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anapplefellonmyhead

Listed below are comments made by anapplefellonmyhead between Friday, 17th October 2008 and Thursday, 1st October 2009.

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Seven months for The Sun to boost Cameron 02:06am on 01 Oct 2009 The sight of The Sun being ripped up in front of conference delegates made me cringe. Surely someone in the Labour party has enough sense to realise that a 'war' with the Sun is exactly what Murdoch wants. It whips up circulation and does more damage to Labour.

Losing the support of the Sun doesn't do much damage in itself (the Sun is mostly just a barometer of the polls anyway), but starting a war that practically invites The Sun to dish out the Kinnock treatment on Brown is hilariously foolhardy.

The Sun can't change the political opinions of its readers, but it can change their opinion of certain individuals given months of ridicule. Thats what Labour must be careful of, and thats why someone needs to get a grip with these attacks.
Charmed by the planet's fastest man 7:36pm on 17 Aug 2009 #6 - I would suppose that number 22 is the BBC's second spot for 5Live. Phil Jones doing the interview for BBC TV, is probably granted a better spot. At least, he certainly seemed to get interviews with the main guys from the 100m quite quickly yesterday. Of course, as the NBC guy proves - a better spot doesn't necessarily mean a better interview...!
Cheerleader Coe outlines 2012 vision 11:57pm on 26 Jun 2009 Nice to see some fellow enthusiasts on this blog.
The arrogance of that article by Patrick Barclay makes me dispair. He seems to somehow attempt to wage a class warfare argument against the "elites" of rowing and cycling - conveniently forgetting that our best paid Olympians would struggle to earn in a year what Ronaldo does in a week. Just because a sport isn't lavished with 24/7 media attention and mega-rich oligarchs hardly means its not worthy of its time in the spotlight.
He lambasts the disruption of parkland for a very short period to acommodate Equestrianism, conveniently ignoring the ruddy huge new park being created in East London for all the dog walking one could ever dream of.
And he suggests that a World Cup is some sort of inspiring spectacle the Olympics could never aspire to. Are we watching the same thing? 50,000 rowdy fellas, blind drunk, hurling plastic chairs at each other, and abuse at a referee, while some carefully manicured 'superstars' jog around a pitch for 90 minutes? I think I'd take the passionately supported triumphs of ordinary folk like Redgrave, Holmes, Hoy and Adlington any day.
But to end on a positive, anytime the cynics start to get you down, I'd reccommend a read of an article by another Times writer, Simon Barnes, two years ago:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/simon_barnes/article2067059.ece
At the end of the day, you can't disguise that the British love an event - especially a sporting one. Just see the queues outside of the Wimbledon gates. Theres still 3 years of moaning to go, but come 2012 I'm confident us "Olympic maniacs" will be vindicated.
Speak - er, erm? 1:34pm on 22 Jun 2009 What a spectacular return to form for our MP's.

They get humiliated by expenses, humbled at an election and spend weeks moping around, grovelling, apologising, promising to work harder, to "listen and learn" and to represent the public.

Then what happens - as soon as the doors of the commons are closed, they return to a grand display of gossip, navel-gasing, vendettas and party politics.

And then if they elect Beckett, we'll have a speaker, elected to clean up expenses, who was caught with her hand in the sweetie jar herself. You would have thought a squeaky clean expenses history would be the very first qualification for the job. But of course, thats hardly the MP's priority...
Parliament's reputation brought low 8:44pm on 09 May 2009 I'm starting to get seriously fed up of MP's defences of these claims.

The common line seems to be "yes, 50 quid for some towels can't really be justified, but hey, its the system thats at fault, not us."

They just don't seem to realise how ridiculous their arguments are. Many of these MP's have been in Parliament for decades. They have used the system for all these years and knew full well how they and their colleagues exploited it. Yet it is only now they're being dragged through the mud in the papers, that any of them turn round and speak out and say the system needs reforming.

Not a single politician has had enough backbone to bite the hand thats been feeding them. So when they turn round now and say the system needs reform, they look utterly hypocritical.
Boat Race returning to the BBC 8:33pm on 19 Mar 2009 Really good news as far as I'm concerned.
In response to comment number 42 about viewing figures:
If the peaks that Roger refered to in his article are correct, then those numbers are higher than the peaks of the vast, vast majority of FA Cup matches. Yes, the final will probably rate higher - but a peak of 8 or 9 million viewers, if I'm not mistaken, is for instance, higher than any Six Nations match so far this year.
Not too shabby for a supposed 'toff' event that no-one cares about...
The Boat Race, along with the Grand National and perhaps Wimbledon, are part of a very unique tradition where smaller, often forgotten about sports get their moment in the spotlight. And I for one, am glad that tradition is set to continue.
GB's have-nots are broke but not broken 5:18pm on 03 Feb 2009 The whole issue of athlete funding is one frought with difficult balances, controversies and winners and losers.

I can sympathise with UK Sports decisions. Take things like Water Polo or Handball - with the greatest will in the world, these things are, and will remain, minority sports. The problem is, as team events, there are just 2 medals up for grabs in each sport. Its a huge risk to take funding dozens of athletes and coaches on the off chance of some success or recognition. That money could be used to instead further the funding of a dozen swimmers, who as individuals competing in perhaps 20 events between them, just have a better chance of success.

I know there should be other factors at play - promoting minority sports and ensuring representation. But whats really going to drive the grass roots and take-up of sport is success - not just representation. If that is the case, then UK Sport have taken the difficult, but justified position of focussing money where it has a higher probability of funding medals.
Reporting from Gaza 01:00am on 07 Jan 2009 After reading all the comments on the blog, it seems clear that the BBC is being attacked from some sides for being Terrorist sympathisers, and from others for collaberating in an Israli cover-up.

Thats as good an indication as any that your reporting so far has been fairly measured and, as a whole, relatively impartial.
Plenty to look forward to in 2009 00:48am on 31 Dec 2008 re: how_was_that, post #21

You say things should be prioritised according to how popular things are with the general public, then reel off a list of events you personally like, and say the BBC should ditch the rest.

Many others might think a couple of England Tests is not as valuable as the very popular Formula 1. I noted an interview with the head of the ECB a few weeks back where he said someting to the same effect as you. But he then indicated that the BBC should have ditched F1, and would then have been able to afford "a couple of Twenty20 internationals a year". This would certainly seem unreasonable to many.

It seems Cricket is a very difficult area for rights negotiations as it seems pretty clear the ECB are very much more interested in taking the money from Pay TV, than ensuring the widespread exposure of their sport on Free-to-Air. We can't expect the BBC to compete directly with the bidding power of Sky and Setanta - there has to be some sort of effort on behalf of rights holders to secure their own FTA exposure at reasonable prices.

On a more positive note, I look forward to the coverage of the Swimming and Cycling over the coming year. It always seems these sports become massive during the Olympics, then fade into the shadows in between. Hopefully, this coverage means this won't happen in the run-up to 2012.
Commercially funded 5:07pm on 17 Oct 2008 To those asking for figures, theres really only one which matters.

Overall, the activities of BBC Worldwide, which includes BBC World News, BBC America, other international channels and all of the other commercial opperations dealing with magazines, DVD's etc. generated a £118 million profit in 2007/8.

That money gets re-invested by the BBC at home and suppliments what it recieves from the license fee.

So to me, rather than getting on these guys backs - we need to encourage their expansion and growth. The more successful they are - they both spead the BBC brand around the world and generate more profits for the BBC. In time, that's hopefully going to reduce the proportion of the BBC's buget that the license fee payer is accountable for.

Its win-win.

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