SNAKE IN A POT

Last night England was ejected out of the FIFA world cup 2010 in their worst defeat ever at the finals. As is expected, pundits are falling over each other to break down for us laymen the reasons for this latest debacle from the ever chest thumping but good for nothing three lions and their army of fans. As the experts are busy outdoing themselves, this is a layman’s take on things: There is this tired argument that England is among the world’s football powers, which just needs to be re-examined. I suspect that this fallacy has been mainly perpetuated by the English media and their fans. However, sober minded people need to ask themselves, what has England done in the last 40 years that warrants them to be mentioned in the same breath with countries like Brazil, Germany, Argentina or Italy? As far as I know, all they have done since their controversial win of the 1966 World Cup over the Germans is reach the semi finals of this competition. And before you applaud them for that ac...

I am sure some people (especially my friends) may find it offensive to say that I tend to understand bigots who claim that black people are less intelligent than white although I do not necessarily agree with such chauvinists. In 2007, one of the world’s most eminent scientists caused a stir by asserting that black people were less intelligent than white people. Mr. James Watson’s assertion reopened the explosive debate about race and science and almost all black empowerment movements called for his head. I am one of those who found his statement very insolent, though I chose to hear him out by reading what he had to say in full. Apparently he had given a newspaper interview where he had made these comments. Dr Watson told The Sunday Times that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really". He said there was ...