Category Archives: politics

Olympian Achievements

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Initial scepticism

Back in 2004, 2005 or so, when London was bidding to host the Olympics, I was against it. My concerns were the cost, the crowding, and the general disruption of it all. I was, I admit, cynical. I recall being annoyed by the fact that the people running the bid published a number to which you could text “yes”, to say you supported the bid; but there was no option to text “no” to say you opposed it.

Looking back to what I wrote at the time, I see that my biggest concern was the effect on the Lower Lee Valley. It turned out that the removal of wilderness didn’t stretch as far as my fears suggested; and of course much of the land that has been used was polluted, abandoned, brownfield industrial sites. Bob Stanley of St Etienne (the band) has an interesting piece in The Guardian about that.

Coming round

But then London won the bid, and I though, “OK, fine, it’ll be interesting at least.” I had enjoyed watching the previous ones, and there was the regeneration for East London that looked promising. And the fact that it would just be down the road for me added to the interest. After all, that would make it easier to get tickets, right? Obviously there would specific tickets made available to to locals.

Hindsight even makes me wonder whether the events of the very next day didn’t make me more supportive: blitz spirit, don’t let the bastards grind you down, “soft power”, and all that.

The intervening years

Worries

In the years since then I’ve gone through various thoughts about the whole thing. Obviously there were the concerns about how long we would be paying for it all. And more recently there were the worries about the security preparations and the expected madness of the precautions. Of course more recently we’ve had the G4S fiasco, and the drafting in of extra soldiers.

More bizarrely we’ve seen the growth of the Olympic “brand police”, the forbidding of certain words and combinations of words (including, ridiculously, things like “summer”, “bronze”, and “2012”).

Cycle-friendly or not?

But closer to home one of the things that has annoyed me is the way they’ve treated our towpath.

The main stadium sits between two branches of the River Lee (or Lea): the river itself, and the Lee Navigation or Cut, which is essentially a canal constructed as a tributary1 of the main river. The towpath of the Navigation is a popular cycling and walking route for us local types. As we watched the construction site form and the massive buildings grow (and in my case moaned about the ugly fencing round it), we were able to keep a close eye on it all by going along the towpath. And indeed, a minor, but pleasing, instance of regeneration has been the resurfacing of the towpath, making it much more pleasant to cycle on.2

Above all, it seemed obvious that we would use the towpath to actually get to the Olympic Park. How else?

Until a few months ago when it became clear that the towpath was going to be closed for the duration of the games. The reason given — of course — was “security”. But what exactly is the security risk of providing access via the towpath?

In all honesty, I had my doubts about its use during the games; but I wasn’t concerned about terrorism. Rather I feared for people’s safety. It’s a towpath, after all: relatively narrow, unfenced, and unlit. And, critically, next to a polluted canal. If thousands — or even only hundreds — of people were trying to leave the park that way all at once — after the opening ceremony, say — then I could see that it would be problematic.

So I begin to wonder whether the “security” excuse was brought out to hide the more mundane, but always-criticised-by-the-tabloids truth: health and safety.

Then we heard that bikes would be among the banned items in the park; but also that there would be cycle parking: it sounded like mixed messages, but we would have to wait and see.

Those pesky tickets and the getting thereof

Ah, the joys of Olympic ticketing. Even as I write, on the third full day of the Games, they don’t seem to have really sorted it all out.

It’s a massively complex task, to allocate and sell tickets for hundreds of events over dozens of venues, all taking place in such a concentrated time period. But it’s not like they’ve never done it before; it’s not even like they haven’t done it in the Internet Age. It should largely be a solved problem, it seems to me.

We had decided to treat the Olympics as our family holiday: we would take a couple of weeks off, buy a load of tickets, and that would be our main summer break. After all, it would be just down the road, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, etc. So we signed up for the ballot, spent time listing events we might like to see, and so on. When the time came we hit the website and listed a summer holiday’s worth of tickets (hampered slightly by me having a MasterCard, which of course is the black sheep of Olympic ticket-buying).

In the end my beloved was allocated tickets to three events, and I got none (had they detected that invalid-card possession?)

However, that was just the initial ballot; and because I had been unsuccessful there, I was entitled to try to buy tickets in the conventional way in the second round.

On the day I woke up early and grabbed my laptop. The site, inevitably, crumpled. I went back to sleep for a bit. Tried again later.

I don’t recall how long it took, but in the end I managed to get a further three events.

And that was that. Remember when I said up there, “it would just be down the road … that would make it easier to get tickets”? Yeah. Somehow that didn’t happen. The Olympics is clearly not meant for the people who live near it. Or not particularly. I’m not suggesting it should be only for locals; but how hard would it have been to allocate a percentage of tickets to residents of host boroughs — or the whole of London — in a first pass? If they didn’t get bought they would be offered on, of course. The answer is “not very”; the Hackney Weekend festival did exactly that, after all. Glastonbury gives free tickets to residents of the nearby village, I seem to recall.

Anyway, that’s where we are. We later added a Paralympic athletics day, which will finally get us into the main stadium; and a set of Olympic Park passes, so we can go and have a wander round and soak up the atmosphere on Wednesday. But as I write there are still tickets available, even for swimming, even for the main stadium.

If you’re made of money, at least. Hell, you can still go to the closing ceremony if you’ve got £995 or £1500 to spare.

But still…

But I don’t mean to turn all negative. I’m actually really excited about it all, and thoroughly enjoying everything I’ve seen on telly; especially, of course, Danny Boyle’s masterpiece of an opening ceremony. Much has been said about that elsewhere, so I won’t say a lot. Just that it was far better, and a far truer representation of Britain than we could have imagined, or even hoped for. Part of the fun was following along on Twitter, of course (when it wasn’t too distracting to do so). And my favourite comment of all was one that Mitch Benn retweeted from Simon Evans:

It’s not that I’m proud to be British. It’s that I’m grateful.

So true.

And I’ve been enjoying seeing the first few days worth of events on telly. Some thoughts:

  • The tennis is just like Wimbledon, except with colour, and Omega timing instead of IBM. And “London 2012” logos, of course.
  • I normally go from one Wimbledon to the next without watching any sport; now, suddenly, I’m almost fanatical about everything (except boxing and anything with horses; and archery is much more boring than you might expect).
  • Seeing those cyclists in the road races made me want to get on my bike; not for those kind of distances, though.
  • Similarly, badminton & table tennis; maybe there will be a knock-on effect on people doing sport after all.

I should write about legacy (and sustainability3), but I’ve gone on long enough, and anyway, it’s another whole discussion. But I cycled down that way on Saturday; along the part of the towpath that’s still open, across Hackney Marshes (by a new, temporary path) and to the bridge across the river where there is access via Eton Manor Gate. There is a vast cycle park there, and from the gate it’s only supposed to be a few minutes walk to, for example, the Basketball Arena. So it’s all good.4

We visit the park on Wednesday, and start seeing actual events from Friday. I may report back.5

  1. Or really an inverted tributary, as it forks off the main river in a downstream direction. [↩]
  2. There are still a few spots of cobblestones, but we can cope with those. [↩]
  3. Yes, that’s a Twenty Twelve reference; if you haven’t watched it, you should. [↩]
  4. Yes, so was that. [↩]
  5. But under no circumstances will I post photos, OK? [↩]
Link

BBC lawyers consider formal appeal over court ban on riots drama | Media | guardian.co.uk.

The most chilling thing about this is not so much banning the broadcast; there could conceivably be a legitimate reason for that, though it’s hard to imagine a good one. Rather it is this:

For legal reasons, the Guardian cannot name the judge who made the ruling, the court in which he is sitting or the case he is presiding over.

This meta-blocking smacks of the “superinjunctions” that we heard a lot about a few years back (but which strangely seem to have dropped out of sight recently).

Voting Time Again

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Time to hit the polling booths again. Doesn’t seem that long since the last one. But it’s a lot easier to decide this time. Brian Paddick’s a decent guy, but the Lib Dems have shown they can’t be trusted over the last two years.

Boris hasn’t been quite the disaster we feared four years ago, but he still cares more about the richer members of society than everyone else. Plus, he’s a Tory. But I repeat myself.

Ken seems kind of past his peak, but he’s still the one for the job. Though I might give Jenny Jones my first vote and Ken my second. I think that’s what I did last time, come to think o it.

For the Assembly it’s going to be Labour all the way. I’m not impressed with how they’re doing in opposition at Westminster: the Tories are down, but they don’t seem to be kicking. Kick harder, Milliband! But to run London? Obviously it’s got to be the (relatively) good guys.

What’s surprising and slightly scary is the number of extreme-right parties who have put candidates up. obviously there’s the BNP and UKIP: but who knew the National Front were still around? Then there’s ones with names like England First and Christians Against Marriage Equality. (Those names may not be exact, but I’m on the Tube at the time of writing, so I can’t check; but you get the gist.)

Anyway, that’s where we are today. Don’t forget to vote if you can, folks.

Boycott News International for life? I already did.

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There’s a campaign on Facebook encouraging people to boycott News International papers for life. I’m way ahead of them. I don’t touch anything from the Murdoch empire.1

I haven’t ever since the days of the Tories. Err, the old days of the Tories, I mean: the eighties; Thatcher; all that stuff we thought we’d done away with in 1997.

My reasons are much the same as those I wrote about in my fourth ever blog entry. Then, I was talking about the Saatchis, and how their name was anathema to me, because of the fact that they had helped the Tories get in all through the Eighties.

I have long held a similar despite for the Murdoch papers; enhanced by the tabloid ones being such trivial pedlars of rubbish and prurience. 2

My kids occasionally complain about the fact that we don’t have Sky, but there are so many channels on Freeview (and Friends and My Name Is Earl are on E4 so often) that I don’t think they really mind.

And I must confess that, until the now-aborted bid to take 100% ownership of Sky, I thought Murdoch did own all of it. Turns out we could have watched 60% of it for all those years.

No matter how negatively I feel towards the organisation and its organs, though, I would never have expected the degree of criminality that they were apparently practising; just as no matter how negatively I might sometimes have felt about the police, I wouldn’t have expected such casual corruption from them. In the end I think we’ll understand that the police taking money from journalists is the worst thing about all this.

And yet on some level I can’t say I’m that surprised; disappointed, certainly, but not really surprised.

It’s all unravelling now, though, and we watch with joy and bated breath.

  1. OK, I admit it: they own some book publishers, and I don’t avoid buying those. We can’t all be perfect. [↩]
  2. Though all tabloids are like that, to be fair. [↩]

World of the Newspaper

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I’m sure we all use the word “disgusted” too easily. But I felt physically sick when I first heard about the News of the World (or someone working on its behalf) allegedly ‘hacking’ Milly Dowler’s phone.

It’s only a few days since her murderer was convicted, and now this comes down. It’s hard to believe that anyone, in any occupation can sink so low. But of course, it gets worse: they seem to have done it to the families of other murdered girls, too.

Oh, obviously they’re not as low as the bampots who actually did the murders. But not by much.

I’m a profound believer in free speech, and know that a free press is essential to a functioning democracy. But shit like this works against those noble ideals. It’s not exercising our freedoms to ensure that we keep them; it’s abusing them, and so making it more likely that they’ll be curtailed.

Because the backlash is coming, News Corp; already advertisers are starting to withdraw from your spiteful rag. (And I hope that some good can come of this: that the public will finally see what hideous, mean-spirited rags tabloid papers are, and start to boycott them.) But bigger than that is that fact there is now bound to be an inquiry.

And it seems to me that there is a strong chance that such an inquiry will recommend introducing some kind of statutory regulation of newspapers. And then we’d all suffer.

Let’s All Say “Yes”

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This morning I heard John Humphrys haul the Prime Minister over the coals regarding the behaviour of the “No to AV” campaign. Cameron tried to separate the “Conservative No” campaign from the rest of the No campaign, while failing to condemn the outright lies told by the broader campaign. It was a remarkable piece of squirming, and decidedly unconvincing.

He then went on to use the “one person one vote” argument. This asserts that under AV, some people’s votes are counted more than once. It ignores the fact that every voter can specify a list of preferences, of course, but it also seems to take an over-literal interpretation of the word “count”. True, if my first preference is eliminated (under AV), my second preference is counted, which means that in some sense my ballot paper (or the entries on it) must be counted again; but ultimately the preferences I state are only applied towards one candidate. My paper only “counts” towards one person.

Alternatively, consider it a minor redefinition of what a “vote” is. Instead of meaning a single “X” placed in a single box, it means a set of one or more preferences specified on a ballot paper. “One person, one paper,” you could say.

And last night I heard a “Referendum Broadcast” by the No campaign. It was incredibly stupid, too; and again by being over-literal. It analogised an AV-based election as a horse race, in which horse A came first, but the victory was awarded to third-placed horse C. Everyone was very confused. Because AV is so complex that nobody can understand it.

Here’s a picture that shows the complexities of the two systems.

Come on, say “Yes” on Thursday.

“Republicans: good at theatre, dreadful at governing”

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I’ve often said that you can’t trust right-wingers with the economy. But now Michael Tomasky, in The Guardian, gives more evidence for my assertion, regarding the US Republicans.

My favourite quote:

But running the country? They’ve shown almost no aptitude for it for many years. The reason is simple and was imperishably expressed by the scholar Alan Wolfe in an essay he wrote four years ago: “Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: if you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well.”

Moat Again

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I spelled Raoul Moat’s name wrongly in my last post. Now corrected.

I have to say that my sympathy for Moat was increased by reading an interview with his brother in The Guardian. A sad family story, there’s no doubt. But even Angus, the brother, condemns the Facebook page (which has now been removed by its creator).

Sympathy, yes; but he’s still not a hero, or a “legend”. Charlie Brooker talks sense on the matter, as you might expect.

Who Lays Flowers for a Murderer?

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When I sent this tweet:

Floral tributes for murderer just because he camped out for a while, apparently. Very strange.less than a minute ago via TweetDeckMartin McCallion
devilgate

I was thinking about the literal, physical flowers that some misguided people had laid on the river bank where Raoul Moat died. Misguided, or possibly, grieving family members. Just because someone is a murderer, it doesn’t mean that no-one grieves for their death.

But now, it seems, things have gone beyond that. Facebook tribute pages celebrating Moat’s life, and especially his last few days in hiding from the police.

Go on the run, camp out for a bit, become a kind of hero: all very well (though I can’t say I’d recommend it as a career path) if the crime were minor, or victimless.

But this guy murdered a man, and shot two other people. One of them has been left blind. The other is still in hospital.

This guy wasn’t some Robin Hood figure. He was in no way a good guy. He was a grade ‘A’ bampot, a fuckpig of the first water. And I’m disgusted that anyone could think of celebrating his acts.

Con/Dem Nation?

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Betrayed?

My initial reaction to the Liberal Democrats’ decision to form a coalition with the Tories was a combination of disappointment and a sense of betrayal (with a side order of impending doom, of course).

I was, perhaps, naive. I said that I was voting LibDem, and that I actively wanted Labour to lose (while stressing that I wanted the Tories to lose even more). I was, I think, hoping for a hung parliament, which of course is what we got. But I was labouring (heh!) under the delusion that the LibDems were ideologically relatively close to Labour, and far enough away from the Tories that siding with them would be unthinkable.

Clearly I was wrong.

I had convinced myself that the only reaction of the LibDems to a hung parliament would be to join with Labour; and that seemed like the best possible solution.

Wasted?

On election day my friend Tony Facebooked to the effect that he had wasted his vote (and it’s really annoying that, as far as I know, there’s no way to link to an update or a comment in Facebook). I answered:

I don’t agree. The only way you can waste a vote is to not use it. For example I voted LibDem in a safe Labour seat, but that isn’t “wasted”. In fact, it would have been more of a waste to vote Labour.

My son made the same point when I told him about that discussion. Diane Abbott got 54% of the vote in Hackney North and Stoke Newington. (That’s a proper majority.) My vote wouldn’t have made any difference, though, would it?

But in the days immediately after the election, as Clegg took his party into talks with the hated Tories, I began to regret my decision. It really felt like I had “wasted” my vote; or maybe misused is the better word.

Things Can Maybe Get Better?

However the coalition document that they published today is remarkable. If you’ve read any of my political posts over the years, you’ll know that the biggest thing going on for me for some time has been ID cards, and all the associated post-9/11 terror-panic fallout. So to read this, from the wordprocessor of the Tories (and LibDems) is remarkable:

  • A Freedom or Great Repeal Bill.

  • The scrapping of ID card scheme, the National Identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the Contact Point Database.

  • Outlawing the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission.

  • The extension of the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency.

  • Adopting the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database.

  • The protection of historic freedoms through the defence of trial by jury.

  • The restoration of rights to non-violent protest.

  • The review of libel laws to protect freedom of speech.

  • Safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation.

  • Further regulation of CCTV.

  • Ending of storage of internet and email records without good reason.

  • A new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences.

I mean, that’s pretty much everything we could want on civil liberties, right there.

And a few other points are good. As my friend Stuart said:

Most important line of the agreement? - We will end the detention of children for immigration purposes. #ge10Wed May 12 14:23:57 via TweetDeckStuart F Wallace
soapyfrogs

(Gotta keep embedding those tweets, you know.)

Dismal Science?

On the other hand, I’m no economist; but as I said before, I don’t trust right-wingers to run the economy. And right now, I have a gut feeling that cutting back on public spending during a recession is exactly the wrong thing to do (cutting back on most public spending is nearly always the wrong thing to do, of course).

Keep On Keeping On

In conclusion, I agree with Charlie, pretty much. I don’t trust the Tories, but let’s see whether Clegg & co can keep this thing on track. And let’s keep a close eye on them all, and keep that list above in mind.

You never know: maybe this really is “The New Politics”.