The end of an earache

(Headline borrowed from The Guardian, November 1990)

When George Best died, former team-mates such as Denis Law wept openly. It was hardly a shock: Best had clearly been drinking himself to death for a long time. But I suspect his friends were also weeping for the career that was wasted thirty years earlier. And somehow they couldn’t weep before. Because when Best left Manchester United, there was still a chance he might find his way back: and as it became clear he wouldn’t, somehow the moment for weeping had passed.

In a similar way, perhaps, it was difficult to rejoice greatly when Thatcher resigned, because her party remained in power. (For over six years. And New Labour, despite its name, did nothing to change or refresh our travails.) So the moment for rejoicing passed. And now, in a mirror image of Law’s tears for Best, we are catching up on the partying we did not do 20 years ago.

Thatcher’s death is not in itself noteworthy or newsworthy. (I am sorry, did you think she was immortal?) She was 87. She retired long ago: any damage she did, she ceased to do in 1990. Some things she may have left beyond repair, like George Best’s liver: but many others we have destroyed without her help.

The important thing, having partied (or wept, if you prefer), is to put her behind us. The world has changed. Her policies are no longer relevant. Her insistence that Nelson Mandela is a terrorist is no longer helpful. Nor is her policy of closing down factories and communities, now that we hardly have any. The good news is, we don’t have to feel we are under her shadow any more. She’s gone. Let’s move on.

Funny peculiar

As a comedian, Stephen Fry knows that timing is everything.

All the more surprising, then, that in a recent edition of QI he told a rude limerick about a churchman and a choirboy. I don't know whether he was trying to score points for being Anti-Clerical, or for being Gay-And-Able-To-Laugh-About-It. But I would have thought "jokes" about child abuse were better left until the fuss about Jimmy Savile has died down a bit.

Waiting for the man to jump

Remember that scene in Lethal Weapon, when the policeman approaches the man on the high ledge? He handcuffs himself to the man, and (to our shock and amusement) the policeman jumps them both off. And he gets off the landing mat and says: That was fun, let’s do it again.

Now imagine, instead of one psychotic policeman there are fifty. And imagine the man on the ledge is the chief of police. And imagine they roped themselves to him inside the building, and then dragged him onto the precipice. And now they jump.

That would be silly.

But essentially, that is what is about to happen in the USA. And there doesn’t seem to be a soft landing – except if the Republicans land on their heads. Amusing? If America jumps off a fiscal cliff, we may laugh – just until we realise that the rope attached to the last man is tangled round our legs.

Collateral damage

Hemingway, I think, said that first-time spectators at bullfights are shocked, not at the death of the bull (for that is the point of the exercise) but at the death of the horses.

It seems that before the matador appears, men on horses stick spikes in the bull’s shoulders to make him angry. This works. He responds by charging at the horses. Their death is shocking because it is incidental: they are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like the police officers mown down like Space Invaders in Leon. Or Ben Kinsella.

Or Jacintha Saldanha.

I’m sure it is very amusing having a joke at the expense of someone rich and famous. I expect it is fun throwing rocks at fire crews, or attacking linesmen. And if those people suffer, I suppose they (like the bull) must accept this as their purpose in life. And if someone else dies because the fire engine fails to arrive, we shake our heads in sorrow and say we didn’t mean any harm.

But even convicted prisoners are protected by national and international law from being publicly humiliated. Nurses, it seems, are not. 

I don’t pretend, of course, that the UK has a clean record in the humane treatment of prisoners (or nurses). We used, for example, to send convicts to Australia. But these days, we recognise that this is cruel and inhuman. After all, Australia contains radio stations like 2Day FM.

Lest we remember

Can a TV celebrity – who turns out to have been a child-molester – be “erased” from the records? His blue plaques can be melted down; charities can drop his name like a hot (and diseased) potato. The damage to his victims is not so easily removed. Nor can we, who used to like the man, retrospectively alter that fact.

But, however symbolically, we can – and must – refuse to recognise any honour (formal or informal) which he enjoyed.

We are told, for example, that the Vatican need not posthumously withdraw a papal knighthood: because it ceases on the holder’s death. Not good enough. Better to declare that he never was a papal knight.

Can’t be done? Sure it can. Lance Armstrong is not a former champion: he never won the Tour de France. Look it up.

(Go further. Unlike papal knighthood, sainthood is intrinsically retrospective: it can only be awarded after the person dies. Can’t it similarly be withdrawn? Some of the church’s mediaeval “saints”, re-examined, might turn out to have been murderous bigots – in the manner of the 9/11 killers. Should they keep their honour?)

By the way, I’m not pointing any fingers at the broadcaster, the hospitals, the charities for whom a child-molester may have worked. They are rather victims (albeit very much secondary victims) of his duplicity.

In the same way, the Hillsborough revelations – however disturbing – will not erase the heroism of PC Bill Barker, who died defending a flood-hit community three years ago this month. Nor that of WPC Fiona Bone and WPC Nicola Hughes, recently murdered.

Nor (as we approach Remembrance Day) should we doubt the heroism of Lt Edward Drummond-Baxter and L/Cpl Siddhanta Kunwar, the latest of our soldiers to die in Afghanistan. If the war itself is idiotic, so was the “Great War” of 1914-18. And that does not stop us honouring those who served and died.

Their names will live forever.

Some names I would sooner forget.

Three cheers for the Olympic spirit

We welcome the Paralympics to the (alleged) home of disabled sport. And The Mail and The Sun are looking beyond the wheelchairs and the missing limbs, and seeing the visiting athletes for what they are. A bunch of foreigners.

Sorry, I’m being cynical. In fact, from what I read, the attitudes shown towards other nations at the Olympics were surprisingly good. With three notable exceptions.

First up were the Americans. A teenage Korean swimmer beat her personal best by several seconds: so of course they cried drugs. Michael Phelps made similar progress at a similar age; and so did an American youngster later in the London games. But when Asians succeed at American expense, they must have cheated. (Underground tunnels, perhaps.) How else did Tezuka get his work out before Disney did?

Next up were the French. Early on, when their swimmers were beating ours, they jeered at our lack of medals. Like we care. We had the last laugh. Just like seven years ago, when Jack Shoerack told the IOC that Britain had the worst cuisine in the world “except Finland”. I’d like to think the Finnish vote was crucial in bringing the Olympics to London rather than Paris.

And finally, not to be left out, came the British. At the football (although, I think, only at the football) there was jeering of the national anthems. And let’s not pretend it’s just an English thing (although it happens all the more in England as 1966 recedes.) In Cardiff, the crowd booed God Save The Queen. I wonder how the Welsh players felt? Maybe they’re all republicans.

Admittedly the England football team needs to use a distinct English anthem:  just as the athletes do at the Commonwealth Games. And use the English flag, if it comes to that. But is that what sporting xenophobia comes down to? Is it about a flag and an anthem? Is it about ingrained culinary pride? Or is it simply about being bad losers?

The moving (middle) finger

See the Kings of Ibrox

Eat dust, or imbibe rocks.

The writing is on the wall, and Rangers FC finds itself shaken from its kingdom.

And I now think that I was in error in my earlier piece (Rangers: good riddance?). It’s not something I said: it’s something I didn’t say.

I asked whether Scottish professional football could survive without Rangers. This remains a taxing question, as it were. But to their great credit, the SPL and SFL are treating it as irrelevant. The question: “What will benefit us?” has been swept aside by the greater question: “What is right, and what is wrong?” Moral considerations have, for once, outweighed market considerations: and for that the clubs are to be applauded.

The new Rangers administration is to be equally admired. They declared in advance that they would accept entry into the Scottish Third Division. Did they have an alternative? Well, yes. They could quite easily have picked up their ball and walked away across the border. I am sure the English Premiership would welcome an Old Firm club with open arms. Who would stand in the way? Glazer? Abramovich? Mansour bin Zayed? Oh, please. What about the sponsors? That’d be Barclays Bank. Enough said.

But aren’t newco Rangers being punished for the sins of the oldco? On the contrary: the newco is benefiting from its association with the oldco. Most new clubs can’t just walk into the professional leagues. They start in the bottom division of a local league somewhere, and work their way up.

It’s still hard on the players and staff - at Rangers and elsewhere. But real and material questions (about mina and shekels, if you will) have been weighed and found wanting.