Chindie

I'll be having a can of Becks during the England match. I love Becks. Shame it's so different in the different ways of buying it - bottles are vile, cans are nice enough, draught is gorgeous.

Away is better than the home for me but the colour... yeah. Hmm. I don't think we'll be having record sales.

*snigger*

Money. The quality of the product doesn't really matter, it's an established propert-sorry, tournament, it'll make money regardless... so you lengthen it to draw out more advertising and licensing cash, as well as open up potential new markets or widen/strengthen existing ones by giving more countries a chance at a big tournament. Simple. UEFA care about the cash and **** the rest. Dress it up in justifications of giving smaller nations a chance to develop or play with the big boys, but know it's all about the dollars in the end.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's shit, I just don't personally like it. It looks cheap, in large part thanks to the design. It's not... classy, harmonious, whatever. The collar is fussy to my eye, the little triangle at the front looks like it came from a different shirt. The Macron bloke on the shoulders makes them look too busy and untidy. The yellow trim at the bottom doesn't really 'fit' the rest of the design, it looks like it was just tacked on to add another detail. To be honest the whole thing can be described in that way - they realised they need a claret body and blue sleeves, and then they just chucked stuff at it to make the design and none of it really flows together. So they chucked on a collar that has one kind of detail, and added another detail to the front of it, and then chucked on the yellow base trim, and then whacked the Macron blokes in the most convenient place. And then the 'premium' detail is going to be the heat prints lion on the back which you just... know is going to look a bit desperate, as that doesn't really 'fit' in either. It's not a bad design... it's just not a good one either. You can tell its made by a company not at the top of their game - it's an also ran. I also think the material looks a bit shit but it's hard to judge that off admittedly poor photos. It's not hideous, or a travesty... it's just not good either. It reminds me of a few of the more naff early/mid 90s designs somehow - the designers having a field day with the kit and not making a cohesive design, which requires restraint and clear vision. The away might get away with it a little more, although the colour rumours have me convinced it's going to be hideous.

Have thought about it for a while, I don't like it.

I don't hate it, I don't love it either. It's a very... 'bit-y' design, it doesn't have a single 'style' running through it. For example the little triangle at the collar looks like it was taken off another shirt, and the collar is very busy, not helped by the bloody stupid logos on the shoulders. It looks somewhat amateurish, and even in the pictures it looks fairly cheap to me. I suspect the heat stamped lion on the back won't help matters. But it's not offensively bad so it's hard to get too annoyed. All you can really say of it is that Macron are not 'big players' in the sportswear field for a reason, and this shirt shows you why.

Look on the bright side, you've got a job

Finished Inversions finally. Stumbles to a finish and never really does what you expect it to with the background of 2 sides in what amounts to a civil war telling 2 concurrent stories, but I kinda enjoyed it. If you hadn't read a Culture novel before or hadn't picked up that a least 1 character isn't what they claim to be, one scene at the end would have you scratching your head. Moved onto to some more Banks, his latest, Stonemouth. Starts well enough but feels like retreads of his previous work already.

NG+ of Arkham City done. Such a good game. And probably the last achievement I'll get on that game since I'm nowhere near good enough at the combat to do the challenge rooms to a good enough degree or do the 'all moves in 1 combo' achievement, unless I buy the latest DLC which I've heard mixed things about.

That job sounds like my worst nightmare. I literally wouldn't be back for day 2 in that scenario Indeed. If I had to do that for any length of time I'd be on a rope by end of the week. I did a day as a telesales once, selling alarms. Literally just a room of telephones, you were given a bundle of paper with numbers on and just had to work your way through it. The first part of the day was the management telling you how to sell things - this was vile. You were told to play on fears and basically scaremonger your way to rip people off. The management were scum, the kind of people for whom the only thing that mattered was the sale and nothing else, there were no morals to them. The main guy was all about money, he boasted about how much money you can make if you are good enough. When we actually got going on the phones, I noticed that all the numbers I was ringing seemed to be answered by the elderly... People were sometimes carted out of the room and had the head guys scream at them for this and that, literally have this bloke take you outside and shout and bawl at you. This was grown men and women being given a priamry school telling off with real venom behind it. I couldn't do it. Didn't go back the next day. My mates were all fine with it, some of them even quite good at it. It's given me a real hatred of sales generally and I'd never do it now, and wouldn't touch a telesales job ever again for sure.

You can't judge too much from that picture, the colours are blown out far too much.

I wonder if 'arry 'ad expected things to go this drastically badly the moment Capello stood down...

Yep I think the Dutch are done. They look weak and worse, look like they can't be arsed. I'll be surprised if they go through.

Schweinsteiger was believed to be bollocks for quite some time when he first appeared on the scene by Germany and Bayern fans. Funny how things change.

You dont think it went though the keeper too easily? He almost sat down and allowed it to go over him. I'd be very disappointed with it if I were him. Yeah the keeper hasn't made it hard for him, he's guessed he's putting it low to the far post and completely **** up, but it's still an awesome finish imo.

The Dutch haven't really turned up, especially the defence - the LB may as well not be there. The Germans just look head and shoulders better and I'm not convinced the Germans are playing at full pelt either.

What on earth was that?

And it is 2, incredible finish from Gomez.

Should be 2, the Dutch defence was non-existant for that FK.

Does just feel like the Germans can turn it up a little more whenever they need to and the Dutch have no answer. The Dutch have shown glimpses of how good they can be but they look like they can be carved open at will.

Nice take for Gomez... though regardless of what Lawrenson says, I think he was just off there.

I increasingly have no issue with hanging up on any 'junk' or sales calls. I'm normally loathe to be impolite but they're getting worse. We went through a period a couple of months ago, thats waned a little thankfully, of having various Indian chaps ringing up saying their name was John/Bill/Sean/Dave and wanting to ask slightly odd survey questions (who is your gas supplier, who is your insurance with, etc etc). You'd tell them to not call again and the next day you'd get the same bloke, called Mark this time, asking the same questions, barely able to speak English, couldn't say our surname correctly at all. I said to the one bloke he'd rung the day before and he called me a liar! Now the moment I hear that pause with call centre chatter and the heavy accent, I hang up. Almost worse are the real pushy sales that are starting up. We keep getting green investment companies ring up. The one got so bad they actually started being aggressively patronising to my dad and accusing him of being a liar and wasting their time - they **** rung us!, we'd told them we're not interested. Unfortunately my dad is even worse for the impoliteness thing than me and got into this conversation, despite me telling him **** knows how many times to just say no thanks, and if they don't accept that you tell them more sternly, ask them not to call again and hang up.

I just can't get away from the feeling that Nolan wants to rubber stamp 'And with that I'm done' on the film, and with all the stuff in the marketing about it being 'the end of the legend' I'm quite convinced that Nolan's take on Bruce Wayne, will not end the film in the position to put the suit back on. Maybe they won't kill him, that might be a step too far and he'd up getting labelled as the man who killed Batman, but I can definitely see the final battle leaving Bruce Wayne unable to do the Batman thing any more. And so enter John Blake... It'd be a nice way to bring an end to it, putting a definitive full stop of Nolan's series.

It doesn't look too bad in some shots, but others it's comically large. I always associate Dredd as having a helmet that is tight to his face, theres a clear gap there with this interpretation. and in some shots the whole thing itself is just... absurdly big, looking beyond silly. I also have a soft spot for the more... over the top Dredd uniform with the mad shoulders, as opposed to the more conservative take that this film is aping, so the costume doesn't get my blood pumping. Saying that considering they are going for the less over the top style and they've nailed that, helmet aside. I'll probably see it regardless. But the trailer needs to knock it out of the park.