There was an interesting item on the Today programme this morning, which was guest edited by Sir Clive Woodward, about boxing and the Olympics (scroll down for the listen again feature to 8.50 am). It has been suggested that investing in boxing, including encouraging boxing in schools, would be a good way to increase possible [...]

Sorry, very old this, but the winner of our Totally Unofficial World Cup Competition is Planeshift, who blogs here. Nobody scored a point after the final update I gave here, so in the event of a tie I say who wins. On balance, I reckon awarding the prize to the non-Sharpener is most likely to [...]

A moderately successful World Cup on Betfair got me thinking about pundits and probabilities. Or, if you prefer, technocrats and managerialists. As any decent gambler will tell you, heuristics beat opinions. Thankfully, there aren’t many of those about

A quick update on the Sharpener Completely Unofficial World Cup Competition. Sadly, only four of you are matching or beating the House (me).

Despite not being a football fan, a nationalist or a car driver, I really rather like all those England flags festooned about the national vehicle fleet (and indeed pretty much everywhere else).
There are numerous detractors of which Janet Street-Porter seems typical. She bemoans ‘white van man’ and the pointlessness of football. Aside of the snobbery [...]

What the heck, all the proper meeja are running one, so here’s The Sharpener’s prizetastic World Cup competition. We’d like to offer the winner two tickets here on 9th July. Sadly, the advertising revenue won’t even stretch to two tickets here, so you’ll have to make do with a voucher for the online retailer of [...]