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affront

Listed below are comments made by affront between Monday, 27th April 2009 and Wednesday, 26th August 2009.

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Victory or heist at the Oval? 5:58pm on 26 Aug 2009 Thinking about it, I can't name one great Aussie inventor, scientist, engineer or philosopher let alone three. That Barry Humphries is great though, isn't he? Gladioli! Fantastic.
Victory or heist at the Oval? 3:57pm on 26 Aug 2009 'Too bad its not the 1700's then we could have a war with the pommies to settle it once and for all!'

This is fantastic stuff, keep it up! I love the Aussie's earnest but child like enthusiasm for sport - they really do take it seriously, don't they?

They don't have an awful lot else to brag about (name 3 great Aussie inventors, scientists, philosophers, engineers etc. etc. - tricky, isn't it?)so we mustn't deprive them of this. They have a couple of good newspaper columnists (Germaine Greer and Clive James) and a fantastic comedian (Barry Humphries) and a few good actors but - oddly - they all live either here or in the USA.
Victory or heist at the Oval? 4:24pm on 24 Aug 2009 Excellent comment, Pickled Pete. I get the impression that rockwanderermatt hasn't really ready what you, I and other English contributors have been saying in response to the OP: i.e. that the problem , if there is one, lies with the press rather than fans. Summary, Matt - don't believe everything you read in the papers.
Victory or heist at the Oval? 2:20pm on 24 Aug 2009 Poor old Rockwanderermatt - you've got to feel sorry for him. He seems to have had great difficulty understanding what the English posters here have been saying. Incidentally what you're doing in your post is 'whinging' about us, Matt, not 'winging'.
Victory or heist at the Oval? 10:58am on 24 Aug 2009 Thanks, Doofus.

Having dug around a little on the web I'd agree with you - the comments I've seen are pretty balanced and - as Nick points out - Gideon Haigh is excellent.

It's difficult to get an overall picture from here in sunny Berkshire, but perhaps Nick himself fell prey to the need to sensationalise. He could hardly lead off a blog post with 'actually, coverage here is pretty balanced and there's good analysis in the quality press.'.

It's a dilemma, isn't it? Report what's actually happening and risk boring everyone or add a little spin (*Fast gaining traction...") in the hope that people will read on.
Victory or heist at the Oval? 10:25am on 24 Aug 2009 Good point re. the run-outs, Mr MLane. I really do think we should treat headlines like "Great Ashes Heist" with the contempt they deserve. I know that intelligent Aussie fans won't sink to the same levels as the hacks who write this garbage.
Victory or heist at the Oval? 09:53am on 24 Aug 2009 Well, I see Nick has added some links to his sources but the story still doesn't count as a story, to my mind. Perhaps that's the point of a blog by a BBC reporter - they can publish any old rubbish their blogs.

The coverage in the Aussie press is exactly what I'd expect. Cheap, content-free wordage that can be used to fill pages and sell papers without the need to do boring research. This is one of the reasons why the print media are doomed - not only is the idea of printing news on dead trees the day after it happened a touch anachronistic, much of the content is just made up and sensationalised. The job title 'reporter' is such an oxymoron, isn't it?

No doubt the TV and radio channels in Aus will be filled with similar rubbish today. It's easy to understand why but it assumes that readers, viewers and listeners are brain dead. I've visited Australia a couple of times and am well aware that this is certainly not the case!
Victory or heist at the Oval? 11:09pm on 23 Aug 2009 I assume that the excuses trotted out on your blog, Nick, are those created by reporters in search of a story. I would think that the Aussie press are about as representative of the opinion of the true Aussie cricket fan as the English press is of true fans here.

Here in England, it's important to distinguish between good and bad sports journalism and to separate both kinds from stories written by non-sports hacks doing what their editors tell them to do in order to sell more papers.

Into which category do you fall, Nick?
The AM Glass Box 07:45am on 15 Jun 2009 As a bit of light relief after the news from Iran, the rail operators' call for new lines and stations provides a good excuse to play a line or two from Flanders and Swann's 'The Slow Train'. E.g.

No more will I go to Blandford Forum and Mortehoe,
On the slow train from Midsummer Norton and Mumby Road,
No churns, no porter,
No cat on a seat,
At Chorlton-cum-Hardy and Chester-le-Street
We won't be meeting again on the slow train.

EM: "Or will we? Train operators have etc. etc...."

An item attempting to explain the wild swings in the England cricket team's performance would also be helpful.
Obama's in a box with torture 4:27pm on 27 Apr 2009 Can we all agree that torture, just like war, is a very bad thing? It was very bad that so many innocent French civilians - women, children and men - were killed during operation Overlord. But it was, unfortunately, a necessary part of the liberation of Europe from the Nazis.

We are no longer fighting a 'war on terror' but it's certainly true that our adversaries are terrorists. The game they play is based on terror - killing innocent civilians as a means of winning the war.

If we're to beat them, we need to play them at their own game. (It's no use playing them at a different game - a first class soccer team can't beat a first class basketball team). Their own game is based on terror and it's not possible to support human rights while at the same time using terror to win the game.

This is pretty obvious isn't it? We can ban the use of torture and terror if we're happy to allow terrorists to get their own way. Yes, yes, I know some will say 'we can all live in peace together' but that's just nonsense, isn't it?

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