broadsword

I'll be the blur in front of you! :-) Looking at teh website, some of the previous medals look top. Have heard it's a bit on the hilly side?! One month later will be doing Marseilles-Cassis.

But I was never optimistic Eddie! Just hopeful that we'd avoid humiliation! It will be another 2 series (maybe one at a push) before we can beat these buggers.

Nope, will be there 23rd to 25th Eddie. Might be able to meet up for a beer, or if not, you can cheer me on when I run Paris to Versailles :-)

You don't come back from losing the first test to the Aussies. More pain to come. Who Ian Bell is I don't know. Seems like a latter-day Graeme Hick. The openers don't hang around for long enough, and it puts more pressure on the skipper who has enough problems as it is. Reminiscent of Atherton, although of course he opened. The first three wickets you can take as given, and then of course we are still waiting for Freddie's contribution with the bat. I predict 4-0 to Australia. The pain just goes on. What will it take to beat these b*stards?

Don't have enough faith in Trescothick or Strauss at the moment. The only one who can hang on in there in Pieterson, and he's not even English. (Sorry, Kevin.)

Is Pieterson the only one who can bat? Jeez, it rains all bloody day and we still lose.

Will be going on my own in Sept, so will be keeping an eye on this thread!

Barton was away representing his club (ie his employers), and starts a ruck. I'm sure my employers wouldn't have regarded it as a storm in a teacup. The guy obviously doesn't have any composure, and sounds a bit dangerous if you ask me (eg stubbing out a cigar on someone's face).

Justifications in their own warped minds, I certainly wouldn't say it was justified. There was a result of a survey that I saw on teh front of teh Torygraph tonite. Apparently 33% of muslims believe the West is decadent and must be brought to an end ...

Absolute twaddle! They have enough justifications already.

Couldn't agree more with MB and Flopsy. Even if he speaky no Engy, then it must have been obvious that they wanted him to stop. I can't understand the motivation for running? Was he late for the dentist's or something?

He was good at bringing the ball forward though!

Just the usual Saturday then?

We can kiss goodbye to winning the Ashes back for another year then. All that pre-Match bluster for Pieterson and co is starting to look a bit damn silly. And when is that bu99er McGrath going to retire?

I flipping well told you lot! Did anyone listen? Non. If we lose 3 more wickets or more today we're up the Khyber.

Not too soon, boys, remember 47 all out in the Caribbeann?

Just read on the Beeb that more than 25k civilians have died since the US went in - horrendous.

I don't think there was any morale aspect to Tony Blair committing to the war, otherwise, we would've found WMD, wouldn't we? Personally, my suspicion is that something happens when you get into office that means any idealistic notions (if you ever had them) get chucked out of the window.

Just one comment I'd like to make after what I'd said earlier about Islam ... I still remember some of the stuff I read about the civil war in Yugoslavia ... specifically the cellar the UN(?) found and all of the implements of torture within that had been used on Muslim women and children. It sickened me to the core. How can human beings do this to each other? Aren't we supposedly at the top of the evolutionary chain? Without in any way devaluing what has happened in London it should be remembered that this has happened on a much larger scale in Iraq, yet another car bomb has gone off there. Why is the dichotomy always "good" guys versus "bad" guys (as defined by country/ religion etc)? It's simplistic and to me is the new opium of the congregation. Perhaps people are fed of of watching WW2 movies and need a new war to be conducted on TV to satiate their desires. Or maybe that's Tony Blair's perception as he makes his latest attempt at Churchillian oratory, with just the hint of witheld tears just for the readers of women's mags, just to give us an emotive gee-up and stop us from thinking about what's really going on. I feel more commonality with the suppressed people of Kosovo, Iraq, East Timor, than I do with the leaders of my own country. A better characterisation would be those who want to live in peace and those who are happy to let others die to feed their own twisted religious/ political aims. Why can't Mad Mullahs/ Tony Blair/ George Bush/ Thenodrog fight their own wars, and let the rest of us live our lives in peace?

Whoah! I hope you're not insinuating that the Israelis are a peaceful bunch who only draw arms when one of those horrid suicide bombers leaves the utopian sanctuary of the West Bank, that the Israelis have magnanimously let the Arabs have the use of, and blows himself up in Jerusalem?

Reading the 'paper (the Mail for what it's worth) yesterday, rather interesting interview with a muslim ... he was stating that "mainstream Islam" is too moderate, and "real Islam" is practised in private, in people's front rooms. He also said that life was made so intolerable (?) for muslims in the UK that they wanted to commit suicide bombings so that they'd go to heaven, which is obviously a nicer place to live. Not his exact words, but the exact sentiment, believe me. Sorry to trivialise, but I'm not too enamoured about where I live, but I'd rather s0d off somewhere else on planet Earth than meet my maker, plenty of time for that afterwards. He also said he had real respect for the bombers, and would carry an attack out himself if he wasn't a coward. Now I know that this newspaper is hardly the 'paper of record, but the interview was conducted by Imran Khan (used to work for the Beeb), and it didn't come across as a hatchet job. All in all, a bit scary.

I only found out this morning that Islam (apparently) means "peace", so it must be distorted in some way in order for people to believe in it, and to also go around blowing people up. N'est pas?

In an ideal world, free speech would reign. But given that the apparent nature of Islam means that it appears to be easy to inculcate youths with the ideal of giving up their own lives to kill as many innocent by-standers as possible, to go and meet Allah ... well, just for the safety of the majority of the population, these people shouldn't be allowed to spill their bile. It would obviously be better if Islam were self-regulating, but it appears that isn't the case. What I would like to know is why it is that if you blow yourself and others to smithereens you go to heaven with 70 birds, why everyone's not doing it? Why doesn't Captain Hook do it? You never see an elderly suicide-bomber, wonder why this is? Perhaps because the fools that do it have been cynically manipulated.

Too late for it now, of course, but isn't there a law being brought in, something about incitement to racial/ religious hatred? I think it's just been brought in, and if I'm right, then surely it should apply equally to all, not just BNP stormtroopers.

What wonderful testimony to those that have died this thread is. Why not just have an insults thread and be done with it.