The state of UK Athletics
Dwain Chambers was found guilty of using performance enhancing substances and was given a two year ban from athletic competition. Having now served his ban, he’s re-entered competition (his American football career having failed due to a change in the NFA) and has been selected for the World Indoor Championships.
There has been much said about this; people like Seb Coe and Kelly Holmes saying that he should not be allowed to compete, others like John Regis saying that he’s done his time, whilst UK Athletics themselves have stated that they’ve reluctantly allowed him back into the team.
But why all this controversy? He was given a two-year ban. He served that ban. He’s now back in competition, he’s not testing positive for any banned substances and has professed that he is clean and regrets what happened. So why shouldn’t he come back? The attitude of UK Athletics is what stinks though; they’ve basically said they were forced to take him back. Sorry, but he met all the criteria for selection - open and shut case.
My message to the selectors is this: if you don’t want people competing after being banned, then ban them for life so that they have no hope of rehabilitation or any chance to redeem themselves. If you’re not going to ban them for life, but you don’t want to be in a position where you might have to select them for the team, then change your selection criteria. Until that time, Dwain Chambers is one of the best athletes this country has ever produced and is one of our best hopes for medals.
Formula 1 2008: the season starts here
And let’s hope its a better one that last year. While the racing was at least slightly better than in 2006, especially with Brit interest at a height with the amazing debut season of Lewis Hamilton, the whole sport became mired in what can only be called farce with the “Spygate” scandal involving McLaren and Ferrari.
This year, hopefully, the FIA will allow all of that to be laid to rest (they’ll have to think up some other ruse to make sure Ferrari win) and we can get on with some proper racing.
There’s been some moving about in the off-season; former champion Fernando Alonso has moved back to Renault - who had a bad season last year without him (and were also found guilty in the off-season of spying, but escaped punishment due to the inadequate nature of the FIA) but good things are promised for 2008. He swaps with Heikki Kovalainen who says that he expects to be treated as an equal to his new team-mate Hamilton at McLaren. Time will tell. Meanwhile Alonso is joined at Renault by Nelsinho Piquet - bringing back one of the all-time great racing names to the Formula One paddock. You can see the full drive line-up on the F1 site.
Not too many of the cars have shown their colours yet, but Hamilton’s been out in the new McLaren and says that “It was fantastic to get my hands on the MP4-23 this morning in Jerez” and he thinks good things will happen. Meanwhile, Alonso called his first drive of the Renault “encouraging”.
BMW Sauber have thrown down the gauntlet to the big two teams, saying that they “are confident we can turn the battle in front into a battle of more than two teams” and challenge for race wins. They scored points at every race last season, but were over 100 points behind false champions Ferrari at the end of the season. It remains to be seen whether they can really do it.
So as usual all the pre-season feather-ruffling is in full swing; lets hope that this year we get some decent races and honest results to bring some credibility back to the sport.
Brief notes
I know, I know: I haven’t been posting very regularly just lately. What can I say? I’m sorry. I don’t know if it’s the New Year or cosmic rays, or the value of the pound but nothing has really sparked me enough to make any comments (well, that’s not quite true, but I think everyone else has said everything I would say quite eloquently enough so I’ll stay away from the subject).
Which leaves us with the latest installment in the ever popular Brief Notes series; you know you love it!!
Politics
Everywhere I turn on the Net and TV these days, I can’t seem to get away from the US presidential candidate elections. So, you guys have an election to select a new leader for your party? That’s novel - you’d think Tony might have picked up on that one, being such a good friend of Dubya.
What I don’t get is all this caucus, primaries, Super Tuesday sort of stuff. It’s like you’re voting to be able to vote or something. But then the whole voting system in the US seems screwy to me; all that electoral college stuff - what’s that about? (Well, other than making sure that the man with the least number of votes get the job, of course).
Blogging 1
One of my pet subjects; there should be a further episode of my Going Self-hosted Guide in a few days but I just wanted to mention spam today. If you have a blog, you get spam; there’s no avoiding it. Wordpress.com blogs get Akismet (whether they want it or not) to filter theirs and it’s OK-ish (although just recently it seems to be somewhat over zealous and is creating a lot of false positives). On a .org blog you have a choice and thanks to a tip from Cornell Finch, I’d say drop Akismet and go for Defensio. I”ve only installed it today, but all the comments I’ve read about it rate it very highly and you do get more control than with Akismet.
Blogging 2
I read a lot of news feeds and since changing to the Mac, I’ve tried out lots of different feed readers. One of the ones that I tried and liked was NetNewsWire, but as it was something you had to pay for (albeit not very much) I ended up plumping for the free of charge Shrook instead.
Shrook is a very good piece of software for reading blogs and I’ve been using it for several months, but there was always something about the way it looked that niggled me. But today comes the announcement that NetNewsWire is now free, so I’ve switched. It just has a nicer feel to it than Shrook and I’d recommend checking it out.
Blogging 3
Over the last day or so, I’ve been having a discussion with another blogger about comments; he was complaining that his relatively new blog never got any comments. He seemed to be taking this as a personal affront, and even suggested that a third blogger only got comments because she sometimes wrote about sex and was “selling herself”.
As an aside to the issue, I started to wonder what other bloggers experiences were with comments. Did it take you a long time to get your first comment, or were you getting lots of comments from day one? Do you see more comments when you write about certain subjects, or on certain days, or is there no pattern at all?
Throughout the life of The Wolf’s Howl (first at Wordpress.com, then Blogspot and now self-hosted) I’ve seen comments go up and down like a yo-yo. I don’t get all that many, but then I don’t get a huge number of visitors.
And what’s your reaction when you do get comments? Has the newness worn off the experience and it’s just another comment, or is it still irregular enough that it’s like a little present, a reward for writing a post that someone else not only read but took the time to write about?
Football
Well, Eastbourne Borough finally got beaten in the League on New Years Day (shame!). But that’s the only loss so far - 22 games in - and they’re second in the table with two games in hand. Just need the team above to have a couple more losses and we’ll be in like Flynn!
Brief notes
Just one of those round-up sort of posts that I do when I haven’t got too much to say about a subject.
1. In Formula One the off-season shenanigans continue, with Renault sure that they’ll get Alonso back for 2008, but the man himself not saying. Speculation is high that in 2009 he’ll be driving a red car. Meanwhile, Ralf Schumacher is touting for the McLaren drive by singing their praises, as well as testing for Force India, the team who have taken over Spyker. Finally, Pro-Drive will not be competing in 2008 because of a question of legality over their use of McLaren “customer cars”. Do we think that someone out there doesn’t like Dave Richards?
2. Arrington’s having a pop at PayPerPost again - in fact, a couple of times over the last few days. As a much better writer than I once said “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Is there something going on between PPP CEO Ted “Whoo” Murphy and Mr A? I think there could be. And Scoble used the ‘e’ word again in a recent blog post to describe PPP. Let’s get real, people, shall we? It’s only blogging; it don’t mean nuthin’.
3. If you’ve got a Canon camera of a certain vintage (go to this page and look for Case Id 37383 for details) you could be at risk of a fault that will stop the CCD functioning properly. Thankfully, Canon are offering free repairs for the fault (via an authorised Canon repair centre) and - having got my camera back today - I can confirm the service is speedy and the work excellent.
4. Eastbourne Borough are STILL unbeaten in the league - 16 games into the season - and are tussling with Lewes at the top of the table. The Boxing Day game between the two sides could turn out to be a promotion decider.
5. Once again, the tolerance of one culture unto another never ceases to amaze me. This time it’s the Sudanese, who have been rioting in (appropriately) Martyr’s Square, calling for a British schoolteacher to be executed because she allowed her class of six and seven year olds to name a teddy bear Mohammed. It’s good to know that all the different races and religions in the world continue to get along together so well.
6. There’s supposed to be a big announcement tonight by the British Inventors Society that will change the face of the world by introducing “something” that could produce climate-safe energy at 80% less cost. Think this is one of those wait-and-see type of things; after all, another British invention was supposed to revolutionise personal transport, but most people won’t have ever seen a Sinclair C5!
Update: 7. Forgot to say that The Wolf’s Howl passed a milestone of its own this week - it now has over 100 posts! Yay!! The first was on 21 March, and this one is number 106. That makes an average of one post every 2.4 days, which is a better rate than I ever expected to be blogging at. Whether it’s worth reading is another issue entirely, but then you’d be a better judge of that dear Reader than I would be.
You’re never too old
It all started with the WI in Rylstone in 1999 - getting your kit off on a calendar to raise money for charity. The Rylstone ladies have gone from strength to strength - raising over £1 million so far, having a hit Hollywood film made about their exploits, etc - and many groups have followed their example since.
The latest is Ancaster Athletic, a children’s football team in Lincolnshire. Not satisfied last year with getting the men in the village to pose for a calendar, the team has this year roped in the ladies of the village - including some of the mothers of the players and the wife of the coach - and scooped the big headline.
Nora Hardwick, who will be 102 next week, has posed behind the bar of the local to become Miss November. And let me tell you, she doesn’t look a day over 78!
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