In other news ....

horace wrote:Oz makes me sick

Bit of a harsh generalised judgment, h. Have you suddenly become English??

horace wrote:spot on Mr L No.2..

oz at the moment is full of the most craven of commemorations of ww1.

1/6 of Oz volunteers in that War croaked. around 60,000.

That about 0.5% of the Oz population can explain what that war is about is even more of a mystery...

Woolies just got caught ahead of the curve of abject consumerism.

Oz makes me sick

Yeah....I've always found Judy Garland especially puke-inducing

over the weekend I was helping a friend deal with her late mum's papers.

Among them were letters written by my friend's grand uncle who died during the war in 1917.

Beyond King, Empire and country sentiments, sad foreboding of his demise and a growing grimness there was no sense that he had a clue what the war was about.

PeterCS wrote:Meh, Bradders. It's a very occasional series. The last one is a genuine eye-opener. (The one before that an eye-closer, I grant you.)

Talking about the tools in your link actually.

skully wrote:

horace wrote:Oz makes me sick

Bit of a harsh generalised judgment, h. Have you suddenly become English??

Bit of a harsh generalised judgment Mk 2, s. We're not all called Henry!

Bradman wrote:

PeterCS wrote:Meh, Bradders. It's a very occasional series. The last one is a genuine eye-opener. (The one before that an eye-closer, I grant you.)

Talking about the tools in your link actually.

ah.

horace wrote:several of my friends have made it their business to be out of Oz on ANZAC Day when the full filth of fascist historicism finds its apotheosis...stoopid dumbass me will be here.

"unreconstructed Empire-loyalist historiography" ... might make better sense, from an old left point of view?

Personally, I think it's a bit more of a vexed, complex question that that ... at the very least, Gallipoli is a founding event/legend/mythology/stone (choose preferred term, or another) of Australian independence and Australian identity, bought dearly as such milestones sadly far too often are.

My experience suggests that to get apoplectic at the exploiters - and the uncritical celebrators - of such occasions, whether through folly, lack of thought and understanding, or worse, often ends up heading blindly towards the insulting lashout of labelling every man, jack, woman and child as corrupt miserable stupid bastards, and - irony of ironies - even the victims themselves as stooges and idiots.

But anyway ....

horace wrote:spot on Mr L No.2..

oz at the moment is full of the most craven of commemorations of ww1.

1/6 of Oz volunteers in that War croaked. around 60,000.

That about 0.5% of the Oz population can explain what that war is about is even more of a mystery...

Woolies just got caught ahead of the curve of abject consumerism.

Oz makes me sick

Not sure if it's of any consolation but over here in the UK it's not any better. Sainsbury's supermarket piggy-backed on the famous English-German WW1 troops Christmas football match in no-mans land to produce a high profile TV ad campaign last year. To be fair it was produced in conjunction with the Royal British Legion, so it probably did end up doing a lot of good for that charity. However, I'm left with a slightly bitter aftertaste when brands do things like that as I just don't buy their protestations of doing it out of pure altruism. By associating themselves with the sentiment of 'Christmas is for sharing' Sainsbury's places itself at the heart of that thought/emotion and presumably hopes to flog a load more turkeys as a result.

Personally, I thought that Sainsburys ad was not only well done (perhaps too well produced), and commemorated a historic event pretty accurately, it was even (surprisingly *) respectful to the victims of the criminally callous mud- and bloodbaths. And the chocolate money going straight to the veterans' charity ....

* True: all corporate badging of such events is at least on the border of dodgy. But it wasn't like, "Get your Christmas provisions here - we care, other supermarkets don't". I thought the furore in some quarters was OTT, looking at it too superficially, going off on one - whereas the ad did have a simple message about the desirability of going OTT for more peaceful purposes, understanding your "enemy"'s differences and similarities and questioning when your "enemy" really is indefinitely your enemy. And then, the rumble of the ordained hostilities resuming at the end of the ad was completley true to history. No schmaltz at all. And I didn't feel duty-bound, chivvied or blackmailed into shopping there. So ... *shrug*.

...

Anyway:

Here's a case of someone who went rather beyond the call of duty, and took his orders a bit too far.

"The Tameside club promoted their final game of the season as a ‘ladies day’ in a bid to attract more women." ....

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/jay-hart-clitheroe-sex-filmed-9079436

"slumped to a 4-1 away defeat" "Evo-Stik Division 1" ... I did check that the story wasn't dated April 1.

And has to return the tracksuit he was wearing at the time.

Well, this will not interest everyone, but it's certainly something different.

And is - at least obliquely - sport-related.

A book review - but a bit more than that.

Barnes (J, not S, in this case) is a brilliant writer, I think - in style and content. If you think it's poncey, with fancy words some of which you've never heard, etc ... well, not for you.

But I think it's all put to good effect. "Telling words, well composed."

Another personal response: Paragraph 7 and the last three made me laugh out loud, and also appreciate the sanity set against the ego-worried obsession.

Give it a go? If I haven't put you off. See what you think.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/15/the-mighty-fed-julian-barnes-reviews-federer-and-me-story-obsession-william-skidelsky

That's just bizarre!

American Cricket - a position paper from USYCA (The United States Youth Cricket Association)

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B00dytzDKrHTUWpuY2hnN1hNdlk/edit

PeterCS wrote:American Cricket - a position paper from USYCA (The United States Youth Cricket Association)

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B00dytzDKrHTUWpuY2hnN1hNdlk/edit

I'm no xenophobe and I'm generally more well disposed to Americans than a lot of people I know, but Lord in Heaven Above, keep them out of international cricket.

Americans are having serious trouble retaining the interest of their youth in baseball. If they are too mindless to appreciate baseball, they have no hope of appreciating cricket.

From the commentary in the Bangles v BanIndia game -

1.20pm A bit of news for you all. It looks like India are touring Zimbabwe in July. "I can confirm that it's now a done deal," Alistair Campbell, Zimbabwe Cricket's managing director, has said, according to a ZC tweet. "India are arriving on July 7 & will leave on the 20th,3 ODIs & 2 T20s."

lardbucket wrote:Americans are having serious trouble retaining the interest of their youth in baseball. If they are too mindless to appreciate baseball, they have no hope of appreciating cricket.

Actually baseball isn't a bad game to play.

That may be. Nevertheless, participation by US youth is declining, most likely as their interest in shooting each other increases.

I would say it is true of sport in general. It goes hand in hand with the decline of sports clubs.

http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/golf/33300570

His playing partner was Kim Jong Il, of course.

Pish. I can beat that at one hole.

Ukip's deputy leader Paul Nuttall has been branded "misogynistic" after claiming SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon should be thrown in front of a horse.

In a blog for The Huffington Post UK, the MEP hit out at SNP plans to vote on changes to the foxhunting ban which only affect England and Wales.

Mr Nuttall wrote: "Tuesday is Emmeline Pankhurst Day, and whilst I am not going to throw myself in front of a horse to make my point about British democracy on this occasion, this is a vitally important constitutional matter and perhaps we should throw Sturgeon in front of a hunt horse as part of the commemorations."

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/paul-nuttall/fox-hunting-snp_b_7785362.html


From the man who gave you double the books for your money:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ukips-deputy-leader-paul-nuttall-5525378

Special Delivery ...

http://www.scotsman.com/news/odd/man-who-stuck-penis-through-letterbox-avoids-jail-1-3833476

Alienation can do weird things.

Cyclists, eh?

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