Apologies to start off with for being quiescent this past week; I was on holiday with the family, in France. There are so many things about France I adore, but chief amongst them is the fact that despite only being twenty-two miles distant, the place feels a world away from England. At one point we […]
Archives for June 2014
The greatest motion picture in the history of cinema: Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil”
Watching the World Cup on TV and hearing Ary Barroso’s “Brazil” at every ad break has reminded me, in a strange way, of what I used to adore about cinema, back when I did. You see, I sort of fell out of love with movies. The reasons for this are complex and I won’t bore […]
World Cup Review 4: dealing with melancholia, the Crash Test Dummies, and FIFA, the Motion Picture
I’ve been feeling glum this past week. Don’t worry, it has little to do with England going out of the World Cup; the emotions are rooted in something more personal that I shan’t share with you right now, if that’s all right. The thing about feeling melancholy for an extended period of time is that […]
World Cup Review 3: Spain tamed, England all but eliminated, and where a nation has been and where it goes from here
First to the really big news: Spain is out of the World Cup after only two matches played. Seven days into the tournament, no less. Already my prediction for the whole shebang is in tatters – I had Spain going out to Argentina in the semis. It should also be noted that they are the […]
The Left should watch itself over ideas around a “Health Tax”
I am always suspicious when key elements of the Left and the Right come to the same conclusion. Sometimes of course, this is simply because an idea has “come of age” and is so obvious it gets embraced across the political spectrum. But more times than not, it is because the Left has been slightly […]
World Cup Review 2: England v Italy review, why Rooney should be dropped, England v Uruguay preview, and Chiles and Dixon for England
So England lost to Italy. This was not wholly unexpected, at least to those of us who live within the boundaries of reality. There was a lot of talk afterwards about how England weren’t that bad, actually, that there was a lot to build on. I suppose I see their point. It wasn’t the mauling […]
The taking of Mosul was the last nail in the coffin of the Iraq War having been a good idea
Last week, Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul, a place that holds 1.8 million people and is geographically placed between all of the warring factions in the Middle East, was taken by a group called ISIS. The acronym breaks down as Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and there’s one thing above all that you should […]
World Cup Review 1 – Wrong calls, the Dutch destroyers, and why I’m not sure I can stay up late to watch England
The story for me, so far in this very young World Cup, is the amount of officiating howlers we have had already. The Brazil penalty was bad enough. But in the first fifteen minutes of the Mexico v Cameroon match, two clear and fair goals were denied by erroneous officiating. What was worse is that […]
My cast iron, bet-your-house-on-it, World Cup 2014 prediction (please don’t actually bet your house)
There’s a great Simpsons sketch that brilliantly illustrates the American viewpoint on association football. We are presented with the concept of a “World Series of Soccer” in which Mexico and Portugal are pitted against each other for world supremacy. The Americans, of course, cannot fathom any sport in which they don’t come out as World […]
Casual Xenophobia – “you know the difference”. Or do you?
A few weeks ago, a person I hadn’t spoken to in a very long time came out of the woodwork. To tweet me. How 21st century. The tweet read: “That’s what we need to hear more from, Canadian Lib Dems”. Now, this person and I had never seen eye to eye politically, so him slagging […]