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hakluytbean

Listed below are comments made by hakluytbean between Wednesday, 5th November 2008 and Sunday, 8th November 2009.

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Haye does what he has to do 2:31pm on 08 Nov 2009 re Post 45:

This is not about "sticking the knife" into Jim Watt, its the fact that he just didnt want to get behind Haye at all. If he cannot get behind a brit in the ring when doing the commentary, then its time to move on. I have all resect for his record as a fighter, I just dont rate him as a pundit and never have. Sky's pundit line up are not that good.
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I don't agree in the slightest. Firstly he's always behind British fighters. Secondly, and this is the trouble for some fans, he's also knowledgeable about boxing. A low-punch fight in the champion's back yard generally goes to the champion and that's more or less the history of Valuev's career. Haye should have done a bit more, he planned to do more, many felt he didn't do enough to prevent a home-town decision. If you remember the Holyfield fight, he seemed to have done quite enough, but he lost. And that's what Jim Watt had in mind. If you don't really follow boxing this will be mysterious to you.

Jim Watt distinguished between these two positions throughout the fight. He kept saying he didn't think Haye had done enough to convince the judges, but he hoped 'with all my heart' (Rd 12) that he had. That's pretty straightforward.
Seconds out as golf and sevens go Olympic 8:27pm on 06 Oct 2009 I agree women's Olympic boxing is progress, but it also harks back to when boxing was altogether a more popular sport and putting on boxing gloves to show off, win a bet or settle a score was something done by either gender. Still, let's hope not everything repeats itself:

"Olean (New York) Times, June 16, 1925; Syracuse (New York) Herald, July 26, 1925. Heaven City was a commune outside Harvard, Illinois, and Nina Roundtree was Schofield's 15-year-old girlfriend. Schofield boasted that he was a boxer, and to prove it, he sparred a male member of the commune. However, he fared badly against the man. Roundtree was upset at this, and put on the gloves herself. She then proceeded to box, while Schofield proceeded to have a heart attack."

From the Journal of Combative Sport index of boxing fatalities:
http://ejmas.com/jcs/jcsart_svinth_b_0700.htm
The men who witnessed sporting history 02:56am on 22 Aug 2009 "The Berlin Olympics were designed by the Nazi government to showcase the superiority of the white Aryan race over the rest of the world."
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Not really Tom, unless you mean culturally. Yes, I dare say they were as conceited as chocolate chips in cookies in that regard. But athletically people of African descent were regarded as having superior physiques. The attempt to show that non-whites were inferior happened at the St. Louis Olympics and World's Fair in 1904, with results of, naturally, no scientific value. Article here: http://www.slate.com/id/2197635/
Semenya left stranded by storm 6:46pm on 21 Aug 2009 Complaints about the treatment of Semenya might have a little more integrity if it was acknowledged that for historical reasons the vast majority of athletes in this position have been european/caucasian. Then there was an 800m runner from India a few years ago. In short there's nothing new about it, which imo the BBC coverage has only partly illuminated. It may be the first time an African athlete has been subject to this controversy (so far as I can tell), but that doesn't make it a unique event. Maria Patino of Spain (someone mentioned her earlier) is an interesting case. She failed a gender test, was asked to feign injury to withdraw from a championships and then again to facilitate retirement, but decided to fund her own tests which demonstrated that although she was to some degree 'trans-gender' she was resistant to the strength-promoting qualities of testosterone. On that basis she was re-admitted to athletics. I hope Semenya gets more assistance than that athlete received.
Semenya left stranded by storm 11:51pm on 20 Aug 2009 # 267. As a South African I may be way off the point in saying this but if she were from a more dominant country in world sports, would she have been treated the same? I cant help but feel that the world media love a weak target. Had she been British or American would their respective outlets have reported in the same way? I hope the backlash (when she's cleared) reaches those it should.
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It wouldn't have got to this stage in Britain or America. In many countries the question of gender would have been investigated by the national federation before throwing an athlete into a global competition.
The downer Down Under 2:20pm on 07 Jan 2009 At 08:41am on 31 Dec 2008, eirebilly wrote:

This GB thing is starting to get on my nerves a bit as well.

When a sports people form Scotland, Wales or NI win something then they are Brittish, when they lose then they are known as Scottish, Welsh or from NI.
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Tbh that analysis is getting on my nerves. When a team wins fans of the team celebrate this by highlighting the name of the team. When Arsenal win a match no-one talks about how well their French players have done, they talk about Arsenal. On the other hand when a team loses no-one likes to draw attention to it so the team is referred to indirectly or by other terms. With British teams you'll find that English players also have a separate identity for this purpose, something like, "unfortunately the Yorkshireman totally stuffed up the finish to the race and so failed to win". It's just simple psychology.

On your other gripe for some reason you've understood the article to be about how well the English (or British) have done this year, but actually it's about the relatively bad year the Aussies have had.

I'm not English or Australian either btw.
The BBC licence free? 8:22pm on 28 Nov 2008 #207, I'm in a similar position, and I suspect there are quite a few of us. I haven't had a television for years and of course pay no licence fee.

I get U.S. dramas by bittorrent and watch a very few BBC programmes on the iPlayer. Anything I miss there can usually be found on bittorrent. You can play the resulting file on a media player suited to your OS and in good quality. I acknowledge that the iPlayer is a great achievement in its way but it's not the best TV experience you can have on your computer. Meanwhile I have a friend who simply goes to the BBC binary newsgroups. If I wanted to watch more telly I'd be curious to find out about non-English programmes, and the internet is the best place for that.

So I doubt I'd pay a licence fee for television. Sport might be an attraction, but there's less and less on terrestrial. Actually you can generally find that on the internet. With other programming, it's clear the BBC tailors some output slightly for the U.S. market. That's fine, but I wouldn't like to pay for it unless I actually lived over there. This trend hasn't gone unnoticed across the Pond incidentally, where I have relatives.

I'd consider paying for BBC radio. The wannabe tendency is less evident and the output is generally great, particularly on 3 and 4. If the licence fee goes then hopefully BBC radio would be remodelled into something like the also excellent NPR. Any subscription element would be fine by me.
When Hoy's bid almost hit the buffers 3:52pm on 12 Nov 2008 Well it's an amusing story although seeing that the Olympics are quite old now it's taken a while to come out and then in common with many BBC blogs seems to have been cobbled together in a hurry. The Beeb should know that it's our job as providers of random comments to apply the old superglue and hairdryer treatment and hope for the best.

Today's spin around the track: what does "Boardman's take from all of this" mean? Maybe the author was attempting the American colloquialism 'take on all this' that's to say 'opinion of' , which in the American tradition of making anything colloquial formally acceptable the time-pressed hacks of British journalism have turned into standard English, but then it seems to have collided with the more traditional 'take from all this' as in a lesson learnt? If that had happened on the track there would have been nasty skin burns all round. Tsk!
A history day? 2:33pm on 06 Nov 2008 #4
I agree with your point about JFK. Talented people graduate from U.S. universities every year. The fact that occasionally someone like Obama goes into politics and has success there should prompt an enquiry into why it doesn't happen more often, not a media love-in. But there we are, that's the media and their 24-hour vaudeville show.

But I've learned the BBC has something for everybody; Gavin's is one of the better blogs imo, News24 is pointless unless you enjoy watching middle-brow puddings sweating under lights, but the radio output is consistently better.
Fast food nation 3:11pm on 05 Nov 2008 #34 - Jeebers76, if there's any part of your description that distinguishes the U.S. from Europe I can't find it, except for the part where you say "we're nothing like Europe".

"From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men." John Ball, 1381.

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