And here is the other great piece of news. Kevin Davies Matt Taylor has scored for Bolton at Stamford Bridge. And Chelsea’s end-of-season tally of 85 points is two short (too short!) of United’s 87! So a middle finger to Avram Grant’s suggestion of a play-off. Bolton ensure their survival. A remarkable turnaround for Gary Megson’s team.

Roy Hodgson’s Fulham are the other champions today, having turned their season around and have won their survival on the final day. Reading and Birmingham City will join Derby County in the Championship. I expect Reading to come back in a season.

Boro have the joy of eight! Richard Dunne’s sending off opened up Man City’s leaky defence. But 8-1 is an almost impossible result in modern-day football.

Everton are in the UEFA Cup after their 3-1 win against the Toon.

Arsenal (3rd) and Liverpool (4th) also win on the day, but they were just playing for pride.

All in all, a great season of football ends with Manchester United deservedly retaining their crown! It is not fully over yet. The FA Cup will be decided on Saturday, and then the big one - the Champions League final from Moscow!

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Rooney slips an intelligent pass to the veteran, and Giggs slots home with ease. A champion nonpareil!

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But here is the more important goal. Danny Murphy for Fulham. A lead for the Cottagers at Portsmouth hoists them to 36 points, level with Bolton and Reading. This would see Reading drop to the Championship.

Everton restore their lead at home to Newcastle. Birmingham City know it is all over, but they have regained their lead against Blackburn.

Middlesbrough have banged in an astounding 6 goals against Manchester City!

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Reading are having a rocking good outing at Derby. 3-0, and they have done all they can today to ensure survival. Fulham can still pour cold water on such hopes by scoring at Fratton Park.

Boro score their third and fourth against Man City.

Ryan Giggs is on as a substitute for Ji-Sung Park. This is a momentous occasion for the Welshman. The winger equals Sir Bobby Charlton’s record of 758 appearances in a United shirt. Owen Hargreaves is also on for United.

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Cristiano Ronaldo delivers a top-draw free-kick, but Kirkland does even better to keep Wigan’s deficit to just one.

Michael Owen pulls one back at Goodison Park. A penalty. Everton are still favorites to wrest the UEFA Cup spot from Aston Villa.

Blatant penalty for United denied. Scholes is totaled in the Wigan box by Titus Bramble, but Steve Bennett turns down calls for a penalty. Will the Sky Sports commentator stop harping on about Rio Ferdinand’s shoulder ball at least now?

United look like they are in the zone, very comfortable. Kirkland has been a giant amidst the sticks to keep United at bay. My man of the match!

Villa now lead 2-1. A draw at Goodison would still see Everton through.

Andriy Shevchenko’s half-time inclusion doesn’t seem to have helped Chelsea.

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Boro have doubled their lead over Sven Goran Eriksson’s Man City, and defeat on the final day could make Thaksin Shinawatra’s decision easier. Surely that would be awful, because Sven has helped City finish 9th in the league, five places better than last season. And managers need time to work things around.

The relegation battle sees Bolton on 37, Reading climbing to 36, Brum on 35 and Fulham on 34. If Fulham score, they could condemn Reading to the Championship. City are now relying on Derby County to score and all else to remain the same, if they are to survive.

Chelsea haven’t scored. Liverpool neither.

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Ronaldo sends Kirkland the wrong way, and more importantly, sends the ball the right way - goal-ward! Number 31 might just be enough to see the champions retain their title.

Elsewhere, Birmingham have the lead, but that might not be enough for the Blues. Everton are in pole position for the UEFA Cup spot. 1-0 against Newcastle.

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Ronaldo takes an excellent free kick, but Chris Kirkland does well to save it. Clearly, Wigan are in it for the fight.

Theo Walcott scores for Arsenal at Sunderland’s Stadium of Light. How lucky Roy Keane’s men don’t have to fight Arsenal on the last day for survival. Fulham and Birmingham are still in the drop zone.

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Reading score at Derby County to move out of the relegation zone.

Paul Scholes receives a yellow card for a routinely mistimed tackle.

John Terry is injured and is replaced by Juliano Belletti.

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The relegation fight could be just as interesting. Promises to be a fabulous day.

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Chelsea, the football club that is, are so boring this season, in that both their football and their manager are boring. At least when Jose Mourinho was around, folks like me had one reason to follow the club.

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போட்டியிலே நான் மாட்டிகிட்டா,
பொறுக்க முடியுமா கலாட்டா!
ஒண்ணும் தோணல நான் ஓடிப்போறேன்,
தேடாதீங்க, நாளை நாடிவரேன்!

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The article says:

1. She missed the mood
2. She didn’t master the rules
3. She underestimated the caucus states
4. She relied on old money, and
5. She never counted on a long haul

What the article (rather politely) omits is that she underestimated her opponent, and crucially, his staying power. While the Clintons never publicly cast Senator Barack Obama as a candidate of color in 2007, they seem to have hoped that he would appeal to only a narrow audience, and that the others would rally behind her. The Clintons would have loved it if Obama played along racial lines, as this would have diminished his appeal.

However, credit to Obama, he never did this. He was, therefore, able to build a coalition of supporters that was more broad-based that any other candidate in the running for President in 2008. As the Clintons’ wait-and-watch strategy started failing, Bill Clinton tried to play up race as the primary factor behind Obama’s successes. This flew in the face of common sense, as Obama’s opening day victory was in Iowa, considered among the whitest of the white states. It also exposed the Clinton campaign’s expectations on this front.

While the other candidates could not get their campaigns to take off as they would have expected, Obama’s campaign worked and is still working really hard to make every state and every vote count. With Hillary, a combination of a failing strategy and pathetic operations ensured defeat.

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And while I appreciate his concern, I find some of his suggestions unworkable. Comments follow.

1. Make people accountable. Yes, it sounds easy to legislate that people should be held accountable for not voting. Standing in the queue at the tahsildar’s office is punishment enough. But consider the amount of administrative work involved. Tahsildar’s offices in India are small and poorly run. They are highly inefficient at whatever they do currently. If they had to cope with this mountain of new work, they would explode. Moreover, how will you ensure that everyone who does not vote comes to the tahsildar’s office to file reasons. In India, we still haven’t found a way to collect income taxes properly. The population that should file tax returns should be much lesser compared to those who are eligible to vote. The amount of paperwork involved in this process would be just too much for anyone to handle.

2. Increase security at polling booths. Increasing security at polling booths and public broadcast of activities in polling stations will only work well in movies. Considering the not-so-honest nature of the law enforcement agencies, increase in security might be considered by the voter as an increase in security for the offenders. It is easy to play with CCTV systems. Keanu Reeves employs this technique to deceive Dennis Hopper in Speed. Again, administrative work is enormous. And who pays to install these systems at polling booths? And that too, once in five years (or a few more times, if you consider state and local elections)

3. Offer free commute. The argumentative Indian will ask, “Won’t the parties use this as a means to lure the voter into voting for them?” And what if people from different parties offer a ride to the same person at the same time. If the parties don’t pay, then who does?

4. Avoiding elections in off-seasons. Though this is a good suggestion, I’m unsure if it will work. Throwing in the weather into an already exploding criteria list will make it unworkable.

5. Postal votes. Offering this on an on-demand, payment-only basis sounds good.

6. Special efforts to include names. Good idea.

7. Use of Internet in voting. It might work in the not-so-distant future, when touch screens become more common and less expensive. Otherwise, fear of technology will put off many voters.

8. Incentives for voting. Good idea, though I would personally recommend disincentivising the non-voters, knowing fully well it has the ability to touch off a civil war!

9, 10, 11. Disincentivizing non-voters. Ah, birds of a feather flock together! Didn’t read this earlier.

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According to the article, Guam is a territory consisting of 19 villages. Reminds me of the fabled padhinettu patti (18 villages) so often cited in Tamil movies. Interestingly, Guam is also holding elections in parallel to elect the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the territory’s Democratic Party… in Tamil movie terms, the naattaamai.

I wonder if they have the famed arasa maram, kizhinja jamakkaalam and odanja sombu

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This isn’t new. A couple of seasons ago, we witnessed Bryan Robson’s West Brom miraculously survive the relegation dog-fight by jumping from 20th to 17th on the last day. Last season, West Ham needed Carlos Tevez’s heroics at Old Trafford to produce an unlikely victory against champions Manchester United, while Wigan had to beat Sheffield United the same day to ensure their survival and the latter’s drop.

This season, Derby confirmed their relegation a few months into the season. The other two relegation spots have been occupied by many different clubs during the course of the season - Sunderland, Boro, Wigan, Bolton, Fulham, Reading and Birmingham City. The latter two are now in 18th and 19th spots respectively. Of the lot, Roy Keane’s Sunderland were the first to ensure another season in the top flight.

Earlier today, Wigan and Boro secured their survival, leaving Bolton, Fulham, Reading and Brum fighting for the remaining two survival spots. Bolton gave their survival chances a major boost by beating Sunderland at the Reebok, while Fulham mauled Birmingham in a potential six-pointer.

The last round of matches will be intriguing. Bolton play Chelsea away at Stamford Bridge. Given that Chelsea will be gunning for victory at home, Bolton might have to be content with their haul of 36 points. If they don’t lose by more than a couple of goals at the Bridge, Bolton should remain in the Premier League.

Fulham, currently on 33 points, are away to Portsmouth next Sunday. Portsmouth are a tough side to crack at home. But considering they are in the FA Cup final a week later, Pompey might field a weakened side, or one which has almost nothing to play for. And given Fulham are the form side, winning 3 of their past 4 games, the Londoners might yet secure the victory that keeps them in the Premiership.

Of the teams in the relegation battle, Reading have the easiest fixture on the last day. They play away at Derby. Reading’s goal difference of -29 does not compare favorably with Bolton’s -19 or Fulham’s -23. To sustain their sojourn in the Premier League, Steve Coppell’s side might need to win by a margin of 7 or 8 goals, assuming a Fulham win.

For Birmingham City, even victory at Blackburn, a daunting prospect in itself, might not be enough. Their survival depends on the final day fortunes of the other teams. They are looking likely to join Derby for another season in the Championship.

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From a design perspective, it was difficult to fathom why the UI designers would not just tinker with, but significantly alter the menus. Considering that the core audience for Office is, well, office users, who do not embrace change as quickly or as easily as, say, a younger, more dynamic demographic, such a radical redesign flew in the face of conventional thinking.

And almost everyone I knew, who had made the transition, felt lost in the new Office. Think of the first time you were using Word 2007, and wanted to change the orientation of the page to “Landscape”. Though “Page Layout” was the third item on the ribbon, the force of old habit made us look us look under File > Print. If not F1 key, we would have wasted hours find something that was right there in front of our eyes.

However, a few months into it, and I find myself totally comfortable, to the point that previous versions of Office seem rudimentary, even ancient. I guess other users would have acclimatised themselves just as well. But I still think it was big gamble on part of the Office team to have gone ahead with such a redesign. I wonder if Microsoft would have been able to pull it off if not for their entrenched strength. In a more open playing field, users might have “considered” gravitating to other choices.

That said, I am still not convinced about Vista’s UI design as being as revolutionary and user-friendly as Office 2007’s.

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