Mid July Musings

Currently watching the Women’s World Cup final and am really impressed by the quality on show, both the U.S.A and Japan are technically very good teams, a good degree better than England I have to concede. It’s a shame that this is the only match the BBC have decided to show on an actual channel rather than only available via the red button; as I said in a previous post, tournaments like this are a great opportunity to raise the profile of the women’s game and remove some of the stigma and prejudice surrounding it, but it will need a bit more bravery on the part of major television channels. I’m rooting for Japan as they’re the under-dogs but on the basis of the first 66 or so minutes, a U.S.A win would be probably the right result.

In other news the basket beneath the News International guillotine is getting a little full, with Met Chief Sir Paul Stevenson joining the list of people jumping before they were pushed. I’m planning to write a full blog on the current state of the scandal either tomorrow or on Tuesday, though by then I imagine the picture will have changed yet further. It’s a rapidly changing situation and there are still an awful lot of questions to be answered.

Jonathan Ross has posted a link to a blog post detailing allegations of illegal activities at The Daily Mail. There’s a temptation for me to say that I’d let Murdoch retreat now with no further repercussions if The Daily Mail was taken down in return. I make no secret of my opinion of that particular newspaper, it is a virulent and hate filled production more concerned with peddling it’s particular agenda than with journalistic standards, perspective or truth. It is a paper which employs Jan Moir and Richard Littlejohn, which surely says all you need to know.

I also intend to write in the next few days about the sentencing of Charlie Gilmour for his part in the student fees protests last year. It might not come as a huge surprise that I’m not particularly happy with it.

In amongst those political posts I’m sure I’ll write a couple of film related pieces, and perhaps I might do a blog on the final of ‘The Apprentice’ but those are less set in stone.

For now though I’ll leave you with a song I listened to earlier today, a song off of a great, if a little repetitive album released last year.