May Standard Round 2

A forfeit win for me, so good in tournament terms, but I don't play :(  Not quite sure why someone would sign up, be online, be paired and then not respond for 15 minutes...could be lots of reasons, actually, but it would've been easier to just message or withdraw politely )

It might be worth mentioning that I have achieved one of my short-term goals for this month. The T45 round 1 win put my rating over 1500, for which I was aiming by the end of the month.

The challenge will be to keep it there !

Next T45 match is against a higher-rated opponent, so probably a difficult one. Looks like he's a Sicilian player too...I know what  I will be doing.

One small advantage of not playing was that I caught the resignation of the UK Prime Minister live.  About time too : the UK doesn't do un-elected Prime Ministers or even coalitions very well, unlike countries like the Netherlands.

You can already see the aggressive stances happening, especially out of England.

Alex Salmond ( Scottish First Minister ) is quoted as saying that Brown was ""almost a force of nature" in Scottish and UK politics over the past 30 years, and said that "No-one could doubt his powerful intellectual capacity, his commitment, and the strength with which he pursued his objectives."  What he doesn't actually say is that it was Brown's objectives that were wrong in the first place.

History will have the assessing words, but there might also be an English-reaction this time, if the English ( as opposed to the generic British ) voter feels that there are too many demands on their pockets from the devolved regions of the UK. Expect another election soon, if that happens.

Interestingly, for word-lovers, I found out that the term 'hung parliament' has only been present in English since 1974, the date of the last coalition in the UK. Allegedly derived from 'hung jury' but not previously used in English !

For non-English speakers I should point out that its more related  to the sense of the word meaning 'delayed' or 'in abeyance' (  another example would be the phrases 'hang back' or 'hang fire' ) rather than that related to a method of execution.

Describing an execution, the word 'hung' is not  used : a person is always 'hanged', which certainly doesn't have the sense of delaying anything at all.