Sweet Nothings

China has been accused of many things in the last couple of weeks. We've had the lip-synching girl at the opening ceremony (as blogged earlier). There was controversy over the gymnast who allegedly did not meet the 16 years and over rule and actually fell into, shall we say, the Gary Glitter target bracket. And there have been plenty of instances of somewhat "eccentric" marks being awarded vis-a-vis Chinese athletes, none more so than in this mornings Taekwondo quarter final which team GB's plucky Sarah Stevenson managed to lose by a point, despite kicking her Chinese opponent squarely in the face for a two-point score just before the end of the contest. A complaint was duly lodged, but nobody seriously expected anything to be done. Homefield advantage has always been a factor in the Olympics, no matter how farcical the result. Ask Roy Jones Jr, who somehow only won boxing silver in the 1988 Seoul Olympics despite pummeling his South Korean opponent in the final and l...

Right-wing think tank Policy Exchange has published a report which pretty much suggests that several northern cities are absolute shitholes, and aren’t worth the bother of redevelopment. From BBC online: Cities in northern England such as Liverpool, Sunderland and Bradford are "beyond revival" and residents should move south, a think tank has argued. Policy Exchange said current regeneration policies were "failing" the people they were supposed to help. The Policy Exchange report said the three million affordable new homes planned by the government should be built in London, Oxford and Cambridge to enable people to migrate south. People should be told the "reality" to avoid them becoming "trapped" in less prosperous parts of the country. Clearly none of the authors of this report live in London, or else they would know that it’s not exactly lacking in people already, and the last thing we need is a million Scousers coming down and clogging it up...