Formula 1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone says that London should simply abandon its 2012 commitments in despair at the majesty of the Beijing games. "I can't see how anyone can follow that." he said to the BBC. Which raises the question: if not London, then who? Was Beijing the last Olympics? Others in awe at the achievement of the People's Republic of China have called on London to spend more on the games; to match Beijing's budget.
London is budgeted to cost less than half the Beijing games, on paper. This doesn't really take into account the difference in labour costs, or the difference in the compensations paid to those displaced by the construction work, or a host of other extra expenses caused by not staging the games in an authoritarian regime. So these comparisons are hardly relevant.
There are also those pointing out that the games were conceived in the 7 years of plenty, and now we are into the years of famine. In which case, the London Olympics could be an enormous stroke of good timing, providing a classic recession-busting hero-project, like the Hoover Dam, and cushioning London from the worst excesses of the global economy. Some 3,000 construction jobs have been created already, before much of the main work has even begun, and before the main purpose of the games - the regeneration of east London and the construction of thousands of affordable homes, has even been fully planned.
Apart from the ridiculous 'feelgood factor', the real lesson of something as apparently daft as the Olympics is that enormous collective projects are possible, and desirable, even if they do not intend to make a financial profit. And that therefore, if we can co-operate to do this, why not solve a lot of other, more pressing problems?
This is why the right-wing press need to trash the London Olympics, as they did the Manchester Commonwealth Games and every other major state-subsidised project from the NHS onwards. They contradict free market dogma, and therefore must not be allowed to succeed.
Beijing Olympics 2008
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Beijing Olympics 2008. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Beijing Olympics 2008. Sort by date Show all posts
9/02/2008
3/27/2008
Tom Daley Vs The People's Republic of China & Primark
It seems that the Beijing Olympics will be one of the most tempestuous ever. We can't predict just what fancy dress interruptions might happen in the smog, and what banners are hung out of hotel windows, but this will not be an Olympics to miss. The political valves of this games will be throbbing red hot.
And in the midst of it all, for our personal British delectation and inspiration will be a tiny 14 year old boy standing high above a pool of water, waiting to throw himself in head first.
Little Tom Daley will be the big British story of the games, and an important antidote to the negative publicity being heaped on our gigantic commercial partner. The boy's story will, in effect, be a diversion from the growing pressure on the Chinese ruling dynasty to abandon the succesful political strategy of thousands of years and be more - well - British. Whether he will be aware of his role in this giant political game is hard to say. He is no Jesse Owens or John Carlos or Jack Johnson.
This exploitation of an innocent boy's sporting dreams is not going to be pretty to watch. But then, to be able to enjoy any true sport, the spectator must have a degree of faith in the integrity of the competition, which is why drugs are poisonous to sport. It's like watching a vicar give a sermon while scratching his arse, a politician shaking hands and looking at his watch.. It is a lie.
In the same way, for the Olympic Committee to expect the viewing billions to unremember the political context of the games is to turn 'suspension of disbelief' into an abandonment of critical faculties, and as such to insult the humanity of the spectatorship. All four billion of us, if some estimates are to be believed, and as such, is another nail in the coffin of anything which can be described as sport.
It might be said that the spectacle of this boy striving for pure personal achievement is a form of heroism. A poetic undermining of the vanity and inhumanity of the stampeding politicians and businessmen all around him. An oasis of calm in a storm of opportunism and that. No doubt the handsomely paid columnists in both the liberal guilt-sheets and gutter tabloids will peddle that line, but they will be paid by a media corporation which is making billions from promoting the Beijing Olympics, and from exploiting a child as cynically as any gang master or the shareholders of Primark.
Other hacks will be peddling the line that It's Only A Game. That sport and politics are 'not the same thing'. That we should just settle down for two weeks of branded running jumping and throwing at the corporation's quadrennial Summer Fete, and that should be good enough for us.
But what does that mean? Wallowing in the spectacle of the sleek Uber-mensch competitive ethic? Turning our brains off and blanking out the context of the event?
The truth is more that by becoming a huge cash cow, with a huge vested interest in attracting the advertising budgets of the nastiest political entities on earth - the global corporations, and keeping them in their place at the top of the power structure, sport has abandoned us. Professional sport is a contradiction in terms. Using it to promote classical, fascistic ideals of perfection and the superman is also death to the idea of human effort for its own sake. An act of worship to the thug who "solves everything with a sock on the jaw" as Orwell said of the gangster hero of American culture. And one using deadly combinations of robotising drugs to achieve its illusion. The fact that the Sydney Olympics is now a complete drug-re-written farce is all the evidence needed that the marketplace is just as tyrannical and cynical a coach as any East German sports commissar on a medals quota - or else.
The posturing between the US and China, with Tibet as the stamping ground, is quite natural for the great superpowers of any age. The disturbing question is whether these competing power blocs represent different ideologies, or just regional variations of the same cynical power politics, designed merely to preserve the status quo rather than improve life for the mass of people. "Is the CIA behind the "Free Tibet" campaign?"
Just a thought about the Chinese security guards who are protected the holy Olympic Flame as it passed through London.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the Chinese specialise in dozens of different and superhuman martial arts techniques each guaranteeing the skilled master almost total invincibility against any enemy, no matter how large or vicious or determined?
You would have thought the Chinese government would have sent a few representatives of these noble 'arts' along to give an example of their sublime techniques where it mattered most. Instead we got the usual frantic western dust-up of flailing elbows and sudden trips, which is the reality of physical combat.
Another myth bites the dust. Alongside Sport, that is.
And how can this child of sport help being compared and contrasted with the millions of child labourers in India and other places, at the sweaty end of the Primark profit-chain? How can the sight of this child with the eyes of the world on him not remind us of the millions of lives which are destroyed each year so that we can cheer ourselves up cheaply with a new shirt or dress every week, so that consumerism can get its quick fix behind the bikesheds?
The answer to both questions must be because it must seem natural to us that these lives are destroyed. Otherwise, we would never shop again with confidence. Just as it seems natural and worthy that India is now a rich and powerful country, with a growing oligarchy of billionaires, and a market presence to be proud of. It is also natural that with access to such token wage bills, Indian entrepreneurs should attract manufacturing jobs away from the west, causing unempleyment, but at the same time, making unemployment more tolerable by reducing the cost of clothes in Primark. And naturally, unemployment is more tolerable in Britain than in India because we have a welfare state. So isn't it time India had one too? Now that she is an embryonic super power. In fact, isn't it time that the western business interestes started demanding that India bear its fair share of global poverty, and allow the jam ofmanufacturing employment to be spread a little thinner but a little wider. In other words, it is time that the CBI started lecturing India (and China) on social policies it would once have described as socialist.
This is assuming, of course, that the likes of the CBI do not relish the prospect of India sliding into a form of Neo-Feudalism, based essentially on slave labour - because if they are prepared to accept that political model in India, why should we assume they would be hostile to it in Britain? Especially as it seems to be so profitable. In fact, why should Digby Jones have any problems with the Chinese political model, given how stable and long-lasting it obviously is.
Whatever muffled outburts of defiance we get to see in the smoggy Peking august, it's safe to predict that there won't be many demands for fair housing benefit and access to universal trade union rights from many western media machines. And yet without this economic safety net, a system based on a vote every 5 years is a pale imitation of democracy, and as India - the biggest democracy of all - shows, can still run on slavery.
Beijing Olympics 2008
And in the midst of it all, for our personal British delectation and inspiration will be a tiny 14 year old boy standing high above a pool of water, waiting to throw himself in head first.
Little Tom Daley will be the big British story of the games, and an important antidote to the negative publicity being heaped on our gigantic commercial partner. The boy's story will, in effect, be a diversion from the growing pressure on the Chinese ruling dynasty to abandon the succesful political strategy of thousands of years and be more - well - British. Whether he will be aware of his role in this giant political game is hard to say. He is no Jesse Owens or John Carlos or Jack Johnson.
This exploitation of an innocent boy's sporting dreams is not going to be pretty to watch. But then, to be able to enjoy any true sport, the spectator must have a degree of faith in the integrity of the competition, which is why drugs are poisonous to sport. It's like watching a vicar give a sermon while scratching his arse, a politician shaking hands and looking at his watch.. It is a lie.
In the same way, for the Olympic Committee to expect the viewing billions to unremember the political context of the games is to turn 'suspension of disbelief' into an abandonment of critical faculties, and as such to insult the humanity of the spectatorship. All four billion of us, if some estimates are to be believed, and as such, is another nail in the coffin of anything which can be described as sport.
It might be said that the spectacle of this boy striving for pure personal achievement is a form of heroism. A poetic undermining of the vanity and inhumanity of the stampeding politicians and businessmen all around him. An oasis of calm in a storm of opportunism and that. No doubt the handsomely paid columnists in both the liberal guilt-sheets and gutter tabloids will peddle that line, but they will be paid by a media corporation which is making billions from promoting the Beijing Olympics, and from exploiting a child as cynically as any gang master or the shareholders of Primark.
Other hacks will be peddling the line that It's Only A Game. That sport and politics are 'not the same thing'. That we should just settle down for two weeks of branded running jumping and throwing at the corporation's quadrennial Summer Fete, and that should be good enough for us.
But what does that mean? Wallowing in the spectacle of the sleek Uber-mensch competitive ethic? Turning our brains off and blanking out the context of the event?
The truth is more that by becoming a huge cash cow, with a huge vested interest in attracting the advertising budgets of the nastiest political entities on earth - the global corporations, and keeping them in their place at the top of the power structure, sport has abandoned us. Professional sport is a contradiction in terms. Using it to promote classical, fascistic ideals of perfection and the superman is also death to the idea of human effort for its own sake. An act of worship to the thug who "solves everything with a sock on the jaw" as Orwell said of the gangster hero of American culture. And one using deadly combinations of robotising drugs to achieve its illusion. The fact that the Sydney Olympics is now a complete drug-re-written farce is all the evidence needed that the marketplace is just as tyrannical and cynical a coach as any East German sports commissar on a medals quota - or else.
The posturing between the US and China, with Tibet as the stamping ground, is quite natural for the great superpowers of any age. The disturbing question is whether these competing power blocs represent different ideologies, or just regional variations of the same cynical power politics, designed merely to preserve the status quo rather than improve life for the mass of people. "Is the CIA behind the "Free Tibet" campaign?"
Just a thought about the Chinese security guards who are protected the holy Olympic Flame as it passed through London.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the Chinese specialise in dozens of different and superhuman martial arts techniques each guaranteeing the skilled master almost total invincibility against any enemy, no matter how large or vicious or determined?
You would have thought the Chinese government would have sent a few representatives of these noble 'arts' along to give an example of their sublime techniques where it mattered most. Instead we got the usual frantic western dust-up of flailing elbows and sudden trips, which is the reality of physical combat.
Another myth bites the dust. Alongside Sport, that is.
And how can this child of sport help being compared and contrasted with the millions of child labourers in India and other places, at the sweaty end of the Primark profit-chain? How can the sight of this child with the eyes of the world on him not remind us of the millions of lives which are destroyed each year so that we can cheer ourselves up cheaply with a new shirt or dress every week, so that consumerism can get its quick fix behind the bikesheds?
The answer to both questions must be because it must seem natural to us that these lives are destroyed. Otherwise, we would never shop again with confidence. Just as it seems natural and worthy that India is now a rich and powerful country, with a growing oligarchy of billionaires, and a market presence to be proud of. It is also natural that with access to such token wage bills, Indian entrepreneurs should attract manufacturing jobs away from the west, causing unempleyment, but at the same time, making unemployment more tolerable by reducing the cost of clothes in Primark. And naturally, unemployment is more tolerable in Britain than in India because we have a welfare state. So isn't it time India had one too? Now that she is an embryonic super power. In fact, isn't it time that the western business interestes started demanding that India bear its fair share of global poverty, and allow the jam ofmanufacturing employment to be spread a little thinner but a little wider. In other words, it is time that the CBI started lecturing India (and China) on social policies it would once have described as socialist.
This is assuming, of course, that the likes of the CBI do not relish the prospect of India sliding into a form of Neo-Feudalism, based essentially on slave labour - because if they are prepared to accept that political model in India, why should we assume they would be hostile to it in Britain? Especially as it seems to be so profitable. In fact, why should Digby Jones have any problems with the Chinese political model, given how stable and long-lasting it obviously is.
Whatever muffled outburts of defiance we get to see in the smoggy Peking august, it's safe to predict that there won't be many demands for fair housing benefit and access to universal trade union rights from many western media machines. And yet without this economic safety net, a system based on a vote every 5 years is a pale imitation of democracy, and as India - the biggest democracy of all - shows, can still run on slavery.
Beijing Olympics 2008
8/09/2008
08/08/08. Georgia, The Olympic War.
The Olympic Wrestling tournament in Beijing should be interesting. Russia is one of the dominant powers, but Georgia has a long history of the sport, which it is very proud and possessive about.
Georgia does tend to specialise in the more physical Olympic events.
It is not very hard to imagine the atmosphere when a Georgian hopeful meets a Russian in combat. It is to be hoped that this will happen, not for the headlines or sick spectacle of two innocent sportsmen performing a puppet war for our amusement, but to help settle the old question of the role of politics in sport.
If sport really is the panacaea preached by the blazers, Russia Vs Georgia for the Olympic boxing title will be a triumph of pure human endeavour and mutual respect over squalid, materialistic political squabbling. If not they will kick the living shit out of each other.
Perhaps the failure of rugby to be included in the Beijing games isn't such a bad thing after all.
Beijing Olympics 2008
Georgia does tend to specialise in the more physical Olympic events.
"Vano Grikhurov, the head coach of the Georgian National Weightlifting team, said that the sportsmen are in good shape, and that as they are highly skilled at judo their chance of winning is high. “I think that Georgia once again will get gold from Olympic Games this year,” said Grikhurov.Their boxing team also has hopes.
It is not very hard to imagine the atmosphere when a Georgian hopeful meets a Russian in combat. It is to be hoped that this will happen, not for the headlines or sick spectacle of two innocent sportsmen performing a puppet war for our amusement, but to help settle the old question of the role of politics in sport.
If sport really is the panacaea preached by the blazers, Russia Vs Georgia for the Olympic boxing title will be a triumph of pure human endeavour and mutual respect over squalid, materialistic political squabbling. If not they will kick the living shit out of each other.
Perhaps the failure of rugby to be included in the Beijing games isn't such a bad thing after all.
Beijing Olympics 2008
8/20/2008
08/08/08 Usain Bolt - Fake THAT!
After his world record-breaking 200metres victory this afternoon, Usain Bolt poses a lot of problems. For his competition - obviously; for his production line of accountants desperately trying to keep up with the workload; and for the coaches who have been preaching the gospel of Power-Sprinting for the last few decades. The same gospel of upper body strength and bulk which produced the likes of the hideously distorted Ben Johnson, and which fuelled the market for steroids and other bulk-enhancers.
Usain Bolt therefore poses the biggest problem to the chemists. From now on, coaches will be looking for long, rangy sprinters with excellent technique. These things are not easily faked with drugs. Not as easily as bulk, anyway. So the task of the cheats just became a little harder, and sports lovers can believe a little more easily.
If long and lean becomes a new body fashion, and leads to fewer immobile neckless gymnauts, so much the better. It might even reduce the amount of rage on the streets a fraction.
Unfortunately, all this depends on not thinking the unthinkable. And that doesn't feel right.
add. 21/8/08.
'Bolt Stakes His Claim As The Greatest Ever Sprinter'.
Richard Williams.Guardian 21/8/08.
Paul Kelso, Guardian 18/8/08.
Usain Bolt therefore poses the biggest problem to the chemists. From now on, coaches will be looking for long, rangy sprinters with excellent technique. These things are not easily faked with drugs. Not as easily as bulk, anyway. So the task of the cheats just became a little harder, and sports lovers can believe a little more easily.
If long and lean becomes a new body fashion, and leads to fewer immobile neckless gymnauts, so much the better. It might even reduce the amount of rage on the streets a fraction.
Unfortunately, all this depends on not thinking the unthinkable. And that doesn't feel right.
add. 21/8/08.
'Bolt Stakes His Claim As The Greatest Ever Sprinter'.
Richard Williams.Guardian 21/8/08.
"Perhaps it is too much to hope that he has also banished the suspicions that have undermined the integrity of Olympic sprinting for so long. But when you look at him, at his 6'5", 13st8lb frame and at the articulation of his limbs as he devours the track you might be forgiven for thinking that he, more than any other leading sprinter for several generations, might just be able to achieve such feats without artificial assistance. There is none of the physical distortion created by the excess muscle that powered recent generations out of the blocks. He looks balanced and natural.Olympics: Why a negative will be a massive positive.'
Well, we can hope."
Paul Kelso, Guardian 18/8/08.
"There was no one aiming daggers at him as Carl Lewis did at Johnson in 1988, instead there were only compliments. Everyone who was gripped on Saturday will hope it stays that way."
Beijing Olympics 2008
8/07/2008
08/08/08 - First British Gold!
They're wild, their noisy, and thank god, they're British!
Britain claimed the first gold medal of the games when its team were the first to be arrested in the Political Demonstration Event (Pro-Tibet Class).
Iain Thom and Lucy Fairbrother performed their winning routine at the very epicentre of the games, the enormously pompous 'Bird's Nest Cage', and therefore gained marks for difficulty as well as beating the rest of the field by days.
The IOC have not decided yet whether this trial event will be retained for the London Games. And it remains to be seen whether being arrested for fomenting unrest in China is umpired in the same way as fomenting unrest in Britain. There are hopeful signs however in the recent record of the British government and the score it awarded to Maya Ann Evans for her Whitehall appearance in 2005 under Section 132 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Naturally, the defamation has started. The messageboards are full of the usual miseryguts smearing Thom & Fairbrother as self-interested egoists in classic Pravda style. These people can never actually name any of the rewards of being put in a Beijing jail for broadcasting unwanted messages from the heart of a totalitarian regime, but they do know their gimcrack philosophy, like: 'Look after Number One', and 'Stuff you Jack, I'm Allright'. They have been taught that the weak should go to the wall, and are determined to stand by their dogma. If they only knew that 'Swampy' is now living in a mansion in Beverly Hills.
There are others who merely sneer at the mismatch. The defeatists who would have said the same to Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The type who don't even try.
Beijing Olympics 2008
Britain claimed the first gold medal of the games when its team were the first to be arrested in the Political Demonstration Event (Pro-Tibet Class).
Iain Thom and Lucy Fairbrother performed their winning routine at the very epicentre of the games, the enormously pompous 'Bird's Nest Cage', and therefore gained marks for difficulty as well as beating the rest of the field by days.
The IOC have not decided yet whether this trial event will be retained for the London Games. And it remains to be seen whether being arrested for fomenting unrest in China is umpired in the same way as fomenting unrest in Britain. There are hopeful signs however in the recent record of the British government and the score it awarded to Maya Ann Evans for her Whitehall appearance in 2005 under Section 132 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Naturally, the defamation has started. The messageboards are full of the usual miseryguts smearing Thom & Fairbrother as self-interested egoists in classic Pravda style. These people can never actually name any of the rewards of being put in a Beijing jail for broadcasting unwanted messages from the heart of a totalitarian regime, but they do know their gimcrack philosophy, like: 'Look after Number One', and 'Stuff you Jack, I'm Allright'. They have been taught that the weak should go to the wall, and are determined to stand by their dogma. If they only knew that 'Swampy' is now living in a mansion in Beverly Hills.
There are others who merely sneer at the mismatch. The defeatists who would have said the same to Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The type who don't even try.
Beijing Olympics 2008
8/08/2008
08/08/08 China - The Opera.
No-one was going to be really surprised by the superiority of Chinese orchestration and mass choreography. But this was a production with some style and no cheesiness. Possibly the least laughable Olympic opening ceremony ever. Scary, some might even say.
The scale of the show managed to capture the scale of Chinese history and achievements and be visually stunning and mysterious. The general story being that China invented everything; that it is the senior civilisation, beating the other whippersnappers by thousands of years; and that it achieved all this through constant, ruthless Harmony in the Confucian tradition. No mention of Mao anywhere.
Militaristic drumming, booful ickle kiddies in red frocks, flourescent flying spirits of the air and earth and fire and the glorious proletariat followed each other through the endless generations of firework-lit Chinese Time. Animism came and went. Buddhism arrived in a flourish of silk. Writing and paper and printing were scrolled out in an epic gleaming claim to global intellectual rights, patents and copyright. After a bizarre burst of Laughing On Command, the dancers lined up obediently behind Men In Black manipulating puppets.. What did that mean? And the depiction of Chinese pioneering navigators (well before anyone else, naturally) with scores of oars flailed by strong men in unison could only trigger one response in anyone who's ever seen Ben Hur. Slavery, which wasn't on the agenda at central committee planning. But this is China, slavery of one sort or another was and still is essential to its economy and success.
There was very little to represent the New Fantasy China of liberty and unfettered exchange across borders, in spite of all the promises. Overall, the message was that China is essentially the same now that it was 5,000 years ago. The same doctrine of Peace and Prosperity through Unity and Harmony. An unconquerable regime built on the most stable of power structures, the pyramid. The constant glorification of the feudal past and its achievements cannot be brushed off as sentimentality, they mean it to continue, but with the help of the modern technologies and financial black magic of Wall Street and Canary Wharf. In return China is offering its political Wisdom of the Ages as a possible future model for the unstable, feverish west. You too can be immortal. All you need is to surrender to 'Harmony'.
Orwell once described fascism as adopting from socialism only those aspects which were useful for the purposes of war. Chinese feudalism initially adopted those same aspects, now it chooses to cherry-pick from Consumerism instead.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ken Livingstone in Beijing
Beijing Olympics 2008
The scale of the show managed to capture the scale of Chinese history and achievements and be visually stunning and mysterious. The general story being that China invented everything; that it is the senior civilisation, beating the other whippersnappers by thousands of years; and that it achieved all this through constant, ruthless Harmony in the Confucian tradition. No mention of Mao anywhere.
Militaristic drumming, booful ickle kiddies in red frocks, flourescent flying spirits of the air and earth and fire and the glorious proletariat followed each other through the endless generations of firework-lit Chinese Time. Animism came and went. Buddhism arrived in a flourish of silk. Writing and paper and printing were scrolled out in an epic gleaming claim to global intellectual rights, patents and copyright. After a bizarre burst of Laughing On Command, the dancers lined up obediently behind Men In Black manipulating puppets.. What did that mean? And the depiction of Chinese pioneering navigators (well before anyone else, naturally) with scores of oars flailed by strong men in unison could only trigger one response in anyone who's ever seen Ben Hur. Slavery, which wasn't on the agenda at central committee planning. But this is China, slavery of one sort or another was and still is essential to its economy and success.
There was very little to represent the New Fantasy China of liberty and unfettered exchange across borders, in spite of all the promises. Overall, the message was that China is essentially the same now that it was 5,000 years ago. The same doctrine of Peace and Prosperity through Unity and Harmony. An unconquerable regime built on the most stable of power structures, the pyramid. The constant glorification of the feudal past and its achievements cannot be brushed off as sentimentality, they mean it to continue, but with the help of the modern technologies and financial black magic of Wall Street and Canary Wharf. In return China is offering its political Wisdom of the Ages as a possible future model for the unstable, feverish west. You too can be immortal. All you need is to surrender to 'Harmony'.
Orwell once described fascism as adopting from socialism only those aspects which were useful for the purposes of war. Chinese feudalism initially adopted those same aspects, now it chooses to cherry-pick from Consumerism instead.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ken Livingstone in Beijing
Beijing Olympics 2008
7/01/2008
Tom Daley Vs Primark
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44300000/jpg/_44300583_thomas_daley2.jpg
How can this boy on the end of a diving board help being compared and contrasted with the millions of child labourers in India and other places, at the sweaty end of the Primark profit-chain? How can the sight of this child with the eyes of the world on him not remind us of the millions of lives which are destroyed each year so that we can cheer ourselves up cheaply with a new shirt or dress every week, so that consumerism can get its quick fix behind the bikesheds?
The answer to both questions must be because it must seem natural to us that these lives are destroyed. Otherwise, we would never shop again with confidence. Just as it seems natural and worthy that India is now a rich and powerful country, with a growing oligarchy of billionaires, and a market presence to be proud of.
It is also natural that with access to such token wage bills, Indian entrepreneurs should attract manufacturing jobs away from the west, causing unemployment, but at the same time, making unemployment more tolerable by reducing the cost of clothes in Primark. And naturally, unemployment is more tolerable in Britain than in India because we have a welfare state. So isn't it time India had one too? Now that she is an embryonic super power. In fact, isn't it time that the western business cabals started demanding that India bear its fair share of global poverty, and allow the jam of manufacturing employment to be spread a little thinner but a little wider. In other words, it is time that the CBI started lecturing India (and China) on social policies it would once have described as socialist.
This is assuming, of course, that the likes of the CBI do not relish the prospect of India sliding into a form of Neo-Feudalism, based essentially on slave labour - because if they are prepared to accept that political model in India, why should we assume they would be hostile to it in Britain? Especially as it seems to be so profitable. In fact, why should Digby Jones have any problems with the Chinese political model, given how stable and long-lasting it obviously is.
Whatever muffled outburts of defiance we get to see in the smoggy Beijing august, it's safe to predict that there won't be many demands for fair housing benefit and access to universal trade union rights from many western media machines. And yet without this economic safety net, a system based on a vote every 5 years is a pale imitation of democracy, and can still run on slavery, as India, the biggest democracy of all, shows.
Beijing Olympics 2008
How can this boy on the end of a diving board help being compared and contrasted with the millions of child labourers in India and other places, at the sweaty end of the Primark profit-chain? How can the sight of this child with the eyes of the world on him not remind us of the millions of lives which are destroyed each year so that we can cheer ourselves up cheaply with a new shirt or dress every week, so that consumerism can get its quick fix behind the bikesheds?
The answer to both questions must be because it must seem natural to us that these lives are destroyed. Otherwise, we would never shop again with confidence. Just as it seems natural and worthy that India is now a rich and powerful country, with a growing oligarchy of billionaires, and a market presence to be proud of.
It is also natural that with access to such token wage bills, Indian entrepreneurs should attract manufacturing jobs away from the west, causing unemployment, but at the same time, making unemployment more tolerable by reducing the cost of clothes in Primark. And naturally, unemployment is more tolerable in Britain than in India because we have a welfare state. So isn't it time India had one too? Now that she is an embryonic super power. In fact, isn't it time that the western business cabals started demanding that India bear its fair share of global poverty, and allow the jam of manufacturing employment to be spread a little thinner but a little wider. In other words, it is time that the CBI started lecturing India (and China) on social policies it would once have described as socialist.
This is assuming, of course, that the likes of the CBI do not relish the prospect of India sliding into a form of Neo-Feudalism, based essentially on slave labour - because if they are prepared to accept that political model in India, why should we assume they would be hostile to it in Britain? Especially as it seems to be so profitable. In fact, why should Digby Jones have any problems with the Chinese political model, given how stable and long-lasting it obviously is.
Whatever muffled outburts of defiance we get to see in the smoggy Beijing august, it's safe to predict that there won't be many demands for fair housing benefit and access to universal trade union rights from many western media machines. And yet without this economic safety net, a system based on a vote every 5 years is a pale imitation of democracy, and can still run on slavery, as India, the biggest democracy of all, shows.
Beijing Olympics 2008
8/12/2008
08/08/08 Ling-A-Long-A-Lympics.
It's only a matter of time before Adrian Chiles gives in to temptation or exhaustion and blurts out:
Ling Long Media Centre
Beijing Olympics 2008
"I wanna tell ya a STORY."
The cosiness of the BBC output from the Ling Long Pagoda is positively Bygravian. With Granny Sue Barker as his sidekick, every elasticated slipper in the country will be at attention for the rest of the games.
But how long can this approach last? Is it an inevitable result of an ageing population? The voice of the grey pound? As Maxie himself might well have said, will it Linga Longa or pa-Go Da way of all flesh? Surely it's time for the BBC to get over the loss of Des Lynam, and employ some livelier presenters who know just as little about sport. More Russ Brand and less Russ Conway, in other words.
As Maxie used to say:
As Maxie used to say:
"That's a good idea, SON."
Ling Long Media Centre
Beijing Olympics 2008
8/20/2008
08/08/08 Lucky Number Team GB
Does every British medal winner carry a number 8 on their back? To the casual but surprised TV viewer, it does seem as if this Chinese talisman has done no harm at all to the glorious medal tally of 'Team GB'. Which prompts the nerdiest Olympic question so far. What is the Olympic numbering system anyway?
People are naturally wondering why the British team are doing so well. On the principle that everything Gordon Brown touches turns to dust, and because he is hiding in Scotland, he can't posibly be to blame. Both John Major and the playing fields of Eton have been held responsible, which was worth a laugh. But no mention of astral forces. To be fair, The Mirror did print a feature on Chinese Numerology, but then forgot all about it in the goldrush.
The Chinese believe in this mumbo jumbo, and they seem to be doing fine.
Beijing Olympics 2008
People are naturally wondering why the British team are doing so well. On the principle that everything Gordon Brown touches turns to dust, and because he is hiding in Scotland, he can't posibly be to blame. Both John Major and the playing fields of Eton have been held responsible, which was worth a laugh. But no mention of astral forces. To be fair, The Mirror did print a feature on Chinese Numerology, but then forgot all about it in the goldrush.
The Chinese believe in this mumbo jumbo, and they seem to be doing fine.
Beijing Olympics 2008
8/19/2008
08/08/08 Wanting To Believe In Sport
One sporting commentator after another is having obligatory doubts about the cavalcade of olympic superlatives of the last week. Not about the legality of the performances, but about sport itself as a form of drama.
Any columnist worth their ticket agonising about whether they actually enjoyed what they saw, or whether the experience was fatally tainted by the background echo of drugs. Was this almost superhuman display of speed and strength an authentic sporting achievement, or merely another disillusionment in waiting, like so many Olympic glories of the past 20 years? Is it even now possible to appreciate sport in the same way it once was? Is sport dead? At least, until there is some guarantee of authenticity.
The climax was the Jamaican track team's performance on sunday. Usain Bolt's contemptuous 'I Am The Greatest' before he'd even crossed the line, followed by the women's clean sweep of the medals in their 100m event were, sadly, almost unbelievable. And we want to believe. In sport, we have to believe. That is the point, the outcome must be fair. And in athletics, this is reduced to a simple matter of mathematics. Fastest, furthest, highest. This clarity is one thing which seperates it from fictional drama. Without genuine achievements and a result which can be trusted, sport doesn't exist. It fails to create the right chemistry in the viewer, and is reduced to a staged tableau. A cheap display of freaks and masochists.
After the hideous damage to the lives of the users, the worst damage of drugs in sport is their destruction of the bond of faith between performance and audience. The cynicism and doubt which every event now faces. And it doesn't matter if, as with Usain Bolt, he looks nothing like a Ben Johnson knucklehead on crack. Or even if the winner is as obviously innocent as the lovely Shelley-Ann Fraser, claiming after her race that
The victory today of Christine Ohuruogu was a very ambiguous experience. Giving the benefit of the doubt, it was a great personal achievement. Her 1 year ban and victorious appeal were hardly a perfect build-up. And she is now legally free to perform. But she is an exception, The truth is that by allowing the cheat to benefit more from the same amount of training as the athlete, it is of as much use in preventing injury and strees as it is in inducing more intense muscle activity.
Also, the enhanced performances achieved by cheating 'stay in the legs', as the athletes put it. So during the period the undetected cheat is in competition, he is setting the standard for the genuine athletes and forcing them to train harder than they might otherwise, causing injury and poisoning the competition. Like a rhodedondron bush poisoning the ground beneath it.
A temporary ban is therefore a puny punishment for the network of suffering caused by drug use in sport. It is almost something a businesslike cheat could budget for, or get someone else to budget for them.
If drugs do win the damage will be even more wide ranging. Until now, sport provided a useful antidote to the need to believe in Father Xmas. Somedays your team won, somedays it lost. That's life. But if the winners in sport are not really the winners, to enjoy the spectacle we have to use a lot of wish-fulfillment. Those nice hardworking supermen and women deserve their glory because we believe they do. The world is nice because I believe it's nice. All is perfect, C21st, Confucian Harmony. As the games come to a close, we go back to the unrelenting theme of the opening ceremony in a huge pretentious cosmic circle.
Not the most progressive of political symbols.
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Beijing Olympics 2008
Any columnist worth their ticket agonising about whether they actually enjoyed what they saw, or whether the experience was fatally tainted by the background echo of drugs. Was this almost superhuman display of speed and strength an authentic sporting achievement, or merely another disillusionment in waiting, like so many Olympic glories of the past 20 years? Is it even now possible to appreciate sport in the same way it once was? Is sport dead? At least, until there is some guarantee of authenticity.
The climax was the Jamaican track team's performance on sunday. Usain Bolt's contemptuous 'I Am The Greatest' before he'd even crossed the line, followed by the women's clean sweep of the medals in their 100m event were, sadly, almost unbelievable. And we want to believe. In sport, we have to believe. That is the point, the outcome must be fair. And in athletics, this is reduced to a simple matter of mathematics. Fastest, furthest, highest. This clarity is one thing which seperates it from fictional drama. Without genuine achievements and a result which can be trusted, sport doesn't exist. It fails to create the right chemistry in the viewer, and is reduced to a staged tableau. A cheap display of freaks and masochists.
After the hideous damage to the lives of the users, the worst damage of drugs in sport is their destruction of the bond of faith between performance and audience. The cynicism and doubt which every event now faces. And it doesn't matter if, as with Usain Bolt, he looks nothing like a Ben Johnson knucklehead on crack. Or even if the winner is as obviously innocent as the lovely Shelley-Ann Fraser, claiming after her race that
"Yam, banana and dumpling make top three!"There will always now be a splinter of doubt digging into what should be a moment of joyful identification with a human being achieving something they want more than anything else in the world. The essential sympathy between 'player' and audience is destroyed, or cut short at best. It is not possible to feel sympathy with a cheat. And the prevalence of drugs makes everyone a possible cheat. Everyone is guilty until found innocent, which is not very sporting.
The victory today of Christine Ohuruogu was a very ambiguous experience. Giving the benefit of the doubt, it was a great personal achievement. Her 1 year ban and victorious appeal were hardly a perfect build-up. And she is now legally free to perform. But she is an exception, The truth is that by allowing the cheat to benefit more from the same amount of training as the athlete, it is of as much use in preventing injury and strees as it is in inducing more intense muscle activity.
Also, the enhanced performances achieved by cheating 'stay in the legs', as the athletes put it. So during the period the undetected cheat is in competition, he is setting the standard for the genuine athletes and forcing them to train harder than they might otherwise, causing injury and poisoning the competition. Like a rhodedondron bush poisoning the ground beneath it.
A temporary ban is therefore a puny punishment for the network of suffering caused by drug use in sport. It is almost something a businesslike cheat could budget for, or get someone else to budget for them.
If drugs do win the damage will be even more wide ranging. Until now, sport provided a useful antidote to the need to believe in Father Xmas. Somedays your team won, somedays it lost. That's life. But if the winners in sport are not really the winners, to enjoy the spectacle we have to use a lot of wish-fulfillment. Those nice hardworking supermen and women deserve their glory because we believe they do. The world is nice because I believe it's nice. All is perfect, C21st, Confucian Harmony. As the games come to a close, we go back to the unrelenting theme of the opening ceremony in a huge pretentious cosmic circle.
Not the most progressive of political symbols.
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Beijing Olympics 2008
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