This Sporting Life

by Les May

ACCORDING to the teachings of the Roman Catholic church my wife and I are adulterers.
According to an Australian rugby player called Israel Folau the doors of Hell await us, along with ‘Drunks, homosexuals, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolators’.  As that covers most of the human race I assume the place is going to be a bit crowded when I get there.


Personally I don’t take this sort of stuff very seriously so as to avoid encouraging them.

Unfortunately some people do take it seriously including rugby player Billy Vunipola who ‘liked’ it on Instagram, the English Rugby Football Union who have ‘summoned’ Vunipola, his club Saracens, and Channel 4, which has decided not to employ him again as a contributor to its match coverage.


Now I don’t think that the decision by these organisations to pillory England’s number 8 is an attempt to pledge their undying support for we adulterers, atheists, drunks, fornicators, idolators, liars and thieves. It’s more likely to do with a Times headline of ‘England rugby star defends post telling gay people hell awaits’.


Which rather prompts a question about why homosexuals are thought more worthy of protection from comments like this than than the rest of us.  And please don’t tell me that homosexuals are a persecuted minority.  Forty odd years ago my wife lost her job because the life she had chosen did not meet with the approval of her church.


Will the English Rugby Football Union and Saracens behave like the Roman Catholic Church did all that time ago, and how Channel 4 have behaved just recently?  Quite likely, but what strange bedfellows they make.


As far as I am concerned those who feel offended by this kind of thing are what my Dad would have called ‘mard-arses’.   It’s a pity they’ve nowt better to do with their time.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Mard

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The Olympics, London & the Militarised State

TODAY we learn that G4S can't supply 10,000 security staff for the Olympics as planned, and that the Home Secretary, Theresa May has had to plead with the Ministry of Defence to let her have thousands more service personnel to do the job as security-men at the London 2012 Games.  I wonder what the squaddies are saying about that?

Ironically, only last Friday in the Herald Tribune, Jules Boykoff and Alan Tomlinson were writing about the International Olympic Committee (ICO):  'Most worrisome, perhaps, is that the I.C.O. creates perverse incentives for security officials in host cities to overspend and militarize public space.  The I.C.O. tends to look kindly on bids that assure security, and host cities too often use the Games as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to stock police warehouses with the best weapons money can buy.'

Mr. Boykoff and Mr. Tomlinson further say visitors to London 'would be forgiven for thinking they had dropped in on a military convention.'  They write:  'Helicopters, fighter jets and bomb-disposal units will be at the ready.'  Before this recent mishap by G4S about 13,500 British military personnel were expected to be on patrol, that would be 4,000 more than currently serving in Afghanistan.  Now, it seems, that figure will have to be revised upwards.

Admittedly, the Government are right to be concerned to protect our capital city and the Games, but as Boykoff and Tomlinson say 'there is such a thing as excess - and surveillance and weaponry are not a panacea.'  Symbolically, having London presenting an image of a militarised state is is hardly conducive to the Olympic ideals of peace and understanding.  These critics suggest that today it is the growing size of the Games that is the problem - 'Gigantism' - and argue that competitions 'drenched in privilege, like the equestrian events, should be ditched' as should 'pseudo-historuical events like Greco-Roman wrestling' and events with high start-up costs should be changed for ones needing less resources like tug-on-war and running events 'like trail running and cross-country'.




 

Doing Business in the Southern Olympics

LAST Friday in the Herald Tribune, Jules Boykoff and Alan Tomlinson wrote:  'Although the I.O.C. (International Olympic Committee) has been periodically tarnished by scandal - usually involving the bribing and illegitimate wooing of delegates - those embarrassments divert us from a deeper problem:  The organisation is elitist, domineering and crassly commercial at its core.'   The revival of the Olympics by Baron Pierre de Coubertin in the 1890s was down to an assembly of princes, barons, counts and lords to help co-ordinate the Games.  It seems that in the present crop of 105 I.O.C. members still have a good chunk of royalty including Princess Nora of Liechtenstein, Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark and Prince Nawaf Faisal Fahd Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia. 

Then there is the commercial end of the Games, Mr. Boykoff and Tomlinson write:  'The I.O.C. has turned the Olympics into a commercial bonanza.  In London, more than 250 miles of V.I.P. traffic lanes are reserved not just for athletes and I.O.C. luminaries but also for corporate sponsors.  Even the signature torch relay has been commercialized:  The I.O.C. and its corporate partners snapped up 10% of the torchbearer slots for I.O.C. stakeholders and members of the commercial sponsors' information technology and marketing staffs.  Michael R. Payne, a former director for the committee, has called the Olympics "the world's longest commercial".'

Good business for some of these folk down South!

'Bird-Brained' Tory minister does U-turn on buzzard cull!

The Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra), announced yesterday (Wednesday) that it was abandoning its controversial plan to cull the common buzzard due to widespread opposition from wildlife enthusiasts and conservationists.

Although the buzzard is a fully protected bird of prey under wildlife laws, the Tory minister for wildlife, Richard Benyon, who the Independent newspaper has dubbed the 'Bird-Brained minister', gave approval to a Defra plan to destroy buzzards nests by blasting them with shotguns and trapping buzzards to relocate them to other areas to protect intensively bred pheasants, reared on pheasant shooting estates. The Independent said that the "climbdown bore all the hallmarks of having been ordered from above."

While this U-turn in government policy - the fourth policy change this week - will be welcomed by nature lovers and conservationists, questions are already being asked about this hairbrained scheme costing £400,000 that only benefited a tiny group of pheasant shooters who run commercial shoots. It is also well known that Benyon, a millionaire landowner and great-great grandson of Lord Salisbury, greatly enjoys shooting as does his leader, David Cameron.

In its research report to justify the cull, Defra claimed that "76% of gamekeepers believe that buzzards have a harmful effect on game birds." Yet research undertaken by the agricultural consultants Adas, on behalf of the British Association for Shooting and Conservation - which was not quoted by Defra - found that on average, the number of young pheasants (poults), taken by all birds of prey, was 1 to 2% with far more dying as a result of road collisions.

Martin Harper, the conservation director of the Royal Society for the Protection of birds (RSPB) told the Independent:

"We believe the public's support has been pivotal to this, and the extensive coverage of the issue in the Independent has driven a flurry of activity that has convinced ministers of the depth of public feeling and has encouraged him to take the right decision to drop the proposal. It's clear they don't want their taxes being spent on removing buzzards."