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Listed below are comments made by Giz between Tuesday, 22nd July 2008 and Monday, 13th October 2008.

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Is music winning the digital war? 6:27pm on 13 Oct 2008 I very rarely download music illegally, generally music from artists I already legitaimately own a number of albums of and whose back catalogs are so extensive and often deleted that it is the only realistic way to get hold of it.

That said, taking a cursory look over some of the 'legitimate' music download stores recommended few of the seem to provide what I'm looking for.

There are the stores such as itunes that have reasonably comprehensive music libraries but force you to use their formats and use low bit rates, and I have no desire to own an ipod.

Then there are the sites that offer DRM free and better bit rates such as emusic, 7digital but don't stock a lot of the music I'm looking for.

Until music companies wise upto the fact that that doing store specific deals rather than providing their catalog to all online retailers they are missing out on a lot of potential revenue. If they do open up the catalog to all, the onus will be on the relevant download stores to provide a service that best suits customers rather than the other way round.

Then you'll find music stores bending over backwards to provide a bespoke music service for customers, rather than the lazy backward thinking we get from them at the moment
Five batsmen not enough for England 2:30pm on 22 Jul 2008 My pick,

Cook
Strauss
Vaughn
KP
Bell
Shah/ Collingwood/ Broad
Prior/ Mustard/ Snell
Flintoff
Anderson
Jones
Panesar

Regarding Harmison, he is a class but, all too often inconsistent bowler, and these days he lacks the mental strength to cut it at Test level. A lot of talk on here has discussed how he can bring you something extra on flat wickets because of his pace, but over the last few years as soon as he feels there is no assistance from the wicket he has given up and been tonked around the ground. Also given his comments on his last tour he obviously doesn't want to play abroad again so he would hardly be a long term solution.

Personally I'd opt for Simon Jones as he's been getting a decent number of wickets and looks to be fully fit. He's also a very clever and still pretty quick bowler with a proven track record (albeit between bouts of injury.)

I'd be tempted (though not convinced) to give broad another go, but as an all rounder batting at 6 rather than just a bowler. I'd like to see how he fairs around that level. His technique looks pretty decent so it would be an interesting experiment. If not broad, then Shah or Collingwood, who's a bit out of sorts but creates a nice balance in the batting.

In terms of the wicket keeping, Read won't offer a noticable improvement over Ambrose. With a flimsy batting line up, are we better just picking a competent wicki who can bat like prior/ mustard or even Snell who's got his chance this year with Gloucestershire and has been knocking it around a bit (though I haven't seen much of his keeping)

Our batting was poor in the last test and has looked a little fragile over the summer, but I'm not sure if there is anyone at the moment in the county scene who looks like an obvious candidate to step up to test level, who we haven't tried already.

anyway that's my two pence

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