Carbon footprint of football matches

It's music festival season and there has been much comment about the carbon footprint of such events. Many tens of thousands of people travelling many miles to attend surely do create a lot of CO2 (and pollution, which seems to have been pushed down the pecking order of things to worry about by greenhouse gases). Events like glastonbury have made a certain number of tickets available only to those who travel there by bus. Bands like Radiohead are only playing at venues with good public transport links.

All very good. But... The last round of premier league football matches was attended by about 365'000 people. There are 38 such rounds in a season which adds up to just under 14 million people per year attending matches. The Championship (the second most highly attended football league in the world) gets about 5 million attendees a year if last weekend is anything to go by (bear in mind it is end of season which attracts more fans but weigh this against declining attendance figures across football). A lot of football fans don't travel far to the match but some fans travel a long way (Man Utd fans). Even so, we are talking a good proportion of 20 million people are travelling to football matches each year. This must dwarf the music festivals in terms of CO2 generated.

Favourite poll result of the week; 15% of Americans think Barak Obama is a muslim.

Medicine balance of the sexes

There are more women than men graduating medical school. Is this a problem? Radio 4 debated this question this morning.

A male doctor made the point that there should be equal numbers of male and female doctors available to fit with patient choice and general equality. To satisfy this need one has to train 3 female doctors for every 2 male doctors. This is because female doctors retire earlier, work fewer hours and require maternity leave. Surely this logic requires more female doctors to be trained in a ratio 3:2?

A female doctor said 'it isn't true you get three times more work out of male doctors' which shows she didn't understand the point made by her colleague. Her final sentence is my quote for the day;

11% of female clinical academics are women

Could Have Been Worse

EMI are to release a Best of Radiohead on June 2 as revenge for the band ditching the record company. The tracklisting and artwork have just landed;

Single album;|||||||||||||||||||Double album; single album plus extra CD

Just||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||Airbag
Paranoid Android|||||||||||||||I Might Be Wrong
Karma Police|||||||||||||||||||Go To Sleep
Creep|||||||||||||||||||||||||||Let Down
No Surprises|||||||||||||||||||Planet Telex
High and Dry||||||||||||||||||Exit Music (For A Film)
My Iron Lung||||||||||||||||||The National Anthem
There There|||||||||||||||||||Knives Out
Lucky|||||||||||||||||||||||||||Talk Show Host
Fake Plastic Trees|||||||||||||You
Idioteque||||||||||||||||||||||Anyone Can Play Guitar
2+2=5||||||||||||||||||||||||||How To Disappear Completely
The Bends|||||||||||||||||||||True Love Waits
Pyramid Song
Street Spirit (Fade Out)
Everything In Its Right Place

I can't really argue with the track list but the running order produces some very odd transitions. Also, 'How To Dissappear' should be on CD 1 because it is one of the top 5 Radiohead songs. Other than that this makes a reasonable introduction to RH. The problem is they are an album band and you can't really cut and shut the albums to get the 'best bits'.

Anyway, as a long time fan I won't buy this album because it is just EMI being greedy. I can make my own RH greatest hits playlist on my ipod and change this every couple months. What the fans really want is a b-sides collection or a boxed set. Now that would be something exciting. Almost exciting as seing them live (again) at the end of June this year (3 months to go!).

Say No to 42 days

The latest great idea from the Government to stop terrorism is to make it legal to hold people and question them repeatedly for 42 days without charge - without even telling them why they are being held. The Equality and Human Rights Commission says it goes against human rights law and may breach the Race Relations Act, while Geoffrey Dear, former chief constable of West Midlands Police and HM inspector of constabulary says passing the law will be a PR coup for Al Qaeda

The Rachel from North London blog explains all this better than I can, so please have a read of her thoughts on this and then go to http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/notadaylonger/ and sign the petition against 42 Days which a)threatens our civil rights and b) won't do the slightest bit of good in 'the war against terror'anyway. Please take a minute to sign, not because I asked and not because a load of bloggers are going on about it, but because it's the right thing to do.
Niczilla xx