Lovilee Jubilee.

This weekend saw Great Britain celebrate Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee; 60 years passively ruling over her loyal subjects. The celebrations featured a Jubilee Pageant down the river Thames, a concert organised by (the no doubt soon to be honoured) Gary Barlow, and several other events including a Jubilee thanksgiving service at St Paul's Cathedral.

The Jubilee concert was probably the highlight for most people, seeing as the pageant was like watching an episode of The One Show – a wet one at that. The concert featured such big names as Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Tom Jones, Jessie J, Alfie Boe, Madness and… Cheryl Cole.

City are champions, but at what cost?

The football season ended not so long ago in what was probably the most dramatic finish ever witnessed by man. As a whole this Premier League season has probably been the most bizarre one yet with more twists and turns than a day at Alton Towers.

It started off with Manchester United thoroughly thrashing everyone including the hapless Arsenal before losing steam completely, getting knocked out of the Champions League, getting knocked out of the Europa League, fumbling their way to a massive 8 point lead before finally throwing it all away and handing their big rivals City the title.

Yep, Manchester City are Premier League champions for the first time in 44 years. Do they deserve it? Well of course they do, they finished top of the league thanks to goal difference and so they deserved to be crowned champions. Though they had blips of their own this season, knocked out of both European competitions and several stumbles in the Premier League, they were the better side overall and did do the double over United.

Football: a window into the bowels of society.

Football can be a horrible realm at times and although it is just a game it can sometimes act as a window into society. This season alone we’ve seen that racism is far from being eradicated with the treatment of Patrice Evra by a fellow professional and that being of high status will result in preferential treatment by the criminal justice system.

If nothing else, these events that occur within football show that certain things are seen as unacceptable by society. For example Luis Suarez was wholeheartedly condemned by every corner of the footballing universe and beyond (with the exception of Anfield) for abusing Evra and when university student Liam Stacey made unpleasant remarks about Fabrice Muamba during and after his horrible heart attack playing for Bolton in the FA Cup he wasn’t only condemned, he was thrown behind bars for 56 days.

Keeping in Touch.

It’s local election time again on Thursday so it isn’t much of a surprise to see those familiar red, blue and yellow coloured leaflets popping through letterboxes across the country, each one attempting to persuade us all to vote for so-and-so in any way possible.

My local area has predominantly been Liberal Democrat territory for many a year both in both local and national level. Andrew Stunell has been the local MP for 15 years now and they’ve controlled the local council for a very long while with my councillor in particular being a Lib Dem too. His name is Dave Goddard and he’s the leader of Stockport Council.

Now, I’ve voted Lib Dem at every single local election in the past but on Thursday my cross will not be going into Goddard’s box. Not because the Lib Dems voted in favour of the student fee increase, though that would usually be a good enough reason, but because the communications representing his campaign are disgusting.

You Wouldn't Kick a Kitten.

The Grand National was today and I noticed that the BBC broadcasted it under BBC Sport. That’d be nice and all if it was actually a sport! Horse-racing just isn’t a sport, why do so many people pretend that it is?

All horse-racing exists for is to generate cash by allowing people to bet on which horse they think will win. For this reason horse-racing is here to stay because money is far more important than the welfare of humans never mind animals.

Just because people bet on it does not constitute it as a sport. I’ve already written about this in the past and summed up my argument with this paragraph:

“The fact is, if the government put a blanket ban on betting on all sports, horse-riding would die overnight. Football wouldn’t. Rugby wouldn’t. Nor would any other real sport. Horse-riding exists for one purpose, betting on it. Have you been in a betting shop recently? It’s depressing. All you find is a tatty old man clutching the Racing Post looking desperately at a television as his horse tumbles over and takes a bullet right between the eyes. His life’s become so desolate you feel it’s him that deserves the bullet. Put the poor guy out of his misery.”

Again: NOT A SPORT.

A Game of Two Books.

I’ve noticed recently that a lot of football clubs have had their appeals turned down by the FA. Liverpool’s Alexander Doni had his wrongful dismissal claim turned down yesterday and QPR’s Shaun Derry lost his appeal earlier in the week for his red card against Manchester United where he fouled an offside and diving Ashley Young. If you can’t get let off for that, when can you?

This has made me wonder: why are clubs still bothering with appeals?

Seriously, I can’t actually remember the last time the FA overturned a decision. The ratio must be close to 500/1.

Seventh Heaven? - Mario Kart 7 Review.

Though the 3DS was critically acclaimed upon its birth into the marketplace back in 2011, it had a very slow start with pretty underwhelming sales. This was largely due to the relatively high price tag and the poor catalogue of games that were on offer at launch.

Nintendo rectified this by firstly lowering the price making it more affordable for their customers to actually buy one, and then they boosted the catalogue before Christmas by adding Ocarina of Time, a remake of the N64 classic; Super Mario 3D Land, a brand new Mario Land; and the big one: Mario Kart 7.

Mario Kart has always been a huge staple for Nintendo, appearing on every single console since its genesis on the SNES. In terms of gameplay it’s as simple as you’ll find – Mario characters racing about in go karts, but this simple formula is so unique to Nintendo that many have tried to replicate it, and all have failed. In terms of racing games, this is as good as it gets; you can keep your realistic F1 games – all I want to do is toss a barrage of red shells at the leader and steal first place!