… and I had a nice drive down to Cebazat, between Riom and Clermont Ferrand, for the footy. Finding the town was one thing – finding the ground was something else entirely. I ended up at what can only be described as a stadium watching a wimmin’s footy match while the locals asked around as to where the men might be playing. In the end I was directed to a public park on the edge of the town where there wasn’t even a pie hut Shock! Horror!
It was a good game and Pionsat drew 2-2, which was a good result seeing as how injuries have decimated the side and they lost 2 more players during the game.
The match kicked off at 15:00 so I could even have gone to see the 2nd XI, who kicked off at 13:00 just down the road at Sayat. But with no alarm clock and waking up at …errr… 11:22, there wasn’t much hope of that.
The drive out was really nice. I didn’t switch the sat-nav on until I got to Pionsat so it took me via Manzat, St Hypocrite and that way, which is a beautiful run. I meant to stop and take some piccies on the way back but it brought me back up the N144 which is nothing like as exciting.
In other news, Rhys and I are well-known for our differences of opinion on the American political scene and we have long since agreed to differ. But in more shock! horror! news, we are in fact inaccord over one thing. And that is “what the hell has Obama done to merit the Nobel Peace Prize?”
Rhys thinks that a well-filled plain brown envelope changed hands, whereas I think that it was because he wasn’t the Bushbaby and someone wanted to rub the Bushbaby’s nose in the political dirt. But the Peace Prize is usually awarred to someone who makes a major breakthrough in some kind of inherent national or international conflict.
But giving it to someone who is just about to up the ante in Afghanistan and is considering sending in more troops to fight the indigenous inhabitants – it’s just insulting and offensive. The Nobel Committee should be ashamed of itself.
I’m more in accord with your idea than Rhys. Apparently Obama though it was a bad joke when they woke him to tell him.
My own ideas though are that, apart from not being Bush, he did quite a bit in his first few weeks to tone down the world tensions that Bush had raised. He backed the US away from confrontation with Korea, and Iran ( and anyone else GW felt like picking a fight wih). Speeded up the withdrawal process in Iraq. Pulled back from writing political blank checks for Isreal ( yes more is needed!) and pulled out of the Chech nuclear weapons sites. That in turn meant Russia could back down on nuclear rearmament wqithout losing face. He’s also rengaged with the UN etc. Not a lot in results no, though he has just brokered an agreement between Turkey and Armenia, which I’d have said would come only when hell froze over, but considering Bush had us on the edge of a world conflict it’s a pretty good start. So I think the Nobel committee gave it to him to give him a boot in the rear to keep moving in the same direction as he started off. I hope he does, someone has to and frankly after the damage to world relations that Gee dubya! did, someone has to and I can’t see the rest of the current shower of world leaders doing it.
During his year in the White House, he has achieved precisely nothing. He has been involved in precisely nothing and pretty much the country has been led by his advisers. The Nobel Peace prize has a long history of being awarded to people who don’t deserve it. Past recipients include Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa whose contribution toward world peace is precisely nothing, some guy who was jailed in Lebanon for poking his nose into other people’s business and so on. It is time the Nobel prize ceased to exist. It is rather ironical that Alfred Nobel should have a peace prize since Alfred Nobel was the inventor of many weapons of war. I suspect he was taking the mickey by setting up a peace prize and I suspect the Nobel committee see it that way and are awarding the prize to useless individuals as a way of furthering that joke.
Obama is still threatening Iran though (why Iran can’t have nuclear weapons when the Zionists have them is something that I just don’t understand) and is increasing the armed foreigner presence in Afghanistan.
To my mind the Nobel Peace Prize should be given to someone who does something outstanding in the way of peace and I don’t think that Obama has done anything like enough to merit even being considered, let alone winning it
I don’t think anyone has done anything this year to deserve it. So what would you have them do? Leave it in the drawer or use it as they have done to give someone with the power to do some good a hefty shove in the direction they want him to go? I’d opt for the latter, but you can vote your own way 🙂
I wouldn’t award it if there wasn’t any suitable candidate to award it to.
Anyway, nice to “see” you again, Krys.
I’d award it posthumously to somebody who’d done the world a great service by leaving it – lol.