The pressure's all mine

 

 

Why and when players feel under the cosh, what it does to them, and how to deal with it

Aakash Chopra

October 8, 2009

	The 1999 World Cup semi-final run-out: pressure does different things to different people © PA Photos
Related Links Players/Officials: Aakash Chopra | Javed Miandad | Ricky Ponting | Chetan Sharma

Ever wonder why Chetan Sharma couldn't bowl a last-ball yorker in the Sharjah final against Pakistan all those years ago and instead bowled a low full-toss that Javed Miandad promptly hit for a six to win the match? After all, Sharma was extremely effective with the old ball in the slog overs. He could produce yorkers almost at will, which was why he was entrusted with the job of bowling that crucial final over. Let me try and put you in the shoes of players at such moments.

 

Scene 1 Imagine you're fielding at long-off in a friendly game at the Eden Gardens. The batsmen stroll a single. You field the ball without fuss and throw it. It's a routine drill for you.

Scene 2 Imagine you're doing the above on your first-class debut. There are senior players, perhaps even selectors, watching you and you want to do it absolutely right. You keep your eyes on the ball and ensure that you don't fumble, and promptly return the ball to the bowler. You feel some nerves but nothing that you can't handle.

Scene 3 Now change the colour of the jersey to India's blue and imagine playing in front of 100,000 people. The noise in the stadium is deafening. You can hear the people in the stands behind you shout as they realise the ball is coming their way. The batsmen are pressing for a non-existent second run to put pressure on you. But you hold your nerve, pick the ball cleanly, throw it back and heave a sigh of relief.

Scene 4 It's the last ball of a final between India and Pakistan. The opposition needs two runs to win the game. The ball is hit in your direction. They're running hard and you need to pounce, collect it cleanly and make a solid and accurate return to ensure a run-out. All of this happens in no more than a few seconds, but they seem to last forever. One slip-up could cost your team the match, and with it the trophy. It may even cost you your place in the side. You could be a veritable pariah to the watching millions.

 

Nothing is fundamentally different between those four scenarios - except for the degree of pressure involved. The ground remained the same, so did the power with which the shot was hit, and the weight of the ball. But there's a huge difference between fielding in a friendly and in an international match, especially when a match, trophy or career is at stake.

 

I use fielding as an example because luck plays a smaller role in fielding than it does in other disciplines. You might get a good ball while batting or the batsman might hit a great shot off a good ball you bowl, but with fielding there are few such issues.

	Ricky Ponting says that unless playing a certain shot or bowling a certain ball hasn't become a habit, it's almost impossible to produce it under pressure. For example, if a lofted shot over covers is your get-out-of-jail shot you must perfect the shot in practice

 

Fear of failure

Cricketers, like everyone else, have an inherent desire to succeed. We are taught the consequences of failure from an early age. If you don't perform, you're dropped from the side and you have to endure criticism from peers, coaches and others. The desire to succeed gives birth to the fear of failure. It's this fear that breeds nervousness, especially at the beginning of an innings. Only a few can remain calm while facing their first ball or running in to bowl their first delivery. There's always the fear of things going awfully wrong. It isn't only public failure that haunts a cricketer but also the knowledge that that failure could mean the end of the road for him at that particular level.

 

I remember playing for the Board President's XI against New Zealand just before my Test debut. I had had a knee surgery a few months before that, and it was my first competitive game in six months. The only thought that occupied my mind while facing Ian Butler was that I had to survive the first ball somehow and not get out for a duck. Logically there isn't much difference between getting out for 0 and for 1, but the mind seldom follows logic. The obsession with getting off the mark exists at all levels.

 

The higher the stakes, the bigger the fear. The fear of failure is at its pinnacle when you're playing for your place in the side. Both Dinesh Karthik and Abhishek Nayar found themselves in such a situation against West Indies in the Champions Trophy, and the effect was quite visible. Both would probably have played differently at any other time in their careers, but not on that day. They were circumspect and did everything in their power to avoid failure.

 

Fear of success

A tennis player committing unforced errors and double faults while serving for the match, a golfer missing a straightforward putt on the 18th hole, and a batsman taking a non-existing single on 99 to reach his hundred are common.

 

Anticipating success, and the accolades that come with it, coupled with the fear of ruining all the hard work that has been put in, makes a player nervous near the finishing line. The mind is in two places: one part wanders into the future, contemplating the kudos, while the other is scared of stumbling at the last hurdle. As a result, the execution of simple skills becomes difficult and the ability to think rationally deserts the individual. In hindsight, I must have felt the same way when I swept Stuart MacGill on 48 in the Melbourne Test of 2003. I don't usually play the sweep shot, but the eagerness to score a fifty did me in.

	While Chetan Sharma lost the plot in the Sharjah final, Javed Miandad showed he fed off the situation © Cricinfo Ltd

Lance Klusener and Allan Donald did something similar in the 1999 World Cup semi-final against Australia. Klusener could have hit a boundary with ease, and he had two more deliveries to go, but it all ended in a messy run-out.

 

Pressure from external circumstances

There are times when it's not the match situation that puts pressure on you. Remember Sachin Tendulkar's sleepless nights before the India-Pakistan clash in the 2003 World Cup? He doesn't lose sleep over every international game, but that wasn't any old game - it was an India-Pakistan clash in the biggest tournament of them all. I'm sure English and Australian cricketers face the same situation during the Ashes. In these cases it's not the quality of the opposition that puts you under pressure but the importance of the occasion and the expectations of people back home.

 

Individuals respond differently to pressure

The pressure that you feel has a lot to do with the form you are in and also the match situation. The pressure you feel while batting on the first day of a Test match is quite different from that which you feel while batting to save a Test in the fourth innings.

 

Two individuals facing the same opposition react differently thanks to the sort of form they are in. In the third Test match in Chennai against Australia in 2004-05, India had to bat only a few overs at the end of the fourth day. Virender Sehwag, who was in sublime form, saw it as an opportunity to score a quick 20, since the field was attacking, considering it was a short session. On the contrary Yuvraj Singh couldn't wait to get off the park. But it doesn't really tell you anything about the attitude or the mental toughness of either batsman because the same Sehwag wasn't keen to bat against the lesser bowlers of Maharashtra in a less important Ranji Trophy game at a time when he couldn't get the ball off the square.

 

How does on handle pressure?

Different players have different ways of dealing with pressure.

 

Brendon McCullum says that one must rein oneself in under pressure. Instead of going for a big heave when you're not seeing the ball well and your feet are not moving, take a single to get the other batsman on strike. Doing that gives you time to settle down and find form.

	The desire to succeed gives birth to the fear of failure. It's this fear that breeds nervousness, especially at the beginning of an innings

 

Ricky Ponting says that the only way to do well under pressure is to work hard in the nets. While he agrees that quality of practice is very important, he believes the quantity also plays a big role. He adds that unless playing a certain shot or bowling a certain ball hasn't become a habit, it's almost impossible to produce it under pressure. For example, if a lofted shot over covers is your get-out-of-jail shot, you must perfect it in practice to execute it to perfection in a match.

 

The importance of detachment

Players who are able to detach themselves from the importance of the occasion are better equipped to handle pressure. John Buchanan spoke to us at Kolkata Knight Riders about the need to disconnect from the hype created around the game in order to perform to potential.

We, as players, tend to go with the flow in big matches and at crucial situations. One feels pressured to hit a big shot as soon as the asking-rate goes over seven. Even though the situation is not as alarming as it sounds - because seven an over is achievable with sensible cricket and a few calculated risks - the pressure gets to people.

 

S Sriram once told me what to do in situations like this: "Postpone the desire to hit a big one by 10 minutes and play percentage cricket till then. But if you still feel the need to go for the jugular after 10 minutes, you should." The idea here is to think rationally instead of going with the flow and hitting a cross-batted slog off a good ball. One must try to play to one's strengths.

 

Bishan Bedi used to tell us that pressure is something you put on yourself. The scoreboard just shows digits and we get nervous or confident depending on how we read them. It sounds ridiculously simple, but it isn't.

 

Feeling under pressure is a state of mind, and I think staying in the present and playing on the merit of the ball works for me. Sharma and Miandad were at the opposite ends of the spectrum on that particular ball in that fateful match. One couldn't think or perhaps couldn't execute his plan under pressure, while the other not only thought rationally but also achieved an extremely difficult task. That's what pressure does to people. And how they handle and react to pressure is what separates great players from good ones.

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The Nobel prize for economics may need its own bailout

 

 

Facing a similar crisis of legitimacy, the prize needs to prove it is much more than an award for stockmarket speculators.

• Jayati Ghosh
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 8 October 2009 22.00 BST

 

The economics award is usually the last of the Nobel prizes to be announced. Correctly so, for it was also the last to be created – and strictly speaking is not even a real Nobel prize. The five original awards, first given out in 1901 for literature, peace, medicine/physiology, physics and chemistry, were intended by Alfred Nobel to recognise contributions that enhanced the quality of human life, through scientific advance, literary creativity or efforts at bringing about peace.

 

The economics prize is not a prize of the Nobel Foundation; rather, it was created in 1968 by the Central Bank of Sweden as a "prize in economic sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel". However, it now has the same procedure of selection by the Swedish Academy, and the same cash award presented at a similar ceremony as the Nobel prizes.

 
There have been recurrent doubts about whether it conforms to the basic goals of the prizes as envisaged by the founder. Is economics a science, on the same lines as physics or chemistry? Does it unambiguously contribute to human wellbeing, like peace or literature? In any case, should economics be privileged over other branches of learning?
 
Peter Nobel, great-grandnephew of the founder and human rights activist, famously argued that Alfred Nobel would not have approved of such a prize, which he termed "a PR coup by economists to improve their reputation ... most often awarded to stockmarket speculators".

 

Certainly the reputation of economists has needed building up, not only in the wake of the global financial crisis, but even before that. As much of mainstream economics became obsessed with navel-gazing esoteric models or theories designed to justify market liberalism, the public became relatively more alienated from the activities of economists. In such a context, the Nobel prize has been a useful tool not only to proclaim the conceptual advances supposedly made by "the dismal science" but also to encourage certain types of economic analysis and research. So its power extends beyond public recognition, altering the very production of economic knowledge.

 
The early prizes generally honoured economists whose work was already widely recognised. But even in the first decade, the list of exceptions was probably more impressive than that of the recipients, as greats like Michal Kalecki, Joan Robinson, Richard Kahn, Nicholas Kaldor and Piero Sraffa were overlooked in favour of lesser contributors. In the subsequent period, the award has occasionally gone to economists of relatively minor and sometimes absolutely questionable achievement, whom others in the profession quickly had to look up when the announcement was made.
 
The political effect of the prize in the profession has been undeniable. There has been overwhelming domination of neoclassical economics, to the exclusion of alternative streams of thought, with only a few nods in the direction of broader and more socially embracing approaches. This has encouraged more conservative approaches in research and teaching.

 

Monetarist and free market approaches have been disproportionately rewarded, often at crucial times. For example, the 1974 award to Friedrich von Hayek led to a resurgence of interest in the Austrian school and made his book The Road to Serfdom a bestseller. Two years later the prize went to Milton Friedman, making his extreme form of monetarism academically respectable and even leading to a conservative policy revolution. Economic history in the turgid and restricting form of retrospective econometrics was promoted by the 1993 award to Robert Fogel and Douglass North, while rational expectations theory was given a big boost by honouring Robert Lucas in 1995.

 

The geographical distribution of the award both creates and reflects power hierarchies in the discipline. The economics prize has been awarded 40 times to 62 recipients, 42 of whom have been from the US, while more than 50 were working in the US at the time of the award. The University of Chicago has 11 laureates, leading to the joke about "the Stockholm-Chicago Express". This does not reflect the actual state of economic knowledge so much as the biases and blindness of the jury. Only two people from developing countries have received it (Arthur Lewis and Amartya Sen) and both worked in the US and Britain. Only three with an interest in the economics of developing countries – which is the economic reality for around three quarters of the world's population – have received the award.

 

In recent years the prize has been focused on financial market behaviour. In 1997, the award went to two economists – Robert Merton and Myron Scholes – who were supposed to have discovered a method of valuing derivatives that could reduce or eliminate risk in financial investment. When the hedge fund they ran (Long Term Capital Management) went bust within the year and had to be rescued by the US federal reserve, there was some embarrassment. Perhaps to right this wrong, a few years later the prize was given to economists George Akerlof and Joseph Stiglitz, who had pointed to the imperfect functioning of financial markets. The award last year to Paul Krugman may also have indicated some bowing to changing times.

 
So far, no woman has received the economics Nobel. Apart from obvious exclusions such as Joan Robinson, this also reflects power hierarchies within the subject, because women economists even in the US and UK tend to be concentrated in the lower reaches of the academics profession, as researchers and lecturers rather than professors.
 
These imbalances will not be rectified easily. But the Nobel prize in economics may now be as much in need of wider legitimacy as the economics profession itself. It will be interesting to see if this is reflected on Monday, when the current year's winner is announced.

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Sowetan

 

Published by TiCam- 04-10-07

In South Africa, women now rape men

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It is strange but true. In South Africa, women are now raping men. If you are tall, handsome and huge, you may likely be a target. Moreover, if you love walking alone in the open field or at night, you may be taking a big risk and chances are that you may fall a prey to the gang of women rapists.

Nevertheless, if a man is not in the right mood for sex, the rapists have a way of creating one. They caress, suck and rub the victim's penis with a lotion. And before you say rape, the penis is erect and ready for action.

Penultimate Tuesday, the South African police arrested a 30-year old woman for allegedly luring a young man into an open field and then raped him while her two other friends stood guard, waiting for their turn. The police confirmed that after the incident, the victim's bruised penis was treated at a local hospital.

In another incident widely reported in the local media, two women allegedly lured a 21-year old job seeker away from a brick company by pretending they were equally looking for work. While walking across an open field, they pounced on the young man and raped him. According to report, police arrested a woman while the other escaped.

The victim told the police thus: "They threatened me, forced me to take off my pants, and then rubbed lotion on my penis to get an erection. The other woman kept watch while the arrested woman had sex with me."

Modus operandi

According to Sowetan, a South African newspaper, the rapists operate in a group of two or three. They ride in posh cars and look out for a man walking alone. Once they spot a potential prey, they pull up beside him and offer to give him a ride. If he accepts their offer, the women would take him to their house and at gunpoint, take their turn to rape him.

Only recently, the police confirmed the incident of a 24-year old man, who after being abducted at gunpoint by three women traveling in a white BMW, was forced to kneel face down on the back seat of the car. He was prevented from looking up and was only allowed to look about him when he was inside the house. For three days, the young man was kept in the house and gang raped.

According to Inspector Manyadza Ralidzhivha, the victim, who was dumped in the township after the incident reported that, "the women who were older than him, made him drink some liquids and then took turns having sex with him. They did not talk too much, but had sex with him as he lay face-up on the bed in a house."

Major problem

For Thembi Hlatshuiayo and Phindile Morewwa, both students of a popular secondary school in Johannesburg, apart from being a major problem in South Africa, women raping men has become a source of embarrassment to the womenfolk.

"The issue of women raping men is now one of the major problems in South Africa. In fact, it is a source of embarrassment to us," Thembi said.

Giving AIDS back to men

Saturday Sun investigation, however, revealed that the alleged rapists are mostly AIDS infected women, who believed that they have contacted the killer disease from men and have decided to pay them back in their own coins.

Lebo Leburu, a shop assistant in Johannesburg, told Saturday Sun thus: "The rapists are AIDS infected prostitutes. They are angry that men have given them the disease and have decided to give it back to them."

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The idea of Non Excludability - Explained in a current context

 

Mark Steel:

I wonder if one day you'll be able to opt out of paying for war you don't like

Who would have guessed, when people first marvelled at the ingenuity of the earliest aircraft, that this awesome achievement would result in the miserable wretched branch of industry known as airline companies? For example, British Airways have announced plans to charge up to £40 per person for the luxury of booking a seat. So if a family doesn't pay the extra, it could find itself separated all over the plane. And the staff will probably be instructed to sell this charge by saying "If you don't pay we MAY be able to sit your children next to you, and we will TRY not to sit them in the middle of a Plymouth nursery workers hen night outing but there's no guarantee so we do recommend the service for peace of mind".
 
Every aspect of the journey; food, drink, luggage, is becoming an "extra", to the point where Ryanair planned to charge £1 for use of the toilet. Next they'll replace safety announcements with an auction for the only oxygen mask. If the current airlines had been around in 1941 they'd have bought up the Spitfires, and pilots returning from the Battle of Britain would have been told they'd used more than their quota of bullets and owed Ryanair seventeen shillings and threepence.
 
But this isn't just about air travel. The arguments used to justify these measures are along the lines of "Why should every customer pay for privileges they don't require themselves?" And there will be people who snarl "Why should part of my ticket price go towards the upkeep of a toilet when I don't use it because I prefer to go in a jar?" This attitude is seeping through every area of business. The arguments directed against the BBC from other broadcasters amount to complaints that some people have to pay for programmes they don't watch. In other words, "Why should I have to pay for yesterday's weather forecast when I stayed in all day? So these layabouts are staying dry and I'm paying for it."
 
Big TV companies want to go further with this, charging for individual sporting events and programmes. If they owned newspapers you'd have to pay extra for the sports results, or the crossword, and be told "Why should regular readers have to fork out for the cryptic minority?"
 
Local councils promote this extreme individuality. The tennis court in my local park now greets you with a sign saying "If you don't pay you won't play." So not only do they charge for what were communal facilities, they don't even do it politely. Instead they sound like The Mafia in rhyme, and might as well say "Three sets costs you twenty notes or Claudio here will slit your throats."
Even rubbish dumps come under the new system. You're now asked to provide proof of address before using a council dump, to prevent those scurrilous types who cross the border and dump stuff in an area they haven't paid for. This is probably what happened in Yugoslavia. Slobodan Milosevic held rallies where he screamed "How long must we sit back while thieves and vagabonds come over here from Dubrovnik to throw their rotting settees in our dump? This is exactly what happened in the great turnip-dumping battles of 1352 , this means war." Soon tall people will have to pay more for bus tickets because "If they were all the same size as me, the bus could be shorter and use less red paint so why should I have to pay...." This attitude isn't natural. It has to be cultivated. When you come back from holiday your neighbours don't say "Welcome back dear. We kept an eye on the place while you were away, just to be on the safe side. So here's an invoice for security, we'll be expecting payment in thirty days or we will sue, dear, ooh you've got a lovely tan."
 
Society depends and thrives on a collective attitude, but there seems to be a trend now to go further than running every corner of society according to the rules of business, and sub-divide each business so everyone is responsible solely for themself. And if enough companies and politicians insist we're all being robbed by paying for toilets and tennis courts and invalidity benefits that we don't directly benefit from, we'll come to accept it must be true. In which case I wonder if in future you can opt out of paying for a war you don't agree with, as long as you yell: "Why should I have to pay for cruise missiles when I can see he hasn't even got these supposed weapons. I'm being robbed."

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The British Energy Sector - An Example of Collussion by Oligopolies and regulatory failure

 

The great energy rip-off (and how you can avoid it)

By Martin Hickman, Consumer Affairs Correspondent

Consumers suffer as energy firms cash in on huge profits

Fuel bills have become a "scandal" as the biggest suppliers in the £25bn-a-year industry make vast profits supplying gas and electricity to Britain's 20 million families, independent experts say.
Today The Independent launches a campaign demanding that the "Big Six" power companies lower their prices, amid accusations that they failed to pass on cuts in fuel bills after the price of oil fell from last summer's record highs.
Utility companies put up power prices by about 42 per cent last year, or about £382 per household. Since then, the wholesale cost of gas and electricity has halved but bills have fallen by only 4 per cent.
Critics say there is too little competition between British Gas, E.ON, EDF Energy, Npower, Scottish & Southern and ScottishPower. The average domestic fuel bill paid by direct debit is £1,141 - but it varies by less than £20 between the six companies.
Over the past month, the mark-up charged by the established power suppliers has been exposed by two new operators who are taking advantage of rock-bottom wholesale gas and electricity prices to slash bills. First:Utility's typical tariff for bills paid online is £954, while Ovo Energy charges £978, a saving of £163 to £187 over the Big Six. Quarterly and pre-payment customers who switch to Ovo or First:Utility would save £287.
By contrast, millions of Big Six customers are languishing on standard deals far costlier than online tariffs offered to savvy customers who shop around.
Some of those expensive packages will hit home this winter when the two British-owned power companies reveal their profits to the City. One million families served by E.ON, ScottishPower and EDF Energy will also find themselves paying up to £296 a year more for gas and electricity after their fixed tariffs ended last week.
As part of the "Great Energy Rip-Off" campaign, The Independent is encouraging its readers to switch supplier to spark greater competition. We are also calling on the Big Six to lower prices by 10 per cent, or about £125 a year, and urging ministers to remove the licences of suppliers that do not pass on falls in wholesale fuel prices.
Of the Big Six, four are owned by foreign corporations which have been accused of treating Britain like a "treasure island". They are expected to report vastly higher profits thanks to falling wholesale costs. While the firms were paying 85p per therm of gas last September, the price now is 35p. Electricity prices have fallen from £90 to £40 per megawatt hour.
According to a review by the Energy Contract Company, an independent energy forecaster, wholesale gas prices will stay low this winter and remain so for three years. "The fall in spot prices has meant the domestic market is now highly profitable," it said in its Gas Market Review, which put current profit margins at 20 to 30 per cent.
In August, the energy regulator Ofgem's request for price cuts was rejected by suppliers who warned that they might even raise bills. Using confidential commercial data, Ofgem - which has been accused of treating the Big Six too leniently - estimated that while they usually made £110 per year on "dual fuel" customers who obtained gas and electricity from one company, this year they would make £170 per customer - an increase of 55 per cent.
According to a "conservative" estimate by the campaign group Consumer Focus, bills are about £100 too high. But an independent energy expert, David Hunter, said that given Ofgem's "caution" he estimated that a figure of £120 a year was more accurate.
"The failure of the suppliers to pass on the massive reductions in energy prices... is approaching scandal proportions," said Mr Hunter, of Britain's biggest independent energy analyst McKinnon & Clarke. "Some suppliers have recently made small reductions to niche tariffs. However, these token discounts are only open to direct debit and online customers and do not change the overall trend."
Last year, Ofgem dismissed any suggestion that the power companies were colluding to fix prices. However, after initially insisting that the market was working, the regulator's Energy Supply Probe found that pre-payment and electricity-only customers were being overcharged by £500m. Energywatch, the disbanded consumer body, blamed a lack of competition.
As a result of takeovers since privatisation in the 1980s, the number of household power suppliers has fallen from 20 to six. EDF Energy, E.ON, ScottishPower and Npower have been taken over by overseas corporations, making them more resistant to national pressure to lower bills.
Confusing bills from the firms, which have a baffling array of 4,000 different tariffs, also make customers less likely to search for a better deal.
The Government urged firms to lower prices this spring, but since then ministers have been quiet and the Department for Energy and Climate Change has issued no press releases on household bills all year. The Big Six, which control 99 per cent of the domestic market, are likely to face new pressure later this year as they reveal bumper earnings. This month, Scottish & Southern is expected to announce interim profits of almost £600m - twice last year's figure.
 

Martin Hickman: Suppliers run rings around regulators

Britain's energy sector is failing. The infrastructure is old and crumbling, the proportion of climate-friendly renewables such as wind and solar is rumbling along at 5 per cent despite a 9.7 per cent target, metering is antiquated and bills are confusing and complex. And, perhaps the most immediate concern in a recession, bills are too high.
The Big Six energy suppliers don't need to collude to fix prices - they simply watch what their rivals are charging and tweak tariffs accordingly. They leave millions of people on expensive tariffs, leaving the juiciest rates for price-sensitive internet surfers.
They have little to fear from the regulator Ofgem. They have run rings around it, even managing to keep their outrageous right to inform customers of price rises two months later.
With the regulator in their pocket and a weak Government, they have almost complete control of the market. While the biggest six supermarkets - themselves subject to bitter claims that they stifle consumer choice - have 77 per cent of food spending and the biggest six banks and building societies have 94 per cent of current accounts, the Big Six energy suppliers have 99 per cent of customers. True, they have occasionally limited domestic rises when the oil price has spiked particularly spectacularly; not all years have been bumper ones.
Now, though, the trough in wholesale prices is so deep and is predicted to last so long, they are set for years of bonanza profits.
Even Ofgem has finally acknowledged bills are too high. But it ceded its last price controls in 2002, when it concluded that the market was working fine. At the start of 2008 it also insisted the market was working - before launching an investigation and finding £500m overcharging. Given its regulatory failure, only a customer exodus will sharpen competition. Last month two new operators, First: Utility and Ovo Energy, undercut the big boys by taking advantage of cheap wholesale energy.
Although the big suppliers have more expensive long-term contracts, almost everyone believes they could still cut bills. Some of their customers already pay hundreds of pounds less than others.
Ministers seem relaxed about prices, with only occasional harrumphing from the Department for Energy and Climate Change. Consumers don't have to be.

The demise of the dollar

In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading

By Robert Fisk

The Independent 6/10/09

 

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

 

Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.

 

The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years.

 

The Americans, who are aware the meetings have taken place – although they have not discovered the details – are sure to fight this international cabal which will include hitherto loyal allies Japan and the Gulf Arabs. Against the background to these currency meetings, Sun Bigan, China's former special envoy to the Middle East, has warned there is a risk of deepening divisions between China and the US over influence and oil in the Middle East. "Bilateral quarrels and clashes are unavoidable," he told the Asia and Africa Review. "We cannot lower vigilance against hostility in the Middle East over energy interests and security."

 

This sounds like a dangerous prediction of a future economic war between the US and China over Middle East oil – yet again turning the region's conflicts into a battle for great power supremacy. China uses more oil incrementally than the US because its growth is less energy efficient. The transitional currency in the move away from dollars, according to Chinese banking sources, may well be gold. An indication of the huge amounts involved can be gained from the wealth of Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar who together hold an estimated $2.1 trillion in dollar reserves.

 

The decline of American economic power linked to the current global recession was implicitly acknowledged by the World Bank president Robert Zoellick. "One of the legacies of this crisis may be a recognition of changed economic power relations," he said in Istanbul ahead of meetings this week of the IMF and World Bank. But it is China's extraordinary new financial power – along with past anger among oil-producing and oil-consuming nations at America's power to interfere in the international financial system – which has prompted the latest discussions involving the Gulf states.

 

Brazil has shown interest in collaborating in non-dollar oil payments, along with India. Indeed, China appears to be the most enthusiastic of all the financial powers involved, not least because of its enormous trade with the Middle East.

 

China imports 60 per cent of its oil, much of it from the Middle East and Russia. The Chinese have oil production concessions in Iraq – blocked by the US until this year – and since 2008 have held an $8bn agreement with Iran to develop refining capacity and gas resources. China has oil deals in Sudan (where it has substituted for US interests) and has been negotiating for oil concessions with Libya, where all such contracts are joint ventures.

 

Furthermore, Chinese exports to the region now account for no fewer than 10 per cent of the imports of every country in the Middle East, including a huge range of products from cars to weapon systems, food, clothes, even dolls. In a clear sign of China's growing financial muscle, the president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, yesterday pleaded with Beijing to let the yuan appreciate against a sliding dollar and, by extension, loosen China's reliance on US monetary policy, to help rebalance the world economy and ease upward pressure on the euro.

 

Ever since the Bretton Woods agreements – the accords after the Second World War which bequeathed the architecture for the modern international financial system – America's trading partners have been left to cope with the impact of Washington's control and, in more recent years, the hegemony of the dollar as the dominant global reserve currency.

 

The Chinese believe, for example, that the Americans persuaded Britain to stay out of the euro in order to prevent an earlier move away from the dollar. But Chinese banking sources say their discussions have gone too far to be blocked now. "The Russians will eventually bring in the rouble to the basket of currencies," a prominent Hong Kong broker told The Independent. "The Brits are stuck in the middle and will come into the euro. They have no choice because they won't be able to use the US dollar."

 

Chinese financial sources believe President Barack Obama is too busy fixing the US economy to concentrate on the extraordinary implications of the transition from the dollar in nine years' time. The current deadline for the currency transition is 2018.

The US discussed the trend briefly at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh; the Chinese Central Bank governor and other officials have been worrying aloud about the dollar for years. Their problem is that much of their national wealth is tied up in dollar assets.

"These plans will change the face of international financial transactions," one Chinese banker said. "America and Britain must be very worried. You will know how worried by the thunder of denials this news will generate."

 

Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars. Bankers remember, of course, what happened to the last Middle East oil producer to sell its oil in euros rather than dollars. A few months after Saddam Hussein trumpeted his decision, the Americans and British invaded Iraq.

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If we care about the BBC, we must fight to defend it

 

Johann Hari

The Tories' plan to scrap impartiality would mean Sky mutating into Fox News

There is a scandal in British politics that is passing almost unnoticed in the night. It will alter the ecology of our politics - and our culture - in ways that will damage us for decades to come.
 
There is one thing most British people think we do best: broadcasting. A recent ICM poll found that 77 per cent think the BBC is an institution to be proud of, and 63 per cent say it is good value for money. This makes the BBC by a long way the most popular public institution in Britain - yet both main political parties are lining up to happy-slap Auntie. The link between the licence fee and the Beeb is about to be broken by a Labour government, and a Tory government will sweep in and widen the gap, while unleashing a snarling pack of Fox News-style hounds across the rest of the channels. And for what? To win the favour of a foreign right-wing billionaire.
 
Let's start with the good news. The BBC works. For just £2.60 a week, the British get a package of the best television and radio in the world. We get the best comedies, the best drama and the best news. There's a reason why we have won seven of the past 10 international Emmies, and the BBC News website is the most popular on earth. As soon as he took power, Nicolas Sarkozy asked how he could make French broadcasting more like ours. It is a model for the world of how to create journalism that isn't contaminated by either corporate advertisers and proprietors on one side, or state ownership on the other. Three independent polls have found that a large majority of Brits would happily pay more for it.
 
Of course we can all find some parts of its output we don't like. I can't stand Jeremy Clarkson, Andrew Neil's blatant editorialising, Chris Moyles, or bogus questions about whether Gordon Brown is popping pills. A right-wing bias still seeps into a lot of its news coverage: see the new book Newspeak by David Edwards and David Cromwell for details. But other people will loathe the parts I love - In Our Time, Start the Week, EastEnders, Question Time, Lauren Laverne, Mark Kermode, BBC4. It's a package: it's impossible for every part to delight every individual. But when there are so many riches, we almost all find something to enjoy: a London Business School found that 99 per cent of us use it every week.
 
Far from becoming outdated, the BBC model is more necessary than ever. Commercial television is losing its ability to produce quality programmes, fast. Advertising money is leaking away to the internet: this week, for the first time, online advertising overtook TV ads in Britain. Revenues are expected to fall by 20 per cent in the next decade, and to continue spiralling after that. As more of us get digital packages that make it possible to record programmes and fast-forward through the ads, it will only get worse. Budgets for shows on commercial channels are in freefall. We won't get good programmes for nothing again. The BBC is the simplest answer, and we are overwhelmingly happy to pay it.
 
So why would our politicians start trashing this system? Rupert Murdoch has long despised the BBC, for the simple reason that although it works well for us, it works badly for him. He can't step in and make a profit by providing his import-filled alternatives, because we're happy with what we have. So he has launched a long campaign through his newspapers to delegitimise the BBC. They relentlessly present it as poor value, biased to the left, and bloated. It's not working with the public: the BBC is 9 per cent more popular today than a decade ago. But he is determined to shrink the BBC to a feeble service like PBS in the US, producing worthy programmes watched by a handful.
 
Despite losing the public argument, Murdoch has another way to exert influence: his newspapers have long applauded the politicians who most serve his interests, and savaged the politicians who lag behind. It's part of a long pattern that stretches across continents. In the debate about The Sun's endorsement of David Cameron this week, many naive observers have acted as if the newspaper is a pressure group with only the interests of the British people at heart, rather than the arm of a corporate machine acting bluntly in its own self-interest.
 
The Labour government began the bidding for Murdoch's favour by proposing - for the first time - to break the link between the licence fee and the BBC. From now on, a chunk of it will be given to other broadcasters like Channel 4 and regional news providers. At first it sounds like a small and reasonable step - it will go to support valuable programming - but it begins a process that will bleed the BBC. You won't be able to see so clearly where your money is going. Gradually, more and more money will be dispersed from the BBC by a Tory government eager to keep Murdoch's favour, and the corporation will shrink back. As it provides less easily traceable value, it will be harder to defend the license fee itself - and Murdoch will win.
 
The Tories then upped the bidding. This summer Ofcom - Britain's broadcasting regulators - found Murdoch's BSkyB guilty of effectively pricing other companies out of the pay-TV market. David Cameron responded by saying he will quietly put Ofcom to sleep, scrapping most of its regulations. Then he gave Murdoch another bauble he has craved for decades: he is going to scrap all the political impartiality rules covering British television (except on the BBC). If Cameron succeeds, Sky News will mutate into Fox News, pumping its poison 24/7. Murdoch duly endorsed the Tories.
 
This quid pro quo is unspoken - there are no meetings in darkened rooms - but Murdoch is quids in nonetheless. His son James Murdoch has been at the forefront of trying to rationalise these grabs for profit. He called the impartiality rules "an impingement on the right to free speech". This is based on a basic error. Your right to free speech - which is the closest thing I have to a sacred belief - doesn't include the right to speak wherever you want. I don't have a primetime show on BBC1 to expound my views, but that doesn't mean I'm being censored. Your right to say what you want doesn't entail a right to say it on the public airwaves. They are a shared public resource, and it is right to regulate them in the public interest.
 
James Murdoch then claimed the BBC "penalises the poorest in our society with regressive taxes and policies". This is hilarious. If James Murdoch is against regressive taxes, why has News International - which makes billions - paid no net taxation in Britain for more than a decade? Why do his newspapers vehemently oppose moves to tax the rich more and the poor less?
After this argument belly-flopped, he claimed the only "guarantor of independence [in broadcasting] is profit". Perhaps he should visit Italy, where the Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, owns half the TV channels, and makes them support his political campaigns.
Enough. We can't tolerate a clandestine campaign to trash one of our great national institutions, just so a foreign billionaire can make more profit. Where are these politicians' spines? Where is their patriotism?
 
j.hari@independent.co.uk [j.hari@independent.co.uk]

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