It struck me rather forcibly and even strikingly this morning, as I ambled back from my tennis along South Street, that there is a direct and strong correlation between the increase in the price of Fisher and Donaldson fudge doughnuts, year on year, and the prime Edinburgh property market. Both being at 15 per cent per anum. Fudge doughnuts up from 1.31 to 1.49 and a 2 bed flat in Bruntsfield by exactly the same percentage. This has been an ongoing phenomenon.
I know we shouldn’t immediately intimate any causatory link between the two but it does seem most uncanny and I’m sure my old Val D’Isere drinking buddy Professor McClutcheon, whose name is always associated with his groundbreaking cricket suicide study work, would show more than a passing interest in it. However I’m certainly not going to be jumping to any immediate conclusions without more data (if not more fudge doughnuts, because I’m watching my waistline and at 1 pound and 49 pence a pop, that’s stretching it)
I have been absorbed by the World Cup football and most captivated by the new VAR technology. However, it did prove rather contentious in the final and brought Roy Keane to claim that the referee was an ‘idiot’ and that he didn’t believe that the chap had ever played football before.
Well Roy I’m afraid that it is probably wrong on your part and I would say there is a huge, if not dare I say monumental, probability in there being a high correlation between World Cup reffing and having kicked a football around a football pitch. But I am no Inspector Clueso.
Anyway the football gurus were furious over this decision, particularly Mr Keane. There was much debate and the most unbelievable and inane utterance came from Gary Lineker (BBC’s top paid presenter at £1.75million) who thought that they shouldn’t be allowed to show such replays from the VAR in slow motion! What?
Chris Waddle came out rather missing the entire point when he said ‘I think it is a penalty. I would have given it. Perisic has stopped the ball going through with his hand’
Yes Chris we know that! The point is whether it was intentional? You know that’s the ethos behind the penalty decision.
When you do in fact look at it in slow motion it rather clearly shows, I think, the chap Perisic quickly drop and indeed fan out his hand to contact the oncoming ball. And to me that is pretty much like he was trying to stop the ball with his hand. And sorry Gary but the slow motion actually helps to see this. But I am no Columbo.
Indeed I am no football pundit whatsoever.
Just a man who is besotted by the prices of Edinburgh property, fudge doughnuts and has more than a passing interest in discussing cricket/suicide corellation and drinking beer in Hotel Savoie, Val D’Isere.