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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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After a few months of rather dodgy weather, summer has at last arrived in London. The evenings are long, the weather is warm, and the mood is good. It is a lovely time to be outside in the beer garden of a nice pub, with a pint of Kölsh lager or something similar. It would be nice to perhaps spend some of the weekend following up on this: sitting in a pub, watching a little sport perhaps on a TV in a quiet civilized audience somewhere.
Unfortunately, it is a slow weekend from a sporting point of view. International cricket has been going for a month or so. England have already played a three test series against Sri Lanka in which the cricket was rather variable, both sides playing well at some points and quite badly at others. (The eventual 1-1 drawn series was a fair result). There are some one day internationals coming up, but the international season doesn’t get back into full swing until England’s test series with Pakistan commences on July 13. In English domestic cricket, Australia’s cricketing genius on the field and A class idiot off it Shane Warne is playing brilliantly as captain of Hampshire, clearly determined to improve on the second place in the County Championship that the county achieved last season when Warne was largely absent due to being off playing for Australia.
And of course, the peace of the true sporting fan is going to be horribly distracted by the fact that the soccer World Cup is being played for the next month.
In the first few weeks of my first stay in England in 1991, I found that English people would utter the words “Nineteen Sixty Six” into all kinds of conversations, usually spoken in hushed tones remniscent of some sort of religious rapture. I found this deeply peculiar, and after it happened four or five times I finally asked one of these people what had happened in 1966, because the English kept bringing it up in this odd way. The response I got was initially disbelief that I was asking this question (the same sort of disbelief that I would get later when I revealed that I was not intimitely familiar with British politics or minor British television personalities of the early 1970s), and when it was figured out that I was serious it was explained to me that Britain had won the World Cup in 1966, and they were still getting joy out of this. I found this kind of sad, but I let them keep it up. I had had some idea that the English (and indeed other Europeans) had some sort of affection for this game.
Then, as now, I could not treat any of this with even the remotest seriousness. As to why Europe and many other parts of the world are so preoccupied with this stupid game that is disdained by all real men, I have no idea. People kick around a round ball and seldom score goals, but spend an awful lot of time falling over and pretending to be injured. Meanwhile, spectators fight out three thousand years of European ethnic disagreements in the stadium. I am unable to even regard it as a sport. I cannot take it seriously enough even for that.
And the lead up to a major tournament like the World Cup is so ridiculous. Rather than declaring themselves to be chavs by wearing a backwards Burberry baseball cap plus three gold chains and an iPod shuffle outside their shirts as they would in normal circumstances, people declare themselves to be chavs by attaching four England flags to the outside of their cars. It is really awful. The newspapers are full of nothing but the tournament. Conversation is about nothing else. The pubs become full of rowdy people who get aggressive when England (inevitably) lose. I just want to sit outside and drink my pint in the sun, but I cannot.
The most I can hope is that it will be over fast. For that reason I hope that England loses every game 10-0, in order that they are eliminated as quickly as possible and my summer can get back to normal. For the sake of God Almighty do not let England win the stupid tournament. The prospect of them being obnoxious about it for the next 40 years is so horrible that I would have to leave the country. If Sven-Goran Ericsson could also conclude his career as England manager by getting into a bizarre sex scandal with Wayne Rooney, that would be an added bonus. While on that, I would also like to see the Italians eliminated quickly, and hopefully in some really embarassing fashion. When they were elimiated by South Korea in the 2002 tournament they went on to demonstrate that they were the worst losers in all of human history, and I would like to see this again.
As for the event in total, I hope that the United States win it, ideally by beating France in the final. That would be the best possible outcome, as the Americans wouldn’t actually care, the French and the English would, and we would be spared any nation at all from being obnoxious about it for the next three decades, as would be the case in the event of any other winner.
Sadly, my own nation seems to have lost the kind of civilized attitude held by the Americans. Australia have qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 32 years. On the previous occasion when Australia qualified (in 1974), they were given a parade down the main street of Sydney before heading off to Germany for the tournament. On that occasion the team was heckled and whistled at by bystanders for playing a girls’ game, but sadly that sort of attitude is now gone. Australians are watching the tournament with interest, although they wouldn’t pay much or any attention to soccer on any other occasion. Somehow they think that since much of the rest of the world cares about this idiotic event, they should too. I can’t imagine that things in Australia are as bad as here – for one thing I don’t think our bogans will be attaching multiple Australian flags to their white Ford Falcon utes, which is something. However, people are, sadly, watching. I don’t really care one way or another if Australia do well, although in truth they are in quality so far from the decent soccer sides that if will be a good result if they score a goal in the tournament. That said, I rather wish the Australian media left the event in the obscurity it deserves.
For Australians’ mind should be focused, and they should be thinking about something much more important than this trivia. There is an actual sporting event taking place at the end of the year, and this one does matter. The shame of Edgbaston must be expunged. The Ashes must be regained.
Most Americans it seems do not give a hoot about the World Cup starting in Germany next weekend. That is a shame, because they have a good team and a chance of making it through to the second round. They may not be the most talented team in the world but they are very good at making the most of what they have got.
That is in stark contrast to Australia, where it seems that despite not knowing much at all about soccer, the country is going over the top with enthusiasm with an over-inflated idea of the national team’s chances. Team USA has a hard group, but with Italy in turmoil, the way is open for an American ambush. They have the ability and nous to do so.
Much of the credit for that can be credited to their manager, Bruce Arena. The New York Times has done a interesting feature on him, and his team. You’ll have to be quick to read the full story given how quickly the NY Times shoves things behind its firewall, but here’s a taster… → Continue reading: Bruce Arena’s views on Truth, Justice and the American way of playing soccer
Tickets for the Ashes series of cricket Test matches in the Australian summer went on sale yesterday to unprecedented levels of demand. Interest in cricket contests between England and Australia, which have a long history (the first series of Test matches was in 1877) is at an all time high in the wake of England’s winning the 2005 series. The return contest in the Australian summer of 2006/07 has been eagerly awaited ever since.
The demand for tickets was expected to be strong, but Cricket Australia’s ticketing system was overwhelmed by the public’s response. I was not surprised by that.
As is now traditional, the travelling English support is likely to be tremendous. Even when English sporting teams have been uncompetitive, their travelling supporters have stuck by them; in 2006 England’s football and cricket teams are doing quite well and naturally England’s supporters want to be there for the good times. Thanks to the Internet and air travel, now they can be, and in greater numbers then ever.
This is not exactly welcomed by Australia’s cricket administrators. They fondly imagined that they could sell out their stadia to domestic audiences, rake in the cash, and wave the patriotic flag and all the usual sentimental blather. They forget that, for all its history, cricket is an entertainment, and a business. Cricket administrators sell entertainment in the form of television rights and seats at stadia.
And of course when you mismanage your pricing, one of two things happen. Either you don’t sell your tickets at all, or they become so valuable that profits can be made by reselling them. The latter is happening in this case. And Cricket Australia CEO is not happy about it:
Scalpers have also cashed in by immediately placing their buys on EBay for prices thousands of dollars more than their retail value. “Scalpers using EBay are a disgraceful insult to normal, loyal cricket fans who should have access to these tickets at face value,” James Sutherland, Cricket Australia’s CEO, said. Organisers have told people purchasing black market tickets to beware and say they have asked experts about tracking the passes.
Scalping on this scale indicates that there’s a severe underestimation of the financial value of the tickets. It’s a bit rich, also, to see an implied threat against purchasers of EBay tickets as well. Once Cricket Australia has sold the tickets, they are the property of whoever owns them, and the owner has the natural right to use them, sell them on EBay, or use them as Christmas decorations if they so wish.
It is disappointing, but not entirely surprising, that the CEO of a private commercial organisation such as Cricket Australia does not know, or understand, the basics of property rights.
Go here for video of Boris Johnson‘s amazing football tackle (actually more like an American football block), in that bizarre pro-celeb England Germany match about a month ago. Apologies if this has already been alluded to here, but a search through the archives suggests not. “Finest hour” is, however, an odd way to describe it. More like finest five seconds.
Talking of great sporting moments, ideal for the delectation of internetters, can anyone direct me to any video of Kevin Pietersen‘s equally amazing (and equally subversive of established order and decency) reverse sweep of Muttiah Muralitharan, last Friday? There are plenty of photos of this extraordinary stroke, but you need video to get the full flavour of what Pietersen did.
Immediately after this, Pietersen got out. But nobody cared, because that shot was one of those “worth the price of admission alone” moments. Not that I was there, or paid this price. I just heard about it on the radio, and then saw it on the TV highlights, which I sadly do not yet have the ability to process and pass on.
More ruminations from me about the wondrous enrichment of cricket fan memories offered by the internet here.
The First Test between Bangladesh and Australia is going right down to the wire, and the final day’s play tomorrow will see a very tight finish. There is a good chance that Bangladesh might pull off one of the biggest upsets in Test cricket history. Australia need 95 runs to win, with only two established batsmen left, and six wickets in hand.
In truth, Australia are fortunate to even be in the game at all, because they were comprehensively outplayed in the first two days of this Test match. Needless to say, this state of affairs has caused plenty of amusement for English cricket fans and other wicked folk.
But regardless of the result, this match has been, to use a cliche, good for the game. It comes as the editor of Wisden Cricketer’s Almanack has released his latest offering in which he takes a small minded view of the game and denounces the ‘globalisation’ of cricket. The way in which Bangladesh were rushed into playing Test cricket was misguided and done for the wrong reasons, but the game is slowly but surely taking a foothold in the country, in terms of playing success.
That is good for cricket. It is even more good for Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world. Bangladesh is famous for being poor, having lots of disasters, and not much else. When the Champions Trophy one-day International cricket tournament was held in Dacca in 1998, one observer said to a shocked editor of Wisden Cricketer’s Almanack that the event was the most positive event in the country’s history since Independence.
With the football World Cup two months away, there may well be quite a bit of tut-tutting in the media about how sport and nationalism are a dreadful combination. And there is something to that. However, I think that sport and national pride, which is something else entirely, is a positive thing. No matter what actually happens tomorrow, the future of Bangladesh cricket looks bright, and I think that is a wonderful thing.
For the last ten days or so, and for about another week, I have been and will continue to be semi-unplugged. Unplugged because my pay-by-the-month internet connection was disconnected a while ago, by some insonsiderate person pushing the wrong button at my internet service provider, but only semi-unplugged, because I have at least been able, thank goodness, to revert to the previous pay-by-the-minute arrengement which preceded my current although currently interrupted arrangement.
I am, therefore, able to link to particular places on the internet that I already know how to get to quickly, such as to this blog posting which I did for the Adam Smith Institute, in which I explain the effect of my present internet miseries, but I am not, as I explained at greater length in that posting, comfortable about just going a-wandering. I can switch on, go somewhere, download it, switch off, and read it. But, I deeply fear switching on, going somewhere, reading it, going somewhere else, reading that, looking something else up, deciding to write something, looking up other stuff, deciding to write something else and making a start with that, . . . you get the picture. It might not cost all that much, especially at the weekend, but in sad old Britain where local phone calls still cost, it could cost me a whole lot too much for comfort. If I did the sums, I might well decide that my state of only semi-linked-ness is a false economy, and that I should just plug myself in regardless and do whatever I feel like doing. But I do not want to have to be worrying.
So, this has been what Americans call a “learning experience”, or what we know on this side of the pond as a considerable nuisance or words to that effect.
However, the particular combination of circumstances – not being permanently connected, but still being able to connect temporarily – has provided me with something you seldom experience in life, namely the contrast between two important stages in my life, with the full knowledge of what both states were like. It really has been a learning experience. → Continue reading: Semi-unplugged
Like my co-Samizdatista Jonathan Pearce, and like Mark Holland of Blognor Regis, I have also been watching the Winter Olympics. In truth I find the winter Olympics to rather more fun than the summer Olympics, partly because it is genuinely a more lighthearted event with more of a party atmosphere than the summer games, and partly because power in the world is rather turned upside down. (Here is a competitor from Norway – he must be good. Here is someone from the United States of America – he will be mediocre). Mostly though, I think it is the simple insanity of many of the events that I find most enjoyable. Winter sports lead to extremes of human achievement that (a) one is amazed that they are possible, but not so much as (b) one wonders why anyone would actually do this, and how the sport was invented in the first place, for surely the first twelve people to try it must have ended up killing themselves.
Mark wonders just how Britain has a luge team, or as he puts it…
Anyway, I get to wondering how on earth a chap from Pinner decides to take up the sport. I mean, say for instance I’d been so inspired by the top luging at the Calgary Olympics that I’d immediately thought, “That’s the event for me!” where am I supposed to go from there? If I’d have gone to my games teacher, Mr “Manly” Stanley, and said, “you know how this football and rugby doesn’t interest me at all, well instead I fancy taking up sliding down an icy tube at 130 km/h whilst lying on a glorified tea tray”. What’s he supposed to do? Phone up the local British Luge Federation affiliated club? That’s not going to happen is it.
Of course, in Australia, the answer as to how and why people take these things up, is that there is an official taxpayer funded organisation that encourages them to do it. At the winter olympics, Australia tends to specialise in something called the “Womens aerials”. For those who have not watched aerials (one of the events in a wider school of insanity called “freestyle skiing”), it involves skiing down a slope, up a ramp, doing three backwards somersaults and a double twist, and then landing on the snow on your head and breaking your neck.
Actually you are not supposed to land on your head and break your neck. You are supposed to land upright on skis and continue down the mountain. Landing on your head and breaking your neck does appear to happen relatively frequently, however. Again, the question of why anyone would do this does come to mind, and the question of why the Australian taxpayer pays for it comes to mind even more. → Continue reading: This is insane
Thanks to modern safety improvements, motor racing is not quite as dangerous as it used to be – although it probably still takes nerves of steel to hurtle around a circuit in a modern F1 car – but if there is a sport that for me demonstrates sporting bravery at its most extreme, it has to be the downhill skiing and bob-sleigh events I am currently watching at the Winter Olympics near Turin.
Being only a moderately competent skier myself, I bow in awe when I see the pros hurtle down icy slopes at speeds touching 100 mph. Wow.
One of my very favourite blogger quotes of 2005 was this, just after the July 7th London bombings:
A friend of mine visits a strip pub, once a week, down by the Gray’s Inn Road. Despite the bombs, he went along this afternoon, as usual, and was the only guy with four strippers. But, he told me, he had to go – ‘otherwise the terrorists would have won’.
In that spirit, I will tell you, not about how I feel about Those Cartoons – no need for any link, see just about everything else here at the moment – but about the Six Nations. Rugby. American Football without the poofy protective clothing. Or: “All those men’s bottoms”, as my now very elderly but still just about functioning mother put it to me yesterday, explaining why she prefers regular football to rugby football. → Continue reading: The first weekend of the Six Nations and the first upset
If, like me, you were vaguely annoyed that Livingstone acquired the Olympics, then you must hope that you are either away during the hell that will be the summer of 2012 (my holidays are accumulating now!), or you must campaign for new sports to appear in the Olympiad. The more violent, the faster, the more dangerous, the better. And free drugtaking, of course. Why not allow genetic modification for athletes. “It’s at their own risk”.
One candidate is the decidedly cool Rocket Racing League. This flying Formula One has not acquired lift as yet, but races are looked for in a year’s time. The origins of this competition lie in the Ansari X Prize, with a nod to their barnstorming ancestors back in the early days of aircraft.
A debut exhibition race is planned for the X Prize Cup in September 2006. In the six months after that, the league expects to see races at an additional two air shows and two car racing events, with a championship event in New Mexico at the 2007 edition of the X Prize Cup.
The events will take a leaf from motor racing’s book.
Rocket planes called X-Racers will compete on a sky ‘track’ in the design of a Grand Prix race, with long straights and the added dimenson of vertical ascents and deep banks. The race will run perpendicular to spectators and be about two miles long, one mile wide and 1,500m in the air. The X-Racers will be staggered upon take-off and fly their own ‘tunnel’ of space, each separated by a hundred metres or so.
Pilots will be guided by differential GPS (Global Positioning System) technology to help them avoid collisions.
Necessity may be the mother but thrillseeking is the father of invention: on second thoughts, the Olympics would ruin it. But I would still welcome a ‘skytrack’ in London, and you can submit your own idea for a rocker racer name on the website…
The question has recently arisen as to whether it is ever right for a journalist to hoax a person into divulging certain facts or opinions that said person might not otherwise divulge. This week, the English Football Association told England soccer coach Sven Goran Eriksson that his contract would end immediately after the World Cup tournament in July, following comments Eriksson made to a News of the World journalist posing as someone else, the “fake Sheikh”.
Now, in the increasingly trivial world of British public life, all this might be of interest only to those who follow team sports. I know that a good many readers of this site probably do not give a damn about sporting contests but who might be troubled about the News of the World’s antics in this case. That newspaper conned a man into giving an interview. It deliberately misled Eriksson, who divulged some not-terribly-interesting facts about members of the England team and about his ambitions in the future. (Try to suppress your yawns, Ed).
Even so, some might argue that if the News of the World was trying to nail a terrorist suspect, say, that such subterfuge might be okay. Well, maybe. But what this latest episode has done is to further reduce the already-low reputation of the press, sow further paranoia about the media’s activities and hence give further ammunition to those in power who want to shackle the media. And all for a pathetic story about a venal Swede with an eye for the main chance and the ladies. How terribly British.
This writer seems to agree that there has not been nearly enough anger about what the NotW did. I hope that newspaper is made to suffer for its actions, although I suspect nothing much will be done. Had that paper been a business conning trade secrets from a rival, criminal charges might now be on the cards.
The recent death of the footballer George Best has seen an outpouring of sentimental remembrance about the skill and talent of one of Britain’s greatest ever footballers. It has also seen a sober reflection of the darker side of Best’s life. As Sue Mott pointed out:
As a sportsman, he was ruinously worshipped as a god. As society’s golden boy, gloriously handsome, funny and highly intelligent, he enjoyed all life’s little luxuries in conveyor-belt quantities. He was a Hollywood film star from Belfast and while we may now lament the wine, women and song, if you had been there at the time, could you have been the one to say: ‘Shall we put the cork back in the champagne, George, I think we’ve had enough?”
It is a common theme of society that those who are blessed with extraordinary talents at one discipline are allowed special leeway in manners, morals and behaviour that are not bestowed upon lesser mortals. Had Best not been such a great footballer he would undoubtedly have been shunned by society as a drunk and a lecher. But because he was once a truly great footballer, he was treated as something different. People tolerated his drunkenness and women gave themselves to him sexually because he was genuinely seen as being cut from a higher cloth then other men. This may seem unfair, and in a way it is, but it was also the root of his downfall.
George Best, and footballers in general, though, are hardly the only sort of celebrity to take advantage of the special rules of society that are afforded to those touched by genius. And it has been going on for a long time.
Nearly 200 years ago, the poet Lord Byron made use of his fame as a poet to indulge himself in all manner of peccadillos, most of them sexual. That was perhaps not so uncommon for a Peer of the Realm back then, but it was mirrored by the behaviour of Percy Bysshe Shelley. A more dramatic example is in the personal life of Ludwig van Beethoven. Poor health, deafness, depression, loneliness and financial troubles made him a very difficult man to deal with, but he was indulged by many people precisely because he was obviously the greatest musical talent of his day.
Poets and classical composers do not have the influence on society in this day and age as they used to. The place of Byron and Beethoven has been taken by sports stars and actors and television celebrities. Some of these people, like Shane Warne are as gifted in his field as Byron was as a poet; and Warne has been noted for womanising on a considerable scale as well. Some are, in sober fact, non-entities, but we live in a vacuous time where everyone gets their ‘fifteen minutes of fame’.
Many not so talented people have also exploited their celebrity to get away with actions that would not be tolerated in others; Hollywood is of course notorious for this sort of thing, where actors and actresses have their notions of their own worth and talent over-inflated by agents, publicists, and the media. A similar fate has befallen many popular musicians over the last forty years. This sort of bad behaviour takes many forms, not just in terms of sexual self-indulgence, but substance abuse, or simply by being a difficult and unpleasant person to be around. The life and times of John Lennon reflect this- he confused his musical talent with wisdom, and spent his latter years pontificating about a society of which his understanding of seems have been very limited indeed. However, because he was such a fine musical talent, no one was willing to stand up to Lennon and tell him that he was talking nonsense.
Why? Why do we allow this select group of people, not all of whom are that talented, to get away with this sort of thing. Why can’t we “put the cork back in the champagne” as it were? There seems to be something innate to many people who must feel that they can reflect the glory of the star’s achievements by indulging them in their foibles. This can not be healthy for us any more then it is healthy for the stars. Just look at George Best now.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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