ENGLISH 101 by Patricia Etteh

Early this month, after a corruption scandal , the leader of the House of Representatives in Nigeria, Patricia Etteh, resigned after several weeks of pressure. She was replaced by Dimeji Bankole, a graduate with Masters degrees from both Oxford University and Havard. Patricia was a 'professional Hairdresser and beautician' .

The Representatives were keen to choose an educated person to lead them. A look at the following quotes below will explain why.

1. On the day the National Assembly was inaugurated, Mrs Etteh reminded House of Representatives members of the need to register their names, warning that any person who failed to do so would have their name "striking out". Slip of tongue?
   Perish the thought. The following day she repeated the phrase "striking out" several times.


2. When a motion was tabled, she asked the member who was speaking,"are you in support of favour?"
   


3. Any time the ayes have carried the day on the floor, she wastes no time in announcing, "the hayes has it".


4. Giving her defence before the David Idoko panel, Etteh informed the nation that she spoke to the management of the national assembly if due process was followed and each person "answered in the affirmation action".


5. When the German ambassador in Abuja visited her, the speaker enthusiastically announced that the first place "I visited as a young parliamentarian was a German"


6. When the Spanish ambassador paid her a courtesy visit with a fairly large delegation, an impressed Etteh spared no effort to "welcome the strangers".


7. When officials of FERMA visited the House, speaker Etteh urged them to urgently "make our roads habitable".


8. To demonstrate the urgency of fixing major roads nationwide, she did not fail to make the point of the"deploration state of our roads"


9. When a House member tabled a motion on the unenviable condition of Kaduna Airport, Etteh called attention to the "two run-aways of our airport".


10. Concerned about the increasing wave of vices, such as occultism on university campuses, excessive drinking, smoking and womanising by our youth, she has set for herself the task of reducing, if not, eradicating these social vices, which she colourfully calls "social devices".


11. In far-away South Africa, at a meeting of the African Parliamentary Union, speaker Etteh stated that Nigeria has vast land where agriculture could thrive so much, that it could serve as an alternative source of foreign exchange, or in her own words, " Nigeria has fast land where agriculture is alternate"


12. To Etteh, the community of nations can sometimes be referred to as "international countries".


13. The office of the speaker has regained its aura as, not just an exalted place, but an "exotic office".


14. The House has become respected as"a hollow chamber",rather than just a hallowed chamber.

Let's just say that I'm glad she's no longer the fourth most powerful person in the country.

I won !!!

1994 was the first time I ever played FIFA Soccer. It was on the Sega Megadrive, and I remember playing mock world cups with my friends. Since then, I've been a FIFA fanatic, I've played almost every single FIFA game since then, on consoles, PC and even mobile phone !! I was briefly converted to Pro Evo in 2005, but FIFA 07 brought me back to my first love. And right now, FIFA 08 is getting a lot of love on my PS3.....

Anyway, I digress.

Every week on FIFA 08, you can represent the club you support online, in the Interactive Leagues. And every week, there's a prediction competition for the results of the Interactive Leagues. And last time out, yours truly won, with 9 out of 10 results spot on. The only result I got wrong was the Arsenal - Reading match, which ended in a draw. (Remember it's the Interactive League results, not the real life ones). So Arsenal fans, you messed me up !!

Anyway, the game downloads a podcast every week, and this week, they named me as the winner, and said how close I came to winning. It's mentioned about halfway through the podcast. They pronounced my name as 'BoZo', not 'Boso', but I don't mind, lol.

The prize is any EA game of your choice, so I've decided to go for the sequel to a game that gave me many hours of Joy on the original Xbox.

[gametrailers 22092]

Mecenaries 2 is not out till February, but I think it's worth the wait !!

And I thought I'd take the chance to show one of the funniest game trailers I've ever seen, which coincidentally, is also an EA game.

[gametrailers 17334]

It's pretty original and it shows how far video game advertising has gone.

Taxi for Steve McLaren

No punchline needed.

To all friends, family and even neighbours of Steve McLaren, please do not pick up a paper tomorrow morning. The press have been sharpening their knives for this man for weeks, and you might just get caught in the the carnage.

England paid for a poor first half, they did very well to get back in the game, but they were just poor tonight. Croatia were magnificent, especially since they did not need anything from this match.

Beckham has played his last match for England, he will probably never get that 100th cap.

At least, the English players will have next summer off !!!!

And to all foreign players in the premiership, watch out, because once they are done with McLaren, they're coming after you. !!

Myfootballclub.co.uk, will it work?

Fans' community website MyFootballClub has agreed a deal to take over Blue Square Premier outfit Ebbsfleet United.

It looks like the deal of a lifetime, pay £35 plus a £7.50 administration fee, and you are now a joint owner of a football club. The website was created to take power away from Russian and American billionaires buying up all the big clubs, and give power back to the fans. 'Owners' will get a vote in all major affairs, including transfers and team selection.

When the news about this website first broke, I thought about joining. However, I decided not to, due to the following reasons :

1. The £35 is not an investment, but a membership fee. It's payable annually. And if the club is sold in the future, you don't get anything out of it, proceeds would be given to a charity with similar objects. All profits are reinvested in the club, and dividends are not paid out. If I wanted to manage a football club, I'd head over to play.com and buy a computer game, and save myself 10 quid. 

2. At the time, they were dreaming about buying Leeds or Halifax, or some other 'big' club. I thought this was unrealistic.

However, now they've gone ahead and agreed in principle to buy a club, it's no longer a dream. Ebbsfleet is getting a lot of publicity as a result, and it's being hailed as a fan's revolution.

However, I seriously do not think it will work in practice. And here are the reasons why :

• The manager has effectively been demoted to head coach. He will give his thoughts on players, their form and fitness, as well as possible selections and tactics. Members will then submit their preferred 11, formation and tactics. A database will calculate the most popular choice. This will be handed to The Head Coach to instigate. So 50,000 people will pick the team? How is this going to work? Every man and his dog feels they can manage a football club, listen to the radio show 606 on BBC Radio Five Live every week, and all you hear is how some bloke who plays Sunday League football thinks he can run Liverpool FC better than Mr. Benitez. Now imagine 50,000 people with a chance to prove their 'footballing prowness'. And what happens when it's 60 minutes, the team is losing one nil and the manager needs to make a change to try and win the game? Does he need to wait for a vote to do that? Ian Holloway, Plymouth manager thinks the whole thing is a joke.

 

• And what happens in the transfer window? All members are to vote on potential transfers. Will all members be given all the confidential information about a transfer? (The transfer fee, the agent's fee, and wages) But most importantly, as David Sullivan, the co-owner of Birmingham city points out here, transfers are done at light speed.

"If a player is in demand you need an instant decision, you can't go on the internet for six or 12 hours and let people vote,Virtually every transfer deal has to be done at tremendous speed because other clubs are going to be interested.
"We have jumped in at transfer deadlines, buying players that were going elsewhere. We have got hold of players that were en route to one club and brought them to Birmingham.
"Middlesbrough beat us to signing a player in Turkey this summer. "
"A few years ago Craig Bellamy was coming to us and Celtic jumped in and got him and derailed the transfer."

Enough said. Voting on transfers will never work in real life.

• We have leaders for a reason. You can't have everyone taking decisions at the same time. It will be a recipe for pure chaos.

Having said all that, I guess with the right men in the right places it can all fall in place, it will be a massive success, and soon fans will be buying clubs all over the country. Only time will tell.

Football Look-a-likes - Roy Keane

One is a maniacal dictator hell-bent on the destruction of anyone who opposes him, and the other is the President of Iran.

24...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-2A7bhy9fQ[/youtube]

The TV series 24 has been hit by the ongoing strike by US screenwriters, as Fox does not want to continue filming till they are sure that they can show all 24 episodes in a row.

This trailer is really intense though, and look, Almeida is now a baddie !! We might have to wait till 2009 for this, but BOY I want to see it NOW.

Mafia's Ten Commandments

Apparently, the mafia's ten commandments have been found at the hideout of a captured Mafia boss.

1. No-one can present himself directly to another of our friends. There must be a third person to do it.
2. Never look at the wives of friends.
3. Never be seen with cops.
4. Don't go to pubs and clubs.
5. Always being available for Cosa Nostra is a duty - even if your wife's about to give birth.
6. Appointments must absolutely be respected.
7. Wives must be treated with respect.
8. When asked for any information, the answer must be the truth.
9. Money cannot be appropriated if it belongs to others or to other families.
10. People who can't be part of Cosa Nostra: anyone who has a close relative in the police, anyone with a two-timing relative in the family, anyone who behaves badly and doesn't hold to moral values.

Mmmmm.....my application form is in the post...........

Heartbroken......

Tonight, I haven't been myself. I've been subdued, a shadow...

The nation of Scotland was ready for the match of their lives. To qualify for Euro 2008, it was simple. Beat the World Champions.

Sadly, it was not to be.

But the Scots can be proud that they came this far, although it will be little comfort. It would have been the mother of all parties if they had done it though.

Nigeria also lost to Australia in a friendly today, in a match played in London.  I'm starting to think Berti Vogts is not the right coach for Nigeria, but let's see how things shape up at the African Nations Cup next year.

Oh, and by the way, Israel did England a favour and beat Russia, meaning that England only need a draw with Croatia on Wednesday to qualify for Euro 2008. Lucky Buggers.

But for all the Scots out there, my heart bleeds with yours tonight.

So what do you think?

Go on, have a look around........brand new spanking design !!

You like???????

We're getting there !!!

I changed my web  host this week, and moved my blog over to the new host. To be honest, I have been thinking about doing this for a while, but was afraid of all the data I would lose, like pictures, and the blog design, but since my previous host lost everything all on their own, they pushed me along.......

It's about the same as what I was paying before, but these new guys (Bluehost) are recommended by wordpress, and have 24/7 support, which I've actually used while setting up this whole account.

The strangest thing is that while my nameserver records were being updated, I actually had two blogs, and for a while, it was pretty random which one you saw. At home, I was getting connected to the new one, while at work, I was getting connected to the old one. Sppadic and Calabar Gal both left comments on the old blog, which is now offline, so sorry folks, but thanks for stopping by !!

Now, I'm working on the plugins that power this baby, it took a while for me to find all of them again, but I've got all shiny new versions, and it's a painstaking process of activating them, making sure they don't break the blog in any way, one by one. Most of the stuff they do can't be seen by you guys, but you may notice one or two things over the next few days.

After that, I'll have to rebuild my blogroll, I'll use my RSS feeds, this will be a good opportunity to remove inactive blogs as well.

Then, it will be time to work on the design, looking for a good theme for the blog that works with my combination of plugins. It will take a few weeks, but hey, it's fun, and I'm not complaining !!

I think I can start blogging again as well, haven't been able to do anything sensible in a month, which is a real shame.........

Sick leave….

Hello friends...

Sadly, my blog has been on sick leave for about 2 weeks.

Due to 'technical issues' with my webhost, my blog went missing, and I've been fighting tool and nail for them to restore it from a backup. This has now been done, sadly, it appears I've lost TONS of data. The blog text is all intact (Thank God), but it seems that all my images are gone, my layout (which took several painful hours to design), my plugins, are all gone.

I guess the good news is that in essence, I've got a brand spanking new blog to play with !! But it will take a while, time which sadly, I don't have too much of at the moment. I'll try and resolve all technical issues before the end of the week, once that is done, then I'll start working on the layout again, and searching for, and reinstalling plugins.

I'll post every now and then while I'm doing this, but I reckon it will be next year before the blog is up and running to my satisfaction.