You’d have to be living in a pretty strict prison not to have heard the big story from today’s Olympics in Paris, in which male Algerian cheat Imane Khelefi was put in a boxing ring with young Italian woman Angela Carini and allowed to hit her in the head for 46 seconds until she retired, in tears and in fear for her safety, saying “I had to preserve my life”.
Sound like your kind of fun, men? It’s surprisingly easy!
Let’s take a moment off, folks. In our latest Panelbase poll, we also threw in a question just for fun, with genuinely no agenda at all, simply because we were curious to know what the answer was. Here it is:
For what these are about, see here. This one’s from 23 August 2019.
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I’m going to talk about this story for a bit, and I’m sorry because I’m as sick of this subject as everyone else is but it’s really really important. Tune out for 10 minutes if you must.
I’ve never been a person who suffered from blackouts. In my younger days I would frequently drink Olympian amounts of booze and pass out in a heap (and/or pool of my own vomit) under a table, but when I woke up I always remembered how I got there. I also went under general anaesthetic a couple of times at the dentist when I was wee, and always remembered counting down from 10 with the mask on before I woke up. (“10…9…8…zzzzzzzz”)
In my entire half-century on this planet, there’s only one gap in my memory. (Like, I don’t remember what I had for dinner on 8 July 1987, but you know what I mean. I remembered it the next day, just not any more.)
It happened when I was about 14, playing rugby at school.
Watching the Six Nations rugby tournament every year is usually quite a dispiriting experience – not just because of Scotland’s invariably underwhelming performances (broken up by the occasional false dawn), but because talking about it on social media always results in an extremely tedious flood of comments about how rugby is a sport played and watched exclusively by middle-class Tory No voters.
(That’s Scotland skipper Greig Laidlaw there, with Wings mascot Hamish.)
Speaking as someone whose interest in the tournament (in the pre-inflation days when it was the Five Nations) was first sparked when my extremely working-class Bathgate comprehensive school started taking pupils to Murrayfield in the 1980s – 50p for the bus and 50p for the match ticket, which got you a seat on wooden benches actually on the grass – this attitude has always instinctively felt like complete nonsense.
So when we did our latest Panelbase poll during this year’s competition, we figured we may as well actually find out.
…for the relationship between the four “partner” nations of the UK presented itself at the weekend when BBC anchorman John Inverdale asked the Scottish rugby pundit and former international Andy Nicol “what does this do for self-belief from a Scottish perspective, Andy?”
Which was clearly pretty ironic in itself:
But alert readers may recall how that “epitome of Better Together” worked out.
Tremendous news for the rest of Scotland’s football clubs as Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers promises never to win the treble unbeaten again, even if his side score more goals than the other team in all their matches.
…is roughly how often Aberdeen get to the final of the Scottish Cup these days. The last time was 17 years ago – a tournament which started in the last century and ended the year Rangers started paying their players with EBTs – when SFA rules meant that they had to play almost the entire game without a recognised goalkeeper.
(A tackle in the third minute broke veteran custodian Jim Leighton’s jaw, and because you were only allowed three players on the subs bench the Dons had no backup No.1 and had to put striker Robbie Winters between the sticks, with a predictable outcome. Leighton never played professional football again.)
In politics, Labour were only one year into the first ever administration of the modern Scottish Parliament, and still in the first term of Tony Blair’s rule at Westminster. The idea of the SNP winning an election, let alone holding an independence referendum, was the preserve of mad fantasists.
And the last time the Pittodrie side actually won the trophy was 27 years back, which is so long ago that most of Hampden was still open to the elements.
Still, it would be weird if we got to the final again next year and some of the Aberdeen support refused to go on the grounds that the matter of who was the best cup football team in Scotland had been settled forever today.
Or if Celtic won but had fielded an ineligible player and the SFA ordered a replay, but the Dons declined to take part because they’d played too many finals recently.
The categorical support of Andy Murray for Scottish independence, though only finally unambiguously revealed in today’s Sunday Times (the tennis star’s day-of-poll tweet backing Yes could by a strict semantic interpretation have been said to be somewhat equivocal), isn’t much of a surprise.
So it’s perhaps worth reminding ourselves what the media told us.
Geri on The shifting sands of memory: “It was meaningless because it wasn’t written down legally anywhere that they’d actually enact the result – just that they’d…” May 22, 00:36
Geri on The shifting sands of memory: ““no matter what some nit picking academics poring over 3 centuries old dead parchments might argue.” Wait a minute there,…” May 22, 00:26
robertkknight on The shifting sands of memory: “Scotland was effectively acquired, through hostile takeover, by England, who had threaten to cut off Scotland’s international trade through naval…” May 21, 23:38
Mia on The shifting sands of memory: “” the laws that were not compatible with the Treaty fell into desuetude” Sorry, Lorn but on this, I have…” May 21, 22:34
Hatey McHateface on The shifting sands of memory: “My reading is that it’s the settled view of many that because the majority of Scottish residents returned the wrong…” May 21, 21:50
Hatey McHateface on The shifting sands of memory: ““he believes that there was and is a Treaty of Union” No shit, Sherlock! That puts him in the overwhelming…” May 21, 21:38
Aidan on The shifting sands of memory: “The Union with England Act was passed by the Scottish Parliament prior to the amalgamation into the Parliament of Great…” May 21, 21:25
Andy Wiltshire on The shifting sands of memory: “Is it the settled view of most people on here that the independence referendum of 2014 was meaningless? And moreover…” May 21, 21:24
Lorn on The shifting sands of memory: “Ian: you kind of have to provide evidence that you ARE a colony, not just being treated as one. It…” May 21, 21:23
McDuff on The shifting sands of memory: “The western world is consumed with righting wrongs of the past so surely that must include Scotland. The Scottish people…” May 21, 21:16
Lorn on The shifting sands of memory: “PhilM: I don’t think Stephen Kerr is being mendacious; I think he believes that there was and is a Treaty…” May 21, 21:06
Lorn on The shifting sands of memory: “Actually, no, it’s not, Dec. The Treaty was real and very much based in legality. The Scots have never really…” May 21, 20:53
Lorn on The shifting sands of memory: “Mia: the laws that were not compatible with the Treaty fell into desuetude – which means that they were no…” May 21, 20:51
Hatey McHateface on Some Attention For James: “Uh oh, Barbie’s been allowed back into the community. Is it me suggesting we get vets to run the euthanasia…” May 21, 20:33
Hatey McHateface on The shifting sands of memory: ““We will have to use every ounce of ingenuity and courage to free ourselves” Sure, but you’ve missed the third…” May 21, 20:21
Mia on The shifting sands of memory: “@Geri They made several attempts at a union, but all monarchs failed until Anne. She seemed to have achieved what…” May 21, 20:21
Hatey McHateface on The shifting sands of memory: ““I wonder how the BBC will report the liberation of the Scots” Do you really? I’m thinking most grounded people…” May 21, 20:06
Hatey McHateface on The shifting sands of memory: “If you use AI to write it, you can use AI to summarise it. “We wus robbed” about covers it.” May 21, 19:50
JB on The shifting sands of memory: “Lorm @6:23pm As to “surrendering the fishing industry” on Monday, so far that is only a political agreement to surrender…” May 21, 19:48
Geri on The shifting sands of memory: “It’s my understanding there was no union or parliament of ‘Great Britain’ because it never happened. It was a wish…” May 21, 19:37
Northcode on The shifting sands of memory: “Mia, your comments are often a mammoth read but it’s always worth making that little extra effort to read them.…” May 21, 19:28
Geri on Some Attention For James: “You’d think by now the penny would drop at your end by now.. “Scotgov” is a colonial outpost, ya cretin.…” May 21, 19:23
Mia on The shifting sands of memory: ““A basic piece of research would dispel this immediately, the Union with England Act 1707 Article XXVV passed by the…” May 21, 19:18
Aidan on The shifting sands of memory: “A basic piece of research would dispel this immediately, the Union with England Act 1707 Article XXVV passed by the…” May 21, 19:02
Mia on The shifting sands of memory: ““the ToU is a fraud” There is indeed something rather iffy about the Treaty of Union and the way the…” May 21, 18:46
Northcode on The shifting sands of memory: “Replying to James Cheyne: 21st May @ 5:19 pm “Give us our Country back, you must be joking” I was…” May 21, 18:42
