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We in England have been neglecting Zimbabwe. There have been very few postings on the subject here lately, just this from me since the Iraq war, unless I missed something in my backtracking.
That is now changing. Today is day one of the test match cricket series between England and Zimbabwe. The first test is a Lords, the St Peter’s Rome of cricket, and frankly the cricket has been fairly dreary. In a rain interrupted first session England, in the persons of Trescothick and Vaughan, managed 28 without loss. While I wrote what follows, England got to about 100 for the loss of Vaughan. (I could explain, but if you don’t know what that means, you almost certainly don’t care.)
But of course the real story is off the pitch, and frankly this aspect of the situation is proving a whole lot more satisfactory and less embarrassing than I for one had dared to hope.
Take the TV coverage so far, on Channel 4 TV. There has been some play, so that has focussed some attention on the situation. But the rain interruptions mean that Channel 4 have been wheeling out all their if-it-rains plans, and one of them concerns the matter of the, er, regime in Zimbabwe, and any demonstrations against and reactions to that regime.
There have already been demonstrations, both inside (one gutsy demonstrator made her point and got herself shepherded out) and outside the ground. And more to the point, much more to the point, Channel 4 have pointed their cameras at some of this.
If you know anything about TV sports coverage, you’ll know that it can be very misleading when a real world news item erupts in its midst. The tiresome habit of certain English exhibitionists invading sports events in the nude was inflamed by the promise of TV coverage, and is now being suppressed by TV coverage of these idiots also being suppressed. When British soccer fans behave really, really badly, they don’t always make it to the TV shows either. What actually happens between rival fans at Celtic v Rangers soccer matches in Glasgow, for example, is nobody’s business, and certainly never gets to be the business of TV viewers in anything like its full lack of glory. All of which means that the Channel 4 recognition of the “regime problem” is very significant. An enthusiastic pro-Mugabe-ite watching the TV coverage here today would not be a happy bunny.
Pitch invader, demos outside the ground, mainstream news coverage of demos outside the ground, above all the prospect of this relentless drizzle of media focus going on and on throughout the tour, destroying all attempts to suggest that things out there are in any way normal – it’s looking a lot worse than such a person would have been hoping for.
It may even be that the tour going ahead, but surrounded by the ever louder claim that it shouldn’t have, is the worst possible media outcome for the “regime”. I surely hope so.
Above all, there is Henry Olonga. → Continue reading: Cricket is drawing English attention back to Zimbabwe
A wondrous row has erupted between two fat, middle-aged, uncouth, bearded geazers, one of them the British Minister of Education, and the other the Chairman of Chelsea Football Club. Mr Clarke is plugging a scheme to get sports clubs to help out with teaching the 3Rs to recalcitrant youth, and Mr Bates’ Chelsea are the only football club not to be cooperating. Mr Clarke slagged off Bates, and now Bates has been slagging off Clarke, pointing out that the British state education system is appalling and getting worse and he, Mr Clarke, should see to it instead of attacking defenceless football clubs.
I have dealt with some of the boring educational angles of this story in another place, but the interesting aspect is that Mr Clarke has now said that he wants West Ham to beat Chelsea in their forthcoming and crucial Premiership clash tomorrow. Or, to put it another way, he wants Liverpool and Newcastle (rather than Chelsea) to qualify for the European Champion’s League next year, and even more controversially, Mr Clarke supports West Ham in their desperate effort to avoid relegation, and accordingly he must favour the idea of one of the clubs above West Ham, such as Bolton, Leeds, or Fulham, getting relegated from the Premier League instead. Bolton, did you get that? I can’t remember a Cabinet Minister wading into sport like this. Supporting your own team in a new-laddish, post-modern sort of way is one thing, but to mix this kind of thing with serious politics is new, surely, and frankly rather unsavoury.
Since Ken Bates is making trouble for a politician, we here presumably all now support Chelsea against the abominable West Hamsters and the even more abominable West Ham support Clarke. And that’s quite aside from the Samizdata HQ being in Chelsea, and David Carr already being a Chelsea season ticket holder. I’m a Spurs man myself, that is to say, for the benefit of Americans, a supporter of Tottenham Hotspur. But Spurs are never involved either in trying to get into Europe or in being relegated because they come eleventh in the Premiership every year. Very dull. So by now I don’t care what they do tomorrow and am happy to swing into line behind Chelsea also. I’ll be keeping a close eye on the Chelsea game tomorrow and keep everyone posted. Go you … Chels?
The recent war in Iraq has of course thrown up many examples of actors and actresses, many of them from Hollywood, who have taken a stand against war. What is interesting is that there appears, according to David Skinner in the Weekly Standard to be a divide in public life between the acting and sports communities, if one can use such a collectivist catch-all term like “community” (yes, I am aware there are nuances here). For example, while “documentary” producer and all-round blowhard leftist (I refuse to be polite) Michael Moore denounces Bush and the war, golfing god Tiger Woods (one of my heroes) takes a diametrically opposite stance, saluting the bravery of American soldiers on his personal website.
What is going on here? For example, I don’t really know what British sportsmen and women like Manchester United’s David Beckham or English cricket captain Nasser Hussein think about such things, although Hussein’s recent decision not to play against Zimbabwe during the World Cup attests to a moral fibre not usually seen among the thespian community. And I admired the fact that Beckham, apparently, asked for the Stars and Stripes to be laid in the mddle of Old Trafford, Manchester United’s home ground, at the start of a match just after 9/11. Skinner reckons that sportsfolk, unlike actors and actresses, have to deal in reality of a sort that makes them better suited to taking a view on issues like war.
I particularly liked this paragraph:
As competitors who directly face opponents, athletes may have less trouble accepting the probability of enmity between nations. They become famous over the strenuous opposition of other people. Their professional lives are in fact defined by antagonism and opposition. They have to individually dominate other players, and help their teams dominate other teams.
While with actors, he says:
when show-business types triumph, victory comes on a wave of public admiration that can make it seem like they were just elected the public’s favorite human being. If competition is the watchword of sports, adoration and acclaim are the watchwords of show business. This kind of career makes for a weak political education as one grapples to understand why a president would take actions certain to make him unpopular in important parts of Europe and elsewhere.
I think he is definitely on to something. Maybe libertarians should forget about ever trying to network in the artistic community and get on the golf course instead.
Surely Britain’s Paula Radcliffe, who broke her own record by running the London Marathon in just two hours, 15 minutes and 25 seconds must rank as one of the greatest sportsfolk ever.
I watched quite a few of the runners grinding their agonising way along parts of the marathon course on a sun-dappled Sunday afternoon. It was hard not to be swept up in a general feel-good atmosphere. One of my favourite moments was seeing a bunch of guys running while carrying a small rubber boat from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), an entirely voluntary charity which is an excellent example of how free men and women can, without the guiding hand of the State, provide such useful services, often at great danger to themselves. Way to go lads!
Of course, in my view anyone who runs in a marathon on a warm afternoon is clearly in need of having their heads examined. What did Man invent Ferraris and Porsches for, for chrissakes?
Just to say, in my capacity as the self-appointed Senior Samizdata Sports Commentator, that the best Oxford University versus Cambridge University boat race ever has just finished. When it did finish, they were not sure who had won, so close was it. Unbelievable.
Personally I don’t care anything about the Boat Race, or I didn’t until about one minute ago. It just happened to be on the telly while I was composing this for my Culture Blog, which has now gone daily.
Usually it is clear who is going to win the Boat Race in the first twenty seconds, and from then on it’s a procession. In this one the lead changed about four times, including just before or just after the finish because Cambridge were closing so fast.
It was the kind of sporting event where, as the commentators said just afterwards, all eighteen will be brothers for life. But get this: four of them already were brothers, the Smiths and the Livingstones, each pair in opposite boats.
Official verdict: Oxford by ONE FOOT. Closest race ever, apparently, because the “dead heat” they had in 1572 or whenever it was wasn’t really. It was just that the umpire that day was drunk.
I overheard another interesting titbit in among the preparatory waffling. Apparently 90% of these oarsmen go into “banking”, by which I think they meant “merchant” banking. I don’t know what this proves. It could be that rowing is a fine preparation for financial titans. Or it could be that the financial services industry contains a lot of people with more ex-brawn than current brain. A bit of both, I should guess. They don’t get paid anything to be in this race, but it seems that they clean up afterwards. Investment in networking. Speculate to accumulate. Apparently they were racing for the “Aberdeen Asset Management Trophy”. It figures.
Some things the BBC does do well. They had this report up within minutes.
The result from tonight’s European Soccer Championship qualifying match between England and Turkey:
England 2 Turkey 0
On the battlefield, on the football field: Rosbeefs rule!
That’s not just a metaphor, let me tell you. Many is the England rugby team to have been ground into the mud of Ireland. After a several happy games scampering about in the sunshine of southern England, or Wales, or even in Paris, England then go to Dublin, try to carry on throwing the ball about, drop a few scoring passes, start to worry, drop some more passes, encourage the crowd, who yell at the Irish team, who then score an interception try, or a breakaway, or some such oddity, and suddenly it’s only five more minutes left and Ireland are leading by a handful of points and that’s how it stays.
But not today. The sun is shining, and England are leading by 30-6, three tries to nil. Ireland may get one try, or even two. They won’t get four. The England defence looks impenetrable. Grand Slam England. Ireland have been good for longish periods, but England have been better.
I’ve been taping it, and pacing about chez moi doing displacement activities. How did all that washing up get done?
Yep. There she blows. Greenwood scores an interception try. Ireland 6 England 35. Greenwood actually ran away from the posts, to make the conversion kick for Jonny Wilkinson harder and Wilkinson just missed it. Greenwood is like that. He often thinks about how to celebrate before actually scoring, and I remember England’s Napoleonic little scrum-half Matt Dawson giving the giant Greenwood a severe talking-to for being a bit exuberant when celebrating another try before he’d completed the formality of actually scoring it.
And in the middle of all this, my brother pops by with some books he thought I might like to have, including – wonder of wonders – a copy of Terence Kealey’s The Economic Laws of Scientific Research, which I have been seeking vainly for months, ever since I heard Kealey speak at a conference. I don’t remember telling Pete I wanted this. It’s a beautiful day in London town.
England are pressing and look like scoring again. Yes! Try by Dan Luger. Five tries to nothing. Unbelievable. “Nobody said it would be a stroll like this, but England have strolled.” 40-6. Five-nil. And Wilkinson won’t miss this conversion. No he doesn’t. Final whistle. Ireland 6 England 42. Now I can watch the tape of it, secure in the knowledge of a happy ending, like a Meg Ryan movie. Moral: don’t count your chickens before they hatch, and they’ll hatch. Then count them.
Well, if Jennings can wallow in the Aussies winning the cricket, I can wallow in this.
I wonder if Saddam Hussein is a rugby fan.
The trouble with the TV coverage of the war isn’t just that the various TV stations have their various biases. It’s that most of the time nothing is happening. Long periods of boredom, and short bursts of total panic. Mostly nothing happens, so they recycle old stuff. But you still tune in to the nothing just in case something happens, and for the same reason they don’t like to switch to anything else either.
How much more convenient is the televising of sport! You know when it will happen, and the excitement is spread reasonably evenly over a set period. Only one thing can happen at a time. Imagine if a rugby match, for example, took place over such a large area that it needed half a dozen different commentators simply to give you a rough idea of what is happening. And imagine if the players spent half their time holding press conferences to tell lies about who’s doing best.
Well, rugby fans can see where I’m going. I’m going to Lansdowne Road, Dublin, where Ireland will play England in a Grand Slam shoot-out in the final game of the Six Nations rugby tournament, which has been televised in its entirety by the BBC, and very well they’ve done it. Ireland and England have both won the first four of their five matches, so it’s winner take all. → Continue reading: Operation Grand Slam
I wanted to write something about this tale earlier, but have been rushed off my feet with work. Anyway, I think it notable that in an age marked by preening Hollywood celebs and British thespian luvvies spouting peacenik garbage about Iraq, it is heartening that in another aspect of life – sport – there are real examples of folk willing to take a stand where it matters.
Nasser Hussein, captain of the English cricket Test side, will not go down in history perhaps as a victorious cricket captain like Len Hutton or even David Gower. He will, however, go down as a man who stood on an issue of principle over Robert Mugabe’s vile regime in Zimbabe. Defeated, mabye, but not with dishonour.
Addendum: for our American friends who haven’t a clue about cricket, my apologies.
The naval might of Switzerland has prevailed. A country with all the maritime traditions of Outer Mongolia, Iowa and Chad has prevailed where 152 years of British endeavour have failed. The America’s Cup, a trophy given by Queen Victoria to promote yachting in the English Channel, and which has never been won by a British team has now changed hands from the USA (1851-1983 [No, that isn’t a typo!], and 1988-1995), Australia (1983-1988), and New Zealand (1995-2003). And now Switzerland.
The main priviledge for the winner, apart from collecting a silver trophy named after its first winner, the schooner America is to get the right to host the next challenge, which is now expected to be in 2007. As this has to be on seawater, there is a little problem. Switzerland is about 450 miles from the nearest coastline. So the defence will probably take place in the Mediterranean or on the Altantic coastline of France.
It’s all very jolly for Ernesto Bertarelli the Swiss owner of the Alinghi team, for Russell Coutts the New Zealander skipper hired to beat his former team mates. So why no British success. Until the 1970s, no one else but the British even challenged the New York Yacht Club. The explanation I offer explains why Italian and now Swiss challengers have emerged, despite no obvious historical tradition for this sort of contest. → Continue reading: “England, a seafaring nation…”
An article in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph Sports section speculates as to why the bid for the Olympic Games in London for 2012 might fail. Apparently the expected losses for hosting the games will be a massive £2,600 millions.
However, as no one has actually published what the toal budget would be, I can only assume that normal public sector project costs will apply: i.e. the original sum multiplied by ten. It is easy to see why the government is apparently unconvinced by the urgency of commiting to such a scheme.
My critics may argue that this sum of money spent on promoting the Olympic Games will do a lot less harm than if allocated to almost any other public programme. This is true. One shudders at the thought of what dregs passing themselves off as doctors would be employed in state hospitals if this sort of money got awarded the National Health Service.
Oh dear, I just realised, the NHS has been given that extra sum over the next two years. Perhaps we should have persuaded the government to spend vast amounts of money on hopeless attempts to bring the football World Cup to Staines, or the Winter Olympics to Blackpool, or even finance half a dozen Americas Cup challenges.
It’s been a difficult time to be an England sports fan. First there was the shambles in South Africa with the cricketers. England, for all the difference it may make to anything serious, eventually refused to play their game in Harare, and Zimbabwe took all the points. And remember how I reported earlier, in my description of how cricket differs from baseball, that Zimbabwe even did better than England in the protest department. Well, this is a reminder that things like that can get serious.
Zimbabwean fast bowler, Henry Olonga, has been banished from the Takashinga Cricket Club following his public protest of political conditions in the country during a World Cup match.
That tells you a lot about the atmosphere in Zimbabwe just now. Hats off to Henry Olonga. He’s only 26 years old, but maybe he figures that cricket in Zimbabwe has no future to speak of anyway.
Meanwhile our footballers (that’s British football – not the rebel US variant) were humiliated by Australia, who are not supposed to be any good at that game. The Oz media went crazy, apparently. They do love to stuff the poms there, and stuffing us at cricket has got boring. → Continue reading: Rugby – and more on cricket
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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.
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