* Nation Of Sportsmen. England has suffered some blows on the sportsfield all in games which the English invented. First the unfortunate football game where England lost 2 - nill to renowned footballing nation Croatia. The highly paid footballers of England seem unable to measure up to foreign competition. I mean its not as though we're trawling the third division for players. These overpaid martinets of the premiere division seem unable to pass the ball to each other let alone score goals. No doubt they seek consolation in their well deserved pay cheques.
Next the English defending the Ashes against Australia are mercilessly outclassed at cricket (possibly the most tedious game ever invented). The final feather in the English cap is the performance of our Rugby team against the South Africans. Such an abysmal performance that they are booed off the pitch. All this just confirms what I have been saying.
The final icing on the cake was the announcement that the national Pie Eating competition has had the rules changed so that it is no longer how many meat pies you can eat in a given time, but how fast you can eat one meat pie! All in the name of politically correct consumption due to concerns over lard *rse Britain. Hang your heads and weep!.

* I haven't touched on the poisoned spy scandal as there is nothing one can add to the unfolding story as covered by the BBC. There seemed to be an inordinate amount of excitement about the possibility that Russia was upto its old tricks again.
I decided to consult my Uncle Dave who has been extremely morose since the cold war ceased. Uncle Dave was very downbeat about the possibility of the being a KGB-FSB (the terms being interchangeable on the BBC) operation.In the old days, said Uncle Dave nostalgically, the target would disappear having been kidnapped, then would be smuggled back to Russia, locked up in the Lubyanka prison, where their life would be made extremely miserable for a few weeks before being bound and thrown alive into the basement furnace. Still ,he said, the way standards are falling ....