Typo o’ the year

Posted on April 4, 2013 by hocillaetalia

From the KCNA, home of ‘news’ from the Democratic Republic of Korea:

And here’s some wonton soup, which, who knows, might be a little challenging:

Supermarket sweep, part 5

Posted on January 30, 2013 by hocillaetalia

Rumours of my demise were greatly etc etc.

Anyway:

Well, having flu does rather put one off pasta, doesn’t it? Maybe the person was uncertain about whether one feeds a colds and starves a fever or vice versa.

Another beauty:

This was spotted in a motorway service station. But what was the CD? Doctor Feelgood? Gregory Isaacs’ ‘Night Nurse’? The Alabama 3′s ‘Power in the Blood’? Perhaps we will never know.

And a couple of folk giving up virtue:

Gin or Brussels sprouts? Not too hard a decision there, although given that this was a pre-Christmas photo, perhaps the family were a little taken aback by what they were offered.

And another choice I applaud – Iced tea, no thanks.

And finally, cynical product placement o’ the year:

Well, fairy cakes do not really have the same level of bloke appeal, do they?

Acronym o’ the day

Posted on November 23, 2012 by hocillaetalia

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Sharjah Electricity and Water Authority, or SEWA for short.

Yes, really.

One last push in 2016?

Posted on November 12, 2012 by hocillaetalia

Sniffing around in a pile of US Presidential Election statistics, I discovered that one Jack Fellure – a name open to various pronunciations – polled the fewest votes of any candidate in 2012. He got 519 votes, or by my reckoning, 0.0004226% of the vote. In fairness one should note that even the third and fourth party candidates – the Libertarian and Green parties – did not achieve ballot paper appearances in all 50 states, so Fellure would have been a write-in, I imagine.

Anyway, the party he stood for once polled 270,770 votes, this being in 1892. As recently as 1948 it polled six figures, but it has been downhill for the Prohibition Party – for it is they and yes, prohibition as in prohibition – eversince.

Here’s an exciting bar chart to make the point:

Note the fall in its vote during the years of its greatest success, policy-wise.

Some fun with statistics – loyal football supporters, or the reverse?

Posted on November 7, 2012 by hocillaetalia

I imagine every football team in the world claims to have the best supporters, and had I world enough and time I might put that to a test of sorts. However, time is tight and there’s not much fun to be had in pointing and sniggering at the pretensions / delusional behaviour of the supporters of Grimsville Town, or come to that, Villagrimo Ciudad, so I am going to focus on the London teams. Or at least those which have spent the whole of the period 1980-2012 in divisions 1 – 4 and are still in London. So no Barnet and no Wimbledon. All stats found here.

So, here is a graph showing average home attendances by season:

Arsenal, Spurs and Chelsea have disputed the lead, although Chelsea did not get much of a look in prior to the mid-nineties. Fact fans might note that Chelsea’s resurgence started at the time of Matthew Harding’s investment rather than after Abramovich acquisition in 2003. West Ham have ranged from second to fifth, while the capital’s two other current top tier tenants, Fulham and QPR, have seen much greater variation in position.

Arsenal and Spurs have been in the top division throughout the period, although Spurs were slumming it as recently as 1978. Of the rest, Chelsea have been in Division One – no, I do not have any truck with this ‘Premier League – Premiership / Championship’ nonsense – for 27/33 years, West Ham 25, QPR 14, Charlton 12, Fulham 11, Crystal Palace 9 and Millwall twice. Chelsea, Palace and West Ham have not sunk further than Division 2 in this period, while the rest have dropped to the third, and in the case of Fulham, the fourth.

So this is where the impact of the ups and downs of a supporter’s life is going to show up:

No great traumas in this period for Arsenal and Spurs fans – at least relative to the sorrows of Fulham and Milwall supporters. So, what do the highs, lows and averages, gate-wise look like? Like this:

Arsenal at Highbury and Arsenal at the Emirates have been split out, as there is no legitimate comparison to be made across the two grounds. Note that some of the troughs in chart one reference stand closures for rebuilding, especially after the Taylor Report and the switch to all seater stadia.

So, the measure of loyalty I am going to use is the percentage of the peak that the trough represents. In the case of the Emirates it is 99.8%. One wonders if that would hold good if Arsenal had a few bad seasons…. Mind you, the 62.4% for Highbury is pretty impressive. Spurs’ figure is 57%, with this informed by ground alteration, but also its less than stellar performance in part of the period.

Two other clubs have managed to better 50% – QPR at 61% and Brentford at 50.1%. Both QPR and Brentford have been in three divisions in this period, so that is an impressive measure of consistency in fan base. Given that Brentford have not made it to the supposed promised land of the top division, no-one knows quite how many more folk would be making for the Griffin Park turnstiles if the Bees were playing a glamour club. Honesty compels me to concede that my lot, West Ham, does have a rep for see-sawing twixt divisions but because I am biased I will excuse the 1993 low as being owed to ground rebuilding.

Orient’s low is just over a third of its high, the peak being when it was in Division 2, and its low when it was in the bottom tier.

And with that we move on to the clubs which see their fan base taunted with ‘where were you when you were (expletive deleted)?’. Chelsea’s minimum is 30.3%, Milwall’s 26%, Crystal Palace’s 21.6%, Charlton Athletic’s 19.3%, and drum roll please, the capital’s biggest glory hunters, Fulham – 16%. Oh dear…..