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Banning the hijab in sports: bigotry rears its head again
contribution by Iman Qureshi
News that Fifa has banned the Iranian women’s football team from participating in the Olympics on account of their headscarves has been met with much criticism, but the real issues are not being addressed.
Whether it’s sexuality, gender, religion or race, sport seems to be the perpetually reoffending schoolyard bully.
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Olympics, World Cup: please God, no
I remember going on a business trip to Glasgow which happened to coincide with the seventh world congress of flower arrangers. Perhaps because I did not appreciate the popularity of this pastime, I didn’t think to check for any clash of dates on that particular score.
So it was that 32,000 attendees – predominantly ladies of a certain age – and poor old me descended on No Mean City at the same time. It was hard to get a decent hotel room, and the resultant shortage of taxis made me late for more than one appointment.
In a country where infrastructure is as woefully inadequate as it is in Britain, major events inevitably put a strain on the inhabitants of the places in which they take place.
Stopping VAT abuse alone could save our school sport
Michael Gove is planning, for all practical purposes,to end sport in UK schools. As the Observer noted: yesterday
A battle is raging at the heart of government over a decision by the education secretary, Michael Gove, to slash £162m of sports funding in English schools as the country prepares for the 2012 Olympics and bids for the 2018 World Cup.
So for the sake of £162 million all but the richest children in the UK are to be denied access to competitive sport. But let’s ignore the political incompetence in Gove’s plan and instead ponder the alternatives he might have considered.
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Why Brazil has more sense than the Netherlands
contribution by Kate Blagojevic
The World Cup has offered us welcome distraction from the constant scare mongering.
They all tell us “We know what is best for you, shut your eyes, open your mouth, take the medicine it will cure all our ills. Watch the football, drink your beer, stay on the sofa, there’s a good chap.”
But the World Development Movement and others don’t want you to stay on your sofa. We have campaigned for decades to stop institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank from forcing developing countries to introduce public service cuts, privatisation and reductions in government spending.
Sound familiar?
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Does Jeremy Hunt illustrate why class still matters?
Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, recently revealed his vast ignorance of British footballing history whilst managing to insult thousands:
[A]s a Minister I was incredibly encouraged by the example set by the England fans, I mean not a single arrest for a football related offensive and the terrible problems that we had in Heysel and Hillsborough in the 1980s seem now to be behind us and I think, you know, there is small grounds for encouragement there even though obviously we are very disappointed about the result.
Anybody with even a basic knowledge of English football will know that what happened at Hillsborough had absolutely nothing to do with hooliganism.
That Hunt was shadow secretary for the same office during last year’s 20th anniversary Hillsborough memorial services is an even greater indictment of his callous ignorance.
But could there be something more going on?
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The left is now ahead in the World Cup
Six out of eight group winners in the group stages shows that left-of-centre countries have hit form as the World Cup enters the knock-out stages, as we continue Next Left’s unique political guide to the world’s greatest sporting event.
While Brazil, Argentina and Spain were favourites to win their group, strong performances from Uruguay, Paraguay and the USA left the political right trailing, with only Holland and Germany topping groups.
There are nine left-of-centre nations in the last sixteen, as Japan’s victory to knock out Denmark proved enough for an overall majority, with Ghana and Portugal also qualifying from the group stages. (But Australia’s third game victory was not enough to put them through, with prime minister Kevin Rudd falling in a party putsch the same morning).
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Do the England squad need better incentives?
One has to feel a bit sorry for North Korea’s football squad. Despite a spirited performance against Brazil yesterday on Tuesday, and managing to go in 0-0 at half time, they lost 2-1.
By any normal standards it was a remarkable result for a squad in which only 3 members play overseas.
Indeed cheer might be taken from the fact that the 0-0 draw between Portugal and Ivory Coast was probably one of the worst world cup games ever, suggesting that North Korea might produce a surprise upset and qualify for the knock-out stages.
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The football world cup is not xenophobic
We’re only three days into the World Cup, and already I’m tired of the drone. I speak not of the Vuzuvelas, but of the naysayers who dismiss the World Cup as being somehow xenophobic.
Laurie Penny was at it last week, now quoted approvingly by fellow Orwell Prize nominee Madame Miaow. Even my friend Ste Curran was at it earlier, and I expected better from him.
These curmudgeons assume that any time two teams from different sides line up against each other, it is inherently warlike.
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Why I find it difficult to cheer England at football
contribution by Madam Miaow
Football — the continuation of war by other means.
The trouble with football (collapsing a whole long list into a handful of bugbears) is that its mindset bears an uncanny resemblance to the belief in “my country/party right or wrong”. It appears designed to programme the collective brain out of thinking and nuance, making those same synaptic connections that can only deal with black and white, binary three-minute hate. Us (good) and them (bad).
Coming out of the Second World War, which devastated huge swathes of the globe, we valued our intellectuals and artists for helping to make the world a better place.
Nowadays, changing social conditions means social engineering, militarising society and the creation a nation of gladiators. From Sky to Skynet, turning you into a combat machine. Prepare to be assimilated.
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Semenya and paranoia about being a woman
This is painful for me. I was scribbling notes in ‘The Female Eunuch’ and ‘The Whole Woman’ before I lost all my milkteeth; I worship her irreverent, punchy prose; but there’s no escaping it. These days, Germaine Greer is a prejudiced, ignorant dickwad.
In her rather confused verdict on the Caster Semenya controversy, Greer comes up with the following gem today:
Nowadays we are all likely to meet people who think they are women, have women’s names, and feminine clothes and lots of eyeshadow, who seem to us to be some kind of ghastly parody, though it isn’t polite to say so. We pretend that all the people passing for female really are. Other delusions may be challenged, but not a man’s delusion that he is female.
Greer hardly does any better in the grand game of unthinking prejudice bingo than the disgusting commentators who have decided that just because Semenya, a phenomenally high-achieving athlete, is big, butch and brilliant at sports, she can’t be a girl.
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London 2012: Cheap ‘n’ quiet
BJ the Mayor Bear has told MPs that he expects London 2012 to be “cosier” than this summer’s Olympics in Beijing. Considering the current economic woes, and the enormous scale of the Beijing games, surely this is something of a no-brainer?
From the BBC ::
Updating MPs on progress, the London mayor pledged to deliver a games “every bit as good as Beijing” without spending “colossal” sums of money.
He repeated his vow that the event would not go over its £9.3bn budget.
In light of the financial problems experienced building London’s other major “event” developments – Wembley Stadium and the Millennium Dome, you’ll forgive me if I remain sceptical that budgets can be honoured.
Has Britain really been ‘buying’ medals?
Now the last glittering firework has sputtered and died and Beijing has regained its industrial atmospheric fog – our Olympic athletes will amble through airport security with less chance of a cavity search than… well, a state-educated person has of winning a medal. Or an inhabitant of a “low-income nation” apparently.
That is according to Matthew Syed who does a good job in stating the bleeding obvious really. Private sector schools have more money to throw at sports, never abandoned the competitive ethos, haven’t sold off quite so many playing fields to make ends meet, etc – and when were the Olympics ever ‘egalitarian’, anyway?
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Roll on 2012
Of course I know all the arguments about the cost, the human rights issues, the corporatism, the exploitation of athletic achievement for chauvinistic purposes. But there’s still something about the Olympics that shines through it all and when that gorgeous torch went out in the Beijing sky an hour or so ago, I felt more than a tinge of emotion about the whole affair.
I think, on balance, it was right that the Olympics went to China. I think it was right, too, that there were widespread protests, most notably as the Olympic flame made its way around the world from Greece to Beijing. I think that both the presence of the Games in China and the protests against them can only help the cause of liberalisation and democracy there.
Am I trying to have my sporting and political cake and eat it too? I don’t believe so.
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How the left should resolve their problems
After much serious thought on the subject I have come up with the answer to all the squabbles on the left.
I considered serious political theoretical and strategic discussion but decided to cut to the chase, yep all the old bitter battles as to who did what in 1981 or more recent spats with the SWP could be settled by a cage fight.
Apparently :
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Forza, Viola
The notion that sport and politics should never mix is a curious, and also deeply political, one. Sport, after all, is just the waging of international politics by other means. Ask the East Germans.
Rarely has the mix been quite as fruity as this weekend’s end to the Italian football season continue reading… »
A Resignation Matter?
Cue the analogies.
You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or RSS feed.
» Clegg’s idea for the public to get RBS shares is just bananas
» Why is the government so secretive about its £1.4bn ‘growth’ fund?
» Once again, ministers ignore evidence of low benefit fraud
» Four reasons why this financial crisis is worse than we think
» More unprecedented bad news as wages fall and prices rise
» How unions could win the public debate on strike action
» Workless households: another success ministers don’t want to explain
» A Liberal Conspiracy guide to the “hateful Right”
» How the Robinhood Tax campaign is gathering steam
» Why is Tony Blair letting Cameron use him for advantage?
» Isn’t it time Labour looked beyond simple economic growth?
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