The Obscurer

Month: September, 2005

Thursday 15th September 2005

A Pub Crawl

Despite cricket’s recent boost in popularity, football is not dead yet; certainly judging by the scenes round my way last Saturday. Does Sky have a financial interest in some of the companies that sell illegal satellite equipment to pubs so they can receive live football from foreign television channels? Whether they do or not, the somewhat odd decision for Sky not to televise the Manchester derby a few days ago certainly gave a fillip to that black market industry. So it was that at the unusual hour of three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon (a crazy time to hold a football match) I went out with my dad to try and watch City versus United, beamed live from Old Trafford.

Our first stop, the George & Dragon, was quickly dismissed. A true blue City pub that I knew would show the game (it was there that I watched our victory over Sunderland, live and illegal thanks to some Danish broadcaster) I was not wholly surprised to find the beer garden with its huge outside screen totally mobbed; the bar was five deep, at least. It didn’t look too much fun, so we decided to hop in my car and go on a tour of our locality.

I suspected The Greyhound would be showing the match (last season I stumbled upon them showing our game against Arsenal live from Highbury), but many other people had obviously thought the same. The car park was chocker, and as I couldn’t immediately see anywhere else to park we decided to try the British Legion, which I had been told would be showing the game. Surely the Legion wouldn’t be that busy, would they?

Wrong; we actually got turned away as they were so full, probably the first time anyone has been turned away from the Legion in the entire history of the organisation. With that my knowledge of pubs likely to have access to the game was exhausted. Where next?

We decided to give the Kenilworth a go, and we were in luck, of sorts. There was no doubt they were showing the game; you could tell by the way people were standing in the car park looking through the doors, craning their necks for a view of the big screen. The car park itself was also full, so people had been forced to liberally abandon their vehicles here, there and everywhere, blocking junctions and driveways. Let’s try somewhere else, we thought.

We thought we’d give The Greyhound one last drive by to see if there was anywhere to park, but on arrival, when we saw it was now as packed as the Kenilworth, we decided to sack it. Clearly anywhere that was showing the game would be ridiculously mobbed; we parked the car back at my house and decided to pop into the Red Lion where we knew we could just follow the City game and the cricket on Sky Sports News while having a drink.

When we got there The Red was busier than expected, and it instantly became clear why; they were also showing the game, but fortunately for us they didn’t appear to have advertised the fact so that while we had to stand to watch the match we were at least not crushed. The pub gradually filled up a bit during our stay, as people phoned their mates to tell them where the game was on, but it remained bearable. While there I learned that The Weavers was also showing the match; they must have only recently invested in the criminal equipment, as they didn’t show the City-Sunderland game a few weeks ago. In fact, at the moment, I haven’t got any solid evidence that there is a single pub in the land that didn’t show the derby match; does anyone know of an exception to this rule?

So it was that last Saturday the purveyors of illegal satellite gear to Greater Manchester were left laughing all the way to the bank, and I was able to enjoy a few pints while watching the most dreadfully boring derby match of recent years.

Good result, though.

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Tuesday 13th September 2005

Stumps

I’m glad I’m not a betting man. One of my best mates is, and I am forever bemused by his enthusiasm for absurd spread bets. This summer, however, when he said he had backed the Aussies to win the Ashes I almost felt like joining in; despite the recent improvements in the England cricket team, and the shaky performance of the Australians during the one-day series’, I felt that come the five day game their undoubted superiority would tell and there could only be one winner. It seemed like easy money to me; but I didn’t succumb, and so had a lucky escape. My mate has lost a small fortune.

All the way through this test series I have thought that the Australians would eventually show their class and turn us over. Even going into the last day at The Oval I would have put my money on Warne spinning the English batsmen out, followed by the Aussie’s rattling together their rapid fire winning runs; and yet it never happened. I still find it hard to take in, but looking back objectively at the whole Ashes series (or as objectively as I can) I have to say that England have not just been the better side but have largely dominated this series and have been superior in all departments (with, I guess, the specific exceptions of spin bowling and wicket keeping). Gaining a first innings lead in four out of five tests, even making the Aussies follow-on at Trent Bridge, illustrates this well; that we have simply batted and bowled better than the opposition. But I still can’t quite believe it.

Where does cricket go from here, and can the recent popularity the sport has gained be built upon? Much has been made of live test matches now leaving terrestrial television and “disappearing to Sky”; but as Sky is present in over 30% of homes I doubt disappearing is the right word to use. That said, I do feel that part of the decline in the popularity of the sport in recent years has been down to the way the matches have been split between Channel 4 and Sky, making many games unavailable to the majority of the public. When the BBC had exclusive rights, and showed every test and one day international, as well as the NatWest cup games and some Sunday league matches, cricket seemed to be more a part of the fabric of national life. I was more than happy when cricket first moved to Channel 4 and their coverage has been excellent, a huge improvement on the BBC’s efforts, and with a few exceptions (Mark Nicholas’s occasional embarrassing hyperbolic commentary, sounding like Alan Partridge reading a Batman comic; those two buffoons who do the BetFair adverts at the breaks, better known to passive Cbeebies viewers at “the twats from Big Cook Little Cook“) I will miss the way they have covered the sport; but I do think the decision to put one day matches and some tests on satellite TV did overall lower the profile of the game. Similarly I feel that the Rugby Union missed a trick after the success of the England team in the World Cup in not trying to get a regular prime time Zurich premiership show on terrestrial television. There may have been all sorts of practical problems preventing them from doing so, but if they had then I think they could have capitalised on the publicity from the World Cup victory and increased the popularity of the game; instead interest seems to have waned back to pre- World Cup levels.

Then again, I don’t have Sky; if I did then perhaps I would still feel that Cricket and Rugby have a good presence on television. Perhaps the best way to build upon the surge of interest in cricket is to have a successful cricket team; after all, that is the reason more people are suddenly interested in the game again today, and perhaps Sky’s money is the best way of ensuring that this success is consolidated and built upon. By the same token perhaps the decline in interest in Rugby Union is more down to the decline in the success of the England rugby team than anything else. But if success of the national teams is a factor, how do you explain the continued popularity of football in England?

Update 14/9/05: The Daily Mail is hilarious (unintentionally, of course) on this matter today. There is their leader, “Hijacking the Ashes heroes” that complains about Labour leaping on board the cricket bandwagon; when in fact all the Mail are doing is hijacking the Ashes to bash the Labour party. While making a fair point about Duncan Fletcher having just been awarded British citizenship, stating that “New Labour hate everything cricket stands for” is plainly absurd, and complaining about “the disgraceful sale of school playing fields” is an incredibly hypocritical statement for a Tory paper to make. But hypocrisy is their stock in trade as their front page story “Labour’s great cricket sell-out” makes clear. Yes, it is all Labour’s fault, for conceding to the the ECB’s own request to remove test matches “listed status”, and for then failing to prevent the ECB from signing an entirely legal contract, approved by OFCOM, with Sky to televise cricket over the next four years. Don’t look surprised; this is classic Daily Mail in action; a fierce proponent of free markets and the scourge of the nanny state…until such a position provides a result they don’t like, or an alternative standpoint can be used to bash Labour, and then their fine principles are jettisonned in the blink of an eye.

I would call it a silly newspaper, if it weren’t so nasty; but I have just spent the past few minutes of my life criticising the Mail, and I feel cheapened as a consequence. I don’t want to be dragged down to their level, so I will shut up now.

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Wednesday 7th September 2005

Mr Clarke Goes To Strasbourg

In a moving speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, British Home Secretary Charles Clarke declared

Our strengthening of human rights needs to acknowledge a truth which we should all accept, that the right to be protected from torture and ill-treatment must be considered side by side with the right to be protected from the death and destruction caused by indiscriminate terrorism, sometimes caused, instigated or fomented by nationals from countries outside the EU.

This is a difficult balance to get right and it requires us all as politicians to ask where our citizens – who elected all of us here – would expect us to draw the line.

Well, at least he is prepared to defer to the electorate, and you have got to hope that they will want to draw the line the right side of torture; but is he really saying that the very principle of torture is now up for grabs?

Unbe-fucking-lievable.

Update: NoseMonkey covers this better, and in far greater detail here.

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Tuesday 6th September 2005

Honours Even

A couple of years ago I was listening to the radio in my car when I heard an interview with the bloke who at that time was in charge of reforming the honours system (I can’t remember who he was). One thing he mentioned stuck in my mind; that the system should be reformed because (and I am paraphrasing here) “just being good at you job should not be a reason to be awarded an honour”.

Quite right too, I thought; but my elation was short lived. It soon became clear that the subject of this attack was the “ordinary people”; the dinner ladies and cleaners who receive modest honours in return for years of dedicated and unsung service. He wasn’t at all bothered about the sportsmen and actors who are annually awarded gongs for merely being successful in their chosen professions; it seemed that he thought this should continue.

The latest reform has just been announced, and in a move aiming to “improve transparency and accountability in the honours system” the new members of the eight committees that decide upon the awarding of honours have been announced; these committees include some famous names and non-civil servants for the first time.

Fair enough as far as it goes, but it is clear from the number of people involved on these committees that we can expect plenty more honours to be doled out twice yearly like toffees at an Everton home game. When compared to, say, the French system and their Legion d’honneur, the British system seems altogether sillier and less prestigious (although it is quite possible that I am praising the French system out of ignorance). I am not saying that there should be no system of honours at all; just that to receive an award should be for some sort of exceptional achievement, something significant or out of the ordinary. Just having been in a pop group for a long time shouldn’t mean you qualify.

It is interesting to look at some of the people who will have a say in where the next set of honours go. The most striking is Sir Bobby Robson, a man who can (but probably doesn’t) consider himself very lucky to have been knighted in the first place. He may be a lovely chap – and has had a fairly decent career – but nothing he has achieved suggests to me that he deserves what should be such a prestigious title.

Particularly when you talk about stars of sport or the arts, there already seems to be plenty of specific ways that success can be rewarded – the Booker Prize, Academy Awards, Olympic Medals – that I don’t see why on top of that you can get a knighthood for just being famous and hanging around for a bit. That is not to say however that such people should never get honours; winning the 1966 World Cup, for example, seems the sort of exceptional event that would be deserving of a knighthood; but only for the manager, or some truly remarkable player, not just the bloke who only played in the final because a better player was injured and who subsequently slutched a hat trick.

Ultimately then, I agree that you need to be more than just good at your job in order to be awarded an honour; but that goes for the rich and famous as much as for the rest of us. You shouldn’t need eight mammoth committees to decide how to allocate each year’s many awards; if only truly remarkable and admirable achievements were rewarded then fewer honours would be issued, and the whole system would gain more respect.

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Friday 2nd September 2005

A Drinking Song

Whatever my friends may think, I consider myself to be quite continental in my drinking habits; I mean, my favourite tipple is Belgium’s Stella Artois for a start. I do drink too much, but I prefer the “little but often” route to sclerosis rather than a binge drinker’s all out assault on my liver. I am far happier having a quiet pint or two with a meal or a book than I am downing pitchers of booze in a town centre Wetherspoons.

Much has been made of the changes to the licensing laws which are soon due to come into force, and for some reason many have waited until the last minute before making their objections known. Now that it is too late to change the legislation all sorts of people are predicting disaster once the new laws are in place.

A few weeks ago Judge Charles Harris QC commented that “Continental-style drinking requires continental-style people – people who sit quietly chatting away at cafe tables”, and almost daily there have been further comments from other people along the same lines. In response, it has been argued that why should decent law abiding folk be prevented from having a little drink after 11 o’clock?

I am in two minds about this one; on the one hand the current licensing laws are clearly outdated and anachronistic, and for that reason liberalisation is a good idea; on the other hand I have little doubt that the only real effect of the new laws will be that the pissheads of today will just drink even more tomorrow.

The thing is, it is not just continental-style people we need in order to have continental-style drinking, but continental-style bars, and I don’t think we are going to see many more of them come November. I often work late shifts, finishing work at 2 or 4 am, and sometimes I would quite like to pop into my local for a swift pint to unwind after a tough day; but I doubt my needs will be catered for once the new legislation comes into force. After all, there are no legal restrictions on coffee shops and libraries opening after 11 pm; the reason they don’t is presumably because doing so is simply not worthwhile. Similarly, I can’t see any quaint country pubs staying open on the off chance that I may wander in with my newspaper at half past four for a quiet drink; only places that can pack people in with happy hours and 2-for-1 offers are likely to find late opening profitable.

It is interesting to actually compare Britain with the rest of Europe. It is true to say that in other countries café owners are able to stay open later and longer; it is also true to say that many of them don’t bother. Last time I was in Paris we wandered around for ages trying to get a drink after 6 pm. There were dozens of cafés around and about our hotel, but having been open all day they shut for the evening when the proprietor went home to his family; and this was on a Saturday.

I think the fears that there will be an increase in violent disorder and drink related crime once the new licensing regulations come into force will be realised, although I don’t think that is necessarily a good reason for sticking with our current silly and restrictive opening times. I just think we need to be realistic; that if binge drinking is considered a problem now, then these changes are likely to make things worse.

And it may be true that British drinking habits have been formed as a consequence of our authoritarian licensing laws, and that the European attitude toward alcohol is to be admired; but the question is, how do we get there from here?

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