Humza Yousaf is threatening to sue Elon Musk, on TwiX, for calling him a racist
THAT would be entertaining. Musk is continuously goading him
Yousaf is an irrelevence. He’s had his 15 minutes.
It would be like the Al Fayed-Hamilton court case. You’d want neither side to win.
I don’t know how it works - sueing a foreigner for libel. Especially a trillionaire American with first amendment protection
Is Musk even obliged to defend himself? Can’t he just ignore it?
Yes. On the other hand, if Yousaf lent his voice to backing the campaign to boycott Tesla cars, that might have some potential to make Musk sit up and take notice, as there's real potential for such a campaign to take off with a bit of prominent backing here and there.
Yousaf is a nobody that about 95% of Brits couldn't care less about.
I suspect even most Scottish independence supporters don't care about Yousaf.
I SO want Humza Yousaf to sue Elon Musk. It would be like Alien v Predator except Predator is 200 times bigger
Genuinely brave by Yousaf if he tries
In what jurisdiction is he planning to sue him?
No idea. But surely the UK because we don’t have free speech anymore and we have much more onerous libel laws
The US passed specific legislation to ban any attempt at enforcing libel tourism judgements in the US.
This was after some U.K. law firms setup and attempted to use libel tourism in U.K. courts to claim that since anything on the Internet is seen in the U.K., anyone on the planet can sue here, get millions and get the truth suppressed.
The array of scum and villainy that was lining up to silence the New York Times etc was remarkable - the most attractive specimen was an international arms dealer, IIRC, who specialised in guns for blood diamonds.
As our Sunil demonstrated a while back, there is more than one plausible way to compile a medal table.
The classic way is to list by golds first, and use silver and bronze as tie-breakers. The US tends however to do it by total medals. That usually enhances their position (and ours too).
Another way is to award points per medal - e.g. Gold 5, Silver 3, Bronze 1. Sunil did this and again it flattered us and the US. You can sod about with the ratios too, in which case you might well want to allocate relatively more for golds, because they really are a lot more valuable than silver and bronze.
A more controversial method would be to allocate more weight to the high status events. Most people accept that Track and Field is the centrepiece of the games, so medals there could be scored higher, with maybe a bonus for blue riband events like the 100m sprint, 1500m and marathon. Swimming, cycling and rowing would be in the mid-range. You could deduct points for winning the breakdancing.
How do like it so far?
Personally I think it was a highly successful games - for Paris, for France, and for the GB team.
I'd go for:
Gold 4 Silver 2 Bronze 1
There's also expectations versus reality.
The silver in synchronised swimming seems to be better than yet another silver in the velodrome or athletics relays.
And then there are comparisons with other countries - the relative performance is much worse this year.
The British team finishes seventh on golds, fourth on silvers and second on bronzes. I think the general idea now is to pretend that winning stuff isn't really that important after all, and to celebrate how hard everyone tried instead.
Team GB. Amongst the most successful losers in the world.
Think of the mountain of lottery tickets that were sacrificed to that end.
Edit: would make a good ski-jump in East London.
My original remarks may have been slightly churlish, but the skipload of bronzes does tell a story - as well as the outright collapses in performance in a variety of previously successful disciplines. As I've remarked previously, there'll be a number of sports governing bodies that are going to have their lotto loot cut drastically or removed at the end of all this.
Applauding effort is the correct approach for infants' school sports day or Parkrun, but elite level competition is a different matter. Celebrating near misses all the time is how you get the England football team and its extraordinary record of utter failure.
Humza Yousaf is threatening to sue Elon Musk, on TwiX, for calling him a racist
THAT would be entertaining. Musk is continuously goading him
Yousaf is an irrelevence. He’s had his 15 minutes.
It would be like the Al Fayed-Hamilton court case. You’d want neither side to win.
I don’t know how it works - sueing a foreigner for libel. Especially a trillionaire American with first amendment protection
Is Musk even obliged to defend himself? Can’t he just ignore it?
Yes. On the other hand, if Yousaf lent his voice to backing the campaign to boycott Tesla cars, that might have some potential to make Musk sit up and take notice, as there's real potential for such a campaign to take off with a bit of prominent backing here and there.
Re: the discussion on Team GB’s performance. In Rio and Tokyo we benefited from the well-known “recent host” bonus. Basically, when a company hosts the Olympics it puts a significant amount of effort into ensuring its team does well at home, and the same athletes tend to re-compete and do well at the games immediately after.
This time round, none of the British athletes were part of the cohort that competed in London 2012.l and performance has dropped back. In constrast, notice how Japan (hosts last time) have done better in Paris than their historical average.
We’ve still done much better than our typical performance in the 80s and 90s when normally only about 5 gold medals were won.
Humza Yousaf is threatening to sue Elon Musk, on TwiX, for calling him a racist
THAT would be entertaining. Musk is continuously goading him
Yousaf is an irrelevence. He’s had his 15 minutes.
It would be like the Al Fayed-Hamilton court case. You’d want neither side to win.
I don’t know how it works - sueing a foreigner for libel. Especially a trillionaire American with first amendment protection
Is Musk even obliged to defend himself? Can’t he just ignore it?
Yes. On the other hand, if Yousaf lent his voice to backing the campaign to boycott Tesla cars, that might have some potential to make Musk sit up and take notice, as there's real potential for such a campaign to take off with a bit of prominent backing here and there.
Yousaf is a nobody that about 95% of Brits couldn't care less about.
I suspect even most Scottish independence supporters don't care about Yousaf.
In that case why is Fashy Elon (and sundry other edge lordlings) still whining about him?
Humza Yousaf is threatening to sue Elon Musk, on TwiX, for calling him a racist
THAT would be entertaining. Musk is continuously goading him
Yousaf is an irrelevence. He’s had his 15 minutes.
It would be like the Al Fayed-Hamilton court case. You’d want neither side to win.
I don’t know how it works - sueing a foreigner for libel. Especially a trillionaire American with first amendment protection
Is Musk even obliged to defend himself? Can’t he just ignore it?
Yes. On the other hand, if Yousaf lent his voice to backing the campaign to boycott Tesla cars, that might have some potential to make Musk sit up and take notice, as there's real potential for such a campaign to take off with a bit of prominent backing here and there.
Yousaf is a nobody that about 95% of Brits couldn't care less about.
I suspect even most Scottish independence supporters don't care about Yousaf.
In that case why is Fashy Elon (and sundry other edge lordlings) still whining about him?
Because Elon is a Twatter-obsessed freak who will respond to any Twatter bullshit.
As our Sunil demonstrated a while back, there is more than one plausible way to compile a medal table.
The classic way is to list by golds first, and use silver and bronze as tie-breakers. The US tends however to do it by total medals. That usually enhances their position (and ours too).
Another way is to award points per medal - e.g. Gold 5, Silver 3, Bronze 1. Sunil did this and again it flattered us and the US. You can sod about with the ratios too, in which case you might well want to allocate relatively more for golds, because they really are a lot more valuable than silver and bronze.
A more controversial method would be to allocate more weight to the high status events. Most people accept that Track and Field is the centrepiece of the games, so medals there could be scored higher, with maybe a bonus for blue riband events like the 100m sprint, 1500m and marathon. Swimming, cycling and rowing would be in the mid-range. You could deduct points for winning the breakdancing.
How do like it so far?
Personally I think it was a highly successful games - for Paris, for France, and for the GB team.
I'd go for:
Gold 4 Silver 2 Bronze 1
There's also expectations versus reality.
The silver in synchronised swimming seems to be better than yet another silver in the velodrome or athletics relays.
And then there are comparisons with other countries - the relative performance is much worse this year.
The gold in the climbing came very much out of the blue and was most welcome.
Best part is Toby Roberts was the last person to realise he had won gold after the last climber fell off.
As our Sunil demonstrated a while back, there is more than one plausible way to compile a medal table.
The classic way is to list by golds first, and use silver and bronze as tie-breakers. The US tends however to do it by total medals. That usually enhances their position (and ours too).
Another way is to award points per medal - e.g. Gold 5, Silver 3, Bronze 1. Sunil did this and again it flattered us and the US. You can sod about with the ratios too, in which case you might well want to allocate relatively more for golds, because they really are a lot more valuable than silver and bronze.
A more controversial method would be to allocate more weight to the high status events. Most people accept that Track and Field is the centrepiece of the games, so medals there could be scored higher, with maybe a bonus for blue riband events like the 100m sprint, 1500m and marathon. Swimming, cycling and rowing would be in the mid-range. You could deduct points for winning the breakdancing.
How do like it so far?
Personally I think it was a highly successful games - for Paris, for France, and for the GB team.
I'd go for:
Gold 4 Silver 2 Bronze 1
There's also expectations versus reality.
The silver in synchronised swimming seems to be better than yet another silver in the velodrome or athletics relays.
And then there are comparisons with other countries - the relative performance is much worse this year.
The British team finishes seventh on golds, fourth on silvers and second on bronzes. I think the general idea now is to pretend that winning stuff isn't really that important after all, and to celebrate how hard everyone tried instead.
Team GB. Amongst the most successful losers in the world.
Adopting the Sunil System of awarding Three points for a Gold, 2 for a Silver, 1 for a Bronze:
G S B Total points United States 120 88 42 250 China 120 54 24 198 France 48 52 22 122 Great Britain 42 44 29 115 Australia 54 38 16 108 Japan 60 24 13 97 Italy 36 26 15 77 Netherlands 45 14 12 71 Germany 36 26 8 70 South Korea 39 18 10 67 Canada 27 14 11 52 New Zealand 30 14 3 47 Hungary 18 14 6 38 Brazil 9 14 10 33 Spain 15 8 9 32 Uzbekistan 24 4 3 31 Iran 9 12 3 24 Sweden 12 8 3 23 Ukraine 9 10 4 23 Kenya 12 4 5 21
You need to adjust the weightings a little, as your table still has France ahead of GB.
I can't help that!
What about 10 points per ampersand in the full team name?
As our Sunil demonstrated a while back, there is more than one plausible way to compile a medal table.
The classic way is to list by golds first, and use silver and bronze as tie-breakers. The US tends however to do it by total medals. That usually enhances their position (and ours too).
Another way is to award points per medal - e.g. Gold 5, Silver 3, Bronze 1. Sunil did this and again it flattered us and the US. You can sod about with the ratios too, in which case you might well want to allocate relatively more for golds, because they really are a lot more valuable than silver and bronze.
A more controversial method would be to allocate more weight to the high status events. Most people accept that Track and Field is the centrepiece of the games, so medals there could be scored higher, with maybe a bonus for blue riband events like the 100m sprint, 1500m and marathon. Swimming, cycling and rowing would be in the mid-range. You could deduct points for winning the breakdancing.
How do like it so far?
Personally I think it was a highly successful games - for Paris, for France, and for the GB team.
I'd go for:
Gold 4 Silver 2 Bronze 1
There's also expectations versus reality.
The silver in synchronised swimming seems to be better than yet another silver in the velodrome or athletics relays.
And then there are comparisons with other countries - the relative performance is much worse this year.
The British team finishes seventh on golds, fourth on silvers and second on bronzes. I think the general idea now is to pretend that winning stuff isn't really that important after all, and to celebrate how hard everyone tried instead.
Lots of countries win no medals at all, but one stands out as being western, wealthy, European, a fairly large population (over 5m) and a neighbour of ours: Finland. Anyone know why? No doubt they make up for it in the winter.
Can’t be arsed… Think when it comes down to it probably better to invest in stuff like education rather than elite sports?
That's the point of the lottery funding though. It removes the politics.
If the funding came from general taxation it wouldn't go to elite sports, or grassroots sports, or schools. It'd all get spaffed on bloody pensions and trying to stop the hospitals collapsing, just like any other spare coppers from down the back of Reeves's sofa.
As our Sunil demonstrated a while back, there is more than one plausible way to compile a medal table.
The classic way is to list by golds first, and use silver and bronze as tie-breakers. The US tends however to do it by total medals. That usually enhances their position (and ours too).
Another way is to award points per medal - e.g. Gold 5, Silver 3, Bronze 1. Sunil did this and again it flattered us and the US. You can sod about with the ratios too, in which case you might well want to allocate relatively more for golds, because they really are a lot more valuable than silver and bronze.
A more controversial method would be to allocate more weight to the high status events. Most people accept that Track and Field is the centrepiece of the games, so medals there could be scored higher, with maybe a bonus for blue riband events like the 100m sprint, 1500m and marathon. Swimming, cycling and rowing would be in the mid-range. You could deduct points for winning the breakdancing.
How do like it so far?
Personally I think it was a highly successful games - for Paris, for France, and for the GB team.
I'd go for:
Gold 4 Silver 2 Bronze 1
There's also expectations versus reality.
The silver in synchronised swimming seems to be better than yet another silver in the velodrome or athletics relays.
And then there are comparisons with other countries - the relative performance is much worse this year.
The British team finishes seventh on golds, fourth on silvers and second on bronzes. I think the general idea now is to pretend that winning stuff isn't really that important after all, and to celebrate how hard everyone tried instead.
Team GB. Amongst the most successful losers in the world.
Think of the mountain of lottery tickets that were sacrificed to that end.
Edit: would make a good ski-jump in East London.
My original remarks may have been slightly churlish, but the skipload of bronzes does tell a story - as well as the outright collapses in performance in a variety of previously successful disciplines. As I've remarked previously, there'll be a number of sports governing bodies that are going to have their lotto loot cut drastically or removed at the end of all this.
Applauding effort is the correct approach for infants' school sports day or Parkrun, but elite level competition is a different matter. Celebrating near misses all the time is how you get the England football team and its extraordinary record of utter failure.
Quite often it's a smidgen of luck that separates the medals. For instance we'd have won another gold instead of bronze if our nag hadn't clipped the last with his hoof. Also you're at the mercy of judges in some events, and even events you're not - the skeet shooting for instance objectively that should have been a gold !
Humza Yousaf is threatening to sue Elon Musk, on TwiX, for calling him a racist
THAT would be entertaining. Musk is continuously goading him
Yousaf is an irrelevence. He’s had his 15 minutes.
It would be like the Al Fayed-Hamilton court case. You’d want neither side to win.
I don’t know how it works - sueing a foreigner for libel. Especially a trillionaire American with first amendment protection
Is Musk even obliged to defend himself? Can’t he just ignore it?
Yes. On the other hand, if Yousaf lent his voice to backing the campaign to boycott Tesla cars, that might have some potential to make Musk sit up and take notice, as there's real potential for such a campaign to take off with a bit of prominent backing here and there.
Yousaf is a nobody that about 95% of Brits couldn't care less about.
I suspect even most Scottish independence supporters don't care about Yousaf.
In that case why is Fashy Elon (and sundry other edge lordlings) still whining about him?
@Muesli : On your question about nuclear power and benefits vs harms, a great resource (albeit now a few years old) is David MacKay's "Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air"
It's available for free online, and the stuff on nuclear power starts here:
(David MacKay was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and Regius Professor of Engineering at Cambridge)
I've often voiced that someone should really update that book with the latest figures. I assume his estate could be persuaded to allow that, especially as he put the book on the web.
As our Sunil demonstrated a while back, there is more than one plausible way to compile a medal table.
The classic way is to list by golds first, and use silver and bronze as tie-breakers. The US tends however to do it by total medals. That usually enhances their position (and ours too).
Another way is to award points per medal - e.g. Gold 5, Silver 3, Bronze 1. Sunil did this and again it flattered us and the US. You can sod about with the ratios too, in which case you might well want to allocate relatively more for golds, because they really are a lot more valuable than silver and bronze.
A more controversial method would be to allocate more weight to the high status events. Most people accept that Track and Field is the centrepiece of the games, so medals there could be scored higher, with maybe a bonus for blue riband events like the 100m sprint, 1500m and marathon. Swimming, cycling and rowing would be in the mid-range. You could deduct points for winning the breakdancing.
How do like it so far?
Personally I think it was a highly successful games - for Paris, for France, and for the GB team.
I'd go for:
Gold 4 Silver 2 Bronze 1
There's also expectations versus reality.
The silver in synchronised swimming seems to be better than yet another silver in the velodrome or athletics relays.
And then there are comparisons with other countries - the relative performance is much worse this year.
The British team finishes seventh on golds, fourth on silvers and second on bronzes. I think the general idea now is to pretend that winning stuff isn't really that important after all, and to celebrate how hard everyone tried instead.
Team GB. Amongst the most successful losers in the world.
Think of the mountain of lottery tickets that were sacrificed to that end.
Edit: would make a good ski-jump in East London.
My original remarks may have been slightly churlish, but the skipload of bronzes does tell a story - as well as the outright collapses in performance in a variety of previously successful disciplines. As I've remarked previously, there'll be a number of sports governing bodies that are going to have their lotto loot cut drastically or removed at the end of all this.
Applauding effort is the correct approach for infants' school sports day or Parkrun, but elite level competition is a different matter. Celebrating near misses all the time is how you get the England football team and its extraordinary record of utter failure.
Those in charge of dishing out the lottery money are known for being pretty ruthless with both sports and athletes, when it comes to renewal of funding after each Games. Anyone older than about 20 who isn’t coming home from Paris with a medal, is likely to find themselves defunded and needing to find their own sponsors if they want to be in Los Angeles. It’s a brutal industry if you’re not winning.
Humza Yousaf is threatening to sue Elon Musk, on TwiX, for calling him a racist
THAT would be entertaining. Musk is continuously goading him
Yousaf is an irrelevence. He’s had his 15 minutes.
It would be like the Al Fayed-Hamilton court case. You’d want neither side to win.
I don’t know how it works - sueing a foreigner for libel. Especially a trillionaire American with first amendment protection
Is Musk even obliged to defend himself? Can’t he just ignore it?
Yes. On the other hand, if Yousaf lent his voice to backing the campaign to boycott Tesla cars, that might have some potential to make Musk sit up and take notice, as there's real potential for such a campaign to take off with a bit of prominent backing here and there.
Yousaf is a nobody that about 95% of Brits couldn't care less about.
I suspect even most Scottish independence supporters don't care about Yousaf.
In that case why is Fashy Elon (and sundry other edge lordlings) still whining about him?
Some people live online. People who live online have no sense of proportion, seeing the world as a set of images on their phone, each with equal validity: near or far, past or present, it doesn't matter.
I'm increasingly convinced that Harris has this. She has a lot of strengths and Trump a lot of weaknesses.
Laying Trump is value at anything below 3 currently.
The double-haters were a real thing in US politics. Now Biden has gone, the polling has been transformed because there are only single haters: Trump. There are some who are so far unconvinced by Harris, but aren't haters. There are plenty think she is a breathe of fresh air.
The November election will be won by the Trump haters.
As our Sunil demonstrated a while back, there is more than one plausible way to compile a medal table.
The classic way is to list by golds first, and use silver and bronze as tie-breakers. The US tends however to do it by total medals. That usually enhances their position (and ours too).
Another way is to award points per medal - e.g. Gold 5, Silver 3, Bronze 1. Sunil did this and again it flattered us and the US. You can sod about with the ratios too, in which case you might well want to allocate relatively more for golds, because they really are a lot more valuable than silver and bronze.
A more controversial method would be to allocate more weight to the high status events. Most people accept that Track and Field is the centrepiece of the games, so medals there could be scored higher, with maybe a bonus for blue riband events like the 100m sprint, 1500m and marathon. Swimming, cycling and rowing would be in the mid-range. You could deduct points for winning the breakdancing.
How do like it so far?
Personally I think it was a highly successful games - for Paris, for France, and for the GB team.
I'd go for:
Gold 4 Silver 2 Bronze 1
There's also expectations versus reality.
The silver in synchronised swimming seems to be better than yet another silver in the velodrome or athletics relays.
And then there are comparisons with other countries - the relative performance is much worse this year.
The British team finishes seventh on golds, fourth on silvers and second on bronzes. I think the general idea now is to pretend that winning stuff isn't really that important after all, and to celebrate how hard everyone tried instead.
Team GB. Amongst the most successful losers in the world.
Think of the mountain of lottery tickets that were sacrificed to that end.
Edit: would make a good ski-jump in East London.
My original remarks may have been slightly churlish, but the skipload of bronzes does tell a story - as well as the outright collapses in performance in a variety of previously successful disciplines. As I've remarked previously, there'll be a number of sports governing bodies that are going to have their lotto loot cut drastically or removed at the end of all this.
Applauding effort is the correct approach for infants' school sports day or Parkrun, but elite level competition is a different matter. Celebrating near misses all the time is how you get the England football team and its extraordinary record of utter failure.
Quite often it's a smidgen of luck that separates the medals. For instance we'd have won another gold instead of bronze if our nag hadn't clipped the last with his hoof. Also you're at the mercy of judges in some events, and even events you're not - the skeet shooting for instance objectively that should have been a gold !
True, but that's the same with every sporting competition.
There were the same number of medals this time as in 2012, but then there were 29 wins and this time there were 29 third places. That's not down to hard luck, it's the result of declining performance. A certain amount of going back to the drawing board is required.
Humza Yousaf is threatening to sue Elon Musk, on TwiX, for calling him a racist
THAT would be entertaining. Musk is continuously goading him
Yousaf is an irrelevence. He’s had his 15 minutes.
It would be like the Al Fayed-Hamilton court case. You’d want neither side to win.
I don’t know how it works - sueing a foreigner for libel. Especially a trillionaire American with first amendment protection
Is Musk even obliged to defend himself? Can’t he just ignore it?
Yes. On the other hand, if Yousaf lent his voice to backing the campaign to boycott Tesla cars, that might have some potential to make Musk sit up and take notice, as there's real potential for such a campaign to take off with a bit of prominent backing here and there.
Yousaf is a nobody that about 95% of Brits couldn't care less about.
I suspect even most Scottish independence supporters don't care about Yousaf.
In that case why is Fashy Elon (and sundry other edge lordlings) still whining about him?
Some people live online. People who live online have no sense of proportion, seeing the world as a set of images on their phone, each with equal validity: near or far, past or present, it doesn't matter.
It depends how they do it. For lots of people it's like that.
But for people who are disabled, or elderly, or otherwise housebound, and who have no other access to the outside world, and who have the education and discrimination to tell junk information from non-junk, it can be very liberating and enlightening.
As always, the key is to make technology always your servant and never your master.
I'm increasingly convinced that Harris has this. She has a lot of strengths and Trump a lot of weaknesses.
Laying Trump is value at anything below 3 currently.
The double-haters were a real thing in US politics. Now Biden has gone, the polling has been transformed because there are only single haters: Trump. There are some who are so far unconvinced by Harris, but aren't haters. There are plenty think she is a breathe of fresh air.
The November election will be won by the Trump haters.
Even better, Harris isn't campaigning based on hate, but rather on positivity.
As our Sunil demonstrated a while back, there is more than one plausible way to compile a medal table.
The classic way is to list by golds first, and use silver and bronze as tie-breakers. The US tends however to do it by total medals. That usually enhances their position (and ours too).
Another way is to award points per medal - e.g. Gold 5, Silver 3, Bronze 1. Sunil did this and again it flattered us and the US. You can sod about with the ratios too, in which case you might well want to allocate relatively more for golds, because they really are a lot more valuable than silver and bronze.
A more controversial method would be to allocate more weight to the high status events. Most people accept that Track and Field is the centrepiece of the games, so medals there could be scored higher, with maybe a bonus for blue riband events like the 100m sprint, 1500m and marathon. Swimming, cycling and rowing would be in the mid-range. You could deduct points for winning the breakdancing.
How do like it so far?
Personally I think it was a highly successful games - for Paris, for France, and for the GB team.
I'd go for:
Gold 4 Silver 2 Bronze 1
There's also expectations versus reality.
The silver in synchronised swimming seems to be better than yet another silver in the velodrome or athletics relays.
And then there are comparisons with other countries - the relative performance is much worse this year.
The British team finishes seventh on golds, fourth on silvers and second on bronzes. I think the general idea now is to pretend that winning stuff isn't really that important after all, and to celebrate how hard everyone tried instead.
Lots of countries win no medals at all, but one stands out as being western, wealthy, European, a fairly large population (over 5m) and a neighbour of ours: Finland. Anyone know why? No doubt they make up for it in the winter.
Can’t be arsed… Think when it comes down to it probably better to invest in stuff like education rather than elite sports?
That's the point of the lottery funding though. It removes the politics.
If the funding came from general taxation it wouldn't go to elite sports, or grassroots sports, or schools. It'd all get spaffed on bloody pensions and trying to stop the hospitals collapsing, just like any other spare coppers from down the back of Reeves's sofa.
It took Labour a few years to understand John Major’s intention. The lottery funding was for The Other Things. The ones that the tax money never gets to.
Tons of sports clubs up and down the land have a new clubhouse via the lottery funding. Or things like fixing up coastal paths.
As our Sunil demonstrated a while back, there is more than one plausible way to compile a medal table.
The classic way is to list by golds first, and use silver and bronze as tie-breakers. The US tends however to do it by total medals. That usually enhances their position (and ours too).
Another way is to award points per medal - e.g. Gold 5, Silver 3, Bronze 1. Sunil did this and again it flattered us and the US. You can sod about with the ratios too, in which case you might well want to allocate relatively more for golds, because they really are a lot more valuable than silver and bronze.
A more controversial method would be to allocate more weight to the high status events. Most people accept that Track and Field is the centrepiece of the games, so medals there could be scored higher, with maybe a bonus for blue riband events like the 100m sprint, 1500m and marathon. Swimming, cycling and rowing would be in the mid-range. You could deduct points for winning the breakdancing.
How do like it so far?
Personally I think it was a highly successful games - for Paris, for France, and for the GB team.
As our Sunil demonstrated a while back, there is more than one plausible way to compile a medal table.
The classic way is to list by golds first, and use silver and bronze as tie-breakers. The US tends however to do it by total medals. That usually enhances their position (and ours too).
Another way is to award points per medal - e.g. Gold 5, Silver 3, Bronze 1. Sunil did this and again it flattered us and the US. You can sod about with the ratios too, in which case you might well want to allocate relatively more for golds, because they really are a lot more valuable than silver and bronze.
A more controversial method would be to allocate more weight to the high status events. Most people accept that Track and Field is the centrepiece of the games, so medals there could be scored higher, with maybe a bonus for blue riband events like the 100m sprint, 1500m and marathon. Swimming, cycling and rowing would be in the mid-range. You could deduct points for winning the breakdancing.
How do like it so far?
Personally I think it was a highly successful games - for Paris, for France, and for the GB team.
I'd favour a much more complex system. As ever.
In some forms of triathlon, points are awarded according to the time people finish after the winner. Every second that passes, a point is removed from a starting total. This means if it is a close finish, second and third (and anyone who finishes before the points tick down to zero) would get points allocated towards their point total - or in case of the Olympics, their teams' total.
The winners still get medals, but potentially fourth, fifth and other finishers also get points for their team. And close finishes are also rewarded, and people who win far out-front also gain more for their team.
It'd be totally unworkable for a host of reasons, including weighting between events and sports, but it would be interesting.
As our Sunil demonstrated a while back, there is more than one plausible way to compile a medal table.
The classic way is to list by golds first, and use silver and bronze as tie-breakers. The US tends however to do it by total medals. That usually enhances their position (and ours too).
Another way is to award points per medal - e.g. Gold 5, Silver 3, Bronze 1. Sunil did this and again it flattered us and the US. You can sod about with the ratios too, in which case you might well want to allocate relatively more for golds, because they really are a lot more valuable than silver and bronze.
A more controversial method would be to allocate more weight to the high status events. Most people accept that Track and Field is the centrepiece of the games, so medals there could be scored higher, with maybe a bonus for blue riband events like the 100m sprint, 1500m and marathon. Swimming, cycling and rowing would be in the mid-range. You could deduct points for winning the breakdancing.
How do like it so far?
Personally I think it was a highly successful games - for Paris, for France, and for the GB team.
I'd go for:
Gold 4 Silver 2 Bronze 1
There's also expectations versus reality.
The silver in synchronised swimming seems to be better than yet another silver in the velodrome or athletics relays.
And then there are comparisons with other countries - the relative performance is much worse this year.
The British team finishes seventh on golds, fourth on silvers and second on bronzes. I think the general idea now is to pretend that winning stuff isn't really that important after all, and to celebrate how hard everyone tried instead.
Lots of countries win no medals at all, but one stands out as being western, wealthy, European, a fairly large population (over 5m) and a neighbour of ours: Finland. Anyone know why? No doubt they make up for it in the winter.
Can’t be arsed… Think when it comes down to it probably better to invest in stuff like education rather than elite sports?
That's the point of the lottery funding though. It removes the politics.
If the funding came from general taxation it wouldn't go to elite sports, or grassroots sports, or schools. It'd all get spaffed on bloody pensions and trying to stop the hospitals collapsing, just like any other spare coppers from down the back of Reeves's sofa.
It took Labour a few years to understand John Major’s intention. The lottery funding was for The Other Things. The ones that the tax money never gets to.
Tons of sports clubs up and down the land have a new clubhouse via the lottery funding. Or things like fixing up coastal paths.
Exactly. Funding for sports and arts would never win against schoolsnhospitals when it came to numbers on the Chancellor’s spreadsheet, so separating these things out and giving them their own, voluntary, source of funding, has improved them no end.
There’s no comparison between today’s Olympic team, and that of 1996. The lottery funds hundreds of athletes and coaches in elite amateur sports, and has paid for loads of new facilities over the past three decades, many of which benefit the wider community.
Re: the discussion on Team GB’s performance. In Rio and Tokyo we benefited from the well-known “recent host” bonus. Basically, when a company hosts the Olympics it puts a significant amount of effort into ensuring its team does well at home, and the same athletes tend to re-compete and do well at the games immediately after.
This time round, none of the British athletes were part of the cohort that competed in London 2012.l and performance has dropped back. In constrast, notice how Japan (hosts last time) have done better in Paris than their historical average.
We’ve still done much better than our typical performance in the 80s and 90s when normally only about 5 gold medals were won.
True but I think most people would regard athletics as the main event, and there we have been disappointing this time round, although if a couple of narrow silvers had gone our way...
As our Sunil demonstrated a while back, there is more than one plausible way to compile a medal table.
The classic way is to list by golds first, and use silver and bronze as tie-breakers. The US tends however to do it by total medals. That usually enhances their position (and ours too).
Another way is to award points per medal - e.g. Gold 5, Silver 3, Bronze 1. Sunil did this and again it flattered us and the US. You can sod about with the ratios too, in which case you might well want to allocate relatively more for golds, because they really are a lot more valuable than silver and bronze.
A more controversial method would be to allocate more weight to the high status events. Most people accept that Track and Field is the centrepiece of the games, so medals there could be scored higher, with maybe a bonus for blue riband events like the 100m sprint, 1500m and marathon. Swimming, cycling and rowing would be in the mid-range. You could deduct points for winning the breakdancing.
How do like it so far?
Personally I think it was a highly successful games - for Paris, for France, and for the GB team.
I'd go for:
Gold 4 Silver 2 Bronze 1
There's also expectations versus reality.
The silver in synchronised swimming seems to be better than yet another silver in the velodrome or athletics relays.
And then there are comparisons with other countries - the relative performance is much worse this year.
The British team finishes seventh on golds, fourth on silvers and second on bronzes. I think the general idea now is to pretend that winning stuff isn't really that important after all, and to celebrate how hard everyone tried instead.
Team GB. Amongst the most successful losers in the world.
Think of the mountain of lottery tickets that were sacrificed to that end.
Edit: would make a good ski-jump in East London.
My original remarks may have been slightly churlish, but the skipload of bronzes does tell a story - as well as the outright collapses in performance in a variety of previously successful disciplines. As I've remarked previously, there'll be a number of sports governing bodies that are going to have their lotto loot cut drastically or removed at the end of all this.
Applauding effort is the correct approach for infants' school sports day or Parkrun, but elite level competition is a different matter. Celebrating near misses all the time is how you get the England football team and its extraordinary record of utter failure.
Quite often it's a smidgen of luck that separates the medals. For instance we'd have won another gold instead of bronze if our nag hadn't clipped the last with his hoof. Also you're at the mercy of judges in some events, and even events you're not - the skeet shooting for instance objectively that should have been a gold !
True, but that's the same with every sporting competition.
There were the same number of medals this time as in 2012, but then there were 29 wins and this time there were 29 third places. That's not down to hard luck, it's the result of declining performance. A certain amount of going back to the drawing board is required.
It just our sports scientists weren't as good this time round. Give 'em another cycle and a bit of CRISPR experience and we'll be there for LA. Just before the Chinese super men turn up in 2032.
As our Sunil demonstrated a while back, there is more than one plausible way to compile a medal table.
The classic way is to list by golds first, and use silver and bronze as tie-breakers. The US tends however to do it by total medals. That usually enhances their position (and ours too).
Another way is to award points per medal - e.g. Gold 5, Silver 3, Bronze 1. Sunil did this and again it flattered us and the US. You can sod about with the ratios too, in which case you might well want to allocate relatively more for golds, because they really are a lot more valuable than silver and bronze.
A more controversial method would be to allocate more weight to the high status events. Most people accept that Track and Field is the centrepiece of the games, so medals there could be scored higher, with maybe a bonus for blue riband events like the 100m sprint, 1500m and marathon. Swimming, cycling and rowing would be in the mid-range. You could deduct points for winning the breakdancing.
How do like it so far?
Personally I think it was a highly successful games - for Paris, for France, and for the GB team.
I'd go for:
Gold 4 Silver 2 Bronze 1
There's also expectations versus reality.
The silver in synchronised swimming seems to be better than yet another silver in the velodrome or athletics relays.
And then there are comparisons with other countries - the relative performance is much worse this year.
The British team finishes seventh on golds, fourth on silvers and second on bronzes. I think the general idea now is to pretend that winning stuff isn't really that important after all, and to celebrate how hard everyone tried instead.
Lots of countries win no medals at all, but one stands out as being western, wealthy, European, a fairly large population (over 5m) and a neighbour of ours: Finland. Anyone know why? No doubt they make up for it in the winter.
Can’t be arsed… Think when it comes down to it probably better to invest in stuff like education rather than elite sports?
That's the point of the lottery funding though. It removes the politics.
If the funding came from general taxation it wouldn't go to elite sports, or grassroots sports, or schools. It'd all get spaffed on bloody pensions and trying to stop the hospitals collapsing, just like any other spare coppers from down the back of Reeves's sofa.
It took Labour a few years to understand John Major’s intention. The lottery funding was for The Other Things. The ones that the tax money never gets to.
Tons of sports clubs up and down the land have a new clubhouse via the lottery funding. Or things like fixing up coastal paths.
Exactly. Funding for sports and arts would never win against schoolsnhospitals when it came to numbers on the Chancellor’s spreadsheet, so separating these things out and giving them their own, voluntary, source of funding, has improved them no end.
There’s no comparison between today’s Olympic team, and that of 1996. The lottery funds hundreds of athletes and coaches in elite amateur sports, and has paid for loads of new facilities over the past three decades, many of which benefit the wider community.
A 1% lead on the economy isn't really a huge margin for Harris though, especially given Hillary won the popular vote by 2% and lost still. It also depends in which swing states she has that lead or not
As our Sunil demonstrated a while back, there is more than one plausible way to compile a medal table.
The classic way is to list by golds first, and use silver and bronze as tie-breakers. The US tends however to do it by total medals. That usually enhances their position (and ours too).
Another way is to award points per medal - e.g. Gold 5, Silver 3, Bronze 1. Sunil did this and again it flattered us and the US. You can sod about with the ratios too, in which case you might well want to allocate relatively more for golds, because they really are a lot more valuable than silver and bronze.
A more controversial method would be to allocate more weight to the high status events. Most people accept that Track and Field is the centrepiece of the games, so medals there could be scored higher, with maybe a bonus for blue riband events like the 100m sprint, 1500m and marathon. Swimming, cycling and rowing would be in the mid-range. You could deduct points for winning the breakdancing.
How do like it so far?
Personally I think it was a highly successful games - for Paris, for France, and for the GB team.
I'd go for:
Gold 4 Silver 2 Bronze 1
There's also expectations versus reality.
The silver in synchronised swimming seems to be better than yet another silver in the velodrome or athletics relays.
And then there are comparisons with other countries - the relative performance is much worse this year.
The British team finishes seventh on golds, fourth on silvers and second on bronzes. I think the general idea now is to pretend that winning stuff isn't really that important after all, and to celebrate how hard everyone tried instead.
Lots of countries win no medals at all, but one stands out as being western, wealthy, European, a fairly large population (over 5m) and a neighbour of ours: Finland. Anyone know why? No doubt they make up for it in the winter.
Can’t be arsed… Think when it comes down to it probably better to invest in stuff like education rather than elite sports?
That's the point of the lottery funding though. It removes the politics.
If the funding came from general taxation it wouldn't go to elite sports, or grassroots sports, or schools. It'd all get spaffed on bloody pensions and trying to stop the hospitals collapsing, just like any other spare coppers from down the back of Reeves's sofa.
It took Labour a few years to understand John Major’s intention. The lottery funding was for The Other Things. The ones that the tax money never gets to.
Tons of sports clubs up and down the land have a new clubhouse via the lottery funding. Or things like fixing up coastal paths.
Exactly. Funding for sports and arts would never win against schoolsnhospitals when it came to numbers on the Chancellor’s spreadsheet, so separating these things out and giving them their own, voluntary, source of funding, has improved them no end.
There’s no comparison between today’s Olympic team, and that of 1996. The lottery funds hundreds of athletes and coaches in elite amateur sports, and has paid for loads of new facilities over the past three decades, many of which benefit the wider community.
Not to mention tons of stuff for small, local museums and the like up and down the land.
A 1% lead on the economy isn't really a huge margin for Harris though, especially given Hillary won the popular vote by 2% and lost still. It also depends in which swing states she has that lead or not
It is huge, because Democrats never ever lead on the economy. GOP always, have a huge lead on the issue.
As our Sunil demonstrated a while back, there is more than one plausible way to compile a medal table.
The classic way is to list by golds first, and use silver and bronze as tie-breakers. The US tends however to do it by total medals. That usually enhances their position (and ours too).
Another way is to award points per medal - e.g. Gold 5, Silver 3, Bronze 1. Sunil did this and again it flattered us and the US. You can sod about with the ratios too, in which case you might well want to allocate relatively more for golds, because they really are a lot more valuable than silver and bronze.
A more controversial method would be to allocate more weight to the high status events. Most people accept that Track and Field is the centrepiece of the games, so medals there could be scored higher, with maybe a bonus for blue riband events like the 100m sprint, 1500m and marathon. Swimming, cycling and rowing would be in the mid-range. You could deduct points for winning the breakdancing.
How do like it so far?
Personally I think it was a highly successful games - for Paris, for France, and for the GB team.
I'd go for:
Gold 4 Silver 2 Bronze 1
There's also expectations versus reality.
The silver in synchronised swimming seems to be better than yet another silver in the velodrome or athletics relays.
And then there are comparisons with other countries - the relative performance is much worse this year.
The British team finishes seventh on golds, fourth on silvers and second on bronzes. I think the general idea now is to pretend that winning stuff isn't really that important after all, and to celebrate how hard everyone tried instead.
Lots of countries win no medals at all, but one stands out as being western, wealthy, European, a fairly large population (over 5m) and a neighbour of ours: Finland. Anyone know why? No doubt they make up for it in the winter.
Can’t be arsed… Think when it comes down to it probably better to invest in stuff like education rather than elite sports?
That's the point of the lottery funding though. It removes the politics.
If the funding came from general taxation it wouldn't go to elite sports, or grassroots sports, or schools. It'd all get spaffed on bloody pensions and trying to stop the hospitals collapsing, just like any other spare coppers from down the back of Reeves's sofa.
It took Labour a few years to understand John Major’s intention. The lottery funding was for The Other Things. The ones that the tax money never gets to.
Tons of sports clubs up and down the land have a new clubhouse via the lottery funding. Or things like fixing up coastal paths.
Exactly. Funding for sports and arts would never win against schoolsnhospitals when it came to numbers on the Chancellor’s spreadsheet, so separating these things out and giving them their own, voluntary, source of funding, has improved them no end.
There’s no comparison between today’s Olympic team, and that of 1996. The lottery funds hundreds of athletes and coaches in elite amateur sports, and has paid for loads of new facilities over the past three decades, many of which benefit the wider community.
"THE GREATER GOOD!"
Sandford has a very low crime rate and wins the best Village Competition all the time.
A bit of an improvement on H&S and it will be perfect.
I SO want Humza Yousaf to sue Elon Musk. It would be like Alien v Predator except Predator is 200 times bigger
Genuinely brave by Yousaf if he tries
In what jurisdiction is he planning to sue him?
No idea. But surely the UK because we don’t have free speech anymore and we have much more onerous libel laws
The US passed specific legislation to ban any attempt at enforcing libel tourism judgements in the US.
This was after some U.K. law firms setup and attempted to use libel tourism in U.K. courts to claim that since anything on the Internet is seen in the U.K., anyone on the planet can sue here, get millions and get the truth suppressed.
The array of scum and villainy that was lining up to silence the New York Times etc was remarkable - the most attractive specimen was an international arms dealer, IIRC, who specialised in guns for blood diamonds.
It’s not tourism if the libel is about U.K. individuals. Published in the U.K. Which is the case.
No doubt any such case would be a shitshow, but Musk has lost in court before. Outside his engineering/business expertise, he has the judgment of a maladjusted teenager.
Currently the RCP EC states' poll average has Trump ahead still 287 EC votes to 251 for Harris.
Trump holds Ohio and Florida yes as well as North Carolina but also picks up Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona and Nevada of key swing states Biden won in 2020.
Re: the discussion on Team GB’s performance. In Rio and Tokyo we benefited from the well-known “recent host” bonus. Basically, when a company hosts the Olympics it puts a significant amount of effort into ensuring its team does well at home, and the same athletes tend to re-compete and do well at the games immediately after.
This time round, none of the British athletes were part of the cohort that competed in London 2012.l and performance has dropped back. In constrast, notice how Japan (hosts last time) have done better in Paris than their historical average.
We’ve still done much better than our typical performance in the 80s and 90s when normally only about 5 gold medals were won.
True but I think most people would regard athletics as the main event, and there we have been disappointing this time round, although if a couple of narrow silvers had gone our way...
Team GB got a lot of silver in the track and field, including some very narrow margins. On a different day, we could have won a lot of gold instead, but that’s the nature of the competition. The one gold we did get, from Keely Hodgkinson in the 800m, was a clear win.
A 1% lead on the economy isn't really a huge margin for Harris though, especially given Hillary won the popular vote by 2% and lost still. It also depends in which swing states she has that lead or not
Harris leading on the economy is massive when she leads on everything else and the economy was Trump's last straw to grasp to.
As our Sunil demonstrated a while back, there is more than one plausible way to compile a medal table.
The classic way is to list by golds first, and use silver and bronze as tie-breakers. The US tends however to do it by total medals. That usually enhances their position (and ours too).
Another way is to award points per medal - e.g. Gold 5, Silver 3, Bronze 1. Sunil did this and again it flattered us and the US. You can sod about with the ratios too, in which case you might well want to allocate relatively more for golds, because they really are a lot more valuable than silver and bronze.
A more controversial method would be to allocate more weight to the high status events. Most people accept that Track and Field is the centrepiece of the games, so medals there could be scored higher, with maybe a bonus for blue riband events like the 100m sprint, 1500m and marathon. Swimming, cycling and rowing would be in the mid-range. You could deduct points for winning the breakdancing.
How do like it so far?
Personally I think it was a highly successful games - for Paris, for France, and for the GB team.
I'd go for:
Gold 4 Silver 2 Bronze 1
There's also expectations versus reality.
The silver in synchronised swimming seems to be better than yet another silver in the velodrome or athletics relays.
And then there are comparisons with other countries - the relative performance is much worse this year.
The British team finishes seventh on golds, fourth on silvers and second on bronzes. I think the general idea now is to pretend that winning stuff isn't really that important after all, and to celebrate how hard everyone tried instead.
Team GB. Amongst the most successful losers in the world.
Think of the mountain of lottery tickets that were sacrificed to that end.
Edit: would make a good ski-jump in East London.
My original remarks may have been slightly churlish, but the skipload of bronzes does tell a story - as well as the outright collapses in performance in a variety of previously successful disciplines. As I've remarked previously, there'll be a number of sports governing bodies that are going to have their lotto loot cut drastically or removed at the end of all this.
Applauding effort is the correct approach for infants' school sports day or Parkrun, but elite level competition is a different matter. Celebrating near misses all the time is how you get the England football team and its extraordinary record of utter failure.
Quite often it's a smidgen of luck that separates the medals. For instance we'd have won another gold instead of bronze if our nag hadn't clipped the last with his hoof. Also you're at the mercy of judges in some events, and even events you're not - the skeet shooting for instance objectively that should have been a gold !
True, but that's the same with every sporting competition.
There were the same number of medals this time as in 2012, but then there were 29 wins and this time there were 29 third places. That's not down to hard luck, it's the result of declining performance. A certain amount of going back to the drawing board is required.
London 2012: 541 GB athletes, home advantage, 65 medals. Paris 2024: 327 GB athletes, playing away at the home of our historic foe, 65 medals.
Humza Yousaf is threatening to sue Elon Musk, on TwiX, for calling him a racist
THAT would be entertaining. Musk is continuously goading him
Yousaf is an irrelevence. He’s had his 15 minutes.
It would be like the Al Fayed-Hamilton court case. You’d want neither side to win.
I don’t know how it works - sueing a foreigner for libel. Especially a trillionaire American with first amendment protection
Is Musk even obliged to defend himself? Can’t he just ignore it?
Yes. On the other hand, if Yousaf lent his voice to backing the campaign to boycott Tesla cars, that might have some potential to make Musk sit up and take notice, as there's real potential for such a campaign to take off with a bit of prominent backing here and there.
Yousaf is a nobody that about 95% of Brits couldn't care less about.
I suspect even most Scottish independence supporters don't care about Yousaf.
In that case why is Fashy Elon (and sundry other edge lordlings) still whining about him?
A 1% lead on the economy isn't really a huge margin for Harris though, especially given Hillary won the popular vote by 2% and lost still. It also depends in which swing states she has that lead or not
Harris leading on the economy is massive when she leads on everything else and the economy was Trump's last straw to grasp to.
She doesn't lead on immigration and the border where Trump is clearly ahead
A 1% lead on the economy isn't really a huge margin for Harris though, especially given Hillary won the popular vote by 2% and lost still. It also depends in which swing states she has that lead or not
It is huge, because Democrats never ever lead on the economy. GOP always, have a huge lead on the issue.
No they don't, Obama had a big lead on the economy in 2008 for instance and Biden clearly led on the economy in 2020
I SO want Humza Yousaf to sue Elon Musk. It would be like Alien v Predator except Predator is 200 times bigger
Genuinely brave by Yousaf if he tries
In what jurisdiction is he planning to sue him?
No idea. But surely the UK because we don’t have free speech anymore and we have much more onerous libel laws
The US passed specific legislation to ban any attempt at enforcing libel tourism judgements in the US.
This was after some U.K. law firms setup and attempted to use libel tourism in U.K. courts to claim that since anything on the Internet is seen in the U.K., anyone on the planet can sue here, get millions and get the truth suppressed.
The array of scum and villainy that was lining up to silence the New York Times etc was remarkable - the most attractive specimen was an international arms dealer, IIRC, who specialised in guns for blood diamonds.
It’s not tourism if the libel is about U.K. individuals. Published in the U.K. Which is the case.
No doubt any such case would be a shitshow, but Musk has lost in court before. Outside his engineering/business expertise, he has the judgment of a maladjusted teenager.
What was banned, was any attempt to enforce a libel judgement from outside the US.
So what would we like to see ditched from the Olympics. In no particular order:
Football Rugby Tennis Golf Basketball
Perhaps questions should be asked about "cluster" events, where one individual wins more than one gold. We see this in gymnastics, cycling, rowing and especially swimming, but even in athletics, often the same runners win 100 and 200 metres, or 800 and 1500, or 5,000 and 10,000.
So what would we like to see ditched from the Olympics. In no particular order:
Football Rugby Tennis Golf Basketball
Anything for which the Olympics isn’t the absolute pinnacle of their sport, the one title everyone competing wants to win more than any other.
If they’re going to keep sports like tennis and golf, make the Olympics for amateurs not professionals, boxing does this really well. There’s really no justification for including the professional team sports.
A 1% lead on the economy isn't really a huge margin for Harris though, especially given Hillary won the popular vote by 2% and lost still. It also depends in which swing states she has that lead or not
It is huge, because Democrats never ever lead on the economy. GOP always, have a huge lead on the issue.
No they don't, Obama had a big lead on the economy in 2008 for instance and Biden clearly led on the economy in 2020
That's not strictly true.
From October 2020, there were enough polls showing Trump ahead of Biden on the economy.
So what would we like to see ditched from the Olympics. In no particular order:
Football Rugby Tennis Golf Basketball
Anything for which the Olympics isn’t the absolute pinnacle of their sport, the one title everyone competing wants to win more than any other.
If they’re going to keep sports like tennis and golf, make the Olympics for amateurs not professionals, boxing does this really well. There’s really no justification for including the professional team sports.
In fairness, for Tennis the Olympics are like the 5th grand slam - it clearly meant a lot to Djokovic
Currently the RCP EC states' poll average has Trump ahead still 287 EC votes to 251 for Harris.
Trump holds Ohio and Florida yes as well as North Carolina but also picks up Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona and Nevada of key swing states Biden won in 2020.
So what would we like to see ditched from the Olympics. In no particular order:
Football Rugby Tennis Golf Basketball
Anything for which the Olympics isn’t the absolute pinnacle of their sport, the one title everyone competing wants to win more than any other.
If they’re going to keep sports like tennis and golf, make the Olympics for amateurs not professionals, boxing does this really well. There’s really no justification for including the professional team sports.
A situation which will worsen in LA with cricket joining the list of sports
So what would we like to see ditched from the Olympics. In no particular order:
Football Rugby Tennis Golf Basketball
Anything for which the Olympics isn’t the absolute pinnacle of their sport, the one title everyone competing wants to win more than any other.
If they’re going to keep sports like tennis and golf, make the Olympics for amateurs not professionals, boxing does this really well. There’s really no justification for including the professional team sports.
A situation which will worsen in LA with cricket joining the list of sports
T20 is there to encourage India to invest in sport...
Re: the discussion on Team GB’s performance. In Rio and Tokyo we benefited from the well-known “recent host” bonus. Basically, when a company hosts the Olympics it puts a significant amount of effort into ensuring its team does well at home, and the same athletes tend to re-compete and do well at the games immediately after.
This time round, none of the British athletes were part of the cohort that competed in London 2012.l and performance has dropped back. In constrast, notice how Japan (hosts last time) have done better in Paris than their historical average.
We’ve still done much better than our typical performance in the 80s and 90s when normally only about 5 gold medals were won.
True but I think most people would regard athletics as the main event, and there we have been disappointing this time round, although if a couple of narrow silvers had gone our way...
Athletics was actually one of the better disciplines this time. There were issues with a couple of near misses and face plants from the more capable entrants, but everyone else also got so comprehensively steamrollered by the United States that ending up with three gold medals rather than one would've looked like a superlative performance. Unfortunately it's Los Angeles coming next so they're going to have to work very hard indeed for further improvement.
Rowing and equestrian both did quite well, and the lotto chiefs could do worse than throw a bit more money at the diving team and see if they can work out how to get close to the Chinese. We know how the young lad did in sport climbing and his female counterpart wasn't a million miles from getting a medal either, so they'll probably attract some more support as well. On the flip side, swimming and cycling both went seriously into reverse. Sailing only got a partial reprieve from the kite surfer and the combat sports had an absolute stinker. A special award for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory must also go to the men's hockey team for their heroically bad quarter final faceplant against India. A truly excruciating fuck up to rival the footballers getting stuffed by Iceland in Euro 2016.
So what would we like to see ditched from the Olympics. In no particular order:
Football Rugby Tennis Golf Basketball
Perhaps questions should be asked about "cluster" events, where one individual wins more than one gold. We see this in gymnastics, cycling, rowing and especially swimming, but even in athletics, often the same runners win 100 and 200 metres, or 800 and 1500, or 5,000 and 10,000.
The IOC are cutting the lightweight category for rowing.
So what would we like to see ditched from the Olympics. In no particular order:
Football Rugby Tennis Golf Basketball
Boxing.
Boxing is off the list for Los Angeles. Seems it pissed off the IOC once too often.
Is boxing officially off or is the IOC still casting around for a boxing governing body after it sacked the Russia-dominated IBA?
Trouble with Los Angeles is they are introducing a bunch of American-only sports: softball, baseball and flag (American) football, along with squash and lacrosse. (They are also scheduling the athletics in week one, followed by swimming, rather than the other way round which is usual.)
A 1% lead on the economy isn't really a huge margin for Harris though, especially given Hillary won the popular vote by 2% and lost still. It also depends in which swing states she has that lead or not
Harris leading on the economy is massive when she leads on everything else and the economy was Trump's last straw to grasp to.
She doesn't lead on immigration and the border where Trump is clearly ahead
How did you manage to paint yourself into the only-Trump-supporter-on-PB corner?
So what would we like to see ditched from the Olympics. In no particular order:
Football Rugby Tennis Golf Basketball
Anything for which the Olympics isn’t the absolute pinnacle of their sport, the one title everyone competing wants to win more than any other.
If they’re going to keep sports like tennis and golf, make the Olympics for amateurs not professionals, boxing does this really well. There’s really no justification for including the professional team sports.
A situation which will worsen in LA with cricket joining the list of sports
T20 is there to encourage India to invest in sport...
Population 1.4 billion, ZERO Gold, 1 Silver, 5 Bronze...
So what would we like to see ditched from the Olympics. In no particular order:
Football Rugby Tennis Golf Basketball
Anything for which the Olympics isn’t the absolute pinnacle of their sport, the one title everyone competing wants to win more than any other.
If they’re going to keep sports like tennis and golf, make the Olympics for amateurs not professionals, boxing does this really well. There’s really no justification for including the professional team sports.
A situation which will worsen in LA with cricket joining the list of sports
Indeed, it makes no sense except to try and encourage India to win a medal in something.
I’ll add to the ban list, anything that can’t be objectively measured. I mean it was fun to watch girls dancing with hoops and balls and clubs and ribbons, and they obviously practiced loads to do it - but it’s really not a sport.
A 1% lead on the economy isn't really a huge margin for Harris though, especially given Hillary won the popular vote by 2% and lost still. It also depends in which swing states she has that lead or not
Harris leading on the economy is massive when she leads on everything else and the economy was Trump's last straw to grasp to.
She doesn't lead on immigration and the border where Trump is clearly ahead
How did you manage to paint yourself into the only-Trump-supporter-on-PB corner?
Because
Here's What Meghan Markle Said About Kamala Harris Back in 2020
"I'm so excited to see that kind of representation," the Duchess of Sussex said.
As our Sunil demonstrated a while back, there is more than one plausible way to compile a medal table.
The classic way is to list by golds first, and use silver and bronze as tie-breakers. The US tends however to do it by total medals. That usually enhances their position (and ours too).
Another way is to award points per medal - e.g. Gold 5, Silver 3, Bronze 1. Sunil did this and again it flattered us and the US. You can sod about with the ratios too, in which case you might well want to allocate relatively more for golds, because they really are a lot more valuable than silver and bronze.
A more controversial method would be to allocate more weight to the high status events. Most people accept that Track and Field is the centrepiece of the games, so medals there could be scored higher, with maybe a bonus for blue riband events like the 100m sprint, 1500m and marathon. Swimming, cycling and rowing would be in the mid-range. You could deduct points for winning the breakdancing.
How do like it so far?
Personally I think it was a highly successful games - for Paris, for France, and for the GB team.
I'd go for:
Gold 4 Silver 2 Bronze 1
There's also expectations versus reality.
The silver in synchronised swimming seems to be better than yet another silver in the velodrome or athletics relays.
And then there are comparisons with other countries - the relative performance is much worse this year.
The British team finishes seventh on golds, fourth on silvers and second on bronzes. I think the general idea now is to pretend that winning stuff isn't really that important after all, and to celebrate how hard everyone tried instead.
Team GB. Amongst the most successful losers in the world.
Think of the mountain of lottery tickets that were sacrificed to that end.
Edit: would make a good ski-jump in East London.
My original remarks may have been slightly churlish, but the skipload of bronzes does tell a story - as well as the outright collapses in performance in a variety of previously successful disciplines. As I've remarked previously, there'll be a number of sports governing bodies that are going to have their lotto loot cut drastically or removed at the end of all this.
Applauding effort is the correct approach for infants' school sports day or Parkrun, but elite level competition is a different matter. Celebrating near misses all the time is how you get the England football team and its extraordinary record of utter failure.
Quite often it's a smidgen of luck that separates the medals. For instance we'd have won another gold instead of bronze if our nag hadn't clipped the last with his hoof. Also you're at the mercy of judges in some events, and even events you're not - the skeet shooting for instance objectively that should have been a gold !
True, but that's the same with every sporting competition.
There were the same number of medals this time as in 2012, but then there were 29 wins and this time there were 29 third places. That's not down to hard luck, it's the result of declining performance. A certain amount of going back to the drawing board is required.
London 2012: 541 GB athletes, home advantage, 65 medals. Paris 2024: 327 GB athletes, playing away at the home of our historic foe, 65 medals.
So what would we like to see ditched from the Olympics. In no particular order:
Football Rugby Tennis Golf Basketball
Boxing.
Boxing is off the list for Los Angeles. Seems it pissed off the IOC once too often.
Is boxing officially off or is the IOC still casting around for a boxing governing body after it sacked the Russia-dominated IBA?
Trouble with Los Angeles is they are introducing a bunch of American-only sports: softball, baseball and flag (American) football, along with squash and lacrosse. (They are also scheduling the athletics in week one, followed by swimming, rather than the other way round which is usual.)
The French missed an opportunity to introduce boules, complete with copious red wine, baguettes and Brie. GB would have had a good chance in that.
As our Sunil demonstrated a while back, there is more than one plausible way to compile a medal table.
The classic way is to list by golds first, and use silver and bronze as tie-breakers. The US tends however to do it by total medals. That usually enhances their position (and ours too).
Another way is to award points per medal - e.g. Gold 5, Silver 3, Bronze 1. Sunil did this and again it flattered us and the US. You can sod about with the ratios too, in which case you might well want to allocate relatively more for golds, because they really are a lot more valuable than silver and bronze.
A more controversial method would be to allocate more weight to the high status events. Most people accept that Track and Field is the centrepiece of the games, so medals there could be scored higher, with maybe a bonus for blue riband events like the 100m sprint, 1500m and marathon. Swimming, cycling and rowing would be in the mid-range. You could deduct points for winning the breakdancing.
How do like it so far?
Personally I think it was a highly successful games - for Paris, for France, and for the GB team.
I'd go for:
Gold 4 Silver 2 Bronze 1
There's also expectations versus reality.
The silver in synchronised swimming seems to be better than yet another silver in the velodrome or athletics relays.
And then there are comparisons with other countries - the relative performance is much worse this year.
The British team finishes seventh on golds, fourth on silvers and second on bronzes. I think the general idea now is to pretend that winning stuff isn't really that important after all, and to celebrate how hard everyone tried instead.
Team GB. Amongst the most successful losers in the world.
Think of the mountain of lottery tickets that were sacrificed to that end.
Edit: would make a good ski-jump in East London.
My original remarks may have been slightly churlish, but the skipload of bronzes does tell a story - as well as the outright collapses in performance in a variety of previously successful disciplines. As I've remarked previously, there'll be a number of sports governing bodies that are going to have their lotto loot cut drastically or removed at the end of all this.
Applauding effort is the correct approach for infants' school sports day or Parkrun, but elite level competition is a different matter. Celebrating near misses all the time is how you get the England football team and its extraordinary record of utter failure.
Quite often it's a smidgen of luck that separates the medals. For instance we'd have won another gold instead of bronze if our nag hadn't clipped the last with his hoof. Also you're at the mercy of judges in some events, and even events you're not - the skeet shooting for instance objectively that should have been a gold !
True, but that's the same with every sporting competition.
There were the same number of medals this time as in 2012, but then there were 29 wins and this time there were 29 third places. That's not down to hard luck, it's the result of declining performance. A certain amount of going back to the drawing board is required.
London 2012: 541 GB athletes, home advantage, 65 medals. Paris 2024: 327 GB athletes, playing away at the home of our historic foe, 65 medals.
Not too shabby imo.
This is just like Southgate being deemed a crap coach for taking England to TWO successive Euro finals, and a World semi.
As our Sunil demonstrated a while back, there is more than one plausible way to compile a medal table.
The classic way is to list by golds first, and use silver and bronze as tie-breakers. The US tends however to do it by total medals. That usually enhances their position (and ours too).
Another way is to award points per medal - e.g. Gold 5, Silver 3, Bronze 1. Sunil did this and again it flattered us and the US. You can sod about with the ratios too, in which case you might well want to allocate relatively more for golds, because they really are a lot more valuable than silver and bronze.
A more controversial method would be to allocate more weight to the high status events. Most people accept that Track and Field is the centrepiece of the games, so medals there could be scored higher, with maybe a bonus for blue riband events like the 100m sprint, 1500m and marathon. Swimming, cycling and rowing would be in the mid-range. You could deduct points for winning the breakdancing.
How do like it so far?
Personally I think it was a highly successful games - for Paris, for France, and for the GB team.
I'd go for:
Gold 4 Silver 2 Bronze 1
There's also expectations versus reality.
The silver in synchronised swimming seems to be better than yet another silver in the velodrome or athletics relays.
And then there are comparisons with other countries - the relative performance is much worse this year.
The British team finishes seventh on golds, fourth on silvers and second on bronzes. I think the general idea now is to pretend that winning stuff isn't really that important after all, and to celebrate how hard everyone tried instead.
Team GB. Amongst the most successful losers in the world.
Think of the mountain of lottery tickets that were sacrificed to that end.
Edit: would make a good ski-jump in East London.
My original remarks may have been slightly churlish, but the skipload of bronzes does tell a story - as well as the outright collapses in performance in a variety of previously successful disciplines. As I've remarked previously, there'll be a number of sports governing bodies that are going to have their lotto loot cut drastically or removed at the end of all this.
Applauding effort is the correct approach for infants' school sports day or Parkrun, but elite level competition is a different matter. Celebrating near misses all the time is how you get the England football team and its extraordinary record of utter failure.
Quite often it's a smidgen of luck that separates the medals. For instance we'd have won another gold instead of bronze if our nag hadn't clipped the last with his hoof. Also you're at the mercy of judges in some events, and even events you're not - the skeet shooting for instance objectively that should have been a gold !
True, but that's the same with every sporting competition.
There were the same number of medals this time as in 2012, but then there were 29 wins and this time there were 29 third places. That's not down to hard luck, it's the result of declining performance. A certain amount of going back to the drawing board is required.
London 2012: 541 GB athletes, home advantage, 65 medals. Paris 2024: 327 GB athletes, playing away at the home of our historic foe, 65 medals.
Not too shabby imo.
Not that I have particularly followed the Olympics, catching only the odd highlights, but it is a bit churlish and entitled to complain about the medal haul. It's a highly respectable number of wins, and near misses for pinnacle events and we are not a very big country, even if we did invent and codify most sports.
A 1% lead on the economy isn't really a huge margin for Harris though, especially given Hillary won the popular vote by 2% and lost still. It also depends in which swing states she has that lead or not
It is huge, because Democrats never ever lead on the economy. GOP always, have a huge lead on the issue.
No they don't, Obama had a big lead on the economy in 2008 for instance and Biden clearly led on the economy in 2020
Obama 2008 and Biden 2020 were both challengers.
And Romney 2012 and Trump 2016 were also challengers if they were leading on the economy.
By that pattern Trump 2020 should be leading on the economy being the challenger.
So what would we like to see ditched from the Olympics. In no particular order:
Football Rugby Tennis Golf Basketball
Boxing.
Boxing is off the list for Los Angeles. Seems it pissed off the IOC once too often.
Is boxing officially off or is the IOC still casting around for a boxing governing body after it sacked the Russia-dominated IBA?
Trouble with Los Angeles is they are introducing a bunch of American-only sports: softball, baseball and flag (American) football, along with squash and lacrosse. (They are also scheduling the athletics in week one, followed by swimming, rather than the other way round which is usual.)
The French missed an opportunity to introduce boules, complete with copious red wine, baguettes and Brie. GB would have had a good chance in that.
If consumption of red wine, baguettes, and. Brie, is to be an Olympic sport, I might put myself forward for Team GB consideration in LA.
On medals, I'm interested in the -6 on cycling golds, and why the total is so low.
I think the absence of Charlotte Dujardin the horse dancer, after whipping her horse abusively (24 strokes in one minute), may be significant. She has 3 golds, 1 silver and 2 bronzes from the last 3 Olympics.
On the cycling, I think two points:
1 - I get the impression that the training regime is marginally less hard charging than previously, although it is also the case that other countries have had 15-20 years to catch up since we really started getting our edge in 2004.
2 - I'm interested in whether our poisonous road culture, which is notably worse than most others in Western Europe in attitudes, has any long term impact on participation.
I haven't been able to find enough data to inform on this one (I suspect this impacts at this time more on wider professional cycling and where they choose to base), yet it is only 9 weeks since Kate Richardson had to withdraw from the Womens Tour de France after a driver of a 4x4 left her with a fractured scapula after hitting her when squeezing past on a 4m wide country lane near Holmfirth.
So what would we like to see ditched from the Olympics. In no particular order:
Football Rugby Tennis Golf Basketball
Boxing.
Boxing is off the list for Los Angeles. Seems it pissed off the IOC once too often.
Is boxing officially off or is the IOC still casting around for a boxing governing body after it sacked the Russia-dominated IBA?
Trouble with Los Angeles is they are introducing a bunch of American-only sports: softball, baseball and flag (American) football, along with squash and lacrosse. (They are also scheduling the athletics in week one, followed by swimming, rather than the other way round which is usual.)
One gets the impression they want to save boxing and it's all to do with the governing body problem.
The American sports are there as part of a programme of including optional events to encourage local interest, although why in the name of God the Paris organising committee picked break dancing rather than, say, boules, artistic Gallic shrugging or maybe synchronised slow motion tractor driving is beyond me.
So what would we like to see ditched from the Olympics. In no particular order:
Football Rugby Tennis Golf Basketball
Boxing.
Boxing is off the list for Los Angeles. Seems it pissed off the IOC once too often.
Is boxing officially off or is the IOC still casting around for a boxing governing body after it sacked the Russia-dominated IBA?
Trouble with Los Angeles is they are introducing a bunch of American-only sports: softball, baseball and flag (American) football, along with squash and lacrosse. (They are also scheduling the athletics in week one, followed by swimming, rather than the other way round which is usual.)
The French missed an opportunity to introduce boules, complete with copious red wine, baguettes and Brie. GB would have had a good chance in that.
If consumption of red wine, baguettes, and. Brie, is to be an Olympic sport, I might put myself forward for Team GB consideration in LA.
On medals, I'm interested in the -6 on cycling golds, and why the total is so low.
I think the absence of Charlotte Dujardin the horse dancer, after whipping her horse abusively (24 strokes in one minute), may be significant. She has 3 golds, 1 silver and 2 bronzes from the last 3 Olympics.
On the cycling, I think two points:
1 - I get the impression that the training regime is marginally less hard charging than previously, although it is also the case that other countries have had 15-20 years to catch up since we really started getting our edge in 2004.
2 - I'm interested in whether our poisonous road culture, which is notably worse than most others in Western Europe in attitudes, has any long term impact on participation.
I haven't been able to find enough data to inform on this one (I suspect this impacts at this time more on wider professional cycling and where they choose to base), yet it is only 9 weeks since Kate Richardson had to withdraw from the Womens Tour de France after a driver of a 4x4 left her with a fractured scapula after hitting her when squeezing past on a 4m wide country lane near Holmfirth.
I suspect we had a golden age of cyclists of whom the Kennys were the last.
The loss of Katie Archibald was also a blow.
What seemed worrying in that in the distance events the GB team were nowhere in both Omniums and the Men's Madison. And didn't seem to have a clue as to how to get into them.
So what would we like to see ditched from the Olympics. In no particular order:
Football Rugby Tennis Golf Basketball
Boxing.
Boxing is off the list for Los Angeles. Seems it pissed off the IOC once too often.
Is boxing officially off or is the IOC still casting around for a boxing governing body after it sacked the Russia-dominated IBA?
Trouble with Los Angeles is they are introducing a bunch of American-only sports: softball, baseball and flag (American) football, along with squash and lacrosse. (They are also scheduling the athletics in week one, followed by swimming, rather than the other way round which is usual.)
One gets the impression they want to save boxing and it's all to do with the governing body problem.
The American sports are there as part of a programme of including optional events to encourage local interest, although why in the name of God the Paris organising committee picked break dancing rather than, say, boules, artistic Gallic shrugging or maybe synchronised slow motion tractor driving is beyond me.
Boxing is a great Olympic sport, one of the original sports from a century ago and the pinnacle of the amateur competition - but the organisation and governance is a total mess, and they probably need a timeout to sort themselves out.
On medals, I'm interested in the -6 on cycling golds, and why the total is so low.
I think the absence of Charlotte Dujardin the horse dancer, after whipping her horse abusively (24 strokes in one minute), may be significant. She has 3 golds, 1 silver and 2 bronzes from the last 3 Olympics.
On the cycling, I think two points:
1 - I get the impression that the training regime is marginally less hard charging than previously, although it is also the case that other countries have had 15-20 years to catch up since we really started getting our edge in 2004.
2 - I'm interested in whether our poisonous road culture, which is notably worse than most others in Western Europe in attitudes, has any long term impact on participation.
I haven't been able to find enough data to inform on this one (I suspect this impacts at this time more on wider professional cycling and where they choose to base), yet it is only 9 weeks since Kate Richardson had to withdraw from the Womens Tour de France after a driver of a 4x4 left her with a fractured scapula after hitting her when squeezing past on a 4m wide country lane near Holmfirth.
The equestrian team quickly relegated the Dujardin controversy with a slew of good performances. Cycling was much more problematic. There were two defending champions in BMX events who both faceplanted, the best track cyclist did herself a mischief in a freak gardening accident and never made the Games, and the rest of it is down to a combination of the rest of the world catching up and some under performances. Essentially, quite a lot went wrong and, whilst it's probably not reasonable to expect further repetitions of the run of performances the track cycling team put together in London, one gold medal from twelve events in the velodrome can't be counted as anything other than a real disappointment.
On medals, I'm interested in the -6 on cycling golds, and why the total is so low.
I think the absence of Charlotte Dujardin the horse dancer, after whipping her horse abusively (24 strokes in one minute), may be significant. She has 3 golds, 1 silver and 2 bronzes from the last 3 Olympics.
On the cycling, I think two points:
1 - I get the impression that the training regime is marginally less hard charging than previously, although it is also the case that other countries have had 15-20 years to catch up since we really started getting our edge in 2004.
2 - I'm interested in whether our poisonous road culture, which is notably worse than most others in Western Europe in attitudes, has any long term impact on participation.
I haven't been able to find enough data to inform on this one (I suspect this impacts at this time more on wider professional cycling and where they choose to base), yet it is only 9 weeks since Kate Richardson had to withdraw from the Womens Tour de France after a driver of a 4x4 left her with a fractured scapula after hitting her when squeezing past on a 4m wide country lane near Holmfirth.
Do you think our "poisonous road culture" didn't exist 10 to 20 years ago?
So what would we like to see ditched from the Olympics. In no particular order:
Football Rugby Tennis Golf Basketball
Boxing.
Boxing is off the list for Los Angeles. Seems it pissed off the IOC once too often.
Is boxing officially off or is the IOC still casting around for a boxing governing body after it sacked the Russia-dominated IBA?
Trouble with Los Angeles is they are introducing a bunch of American-only sports: softball, baseball and flag (American) football, along with squash and lacrosse. (They are also scheduling the athletics in week one, followed by swimming, rather than the other way round which is usual.)
The French missed an opportunity to introduce boules, complete with copious red wine, baguettes and Brie. GB would have had a good chance in that.
If consumption of red wine, baguettes, and. Brie, is to be an Olympic sport, I might put myself forward for Team GB consideration in LA.
No Synchronised Trainspotting then?
Cancelled due to the wrong sort of leaves on the line.
So what would we like to see ditched from the Olympics. In no particular order:
Football Rugby Tennis Golf Basketball
Boxing.
Boxing is off the list for Los Angeles. Seems it pissed off the IOC once too often.
Is boxing officially off or is the IOC still casting around for a boxing governing body after it sacked the Russia-dominated IBA?
Trouble with Los Angeles is they are introducing a bunch of American-only sports: softball, baseball and flag (American) football, along with squash and lacrosse. (They are also scheduling the athletics in week one, followed by swimming, rather than the other way round which is usual.)
The French missed an opportunity to introduce boules, complete with copious red wine, baguettes and Brie. GB would have had a good chance in that.
If consumption of red wine, baguettes, and. Brie, is to be an Olympic sport, I might put myself forward for Team GB consideration in LA.
No Synchronised Trainspotting then?
Cancelled due to the wrong sort of leaves on the line.
A 1% lead on the economy isn't really a huge margin for Harris though, especially given Hillary won the popular vote by 2% and lost still. It also depends in which swing states she has that lead or not
Harris leading on the economy is massive when she leads on everything else and the economy was Trump's last straw to grasp to.
She doesn't lead on immigration and the border where Trump is clearly ahead
How did you manage to paint yourself into the only-Trump-supporter-on-PB corner?
I'm not particularly, I would have voted for Hillary and Biden over Trump and there are some on here like LuckyGuy and Sandpit and Darkage more pro Trump than me. However Harris is too liberal left for me, I would certainly have voted for Haley over her but as I am not American I don't get a vote anyway
So what would we like to see ditched from the Olympics. In no particular order:
Football Rugby Tennis Golf Basketball
Boxing.
Boxing is off the list for Los Angeles. Seems it pissed off the IOC once too often.
Is boxing officially off or is the IOC still casting around for a boxing governing body after it sacked the Russia-dominated IBA?
Trouble with Los Angeles is they are introducing a bunch of American-only sports: softball, baseball and flag (American) football, along with squash and lacrosse. (They are also scheduling the athletics in week one, followed by swimming, rather than the other way round which is usual.)
The French missed an opportunity to introduce boules, complete with copious red wine, baguettes and Brie. GB would have had a good chance in that.
If consumption of red wine, baguettes, and. Brie, is to be an Olympic sport, I might put myself forward for Team GB consideration in LA.
Even if you fail to make the team, the qualifiers should be fun.
As our Sunil demonstrated a while back, there is more than one plausible way to compile a medal table.
The classic way is to list by golds first, and use silver and bronze as tie-breakers. The US tends however to do it by total medals. That usually enhances their position (and ours too).
Another way is to award points per medal - e.g. Gold 5, Silver 3, Bronze 1. Sunil did this and again it flattered us and the US. You can sod about with the ratios too, in which case you might well want to allocate relatively more for golds, because they really are a lot more valuable than silver and bronze.
A more controversial method would be to allocate more weight to the high status events. Most people accept that Track and Field is the centrepiece of the games, so medals there could be scored higher, with maybe a bonus for blue riband events like the 100m sprint, 1500m and marathon. Swimming, cycling and rowing would be in the mid-range. You could deduct points for winning the breakdancing.
How do like it so far?
Personally I think it was a highly successful games - for Paris, for France, and for the GB team.
I'd go for:
Gold 4 Silver 2 Bronze 1
There's also expectations versus reality.
The silver in synchronised swimming seems to be better than yet another silver in the velodrome or athletics relays.
And then there are comparisons with other countries - the relative performance is much worse this year.
The British team finishes seventh on golds, fourth on silvers and second on bronzes. I think the general idea now is to pretend that winning stuff isn't really that important after all, and to celebrate how hard everyone tried instead.
Team GB. Amongst the most successful losers in the world.
Think of the mountain of lottery tickets that were sacrificed to that end.
Edit: would make a good ski-jump in East London.
My original remarks may have been slightly churlish, but the skipload of bronzes does tell a story - as well as the outright collapses in performance in a variety of previously successful disciplines. As I've remarked previously, there'll be a number of sports governing bodies that are going to have their lotto loot cut drastically or removed at the end of all this.
Applauding effort is the correct approach for infants' school sports day or Parkrun, but elite level competition is a different matter. Celebrating near misses all the time is how you get the England football team and its extraordinary record of utter failure.
Those in charge of dishing out the lottery money are known for being pretty ruthless with both sports and athletes, when it comes to renewal of funding after each Games. Anyone older than about 20 who isn’t coming home from Paris with a medal, is likely to find themselves defunded and needing to find their own sponsors if they want to be in Los Angeles. It’s a brutal industry if you’re not winning.
So what would we like to see ditched from the Olympics. In no particular order:
Football Rugby Tennis Golf Basketball
Boxing.
Boxing is off the list for Los Angeles. Seems it pissed off the IOC once too often.
Is boxing officially off or is the IOC still casting around for a boxing governing body after it sacked the Russia-dominated IBA?
Trouble with Los Angeles is they are introducing a bunch of American-only sports: softball, baseball and flag (American) football, along with squash and lacrosse. (They are also scheduling the athletics in week one, followed by swimming, rather than the other way round which is usual.)
The French missed an opportunity to introduce boules, complete with copious red wine, baguettes and Brie. GB would have had a good chance in that.
If consumption of red wine, baguettes, and. Brie, is to be an Olympic sport, I might put myself forward for Team GB consideration in LA.
No Synchronised Trainspotting then?
Cancelled due to the wrong sort of leaves on the line.
Currently the RCP EC states' poll average has Trump ahead still 287 EC votes to 251 for Harris.
Trump holds Ohio and Florida yes as well as North Carolina but also picks up Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona and Nevada of key swing states Biden won in 2020.
So what would we like to see ditched from the Olympics. In no particular order:
Football Rugby Tennis Golf Basketball
Boxing.
Boxing is off the list for Los Angeles. Seems it pissed off the IOC once too often.
Is boxing officially off or is the IOC still casting around for a boxing governing body after it sacked the Russia-dominated IBA?
Trouble with Los Angeles is they are introducing a bunch of American-only sports: softball, baseball and flag (American) football, along with squash and lacrosse. (They are also scheduling the athletics in week one, followed by swimming, rather than the other way round which is usual.)
The French missed an opportunity to introduce boules, complete with copious red wine, baguettes and Brie. GB would have had a good chance in that.
If consumption of red wine, baguettes, and. Brie, is to be an Olympic sport, I might put myself forward for Team GB consideration in LA.
No Synchronised Trainspotting then?
Cancelled due to the wrong sort of leaves on the line.
Wrong sort of Leavers, shurely?
What points are you trying to signal?
I don't know, but I think we're getting switched off track, so I'll stop.
As our Sunil demonstrated a while back, there is more than one plausible way to compile a medal table.
The classic way is to list by golds first, and use silver and bronze as tie-breakers. The US tends however to do it by total medals. That usually enhances their position (and ours too).
Another way is to award points per medal - e.g. Gold 5, Silver 3, Bronze 1. Sunil did this and again it flattered us and the US. You can sod about with the ratios too, in which case you might well want to allocate relatively more for golds, because they really are a lot more valuable than silver and bronze.
A more controversial method would be to allocate more weight to the high status events. Most people accept that Track and Field is the centrepiece of the games, so medals there could be scored higher, with maybe a bonus for blue riband events like the 100m sprint, 1500m and marathon. Swimming, cycling and rowing would be in the mid-range. You could deduct points for winning the breakdancing.
How do like it so far?
Personally I think it was a highly successful games - for Paris, for France, and for the GB team.
I'd go for:
Gold 4 Silver 2 Bronze 1
There's also expectations versus reality.
The silver in synchronised swimming seems to be better than yet another silver in the velodrome or athletics relays.
And then there are comparisons with other countries - the relative performance is much worse this year.
The British team finishes seventh on golds, fourth on silvers and second on bronzes. I think the general idea now is to pretend that winning stuff isn't really that important after all, and to celebrate how hard everyone tried instead.
Team GB. Amongst the most successful losers in the world.
Think of the mountain of lottery tickets that were sacrificed to that end.
Edit: would make a good ski-jump in East London.
My original remarks may have been slightly churlish, but the skipload of bronzes does tell a story - as well as the outright collapses in performance in a variety of previously successful disciplines. As I've remarked previously, there'll be a number of sports governing bodies that are going to have their lotto loot cut drastically or removed at the end of all this.
Applauding effort is the correct approach for infants' school sports day or Parkrun, but elite level competition is a different matter. Celebrating near misses all the time is how you get the England football team and its extraordinary record of utter failure.
Those in charge of dishing out the lottery money are known for being pretty ruthless with both sports and athletes, when it comes to renewal of funding after each Games. Anyone older than about 20 who isn’t coming home from Paris with a medal, is likely to find themselves defunded and needing to find their own sponsors if they want to be in Los Angeles. It’s a brutal industry if you’re not winning.
Comments
I suspect even most Scottish independence supporters don't care about Yousaf.
This was after some U.K. law firms setup and attempted to use libel tourism in U.K. courts to claim that since anything on the Internet is seen in the U.K., anyone on the planet can sue here, get millions and get the truth suppressed.
The array of scum and villainy that was lining up to silence the New York Times etc was remarkable - the most attractive specimen was an international arms dealer, IIRC, who specialised in guns for blood diamonds.
Applauding effort is the correct approach for infants' school sports day or Parkrun, but elite level competition is a different matter. Celebrating near misses all the time is how you get the England football team and its extraordinary record of utter failure.
He’s a nobody.
Yesterdays man.
Hardly anyone is going to listen to him.
This time round, none of the British athletes were part of the cohort that competed in London 2012.l and performance has dropped back. In constrast, notice how Japan (hosts last time) have done better in Paris than their historical average.
We’ve still done much better than our typical performance in the 80s and 90s when normally only about 5 gold medals were won.
If Ohio is in play...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct02GrU88W0
Laying Trump is value at anything below 3 currently.
🚨 🚨 🚨 NEW from @mikeallen and @JimVandeHei:
“Trump's advisers are deeply rattled by his meandering, mean and often middling public performances.”
Trump “has fumed, stewed and stumbled in private and public ever since” the convention.
https://x.com/JakeWilkns/status/1822643354846269521
Twatter is not Britain.
If the funding came from general taxation it wouldn't go to elite sports, or grassroots sports, or schools. It'd all get spaffed on bloody pensions and trying to stop the hospitals collapsing, just like any other spare coppers from down the back of Reeves's sofa.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1822352993422901402
Trump wants to be Snow
He would love to build a Death Star
Musk is already connecting humans to his machines
MAGA is all about factions, and Musk thinks he is Erudite
OK, maybe they wouldn't intentionally poison their citizens, right..?
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/4929906/#Comment_4929906
As evidenced by the posts above, I currently have two bets on Harris for Prez. They are
£50 on Kamala Harris for POTUS at 11/10 from one of Ladbrokes and Coral.
£60 on Kamala Harris for POTUS at 5/6 from Betfred.
#bigboypants
The November election will be won by the Trump haters.
There were the same number of medals this time as in 2012, but then there were 29 wins and this time there were 29 third places. That's not down to hard luck, it's the result of declining performance. A certain amount of going back to the drawing board is required.
That's where Amber Heard beat Johny Depp, for example, then lost elsewhere.
But for people who are disabled, or elderly, or otherwise housebound, and who have no other access to the outside world, and who have the education and discrimination to tell junk information from non-junk, it can be very liberating and enlightening.
As always, the key is to make technology always your servant and never your master.
Many voters want positivity, not hate.
NeverTrumpers + positivity seeking voters = winning combination.
Trotting round draped in a flag when you've just lost is a bit desperate.
Tons of sports clubs up and down the land have a new clubhouse via the lottery funding. Or things like fixing up coastal paths.
https://www.medalspercapita.com/#golds-per-capita:2024
In some forms of triathlon, points are awarded according to the time people finish after the winner. Every second that passes, a point is removed from a starting total. This means if it is a close finish, second and third (and anyone who finishes before the points tick down to zero) would get points allocated towards their point total - or in case of the Olympics, their teams' total.
The winners still get medals, but potentially fourth, fifth and other finishers also get points for their team. And close finishes are also rewarded, and people who win far out-front also gain more for their team.
It'd be totally unworkable for a host of reasons, including weighting between events and sports, but it would be interesting.
There’s no comparison between today’s Olympic team, and that of 1996. The lottery funds hundreds of athletes and coaches in elite amateur sports, and has paid for loads of new facilities over the past three decades, many of which benefit the wider community.
https://www.heritagefund.org.uk/projects/jurassic-coast-gallery
BYD is probably a better bet now.
A bit of an improvement on H&S and it will be perfect.
Football
Rugby
Tennis
Golf
Basketball
Which is the case.
No doubt any such case would be a shitshow, but Musk has lost in court before. Outside his engineering/business expertise, he has the judgment of a maladjusted teenager.
Trump holds Ohio and Florida yes as well as North Carolina but also picks up Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona and Nevada of key swing states Biden won in 2020.
Harris holds Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan and New Hampshire of the closest states in 2020
https://www.realclearpolling.com/maps/president/2024/no-toss-up/electoral-college
Paris 2024: 327 GB athletes, playing away at the home of our historic foe, 65 medals.
Not too shabby imo.
He’s the problem.
If they’re going to keep sports like tennis and golf, make the Olympics for amateurs not professionals, boxing does this really well. There’s really no justification for including the professional team sports.
From October 2020, there were enough polls showing Trump ahead of Biden on the economy.
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/10/11/if-trumps-wins-next-month-its-the-economy-stupid/
5/1 seems decent odds for a punt.
Rowing and equestrian both did quite well, and the lotto chiefs could do worse than throw a bit more money at the diving team and see if they can work out how to get close to the Chinese. We know how the young lad did in sport climbing and his female counterpart wasn't a million miles from getting a medal either, so they'll probably attract some more support as well. On the flip side, swimming and cycling both went seriously into reverse. Sailing only got a partial reprieve from the kite surfer and the combat sports had an absolute stinker. A special award for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory must also go to the men's hockey team for their heroically bad quarter final faceplant against India. A truly excruciating fuck up to rival the footballers getting stuffed by Iceland in Euro 2016.
Trouble with Los Angeles is they are introducing a bunch of American-only sports: softball, baseball and flag (American) football, along with squash and lacrosse. (They are also scheduling the athletics in week one, followed by swimming, rather than the other way round which is usual.)
This is the genuine world championship.
I’ll add to the ban list, anything that can’t be objectively measured. I mean it was fun to watch girls dancing with hoops and balls and clubs and ribbons, and they obviously practiced loads to do it - but it’s really not a sport.
Here's What Meghan Markle Said About Kamala Harris Back in 2020
"I'm so excited to see that kind of representation," the Duchess of Sussex said.
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/politics/a61665698/meghan-markle-kamala-harris-2020-comments/
and
Meghan Markle to make 'big political move' on her 43rd birthday, endorsing Kamala Harris
Duchess poised to endorse VP Harris amid election season
https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/uk-news/2024/08/03/66ae7f9b46163fcd1d8b456c.html
And Romney 2012 and Trump 2016 were also challengers if they were leading on the economy.
By that pattern Trump 2020 should be leading on the economy being the challenger.
Which would also be very annoying for JD Vance personally, of course.
I think the absence of Charlotte Dujardin the horse dancer, after whipping her horse abusively (24 strokes in one minute), may be significant. She has 3 golds, 1 silver and 2 bronzes from the last 3 Olympics.
On the cycling, I think two points:
1 - I get the impression that the training regime is marginally less hard charging than previously, although it is also the case that other countries have had 15-20 years to catch up since we really started getting our edge in 2004.
2 - I'm interested in whether our poisonous road culture, which is notably worse than most others in Western Europe in attitudes, has any long term impact on participation.
I haven't been able to find enough data to inform on this one (I suspect this impacts at this time more on wider professional cycling and where they choose to base), yet it is only 9 weeks since Kate Richardson had to withdraw from the Womens Tour de France after a driver of a 4x4 left her with a fractured scapula after hitting her when squeezing past on a 4m wide country lane near Holmfirth.
The American sports are there as part of a programme of including optional events to encourage local interest, although why in the name of God the Paris organising committee picked break dancing rather than, say, boules, artistic Gallic shrugging or maybe synchronised slow motion tractor driving is beyond me.
The loss of Katie Archibald was also a blow.
What seemed worrying in that in the distance events the GB team were nowhere in both Omniums and the Men's Madison. And didn't seem to have a clue as to how to get into them.
What have the GOP done? They've nominated someone having a mental breakdown in public.
The only states they got wrong were Florida, which they had going for Biden and Georgia which they had for Trump
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/2020_elections_electoral_college_map_no_toss_ups.html
Rightwing violence treated more leniently.
Are we doing medals for porno now?