Monday 21 June 2010

Bamboozling

Evening all. Or should I say morning? It's half past midnight. I can't sleep, so I'm just going to write a short piece about a comment made by Springwatch presenter Chris Packham, back in 2008.

"I'd eat the last panda if I could have the money we've spent on panda conservation back on the table for me to do more sensible things with."

Naturally, this provoked a lot of negative response. However...

If/when the Giant Panda inevitably becomes extinct, what would have been the point of spending all those hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to save it when all we'd done was allow it a few more years of existence? We've spent all this money, and for what? So we can admire it for a little while longer?

Essentially, what it is, is funding prolonging the inevitable. Would you spend £20 on a chocolate bar, knowing it would only last about 5 minutes? The situation with the panda is basically the same thing, only on a much vaster scale. The panda is just about beyond help. It cannot be saved.

Should we ever find ourselves in a situation where there is just one panda left on the planet, i would quite happily make it into burgers if I could recoup all those many thousands of pounds so that I could do something more realistic with it.

Because let's face it, saving the Giant Panda is not a realistic target.

Saturday 19 June 2010

Boo Are Ya?

It was the game every England fan, and most other fans, had down as a guaranteed 3 Lions win. Algeria were hopeless against Slovenia in their opening group game and there was no way they would be able to hold out for too long against the awesome might of England.

Well, after the first 10 minutes, it looked as if things would go exactly as predicted. Algeria struggled to string more than a couple of passes together, and their set pieces were dreadful. Unfortunately, the same could also be said of the team in white. England were poor in the early stages. But maybe it was just early match nerves. England and Algeria had never met before in a competitive match and so perhaps both teams were just unsure of each other. As the match wore on though, it became clear that one side began to grow in confidence and for large periods of the game were all over their opponents. They were passing the ball around with relative ease, testing the goalkeeper frequently, and forcing the other team into making mistake after mistake.

But it wasn't the team ranked 8th best in the world.

It was Algeria. A country in Northern Africa with a population nearly 20 million less than their illustrious opposition. A country whose national football team were ranked 103rd in the world just 2 years ago. Since then the Desert Foxes have climbed the rankings and now sit 30th, just 22 places below England in the much maligned FIFA World Ranking System. Egypt, the team beaten by Algeria in the African play off for a spot at the World Cup, are ranked 12th. So work that one out.

Cock-up keeper Rob Green was dropped in favour of the more experienced David James. Glen Johnson, John Terry and Ashley Cole kept their certain places in defence, and Jamie Carragher started alongside Terry in the absence of the injury-prone Ledley King. Aaron Lennon started on the right of England's midfield, with Frank Lampard and Gareth Barry, returning from injury, in the middle. Steven Gerrard was played out on the left wing. Up front, Barnus Doorus Banjonus, or as most people know him, Emile Heskey partnered Wayne 'Best in the World if you believe Terry Venables' Rooney.

Looks like a team capable of coping with even the likes of Italy and Brazil, let alone Algeria, right?

Wrong. England were abysmal. They started on the back foot and stayed there pretty much for the duration of the match. The defence looked shaky and nervous. The midfield, save for Gareth Barry, couldn't string more than 2 passes together, and we might as well have played Bruce Forsyth and Chris fucking Moyles in attack for all the good Rooney and Heskey did for the England cause. David James didn't do a lot wrong, but then he didn't do a lot full stop. Three or four comfortable catches and a weird Lampard back-pass that looked more like an attempt on goal were the only real danger for the England keeper. A Speckled Pigeon (Columba guinea), (sorry, that's the bird geek in me shining through) got the best, and safest seat in the house as it perched on top of the Algerian goal for the whole first half. There was no danger of it being knocked off of that perch, not with Heskey and a surprisingly useless Rooney in attack.

Everyone expected Fabio Capello to lay into his players in the dressing room at half time to provoke some sort of response in the second half. For all we know he may well have done; it didn't have the desired effect though. If anything, Algeria grew in confidence, and even in the closing stages they looked the more likely to score. England replaced Lennon with Shaun Wright-Phillips in the second half, which didn't work. Aren't Lennon and SWP essentially the same player? Shaun had a chance to justify his old man's relentless and tedious blabbering about how good his son was in his newspaper column. Needless to say he made absolutely zero impact. Heskey was taken off in favour of Jermain Defoe, and England legend Peter Crouch replaced Gareth Barry. But even with 3 strikers on the field, England couldn't penetrate the stubborn Algerian defence.

England 0-0 Algeria

The final whistle prompted a mixture of cheering and booing. You don't need me to tell you which set of fans was doing what. The Algerian fans celebrated the result as if they'd won the Cup. The England fans that weren't jeering were sat with their heads in their hands, or just staring into space. England captain Steven Gerrard said "We simply weren't good enough." He held his hands up and admitted that they had been poor, and he should be respected for that. The same could not be said for his fellow scouser, Rooney. As he trudged off the pitch he looked into the TV camera and said:

"Nice to see you own fans boo you. That's what loyal support is."

Excuse me? I'll boo whoever the bloody hell I want, and no over rated petulant little git is going to tell me otherwise. He was useless, a joke on the pitch against Algeria. And yet he has the cheek to say it was unwarranted? Algeria did ok against England, but they were still poor. I suppose that made it worse. If Algeria had actually outplayed England, a draw wouldn't have seemed to bad. But they didn't. They were as poor as England and that made the result an even more bitter pill to swallow.

England's fate is still in their own hands. A win in their final group game will take them through. And that game is against Slovenia. They beat Algeria and held the USA to a 2-2 draw. But England will win won't they? I mean it's a foregone conclusion.

Right?

Thursday 10 June 2010

Urban 'Fox' Attack

This may be a bit controversial, and not everyone who reads it will agree with me. But frankly my dear, I couldn't give a shit.

You will all no doubt have heard the news recently that 2 small children were supposedly attacked by a fox that got into their house through a back door. As tragic an incident as this is, it is being blown way out of proportion by the media and people who are easily manipulated by what is reported in the news, newspapers, magazines and the internet.

How many of these people that write into newspaper letters pages and internet forums actually know the first thing about the topic they are outraged by? I'm guessing very few, if any. These are people who are just looking for something to rant about and feel like they're a part of something. All over the country right now, mothers of young children will be banging their heads repeatedly on their keyboards in blind anger about a subject they have little or no understanding of.

One person in the Sun letters column today wrote:

"Foxes have been the scourge of the countryside for years, with hunting raising numerous debates and protests. It was horrific reading how two babies in London have been mauled by one that sneaked into a house. These deadly predators have moved from the country to the city and now have no fear of where they roam."

How very ignorant of you, dear reader. Firstly, foxes have not raised any debates; humans have. Secondly, the fox did not 'sneak' into the house, it found an open door. Perhaps there was a smell that caught it's attention. And third, they are not 'deadly predators' as you so elegantly and unbiasedly put it. (I have checked that unbiasedly is a word). Most foxes would run from a pet cat, let alone attack one. The same is true of humans, more so infact. Pet dogs maul more babies and toddlers in a month than foxes have in the last 5-10 years. Judging by this, should we not call for a mass killing of family pets? My budgie has bitten me and drawn blood before. Why not cull all the teenage hooligans who like to go out on the streets and stab the first person who so much as looks in their direction? How about a ban on cancer?

This was nothing more than a freak accident. This fox did not go into the house with the sole intention of snacking on some toddlers. An urban fox is constantly at risk. They will take any opportunity they can if they think it will provide them with food. The animal found the back door open and simply wandered inside. If you found a fiver on the street, would you pick it up? Of course you would, and don't try and claim otherwise.

When the fox got into the room it most probably felt trapped and panicked. Animals have an instinct called 'Fight or Flight'. In this instance, the fox found itself in an enclosed space with two humans. Much like a dolphin or whale that has swum into a harbour can not always find the harbour entrance to get out again, this fox could not find a way out, felt cornered and lashed out; the 'fight' mechanism. It viewed the children as a threat, and attacked them when it thought it was trapped.

There are a great many reasons why this alleged fox may have attacked two small children in their own home, but it does not mean that the entire fox population of Britain are bloodthirsty killers out to get us.

RJ Wallace.