness to London I confess to having lost the will to live at various moments in my quest to find an establishment that actually serves good, wholesome food – the sort that leaves you with a feeling of contentment.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The early starter, the all day breakfast, the Olympic breakfast, sausage and mash, pie of the day; all have been replaced by tasteless burgers, supermarket fodder for food luvvies and pre-packed sandwiches full of disgusting concoctions ranging from ham, mayonnaise and dill to egg with cress and cold crispy bacon and sausage. I wouldn’t feed most of it to a starving dog for fear of offending the animal’s taste buds!</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We are assured by Alex Salmond’s rapidly expanding food police that such offerings are far healthier than a traditional fry-up. Maybe, but I would prefer to be given the choice between eating a meal that satisfies certain cravings when you are driving hour after hour than one that tastes like it’s been made from sawdust and pigeon droppings.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Not that I appear to have much say in the matter, judging by my experience of trying to find desirable sustenance on Britain’s motorway network.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Just for a moment I thought I had cracked it on the journey south when I spotted a sign informing that I was approaching a Road Chef at the Sandbach Services in Cheshire. Not so.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Road Chef would seem to me to imply exactly that, food prepared by a chef or chefs. Instead, when I enquired as to exactly where this facility was located in the complex I was informed by the young lady serving behind the Costa Coffee counter that I had a choice of her establishment or McDonalds. Not wishing to dine on packets of biscuits, slabs of cake or cardboard Panini, I opted for a Big Mac.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">To be fair, choice is not limited to Costa or McDonalds. For those who wish to turn their comfort break into a shopping expedition, there is also the choice of Waitrose or M&S at some service areas.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Do me a favour. What are you supposed to do; purchase a loaf of bread, a packet of ham, a jar of coffee, a pint of milk and a set of cutlery? Evening officer, the reason I’ve parked up on the hard shoulder is to prepare my evening meal. You don’t happen to have a kitchen table and a kettle on you, by any chance?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I could go on listing my many complaints, but what’s the point? Little Chef is almost no more and we’re stuck with sub-standard alternatives.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But there is at least one bastion of good, old fashioned cooking – The Ballinluig Services in the Perthshire village of the same name, just off the A9, where they serve traditional grub.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And while I am on the subject of traditional food, why the hell can you no longer seem to get a roll and ham or a plain egg roll without any of the other gunge included? I’m sure the Ballinluig Services do them, so why do other outlets simply refuse to cater for those of us who enjoy their food plain and simple?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">No, don’t bother replying as I have neither the will nor the patience to listen to some sort of cack handed explanation about nutritional values.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Just so long as the Ballinluig Services continue to flourish there remains a glimmer of hope and a refuge from the average speed cameras the SNP’s appallingly arrogant and self important Minister for Transport Keith Brown assures us will make the A9 a safer track.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But that’s another rant for another day.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-65194930786889758052014-06-02T19:31:00.002+01:002014-06-02T19:43:09.692+01:00EXPLOITATION AT THE RYDER CUP: CALLING MR ALEX SALMOND<div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">IT’S possibly injudicious to write about your relatives on a public platform such as this, but lack of judgment seems to form a stout branch of the family tree, so here goes.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Today, I ’m concentrating on what I consider to be exploitation, and also the autumnal madness of my Chicago-based brother- in-law.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Alejandro Gonzales, aka Alex, is a volunteer (one of around 1,800, or so) for this year’s Ryder Cup in September. I’m still wondering whether he has forfeited his wits.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">But, before highlighting the plight of the less than privileged key workers at Gleneagles, it’s necessary to paint a picture of a rather incredible and impressive man who, it must be stated, has not uttered one single word of complaint about what’s ahead of him.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">At 82 years of age, Alex is a former oil company executive who declares himself quite captivated by the game of golf. As a player, he’s Mr Average in that he’ll never be a reincarnation of Lee Trevino but, there again, he will assuredly never witness the indignity of the number 24 attached to his handicap.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">He takes his allegiance to the sport further by dedicating some of his leisure time to the professional game: he’s been a steward at two Ryder Cups, a US Open and quite a few other big tournaments. It allows him, he says, to be close to his heroes. You cannot curb enthusiasm like that, it seems.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">But now it’s time to study the exploitative nature of this year’s biennial bun fight between Europe and America. We’ll vote for fairness and start with the one perk afforded volunteers. Most of them work a four-hour shift - and then are permitted to watch the proceedings in their downtime. Now, ain’t that cute?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">But prepare yourselves for the negatives. Firstly, workers are expected to pay in the order of £65-70 for their uniforms, which comprise a windcheater, polo shirt and cap.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Surely they are remunerated in other ways? A daily wage, for instance? Er, not so as you would notice. Other than a £15 daily voucher for food and drink, they won’t receive a hillock of beans, far less a hill, for their efforts. Neither, it‘s claimed, are they given an allowance for travelling to Perthshire.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">While we’re at it, let’s count the ancillary costs of being a volunteer. Whilst the panjandrums of the competition are firmly ensconced in the luxury of Gleneagles - no doubt contemplating the millions of pounds of profit - the worker ants must scurry around finding their own accommodation. Again, they must pay for this themselves.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">To ease this potential burden, Alex originally considered staying at a hotel in nearby Crieff, but was deterred by the prohibitive cost of £200 a night. So, he will stay in Glasgow at approximately £60 a night and make a daily 100-mile round trip in order to perform his duties in the merchandising marquee. Remember, we’re talking about an octogenarian here.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Overall, the cost to his pocket will be equally disturbing: at a conservative estimate, his trip from America will cost him two or three thousand pounds, possibly more.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Now, let me underline again that my brother-in-law’s lips are sealed against recrimination. When I say that the organisers are taking an almighty liberty with willing hands, Alex prefers diplomacy.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">“It doesn’t bother me, fortunately,” he responds. “I’m retired and in a (financial) position to do it. Hey, I’m still blessed with the memory of Medinah. Now that came as a complete surprise.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">“I’ll always remember that the Europeans were so happy - meanwhile I think the Americans took it in their stride: I didn’t see any confrontations. I don’t think we’ll ever see another ending like that one.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Alex is not getting off that easily, though. I press him again for a reaction and am rewarded with a token victory. “Oh, I suppose I’d like to see some additional benes (benefits) for the volunteers. We do work hard and try to make it as smooth as possible.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">So what benes would be acceptable? “Oh, okay, the ball swings towards the Ryder Cup group as far as being able to take advantage of myself and others. But, hey, by the same token, if I weren’t there, it would be very easy to fill my shoes. I understand 18,000 people volunteered. That gives you an idea how many people out there want to do this.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">That may be so, but who expects a man to work for nothing in this age of corporate activity and insatiable greed? It is exploitation by any name you can conjure.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">There are no firm figures regarding what the European Tour as organisers expect to make from this year’s competition, but I do know that, back in 2006, the K Club in Dublin is said to have cleared £10million after the taxman had deliberated.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">They say Gleneagles will generate £100million, so you can take that as around £20 million of clear profit.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Wouldn’t it be nice if each and every one of those volunteers from all over the world went back home with a small but well-earned bonus. Plus a pleasant memory of their time in Scotland?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">I’m no actuary, but my instant calculations say it would take just over one and a quarter million pounds to do that. Small potatoes, indeed, considering the crop.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Now, I understand the Scottish Government was highly instrumental in bringing the competition back to Scotland. Perhaps another Alex - the one called Salmond, can supply a rescue package.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Mr Salmond positively thrives on being seen and heard at big events; I also imagine he believes in fairness. What a chance for him to flourish his true mettle.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">He could step in and demand justice for the underprivileged of Ryder Cup golf. Surely, it's not beyond him in this year of destiny?</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-8438920003808603692014-05-31T09:40:00.002+01:002014-06-11T21:09:25.580+01:00LAWWELL MAY FOLLOW LENNON OUT OF PARKHEAD<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">I WAS spot on when I was the first to reveal that Neil Lennon would be leaving Celtic.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Followers of No Grey Areas were tipped off weeks ago that Lennon was poised to quit. Now I believe a second high profile figure may soon follow Lennon out of Celtic Park – chief executive Peter Lawwell.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The majority shareholder Dermot Desmond wants Roy Keane as Lennon’s successor and I believe that could hasten Lawwell’s departure.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Why do I think that? My gut instinct is that Keane wouldn’t be Lawwell’s preferred choice. Keane doesn’t strike me as the sort who is prepared to compromise and take instructions. I also get the distinct impression that when he sets his mind on doing something, he’s unshakable.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Lennon was Lawwell’s man. Keane is Desmond’s and I suspect there would be an inevitable clash of personalities.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s no secret either that Lawwell has been touting himself for high-powered chief executives roles with Premiership clubs. He was keen on the Arsenal job and there have been one or two others.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">So, watch this space, and remember who told you first when there are further changes at the top at Celtic.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">To be honest, I do think Lawwell really wanted to do more to try to persuade Lennon to stay. I believe he had already made his mind up that next season would be Lennon’s last and it suited him when the manager announced he was quitting.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">No great effort was made to persuade Johan Mjallby to stay and it was made clear that other changes were required in the coaching staff, including Garry Parker leaving.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">I reckon Lawwell thought the treble was a gimme, given how little pressure there is on Celtic at the moment domestically.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Lawwell expected a clean sweep of honours and losing to Morton in the League Cup and going out of the Scottish Cup to Aberdeen constituted major disappointments.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">So, no great effort was made to keep Lennon. Significantly, there has been no gnashing of teeth or wailing from within in the wake of the announcement.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">At least that was the feeling I got and I am sure Lennon read all the signs and reacted accordingly.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">But if he’s honest with himself, he’ll probably reflect that he should have acted sooner when his stock was at its highest in the wake of Celtic beating Barcelona and qualifying for the last 16 in the Champions League.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">If Keane does get the job I expect he’ll shake the place up and the fact that there are no credible challengers to Celtic’s dominance in the SPFL and Rangers are still stumbling around in the wilderness would probably make the transition fairly straightforward.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">But while Desmond would be quite happy to see Keane in charge, I don’t think Lawwell would share that feeling.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Lennon was Lawwell’s man and he had to put up with a lot. Keane does not fit into the same category, in my opinion.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">But, let’s be perfectly frank, the Honey Monster could move into the Celtic dug-out at the moment and be expected to win the treble.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">But, judging by their initial reaction to the news, whether the fans feel the same way about Keane is a different matter entirely.</span></span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-79867343829317129862014-05-29T20:04:00.002+01:002014-05-29T20:07:58.691+01:00IAN BROADLEY: AN APPRECIATION OF A FINE JOURNALIST<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ian, from Dumbarton, was a newspaper man of 50 years standing and, during his time as the Herald’s golf writer, reported on all four major championships as well as the leading European Tour events and local championships.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">He was also employed by the Daily Record in Glasgow and the north east as a football writer for more than 20 years after graduating from local newspapers to the news desk of the Scottish Daily Express in the early 1960s.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Immediately prior to joining the Herald, Ian also worked for the ill-fated Sunday Scot newspaper, which closed after just a few months. In more recent years he operated as a freelance sportswriter in his adopted city of Aberdeen, reporting on the Dons for several national newspapers.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">During his long and distinguished career, Ian covered Aberdeen’s most successful years under Sir Alex Ferguson and, prior to that, Eddie Turnbull and Billy McNeill.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Know as “Bonesy” or “Broads” to his closest colleagues, Ian was a larger than life character famous for his fiery temperament which brought him into conflict with football players, managers, golfers and colleagues in equal measure. Mercifully, his bark was often worse than his bite and underneath his at times gruff exterior beat a generous heart.</span></span></h2>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ian never minded putting himself out to accommodate colleagues visiting Aberdeen and enjoyed sharing a drink and exchanging stories with them. But woe be tide those who crossed him. They were not easily forgiven, if Ian believed he was the victim of injustice.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">A man with strong principals, Ian’s spats with various football managers are the stuff of legend and earned him the respect of his colleagues and those involved in the game.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">He was once famously challenged by the then Aberdeen manager Eddie Turnbull to settle their differences behind Gleneagles Hotel on the eve of the 1967 Scottish Cup final. There is no record of blows being thrown, but the incident highlighted Ian’s refusal to bow down to those in authority if he felt he had been wronged.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Sir Alex Ferguson recalled: “I had many arguments with him over the years but I could never get angry. I never fell out with him which says a lot when you consider my battles with the press.”</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">A talented golfer himself with a low single figure handicap at his peak, Ian was a member of Murcar Golf Club.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Paul Lawrie, the former Open champion, said: “I have known Ian for a number of years. He covered golf quite a bit when I first went to America after winning the Open and I got to know him.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">“He also played golf at Deeside, where I play with my boys when I am at home, and I used to see him out playing in the evenings. He was a good journalist for a long time so we will miss him.”</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Always good company and a man of wit and a rare ability to laugh at himself, Ian was a member of both the Association of Golf Writers and the Scottish Football Writers’ Association.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">He had genuine warmth and he was a loyal and supportive colleague and friend, and in an age when new technology has replaced many of the previous working practices, he remained an old school type of reporter with the ability to ask the right questions and elicit a response.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ian will be sorely missed by all those who knew him. He is survived by his widow Margaret and his sons John and Gavin.</span></span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-40503249853766637042014-05-25T21:51:00.003+01:002014-05-25T21:51:49.220+01:00NO GREY AREAS MAKES NEW SIGNING<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">NO GREY AREAS has made an exciting new signing...17-year-old freelance sports journalist Ben Palmer.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ben’s Blog will be a regular feature and is the young voice of the website.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">So, who is Ben Palmer?</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Brought up in Buckie, Morayshire, Ben began covering sports from as wide a geographical area as Wick to Wigtown – before he was the legal age to drive.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">A keen golfer, Ben hopes to one day cover both golf and football on a regular basis, but says his sports mind is not as narrow as may seem. His passion is greater for writing on sports of all varieties, rather than just watching his two preferred.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">He started sports writing at the tender age of 13 – covering the Highland League – but has continued to climb the metaphorical ladder and has written for an array of Scottish national newspapers, including The Press & Journal, Sunday Mail and The Times.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">So far in his career he has won “The Herald and Daily What News Schools Journalist of the Year 2012” and was also selected as part of the Future News event in Glasgow, 2014. This event rounded up 100 young journalists from across the Commonwealth and taught the fundamentals required in modern day journalism.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Having only just completed his Secondary education at Buckie High School – at which he was Head Boy in his final year – Ben is about embark on a four year University course before, hopefully, sculpting a career writing the back pages of newspapers.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Meantime, don’t miss his weekly blog, starting with his frank assessment of the state of Scottish football at the top level.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">LA LIGA and the Barclay's Premier League. Arguably the two top leagues in world football quality wise; certainly from an economic dynamic.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Questions have been raised on the ethics in either of these leagues recently. Man City look set to be fined 60 Million Euros for breaching the Financial Fair Play regulations, whereas Spain's crippling problems with racism continue to increase.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Beneath the blurred surroundings in which these leagues are played though, is still the fundamental trait mandatory for the top football leagues in the world: excitement.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Atl</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; letter-spacing: 0px;">é</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">tico Madrid won their first league title since 1996 – on the last day of the season in a winner takes all affair with Barcelona – and Manchester City won the English edition in similar circumstances, defeating West Ham. Not quite in the Hollywood style climax La Liga enjoyed, but a fitting finale nonetheless.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Essentially, these two leagues continue to flourish, continue to captivate and ooze excitement year after year. The spectators of each are lavished with sheer quality continuously.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">In Scotland, however, we are being told that we have just experienced the most exciting season in years. That seemingly positive comment is merely a sad indictment of our nation’s number one sport.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The game, according to some, is blossoming, all because neither Celtic nor Rangers partook in a cup final.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Sure, it's great that we've been treated to St Johnstone winning the Scottish Cup and Aberdeen the League Cup - two formidable tasks - but the assessment that this is portraying this past season of Scottish football as being exciting is laughable.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The début Scottish Premiership season was a sham. Celtic being engraved as champions could have been done last summer, and Hearts were always condemned to relegation having to toil through a season with a bunch of teenagers and a 15 point deduction.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The main trophy in Scottish football never even had realistic potential to conceive excitement. The two most important positions in the league table had been determined before the leaves had started to drift off the trees; the period in the season where a team’s potential should become recognised.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Whilst Dundee United displayed sprinklings of their now recognised youthful zest, it didn't really matter at all in the context of the league – they would never win it.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Their developing of young Scottish talent did plant a seed of hope for the game as a whole, but their parabola of a second half of a season – rounding off with a Scottish Cup final defeat - means that we must wait longer to see it produce the desired results.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Admittedly there was tension, excitement for a pessimist, at the bottom end of the league. Hibs downfall and tussle with Partick Thistle and Kilmarnock for the relegation play-off place grabbed attention.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">But does that mean a season of Scottish football has been exciting because one of the biggest clubs in the country has sunk in a manner of Titanic proportions? Absolutely not.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Teams tussling for the league title is exciting; teams having a hope of escaping relegation is exciting; our clubs battling it out in Europe is exciting - Hibs having a bunch of incompetent footballers does not constitute exciting.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">With this, I am not saying Scottish football is in an inescapable cul-de-sac. It is the proclaiming of this past season as the most exciting in years that I must refute.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Scottish football has perhaps enjoyed a better year; Aberdeen fans being thrown back to the 80's was a fun period, and Motherwell's steadiness is reassuring, but we must let the game reach its peak before we jump on our stallion and shout from the roof tops.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Will we remember the dogged battle Hibs have fought in 10 years time? Probably not. Will we remember La Liga's most thrilling conclusion in a decade? Absolutely.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Let's just settle ourselves down and leave the superlatives to the games that deserve it. With the progression we are currently making, it may not be long before we merit it ourselves.</span></span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-62090647546822206192014-05-19T13:40:00.002+01:002014-05-19T13:40:34.712+01:00FROM HERE TO OBSCURITY<div style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px; min-height: 22px;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">THE gurus/gorillas at No Grey Areas have asked me to comment on the madness of the traditional managerial shuffle in both England and Scotland.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Well, this particular shuffle threatens to turn into a stampede. It began some weeks ago with the ousting of Malky Mackay at Cardiff and Davie Moyes at Manchester United, and has since gathered momentum.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And just think, we’re only just going into the close season, the traditional time for reassessing positions.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We’ll return to Malky (and his unreserved apology to Cardiff owner Vincent Tan) in a minute. I’m gonna start with one directly out of left field: my forecast is that Guy Poyet will leave Sunderland and go to West Ham.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For that to happen, of course, Sam Allardyce, would have to leave Upton Park. He’s the man, remember, whose name is inevitably on the lips of every chairman who sees his club disappearing down the nearest plughole.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But, since he’s managed to haul West Ham away from that plughole, I suppose he’s sort of expendable. So, enter the impressive Uruguayan, the wizard of Wearside. Well, that’s my reading of the situation - I trust myopia is not overtaking me!</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I think that Poyet may have made the decision eight to ten weeks ago, even when he thought that Sunderland had no chance of wiping its feet on the welcome mat of the Premier Division next season. Alongside that, he maybe discovered that this wasn’t the club that he thought it was.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Let’s be circumspect and say he would have suspected that West Ham were looking to make changes, and it went on from there. Anyway, it wouldn’t be the world’s greatest surprise to see him installed in East London next season.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I’ll return to the Stadium of Light soon. First, let’s take a trip down White Hart Lane. It seems Mauricio Pochettino will shake the hand of Tottenham’s executioner-in-chief, Daniel Levy, any day soon - provided he starts speaking in English, of course.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hey, my information is that the Argentinian’s English is very good. Why he refuses to do it on television is anyone’s guess. Even people who are close to his situation at Southampton don’t understand it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Maybe it’s to keep a shield between himself and the public; maybe it’s to avoid being, er, misquoted. The laugh is that he’s responding to an English question in his own language before the interpreter has finished translating.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Anyway, should Pochettino take the Levy shilling and start speaking the Queen’s, there will be a vacancy at Southampton, a club due to lose players like Luke Shaw and Adam Lallana. The rumour is that Harry Redknapp might fancy a return to the south coast.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It didn’t go too well for old ’Arry last time, when I believe he entered conflict with a certain Sir Clive Woodward. The rugby guru, evidently, had a hotline to the chairman’s ear at the time and that was never going to be the ideal situation.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Why would Harry want to leave QPR? Might I suggest that the aroma of a ten-pound note might have something to do with it? Hey, if Harry was getting more money to return to Bournemouth, he’d be right up there with the ice cream sellers on the prom.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The Championship play-offs will determine all, I’d imagine. If Rangers don’t make it, hauling your arse up and down the road to faraway places with strange names like Huddersfield doesn’t quite hold the same allure.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Still, I don’t think it’s tablets of stone stuff yet. Southampton may very well have gone beyond the stage of Harry Redknapp. They would maybe like to bring in someone of the same ilk as Pochettino.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Many jobs could be up for grabs, It seems to be the way of the Premier world. A run of good results makes a man the flavour of Belgian chocolate, a run of bad ones puts him under pressure and there’s no safety net.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Davie Moyes (alias Billy McMoyes) knows that better than anyone. I suspect that, having sampled the white sands of Mauritius, or wherever, he’ll be ready to return and he’ll get a job again, no danger.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">He won’t penetrate the top six again at the moment, so it’ll be Newcastle or Aston Villa. It’s suffice to say that I don’t think Paul Lambert will start next season as manager of Villa. The new people won’t want a regime that was less than successful.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The majority of these changes are the product of poor results, but the fall-out between Malky Mackay and Vincent Tan ran a lot deeper. Cardiff were in a position of safety when Mackay left them. So now a settlement (did he get any money?) has been made and a fulsome apology thrown into the mix.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As far as we know, there was nothing for which to apologise, so why would you do so? I don’t suppose we’ll ever really know the real story: it’s just one of the many unexplained tales that surround this game. Anyway, Mackay is now clear to take another job, and I expect him to go to West Brom very shortly.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Meanwhile, up here in Scotland but not, maybe, for very much longer lingers the Neil Lennon situation. There will be positions open to him down south - Norwich in the Championship and Sunderland in the Premier Division.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Take your pick. My message to sports journalists is see that you don’t run out of ink. There’s a lot more to come.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There are questions marks over the futures of Terry Butcher, John Hughes and also Jackie McNamara. Blackpool has gone, but will the lure of the Championship prove too strong for him?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Finally, I come to my old club, Morton. Who will be the next manager? I’m stumped with this one at the moment: give me 64,000 dollars and I still couldn’t tell you. All I’ll say is this: after Allan Moore and Kenny Shields, who will be the next one that the chairman plucks out of notoriety and plunges into obscurity?</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-65577386187956745002014-05-16T14:35:00.005+01:002014-05-16T14:35:49.721+01:00MCINNES NOT FIT FOR FERGIE'S SHOES JUST YET<div style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">By Bryan Cooney</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">THIS somewhat deranged world of Scottish football is occasionally predisposed towards wild exaggeration.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The Highland News, for instance, recently reported that Inverness CT manager John Hughes had drawn comparisons between his prolific striker, Billy McKay, and the little guy employed to do similar business for FC Barcelona: Lionel Messi.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">No, this is not a misprint. You imagine McKay pulling the duck-feather duvet over his head when he read that one. Can you imagine the stick he received when he next popped that head around the dressing room door at the Tulloch Caledonian Stadium?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Anyway, a similar form of hyperbole was employed in Aberdeen recently when Stewart Milne and some of his acquaintances from the business community toasted the club’s League Cup victory.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Now, aside from an impressive flourish of solidarity from over 40,000 fans, it had been a less than convincing conclusion at Hampden. The Dons just about crawled over the line, extra time and penalties being required to deny the muscular challenge of the aforementioned Inverness.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Yet the jubilation within Milne, no doubt encouraged by the massive turn-out in the city for the homecoming, was unconfined. I understand he astounded his chums by announcing that, in Derek McInnes, he’d found a manager who belonged to the same league as Alex Ferguson.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">That statement put the chairman so far over the top that he effectively joined the space race. Had he totally lost his senses? Or, might he have been positively pixilated at the time of speaking?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Whatever, some form of empathy certainly can be distributed towards the man from Alford: he has experienced several torrid years, forfeited a sizeable chunk of his £400 million fortune and, it was whispered, come close to business oblivion.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">His record as a football leader, meanwhile, has been so impoverished that it was comparable with the UK’s annual performance in the Eurovision Song contest. Eight managers in 19 years: that’s infiltrating the pedigree of real estate owned by the likes of Daniel Levy and Rod Petrie.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Still, with economic growth encouraging legitimate expectations and the building empire and bank balance rapidly replenishing themselves, Milne at last had discovered a man who certainly knew his way around the sporting block.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But does the fact that McInnes has won a League Cup and finished third in the Premiership, comprehensively outflanked by Celtic and marginally by Motherwell, mean they’ll be singing loud hosannas in the Granite City from here on in? It’s a possibility but some way from a probability.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Does it mean it’s acceptable to mention McInnes and Ferguson in the same sentence? No, it’s not. Listen, it’s impossible to imagine anyone taking such a claim seriously. Least of all the pragmatic McInnes.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">However, there is a suggestion that the dual winner of the Manager of the Year awards is already fashioning himself in the image of the great man.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">He appears to have adopted the unfortunate trait of phoning up those journalists who are not tuned into his personal wavelength. Anyone daring to query his tactics or his choice of playing personnel are liable to be in receipt of an assault of the auditory system.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Last week, it’s claimed that the phone lines between Glasgow and the South were particular busy. Radio pundit Allan Preston seemingly voiced his reservations about McInnes winning the manager awards and was rewarded with a few minutes of vituperation. From what I hear, Preston, alias The Biscuit, insisted on biting back.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Look, this is not a campaign on behalf of the media - its representatives are robust enough to look after themselves. But just remember, despite what many fans think, <b>most</b> of those reporters do their jobs as objectively and honestly as possible. Most of them are inveterate fans themselves.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But how robotic would we be if there was agreement on every citizen’s lips? This country still preserves its reputation as a democratised society: it is not Putin’s Russia, And, because of that, everyone is entitled to their beliefs, even it if conflicts with others.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Perish the thought that anyone should be stripped of his or her opinion by any football manager, no matter his status.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Many fans are unlikely to agree with these observations because of an inherent dislike of the media, But the habit into which McInnes is falling is ill advised, Taking issue in this manner tells you a lot about a man. It represents hubris and arrogance. But it can also suggest insecurity and paranoia.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">None of these things look good on the figurative C.V. of an ambitious young thruster. And I suspect this young man is bristling with ambition.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Now, I introduced myself very briefly to McInnes at Sunday’s football writers’ dinner. I was immediately impressed. He’s a clean-cut, articulate figure who has taken on the good work initiated by Craig Brown and Archie Knox and directed the team onto the next platform.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Most fans have bought wholeheartedly into his style, after their initial suspicions. The popular mantra has now become: In McInnes We Trust. There remain a few worrying issues, however.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Being a Dons fan for 60 years and more, I told him that I was a great admirer of his team. I could have said a lot more had the situation been more appropriate. Asked him a few questions.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For instance, who recommended that Calvin Zola should ever wear an Aberdeen jersey, and how much research went into that signing?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Why was Gregg Wylde discarded with such haste and so little explanation?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Why is the lone striker system persevered with at home, when invariably there are two rows of double-decker buses parked just in front of the opposition’s penalty area? Why does he seem reluctant to alter tactics when a stalemate ensues?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Don’t misinterpret matters. I’m not anti-McInnes. Far from it. Overall, he’s performed so much better than most of his predecessors. A welter of fine work has been achieved and a smile is returning to the faces of the people of Aberdeen. But these faces are mercurial by nature.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Last Sunday, the Dons threatened to sweep Motherwell into the North Sea. By doing that, they’d have finished second in the Premiership. Ultimately, they were denied by a refereeing blunder of the first order, so they were left in third spot.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This was the last game of the season and it’s traditionally a festive occasion where players celebrate with the fans. But, five minutes after the final whistle, there were almost no Aberdeen fans with whom to celebrate.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">McInnes should take that on board. The wind is firmly in his favour at this moment. He should harness it effectively rather than trying to fight it.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-84184874766634140132014-05-13T20:17:00.001+01:002014-05-13T20:17:52.436+01:00BACK STABBING IS MAKING IT A DIRTY GAME<div style="margin-bottom: 13.3px; min-height: 19px;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">BY JIM BLACK</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">FOOTBALL has become an increasingly dirty game - and I am not talking about the physical nature of the sport.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Back-stabbing and blatant wheeling and dealing by individuals out to make a quick buck at the expense of those who support the once great game has turned football into a shadowy, grainy image of its former self.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">But even by the current standards of duplicity and dirty tricks, recent distasteful events have cast another dark shadow over Scottish football.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">My initial instinct was to say hell mend Hearts for the club’s treatment of its former manager, Gary Locke, his backroom staff, and several players.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Likewise, St Mirren, for their treatment of Danny Lennon, and Hibs chairman Rod Petrie, for immediately distancing himself from the latest Easter Road crisis.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Rangers Football Club, meanwhile, continues to be run in a manner that beggars belief and suggests that the inmates have indeed taken over the running of the asylum!</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">One is tempted to hope that good fortune deserts those responsible for discarding Locke and Lennon, Petrie, for his cowardly refusal to stand up and be counted, and Rangers’ chief executive Graham Wallace and an incompetent bunch of directors - some of whom are patently unfit to hold the role – for their continued bungling.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">But to do so would be disrespectful and unfeeling towards the thousands of loyal fans who follow the fortunes of the aforementioned clubs at considerable expense.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">After the Hearts fans had shown a loyalty above and beyond the call of duty to keep the club alive, they were rewarded with renewed hope of a much brighter future under Ann Budge, the new owner with a successful business background.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Their optimism was sadly misplaced. Budge has shown herself to be a “Hearts-breaker” rather than a visionary.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Budge revolution has begun with the axing of loyal staff, most notably Locke, a Jambo through and through, and man who did a quite remarkable job in largely impossible circumstances.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Hearts were never going to survive in the Premiership on the back of a 15 point deduction and a signing ban. That they managed to stave off relegation for as long as they did was largely down to Locke and his assistant Billy Brown.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">They also departed Tynecastle having left behind a rich legacy of young players who, I believed, would have made Hearts a good bet to be promotion contenders next season.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Robbie Neilson has replaced Locke as first team coach. Craig Levein has been appointed to the role of director of football.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Remember Levein? He is a former Hearts footballer who achieved some success as a player, but precious little as a manager, including a disastrous and largely hugely embarrassing spell as Scotland coach.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Budge attempted to explain her betrayal of Locke and the others in a waffling statement that added insult to injury.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Bottom line is the 66-year-old so-called Queen of Hearts has behaved in a manner little better than that of a cut-throat.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial; letter-spacing: 0px;">She i</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">s guilty of a huge misjudgement. She emerged from her first day in charge without a shred of credit and already thousands of Hearts fans are questioning the future under the new Iron Lady.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 13.3px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Will she eventually hand over control, as promised? Don’t bet on it. She appears to already have been caught out in a lie when she claimed she had not spoken with Levein prior to her takeover.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">But Budge will do well to remember that the majority of Hearts fans regard Locke as one of their own and will be quick to round on her if the expected renaissance fails to happen.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Personally, I would not be at all surprised if Hearts is plunged into a new crisis a year from now although I hope, for the fans’ sake, I am wrong.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Officially, St Mirren did not sack Danny Lennon they simply did not renew his contract. It was Lennon’s reward for winning the League Cup and keeping the club in the Premiership.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">What more can a provincial club with limited resources expect? I know the chairman Stewart Gilmour reasonably well. Indeed, I have socialised with him and find him pleasant company. But Stewart is in danger of taking up residence in La-La Land if he imagines that his beloved Saints can do very much better under the stewardship of a different manager.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Petrie, meanwhile, is Scottish football’s Teflon Don. Having launched a verbal assault on his manager, Terry Butcher and the Hibs players for the abject failure to avoid the SPFL play-off, he conveniently forgets that he is the man who appoints and then sacks managers at a rate that is almost as dizzying as a roundabout.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">So, Hibs current plight has nothing do with Petrie, then?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">And, finally, Rangers – that once great club situated on Glasgow’s south-side.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">There was a glorious opportunity to begin again post-David Murray and rebuild a strong foundation. Instead, those who have followed have dangerously weakened the existing one.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The general consensus is that it will take Rangers a decade to reassert themselves as a power in Scottish football, capable of challenging Celtic.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">From where I’m sitting, under the present regime, that is an extremely optimistic time-scale!</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-38145762560117686572014-05-09T15:37:00.002+01:002014-06-11T21:24:31.847+01:00UNCLE SAM'S SHAME<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ASH9m5LB3iY/U5i650GJCnI/AAAAAAAAAPs/xbJA3-XGves/s1600/death-penalty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ASH9m5LB3iY/U5i650GJCnI/AAAAAAAAAPs/xbJA3-XGves/s1600/death-penalty.jpg" height="211" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">BY JIM BLACK</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">WHEN it comes to sheer hypocrisy and the practice of double standards, America leads the world.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The master race, as they like to view themselves, is quick to lecture the rest of mankind on the subjects of morality, fairness, common decency and the rule of law. Yet, Uncle Sam consistently fails miserably to practice these values.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Maybe some of you have never heard of Clayton Lockett. For those of you who haven’t, he is a deceased 39-year-old black American.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Lockett was put to death on April 29, by order of the State of Oklahoma. His crimes were truly unspeakable.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">He and accomplices abducted two teenage girls (as well as a man and his baby). One of them, Stephanie Neiman, refused to say she wouldn’t tell the police, so Lockett shot her. But she didn’t die, so he then ordered his accomplices to bury her alive.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">In addition to first-degree murder, Lockett was charged with conspiracy, first-degree burglary, three counts of assault with a dangerous weapon, three counts of forcible oral sodomy, four counts of first-degree rape, four counts of kidnapping and two counts of robbery by force and fear.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Lockett had previously served time for various crimes, for four years and seven years.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">That Lockett was pure scum is, I suggest, not open to debate. Nor am I inviting a discussion for or against the death penalty.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">But even a rabid dog deserves some compassion. Lockett received none. Indeed, the manner of his death was almost as horrific as his crimes.</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">It took Lockett 43 minutes to die inhumanely at the hands of the state when it botched his execution.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Apparently his death certificate states that he suffered a heart attack shortly after a failed execution by lethal injection.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Lockett was administered an untested mixture of drugs that had not previously been used for executions in the United States. Although the procedure was stopped, by then Lockett had been subjected to various forms of torture.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">According to several witnesses, he writhed, groaned, convulsed and spoke during the process and attempted to rise from the execution table 14<b> </b>minutes after being sedated, despite having been declared unconscious.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The time line issued by Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester makes grim reading.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The first drug was administered at 6.23pm and Lockett was declared unconscious at 6.33. The execution was halted after about 20 minutes and he was pronounced dead at 7.06 due to a heart attack.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Oklahoma Department of Correction Director Robert Patton said that one of the doctors present stopped the execution after Lockett had a “vein failure”.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">A subsequent report showed Lockett’s execution was halted 33 minutes after it began, his vein collapsed as the drugs were administered. A doctor said there were not enough drugs left and that Lockett had not been given enough drugs to cause death, adding that there were not enough drugs to continue.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin had strongly pushed for the execution to take place despite the lack of standard drugs. Oklahoma officials, for their part, testified that the drugs to be used had been legally obtained and had not expired. However, they refused to divulge the source of these drugs.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is not difficult to understand why the State has refused to disclose basic information about the drugs used with such catastrophic consequences.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Put plainly, Clayton Lockett’s treatment was barbaric and inappropriate in a so-called civilised society.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The idea of actually spectating while a victim is put to death also surely clashes with basic humanity and dignity.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">As a nation of animal lovers we Brits would not tolerate for a moment the idea of putting a dog to death with such barbarism, let alone turn the event into a glorified “peep show” viewed by a select audience.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is not the first time execution US-style has been botched. Many other condemned prisoners have died in an appalling manner at the hands of the State.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">President Obama is said to be deeply troubled by the ghastly events of McAlester carried out in the name of justice. I’ll bet he is.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Uncle Sam should hang his head in shame before choosing to take the moral high ground and lecture other nations.</span></span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-8381507411584869352014-05-09T14:57:00.002+01:002014-05-09T17:52:55.492+01:00DON’T BREAK JAMBO GARY’S HEART, ANN<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0px;">BY ANDY RITCHIE</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">THE buzz is that Craig Levein is set to return to Tynecastle as manager under the new regime.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If so, it will be an act of sheer madness. Hearts are on a roll under Gary Locke and the signs are extremely encouraging.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Locke is a Jambo through and through. I’m sure if you cut him he would bleed maroon.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">He knows the club inside, out and he’s respected. The fans want him to stay and, more importantly, so do the players.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Several of them have come out publicly to pledge their support and that tells you the manager has the respect of the dressing room.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Consider the facts. Hearts were behind the eight ball right from the very start. Financial turmoil, the threat of liquidation, a 15 point deduction for going into administration, and a signing ban before a ball had even been kicked.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What hope did they have of avoiding the drop? Not a snowball’s chance in hell. It was always just a question of when their fate would be sealed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">That must have been extremely demoralising for all concerned. The psychological damage of knowing they had to win six matches just to put points on the board must have been huge.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It was as if once the death sentence had been pronounced all that remained was for the date of execution to be set.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But Hearts earned several reprieves before being forced to bow to the inevitable and that says much about the spirit in the camp.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It would have been easy for the players to have thrown in the towel and given it up as a bad job. Instead, they rolled their sleeves up and tried to achieve the virtually impossible and Locke must have been the inspirational force.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Just imagine if Hearts had begun their current remarkable revival six games sooner. We might have been talking about the Great Escape.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As it is, Hearts are heading for the Championship with all guns blazing and Rangers will do well to avoid a bullet or two next season.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I am not saying Hearts will sweep straight back into the top flight, but they’ll certainly be a handful.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Circumstances forced Locke to give the youngsters their head and they are a year older and wiser and less prone to naivety and basic errors.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Young players are also resilient and the recent winning run will have boosted their confidence no end.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There’s no shortage of talent either as far as I can see. Locke clearly has an eye for spotting potential and he’s exploited that talent.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, what would be the point in changing the manager before Locke has even had a chance to test himself on a more even playing field?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">He deserves another season at least for the splendid job he has done during one of the most difficult and testing periods in Hearts’ history.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> So, my message to Ann Budge is this: Stick with what you have rather than risk fresh instability.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Talk of instability, what the hell’s going on at my old club Morton?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">One truly did fly over the cuckoo’s nest when Kenny Shiels oversaw a humiliating 10-2 defeat at Hamilton.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Kenny fancies himself as a psychologist. After that result the entire management team and players should have been forced to consult a shrink.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">At least Shiels did the honourable thing and fell on his sword - or at least we are told he resigned. But it was clearly one of those ones - jump before you’re pushed!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The signing of Garry O’Connor alone was grounds enough for being given the sack. Those amongst the older generation of Morton fans who questioned my fitness and training methods must be misty eyed at the memory of the goals I scored when they look at O’Connor.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But while Shiels was culpable, players and officials must also shoulder part of the blame for the club’s dramatic decline – even the chairman.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Douglas Rae has done a lot for the club and deserves due credit from the people of Greenock. Without his financial support, Morton might well have ceased to exist.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But he appointed Shiels in the first place and bought into Kenny’s mumbo jumbo so can’t escape criticism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But I’ve heard on the grapevine that Morton is going to remain full-time next season and that’s heartening if it is the case.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">However, I fear for the long term future of the club, for they aren’t going to find it easy to claw their way out of League One.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Attendances have plummeted in the wake of this season’s results and it’s going to be extremely difficult regaining the confidence and support of the locals.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16084994900783441163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7281155557554395510.post-64577760571556742302014-04-29T14:50:00.001+01:002014-04-29T15:04:06.174+01:00GIGGS, THE NEXT MAN UTD MANAGER? - SORRY, BUT YOU'RE HAVING A LAUGH HANSEN!<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 19px;">
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 19px; letter-spacing: 0px;">By </span><span style="font-size: 19px;">Bryan</span><span style="font-size: 19px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> Cooney</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">WHENEVER I see <i>that </i>supercilious look on Alan Hansen’s face, I’m tempted to dismember the old flat screen television.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There was a maniacal urge to do so on Saturday, when Hansen made an unfortunate appearance on Football Focus, together with the relative newcomer, Martin Keown</span><span style="font-size: 18px; letter-spacing: 0px;">.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">A rather diffident Dan Walker was obliged to function as referee rather than presenter in a show that for once divested itself of its inherent predictability and produced some spirited debate.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sometimes it promised to become over animated as a conflict of opinions developed between the pundits. “I’ve got to take control of this programme,” Walker admitted nervously.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hansen reckoned the Premier League was firmly in Liverpool’s hands. Keown intimated that the fat lady had not even pulled her corset strings together, far less test-driven her vocal chords. The Scot opined that Fulham could survive the relegation battle; the Englishman professed himself far from confident of this occurring.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But it was the divergence of opinion over whom should next pick up the pieces of Manchester United that declared them to be polar opposites - and perhaps emphasised the fact that they belong to different generations.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Now, in 1995, Hansen was once ridiculed for insisting that a team wins nothing with kids. Manchester United, Alex Ferguson’s squad of adolescent brilliance, duly went on to win the league and FA Cup double.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">On Saturday, he offered himself up for further derision - again on the altar of Old Trafford. Supporting Ryan Giggs’ claims for the preferment, he pointed out that Kenny Dalglish had once done something similar with Liverpool almost 30 years ago.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“What if he wins his last four matches in a style Man Utd supporters are used to?” Hansen asked rhetorically. “How do they turn around and say he’s not getting the job then?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The naivety of that statement was seized upon by a remorseless Keown. Recognising and understanding the pragmatic and unromantic world inhabited by the Glazers, he stressed: “Giggs is for the future. United now need a safe pair of hands.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This is Hansen’s 22</span><span style="font-size: 10.7px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><sup>nd</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> season as an occasionally dyspeptic and sometimes despotic pundit for the BBC. It’s also his last. It’s said he’s about to retire, possibly to devote further attention to the golf courses of the universe. The time may be ripe for a departure.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The scars of football management have not inflicted themselves on him as they have many others. He had the chance to lead Manchester City out of their mid Nineties wilderness. Instead, he pledged himself to the punditry game.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Consequently, he is a fine advertisement of a man of 58 years: handsome and unlined. And rich into the bargain. But punditry, like most things, is changing. And if Hansen is seeking a comfortable ride before delivering his last sermon at the World Cup, he may have to reconsider his options.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Broadly speaking, Mark Lawrenson, his old oppo, has been removed from centre stage. Increasingly, this now belongs to the young, ambitious thrusters such as Keown, Alan Shearer, Robbie Savage and Danny Murphy.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">To adopt an American colloquialism, they take s*** from no man. Not even Hansen.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Now, though there have been times I’ve saluted his professionalism and his critiques, I cannot say I’m unhappy with this situation. We all have our favourites and <i>betes noir </i>in this very subjective business. I find Hansen crosses that line between self assurance and arrogance.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There again, I must admit to a bit of previous with him. Some sportsmen can surprise you with their generosity of spirit. I cannot recall being overwhelmed by Hansen’s on the two occasions we met.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Our first, essentially brief, encounter occurred in the Wembley tunnel in the Eighties. Hansen was talking to family and friends after one of Liverpool’s regular FC Cup final appearances.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There were no mixed zones back then to inhibit the media’s lust for adventure, but nevertheless this was not the time for ignorant behaviour on my part. Thus, I maintained a respectable distance from the Hansen entourage and, like a jungle predator, waited patiently, poised to strike as soon as their exchanges ended.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">When they did, I politely asked whether I might have a word with him. His response was unambiguous, if not downright rude. “No!” he announced, before turning his back on me. I observed that this negativity was accompanied by a rather superior smirk that would become familiar to millions of television viewers.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s difficult to forget these things when you are treated so disrespectfully</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Our second meeting, in 1991, was comprehensively longer and infinitely more rewarding by comparison: plus it had the bonus (for me) of a positive ending. Hansen agreed to an audience at Anfield early one Friday morning, our interview having been brokered by a Liverpool colleague of mine.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I expected no effusion from him and indeed found none. Our conversation centred on his manager and friend, Kenny Dalglish. The fact that Liverpool players were never renowned from divulging state secrets meant that Hansen’s words were necessarily routine and clichéd.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We ended on Dalglish’s future. “When do you think Kenny might have had enough of this managerial game?” I asked. Hansen said he didn’t know but insisted it would not be for a while.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Leaving the ground, I prepared to drive to the house of the guy who had arranged the interview. But when I telephoned his home, I was told he was on his way to Anfield as an emergency press conference had been convened.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I redirected myself and was back at the stadium a few minutes later and the whisper was that Dalglish was quitting. Confirmation of this fact was soon provided when the latter swept into a packed room and made the announcement.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The reason was speedily downloaded: Hillsborough and its ramifications of death and disaster had finally caught up with him. His head was ready to explode.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">A few minutes later, Dalglish had left the room and also the building. It transpired he’d broken the news to his players before he had entered the press conference. None, I imagine, would have been more stunned than Hansen. He was one of Dalglish’s closest confidants and yet on this day the limitations to that friendship had been exposed.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It had been a rather surreal day. I retreated from Anfield, soon after Dalglish, to write about it all. I was informed later that Hansen had been searching frantically for me.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I could only conclude that he was thinking of asking me to forget our conversation of that morning. If he had found me, however, he’d have been wasting his breath.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My answer would have been “no” - just like that day at Wembley. Mind you, common courtesy would have dictated that this would have been preceded by one five-lettered word of apology.</span></div>
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<ul>
<li style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Adapted from Fingerprints of a Football Rascal. Amazon Kindle. £2.56</span></li>
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