Monday Moan 16

Protests spread over shocking insult to Royalists

Royalists around the world have reacted against the publication of photographs of The Duchess of Cambridge sunbathing topless in the garden of her holiday home.  Protesters in every corner of the world have taken to the streets to demonstrate their opposition.

 "Those who should be held accountable, punished, prosecuted and boycotted are those directly responsible for these photographs and those who stand behind them and those who support and protect them, primarily the French," a leading protester said.

He said that British and Commonwealth governments should press for an enforceable international law banning insults to the British and other royal families.

There have been protests over the photographs in cities around the world in recent days, with spontaneous demonstrations by mobs of angry old ladies, who have made fairy cakes and set up bring and buy stalls outside French embassies. When questioned, none of the protesters had actually seen the photographs, but they had read about it in the Daily Mail so knew it must be true.

The “tut-tutting” could be heard from miles around.

The obscure, poor quality photographs at the centre of the row show the Duchess as a beautiful, if rather thin, young woman, comfortable with her body and with her new husband, apparently deeply in love and unaware that she is being spied upon.

The world needed to know Royalists "would not be silent in the face of this insult", said the protester, who branded the photographs the most dangerous insult to Royalists ever.

 

Didn’t take long, did it?

Oh dear, the Guardian's columnist Simon Jenkins has become the first journalist I have seen to break with the self-imposed restraint code operated by the media during the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

In his column on 11th September  he takes a number of huge swipes at the "sobbing with joy and weeping with ecstacy" of the London media and politicians. Nice touch to suggest it was a London issue - that should help garner support from everywhere else.

He makes numerous references to "throwing public money" at problems and contrasts Danny Boyle's entertainers and the athletes with the "nasty taste of the International Committee, it's ZiL lanes and fats cats" - lovely populist stuff there, particularly the mention of unnamed 'fat cats' - who doesn't despise them?

Of course, his praise for Danny Boyle's entertainers does not sit well with his condemnation of the "extra £40m on the opening ceremony", but hey, who needs consistency when you are ranting?

Wild, unsupported and contentious statements litter this apology for serious journalism - "this proves only that unrestricted public spending can work wonders" - well, yes it can, but then again it might also be just a waste of money unless it is properly controlled and with a specific aim.  "The same is true of defence. No sum is considered too great and no return too abstract". Oh really?  Why then have we had such an uproar about defence cuts? No unrestricted public spending there, surely?

And then the priceless "if it [the Government] can blow £9.3bn on sport why not shower money on intellectually rather than physically gifted young people and call it a university?". (note: it’s difficult to find official Government data, but some estimates suggest that public expenditure on tertiary education has been more that £10bn each year since the Olympics were awarded to London)

The whole article is full of statements that could be picked apart, but why bother? The press is back where it feels most at home - criticising, carping, undermining.  It was a lovely summer without this insidious nonsense, but all good things must come to an end I suppose. It would have been nice if we could have had a few more days though, but I guess they were champing at the bit for the Games to end. Normal service has been resumed.

 

 

Sports Personality of the Year (SPOTY)

According to Barney Ronay, apparently chief sports writer of The Guardian, the reason for Andy Murray having taken so long to become a real British sporting personality is nothing to do with him being sullen, scruffy, chip-on-both-shoulders, spoilt youth, but the fact that he was not born in Surrey.  He calls on the great British public to demonstrate that SPOTY can be "more than a self-serving irrelevance stewarded by a clique of home counties voters".  No sign of The Guardian pandering again to the anti-London and the South-East brigade there then.

Equally, no guidance from Barney as to who that 'clique of home counties voters' would like to see crowned SPOTY this time - so how are we to know who shouldn't get our vote?  He suggests they would chose to vote for people like Steve Redgrave and Seb Coe, as if this was somehow wrong.  How can it be wrong to support people who, in their eras, were the best in the world at times when Britain was not endowed with many who deserved that title?

It's all very well writing humorously Barney, but have an eye for factual accuracy and at least a modicum of logic.

 

 

Downton Abbey

Apparently, I am not allowed to say anything about Downton Abbey, the story of every-day, simple folk now set in the years after the First World War.  It is a national treasure above lampooning.

 

 

 

 

Monday Moan 15

Special End of Festivities Edition

 

 

Mad Max and Mogadon

What a brilliant party the Olympics and Paralympics has been!  Loved the sport, loved the overall atmosphere, loved weather (!), loved the inspirational performances of all the athletes, loved the superb organisation, loved the way that London in particular, and the rest of the UK (as far as I could see) have embraced it all and shown the world a side of the UK not often seen.

Of course, there has been an unwritten rule that nobody is supposed to make any comments on the things that haven’t gone well, but readers of the Moan will know that this has not stopped me from pointing out a few things that have annoyed me over the last few weeks.

So, in the spirit of calling it as I see it, I am sorry but I have to say it was just such a shame that the closing ceremony yesterday should have no connection that I could discern with the most amazing Paralympic Games apart from spaces for a few disabled performers amongst the thousands who took part.  I kept thinking ‘Why?’   We have been through all the emotions from amazement to awe at the immense achievements of people with so many different disabilities. And then we have to finish with a Mad Max pastiche, with pointless posturing from actors and some of the most mind-numbingly boring music in the world from Coldplay, the music industry's answer to insomnia.

 

What did it all cost?  What was it all about?  Why was so much of the music pre-recorded and not live?  Why Coldplay?  Why couldn’t we have something shorter and more relevant to the Games?

 

 

Where was the tension?

I have had the opportunity to attend many major sporting events in the past. Each has had its own atmosphere and has been focused on a particular sport.  Some have been more enjoyable than others.  So many things can contribute to that overall feeling – the standard of the sport, the weather, the people you are with, the atmosphere at the event. 

On any measure the Olympics and Paralympics have been different.

Most of my sporting experiences have been spent at team events, usually where I was supporting one side over the other.  Most of that has involved football, although other sports have had their moments too.

So, attending the Paralympics was a real culture shock.  Where was the constant underlying threat of physical violence between supporters, the bad language, having to fight your way into the venues past the ticket touts, hot dog stalls, and street vendors flogging t-shirts and the like, the booing of national anthems, vicious abuse of supporters of the other side, the sullen silences and refusal to acknowledge skills shown by the other side?

Instead we have had good-natured and friendly crowds, keen to applaud all the athletes and recognise both effort and achievement. People were able to walk to the stadium without fear, they did not have to worry about their safety or that of their families, they did not need to beware of pickpockets, they could watch the sports without being assaulted by bad language and snarling groups of men.  Of course, there has been patriotism by the bucket-load, with the crowds in a frenzy of support for British competitors, but this has all been within the overall context of support for all the competitors of whatever nationality.  The cheers for the international ‘stars’ were as loud as those for the British favourites.

No doubt normal service will be resumed now that the Games are over.  That’s a shame, but I realise that it is also reality.

 

 

Boris is still a clown – surely?

I am completely baffled as to how on earth Boris the Clown has been transformed in the eyes of part of the media and, it seems, the public, into Boris the National Treasure. 

 

Boris is still the same man who can be relied upon to say something inappropriate, who looks and sounds like the village-idiot far too often to be taken seriously – isn’t he?

Perhaps he’ll make an appearance at the forthcoming Conservative Party Conference and be greeted as some kind of Messiah-like figure?  He certainly seems to have been the recipient of the kind headlines and acclaim that David Cameron must have hoped might come his way. 

But how long will it take before reality asserts itself, and Boris is once again seen as a figure of fun rather than a potential future Prime Minister?  By Christmas, I’d say.

 

 

Channel 4 - consistent to the end

 

Channel  4 have had mixed reviews for their coverage.  Deserved plaudits for providing more coverage than others managed for previous Games and for trying very hard to explain the complicated arrangements for deciding which of the many categories each athlete should be in.

Unfortunately, they continued to display all the irritating things that had plagued their coverage from the start.  I could pick on almost any day from the Games to illustrate my point, but rather than repeat things I have said before let’s just look at their efforts on the day that Oscar Pistorius and the rest of the South African team won gold in the 4 x 100 metres relay.  Channel  4 showed the previous race just before 10pm.  At the end of that race we could see the relay athletes warming up in the background whilst the interviews were taking place.  Unfortunately, they  then cut away to something else and returned to show the relay half an hour later.  They showed the race as if it was live and cut back to the studio, completely missing the fact that the 2^nd and 3^rd placed teams had been disqualified.  Earlier in the day interviews with athletes after the 100 metres heats all included questions about Oscar Pistorius’s outburst earlier in the week, despite his subsequent apology – they just wouldn’t let it go. 
 

Shoddy work.

Finally, we won’t cheer everything regardless

George Osborne, Theresa May, Jeremy Hunt and Sepp Blatter were all recipients of a barrage of booing when they presented medals at the Games.  Boris Johnson, Gordon Brown and Tessa Jowell were cheered.    So the crowds were not so swept up in the general euphoria surrounding the games that they would cheer anyone and anything.  At least David Cameron had the good fortune to be presenting Ellie Simmonds with a medal, so his own boos were drowned-out by her cheers.

Monday Moan 14

Special Paralympic Edition

 

 

Paralympics – is it News?

Channel 4’s coverage of the Paralympics has drawn even more complaints than did the BBC’s of the main Olympics.  Of course, it’s easy to pick on small things and perhaps blow them out of proportion, but as I have said previously, it’s attention to detail that matters!

So, we start with their ponderous coverage of the Opening Ceremony.  Like the BBC, Channel 4 decided that this should be fronted by a newsman rather than a sports journalist.  I can understand that.  But was Jon Snow really the best choice available?  Presumably because he didn’t know much about sport he decided that he would introduce each of the participating nations by referring to whether or not they were in the process of a civil war or had suffered similar problems in recent years.  Interesting in almost any other context, but not for the Paralympics, surely?

I saw Jon Snow on the Breakfast show on Channel 4 the morning after the Opening Ceremony.  He talked about how he had been affected by the build-up to the Games.  He said he was a hardened hack, a cynic, a sceptic, who usually demanded “bring me the bad news”.  But he said that “this period has seen the media behave in a completely un-media way, so the question is will we behave better, will we behave cleaner, will we behave and perhaps reflect the goodness of humanity a little more?”  

Er, no, I don’t think so.

  

Paralympics – got something to sell?

Those of us used to watching our sport on the BBC (OK, not so much of it these days, now that Sky has bought the rights to just about everything) had been grateful that their Olympic coverage was uninterrupted by the commercial breaks that are a fact of life on every other channel.

No such luck with the Paralympics, unfortunately. It’s not that they take their breaks at particularly unfortunate times, although that has happened on occasions, including during the Opening Ceremony, but it’s also that cutting away to adverts destroys the continuity and the atmosphere.

  

Paralympics – things that Channel 4 should not have copied from the BBC

OK, asking Clare Balding to front the main evening programme after her starring role for the BBC was a smart move.  Sitting her alongside Ade Adepitan was more questionable from a number of angles – they do not have the same rapport as Clare had with Mark Foster during the BBC’s coverage, and where they were seen to be facing each other and having a conversation, she and Ade are facing the camera and one of them, at least, is reading a script.

I am not vain enough to imagine that my criticisms of aspects of the BBC’s coverage would have been noticed by anybody, but I was not alone in many of my views.  It’s a shame, therefore, that Channel 4 appears to have been copying the BBC’s approach, presumably because it is so lacking in experience of covering such events and so thought it best to follow the leader.  For example;-

I criticised the BBC in MOAN 10 for its insistence on screening pre-recorded pieces to introduce events and getting the timing wrong so that we missed some of the important build up.  Unfortunately, Channel 4 has been doing exactly the same thing.  Channel 4 has also failed to prefect the art of subtefuge.  Trying to cover up the fact that it has not got to the live action in time following its pre-recorded pieces, it has been editing the stadium introductions to the athletes before races to pretend that they are live.  Unfortunately, Channel 4 has failed to realise that live crowds make noise and get animated, so cutting from pictures and sounds of a frenzied reception for an athlete to the actual live shots right at the start of the race doesn’t fool anybody, since the crowd by that time is quiet and still;

I criticised the BBC for constantly plugging its own shows (MOAN 10) – unfortunately Channel 4 is doing the same thing.  As a result I am taking a principled stand and will be refusing to watch ‘Shameless’ or use Channel 4 OD, since both have been so heavily plugged; and

I criticised the BBC for its post-race interviewing techniques (MOAN 10 and MOAN 11) – whilst, mercifully, Channel 4 has not so far come up with anybody like Phil Jones, the questions being fired at competitors at the end of each race or event are so banal and pointless they almost make me wish for the adverts to cut in!

 

 

Paralympics - Don’t forget us

The BBC has been in a difficult position, given that it is not actually broadcasting the Paralympics.  So we have seen that on most days the BBC News has taken the Paralympics as the main news item – partly because until now our politicians have been on holiday and so we don’t have to be subjected to their often meaningless statements (all about to change now that they are drifting back to work).

But in the spirit of fun that the Paralympics has generated, the BBC provided a highlight on Sunday’s main news programme by relegating Australia from the top 3 of the medal table and installing Afghanistan instead.  Those who hadn’t been following the medal table may have wondered how such a war-torn and desperately poor country had managed to find such excellence in its Paralympians – but the truth was that they hadn’t, of course.  It was nice while it lasted though. There is a part of me that just can’t help wondering if it was a wind-up designed to rub salt into Australian wounds?

  

 



Cheering on GB?

I was lucky enough to be able to go to the athletics on Saturday night.  It was an unforgettable occasion and all that has been said about the enthusiasm and friendliness of the crowds was true as far as I could see. 

Of course, it was disappointing that there were no GB victories to celebrate on Saturday.  No chance to bellow out the national anthem.  But that didn’t stop the mass waving of Union Jacks, even if it did seem somehow strange that the loudest roars and the wildest flag-waving were for victories by two Irishmen and a South African.  I’m sure the same would have happened in reverse had the games been held in Dublin or Cape Town.  Maybe the crowd were confused by the Irish colours being worn by men from Belfast and Derry?