Samizdata readers distressed that there has been no mention here for two whole days of the World Cup can slake their soccer thirst over at UK Transport. Or should that be UKTran Sport? Some while ago, Patrick Crozier explained that since he finds the World Cup more interesting than transport, he was going to talk about the World Cup more and transport less. I just went looking for the relevant posting, but couldn’t find it in his voluminous archives (although I did chance upon an interesting posting with guest emails galore about compulsory purchase orders/eminent domain of May 7 2002 that I missed the first time around). Anyway, Patrick is taking his own threat seriously and has done several World Cup postings without even the pretence of transport relevance, culminating in a long report this morning of the televising on BBC1 last night of the 1970 Brazil/England game.
Samizdata is intended to be somewhat self-indulgent. We’re supposed to be talking about whatever takes our fancy. And we’ve at least made some effort to relate the World Cup to the libertarian agenda, for example by wondering what is the relationship between the apparent collectivism of a pub crowd watching the World Cup to the individualism we’re supposed to believe in? Football, soccer I should say, has also proved to be a fun way to get to know some of our American readers better.
But I think that Patrick is taking the joke a step too far. There’s plenty he could say about the World Cup that is transport related. What are the problems of shifting crowds around which are huge but which will only be there for a few weeks? What is transport like generally in the places where the World Cup is taking place? Where, because of transport considerations, does it make sense to put football stadiums in the first place? What sort of buses do the various teams like to use? Are their any ex-bus-drivers or ex-train-drivers or qualified pilots in any of the teams? But Patrick isn’t handling the World Cup like that. He’s just plain writing about it. To hell with transport. If I was a journalist looking in at UK Transport for a possible transport story, I might be seriously irritated, and that might very well
