Dr Gloom

king's ransom - £150 per pop. A class seats though for Thursday morning - mainly heats and decathlon races. get to see the 4 by 400m heat, which i'm quite looking forward to, plus some long jump and pole vault action. but tonight it's all about the weight lifting at the excel. the conversation i had with mrs gloom the morning after i stayed up till 2am securing the tickets went like this: me: "great news love, i stayed up really late and managed to get tickets to the weight lifting!" wife: "weight lifting? really? well at least we get to experience the atmopshere inside the Olympic park" me: "erm, well, no actually. It's at the Excel centre. You know - that soulless, cavernous conference centre in Canning town."

Athletics tickets are mine bitches. The only downside is I now no longer have an f5 key left on my laptop

Aye, Colo is our MVP. Ashley and Pardew know it too. They don't hand the kind of contract extension he got to other players in his age bracket.

Aye, perch was surprisingly good in most games he played last season

Yeah I know that but the point is he was good enough to come in for tiote and do a good job in Central midfield - we got some good results in with Guthrie alongside cabaye last season. We don't yet know if the young guns in our current second string will equal that level of performance.

Thought Guthrie covered tiote well last season and played well alongside cabaye when needed. The other lads like abheid are all unproven. Hopefully they'll do as good a job

Exactly. We should have done more to keep Guthrie with that in mind

i felt the same way before i left. i've got mates from washington that are mackems. they're good lads; they're not a different species. there are plenty of charv freaks in the west end of newcastle. the downtrodden look comes from living in deprived areas, not genetics ffs.

finally managed to get tickets to .... the weightlifting. the mrs is thrilled, naturally.

i really don't hate sunderland as much as a lot of newcastle fans. the town is a hole and i feel sorry for those that have to live there but some of my oldest and best mates are mackems; stevie's chat about them being genetically inferior is just wind up material. as far as their club's concerned, i'm really not that bothered. as long as we beat them and finish above them, i'm happy for them to stay up. you can't beat the atmopshere at the derby and it's a shame not to have that. i like to see boro in the top flight too. good to have the three north east sides up there.

The London Metro, perhaps not the most reliable source, are reporting this morning that Debucy will join us this week and West Ham have agreed a deal for Carroll but he wants to stay and fight for his place.

post of the year so far

Can't say I'm sorry to hear the news; he's been dragging this place down for years. Though I've had him on ignore the last couple of years, even I've seen an improvement in his behaviour through the decrease in how often I've had to read people quoting him about the glory years under shepherd. Seems odd that he's gone now when he was at the height of his wummery earlier in the year. Something radge must have kicked off that I missed.

Agreed. I'm not the most patriotic lad in the world but i thought Boyle nailed it. It showed the world everything that's great about Britain. A rich, culture, history and sense of humour. I was holding back tears of pride on more than one occasion. He deserves a night hood.

couldn't compete with bejing on the grand spectacle scale (their import costs are non existent for one), so we played the rich history card. and what a card. no other country can compete with that.

i've been enjoying all the minority sports today: badminton, archery, shooting.

1984 LA games. seb coe in the 1500m, steve ovett in the 800m. daley thompson winning the decathlon. carl lewis winning everything else

quite enjoying the badminton

nice moments of humour too to balance out the patriotism.

i'm not one to get schmultzy but i thought the whole thing was bloody brilliant. i was choking up on more than one occasion. such a good production and a reminder of why we should all be proud to be british.

who the fuck are you like?

since when were "the" and "a" big words?

Too late. We have already started the descent into a second great depression

Most of the deficit reuction is supposed to come from recovery, not from cuts. yeah, that's what i meant. it's economics 101. you don't get the growth needed to reduce the deficit from savage austerity measures