Red and Bluebeard
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Everything posted by Red and Bluebeard
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Not sure that I see the link between British rah-rah and the assassination of Archiduke Ferdinand (heir to which throne again? ) but you have a good point about military victory but economic loss in both wars. IMHO I think it was more the insanity of the German Kaiser which ensured that a relatively minor dispute in the Balkans escalated into a pan-European Gotterdamerung that killed millions, but that was only possible because of the Great Powers of the time (Britain, Russia, Germany, France etc) wanting to belt the snot out of each other at any given opportunity. Makes Demonland look positively sane ...
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Pointless is too harsh a description. Much as I generally like putting the boot into Poms, a fairer comparison might be the Britain that gave us Britten, Vaughan-Williams, Elgar, Beecham and the Proms concerts, Tolkien, CS Lewis, JM Barrie, Tennyson, PG Wodehouse etc. And, to be really nasty, in which part of the world was that master warmongerer named Adolf born?
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James Hird is not one of my heroes, and if I saw him walking down the street, I would probably cross the street to avoid him. But like others I feel sorry for his children and family for what he has put them through, and I wish him the speediest of recoveries. It is one thing to thoroughly disagree with what he has done and how he has done it; it is quite another to wish him harm. Get well soon, James Hird.
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Bozo the Clown may feel insulted by the comparison :-) One of the main things that sticks in my craw is the way he has handled the Essendon drug scandal. It shouldn't have been an issue whether or not Jobe Watson kept his Brownlow once the appeal failed. This should have been obvious to anyone with a clue, therefore ... On the broader Essendon issue, Gill has never come out and said what I think an AFL CEO should, which is that performace-enhancing drugs are banned, and that anyone found to be using them is not welcome. He has encouraged an atmosphere in which there are ready arrangements for Essendon to top-up player lists in 2016, and that the players are victims of circumstance, rather than professional athletes who are accountable for their actions. As someone said early in the Essendon saga, in what other context woud a professional sporting organisation contact the parents of the players, rather than the players themselves? It seems that the "players as innocent victims" image is practically AFL-endorsed. Where does the buck stop for that? As for the Players Association, I think he should have at least turned up for a little while. What is the AFL without the players? So at least doing something to contact them at the appropriate time seems a no-brainer to me. If nothing else, he seems to have made them feel he is the enemy, rather than someone with a similar broad interest but perhaps some differences of detail which can be discussed. To me, this is Management 101, let alone the top level of the organisation that is supposedly the leading sporting organisation in the country. He seems far more intent on making so-called 'win-win' deals than following rules, such as the way that we were denied a priority pickin 2013, but Brisbane get one. Clearly there is no consistency here. A good CEO would have articulated a general strategy or policy, and made sure it was understood by all concerned. Demitriou may have had his detractors, but there wasn't much doubt what he stood for. Whether it was a good thing or not is another matter, but to me a key duty of an AFL CEO is to articulate and maintain a publically visible direction. Gill? Enough said!
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