The boys are back in town

I joined the Tesco DVD club about three years ago and in the interim period have watched about 208 DVD's ranging from live concerts, comedy series, boxed sets and films.

The joy of the club is that every so often I'll pick a film that in all honesty was a bit of a gamble and when it comes and I watch it, it actually proves to be an inspired choice.

"The boys are back" the film that I watched tonight, was definitely in that category. Mainly set in Australia, it concerns how a sports journalist (played by Clive Owen) copes with the death of his wife and then has to look after his 8 year old son. Add into the mix his 14 year old son (from his first marriage in England) coming to stay shortly afterwards and a mother in law who thinks that he doesn't know what he's doing and the emotional rollercoaster is at the top of the ride, ready to go.

Fairly soon after the death of his wife, we meet a Mum at school (who he thinks is his sons teacher) and frankly I thought we were revisiting Jack & Sarah. But the good thing about this film is that just as you think "ah right he's going to do this, then that and then they'll do that and then happy ending" then the story goes against the obvious route and delivers in the end a heart warming but not obvious end.

The final bonus was that the music was largely provided by Sigur Ros and was exactly what the story needed.

Embarrassment

Let's face it from the first game we were never in this tournament. Flattered by beating a nation of two million in the last group game, we were made to look what we are, a collection of individuals by the Germans.

The simple fact is that we don't have enough English players playing Premier League football at a high enough standard. When Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, Man Utd and Man City fill their starting line ups with foreign players (funded by the TV money), then where are the future English internationals going to play football at the highest standard? Now you can argue that if they're good enough then they will break through but that simply means that when one or two do, you end up with players (Rooney, Gerrard & Lampard) who have no competition for their places. Others like Theo Walcott don't play regularly enough which just adds pressure when they do play and some of the "top" players actually aren't.

This has two impacts firstly the good ones get too complacent and secondly their replacements (if they get injured) play for West Ham, Aston Villa and the the like and that drop in class shows.

The future, I fear, is bleak. Our "golden generation" is getting old, many will not play in another World Cup and the players coming up from the Under 21's don't look of the same class (and who do they play for both now and in the future?).

As worrying is, if you read the BBC gossip column, all the talk is of Premier League teams buying more foreign players. Less and less English players will be playing Premier League football at any standard if this carries on.

The first solution is that we introduce "caps" on foreign players, but firstly "money talks" and secondly european/international law probably forbids it. Secondly we need to improve our coaching acadamies, but they too are now filling up with foreign youngsters, and the success that Arsenal had with Fabregas, will only encourage that approach. So there needs to be some intervention there too, but "money" and" European law" probably also apply?

Still we did get further than both the winners and runners up of the 2006 competition!

Festival

I've just been looking through the full Glastonbury line up for the week end after next.

One of the wonders of the festival in particular is the acts performing "down the bill" who you had no idea were performing (either at Glastonbury, or for one or two, at all!)

This year, among the hundreds of bands there, the following should be appearing :-

• Jackson Browne
  
• Lightning Seeds
  
• The Pet Shop Boys
  
• The National
  
• Nouvelle Vague
  
• Toots & the Maytals
  
• Mumford & Sons
  
• Ash
  
• Gang of Four
  
• Hypnotic Brass Ensemble
  
• Nick Lowe
  
• Al Stewart
  
• Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel
  

I wonder how many of those the BBC will manage to show at least one song live?

The Sound of the crowd

For those of you who follow this blog and don't know, each blog title is also a song title. Clever huh?

Most of the time I have the subject of the blog first and then fit the song to it. Occasionally though a song title jumps into my head and the blog then writes itself. This is one of the latter type.

Every World Cup game this tournament will sound like a swarm of angry bees are loose near to the effects microphone. The reason for this is a trumpet like instrument, widely available in South Africa called the "vuvuzela". This has led to wide scale debate on whether this is adding to the experience or ruining it. Most comment seems to be against the noise they make. Indeed Bill Turnbull on BBC Breakfast this morning even had a conversation with the sound engineer as to whether the feed from the stadium could have the crowd noise "turned down"? Simple answer – no it can't!

There has been talk of having them banned, but the SA economy is likely to be c$2m better off through sales so that's fairly unlikely. If someone throws one at a player then that could change, but let's hope that doesn't happen.

I actually quite like them; after all during the first England game I didn't hear the entirely inappropriate "Great Escape" at all!

Back home

So we put the wall chart up at work this week, the excellent Baddiel & Skinner podcast has examined the squad (main question – "Will Peter Crouch suffer more from playing at altitude as he will be higher up than the rest of the squad or as he plays at a slightly higher altitude than the rest of the squad all the time, will he be less affected by it?") and shops from "99p stores" to Waitrose have a special section of merchandise!

The BBC & ITV cannot have a gap between programmes without having a trail for it and programmes "remembering previous ones" have been commissioned. Last night Radio 5 live had "the 1986 squad" looking over the current squad and reminiscing about their tournament.

Most offices have drawn their sweepstake and twitter is full of posts along the lines of "I got Algeria in the sweepstake so that's me stuffed"

As we have no official song for this tournament, lots of quite dreadful remakes or new songs are about to be unleashed on an unsuspecting public.

And the boy who was the shock inclusion in the last squad is the shock exclusion as a young man for this one.

Ladies & gentlemen the 2010 Wold Cup is a week away...enjoy.

Where the streets have no name

This is meant to be a regular blog, but of late, dear readers, it has been little more than a weekly (if that) look at the world.

What are the reasons for that? Well firstly work is keeping me overly busy. Banking has never been the easiest of jobs but of late it has demanded most of my brain power so that by the time I get to sit down and could put a blog together my head is full of scrambled egg. Yes I know it seems strange but I do put some thought into this!

Secondly, I have an eldest son with glandular fever which also has meant that at weekends my time has been focused on him. He's doing well but it is a rollercoaster of an illness so we have some steps backwards but overall he's heading in the right direction.

Thirdly, I've found twitter has enabled me to mini blog. You would think 140 characters wouldn't be enough but it's amazing what you can get across.

Anyway I hope that this will be a more regular blog in the future, but I have said that before.

I'm writing this watching U2 on Sky 1 and the opening riff of "where the streets have no name" will always make me feel a slightly better person for hearing it.

You’re gone

I have just deleted both the Daily Mail and Southern evening Echo websites from my favourites and plan not to read them anymore. I also won't be buying the papers either.

There are two main reasons that I've done this.

With the Mail it's the Lord Triesman story that has "broken the camel's back". On last Sunday they published a story about Lord T, the then Chair of the FA and the England 2018 World Cup bid, who had allegedly said in a private conversation things about the Russian FA & the Spanish FA colluding over World Cup refereeing and hosting the 2018 competition. The conversation was recorded and the Mail obtained a copy. Now the Mail at that point had a choice. Firstly they could have gone to the FA and said "you have a problem, sort it out" and told the informant where to go. That you might say would be the right thing to do and as a British newspaper, the supportive thing to do.

They however chose to do the other thing. That was publishing the story that brings the England World cup bid to the attention of the worlds press in a very bad light. Yes Lord T shouldn't have said what he said to anyone, but it was a private conversation and he wasn't told by the young lady involved that she was recording it. It seems to me to be very doubtful that this was "in the public interest". Whether or not this saga will have long term repercussions on the2018 World cup bid remains to be seen but the Mail had a choice and they chose the wrong one.

The Echo banishment is over their publishing stories about Alan Pardew, the Saints manager, and how he was allegedly "fighting to keep his job" Their source for this story was "a national newspaper" which it turns out was the Daily Mail! The Mail had a small piece about how the Saints Chairman wasn't happy with the clubs performance after the money given to Pardew in the January transfer window. This in itself appeared to be a "retread" of an old story from March time and was dismissed by the Saints at that time.

The Echo also said that a "clear the air" meeting between the Chairman and Pardew expected to take place on a Wednesday had been postponed to the Thursday.

On the Thursday morning the Saints web site published a long article by the Saints chairman that basically said that he and Pardew were working closely together, having fun doing it and that comments by both ex players and the local paper were not helping. So clearly they had met! The Echo published a new story reporting the article and that the Chairman had criticised ex players. No mention of the stinging broadside aimed at the Echo at all. Unbelievable! The comments from fans below the article were numerous and the main theme was this very point, that the paper had completely failed to acknowledge its part in the "non-story". If that is the level of reporting that they think is acceptable then good luck to them, I for one don't need them.