Telegraph and sports comment

Rather disturbingly, the Telegraph's sports columnists seem to have had a rather bad weekend of getting things right.

Sue Mott started off on Saturday by blaming the alleged corruption around a recent tennis match on the practice of allowing "betting on losers in any sport" - which rather ignores the fact that tennis is one of those sports where by betting on one player to win the match, you are effectively betting on the other player to lose the match (as opposed to, say, football where you have the option of a draw). There maybe issues around the fact that Betfair effectively allow you to bet on a horse to lose, but this doesn't have anything to do with the tennis issue.

Patrick Barclay manages the impressive feat of making two factual errors in two successive paragraphs. Firstly he repeats, with approval, Neil Warnock's comment that "Carlos Tevez, football's equivalent of a murderer out on bail, scored the goal that kept West Ham up and sent us down. So much for the integrity of the Premier League.'' If Warnock is referring to the goal Tevez scored at Old Trafford, he's talking rubbish. West Ham went into that game knowing that a point was enough to save them. If you're going to blame the result at Old Trafford, rather than the fact you lost at home to Wigan, then the anger should be directed at Manchester United's forwards for failing to score. Even if Tevez hadn't scored, West Ham would still have stayed up. (Incidentally, United were attacking the Stretford for the second half, and as they kicked off, the Stretford end chanted with one voice "Send them down!")

Barclay then follows that with the statement that all of the clubs in foreign ownership - but Fulham - have been taken over since the Glazers acquired Manchester United. This might come as a shock to Claudio Ranieri, who was sacked by Roman Abramovich a year before.

To be fair, he then makes an excellent point about the row over Thaksin Shinawatra's record, comparing it with the treatment Roman Abramovich received.

Why I'm not a LibDem.

A couple of years ago - before making the decision to join the Conservatives - I did one of those online "what party are you" questionaires which had me smack between the LibDems and the Tories.

In case I had any doubt that I made the right decision, Iain Dale is reporting that LibDem MP Sandra Gidley has called for a ban on school sports days as "Those children who are towards the end of the queue when the teams are being picked soon get the message and decide that they do not want to exercise" and it's humilitating for those who finish last.

What a load of ridiculous, PC, twaddle. I can speak from personal experience here - I was usually one of the last picked at sport (though for a strange period at around 13 when we did mini rugby during PE, I turned out to be pretty good at it and didn't get picked last - and I admit that felt great). However, it didn't stop me taking part - I was (and still am) rather proud of the fact that I managed to finish the 3000 metres every year at the school sports day - though I only avoided finishing last in my final year, and even that wasn't very impressive as a sporting achievement (a seventeen year old finishing ahead of only two 13 year olds doesn't exactly rank up there with the sinking of Bayern in extra time).

Life is full of adversity - we can't all be multi millionaire city traders, sports stars or thickos like Jade Goody. Children should enjoy their child hood, but don't wrap them up in cotton wool. Its a tough world out there, and they have to learn that at some point.

The fact that a LibDem MP can come out with this sort of garbage is exactly the reason I prefer the Conservatives.