Sunday, December 09, 2007

Congratulations to Joe as well.

Full of congratulations today - but I cannot allow the naming of Joe Calzhage as BBC Sports Personality of the Year to pass without comment. This year he was the only winner. His victory over Mikkel Kessler was as stunning as his demolition of Jeff Lacey last year. Joe whinged a bit when he didn't win in 2006, when the title should have gone to Nicole Cooke. But this year there was no contest. I must admit that I thought the title would go to Lewis Hamilton - but then motor racing is an ITV sport. Justice was done and fulsome congratulations are in order.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://www.retakingamerica.com/files/northwoods_documents.pdf
http://www.corriere.it/politica/07_novembre_30/osama_berlusconi_cossiga_27f4ccee-9f55-11dc-8807-0003ba99c53b.shtml
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7373201783240489827&q=education%2Billuminati&hl=en
The Eradication of National Identity
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/865

http://bfbwwiii.blogspot.com/2007/10/frankfurt-subversion.html

36% want death
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23425890-details/Imam's%20daughter%20in%20hiding%20after%20her%20conversion%20to%20Christianity%20sparked%20death%20threats/article.do?expand=true#StartComments

Dr. Christopher Wood said...

Talking about 'sports' ...

In Donald Trump’s latest book “THINK BIG AND KICK ASS – in Business and Life” Trump encourages, if not demands, that his readers “THINK BIG”.

Donald Trump wants to build a billion dollar golf course in Scotland, but the Scottish authorities refused planning permission.

So why isn’t the Welsh Assembly Government THINKING BIG about getting Trump to build his golf course in Wales?

It’s not like Trump’s planned golf resort will resemble an open cast mine or ugly quarry and Trump’s golf course would be so much better than plans for erecting thousands of very tall noisy bird killing turbines that will harm the Welsh tourism and make many people’s lives a living misery.

Why isn’t WAG boasting about the beautiful scenery in Wales – why isn’t WAG recruiting Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas to invite Trump to take a trip around the Welsh coastline?

Wales can give Trump a better coastal golf course than Pebble Beach!

Glyn Davies said...

Christopher - I was surprised the Scots turned down Trump's development. There have been several reports that he is now looking at Ireland. I don't know what the response would be in Wales - or whether any discussion has taken place. I would not expect a great response from Wales - being surprised when a comparatively modest golf 'resort' caled Royal Fern (I think) near Swansea was refused a year ago.

Dr. Christopher Wood said...

It’s truly pathetic; there’s Deputy First Minister Ieuan Wyn Jones jumping up and down in glee that his recent trade mission trip to India has led to a £150,000 order with the prospect of winning inward investment of around £2 million when there’s £1 billion of inward investment that can fall into Wales lap if Ieuan just got on the phone and rang WAG’s enterprise office in the Chrysler Building in New York City (which is only a 10 minute cab ride (if that) to Trump Tower, where Donald Trump is based) and get some talks going.

Trump likes people to talk to him in BIG terms – he likes to make BIG deals, so talk his language and promise him that WAG will move heaven and earth to help him build his one billion dollar golf resort that will OUT MATCH Pebble Beach in Monteray, California.

I took my mother to Monteray in California, great small town, great scenery but it does not match the Gower Coastline. Keep in mind that the Gower is but 2 hours from London, 6-7 hours from NYC (via direct flight into Cardiff), its closer to London than the west coast of Scotland, and has better road/rail/airport links than Pebble Beach.

If the Gower is not on the table, then there are plenty of other coastal spots around Wales – in fact there are loads of spots on the coast around Wales that out do Pebble Beach.

Why build noisy bird killing wind-turbines which can only blight the landscape and coastline when in one swoop here’s a guy who wants to spend one billion dollars on a new golf resort where it will be very important to maintain very good coastal views not blighted with huge wind turbines.

But yeah, I have to concur, with others that WAG is so anal it will let this fantastic opportunity go bye-bye – WAG is inherently incapable of turning the Welsh economy around.

10 years of WAG and Wales is going backwards in education (as evidenced by the recently published OECD education data), the economy (the Welsh economy is at the bottom of just about every comparative study), even the ambulance service turned into a bad joke c/o WAG. Rhodri et al yak yak about Wales being a small clever country, but they can’t even fathom out how to boost the patent output of Wales – so the knowledge industry that Rhodri likes to talk about will not take off if Wales – look at the HUGE spend in research in the universities in Wales, yet there are single universities in the former third world that outperform all of the Welsh universities combined in terms of patent output. WAG is simply not building a strong vibrant future for Wales – instead it is building a Welsh economy that will remain overly reliant on hand-outs and grants from the EU.

Dr. Christopher Wood said...

Also, Wales faces the North Atlantic Drift, so it gets warm water from the Gulf of Mexico - contrast that with the East coast of Scotland (it's the east coast of Scotland that Trump wanted his golf course) and that faces the cold North Sea. Welsh climate is so much better than Scotland - it's scenery easily outmatches Scotland - much closer to London than the east coast of Scotland - Wales can win the BIG deal if WAG got up and "KICK ASS". But there is more chance of "hell freezing over" than WAG coming to its senses in sufficient time to turn the Welsh economy around.

Glyn Davies said...

Christopher - perhaps Ieuan has been on the phone!! I wouldn't know. But I do agree with you that he should have been - to establish whether theer is a suitable location in Wales for the sort of development that would meet Trump's requirements.

Dr. Christopher Wood said...

Why do people like Donald Trump build business empires out of helping people put predetermined size balls into predetermined size holes? Know one really knows, but with some encouragement Trump could be convinced on spending a billion dollars to build a golf course resort on the Welsh coastline and create jobs for locals in rural areas who are otherwise forced to move away from where they are born because local house prices are going up through people coming in and buying second homes. I am sure that Trump would be willing to help with that problem. But if no one from WAG bothers to ask him WE WILL NEVER KNOW.

I hope ur right Glyn, that Ieuan has picked up the phone, but I rather fear that it be easier to get a mouse to eat cat poo than get any high-official at the WAG to use gut instinct to get jobs and one billion dollars of inward investment for Wales. As Trump notes in his latest book he listens to his gut – Trump thinks there is some traction to the notion that nerves around the human gut are wired into nerves that speak to cognitive thought. So Trump listens to what his gut is telling him. If he gets a good gut feeling about someone he is interviewing – Trump will give him/her a chance and hire them. If he gets a good gut feeling about Ieuan - Wales might get the one billion dollar golf course.

But unless Ieuan picks up the phone and talks straight to Trump’s gut – we will never know, and the one-billion dollar golf course will fly by Wales as like the fiasco behind the making of “Saving Private Ryan” which the director wanted to film on the Welsh coastline but met with hostility and lack of faith from Welsh ‘leaders’ and so he filmed the beach scenes on the coastline of Ireland … where is Trump thinking of moving his one billion dollar investment to? Oh, the coastline of Ireland.