Craig Sawyers

At the moment they are both "Bring out your dead", so not so different

Ha! Well, the joke here is that cricket is a sport you watch after Sunday lunch to have a snooze. Second only to golf. But yes - we are not bathed in glory at the moment, for sure.

Today, the remains of Richard III will be reburied in Leicester Cathedral. His skeleton was found under a car park (!) a couple of years ago, along with evidence of his curved spine from scoliosis. The car park was on the site of the Greyfriars monastery five hundred years ago. Immortalised by Shakespeare in his play of that name: "Now is the winter of our disconent, made glorious summer by this Son of York..." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/11488151/The-burial-of-Richard-III-viewers-guide.html

This is probably going to be minority interest, but the precursor to American Football is Rugby. Elliptical ball and two teams of enormous brutal guys (and now women too). Rules of play are more cryptic (much) than American Football, and there is no defensive gear at all - no padding, no helmets (other than a soft one to protect cauliflower ears). Lots of injuries - it is not uncommon for a player to go off bleeding profusely from a cut, have it stitched, and go back on again. The odd broken bone, the odd concussion. Everyone has had a broken nose at some point. There are two variants of Rugby - Union and League. The rules are different. League has more in common with American football, but only the 6 plays element - after which the ball goes to the opposing team. That is not the case in Union, where you retain possession of the ball until you lose it to the opposing team through interception, being turned over in a tackle, a scrum, a penalty or a lineout. There is a ten minute sin-bin for dangerous play, or being sent off entirely for the duration of the game. It is a big sport in the UK and Europe (mainly France and Italy), and worldwide. This year the Rugby World Cup is held in the UK http://hospitality.rugbyworldcup.com/hospitality_matches.aspxand should be brutal. Reason for posting this is yesterday was the culmination of the 6 nations championship. England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France and Italy. It runs in the early spring. The three final matches were yesterday, and many records were broken. Started with Italy/Wales. At half time the score was a lacklustre 13 points to14. Yawn. But then Wales went on a rampage of epic proportions in the second half and the final score line was 20 points to 61. That monster score meant that in order to win the tournament, in the next match Ireland had to beat Scotland by at least 27 points and England had to beat France by at least 23 points - a really tough challenge. However another epic battle by Ireland saw them demolish Scotland by 40 points to 10. That raised the bar for England, who now had to beat France by at least 27 points. In a phenomenal match, England beat France by 55 points to 35 points - a margin of 20, and falling short by one converted try (7 points) of taking the champoinship, which went to Ireland. This is a day of Rugby which will go down in history. It is the first time in the final three matches that the total number of points scored has been as high as 221, by a large margin. It is the first time ever that a team has scored over 30 points (France) - and then lost. Since the competition (initially the five nations, minus Italy) started in 1910.

Well, I hold solder in my teeth to feed it as a third hand. Where are the pearly gates?

Have a great one Al - happy birthday!

In the dick head stakes, Cohen's head dicks more that Clarkson's. Hope he (Cohen) gets his ass handed him for inept, vengeful and petulant (mis)management of the whole shebang.

There are press reports (who can say if they are based on fact) that May and Hammond have told the BBC that they will not do Top Gear without Clarkson.

And so it goes on http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/mar/20/jeremy-clarkson-foul-mouthed-rant-bbc-top-gear

The old goat! Ball gag, diapers and baby bottle - the mind runs riot.

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Darn. Looks like that twitter name is a parody account, so it is all alas bull. Like the @JeremyDarkson account - in twitter's fond the D looks like Cl.

Well no - all you do is set a near horizontal load line at some high value corresponding to the effective resistance of the constant current source, and plot characteristics along that line.

Could be all too true - the Daily Mail is not a journalistic organ based on objectivity. I checked the website of the Hotel that the Production Team had booked them into. It is in the middle of the North Yorkshire national park, essentially in the middle of nowhere. The Brasserie menu indicates that it closes at 8:45pm. The main restaurant menu does not indicate when it closes, but if it shuts at a similar time, the whole crew would have been stuffed for a decent meal when the copter landed at 9:30.

Beeb have now compared Clarkson to serial pedophile Jimmy Savile http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2995106/Astonishing-remarks-Gear-affair-senior-BBC-boss-claims-Clarkson-like-Savile.html Like you say Hop - it is all coming to a nice simmer, along with eye of newt and toe of frog.

Nope. In fact the uTracer goes much further. You can even put a load line on a set of measured curves and it calculates the distortion. All the usual characteristics, u,gm,ra etc are measured for a chosen bias point. I've just sent him a mail asking him to set one aside for me. The Euro rate is really good for me just now so it is even more of a bargain.

In response to a tweet : lorna43 ‏@lornaparadise Mar 12 @TymonOisin according to some theyre sayin you aint the real guy,if thats the case then why havent you tried to get him reinstated? The reply way Oisin Tymon ➿ ‏@TymonOisin @lornaparadise we are and no he never landed a punch or slap ect it was a argument nothing more senior management stepped in So it looks increasingly like this is set to blow over. The Beeb has gone so far as to apologise to fans for cancelling the show, so may well end up well and truly with egg on its face.

On my list of must-buys is this http://dos4ever.com/uTracer3/uTracer3.htmlat Euro 210 (about equivalent to USD) as a kit. Now I have more valve (tube) testers than I know what to do with, but none of them have the capability of the uTracer.

I dunno how I feel about Edmonds. The hugely popular Noel's House Party got cancelled when they killed a guy - they had a viewer stunt each week, and a guy bungee jumped and the harness broke. And recently he has been trying to buy the BBC lock stock and barrel using (I believe) Saudi money. But he is very lucid in supporting Clarkson and his like.

^^ This

Well yes - I read that too. But we are talking about a report in the Daily Mail, who are not known for their objectivity. All the reports from that family come back to a Sky interview, and are clearly exaggerated (30 minute rant - not possible) The standing joke is the Mail reports on the cancer causing, or cancer risk reduction effects of food. Depending on how they feel on a particular day, as an example tomatoes can be either good for you, or lethal. Google is your friend http://www.anorak.co.uk/288298/scare-stories/the-daily-mails-list-of-things-that-give-you-cancer-from-a-to-z.html/with links to the original articles. There are only four (moderately) objective dailies in the UK - the Guardian, the Independent, the Telegraph and the Times. Here we go: Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/mar/13/bbc-apologises-top-gear-jeremy-clarkson-inquiry Nothing at all today in the Telegraph Indpendent, just quotes the same Sky stuff (minus the typical Mail hyperbole of steak and fondant potatoes, which clearly has no basis in fact) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/jeremy-clarkson-family-claim-they-witnessed-presenter-threaten-to-have-producer-fired-during-expletive-laden-rant-10105472.html And typical Times - you have to subscribe to read an article!

By and large the London Underground does pretty well. It transports well over 1.2 billion passengers a year. I use it regularly. A case in point was travelling back from Oxford Circus at peak commuter time on the Bakerloo to Paddington station yesterday. I got on the platform as one train pulled out, and 1 minute later the next one arrived. I got a seat. That is typical despite what @angryflatcap says.

Oisin Tymon ➿ @TymonOisin · 19h 19 hours ago Filming was stopped for the day my duty manager found out and reported it now it's out of hand this is silly So he didn't even report it himself - the "duty manager", whatever that is, was the one who stirred it up with the BBC. I'd say based on Tymon's tweets, and his retweets of the Save Clarkson petition, that the BBC have just carved a massively deep hole for themselves.

Or Oisin Tymon ➿ @TymonOisin · 17h17 hours ago Big day tomorrow and I promise all the #BringBackClarkson fans I will tell the enquiry team that Jeremy did not hit me and this will be ok

From a guy - one of the admins - on another forum (The Audio Standard): "Having directed in film and tv for 20 years, none of my producers would have made a mistake like that ... But if they did, sure I would be pissed off but can't imagine trying to knock them out even if I didn't get on with them. There are plenty of circumstances when shooting on location when 'meals on wheels' / location catering aren't always possible, but other arrangements are always made."