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swirvy

Listed below are comments made by swirvy between Tuesday, 11th November 2008 and Thursday, 8th October 2009.

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Can James answer England call? 10:57am on 08 Oct 2009 Again, I repeat what a number of people have been saying on here...

Steve Harper...

Newcastle have never been strong defensively, but they now have the best defensive record in the league. A lot of the credit for that must go to Steve Harper. He's at least worth a look.
England one-day player ratings 10:40am on 21 Sep 2009 The ODI series shows without a doubt that we shouldn't pick 'specialist' ODI players, just the best 11 who are available. Mascarenas, Bopara, Shah are simply not good enough. With Morgan and Wright, the jury's still out,

Pietersen & Collingwood have held England's ODI side together for too long, without one and with the other hopelessly off form, we offered nothing.

Still not sure about Bresnan either. He's not good enough for the Test team, but he does bowl some tight spells. However, he's not aggressive enough for the pace he bowls at and doesn't take enough wickets. The rest are mainly test players....

Strauss
Denly
Bell
Pietersen (when fit)
Colly
Prior
Wright
Broad
Anderson
Swann
Onions

Rashid/Sidebottom offer options.
Are 'broken families' responsible for 'Broken Britain'? 3:16pm on 04 Sep 2009 Secretariat is quite right.

I am a single parent. My partner moved out when our daughter was 3. She is now 14. She is in the top set for every subject at school and her behaviour is normal (probably slightly better than many of her school friends). Certainly, it is better than many of the other children in her year at school.

This proves conclusively that it is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT how many parents are at home. The only influencing factor is the quality of the parenting. For further proof, look at all the recent court cases surrounding children;

Baby P was killed by his mother's partner, who had had a very disturbed childhood.
The 2 boys in Doncaster had TWO parents, one (the father) who was 'too strict' and one (the mother) who, apparently, didn't seem interested.
The 2 boys in the James Bolger case both came from disturbed backgrounds.
Mary Bell came from a very disfunctional background.

The cases like this are virtually endless. It is the quality of parenting which is the single over-riding factor in every case, not whether they came from a one- or a two-parent background. It is extremely dangerous to avoid this issue, as the problem seems to be getting worse all the time (I have my suspicions as to why).

I am afraid the evidence is incontrovertible. Bad children come from bad parents. It is a simple as that.

It is, of course, not as simple as that. Not every child of a bad parent turns out to be bad.... But that's a different story.

With regard to the "statistics" from David Lilley;

"Our outcomes from broken homes are there for everyone to judge. Almost 100% of children in single parent families leave school with no qualifications. 20% spend their life in and out of prison where 80% of prisoners cannot read and write, 40% become alcoholics, 40% become drug addicts and 70% become clinically depressed. These are our outcomes nevermind the global picture."

I cannot comment upon the final four figures quoted, although I would suspect that they have been inflated for effect. However, based on personal experience, I would strongly dispute the assertion that "Almost 100% of children in single parent families leave school with no qualifications". Of the people I know who grew up in single parent families, around 80% left school with at least one qualification. Now, I don't claim this to be a representative sample, but the fact that I know so many means that either dlilley's figures are a lie, or that I know EVERY SINGLE PERSON who grew up in a single parent family and did not leave school without qualifications.....
Ashes player ratings - First Test 11:00am on 13 Jul 2009 Yes. Ratings for Jimmy and Monty are too high.

More importantly, we need a complete overhaul of the team if we're going to be competitive in the Ashes.

Firstly, it should have been apparent to everybody that the main reason we won in 2005 was Vaughan's captaincy. He out-thought Ponting and that gave the players the boost they needed to up their performances. Bring in Rob Key as captain for the remainder of the Ashes series. Give Strauss support & confirm him as long-term captain, but stress that Key's being brought in to provide experienced captaincy when we need it. Bringing in Key will also strengthen the batting.

Secondly, Broad should be dropped and Harmison brought in. Harmison is bowling very well at the moment and taking wickets. He can also 'rough-up' the Aussies better than any of our current attack. Broad is not showing the quality against the strongest side in the world to justify his place. He is primarily a bowler and must bowl better.

Thirdly, nobody, not even Flintoff, should be guaranteed a place in the team. Flintoff batted well at Cardiff. He didn't bowl well. Do we need him, or would a 'stock' bowler such as Onions or Sidebottom be a better bet in the team?

We also need to take a good, hard look at both Cook and Bopara. Everybody knows that Cook's major problem is that he doesn't convert fifties into hundreds, but his dismissals by the Aussies demonstrate a couple of flaws in his technique, which need to be ironed out. A spell back on the county circuit could be what he needs to help him do this. Bopara is another one who should come under a lot more scrutiny. He scored 3 successive centuries against a very weak West Indies side and now needs to step up a level against Australia.

Team for the second test:

Strauss
Cook
Key (capt)
Pietersen
Collingwood
Prior
Flintoff
Swann
Sidebottom
Anderson
Harmison

What was most worrying about this test was that the Aussies got spin and movement from the pitch but we didn't. Wholesale changes may come about in the very near future...
Should smokers pay for treatment? 09:22am on 09 Jun 2009 Whoever came up with this ridiculous idea should be immediately removed from their job. It is a disgrace to expect smokers to pay for their own treatment and yet alcoholics and drug addicts are allowed treatment for free.

In any event, where do you draw the line? If smokers have to pay for treatment because it is self-inflicted, then surely everybody who is treated by the NHS should be refused treatment if it is self-inflicted?

Should two people who have a fight outside a pub be left to bleed to death?

Should treatment be refused to everybody in a road accident until it is discovered who is to blame and then only the innocent parties be treated...??

Should a rape victim be refused treatment in case she was "asking for it"...???

It is disgusting that this question should even be asked, let alone have an hour of a national radio programme devoted to it.

The NHS is free to all at the point of delivery, or it has to be free to no-one.
What spending would you cut? 11:19pm on 24 Apr 2009 It woudl be nice if we could be sensible about this, rather than the 'Kick out the Immigrants' rants which seem to predominate on this thread. There are a number of measures which we should take to get us out of the current problems quickly.

1. Scrap ID Cards. These are only still being pursued because they became ingrained in Labour thinking in the last years under Tony Blair. Time for the government to try to think OUTSIDE the boxes.

2. Scrap Trident. We don't need it. We won't use it. Again, its only been ordered because of Tony Blair's legacy.

3. Slash Public Sector Pensions. Don't just tinker with them, do what actually needs to be done. Put them on a Money Purchase basis, so that they are actually funded by the contributions paid by the members. Political suicide, the government may think, but what do they care now, the next election's lost (and probably the one after that as well, so why not do something to actually help the country.

4. The cut in Income Tax rates from 22% to 20% needs to be reversed when we are out of recession. I know that hurts everybody, but it will raise the sort of sum which we need to raise to get out of this mess.

5. Public Sector pay freeze for the foreseeable future. It was always assumed that the Public Sector received lower salaries than the Private Sector, but made up for it in higher pensions. This has been a falsehood for a number of years. Public Sector pay is at least on a par with Private Sector pay and their pensions are vastly more generous.

6. Cut the number of MPs to around 550. We don't need any more, the House of Commons is too crowded if every MP turns up on the same day and in MPs' salary and allowances, it is likely to save about £50 million a year!!!

7. Finally, for the love of God, keep the bank shares which the country holds until they have increased in value tenfold, which is likely to happen in the next few years. Banks have always been profitable, and always will be in the future. 2008 was a blip. Bank shares will be worth a lot more again in the medium term. That should clear a large chunk of the extra debt which we have accumulated on its own. Just don't do what Gordon Brown did to the country's Gold Reserves and wait until the market is at its most depressed before selling them!
Do former athletes make the best coaches? 11:10am on 09 Apr 2009 Great point well made. I am a Newcastle supporter and I have NEVER wanted Shearer as manager. In football, great players hardly ever make great managers. The only exceptions to that who I can think of are actually Brian Clough and Jack Charlton. You say that Jack Charlton was 'arguably' a weaker player than Bobby; he was still a good enough Centre Half to play in a World Cup Final. Of the current Premiership Managers, it is worth noting that Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Fulham, Tottenham, Stoke, Hull and Sunderland are all managed by less than succesful players and that Gary Megson and Sam Allardyce were only slightly above average. Portsmouth and Sunderland were both managed for the early part of the season by very good players with poor managerial records. Only Martin O'Neill, Steve Bruce and Mark Hughes are former quality players who now have a track record in management.
Game-changers - Google or Apple? 12:15pm on 17 Feb 2009 I'm sorry Rory, but I agree with 'sporran'. Just how difficult can you make the action of holding down a button?

Surfing with any Nokia phone is so easy that even my dog can do it......

I'm at a loss to understand how anybody can claim otherwise.
Not quite the full sorry 3:32pm on 10 Feb 2009 Sorry Robert, but your analysis falls slightly short. The bankers cannot apologise to a parliamentary select committee because it would be apologising to the very people who are actually to blame.

The sad truth of the matter is that it is not the bankers to blame in this instance. I know that's a controversial view, but please hear me out...

Banks have been lending money recklessly, its true, but only because we have been demanding it. The fault for this recession/depression and for the Credit Crunch lies with all of us, not with a few individuals who made a great deal of money as a result. It is all of our collective folly that we are in this mess and we won't learn any lessons at all unless we all wake up and acknowledge that fact.

Can you imagine how the media would have reacted in 2006 had the FSA, Bank of England and the Government acted then and said to Northern Rock "Sorry, but you have got to stop this ridiculous lending and get back to sensible banking." There would have been uproar. The Sun would have run a headline saying something along the lines of "Fat Cat Bankers Stop Hard Working Brits Buying Houses - What A Bunch Of Merchants" and the reaction from the rest of the media would have been similar, though generally less laden with innuendo!!

The simple fact is that we created this problem, not the banks. They have spotted a gap in the market and exploited it. The real problem is that that gap was ever created. And for that, we are all, collectively, responsible.
Your choice has never been so difficult 4:39pm on 11 Nov 2008 I would like to know what Ben Ainslie has to do to get any sort of recognition for his achievements.....

Assuming Ben Ainslie doesn't win (which I expect to be the case, unfortunately), Chris Hoy, Rebecca Adlington or Victoria Pendleton are also very deserving. Remember Victoria Pendleton's achievements this year weren't just at the Olympics. Cycling Team as Team of the Year & Dave Brailsford as coach of the year. Overseas surely must be Usain Bolt?

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