(from the ‘Oh My God’ department of common sense)
Professor Allyson Pollock, director of Edinburgh University’s Centre for International Public Health Policy has produced a paper that has put forward the argument that scrums, in games of school rugby, should be banned.
Can I just point out that if you take the scrum out of the game of rugby, what you have left is no longer a game of rugby?
Can I also point out that the England Under 21 Rugby Team are going to get their collective arses wiped by even the Italians, if Professor Pillock Pollock gets her way?
Is this Health and Safety gone completely bonkers? Can our American cousins imagine a game of gridiron where the offence is not allowed to actually sack the quarterback?
Meanwhile, in other news, the serial media-botherers, Kate and Gerry McCann are going to meet the Home Secretary in a bid to get a new investigation in to the disappearance of their daughter.
On one hand I would object to any more British public money being spent on this case – simply because the disappearance occurred in a foreign country; Portugal.
However, on the other hand, I would like to see the McCanns get a new (British) investigation in to their daughter’s disappearance – but only if the investigation takes a long hard look at the abandonment of the McCann children by Kate and Gerry in the first place.
Abandonment of any child is a criminal offence and these people have not yet been charged with the crime.
So yes, let’s reopen the British investigation but let’s have the correct charges levied too – and the correct punishments because, by their own evidence, the McCanns abandoned all three of their children.
Lee Siegel, an American literary critic, has declared the age of American fiction to be dead. Has he not read the CIA’s report to GW Bush on ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ in Iraq?
Could anything underline the continued well-being of American fiction more than this pile of steaming horseshit work of fictional art?
Prime Minster Cameron has instructed Central Government departments to prepare for budget cuts of up to 40%. Yet strangely, we’re not hearing that the MP Expense Budget is to be cut by 40%.
We’re also not hearing that the number of MPs will be cut by 40%.
Hmmm…
Bren, I saw that article.
Yes, of course there are dangers in the scrum, no matter what age you are. It’s a contact sport ffs.
Perhaps the author would have been better advised to visit a junior club to see how contact is phased in over the years and how much emphasis is put on safety.
My eldest is ten and has been playing hooker for the past two seasons. Two years ago, three man scrums, no pushing, teaching them the basics of binding and body positions. Last season, still three man scrums with a drive of no more than one and a half metres to minimise the danger of collapse. Next season, five man scrums.
Witness Thom Evans horrific injury playing on the wing for Scotland earlier this year, it’s not just the scrums.
There’ll be some ‘expert’ after what you love soon, those horses are blydi dangerous y’know.
As part of my job, I had to watch a video feed of men playing rugby over and over and… over… and… aaaaaaaaargh…
Much as I enjoy watching men run around in shorts having fun, it’s still a bewildering game. I’ve figured out that when they all link arms, the idea is /not/ to deliberately kick each other’s ankles. That’s just a perk.
In California, the governor is threatening to pay all state workers minimum wage, regardless of position or experience. (Well, he can afford to do that; every time someone says “I’ll be back” in an Austrian accent, he gets royalties 😉
Good to see someone else noting the much-glossed-over point that they left the kid alone in a foreign hotel room! I never understood why the international media seemed to think that was OK. It’s just NOT. I mean, even if you’re really in a bind it’s not OK. But just so you can pop out and lounge around in the sun and drink? Criminal!