Tag Archives: sport

Bigger, dearer, exclusiver

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by Media • Tags: ,

The other day there was Sebastian Coe (who I remember as that slim young magical runner, not the middle aged Lord Coe he has become) did one of those “Here come the Olympics” Press occasions, this time to announce 100 days to go until London launches into its third Olympics. This time of course it will be a vastly different event to those of 1908 (when the modern games had barely begun) and 1948 (when Britain used it, though in a very austere way, as a way of firmly leaving the war behind). And that difference over the course of just over 100 years I suppose sums up why my interest in the Olympic Games now verges on zero.

The sums of money now spent to hold an Olympic Games are obscene. Huge stadia are built, transport reorganised, media outlets pay for exclusive rights, gimcrackery souvenirs are produced in landfill quantities. Most facilities continue in use for a short time, then fall into disuse, then get demolished. Rarely do facilities built for the specific conditions of the games suit what an individual city may later need. The result of all that is that the major criterion used to evaluate Games “Bids” (and that is a whole other topic) are whether a city and country can afford them. No poor country could hold a modern games, and that in itself is a damning inditement of the loss of the “Olympic Spirit”. As is the tendency for winning cities (most notably China) to bulldoze poor housing and move beggars off the streets, so as not to detract from the glossiness.

And if poor countries can’t afford to hold the Games, athletes from poor countries can’t afford to hold Olympic medals. Once upon a time the Olympic mythology echoed “it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, it’s how you play the game” credo. Not any more. It has long been known that the number of medals a country wins (and the Olympics was supposed not to be a competition between countries but athletes) is directly proportional to how much money a country spends (so much so that Australian Olympic officials keep demanding more and more money otherwise our “medal count” will go down). These days sports training is a science, and equipment is also very important (the Australian bobsled team was complaining the other day they had a $5000 dollar sled and needed a $25,000 one to be competitive. I hate to think how much things like cycles and rowing boats cost). Athletes from the great majority of countries in the world have no chance of winning a medal, no matter how much natural talent a swimmer from, say, Guinea-Bissau might have.

Look if the Games were like those of 1908, where Australians with a bit of natural swimming or running talent paid their own way to Britain to chance their arm (and legs) against the best other amateurs who turned up, I would be happy to wave a little Australian flag and cheer them along. But Olympics 2012? I doubt I’ll bother watching.

What about you?

Since sliced bread

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by Uncategorized • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Was doing some cleaning up, sorting out, the Steptoesque room that is my Study, when the question arose as to whether to keep some old atlases. The answer was sort of yes, but only on the basis that I can’t bear to throw out books like that, and that I have always loved maps. But got me thinking about recent changes in the way we live now. If I want to check on something about a country, look at a map, I use the internet, not a big printed atlas. So what else has changed? Well, here is a list I put together quickly of things that no longer apply or happen that we once used to take for granted:

Wearing a wrist watch
Using lined paper
Using liquid ink
Using actual money
Using reference books
Having a newspaper delivered
Cutting unsliced bread
Postcards
Telegrams
Going to movies
Having phone plugged into wall
Shorthand
Having written address and birthday books
Following a sporting team that isn’t an “investment”
Being totally surprised by weather change
Use logarithms or slide rules
Having a piece of film developed
Speaking on phone to real person in a company
Lowering a stylus on to a music record
Visiting a bank in person

When climate change really starts to kick in, there are going to be a lot more things we can’t do that we once took for granted. But what else can you think of that we used to commonly do but do no longer? Come on, thinking caps on, elephant stamp for the mostest and bestest.

Addicted country

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , , , ,

When I was a young fellow I took up smoking. Well, when I say took up smoking, I mean I had hidden a packet of cigarettes in the garage, and about once a fortnight, when home alone, I would bravely smoke one. Even after I had left home I would smoke no more than say a couple of times a week, especially at parties, and could say, quite truthfully, that I could stop any time, no worries. And then, somehow, don’t know how it happened, one day I was smoking 2 cigarettes a day, the next I was smoking two packs a day, sometimes opening a third, and it took me over twenty five years to kick the habit, leaving me with damaged lungs and, it turned out later, a damaged heart.

Conservatives are fond of invoking “slippery slopes” or “dominos” or “thin ends of wedges” – legalise marijuana and within a week or two 8 million children will be injecting heroin and smoking crack cocaine. Legalise gay marriage and within a matter of days civilisation as we know it will come to an end and people will be marrying their hamsters. Treat refugee children decently by bringing them out from behind razor wire and letting them lead moderately normal lives in the community and you are opening the floodgates to boatloads of children arriving and over-running the country. Pay the unemployed a level of dole that will prevent them and their children from starving to death and the whole population will give up work. Treat single mothers with compassion and every teenage girl in the country will become pregnant. Allow the North Vietnamese to reunite and run their own country and next you know they will be invading Cape York. Land Rights for a few traditional Aborigines and they will take over your backyards. Treat prisoners in jail like human beings and there won’t be a member of the population who isn’t going on a crime spree. Permit women to vote and before you can say “barefoot and pregnant” they will be running the country. Oh, sorry, that one was right.

Always such warnings follow the same script. They involve the rich and powerful trying to ensure (and usually succeeding) that the poor and disadvantaged will not be treated decently and will not get a bigger share of the cake, or indeed get any cake at all. They are often motivated by the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is having a good time. A determination to make sure that the lesser orders are kept under the thumb and under control. The mechanisms of falling dominos are so transparently false as to be laughable if they didn’t ruin people’s lives.

So here are people who purport to be the Cassandras of modern Australia, saving civilisation from the liberal barbarians within the gates, single-handedly holding back the tide, preventing Australia going to hell in a hand cart, holding the bridge, whichever metaphor you prefer for maintaining Australian society in exactly the state it was in during the 1950s before the rot of the 1960s spoiled it for true blue conservatives. While at the same time they are not just happy, but often actively involved in, setting in action processes, dominos on slippery slopes, based not on “morals” but on money, that are changing Australia to something that Robert Menzies could not have imagined in his worst nightmares.

The sale of alcohol, recognising its dangers to society, was once carefully controlled – early closing hours, alcohol only available in pubs and bottle shops, or with a meal in a licensed restaurant. And then the pressure came on – unfair to trade, uncivilised, could drink at home why not in other places – and before we had time to take a breath, see what was happening we were a society awash with alcohol. Bars and clubs stayed open all night, alcohol could be bought just about anywhere. Our city streets became no go zones as drunken teenagers fought and vomited, our pubs became places where there could be extreme violence, as did many homes. Well, obviously, you would think, we need to reduce alcohol consumption, return to the regime of, say, 40 years ago. Closing time for pubs 10pm, for alcohol sales in clubs maybe midnight, clubs closing at 2am, retail outlets cut back to pubs and bottleshops, sale of the alcopop type ready-mixed drinks deliberately marketed to teenagers banned. Problem solved. Except, it seems, we are now addicted not only to alcohol but to the unrestricted sale of alcohol. Any attempt to limit its availability is met with howls of outrage and political pressure from the liquor “industry”. To hell with society, the liquor industry is in the business of maintaining its now massive profits.

Gambling has been the same. Once heavily restricted, the slippery slope began virtually unnoticed. Couple of pokie machines in a club, just for fun, where’s the harm? Betting on sport as well as the horses? Well, why not? Gambling online? Of course, if we don’t other countries will. Betting on minor events during a cricket match – bit of a giggle. And so on. Suddenly we have a massive gambling habit, ruined lives, match fixing, which seems impossible to kick. Tens of thousands of poker machines fill clubs and pubs and can’t be reduced or removed or regulated in any way without reducing profits scream the club industry and its political representatives.

Go to war and take casualties and it is impossible to withdraw without disrespecting the sacrifice those casualties represent, so we stay longer and take more casualties, which makes the argument stronger for staying longer. Allow some water to be removed from the Murray-Darling for minor irrigation projects and suddenly farmers can’t do without it, and country towns have riots in the streets, and the river runs dry. Put some public money into private schools out of a mistaken idea of equity and next thing you are funding fundamentalist religious schools springing up like mushrooms and with a political voice which means you can’t stop funding them. Let private tourist operations into National Parks and bingo, in order to keep making a profit they have to expand with more and more access and features and facilities. Privatise telecommunications and public transport companies and they will decide who will get services and under what circumstances they will get them. Build a wood chip mill on the basis of using plantation timber, and when it runs out, switch to old growth because the mill is employing people and therefore cannot stop production. Build an industry based on coal and you can’t reduce greenhouse gas production.

In every case the money involved at the end of the slippery slope is addictive. The companies and communities become addicted to the money and there is no going back, no climbing back up the slope to undo the damage. The attempts to remove cigarette smoking from our society are instructive – battles every inch of the way as advertising was reduced, smoking areas closed, taxes increased, packaging and display controlled. Slowly trying to overcome the addiction of the community to the effects of cigarettes. Just like undoing an individual addiction.

If I could have a word with my teenage self I would tell him to ditch the cigarette packet, don’t get started. If conservatives are really so concerned to conserve a Menzies Dreamtime they should move from the top of the imaginary slippery slopes where they contemplate boat people and single mothers and drug addicts and the unemployed, and begin looking back up from the bottom of the real slippery slopes of alcohol abuse, forest loss, religious schools, dying rivers, gambling addiction, a warming planet, help us figure out how we can fight our way back up the slope to a more civilised Australia.

Cross-posted at ABC Unleashed.

Up there Cazaly

by Education, Media • Tags: , , , , ,

So, another football season has come and gone. Hooray. Oh I used to follow football, a bit, when I was younger, managed to get excited when “my” teams won, became briefly downhearted when they didn’t. Even went to a game or two of the WANFL (shows how old I am) in Perth as a teenager. But I began to lose interest when the codes became professional. When the WA and SA leagues were relegated to amateur hour and the AFL took over with artificial teams like the Eagles and Crows being created (back in the good old days, teams were actually based in a district, and were referred to accordingly, this creation of artificial teams with idiotic non-location based “names” was another turn-off). Similarly in Rugby League as the Broncos and Raiders emerged. I started to find I had little interest in who won these artificial contests and indeed could barely remember who had won the competitions the previous year.

But mainly I suppose the rise and rise of millionaire football players was the turn off. Always discussion during the season, and outside the season, about footballers behaving badly. Every week or two some footballer will not only get drunk out of his brain but emerge from a nightclub or pub at 5am to let the world, and the local police force, know that he is drunk out of his brain by committing various unacceptable acts. Sports commentators, presumably on the basis that it’s best not to throw the first stone never knowing whose glasshouse is in the way, generally don’t condemn the acts as such. Men are men after all, and a bit of violence is only to be expected – on and off the field. No the criticism is always along the lines that these people are “role models” for the young. Indeed I heard one commentator say in effect that the reason why footballers had bank accounts bigger than the budgets of some small countries was not because they played football but because they were being paid to be role models, so they weren’t earning their pay when they appeared, behaving badly, on CCTV cameras outside nightclubs.

Now it has never occurred to me to have a footballer as a role model, so I would join in the hysterical laughter from CEOs of football clubs (who pay millions, and juggle salary caps, for one reason, and one reason only – to win premierships) when that statement was made. But there is anyway a curiously restricted view of what a role model is. For sports commentators a role model is purely a negative thing – a footballer should avoid doing drugs, getting drunk in public, abusing women. Now I guess this is fine as far as it goes, but since there must be 21, 999,000 people, including me, who also don’t do those things, I am not sure exactly how a footballer not doing them either qualifies for role modelhood.

It is hard to imagine, conversely, any positive aspects of being a role model that a footballer can do. The only reason these guys are in the public eye is that they have an ability to catch and kick a football. In all other respects they are no different to the average guy in the pub on a Friday night, or walking down the street on a Monday morning. So why would you choose (unless you wanted to be a footballer) a footballer as a role model for, well, life I suppose? If I was advising young people as to who they could look to as role models for their future life I might advise them to consider nurses, teachers, police officers, scientists, soldiers, aged care workers, conservationists, farmers, emergency workers, public servants. If they used those people as role models I don’t think we would need to call on footballers to fill the, er, role.

Unless you wanted to be a footballer and earn far more money than any of those good people I have mentioned.

Tar baby

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , ,

“New allegations of racism in sport”. One of those headlines that write themselves while subeditors have a day off (like “Offshore oil well massively leaks oil” or “Billionaire miners hate paying tax”). So rather than just have a day off myself, while the keyboard does the writing of the usual cliches, let’s have a look at the meaning behind the latest examples of racism in society, oops, sport. In particular let’s look at the reaction to the nastiness that those three former footballers spouted, rather than the nastiness itself.

The first thing to note, and I am sure you will be as surprised by this as I was, is that no racist remarks are apparently ever made by actual, you know, racists. And conversely, of course, it follows that no racist ever makes racist remarks. Confused? I am. Both groups, it seems, need to do some thinking about which club they belong to and if they find that the club they should be in is happy to accept them perhaps that isn’t a club they want to join. The friends of one of the footballers used the “I’m not racist, some of my best friends are blacks” routine on his behalf. The other one used, on his own behalf, apparently unable to find friends, the equally old “I’m not a racist I’m just an idiot”. And then, apparently willing to leave no cliche unturned, followed it with “It was just a joke”, and then the tried and true “If anyone was offended I apologise to them” routine, clearly offended at the idea that anyone could be offended by some good old fashioned remarks about cannibals, and blacks being invisible at night. It was good to hear these golden oldies could still raise some laughs on the night they were delivered. What a great audience. And then the third one was said to be “devastated” by, um, you know, what HE had said, and he wasn’t a racist either, had a “good record” it was said..

The sports journalists came out in support. These people of course are as likely to criticise their sportsmen mates as financial journalists are to criticise their banking mates. Sure enough, here was one of the boys saying that the after dinner speaker was not a racist, just an idiot. An idiot for saying these things? Well, no, an idiot, apparently, for not realising that in these days of “political correctness” you couldn’t get away with saying these things. I mean, these were just jokes, right, who could possibly object to that unless they were politically correct, and these days the pc crowd have taken over so sportsmen needed to sharpen up and not say racist things in public, or at least not where they might be recorded or heard by one of those dark-skinned people who might unaccountably take offense. And so it goes, smoothed over, explained away, nothing to see here, who could possibly think there was such a thing as racism in sport or anywhere else in Australian society. Until the next time.

Time we acknowledged that saying racist things is racism by racists. What else could it be? Why would you pile abuse, or ridicule, on players of various ethnic groups otherwise? Why would this stuff come pouring out of your mouth unless that’s the way you felt? Where else has it come from except your brain, your thoughts, your prejudices? And once it does pour out, like the oil spilling out into the Gulf, it kills what it touches. Racism in a speech or a team warm-up legitimises racism, makes the audience think it is ok for them to repeat similar sentiments, damages those it is aimed at just a little bit more. And society will continue to struggle to get out of a racist past like a pelican struggles to escape the clinging oil from the BP well. Or Brer Rabbit the tar baby.

If you hear racist remarks or “jokes”, don’t laugh, nervously, tell the speaker you don’t like it. Sports journalists need to do the same – wash the offender’s mouth out with detergent perhaps.

It’s not ok. It never was ok.

Aussie Aussie Aussie

by Economics • Tags: , , , , ,

Heard one of those figures the other day that make you wonder if, like Barnaby Joyce, some media outlet has mixed up “millions” and “billions” in a financial report. Easy to do, they are only separated by one key on the keyboard. But no, this one was sadly correct – South Africa has spent, and my keyboard almost melts as I type this figure, $5billion on hosting the World Cup. Five. Billion. Dollars. I mean, I know it’s not much if you are a banker, or a miner in Australia, but it is quite a lot for a country that has major social and financial problems. Big unemployment, slums, health concerns, crime, education needs. It surely doesn’t need saying, does it, that spending $5billion for a couple of weeks of sport is, just a little, out of proportion?

South Africa’s world cup is just the most extreme of the distorted spending priorities I have heard of recently. Last week there was, horrifyingly, a soccer World Cup bid from Australia – and governments were happily agreeing to massive spending on new stadiums around the country. Including in a city not a million (or billion) miles from Yass, where the Chief Minister happily signed up for several hundred million dollars expenditure on a new stadium. This is a city which has seen many school closures, problems in the hospitals, infrastructure needs, homeless numbers growing, mental health issues. Getting money out of the government for these needs gets a grim-faced response Scrooge (no, the other one) would feel was over the top, and a stern reminder that money doesn’t grow on trees and the poor and sick and old and young just have to tighten their belts.

This bizarre upside down sense of need and urgency is everywhere lately. Think of the massive subsidies for energy firms in the abortive ETS. The financial bail outs for banks in the first global financial crisis. The massive increase in spending on “Border Protection” in general and ASIO in particular. And yet – spending on health, education, aged care, mental health, childcare, all too hard, got to be postponed, dribbled out. And on the environment, come on now, got to be realistic, only those extreme greens would think spending money on the world we live in can’t wait for a decade or two. Or three. Reducing carbon dioxide production – what about the poor coal companies?

No, I don’t have an answer. Something seems to happen to politicians between saving the world before they get elected and saving giant corporations afterwards. Between concern for the poor in their election brochure and interest in sport while clutching tickets to a corporate box. Both sides of politics the same, so there’s no hope there – oppositions always think they will be in power by the time the opening ceremony needs to be presided over.

I guess we just keep niggling away, all of us. Please Sir, I want less, we might say to politicians eyeing off another sporting event.

Battler Sport

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by politics • Tags: , ,

So John Coates thinks it is un-Australian not to increase funding by $100 million to "elite sports". Well, as John Howard would say, can't get much more Australian (greatest Australian who ever lived I think Mr Howard believed) than Donald Bradman, who famously practiced his cricket by batting with a cricket stump instead of a bat and bouncing the tennis ball off a corrugated iron water tank. At very little cost indeed. And Keith Miller, arguably a greater cricketer than Bradman, used to famously turn up to play cricket after a night on the town. Herb Elliot ran barefoot up sandhills. Marjorie Jackson trained, in second hand running shoes, on a country grass oval lit by car headlights . Footballers used to work all week as garbage collectors. And … well, you get the idea.

I think John Coates is so un-Australian that he doesn't understand Australians. He was going on about how the public would be disappointed if we didn't win everything, and, heaven forbid, slipped down the Olympic medal table to tenth, beaten, oh the shame, even by Britain. I don't reckon Australians really give a stuff about that, although whichever television network is showing the event, at enormous cost, will pretend that we do. And I don't think we are too impressed by the well known fact that you can, essentially, buy your medals – that the number of medals won is directly proportional to the money spent. Nor do I think we really like the idea that someone has won because they have had all the best equipment, best facilities, all the best coaching from overseas. Instead we like the idea of the battler from the bush who turns up with no running shoes and beats the rich kids. We really do, even now, in spite of all the propaganda from the Olympic Committee, support the underdogs. Remember the film Chariots of Fire? Change a few names, a few accents, and that could have been any rag tag bunch of Aussies turning up to take on the might of the Americans or East Germans. But that didn't mean we wanted to become Americans or East Germans, and that is where Mr Coates has got it wrong.

And then there are those other Ausssie battlers from the bush – the country hospitals with crumbling walls, the country schools ditto, the poor transport facilities, and, yes, indeed, the country sports ovals with no grass, and the pools with no water. There are so many things you could spend $100 million dollars a year on that didn't involve buying Olympic medals. Indeed, bearing in mind that this was just the EXTRA $100 million dollars that bitter tears were being shed over, how about we look at removing pretty much all the money from "elite sport" (a term itself an invention of people like Mr Coates in just the last few years, because elite sport of course must get elite money)?

Let's start a new program in the kind of country towns that produced Bradman and Jackson, let's try to develop elite hospitals, and elite schools, and elite railways, and elite ovals for local football clubs.

Say no to elite sport – elite sport is so un-Australian. Say hullo to battler sport.

You can't eat gold medals.

All David Horton's earlier writing is here.

It’s a knockout

by Media • Tags: , , ,

I don't suppose any of you will have noticed, but there was a very minor Press kerfuffle last week about some football player accused of rape. While the television reporters were paying lip service to the idea that he hadn't been convicted yet, they were already speculating, indeed running viewer polls, on whether he should be punished by being stopped from playing football. Television reporters do have trouble with that whole "innocent until guilty" malarkey on which our justice system depends, and seem to have missed the class which explained when to drop in that magic word "alleged". But they have also, it seems, lost any sense of self-awareness of the consequence of their own actions that my three year old grandson already has. One network reported that the girl's lawyer had asked that the family's privacy be respected, and they read out that sentence while running a bit of film footage of the girl and her father rushing for their car at the court, obtained by some intrepid and principled cameraman pushing his camera through the gate of the courtyard. They had though, in some confused sense of morality, pixellated the faces.

There was then a discussion about how the football club concerned should stop the players drinking, outraged that these players should get drunk. The television channels of course revel in champagne corks being popped after victories, will cheerfully and laughingly report that football players and supporters are still on a two day binge after a major win. Will suggest in interviews that a player should go out and have some beers. Will happily promote alcohol in adverts, including on football jumpers. Self awareness gone missing again.

In a not unrelated story came news of a new fad among schoolboys, indulging in brawls (one which was fatal) of the "Fight Club" kind, egged on by cheering crowds and recorded on mobile phones for YouTube distribution. Again I saw much discussion by television pundits, and much tut tutting by presenters, wondering what the youth of today was coming to, how could this be happening? This is, I remind myself, the same television that delights in showing knockdowns in boxing matches, and turns winning boxers into media darlings. Which shows brawls in football and basketball, murmuring approval. Which dismisses any demands for less brutality in football, scoffing that the demanders are girly wimps, and football is a man's game. Which relishes people being hurt, bruised, broken by fast bowling in cricket, replaying incidents over and over in slow motion. That runs ads which use likely violence between rival teams to promote coming games. Which runs reality shows in which film sent in by viewers showing people being hurt in accidents is used for laughter and entertainment. In which a game show glories in people being hurt on an obstacle course. That makes glamorous heroes of violent underworld figures. Which delights in protests being violently broken up by the police. And all of that before we even get to the constant diet of American cop shows in which extensive violence is a necessary ingredient. But no self-awareness about all this in television land.

I wonder where the youth could have possibly gotten the idea that violence is desirable and glamorous, as Australian as meat pie and coca-cola?

I know the owners of the television networks (allegedly) keenly follow this column, seeking answers as to where Australian society has gone wrong in the last 50 years. As soon as they have finished reading, and become aware of the problem, they will, no doubt, be on the phone to their programmers, demanding changes. Pointing out that words have meaning, actions have consequences, and that a constant promotion of alcohol and violence among the young might be having an effect. And stating firmly that it is not just the violent content itself that matters (as is often glibly said) but the context of warm and enthusiastic approval that surrounds it on modern television broadcasts. Telling producers, presenters, sports reporters to get their act together, change their ways, show that violence is not to be tolerated. Except to the extent that such actions might impinge upon ratings and revenue of course. But leaving that aside, any action to reduce television-sanctioned violence will be fully supported.

But I wouldn't bet on a knockout in the tenth round. Would you?

All David Horton's earlier writing is here.

Greeks bearing gifts

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by Economics • Tags: , , , ,

I see some of the "elite sport" people were doing their final sums last week deciding how much to demand from the government. The calculation seemed to involve thinking of a number, doubling it, doubling it again, and then adding, oh, say, 50% for contingencies, and then you take away the number … (oh, no, sorry, we don't do take-aways now). They seem to have borrowed the formula from the CEOs of giant corporations, who, even as their companies were going down the drain were receiving massive bonuses, and, especially in America, actually taking billions of dollars of taxpayer money, meant to bail them out, for the purpose.

Call me old fashioned (if you don't someone else will) but I seem to remember a time when there was no such thing as "elite sports" and "elite sportspeople", meaning people and organisations who got paid huge sums of money, just people who played for the love of the game, and who did so part time in between doing a job to support themselves. Football teams were based in their communities, cricket uniforms were not covered in advertising, athletes ran up and down sandhills to get fit, swimmers paid their own way to Olympics.

It's always been bad to pour money into these sports, running them as if they were businesses. When the chances of winning an Olympic medal can be easily calculated by the amount of money spent, something seems to have been lost, and much of the shine seems to have gone off the gold. And certainly the old concept that it doesn't matter whether you win or lose it is how you play the game is long gone from Australian sport.

The Romans famously poured large sums of money into elite sports like chariot racing and gladiator fighting. I can imagine the head of the Gladiator Federation demanding ever more money from the Emperor otherwise the standard of the competition in the Colosseum would be lowered. Money that could have been better spent on infrastructure, the welfare of the ordinary people, and foreign aid, and therefore perhaps helped the Roman Empire survive for a lot longer.

But we don't learn from history, and here we are again with huge amounts of money being demanded for circuses. Money that is needed to cope with the effects of global warming, money needed for people who lose their jobs, money for schools and hospitals and other infrastructure. Money needed for the people who have been through such agony and loss in Victoria. And money needed to massively support bushfire brigades with equipment and logistical support and communications and research on more effective fire fighting.

Not a sport or a game, fire-fighting, but far more worthy of support than the sportspeople who can go back to doing it for the love of the game, and for a mens sana in corpore sano, as the Romans would have said. At least until we get through the next few decades and the challenges they will bring. And even after that, Mr Olympic official, don't call us, we'll call you. Seem to remember the ancient Greeks, unlike the Romans, were amateur sportsmen, competing for glory not gold. Let's return to the old Olympic ways.

I see the people of flood torn Ingham are donating much of the help they received to the fire victims. Perhaps the Olympic people could do the same for the Fire Brigades.

All David Horton's earlier writing is here.

Olympian depths

by Media • Tags: , ,

The Olympics will soon be over except for the last virtual fireworks display. Thank goodness. Oh, I'm not saying I don't enjoy parts of it. Will thrill to close finishes, gallant failures, great achievements, along  with everyone else. But Australian television coverage has become Americanised, in absence of a better term, to the extent that it is unrecognisable from what we used to get up to about 12 years ago. The flashiness, the human interest stories, the snappy editing, the tears, the drums, the set piece interviews, the slow motion shots of wobbly muscles, the rap music, the cute and cuddly Chinese in the street, the packaged highlights, the blatant nationalism, the narratives, all endlessly repeated. Increasingly the 1936 Olympic Games look like not just the inventors of the torch relay, but of massed flags and supermen. I assume that Channel Seven has purchased  a set number of events and they show those in rotation and fill in the spaces in between with this glossy fluff – fairy floss for the sports viewer. And of course all of it is only there to fill in the spaces between the massive advertising campaigns that are the real function of the Games.

But I digress. I suppose you saw the medal table? The narrative of course is that it is only the taking part that matters (the swimmers have now been trained to say "having fun") and that it is not whether you win or lose but how you  play the game. Then the media proceed to turn gold medal winners into heroes, lesser medal winners into losers, and those without medals as being non-people. And then there are the villains, the ones that the media loves to hate – Jana Rawlinson of course, Tamsyn Lewis, the girl who collapsed in the rowing eight, the one who swam too slowly in the relay. When they love you they worship at your feet, when they hate you nothing you do will be right. And constantly showing the medal table. Well, briefly at least, because we are not on top. Never have been, never will be. What to do? Ah ha, divide number of medals by size of population and hey  presto, a virtual medal table, Australia on top.

What nonsense. Why not divide number of medals by the per capita income? Or the number of international standard sports grounds? Or the amount of government subsidy to elite sport? Or by the level of carbon emissions per head of population? Where would we come then?

The media are turning us into a nation of bad sports. No Australian can lose without the excuse of a severe illness, a broken leg, a dying relative, a parochial foreign crowd, other countries spending more, strange foreign food, sub-standard facilities, biased umpires and referees, or, shudder, drug-taking by the winner. No competitor can win fairly or by being better or stronger or more determined. The narrative is that Australians will always win, other things being equal, because we have greater strength of character, more grit and determination. So if we lose the playing field could not possibly have been level. Do the athletes themselves go along with this invidious nonsense? I guess not yet, but it must be tempting.

London could save a lot of money in 4 years time. Just take all the footage from Beijing. Insert a few shots of cuddly Cockneys and London Bridge. Create a medal table headed by Britain and hey presto – a complete virtual games with plenty of space for advertisements. Would anyone notice?

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