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Ladhar_Bheinn

Listed below are comments made by Ladhar_Bheinn between Sunday, 17th August 2008 and Tuesday, 16th September 2008.

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Profiting from fear 1:02pm on 16 Sep 2008 Selling shares that you have not bought. Buying or selling comodities that you have no intention of using or comsuming (no Mr Darling this is not like Airliners that buy fuel they intend to consume).

In simple terms this is gambling pure and simple - exactly the same as placing money on a horse. Of course the financial sector will defend it as being totally different but it isn't. Its pure gambling and it undermines the true financial situations and it certainly kicks the small share investor in the teeth.

It not exactly rocket science to predict that these practices were bound to eventually cause precisely the choas we have now. The sad thing is that successive governments have done absolutely nothing about it - there the blame lies.
BBC reporters pick out their Olympics highlights 8:38pm on 25 Aug 2008 Highlights - the German weightlifter holding the photo of his late wife on the podium. Yes sport is good but there are more important things as well.

Lowlights
(a) China being the hosts - given they have one of the worst human rights record on the planet. Did anyone understand the slogan One World One Dream or was the dream that the world must have been dreaming if they thought giving China the Games would make one iota of difference to their human rights record.
(b) Grainger missing gold again

Stars of Beijing
(a) those competitors that took defeat in the Olympic spirit
(b) the GB cycling team

Tip for 2012
(a) it will rain
(b) one of the relay teams will drop the baton
Taekwondo needs to move with the times 09:15am on 25 Aug 2008 If one takes part in a sport in which the result is based on subjective appraisal one has to accept that you will get bad decisions and bad judgements. If you don't like this then get out of the sport and go for a sport where your efforts are solely based on your ability.

Not only are subjective sports a cause of problems like that articulated above they are also, by and large, difficult to understand. Unless you play some of these sports it is difficult to work out which of two performances is the better. At least with objective sports there is little difficulty understanding why someone won.
World view of Beijing 08:18am on 25 Aug 2008 Just scrap all sports from the Olympics where the results is based on subjective judgement. Out goes diving, synchro swimming, boxing, taekwondo, gymnastics and several others.

Either one removes these sports or one just has to accept that part of their very fabric is ludicrous refereeing decisions and when they happen that's sport (or rather that that particular sport).

There is another class of sports where the scoring isn't based on judges but the results can be (eg weightlifting - was it a valid lift, football, hockey (eg was it offside) and a few others.

Finally there are the 'pure' sports in which the scoring isn't based on judges and the result is rarely if ever affected by judges. Athletics, Swimming, Sailing, Rowing, Cycling to name a few. Interesting that these 5 sports account for the bulk of medals available at the Olympics.

'Pureness' in this sense could be the criteria for both removing and including news sports. For example, Golf passes this test (and the personal integrity of the players is a credit to golf), snooker (although maybe not enough countries would send competitors), chess (well if we can have synchro swimming we can certainly have chess !), horse racing, angling (good watched live !), etc.
China for gold, Britain for bronze? 8:53pm on 21 Aug 2008 TeamGB are doing brilliantly with 17G 12S and 11B.

Its worth noting that in 2004 we got 9G,9S and 12B so our current total is a major step forward.

If one ignores Cycling medals the stats for 2004 were 7G 8S 11B and 2008 are 9G 8S 9B (so far) which puts into perspective that Cycling has been the real source of this major step forward.

If one knocks out Cycling, Sailing and Rowing we have 2004 4G 5S 8B and 2008 3G 5S 6B (so far) .

If one knocks out Cycling, Sailing, Rowing and Swimming we have 2004 4G 5S 6B and 2008 1G 3S 4B (so far) .

There are 31 Olympic sports. I guess the good news is that inspite of this mega medal haul there is certainly room for other sports to step up and make 2012 even more successful.

For any anoraks out there :-

Cycling (18 events): 2-1-1 (2004) up to 8-4-2 (2008) with maybe more to come.

Sailing (11 events): 2-1-2 (2004) up to 4-1-1 (2008)

Rowing (14 events): 1-2-1 (2004) up to 2-2-2 (2008)

Swimming (34 events): 0-0-2 (2004) up to 2-2-2 (2008)

The most obvious place to get extras medal is Athletics with a whopping 47 events.
A tactical masterpiece 12:44pm on 20 Aug 2008 There is a very old fashioned concept of trust. Its rather like virginity, once you've lost it its pretty well impossible to get it back. The shear volume of negative comments on this blog is a testamony to this.

Christine cannot complain that people are looking back at her history because its a history all of her own making and one cannot decide what parts of one's history should be ignored what parts should not be.

Christine's run was fantastic and her gold medal is a gold medal however all people who have violated sports drug rules have to accept the consequences of their own actions and if that means your gold medal doesn't shine as brightly as others or isn't considered by many people as worthy, then that's the price you pay.
Hoy the pick of GB's golden bunch 6:54pm on 17 Aug 2008 Before we get too excited about knighthoods let's look at some facts.

1. Matthew Pinsent has 4 gold medals and no knighthood.

2. Kelly Holmes has 2 gold medals and was made a Dame - presumably all double gold medallists at the same Games now qualify for Sir/Dame. Hoy,Adlington being the latest to qualify.

3. Alex Ferguson, (blame anybody but yourself when you lose, whinge about the referee endlessly and don’t give interviews to the BBC) was knighted.

Not quite sure what value a knighthood has any longer, or even what values it represents.

Over the last decade Rowing, Sailing and Cycling have provided superb Olympic athletes who are a credit to the nation and their sport. These Games provide just a small window into these fantastic sports – it’s a shame that once the Games end we’ll get an endless TV/radio diet of football (aka diving, abuse of officials, blame game when you lose, obscene millions in wages, the biggest branding con in history).

Congratulations to all our medallists.

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