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15 reasons why squash is better than tennis

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Squash is a fantastic game that far from being a minority sport, ought to be more popular than tennis. Here's why. The serve doesn't rule squash... Despite modifications to tennis balls to slow them down, the modern game of tennis is dominated by the serve to far too great an extent, particularly in the men's game. Having a powerful serve is essential to reaching the top level in tennis and if you consistently serve well you can win matches with few other good shots.  ...so the ball's in play for much longer.  Because it's so important, most players concentrate hard on hitting a good serve in and are seldom in a rush to get the ball back in play, and because the server gets two chances to serve the ball in, it also means that a huge proportion of a tennis match is spent with the ball out of play waiting for the serve. And a good serve will usually mean a short rally of no more than 3 shots, particularly on a fast surface like grass. According to a Wall St Journal...
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Road to ruin?

Every day from the train window I note with interest the progress of the East Kent Access Road, currently under construction between Richborough and the Lord of the Manor Junction and between the Lord of the Manor junction and the Minster roundabout. Once open, the road will improve journey times to and from Thanet, which although not physically an island for centuries, has nevertheless always felt somewhat cut off and remote from the rest of Kent and has continues to justify its ‘Isle’ moniker. I’m sure it will also prove a great relief to the residents of Pegwell Bay where the A256 is constantly clogged with traffic every day. Moreover, during its construction the road must be providing work for many local people, from labourers to civil engineers, and the hope is that the improved communication links may entice new and existing businesses to invest in the area. Such investment is undoubtedly desperately needed, especially following the announcement of the closure of the Pfizer site ...
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It’s a credit apocalypse - we’re all in the shit

My second post has been prompted by the financial crisis that's engulfing the world and my desire to preserve for posterity my thoughts and feelings about it. Not that I'm an expert on finance; au contraire , I don't pretend to have any real financial nous, but these are my views as an outsider. The last few weeks and months in the financial world have been, by anyone's standards, historic, extraordinary, fascinating and pretty bloody terrifying in equal measure. To those of us not working for banks, it all seemed quite distant when the credit crunch first started to bite in the US last summer, when poor (in both senses of the word) Americans started losing their homes because they couldn't afford the mortgage repayments, but now it is affecting everyone financially and psychologically, and the frightening thing is this is the very beginning. The Great Depression took the world over 20 years to recover from and it caused untold pain for millions. Even if this is les...
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First ever blog post

I've never posted a blog till now because I've always thought that blogging was an essentially pointless and narcissistic thing to do, so I guess by my own admission, in publishing this I've become a pointless narcissist. Today's post is going to be mercifully brief because it's late and I can't be arsed to stay up too late navel-gazing. So what's prompted me to write this? Well, a couple of things. Since I was very young I've thought writing a diary would be a splendid idea yet I've never got round to it because other things (such as cutting my toe nails, reading the ingredients on jars of pasta sauce etc) seemed more important. Obviously the blog is just a modern version of a diary and like 99% of diaries will never be read by anyone other than their authors, if their authors can bring themselves to read the dross they've spewed out. I've also harboured a desire to write since I was 10 years old, and never really written anything creative....
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