Category Archives: Britain today

Olympian Achievements

Leave a reply

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? [↩]

Moat Again

Leave a reply

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?

2 Replies

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?

1 Reply

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”.

The Big Disappointment

Leave a reply

The Boundaries of Voting

I’ve been boundary-changed, and it’s made it harder to decide who to vote for.

At the last election (and until a couple of weeks ago) We were in Hackney South and Shoreditch, which was Meg Hillier’s constituency. Meg wasn’t a bad constituency MP, at least inasmuch as she answered my emails the few times I got in touch with her. Not always in ways I agreed with, but still.

But “ID Meg”, as I liked to think of her, was the government minister for ID Cards and the Database state; the biggest issue at all recent elections for me. Amusing, really, that she got into that role, if you consider my correspondence with her in 2005

If we had lived on the other side of our street back then, we’d have been in Diane Abbott’s constituency. She was opposed to the war, and to ID cards. Plus I like her on the telly (though some, apparently, complain about her second job; at least it’s a political programme she’s on, even if it’s lightweight to the point of triviality).

Five years ago I’d have voted for Diane. Today, with the boundary change, we’re in Hackney North and Stoke Newington, so I can.

And I’m not going to.

It’s all gone too far. Our electoral system is too fucked up; our Labour party is too fucked up, too corrupt. They have developed an alarming reflexive response, it seems, to always do exactly the wrong thing. A hung parliament — or, hey: a Liberal Democrat majority — might be just the change we need.

At least that way there’s a chance we’d get some taste of electoral reform.

Houses. Plagues. You Know the Rest.

Diane’s leaflet came through the door today, and it tells me that she’s still against ID cards and the Iraq war. Why, then, I have to ask, does she still retain the Labour whip? It would be more honourable to resign.

And I can’t honourably vote for the former Labour party any more (not that I did last time, but remember, I was actively against the candidate then, too). We’ve come a long way now: we’ve reached the stage where I want Labour to lose. It’s a strange place to find myself.

Maybe, I’ve always been more of a natural LibDem voter anyway. Any time I’ve done those “Political Compass”-type questionnaires, they tell me that the LibDems most closely match my answers.

But even more than wanting Labour to lose, I want the Tories to lose. I remain profoundly mistrustful of them; I lived through the Thatcher years, you know? And It’s clear that, no matter how shiny Cameron may be, lots of his members remain the same old bastards. Witness this “I cure gays” bollocks from Phlippa Stroud. And Cameron has now backed her, I see. And she has denied it.

So much for that. We know the Tories are the opposite of socially liberal; we know they take a reflexive antagonism to supporting public services; and we know we can’t trust them with the economy (you never can trust right wingers, because they believe the market is guided by an invisible hand; I mean, come on).

I Can’t Do Both, Gordie

So now Brown is saying, ‘Vote for the kind of country you believe in; and come home to Labour.’ Sorry, mon: Labour no longer represents the kind of country I believe in.

Keith Angus will be getting my vote.

Link: "Long-standing party loyalties, even in a less tribal world, are not easily suspended"

Leave a reply

"… But May 2010 offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape politics for the better. It must be seized."

Fascinating list of signatories to this letter in The Guardian: "Long-standing party loyalties, even in a less tribal world, are not easily suspended

Corporal punishment: not on my watch

2 Replies

There was an arse on the Today programme this morning, calling for the return of corporal punishment to schools. One in five teachers, he says, want it ‘as an option’.

Two points, then: a) that means four in five don’t want it, and b) why do you think it’s all right to use violence against children? (and as a corollary, how do you think doing so will make them less prone to using violence themselves?)

42 referendums and and a resignation

Leave a reply

I can’t decide on this David Davis thing Is it just a stunt? Is he genuinely concerned enough about civil liberties to take the chance (small though it is) of losing his seat? Certainly he sounds sincere when he talks about his concerns about the growth of state power; and Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty counts him as a friend, it seems.

But as others have pointed out he has a bad reputation on some other rights votes.

Still, there’s no doubt in my mind that he’d be better than “Kelvin Mc-bloody-Kenzie”:… (as backed by Rupert Murdoch, of course).

The most concerning thing, though, is the talk to the effect that the public is in favour of 42-day detention without trial. This member of the public most certainly is not, and I’m sure I’m by no means alone. And honestly: would people who’ve really thought it through be in favour of this kind of thing? I find it hard to believe. What happened, if it’s true, to the great British sense of fair play, of support for the underdog, even of disrespect for authority? Is this another facet of the grumbling about human rights I wrote about before?

Maybe we need to re-educate people about what is good and right. But how?

And then Ireland have voted ‘No’ to the EU treaty. I can’t help but think that this is a bad thing. The EU itself has been a net good for Europe and the world, as I’ve probably said here before. Whether these reforms will really make it better and more democratic, or not, I can’t say: I haven’t studied it.

Thing is, though, I would probably have been in favour of the EU constitution; if only because we could do with one in the UK. Admittedly, I’d want one that got rid of the monarchy and introduced an elected upper chamber in parliament, but one that further enshrined the European Convention on Human Rights would be a good start.

It would be quite difficult to amend it, mind you, since you’d need a Europe-wide referendum.

But I’m havering fancifully here: it was never meant to be that kind of constitution.

What now, then? Who knows, really. I expect they’ll either re-work it slightly and try again, or just apply various components of it without the treaty.

Floating

Leave a reply

So the Tories took Crewe and Nantwich in the by-election.

I don’t understand (never have) the mentality, the mindset, the brains of floating voters. I’m not saying that no-one should ever change their mind, in politics or anything else; nor do I think that people can’t be convinced by the arguments over issues – nor, for that matter, swayed by the force of a candidate’s personality. Furthermore, I speak as one who has voted against Labour, my lifetime-favoured party, in recent years.

But floating voters – and in particular ones who’ll switch all the way between Labour and Tory – I just don’t understand them.

Of course it’s possible – even likely – that no-one actually describes themself as a floating voter. They might all say, “I decide on the issues each time,” or even, “… by who I like…” That would be OK, y’know? I could get behind that, sort of. I mean, it doesn’t sound very committed; but it could be. On each occasion you could examine the candidates’ and/or their parties’ positions on human rights/the environment/tax cuts/hanging and flogging (or whatever your particular concerns may be). Match them against your own position and preferences, and see who suits you best.

But I’m not convinced that’s what the bulk of these ‘floaters’ do.

See, I suspect that they mostly take little to no interest in politics (which is to say, little to no interest in the world) between elections. Then when one does roll round they vote whatever way their stupid, dumbfuck tabloid paper tells them to.

Though I may be doing many people a great disservice there. And at least they do get out and vote.

It’s just that sometimes the world might be a better place if they didn’t.

Jeremy Hardy obviously feels similarly to me: on The News Quiz the other night he said that floating voters who switched all the way from Labour to Tory (rather than voting, say, Green or LibDem) were like someone saying, “Well, I’ve always had my hair cut at the barbers in the High Street, but this time I’m just going to set my head on fire!”

On secondary school selection and the myth of choice

2 Replies

My son will be starting secondary school in September this year. So towards the end of last year we spent a lot of time reading up on the policies of our and adjoining London boroughs, visiting schools, and finally applying.

The application works like this. You can name up to six “preferences” (not “choices”, note). A central (London-wide, but I’m not sure under what body — I don’t think the GLA handles education) body assesses your application against the entry conditions of your first preference. If you meet those conditions, you get a place in that school; if not, they go on to your second preference; if you meet that school’s conditions, you get a place there, and so on.

It’s not quite as simple as that, of course, because schools’ entry conditions don’t just apply to your child in isolation; they have to take account of how many people are applying, and how many of those fall into each of the entry conditions, and so on. As well as that, not only do different boroughs have different conditions, but so do different schools within a borough.

The entry conditions of most state schools, including the new academies, depend primarily on distance from the school. There are special conditions for children with special needs, but that’s a small minority.

Now, all of this raises a number of problems — or contributes to them, at least.

First is the fact that different schools have different entry conditions. This applies in particular to the new academies. Our closest, non-denominational, mixed-gender, state secondary, is Mossbourne, the much-cited flagship of the government’s new academies programme. We live about 900 metres from it, according to Google Maps. Close enough, you’d think. But their admissions policy goes something like this:

  • the first 10% if the year’s intake goes to kids with special needs;
  • next, you get priority if you have a sibling already at the school;
  • about 60% of the remaining places go to the nearest kids within a 1km “inner zone”;
  • the rest go to kids outside the 1km zone, but not by simple proximity; it now depends on how far away the next-nearest non-denominational, mixed, state school is.

Confused? Most parents who have kids going up were. And it’s further complicated by the fact that there’s a test. Not a pass -or-fail test, of course: this is still a comprehensive school, so there’s no selection by ability allowed. Rather, this test is used to split the kids into ability bands. The entry conditions then ensure that an equal proportion of kids from each band is offered a place. This is to ensure that the school has kids of a range of abilities; to ensure that it is truly comprehensive, if you will.

None of that is inherently bad: a school can’t take every kid, if more want in than it has places, so it has to have some conditions by which to decide which ones to take. And ensuring that you take on kids with the full range of abilities is egalitarian and in keeping with the comprehensive principle.

The problem comes when the school is oversubscribed, and so is the next one in the area, and the next; and when they all have different entry criteria.

Such is the situation in our corner of Hackney. Well, across Hackney as a whole, but we happen to be in one of the more problematic corners, since we’re right at the edge of the borough. That wouldn’t matter if the Hackney schools gave priority to Hackney kids, but they don’t: their distance criteria are based on pure straight-line measurements, ignoring borough boundaries.

Again, that wouldn’t matter so much if all the other boroughs did the same. But they don’t. Our neighbours Tower Hamlets, for example, not only give priority to Tower Hamlets residents, they also have tied primary schools. If your kid goes to one of these, then they are guaranteed a place in the associated secondary school, if they (you) want it.

But this is not intended to be a big bowl of sour grapes. Our boy almost certainly won’t get into any of the Hackney schools, but he should get into the next-nearest one, which is just over the border into Waltham Forest. And all of this may be moot, anyway. But more of that later.

I referred in my title to “the myth of choice”, and I was careful to stress above that the application process allows parents and children to specify their preferences, rather than choices. That’s because of what happens next, after the application process has come up with a school for your kid.

You get an offer. One offer. That’s it. (Or maybe none, in which you have to run around frantically making further applications.)

It’s not like it was when I applied to university (and probably still is for university applications today). There, you could apply to five (or was it six?) institutions using the UCCA (now UCAS) form. They all assessed your application, and up to all of them made you an offer. You could then choose among your offers and decide which place would suit you best.

That was choice. For secondary schools. despite what the government might tell you, there is no choice. All you can do is state your preferences.

Our particular dilemma had another wrinkle, though.

See, he and some of his friends decided that they wanted to go to something called The Latymer School, in Edmonton. I was surprised when I found out that this is a grammar school. Now, some years ago I was surprised to discover that these things still exist in England. I’m pretty sure that when the comprehensive system started in Scotland, it was done properly: we got rid of all the grammar schools and Secondary Moderns, as far as I understand it. So as I say, it was a surprise when I realised they still had some in England.

But even then, I thought they were restricted to Kent and a few other places. I had no idea there were any in London.

Still, there we were. We weren’t about to forbid him to look at a particular school, despite our natural left-wing reaction to the idea of a selective school. Perhaps of more concern is that he would be going out of the borough, with both a long journey to get there, and a less ethnically diverse mix than he’s used to from primary.

When it came time to stating our preferences, we let him have the final word. Which is a lot of weight to put on the shoulders of a ten-year-old, perhaps, but it’s better than pressuring him into going somewhere he’d rather not go, and driving him away from us.

One thing I can say: selection by ability is obviously better than selection by ability to pay.

And another: we’ll be incredibly proud of him wherever he goes.

He got through the first battery of tests, and took the second; and we’ve been waiting since then. And tomorrow, we’ll know.