*For writing on a similar theme, please visit: https://ukshortwavefreeradiomemories.blogspot.com/ Aged in my early teens in the Autumn of 1990, little could I have known that randomly tuning around the international shortwave bands on a basic analogue radio one Sunday morning would spark a hobby that has, albeit intermittently, endured to this day. Already moderately aware…
Will the intervention of Covid-19 inadvertently prevent environmental encroachment, or merely represent a stay of execution?
In the immediate term Austria's delayed ski season is due to begin on Christmas Eve or January 7th, depending on the resort. Where the Soelden ski area in the Oetztal aims to reopen for business in 12 days' time, further up the valley in Obergurgl and Vent, the slopes expect to receive guests after many…
Blackpool Football Club: Liam Feeney thrown under the bus as exodus of experience continues
It is assumed and in the main understood in equal measure that football managers on arriving at their next posting will wish to bring in personnel to play in their image, to dovetail with the most suitable component parts of their predecessor's squad. In the pursuit of implementing an ethos as far removed as can…
Blackpool Football Club: Neil Critchley ruthlessly consigns Grayson era to history
The unexpected but game-changing onset of Covid-19 has made 2020 a year like no other. As schools cautiously head back into the unknown this autumn it feels as if we have already been through a year several times its normal length, with still a third of it to elapse. Events 'pre-pandemic', in other words before…
Obergurgl: Landslide and Covid-19 heavily curtails summer season, bringing in to question its ‘off season’ future
It was once suggested to me by a hotelier in the Austrian lakeside resort of St. Wolfgang im Salzkammergut that his Obergurgl counterparts did not need to be friendly as they were all already millionaires. Whether each were indeed already men and women of significant means, as was almost twenty years, remains in little doubt…
Neil Critchley needs numbers, experience, and quality for his new look Blackpool F.C. squad
Reboot 2.0 for Blackpool Football Club under the auspices of benevolent ownership was paused before it could gain traction, but 'new' head coach Neil Critchley is now beginning to stamp his identity on what is a squad brimming in creative intent but lacking in numbers. After wresting the reins from the ruinous stranglehold the Oyston…
Mired in mediocrity the EFL Championship affords little preparation for the culture shock awaiting those promoted from it
The English Football League(EFL) Championship: highly competitive, much of a muchness, or of such a poor standard that it is merely rearing the next battery farmed, low quality fodder for next season's Premier League? Notwithstanding the enforced Covid-19 break the Championship season is roughly at the mid-April stage, a point where the league table has…
Has Covid-19 bought alpine tourism some much needed time to reflect on its future?
Reliant on perhaps up to 90% of visitors from outside its borders to sustain a tourism economy, Austria's Tirol region will be nervously anticipating a sharp drop in revenue during its forthcoming summer season. As though border restrictions with its neighbouring countries are slowly relaxed, will a 'make do and mend' hiatus to its usual…
Shortwave ‘Pirate’ Radio in the time of Covid-19 provides much needed entertainment and reminiscence
Aged in my early teens in the Autumn of 1990, little could I have known that randomly tuning around the international shortwave bands on a basic analogue radio one Sunday morning would spark a hobby that has, albeit intermittently, endured to this day. Already moderately aware of what could be heard using just a bog…
Blogging with purpose, not for self-importance
I do not take credit for this - please see the link below for intellectual property details - but if ever Blogging could for many people be summed up so perfectly, it would go something like this: Blogging: "Never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few"…
Alpine Adventures, Soccer, Central Asian Autocracies & Secessionist Politics 
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