A Woman I met on the train

It was fairly inevitable I suppose.  The train was not that busy but not having perfected, or employed, a kind of menacing force-field around me, someone was bound to sit on the other side of the table.  It was a table after all, and as much as I insist on facing the rear (“you should always have your back to the engine” Audrey fforbes-Hamilton would say), there are just as many or more who prefer to face the front and thus this is a plumb seat.  And she got it. 

            She sat down, faffed as people do when they sit down in railway carriages, fiddled with the newspaper sections she had and the plastic bag they were in.  She set down a drink on the table.  No food though, so we were spared that.  She has unconvincingly-fake-tanned skin on her face, with a foundation that neither covered it, nor matched it, nor suited her.  Her face was adorned by synthetically coloured hair that was as obvious as the vertical wrinkles on her upper lip, spaced a couple of millimetres apart, that are only possessed of women who have smoked regularly in young adulthood but given up later on; we see her now less than a decade before the modern answer to middle age.  After reading the free London newspaper that is only ever read out of boredom or by fools who wish to look intellectual, she opened her plastic quarter-bottle of cheap new-world white wine, and proceeded to drink it out of a plastic water cup that looked as though it had been taken from a water cooler. 

But.

This was unselfconsciously done.  The poured cups were not filled to the brim, she was not drinking it this way simply to avoid drinking it out of the bottle, this is how she liked it.  By this time she had moved on to reading the travel section of a Sunday broadsheet, and cracked open the reading glasses.  The combination of this and the time since, had settled her.  This was not to last however, and the colour supplement was replaced by an A5 catalogue from a budget supermarket from which she proceeded to tear a selection of pages.  These were to keep rather than to throw away one imagined.  They were recipes the pictures of which seemed to consist predominantly of green salad vegetables, and sweet cakes.  Not cakes merely for tea, but those that could only involve children.  Young children?  How would that work for a woman in her mid-40s? 

Of course.  Her lack of bright pastel colours had failed to alert me sooner.  Her wedding band and engagement ring were a pleasant silver, with the latter containing a single stone.  Tasteful, both of them.  Clean, tidy hands, but not lazy ones.  The care and attention was undoubtedly the result of the new lease of life afforded by hormone replacement therapy that somehow unaccountably took years off her.  That is how a woman in her mid-40s happened to be baking cakes for her otherwise unborn grandchildren on a train to Lingfield in late spring.

We never spoke a word of course.  This is the south of England, a place where one of the last bastions of what was once a much more ‘correct’ social structure is still observed.  Of course it exists now for more and different reasons than once it did.  First, it is easier not to talk than to talk.  Second, third, fourth and fifth, we have smart-phones and laptops and books and newspapers to busy ourselves on railway journeys.  And so the silence has lived on; it is as silent as ever it was, but it survives because it has evolved.  Other privacy has vanished of course.  Health records, how much money one has and where one has been and what has been done are far more readily available and they ever were, I feel sure.  The idea of privacy has changed out of all recognition.  Many of the manifestations of it in days of olde have disappeared.  Of course servants ate in the Servants’ hall and this was tucked away at the bottom of the house or right at the top.  How else were the staff to be given any privacy?  Of course their lot was not palatial – but surely no one was expecting that.  Rather as now, the lot of a Polish immigrant who works on building sites on the minimum wage is not palatial.  And he does not, as they did not, scurry.  Servants do not scurry.  Good ones at least do not.  Why would they? 

Oddly though, this structure also provided for the privacy of the above-stairs protagonists.  They do not have to eat in front of the staff, any more than the other way around.  I wonder how many would dissent from that now.  Even on a railway carriage: no one wants to eat ad hoc on a train.  We do because we are hungry or bored or disorganised but a choice between that and even the buffet car—for the time they are left on the network—is not a hard one to make, even for the uninitiated. 

But neither of us ate so no indignity could befall us, nor could any snobbery.  

Yo say what, Mo-Pho?

I want more wireless.  It is since getting a not-a-phone-iPod that the frustration has boiled so it is only in the last six months that I have really noticed this.  Having had a smartphone for two years had almost disguised the need for it.   

            In many ways I like the Touch, it does a variety of things my little old nano could never have done.  Typically for a computer-update, it also does a lot of stuff I never really thought nor cared about.  But now I can do these things, I do, and I think they are quite fun and only slightly procrastination-making.  I have not yet given in to the temptation of Angry Birds, however. 

            For those who do not know, the Touch does everything an iPhone does except be a phone.  Thus if I want to do anything useful, or even useless (Check-in on facebook) It has that nice large screen which is completely impossible to type accurately and meaningfully on (“these hands were absolutely built to play Rachmaninoff, darling”) but has plenty of space for music and whatever other dross I want to put on there.  The camera is a murky and basically an option-less affair but it is another feature and it does alright if you want to send a blurry photo to facebook that needs to be rotated through 90° by the viewer. 

            It does make one wonder what is to happen next though.  Where can the iPod Touch go next?  Apple might argue that it is one of many products that fits into a market that demands a variety of hand-held devices.  Despite Apple’s success, sadly, it has yet to gain supremacy of the smartphone market—that goes to Blackberry, at least in numbers.  In fact there are now estimates to suggest that the 8520 curve is a better selling phone in Britain, than any iPhone.  One thing the iPhone can do that the BB cannot however is a check-in on facebook.  Thus, the option is not so much an indicator of where you are, but which instrument you use.  However the tussle for first and second position is not over yet.  Other contenders seem unlikely for the time being though, with Android—the second and much more successful incarnation of the rather flat Windows Mobile—in third, and Nokia and Samsung with their efforts languishing below this. 

            So short of a shift in the market that I as one consumer cannot elicit, where do I go?  Internet on telephones—smartphones or not—is finding it hard to advance.  It feels pretty indistinguishable from what it was on computers ten years ago when broadband was just starting to fall into the mainstream, i.e. was still a bit crap, and websites were designed for 800x600 resolution as a maximum.  This was not a happy time, let me tell you in case you were not there.  Perhaps it will be like Africa.  Here there is a fast-growing market in smartphone use (Digital Africa, J. M. Ledgard, Intelligent Life, Spring 2011) on which they use any and all websites on the tiny screen and get on with it, to a fashion.  In the West, we use websites that are designed for it, or applications that avoid the need for websites altogether. 

            Whatever happens, the zeitgeist is very much with this movement.  Six continents demand it—wireless on Antarctica is just hassle, trust me—and yet it fails to emerge.  If you walk around with an iPod Touch and want wireless, such oases are few and far between.  This is the thing: there is no point in someone providing it because then you well spend the whole time chatting or doing or spending something or someone else.  And you can probably do that on your phone anyway.  If you have the right phone, that is...

What fresh Hell is this?

The following food column can also be found published by The Felix, the student voice of Imperial College London. On-line version here: http://felixonline.co.uk/food/1275/cheap-chicken/


Cheap Chicken will never die. If anything it is on the increase, despite McDonald’s and the ubiquitous beef burger having been around longer even than most of us. The trouble is that it is looking as though its days may well be numbered, not least because various things have now clipped its wings.
         Beef is traditionally a staple meat for much of the western world—much as it should be on nutrition grounds alone, it is an excellent source of protein as well as energy-giving fats that are particularly ideal for those in high-calorie-burning manual work. Beef is also a flavoursome meat, and is not hard to pick out in a blind tasting either on flavour or texture, even when cooked badly. Currently however it is significantly more expensive than poultry and despite its prominence, is only slightly cheaper than game meats such as duck and venison in middle-class supermarkets. You can also see this variation in the prices of dishes in restaurants, sandwiches in Sainsbury’s or menu items from the Union kitchen.
         Not only is beef more expensive, but provides an environmental problem. Part of the McLibel trial in the 90s focussed on the felling of ecologically valuable vegetation, including rainforests, in order to produce fertile land on which to rear cattle. This fertile land lasted only a few years before it was washed away. This lead to more forest being cut down and so on. Not only did this reflect badly on the beef producing industry in America but precipitated how beef is reared and sourced, being followed up in more recent years by analyses from various quarters about how animals are reared and slaughtered in the UK. Currently we have laws relating to animal husbandry that are more stringent than those in Europe. That is why, incidentally, Danish bacon is cheaper than British bacon, despite that additional cost of transporting it from northern Europe to the UK.
         Supply is of course not the only thing that dictates price in any industry. Demand is also part of the equation. This demand has lead to the spread and flourishing of a variety of chicken-based fast food shops. KFC is of course the oldest, but Chicken Cottage and other pale imitations are now widespread. These shops also have their own dedicated suppliers: large scale catering supply companies that specialise in supplying fast food chicken shops of all kinds, who now market themselves independently. Or on the side of their lorries at least. There is money to be made in budget fast food, evidently.
         And so we have a food industry which fails to excite the passion of the environmental lobby, and is cheap enough such that drunk students can and will eat it without the concern that it will destroy the planet or break the bank. Seems pretty reasonable. It is also fair to say that cheap chicken is probably succeeding where others may have had their day, but is this a good thing? It would be easy for a commentator to tell everyone to eat in Michelin-starred restaurants and hang the cost, though there is Mr Scarface himself to put even the most tenacious off doing that, despite the cost. And of course you should, but none of us do. What is there left? We are in a downturn and after a few drinks, crispy chicken wings are tempting, available and manifestly cheaper than venison tatare with pear sauce. And anything has got to be better than another packet of crisps, surely?

Super-injuctions, without the super, please...

Ryan Giggs needs to learn to keep his penis in his pants.  The prime minister thinks they are unsustainable (The Telegraph, Monday), and if you do not want people to find out about something, shut up about it.  Three easy ways to avoid the need for super-injunctions, and also to maintain your privacy.  You may think that would be enough to neutralise any need for this legal tool, but we are not even half way there. 

            Piers Morgan is a loathsome person.  Throughout his editorship of The News of the World and the Daily Mirror, he focussed on ‘exposing’ a variety of stories about a variety of people.  No one in public life was safe – Diana, Princess of Wales (meh) amongst others, was the subject of many stories.  His attitude to privacy has upset countless people, including Ian Hislop and Jeremy Clarkson, with whom few have manage to remain upset for any length of time.  I did not have an opinion on Piers Morgan, or indeed super-injunctions, until I heard Piers Morgan’s edition on the Desert Island Discs Archive.  Openly he states that he cares not for anyone’s privacy, however I defend my own and others’.  So, you might think I would argue in favour of super-injunctions.  But I do not.  Not even where it would clip the wings of people like Piers Morgan.

            In order to have an opinion on this subject, it is perhaps objective to work out what would happen in either case.  First, we have the situation in which super-injunctions do not exist, much like now—albeit in a world in which the idea has been tried.  Events of all sorts are open to publication, and provided they are true, they are not met with prosecutions under the law of Libel.  A story being true does not make it public knowledge, not does it give the right to the gutter press to use it to behave cynically, or to sell newspapers.  If they do, arguably it says more about them than it does about the person, people, or events of which they write. 

Second, we have a situation in which they are used.  Much like now, we would not be able to know what has been suppressed or by whom, except where thousands of Twitter users, myself included (@SamuelFurse, Monday), participate in ‘outing’ it.  We were protected by the fact that Twitter is based in America and the fact that even with our efficient law system, 30k people are not going to be traced, arrested charged and sentenced.  Of course a number of super-injunctions could have been taken out without us knowing – that is after all the point.  Meetings, agreements, bribes, payments, swaps, deaths or even criminal activity might be covered up or publication of which is conveniently avoided by super-injunctions. We just do not know. 

You might also argue that secret information can and should be protected, and that super-injunctions are a way of doing this.  Maybe if the law had been brought in a century ago, you might have been right.  However we have the Official Secrets Act (first in 1911), covers information relating to national security.  Important stuff, like government secrets and who works for secret government agencies and so on, is protected.  Not some oaf who happens to be banging Whoeversheis Jones. 

And that is really the problem.  There are situations in which super-injunctions could be handy, although we have other means for controlling really sensitive information, but there are also times when it manifestly is not justified.  Personal indiscretions cannot be a justification for the use of serious legal tools.  This reminds me of the death penalty: of course there are times in which it is easy to believe that some criminals should just be dealt with – serial rapist-murderers would be pretty high on my list.  But where does it stop?  And what happens if it is wrong?  It cannot be undone.  Super-injunctions are not in such a dramatic position just yet, but use of them over time would undoubtedly give opportunity for greater breadth of cases, some of which would inevitably provide ammunition from anti-super-injunction arguers.  Thus if a super-injunction was granted and it later emerged that it concealed criminal activity or something which really ought to have been brought to light, what then?

Super-injunctions are too powerful.  We, as other democratic nations, have demonstrated that a balance is what underpins a stable democracy.  Thus we have a judiciary, Monarchy, parliament and police force, all of whom are independent.  Naturally things might be faster if we did not, but then we need checks and balances to ensure we achieve an understanding of the truth.  While who is shagging whom falls under the auspices of truth, I am not interested.  Not unless it turns out to be comically ridiculous, like a passionate love affair between Nicholas Parsons and Margaret Thatcher.  But the chances are remote (or are they?) and we have no evidence to support the idea of Him giving her Just a minute without hesitation, repetition or deviation.  Either way, newspapers will print whatever they want.  If it is untrue they will write it as a ‘balanced’ piece, or they will get sued into the pre-loincloth age.  And if people buy their newspaper they will carry on doing it. 

So although I would like to have super-injunctions to avoid the tabloids reporting irrelevant dross which I do not read anyway, they serve no purpose.  Not if it is really important.

I want a good war

The following food column can also be found published by The Felix, the student voice of Imperial College London.  On-line version here: http://felixonline.co.uk/comment/1230/i-want-a-good-war/

There is nothing like the threat of being shot in the head, for reassurance.  And whether or not the threat of that has befallen you, and I hope not, on the world’s stage there seems to be something of a trend of conflict resolution and a supremacy of liberal ideals.  The conflict in northern Ireland seems at an end, there is continued progress of the democracy in South Africa, and the death of Osama Bin Laden signally a deep-if-not-fatal blow to the war on the faceless enemy of terrorism.  Yes, terrorism and not ‘terror’.  Only Lynn Truss can be said to wage war on a verb. 

            A successful state visit of H.M. the Queen to Ireland seems a bit of an obvious thing now, or at least one that should attract little drama.  However, thirty or even twenty years ago, when those claiming to be the IRA were still bombing parts of England, a state visit was unthinkable.  However, successive governments have made a real effort to resolve the seemingly unresolvable conflict and so despite Oliver Cromwell’s manifest incompetence, the situation is measurably on the mend.  With 20-20 hindsight it is not hard to see why—no one wants to feel in conflict, not really.  It is too much effort and affords too much waste to be sustainable.  There is every likelihood that such conflict is an adaptation to mitigate population growth, much good that has done up against our survival instincts.

            The change in the democracy in South Africa is perhaps less easy to see.  Certainly, in the recent political activity there politicians have been quoted saying that the focus should be on the issues.  Impressive stuff for a country with a democracy less than twenty years old and one in a continent riddled with tribal conflict.  Perhaps States in north Africa will also adopt this tack in the future, once their democracies are established. 

            The faceless was on terrorism is perhaps a harder to measure, but the apparent focus by intelligence services on it and lack of activity in the western world since 2005 suggests that that this too is losing its sting.  We cannot tell what sort of cover-up, if any, there is by Islamic or any other fundamentalists.  However, if all the said extremists blow themselves up, there will not be any left to hurt us or the religion they claim to represent anyway. 

            This gives us a peculiar quiet though.  Throughout my childhood there was endless conflict – middle east, former Yugoslavia, Chechnya, you name it.  Of course not everywhere is stable and safe – it is not really safe until Margaret Beckett goes there on a caravanning holiday if you ask me – but at least for the minute we have relative calm.  Let us enjoy it while we can.  

Sagging is the new tightness

Whose arse fails to look good in a well-fitted pair of jeans?  We have all admired a well-clothed derrière, even if it is only really achieved by A&F models.  Despite the low-cut tops, the risk of cameltoe and escaping of god-knows-what, should seams break, it seems to be the arse that attracts the most attention.  I would love to say that this is because there is quantitative data suggesting the attractiveness of the average rump has improved but I just cannot—take a look around any pub in the south of England if you dissent—sadly it is that the decency police have strayed into clothing once again.

            Admittedly Karl Lagerfeld would balk at the idea of parading anyone but the best in low cut jeans in the pages of the glossies, but that does fail to address the point.  Wearing jeans ‘below the waist’, now called sagging,  has been fashionable since before the next crop of eighteen year olds were born, in fact before most of the next lot of 25 year olds were born – we need only look at the ‘Back to the Future’ films (the first one came out in 1985) for this.  Having said that, how much of that is down to the 'sagging' fashion being presented in the film by a doe-eyed Michael J. Fox, has not been calculated. 

            Whatever your view, the arse—or at least the boxers—being on show is irritating most of the western world, it seems.  Obama does not like it (“brothers should pull up their pants”), and there have been some moves to serve ASBOs for showing their underwear over here.  Apart from the fairly obvious point that we all know that this annoys so it is going to happen on those grounds alone, and whether or not it is nice to look at, it is a pretty victimless crime.  It raises an interesting question though.  As this has been going on for 20 years it is no longer shocking, nor is it difficult to organise, nor is it easy to ignore or eclipse.  So why the response?

            One possibility is a backlash.  Europe and north America are in something of a downturn I am sure you have noticed and so some might say that this is reflected in our general behaviour, with a greater austerity all round.  Perhaps this is even supported by the fact that older people remember a time when it was basically unknown, or embarrassing, and so it is associated with the slackness of the 80s and 90s, quite literally.  This fails to hold water though, as the fashion appears to have survived the downturn in the 90s in any case and was worn through that anyway. 

            Perhaps it is because it has permeated to such a variety that it is no longer the reserve of the attractive and is now use to the point at which it is more unattractive than attractive.  This would not be the first time this has happened.  Facebook has suffered this indignity.  When it first appeared in Britain it was only used by students at London and Oxbridge Colleges.  Now every 13 year old—not to mention silver surfer—between London and Inverness has an account, seemingly regardless of either their literacy or social grace.  No one likes to look at something unattractive, either on facebook or on someone’s lower half. 

            Certainly it cannot be legislated for.  In the positive sense I mean.  Any kind of uniform—school, work etc is unlikely to make provision for the type and colour of underwear to be worn, with jeans showing it off.  Perhaps that is the point, in doing this there is a chance to give a bit of greater expression to wearing clothes, especially on males.  Grayson Perry ‘drags up’ because he wants to break the conventions and sterility of male clothing.  I am not sure how much showing our arses helps his cause, all I would say is that if we are going to, male or female, we should make sure we wearing something worth looking at and you have spent more time at the gym than in Chicken Cottage.  Deal?

#YesnotoAV

Pretty much everyone is bored with AV coverage by now.  Everyone apart from some hacks, amongst my facebook friends at least.  But I have clipped their facebook cyber wings as far as I am concerned and so that makes at least my on-line life easier.  Though that is little compensation when one tussles with that slight feeling of isolation that comes with wondering what the bollocks other people are talking about.  Ever had that?  I do not mean where you do not understand it—we have all had that, pissed or not—but where it is not really possible to work out how they got there or why they are talking about it. 

            This started for me with hearing about proportional representation, PR.  It is probably one of those things like socialism or Christianity.  They are obviously crap ideas but they picked their moments and had supporters belligerent enough not to let it go so we retain at least bits of them, years later.  Add to that, that there is probably nothing better—and some that are worse—so some remnants stand the test of time.  This of course goes for more or less everything else in current affairs: fiscal economic theory and the royal family, to name but two.  You have probably also heard that PR means that tiny minorities are ‘fairly represented’—whatever that means, it is in all likelihood another vague and utopian-sounding fantastic half-truth, and a gain made at the expense of any localisation of central government politics.  But it has been decried by many as a silver bullet that will solve everything that is wrong in politics. 

            Wondering why people bang on about yes-or-no-to-AV is another debate that has a similarly discombobulating effect.  It has been covered less-than-brilliantly by the media and is complicated, creating peculiar bedfellows.  Who expected the reversement d’alliance that mean PR supports voting to keep first-past-the-post? 

I decided quite early on what I wanted in the referendum.  It turns out that this is both different to that of most of my friends, though entirely in line with the expected result.  I suppose my view stems from my not being able to see the point of AV, not least because any increase in fairness is cancelled out by an increase in complication.  ‘But AV is simple’ I hear the yes campaign cry.  Of course Imperial students can understand it, but the percentage of secondary-level pupils who will be old enough to vote at the expected time of the next general election, but that cannot write a coherent sentence on what they did today would suggest that this depth of understanding is not shared by everyone.  Arguments from those purporting No to AV suggesting that the third-placed candidate would win have failed to gain momentum, though it remains unclear as to whether coalition governments would be commonplace under AV and whether or not this is desirable. 

However it is hard not to liken this to two bald men fighting over a comb.  Naturally, I have a fiver on the one with fewer teeth and a flick-knife in his back pocket as he does my garden (British politics analogised with fighting and gardens there, hope you liked it) but there it ends.  The probability reached after reflection now seems to be that changing to AV would not make that much difference, and so we will not really notice it in the long term.  Perhaps they would if other aspects of the electoral system were investigated more publically.  What about voter turnout?  In the 1960s it was >65%.  At the last election it was barely 45%.  European elections held in the UK routinely have turnouts in the mid-30s%.  Is this representative or fair, AV debators?  So while the merits of clarity and simplicity against a fantasy of representation and a dystopia of fairness go on, probably whatever the result, only 40-odd-percent of the electorate are deciding the fate of 100%.  Who voted for that?

Is convenience for poor people?

The following food column can also be found published by The Felix, the student voice of Imperial College London.  On-line version here: http://felixonline.co.uk/food/1175/convenience-for-the-poor/

It is just fat pikeys that shop in Gregg’s.  Surely?  I mean, it must be they who demand an opening time of 0700 on weekdays, freshly-baked multi-grain loaves, Empire biscuits, and roasted chicken sandwiches complete with delicate slivers of red onion.  Must be.  No other answer.  Clearly.

            Think for a moment, how often you buy lunch.  We have all done it – either a result of poor planning, greed, or because colleagues were going out to buy and it was just easier to go with them.  In case you thought you were getting off lightly by having the last one as the most reasonable-sounding, I am afraid that reason can easily be boiled down to simple laziness. 

If you are thinking that you might do this more often that you can remember, you might like to consider the following:

-         - Sandwiches now cost about £2-3 per pack on average.  I want to eat two of these, and I am not alone;

-          -A drink.  Another £1;

-          -A chocolate bar or cupcake, something sweet, £1-2, because, it is not a meal without something sweet now is it?;

-          -The coffee you had on the way in, £2.  Did you think you had got away with that one?  Nice try: it costs money too.

That makes a total in the region of no less than £7.  That is even if we take one off the list for the sake of a conservative estimate, and because not everyone has two sandwiches and morning coffee from Moonquids-Caligula-Kingdom-coffee-cottage in the same day.  £7 is not that much though.  If it is once a week, that makes £210 per year.  On an Undergrad term-table.  If you are a postgraduate who eats out like this 3-4 times a week, this is an annual bill of £1,400.  The average bursary of an Imperial College postgraduate is now approaching £12.7k/annum. 

This does go much further than sandwiches I am afraid.  Would you spend £5 on a packet of coffee that would make only 8 cups worth?  Of course not.  That works out to 63p/cup.  Not so expensive compared to the £2 one from Asteroidfrancs-Augustus-principality-whatever-coffee, though. 

You may be wondering exactly why Gregg’s is relevant though.  Based on the opening paragraph neither I, nor they, have the idea that their clientele is a single-market for shoppers, of whatever waist measurement, on a budget.  However, I am not going to wax lyrical about their wares in a Marks and Spencer ‘Food porn’ advert sort of way.  What I will say is that freshly-baked baked goods, sandwiches that are 10% cheaper than Sainsbury’s and a range that allows some ‘proper’ shopping on the side, gives this lot a corner of the market that they are not really being challenged on.  At least, not nationally.  Local competition to Imperial would include the Sandwich shop on Gloucester Road, which probably has the widest range of fresh made-to-measure budget sandwiches I have ever seen in one place.  So one way or another it can be done on the cheap, but the total is still the fat side of £5 per day.

Undoubtedly none of this costing business looks good.  I can feel it too.  I suppose what I should do now is extol the virtues of eating some of last night’s leftovers for lunch every day.  The rough cost of cooking-a-bit-more-for-tomorrow’s-lunch is probably no more than £5/week, so it sounds as though it will work financially.  But how often have you seen a colleague or friend or whoever eating their lunch out of one of those zipped cool-case things with a plastic fork, in what is surely an utterly joyless manner?  Too often.  This is something of a paradox, then.  Do let me know if you solve it.  Answers on a postcard, please.      

The Olympics are just not cricket

The following current affairs column can also be found published by The Felix, the student voice of Imperial College London.  On-line version here: http://felixonline.co.uk/comment/1162/its-all-an-olympic-waste-of-time/

Recently I decided to try and buy my tickets for the London Olympics next year.  I had been in two minds about it for some time—I would get to see some great riding but champing at the bit, I was not. 

As one may expect, tickets are not cheap and of course I want good value for money.  Seeing good horse-and-rider combinations strut their stuff is great, but it may be better value-for-money to invest in training with one of those riders.  However, regarding rickets, as you may well know, one cannot simply buy tickets.  It is a sort of lottery in which one has to register, ask for which tickets one wants and hand over intimate financial/personal details, all in order to wait with bated breath at the prospect of being allocated the ‘requested’ tickets.  It is not clear how the tickets will be doled out and so whether or not any predictive facility for success on this is not known. 

I can easily add to this the necessity of having to use a VISA card to pay for such tickets.  It is styled as a revolting sponsorship deal – and probably is when a verbatim quote from the Olympics website is “We are proud to accept only VISA payments for tickets”.  Apart from the questionable syntax, this does not reconcile with the otherwise rather sensible argument in favour of using VISA for payments, that is currently doing the rounds.  This supporting argument is that due to a unique rule governing the use of VISA accounts, the tickets bought with them cannot be sold on to ticket touts and thus the price not be inflated or used as a vehicle for insalubrious activity.  Of course it is perfectly possible that such a sensible rule and such a nauseating sponsorship deal are not mutually exclusive.  If it were a combination of the two, I think it would reflect well, of oddly, on the organisers. 

Another thing that I have also disliked has been the logo.  Of course, I am not alone in this.  All sorts of objections have been raised – that the meaning of it is not clear, that it looks like something else and is thus confused and confusing, but it is also objective that it is not beautiful.  This may seem fanciful, or even whimsical, but beauty has now been defined objectively.  It is based as it is on numerical proportion and ratia of distances between seen points on a given surface.  A face is a good example of such a surface.  One could of course argue that the very fact that I am writing this is evidence that the marketing strategy, of which the logo is manifestly part, is working.  Crudely, that is true, but what about the tone?  I am not writing about it because it is good, even if it has managed not to be entirely hopeless.  It will be and is being noticed, but that does not make it pleasing, or liked.  It got them attention, but is it the sort of attention that one wants?

Most commentators have been rather negative about the Olympics up to now.  In fact, we are just coming to the end of the period of moaning that boils down to “It’ll be crap because it is in London and not anywhere else”, which is itself a relief.  Perhaps the sort of furtive stubbornness—I wish it were tenacity, but it appears that it is not—we have seen from the Olympic organisers is the result of such attacks.  Boris knew that it was going to be a tough one to organise, and so in order to get it organised without flaking out, he needed the sort of people who were tough enough to get the job done.  The side-effects of having people tough enough to work hard and get things done on time in the face of the British media, and organise the largest sporting event the world sees are a revolting logo, a nauseating sponsorship deal and a peculiar ticketing system.  All the same, I am left with an uneasiness: I cannot help feeling that it is not quite cricket.