Events, Tickets, Lifestyle and Fashion

Sir Alex Ferguson retires

Chris — Tue, 14 May 2013 02:05:56 +0000

Sir Alex Ferguson will retire as Manchester United manager at the end of the season after 26 years in charge.

Sir Alex, 71, has won 38 trophies during his reign at Old Trafford and will now take up the post of director and ambassador for the club.

Achieventments
He has won, no less than 13 league titles, two Champions League crowns, five FA Cups and four League Cups with Manchester United.

“The decision to retire is one that I have thought a great deal about. It is the right time,” Ferguson said.

Congratulations to Sir Alex Ferguson on years of unprecedented achievements at Manchester United.
English Football will never be the same after this week.

Sir Alex retires

A visionary character
A man amongst men
A leader
A champion
A football legend

A hard act to follow
With trophies galore
His primary objective
Man United to score

His players united
And full of respect
Motivated and mean
To give of their best

Achievements unrivaled
He taught players to win
Pundits and fans
Will sorely miss him

Hard work and desire
Kept his club at the top
We wish he could go on
And didn’t have to stop

International Women’s Day

Chris — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 04:13:57 +0000

IWD 101 years

International Women’s Day has been observed since the early 1900′s, a time of great expansion and turbulence in the industrialized world that saw booming population growth and the rise of radical ideologies.

This day marks a 101 official years of struggles, social change, achievements and innovation engendered by women from every corner of the globe.

History of International Women’s Day

1908 … Great unrest and critical debate was occurring amongst women. Women’s oppression and inequality was spurring women to become more vocal and active in campaigning for change.
Then in 1908, 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights.
1909 … In accordance with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America, the first National Woman’s Day (NWD) was observed across the United States on 28 February. Women continued to celebrate NWD on the last Sunday of February until 1913.
1910 … In 1910 a second International Conference of Working Women was held in Copenhagen. A woman named a Clara Zetkin (Leader of the ‘Women’s Office’ for the Social Democratic Party in Germany) tabled the idea of an International Women’s Day
1911 … International Women’s Day (IWD) was honoured for the first time in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland on 19 March after a consensus in Copenhagen in 1911.
Over one million women and men attended IWD rallies campaigning for women’s rights to work, vote, be trained, to hold public office and end discrimination.
However less than a week later on 25 March, the tragic ‘Triangle Fire’ in New York City took the lives of more than 140 working women, most of them Italian and Jewish immigrants. This disaster drew significant attention to working conditions and labour legislation in the United States that became a focus of subsequent International Women’s Day events.

Arsenal fans bored with Wenger

Chris — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 22:47:36 +0000

How long will it be before the Arsenal board and Wenger realizes that their Arsenal team is not competing with the top teams in the Premiership?

The current squad is not good enough and the fans have agonised over this for at least four seasons with perennial denials from Arsene Wenger.

Arsenal’s performance is like a high street giant with products which nobody wants and stores which cost too much to run. Such multinational under threat of going out of business are in that position because they refuse to embrace change and accept that customers have started shopping online or they have disregarded their customers demand for different goods.

Arsenal as a club is not short of resources but they continually makes bad choices about their players. The Arsenal team has one of the most brittle defenses in the Premiership and as soon as their opponents score a goal, fans feel that the game is over.

The recent additions to the team in Cazorla, Podolski and Giroud are a commitment to spending money on new players but they have not replaced, like for like, the world class players who have left Arsenal only to strengthen the top Manchester teams.

Players like Fabregas, Robin van Persie, Nasri and Clichy are hard to replace but Wenger and his backroom staff are poor at finding good players to strengthen their team. Wenger’s preference of recruiting French players should come to an end as these players are not world class. Better players exist in South America and other countries and are often overlooked.

Arsenal should move Wenger unto the board and appoint a new football manager who can get the best out of the existing players. The new manager should be talented enough to select a team to compete in the Premiership and deal with teams with varying tactic and styles of play.

Happy New Year

Chris — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 00:58:41 +0000

Happy New Year to all our readers!

After an eventful year of geopolitical unrest, natural disasters and wars, the world is slowly recovering.
Events in every corner of the globe have battered and bruised the poor and disadvantaged causing pain, hardship and turmoil.
However, we hope that the unpalatable events of 2012 are not a precursor for things to come.
Globally people will have to get used to greedy multinationals overreaching to attain bigger profits and weak governments that are unable to support the poor and disadvantaged in society.

Nevertheless!
We hope that 2013 will be peaceful and prosperous year for everyone.

Gunners firing blanks

Chris — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 16:03:29 +0000

Olympiakos 2 Arsenal 1

Arsenal fielded a weakened team against Olympiakos in the deciding match in the group stages of the Champions League. Olympiakos won, scoring 2 goals to Arsenal’s 1. As a result, Arsenal finished second in their group. Although they have qualified for the knockout stage, its only a matter of time, 90 minutes more, before they will inevitably be knocked out.

Arsene Wenger seems devoid of a plan or ideas on how revitalise this misfiring bunch of players. His team is weak, unbalanced and the players show little sign of improving without some new blood or a miracle. Half the teams in the Premiership are in better form as the moment.

The new boys, Podolski, Cazorla and Giroud show signs of promise but the team as a whole does not gel. The defense, though improving is still woeful. After much debate and thousands of column inches, Arsenal’s defense is still as brittle as a cookie.

Arsene is in denial about the capabilities of this team. The fans however are certain that most of the players are at best average. That is reflected in the 2 out of 9 games that they have won recently.

Quality players don’t grow on trees and even when they become available, Arsenal is usually last out of the transfer blocks. On the other hand, the money that fans pay to watch their team struggle every week doesn’t bring the pleasure and entertainment they deserve.

Already, the top two Manchester clubs are 15 and 11 points ahead in the league. Meanwhile Arsenal languish in 10th position and the transfer window is still several hard games away.

As a business, Arsenal is run in an exemplary way. They are the envy of football clubs worldwide because of the way the club is run . The challenge for them now is to keep their fans wanting to go to watch them play. Arsenal has to try and bridge the football skills gap and stay to with the other teams in the Premiership. To do this they will have to get a better back room staff and buy players who can help the club to win again.

Democracy, the last lap

Chris — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 05:30:00 +0000

The next president of the United States of America will be faced with many challenges at home and abroad.

The American people will decide but the whole world will be watching and hoping that
he will be wise, strong and egalitarian.

Democracy – the last lap

The race, t’is near the end
And networks are in overdrive
No time for honesty and truth
Though each message is broadcast live

Superpacks rule the roost
With dollars to beguile
So sonorous, yet invisible
But always with a smile

The rhetoric now befuddled
The biased media resets
As the last ad airs
Scaremongers and haters rest

One last promise fills the airwaves
The undecideds hold the key
Clever blogs are being written
Knowing what the outcome will be

The well healed, they careless
And slyly take a melliflous breath
The meek are unimpressed
And worry about their debt

Time to cast that vote
In hope that change will come
Tomorrow is a new day
Whatever happens, life goes on

Apple gets hi5 for iPhone5

Chris — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 12:28:14 +0000

The new Apple smartphone is taller, slimmer, lighter and faster.

Apple revealed the much awaited iPhone 5 at its September 12 event on Wednesday. In a surprise move, Apple announced that the iPhone 5 will come with the same price tags as iPhone 4S, that is $199 $299 and $399. The new iPhone line-up will now include iPhone 5, iPhone 4S and iPhone 4. Apple has phased out the smartphone’s older model iPhone 3GS.

It has some notable and significant features but are they groundbreaking?

The features

Surf at high speed with LTE
4 inch retina display
Better app management
Improved battery life
HD recording
7.6mm thin … 18% thinner
Light 112gms … 20% lighter
Volume … 12% less

New A6 chip quad-core Cortex A6 processor
faster processing/graphics

8 megapixel camera

Bigger screen
screen has 1136 x 640 screen resolution, with a 16:9 aspect ratio

Cook says

Apple has created “a completely new iTunes”. As for the iPhone 5, it’s “the thinnest, lightest and best iPhone we have ever shipped, powered by iOS 6, now with 200 new features for you to discover and explore”.

Pricing

Schiller retort
“Just two questions left: how much do I have to spend?”
The same prices as for the 4S last year:
$199 (16GB), $299 (32GB), $399 (64GB).

“When can i get my hands on one?
You can pre-order on September 14, ship just one week later – September 21 – in US, UK, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Singapore, and then a week later in 20 more countries, and by the end of this year in more than 100 countries. It’s the fastest rollout ever.”

Networks

4G/LTE gives you a theoretical maximum downlink of 100megabits per second. Single chip, single radio, dynamic antenna – the latter from the iPhone 4S, switching between two virtual antennas for signal reception.”
“LTE is the most complicated networking technology ever brought to this earth.” Who with? Sprint, Verizon and AT&T in the US; Asia, Softbank, KDDI, Smartone; Australia, Telstra, Optus, Virgin Mobile; in Europe Deutsche Telekom and – hurrah! – EvEv in the UK.
“Made entirely of glass and aluminium, unlike anything we or anyone in our industry has made before. Hardware and software engineering is the most challenging our team has ever taken on.”
First: “the thinnest and lightest phone we’ve ever made, 7.6mm thin, 112g so 20% lighter, smaller volume. “This is the monumental challenge.. have everything the iPhone 4S has even before new features. It’s really easy to make a product that’s bigger, everyone does that.”

Dock Connector

OK, now let’s kill the connector. “So many things we used to do over the wire we now do wirelessly. We use Bluetooth … Wi-Fi for our stereo … iTunes … it’s time for the connector to evolve.”

http://9to5mac.com/2012/09/11/apples-new-dock-connector-is-called-lightning-earpod-headphones-loop-ipod-touch-accessories-2gb-ipod-shuffles/

able to sync via a computer at faster speeds than the current 30-pin connector

iOS 6

The iOS6 browser tabs know what you have open on Safari back on your Mac, so all your browsing is in sync.

Wednesday, Apple’s website suggest the update will revamp Siri, FaceTime and Safari, among other services.

Cue the music

Eddy Cue, the head of music. “iTunes Store has 26m songs, you have purchased over 20bn songs since we launched it 9 years ago.” My credit card knows it.
iTunes Store is in 63 countries around the world. “With that we now have 435m iTunes accounts with one-click purchasing and they can easily shop from anywhere … but over the past few years there’s been an amazing trend: two-thirds directly to iOS.”

Colours

Black and white.

Camera

As for the camera
There’ll be an A6 chip used to process images, and a “smart filter” which looks at the image and figures out where areas should be coloured (sky) or textured. “Faster photo capture, now 40% faster”.

Photos while recording

The back camera takes 1080 pixel images, and can take photos while recording video. The front does the same but at 720p.

Panoramic images

The presentation shows 28 megapixel stitching.

Performance claims

Apple says, the iPhone 5 will achieve:
• 225 hours standby
• 40 hours music playback
• 10 hours LTE use
• 10 hours video
• 8 hours 3G
• 8 hours Wi-Fi

Leeds West Indian Carnival

Chris — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 03:46:32 +0000

Leeds Carnival
The 45th Leeds Carnival was a true spectacle of colour and excitement.

The pouring rain, wet damp conditions and the missing sunshine couldn’t dampen the spirits of the carnival troupes.

The crowds came out as usual and descended on the park in Chapeltown and thousands gathered along the carnival route.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Wenger 1 Sir Alex 0

Chris — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 00:16:00 +0000

The new season is now in full flow with premiership clubs already battling for the top spot.

The big 6 clubs haven’t got into their groove as yet but they don’t have any divine right to be at the top either.

The star players are eager to impress and managers more so. Some managers are trying to hold onto to their jobs by putting into practice all they learnt in summer from the Euro2012 championships and the Olympics.

The exciting thing about football is that it’s unpredictable. Well, at least to a point!
The pundits, bookies and fans all expect the Manchester clubs to be at the top with Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham panting heavily behind.

Manchester City and United are poised to keep their stranglehold on the Premiership but Chelsea are buoyed by that massive piece of silverware ‘The European Cup’, and they will be keen to show that they are still a worthy championship contenders.

Arsenal and Wenger seem to be in free-fall. However they may be laughing all the way to the bank after selling Robin van Persie and Alex song and netting nearly £40 million in the process.

Van Persie did Arsenal a huge favour even though some fan still call him a ‘Judas’. Robin at 29, had one year left on his contract and his best years behind him. So, in my opinion, he did the right thing for himself, for Arsenal and their fans.

If van Persie has another season like the last one it will be a miracle.
Arsene Wenger can now show if he has the right stuff. He has the money, a new batch of starlets with long contracts and all to play for.

Leeds Golden Girl Nicola wins Olympic medal

Chris — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 20:50:55 +0000

Nicola is the champ
Nichola Adams, the Leeds boxer beat Chinese champion in the Olympic boxing women’s final to take the gold medal and write her name in the history books.

Team GB’s Nicola Adams beat her ‘Nemesis’, China’s Ren Cancan to becomes the first woman, ever, to win an Olympic boxing gold medal, in the Olympics flyweight final.

Nicola made history by becoming the first woman to win an Olympic gold medal.

She produced a flawless display to claim the title of 2012 London Olympics champion by winning all four three minutes rounds by a 9 point margin.

Well done Nicola!!!!

The Pugilist

To be the champ
Is the only ambition
Achieving this goal
Demands lots of preparation

What makes a champion
(S)he’s strong and he’s tough
Even with stamina and speed
That’s still not enough

Your trainer develops
A regimented routine
To hone up your skills
And to make you real mean

Up at six pounding the road
Then straight to the gym
Skipping, weights and sparring
Followed by shadow boxing

A punchbag is used
To develop more power
It will harden your fist
So you can punch for an hour

When the bell rings
It starts a new bout
You’d better be ready
Or’ze you’ll get knocked out

Jab jab jab
Keep the punk at arms length
Hook, hook, uppercut
Way to build up your strength

This mother packs a punch
Like a runaway train
Don’t get in the way
Or you’re in a world of pain