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Saturday, 9 Jul 2005

Steven Wells has written a terrific article at Guardian Unlimited:-

"Free tennis for all" : http://sport.guardian.co.uk/wimbledon2003/story/0,13391,989374,00.html

To quote a bit:-

Oh yeah. Tim's NOT going to win. But if he does it's going to be a DISASTER for British tennis. Look, face facts, British tennis is crap. It's a sporting Chernobyl. It's a smug, sterile, mono-cultural, quasi-fascist, casually racist, elitist, snob-ridden, blazer-buggered, apartheid-crippled disaster area. It makes golf look like the Notting Hill carnival. It makes Polo look like a festival of miscegenation. OK, so that last line was total bollocks. But you get the picture.

Like you, I was appalled the facts catalogued in Martin Jaques' brilliant Guardian article about racism in tennis. And I was shocked to learn that a few years ago "a certain British newspaper" pulled out of an interview with the Williams sisters when it realised, at the last moment, that they were black. That's more than just disgusting - it's also indicative of why we're so crap at tennis. Racism and class bias strangles talent in the pram.

So IF Tim Henman wins Wimbledon - what sort of message would that send to those who want to keep tennis nice, middle class and white? It would mean that the pressure for tennis to change - to become both multi-cultural and truly inclusive - would slacken. Inertia, smugness and unexamined privilege would do the rest. And British tennis would slumber on - monocultural, mimsy and mediocre.


The LTA does okay. Look, they're paying their bills. Well, maybe in fact they are making a fortune. I think Wimbledon washes its face in business terms. I wonder how embarrassed they are that year upon year we have a non-British final and that most of the Brits - the few that docompete at all - get blasted off the court in the first few days. Obviously not embarrassed enough to capture and nurture new talent - invest in a few players.

Just a couple of years ago Arvind Parmer was being recognised as a contender with yet more potential to show us. Since then nothing happened, asfar as I can tell. Maybe he just did not deliver the results or could it be that he is just the wrong colour for the LTA to commit to his development?

Thursday, 16 Jun 2005

Bob Geldof is cross that some winners of tickets to the live8 concert decided to try to sell them on eBay.co.uk

The BBC reported:-
Geldof had launched an attack on the site and the sellers, calling it "sick profiteering".

And he even got government ministers and MPs rallying round, decrying eBay's willingness to allow these auctions on their site.

Now some people have claimed that this behaviour was ripping off the charity. Nonsense. The charity had received its piece of the revenue when they took their slice of each �2 SMS text message. Apparently eBay was even prepared to donate back their commissions on the ticket sales, thus providing potentially even more revenue for the event. I admit that this sounds very lame and indeed eBay were ethically digging themslves into an even deeper hole here. My point is that the charity was not losing out.

Geldof is probably right. It is profiteering, and it is a bit sick. His intention was that well-meaning competition winners should be the ones attending the concert, not those who had been prepared to pay a large amount of money. Apart from the two quid SMS charge, the tickets were meant to be free, so trading them seems to go against the sprit of the thing.

So what did he do? In a spirit of Moral People Power, he called upon ordinary eBay users to scupper the auctions with ridiculously high bids. And they did. Hurrah to them!

So what did eBay do? They suspended (indefinitely, it seems) the accounts of the naughty but well-meaning scupperers, because they were wrong to sabotage perfectly legal and legitimate auctions. Oh, and then eBay banned the auctions too because they felt they weren't right after all.

It seems to me to be really sad and unfair that the losers are the ones who followed the leadership of Bob Geldof, a Knight of the Realm. (I bet he did not lose his ebay account.) They broke the letter of the eBay Law, sure. They were perhaps a little foolish or impetuous to get stuck in like that. But they meant well.

Even though eBay changed its position on the appropriateness of the Live8 ticket auctions, they have remained thus far steadfast to their position on the eBay account suspensions. So under moral pressure, no more poignantly placed than in the high-bidding sabotage bids, they are prepared to bend their own rules. But for the people at the axel of the moral argument there is no leniency.

EBay UK will capitulate for the sake of public pressure but not for the sake of the moral argument. Do I hear cash tills at the altar of eBay? Do I need to offer the opinion that this is pathetic?

Here's the link to the squirmy, Blair-like back-down announcement from eBay:-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/entertainment/music/4095464.stm

And here's the full dirt at the BBC:-

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/uk/200506141934002.html

Another link that may be interesting:-

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/16/ebay_live8/

Apparently the Live8 concert tickets are marked up as "not transferrable". This means that you may not transfer them, as part of the terms of accepting them. I understand that selling a ticket really does include transferring it. Therefore you are not allowed to sell it. And I believe it is a legal "not allowed to" here.

So if it is indeed a breach of the terms of the receipt of the tickets to re-sell them, how then does eBay justify its claim that it is not illegal to do so? Maybe I am being dumb but when propositional logic and the English language fail to agree with eBay, who is mistaken?

Friday, 3 Jun 2005

I have been researching camcorders on the internet and I recently sent an inquiry through the "Contact Us" form at an online electrical retailer, namely www.121electricals.co.uk.

I sent this through over the Bank Holiday weekend break, on the Monday just passed. Even though the main page advertised that the shop was open for business, I did not expect a reply straight away. Yesterday (Thursday) I decided that I was now officially cross not to have received a reply and told them so, again using the same contact form on their website. I got a reply this morning, which included this:-

I am sorry but we appear not to of received any previous email from you. We
do try to answer every mail from customers and potential customers.

Argh, now they've put me in a spot. I cannot continue to be upset about the delay - mistakes happen and they've apologised - but now I have to decide if I am more enraged by the non-clause in the first sentence?

"We appear not to of received any previous email from you." What?

Thank you, Shirley Williams; thank you, Tony Bliar.

It's an outrage! People these days don't know their verbs from their nouns. I should coco.

Wednesday, 25 May 2005

The chicken or the egg, the firewood or the fire, the investment or the return....

A: "Come out of that ditch! - it's lovely and light up here!"

B: "Would love to - but I have no ladder."

A: "There's a super ladder up here - come get it and you'll never want another ladder again, this one is so great."

B: "Err, but...."

Tuesday, 17 May 2005

Here's the story:-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/uk/4385573.stm

I say hats off to Murphy O'Connor. I thought he was crap as a diocesan Bishop, but he is speaking up for the defenceless here and I support that.


Abortion copies Nazis - cardinal
Abortion leads to Nazi-style birth control and lets the strong decide the fate of the weak, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor has warned.
The head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales wrote: "That way lies eugenics, and we know from German history where that leads."

He denounced "embryo selection on the basis of gender and genes".

Pro-choice campaigners said they were disappointed he had attacked "women's right to safe legal abortions".


“ What else is the termination of six million lives in the womb since the Abortion Act was introduced? ”
Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor
The cardinal claimed human beings were made "instruments of other human beings", in the Sunday Telegraph article.
Britain was already on the road to Nazi-style eugenic - or selective breeding - policies, he argued.

"For what else is the termination of six million lives in the womb since the Abortion Act was introduced, and embryo selection on the basis of gender and genes?"

Cardinal Murphy O' Connor also said in an interview with Baroness Shirley Williams for the GMTV Sunday programme that it was "legitimate" for Catholics to discuss issues surrounding abortion.

But he insisted that he was not saying Catholics should vote for any one political party.

'Sacred'


Pro-choice group Abortion Rights said: "We don't think political and religious leaders should play political football with women's lives.

"Most political leaders made it very clear in the last week that abortion should not be used as a political issue in the run up to the general election.

"This would risk a re-run of US election last November which made abortion, gay rights and stem cell research central to the debate in place of more pressing national and international concerns."


“ We don't think political and religious leaders should play political football with women's lives ”
Abortion Rights
She said 76% of the public supported women's right to choose, and called for more widespread access to emergency contraception and sex education.
Meanwhile, another British Catholic leader has called on the electorate to ask questions about prospective MPs' views on "life issues" in the run-up to the General Election.

In his Easter message, the Archbishop of Birmingham, the Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, said voters should not only be sure of what they believed, but make "clearer demands" of elected representatives.

"No human being is simply a cog in a machine, a means to an end, a possession or a plaything. Human life is sacred," he said.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk/4385573.stm

Published: 2005/03/27 11:19:34 GMT

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