BBC Blog Network

User Profile

thoult

Listed below are comments made by thoult between Monday, 12th May 2008 and Monday, 22nd December 2008.

«Newer
Older»

Experiencing boutique football at QPR 2:19pm on 22 Dec 2008 To poster number 9:

Over the past few years Chelsea's involvement with the community has generally been pretty far away from Stamford Bridge. They still do a lot of work in the local area, don't get me wrong, especially with the schools around there, but they used to do a huge amount outside of London in Surrey and South Bucks, traditional catchment areas for their fans. Fulham also have made a big effort with local schools and football clubs.

I've been impressed by a lot of what I've seen of QPR's community work in the past five years. Since following in Chelsea's footsteps at their Harlington training ground, the coaching staff seem to have built good links with community coaching projects, including school and girls teams. I know they do a fair amount of work across the north of London in trying to support community sports schemes to give young people outlets and activities (although trying to get a housing estate to be named after the club was probably a bit much). They're not yet up there with Charlton, but I think that they are probably trying to emulate that level of community support.

And yes, I'm sure as someone else pointed out, the housing prices around the club are probably pretty high compared to others in the championship. But most of their fans don't live in Notting Hill, that's for sure!
Ask Bearders #182 12:52pm on 27 Nov 2008 Hi Bearders,

Could you answer the following question that my colleagues and I have? We are wondering what the longest line ever on a test match scorecard has been, if such a statistic can be determined. We're pretty sure it will involve Sri Lanka, and would have to be a catch or stumping. One of the longest we think we've found so far is from the 2nd test in Colombo against England last December:

RJ Sidebottom c DPMD Jayawardene b Muralitharan

Tim, London
Caption Competition 5:14pm on 20 Nov 2008 Fred Astaire had really let himself go after discovering Krispy Kremes.
Gregan - a Football League legend 12:02pm on 29 Sep 2008 Thanks Fletch - along with Tim Vickery you are one of the better column writers on the Football pages. It's always refreshing to see some coverage and read stories and views about life away from the Premier League and long may it continue.
Ask Bearders #178 5:44pm on 22 Sep 2008 Ron and Dean Headley, father and son, played Test cricket for two different countries. Have many other such close relations done the same?
Argentine trailblazers 6:21pm on 11 Aug 2008 As usual, another interesting and well put together column from Mr Vickery. If only the articles covering top flight domestic football were as good!

Having visited Venezuela on holiday during the 2006 World Cup and seen the locals' passion for the game, I was interested to hear earlier this summer that Wigan were interested in the young Maracaibo forward Daniel Arismendi.

How do you think Arismendi would fare in the Premier League? Would he work well with the other South Americans in the squad?
Can Birmingham, Reading and Derby bounce back? 10:04am on 07 Aug 2008 JustALitaBit wrote:
"...but to be honest I could reel off a list of another 10 teams who wouldn't suprise me if they made the playoffs!"

And that's what makes the Championship so much fun :)

There are an awful lot of teams managed by wily old individuals with plenty of Premiership experience between them. Like you said, any number of them could at the very least make the playoffs. Of the relegated sides, I would definitely say Brum look the strongest, but still - you never know.

Fletch - for your next piece you should find out more about Don Hutchison's magnanimous parting gesture to Luton.
Crouch deal proves Redknapp's quality 9:41pm on 07 Jul 2008 Peter Taylor - Ade Akinbiyi (£5m for Leicester) - really, really never understood that one. Ever.

Glenn Hoddle - Sergei Rebrov (£11m for Spurs) - anything Andriy Shevchenko can do, Rebrov...can't.

Gianluca Vialli / Claudio Ranieri- Winston Bogarde (free for Chelsea) - allegedly earned over £10m over 4 years in return for 11 games. Vialli signed him, then got sacked, and Ranieri didn't like him. So Chelsea tried to sell him, then force him out. Bogarde stuck to his guns, to much general ridicule, and refused to cancel his contract. I wholly recommend his autobiography to hear his take on it.

Jose Antonio Camacho - Jonathan Woodgate (£13.4m for Real Madrid) - maybe not a great manager either, but still, almost the ultimate in awful signings.

Graeme Souness - Ali Dia (freebie for Southampton) - good old Graeme believed the story about him being George Weah's cousin and gave him a game. Matt Le Tissier will probably be giving after dinner speeches about that one for the rest of his life.
Farewell Euro 2008 4:39pm on 01 Jul 2008 Fletch, good blogs, very entertaining. But complaints of Anglo-centrism are right. Of the Home Nations, what might they have done had they qualified?

England - lost out to Croatia and Russia in the qualifiers, had they qualified then we could have been denied Bilic's crazy celebrations or Russia's progress to the semis.

Wales - only managed fifth in their qualification group anyway, from which Germany (finalists) and the Czech Republic (pretty inane) qualified.

Scotland - had they qualified instead of Italy or France, none of the games they were involved in would have been so dull - although the Holland-France game was thrilling, the rest were pretty dire.

Northern Ireland - if they beat Spain 3-2 in the qualifiers does that mean they're better than the European champions? :)

Obviously, I know it wouldn't have worked out like that, but I definitely agree that the lack of any Home Nations didn't weaken the tournament. But it's not just England who could have added to the tournament!
Centrica to go nuclear? 11:40am on 12 May 2008 Red Lenin:

Possible reasons for interest in nuclear power
- High temperatures could provide method of disassociating hydrogen for a hydrogen based economy
- Carbon emission costs for current fossil fuel baseload power generation systems; if world governments increase levy on carbon production to the point where nuclear power becomes attractive in terms of cost per MWh compared to clean coal or clean gas technologies, suppliers will switch to building nuclear plants instead of new gas or coal plants
- Buying fuel from Canada and Australia (depending on the cycle used) is potentially more stable and less politically / economically damaging than relying on cartels of oil producing nations in relatively politically unstable countries.

The Australian government may be correct when they say that there are currently only 80 years of resources at current usage. Firstly, they refer to known resources. When resources begin to dwindle, more exploration will take place and more resources will be found - just look at oil production for an analogue. I would also be willing to wager that they are referring to high grade, 'easily' extracted uranium. In a similar situation to oil, the cheaper, easier, purer reserves will be harvested first, and more difficult reserves will begin to be exploited when the market price of uranium rises.

In addition, nuclear fuel isn't just uranium - there are other possibilities, such as running plants on the thorium cycle (India has huge deposits) or breeder type reactors, which run on nuclear waste.

Still, all of these possibilities require mining of natural deposits in processes that are energy consuming and quite harmful to the environment and to those carrying out the extraction. Most of the arguments about electricity production methods, whether it be coal, gas, wind, water or nuclear, focus on the relative pollution at the power plant end, and not throughout the whole cycle from mining through installation and production to decommision.

«Newer
Older»

^ Back to top

BBC MMVI

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites

BBC.co.uk

BBC Blog Network

Find and talk to the BBC's bloggers.

User Profile

thoult