Two games in and Capello’s England already look stale – a headline that manages to sum up its own stupidity – two games and stale is surely an oxymoron.

“There are a lot of hypocrites out there. The same bosses talking about players showing respect have been sent off themselves for abusing officials.” Roy Keane.

The Quackometer does sterling work unearthing unscientific and flawed medical practices. Le Canard Noir’s latest posting on ear candles – ear candles I ask you, and yes it involves stuffing lighted candles in your ear – is amusing and sums up brilliantly anyone who does go through with this nonsense probably has very little between their ears that could be damaged by such stupidity.

Over years, like many other people I’ve been buying locally produced food, one of the reasons being the issue of “food miles” – the consideration of how far our food has travelled to get to our plates.

However, Rob Lyons in his article Why there’s no mileage in “food miles” for Spiked, gives , excuse the pun, food for thought.

The trouble with the concept of food miles is that it is not only simple but simple-minded. It even caused a little cat-fight in the green movement a couple of years ago. Outraged members of New Zealand’s Green Party wrote to their British counterparts to protest at the eco-calumny that we shouldn’t buy Kiwi food. “The total greenhouse emissions released in the production and transport of dairy and lamb shipped to Britain from New Zealand are lower than the emissions generated by the production of dairy and lamb in Britain”, declared New Zealand Green Party co-leader, Russel Norman.

Norman pointed to research from Lincoln University in New Zealand which showed that simply counting the miles travelled was little help in assessing the “ecological footprint” of a particular foodstuff. For example, lamb reared on sunny New Zealand pasture and then shipped halfway round the world to the UK creates fewer carbon emissions than meat from animals reared on the rather less luscious grass in the fields of Wales or Scotland. That’s because farmers here in the UK have to add feed to the diets of their animals, feed which is grown using fertilisers and then transported to the farm – all of which emits CO2. There are lots of other examples – like those Spanish tomatoes – where growing food in sunnier climes and then shipping it to Britain uses far fewer resources and emits less pollution than growing crops in less favourable circumstances closer to home.

As Lyons has already amply pointed out things are more complex, one thing I’ve certainly discovered in buying locally is that the quality on offer from our local butcher is far superior to anything the local supermarkets sell.

The BBC reports.

Cough remedies aimed at young children are to be removed from shelves “as a precautionary measure” amid fears of accidental overdose.

The Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has ordered six products taken by children aged under two be permanently removed from sale.

About 90 more remedies will be removed until they can be repackaged.

The move is due to concerns that parents might be giving children the wrong dosages.

How difficult can it be to write clear and precise instructions and how difficult can it be to follow the instructions. Surely, on this basis we should just ban all medicines.

What is it with this government and nuclear power? One of the main trusts seems to be that Nuclear is a low-carbon energy source, however exchanging carbon emissions for highly hazardous radioactive waste for which our only solution seems to be to bury it in the ground seems at most short-sighted. Goodness knows what the cost of building these plants might be but they’ll dwarf the £20 billion economic bonanza that government minister John Hutton predicts in his Nuclear is UK’s new North Sea oil speech. Wouldn’t the money be better spent on energy efficiency and renewables. From production to consumption our current systems are hugely wasteful, there’s plenty of room for improvement and as for renewables, wind, wave and tidal can surely meet or needs.

There’s no scientific evidence but let’s advise women they shouldn’t drink any alcohol, regardless, that’s the latest advice from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). The NICE deputy chief executive Dr Gillian Leng said people, and in particular women, were drinking more and the NHS advisory body wanted to send a “clear message”. So what NICE actually wants is for us to drink less. I think we’re all fed up with health advice, you get the feeling they’d only be happy if we all ate just vegetables and drank only water – tap water that is. Source: The BBC.

As the Democratic nomination continues I can’t help thinking it’s immaterial I don’t believe that Americans will elect either a woman or a black man so unless John McCain does something stupid we can in my opinion sadly look forward to another Republican president.

How much would you need to win to give up work? The £1.3m that Luke Pittard won would be enough for me. However, not Mr. Pittard, 21 months after his win he got bored and is now back at work at McDonald’s. I can think of lots of things I’d do before considering returning to work, no actually, I’d never consider returning to work. Source: The BBC.

If we can’t hang on to a 3-1 lead then we can forget winning the Premiership. So we’re now five points behind the champions eight games to go someone is going to have to do us a favour, plus we’re going to have to beat Arsenal on Sunday and Man Utd on Saturday 26th April which even if we manage still leaves us short.