UK

When did sport become a business? A long time ago.

I am old enough to remember when the eastern European countries dominated many events at the Olympics, and here in the UK we muttered under our breath about how unfair it was. They were state sponsored. They did not have to work for a living. To all intents and purposes they were professionals, paid for by the state, competing against our gallant Brtish amateurs.

In the USA they had their own system for allowing elite athletes to train fulltime. They had a college scholarship scheme which allowed their best athletes to become almost full-timers, spending a minimum time maintaining a minimum grade average to stay in college.

Then came the UK Lottery. And suddenly we were back in the game. Milions of pounds raised by the Lottery for good causes were diverted to the promotion of sport. And UK performance in the Olympics improved immeasurably, first in the London 2012 games, and now surpassing the London medal haul in Rio.

And, proud as I am of Team GB’s achievements, there is a little voice in the back of my head saying: we bought those medals. Not outright. Not for cash. Not passing stuffed brown envelopes into the hands of Sepp Blatter-like officials at the IOC. But still, there is a niggling guilt that we out-did many countries by the amount of training time and sports science we could throw at our best athletes.

None of which takes anything away from the individual athletes who sweated, strained and suffered to achieve their very best. I well remember a friend of mine who wanted to compete at world level in a non-Olympic sport, back in the 1970’s. He had to give up his job for six months and go on the dole so he could devote the amount of time needed to be the best he could be. With or without finacial backing, achieving world-class sporting prowess is a testament to the determination and dedication of every individual athlete who stands on the world stage, medallist or not.

But the statistics on the overall haul, it cannot be denied, are influenced by wealth. And that cannot be in the Olympic spirit, surely?

Sound-bite Dave has come to the rescue again.

As thousands of homes are affected by flooding in Cumbria, Leeds, York, Manchester and Scotland, slick Dave announced an ‘extra £40 million’ was to be spent of dealing with the flood damage in Yorkshire. Not only that … he has also appointed a ‘Yorkshire Floods Envoy’ in the person of Robert Goodwill MP, to go to Yorkshire and talk reassuringky to TV camera crews.

Robert Goodwill is the Conservative who, when he was an MEP in 2000, told the BBC’s Today programme “I fly from Leeds/Bradford to Brussels and we get a set fee of around £500. But I can buy a cheaper ticket, economy class for between £160 and £250, I can pocket the difference. And of course as a capitalist, as a British Conservative, I see it as a challenge to buy cheap tickets and make some profit on the system“. Hopefully Robert will dutifully find a way to syphon off some of Cameron’s £40 million for his personal benefit.

But even as soundbite Dave talks about his £40m ‘extra’ the Labour Shadow Environment Secretary points out that there have been cuts of over £500 billion over the last 5 years in the budget for maintenance of existing flood defences.

I do not live in one of these flooded areas (thank god) but if I did I would not be reassured by Mr Glib and his Floods Envoy.

Google has agreed to pay £130m in corporation tax, following a six-year enquiry by HMRC into their tax affairs.

This measly payment is a tiny fraction of the £3-4 billion they earn every year in the UK. Of course, corporation tax is paid on profits, not turnover. So they are allowed to deduct their ‘costs’ to reach a net profit. It makes you wonder what those ‘costs’ could be for an internet giant. Raw materials? Probably not. Machinery and equipment? Staffing costs? Whatever they are using as deductions, it comes to a whopping £3-4 billion, or nearly the whole of their turnover. It makes you wonder, with such minimal profits, why they even bother trading in the UK.

It is not clear which period the tax covers, but it is believed it covers an eight-year period, so probably about an extra £20m per year, on average.

In today’s i newspaper (the cut-down tabloid version of The Independent) Ian Birrell uses his column to lambast the junior doctor for having the cheek to defend their salaries and working conditions.

He says the BMA has ‘behaved like an old-fashioned trade union’ as if that was an insult. How dare an organisation set up to represent doctors have the affrontery to … represent the interests of doctors. Shame on the BMA.

Birrell trots out the Conservative party line about ‘compelling evidence of higher death rates at weekends’. This is a blatant misuse of statistics, that any half-qualified statistician could explain to Birrell is deliberately misleading. What is this compelling evidence?

Firstly, take Birrell’s claim of higher death rates at weekends. Simply untrue. According to Dr Chris Roseveare, a consultant in acute medicine at University Hospital, Southampton, the day with the highest mortality rate is Wednesday. If you want to look at the issues in the NHS you need to look at the facts dispassionately, and not with your Conservative-tinted glasses. Because there are genuine issues with organising NHS services to match the needs of patients. But these issues require a more considered approach than explaining differences in mortality rates by blaming doctors.

The truth is that there is a higher mortality rate associated with hospital admissions at weekends. Not a higher rate at the weekends. As I said, the highest mortality rate occurs in the middle of the week, when the NHS is fully staffed (or as fully as the cutbacks permit).

There have been several reports on mortality rates and weekend admissions published over the last few years. The most often quoted one was produced by Dr Foster Intelligence. But even they did not suggest that variations in mortality rates could be ironed out by a single measure. Only a PR specialist like David Cameron, or an unprincipled politico like Jeremy Hunt, would try and simplify the issue.

A more responsible attitude was expressed by Andrew Goddard, director of the Medical Workforce Unit at the Royal College of Physicians, and Peter Lees, founding director of the Faculty of Medical Leadership and Management. They wrote an article for the BMJ which stated:

The Dr Foster report raises more questions than it answers and calls for greater insight into community out of hours services, hospital staffing, and workforce configuration. “All need to be reviewed against the knowledge of which conditions are associated with increased mortality at the weekend. This is an opportunity that, if tackled intelligently, will improve the care of some of our sickest patients for many years to come.

‘If tackled intelligently.’

Now look at David Cameron’s intelligent contribution to the discussion.

It is a shocking fact that mortality rates for patients admitted to hospital on a Sunday can be 16% higher than on a Wednesday. While the biggest numbers of seriously ill patients arrive at the weekend when hospitals are least well equipped to handle them. So seven-day care is not just about better care for the patient, it’s also about saving lives.

But David, the same statistical returns would have told you that more people die in hospital on a Wednesday than on either Friday or Saturday. And the 16% increase he refers to does not mean what he wants you to think. Assume a 1% mortality rate for people admitted on Wednesday. Cameron’s quote is shocking, because it makes you think the rate at the weekend is 17%. It is not, it is 1.16%. That is your 16% increase. It is still a significant difference, but not what David Cameron wants you to believe.

Scaremongering is not tackling an issue intelligently.

So what are Cameron and Hunt up to? They have their own agenda in negotiating the new doctors’ contracts, which expire very soon. And they are using statistics in the way mealy-mouthed politicians usually do – to obfuscate and drive their own political objectives.

So Ian Birrell swallows the Conservative Central Office propaganda uncritically, and regurgitates it to write a ‘think-piece’ on the NHS dispute. Once again a columnist demonstrates his abject prostration at the feet of politicians. Perhaps a career as media advisor to Central Office beckons?

Why all the fuss about Lynton Crosby getting a knighthood in the New Year’s honours list?

The Telegraph columnist John Mc Ternan says it is fine. After all, what is the honours list for, if not to reward your friends for their help, he argues.

Makes no difference to me. My application to be on The Apprentice was rejected when I kept calling the bearded Cockney ‘Alan’. It seems you are supposed to use the term ‘Lord Sugar’ and pronounce it it a lowered, reverential voice, whenever you speak to him. The hell with that. The Queen may have decided you should be addressed as Lrd Sugar. But we cut off the head of one of her predecessors so that we would not have to do what the aristocracy says.

The New Year’s honours list was announced the same week that David Cameron put out his annual New Year’s message. The BBC reported the message in abbreviated form: they edited it down to ‘tackle poverty and extremism’ as being his bite-size priorities. I almost choked. The guy who wanted to reduce the working tax credits of the poorest families in the country, and was only stopped by popular revulsion at the move, now says he wants to reduce poverty. The cant is unbelievable! (No, that is not a typo.)

And the sanctimonious Mr Cameron also wants to end extremism. So he is bombing Syria. That’ll help.

I’ll tell you what, Dave; try ending poverty in the Middle East and then maybe oppressed and frustrated people will stop looking to feudal religious leaders for leadership and opposition to Western expol=itation and power-mongering in the area. But ending poverty in the middle east would involve ending capitalist exploitation in the area, putting all the natural resources and major industries in the hands of, and under the democratic control of, the working class.

But that sounds a bit like socialism. And that would never do.

There is a myth promulgated by the establishment that the military is above politics. They refer to it as a ‘constitutional convention’ as if using more syllables made it more true. It is not true, and General Sir Nicholas Houghton blew it out of the water today.

On the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday morning he was asked whether Jeremy Corbyn, the elected leader of the opposition, worried him when he declared he would never press the nuclear button.

If the convention were true, he should have politely ducked the question. He could have said it was for politicians to decide what role the army plays in international relations. He could have deferred to the British public, who might take that into consideration when deciding what leader they want at the next general election.

Instead he waded in with both of his highly polished military boots.

“It would worry me if that were translated into power” was his answer. So as far as the head of British Joint Services is concerned, the elected representative of the Labour Party would only be a worry if he were ever ‘in power’. And according to this big brass, ‘there’s a couple of hurdles to cross before we get to that’.

This man should be sacked. Immediately. And the same fate should befall any military leader who wades into the political arena while still in office.

I know the constitutional convention is a myth. I know that the military hierarchy has always put on a mask of neutrality until the chips are down; and whenever the chips are down their true colours come out. And I know that, when the vital interests of the capitalist class are threatened they will defend capitalism with whatever it takes. They will use  ‘British values’ or ‘democracy’ or ‘freedom’ or any other high falutin’ sanctimonious cover for their abject subordination to the aim of maintaining the privileges, wealth and power of the existing elite. And they will be ruthless in putting down any attempt by the working class to take real power.

Even the slight whisper of a faint change from a soft reformist like Jeremy Corbyn brings these cockroaches scuttling out from the cracks.

A Tory MP has resigned from the Parliamentary watchdog which checks on MP’s expenses – because of his expenses.

Geoffrey Cox is MP for Torridge and West Devon. What caught my attention about this story was not the failure to declare income in the register of interests. He forgot. He missed the deadline. Whatever the excuse, I am not interested.

What interested me was the report that he earned £325,000 for 500 hours of work. Or £650 per hour.

I don’t know how he does it – find a spare 500 hours out of his very busy schedule to make time to earn a third of a million pounds. 500 hours when all his bleating colleagues are working their fingers to stumps in the interests of their constituents, they tell us.

Oh yes, it is tough being a parliamentarian.

It comes as no surprise to anyone that the British security services serve a higher master than the elected government of the day.

Now the judiciary have ruled that it is not illegal for MI5 or MI6 to intercept the emails, correspondence or phone calls of MP’s. The decision was made by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, a panel of senior judges charged with scrutinising the activities of the security services.

None of this is news to us. Spooks have been bugging whoever they want, on the grounds that they don’t like the look of them, for decades. They are known to have placed bugs inside 10 Downing Street, and to have kept them there during the premierships of Macmillan, Douglas-Home, Wilson and Callaghan.

The idea that elected representatives should be spied in by the security services exposes the fiction of democratic control of the spies. They are a law unto themselves. The reassurance given to MP’s by Harold Wilson, that they would not be spied on (referred to as the Wilson Doctrine) was a joke. Harold Wilson himself was spied on by the spooks.

You have to ask yourself on whose behalf they are working, if it is not for the government of the day. If they are prepared to spy on the Prime Minister then what are the objectives of their surveillance?

The short answer is that they work to maintain the status quo, and the grip on real power exercised by the ruling class. Anyone that represents a potential threat to the existing order is automatically a ‘subversive’ and warrants intrusive surveillance. But a state that does not answer to Parliament is, by definition, not a democratic state. Parliament is just the fig leaf, which exists to provide an illusion of democracy.

It is four days since The Sun’s front page excoriated Jeremy Corbyn for his alleged disrespect to the royal family. Jeremy Corbyn did not sing the national anthem.

And today the same royalist respecting paper splattered its front page with a picture of the queen’s grand-daughter-in-law, the former Kate Middleton, flashing a bit of thigh as she walked along with a split skirt.

Respect.