Bits and Bobs

Allo Allo

It's French presidential election time again. Let's hope the country doesn't go half mad and nearly elect Jean-Marie Le Pen like last time. If he gets into the run off again we need to ask serious questions about the state of liberal democracy in France. Or perhaps we should just close the country. That would work. It seems the turnout has been higher than at any point in the last 20 years so that should work against him. Sarkozy or Bayrou are probably the main front runners, both of them promising a new direction for French politics following twelve years of gentle economic decline... We wait and see...

Wake me up when it's over

Goodness me but is the Cricket World Cup still going on? It seems like forever ago that Australia took on Scotland in the opening game. It was forever ago. I like cricket almost as much as football sometimes, but you'd have to say this tournament's been a bit of a flop. For those of us without Sky Sports and unwilling to burn the midnight oil to watch the BBC highlights this tournament has been going on more or less in the distant backgroud. And it's not too disimilar for those in the West Indies as well. High ticket prices as well as barmy accreditation rules surrounding what one can and can't bring into the ground with you has probably robbed this tournament from people in the West Indies, which is a great shame because they would have given the tournament the life and colour it's missed. It's probably not helped that the hosts have been poor, and that the two biggest supported sides, India and Pakistan went out in the group stages. Their Super Eight game would have been the first sell out of the World Cup, instead the game that replaced it Ireland versus Bangladesh was watched only by close relatives of the players.

The Irish success has been one of the highlights of the tournament, even if it means that they beat as many test playing nations as the soporific England team. That and the close finish between England and the hosts last night have been more or less the only highlights of this World Cup. Hopefully in future the 'Super Eight' stage will be scrapped, and the eight group winners will play traditional quarter finals. To think that it will take 11 games to get to the final of a sixteen team tournament is madness. Hopefully in four years time the organisers will have remembered what cricket is all about.

Cricket.

Innocence

Last weej i bought, listened to and enjoyed the new Avril Lavinge album. It's now number one in the album chart. So does that mean it's ok to like her music, or just that a lot of fourteen year old girls have been buying records this week?