History Lesson

I spoke a little too soon about the Sports Betting Professor's tips no longer arriving. They are, but for some reason were directed to my Spam folder rather than my Inbox. Just four winners from twelve this week though, so I didn't miss anything. His one NBA pick for this week also went down in flames with the Celtics picked at -1 over the Cavaliers on Friday - they lost by 29 at home.

Football Elite's end of term woes continued with Borussisa Moenchengladbach at 4.7 drawing 1-1 at home to Bayer Leverkusen.

Also in my Spam folder were some more (unintentionally) amusing comments from Anonymous (of course), this time showing a rather limited knowledge of history, English and logic.

I posted on Friday that "..the odds are that it won't be another five years until we get another stab at these markets".

So here's his sharp-minded comment:

I'm unsure why previous coalition Governments, that occurred during the world world 1 & 2, would indicate we'll have to wait another five years. Maybe you could enlighten us all.

Where did I say that we'll have to wait another five years? I said the precise opposite.

Ignore the 'world world' - that could be a typo, but first of all, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland did NOT have a coalition government during the Great War. The nation had a Liberal government for the entire duration of the war, with first Herbert Henry Asquith and later David Lloyd George as Prime Minister.

Secondly, for World War Two, he is somewhat correct, except that at the time the UK government was known as a National Government, and they were in power long before the war started in 1939. 1931 to be precise. The election saw the Conservatives win a majority of seats, yet National Labour's Ramsay MacDonald remained as PM. It is only in more recent years that this government has been referred to as a coalition.

Not too many goverments in the UK run for the full five years, in fact in the last 60 years (16 elections) only the governments of 1959, 1987, 1992 and 1995 have exceeded 4 1/2 years and all had big working majorities so I stand by my statement that it is unlikely to be five years until we see another election. Anonymous then has this to say:

I'm also guessing you've snapped up all that 1.5 available, in the 2 Elections In 2010 market on there not being another election in 2010

Anyone spot the flaw in this man's logic? I hope he is active on the exchanges. Was it he who backed Clegg at 1.5 to be next Prime Minister I wonder?