Penalties and lotteries (again)

I've talked about this at various points before, but the BBC has a new piece on the history of penalty shoot outs here. While shoot outs are often referred to by pundits as a lottery, they aren't random - rather, they are a test of skill and nerve.

Ironically, shoot outs were introduced to replace lotteries, such as coin flips. The article linked above credits the idea to Michael Almog (later Israeli FA chief), quoting him as describing the drawing of lots as  "an immoral and even cruel system for the losing team and not honourable for the winner".

Cheesy peas

I knew my partner was cooking chilli for dinner tonight, so I'd been told not to have beans for lunch. Therefore, jacket potato with cheese and peas:

It may seem an odd combination, but if you like peas and you like cheese, then why not...

Right and wrong ways to play the game?

In 'Essentially Contested Concepts,' W. B. Gallie imagines a championship contest where "each team specializes in a distinctive method, strategy and style of play" (p. 170) and there is no agreed scoring system, with each team competing to be acknowledged the best players of the game.

Of course, football isn't quite like this. There is an agreed method for determining who wins each match (who scores most goals) and the league championship (most points from all the games). But still, I'm sometimes reminded of Gallie when people debate how the game should be played.

Today, I see a bit of a discussion about importance of set pieces. This seems to be a current talking point on the BBC at least. Pundit Chris Sutton describes Arsenal as potentially "the ugliest Premier League-winning team in history". And Arne Slot says he doesn't like the emphasis on set pieces. It seems some don't like Arsenal winning the way they do, even if they are top of the table.

However, I was particularly struck by contrasting comments from Chelsea manager, Liam Rosenior, who is quoted as saying: 

"I think that is the beauty of football, you can do it in so many different ways. There's no right or wrong way to play football for me. I'm sure when we scored from a corner yesterday, our fans didn't care what the goal looked like. I'm sure Arsenal's fans didn't care what their goals looked like either. The game is about winning."

It looks like the debate will continue...

Ban on advertising junk food

We have a few more weeks of semester 1 (mostly assessment), before we start our second semester of teaching, but - when we get there - I'll be running my ethics of public policy module again. As usual, I'll start with a section on public health and paternalism, which includes tackling obesity. So, the advertising ban that comes into force tomorrow (5th Jan 2026) is particularly well-timed. This follows last year's earlier ban on multi-buy offers.

Parental licensing - in Denmark

Following on from yesterday's post, another topic that I'll cover next semester is parental licensing. This was proposed/defended by Hugh LaFollette some time ago. However, it turns out that it's not merely a philosophical thought experiment. I just learned that Denmark does actually have a parental competency test.

Unfortunately, I don't know any more about it than what's in that article. It seems it isn't applied to all (prospective) parents, but only those that are considered a risk. Nonetheless, it appears that children can be taken away from parents who fail the test, even if they haven't yet suffered any harm.

Scotland proposes to criminalise prostitution

The module that I'll be teaching next semester includes, amongst other things, a week on prostitution. So, it's good to know that there are moves to criminalise it in Scotland. This makes it more topical.

Disrespecting a Game 2

Earlier in the year, I made a post about disrespecting the game of football. That concerned the practice of standing on the ball in Brazil. But, thanks to a recent BBC article, I learned that "under Ifab's law 12.4, a player can be booked for dissent by word or action, or even for displaying unsportsmanlike behaviour such as showing a lack of respect for the game". Unfortunately, they don't give a link, but I assume this should be easy enough to find.