Ayahuasca - A nice cup of tea

Games I love

Yahtzee
The traditional spotted dice cube is considered to be on of the oldest form of gambling by Historians. Several variations of dice games have been invented since its origin. Yahtzee is one such game. It is a game of great chance, luck and also of smart thinking and strategy.


Mastermind

Brain training for the 1970s. Lots of tiny plastic pieces which, if swallowed by a small child, would pass harmlessly through the bowel.
A tricky game but a lot a fun during a train journey or on any Sunday.

Paint bombs and protests

Students have one or two luxuries that their grown up counterparts do not. The luxury they have is a view of the world that is untainted by the overwhelming financial constraints handed out to their future selves by the control system called government, both local and national.
Being a student is comparable to being a passenger on the Titanic. In spiritual terms they live a pure and unhindered life, unaffected by taxes and by responsibility for self and for others. In the take take take world of growing up, no child should experience anything other than a period of self-indulgence. Students enjoy that freedom and luxury of thought and movement throughout their student years. Into the bargain they are obliged to complete a period of study in between their transition from young people to adults.
This leads to freedom of expression. And in London recently we have seen that freedom of expression manifesting itself in protests and violence at the decisions being made by the liars that sit in the houses of parliament, masquerading as "government". Liars they are, and in huge proportions. For those students in London, the iceberg approaches, and they are thrashing around to find a way out of the shit storm they are about to enter.

I am not, for one instance, condemning people for sticking their heads up in the coldest weather imaginable in this country, and making their feelings known. I am here to condemn and, at the same time, sympathise, wholeheartedly with and for the people who are jumping to condemn the young people who have reacted with rage at what is going on before their eyes.
To suggest that that the riots in London are a result - not of angry students - but of gangs hijacking the event to simply cause trouble, is to say that students are not angry enough to cause the trouble themselves, which they are. Surely, on reflection, the question "why are these people so angry?" is most pertinent.
The issue is not one of agreement or disagreement. The issue that is most disturbing is the people who seem to be queueing up to pour scorn on protesters for the passion and honest outpouring thereof.
I see something very refreshing in the reaction of the students. As for Prince Charles and Camilla. Fuck them. For once they have been found outside their bubble, and some people have let them know what they think about them.
We are told that there is no budget to invest in the future experts of this country, and at the same time the government has handed 9 Billion Pounds to the republic of Ireland. Hang on a minute. What has Ireland done for us that our youngsters have not?
The thing that surprises me most is that more extreme events have not taken place. Apart from a few injured police officers - I've met some of them - honestly, its leave your brain - and soul - at home when those tossers put on their uniforms, what real damage has been done? I would quite honestly be completely understanding if something more extreme happened than a few paint bombs and a few smashed windows. Christ, that happens every night in some parts of London and no fuss is made. Because its happening in the centre its national news. Good. I say.

It is most remarkable still that as the government were making a decision, yesterday, on tuition fees, that stands to cost families £30,000 a year when their child completes university, few were paying attention or reacting. At the same time, 14 million people were sat in front of their hypnosis machines, weeping and blubbering at the drama unfolding from Coronation Street. After that, the news reports showing students kicking off in London, and the phone calls from the sheeple of this country (the self appointed protectors of the state) demanding students be punished for having a view and expressing themselves instead of sitting on their arses, stuffing their faces with maltesers and cheap wine by the bottle every night of what pass for real life.
In Nazi Germany, if a Jew stood up and argued with a German soldier, he would have been severely punished. The way many people have reacted to these protesters demands blood much in the same way.
Rest assured, we are in a fascist state, and the people are running it themselves, without any help from the Gestapo, the Stazi or any other gun wielding thugs. We don't need them.
Don't worry. Just pay your taxes and sleep. Switch off. Coronation Street's on. Bollocks.
That said, I see this protest as a watershed of national emotion that threatens to swell in the coming years, as people wake up from the soap operas on TV to the real soap opera being played out in the civic centres, council offices, and government circles that make our decisions for us. Some of us have already woken up.

England go one up over Australia

In Adelaide, England completely dominated Australia from start to finish.

 Ponting leaves the field.
Test match series

Australia: 245 & 304 (99.1 overs)
England: 620-5 (152.0 overs)
England beat Australia by an innings and 71 runs

Full scorecard

Best Quote, Geoff Boycott.
"Remember, they gave us plenty of stick four years ago, so don’t shed any tears for them."
I won't Geoffrey, I won't.

Septic Blagger

Russia will host the 2018 World Cup. Qatar will host the 2022 World Cup. This represents a period of wilderness for the sport of international football. The World Cup is a football tournament that brings together the football cultures of the world. It creates rivalries and relationships, through sport that are better played out on a 2-acre grass field than across nation states with nuclear weapons.
Unfortunately, the tournament has been hijacked, along with anything else that is popular enough to be televised globally. Hijacked by marketing teams, big business, and cling ons who take huge chunks of the generated cash without ever kicking a football.
In the post war days, if you played for your country, you were invited to turn up at a certain venue at a certain time, and that's what you did. The honour is all yours, and get there you would, for you were picked from the entire population to represent your country at the sport you love.
England has watched football go round the world since developing the game from its roots in the educational establishments who first discovered the need for leisure facilities as part of healthy working and educational life.
England has no right to host a tournament ahead of any other nation. This is because FIFA does not recognise England as anything other than the primordial slime from which the DNA of football sprung forth. If football is, in evolutionary terms, homo-sapiens, then the world views England as orang-u-tangs. Not to be taken seriously.
At its core, like all English sports, both amateur and "professional", is the essence of fair play, which still remains, by and large, at all strata. The top flight has become corrupt in its abuse of officials, due not only to foreign influence, but due to the pressure on managers from their bosses to achieve results. Managers claim the right to accuse referees, and their judgements, of ending their careers. No referee has any obligation to the financial repercussions of their decisions. The amount of money a club chooses to invest into gaining success on the field, has no bearing on refereeing decisions. Yet they are blamed for "losing a man his job" and "costing a club their season".
If England gave the ingredients, world sport created their own recipes. The physical side of football - a contact sport involving fair physical strength - has been eroded away from the world game. This is perpetuated by refereeing culture around the world. A refereeing culture that, from an English perspective, appears to advocate faking injury, faking contact, shirt pulling, professional fouls, yet which frowns upon a slightly raised foot or any tackle that even slightly injures the opponent.

This is not a case of English paranoia. England is not paranoid in this case. Indeed, one only needs to consult the history books which show England was banned from European football from 1986 until the mid 1990s because of hooliganism. Understandable, you may imagine, until you witness the unpunished acts of hooliganism found at football grounds across Europe during and well after that period.
English football had, at its core, fair play. This was not passed onto the rest of the world. Perhaps it is, in conclusion, the biggest fault of English football that it has retained a naive resistance to this. If we couldn't beat them, should England have joined them? Has it taken the likes of Owen and Beckham to learn the art of the convincing dive in order to compete at the top level?
England retain this sense of honour which, in terms of international sport, is neanderthal, compared to the cold, calculated methods now employed throughout the world.
I feel England should retain its honourable view of sport. In England, there is still an air of amateurism in sport. Apart from the gamesmanship polluted top flight, professional sport in the main retains a strong sense of fiar play. Any player who takes a dive is penalised by officials and castigated by opponents and, occasionally, their own manager.
What I see evolving from now on are break away tournaments involving major teams and major prize money. Football is perhaps far too lucrative a product for nations to wait 4 years to cash in. I envisage a 6 or 8 team tournament each summer, hosted at Wembley, and involving huge prize money for the winners. TV contracts can be secured, to cover costs, and fans can come and watch the best teams in the world playing on home soil. The confederations cup in France has gathered momentum in recent years. The voice of the FA continues to bow to the corrupt FIFA system but I would suggest that if the English FA don't do it, other countries will take the lead. Once again, England will be last in, and, as in the recent World Cup venue vote, first out.
When England first allowed FIFA to run away with football they gave up the right to have a say on how the sport is run. What the English have to do is fall back into the background, toe the line, and remind ourselves that we are an insignificant football nation in the views of the world body.