Loving It

OK so the Olympic Games shouldn’t be in Beijing. But it really has been quite a show.

And this might be a horribly old fashioned view, completely lacking the cynicism of the times but I’m loving the exploits of the British team (not Team GB. Please everyone stop saying Team GB).

The misery of, well, of pretty much everything that we read, see and hear has been lifted by news of Chris Hoy, of Becca Adlington, of all of them really.

Everyone seems to be talking about it, mostly in disbelief, but all the conversations are bathed in smiles. That’s good. Sport can’t change the course of a nation but I think it has proved that most of us don’t have it nearly as bad as the media would have us believe. A few gold medals and we’re all smiles, patriotism and bonhomie.

A shame that the minute the team get back we’ll be subjected to more negativity about 2012. We’re lumbered with it now so let’s get on with it and throw open our arms and welcome the world. That’s all we can do.

And our athletes have proved that whatever else it might be the Olympic Games can still be an enthralling festival of humanity.

Harrumph!

Edinburgh audiences. Two middle aged women shouting inane abuse at the stage at the Corn Exchange. A group of guys with machine gun delivery of inane “banter” at the cricket on Monday making two gross misjudgments: first they laboured for the whole day under the impression that they were hysterically funny, second they felt the need to pump up the volume to give us all the chance to share in the party.

Worst was the besuited business types who laughed just that bit too easily and too genuinely at the more racist and sexist parts of Jerry Sadowitz’s act at the Udderbelly.

Common theme: they were all drunk.

Common theme number two: my rage.

Let the Games Begin

Finally, after the posturing, campaigning and general hoohah the Olympics kick off tomorrow.

As an aside - the Opening Ceremony is FIVE hours long. Clearly stage one of the mighty Chinese charm offensive is to bore us all to death.

Great to see before a race has been run, a hammer been tossed, Jacques Rogge asking people not to use the Olympics for propaganda purposes. Wish his own IOC had thought about that before allowing China to launch the most expensive propaganda campaign in history.

Great to see George Bush having a go about China’s human rights. Let’s leave aside the hypocrisy of that and imagine that he does mean it. In that case he really has nothing to lose by making a real stand: You didn’t need to get on the plane George!

Great to see China asking people not to interfere in the internal politics of another country. Pretty much what people in Tibet have been saying all along.

It has actually been heartening to see that some of the athletes have signed an open letter condemning some Chinese policies. A bit more of that would be good: The athletes deserve this stage and I think they should use it however they see fit - even if that means refusing to be bullied by the IOC.

I vaguely know one of the British protesters who was arrested after climbing a pole and unfurling a Tibetan flag (it seems such a quaint protest). You’ve got to admire their guts and dedication. You might disagree with their methods. You might not even agree with their cause. But we should at least applaud them for providing such a global antidote to the apparent apathy of a generation.

Question: Will I watch the sport? Yes I will. The athletes dedicate their lives to reach this stage. I think they deserve our support. It is not their fault that the biggest event of their careers is run by a cabal of, at worst, corrupt bureaucrats or, at best, ignorant incompetents.

Julie and Jeremy

The fallout from the great Julie Burchill - George Monbiot stand off has seen some of our American cousins brand Ms Burchill the UK’s very own Ann Coulter.

I think not. Ms Coulter, although clearly every bit as ridiculous as Julie, still seems to retain relevance for certain sections of the American right. Burchill has been claimed and disclaimed by both right and left in the UK but is now only relevant to whichever newspaper is paying her to deliver her increasingly pointless columns.

In fact, listening to that little girl whine slagging off environmentalists, cyclists and anyone else who doesn’t fit her “gang” I was struck by how closely she resembles someone much closer to home. The tweenie who never grew up: Julie is nothing more than the female Jeremy Clarkson.

PS

Chas Newkey-Brown, who co-authored Julie’s new tome (essentially: How everyone in Britain is crap except us), likes to write glowing reviews of his own books on Amazon. Classy guy.
PPS

In a fit of insomnia last night I found myself watching Jeremy/Julie on Top Gear with his little clique of odious twerps. There was some contrived feature about the German version of Top Gear. Cast your mind back to 1996 and the storm caused by the Mirror’s anti German front page. I don’t think that came as close to being as offensive as Jeremy and his little friends were on Top Gear. Not only do they get away with it - they are lauded for it. Why?

Crazy Tory Madness

On the subject of a broken society. This story about a Tory parliamentary candidate has gone on a sustained bender of hate against his Lib Dem rivals.

There’s something amusing in the sheer lunacy of this story. At least he was attacking his rivals - unlike the East Lothian Labour Party. Allegedly.

Must Do Better

Gove-y Ding

Little Michael Gove yesterday opened up another front in Dave Cameron’s Conservative Party battle against our broken society.

Thus far this campaign has involved blaming father’s for all the ills of society. This theme developed yesterday when Gove decried men’s magazines: “Titles such as Nuts and Zoo paint a picture of women as permanently, lasciviously, uncomplicatedly available. We should ask those who make profits out of revelling in, or encouraging, selfish irresponsibility among young men what they think they’re doing,” he whimpered.

Quite. He’s not wrong. But does this intelligent man think that he’s really hit the jackpot? Does he think that changing these magazine’s will make the blindest bit of difference? If he does, he’s wrong.

Does he think this is a new phenomenon? Is the Tory Party so out of touch that it has missed this “laddish” culture for the past 15 or so years. They can’t have because Dave himself is quite happy to borrow from it when it suits him.

And are we to accept that the idea of women as “permanently, lasciviously, uncomplicatedly available” is new. Does Mr Gove think that it’s acceptable that our biggest selling daily paper serves up naked 18 year olds to salivating males every day? Why no mention of The Sun in his speech? Does he ever mention his worries when he picks up the £65000 that The Sun’s owner pays him each year to top up his MP’s wage? Probably not.

Does he mention the objectifying of women when the Tory Party is partying on down with Peter Stringfellow. Probably not.

And this is a male problem? No mention of the “ladette” culture. No mention of women getting dressed down to go for a night out binge drinking and picking up blokes. Women’s magazines are let off the hook. Acceptable in Mr Gove’s bizarre little world that More, read by if not aimed at teenage girls, has a position of the month? What is that encouraging?

Michael Gove picked a soft target and still missed with his best shots. If you want a debate on our fractured society then please begin one. Don’t rant about things that, in the cold light of day, seem entirely pointless and are underscored by a deep seated hypocrisy.

Where the Power Lies

A cheap and tasteless illustration. That I couldn't resist.

I’ve not written anything about the contest to replace Wendy Alexander as leader of the Labour Party at Holyrood. Truly, life seems too short to care. That attitude - and I think a lot of people share it - shows the seriousness of Labour’s current woes in Scotland.

They are, on the face of it, the opposition party with the numbers in parliament to make life tricky for Alex Salmond. So far they’ve made life tricky for themselves.

The contenders are:

Andy Kerr. Former Health Minister and one time right hand man of Jack McConnell. Steered the smoking ban through Holyrood. Which I suppose makes him responsible for the only legacy Labour really has from their years in power. But one time right hand man of Jack McConnell - is a past subservience to Scotland’s least impressive politician any qualification to lead a party?

Cathy Jamieson. Acting Leader. Strikes me as one of the many Labour MSP’s who has found Holyrood too much of stretch for her abilities. I’m sure she’s competent but she was, at best, a safe pair of hands in government and no more. Might be a novelty value (as shown when she stepped in for Alexander) in her clashes with Salmond but not much more: If being berated by Alexander was like being attacked by a neurotic Business Studies teacher, being lectured by Jamieson would be like getting a telling off from an extra from The Steamie. Might, however, shore up the core Labour vote at a time when that is needed.

Iain Gray. A man so lacking in charisma he couldn’t fight off the challenge of David McLetchie in Edinburgh Pentlands - an election campaign that had all the appeal of two bank managers discussing the future direction of the local Rotarians. Now a safe seat in East Lothian. That gives a powerbase. But East Lothian would vote in Bernard Manning if he wore a red rosette (I know - I was once one of their youngest members). The lesser of three evils or the runt of the pack?

So many choices, such little excitement. Too close to call. I’ll take a punt on Jamieson with the proviso that for the purposes of this election they should focus less on policy and Salmond baiting than on the future direction of Labour in Scotland. An autonomous Scottish Labour Party would give the new leader a more legitimate voice in a Holyrood parliament that is, at the moment, largely doing Salmond’s bidding for him.

An interesting article in today’s Scotsman (and you don’t often say that these days) suggest that the important election this summer is not Labour but the Lib Dems. If the SNP can take Jack McConnell’s seat at the by election then the Lib Dems would be back as powerbrokers - possibly even coalition partners. That, I would suggest, backs up my original point that Mike Rumbles would be both the brave and sensible choice.

Solzhenitsyn: Let the Battles Begin

A great writer dies and his work is celebrated. Or his politics and view of history are laid bare to attack from all sides. That’s the case with William Harrison having a go at Alexander Solzhenitsyn in The Guardian today.

I don’t go along with the increasing trend to canonise everyone before they’ve even been shipped off their deathbed.

But I wonder if sometimes people just go out to shock for the sake of it (as I did, in an entirely different  - and lesser - context here). If that was not Mr Harrison’s intent then his critique would have been better founded on something more solid than a few historical articles and the ramblings of an old man who felt uncomfortable with the excesses of capitalism.

On a personal note: I first encountered Solzhenitsyn’s work when I read A Day in the Life of Ivan Desinovich at school. I was the only person in the class who chose to read it. Which made the study groups a rather solitary experience. I thought then, and I think now, that it was the rest of the class who were missing out.