England Muppets Create Soccer Nightmare

The fact is the 2010 England team were a bunch of overpaid talentless prima donnas. Remember they earn more in one day than most of us earn in a year. They are paid these huge sums to deliver. They didn't.

Unlike the rest of the employed human race these people remain in secure highly paid jobs despite not being able to deilver, failing in front of billions of people, costing the fans that follow them thousands of pounds and still go back to their pampered lifestyles. Nice work if you can get it.

The real issue is being able to define 'the problem'. It is clearly a systemic management problem. Well beyond the intellectual capability of the 'lads in suits' that run the Football Association. A complete re-imagining of what English soccer is about is required. Not just tinkering with team rules and tactics. A complete re-think of what brings success from a high profile team sport. What is the role of the 'manager'? do we need it? Should people who have worked their way 'up the ranks' in the game be determining where it goes in the future. To quote Hamel and Prahalad, all they are going to do is "infect everyone with the same orthodoxies they've infected everyone else with" You've only got to look at the supreme Luddite Sepp Blatter to see how dominant mind-sets can lock a game into the psychic prison of the past.

Welcome to the nightmare!

Remember a true English hero:

Wayne Rooney Apologises Thank You

So Wayne Rooney has apologised. Thank you. The best form of atonement clearly has to be a hat full of goals against Slovenia.

The Telegraph
The Daily Mail
The Guardian

If this happens then he might regain his hero status.

Am I being cynical if I say I think I spotted him noticing which side his bread is buttered?

Fly Wayne Rooney Home Immediately

Wayne Rooney is an overpaid, pugnacious and arrogant man who should be dropped from the England team and flown home. The fans who have paid thousands of pounds to be in South Africa are not there to blow smoke up his arse and fawn over his flawed celebrity. He is just a footballer who claims to be an elite performer and he should be judged by his actions not is ill conceived sense of celebrity status.

Wayne Rooney is gullible if he thinks that he is not answerable to the paying public. Where do your wages come from Wayne? He is also gullible if he thinks its the fans job to motivate him, when he is paid to inspire the fans.

The Game An Open Letter To Wayne Rooney

Just One Of Those Days

Its been a while now. 15 years or so. This morning I'm sitting in the conservatory on a sunny morning...and I want to speak to my mother. Don't know why. Nothing bad or anything just fancied a chat, a catch up, and I can't. I'm looking at her piano. I thought her soul was in it. Today I don't think she's there. I think she may have gone? I feel very alone at this moment. I'm sure it will pass.

I can't fathom why I suddenly got yanked by the chain on this one. Right now. This morning. A beautiful morning to sit and chat. I think I'm going to have that chat. Right now. A walk and a chat, now that sounds good. Maybe I'm not alone.

Dough!! Duchess of York Sells Prince Andrew

Duchess demonstrates eligability for this blog. As she rationalises what has taken place she attempts to diminish the PR and reputational catastrophe as a heavy day.

The Elephant In The Blogosphere

So who really is getting the benefit from blogging? It seems that for all the talk about marketing paradigm shifts and new communication eras that the usual suspects are the people who have the time and interest in blogging.

Journalists are a case in point. Trained writers and people who are paid to write. The UK election trotted out the odd political blogger to show how 'hip and trendy' they were. The old wags made quips about the new turks using twitter.


Marketing communications and relationship marketing people are evangelists too. Paid to relate paid to communicate. The thing is all these people have TIME to blog, TIME to engage and participate. I've noticed a very interesting things with social networking. I work in academia. Academics do alot of reading and writing. Usually other peoples work. When it comes to blogging and engaging in sharepoint sites, ning communities they simply don't have the time to be avid and prolific. Composing a post occupies the mind as well the time. If your mind and time are occupied you don't blog. Simple as. So if a huge number of people are disenfranchised from the blogosphere not because of technological access or know how, not because of education, then how representative is the blogosphere of opinion?


Blogging and social media neophytes claim its the new frontier. They have the time to preach. For me its Cognitive Miser time. I can engage sparodically, my social influence is limited. The only gratification is expression of point of view. This has taken me 20 minutes and I could have been watching Springwatch.

Do Google Keywords Stifle Originality?

I've been dabbling alot with keywords recently, using Googles Keyword Tool and other Google search tools such as Google Insight for Search.

Now sure as eggs are eggs I'm no SEO expert, and yes I've found that finding 'goldilocks' keywords (not too popular, not too obscure but 'just right') have appeared to make a difference to blog posts visits and also my Squidoo lenses. They've also influenced url selection and also title selection too.

But that is what got me thinking about originality. If writers and publishers of on-line material chase after key words then where is the spark of originality?

If Harper Lee had done a search on 'To Kill A Mocking Bird' would she have thought woah!! Not very popular steer clear? How about Shakespeare? 'Much Ado About Nothing' hmmm not many searches for that...So it seems to me there is a conundrum. Do you go for the unique and rely on your creative genius to be discovered, or do you go bland and follow the sheep?

Google after all is predicated on technical search assumptions not artistic originality.

Bloggers Break Free From Traditional Media Manipulation and Bias

The UK Election debates have proved unequivocally how biased UK Big Media is in their reporting. Their blatant misrepresentation of reality in a naive attempt to dupe the British public into believing something else happened in the televised leaders debates shows just how out of touch they are with modern media and communciations. Look at any overseas reporting of the debates and they confirm that Nick Clegg did well, look at the narrative that Sky and the Daily Mail would have you believe and you'd think Cameron had produced a rhetorical triumph of Aristotelean proportions.

The British public are not stupid. They do not uncritically digest the pap that comes from the keyboards of so called 'professional' journalists. Furthermore once they realise that they are being misled they will kcik back. The electorate can think for themselves and social media platforms allow the true consensus to emerge into the light. The patronising attitude of Big Media is out of touch with reality and the voice of ordinary people. The man in the street saw Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown do well and and saw a David Cameron grasp and gasp as he put across half baked polemical ideas targetted at getting a 'hurrah' from his fellow 'henries'.

Twitter reaches more people than Sky and more people participate too. Facebook is a popular forum that represents topics from the ground up. All of these places are the new hustings, the space of community. We don't need someone else to make sense of our worlds for us Mr Murdoch we are quite savvy enough to do it for ourselves. If your reporting in this is biased why on earth should we believe anything else your organisation says?

The British electorate have emerged into the sunlight. They don't have to comment in huddles down the pub they can express themselves as they wish via social media. David Cameron did NOT do well on last night's television debate he looked all sea, he looked concerned and desperate, he is out of touch and lives in the past with his media backers.

Objective reporting? See Google Election Trends for the real buzz.

Is Nick Clegg Really Being Heard?

I've just been trawling Google Trends, Google Search and Technorati for the buzz about Nick Clegg's electoral challenge and there isn't any!

Whilst our news programmes and papers are full of the Clegg effect the blogosphere is remarkably quiet. So just how important is the UK election to the rest of the world? Not alot it seems. Or perhaps its a little early.

Maybe it will get a bit more feisty after tonight's gunfight at the OK Corall. Ego's have been pricked and so pulling Nick down a peg or two is bound to be part of the game plan. The mud slinging has started of course. It has to be asked whether this is a feint or a full on assault. I think the former.

If Nick gets drawn into defending his position he might just slip back to third place. As we know from the 'X' factor and 'Dorothy' you can sing a song well one week and singing for your right to stay in the game the next.

Conservative Americans were worried about Nick Clegg about 17 hours ago from the time of writing this post according to Technorati. Google Buzz seems to be a bit more up to the minute and Twitter is on the pulse too.