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.

Simply Redtop

No connection with the item below (about reds and redtops). Simply an amusing resemblance.

There Is No Alternative

The other day, suspicious as I am of free-market Capitalism, I looked through a Communist newspaper. It was full of prefabricated screaming slogans. (A bit like the X-Factor build-ups, but with long words.) Nevertheless, from its pages I learned many things.

Firstly, I learned that the Syrian government is “magnanimous”, its agenda “peaceful” and its people “heroic and dignified”. (I will accept the last point.) And I learned that Colonel Gaddafi – who harboured Yvonne Fletcher’s killer and feted the Lockerbie bomber as a national hero – was “great” and that his works command “a feeling nothing short of awe”.

I’m aware that the West has an agenda. We routinely intervene in (say) Libya or Iraq, but not in Zimbabwe or Rwanda – which see equal atrocities but don’t have oil. Funny, that. But if we elect, or tolerate, people like Bush and Mugabe, that doesn’t suddenly make Saddam and Gaddafi good guys.

Secondly, I learned something about the Royal Jubilee. I don’t mean the revelation that the royal family (and all rich people) are a bunch of parasites. I wouldn’t expect a Communist newspaper to say anything else. I’ve blogged elsewhere (Sons and Daughters) about the useful role a ceremonial head of state plays in a democracy: but I don’t suppose democracy interests Communists any more than it does Capitalists.

No:  the surprising news about the Jubilee was quoted from an online commentator, who wrote: “The only sentiment allowed to be expressed in the media was pro-monarchial.”

Fair enough, it’s not everyone’s plate of cucumber sandwiches. But the only sentiment allowed? I’m sorry, but this is paranoid nonsense. The press includes reds as well as redtops. You may produce The Morning Star as freely as The Daily Star, and I may as freely buy it. There are countries where this would be impossible: where one cannot speak (much less write) against the establishment.

A more interesting question might be: why do we overwhelmingly buy newspapers with a pro- Establishment slant?

But maybe it’s a trick question. The attitude of the mainstream press (and its readers – chicken and egg) is more complex. In 1992, when Royal Divorce memorabilia was selling 3-for-2, the papers were largely anti-monarchial. The church, the Lords, the banks, politicians in general, are routinely pilloried. Fat-cat salaries and dodgy Middle East wars are fair game.

True, the mainstream press doesn’t really question Capitalist assumptions. The Guardian (for one) has a go, but it doesn’t hack at the roots. The redtops don’t even behave as though the questions exist. They would rather tell us about Wayne Rooney or … well, Kate and Wills.

And perhaps that is the problem with the coverage of the Jubilee. It has become another celebrity story with which the redtops fill their front pages. And they are free to do so.

The Communist press, by contrast, is quite happy to hack at the roots of the system. (Not with subtlety; nor with evidence of independent thought on the part of individuals. That’s OK.) Or they too can obsess about the royals. And they are free to do so.  

There are places where this precious freedom does not exist. Syria springs to mind.

There are other countries whose leaders oppose sanctions against the Syrian regime. (Perhaps because they look at its actions and they see nothing wrong: they see normality: they see themselves.) Which countries would those be? Ah, yes, of course.

Thatcher said “There is no alternative.” She was wrong. There is an alternative. There has to be an alternative. But this isn’t it.

Rangers: good riddance?

Many of us, sick of the obscene overpayment of footballers by the richest clubs, are secretly (or openly) pleased at the prospect of a top club going out of business.

If (as seems likely) Rangers are refused entry to the Scottish Premier League, that is surely where the road leads. For why should the Scottish League let them in? Surely the only ways into the League are by relegation from SPL or promotion from feeder leagues. Do they join at the bottom of the pyramid, or what?

But hold it. Barclays Bank has been accused of – well, I can't quite make out what. But it looks as if we have all been thoroughly swindled. A serious financial penalty is in order, for starters. But nobody speaks of punitively closing the bank down: because it would solve nothing, serve no-one, and punish the innocent along with the guilty. A major bank going out of business would destabilise the whole sector.

So it is with Rangers. The punishment should be severe, certainly: but (effective) extinction – even if we don't think it too harsh – would have difficult consequences for the rest of Scottish football.

Here are two possible alternatives:

(1) The other clubs could vote newco Rangers into the SPL: but then apply such a points penalty that the team is immediately relegated. (Presumably instead of one of the teams currently going down.) That would give the new club legitimate entry into the League, as a club relegated from the SPL.

This would limit the punishment suffered.  Of course, a year out of the SPL and a further year (presumably) out of European competition would represent a sizable hit, and rightly. Or:

(2) The approximate financial weight of that penalty could be calculated. Then the newco could be fined the equivalent amount, to be paid over those two seasons, but spared the actual relegation.

Then Rangers have to live within restricted means, as if they had been relegated.  But the SPL as a whole keeps Rangers in their portfolio when touting for TV and sponsorship deals – and receives a healthy bonus in the form of the fine levied. So the SPL does not take a financial hit, and newco Rangers do not gain financially from the sins of oldco. (But are not crushed out of existence.)

Or let Rangers die, and no doubt serve them right, and see what happens to all the other clubs when there are no Rangers matches in the calendar.

Morality and the free market

The other day David Cameron said Jimmy Carr's tax arrangements, though legal, were morally wrong. Then yesterday the courts said the same about HBOS's actions towards Farepak savers.

Let's leave aside for a moment the fact that, for money earned (and unpaid), Carr pales into insignificance alongside many sly businesspeople whom Cameron obviously doesn't want to upset.

The puzzling thing is to find a committed free-market capitalist suddenly discovering morality. Milton Friedman (Thatcher's monetarist guru) famously said that the only "social responsibility" of business is to make maximum profits for its shareholders. You do what is profitable for you, I do what is profitable for me. In this world-view, the only "immoral" thing is to go against the dictates of greed. The market knows best: the market is the only wisdom, the only morality.

It's not a new philosophy. Friedman just pushed an old one to a new extreme. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" means my happiness, not my neighbour's happiness. He should pursue his own happiness. That is why the talk is always of a Bill of Rights - not a Bill of Responsibilities. That is why there is no such thing as society: and I am certainly not my brother's keeper.

Ed Miliband said: "I'm not in favour of tax avoidance obviously, but I don't think it is for politicians to lecture people about morality." Nor for the courts, perhaps. But it is for politicians to legislate against wrongdoing, and it is for the courts to interpret legislation accordingly (by the spirit, not the letter, one might say).

To challenge Carr, or even HBOS, is to miss the point. We might rather question the whole ultra-captialist experiment and the (often unstated) assumptions on which it is founded. Perhaps, to reverse the flow of Ed Miliband's comment, it is for people to lecture politicians about morality

When I were a lad

A few days ago Geoff Boycott said on a BBC cricket blog:

“Harold Larwood had to walk eight miles just to go the cinema. And then eight miles back.”

Two things strike me about this comment. Firstly, it sounds like the Four Yorkshiremen, with their competitive tales of childhood deprivation.

“Cinema? You were lucky! We used to walk twenty miles to look at a hole in t’ground.”

“Oh, we used to DREAM of looking at a hole in t’ground. We walked a hundred miles before breakfast to look at a cardboard box.”

“Breakfast? Ha!”

(And so on.)

Secondly, I am struck by Boycott’s evident surprise that the distance was the same in both directions. Maybe that’s what went wrong with his running between the wickets.