Libraries Deserve a Sporting Chance

About a year after the collapse of the Soviet system, which now seems a lifetime ago, domestic matters led me to visit Poland, during which time I had the pleasure of staying with some family relatives on my partners side. I soon learned that the lady of the house had recently been made redundant from her job as a librarian and I naturally enquired as to why that was so. I was duly informed that her library had been closed down as part of the new wave of capitalist austerity measures. Ah I hear you say how very familiar. The interesting thing in this little story is not so much the closure of the library depressing as that is, but the type of library that had been forced to close.

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Pornography Penetrates Sport

Two excellent pieces of journalism appeared in the press today though I suspect few commentators will choose to make a connection. Firstly, The Times 5/1/11 chose to run with a damning front page expose on UK sex gangs where young vulnerable white working class girls in Britain’s northern cities are being lured into prostitution by Asian gangs, principally of Pakistani origin. The hidden agenda to this story being that British authorities have been complicit in a ‘conspiracy of silence’ for fear of being accused of racism. Fortunately for the present and future victims of this ugly piece of domestic human sex trafficking, a prominent member of the Muslim community in Britain has had the courage to speak out, even it transpires, at the risk to his own safety.

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The Arms Trade, New Internationalist

Christmas time and the usual stampede of mindless consumerism, the majority of stuff we neither need nor want. Spurred on by an advertising industry that starts to badger and bully the senses as early as October, the relentless onslaught builds up into a crazed frenzy by mid and late December. The Government plays it part, all but suggesting that it is our patriotic duty to spend, spend, spend in order to pump prime our sick and wasting economy. The joke is, in order to rescue the dying patient we will likely plunge ourselves even further into personal debt. Help, get me out of here! Read More…

The Queen’s Speech

After blabbering on about the wonders of the King James Bible, the House of Windsor’s long serving, immaculately preserved top dog, tried her hand at something a little more common; the earthly wonders of sport. In the context of her hopelessly ahistorical understanding of the real repressive role of Christianity (and indeed all religion) and the much hyped Protestant version of the Bible, her cliched sentiments on the role and value of sport are consistent and equally inept. No mention in our monarch’s speech about the cheating, the corruption and the national chauvinism that is the daily staple of globalised sport.

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Tottenham Versus West Ham Is No Choice At All

It’s amazing how easy it is to manipulate people into choosing between two totally unacceptable alternatives. A classic example would be the economic and political choice between Tory cuts and Labour cuts. It’s a clever ploy. By presenting one draconian programme of cuts against a slightly less draconian programme the electorate conveniently forgets who was responsible for the economic mess in the first place. Instead of focusing on the casino capitalists and their off shore tax havens we get sidetracked into debating which austerity programme is the most appropriate for the country. You’ve got to admit, they are clever bastards.

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Naomi Campbell Speaks Out

Once again, top model Naomi Campbell has spoken of the obvious racist dimension to the western fashion industry, her latest condemnation making page three headlines in The London Evening Standard 8/12/10. Despite her high profile modelling career, Campbell stresses that it is still near impossible for models of Black and Asian origin to capture the top fashion posts. Pandering to the Eurocentric notion that blond is beautiful, the industry ensures there remain very few people of colour strutting the catwalks in London, Paris, Rome and New York, despite the fact that these cities are demographically multinational and pride themselves as being global cities. Read More…

Wikileaks: A New Global Sport

What have we learnt from the latest tranche of secret documents heroically dragged into the public domain by Wikileaks this week? Simply, that the entire planet is run by a shady cabal of gangsters, both government and freelance, sometimes in loose cooperation and sometimes in fierce rivalry. Nothing really new there then. The Russian government, we are told, are in league with and up to their necks in organised crime. Yes, we know. Some of their most celebrated gangsters have UK resident status and one owns a very well known football club.

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Government to Measure Happiness!

There is very probably no pre-ordained purpose to human existence at all. In fact, we should only use the word, ‘probably’ out of deference to the principle of scientific scepticism. On a day to day basis we should have absolutely no truck with any manner of primitive obscurantist superstitions that pass for modern day religious belief. The word ‘probably’ does not come into the equation. The world is round and orbits the sun and was formed some 5 billion years ago. It is part of a much, much larger universe which exploded into physical being some 13.7 billion years ago. We can actually measure the radiation from that explosion today!

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The Murdoch Empire Knows No Bounds

The one feature that unites all recent commentary on Rupert Murdoch’s audacious bid to completely buy out BSkyB TV is that such a move would give one man a disproportionate control over Britain’s media. In this respect they are all barking up the wrong tree. Rupert Murdoch and his international News Corporation already have a massively undemocratic control over British affairs and I’m not just talking about sport. Whether he succeeds in buying the remaining part of Sky that he does not already own is largely immaterial to his already massive, unaccountable, undemocratic influence over British politics.

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George Monbiot for Chancellor

If there’s one certainty in history, it’s that empires that rise are certain to fall. There has been, to my knowledge, not one exception to this rule. Britain is certainly no exception, as the British resignedly witness the inexorable waning of its star. Apparently Britain is so broke that it can’t even afford to continue the network of School Sports Partnerships carefully constructed by the Youth Sport Trust over the past decade. A mere £136 million is all it takes to fund this extremely productive extracurricular scheme, but it seems the once mighty British Empire is just too poor these days. Or is it? Read More…

Stadiums, Stadiums, Stadiums – Olympic Notes No3

Athens got some new ones. So did Sydney. Beijing got some terrific ones. Delhi got in on the act and threw up some impressive ones albeit with just days to spare. South Africa recently built or renovated ten of them. Dubai just can’t stop building them. London got a new one at Wembley and Cardiff got one to celebrate the new millennium. Now Liverpool FC have new owners, they also want a new one. After all, Manchester City have a relatively new one, as do Arsenal. And with the 2012 Olympics on the near horizon, London is currently building itself a whole lot more of them.

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The Agnostic Mr Barnes

In a cleverly crafted piece on the rise and fall of sporting empires, institutions and individuals, Simon Barnes, writing in The Times 22/10/10 shows why he is light years ahead of the rest of the journalistic pack, with only fellow Times correspondent, Matt Syed, able to match him for depth and dimension. True, The Guardian has excellent investigative journalists with the likes of David Conn and Owen Gibson, but neither seem to have that ability to touch on the soft human underbelly of sport in the way that Barnes regularly achieves.

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The Geopolitics of the Ryder Cup

Have you ever been bemused by the incongruity of the European Champions League draw or, for that matter, any of the draws for contemporary European football? Kazakhstan is there and so is Azerbaijan and Armenia. Many of the republics of the former Soviet Union are included. Georgia is there as are the Baltic Republics. Israel gets itself an invite as does Turkey. By any stretch of the geographical imagination, this is truly an expanded Europe. In fact, a more accurate name for these sporting fixtures might be the Eurasia Cup. Don’t misunderstand me, I am more than happy to see this expanded ‘Europe’ battling it out on the playing fields, but I do marvel at how audacious UEFA has become in unilaterally redefining the European continent.

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The Selfish Gene Revisited

Frans de Waal, a leading primatology professor, gave a thought-provoking synopsis of his latest research (The Age of Empathy: Nature’s lesson for a Kinder Society) in the Sunday Observer 19/9/10. This research once again throws doubt on the prevailing wisdom that sport, and life generally, are primarily governed by our animalistic, competitive human natures. De Waal gets straight to the point in his articulate summation when asked by Robin McKie about the importance of empathy in the evolution of Homo Sapians:

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In My Dreams I Dance by Anne Wafula Strike

In a welcome relief to my usual cynical sporting blog, it is great to be able to report on a greatly uplifting human sporting tale. Anne Wafula, in her book, In My Dreams I Dance, paints a beautiful autobiographical picture of her life from a healthy young Kenyan baby struck down with polio, through to her amazing achievements in both Kenyan and later British Paralympics wheelchair racing. The tale is simply written, though much that is inspiring in the human condition shines through. The battle against disability prejudice, particularly in Africa, is cleverly contrasted both with all that is hopeful and communal in the African village, and also all that is efficient but soulless and individualistic in our European cities and towns.

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23 things they dont tell you

What better place to start in order to get a handle on the ever expanding bubble that is the English Premier League than Ha-Joon Chang’s smart little indictment of free-market capitalism. This book is tailor-made for understanding just why the EPL might be heading for one almighty implosion. Portsmouth FC might very well be just the tip of the iceberg. If ever there was an industry that had all the hallmarks of the free-market model, it is the EPL, complete with unsustainable mountains of debt, extreme light touch regulation bordering on zero regulation, and a business model that puts immediate profit gratification well ahead of any long term R&D and investment in the future. Read More…

Women Hold Up Half the Sky

Women hold up half the sky, said Mao Tse-tung many decades ago. It’s one of my favourite and more memorably slogans from my utopian and somewhat infantile student days, but the slogan still has resonance, and is a poignant reminder of just how patriarchal and misogynistic our world still is. Recently, a host of disparate events, some with a sporting backdrop, have come to the fore, and taken together, they paint a very grim picture of the current status of women on planet Earth. Metaphorically, and numerically of course, women do hold up half the sky, but in real earthly terms women are still labouring to free themselves from the fetters of feudal bondage. That may seem extreme but consider the following. Read More…

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

I first came across Jacobson the writer at his launch of his ‘Mighty Walzer’, a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story set in 1950’s Manchester with hard-bat table tennis as a constant backdrop to a young life emerging from the Jewish Diaspora of that city. I remember it as a cracking tale which definitely deserves a second reading and an accompanying review for this blog. At the launch of the book, in the basement of his then publishers, Random House, a number of table tennis tables were set up (that’s where I came into things) so that the publishing agents could indulge themselves in copious quantise of free booze and a game or two of ping.

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Liverpool For Sale

It was Des Kelly in The Mail 9/8/10 who for me, came closest to hitting the proverbial nail on the head, with respect to prospective new owners for Liverpool FC. In a blistering broadside of a heading, Get real, we sold our soul to Chinese ages ago, Kelly dismisses those who bemoan that another sporting jewel in the crown is up for sale to the highest foreign bidder. Kelly correctly argues that the sale of British sporting assets is already well advanced. The Premier League is merely a plaything, like a giant game of Risk, where America, China, Russia, and the Arabian oil powers move their pieces around and use sport to promote their image, boost commerce and shift huge sums across international borders.

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The Great Game, The Tricycle Theatre, Kilburn

Its not what you think. The Great Game here does not refer to the glorious English Premier League nor the Champions League nor FIFAs World Cup, nor any other activity that might generally fit under the universal sporting umbrella. No, here the term refers to that bloody game of sport between Imperial Britain and Imperial Russia in the nineteenth century for control of Afghanistan, a battle that has now spanned three centuries and shows no sign of exhaustion. The motive for such warlike activity in the 19th century was principally to secure control of India, the jewel in the British Imperial crown.

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Marina Hyde takes off the gloves: Olympic Notes No 2

Praise be to the sporting gods. It is not only Matthew Syed and myself who have had a gut-full of Olympic hype. Marina Hyde writing in the back pages of The Guardian 26/08/10 gets right down to her bare knuckles and lays one fair and square on the nose of the IOC, while landing a sharp kick to the FIFA groin whiles she’s at it. I send her my hearty congratulations. Just cast your eyes over her opening salvo to get a taste of what she has in store. Is there a more titanic rivalry in modern sport than that between Fifa and the International Olympic Committee, whose efforts to be considered the most repulsive organisation in world sport dwarf all other contests?

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