Sport
ENGLAND AREN’T IN EURO 2012 ANY MORE
Italian penalty takers sent them home
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The England football team exited Euro 2012 last night after losing on penalties to a side full of Italian men who are more techinically gifted than them.
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They managed to last 120 minutes by defending a lot near their goal, choosing to cede possession of the ball to the languidly breathtaking Italian playmaker Andrea Pirlo and his ten friends, who let him down time and again with poor finishes.
The Italians saw a few of their shots rebound off the metal of Joe Hart’s goal frame, had a “goal” ruled out for offside and drew a number of great saves from the defiant and commanding Hart.
England came to life in an attacking sense in the mid-part of the first half, but spent the rest of the game distractedly chasing the Italian support players without realising that their primary job was to make space for the peerless Pirlo.
Danny Welbeck, Glen Johnson, Wayne Rooney and Scott Parker missed presentable chances for England, but the Italian players finally got the win their dominance craved when they came back from 2-1 down in the shoot-out to eventually win 4-2.
Afterwards there came the ritual calls for the England manager’s head and Twitter racists embarrassing themselves by calling for the deportation of Ashleys Cole and Young, the two black players who missed penalties.
Sigh.
The more realistic set about their post-mortems with scalpels rather than pickaxes though, perhaps comforted by the fact that England had maximised their ability in this tournament, whereas in competitions past the players had underwhelmed to the point of derision and parody.
Almost as welcome as the resettling upon realism among the majority of the support will have been the return of pragmatism to the coaching setup.
They came and they did a job for as long as they could before the time to leave arrived.
Politics
THE TORIES CONTINUED THEIR ATTEMPTS TO FUCK US
If you’re under 25 you’ll probably lose housing benefit, if you’ve got a lot of kids you’ll probably have less money
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Apparently David Cameron will today announce a series of planned changes to the benefits system.
Key to these proposals is the removal of housing benefit from those under the age of 25 and cuts to the amount of money that single parents with three or more kids receive from the welfare pool.
The prime minister reckons there’s a growing gap between the people enjoying the, er, benefits of the benefits system, and those who aren’t eligible who continue to struggle.
I guess one way of closing that gap is to fix things so that more people are struggling.
Politics
EGYPT GOT TO CHOOSE ITS LEADER FOR THE FIRST EVER TIME
The Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Mursi is their new president-elect
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Mohammed Mursi became Egypt’s first ever democratically elected leader this weekend.
The Muslim Brotherhood member snared 51.73 percent of the vote in the contest last week, beating former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq into second place.
Tens of thousands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters celebrated loudly in Tahrir Square in Cairo when the news broke, letting off fireworks and chanting “Down with military rule” – a reference to SCAF, the military council that had previously installed itself as the country’s interim ruling body.
Local
RIHANNA, JAY-Z AND A BUNCH OF OTHER PEOPLE PLAYED LIVE ON HACKNEY MARSHES
At Radio 1’s Hackney Weekend thing
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Rihanna, Jay-Z, Nicki Minaj, Kanye West and a bunch of other people played live on Hackney Marshes in London’s on Saturday and Sunday.
They did so because Radio 1 were holding a mini-festival called Hackney Weekend there.
