Astonishing things going on in 2nd day the Test Match. England are only 70 runs behind Australia's 1st innings total having only lost 2 wickets. Crawley on 137 not out....
Tomorrow morning will be interesting. England will no doubt go full Baz Ball and try to pile on runs as fast as they can before letting Broad, Woakes and Anderson loose on their openers.
My bet is the rain will come along just when it gets interesting and bollocks the game completely. Thagt's the problem with a supposed summer game and the English weather. Cricket and Wimbledon equals pi**ing it down.
Covers going on at about 8am. But that’s what’s made this such a good game - both teams were expecting a shortened game due to weather, so both, but particularly England, have been going hell for leather for the win.
Wow....that was an interesting ring of the door bell that I have just answered. A gentleman asking if there was any issues regarding living in this area and my political views. He handed me is visiting card (is that the right term ?).......Gareth Bacon MP our Orpington member of Parliament. So I told him that I felt that this country was devoid of any leadership whatever party you look at. My views on wokeism and the way that Brexit has been cocked up by the civil service and the powers that be who are remainers (sorry that is my view)......and he agreed with a lot of what I said. By this time his group of door knockers where half way down the road and he had to catch them up and he was gone.
Brexit is inherently a cock-up. It was crystal clear leaving a massive market for British goods and services just on our doorstep was always going to be a cock-up as was depriving us of a keen and energetic pool of workers. Two groups are responsible for the cock-up. Those that lied to the electorate to obtain a small Leave majority and those who swallowed the lies despite having the falsehoods pointed out to them and voted for it. No-one else can now make the success of it you were promised. Don’t try to blame those trying to mitigate the scale of the disaster. Also don’t forget it hasn’t run its full course yet. That will only unwind over the timescale of strategy decisions by UK and overseas businesses. A decade at least and maybe 15 years plus.
If ever you wanted an example of a Politician who is only interested in own interest and hanging onto power not matter what it takes then look no further than the current Rushi Sunak. Having told anyone who would listen about the evils of certain types of car and what it is doing to the planet for ages now as well as spouting his own green credentials what a 100% about turn he has just done. This is not a comment on the rights and wrongs of motoring but solely on the true colours of a desperate PM. Having seen the polls and the results of the recent Bye Elections he now suddenly has a different view on motorists. A sniff that the subject might, and it is a very tentative might, save their arses at the next Election he is now on the side of the ordinary motorist nationwide. My only concern is that people will fall for this synical about turn and believe he actually cares about them.
Whatever the reasons, it’s better to stop being wrong than to continue to do it for fear of admitting a mistake. It’s clearly a nonsense to stop exploiting the North Sea to earn green brownie points (an interesting concept) so that we instead import oil and gas because we haven’t first reduced the demand for it. Similarly, while it may be laudable to switch to electric or hydrogen powered vehicles, we need to get the infrastructure in place to do that and then penalise the use of polluting cars and trucks, not the other way around. There’s a huge cost in all this infrastructure and the timescales are certainly in the 5 to 10 year range as a minimum. The best answer would have been to start 10 years ago but unfortunately that’s not available to us. You could draw a parallel between the electricity infrastructure needed for this and internet and mobile telephony. We’ve been at the latter since the early 1990’s. The results are still patchy (my network doesn’t have 5G phone coverage in my part of a large city) and the whole thing was financed by private capital. The Government needs to get a move on if it wants to change the entire energy infrastructure, which is much bigger task.
"Whatever the reasons....... I do not agree with that. The only reason he has changed tack is for votes and votes alone. I am not arguing the rights or wrongs of a green agenda here but the way in which, having pounded our ears with greeness he suddenly decides he was never in favour of doing any of it anyway. This is a week after Europe was on fire and everyone who could grab a microphone was telling us the World would end unless man changed habits and Rushi was up there doing exactly that before the Uxbridge result. If that is not just trying to curry votes rather than having any sort of true belief in anything then I don't know what is. The man who today flew to Aberdeen to announce something he could have said on the steps of Downing Street. He then justified his flying habits as a useful use of his time and busy schedule. So flying to Aberdeen was much quicker than a 10 minute speech outside his home address.......... The man is a feckin excuse for a leader.
It looks like Trump is about to be indicted for his part in trying to over-turn the result of the 2020 election and in the Capitol Hill riot on 6th January 2021. We think we have problems here: unbelievably this just makes him more popular with the lunatic wing of the American population.
That's about 50% of them isn't it? I used to think Americans were a fairly educated lot...........and then I met a ship load of them and have to say there was scarcely a brain cell anywhere onboard it. We have our own of course who would still vote for Boris if they could.
Funny as the Americans I’ve met (far less than a ship full and all business people to be fair) have been friendly, enthusiastic and incredibly interested in British life and culture. Different groups of course but also different times……. isolationist Trump there. Brexit and the clown Johnson here, the rise of the extreme right in France and Central Europe, Turkey……
Even an extreme grouping in Germany is beginning to evolve. The far-Right revolutionaries'...who call themselves the Patriotic Union...had planned to storm the Bundestag to depose of the Federal Republic of Germany and replace it with a pro-Russia monarchy led by minor aristocrat Prince Heinrich X111. Birgit Malsack-Winkermann an ex MP for the far-Right AFD...who is currently in custody on suspicion of high treason ....was to serve as Justice Minister in their government. The Vice President of the Bundestag called the new details ..."extremely worrying...but not surprising". Daily Telegraph...Wednesday...02/08/2023. Many Germans are becoming fed up of supporting ailing EU countries financially and want to get out of the failing Federal State of Europe. There is an alleged..."Reichburger"...coup plotters grouping around the German Parliament. No German finance or support would collapse the EU....other members need to do their share and not turn their backs when the begging bowl comes round. Although I hated Thatcher and what she was doing to divide the country into those that have it and those that didn't.....the one good thing that she did do was recover some of the pots of gold that the EU where thieving from the UK.
They modelled their activities on the Burning of the Reichstag in 1933 and Storming of the Capitol Building in January 2021. That's all you need to know about these people: what their role models are. Fascist filth.
It makes sense that stability in Europe would benefit from countries being united by togetherness .....and that has been tried and the UK joined such a cause. But things expanded beyond that cause....and the monster that is the EU has evolved....wanting to be the the equivalent of USA.....the United States of Europe...(ESE). And its leadership has come from mainly West Germany...who became a united country again when the USSR collapsed and all its satellite states grabbed their own freedom. West Germany did a great job of dragging East Germany into the 21st century and improving their lifestyle into a united country once more. The problem is that a United Germany only knows one route and that is in leadership.....and once Angela Merkel had retired and her firm grip on proceedings had gone.... the right of the country started to flex its muscle's.....and they could see that Germany where being held back by poorer countries who where benefitting from the continual hand-outs that the EU were giving them...which mainly came from Germany. France thinks that they are an equal partner with Germany....and its present leader thinks that he is the incarnation of Napoleon....nothing good can come from that.
