Stop The World, I Want To Get Off

It seems as though it happened in a different life, in a different world, but the London Olympics were just nine years ago. In the summer of 2012, the sun shone, God – who seemed to have actually proven R F Delderfield correct, and become an Englishman[1] – was in his heaven, and all was right with the world: British athletes won 29 golds and finished third in the medal table. It was a wonderful time to be alive.

 

In 2012 we only knew Donald Trump – if we knew of him at all – as the host of The Apprentice, or for his highly publicised marriages. If you had mentioned Brexit in 2012, no one would have known what you were talking about: A Greek exit from the EU – Grexit – had been mentioned, but even a referendum on UK’s EU membership usually had people thinking back to 1975, rather than forward. Any mention of corona would have made you think of a Mexican beer or an old-time soft drink range.

 

Oh for the days when Corona just meant "Every bubble's passed its FIZZical!"

In 2012 Boris Johnson was Mayor of London, considered by many as an amiable, largely harmless, buffoon, although his antics at the closing ceremony at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing – he offended the Chinese, by being “rude, arrogant and disrespectful” for accepting the Olympic flag with one hand, putting his hands in his pockets and not buttoning up his jacket - were perhaps a portent of things to come.

 

The feelgood factor of 2012 has evaporated like morning mist, and a nation that was as united as I can ever remember it has become fractured and divided on a scale that reminds me of the 1970s, but without the decent music. There are times now when I feel that the world has changed so much, I’d like it to stop so I can get off.

 

In recent weeks, the media, while remaining dominated by stories about Brexit, coronavirus, and the G7 summit, has devoted rather more time and space than the matters deserve to fans at football matches booing their own players, and to a tiny group of students taking a photograph off a wall.

 

The fans booing their own players have been England supporters, jeering the team for taking the knee prior to recent games. It seems that either wilfully or not, those fans who have taken to booing are conflating the principle that black lives matter, with the organisation Black Lives Matter. The players themselves – some of the most highly paid athletes around, working in an industry that is the living definition of capitalism – have not, as some people seem to think, suddenly embraced Marxism.

 

Given the alacrity with which football’s governing bodies leap on and curtail anything that smacks of politically motivated behaviour in the sport – Ukraine have had to change the design of their kit, which includes a map showing Russian-annexed Crimea as part of Ukraine, as the phrase "Glory to the heroes” on it was deemed a political slogan – the fact that Uefa have not outlawed the taking of the knee shows that even they don’t regard it as a political gesture.

 

One Tory MP - Lee Anderson, who represents Ashfield in Nottinghamshire – has said that he will boycott England games because of the decision by players to take the knee, while the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, defended those who booed players for making an anti-racist gesture. She also said that those taking the knee were indulging in ‘gesture politics.’ Ms Patel is something of an expert in gesture politics, what with her idea to process asylum seekers on Ascension Island (nearly 4,500 miles from the UK), or repelling cross-Channel migrants with wave machines. 

Ms Patel (among others) believes that politics has no place in sport. In a way, I’m in agreement; politicians have no place in sport.

 

Decrying knee-taking as ‘woke,’ or ‘virtue signalling’ conveniently shifts the focus away from the actual issue of racism itself. Clearly for many people, that is the intention. But then we live in a counter intuitive world, where ‘do-gooder’ is a derogatory term, and being ‘woke’ – that is ‘alert to injustice in society, especially racism,’ is an insult.

 

Meanwhile, over at Magdalen College in Oxford, a small group of students – ten, I believe – decided on a change of décor in the Middle Common Room, and voted to remove from the wall, a photo of the Queen. The Daily Mail, in a display of sound and fury, announced that Oxford students had voted to ‘axe the Queen.’

Gavin Williamson – Secretary of State for Education – weighed in with this tweet:

Calling the decision to remove a picture that had only hung for eight years (it went up in 2013), absurd, and inferring that this was a sleight against Her Majesty, is pretty absurd itself. Perhaps the hapless Williamson – and other critics of the decision – feel that once a picture of the Monarch has been installed anywhere, it should never be removed. Perhaps government should keep a central register of all pictures of the Queen, when and where they are installed, and regularly check that they have not been removed without permission from Westminster.

 

Naturally, this story has also been all over social media, with this post not untypical.

"People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice,” Charles Bukowski the German–American poet and novelist once said, and the concocted fury about footballers taking the knee and students removing a picture from their common room rather proves his point. Of course, these sorts of stories are like gold dust to governments or other organisations looking for a distraction from their own performances and behaviour being scrutinised.

 

From the suggestion by Labour aide Jo Moore in 2001 that the September 11^th attacks were a “good day to bury bad news,” to the current plethora of dead cat stories, politicians have always sought to deflect attention from bad news, or from their antics, with puffery or confected outrage at some triviality. And sometime, very soon, another dead cat is going to be thrown on the dining room table.

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[1] Delderfield actually said, “Most Englishmen are convinced that God is an Englishman, probably educated at Eton.” This explains much about the current Tory government, in which this could be said to be the belief.