Thinking Up Solutions Is Tough, Even With Two Brains.

Keep reading, this is not a David Willetts fan blog but some ramblings about sport, politics and science, and usually a mish-mash of all three.

The Porsche Fruit Machine

As Rooney's apologies fall on deaf ears and the faceless corporates clamour, like interns when the boss needs their dry-cleaning picking up, to stick another dagger in the back of the zombie that is England's undying rugby world cup experience, John Terry, to the surprise of nobody, looks to tick every box on his rap sheet. To top it all, the spread betters from the sub-continent fix the market with ease; much to the envy of many financial institutions, Porsche's puts apart.

Sports reporters these days, like the youth of Britain, balance on the brink of Rickets; deprived of their usual outdoor vitamin D rich lifestyles, they are now more accustomed to the interior of court rooms and police stations. That jail acts as a deterrent is often trotted out when those in power look to protect those who vote for them from the feral youth that have inhabited this isle for centuries. Now prison is to act in the same way against would be sports cheats. Whether clan Rooney, Terry, or Tuilagi qualify as one of the 120,000 "very dysfunctional, very troubled" British families the government will mentor, takes one to know one, is unclear. It is, however, certain that Feltham Young Offenders Institution is praying that Mohammad Amir remains within its gates for all of his six month sentence. It might just coincide with the 1st XIs opening cricket fixtures of 2012 and, if he oversteps the line while inside, he may be there for the entire summer.

With the clocks back on GMT and daylight struggling to impart its influence in a stunningly Merkozy selling unbreakable austerity plates to a Greek taverna sort of way, it may be early to start thinking of long summer evenings on the village green powering our lives. Not so the media savvy folk at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and G24 Innovations, based in Cardiff, who chose the ever shortening northern hemisphere days to promote their deeply floored 20 year old solar panels.

Engage two brains! Oh...

Good British science, and there is plenty of it about, is part of Willetts's plan for future econimic growth. Didn't need both brains for that one. However, his inter-cranial neurons will need to be firing if the Ponzi scheme of science careers is to be unwound before the requests for redemptions come rolling in. With the generally left leaning academic community currently placated by having their funding kept intact at the last spending review, let's hope they don't get any ideas from The Daily Mash who note: "When the right is in power, the left goes on strike. When the left is in power the right keeps turning up for work." Concentrating on coordinating left and right may well prevent the masses marching on Westminster and help Messrs Tuilagi and Terry keep reports about them to the back pages.

Should you have little else to do, you can follow me on Twitter @jbartosi and listen to Science and Universities Minister David Willetts deliver the 2011 Roberts lecture on Science Policy here.