Sports, Business And Stuff

Here is an interview done for ABC with Terrance Floyd, the brother of George Floyd, who was murdered by police in Minneapolis, sparking days of rioting all over the United States.  In his interview, he tells people not to **** up the country.  Q: Is there any way to describe what the last week has been like for you? Terrance Floyd: I’m still numb about it. I’m seeing it, and coming to realisation that that’s my father’s namesake. I lost my father and I lost my brother. I just had to come. I was on a zoom meeting with my family and I told them and I said: “I have to go there”. Of course they had the pros and cons, but they were a little nervous and said: “Do it”. We’ve got family in North Carolina and we’ve got all these people who can’t make it, and once I got the OK, the spirit of my brother told me to do it. I’m outraged too. At times I feel angry. I wanna bust some heads too. But my brother was not like that. My brother was about peace. He was a ‘gentle g...

My parents had the Coronavirus.   It plunged their weight, left them absolutely exhausted, and left me praying to the Lord Jesus that they would be OK. Thankfully, He answered in the affirmative. Sadly, hundreds of thousands of others didn't come through it (I don't know why. We just got lucky, I suppose). In Texas and all over the USA, there are repeated calls from factions who want everyone to get out there and 'restart the economy again'.  And you can understand why. These factions - often pushed along by their areas - have seen their areas (and voters, if we're honest about it), hammered by this immediate recession, and they are dying to get people back to work. I would love to restart the economy again. I would love for Disneyland and Disneyworld to open up again, be able to go the cinema two or three times a week, and get to use some of the Houston Astros baseball tickets that I bought in March (now I realise why the guy rec...

In one of my favourite films: 'Pump Up The Volume', there is a slogan sprayed on the wall of a high school: 'The Truth Is A Virus'. Right now, the world is struggling with a virus, and that's the coronavirus. Never mind the fact that the mortality rate is actually low , or the fact that you could be having flu - or even just a bad hangover (in the UK someone was hospitalized for 3 days with suspected coronavirus until it was found out that he had imbibed too much a few days beforehand).  The world is panicking, and the media's not helping.  Look, it's not to say that anyone dying from a disease is a good - or funny -  thing. It wasn't back in the days with flu and polio reeked havoc, it wasn't when the AIDS virus destroyed many in the 1980s, and it still isn't when malaria-driven areas of Africa took account of over 400,000 people in 2018 . I think that's why I resent people calling the virus the 'beer virus' (Corona-Vi...

It’s been said by more than enough people how easy or difficult being cynical is, and how difficult or easy being happy or hopeful is. For me, if you’re the kind of person that wants to rain on people’s parade all the time – be it the fact that you got through airport security in record time (“They probably got us through because they wanted us to shop more”), you went to the beach on Texas coast not too far from an oil refinery (“Was the water brown? Did the oil refinery make the air smell? Was your dog poisoned?”), or that church was fun (“It’s full of hypocrites being spoon-fed lies blah blah blah”) – then you become very boring, very quickly. Cynics don’t have a balance. They dislike everything. A cynic won’t let you say that there might be a positive aspect to Donald Trump or Boris Johnson, and the cynic on the other side will say the same about Barack Obama or Jeremy Corbyn. On both sides breeds a spirit of negativity that isn’t funny, it’s plain mean. I know, be...

One of the biggest things happening this month around the world is Pride Month, where the LGBT (that’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual for you know don't know what it stands for) community get together to celebrate. It's a worldwide celebration, with every city holding its own parade celebrating same-sex love.  The history of the marches themselves goes back to the Stonewall marches when gay persons  who stayed at the LGBT-friendly Stonewall Inn in New York in 1969 got fed up with police raiding their hotels and others like them which were gay, bi or trans-friendly rioted against the persecution by police. There were injuries and arrests. In 1970, there was the first Pride March.  Fast forward to the start of July 2019, where there's a Pride march in London. The London Pride March will explode into a mass of colour, an awful amount of PVC and leather on show in uncomfortable places that wouldn't want me to hit up my local Ann Summers anytime soon, and lo...

Sometimes it’s great to be first. You make history. Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon. Edmund Hillary was the first man to conquer Everest. Christopher Columbus discovered America (albeit a thousands years behind the Native Americans). Barack Obama was the first black president, while Margaret Thatcher was the first woman prime minister. And Thomas Crapper invented the U-bend in toilets. Making history and finishing first in the sports world is vastly important, too.     In sporting occasions, it’s the same. England won their first – and only - World Cup in 1966. Tom Brady became the first quarterback to reach 200 regular season wins, and the first quarterback to six Super Bowl victories. Wayne Gretzky was the first person to 1,851 points (assists and goals) in the NHL. Arsenal recorded the first-ever unbeaten season in the Premier League. And for the winners, there’s the following and the adulation – even Mr Crapper, had a word derived...