Tony Pulis, Class Traitor?

I return from my union meeting with another job - co-signatory on the funds. Not, unfortunately, a great opportunity for embezzlement: last year we bought a kettle.

I've had sport on my mind today. Last night I went to the university's fencing club, desperate to hit someone, only to find that it's been abolished by the students' union without regard for the democratic niceties: the union's disgraceful financial incompetence and slavish devotion to the university's management trump such details. It's a real shame: before I resigned as coach over a year ago, I acquired £5000 of new kit for them… sigh.

Later in the evening, I declined the opportunity to manage the England junior team for the School Games - I'm already the Games' Welfare Officer for my sport. Maybe next year.

Then, Ewar sends me a link to a very amusing and ideologically correct blog entry on my beloved Stoke City. You can tell it's clever and true because Ewar, blinded by his hatred for anything leftwing, describes it as 'bollocks'. In this piece, the author explains why the manager's defence of Ryan Shawcross's devastating tackle is 'pernicious' because it seks to explain the actions of the worker on an individualistic level (intention to hurt, in this case) rather than in structural terms (i.e. the system requires potentially dangerous behaviour because the alternative is to lose): it's classic Marxism. Stumbling and Bumbling earns a place on my blogroll for mixing football and Marxist politics.

Why why why, Delilah?

Just to make you happy, congratulations to Manchester United for their league success. I've lost a filling getting that out through gritted teeth.

Good weekend for the revived giants of Stoke though. A clear victory. We're closing on Man City and ahead of all my friends' teams other than MU. I'd like to finish the season by doling out a damn good thrashing to Woolwich Arsenal. All that remains for me to say is I TOLD YOU SO.

Tony Pulis for England?

Backsliding

OK, I didn't plan to touch Plashing Vole until Monday (even God rested on the 7th day), but the computer's on and constructive alignment theory doesn't appeal one little bit. Maybe later. Instead, I've read three books this weekend (a biography of Melita Norwood badly written but highly informative), Adam Roberts's Swiftly (riproaring but also thoughtful steampunk SF with a side-order of weird sex), and Mary McCarthy's The Groves of Academe, a slow novel about a seedy academic trying to disguise his inadequacies as political and personal honour. I am a fan of campus novels, though real life as an academic is much less interesting than the fiction. Perhaps a book that went 'lectured, marked, marked, slept, drank too much, went home alone as usual, marked, marked, marked, lectured, died' wouldn't fly off the shelves.

Stoke lost to Fulham yesterday, as I suspected would happen. We still need a few more points to guarantee safety, but it should be OK (congratulations, FINALLY, to Ewarwoowar for predicting a Stoke result correctly). Meanwhile, Tony Pulis is replicating our middle-table form at the London Marathon. Triffic!