United confident against lyon

Ferguson thinks we have a more complete squad than last season as we aim to go that one step further
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/manchester_united/article3399660.ece

http://United prepare fitting feast for Giggs 100th Euro appearance
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/european/united-prepare-fitting-feast-for-giggs-century-784304.html

I can't say i was very confident that Inter would get anything last night, but when Matterazzi got sent off i feared the worse. I have got to agree with this column by Tony Cascarino, that the Italian league is vastly overrated these days. I know AC Milan beat us and Liverpool last season, but they played us at just the right stage of the season as we began to hit a fitness brick wall, and they were carefully resting their most important players as the league title was well gone for them. And even in the final against a very ordinary scouse outfit, even to my biased eyes Liverpool were the better team for the larger part of it.
When you watch Italian football the first thing that you notice is the speed of it. It is just so slow, and when they play against English teams, especially over here, they just get blown away by the speed of our top teams. Even though i thought AC Milan caught us at the right time last season, they are definitely the one Italian team who could live with our top four. You couldn't see them doing it in our league over a season though, and in a year or two they are going to do some serious rebuilding. Roma are a good team, but no more than that and Inter are probably a bit above them although below their big city rivals when they step up to this class of football. The slower speed of international football is probably one of the reasons the Azzuri are still very competitive, when it comes to world cups and European championships. Not to overlook the fact that most of the best players in the world now ply their trade in England and Spain. Mind you everything goes in cycles, maybe serie A's time will come again
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/liverpool/article3400146.ece

This must have been some game of cricket, i hope there are some highlights on at some stage. To see two scores of 340 in a day takes some beating. England really seemed to have picked it up a notch after the disaster of the first two one dayers.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/cricket/article3401222.ece

A two part debate in the Guardian on a remark by BBC music co-ordinator that men and woman
experience music differently, as she explained changes to BBC Radio 6 scheduling. That is one of the only stations i listen to nowadays.
http://music.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2258116,00.html
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/02/women_men_music.html
My only thought on that is that i would class myself with Laura Barton's dad, it is the music that comes first for me. If it's the lyrics you are listening to, there must be so much music you miss out on. World music, jazz, classical music, techno, i don't really see how you can really like any of these styles if what really turns you on are profound lyrics.

David Hepworth slags off the Brits in the Indy, music awards and awards shows in general are just about the most cringe-worthy shows ever invented to my mind.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/david-hepworth-these-silly-awards-are-pops-most-absurd-anachronism-784365.html
He makes a cracking point in that the awards seem to be for the media nowadays and not the other way around. Who watches this shite though? I suppose it's the same Muppet's that think big brother is entertainment.

Meanwhile we can now search for free the records of our ancestors from the first world war, as the full medal records go online. I had already found that my great grandfather Robert Alfred Kemp had joined up, or more likely was conscripted in 1916. Conscription was a hot political potato in 1916, it was felt to be an un-English thing to do, and helped play a part in the downfall of Asquith, and his by his replacement Lloyd George. I had found that he served on the western front, but was moved behind the lines because of chronic bad feet, that i have been told was trench foot. I never knew him but apparently he had terrible feet for the rest of his life. Anyway he was then enlisted in the royal veterinary corps, i think as a blacksmith. And at the end of the war was awarded the victory campaign medal, that everybody who had fought and survived the war received. It has to be said though that i wouldn't have found any of that on this website, there isn't enough detail in it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/feb/20/military.news
http://landing.ancestry.co.uk/ukmilitary/collections.aspx

Will Musharraf stand down in Pakistan after his parties rout in yesterdays elections?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/20/pakistan

How long before democracy comes to Cuba?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/20/cuba2

Another bank has to reveal embarrassing malpractices, this time credit suisse
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/columnists/article3399749.ece