Got five minutes, so wanted to post a couple of things. First, this headline, taken straight from the BBC News website this afternoon:
"Legal challenges against the scrapping of a tax loophole that allowed the Channel Islands to sell low value goods VAT-free fail."
Now I don't mind that Jersey used to offer VAT-free goods, or that this was due to a legal loophole, or that said loophole was to be scrapped or that there was a legal challenge against said scrapping or indeed that said legal loophole had failed. What I objected to was that I had to not only read the sentence four times, but actually work it out piece by piece to figure out what it was saying and determine if it meant things would be cheaper or not. (Answer = "not cheaper").
And secondly, looks like the Save The Hobbit campaign, which got support from the likes of Stephen Fry and Ian McKellan (Gandalf himself, of course), has succeeded. Hurrah! Not that I get to go there much these days, but there's something reassuring about knowing that not all unique pubs go the way of the Old Black Cat.
Happy Thursday. Time for another meeting.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Monday, March 05, 2012
5 March 2012: Tumble
This one's been brewing for a while - since our visit to the UK in January, in fact - but my sis spotted a news article from the Guardian concerning the same subject and I knew it could wait no longer.
According to said article, there will soon be Mr Tumble - The Movie.
That statement will have a small minority of you cheering, and the rest (from both sides of the Atlantic) scratching your heads in puzzled bemusement. But I know what it's about, because during our visit to the UK, my mum (bless her) decided it would be good to put a cushion on the floor in front of the television, sit Hannah down on it, and switch on CBeebies - the BBC digital TV channel for the under 5s or so which just celebrated its tenth birthday.
Well, needless to say this went down well with Hannah. Back home we offer her occasional trips to Dora the Explorer and a little Bagpuss or In The Night Garden (thanks to birthday DVDs), but here was a constantly-on channel aimed right at her! Well, we thought, it's holiday time, she can watch a bit more TV than usual.
Of course, what also happened is that as well as Hannah watching it, we watched it too, and watched her watching it. And I began to see what has happened to BBC programming for pre-schoolers since those many years ago when I'd watch Brian Cant or Fred Harris trying to make Little Ted sit up straight on Playschool.
The first thing to say is this: it's a lot better than you'd think, and a lot better than pre-school equivalents over in the US. Partly because there's no adverts (no adverts to speak of on PBS Sprout either, to be fair) but the reason Hannah clicked with it was because it was, for the main part, actual real people (and usually adults) rather than animation. It surprised me that she preferred that, given the flexibility of animation, but there was no question that she really liked seeing even the continuity announcers being real grown-ups playing around with toys.
And then you get to the programmes themselves. 'In The Night Garden' was there, of course, just before bed time (although Hannah also got into the 'Goodnight Song', so we've had to YouTube that a few times for her since) - whenever the Night Garden characters appeared, there was a visible jump from her (not yet 18 months by this point, remember). But we also soon picked up which shows were her favourites and which ones she didn't care for.
And the winner, unquestionably, was a programme called "Show Me Show Me", which was roughly twenty-five minutes long and generally featured two adults playing with five toys, interspersed with occasional songs and video shorts. In other words, it's Playschool, innit?
The presenters, Chris Jarvis and Pui Fan Lee (the latter of whom I find slightly irritating for reasons I can't quite put my finger on, although I did read that she used to be a Teletubby so that might have something to do with it...) - anyway, apparently they used to be CBeebies continuity presenters who got a show of their own when their contracts were up. And it's really good. Just pacy enough to keep Hannah interested without being over the top, and sufficiently non-patronising that they can make in-jokes and only-parents-are-going-to-get-this references without ruining the show.
Other favourites included Mister Maker, an art/craft show fronted by the eponymous Mister Maker, who energetic performance makes him appear to have some kind of bi-polar thing where he is right at the top and about to plunge over the edge... then there's ZingZillas, a bunch of monkey-costume musicians whose ten-minute show is a nice length; some train animation thing called Chuggington that I don't particularly get but seems to have Playschool alumnus Floella Benjamin somewhere in the background; and Grandpa In My Pocket (aimed at much older children than Hannah I think, but she loves it), featuring James Bolam of all people - playing yet another version of James Bolam, of course, but that's always pretty good value.
And then there's Justin.
Ah, Justin. What can you say, other than he appears to be on just about every other show on the channel and everyone loves him. Justin Fletcher MBE, of course, given the award for services to children, television and communication, as I understand it. He was on something called Tikkabilla (another Playschool clone that my sis says I was lucky to miss), voiced several of the Tweenies (another show we avoided happily), and today still hosts a joke-related show named Gigglebiz and Hannah's other favourite: "Justin's House" (essentially a weekly pantomime with much audience participation). And of course, Mister Tumble.
The show is actually called 'Something Special' and is about to start filming its eighth season. Justin plays both himself - meeting special needs children and doing some activities with them - and said character Mister Tumble, a strange man dressed in spots and with a mild clown-like appearance, whose sections of the programme are shared by an unseen child (presumably representing the viewer) who talks and interacts with Mister Tumble and his unusual family (all also played by Justin). The Guardian article tells you more about the show, the sign language it uses and Fletcher's family (although it fails to mention that his cousin is Guy Fletcher from Dire Straits) but what surprised me was that for a slow-moving show aimed at special needs children aged 4 to 7, it GRABS Hannah's attention almost as much as Show Me Show Me. She interacts with the sign language to some extent and ALWAYS performs the magic to transport Mister Tumble's Spotty Bag to Justin ("touch your finger to your nose, blink three times and off it goes..."), usually ahead of cue.
The show is slow-moving and generally not all that interesting to me (contrasting with Show Me Show Me or Justin's House, which I'll happily watch all the way through) but it seems that it's not only Hannah that loves it - children of all ages and across the needs spectrum are huge fans of the show, so much so that (like In The Night Garden), the BBC dare not take it off the air even for one day. And I suppose that's why Justin has his MBE - he is such a good communicator and is able to teach children in the context of fun, as well as giving such great exposure to special needs children in such a positive way.
So enough gushing from me, the challenge now we're back in the US is to get Hannah back from being a telly junkie... especially as it's not long now until her little sister arrives...
According to said article, there will soon be Mr Tumble - The Movie.
That statement will have a small minority of you cheering, and the rest (from both sides of the Atlantic) scratching your heads in puzzled bemusement. But I know what it's about, because during our visit to the UK, my mum (bless her) decided it would be good to put a cushion on the floor in front of the television, sit Hannah down on it, and switch on CBeebies - the BBC digital TV channel for the under 5s or so which just celebrated its tenth birthday.
Well, needless to say this went down well with Hannah. Back home we offer her occasional trips to Dora the Explorer and a little Bagpuss or In The Night Garden (thanks to birthday DVDs), but here was a constantly-on channel aimed right at her! Well, we thought, it's holiday time, she can watch a bit more TV than usual.
Of course, what also happened is that as well as Hannah watching it, we watched it too, and watched her watching it. And I began to see what has happened to BBC programming for pre-schoolers since those many years ago when I'd watch Brian Cant or Fred Harris trying to make Little Ted sit up straight on Playschool.
The first thing to say is this: it's a lot better than you'd think, and a lot better than pre-school equivalents over in the US. Partly because there's no adverts (no adverts to speak of on PBS Sprout either, to be fair) but the reason Hannah clicked with it was because it was, for the main part, actual real people (and usually adults) rather than animation. It surprised me that she preferred that, given the flexibility of animation, but there was no question that she really liked seeing even the continuity announcers being real grown-ups playing around with toys.
And then you get to the programmes themselves. 'In The Night Garden' was there, of course, just before bed time (although Hannah also got into the 'Goodnight Song', so we've had to YouTube that a few times for her since) - whenever the Night Garden characters appeared, there was a visible jump from her (not yet 18 months by this point, remember). But we also soon picked up which shows were her favourites and which ones she didn't care for.
And the winner, unquestionably, was a programme called "Show Me Show Me", which was roughly twenty-five minutes long and generally featured two adults playing with five toys, interspersed with occasional songs and video shorts. In other words, it's Playschool, innit?
The presenters, Chris Jarvis and Pui Fan Lee (the latter of whom I find slightly irritating for reasons I can't quite put my finger on, although I did read that she used to be a Teletubby so that might have something to do with it...) - anyway, apparently they used to be CBeebies continuity presenters who got a show of their own when their contracts were up. And it's really good. Just pacy enough to keep Hannah interested without being over the top, and sufficiently non-patronising that they can make in-jokes and only-parents-are-going-to-get-this references without ruining the show.
Other favourites included Mister Maker, an art/craft show fronted by the eponymous Mister Maker, who energetic performance makes him appear to have some kind of bi-polar thing where he is right at the top and about to plunge over the edge... then there's ZingZillas, a bunch of monkey-costume musicians whose ten-minute show is a nice length; some train animation thing called Chuggington that I don't particularly get but seems to have Playschool alumnus Floella Benjamin somewhere in the background; and Grandpa In My Pocket (aimed at much older children than Hannah I think, but she loves it), featuring James Bolam of all people - playing yet another version of James Bolam, of course, but that's always pretty good value.
And then there's Justin.
Ah, Justin. What can you say, other than he appears to be on just about every other show on the channel and everyone loves him. Justin Fletcher MBE, of course, given the award for services to children, television and communication, as I understand it. He was on something called Tikkabilla (another Playschool clone that my sis says I was lucky to miss), voiced several of the Tweenies (another show we avoided happily), and today still hosts a joke-related show named Gigglebiz and Hannah's other favourite: "Justin's House" (essentially a weekly pantomime with much audience participation). And of course, Mister Tumble.
The show is actually called 'Something Special' and is about to start filming its eighth season. Justin plays both himself - meeting special needs children and doing some activities with them - and said character Mister Tumble, a strange man dressed in spots and with a mild clown-like appearance, whose sections of the programme are shared by an unseen child (presumably representing the viewer) who talks and interacts with Mister Tumble and his unusual family (all also played by Justin). The Guardian article tells you more about the show, the sign language it uses and Fletcher's family (although it fails to mention that his cousin is Guy Fletcher from Dire Straits) but what surprised me was that for a slow-moving show aimed at special needs children aged 4 to 7, it GRABS Hannah's attention almost as much as Show Me Show Me. She interacts with the sign language to some extent and ALWAYS performs the magic to transport Mister Tumble's Spotty Bag to Justin ("touch your finger to your nose, blink three times and off it goes..."), usually ahead of cue.
The show is slow-moving and generally not all that interesting to me (contrasting with Show Me Show Me or Justin's House, which I'll happily watch all the way through) but it seems that it's not only Hannah that loves it - children of all ages and across the needs spectrum are huge fans of the show, so much so that (like In The Night Garden), the BBC dare not take it off the air even for one day. And I suppose that's why Justin has his MBE - he is such a good communicator and is able to teach children in the context of fun, as well as giving such great exposure to special needs children in such a positive way.
So enough gushing from me, the challenge now we're back in the US is to get Hannah back from being a telly junkie... especially as it's not long now until her little sister arrives...
Thursday, February 09, 2012
9 February 2012: Corruption
Breaking out of semi-blog-retirement to comment on the Harry Redknapp thing and the England manager thing.
Not much to say, really, except that the whole thing stinks worse than a pig sty after curry night. Not content with the fact that everyone within the game (really, everyone) knows that Harry's been doing the bung thing for years (and not just bungs), the FA seem poised to sanction his behaviour by appointing him England manager.
The only light in this dark place appears to be that a little over fifteen years ago, Terry Venables was removed after two years as England manager essentially because of his somewhat shady dealings. The fear, however, would be that times have now changed and the FA aren't as concerned about corruption as they used to be. I mean, look at them parachuting David Lampitt into Portsmouth, an organisation that seemingly exists purely to allow Mr Chainrai's clients to "own" for a short period so they can do some laundry. (Really, buying David Norris using the savings of elderly Lithuanians and then declaring bancrupty? Mmm.)
The thing that really made me think, though, was the fact that earlier this week Alberto Condator was found guilty of drug cheating due to the world's tiniest measurable amount of Clenbuterol in his system, and banned for two years. Notwithstanding any appeals he may make, the facts are that he is now officially branded a cheat (although the amount in his system would have had zero effect on his body or performance) and has been stripped of the 2010 Tour De France title.
Now don't for a moment think I'm suddenly a Contador apologist. He's been involved in doping controversy - either at a team or an individual level - on at least two prior occasions AND there was evidence (due to the presence of a type of plastic in his samples) that he may also have been involved in blood doping (where they transfuse blood with more red blood cells into his body - hard to trace, fairly effective but also highly dangerous) during 2010. Totally unproven, but a slight whiff of 'something not right there' Add to that his 2011 performances, which were much more normal/human, which also fits with someone who used to use banned performance enhancers and now doesn't... all unproven conjecture but to me it just smells a little.
Contrast this with football's corruption, right up to the highest level, and the thing appears to be this: at least cycling, as a sport, is DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
Football just buries its head in the sand and watches the money roll in.
Makes me think, do I really want Saints to get promoted back to all that Premier League stuff?
Not much to say, really, except that the whole thing stinks worse than a pig sty after curry night. Not content with the fact that everyone within the game (really, everyone) knows that Harry's been doing the bung thing for years (and not just bungs), the FA seem poised to sanction his behaviour by appointing him England manager.
The only light in this dark place appears to be that a little over fifteen years ago, Terry Venables was removed after two years as England manager essentially because of his somewhat shady dealings. The fear, however, would be that times have now changed and the FA aren't as concerned about corruption as they used to be. I mean, look at them parachuting David Lampitt into Portsmouth, an organisation that seemingly exists purely to allow Mr Chainrai's clients to "own" for a short period so they can do some laundry. (Really, buying David Norris using the savings of elderly Lithuanians and then declaring bancrupty? Mmm.)
The thing that really made me think, though, was the fact that earlier this week Alberto Condator was found guilty of drug cheating due to the world's tiniest measurable amount of Clenbuterol in his system, and banned for two years. Notwithstanding any appeals he may make, the facts are that he is now officially branded a cheat (although the amount in his system would have had zero effect on his body or performance) and has been stripped of the 2010 Tour De France title.
Now don't for a moment think I'm suddenly a Contador apologist. He's been involved in doping controversy - either at a team or an individual level - on at least two prior occasions AND there was evidence (due to the presence of a type of plastic in his samples) that he may also have been involved in blood doping (where they transfuse blood with more red blood cells into his body - hard to trace, fairly effective but also highly dangerous) during 2010. Totally unproven, but a slight whiff of 'something not right there' Add to that his 2011 performances, which were much more normal/human, which also fits with someone who used to use banned performance enhancers and now doesn't... all unproven conjecture but to me it just smells a little.
Contrast this with football's corruption, right up to the highest level, and the thing appears to be this: at least cycling, as a sport, is DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
Football just buries its head in the sand and watches the money roll in.
Makes me think, do I really want Saints to get promoted back to all that Premier League stuff?
Friday, December 30, 2011
30 December 2011: Spikier
So here are the results and indeed the spike this year proved spikier than the spike of last year, thus adding yet another spiky year to the upwardly spiky graph.
As we've yet to have New Year's Eve, the final mini-spike is yet to register, but the pattern of previous years has again proved repetitive: mini-spike in early December followed by steady growth before a huge leap leading to two days of almost-identical viewing figures on the 23rd and 24th, before dropping off somewhat on Christmas Day itself.
And the numbers? Compared with last years twin peak of 1476 and 1479 on the 23rd and 24th respective, this year gave us heights of 2056 and 2082 views on those same days this year, with Christmas Day (1221 views) actually slightly below that of 22nd December (1243 views). So with no intervention whatsoever from myself (except for my previous blog entry), the spiky spike rises to a new high, taking the video itself over fifty thousand lifetime views. Not crazy compared to some of those viral videos, but for a one-week-a-year hit, it's doing pretty well.
The other stats are much as expected - UK males aged 45-54 again dominated hugely. The only interesting one was the one I pointed out previously - viewing sources. There was a slight rise in Facebook percentage but the mysterious 'external' non-traceable source actually ended up accounting for 39.9% of this year's Bill Barclay traffic. YouTube searches came in second at 23.4% (I think that's something of a new phenomenon for that to be so high as well) with Facebook down in the teens and Google at only 8.1% of traffic sources, which is much much down on previous years.
So, Twitter does its job and proves to be the Facebook of 2011 as far as my video is concerned. In fact, if you do a few relevant twitter searches you'll see links to the video popping up at regular intervals and people extolling Bill's genius. Also weirdly this year someone made a negative-sounding comment on the YouTube page and it was sufficiently thumbs-down voted that it actually got auto-hidden. I had nothing to do with it and only saw it a couple of days ago!
Final thing: while Bill Barclay got 15206 views (so far) since the beginning of December, the 2009 Kokomo Christmas Lights video only garnered some 448 views during the same period. Goes to show that dinosaurs come and go, but Scottish comedy lasts forever.
Or something.
Happy New Year!
Sunday, December 18, 2011
18 December 2011: Spikes
Here's an interesting picture. Is it a heartbeat chart from some medical facility?
No. It's a graph indicating the YouTube statistics of the Bill Barclay '12 Days Of Christmas' video from a few years ago. As you can see, nobody views it during most of the year - if you do a close-up of those sections there are normally one or two views per week. But then at Christmas it just takes off...
Interestingly there's always a little mini-spike right at the beginning of December. Not sure why that is, but maybe that's the unofficial 'start of Christmas' period when folks begin to search for Bill's classic song. Then it drops a little before remaining somewhat steady at a few hundred views per day, then...
December 23rd it just JUMPS - 1476 views last year. Then Christmas Eve comes along and it jumps further (although in 2010 it was almost identical to the day before, at 1479 views), and this is usually the peak. Christmas Day is also pretty big (1201 last year), but never quite as much as Christmas Eve. Then...that's it. There's a very minor spike on New Year's Eve, but essentially that's it for another year and the video slips back into its coma.
And the statistics aren't limited to how many views per day - YouTube also uses 'logged in users' to give me demographic info, and there are no surprises here: vast, vast majority of viewers are from the UK, Male, aged 45-54 - the people who would have remembered the song from the 1970s when they were young. Second most popular source of viewers is the USA, presumably curious Hoosiers interested in what other videos I have up aside from the 2009 Kokomo Christmas Lights (stats for that one, incidentally, are all Indiana, aged 25-34, equal male/female split, but that video only gets a thousand or so views per year now).
It also tells me the 'Traffic Source' for the hits - at least as best as it can. The Bill Barclay video has varied over the years, but Facebook embeds tend to come out on top, followed by YouTube searches (for "Bill Barclay" and "Wee Heavy and a Half Pint" etc), Google searches for the same and a few direct links from sites where people leave it as a message or a comment (2009 featured 528 views after someone left it as a comment on a story in the online edition of The Guardian, a major UK newspaper). This year it's changed slightly - 'Mobile Apps and Direct Traffic (unknown sources)' is suddenly at the top, carrying 42.1% of the traffic for Bill Barclay so far this spike, far ahead of YouTube searches... too early yet for the Facebook embedded links to really get going. This would appear to be largely Twitter-based direct links, which YouTube tends not to trace so well. So, I guess I have some link to Twitter after all, despite being continually bemused as to its popularity.
Anyway, all that is to say that Christmas must officially be here since the spike has begun. You'll notice from that initial graph that the peak each year is bigger - last year's total of over 4000 views in the three day period 23-25 December may be under threat... we'll have to see. I could of course try to fix it by publicising the video on various sites, but it's kind of more fun not to, and just see how people find it on their own.
As for making a Christmas video this year? Hm. We'll have to see... we're in Louisiana so maybe something Cajun featuring alligators or something....
Friday, October 28, 2011
28 October 2011: Green Pilgrim
So the fast is now over, and Plymouth Argyle has a new owner.
And, thank goodness, it's not that Kevin Heaney bloke. He was finally seen off by the Administrator in late September (as therefore was Peter Ridsdale's plan to buy Argyle for one pound and sell off the ground to developers). Heaney is now in deep trouble with his other club, Truro City, which he is trying to run as a professional club but since he has no money, it's now all swirling down the administration/liquidation plughole.
Meantime the Administrator finally agreed to work with James Brent and his Akkeron company to see if they could do a takeover. They completed more in four weeks than Heaney managed in four months - indeed, despite Heaney claimed that completion of the deal was mere hours away, it seems he never even began discussions with the 300 or so football creditors to get them to sign deals. Brent did.
Wasn't easy. Some high-profile folks, including Tony Campbell and former manager Peter Reid, kicked up a fuss at the deal offered, but eventually signed. Some ex-players wanted to sign but it took time, one example being the need to translate into Czech, another being the fact that the player in question is in prison, so in his case what are the legal implications? Working round the clock, one by one, these were all answered by Brent's team, aided very willingly by the Argyle Fans Trust and the good folks at PASOTI. Even Plymouth City Council had a part to play, and they agreed to buy back the ground for 1.6 million pounds, having sold it for over two million not long ago.
Finally yesterday it came down to one thing: the administrator's fee. Despite the fact that all the above work as supposed to be performed by the Administrator but ended up being done by Brent, and despite the fact that the administrator wasted four months by sticking with Heaney WAAAY beyond the six week exclusivity period (that he didn't even pay for in full anyway) - ie despite showing a large degree of laziness and incompetence - the administrator and Brent couldn't agree a figure, and issued press releases saying so.
So, one final mobilization of the Green Army - ie a bunch of folks from PASOTI phoning and emailing the administrator to tell him to get on with it - and this morning the news broke. Everything done, golden share being handed over to a new company named 'Green Pilgrim Limited' and Argyle live on. Somehow.
Not that the good times are close to returning, of course. Argyle survive financially but they are five points adrift at the bottom of the league and most of the good players have been sold by the administrator, who naturally kept the money for himself (and, possibly, Ridsdale, although the facts are less certain there) while the staff and players went without wages month after month. And although Brent states he will be an 'enthusiastic owner', he also states the club will run within its means, which means hopefully they can work out some league safety this year (League Two is really a very low standard so you should be able to finish third-from-bottom if you're any good at all), but don't expect any more five-year plans or Premiership ambitions.
If Argyle do reach the Championship any time soon, expect Brent to attempt to sell the club. But for now, Argyle are safe and they have an owner whose support among the fans is not only unparalleled with any from the past, but due to the circumstances, he may end up being popular long after most owners start getting shouted at for not investing enough.
This was unquestionably the closest call any league club has had to going under without actually doing so. A year of ridiculous scenarios and astonishing outcomes is tracked on PASOTI here, including the Japanese petition, Heaney's 'out'ing after being discovered eating breakfast at a hotel, the administrator's lies and his 'I was given instructions to lie by my solicitor'.
So now we can get back to the important questions, such as whether Matt LeCointe will become the first Ivybridge Community College alumnus to play for the full England team...
And, thank goodness, it's not that Kevin Heaney bloke. He was finally seen off by the Administrator in late September (as therefore was Peter Ridsdale's plan to buy Argyle for one pound and sell off the ground to developers). Heaney is now in deep trouble with his other club, Truro City, which he is trying to run as a professional club but since he has no money, it's now all swirling down the administration/liquidation plughole.
Meantime the Administrator finally agreed to work with James Brent and his Akkeron company to see if they could do a takeover. They completed more in four weeks than Heaney managed in four months - indeed, despite Heaney claimed that completion of the deal was mere hours away, it seems he never even began discussions with the 300 or so football creditors to get them to sign deals. Brent did.
Wasn't easy. Some high-profile folks, including Tony Campbell and former manager Peter Reid, kicked up a fuss at the deal offered, but eventually signed. Some ex-players wanted to sign but it took time, one example being the need to translate into Czech, another being the fact that the player in question is in prison, so in his case what are the legal implications? Working round the clock, one by one, these were all answered by Brent's team, aided very willingly by the Argyle Fans Trust and the good folks at PASOTI. Even Plymouth City Council had a part to play, and they agreed to buy back the ground for 1.6 million pounds, having sold it for over two million not long ago.
Finally yesterday it came down to one thing: the administrator's fee. Despite the fact that all the above work as supposed to be performed by the Administrator but ended up being done by Brent, and despite the fact that the administrator wasted four months by sticking with Heaney WAAAY beyond the six week exclusivity period (that he didn't even pay for in full anyway) - ie despite showing a large degree of laziness and incompetence - the administrator and Brent couldn't agree a figure, and issued press releases saying so.
So, one final mobilization of the Green Army - ie a bunch of folks from PASOTI phoning and emailing the administrator to tell him to get on with it - and this morning the news broke. Everything done, golden share being handed over to a new company named 'Green Pilgrim Limited' and Argyle live on. Somehow.
Not that the good times are close to returning, of course. Argyle survive financially but they are five points adrift at the bottom of the league and most of the good players have been sold by the administrator, who naturally kept the money for himself (and, possibly, Ridsdale, although the facts are less certain there) while the staff and players went without wages month after month. And although Brent states he will be an 'enthusiastic owner', he also states the club will run within its means, which means hopefully they can work out some league safety this year (League Two is really a very low standard so you should be able to finish third-from-bottom if you're any good at all), but don't expect any more five-year plans or Premiership ambitions.
If Argyle do reach the Championship any time soon, expect Brent to attempt to sell the club. But for now, Argyle are safe and they have an owner whose support among the fans is not only unparalleled with any from the past, but due to the circumstances, he may end up being popular long after most owners start getting shouted at for not investing enough.
This was unquestionably the closest call any league club has had to going under without actually doing so. A year of ridiculous scenarios and astonishing outcomes is tracked on PASOTI here, including the Japanese petition, Heaney's 'out'ing after being discovered eating breakfast at a hotel, the administrator's lies and his 'I was given instructions to lie by my solicitor'.
So now we can get back to the important questions, such as whether Matt LeCointe will become the first Ivybridge Community College alumnus to play for the full England team...
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
7 September 2011: Fasting
Actually I'm just fasting from Pasoti.
I found that not only was very little happening with the knife-edge situation - except endless extensions to the Preferred Bidder (who has no money) which continue to be funded by the goodwill of the Argyle players and staff going wage-less (note that the administrator has been paying himself and Peter Ridsdale in full during this period, and neither are cheap. Anyway, little enough was happening compared to the amount of nevous energy with which I was hitting F5 that I determined it would be good to go no-Pasoti cold-turkey for a while for the good of my health.
So I have no idea what's going on there, but I can probably guess.
Meantime it seems Blogger have brought out a new version of the editor, perhaps one that is compatible with the useless-yet-default IE9, Doctor Who was a bit rubbish on Saturday (can Mark Gatiss just not write Doctor Who?), the weather in Kokomo is essentially identical (according to the BBC weather page, at least) to Southampton right now, Hannah is for some reason knocking on everything and saying 'knock knock', the economy continues to bother everyone although nobody wants to admit it, and we're about to come up to the tenth anniversary of the September Eleventh attacks.
And the question everyone is asking each other here: where were you that day?
I found that not only was very little happening with the knife-edge situation - except endless extensions to the Preferred Bidder (who has no money) which continue to be funded by the goodwill of the Argyle players and staff going wage-less (note that the administrator has been paying himself and Peter Ridsdale in full during this period, and neither are cheap. Anyway, little enough was happening compared to the amount of nevous energy with which I was hitting F5 that I determined it would be good to go no-Pasoti cold-turkey for a while for the good of my health.
So I have no idea what's going on there, but I can probably guess.
Meantime it seems Blogger have brought out a new version of the editor, perhaps one that is compatible with the useless-yet-default IE9, Doctor Who was a bit rubbish on Saturday (can Mark Gatiss just not write Doctor Who?), the weather in Kokomo is essentially identical (according to the BBC weather page, at least) to Southampton right now, Hannah is for some reason knocking on everything and saying 'knock knock', the economy continues to bother everyone although nobody wants to admit it, and we're about to come up to the tenth anniversary of the September Eleventh attacks.
And the question everyone is asking each other here: where were you that day?
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