Twenty20 Upsets
England’s Twenty20 team performed badly against South Africa yesterday, but so did the Australia’s against Pakistan.
Australia now seem to be ranked below Ireland in this form of cricket.
Giovanni Trapattoni claims “I am not Jesus Christ”
Giovanni Trapattoni, the Ireland manager has supposedly said this according to the BBC’s text commentary.
He claims “I am not Jesus Christ”. It is a healthy realisation to come to. “I don’t do miracles,” he continues. “Only the players can do miracles.”
He may be Italian, but he certainly has learned how to speak like an Irishman.
Every Party Needs At Least A Few Irish
The torch is now in St. Stephen’s Green in the middle of Dublin. I think, for the rest of the Torch Relay, the places that follow will have a lot to live up to.
I had thought about going and I’m afraid that this will rank as one of the worst decisions I’ve ever made. There’s some pictures here.
On the log with the relay, there’s a picture of the torch being taken into Government buildings. They’d only do that in Ireland without malice!
Olympic Torch Relay or Diamond Jubilee Service
I’m very much a supporter of the Queen and the work she does, but I’m watching the Olympic Torch Relay as it passes through Omagh.
I think when we look back on these days in the years to come, the Olympics of 2012 and the associated relay, may be in our memories more than the Diamond Jubilee. After all we’ve seen a lot of Royal ceremonials, but the Torch Relay could turn out to be an important moment, in the restoration of good relations between the UK and especially England and the whole island of Ireland. We may be divided in many ways, but no pessimist could say we’re not joined in our enjoyment of sport.
The Vatican Has Its Troubles Too
According to this report on the BBC, the Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland is discussing the Church’s future.
And as they are sensible reforms, in areas like celibacy, contraception and woman priests, the Vatican is not pleased. I wonder whether they are discussing whether coeliacs can be priests, something that the Pope is personally against. Even though that rule would have stopped Liverpool’s excellent Archbishop Warlock being a priest.
The Luck of the Irish
Only the Irish would strike oil a few days before St. Patrick’s Day as is reported here.
Then they win the Gold Cup at Cheltenham today.
So what will happen tomorrow in the rugby. It’s obvious.
Even this van had the flag out.
The Irish Are Flying The Flag
I don’t wish the Irish bad luck tomorrow. But I do hope England win!
The French Prove They Shouldn’t Have Had the Olympics
The French were peeved that we got the Olympics for 2012, especially as they said they had all the stadia ready.
But when they built the Stade de France, they forgot one important thing; undersoil heating. In fact because of the design of the roof, they may have actually made things worse in cold weather. This is from Wikipedia.
The tinted glass in the center reduces the contrast and distributes natural light. It filters out red and infrared radiation, however, it allows blue and green lights, due to their necessity involving the health of the turf.
So perhaps their design actually made matters worse by stopping red and infrared radiation.
I suspect there will be small arguments going on all over Paris tonight. How many Irishmen for instance have come over for a long weekend with their wifes to give them a Valentine’s Day treat on Tuesday? And how many French are wanting to get back the South-West, where most of their rugby is placed?
It’s just been said on BBC Radio 5, that the reason the Stade de France has no undersoil heating , is that it was built on an old rubbish dump and methane rises out of the soil.
The Olympic Torch is Going to Dublin
I didn’t realise this, until I read this article in the Irish Times.
But then the Irish always like a good party.
And I’ve always found, that the English often get on better with the Southern Irish, than they do with the Scots and the Northern Irish.
From London and Crewe to Dublin By Train and Ferry
Ireland has an economic problem, as is well known. Commentators will argue the various reasons, but something that doesn’t help is that getting from Great Britain to Eire is not as easy as to get from Birmingham to Scotland. There are lots of flights, but they are not convenient or acceptable for everyone who wants to travel.
If you go to Dublin by train and ferry there is one train at 9:10 in the morning from Euston, that gets you to Dublin at 17:15, which is a journey time of eight hours and five minutes. I looked for tomorrow and the fare is only £32 one way. But there is only one service during the day, with another overnight.
So how fast could a service be done if the line was electrified all the way to Holyhead? Crewe from Euston can be done in two hours quite easily and it is only 84 miles from Crewe to Holyhead. The fastest services now take just short of four hours. but the trains are not electric or have the smooth ride of an IC125. The fast ferries take two hours for the crossing, but the larger slower ones take three hours fifteen minutes.
If we assume that Crewe to Holyhead can be done at a similar speed as Liverpool Street to Norwich, it would appear that a time of about one hour ten minutes could be obtained on this part of the route. So this would mean a time from London of three hours ten minutes in a smooth modern electric train. If this could be paired with a fast ferry this could mean a time of under five and a half hours if the sea conditions were good enough.
But this is more than about electrifying the North Wales Coast line, which it would appear that the Welsh Assembly would probably like to do. It is about kick starting the Irish economy. And that of North Wales too!
So surely instead of spending billions of euros propping the Irish up, wouldn’t it be better to spend use of that money to connect Eire to Europe more efficiently. After all, railwise, despite what some might believe, the UK is actually part of Europe.
It would be 84 miles of electrification and perhaps a subsidy to the Holyhead to Dublin ferries to make sure that the fast service was every three hours or so. Surely, that would be a more affordable option, as it would also benefit North Wales, which is not one of the more prosperous parts of the EU.
But it is not just about London to North Wales and on to Dublin. Properly built the line would also connect Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester to North Wales. As an example Liverpool to Holyhead would be under ninety minutes, which is the magic time that makes day trips easy. I also think it would make trips between North and South Wales quicker, but it would probably mean a change at either Chester or Shrewbury.
There are also other issues on the horizon. The major sources of employment on Anglesey, are the nuclear power station at Wylfa and the aluminium smelter. Who knows what will happen in the next few years? But if Holyhead and Anglesey had a first class electrified rail line to the rest of both Wales and the UK, it would help to attract long term jobs. It would of course help tourism and would probably make the University of Bangor even better.
The British POWs Who Went Fox-Hunting
This may seem a strange heading, as after all Adolf Hitler banned hunting and the Boy Scouts before the Second World War. But these prisoners weren’t in Germany or the parts of Europe they had occupied, but in the Republic of Ireland.
Dan Snow, is making about a program this bizarre story, which also includes recovering a Spitfire from a Donegal peat bog. To make the story even more strange, the pilot was an American, who like all Americans fighting at that time in the War had been stripped of his citizenship.
There is more here on the BBC web site.
But then the role of the Irish in the Second World War contains a lot of strange and almost unbelievable facts.
I once heard that more from the south actually fought in British forces in the war than from the North. Remember that there was no conscription in the North. This page from the Imperial War Museum explains why.
To avoid inflaming sentiments in the nationalist community, conscription was not extended to Northern Ireland.
Even today, I believe that the Irish Guards still accept some recruits from the Republic. This report gives the stories of two Irish Guards killed in Iraq. One was from Zimbabwe and the other from Dublin. There’s more on the story here.
The Anonymous Widower 