Rugby Balls – it’s all going pear shaped

Its very hard to defend the world of football where the supporters world is a very black and white affair. To a fan life is simple – your team are either heroes or traitors, gods or muppets, the best club in the world or an overpaid bunch of w**kers.

However fickle or simplistic the world of a football fan is – surely anything must be better than being an England Rugby Union fan.

Every England international draws a full house of corporate suits and the comfortably off. And every match they are treated to a one sided spectacle of non-competition, poor hospitality, anti climax and in recent times just straight defeat.

And what do you hear from the England fans as they leave the home of rugby, outrage, anger, abuse? Not a bit of it. The converation is about property prices in Twickenham, their next corporate jolly, the FTSE index, commercial development of the South stand, how the Bordeaux was not room temperature, and bemusement why the Heathrow flight path can’t be changed for major internationals.

Perhaps if one fan stood up in the South Stand and started to chant “You’re crap and you know you are!” perhaps everything might change. It might start a wave of abuse and spleen venting from the most influential section of English society that would lead to the sacking of the manager and a change in the rules of the sport.

Or maybe that would be too impolite.

Ugli tree rating: Rugby league is the best winter spectator support.

Atlantic Boring

Have you ever hired a boat on a boating lake for an hour and after 10 minutes you realise what a boring and pointless thing you’re doing and you want to come in. Well enter James Cracknell and Ben Fogle.

While I can accept that 2 young, good-looking and talented men may want to spend 2 months living and rowing on a boat in the middle of the ocean – I find it less acceptable that they would then try and write a book about it.

Clearly doing something very boring and pointless is up to them – as long as they keep it to themselves then thats just fine. But to try and inflict it on the rest of the country in a book (and dvd by the way) is quite disturbing.

What exactly will we find out by reading this book – the sea is choppy; its a long way to America; sea water is salty; its tiring rowing all day; there’s not much scenery; maybe we might even learn a few fishing tips.

Now if there was some kind of Brokeback Mountain thing going on in the book then that might be a more compelling sub-plot. However you only need to read the promotional blurb that comes with the book to know what its going to be like.

“..but as the security of dry land became a distant memory, the full
enormity of what they had committed themselves to became apparent: they were surrounded by ocean on all sides, hundreds of miles from home, trapped together in a tiny space for every waking moment. “

Duh!

Ugli tree rating: Please do something more interesting instead.

Green is the new sexy

Changing all your light bulbs, lagging your hot water tank and getting a bus to work, while beneficial for the environment, is not exactly sexy stuff. However the Tesla Roadster is about to change all this.

0-60 in 4 seconds at 135 mpg effectively combines the performance of a Lamborghini with the fuel consumption of a scooter.

Oh yes, it doesn’t look too bad either.

Ugli tree rating: Plug me in and turn me on