NFL showing its international intentions

I could write rant after rant after rant about Donald Trump, but frankly that would be boring, so I want to tackle some other stories here for a little bit.

I am a bit of a sports fan, okay, a lot of a sports fan, and I'm getting ready for the Super Bowl this weekend, and saw with interest on a recent episode of Around The Horn, a story about the NFL playing a game in Mexico City next year.

It does look like that the NFL is showing its hand with regards to adding more international teams to their roster.  London has already seen many NFL matches with 4 more coming up next season.

But the NFL's history with the World League Of American Football, later NFL Europe League and NFL Europa; gives some interesting background.

For the 1991 and 1992 seasons, there were more North American teams than European ones.  Only one of those teams was outside the US, and it wasn't in Mexico, it was in Canada.  The Montreal Machine.  The other North American teams by the way were Birmingham Fire (that's Birmingham, Alabama, not the West Midlands), New York/New Jersey Knights, Ohio Glory, Orlando Thunder, Raleigh-Durham Skyhawks, Sacramento Surge & San Antonio Riders.

Other than New York, who already have the Giants and the Jets, none of the other cities in the North American section of the WLAF, have a current NFL franchise.  Interestingly though, Florida already has 3 teams in their state.  Jacksonville Jaguars, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Miami Dolphins.  The Carolina Panthers are based in the same state as the Skyhawks were but at the other end of the state.  The Cincinnati Bengals are in the same state that the Glory were.

The European teams were across a greater number of countries originally.  The UK had the London Monarchs, Germany had the Frankfurt Galaxy and Spain had the Barcelona Dragons.  When the World League became exclusively European in 1995, they added the Netherlands with the Amsterdam Admirals, and they added teams in the UK and Germany, the Scottish Claymores and the Rhein Fire in Dusseldorf.

When the London Monarchs tried playing home games in different locations in 1998, rebranding themselves as the England Monarchs, the move ultimately failed and the franchise was shutdown and replaced by the Berlin Thunder.

Gradually NFL Europe became more and more NFL Germany, as Barcelona Dragons were shutdown in 2003 and replaced by the Cologne Centurions, and the following year, the Scottish Claymores were closed down and replaced by the Hamburg Sea Devils.  Only the Amsterdam Admirals would keep going as the sole non-German NFL Europa team until the league folded in 2007.

So, whilst the NFL's international ambitions have been there for a long time, the lack of international success in terms of building teams, doesn't bode well.

Scotland Votes 2014: Early Indications…

Well the polls in Scotland closed at 2200 UK time, and so far, none of the 32 councils have declared, but we are expecting the smaller counties with fewer votes to declare first.

We haven’t had an exit poll, but You Gov did an “on the day” poll, telephoning people who had voted, rather than catching them after they leave the polling station, and that poll suggests 54% have voted No, and 46% have voted Yes.  The head honcho of You Gov, Peter Kellner, gives his poll a 99% certainty, though to be honest, nothing like this has ever been done before, and certainly the usual rules of polling are less reliable here than in elections, so to give this much more credence right now than to call it an interesting survey.  We will see overnight, if that survey has any more credence than that.

Otherwise, there really is little to report.  First results are expected sometime between Midnight and 2am, with the last council declaring around 6am.  Even as a long time observer of global politics, this is one of those situations and issues where I don’t have even an inkling on how this will go.  From the historical perspective, more countries have voted for independence since 1945 than against it, but history is not a guide to the future. 

Hopefully once we get the first results, we’ll start to get an idea just how the vote is going.  But we are still waiting for those first results.

UKIP feeling the heat in Scotland

UKIP's Nigel Farage never met a controversy he didn't like.  In this case, it's being protested against in Edinburgh.  A number of protestors yesterday confronted him as he held a news conference in a pub, and he had to be locked in for his own protection. 

Now he is trying to put a brave face on it today, by saying that he'd been in worse places than that.  Yeah, right!  You felt scared for your life, so you got the police to bring a van so you could get away without facing the protestors again.  Because you knew in your heart, they had you pegged, to a T.

UKIP describe themselves as "...the UK’s third political party – and the only one now offering a radical alternative...".  Third political party?  Not true.  In terms of elected representatives, they have only 11 MEPs, 3 members of the House of Lords, 1 Assembly Member in Northern Ireland, and 201 councillors in Local Elections.  That's a lot lower than many parties, behind the SNP, Plaid Cymru, and even The Green Party. 

Yes, they may have made a major breakthrough in England, but outside of England, they have just 1 MEP, for Wales, and 1 Assembly Member in Northern Ireland, and even this was a defection.  Their only electoral success outside of England is the one MEP in Wales.  This gives the impression that they are somewhat of a band of 'little Engalders', as it were.

They're fighting hard to establish themselves as a mainstream party, even going so far as to ban former BNP Members from joining or standing as candidates, but this is mere smoke and mirrors.  The party's policies and actions in various situations have spoken far louder.

They proposed a 5 year freeze on immigration, and they wanted to initiate a drive to remove all illegal immigrants from the UK, something that in cost terms, is impractical.  They want to leave the European Union, withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, and the European Convention on Refugees.  They want cut corporation taxes and abolish inheritence taxes and national insurance.  UKIP lost a sex-discriminitation case when Nikki Sinclaire was expelled from UKIP.  Now you might say they lost because they mounted no defence, but to be honest, they must have known what they'd done was indefensible.  This is an extremist right wing party.

And whilst Nigel Farage might find it easy to accuse Scottish Nationalism of being extremists and being "akin to fascism", but it's clear to me, that he obviously has little understanding of Scottish politics and his view of the UK is obviously a view of England primarily and not of the other nations in the Union.

However, SNP leader and Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, got it wrong when he said the UKIP Leader had "lost the plot." as to be honest, UKIP and Nigel Farage never had the plot in the first place.  Farag'e accusations of a hate campaign as well are liudicrous.  If you think a small student demonstration constitutes a hate campaign, then you know nothing about politics.  UKIP has little credibility, and even less believeablity after this.

Nigel Farage might be trying to make UKIP seem more electable, but nobody should be fooled by extremism dressed up in a suit.  And their audience outside England, might be extremely limited indeed.

Home Internationals: Is it time they returned?

Sky Sports at the moment are showing a Home Nations Masters Football tournament, and it great fun to watch some of these great stars from football's past having fun in the indoor arena. But perhaps it is time we restarted an old tradition by bringing back the Home Internationals.

The Home Internationals was a mini tournament between the home nations in Football, much the Six Nations was originally for Rugby, before the introduction of France and Italy into the competition. Perhaps a five way tournament between England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland would be a great aid to helping sharpen our International sides for matches against other nations. What do you think?

Politics and Religion: Too explosive to combine

Part of me hates the idea that in Northern Ireland, a minister of the cloth, Rev. Ian Paisley is the First Minister, and that he has been politically active for so long. It always seemed wrong to me to mix politics and religion.

But after this story today, as reported by BBC News, it seems even more wrong now. The head of the church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, has told catholic politicians who support abortion to rethink whether they should be accepting holy communion.

You know what he's really saying here, don't you? The translation that comes out of the Universal Translator and Decryptographical Analyser says, 'Recind your support for Abortion or you won't enter Heaven!'.

HOW DARE HE!

He is doing what I abhor seeing happen in newspapers, where the papers tell the readers what to think. In Christianity, the priest or vicar tells the congregation what to think, only they call it 'preaching'. In reality, it is brainwashing!

I am a human being, with a perfectly good mind of my own, one which I intend to use to the best of my ability, and I do NOT allow ANYONE to tell ME, what to think. It's called having an independent mind. I am a lone wolf who goes my own way and makes my own deicisions, not a sheep, who gets guided to his pen.

Ireland Votes 2007: Declarations

Well, we have full declarations in Wexford, where Fianna Fail has 2 seats, Fine Gael has 2 seats and Labour has 1.

We also have a full declaration in Sligo-North Leitrim and in Roscommon-South Leitrim, which seems to be pretty well split straight between FF and FG.

The more you look at the fully declared results, as there are others too, the more you realise that, as I said earlier, this was a polarised election, rather than a diversified one. Labour, in third place at the moment with 11 seats, could well be the balance of power in Ireland, but as we have seen in Elections in Scotland and Wales, deal-making between political parties is extremely difficult, and it would not surprise me if we had a minority government situation.

Don't forget though that there are constituencies where counts continue as they have yet to fill all the available seats, and some of these will go into Saturday, so we won't know the full story for a while yet.

Just to prove the point, Dublin Central is going into it's seventh count!