Chindie

I'm with Tony on that one, it hadn't gone away at all to my mind. It was still a fixture on the news and Ed used it as his opening salvo at PMQs. He only went as the issue just wasn't being allowed to go away no matter how he hung on.

Presumably theres now more than enough miracle water to go round. Perhaps miracle molecules can be used like homeopathy remedies, and get stronger the more dilute it is... in which case Lourdes water should probably be more miraculous than ever. They should have left the sick and disabled, they'd be fit as fiddle soon enough.

Goldeneye (though it's aging terribly) Daniel Craig (just - Connery is the classic of course, and I think Brosnan could have been brilliant given a more consistent set of films, but Craig has enough of the thug Bond should be) Theres only 1 Bond theme... The James Bond Theme.

On the gay front, I've noticed a few buses around here have the (slightly controversial to bigots) 'Some people are gay, deal with it' Stonewall ads that first appeared in London a while back. Good stuff.

I'm a complete sucker for info-tainment shows. The kind of thing usually done by the Open University and with some science or history bent that also serves a kind of entertainment show. The latest one of these kind of things is on at the moment, How Britain Worked on Channel 4, which is following some bloke called Guy Martin (who is supposedly a known name?) looking at different historical industries and having a crack at bits of it, this week the railways. He's restoring an old steam train, and has had a look at the kind of work navvies used to do laying track, and also fixed a watch ('cos it's the railways that gave us a standardised time). Being a boring sod this is pretty interesting background viewing. Unfortunately this Guy Martin bloke is really **** annoying. He's got this hyperactive way of talking that sounds like the one of the younger cast members of Corrie given a serious hit of cocaine. If he says 'graft' again I'm throwing something at the screen.

I don't think I could give less of shit what class any MP sits in. In fact I don't think I care whether they take the train or not. Utterly tedious tit for tat childish nonsense at a time when, frankly, there are more important things to be concerned with.

There's not a Bond 'canon' as such. The films have never really attempted to make a definite time line and as such each film basically exists in it's own right. Occasionally there are nods to previous outings but theres rarely serious consistant thread through them (apart from recurring 'baddies' and organisations, SPECTRE and Quantum in the Craig outings, although even thats been ditched for the new one). There is a school of thought that sought to make some form of logical progression out of the films and did so by suggesting that 'Bond' (and 007) is basically a codename, that is passed on to a new guy once the previous has had enough, and so the different actors are actually different guys who just so happen to have become 007 and all their escapades are canon to themselves, thus explaining in universe the different guys and lack of continuity. This is obviously retarded however, and clearly the films are just largely standalone.

My copy of Forza Horizon came early, and a couple of hours of driving around mock Colorado later, it's glorious. I don't care for the presentation of it, the whole conceit of the 'Horizon Festival', but it's just good fun. It's Forza 4 trimmed down and crashed through PGR, by way of Burnout Paradise. Theres enough of the sim there to bring in Forza lovers like myself, it adds in a few bits of the Kudos system from PGR to add some arcade-y shenanigans and the freedom of the Burnout Paradise with none of the annoyances of that game's open city. It's great. Looks fantastic too. Wrapping the whole thing in this painfully 'down with the kids... right?' setting is a shame but whatever, it's brilliant.

Well we've effectively gotten ourselves into a catch-22. We have a player who can only thrive with good consistent service, but we lack the players to provide that service. I rather suspect we lack the ability to buy those players without sales (and I also don't think, given the wages only just beginning to come into line with a position the powers that be are happy with, that we'd be keen to add to the wage bill all of a sudden with a net influx of wages). So do you keep a player who is useless without service and not have the service to give him, or do you sell to purchase players the improve the side in other areas and hopefully get the other strikers scoring (gambling that Benteke is not the donkey he appears, Gabby can get firing, or Weimann do it week on week)? Do not get me wrong, I'd rather keep Bent and spend some money on some decent creative players. I just don't think there's any desire to spend the money required to do that without a sale first. And Bent is the most saleable asset, and we have flaws running right through the squad that needs investment to improve. I'm utterly convinced he will not be here for much longer.

Selling him might be the key to buying players to improve the team. There's not really any other assets to sell that will bring in the kind of money we need to spend. In fairness it's entirely arguable that even his sale wouldn't be enough, but I guess needs must.

What do we realistically reckon we will get for him in January? I suppose we have to be thinking double figures but we can't be silly, especially when theres not going to be a mass of teams to market him to.

He doesn't seem to do any favours for rumours of being alright when he puts our shirt on, does he?

We're shite. All the substance of a wet paper bag, all the fight of a lame penguin.

We could really do with a win, but we won't get it.

Andrew Mitchell's resignation was obvious weeks ago, I'm not sure why they ever bother to drag these things out.

On the Plaid note, I distinctly remember absolutely flummoxing a canvasser for them when I was at uni in Aber. They came and knocked on our door, I was the only one in, and they basically did the 'will you vote for us' spiel. My reply was simply 'No, because I don't believe in what you stand for', and the woman looked genuinely shocked, as if the concept of anyone, let alone a Brummie student in a town full of students, not supporting Plaid Cymru, was like spitting in her face. I imagine these people must have heard similar things all day long but apparently not this woman. For what it's worth on this entire subject, I'm rather against nationalism on any front, Welsh, Scottish, Cornish... it's all arbitrary and pointless and daft.

But that does not make them a 'Southern England National Party'. Which is a nonsense view - they support British interest, not necessarily 'Southern English' interest, and are 'for' anyone with some wealth. There is considerable Tory support countrywide, despite the fact that there is that correlation, they aren't even close to anything like a regional national party - for a start I don't think many people in, lets say Harrogate, vote for Plaid Cyrmu, but Tories get votes from Land's End to John o'Groats.

Exactly. The Tories are the party of the middle class and above, they don't have a geographical base beyond being popular wherever people have a bit of financial security.

Give it a week and CVByrne will have a barely used phone on Ebay fire a knockdown price, and probably a top of the line model to boot.

We're shit.

I'm always struck by how shit Welbeck looks as well.

If you were going to tie a geographical identity to the Tories, it'd be 'the British party' - a considerable part of the party is founded a pretty distinct patriotism. They aren't especially 'for' the South East, either - they're for anyone with a bit of money in their pocket, countrywide. Even if you argue that their makeup has traditionally been one founded of the South East, thats also true of the other major players, particularly in recent years but generally always the case.

One of the women who came forward has had some doubt cast on the extent there was a cover up with regards the Newsnight investigation that was shelved (and possibly to a lesser extent her claims in their entirety) as one of her pieces of evidence for the police effectively not bothering to investigate any claims, was an obvious fake, a letter claiming they would be unable to pursue any investigation thanks to Savile's ill health and 'senility'. She had refused to let Newsnight see it, who were keen to do so as it contradicted the account put forward by police, that there wasn't enough evidence to proceed. It seems the Newsnight team believed the letter could form the basis for the investigation to get aired.

Arkane Studios are behind it, French. They probably got the title on the back of the major market being the North American market.

I know we're not really much cop these days, haven't been for a while, but this is tragic. It's such a lacklustre performance, side even. there are so may players in it where you just have to ask 'What does he really bring to the table?'. The Poles'll be rightly gutted if they don't score here.