My Euros Vision

So, I've had an idea.  In an attempt to make both the European Football Championship and the Eurovision Song Contest more appealing, I am suggesting that countries have to enter the same team/act for both.


So, Russia this year would have their granny group squaring up against Poland in the first game of the group stages and England could choose whether to have Engelbert Humperdinck as a one-man football team, or whether to have the England football team performing Three Lions at Eurovision.  Let's face it, the England team couldn't have done much worse than poor old Engelbert in Eurovision; although, to be fair, Engelbert probably has about as much chance of winning the euros as Terry, Ferdinand et al.


And the real genius of my idea?  Finally Wales will have a chance.  Only Boys Aloud, with their 150-odd members, would belt out a bloody good tune and stand a good chance at Eurovision, and could all simply hang around the goal end of the pitch making it impossible for the opposition to get through.


All rights to my idea are reserved by me but can be bought by an enterprising TV company for a very reasonable six-figure sum.


Thank you.

Interesting things what I did learn from reading History of the Present by Timothy Garton Ash:


1. Difficulty in forming democratic governments in central and eastern Europe after the fall of communism.  A single movement united against communism (eg, Solidarity in Poland) suddenly has to almost divide to form a multi-party democracy.  TGA believes the most successful countries needed a strong coalition government to drive the necessary economic changes from a collective to a market economy.


2. Talking of a former Solidarity member who once ran an underground anti-communist newspaper in Warsaw, and who now stands to make millions as the post-communist media conglomerate she helped found is floated on the stock market: "Perhaps this is the last irony of freedom's battle: the compulsory could be defied, but the voluntary may be irresistible".


3.  TGA suggests that states can only be stable with a majority of the same ethnicity, and states of mixed ethnicities - eg, Yugoslavia, Bosnia - are being torn apart through civil war and often end up being divided into smaller nation states.  Czechoslovakia is another example, although its separation in to two countries was managed peacefully.  Suggests that in order for Europe to integrate more fully (ie, through the EU), states may first have to divide into smaller nations in order to achieve peace and stability.


4. Writing in 1999, TGA suggests that Europe should focus on enlarging the EU rather than pushing on with monetary union with some countries which are "not ready for it".  "I fear the resulting strains will make Western Europe a very bad-tempered place - perhaps even worse - at some point in the next ten years".  It's 2012, so he was a few years out, but the current riots in Greece and the problems in Ireland, Portugal, Spain and others, are more than enough to vindicate his argument.

Review of 2011

Wow, didn't 2011 go fast.  It doesn't seem like 5 minutes since I was writing my statistical review of 2010.  Well, after some more geeky data mining, here's the roundup of 2011 in numbers.

Category	2010	2011	What happened dude?
Train (miles)	5,125	4,878	Only a small drop despite a much shorter commute.  Helped by some long distance train travel to far flung cities.  Like London and Manchester.
Driving (miles)	8,000	9,507	One of 2011’s resolutions was to keep the driving to a minimum.  So it looks like that totally didn’t work.  But there are a large number of work miles in there (c2,000), which are fairly unavoidable.
Walking (miles)	-	407	First year tracking this one.  Equates to over one mile a day, which was my target.
Swimming (lengths)	-	418 lengths	Equivalent to just over 10,000 metres.  Not good enough.  Got very lazy in second half of the year.
Cycling (miles)	-	161	Not bad, but was aiming for 365.  Took me a while to sort out punctures etc at start of the year.
Running (miles)	-	9	Gotta get to grips with the fact that I’m not a runner.  I just don’t enjoy it.  Not even gonna bother measuring it in 2012.
Flying (miles)	1,286	26,297	Well, flying halfway round the world to New Zealand and then back again meant this was always gonna be a big number in 2011!
Nights away	80	104	That’s right.  About 3½ months spent not sleeping in my own bed, thanks to muchos holidays and loads of weekends away.
Films	43	62	Wow, 44% more films than last year.  Suggests I am becoming more of a couch potato.  Not sure this is a good thing.
Books	30	24	Less books, but more pages overall (8,431 against 7,722 in 2010).  Reflects getting through a load of the heavy stuff that’s been sitting on my shelves for years and not simply going through PG Wodehouse!
Charity	£70	£145	Much better, but still not the 1% of net income I’m aiming for.  I said last year I would find a charity a month to give money too and obviously promptly forgot all about it.  I will do that this year.

And what would life be without some crazy predictions for the year ahead:

• Train travel up due to travelling to London more often by train
• Driving down due to looking for, applying and getting new job that involves less driving.
• Walking, swimming and cycling all to be up.  I am determined to spend more time outside exercising and to stop the ever-expanding waistline in its tracks.
• Flying: way, way down.  If only I could afford to do New Zealand two years running...
• Nights away - down to about 80 due to moving closer to friends and so spending less weekends away from home.
• Films and books - both will stay pretty much the same.  Aiming to end the year with no more than two unread books on the shelves.
• Charity - aiming for 1% of net income.  Quick fag packet calculation suggests I managed 0.6% in 2011.  Not great, but better than the c0.35% in 2010.

And finally, five aims for 2012:

1. Properly stop biting my nails.  Not even a nibble.
2. Either (i) get job in London, or (ii) failing that, quit current job and travel.
3. Save further £5,000 towards house deposit (less likely to be achieved in conjunction with Option 2 above).
4. Blog more.  At least once a month.
5. Start some sort of further education.  Either history, international relations or something environmental.

Sounds good?  It's so easy to write them down.  Pretty scary having to actually do some of them though.

Wish me luck.