World Cup 2010

Every four years there comes a great football tournament that gets the whole world excited like nothing else, and that is the world cup. This years event is hosted in South Africa and starts 11th June 2010.

With the fairly recent online betting world taking off, last time round I didn't research my teams enough and was a little too slow on the uptake to take advantage of some of the great odds being offered in certain draws.

Some online betting agencies were offering odds of up to 5,000 to 1 against the chances of anyone scoring at least 6 goals in one match, and had I got in early enough then I could have made a kiling with high scoring teams like Argentina and Spain.

This time round the bookmakers have learned their lesson, and even an unbelievably high score line of 9-0 ( which has only ever been managed in the final rounds twice since its inception in 1930's and none in the last 35 years ) are only a pathetic 100 to 1 against, so is no longer worth the risk.

However, the first group stages for this years competition seem very uneven, with each group having one clear favourite and one lucky-to-be-here outsider, allowing plenty of scope for adventurous betting with accumulators that still have a high probability of getting at least your money back if done correctly.

If you have never gambled, or are very unlucky when you do then I would suggest that either you don't bet at all or only a few pennies per accumulator.

My prediction for qualifiers of the the groups are as follows ;-

Group A - France            &   Mexico

Group B - Argentina        &   Nigeria

Group C - England          &   USA 

Group D - Germany        &   Ghana

Group E - Netherlands    &   Cameroon 

Group F - Italy                 &   Paraguay 

Group G - Brazil              &   Portugal 

Group H - Spain              &   Chile

Although there is always the possibility of a shock surprise, like France being knocked out the first round without scoring a single goal (World Cup in Korea/Japan 2002) , I feel fairly certain that my first pick team in each group will qualify either first or second.

My second choices are much less certain, and often I have picked an African team purely on the basis of them having the home ground advantage, as they will be used to the pitch conditions, heat & humidity, climate, water quality, time zones, etc.

Personally I have avoided anything beyond the first round, I have avoided predicting final scores (and other very risky bets like time of first goal or how many yellow cards and fouls commited) and I have only selected a few individual games to bet on.

That said, with online betting making it simple to pick your choices and offering a multitude of different combination bets, I have set up several combination bets with at least four of my sure things together with a single second choice to create some realistic accumulators that still have worth while odds.

None of my bets conflict with each other, as if I have learned that trying to cover myself with spread betting (betting both sides) does nothing more than guarantee that some of my bets will fail, and this is the fastest way to end up with nothing at the end.

I have also had a purely silly moment with a single 1 x 10p accumulator bet on all my second choices that if it comes off will net a huge windfall, but the combined odds are worse than the lottery so I am not holding out any hope on that one.

Overall, I will be not only be dissapointed but indeed very shocked if my system does not at least make my money back, with the added potential for making between a small and a medium size return upon my investment.

I am also going to make a small prediction here of who I think will make the quarter finals, but there are so many possibly minor changes that would affect the first and second placings of this set of results that I myself don't feel it is worth the risk of betting upon it.

Quarter Final 1 - France vs German

Quarter Final 2 - England vs Argentina

Quarter Final 3 - Netherlands vs Italy

Quarter Final 4 - Brazil vs Spain

Being Patriotic I am not going to curse fate by saying any more, but as 6 of my 8 predicted finalists are from  Europe there are good odds that this years winner will be European, with South America being the only other choice according to my estimations. 

All Quiet

All is quiet on the Chatham front.

At the moment, life is fine, but life is also quiet and uneventful.

Apart from spending a few hours every day searching for jobs, I am pushing myself hard to revamp and finish off my travel book, hopefully in time for my "back from my travels exactly one year today" anniversary, but if not then so be it.

I'm single, the weather outside is still generally grey and it gets dark far too early, so I dont feel that I am particularly missing out on anything right at the moment.

I'm neither unhappy nor depressed, just without anything exciting to say and too busy writing to go out looking for adventure at the moment.

However, if I looks like I'm about to get abducted by aliens or plan to run off and join the peace corps, I will of course post the details on here before I go.

Immigration Problems

Now I have many foreign friends, have done plenty of travelling and have people I love and care about all over the world.

However, I have for a long time been saying that the UK has been used as the dumping grounds of the world, especially Europe and Africa, and that it would one day become a case of me being in the minority.
Well, I am very sad to say that the day has arrived and I am still in my early 30's.

I live in Kent, the closest of the 92 UK counties, or 39 English counties, to mainland Europe.

The Medway towns is the most densely populated group of towns / cities in Kent, thus Medway is the most densely populated region in Kent.

In the Medway towns there are about 112 schools, and having contacts / associates in the council I am now aware of how bad the immigration problem has become.

When I say immigration, I mean the RECENT immigration problem, not the fact that there are non-white people living in the UK who were born and raised here, I mean the fresh-off-the-boat and can't speak a word of English kind of immigrant.

I have never had a problem with genuine hardship cases who come to the UK to find work, a better life and try to become British. But, I cannot stand the people who come here, have no intention of looking for work, have no interest in learning out language or culture, who demand benefits for everything and who are contantly saying that it should be more like "their country back home".

I have only one thing to say about THOSE kinds of people, and that is, "If home was so much nicer then do us all a favour and F**K **F back there, cos we certainly don't want you here and your ruining it for the rest of us who actually quite like it, or at least we did til you and your was ilk came along".

The Medway Towns with its 110 (or so) school has at least 5 of the UK's worst schools. This is a number that is higher than any other region in the UK, even when compared to larger populated areas with over 500 school, there is still no other area that has 5 of the UK's worst in its catchment zone.

There is a school where over 57% of all the pupils are immigrants, and this is not a specialist school but a normal, run-of-the-mill state run school.

There is a school where there are over 50 separate languages spoken in the school.

There is a school where a single classroom has 1 teacher and 6 interpreters for each lesson.

There is a school where 40% of all the pupils come from families that are travellers, with no fixed abode, no proper set of records and where the pupils never stay long enough to get a complete education or complete exams at the end of their final year.

And all these are DIFFERENT schools in the Medway area.

The problem is even more hard to see, as to protect and offer anonimity to individual children, if a school has less than 5 of a certain language or ethnic background it is not allowed to include them in any kind of statistical makeup of the school, and thus the only way you know that they exist is by adding up the numbers of all the the groups and counting how many are missing from the total number of puils.

This huge immigration problem is not as much of a problem over much of the rest of the UK, which is much further away from Kent and from their prospective its all one big NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard).

Because we had so few MP's representing us, and we have to show to the whole world how generous, accepting, tolerant and welcome to all that the UK is, parts of Kent are not just becoming but have actually already become overrun with immigrants.

The walk from the train station to my mothers house is a short and direct three minute walk, but taking that journey every time means going past groups or individuals and these days it is a rare occurance when I can even accurately guess what language they are speaking.

This is a problem that historically has affected too few of the UK people and thus they have chosen to ignore it, but of course the problem didn't go away and instead as it was passed over and unchecked it has now got to where it is of epidemic proportion and there is nothing that the good old english folk from kent can do about it.

Kent was once called the Garden of England, but now the beauty and greenery is gone and all that's left is a multiracial junkyard where nothing works properly anymore, nothing makes sense and before you can even try and get on with your neighbours you have to identify and learn the language of the week, which of course will be replaced before the year is out with yet more strangers speaking foreign tongues.

I do not recognise the Gillingham of my youth, it is gone now and forever with the only remnants being glimpses in my mind and in the family photo album.

Legal Insanity

Here is some more legal justice insanity.

Within 48 hours of learning of the ridiculously light penalty of Pete Doherty, comes another equally unbelievable report at the opposite end of the spectrum.

According to Sky News today, a man in Ayreshire was given a £60 fixed fine and 3 points on his drivers licence for blowing his nose while stationery stuck in traffic and having already applied the handbrake.

That story goes hand in hand with the owner of a car who has 3 times been fined for speeding while driving at 0 mph, while they were not even inside the car, as it was parked outside their home.

So have a runny nose and driving a car is worth £60, owning a car near a fixed speed camera is double that and yet owning so many drugs you have lost track is a piffling £835.

It really makes you wonder if anything is logical any more.