Review in The Guardian by Steven Poole

There's always somebody trying to pull a fast one, but we can help ourselves. "The antidotes to delusion are logic and evidence, preferably from multiple sources." The author hopes to give us the tools to avoid being fooled by "pseudo-news", as well as pseudo-experts, and pseudo-conspiracy theories. Confusingly, many of the people we ought to be sceptical of pretend to be sceptics themselves. The giveaway, as Wilson nicely shows, is that their scepticism is asymmetrical: no evidence is ever enough for someone "sceptical" about anthropogenic global warming (an example not included in this book), and yet they are remarkably credulous about any alternative factoids that might seem to support their own view.

Wilson ranges somewhat loosely over examples contemporary and historical: anti-Aids science in South Africa, Lysenko's pseudo-agriculture, David Irving's Holocaust denial, Richard Dawkins's atheism, and torture at Abu Ghraib, explaining psychological ideas of selection bias and groupthink along the way. He alludes to the X-Files slogan "I want to believe" as an example of dangerous thinking, but to be fair they also say "Trust no one." ]]> http://5pillar.wordpress.com/?p=8456 Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:12:32 +0000 5-Pillar Scribe http://5pillar.pt.wordpress.com/2008/10/10/censorship-at-the-guardianfind-the-antisemitism-if-you-can/ In what can only be described as a shocking glimpse into Zionist lobbying at the heart of British media, the Guardian last week dismissed an Iranian contributor after a group of pro-war, Islamophobic Neocons accused her of anti-Semitism. >>>>>

"The recently appointed controller of BBC1 Jay Hunt said that one of her first acts in the job had been to look into reviving the series The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin." he writes.

The sitcom was highly influential in its satirical take on the angst of suburban commuter/consumerism. Inspiring, not least, yours truly, the satirical force known as the Suburban Pirate.

To me, it's simple.

Anyone who wants to save the BBC should just write to the Culture Secretary and politely ask him not to top slice the licence fee.

For all the kind words in the Guardian though, I'm not sure if the arguments progressed any further and I found it hard to disentangle ideas (certainly new ones) from emotions.

For example the comments on the Guardian's blog post are too familar:

"The BBC is great and we love your programmes and content" (Thank you very much)

or

"You're just a lunch of lefties, and you should be closed down" (You're entitled to your opinion, you're wrong but thank you very much)

or

"It's all the executives' fault" (Well, it probably isn't actually)

So far, so predictable.

A more interesting perspective was provided by a colleague of mine Tom Scott on his personal blog.

Entitled "BBC public value in the online world" what's different about Tom's thoughts is his attempt to see developments in digital media alongside the very heart of what the BBC does: its' public purposes as outlined in the BBC's Charter. Here's a quote:

By joining BBC data, in this fashion, with the rest of the web the Network Effect is magnified yet further. That does benefit to the BBC, but it also benefits the web at large and that is important. The BBC has a role that transcends its business needs - it can help create public value around its content for others to benefit from (assuming, of course, there remains one, non-discriminatory, free and open internet).

Tom is on to something.

In the old world of television the "mixed schedule" was one of the ways the BBC delivered its public purposes. The thinking went (and I summarise crudely) "If we put Panorama next to Eastenders then some people might watch both".

I don't think the mixed schedule is dead. But in an on demand world where people can just watch Eastenders whenever or wherever they like it's clear the BBC needs some new methods of bringing people wonderful things they didn't know they liked or needed.

And on the internet the method is clearly the link.

How a linking journey that took you from Eastenders to other drama to Shakespeare?

Or that took you from watching Dr Who online on bbc.co.uk to buy a ticket to see David Tennant in Hamlet?

Or from BBC music content to Wikipedia music content? (Oh yes I forgot the BBC music beta does just that and that's why it's such a breakthrough for the BBC).

Let's take a look at a couple of those public purposes again:

"Sustaining citizenship and civil society"

(How does citizenship get encouraged - surely by sharing? A citizen has a stake, a link to other citizens?)

"Bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK"

(Sounds like linking to me)

And linking is a lot easier than other ideas like sharing assets, creative commons or ideas around open source as Jemima suggests and common platforms (as the BBC's blogger in residence Steve Bowbrick suggests - disclaimer - Steve works for me). All these are complex and most bump up against the brutal political realities of the rights regieme and the rights holders' understandable desire to hold on to their intellectual property.

But links don't feel like intellectual property or at least they're not valuable enough for any body to care (yet). And in order to link all the BBC has to do is change its' culture, not change the law (difficult but easier than facing down the rights holders). And everybody agrees The BBC should link more.

Linking the country together sounds like a tall order.

It also sounds like a job for the BBC.

2. Mark Fiore's coverage of the Presidential elections/economic turmoil.

3. This Current Super News animation about the VP candidates John McCain didn't choose.

4. This post on the PCO blog from cartoonist Gerard Whyman, on Lulu.com - the way to self-publishing.

5. This advert for the Green Party made by Hackney-based Shroom Studio. One of the people behind this ad is Steven Azancot, who regular readers might remember made "William the Anarchist" which I posted about in early in 2007.

It's still quite funny regardless. I happened upon it at the Guardian reading an article a friend forwarded. Unlike the American Press, which is too timid to be candid, the Brits are showing no such restraint;

Palin, however, has single-handedly so lowered the standards both for female candidates and American political discourse that, with her newfound ability to speak in more-or-less full sentences, she is now deemed to have performed acceptably last night.

Platini has gone about raising this issue in a different way to what i think but he has none the less raised the issue. Platini told skysports.com that he thought Lord Triesmann was right in saying that we need to safeguard the future of football clubs in difficult financial positions.

In an effect he is right. However i see the view slightly different. I think that in order for football to progress as a truly competitive sport, we need to level the playing field for all Premiership and top league European teams. In order to do this the salary cap step must be attained. We could argue all day over where the cap should be placed but 500, 000 per week per club would be sufficient. It would give players less inclination to up sticks and get more money elsewhere. It would in some respects give a much better chance for the likes of Wigan and Stoke to compete with the top table teams.

However, i cannot see the clubs at the top table of European Football going for this. The G14 clubs usually operate like a business with one eye solely on the money aspect and this revelation from the Michel Platini will more than likely get vetoed by the big clubs.

It is quite strange that the point has only been brought up because of a credit crunch trickling down to the footballing world, however it shouldn’t be something that is mentioned then dispersed into the ether.

It is interesting that Jamie Carragher has supported this idea, although, he's agreed to it in written principle and when he's retired.

I must admit, I laughed slightly in reading Matt Scott's article in the Guardian( not because of Matt's writing skills, or his point) but the sheer notion that the F.A are going to get tough with Premier League over the issue. For as much as Triesmann is talking sense, he has effectively shot himself in the foot with his comment on who is running the game.

I think we are too fragmented with too many bodies responsible for too many parts of the sport," he said. "Greater clarity is needed about who is responsible for the fitness and future of the game. A clear sports law could clarify the position. The time has come for a comprehensive sports law apportioning responsibility and accountability."

That surely stops the argument there. Because it is simply impossible to get the big-shots in one room at the same time and then communicate on the same wavelength.

Heres to hoping.....

RT Wilcock

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/09/communities.religion?commentpage=1

Community is key to tackling Islamic extremism

The 'Prevent' strand of counter-terrorism is difficult to implement. But security services should see those at risk individuals first.

The British government is reported to be overhauling its counter-terrorism strategy. The threat is apparently as high as ever and there are heightened fears about the appearance of "lone wolf" terrorists self-radicalising and moving into action without the usual connections to known networks.

At the core of this overhaul is an apparent revision of the "prevent" strand of the policy and the problem of measuring success in this opaque field.

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the British government revamped its counter-terrorist strategy. Founded in lessons learned from the Irish struggles, the new approach laid out a four-pillar method to counter the terrorist threat: "Pursue, prevent, protect and prepare" – the so-called "four Ps" strategy.

The "prevent" strand is concerned with tackling the radicalisation of individuals, both in the UK and elsewhere; "pursue" is concerned with disrupting terrorists and their operations; "protect" is concerned with reducing the vulnerability of the UK and UK interests overseas; "prepare" is concerned with ensuring that the UK is as ready as it can be for the consequences of an attack.

This widely emulated bureaucratic codification (both the EU and American homeland security strategies owe something to it) was intended as a way of defining how we face the immediate threat, while also outlining a long-term strategy to tackle a "generational" struggle.

All four pillars are interlinked and it is impossible to completely separate them from each other. Broadly speaking, the pursue, protect and prepare strands can be addressed in a relatively clear pre-emptive manner. This is not to say we can completely insulate ourselves, but we are able to at least understand the parameters within which we can manage the risk. The prevent strand, on the other hand, is hard to grapple with and previous assumptions are regularly thrown out with the discovery of new plots.

To those seeking patterns in terrorist profiles, there would seem to be almost none – a fact broadly confirmed by a recent MI5 report published in the Guardian. Our end goal in preventing terrorism is a cessation in attacks, but what are the mid-points to know we are going in the right direction?

There has not been a successful attack since 2005 (though a number of near-misses), but does this mean that prevent is working? And against this backdrop, we continue to be told that the threat level remains "at the severe end of severe".

One step would be something that measures a lessening in radical activity – or more specifically, some way to assess a lowering of dangerous radical activity that may lead to violence. But this is where the difficulty comes, as it is very hard to define where that line should be drawn. We may find someone's views abhorrent, but does that mean they are dangerous to the point of violence? What exactly is the "acceptable" level and who determines this?

Similarly, there is little value in focusing on whether people agree with government's foreign policy or not – this may be an exacerbating factor among individuals involved in terrorist activity, but hardly a defining one given the broad disagreement against current foreign policy that exists.

An alternative approach might be to focus less on the ideology and more on the individuals. Measuring tangible and positive community engagement such as working with local youths or helping local community development projects (and assessing whether this is merely a cover for something else or genuine) could offer a glimpse into whether groups or individuals are potentially a risk, or are actively engaged in a positive way in the world around them and consequently have less of a vested interest in destroying it.

Efforts could be made to draw individuals towards active engagement in projects that appeal to their sense of adventure, but at the same time assuage their sense of being part of an international community. Projects, for example, that provide youths from at-risk communities with an opportunity to work in international development.

In the end, what is needed is some way of assessing what value we are getting for the money that is being poured into preventing terrorism. By focusing on individuals' tangible and proactive engagement with the world around them, we may be able to start to map this.

A NEWS process called "localising a story" - when newsrooms note something on the wires and check if the same thing is happening locally - has a relatively new dimension that some NZ media outlets have failed to notice.

Take today's Press story about Starbucks and its constantly draining taps that waste zillions of litres of water each year.

If you read the Press version (on Stuff) or the truncated one in today's Dom Post, you get the impression that the Christchurch paper has broken a scoop worthy of world-wide circulation.

Alas, no. Here's what UK's Roy Greenslade had on his blog today:

Starbucks and the great drain robbery

The Sun pulled off a genuine investigative scoop yesterday that must surely win it an award. The great drain robbery revealed that the coffee chain Starbucks is wasting colossal quantities of water every day by keeping taps running in its outlets.

The story, which contradicted Starbucks' boast about its green credentials, was picked up by The Guardian and got a major boost on the BBC's 10 o'clock news with pictures bearing The Sun logo.

It was also one of those rare occasions when a story has an immediate and satisfying resolution. In a follow-up today, The Sun reports that an embarrassed Starbucks has changed it policy by agreeing to turn off the taps and seek an alternative way to meet hygiene rules and prevent the build-up of bacteria.

So well done to The Sun. A public interest story, an excellent match of print and online video material (here) to illustrate the problem, TV news publicity and a climbdown by Starbucks. It doesn't get much better for a paper than that.

News outlets which fool readers/listeners/viewers into thinking they've got a "genuine investigative scoop...that must surely win an award" when all they've done is pinch an idea off the web need to wise up.

Putting a line in such stories that indicates where they originated becomes all the more important in these web-based times.

The most excellent Strange Maps blog has just published an article about The Guardian's fondly remembered 1977 April Fool supplement on the island of San Serriffe.

(Well, I say fondly remembered, though I do not personally remember the, fondly or otherwise, seeing as I was only rising one at the time. Over the years I became aware of it, though, by way of the 1999 reboot of the spoof, and also in much the same osmotic way as I know about the Tomorrow's World piece on spaghetti trees.)

Talking of fake-stories-as-Grauniad-news, I am reminded of the (and correct me if I am wrong) 1976 piece the paper published in which a reporter related the story of his chance encounter with a member of the SAS on a train.

The journalist - a sceptic of the British military strategy in Northern Ireland - had recently been writing about the deployment of SAS troops to the province, and in none too complimentary terms. IIRC he suggested they were swaggering cowboys who offered little to the peaceful resolution of the Troubles.

And lo, by complete serendipity he happened to meet one such soldier (in civvies) on an InterCity, who, during the course of a spontaneously-struck up conversation, turned out to be articulate, erudite, and anything but macho. His opinions on British policy in Ulster shifted slightly, and he wrote up the story for the paper.

Then many years later it transpired that the whole 'chance encounter' had been a psyops fabrication; the journalist had been picked out as a possible target and a well-briefed and affable serviceman been placed on a train he was known to be travelling on in order to casually strike up a conversation with a view to modifying his opinions.

I've no idea whether that is a true story, as I can't remember where I read it. Perhaps I imagined it? But it sounds like it might be a Colin Wallace one. I know the original story exists, as I read it in one of those Guardian Yearbook thingummies which they used to publish.

Can anyone fill in the details? The source of this tale swimming round my rapidly-shrinking brain? The journalist it seems to be about? The year, even?

Here's what he says just now - it's worth repeating in full:-

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Death's homework

I've been diagnosed with cancer - a treatable kind, but still I'm ruminating on God and mortality

All comments (31)

• PJ O'Rourke
• The Guardian,
• Tuesday October 7 2008
• Article history

I looked death in the face. All right, I didn't. I glimpsed him in a crowd. I've been diagnosed with cancer, of a very treatable kind. I'm told I have a 95% chance of survival. Come to think of it, as a drinking, smoking, saturated-fat hound, my chance of survival has been improved by cancer.

I still cursed God, as we all do when we get bad news and pain. Not even the most faith-impaired among us shouts: "Damn quantum mechanics!", "damn organic chemistry!", or "damn chaos and coincidence!"

I believe in God. God created the world. Obviously pain had to be included in God's plan. Otherwise we'd never learn that our actions have consequences. Our cave-person ancestors, finding fire warm, would conclude that curling up to sleep in the middle of the flames would be even warmer. Cave bears would dine on roast ancestor, and we'd never get any bad news and pain because we wouldn't be here.

But God, Sir, in Your manner of teaching us about life's consequential nature, isn't death a bit ... um ... extreme, pedagogically speaking? I know the lesson we're studying is difficult. But dying is more homework than I was counting on. Also, it kind of messes up my vacation planning. Can we talk after class? Maybe if I did something for extra credit?

Why can't death - if we must have it - be always glorious, as in The Iliad? Of course death continues to be so, sometimes, with heroes in Fallujah and Kandahar. But nowadays, death more often comes drooling on the toilet seat in the nursing home, or bleeding under the crushed roof of a teen-driven SUV, or breathless in a deluxe hotel suite filled with empty drug bottles and a minor public figure whose celebrity expiration date has passed.

I have, of all the inglorious things, a malignant haemorrhoid. What colour bracelet does one wear for that? And what slogan is apropos? Perhaps it can be embroidered around the ruffle on a cover for my embarrassing little doughnut buttocks pillow.

Furthermore, I am a logical, sensible, pragmatic Republican, and my diagnosis came just weeks after Teddy Kennedy's. That he should have cancer of the brain, and I should have cancer of the ass ... well, I'll say a rosary for him and hope he has a laugh at me. After all, what would I do, ask God for a more dignified cancer? Pancreatic? Liver? Lung? No doubt death is one of those mysterious ways in which God famously works. Except, on consideration, death isn't mysterious. Do we really want everyone to be around for ever? I'm thinking about my own family, specifically a certain stepfather I had as a kid.

Then there's the matter of our debt to death for life as we know it. I believe in God. I also believe in evolution. If death weren't around to "finalise" the Darwinian process, we'd all still be amoebas. We'd eat by surrounding pizzas with our belly flab and have sex by lying on railroad tracks waiting for a train to split us into significant others.

I consider evolution to be more than a scientific theory. I think it's a call to God. God created a free universe. He could have created any kind of universe He wanted. But a universe without freedom would have been static and meaningless - the taxpayer-funded-art-in-public-places universe.

Rather, God created a universe full of cosmic whatchmajiggers and subatomic whosits free to interact. And interact they did, becoming matter and organic matter and organic matter that replicated itself and life. And that life was free, as amoral as my cancer cells.

Life forms could exercise freedom to an idiotic extent, growing uncontrolled, thoughtless and greedy to the point that they killed the source of their own fool existence. But, with the help of death, matter began to learn right from wrong - how to save itself and its ilk, how to nurture, how to love (or, anyway, how to build a Facebook page), and how to know God and His rules.

Death is so important that God visited death upon His own son, thereby helping us learn right from wrong well enough that we may escape death for ever and live eternally in God's grace. (Although this option is not usually open to reporters.)

I'm not promising that the Pope will back me up about all of the above. But it's the best I can do by my poor lights about the subject of mortality and free will.

Thus, the next time I glimpse death ... well, I'm not going over and introducing myself. I'm not giving the grim reaper fist daps. But I'll remind myself to try, at least, to thank God for death. And then I'll thank God, with all my heart, for whiskey.

• PJ O'Rourke is a correspondent for the Weekly Standard and the Atlantic

© Los Angeles Times

The article claims that there are growing concerns that Wall Street will abstain from participating in the Paulson-administered $700 billion Hallowe'en party.  As Paulson suggested when the bill was still in formulation, restrictions on executive compensation would discourage executives from partipating.  Well, he may be right about that one thing it seems.  One for ninety-nine isn't so bad for a Treasury Secretary.

Apparently executives aren't resisting the draws of free government cheese simply because they'd rather see their companies burn to the ground than limit their share of the ash, but because the ever-optimistic Wall Street, despite the growing global economic concerns, are calling a market bottom (Again!).  They also appear to believe that liquidity issues are solved simply by the unused presence of the TARP program.  Apparently, as most observers were saying that a $700 billion economic redistribution to Wall Street was unlikely sufficient to do more than slow the economic downturn ever-so-slightly, Wall Street is confident that just talking about the TARP and not spending a single dollar of it will be enough to return prosperity to America.

Either executives are very comfortable with the personalized bailouts that we've been seeing so far or they're bluffing for better terms to be amended to the TARP.  I'd bet on the latter (might as well, since the rapidity of the European slide has scared all my money out of the market).

And really, could it get much better?  Greedy bastards.  As is, the TARP's limits on executive compensation are there simply so lawmakers could SAY that 'yes, there are... limits... in there'.  They limitations are effectively null for any current executive compensation contract.  As far as I know, they only effect contracts drawn up during the period where a bank participates in the TARP (and the partipication has to be over $300 million?).  As I understand it, if you know you're going to want to attend The Greatest Hallowe'en Party Ever, you draw up a new contract with the appropriately laughing-in-the-face-of-outrage golden parachute, then you grab your mask and empty garbage bag and head over to Paulson's house.

... and the cow goes moo

The following article was written for Kidstuff magazine a year ago.  Not sure if I have 6-year-old and 7-year-old readers out there for this blog, but I'm certain you could use this somehow.  By the way, Math-Tinik came from "matinik", a Filipino slang meaning unusually well-versed.

Be Math-tinik

[How to Do Well in Math for 1^st and 2^nd Graders]

By: Wacks Cagampan

You’re in your early grade school.  And everyone is having trouble with the subject called “Math”.  Well, you don’t have to worry.  Here are some tips on how to make your Math life easy to begin with:

1.    Solve puzzles.  Math is just a bunch of puzzles.  Solve those puzzles at the back of juice drink packs and you’ll be ready for Math in no time.  Have fun!

2.    Sleep early for 8-10hours.  You need to be alert and awake in your Math class.  And remember, no sleeping in class!

3.    Do skip counting.  Do it by 2’s, and then by 3’s, then up to 9’s.  This will help you a lot with the other lessons.

4.    Follow each lesson carefully.  You can’t learn Lesson 2 without knowing Lesson 1 first.  And so on.

5.    Ask questions.  Teachers give the secret formula only to those who ask.  Don’t be afraid of your teachers.  Math teachers even love students who ask questions.

6.    Do all seatworks and homeworks.  If you get used to them, you can ace all math tests with no sweat.

7.    Do homeworks right away.  Do the Math homeworks first before the other homeworks.

8.    Ask Mom and Dad.  Let them help on your math homeworks.

9.    Teach.  If you know the lesson well, teach your classmates during free time.  Learn more while meeting new friends.  And it’s always good to help others.

10. Last but not the least, love Math.  It’s the easiest way to learn it.

[Note to parents: Want to know more on how to guide your kids in Math?  Email pogingwacks@yahoo.com.]

A local businessman claimed October 4th that the Liberal party through his accountant offered him $200,000 in Provincial Nominee Program or PNP funds if he would kick back $107,000 to unnamed people.

This is the second claim of this nature. The Guardian and Journal Pioneer reported on October 4th that Joe Dorgan of Sea Cow, Prince County, PEI claimed MLA Neil LeClair asked him for an $18,000 cheque to arrange an Immigrant Investment, as late as two weeks ago. (Note: this was reported as $180,000 but our sources confirm the amount is a misprint in the newspaper.)

The Charlottetown businessman was offered 4 PNP units for a total of $800,000. The Province of PEI would keep $400,000. The lawyers and accountants would keep approximately $200,000. He would receive a cheque for $93,000 and the balance would go to someone in the Liberal Party. He did not know the name of the recipient.

The businessman was so upset by this request and suspicious that he reported it to the RCMP. He also gave a copy of his file to the CBC. CBC reporter John Jeffrey later advised the business person that he had shared it with The Guardian.

We believe this is one of the files that the RCMP is investigating.

Mr. Dorgan's story is reported in the Guardian and Journal Pioneer.

It is illegal for elected officials or their party workers to solicit a bribe from anyone. Kickbacks to political officials for favours are unethical and illegal. Similar illegal kickbacks from advertising executives and Liberal Party officials, known as the Sponsorship Scandal, resulted in criminal convictions in Quebec.

Of course, people are innocent of criminal charges until it has been proven in a court of law.

The optics is worse than Premier Ghiz is admitting yet.

Einer Schlagzeile der Daily Telegraph zufolge geschieht Terror nur im Zusammenhang mit Juden:

Jüdischer Terror bedroht Israel

Die Redakteure der Telegraph - wie ihre Kollegen vom Guardian and der Independent - vermeiden das Wort Terror nicht per se. Sie lehnen es nur ab, wenn die Opfer Israels oder Amerikaner sind.

Unter welchen Bedingungen würde die britische Presse mit dieser Schlagzeile aufwarten?

Palästinensischer Terror bedroht Israel

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Looking at the cover photo on TIME Magazine's latest issue, made me want to go look at some old photos from back in the day. Here are a few to look at.

Also online at the Guardian newspaper, I found this comparision between the 1929 financial crash and the current crisis at Wall Street.

Boro Stem the Road Rot

04 Oct - JJB Staduim - Wigan, Lancashire

Nearly 10 months since a proper result away from County Durham...4 losses on the bounce, including a disheartening defeat at Fortress Riverside to top flight new boys West Brom. A recharged and in-form Wigan side still bouncing from a 2-1 win over Abu Dhabi Cit-eh. Prospects were grim for Boro, with the international break looming to ruminate over predictable missed opportunities and lapses of concentration; Chelsea on the other side of that interval...a result was in dire order.

Injuries continued to haunt our already thin side; Robert Huth out with leg knack, hip gah for Andrew Taylor. Compounded by the suspension to Emmanuel Pogatetz, Gate summoned an early loan return from Jonathan Grounds to fill out a makeshift backline. Their graft would be needed to deal with Egyptian international Amr Zaki and the resurgent Emile Heskey forming a burgeoning partnership for the Latics.

For the first 20 minutes the Wigan bulls up front pressed Boro, creating chances and magnifying our deficiencies. Boro's attack was anonymous with Afonso Alves and Mido bereft of any midfield service or support from the flanks. Zaki left little doubt to as why he was rated as one of the worlds top rated strikers for reigning African Cup champs Egypt and club side El Zamalek. Wilson Palacios peppered Ross Turnbull's goal with tame efforts. Stockton born Lee Cattermole was exerting himself against his boyhood side, desperate to signal to Gate and Gibbo that a lack of confidence in his ability to marshall the Boro midfield was an incorrect inclination. Still, at the break it was 0-0, with Wigan shining brighter and Boro clutching on. A decent shout for a penalty for the Boro on 31 minutes fell on deaf ears as Chris Riggott was felled by Titus Bramble in the box during a Gary O'Neill corner.

The second half started more tame; a few odd chances for the Boro, but with Alves on his own up top and Mido barreling around midfield as a rover, Boro resorted to Stoke tactics, hoofing the ball upfield awaiting a breakdown at the Wigan backline. Ross Turnbull called into duty more and more due to intrusion from the Welsh international sub Jason Koumas...Emile Heskey with a gilt edged chance, blocked successfully by David Wheater...Henri Camara denied by an onrushing Turnbull. Another penalty shout for the Boro as Paul Scharner incredulously trapped a ball in the box with his upper body. Referee Martin Atkinson was unfazed. This was gearing towards a draw inside 10 mins left...a point Boro and the support would gladly snatch. But as the added time was anticipated, substitute Didier Digard offered the best service of the match for the away side, a lollipop into the box from the right, nodded down by Stewart Downing, controlled by Jeramie Aliadiere, who shook his marker and fired past a helpless Chris Kirkland. That. Was. Absolutely. Huge. GOAL for the Boro. The away support rewarded for their jaunt across the Pennines. Boro were able to avert past last minute disasters and disappointments by controlling the injury time to complete what Wigan gaffer Steve Bruce termed 'a mugging'.

Undeserved away wins. The absolute best kind. Boro sails. Gate offers an animated series of fist pumps to the away support, and I'm sure the Red contingent watching from all corners of the globe. Good sides win ugly...

Disclaimer...the eye to a Guardian style comprehensive minute by minute coverage was derailed at the break by lunch (a lovely proscuitto and roasted peppers on a demi baguette). And the post-match fag was the tastiest of the day!

Back with more during the week...news on England/Kazakhstan and other WCQs, fallout from a huge EPL Sunday, the Barca tonking of Atletico Madrid 6-1 and et al La Liga, and surely more...

Sightsee MFC Approved Links...

http://football.guardian.co.uk

http://www.gazettelive.co.uk

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/shows/brand

and be sure to check YouTube for the latest installments of I'm On Setanta Sports