George Monbiot in Outlook India
Be reasonable in response to the unreasonable: this is what voters in the Labour election are told. Accommodate, moderate, triangulate, for the alternative is to isolate yourself from reality. You might be inclined to agree. If so, please take a look at the reality to which you must submit.
To an extent unknown since before the First World War, economic relations in this country are becoming set in stone. It's not just that the very rich no longer fall while the very poor no longer rise. It's that the system itself is protected from risk. Through bail-outs, quantitative easing and delays in interest rate rises, speculative investment has been so well cushioned that, as Larry Elliott puts it, financial markets are "one of the last bastions of socialism left on earth."
Public services, infrastructure, the very fabric of the nation: these too are being converted into risk-free investments. Social cleansing is transforming inner London into an exclusive economic zone for property speculation. From a dozen directions, government policy converges on this objective. The benefits cap and the bedroom tax drive the poor out of their homes. The forced sale of high-value council houses creates a new asset pool. An uncapped and scarcely regulated private rental market turns these assets into gold. The freeze on council tax banding since 1991, the lifting of the inheritance tax threshold and £14 billion a year in breaks for private landlords all help to guarantee stupendous returns.
And for those who wish simply to sit on their assets, the government can help here too, by ensuring that there are no penalties for leaving buildings empty. As a result, great tracts of housing are removed from occupation. Agricultural land has proved an even better punt for City money: with the help of capital gains, inheritance and income tax exemptions, as well as farm subsidies, its price has quadrupled in 12 years.
Property in this country is a haven for the proceeds of international crime. The head of the National Crime Agency, Donald Toon, notes that "the London property market has been skewed by laundered money. Prices are being artificially driven up by overseas criminals who want to sequester their assets here in the UK."
It's hardly surprising, given the degree of oversight. Private Eye has produced a map of British land owned by companies registered in offshore tax havens. The holdings amount to 1.2 million acres, including much of our prime real estate. Among those it names as beneficiaries are a cast of Russian oligarchs, oil sheikhs, British aristocrats and newspaper proprietors. These are the people for whom government policy works, and the less regulated the system that enriches them, the happier they are.
The speculative property market is just one current in the great flow of cash that sluices through Britain while scarcely touching the sides. The financial sector exploits an astonishing political privilege: the City of London is the only jurisdiction in the UK not fully subject to the authority of parliament. In fact, the relationship seems to work the other way. Behind the Speaker's chair in the House of Commons sits the Remembrancer, whose job is to ensure that the interests of the City of London are recognised by the elected members. (A campaign to rescind this privilege — Don't Forget the Remembrancer — will be launched very soon). The City has one foot in the water: it is a semi-offshore state, a bit like the UK's Crown dependencies and overseas territories, tax havens legitimised by the Privy Council. Britain's financial secrecy undermines the tax base while providing a conduit into the legal economy for gangsters, kleptocrats and drug barons.
Even the more orthodox financial institutions deploy a long succession of scandalous practices: pension mis-selling, endowment mortgage fraud, the payment protection insurance con, Libor rigging. A former minister in the last government, Lord Green, ran HSBC while it engaged in money laundering for drugs gangs, systematic tax evasion and the provision of services to Saudi and Bangladeshi banks linked to the financing of terrorists. Sometimes the UK looks to me like an ever-so-civilised mafia state.
At next month's Conservative party conference, corporate executives will pay £2,500 to sit with a minister. Doubtless, because we are assured that there is no link between funding and policy, they will spend the day discussing the weather and the films they have seen. If we noticed such arrangements overseas, we might be inclined to regard them as corruption. But that can't be the case here, not least because the invitation explains that "fees associated with business day & dinner are considered a commercial transaction and therefore do not constitute a political donation."
The government also insists that there is no link between political donations and seats in the House of Lords. But a study by researchers at Oxford University found that the probability of so many major donors arriving there by chance is 1.36 x 10-38: roughly "equivalent to entering the National Lottery and winning the jackpot 5 times in a row". Why does the Lords remain unreformed? Because it permits plutocratic power to override democracy. Both rich and poor are kept in their place.
Governed either by or on behalf of the people who fleece us, we cannot be surprised to discover that all public services are being re-engineered for the benefit of private capital. Nor should we be surprised when governments help to negotiate, without public consent, treaties such as TTIP and CETA (the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement), which undermine the sovereignty of both parliament and the law. Aesop's observation that "we hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office" remains true in spirit, though hanging has been replaced by community payback.
Wherever you sniff in British public life, something stinks: I could fill this newspaper with examples. But, while every pore oozes corruption, our task, we are told, is merely to trim the nails of the body politic.
To fail to confront this system is to collaborate with it. Who on the left would wish to stand on the sidelines as this carve-up continues? Who would vote for anything but sweeping change?
Sunday 13 September 2015
Jeremy Corbyn's victory means Labour's living dead have been vanquished - and English politics has come to life again
Tariq Ali in The Independent
The ironies of history never fail to surprise. Measured by any criteria, Jeremy Corbyn is the most left-wing leader in the history of the Labour Party. He understands that those who do evil abroad are unlikely to do much good at home. He is the staunchest anti-imperialist Member of Parliament.
A contrast with his political forebears proves this assertion. Keir Hardie’s socialism floundered on the battlefields of the First World War. Clement Attlee was a great reformer domestically, but abroad his government approved the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Harold Wilson redistributed wealth but supported the US in Vietnam; Michael Foot as Leader of the Opposition was a rabid supporter of Margaret Thatcher’s war to retrieve the Malvinas/Falklands.
The Thatcherite Blair/Brown twins agreed to share power thus creating two power-hungry factions with no political differences except that Tony Blair hungered for both power and money. He gave us the wars in the former Yugoslavia and Iraq, while Gordon Brown was oblivious to the vulnerabilities of financialised capitalism and spent billions of taxpayers’ money bailing out banks that might have (after paying the depositors) been best left to croak. Both bureaucratised the Labour Party by neutering the party conference, reducing it to a tacky version of the US Democrats. All show, no substance. They denuded constituency Labour parties of the right to select their own prospective parliamentary candidates. This was the only way they could transform a large chunk of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) into a collection of over-promoted office boys and girls together with bandwagon careerists.
Three of them were on regular display in the campaign to succeed another of their number, Ed Miliband. What is ironic is that Miliband’s reform of the party’s electoral system was designed to appease the Blairites and their media chums by eliminating what was left of trade union power in the party and opening it up to outsiders in the lame hope that more congenial voters would ensure the domination of extreme centre politics.
So confident were they, that a few Blairites gave Corbyn the necessary parliamentary votes to stand as a token lefty and reveal the party’s generosity and attachment to diversity. Who would have thought that it would backfire so sensationally? Certainly not Corbyn. Nor anyone else. The Guardian came out for Yvette Cooper, its Blairite columnists denouncing the dinosaur from Islington, forgetting that, for younger folk, dinosaurs are a much loved and missed species. The Daily Mirror backed Andy Burnham.
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COMMENT: TODAY IS OUR DARKEST HOUR – WE HAVE BECOME UNELECTABLE
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No one who knows or sees and hears Corbyn can doubt his authenticity. I have shared numerous platforms with him over the past 40 years. On the key issues he has remained steadfast. What appealed to the young, who transformed the campaign into a social movement, was precisely what alienated the traditional political and media cliques. Corbyn was untutored, discursive, too left-wing, wanted to reverse the privatisations of the railways and utilities, etc. Many who registered to vote for him did so because of this and to break from the bland, unimaginative and visionless New Labour.
Corbyn had underestimated the changes in Scotland, but these actually helped his campaign. A Scottish National Party cohort in parliament that wanted to ditch the redundant and over-priced Trident; an electrifying maiden speech by 20-year-old Mhairi Black that took on the Tories. All this helped the Corbyn campaign. If Scotland, why not England?
As Labour members elect their most left-wing leader, the overwhelming majority of the PLP is in the death grip of the right. Anyone listening to Sadiq Khan’s speech after being elected as Labour’s choice for London mayor would have noticed the difference with the Corbyn campaign. Khan’s clichés were a reminder of how isolated Corbyn will be in the PLP. Corbyn will call on the party to unite behind him. But there is no getting away from the fact that the PLP majority is opposed to his policies. I guess they will try to tire him out and force compromise after compromise to discredit him (remember Alexis Tsipras in Greece), but I doubt they’ll succeed.
Corbyn understands the key issues on which no compromise is possible. He’s been campaigning for them long enough. His closeness to the Green agenda is not a secret, and the single Green MP now has a solid supporter in the new Labour leader. Taking back public transport from the profiteers is another element; cheap public housing for the young and the old will help rebuild communities. A robust tax regime that reverses the decades of privileges afforded the rich will unleash a fierce offensive by the City and its media and political acolytes, but it’s considered absolutely necessary.
Since the late Seventies, the redistribution of wealth in favour of the rich and the very rich has risen faster in Britain than in any other country in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Corbyn is not interested in power for its own sake or to amass personal wealth.
Within the party, Corbyn will undoubtedly move to restore democracy. It’s the only way for Labour supporters in the country to be properly represented in parliament. None of this is easy and that is why a powerful movement, a new model campaigning army outside Parliament remains essential. It is the only way to ensure that the Corbyn agenda is fulfilled. None of this will happen overnight, and supporters have to be patient and not scream from the sidelines.
Some Labour MPs will desert. After all, they happily supported austerity. But, whatever happens, it will no longer be possible for the self-censoring BBC to keep the views espoused by the new Labour leader off the screen. The living dead have been vanquished, if temporarily. English politics has come to life again.
The ironies of history never fail to surprise. Measured by any criteria, Jeremy Corbyn is the most left-wing leader in the history of the Labour Party. He understands that those who do evil abroad are unlikely to do much good at home. He is the staunchest anti-imperialist Member of Parliament.
A contrast with his political forebears proves this assertion. Keir Hardie’s socialism floundered on the battlefields of the First World War. Clement Attlee was a great reformer domestically, but abroad his government approved the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Harold Wilson redistributed wealth but supported the US in Vietnam; Michael Foot as Leader of the Opposition was a rabid supporter of Margaret Thatcher’s war to retrieve the Malvinas/Falklands.
The Thatcherite Blair/Brown twins agreed to share power thus creating two power-hungry factions with no political differences except that Tony Blair hungered for both power and money. He gave us the wars in the former Yugoslavia and Iraq, while Gordon Brown was oblivious to the vulnerabilities of financialised capitalism and spent billions of taxpayers’ money bailing out banks that might have (after paying the depositors) been best left to croak. Both bureaucratised the Labour Party by neutering the party conference, reducing it to a tacky version of the US Democrats. All show, no substance. They denuded constituency Labour parties of the right to select their own prospective parliamentary candidates. This was the only way they could transform a large chunk of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) into a collection of over-promoted office boys and girls together with bandwagon careerists.
Three of them were on regular display in the campaign to succeed another of their number, Ed Miliband. What is ironic is that Miliband’s reform of the party’s electoral system was designed to appease the Blairites and their media chums by eliminating what was left of trade union power in the party and opening it up to outsiders in the lame hope that more congenial voters would ensure the domination of extreme centre politics.
So confident were they, that a few Blairites gave Corbyn the necessary parliamentary votes to stand as a token lefty and reveal the party’s generosity and attachment to diversity. Who would have thought that it would backfire so sensationally? Certainly not Corbyn. Nor anyone else. The Guardian came out for Yvette Cooper, its Blairite columnists denouncing the dinosaur from Islington, forgetting that, for younger folk, dinosaurs are a much loved and missed species. The Daily Mirror backed Andy Burnham.
------
READ MORE:
COMMENT: TODAY IS OUR DARKEST HOUR – WE HAVE BECOME UNELECTABLE
-----
No one who knows or sees and hears Corbyn can doubt his authenticity. I have shared numerous platforms with him over the past 40 years. On the key issues he has remained steadfast. What appealed to the young, who transformed the campaign into a social movement, was precisely what alienated the traditional political and media cliques. Corbyn was untutored, discursive, too left-wing, wanted to reverse the privatisations of the railways and utilities, etc. Many who registered to vote for him did so because of this and to break from the bland, unimaginative and visionless New Labour.
Corbyn had underestimated the changes in Scotland, but these actually helped his campaign. A Scottish National Party cohort in parliament that wanted to ditch the redundant and over-priced Trident; an electrifying maiden speech by 20-year-old Mhairi Black that took on the Tories. All this helped the Corbyn campaign. If Scotland, why not England?
As Labour members elect their most left-wing leader, the overwhelming majority of the PLP is in the death grip of the right. Anyone listening to Sadiq Khan’s speech after being elected as Labour’s choice for London mayor would have noticed the difference with the Corbyn campaign. Khan’s clichés were a reminder of how isolated Corbyn will be in the PLP. Corbyn will call on the party to unite behind him. But there is no getting away from the fact that the PLP majority is opposed to his policies. I guess they will try to tire him out and force compromise after compromise to discredit him (remember Alexis Tsipras in Greece), but I doubt they’ll succeed.
Corbyn understands the key issues on which no compromise is possible. He’s been campaigning for them long enough. His closeness to the Green agenda is not a secret, and the single Green MP now has a solid supporter in the new Labour leader. Taking back public transport from the profiteers is another element; cheap public housing for the young and the old will help rebuild communities. A robust tax regime that reverses the decades of privileges afforded the rich will unleash a fierce offensive by the City and its media and political acolytes, but it’s considered absolutely necessary.
Since the late Seventies, the redistribution of wealth in favour of the rich and the very rich has risen faster in Britain than in any other country in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Corbyn is not interested in power for its own sake or to amass personal wealth.
Within the party, Corbyn will undoubtedly move to restore democracy. It’s the only way for Labour supporters in the country to be properly represented in parliament. None of this is easy and that is why a powerful movement, a new model campaigning army outside Parliament remains essential. It is the only way to ensure that the Corbyn agenda is fulfilled. None of this will happen overnight, and supporters have to be patient and not scream from the sidelines.
Some Labour MPs will desert. After all, they happily supported austerity. But, whatever happens, it will no longer be possible for the self-censoring BBC to keep the views espoused by the new Labour leader off the screen. The living dead have been vanquished, if temporarily. English politics has come to life again.
Thursday 10 September 2015
Travelling to work 'is work', European court rules
BBC News
Time spent travelling to and from first and last appointments by workers without a fixed office should be regarded as working time, the European Court of Justice has ruled.
This time has not previously been considered work by many employers.
It means firms including those employing care workers, gas fitters and sales reps may be in breach of EU working time regulations.
BBC legal correspondent Clive Coleman said it could have a "huge effect".
"Thousands of employers could now find themselves in breach of working time regulations," he added.
This time has not previously been considered work by many employers.
It means firms including those employing care workers, gas fitters and sales reps may be in breach of EU working time regulations.
BBC legal correspondent Clive Coleman said it could have a "huge effect".
"Thousands of employers could now find themselves in breach of working time regulations," he added.
'Falling below minimum wage'
Chris Tutton, from the solicitors Irwin Mitchell, agreed the ruling would be "very significant" and could have an impact on pay.
"People may now be working an additional 10 hours a week once you take into account their travel time, and that may mean employers are falling below the national minimum wage level when you look at the hourly rate that staff are paid," he said.
The court says its judgment is about protecting the "health and safety" of workers as set out in the European Union's working time directive.
The directive is designed to protect workers from exploitation by employers, and it lays down regulations on matters such as how long employees work, how many breaks they have, and how much holiday they are entitled to.
'Bear the burden'
One of its main goals is to ensure that no employee in the EU is obliged to work more than an average of 48 hours a week.
The ruling came about because of an ongoing legal case in Spain involving a company called Tyco, which installs security systems.
The company shut its regional offices down in 2011, resulting in employees travelling varying distances before arriving at their first appointment.
The court ruling said: "The fact that the workers begin and finish the journeys at their homes stems directly from the decision of their employer to abolish the regional offices and not from the desire of the workers themselves.
"Requiring them to bear the burden of their employer's choice would be contrary to the objective of protecting the safety and health of workers pursued by the directive, which includes the necessity of guaranteeing workers a minimum rest period."
Technology and the amateur cricketer
Jon Hotten in Cricinfo
The professional cricketer lives an examined life, with feedback from various corners © Getty Images
Every journalist knows the horror of their own voice. The realisation comes early, when you begin recording interviews. There, on the tape or in the bytes or the VT, is not the voice you thought that you had, the one that's been echoing in your ears for your whole life, but the one that the rest of the world hears - reedy, nasal, pitched entirely differently.
It takes a while to get over the discovery and to become acquainted with the notion that self-image overlaps only slightly with the objective view of the rest of the world.
Cricket is deep into its age of analysis. Kartikeya Date's lovely piece in the current Cricket Monthly illuminates the depth of it: every ball in every major match is logged, filed, deconstructed. It means that the professional cricketer lives an examined life, and its information comes at them from all angles: their coaches, their laptops, the television, the internet, YouTube, Twitter… a bombardment of feedback that can leave them in no doubt as to what they look like in the eyes of the world. Reality here is absolute, self-image challenged from an early age.
It has a purpose, of course; all of this stuff, and in a sport that exacts a high psychological price, strong self-knowledge can be an important anchor. It's why the analysed player speaks constantly of "knowing my game", "executing my skills" and so on. There is no longer any mystery to how they do what they do and so they take refuge in the empirical evidence of their talents.
The amateur cricketer (apart from the serious, higher-level one) is the polar opposite, a player who relies almost totally on the powers of delusion. In our heads we are younger, stronger, faster and better than ever. Fleeting successes sustain the vision.
The classic response to failure is not to practise more but to buy a new bat or try a new grip or take up a new place in the order. Bowlers gaze at the television and imagine that their pace is up there at the dibbly-dobbly end of the pro game - Paul Collingwood maybe, or David Warner.
Does analysis have a role to play here, where the idea of preparation is a few taps on the boundary edge when you're next in? Can an encounter with the awful reality of your game offer the way towards the radical and constant self-improvement sought and often attained by the professional cricketer?
As with all technologies, the machinery required for analysing cricket is becoming more available as the hardware becomes affordable. As a joint birthday present (and maybe a not-so-subtle hint) our team-mates bought me and my fellow senior player Big Tone a session at the indoor school at Lord's, where they have installed a lane with Pitch Vision technology and another with Hawk-Eye. Pitch Vision ("Come face to face with your own performance outcomes") utilises sensors and cameras to offer immediate video playback and analysis of every delivery on both a big screen behind the net and via downloadable post-session data for perusal at your leisure.
A bowling action in pixels © Getty Images
Disconcertingly, it also measures the speed of each delivery. Accompanying me and Big Tone (ostensibly both batsmen) is our captain Charlie, who is an opening bowler and as such has more invested in the unyielding outcome of the speed gun.
I watch a playback as a stooped, shuffling figure advances slowly - really slowly - towards the crease before hopping into a round-arm, bent-backed delivery that progresses at a stately 50mph towards the batsman. "Ha!" I think. "Who's that old man…" before the dreaded realisation that, of course, it is me.
In my mind, I have a jaunty and rapid run-up and quite a high arm. The screen before me shatters that illusion forever. Sybil Fawlty's withering description of the hapless Basil as "a brillianteened stick-insect" flashes into my head as I watch myself replayed in super slo-mo. I briefly salvage some self-esteem with a delivery recorded at 62mph before realising that the screen is still showing Charlie's last ball.
The batting was a little better, or at least a little more familiar. I'd seen myself on camera years ago and so my psyche had absorbed the fact that I wasn't exactly King Viv, more of a taller Boycott type, whose defence was nonetheless far more permeable than the great man's. I had, though, an idea that my backlift was high and that I had a dynamic stance ready to push forward or back with coiled power. Sadly it was all more of a non-committed shuffle. Although my bat speed was something of a triumph, especially watching in normal time after a period of slow motion.
The Hawk-Eye session was equally revelatory. Its on-screen analysis is identical to its televisual output - the beehive, the pitch map, the strike zones and so on - except with very different, and reduced, figures. The finest moment was the side-on ball-tracker of one of Big Tone's medium-pacers. Stopping the gun at 42mph, it ascribed two long and looping parabolas and was actually descending as it hit the stumps. The ball's pathway resembled a 22-yard letter "m".
It was a lot of fun, and illuminated the gulf between the world of the pro cricketer, who must worry and fret about this sort of stuff, and the amateur, who, like me, watched Glenn Maxwell bowl the next day at 57mph with renewed admiration for his pace. In the blinding light of technology's glare, your game is laid bare. It will take me a while to retreat back into the land of comfortable and happily deluded fantasy.
The professional cricketer lives an examined life, with feedback from various corners © Getty ImagesEvery journalist knows the horror of their own voice. The realisation comes early, when you begin recording interviews. There, on the tape or in the bytes or the VT, is not the voice you thought that you had, the one that's been echoing in your ears for your whole life, but the one that the rest of the world hears - reedy, nasal, pitched entirely differently.
It takes a while to get over the discovery and to become acquainted with the notion that self-image overlaps only slightly with the objective view of the rest of the world.
Cricket is deep into its age of analysis. Kartikeya Date's lovely piece in the current Cricket Monthly illuminates the depth of it: every ball in every major match is logged, filed, deconstructed. It means that the professional cricketer lives an examined life, and its information comes at them from all angles: their coaches, their laptops, the television, the internet, YouTube, Twitter… a bombardment of feedback that can leave them in no doubt as to what they look like in the eyes of the world. Reality here is absolute, self-image challenged from an early age.
It has a purpose, of course; all of this stuff, and in a sport that exacts a high psychological price, strong self-knowledge can be an important anchor. It's why the analysed player speaks constantly of "knowing my game", "executing my skills" and so on. There is no longer any mystery to how they do what they do and so they take refuge in the empirical evidence of their talents.
The amateur cricketer (apart from the serious, higher-level one) is the polar opposite, a player who relies almost totally on the powers of delusion. In our heads we are younger, stronger, faster and better than ever. Fleeting successes sustain the vision.
The classic response to failure is not to practise more but to buy a new bat or try a new grip or take up a new place in the order. Bowlers gaze at the television and imagine that their pace is up there at the dibbly-dobbly end of the pro game - Paul Collingwood maybe, or David Warner.
Does analysis have a role to play here, where the idea of preparation is a few taps on the boundary edge when you're next in? Can an encounter with the awful reality of your game offer the way towards the radical and constant self-improvement sought and often attained by the professional cricketer?
As with all technologies, the machinery required for analysing cricket is becoming more available as the hardware becomes affordable. As a joint birthday present (and maybe a not-so-subtle hint) our team-mates bought me and my fellow senior player Big Tone a session at the indoor school at Lord's, where they have installed a lane with Pitch Vision technology and another with Hawk-Eye. Pitch Vision ("Come face to face with your own performance outcomes") utilises sensors and cameras to offer immediate video playback and analysis of every delivery on both a big screen behind the net and via downloadable post-session data for perusal at your leisure.
A bowling action in pixels © Getty ImagesDisconcertingly, it also measures the speed of each delivery. Accompanying me and Big Tone (ostensibly both batsmen) is our captain Charlie, who is an opening bowler and as such has more invested in the unyielding outcome of the speed gun.
I watch a playback as a stooped, shuffling figure advances slowly - really slowly - towards the crease before hopping into a round-arm, bent-backed delivery that progresses at a stately 50mph towards the batsman. "Ha!" I think. "Who's that old man…" before the dreaded realisation that, of course, it is me.
In my mind, I have a jaunty and rapid run-up and quite a high arm. The screen before me shatters that illusion forever. Sybil Fawlty's withering description of the hapless Basil as "a brillianteened stick-insect" flashes into my head as I watch myself replayed in super slo-mo. I briefly salvage some self-esteem with a delivery recorded at 62mph before realising that the screen is still showing Charlie's last ball.
The batting was a little better, or at least a little more familiar. I'd seen myself on camera years ago and so my psyche had absorbed the fact that I wasn't exactly King Viv, more of a taller Boycott type, whose defence was nonetheless far more permeable than the great man's. I had, though, an idea that my backlift was high and that I had a dynamic stance ready to push forward or back with coiled power. Sadly it was all more of a non-committed shuffle. Although my bat speed was something of a triumph, especially watching in normal time after a period of slow motion.
The Hawk-Eye session was equally revelatory. Its on-screen analysis is identical to its televisual output - the beehive, the pitch map, the strike zones and so on - except with very different, and reduced, figures. The finest moment was the side-on ball-tracker of one of Big Tone's medium-pacers. Stopping the gun at 42mph, it ascribed two long and looping parabolas and was actually descending as it hit the stumps. The ball's pathway resembled a 22-yard letter "m".
It was a lot of fun, and illuminated the gulf between the world of the pro cricketer, who must worry and fret about this sort of stuff, and the amateur, who, like me, watched Glenn Maxwell bowl the next day at 57mph with renewed admiration for his pace. In the blinding light of technology's glare, your game is laid bare. It will take me a while to retreat back into the land of comfortable and happily deluded fantasy.
The refugee crisis - Payback time?
F S Aijazuddin in The Dawn
IMMIGRATION can be a messy business. It leaves stains.
It is a subtle challenge to the notion that the world is a global village. The recent exodus by refugees fleeing insecure poverty in southern Europe to the stable affluence of its north puts this misconception to the test. Without warning, a human horde has swept across the continent of Europe. This phalanx of disturbed humanity has floated across seas, swum through rivers, trudged over mountains, permeated through city streets, and barged blithely through border check-posts in search of a German Paradise.
Countries in their way like Hungary have been subjected to pressures they have not had time to anticipate. Consequently, their resources are being strained, their public services overburdened, and their patience stretched. Nations that had cocooned themselves comfortably within the European Union are now questioning the very fundamentals of the EU, in particular its egalitarian commitment to free movement across invisible borders.
The combustible unrest in Syria alone does not explain this sudden surge. There have been other wars in the region — in Lebanon, for example, which its harried citizens quit in Mercedes overladen with monogrammed suitcases. Or Iraq, from which its nationals — bombarded and harried by the US-led coalition forces — fled to neighbouring countries. This latest influx of migrants though is different. It is determined. It is coordinated. And it seems to have foreknowledge which countries should be targeted, and where their vulnerabilities lie.
Such information does not come off the internet, nor can it be bought in the grey market. How and where did these displaced persons obtain this crash course in gate-crashing?
Euro-cynics contend that this could be a covert attempt by inimical powers to destabilise the complacency of European societies, using desperate civilian families in lieu of trained military forces. Euro-optimists are convinced that this flood will recede, as tsunamis do. Whenever it does, it will leave behind a detritus of disorder and discontent for host governments to manage.
No political bleach has yet been invented that can remove these lasting stains. They will remain. Recall: West Germany reunified with East Germany in 1990, but a united Germany has yet to absorb its Turkish guests. France quit its Muslim colony Algeria in 1962, yet it still has difficulties with non-designer headscarves. The United Kingdom has done more than most to accommodate West Indians, East Africans, South Asians, and now Russian oligarchs. But even Great Britain has geographical limitations.
Shakespeare described his island home as a “precious stone set in the silver sea,/ Which serves it in the office of a wall/ Or as a moat defensive to a house,/ Against the envy of less happier lands”. Shakespeare had not foreseen the Chunnel. Envious refugees at Calais peer into it, attracted like moths by the light at the British end — alluring, irresistible, and maddeningly within reach.
The vast Atlantic Ocean once separated the continents of Europe and America, but even that expanse of seawater could not prevent tenacious migrants navigating across it, landing on its eastern shores, and then cloning New England, New York, New Prague, New Vienna, New Orleans.
“Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/ The wretched refuse of your teeming shore...” beckons the Statue of Liberty. Shoals of immigration have now forced the United States to reconsider this open invitation. In 1847, it tried to reverse the flow. It created Liberia in West Africa for its African and Caribbean freed slaves. Not all of them wanted to return. None agreed with Liberia’s national motto: “The love of liberty brought us here”.
Today’s Americans are hyphenated with every nationality in the world. This ethnic diversity contributes to its superpower strength; yet, in that mix lies its weakness, its Kryptonite. By 2050, the US population will exceed 430 million. Whites will reduce from 67pc (2005) to 47pc (2050). Blacks will remain static at 13pc of the total. Asians will creep up from 5pc to a projected 9pc (blame it on Muslim fundamentalists). Hispanics, however, will increase dramatically from 14pc in 2005 to almost 30pc by 2050, to become United States’ largest ethnic community.
That explains why President Obama felt the need to restore ties with Cuba. It was not an act of belated condescension by a superpower to a villain with a Spanish accent. It was a farsighted admission by the US of its geographic, ethnic, linguistic affinity with Hispanic countries in South America.
Future historians will interpret the unfurling of the US flag in Havana as a defining moment in its history, when the US — not in war, not in retaliation, not out of folie de grandeur, but voluntarily — shifted its worldview from a West-East axis to a North-South one, from military interventions to neighbourly cooperation.
IMMIGRATION can be a messy business. It leaves stains.
It is a subtle challenge to the notion that the world is a global village. The recent exodus by refugees fleeing insecure poverty in southern Europe to the stable affluence of its north puts this misconception to the test. Without warning, a human horde has swept across the continent of Europe. This phalanx of disturbed humanity has floated across seas, swum through rivers, trudged over mountains, permeated through city streets, and barged blithely through border check-posts in search of a German Paradise.
Countries in their way like Hungary have been subjected to pressures they have not had time to anticipate. Consequently, their resources are being strained, their public services overburdened, and their patience stretched. Nations that had cocooned themselves comfortably within the European Union are now questioning the very fundamentals of the EU, in particular its egalitarian commitment to free movement across invisible borders.
The combustible unrest in Syria alone does not explain this sudden surge. There have been other wars in the region — in Lebanon, for example, which its harried citizens quit in Mercedes overladen with monogrammed suitcases. Or Iraq, from which its nationals — bombarded and harried by the US-led coalition forces — fled to neighbouring countries. This latest influx of migrants though is different. It is determined. It is coordinated. And it seems to have foreknowledge which countries should be targeted, and where their vulnerabilities lie.
Such information does not come off the internet, nor can it be bought in the grey market. How and where did these displaced persons obtain this crash course in gate-crashing?
Euro-cynics contend that this could be a covert attempt by inimical powers to destabilise the complacency of European societies, using desperate civilian families in lieu of trained military forces. Euro-optimists are convinced that this flood will recede, as tsunamis do. Whenever it does, it will leave behind a detritus of disorder and discontent for host governments to manage.
No political bleach has yet been invented that can remove these lasting stains. They will remain. Recall: West Germany reunified with East Germany in 1990, but a united Germany has yet to absorb its Turkish guests. France quit its Muslim colony Algeria in 1962, yet it still has difficulties with non-designer headscarves. The United Kingdom has done more than most to accommodate West Indians, East Africans, South Asians, and now Russian oligarchs. But even Great Britain has geographical limitations.
Shakespeare described his island home as a “precious stone set in the silver sea,/ Which serves it in the office of a wall/ Or as a moat defensive to a house,/ Against the envy of less happier lands”. Shakespeare had not foreseen the Chunnel. Envious refugees at Calais peer into it, attracted like moths by the light at the British end — alluring, irresistible, and maddeningly within reach.
The vast Atlantic Ocean once separated the continents of Europe and America, but even that expanse of seawater could not prevent tenacious migrants navigating across it, landing on its eastern shores, and then cloning New England, New York, New Prague, New Vienna, New Orleans.
“Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/ The wretched refuse of your teeming shore...” beckons the Statue of Liberty. Shoals of immigration have now forced the United States to reconsider this open invitation. In 1847, it tried to reverse the flow. It created Liberia in West Africa for its African and Caribbean freed slaves. Not all of them wanted to return. None agreed with Liberia’s national motto: “The love of liberty brought us here”.
Today’s Americans are hyphenated with every nationality in the world. This ethnic diversity contributes to its superpower strength; yet, in that mix lies its weakness, its Kryptonite. By 2050, the US population will exceed 430 million. Whites will reduce from 67pc (2005) to 47pc (2050). Blacks will remain static at 13pc of the total. Asians will creep up from 5pc to a projected 9pc (blame it on Muslim fundamentalists). Hispanics, however, will increase dramatically from 14pc in 2005 to almost 30pc by 2050, to become United States’ largest ethnic community.
That explains why President Obama felt the need to restore ties with Cuba. It was not an act of belated condescension by a superpower to a villain with a Spanish accent. It was a farsighted admission by the US of its geographic, ethnic, linguistic affinity with Hispanic countries in South America.
Future historians will interpret the unfurling of the US flag in Havana as a defining moment in its history, when the US — not in war, not in retaliation, not out of folie de grandeur, but voluntarily — shifted its worldview from a West-East axis to a North-South one, from military interventions to neighbourly cooperation.
Wednesday 2 September 2015
Want to be happy? Be grateful
David Steindl-Rast
The person you really need to marry:
Tracy Mcmillan
How to know the purpose of your life in five minutes
Adam Leipzig
The person you really need to marry:
How to know the purpose of your life in five minutes
Life as a batsman
Simon Barnes in Cricinfo
Batting is about death. And life of course. It's all about how useful - how good - a life you lead before you die. You are surrounded by pitfalls and bayed about by enemies, but the good person will come through adversity to triumph. And the less good person won't.
That life-and-death metaphor gives cricket its USP: its own particular force and vividness. Cricket - red-ball cricket in particular - is all about the little death of dismissal. Every great innings takes place in the shadow of fallibility. That, in the end, is what cricket means.
Batsmen, writes Simon Hughes, "are walking the tightrope between success and failure. One minuscule error and they're toast. Terminé. Caput."
Hughes has always brought an original mind to the interpretation of cricket. He invented the concept of The Analyst for Channel Four in Britain, and now he tries to analyse batsmanship in his latest, highly enjoyable book, Who Wants to be a Batsman? He calls on his experience of more than 200 first-class innings, and his career-long struggle to add a decent batting CV to the deceptively fast arm he possessed as a bowler.
He returns to the infinitely fragile nature of every batsman's experience. "In tennis, if you lose 6-0 6-0 and haven't returned a single ball, you will have still served a few yourself. You have contributed something to the match. In football, unless you score an own goal with the last kick of the game, you have got time to atone for any mistake you might have made. Hell, even if you have shanked every drive into the bushes on the golf course, there is always hope that you will nail one down the middle on the eighteenth…
"But nought in cricket. What has that achieved?"
Cricketers cherish the notion that a bowler can bowl a bad ball that's whacked for six and get a wicket next ball, but one error - one tiny, measly error - from the batsman and he's gone.
But it's not necessarily true. And even if it were, it wouldn't be unique in sport. Batsmen make mistakes and survive. Very few batsmen reach three figures without a play-and-miss or a false shot. Perhaps every century is a demonstration of how much the batsman has got away with.
Joe Root made a major error in the first Test of the recent Ashes series. He should have been out for nought and gone back to the pavilion asking himself what he had achieved. But Brad Haddin dropped the chance, Root made a century, England won and Root was the hero.
In other words, and contrary to standard wisdom, there is a margin for error in batting. The top players are better at coping with it, and above all, better at cashing in when matters beyond their control happen to work in their favour.
The routine humiliation of dismissal is not unique to cricket. There are quite a few sports in which your participation can be over before the finish - and long before you're ready to give up. Sonny Liston failed to complete either of his two fights against Muhammad Ali: quitting on his stool in the first and knocked out in the second.
In all jumping competitions in the horsey world your participation can end prematurely with an involuntary dismount. I have watched the Grand National favourite fall at the first fence. I have experienced a public crash-landing or two myself, as it happens, and believe me, it hurts more than being clean bowled - about which, too, I know in more detail than I would wish.
In sports more dangerous than cricket every competitor knows that participation could end with the assistance of a stretcher. In some sports real deaths happen more often than they do in cricket. Let's have a moment of silence for Phillip Hughes at this point - but we should also recall that in 1999 five people were killed in the equestrian sport of eventing.
Back to the pavilion before facing a ball: Usain Bolt is disqualified in the final of the World Athletics Championships © AFP
In track and field, errors are savagely punished, and sometimes it's worse than getting out first ball. It's like being sent back to the pavvy for taking guard wrong. You're out without running a single stride of the race. Terminé. Caput. It happened to Usain Bolt in the final of the World Championships in 2011.
So I dispute the self-pitying notion of all batsmen (and ex-batsmen in the commentary box) who tell us that batting is a uniquely fragile sporting discipline. It just feels like that when you're out there.
That doesn't mean that a batsman is not in a unique position, and that it's not fraught with psychological problems of all kinds. It's just that cricketers - tied up in the intricacies of a single sport - tend not to identify the uniquely troubling aspect of batsmanship. It's the twin load of responsibility. When you fail as a batsman you have not one but two reasons to feel bad. You have lost a contest against another individual - and you have also let down your colleagues. You have failed yourself andyou have failed your team.
That's a hefty burden to bear. Of course there's an essence of that in all team sports - it's rather the point of them. But in most team sports you are operating with others. A goalkeeper in football is not as isolated as he looks: he's in constant dialogue with his central defenders, and his distribution of the ball is a core skill.
A batsman is as lonely as a golfer or a tennis player - but he's also working for other people. In some competitions they make tennis players and golfers shoulder a batsman's twin responsibilities: the Ryder Cup, Solheim Cup, Davis Cup and Fed Cup. Often you see great players unable to cope with a secondary responsibility: Tiger Woods never got the hang of it.
A great batsman must be like a top Ryder Cup golfer, not once every two years but in every single innings. He must - like Colin Montgomerie - find inspiration in this double responsibility. Woods goes straight back to strokeplay golf; for a batsman there is no other game.
If you fail as a batsman, you must deal with your personal inadequacies. Graham Gooch began his Test career with a pair. Repeated failure will cost you your place in the team. Your career will suffer. So will your sense of self-worth. But failure will also cost your team. You will fail to contribute. You will stop feeling like a part of the whole. You will lose matches and even if no one says anything, you know what you've done and what you haven't done.
It's the double whammy that's unique to batsmanship. That extends to cricket's bastard sister, baseball; the difference here is that baseball is weighted towards the pitcher and a dismissal is a relatively trivial matter; it's a run that's a big deal. All the same, the batter and the batsman share a double burden .
It follows, then, that again and again Simon Hughes goes back to the mental side of things. He offers "Ten Wanna Be Batsman Rules": of these, eight are mental. One is semi-facetious (this is "Yozzer" writing after all) and rule eight is "play at the Oval." The only physical tip is "Keep the head still."
It's almost as if every batsman had the same amount of physical ability, and that the only difference between good and great was mental posture. That's clearly not true: David Gower, Brian Lara and Kevin Pietersen clearly had something extra. But they also had mental ability: they could put errors behind them, didn't get sucked into the wrong sort of confrontation, knew how to pace an innings, understood when to stick and when to twist.
In cricket you often see a player of (comparatively) limited physical ability playing any number of match-winning innings because of a great mental attitude. Alastair Cook is a classic example of this type.
A player with a lesser degree of pure talent never takes success for granted. He is naturally disposed to make the most of every let-off. Thus you can turn an apparent disadvantage into an advantage. That's one of the most fascinating things about sport - and it's very cricket.
Batting is about shame and guilt: the shame of personal failure and the guilt at playing a part in team failure. It's also about escaping from - or being inspired by - these two things to find individual and corporate glory. You must sink yourself into the common cause without losing your sense of individuality.
A batsman needs to combine rampant egomania with the selflessness of a Zen monk, and to hold the two things in perfect balance. Unsurprising, then, that excellence is a rare thing - and that we value it so highly when we find it.
Batting is about death. And life of course. It's all about how useful - how good - a life you lead before you die. You are surrounded by pitfalls and bayed about by enemies, but the good person will come through adversity to triumph. And the less good person won't.
That life-and-death metaphor gives cricket its USP: its own particular force and vividness. Cricket - red-ball cricket in particular - is all about the little death of dismissal. Every great innings takes place in the shadow of fallibility. That, in the end, is what cricket means.
Batsmen, writes Simon Hughes, "are walking the tightrope between success and failure. One minuscule error and they're toast. Terminé. Caput."
Hughes has always brought an original mind to the interpretation of cricket. He invented the concept of The Analyst for Channel Four in Britain, and now he tries to analyse batsmanship in his latest, highly enjoyable book, Who Wants to be a Batsman? He calls on his experience of more than 200 first-class innings, and his career-long struggle to add a decent batting CV to the deceptively fast arm he possessed as a bowler.
He returns to the infinitely fragile nature of every batsman's experience. "In tennis, if you lose 6-0 6-0 and haven't returned a single ball, you will have still served a few yourself. You have contributed something to the match. In football, unless you score an own goal with the last kick of the game, you have got time to atone for any mistake you might have made. Hell, even if you have shanked every drive into the bushes on the golf course, there is always hope that you will nail one down the middle on the eighteenth…
"But nought in cricket. What has that achieved?"
Cricketers cherish the notion that a bowler can bowl a bad ball that's whacked for six and get a wicket next ball, but one error - one tiny, measly error - from the batsman and he's gone.
A batsman needs to combine rampant egomania with the selflessness of a Zen monk, and to hold the two things in perfect balance
But it's not necessarily true. And even if it were, it wouldn't be unique in sport. Batsmen make mistakes and survive. Very few batsmen reach three figures without a play-and-miss or a false shot. Perhaps every century is a demonstration of how much the batsman has got away with.
Joe Root made a major error in the first Test of the recent Ashes series. He should have been out for nought and gone back to the pavilion asking himself what he had achieved. But Brad Haddin dropped the chance, Root made a century, England won and Root was the hero.
In other words, and contrary to standard wisdom, there is a margin for error in batting. The top players are better at coping with it, and above all, better at cashing in when matters beyond their control happen to work in their favour.
The routine humiliation of dismissal is not unique to cricket. There are quite a few sports in which your participation can be over before the finish - and long before you're ready to give up. Sonny Liston failed to complete either of his two fights against Muhammad Ali: quitting on his stool in the first and knocked out in the second.
In all jumping competitions in the horsey world your participation can end prematurely with an involuntary dismount. I have watched the Grand National favourite fall at the first fence. I have experienced a public crash-landing or two myself, as it happens, and believe me, it hurts more than being clean bowled - about which, too, I know in more detail than I would wish.
In sports more dangerous than cricket every competitor knows that participation could end with the assistance of a stretcher. In some sports real deaths happen more often than they do in cricket. Let's have a moment of silence for Phillip Hughes at this point - but we should also recall that in 1999 five people were killed in the equestrian sport of eventing.
Back to the pavilion before facing a ball: Usain Bolt is disqualified in the final of the World Athletics Championships © AFP
In track and field, errors are savagely punished, and sometimes it's worse than getting out first ball. It's like being sent back to the pavvy for taking guard wrong. You're out without running a single stride of the race. Terminé. Caput. It happened to Usain Bolt in the final of the World Championships in 2011.
So I dispute the self-pitying notion of all batsmen (and ex-batsmen in the commentary box) who tell us that batting is a uniquely fragile sporting discipline. It just feels like that when you're out there.
That doesn't mean that a batsman is not in a unique position, and that it's not fraught with psychological problems of all kinds. It's just that cricketers - tied up in the intricacies of a single sport - tend not to identify the uniquely troubling aspect of batsmanship. It's the twin load of responsibility. When you fail as a batsman you have not one but two reasons to feel bad. You have lost a contest against another individual - and you have also let down your colleagues. You have failed yourself andyou have failed your team.
That's a hefty burden to bear. Of course there's an essence of that in all team sports - it's rather the point of them. But in most team sports you are operating with others. A goalkeeper in football is not as isolated as he looks: he's in constant dialogue with his central defenders, and his distribution of the ball is a core skill.
A batsman is as lonely as a golfer or a tennis player - but he's also working for other people. In some competitions they make tennis players and golfers shoulder a batsman's twin responsibilities: the Ryder Cup, Solheim Cup, Davis Cup and Fed Cup. Often you see great players unable to cope with a secondary responsibility: Tiger Woods never got the hang of it.
A great batsman must be like a top Ryder Cup golfer, not once every two years but in every single innings. He must - like Colin Montgomerie - find inspiration in this double responsibility. Woods goes straight back to strokeplay golf; for a batsman there is no other game.
If you fail as a batsman, you must deal with your personal inadequacies. Graham Gooch began his Test career with a pair. Repeated failure will cost you your place in the team. Your career will suffer. So will your sense of self-worth. But failure will also cost your team. You will fail to contribute. You will stop feeling like a part of the whole. You will lose matches and even if no one says anything, you know what you've done and what you haven't done.
Every great innings takes place in the shadow of fallibility. That, in the end, is what cricket means
It's the double whammy that's unique to batsmanship. That extends to cricket's bastard sister, baseball; the difference here is that baseball is weighted towards the pitcher and a dismissal is a relatively trivial matter; it's a run that's a big deal. All the same, the batter and the batsman share a double burden .
It follows, then, that again and again Simon Hughes goes back to the mental side of things. He offers "Ten Wanna Be Batsman Rules": of these, eight are mental. One is semi-facetious (this is "Yozzer" writing after all) and rule eight is "play at the Oval." The only physical tip is "Keep the head still."
It's almost as if every batsman had the same amount of physical ability, and that the only difference between good and great was mental posture. That's clearly not true: David Gower, Brian Lara and Kevin Pietersen clearly had something extra. But they also had mental ability: they could put errors behind them, didn't get sucked into the wrong sort of confrontation, knew how to pace an innings, understood when to stick and when to twist.
In cricket you often see a player of (comparatively) limited physical ability playing any number of match-winning innings because of a great mental attitude. Alastair Cook is a classic example of this type.
A player with a lesser degree of pure talent never takes success for granted. He is naturally disposed to make the most of every let-off. Thus you can turn an apparent disadvantage into an advantage. That's one of the most fascinating things about sport - and it's very cricket.
Batting is about shame and guilt: the shame of personal failure and the guilt at playing a part in team failure. It's also about escaping from - or being inspired by - these two things to find individual and corporate glory. You must sink yourself into the common cause without losing your sense of individuality.
A batsman needs to combine rampant egomania with the selflessness of a Zen monk, and to hold the two things in perfect balance. Unsurprising, then, that excellence is a rare thing - and that we value it so highly when we find it.
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