mcgillianaire: (Football player)


Forget about English football for just a moment if you will. An awesome duel is entering dizzying heights in Spain's La Liga between two of the world's best players: Barcelona's Lionel Messi and Real Madrid's Cristiano Ronaldo. Each has scored 24 goals in the league this season with Messi cracking a hat trick against Atletico Madrid this weekend while Ronaldo's brace secured a victory against Real Sociedad. The Argentine has now scored 40 goals in 33 matches in all competitions this season, while the Portuguese striker has 34 goals in 35 matches. And to think February is but a week old. Stretch the stats further and it's 83 goals in 82 games by Messi for Barca in all competitions and 50 goals in 51 games by Ronaldo for Real. Factor in all the requisite club rivalries and you're left with Atletico's manager praising Messi after their game this weekend by declaring him to be a 21st century Alfredo di Stefano - only the most famous player in Real Madrid's history.

Cue Marca, Spain's most widely read paper and the unofficial mouthpiece for Real Madrid, to respond this morning with the front page splash seen above. They think someone else is the 21st century di Stefano and it's not Lionel Messi. And according to their charts, Ronaldo has 25 league goals for the season even though the Spanish football federation and every other newspaper in the country credited Sociedad's Pepe with an own-goal during their previous league encounter in September, when a Ronaldo free-kick was deflected into the net. The whole thing stinks of "my daddy strongest" but it doesn't do any harm to boost the profile of a timely friendly between Argentina and Portugal this Wednesday. It probably won't settle the debate but it will certainly add spice to an already exciting two-horse race between the two clubs in the league. Despite Real having a great season, they've been outpaced by a Barcelona team lording all that they survey and who are now 7 points clear with just 16 games left. The Catalan giants are odds-on to retain their title but don't count Los Blancos out yet.
mcgillianaire: (LFC Liverbird)


There was something in the air that night
The stars were bright, Fernando
They were shining there for you and me
For liberty, Fernando
Though we never thought that we could lose
There's no regret
If I had to do the same again
I would, my friend, Fernando
Yes, if I had to do the same again
I would, my friend, Fernando...
mcgillianaire: (LFC Liverbird)


If he leaves Liverpool FC as I suspect he will do so within forty-eight hours, I will be a very broken football fan. That is all, good night. :(
mcgillianaire: (BBC Logo)
WIKILEAKS:
16 DEC - The rights and wrongs of hacktivism (Economist)
16 DEC - Art imitating life: Funky new ad puts a spin on personal hygiene and politics (The Express Tribune, Pakistan)
14 DEC - Why I'm Posting Bail Money for Julian Assange: Michael Moore (Huffington Post)
10 DEC - Ron Paul’s Passionate Defense Of Julian Assange And WikiLeaks On House Floor (MEDIAite)
09 DEC - Pakistani media publish fake WikiLeaks cables attacking India (Guardian)

LAW:
16 DEC - Top judge complains about 'sex with corpses' rules (Daily Telegraph)
16 DEC - Court backs tourist ban for Dutch cannabis coffee shops (BBC News)
15 DEC - Tweeting in court: why reporters must be given guidelines (Guardian)
14 DEC - Qatar: A centre for 'quality' international dispute resolution? (Guardian)

TUITION FEE PROTESTS:
14 DEC - Let’s get London’s riots into the right perspective: Simon Jenkins (London Evening Standard)
14 DEC - An attack on the royal carriage by angry protesters. Sound familiar? (Guardian)

UK:
14 DEC - 'We the people' deserve something better than a high-class villain's charter (Guardian)
13 DEC - Toby Ord: Why I'm giving £1 million to charity (BBC News)
06 DEC - Medieval Britons were richer than modern poor people, study finds (Guardian)
03 DEC - Woman dials 999 to report snowman theft in Kent (BBC News)
03 DEC - Christmas with a German accent – the PR ploy taking Britain's towns by storm (Guardian)

INDIA:
03 DEC - India's third richest man gives £1.27bn to children's education charity (Guardian)
19 OCT - Indian man of 100 goes back to university for PhD (BBC News)

OTHER:
12 DEC - German man castrates teenage daughter's 57-year-old boyfriend (Daily Telegraph)

SPORT:
18 DEC - Liverpool fans outraged after Paul Konchesky's mum launches Facebook blast (Daily Mail)
16 DEC - India enter Formula One limelight (ESPNstar.com)
09 DEC - The top 10 worst misses in football history: your votes are in (Guardian: Sports Blog)
17 SEP - Blackburn's Sam Allardyce 'more suited to Inter or Real Madrid' (Guardian)
mcgillianaire: (Liverpool FC)
I think the only way Torres, Reina and Gerrard will stay at the end of the season is if John Henry fires Roy Hodgson before Christmas and brings in a big name like Hiddink. The new owners will also probably have to demonstrate their ambition by splashing the dough in January on at least one major signing. Otherwise we're toast. It's probably too late already. What a disaster the last eighteen months have been. YNWA
mcgillianaire: (BBC Logo)
Fantastic news for Premier League fans. MOTD2 will be available for a week, on the Tuesday following its Sunday evening broadcast.

-----

It'll take a while to get used to Colin Murray, who replaces the man you love to hate but love and miss terribly, Adrian Chiles. A cursory search on Twitter suggests I'm not the only one who misses his under appreciated sense of humour and Brummie accent. It is a Brummie accent, right? Any ways, today's show was nice with its cutbacks to old footage, 80s music and titles. Don't you just miss the 80s? I do.

And what happened to, 2Good 2Bad? I really miss it and I hope they bring it back next week. Again, Twitter suggests I'm not alone.
mcgillianaire: (Default)
Thanks to the non-stop Oman Air flight, it took me less than 12 hours door-to-door. Just in time to watch Match of the Day! YNWA
mcgillianaire: (Liverpool FC)

The Anfield faithful voice their displeasure at the ongoing financial disarray at England's most successful football club.
mcgillianaire: (Liverpool FC)

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the ref that it wasn't a booking." -Tom Nycz-Losi

I'm not happy. He's good, but I don't like players who subscribe to the Van Bommel School of Fair Play. Makes Materazzi look like a saint.
mcgillianaire: (iPhone)
The Guardian is my favourite iPhone app. I had tried sharing my favourite articles before but I found myself wasting too much time writing details about each one, so I've decided to just leave a list of my favourite ones. I'm not sure whether I'll update these every week, fortnight or monthly, but for now here's a selection of my favourite articles between April and July. The next edition will begin with August articles.

HEALTH/DIET/ENVIRONMENT:
Reality check: Is the UK's cancer death rate worse than Bulgaria's? (16 Apr 2010) - Denis Campbell
Is veganism safe for kids? (20 Apr 2010) - Joanna Moorhead
The ethics of veggie cats and dogs (24 May 2010) - Dan Welch

EDUCATION:
Black students trail white classmates in achieving first-class degrees (15 Jun 2010) - Jessica Shepherd
Paris stages 'festival of errors' to teach French schoolchildren how to think (21 Jul 2010) - Lizzy Davies
Born too late: age ruins GCSE results for 10,000 pupils a year (29 Jul 2010) - Jessica Shepherd

ECONOMY:
London's richest people worth 273 times more than the poorest (20 Apr 2010) - Randeep Ramesh
Can Malaysia's Islamic gold dinar thwart capitalism? (17 Jul 2010) - Nazry Bahrawi

TRANSPORT:
UK military aircraft involved in 832 near misses in five years (22 Jun 2010) - Polly Curtis, Dan Milmo
Police quell Ryanair mutiny with chocolate (25 Jun 2010) - Severin Carrell

SPORT:
The World Cup defeat that lost an election (20 Apr 2010) - Frank Keating
mcgillianaire: (Football player)
Thought the Spanish seniors were good? Check out Ezequiel Calvente's audacious penalty scored during an U19 Euro game on Friday!

mcgillianaire: (Football player)

The Crown & Horseshoes pub down the road from where I live. It seemed pretty busy minutes before the Uruguay game kicked off.
mcgillianaire: (Football player)
1. Brazil
2. Spain
3. Portugal
4. Netherlands
5. Italy
6. Germany
7. Argentina
8. England
9. France
13. Greece
14. USA
15. Serbia
16. Uruguay
17. Mexico
18. Chile
19. Cameroon
20. Australia
21. Nigeria
24. Switzerland
25. Slovenia
27. Côte d'Ivoire
30. Algeria
31. Paraguay
32. Ghana
34. Slovakia
36. Denmark
38. Honduras
45. Japan
47. Korea Republic
78. New Zealand
83. South Africa
105. Korea DPR
mcgillianaire: (Shakespeare)
There once was a team from Iberia,
Who claimed they'd overcome their hysteria,
European Champs notwithstanding,
The Swiss did the scoring,
It might just have been collective am-nesia!


I've been experimenting with limericks on Facebook this afternoon. So I thought I'd share my latest version with you.
mcgillianaire: (Default)
A major study by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) has found that black students are more than 3-times less likely to be awarded a 1st-class university degree than white students. Can somebody please hide its contents from Nick Griffin and his ilk!

Britain's oldest cinema, the 100-year-old Phoenix in North London is getting a £1 million makeover and will reopen in September.

Sticking with London, the UK-based chain Selfridges has been named the world's best department store, fighting off competition from NYC's Bloomingdales and Hong Kong's Lane Crawford, by the International Group of Department Stores and the International Association of Department Stores. Less known is that it was founded by a Wisconsin-born American-magnate unimpressed with British stores in 1909!

Sources close to Inayat Bunglawala, the founder and chair of Muslims4UK (a group to celebrate the UK's democratic traditions and promote active Muslim engagement), tell him that the Home Office is considering issuing two exclusion orders; one against Jamaican-born Muslim preacher Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips and the other against Mumbai-based Zakir Naik. Bunglawala argues that if we really care about freedom of speech, we should let these Muslim speakers in and let the law take its course. He includes a good quote from a spokesman for Nick Clegg from a couple years ago over the controversial proposed visit of Qatar-based Islamic scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi:
    "Many of Yusuf al-Qaradawi's views are repugnant; the job of a truly liberal society is to defeat such abhorrent ideas by arguing forcefully and persuasively against them. Giving al-Qaradawi the publicity that a ban would create would ultimately serve only to legitimise his views in the eyes of extremists. If he is allowed into this country he is of course subject to our laws; and if he were to break the law in any way including inciting or glorifying terrorism he should obviously be prosecuted."
I couldn't have put it better myself. I hope the Lib Dems put their foot down on this issue and ensure the two men are not excluded.

Meanwhile viewing figures from both sides of the Atlantic during last weekend's World Cup fixture between England and USA appear fairly similar. 17 million people watched the game in American homes, more than the number who watched the first four games of the NBA Finals! It's all the more impressive given that the NBA viewing figures itself were up on previous years. Game 5 of the NBA Finals drew in an audience of 18.2 million. And though we don't know what the total viewing figures were because of those who watched it in pubs and bars, it's worth pointing out that over 100 million Americans watched this year's Super Bowl. Closer to home, it appears a similar number of people watched it on the telly. There was a maximum of nearly 20 million as full-time approached, but the real talking point was felt by the 1.5 million watching it on HD, who missed Gerrard's goal as ITV broke into an ad-break. Plebs like myself who were watching it on Freeview were not affected. ITVs coverage of the World Cup has generally been poor and this major blunder has not won them any friends. And from what I gather about their coverage of Formula One events in the past, this isn't entirely surprising either! Thank goodness for the BBC!!

Finally, Jeffrey Archer has been approached by Bollywood producers intent on making blockbusters of his short stories. Not a rupee more...
mcgillianaire: (Three Lions (WC 2010))


Simon Cowell has the Midas touch as evidenced by this production of a song built on 1984 Tears for Fears hit "Shout". It was officially released just last month and Cowell has promised to have it played in the dressing room before England's next game against Algeria. All proceeds from the song will be donated to Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) in London. But will it inspire our Men In White? It's OK.

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