http://www.blogrant.co.uk/ the rantings and musings of James Collett en-us Matthew1471's BlogX / BlogX.co.uk Content © 2005 - 2014 James Collett http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://www.blogrant.co.uk/RSS/Image.jpg http://www.blogrant.co.uk/ 100 100 Thu, 12 Nov 2015 21:45 UTC Sat, 9 Jul 2005 14:45 Current%20Affairs http://www.blogrant.co.uk/ViewItem.asp?Entry=17 http://www.blogrant.co.uk/Comments.asp?Entry=17 Steven Wells has written a terrific article at Guardian Unlimited:-<br><br>"Free tennis for all" : http://sport.guardian.co.uk/wimbledon2003/story/0,13391,989374,00.html<br><br>To quote a bit:-<br><div style="background:white; color:blue;"><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br></div>... <a href="http://www.blogrant.co.uk/ViewItem.asp?Entry=17">Read More (740 Characters)</a>