Sunday Sounds 62

This week's Sunday Sound comes courtesy of the fantastic The Blue Nile and Tinseltown in the Rain. Whilst undeniably Eighties, I think there is something timeless about the music: something which can't be said for the video!

Andrew

Gay Footballers: What are the Chances?

One of my favourite Radio 4 programme's is Tim Harford's More or Less. It takes a weekly look at some of the statistics and numbers in the news and explores the basis of these: often uncovering cases of these being misapplied or misrepresented.

Yesterday I listened to the 2012 "numbers of the year" edition in which various journalists, reporters and personalities chose a significant statistic and explained something about it.

Bill Edgar, Statistics in Football writer for the Times, and author of Back of the Net: 100 Golden Goals decided to look at the chances of there NOT having been a gay footballer in the English League since the last (and first) openly gay footballer (Justin Fashanu) ended his English career at Torquay, some 20 years ago next month.

Assuming that a) the proportion of gay footballers is similar to the percentage in broader society and b) that this percentage is a conservative 1.5%, the chance that there has been no gay players in the English League is...

Of the 13,600 players to have played in the League in the past 20 years, the chances of none of them being gay is (drum roll please)

1 in 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

In the Premier League, there have been 3,200 players in this period. The chances of picking 3,200 men at random from the general populace and not picking any gay ones is:

1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

The only recorded case of an active professional footballer being openly gay, anywhere, is the (Liverpool-born) Swede Anton Hysén (pictured) - you can read more about Hysén over on Stephen's blog. For more of More or Less, you can download the podcast.

Andrew

The Office: An Unexpected Journey

Martin Freeman. 

Star of The Hobbit. 

Former star of The Office. 

Inspiration for this inspired mash-up:

h/t to the theonering.net's Facebook page for this!

Andrew

Saturday Six 20

Welcome to this, my twentieth weekly collection of blogs which have caught my eye. Let's crack on...

First up, Jonathan Calder on Liberal England reports on a little-know 1955 radio production of The Lord of the Rings, featuring Prunella Scales and David Hemmings!

Last week's Saturday Six had a link to a Liberator article on the new (or latest) Lib Dem messaging strategy. Caron Lindsay and George Potter have both written their own responses.

George has also written this piece on why it is fair to raise welfare payments in line with inflation - in bad times as well as good.

The Adam Smith Institute's Sam Bowman discusses some of the issues faced when cutting spending in the Public Sector; concluding that spending cuts have to be accompanied by reform. I would like to re-iterate the old addage that a link does not infer full agreement. But I liked this paragraph: " Of course deep spending cuts are needed. But, unless you’re happy to mess over people who rely on state services through no fault of their own, they can only work in conjunction with big changes in how we do things." 

And finally, who says F1 isn't affordable on a budget? Perhaps this guy could save HRT...

Andrew

NOW! That's What I Call A Tune! 65

It's a New Year and some things haven't changed: I'm a day late in bringing you this week's NOW! That's What I Call A Tune...

There were a few acts and songs that I considered for this entry - some of which have been featured on these pages before. Scissor Sisters, The Fratellis, Christina Aguilera, Razorlight, Snow Patrol, Paolo Nutini, The Feeling, The Killers, Jamelia and Meat Loaf all staked a claim.

I could only, honestly, choose one track though - the sublime Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol. It was a bit of a surprise that I hadn't featured this song before but, better late than never!

What would you have chosen?:

Andrew