Moscow World Athletics Marred By Medieval Anti-Gay Legislation

Here we go again. Another international sporting event tainted by bigotry and ignorance and once again we are left with the dilemma of how to react. A boycott automatically comes to mind but by adopting that tactic, every international sporting event on the planet would have to be boycotted, for which country on earth can declare itself free of prejudice and injustice. We could equally just shrug our shoulders and resign ourselves to the obvious fact that the world is a bigoted, ignorant and cruelly unjust place. Global sporting events just may help to break down a few barriers so let’s just get on with it.

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FIFA’s Confederation Cup Reeks of Tear Gas

So it begins. With just under a year to go until the start of Brazil’s FIFA World Cup, and the first real dress rehearsal for that big event now underway, some two million angry Brazilians have taken to streets, and the numbers just seem to be growing by the day. It started, much like it did in Turkey, with a protest over something seemingly as minor as a 20cent increase in the price of a bus ticket. Within a week, hundreds of thousands were on the streets across many Brazilian cities, screaming about a wide range of grievances including corruption, police brutality and inadequate public services. The bus fare increase was simply the spark that started a raging inferno. The fact that billions are being squandered on global sporting jamborees has only made matters worse.

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Brazil’s Decade of Sport – Bus 174

I sat down, along with millions of other football enthusiasts, to enjoy/suffer while England’s finest took on the Brazilians, who invariable boast some of the world’s finest footballers. On this occasion the Anglo-Saxons put up a half decent performance in the second half and came within a stone’s throw of stealing a rare victory. As it turned out, the perennial English underperformers will be more than happy with their two-all draw. The match was also a timely reminder that the Brazilian World Cup is a mere twelve months away and judging by the well-fed faces in the beautifully revamped Maracana stadium, it promises to be a welcome diversion from all the political and economic doom and gloom currently sweeping the planet. But not for all Brazilians. Read More…

Alex Ferguson: From Govan to Global Brand

It’s hard for the hand not to tremble when typing out the statistics thirteen titles in twenty seven years. A staggering forty-nine trophies in a blisteringly successful career. Simply staying in the job for that period in a sport so unforgivingly turbulent is glory enough. But to ratchet up the silverware year after year at national and international level while never losing sight of the need to build and rebuild puts Ferguson in a rarefied world of his own. From hard living, street fighting Govan to managing a highly successful global brand, while still retaining something of his working class, socialist credentials, despite the racehorses and real estate, is achievement indeed.

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Is Israeli Football Racist? Wrong Question!

Albert Einstein was once reputed to have said, when asked if he thought there was anything special about the Jews; I have every confidence that, if given the chance, Jews would behave exactly like all other nations. How prophetic those thoughts turned out to be. Last week I blogged about how white Australians were in denial about their history and culture. This week is the turn of the Israelis. All nations of course are fabrications, a collection of myths, half-truths and damn right lies. The nation state is an artificial construct, lines drawn in the sand to demarcate conquest and oppression of the other.

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Australian Sport: Fair Go for Cheats, Dopers and Gangsters

Let’s be clear about one thing. Australia is no worse than other nations when it comes to cheating and corruption in the sporting arena. It becomes a story only in the fact that Australians have long been in denial about such matters. They have been happy to engage in the collective myth of ‘fair play for all’ on and off the sporting field. But like the entire modern Australian narrative, it is nothing but a well-constructed myth, airbrushing out all the nasty bits and creating instead a picture of Aussie mateship, down to earth honesty, no pretentious bullshit, and a fair go for all. Nothing could be further from the truth. Read More…

BBC Sports Personality of the Year: Yuk!

I think I am rapidly developing an obsession about the BBC. First it was their OTT patriotic Olympic coverage that got my goat. Then there was and is the never-ending sycophantic fawning over the monarchy births, engagements, marriages, divorces, jubilees. The Beeb just can’t get enough of the stuff. It’s not so much they report the news, more they try to create it. The average Joe, Josephine and Jamaal down the road isn’t intrinsically interested in the monarchy but the constant media frenzy whips up a storm where there would normally be disinterest.

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Jessica Ennis: Unbelievable

I wasn’t expecting very much and my lowly expectations proved well founded. Someone should tell athletes, even highly impressive ones like Jessica Ennis, that they don’t automatically produce great autobiographies. This one was obviously rushed out post London Olympics in time for the Christmas market, and to be brutally honest, I don’t think they should have bothered. Autobiographies, I would have thought, are best left towards the end of a person’s career when they have had time to reflect on their life’s ups and downs, gain some perspective on events, and have the humility to allow for history to make some of its own judgements.

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Brazil’s Decade of Sport Bulletin: No 1

The first significant off-plan event of Brazil’s decade of global sport has just hit the streets. Some 200,000 protesters took to the streets of Rio to protest a new government statute that calls for a wider national distribution of Brazil’s newfound oil wealth. The protesters claim the new law will cripple Rio’s ability to host the World Cup 2014 and the Olympics 2016. The government responded that the oil royalties should be spread more evenly. The obvious solution is that the multinational oil companies should be expropriated, the oil industry should be fully nationalised and the wealth distributed according to a rational plan. Brazil might look to Venezuela for the way forward. Read More…

The Secret Race by Tyler Hamilton

Let’s clear the decks first. I for one, along with countless millions, was largely seduced by the Lance Armstrong global propaganda machine, a machine it seems that incorporated some extremely powerful people, up to and including people near the Obama White House. Not necessarily Obama himself, but those charged with protecting his image and getting him re-elected. More of that presently. When I first blogged on Armstrong a few years back I was moved, naively it turns out, by his, ‘It’s Not About the Bike’ story, a story of human endurance against all the odds. I was wise enough to avoid coming out directly in Lance Armstrong’s corner, but deep down I believed no one could tell such a moving story while at the very same time being up to their neck in doping and lying.

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John Terry the History Teacher

We owe a great debt of thanks to John Terry. In his own inimitable style, in a clarity and eloquence far exceeding even the best of history teachers, Mr Terry has reminded us that Europe, with Britain as no exception, has a long, bloody five hundred year colonial history, and that that history has been singularly defined by a deep seated poisonous racism, a racism that persists at all levels of society to this very day. It’s in our police forces, in our media institutions, in all levels of government, left as well as right, and deeply ingrained throughout the entire social fabric of our imagined civilisation.

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Hillsborough and Ireland – Don’t Mention the War

In all the countless pages of commentary on the Hillsborough enquiry findings I could find just one fleeting mention of Britain’s colonial war against Ireland and that was from Simon Jenkins who deigned to mention Bloody Sunday in one of his pieces. Hooray for Mr Jenkins. For the rest of Britain’s rabid pro-imperialist media, Britain’s long running war against Ireland had absolutely no connection what-so-ever to the tragedy that befell those Liverpool football fans all those years ago. And yet, if we care to remind ourselves, Britain, at the time of the Hillsborough tragedy was at the height of its bloody campaign to crush the body and spirit of those brave Irish republicans who had the temerity to claim self-rule for not just 26 counties but for all 32 counties of Ireland. So what exactly is the connection between the two?

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The Paralympics – What it Means to be Human

Jackie Ashley, writing in The Guardian, tells part of the story of what the Paralympics means today. On the one hand it means a far greater acceptance that people with disabilities, both physical and learning disabilities, are just people with the very same complex natures and the very same aspirations as the non-disabled. They are people first and foremost, who just happen through birth or accident, to have a specific disability to contend with. Those that excel at sport are exactly like those Olympians we witnessed over the past few weeks – outstanding athletes who push themselves to the extremities of human possibilities and sometimes beyond.

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BBC Olympic Coverage – Crass National Chauvinism

There are many ways you could describe the BBC’s coverage of the Olympics, crass; unimaginative, myopic, blinkered, shallow or just plain predictable. For me, while all those adjectives apply, more than all that, their coverage has to be described as sickeningly chauvinistic. Since when has the BBC taken upon itself to be the national cheer-leader for Team GB, whether on the sporting fields or in any other endeavour? Was there not once a time when the BBC made at least a half-hearted pretence at being an impartial broadcaster?

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Be Careful What You Wish For by Simon Jordan

I found myself despising and admiring Simon Jordan in equal measure and, paradoxically, often for the very same reasons. Like so many of Britain’s self-made men, Jordan is full of himself and his sense of self-importance. Alan Sugar comes to mind in this respect as does Barry Hearn. But in each of their cases there is no doubting their achievements. Anyone can set out in business to get to the top but only a handful actually make it. Does that make them special or just lucky? Were they simply in the right place at the right time or did they bring to the table some magical alchemy of skill, determination and foresight?

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The Circus is Coming to Town

Hurrah, the Circus is coming to town
And my heart is beginning to pound
With the runners and jumpers
And swimmers and punchers

And Ronald McDonald the clown
Yippee, the Circus will soon be in town
With its lights and its smells and its sound
With the food and the dips
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The Real Chariots of Fire, ITV

Predictably it’s back. Who could forget it, with that memorable, stirring soundtrack that, once in your head, stays there for days, weeks, months, years. I wouldn’t bet against it being the number one soundtrack of the London 2012 Olympics, inspiring Team GB to run faster, jump higher, hit harder and swim stronger. So stirring is that one little piece of music that a whole new generation of British Olympians will be born simply by turning up for the re-release of the film. Who needs a well-coordinated, well-funded sporting legacy programme when you have Chariots of Fire burning away in your brain.

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Stadiums of Hate, Panorama

UEFA 2012 – to boycott or not to boycott that is the troublesome question. In fact, it is not so much a question as a murky swamp that once you dip your toe in, there seems no easy way out. Here is the problem. Everybody has their own list of who should face a sporting boycott. For me Israel should be high on the list for its arrogant, openly racist, neo-fascist treatment of its Palestinian neighbours. The United States of America and the UK, its willing lap dog, should definitely be on any boycott list for their wholly illegal war in Iraq, not to mention their 12 year collective punishment of the Afghan people in response to the criminal behaviour of a relatively small band of Islamic religious fanatics.

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Luck: What It Means and Why It Matters by Ed Smith

So it’s game on – Ed Smith versus Matt Syed. It’s a well rehearsed game that has been played out for decades. Nature versus nurture, with Syed batting for the primacy of nurture and Ed Smith, in his latest literary offering, waving the flag for the luck involved in our genetic and environmental inheritance. Of course, I do both gentleman a disservice because I’m certain that both appreciate the dialectics of the two positions or do they. The fault, in a sense, lies with Syed who, in his well acclaimed book, Bounce, probably pushed the pendulum too far in the direction of the importance of a favourable environment and virtually dismissed any biological significance.

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The Olympic Torch Relay – A Symbol of Austerity

Make no mistake; there is much symbolism in the British Olympic touch relay but not the much hyped symbolism of human togetherness and good will to all. No, the current symbolism of London 2012 Olympic Relay can be more realistically be described as linking a growing wave of austerity and human misery that is spreading not just across the UK but the whole of Europe. As the Olympic torch passes from region to region, city to city, town to town, will the BBC and the rest of the cringing, servile media make reference to the boarded up shops in our high streets, the growing homelessness in our cities and the ever expanding ranks of unemployed and alienated youth?

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Ping London Goes National

So perhaps there is a God after all. At least someone up there or out there is starting to answer my daily prayers. It’s a simple prayer to the Almighty One: “Dear Creator of all things, please tell Lord Coe, Cameron, Boris and the rest of the self satisfied Old Etonians to stop fluffing about pretending there will be a sporting legacy from the London Olympics and instead spend a few quid on community sports and leisure, because there won’t be a sporting legacy from the Olympics – there never is. There wasn’t one in Sydney or Athens, Los Angeles or Moscow and I doubt if there will be much of one from Beijing. Just big ugly stadia that nobody wants and nobody needs.

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