When you're a kid you get appreciated for lots of things. Walking across the width of swimming pools. Drawing a brightly coloured shapeless blob and entitling it "mUm". Tying your shoelaces. Not shitting in your underwear. That sort of thing. Little kids even get appreciated for being beautiful without anyone descrying how they've turned into commodities and isn't it about time we appreciated their sophisticated personalities instead?
It does make being an adult feel a little unappreciated. I wonder if that's why I spend so much of my time acting or playing cricket? They are both areas where the rules seem to shift and suddenly you are applauded for doing what you are supposed to do, exactly what is frowned on the rest of the time. If I got a round of applause for turning up to work on time (other than a sarcastic one, which is quite common), or pressing the right button in the lift, or turning up with my shirt buttons done up correctly, I'd feel patronised and slightly disconcerted. On a cricket pitch, if I stop the ball when fielding (which I am supposed to do) or bowl a good ball (again...) there'll be general shouts of "well done Speedy" and a wee clap. On stage all you have to do is not vomit on the audience half way through the play and you're almost guaranteed a clap, even if the play was about as entertaining as having a weasel shit into your eyes for an hour. It's no better than the coloured mUm blob.
My point is, I am clearly a child. I want to be clapped for things. Clap me, you bastards, clap me! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
Tuesday 31 August 2010
Monday 30 August 2010
Tug
Well, there's a tricky word. A world of slightly off-colour avenues present themselves. I shall not go there.
I have been having problems with my forelock though. Not because I'm tugging it too much, but simply because it likes to turn to sponge during the course of the day. It doesn't matter what product I use or how expensive my conditioner it, but I end up looking like I've been the target in some sort of circus game of "throw the sponge at the smug twat". I hope someone somewhere has been rewarded with a big cuddly stuffed jelly fish for their efforts. In the meanwhile, I'm putting on a hat and hoping not to meet any members of the aristocracy.
I have been having problems with my forelock though. Not because I'm tugging it too much, but simply because it likes to turn to sponge during the course of the day. It doesn't matter what product I use or how expensive my conditioner it, but I end up looking like I've been the target in some sort of circus game of "throw the sponge at the smug twat". I hope someone somewhere has been rewarded with a big cuddly stuffed jelly fish for their efforts. In the meanwhile, I'm putting on a hat and hoping not to meet any members of the aristocracy.
Speech
A married friend of mine has just posted the video of the Best Man's Speech made by a mutual friend, so it's funny that the randomiser just spat "speech" at me. Well, I say funny.
I had a pleasurable 15 minutes watching the speech, feeling transported by to 2005 and admiring the way in which the Best man somehow steered clear of saying anything truly embarrassing about the Groom whilst at the same time *appearing* to be utterly humiliating him. It's a fine line, and I suspect one that gets transgressed more than the popping crease at Lord's.
That's all really. I've hardly been to any weddings (my friends have a tendency not only not to get married but for some reason to bumble on like increasingly grey students and not find a mate). Also everyone hates me so they don't invite me.
That last bit may or may not be a joke. You'd have to ask them.
But it strikes me that if you can give the punters what they want (ritual abuse of the groom) whilst not giving them what they don't want (jokes about his misshaped cock made in front of his granny) you've done admirably well.
On the other hand it would have been nice if the whole thing hadn't sounded like a Tony Blair speech. I suppose you can't have everything.
I had a pleasurable 15 minutes watching the speech, feeling transported by to 2005 and admiring the way in which the Best man somehow steered clear of saying anything truly embarrassing about the Groom whilst at the same time *appearing* to be utterly humiliating him. It's a fine line, and I suspect one that gets transgressed more than the popping crease at Lord's.
That's all really. I've hardly been to any weddings (my friends have a tendency not only not to get married but for some reason to bumble on like increasingly grey students and not find a mate). Also everyone hates me so they don't invite me.
That last bit may or may not be a joke. You'd have to ask them.
But it strikes me that if you can give the punters what they want (ritual abuse of the groom) whilst not giving them what they don't want (jokes about his misshaped cock made in front of his granny) you've done admirably well.
On the other hand it would have been nice if the whole thing hadn't sounded like a Tony Blair speech. I suppose you can't have everything.
Fluctuations
I've been getting increasingly restless reading about the "spot-fixing" scandal surrounding the recent England v Pakistan Test at Lord's. Not because of the moral angle - though clearly (no matter how benign it sounds) taking money to do something in the middle of a top level sorting contest diminishes the whole thing a bit and - since millions of people derive pleasure from such sporting contests - must be stopped wherever possible. No, I'm getting tetchy because of the insistence of at least one commentator that the recent result should be scrubbed because it "wasn't proper cricket".
Perhaps my views are incompatible. I've already said that spot-fixing diminishes the contest and must be stopped - why don't I don't think the match result should be expunged?
It's as simple as this. The problem with this form of spot fixing is that any form of interference creates doubts and uncertainties that take a sheen from the pure pleasure of watching two sides do their utmost to win. It's very much a question of the viewing pleasure of the spectators and their personal reaction to it. My first problem with the expunging of the Test is that it would be suggesting that any game where there was a sniff of something dodgy going on becomes fundamentally pointless, and that is surely more, and not less, likely to persuade spectators that watching cricket is a waste of their time: a dangerous statement to make.
Secondly, I take issue with the fact that bowling 3 no balls in itself devalues the efforts of the honest players (or even the dishonest players) in the match.
Barney Ronay, in his Over-by-Over commentary on The Guardian website, stated:
"The whole performance becomes a mockery. and what if you get the batsman out and it's a planned no-ball?"
This doesn't make the whole performance a mockery. True, I can think of circumstances where it would: let's say a batsman is under the cosh and has faced a succession of dot balls. He's getting antsy and nervous and decides he is going to have a premeditated heave at the next ball bowled at him irrespective of what the delivery is. He misses, or slices in the air - it's a no ball. A genuine bit of sporting rivalry has been torpedoed by cheats.
But really that's about it. Ronay himself suggests "you don't just switch on and off like that, you can't try 100%, try 100%, try 100% and then - oh, quick no ball - then try 100% etc etc.*" Suggesting that an entire bowling performance is going to be affected by the fact that you have to remember to bowl a no-ball in the 36th over is a bold statement, but suggesting that at the same time should a batsman get out to the said no ball it would make a mockery of the whole test is to reverse the logic to fit into the argument. And it ignores what I shall call - despite my mathematical ignorance - the Chaos Theory of Cricket.
Batsmen play shots based on what is bowled that them (part of the "initial conditions" of the system that is any interplay between bowlers and batsmen), and a delivery is very specifically related to a number of factors, including from where it was bowled. The simple response should a batsman have been dismissed by one of these no-balls is that the chances of him having played the same shot to a legitimate delivery are negligible. Fluctuations in the angle and speed of the delivery means that he would almost certainly (doubt created merely by that example I give above) have a played a different shot.
He might still have got out, but would be no more likely to have done so than from any other ball bowled in the entire game. The margins of dismissal - thin edges, balls evading fielders, even the bails refusing to drop from the stumps when hit - are often so infinitesimally small that making broad comments like "that would have been a wicket had it not been a no ball" are a bit stupid. And I think that about legit no-balls too - the bowlers always hang their head and kick the turf, but they have no way of knowing if the same result would have been achieved had they changed a fundamental part of the mechanical composition of the delivery - where it was bowled from. An inch makes a difference. If it didn't we wouldn't have a no-ball rule in the first place.
So the only sensible thing to do is look at it this way: there were three planned points at which legitimate cricket ceased and corrupt silliness took over. That does take the sheen off the game, but it doesn't make it pointless. True, whatever had happened in those three balls would have made a difference if they somehow broke crucial pressure, or if the penalty/actual runs stemming from them skewed the final result. England won the game by an innings and 225 runs. I think you can safely say that it would have taken a lot more than three oversteps to make that a borderline result.
My third problem is that expunging the game punishes the wrong people. Stuart Broad is a bit of a dick sometimes, but the boy scored his maiden Test century in the game. His performance had nothing to do with any dodgy practice, and certainly should count as an achievement even if Pakistan were 5% off their game because they were thinking about cheating. After all, Pakistan at 95% effective are still a fuck of a lot better than Zimbabwe - no one suggests canceling Matthew Hayden's (once) record breaking score on the basis that the oppo were embarrassingly poor.
That's enough. Get on with the game.
S.
* At one point Amir had taken 6 wickets for 29 runs. I'd hate to see him when he was concentrating.
Perhaps my views are incompatible. I've already said that spot-fixing diminishes the contest and must be stopped - why don't I don't think the match result should be expunged?
It's as simple as this. The problem with this form of spot fixing is that any form of interference creates doubts and uncertainties that take a sheen from the pure pleasure of watching two sides do their utmost to win. It's very much a question of the viewing pleasure of the spectators and their personal reaction to it. My first problem with the expunging of the Test is that it would be suggesting that any game where there was a sniff of something dodgy going on becomes fundamentally pointless, and that is surely more, and not less, likely to persuade spectators that watching cricket is a waste of their time: a dangerous statement to make.
Secondly, I take issue with the fact that bowling 3 no balls in itself devalues the efforts of the honest players (or even the dishonest players) in the match.
Barney Ronay, in his Over-by-Over commentary on The Guardian website, stated:
"The whole performance becomes a mockery. and what if you get the batsman out and it's a planned no-ball?"
This doesn't make the whole performance a mockery. True, I can think of circumstances where it would: let's say a batsman is under the cosh and has faced a succession of dot balls. He's getting antsy and nervous and decides he is going to have a premeditated heave at the next ball bowled at him irrespective of what the delivery is. He misses, or slices in the air - it's a no ball. A genuine bit of sporting rivalry has been torpedoed by cheats.
But really that's about it. Ronay himself suggests "you don't just switch on and off like that, you can't try 100%, try 100%, try 100% and then - oh, quick no ball - then try 100% etc etc.*" Suggesting that an entire bowling performance is going to be affected by the fact that you have to remember to bowl a no-ball in the 36th over is a bold statement, but suggesting that at the same time should a batsman get out to the said no ball it would make a mockery of the whole test is to reverse the logic to fit into the argument. And it ignores what I shall call - despite my mathematical ignorance - the Chaos Theory of Cricket.
Batsmen play shots based on what is bowled that them (part of the "initial conditions" of the system that is any interplay between bowlers and batsmen), and a delivery is very specifically related to a number of factors, including from where it was bowled. The simple response should a batsman have been dismissed by one of these no-balls is that the chances of him having played the same shot to a legitimate delivery are negligible. Fluctuations in the angle and speed of the delivery means that he would almost certainly (doubt created merely by that example I give above) have a played a different shot.
He might still have got out, but would be no more likely to have done so than from any other ball bowled in the entire game. The margins of dismissal - thin edges, balls evading fielders, even the bails refusing to drop from the stumps when hit - are often so infinitesimally small that making broad comments like "that would have been a wicket had it not been a no ball" are a bit stupid. And I think that about legit no-balls too - the bowlers always hang their head and kick the turf, but they have no way of knowing if the same result would have been achieved had they changed a fundamental part of the mechanical composition of the delivery - where it was bowled from. An inch makes a difference. If it didn't we wouldn't have a no-ball rule in the first place.
So the only sensible thing to do is look at it this way: there were three planned points at which legitimate cricket ceased and corrupt silliness took over. That does take the sheen off the game, but it doesn't make it pointless. True, whatever had happened in those three balls would have made a difference if they somehow broke crucial pressure, or if the penalty/actual runs stemming from them skewed the final result. England won the game by an innings and 225 runs. I think you can safely say that it would have taken a lot more than three oversteps to make that a borderline result.
My third problem is that expunging the game punishes the wrong people. Stuart Broad is a bit of a dick sometimes, but the boy scored his maiden Test century in the game. His performance had nothing to do with any dodgy practice, and certainly should count as an achievement even if Pakistan were 5% off their game because they were thinking about cheating. After all, Pakistan at 95% effective are still a fuck of a lot better than Zimbabwe - no one suggests canceling Matthew Hayden's (once) record breaking score on the basis that the oppo were embarrassingly poor.
That's enough. Get on with the game.
S.
* At one point Amir had taken 6 wickets for 29 runs. I'd hate to see him when he was concentrating.
Thursday 19 August 2010
Influx
Interesting article today in the New Statesman (or should that be ON the New Stateman, given I saw it online?) picking apart figures on immigration as provided by MigrationWatch, “an independent, voluntary, non political body which is concerned about the present scale of immigration into the UK.”
The article notes a few recent stats the group have used to back up their claim that immigration costs jobs, comparing several years’ migration figures to one year’s unemployment figures - fatuous in the extreme. Read it. It may make you cry, especially when you consider that this stuff gets presented as news.
It’s not necessarily racist to have concerns about a national immigration policy. It is however pretty fucking despicable if you have to lie in order to back up whatever opinion once crawled into your brain and died there like a rat in an airvent.
The article notes a few recent stats the group have used to back up their claim that immigration costs jobs, comparing several years’ migration figures to one year’s unemployment figures - fatuous in the extreme. Read it. It may make you cry, especially when you consider that this stuff gets presented as news.
It’s not necessarily racist to have concerns about a national immigration policy. It is however pretty fucking despicable if you have to lie in order to back up whatever opinion once crawled into your brain and died there like a rat in an airvent.
Monday 16 August 2010
Fecundated
There’s a bit of a ding-dong going on today in the Twitterverse and Bloggersphere (or “online” as it used to be prosaically known) about benefits and children.
The Sun today ran as a headline “Dozen it make you sick”, (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3097118/12th-kid-for-jobless-scroungers.html) about a family on benefits who are expecting their 12th child. Alongside a deeply (and no doubt intentionally) unflattering picture of the mother looking as much like a Kathy Burke character as they could manage, are various claims and attacks. Among them are that they bring in over £30,000 in benefits.
What the article doesn’t say that the £30k will certainly include housing benefit, which of course they have to pay back to the council for their 5 bedroom home, which won’t be cheap (in fact the Sun says it’s 1,200pcm), meaning they are probably bringing up 11 (and now 12) children on just over £15k. That’s a monthly family income of £1,300. Not bad, except they’re paying to feed and clothe 13 (soon to be 14) people on it. Now, I have no children, but people keep telling me they’re expensive, so is £100pcm each for food and clothing (and anything else) really the lap of luxury? Not to mention he fact that even at £1,200pcm, a 5 bedroom house is still inadequate for 14 people.
None of those provisos has stopped Iain Dale, doyenne of right-wing bloggers, from announcing his horror and dismay at the story and another like it yesterday. “Having children is not a human right,” he rages. He then slightly undermines his position with logic – a very foolish thing to do as a right-wing blogger. “It's irresponsible to have so many children if you haven't the means to support them.”
Yes, Iain. Yes it probably is. But the irresponsibil8ity of it does not counteract the right o have children. The debate is not about whether or not it is right that some people who clearly lack the means to support children continue to have them, it’s about how comfortable anyone should be about telling them that they *can’t* have them.
This supposedly “most Liberal of governments” [© Nick Clegg] has amongst its main cheerleaders media outlets and commentators who denounce the behaviour of British subjects without any idea at all about what they are saying.
If it is not a human right to have a child, then clearly it is fair for the Government to intervene and stop them.
How, exactly?
Oddly enough, when posters suggested to Dale that he was advocating 19th century eugenics, he was pretty upset. He described it as showing the “intolerant left at its worst”. But this is the problem with the “just sayin’” culture, where people shove their oar in to a delicate moral debate without having the intellect or the backbone to follow their ideas through.
Just saying.
The logical outcome of removing the status of child birth as a human right is either a) Chinese style birth bans / sterilisation or b) compulsory adoption. There is no other effective sanction against what the 14-strong family and their ilk have done. Now, the compulsory adoption need not be as blunt as marching in and stealing the babies – perhaps benefits will be removed for the 6th child, and as soon as the parents are proved to be incapable of supporting the children they will be taken away and put into care. This gives the family the chance to become decent, upright citizens and get proper jobs. Hmmm.
The big, pragmatic problem with this is that it costs an awful lot more to keep children in care than it does to leave them with a family (however apparently dysfunctional) who want them. And adoption takes a while to sort out.
So when Ian Dale (and the Tax Payers' Alliance) rages against the iniquity of everything, he must remember that the only cheaper option than continuing to pay these benefits is to sterilise mothers of multiple children or just to kill their babies. I am absolutely certain that Mr Dale does not want these things to happen, but I’d be very grateful if he could pull his finger out and make clear exactly what point he *is* trying to make, instead of just contributing to public benefits hysteria and then squealing when people point out the dangerous nature of his logic.
The Sun today ran as a headline “Dozen it make you sick”, (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3097118/12th-kid-for-jobless-scroungers.html) about a family on benefits who are expecting their 12th child. Alongside a deeply (and no doubt intentionally) unflattering picture of the mother looking as much like a Kathy Burke character as they could manage, are various claims and attacks. Among them are that they bring in over £30,000 in benefits.
What the article doesn’t say that the £30k will certainly include housing benefit, which of course they have to pay back to the council for their 5 bedroom home, which won’t be cheap (in fact the Sun says it’s 1,200pcm), meaning they are probably bringing up 11 (and now 12) children on just over £15k. That’s a monthly family income of £1,300. Not bad, except they’re paying to feed and clothe 13 (soon to be 14) people on it. Now, I have no children, but people keep telling me they’re expensive, so is £100pcm each for food and clothing (and anything else) really the lap of luxury? Not to mention he fact that even at £1,200pcm, a 5 bedroom house is still inadequate for 14 people.
None of those provisos has stopped Iain Dale, doyenne of right-wing bloggers, from announcing his horror and dismay at the story and another like it yesterday. “Having children is not a human right,” he rages. He then slightly undermines his position with logic – a very foolish thing to do as a right-wing blogger. “It's irresponsible to have so many children if you haven't the means to support them.”
Yes, Iain. Yes it probably is. But the irresponsibil8ity of it does not counteract the right o have children. The debate is not about whether or not it is right that some people who clearly lack the means to support children continue to have them, it’s about how comfortable anyone should be about telling them that they *can’t* have them.
This supposedly “most Liberal of governments” [© Nick Clegg] has amongst its main cheerleaders media outlets and commentators who denounce the behaviour of British subjects without any idea at all about what they are saying.
If it is not a human right to have a child, then clearly it is fair for the Government to intervene and stop them.
How, exactly?
Oddly enough, when posters suggested to Dale that he was advocating 19th century eugenics, he was pretty upset. He described it as showing the “intolerant left at its worst”. But this is the problem with the “just sayin’” culture, where people shove their oar in to a delicate moral debate without having the intellect or the backbone to follow their ideas through.
Just saying.
The logical outcome of removing the status of child birth as a human right is either a) Chinese style birth bans / sterilisation or b) compulsory adoption. There is no other effective sanction against what the 14-strong family and their ilk have done. Now, the compulsory adoption need not be as blunt as marching in and stealing the babies – perhaps benefits will be removed for the 6th child, and as soon as the parents are proved to be incapable of supporting the children they will be taken away and put into care. This gives the family the chance to become decent, upright citizens and get proper jobs. Hmmm.
The big, pragmatic problem with this is that it costs an awful lot more to keep children in care than it does to leave them with a family (however apparently dysfunctional) who want them. And adoption takes a while to sort out.
So when Ian Dale (and the Tax Payers' Alliance) rages against the iniquity of everything, he must remember that the only cheaper option than continuing to pay these benefits is to sterilise mothers of multiple children or just to kill their babies. I am absolutely certain that Mr Dale does not want these things to happen, but I’d be very grateful if he could pull his finger out and make clear exactly what point he *is* trying to make, instead of just contributing to public benefits hysteria and then squealing when people point out the dangerous nature of his logic.
Execrable
An execrable performance on the cricket field yesterday has left me sleepless. Not in Seattle, though I’m led to believe cricket is quite popular there – nice to see an English tradition of playing cricket in the rainiest part of a country lives on in the colonies.
I haven’t quite worked out why I don’t sleep well after a loss. After all, there’s not always that much a captain can do about it. Yesterday a team we picked to play a bunch of wandering crickety types instead ran into a team full of league players who’d had their Saturday games rained off. I felt like the Polish cavalry charging the German panzers. But, y’know, without death and the end of national independence. Just slightly soiled bowling figures and a batting collapse.
All of which spreads to a day’s work like some sort of fungus, and may even infect my week. I hope not. I don’t want my working week to end up like my flat, which seems to be turning into a menagerie and toadstool garden, with comedy mushrooms on the window sill, spiders galore, snails on the boathroom wall and this week’s special a three inch long coachman beetle. It’ll be toads next.
I haven’t quite worked out why I don’t sleep well after a loss. After all, there’s not always that much a captain can do about it. Yesterday a team we picked to play a bunch of wandering crickety types instead ran into a team full of league players who’d had their Saturday games rained off. I felt like the Polish cavalry charging the German panzers. But, y’know, without death and the end of national independence. Just slightly soiled bowling figures and a batting collapse.
All of which spreads to a day’s work like some sort of fungus, and may even infect my week. I hope not. I don’t want my working week to end up like my flat, which seems to be turning into a menagerie and toadstool garden, with comedy mushrooms on the window sill, spiders galore, snails on the boathroom wall and this week’s special a three inch long coachman beetle. It’ll be toads next.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
