All Div1/2 really did was reduce the pool of non-centrally contracted players the national team was prepared to pick from. In the early days there was also a crazy situation where nearly all the overseas pro bowlers were world class seamers in one division and spinners in the other.

It probably is time to slim the whole thing down to 8 or so ‘franchises’. It is a tricky one. As a cricket fan I would mourn the loss of Canterbury, New Road or Grace Road (but not Derby – horrible ground), but it might be in the longer term interest to do that, flog the grounds for city housing and use the cash to fund a new system.

who else?

Bloody good question. Fisher looked OK. Pope has what it takes technique wise to be world class. Hameed is much of a muchness with the likes of Burns or Sibley.

This is the real worry. Who could replace, for example, Leach? Dom ‘two long hops an over’ Bess? I’d rather have Root bowling his roundarm filth than that!

What we won’t have bowling-wise is a world-class pair of quicks who can rout a side one week and contain them the next on a flat deck.

I liked the look of Ollie Stone, but have no idea how he is injury-wise. He’s a quicker but less movement version of Broad. But it is impossible to see a ‘next generation’ already in place to build a team around. The aussies have always seemed to have this. The Waughs and Tubs overlapped with the Hayden-Langer-Slater-Ponting generation who overlapped with Clarke-Hussey-North and so on with Warner-Smith etc. England don’t have that strength in depth because the gulf from county cricket is massive – it is where discarded academy and ‘squad’ players end up mixed in with journeyman players – somewhere you end up when you ‘fail’ rather than somewhere you graduate from.

On the subject of the men’s test side…

Lees – looks half reasonable and he needs to be given a chance. It’s not as if we’re awash with talented openers.

Crawley – I hope he isn’t destined to become another Hick. Occasional flashes of brilliance (where he looks like a world beater, not just a dasher) but mostly frustratingly tame dismissals.

Root – probably needs a break from captaincy, but one of England’s only two world class batters.

Lawrence – loads of natural talent, but an utter space cadet.

Bairstow – should never be seen in keeping gloves again. Good flat track bully with the bat, but seam movement exposes him. Such hard hands that an edge from him will carry to the cordon 95% of the time.

Buttler – time to fill his boots in white ball contracts.

Stokes – world class batsman. A great 4th seamer to have, not good enough to be 3rd seamer.

Woakes – good trier, but not worth his place with bat or ball individually. Doesn’t fancy it with the bat when the bowling is quick and his bowling is gun barrel straight military medium unless there is a lot of juice in the pitch or very favourable overhead conditions.

Foakes – it is great to see a proper keeper, not just an iron-mitted stopper like Buttler and Bairstow. The problem is his batting. Could go the way of other specialist keepers who couldn’t bat at test level.

Overton – needs ****ing off once and for all. Looks like he should hit the deck and move it around with a heavy ball. Actually a cart horse who bowls floaty shite.

Mahmood – has potential, especially with reverse swing later in the innings, but skiddy bowlers can end up going for lots of runs. He needs to model himself on Mohammed Shami.

Wood – a nice to have. Can break partnerships or clean up the tail, but he shouldn’t be bowling long spells and is 100% on the limit, every ball. He has to throw himself off his feet to bowl at the speed that is his USP.

Robinson – a more talented version of Overton who does hit the deck a bit, but is basically a good old fashioned county trundler.

Leach – I want to like him, nice action and is a subtle bowler, but in the era of balsa bats his subtlety can be lost simply by being twotted to cow corner. He also gets cut too much. Orthodox left armers should never get cut for four.

All in all a bit of a shitshow. And we’re going to lose Anderson and Broad soon – if not already.

I dont get it – inflation high, so raise interest rates, but now extra support?

Stagflation. Everything is just kicking the can down the road and/or spreading the impact.

Unless the UK actually starts facing up to its ‘needs’, it is merely an acceleration of a downward spiral, caused in no small part by ‘our’ adoption of childish foreign policy that has an inflationary impact with no actual upside.

The terminal decline of net consumer economies with a ludicrously high standard of living (in world terms) is inevitable with global population growth and dwindling natural resources. Choosing to unnecessarily expose ourselves to global economic forces in light of the above is just plain **** stupid. 🤷‍♂️

Someone really should slot Putin.

I should also say back on the bike after 6-7 weeks – gingerly.

If the fracture is mid shaft or wider and more than 100% displaced you are looking at 12 weeks plus.

It totally depends on the break. I did mine in an exotic way (not the classic hands out job), taking the impact direct on the top/back of the shoulder. My collarbone smacked against my sternum or dislocated at the inner end and the end fragmented into a comminuted fracture. I had 75% movement pretty much immediately and ditched the sling after a fortnight – being ‘guided by pain’. Mid shift fractures take longer and fractures near or between the ligaments at the distal end are even worse.

Not to mention the huge storage charges still being incurred for containers of un-needed PPE at various facilities in East Anglia

Yep that’s just the cherry on the top,I think that’s a massive scandal in itself.

Presumably another ‘thrusting, buccaneering, British entrepreneur’ owns the storage facility.

The whole ‘PPE Contracts for Mates’ is just a microcosm of what this government represents. Namely a one off smash and grab on the economy of a country in slow, but terminal decline.

Job’s jobbed for the dodgy PPE suppliers, though. That money is gone and will never be recovered.

Your scheduled reminder that the real issue isn’t the money or the corruption or the lying- not that they don’t matter, but the gowns delivered were never used, they weren’t up to spec. That, in the middle of a PPE crisis, meant that healthcare workers didn’t get the kit they needed to do their jobs safely.

Don’t forget, too, that the company connected to Mone also insisted on exclusivity*. So not only did they supply sub-standard crap, they also ensured that existing suppliers wouldn’t be able to provide pukka stuff. Good old thrusting Tory enterprise there.

*According to a chap I know who is fairly senior at Arco.

There is no worse bike maintenance job than…..

Tubeless when the tyre won’t seat. It combines non-exact science with physical exertion and if unsuccessful it is 100% unsuccessful.

Mind you, I was doing it with just a shock pump. I’ve got an airshot now and it is much better.

over educated elite (I’m guessing they were setting the boundary around mid grade GCSE level)

It shifts, but fundamentally it can be defined as people telling them true stuff they don’t like to hear. Stuff that runs against notions like “everyone respects the Britain of 2021 because Britain won the war” and “we are special” and “yah boo sucks to you Johnny Foreigner is a wise and acceptable way to make the rest of the world realise they need us somehow”.

In short, people who aren’t tossers.

Threatening to freeze his financial assets would be better. Or a trial for treason.

He knows that he’s got the flag-waving we won the war brigade forever, he can’t believe his luck in having the stupidest electorate in Europe and his act has been rewarded at every turn. Why would he stop?

So….

‘Levelling Up’ is bullshit.

Government have been taking the piss with illicit Xmas parties last year.

Health Secretary caught playing tonsil hockey with a woman who wasn’t his wife.

Super injunction left, right and centre covering up their hypocrisy.

Billions awarded to mates for shonky PPE.

Afghanistan ceded to the Taliban and a dithering mess of evacuation of UK friendlies whose first meal on UK soil was provided by charities.

Plus countless others.

BUT….BUT….BUT

A handful of desperate migrants in a dinghy, always appear in front of a minimum of four union jacks and oh dear, the Queen looks a bit pale and……

NOTHING CHANGES.

Go us. Woooooo.

🥳

clinical governance team that will have work out how to delivery this

Pah, mere details. Details, details, don’t bother me with details, just tell me when it’s done.

I had a boss like this not so long ago. It was a nightmare. I left.

‘do some planning’

Flipchart with some numbers on that everyone knows are impossible, but worked out just to make sure. A lot of crossing out and a flippant remark about interviewing Santa on how he does it at the bottom.

Page 2, someone’s drawn a cock. Much laughter.

Page 3 – we’ve established the size of the challenge – how are we going to do it? The rest of the page is blank.

I’m not usually a John Harris fan – he’s too much on the side of “oh bless, you voted for a xenophobic far right government because no one listens to you”, but….

This is spot on. Contempt and disdain. The only thing that makes me feel slightly better is that the people he holds in most contempt are his supporters.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/12/boris-johnson-crisis-contempt-covid-levelling-up

He really is a shithouse, isn’t he?

Yep. And the rest of the world sees him as the public face of ‘us’.

It boils my piss.

Putins control of gas supply

Luckily we’re part of a large international bloc with some influence.

Oh, hang on…

I sure wouldn’t like to be a copper trying to enforce any stricter covid restrictions that may be necessary….

That sounds a bit cruel.

I’m not the one doing the tying…?

🤷‍♂️

In any case, I have no desire to end up in a self-sustaining loop of saying the same thing over and over with slightly different words.

The fact is that the UK has landed itself in a stupid situation with irreconcilable contradictions and hypocrisy all over the place.

I continue to view the piece by piece unravelling of this nonsense with a mixture of bemusement, amusement and dismay. The fact is that our little collective moment of national tantrum is going to disintegrate bit by bit when confronted by reality.

Will it take a brave politician to say “this is stupid, let’s face it and start to repair the damage”?

Or will it have to be done inch by inch by stealth as is currently the case (big nationalist words in public, craven capitulation behind the scenes)?

But whatever the means and timescale, the UK will be forced to confront its true status in the end. The everyday brexiteers will be humiliated and poorer, the rest of us will just be poorer. A few rich Brexiteers will be even richer.

That is the bottom line. No amount of bitching on the Internet can change it. It is amusing byplay watching people tie themselves in knots trying to talk away the inevitable, but it is ultimately just that – byplay based on parlour talk.

The everyday brexiteer has already lost. The goals have been taken down, the stumps have been drawn, the clubhouse is shut. But still they carry on, playing like their lives depend on it. Amusing and tragic in equal measure.

This lot love waving flags and slagging off immigrants but when it comes to actions they’ve the same priorities as the old school establishment Tory’s. The money all goes to the same old places. Dished out to the same old people. They couldn’t care less about the rest. They’ve pretty much stopped even pretending they do

Apart from saddling ‘business’ with lots of unnecessary cost by limiting their pool of labour? Thatcher and her ilk used to lionise the mythical ‘business’ and have thrusting entrepreneurs around to No 10 all the time. Even if some turned out to be crooks.

Also screwing over exporters by alienating their closest markets?

Agreed about HS2, by the same token.

Whatever, though, in the 1930s the markets didn’t react within a millisecond to every pathetic bit of insularity like they do now, so inflation will be the end of this lot. They’ll try to paint the Bank of England as another bunch of elitists if they raise interest rates, but they’ll have to. In this day and age, you literally cannot win by alienating (relatively) stable and sensible trading blocs like the EU and trying to use a kind of ‘Protectionism for Toddlers’ policy. (The use of quotation marks is not intended to be ironic, it is trying to show that it is a made-up phrase I am using for brevity.)

How long it takes for this to sink in with the electorate is anybody’s guess, but however long it is, it cannot change that central truth above.

<Shrugs shoulders and turns palms upward>

I’m also hating Lyon’s straight on ball being called a doosra or arm ball. It is neither, it is an undercut offbreak that skids because it lands on the flat part of the ball not the seam.

Doosra is impossible to bowl with a legal action (Murali was a chucker, sorry to say) and the arm ball is a seam up outswinger pushed off of the index finger.

Riding in trousers means only one upper body and one lower body garment is actually shit up.

I tend to get in the shower (in downstairs toilet) fully clothed and pre-wash like that. Chucking one item out into a bucket at a time. Then either into the washing machine or (if a waterproof) out on the line to dry, or on a kitchen radiator.

My wife doesn’t like the shower thing particularly but I ask her whether she’d prefer having to buy a new washing machine every six months. That tends to sort it.

There are two different Shimano barbs, not sure about olives. If you have mashed oe badly, make sure you root around in there with a pick to get any shards out that may still be in there.

The last time I did a hose barb and olive job, the olive would not slide back up onto the hose around the barb. I had to clamp a small spanner to my workmate, then tap the barb end of the hose with a pin hammer to get it to go. It was a pain in the arse.

They are though, aren’t they?

British jobs for British workers. Ousting foreign workers to the temporary benefit of a few brits and appearing in front of about the same number of union jacks at any given opportunity that Adolf used to with swastikas. It’s all a bit “National Socialist British Workers’ Party”, no?

One of their premier mouthpieces seems to think so…

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-conservatives-have-become-the-true-workers-party

I didn’t see one dismissal where I thought it was an unplayable delivery.

The one Burns got was a snorter. Other than that I agree entirely.

So now Anderson and Broad come in and if it isn’t 50-5 and hooping around corners, the pressure is on them.

The sad fact is, in Oz with the Kookaburra, their bowlers move the ball as much as ours and are 5-10mph quicker. Even with the ‘new’ Kookaburra. So England are behind from the off. It is difficult to underplay how much movement is enhanced by the threat of a rapid, steepling bouncer. Only Wood is quick enough for that, but he is gun-barrel straight.

Leach disappeared at 9 an over for an extended period. Lyon looked threatening and kept it fairly tight when he wasn’t taking wickets. In Australian conditions a series XI would definitely contain Root and Stokes if fit. Other than that it would be 9 Aussies.

I can’t see Robinson taking those two catches that Hazlewood took, either.

Sorry, new around here.

How about you?

Johnson’s rabble are not a tory government. They are a Nationalist-Socialist ‘Workers’ party who actually appeal a lot more to ‘old school’ Labour voters than they’d like to admit at parties.

Still, a few Brexity lorry drivers have managed to get a few quid extra as a result of the stupid restricted labour market created by Brexit. Hopefully they enjoy it before it is wiped out by inflation in a month or two. And they’ll have devalued the wages of those of us working all the hours god sends ‘woking from home’*, so go them.

CPI expected to exceed 5% next year. Short-termist, stupid and unsustainable. Just like Brexit itself.

👍

*Although, I should add that I’m now about £100 a month better off from what I’ve saved on fuel. As well as not buying stuff from the supermarket on lunchtime walks to get out of the office.

😆

And the reason Raab froze when Kabul fell was because his foremost thought at the time was:

“Shit, this means publicly re-homing brown Muslim people in the UK. That will play badly with the Brexity new tory voters”.

Irrespective of the fact that most of them had helped the UK far more than he ever has.

That pic Of Raab is him calling IT because he can’t open a bloody spreadsheet…

It’s actually him bawling out IT because he can’t open a spreadsheet. Asking for help is weak. Yelling at people because they can’t change the world to adapt to your idiocy is ‘strong’.

I’m actually surprised he is holding the receiver the right way up if I’m honest.

Prat.

My sister and bil would still vote for him, “he’s funny”.

That’s a toughie. Try to do all future interaction by letter perhaps?

Neighbour down the road thinks, “he’s doing his best.”

Move house. Life is too short to live near utter strokers.

I’d expect Boris is now effectively trapped in the job until we start seeing some positive signs from Covid, Brexit, whatever.

So, you’re pinning your hopes on the covid situation getting better then? Otherwise it is Johnson forever if we’ve got to wait for a Brexit positive.

centrists loons

No such thing, by definition.

Loony Left, Rabid Right, sure.

the way legislation was brought in doesn’t cover the Crown Estate

I bet Queenie is thrilled with that one.

Do you think at the time they all thought it was Jolly Wheeze ? the sheer naivety of it all is staggering (and even after the shit show that was Barnard Castle).

I imagine the only thought (if any) was “**** it, it’ll be tomorrow’s problem if at all and we’ll just announce something about turning migrant dinghies around if we do get found out”.

Their contempt for the electorate (and especially those who buy their lies) is total, their cynicism boundless.

UK politics is too mired and inward-looking.

It is all about giving as little as you can to achieve a desired outcome by a minimal margin. The vested interests know this and immediately mobilise against anything that undermines their power. The parties then become unduly focused on what a few people say they can/will do, rather than what is actually in the best interests of the majority of the people. It is politics without vision, without imagination and without obligation.

Someone like Johnson is well-adapted to this. He has no policies that are precious to him, no vision, no desire to do anything other than accrue more power, positions and influence to satisfy his ego. He is a political nonentity who doesn’t stand for anything other than making it to the next morning still feeling like a big man. Anything.

Why don’t labour stand down & tell their supporters to vote LD?

That is a many-faceted consideration.

Personally I think it would be best if the Tories could be beaten without anything their rabid fans could construe as an electoral stitch-up – on this one-off basis. But a Lib-Lab pact of some degree is still probably needed at a GE. This is because all the Tories need to do to appeal to their current base is say that Labour want to ‘give your money to asylum seekers, benefits cheats, single mothers etc’ and it is job done.

It also involves Labour admitting that they need to address the centrist vote – something that the Momentum nutters will fight tooth and nail to stop now they’ve had their moment in the sun with Corbyn (not in the sense of actually winning at an election*, God forbid, but looking hard in front of people whose support is already a given).

*Or even inflicting some kind of reverse on Johnson and his shitshow.

Looks like the press are going to release this in dribs and drabs, one person at a time, to drag it out and cause maximum damage

To be honest, this is what any prosecution, defence, news outlet, whatever has to do when confronted by power whose MO is always the most cynical possible lie to get to the next day with as little damage as possible.

If the great British public was worth the candle, this would already have been amply demonstrated to them to make them angry enough that Johnson would be gone already. But then if they were worth the candle the prerequisite for someone like this to be in power (Brexit) would never have happened either.

What Cummings demonstrated to the likes of Johnson was that whatever contempt they held the public in, it was likely to be well-earned and probably under-egged. He showed them exactly how base and ignorant a large enough section was. He’s been proved right over and over. Johnson hasn’t got the minerals or courage to change tack now and why would he? Laughing at his support, throwing them a few crumbs of intolerance every now and then and bedazzling them with panto has worked up until now. It may well continue to work. You only have to do enough to satisfy your audience. If a bit of ‘anti-woke’ faux-intolerant bullshit is all that is required that is all he will do.

🤷‍♂️

The only story now is the exit plan.
johnson is a busted flush; his only plan is to escape with some remaining shred of credibility.

Don’t be so sure. He has never traded on his credibility because he has never had any. Bluff, bullshit and flag waving has worked wonders up to now.

time with family

Which one?

A future of bankruptcy and alcoholism awaits

Hope springs eternal.