A spot of Tennis While Cairo Burns

Last weekend millions of Brits, egged on by hundreds of sports journalists, turned on their TV sets on Sunday morning to witness a British tennis player win a Grand Slam tennis event after an agonisingly, ingloriously long 75 year wait. It didn’t happen but it was good fun getting all worked up especially since both Federer and Nadal had both been knocked out of contention. Only Novak Djokovic stood in the way and Murray had beaten him on their last three encounters. Djokovic cruised home three sets to nil. Murray chocks again, screamed the Monday headlines and the long suffering British tennis fan just shrugged their shoulders and went back to work. Read More…

China China China

When China was awarded the 2008 Olympics it was considered a landmark in that nation’s extraordinary economic development. That it put on a well organised showpiece Olympics and swept the medals table in the process merely emphasised the growing economic status of the country. In sporting terms China will continue to surge ahead on all fronts simple because sport is state sponsored and sporting success is considered, as it is for all countries but to even a greater extent, a badge of honour and a statement of national virility. In recent weeks Chinese sports stars have excelled in both snooker and tennis, two sports that have traditionally been beyond their sphere of operations.

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Chris Blackhurst in Fantasy Land

Chris Blackhurst, City Editor for the London Evening Standard, produced a pretty fair piece of journalism 20/1/11 when he called on the City of London to end its indifference to the plight of the poor. The only real flaw in the article, entitled, Why Goldman Must Repay Its Debt to Society was its timing. Had it appeared, some 150 years ago, along with similar well meaning pleadings by well meaning Victorian philanthropists like Charles Dickens, it might be regarded as a progressive and even radical piece of journalistic agitation. Instead, coming as it does at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, it can only be described as a piece of fantasy fiction. Read More…

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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Full Time – The Secret Life of Tony Cascarino by Paul Kimmage

While perusing the selection of sports books in my local charity shop I was faced with the daunting choice of biographies/autobiographies concerning Dennis Wise, Ruud Gullit, Gianfranco Zola and Tony Cascarino. What didn’t strike me then but is glaringly obvious now is that all four have had a substantial Chelsea link, some illustrious others not quite so. I don’t know what drew me to the Cascarino book over and above the others, all of whom I would imagine have something worthy of reporting from their footballing lives. Perhaps it was the promotional snippets that were provided front and rear of the main text that swung it.

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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 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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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…

FC United – Is This The Future?

Alienation in the Marxist sense of the word and alienation in the lay sense are not a million miles apart. For Marx, the term had a specific economic content, whereby humanity under the capitalist mode of production was becoming increasing alienated from the production of life’s necessities because the capitalist owned the entire process of production and the worker was reduced to a mere cog in a machine, forced to sell his/her labour power in a heartless labour market, with little or no prospect of gaining any satisfaction from the completed product, a product that was produced for profit rather than human need. In short the worker under capitalism, was separated from the most basic of human activity; that of conscious work – the very thing that defines our humanity.

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Another Black History Month Comes and Goes

The merits or otherwise of a Black History Month have been well rehearsed over the years. In a perfect world, black history would be celebrated and debated every day of every month of every year and there would be no need for a specific black history month. When you consider that ‘people of colour’ account for four out of every five people on our planet, it seems only natural that black history should be at the very heart of the human story. That it is not, says everything about the lingering racism and colonial mentality within European society, even within the so-called respected, liberal media and academia.

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It’s Wayne’s World – But its not Wayne’s Fault

Both The Mail and The Independent led with pretty much the same headline, comparing Wayne Rooney’s world with that of what they described as ‘the real world’. Credit to them both. Jonathan Brown for The Independent summed the story up thus; “…the opulence of Wayne’s world and his historic record-breaking deal stands in stark contrast to the other news that rocked the city this week. It is now estimated that 40,000 people in the Greater Manchester area will lose their jobs as a result of chancellor George Osborne’s plan to cut £83bn from public spending to fight the deficit.”

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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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Olympic Legacy: Going, Going, Gone

I’ve been trying to think if there are any positives to the thirteen years of Labour Party government. The negatives are all too obvious. I suppose there was Sure Start, which bravely attempted to break the cycle of deprivation and low aspiration. Then there was devolution which, as Europe becomes inevitably more of a centralised authority, was a definite step in the democratic direction. The minimum wage, paltry as it is, and feebly enforced as it, again was a tiny but significant step in the direction away from workplace exploitation. Read More…

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 Commonwealth Games – Hail the Indian Sub-Continent

Approximately one in five of the human race live in what is generally referred to as the Indian sub-continent, a geographical area that includes Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and of course India itself. Within this geographical region there have been civilisations since the dawn of human history, many of which have been at the cutting edge of our collective understanding of mathematics, science and the arts.

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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…

Cricket Reflects Life

Cricket, like sport generally, is but a reflection of life itself. Nothing particularly profound or original in that. Everything we see in sport, be it the highly professional, highly commercialised, highly globalised version, or the stuff at the other end of the spectrum, the local school or club match with nothing but pride and a cheap shiny trophy at stake, reflects what’s all around us. How could it be otherwise? Nothing exists in a vacuum and sport is no exception. It’s all there in the sporting arena: titanic individual performances, heroic collective endeavour, sacrifice way beyond possible human expectation, and of course, intense human joy and satisfaction that are quite literally beyond words.

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