It turns out that I am a racist

There has been an interesting proposal from the Green Party.  Let me say that although I am not a Jew, I can be considered to be a Zionist as I support a two state solution, which means that I want a Palestinian State to exist alongside Israel.

My view is that the Oslo Peace Accords should be honoured and that any settlements in The West Bank should be transferred to be administered by the Palestinian Authority. 

I guess it all comes down to what people consider to be Zionism.  Despite the claims in the video below (if it works), there are Israeli's who want a two state solution. 

The team rhymes with City

Manchester City have been found wanting.  Concerns have been present for some time and a decision has been made.  

I am sure that there are to be legal appeals, but fans of other teams are celebrating that justice appears to have been done.  

Personally, I feel that they should face a points deduction, one point for each infringement, but with the option of spreading this across ten years.  Which would mean a ten point deduction this season if they took this up.  Or they can take it now, but that would mean demotion at the end of the season but due to the number of infringements, that should mean a demotion of more than one league placement. I would favour to the old third division, which means League One.

I did try to share a video at work about this, but I did not realise that Paddy Power have two of them.  One in English, one in Arabic.

Best of the Best

Our son recommended that we watch this yesterday. He does not make too many requests so we listened to him. He has been unwell over the last few days. So when my wife and I travelled to London, we did not take him with us when we popped into see my mother.  She was sad that he was not with us, but understood that he needed to rest.  

We had intended to travel earlier in the day, but got caught up in traffic for the Spurs game. I know a few people who went to it, so I had to look at the result before Arsenal played. I laughed, but little did I know that would jinx us in our kick off. Arsenal, in the last few seasons, had a habit of dropping points if ahead in the table and playing an early kick off. This time we were level on points with the team that rhymes with City, but dropped points. I think that all would agree that Brighton deserved to win. Our son will be there next year as he will be going to The University of Sussex and he did watch the game with me. Hopefully he will end up an Arsenal fan though.

Anyway, back to the film. I will admit, I expected it to be terrible. I did wonder how they got so much set up with props, but the film was enjoyable. We all were glad to watch it, but I do not see me watching it again. 

Will Donald Trump copy Putin?

Elections for the Russian parliament are to take place. In two months time, elections will be taking place in America, the mid-terms where voters will get to decide if they want to stick with the party of high inflation, or the radical [insert Trump insult] Democrats. It is widely predicted that the Republicans are going to face a kicking in the elections. Trump has said different things about the state of the economy, including blaming (sleepy) Joe Biden as well as saying outright lies about petrol prices in the USA. He has even promised a handout to voters if they vote for him, legal, but something he has promised before.

Trump has been trying different ways to “prevent election fraud” and it will be interesting to see what his reactions to what will happen in Russia during these elections will be.  I may be being unfair to Putin and Russia, but they have form when it comes to fixing other elections. A famous image involves Russian votes adding up to 146%, but apparently this was a genuine mistake when reporting the 2011 elections as opposed to fraud. The same cannot be said for an election in 2012 when one electoral district had a 107% voter turnout, strangely the same district having a huge number of votes for Putin.  I hope that the elections in the USA and Russia will be free and fair. I suspect only one will be, but I will have to admit that I cannot be as optimistic about that as I was two years ago.

Practical Magic 2

My wife and I went to watch this film this week. We have been looking forwards to it after watching the first one, well to be fair, she had been looking forwards to it for longer. I did not think it would be as good as the sequel, and it was not. 

Some parts were great, the two main characters are amazing with each other, but other parts annoyed me, not the timeline, but certain issues with how the daughters were written.  Despite that, I am glad I watched it, not just because I did so with my wife, but I do think it was an okay film and I would watch it again.

If you don’t want spoilers, stop reading now. I do have a gripe with the UK being quaint, and the bus which was used to transport Kylie is not one I have seen in use for a long time. Likewise the train used by the main characters features rolling stock from a museum, one which I now want to visit. My main issue was with how the daughters went from not using their latent magic powers (which come out at times with their mother) to being able to use them in the blink of an eye. That is probably me being grumpy because those powers were not a major issue in the film and also were reminders of what happened in the original. Maybe I need to cheer up. 

Sydney Sweeney does it again

I have grown to like and admire Sydney Sweeney. I first saw her in White Lotus and hated her character (which you are meant to) but was won over by other performances, including The Handmaids Tale.  

But she appears to have embraced controversy.  She, like many, has implied who she votes for, and this is offended many.  But her adverts have been more interesting with the outrage.  The video about genes 1s not about eugenics and the video "about sports" is actually about betting.  I think it is awesome.  It is targeted at men and if not for the controversy, just like with American Eagle, I would never have heard about Novig. But as much as I like her two adverts, I love the spoof by Nerine Skinner more. 

Ed Sheeran being shot as the messenger

I like Ed Sheeran.  I think that he has ended up being the fall guy over the latest controversy. In summary, after a support act made a statement on stage in support of Palestine, he was given an ultimatum, to drop the act or else.  He did, and others have dropped him.  He was forced to be in a position where he could disappoint fans or allow them to listen to his music.

I think that people, who like me, are in favour of a Free Palestine, should direct our ire at the owners of the concert venues.  They are the ones who made this happen, and artists should boycott their venues until they allow civil free speech.