Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Methinks they doth protest...

I’d been looking forward to a rant-free day today following yesterday’s diatribe about sports administrators and their jealously guarded powers. But now we have a crisis in that most gentlemanly of sports – cricket. The dreaded umpire Hair – that’s his name not his coiffure – decided that the Pakistan team had tampered with the ball to make it swing more. (You’re allowed to polish one side, but not to scuff the other.) Without further discussion he reduced their score by five runs. Not a very severe punishment - less than 1% of their score in fact – but they expressed their displeasure by not coming out after the tea interval. Hair expressed his by calling the game off and awarding it to England – who had already won the series anyway. In the letter of the law he was entitled to do this – I'm not sure about the spirit.
As if we didn’t have enough problems with Pakistan, Mr Hair has now upset the president, and Pakistani pols are calling it a slur on the whole nation. But you can bet that the cricket bigwigs will back Hair.
Meanwhile the ‘faceless amateurs’ of the Football Association have banned Rooney for three weeks for being sent off during a pre-season friendly match. Well, we don’t want players to start getting above themselves. They’ll start to think that people pay to watch them – when in fact it is the officials who are the main attraction. The Roon protests, but it’s not worth it.
The blazers always win.

They flirted with flower power and bankrolled the Beatles. Some of them claim that they invented rock festivals and CND and won the 1966 World Cup for England. Some even think they created women’s lib (200 years after Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman) and gay rights. They also stormed the Bastille, built the Suez Canal, invented the polio vaccine and abolished slavery.
OK, maybe the baby boomers did achieve a few things, (I guess they had plenty of time on their hands, not having to fight a war) but they did not do it in silence. Roland White in the Sunday Times calls them the most self-regarding generation for generations.
On the other hand, some of them are the most caring, loving, generous people in the world.
I should know - I married one.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

How can you still protest/rant when Everton are STILL above Chelsea! (Alas poor Kevin - tee hee!!)

Mind you, have you seen MY lovely Reds (Robin Hood rools OK) .... just don't mention Accrington Stanley!