Dave

Brighton 0 – 0 Forest

From the BBC Football site:

Brighton 0-0 Nottm Forest

Paul Gerrard’s first-half penalty save earned Nottingham Forest a point in their relegation tussle with Brighton.

Gerrard brought down Leon Knight after 10 minutes but pulled off a stunning one-handed stop to deny him a goal.

Brighton created the early chances as Richard Carpenter shot wide and Gerrard saved from Knight and Kerry Mayo.

But Forest improved and Andy Reid twice tested Michel Kuipers, Kris Commons diverted Marlon King’s cross wide and Kuipers saved from King’s snap-shot.

# Brighton boss Mark McGhee:
“It was important not to lose to Forest, regardless of how it looked. I’m happy with the draw.

“If we take a point a game from now on we should stay up. What was really important was that we denied Forest three points which they badly needed.

“This was not our best passing game of our unbeaten sequence of matches, but the pitch was a bit bumpy.”

# Forest boss Gary Megson:
“It gives us something to build on, and this was a slight improvement to get a point.

“It’s a huge task and it doesn’t get any easier. But there are 16 games to go and a lot of points to play for.

“We need to get better technically in both boxes. We made a hesitant start but created chance after chance.”

Brighton: Kuipers (May 85), Mayo, El-Abd, Hinshelwood, Butters, Harding, Reid, Carpenter, Oatway, Knight, Hart (Jones 88).
Subs Not Used: Nicolas, Molango, Hammond.

Booked: Oatway, El-Abd.

Nottm Forest: Gerrard, Louis-Jean, Rogers, Morgan, Doig, Evans, Reid, Commons, Derry, Taylor, King (Johnson 90).
Subs Not Used: Doyle, Thompson, Impey, Folly.

Booked: Gerrard, Reid.

Att: 6,704.

Ref: P Taylor (Hertfordshire).

Brighton v Forest

A tough one today. I understand that Megson is likely to play 3-5-2 again, with Wes Morgan and Andy Reid back from injury: Gerrard; Doig, Morgan, Dawson; Louis-Jean, Derry, Reid, Commons, Rogers; King, Taylor.

Hopefully he won’t be playing David Johnson.

My prediction? 0-1 to Forest. I gotta be optimistic!

Internet Restrictions

Melissa at Boris Johnson’s blog pointed out this article on the BBC News site:

“A large part of the attraction of the internet is that it goes below the radar,” he said. “Generally it’s more difficult for the government to be able to control it.

“Its real value is as an open window onto what’s happening elsewhere in the world,” he said.

This set me thinking about how the internet is (ab)used in other repressed countries. After a couple of Google searches, I finally came across this page, from Reporters Without Borders. Plenty to be going on there, I feel.

Bush Reads Dostoevsky!

Burning Bush brandishes Dostoevsky

Given the Biblical language in which George Bush and his speechwriters are steeped, it is not surprising that the US president should invoke the imagery of fire, writes James Meek

One of the models of American leadership is that of Moses, leading God’s chosen people – then the Jews, now the Americans – towards a promised land, following a pillar of fire. At one point, according to the Bible, Moses was shown a sign: “Behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.”
But the key fire passage in the Burning Bush speech – “We have lit a fire as well; a fire in the minds of men” – actually has its origins in a novel by the 19th century Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Devils, about a group of terrorists’ ineffectual struggle to bring down the tyrannical Tsarist regime.

One of the characters declares that it is pointless to try to put out a fire started by terrorists: “The fire is in the minds of men and not in the roofs of houses,” he says.

The novel belongs to a period in Dostoevsky’s life which the White House might find attractive, after he had been sent by the Tsar to a kind of Russian Guantánamo and emerged a deeply religious conservative.

Nonetheless, it is not clear whether Bush is identifying here with the terrorists – or the tyrants.

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