Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Fear

Among the many conspiracy theories that have arisen during the coronavirus pandemic is the idea that the vaccines contain some sort of microchip designed to track the movements of the vaccinated. If it wasn’t COVID-19 it would be something else, as there are constantly evolving theories about how ‘they’ (governments, big business, shadowy but unspecified other groups) are tracking our every move, recording our conversations, building up vast amounts of data about us.

 

The one thing that these theories usually lack is what the explicit purpose of this information gathering exercise is: ‘Control’ is often given as a reason, but with limited explanation of how this control will be exercised or what purpose it serves, unless control is the end and not the means.

 

It is true however, that virtually everything we do is tracked, traced, and recorded somewhere by someone. If you own a car, have a bank account, store loyalty cards, or mobile phone, just about everything you do, everywhere you go is logged. And that is before we even get to the estimated 4-6 million CCTV cameras in the UK.

 

Almost everyone will have a story about the somewhat unsettling, spooky online incidents where an advert for a product or service pops up in our social media feeds for something we have been talking about: Coincidence, or is your mobile phone or virtual assistant like Alexa spying on you? Goodness knows, but for most of us the thinking must be, if we’ve nothing to hide, we’ve nothing to fear. If I’m going to see adverts on Facebook for example, they might as well be for things I might actually have an interest in.

 

But news coming from the United States about a plan by Apple to study images that iPhone users upload for storage in iCloud Photos takes matters a step further.

 

Before I go on I must clarify that Apple are only reviewing images to look for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and only in the USA. The creation and distribution of such images is so abhorrent that most people would consider it reasonable to justify almost any method of detecting such offences and bringing those responsible to book.

 

Apple’s process works by comparing images that are being stored in iCloud Photos with known images of CSAM, and if a potential match is found, a human reviewer will assess the images and report the user to law enforcement agencies.

 

Where we start to enter somewhat more uncertain waters however, is how this technology might spread, how it might be abused or misused. Yes, we could quite easily and justifiably defend and support the use of this sort of technology to combat the sexual abuse of children. But then law enforcement agencies and governments will inevitably ask the question, what else could we use this technology for, what other offences could we detect and prosecute using it?

 

Terrorism? Yes, obviously terrorism. If wholesale surveillance of mobile phones could have prevented 9/11, or 7/7 in London, or the bombing of the Bataclan in Paris, then surely it would be justifiable. Or people smuggling and trafficking? Or the drugs cartels? Or what about gangs planning robberies like the Hatton Garden safe deposit burglary, surely we can justify using technology to combat that sort of thing too? I could go on, but that would risk straying into Monty Python’s ‘What did the Romans do for us?’ territory.

 

To some extent it already happens. Phones have been tapped for years if potential criminal activity is suspected, but only by going through a process to justify individual instances that ends with a senior politician or judge authorising such activity. Terrorist offences have been stopped through mobile phone surveillance, but what we are looking at with Apple’s photo scanning process is the possibility of blanket coverage of everyone’s phone at all times.

 

You might shrug your shoulders and say, I have nothing to hide, so I’ve nothing to fear. And if you are not inclined to commit offences that involve CSAM, and you aren’t located in the United States, then at present that’s true. But what Apple have done here is to open a door which they themselves had previously locked, barred, bolted and declared that they would never open. There have been cases in the past where law enforcement agencies have been stymied by Apple’s refusal to unlock phones that have been used by terrorists, even for the FBI, but now they are proactively saying that the data on iPhones is fair game.

 

Matthew Green, a security researcher at Johns Hopkins University, has raised concerns: “They (Apple) have sent a very clear signal. In their (very influential) opinion, it is safe to build systems that scan users' phones for prohibited content. Whether they turn out to be right or wrong on that point hardly matters. This will break the dam — governments will demand it from everyone."

 

This sort of technology would enable an oppressive regime to clamp down on even the mildest form of dissent and suppress any form of protest, making criminals of even the meekest opponents.

 

And that is the point that defenders of free speech and civil liberties, and those who love a conspiracy theory will latch onto, and for once possibly with good reason. Who gets to decide what constitutes prohibited content?

 

In Britain, and in much of the world, people like to think that they live in benign democracies, where their rights are respected, where they can travel and speak freely, and that criticising the government and other authorities is acceptable, where free speech is protected, and civil liberties unlikely to be curtailed except in extremis, COVID-19 being a case in point.

 

But not everyone lives in a benign democracy, and even in countries that purport to be so, governments are not above suppressing dissent – take a look at the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which was passed in the House of Commons by 359 votes to 263 on Monday 16th March, and under which it will become an offence to cause someone ‘serious annoyance,’ or merely put them at risk of being caused serious annoyance. That could merely be a step on the road towards a government deciding that, in the interests of national security, they should start interrogating people’s phones for all sorts of material, including simple, straightforward, currently perfectly legitimate, criticism of government, its policies, and its ministers.

 

At the moment it’s just Apple, in the United States, targeting a particularly narrow, detestable group of people. But the line that has been drawn is not fixed; it can and probably will, move. Things we don’t have to hide today may be proscribed tomorrow. One day, that merry little jape you made about the Prime Minister might land you in very hot water indeed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Liar, Liar!

Parliamentary privilege allows Members of Parliament to say things in the House of Commons that outside it would make them liable for prosecution for slander, contempt of court, or breaching the Official Secrets Act. On the other hand, rules around unparliamentary language forbid MPs from using certain words or phrases about other MPs. Words like blackguard, coward, git, guttersnipe, hooligan, rat, swine, stoolpigeon, and traitor. And of course, liar.

 

Members of Parliament are generally described by one another as "the Honourable Member for . . .” and the assumption is, as the Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle has said, that “No honourable member would actually mislead or lie to the House,” and should an MP unwittingly utter a falsehood, or accidentally mislead the House, then they are obliged to correct the matter at the earliest opportunity. Not that they always do. [1]

 

Accusing a fellow MP of lying will result in the MP making the accusation being required to withdraw from the Chamber if they do not retract their remark, as happened to Labour MP Dawn Butler last week. Citing a YouTube video produced by the lawyer and filmmaker Peter Stefanovic in which he dissected and debunked a number of claims made in Parliament by Boris Johnson, Butler said that Boris Johnson “has lied to this House and the country, over and over again."

  

As Dawn Butler found, in this country we take accusations of lying very seriously. In much the same way as we take accusations of racism and anti-Semitism very seriously. Unfortunately, we take the accusations more seriously than the offence a lot of the time. As former Speaker John Bercow and Dawn Butler herself said in a joint statement published in The Times, “Someone lying to tens of millions of citizens knows he or she is protected by an ancient rule. They face no sanction. By contrast, an MP with the guts to tell the truth is judged to be in disgrace. It is absurd.”

 

Dawn Butler speaking in the Commons on Friday. Picture: House of Commons/PA

MPs can be accused of lying of course. Virtually every week at Prime Minister’s Questions, Sir Keir Starmer says, of some answer or statement that Boris Johnson has given, ‘That simply isn’t true.” A lie, then. As he has said, “the Prime Minister is the master of untruths and half-truths.” Starmer says that he supports the deputy speaker who ejected Dawn Butler, but also supports Butler for what she said. He likely only said that because his silence on the matter had drawn criticism, but that sort of fence sitting harms him more than Johnson and the Tory government.

 

I saw a comment on Twitter that if MPs were allowed to call each other liars, then that word would be constantly bandied about in the Chamber, and the point being made clearly was that it would be uttered even when no lie had been told. Which raises two points.

 

First, if Honourable Members were actually honourable and didn’t lie, then the accusation would carry no weight (it wouldn’t stop it being used, but it would be more detrimental to the accuser than the accused), but secondly – and just as importantly – is it right that MPs shout across the Chamber?

 

While some speeches in the House of Commons are listened to respectfully, anyone who has watched PMQs will know that the House is often like a bear pit, with voices raised on both sides. MPs should not shout ‘liar’ at their opponents; they ought not shout anything at all. They should however, be able to use a speech to call out lies on the part of another member, particularly if that member knowingly and demonstrably did lie.

 

The arcane rules and customs of Parliament are like Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, where things are done a certain way because of accidents of history, because of tradition, not because they are logical or make sense. If Parliament were a private business, engaged in banking for example, it would probably use abacuses instead of calculators, and handwritten ledgers instead of computer mainframes because that is how it has always been done. Getting Parliament to move with the times is on a par with getting a cat to learn algebra.

 

Christopher Lee as Mr Flay, responsible for upholding the rules and maintaining 
tradition in the castle of Gormenghast. From the BBC production.

But move with the times it should. The whole system of politics in the UK is overdue for reform: Our First Past the Post (FPTP) voting system for a start. In the last seventy years FPTP means that in all but three elections the majority of votes have been cast for parties other than the one that formed a government. 

 

Politics is binary, but the world is nuanced. The majority support a political party the way they support a football team, with blind, unthinking loyalty. But whichever party you support you are likely to be lumbered with just as many policies that you don’t like as ones that you do. In fact, it may be that there are policies that another party has that you support more than the ones proposed by the party you vote for. Which is the reason why we should stop voting for people and parties and start voting for policies.

 

Come election time, the parties should set forth their intended policies. The public votes for the policies they want and the policies are carried out by private industry. We will still need MPs, but not the 600 odd we have now; a couple of hundred should suffice to act as administrators and make sure that the private companies entrusted with carrying out the policies we voted for do so properly. An unintended consequence is that this could lead to a privatised health service, but at least it would happen through conscious choice and not implemented by stealth.

 

In private industry objectives are the norm, and performance against objectives is how pay rises and bonuses are set. In a privatised parliament, our MPs could be assessed and rewarded by how effectively they manage to get the policies implemented.

 

This method of governance would ensure that the right people are doing the right jobs. Iain Duncan Smith last year lambasted the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), for recommending that working from home measures stay in place. He said that SAGE had no right to tell employers what to do because “most of them have never run a business.” Duncan Smith has never run a business, nor have many MPs, so how appropriate is it that a completely unqualified person is put in charge of the Department of Health, or Education, or the Ministry Defence?

 

Michael Gove once said that Britain is fed up with experts, but it is normally accepted that some degree of expertise and knowledge of a business is useful when running it. Being in charge of a multi-million pound department with thousands of employees and the literal power of life and death over the population of the whole country apparently requires no experience or knowledge, just the good fortune to have won a popularity contest and be looked on kindly by the Prime Minister.

 

It’s time to privatise government and get the experts in.

 

 

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[1] Since 1979 there have been 93 occasions on which MPs have apologised for misleading the House. The most recent was in 2019. Source: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03169/

It’s Not Coming Home - Again

My interest in football – especially international and Premier League football – has waned a bit in recent years, and I’ve rarely watched live football on TV, especially since covid, what with the lack of atmosphere at games played behind closed doors. I approached Euro 2020 with some scepticism; I wasn’t expecting to watch many games, and I wasn’t overly optimistic about how enjoyable it would be.

 

As it turned out, I watched more games that I expected, and enjoyed them much more than I had anticipated. It helped of course, that England surpassed my expectations (a Semi-Final place was the best I was hoping for, and even that was a stretch), but in any case, the quality of the games – especially in the knock-out stages – was mostly excellent. Two games on the same day – Croatia v Spain, and France v Switzerland – were spectacularly entertaining, and then the next day England beat Germany, and any victory over Germany is one to be savoured.

 

Spain's Mikel Oyarzabal celebrates scoring their fifth goal in their thrilling game against Croatia. Picture:  REUTERS/Stuart Franklin

The football benefited from the return of the fans, although a multi-country, multi-city format during a pandemic introduced some unnecessary risk. It seems that at Wembley especially, the supposed covid restrictions that required fans to show their vaccination status or a negative test result were not rigidly enforced, and the chaotic and violent scenes at the stadium and other parts of London on the day of the Final were as predictable as they were saddening.

 

In the end, England’s quest for a first tournament win since 1966 fell short in the penalty shoot-out against Italy. It won’t be long before ‘thirty years of hurt’ becomes sixty at this rate. Perhaps Messrs Broudie, Skinner, and Baddiel will update the tune in time for the 2026 World Cup, unless England manage to go one better than this year before then.

 

Comparisons between England’s final this year and 1966 are inevitable, and as much as anything, they display the changes that the country, indeed the whole world, has gone through in the last fifty-five years.

 

Take the crowd at Wembley. In 1966 most of the men were in suits and ties; rosettes abound, and the flags being waved were largely Union Flags. Now it’s replica shirts and the Cross of St George.

1966 at Wembley

And everyone looked older. Take a picture from 1966 and compare it with one from this year, and most of the fans will be roughly the same ages, but those from 1966 look older, and they certainly seem to be have been more mature in their behaviour. In 1966 no one was sticking a lighted flare up their backside as one England ‘fan’ did before the game this year. Sadly, the events at Wembley and in Central London on final day make a possible England bid for the 2030 World Cup looked doomed to failure.

Wembley 2021

It isn’t just the fans. This is a picture of Sir Alf Ramsey – plain Mr Ramsey then – at the time of the 1966 final. He was 46 years old.

 

Then there is Gareth Southgate. He’s fifty in this picture. But then, everyone looks younger and dresses younger these days. 

When I was a teenager my grandparents seemed incredibly old, but in reality they weren’t much older than I am now, yet as my mother said, once her mother hit fifty, she became old, and acted old. My parents never owned a pair of jeans between them, or trainers; my dad didn’t even own any polo shirts or t-shirts come to that. His casual wear still involved putting on collar and tie, even if he wore them with a windbreaker rather than a sports jacket.

 

Much has been made of the youth of the England team that lost to the Italians, particularly the ages of those who missed the crucial penalties. Yes, Bukayo Saka, Jordan Sancho, and Marcus Rashford are 19, 21, and 23 respectively, but in 1966 England had Alan Ball (21), and Martin Peters (22). Hat-trick scorer Geoff Hurst was just 24, as was Nobby Stiles; even Bobby Moore was just 25. The average age of the 1966 team was 26.5, compared with 25.27 for Gareth Southgate’s men.

 

The refereeing, and the use of VAR impressed me at Euro 2020. In fact, the first game I watched made me wonder if VAR was even being used. It was unobtrusive and seemed to be genuinely there to help referees, unlike the version used in the Premier League which seems to just stoke controversy and generate perverse decisions.

 

That isn’t to say there wasn’t any controversy at Euro 2020. If anything, it has made me doubt whether I know what is and isn’t a foul any more, especially after some commentators called into question the correctness of the referee awarding a penalty when French goalkeeper Hugo Lloris as near as damn-it decapitated Portugal’s Danilo, but were certain that the minimal contact on Raheem Sterling in England’s Semi-Final against Denmark was a nailed-on penalty.

Some commentators had some doubt about this being a penalty...

...but no doubt about this one.

I have read and re-read football’s Law 12, which deals with Fouls and Misconduct, and have reached the conclusion that it is not a law at all (football is very precious about the fact that it has laws, not rules), but rather a set of very loose guidelines that are within the gift of the referee to interpret as they see fit. I guess that anyone who has, like me, watched football for more than half a century, thinks they know a foul when they see one, but sometimes it can be very hard to explain why when there are a series of very similar challenges, some are fouls and some are not; it’s all highly subjective.

There were two things that rather got on my nerves during Euro 2020. Firstly, the trend for treading on an opponent’s foot, which – if you will pardon the pun – really needs stamping out. The other thing – and why this is so prevalent baffles me – is the foul throw.

 

At the top of the game, players spend hours honing their skills at free-kicks, penalties and other set pieces. They practice pinging passes with unerring accuracy over long distances, but when it comes to taking throw ins it often looks like some of them are doing so for the first time. I lost track of the number of foul throws that were taken, yet not one that I saw was flagged by an assistant referee.

 

The foul throw is somewhat like a victimless crime; it’s rarely more advantageous for the player taking it and his team than a proper throw, and in that respect one might say it’s not worth worrying about. Except of course, football will maintain that it has laws, and unlike rules, with which one might allow a degree of discretion, laws have a more rigid structure. If the ‘law’ on foul throws is not going to be enforced then it should be changed.

  

Now that the dust has settled after Euro 2020, it seems that once again, football has failed to come home; instead, it went to Rome. Maybe next year in Qatar, eh?

 

 

 

 

 

 

One Rule For You

It is easy to paint all members of any given group with the same brush if a small, unrepresentative element among them behave badly. It was too easy (and lazy) back in the 1970s, to condemn all football fans for the hooliganism that a minority indulged in at football matches, and the anti-social behaviour of some fans on trains and in town centres on Saturday afternoons.

 

Badly behaved British holidaymakers in Spanish resorts, and so-called ‘lager louts’ in town centres up and down Britain are equally unrepresentative of the majority of Britons who holiday abroad, or enjoy an evening out in this country. By the same token, we should not consider all of Britain’s cyclists together as an arrogant, ignorant and anti-social, Highway Code ignoring, lumpen mass – but sometimes it is difficult not to.

 

I suppose that it is a combination of confirmation bias and the frequency illusion that gives the impression that all cyclists are ‘Lycra-clad louts,’ as they are sometimes dubbed – not that all cyclists wear Lycra -  and in fact, where I have a problem with cyclists, it is less with the Lycra-clad among them, who at least seem to confine themselves to the road, even if they do sometimes ignore the rules.

 

My biggest bug-bear with cyclists are those who ride their bikes where it is expressly prohibited, and if challenged, are not only unapologetic, but downright affronted, displaying the increasingly common trait of exceptionalism.

A week or so ago, Val and I were in Eastbourne for the Finals of the Viking International Tennis, and as we always do when we visit Eastbourne – and most other seaside towns we go to – we love to walk along the promenade. Eastbourne has a particularly fine promenade, and along the two-and-half miles from Holywell in the west to Fisherman’s Green in the east, cycling is prohibited. West of Fisherman’s Green, pedestrians and cyclists each have their own dedicated lane along the prom to the end, by the water treatment works.

 

The prom at Eastbourne, marked in red.

There are of course, signs on lampposts and painted on the footway indicating that cycling is prohibited. These are flagrantly ignored and in one walk we took, we were passed by nearly a dozen bike riders.

 

Recently, notices have appeared on a couple of lampposts reiterating the ban on cycling, however these are hidden away quite discreetly and virtually invisible to the cyclists that whizz by them. It doesn’t help that as well as being hard to see, the signs contain an invalid URL for the local council (it should read byelaws, not bylaws), and the website for reporting anti-social behaviour to the police is so convoluted and user-unfriendly that many people must be deterred from trying to report the matter.

That notice, complete with mis-spelling of 'bye-laws.'

Getting more and more annoyed as we were passed by more and more cyclists, we decided to ask some of them why they were cycling in an area where it is prohibited. Most totally ignored us, and one or two just laughed. One said he wasn’t cycling because he was riding an electric bike, and one asked why we were bothered, as it was 7am and there were few people about. He got very upset when we took a photo of him.

Cyclists on the prom.

There have also been a good number of people riding e-scooters up and down the prom, and while the prohibition on cycling does not specifically mention e-scooters, riding them anywhere other than on private property is illegal, and police recently confiscated over 500 e-scooters (which are subject to all the same legal requirements such as MOT, tax, and licensing as cars and other vehicles) in London. What makes it particularly galling is that on the north side of Grand Parade (which runs parallel to the prom), cyclists are allowed to ride on the pavement; they presumably prefer the view of the sea that one gets from the prom.

 

You may think that given the name of my blog, which comes from the concept that rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men, that I would be more forgiving, especially since you could argue that a cyclist riding on an almost deserted prom at 7am is doing little harm. Except that my attitude towards being guided by rules is that the person doing so should be circumventing, or even ignoring them for the benefit of others not themselves. They should be using discretion in applying the rules to avoid unintended consequences that disadvantage others; it does not mean blithely ignoring rules that are an  inconvenience, or which they simply do not like.

 

In 2020, the Eastbourne Herald reported that a Freedom of Information request showed that no fines or warnings had been issued to cyclists in the previous two years. In that article, a spokesman for Eastbourne Council was quoted as saying, " Our Neighbourhood First officers do their best to engage with anyone not abiding by the no-cycling signs and explain why it is a pedestrianised area." You will excuse my scepticism on that score.

 

No doubt the police and the council would cite a lack of resources for the lack of enforcement of the bye-law, and I appreciate that the promenade cannot be patrolled 24/7, however, some sort of presence, some sort of enforcement, along with publicising those prosecuted or fined might make a difference, because the current policy - relying on the goodwill of the public- is clearly not working.

 

I do wonder if the apparent absence of any enforcement is due to the fact that back in 2016, the local council wanted to amend the bye-law and allow cycling on the prom, but the Government – in the form of the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) – rejected the plan.

 

Exceptionalism and people’s belief that the rules don’t apply to them has never been more apparent than in the last fifteen months, during which time the whole world has been subject to restrictions of one form or another. And during that time there have been many examples of people deciding that the rules did not apply to them.

Dominic Cummings’s eyesight testing drive to Barnard Castle got justified because he was, to quote the Prime Minister, merely doing what any good father would have done, leaving thousands of men crestfallen that by not breaking the rules, they were not good fathers.

 

More egregiously (which last April I would not have thought possible), we had Matt Hancock canoodling with his aide, Gina Coladangelo, in flagrant breach of the social distancing rules that he was largely responsible for. Hancock’s hypocrisy in this matter is breath-taking: You may remember that last year he was all for the police getting involved when Prof Neil Ferguson resigned (with more alacrity than Hancock did) after breaking social distancing rules.

Thousands of people who stuck to the rules and were unable to visit their loved ones in care homes, or relatives ill and dying in hospital will have asked themselves, why did we bother?

Given the sacrifices that so many people have made because they have stuck to the rules, seeing others regularly ignoring them, those same people may be forgiven for taking a more selective approach to which rules they stick to in the future.

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.

Proper Fans

What is a ‘proper’ football fan? There’s no true definition, and the meaning that I attribute to the expression has changed over the years.

At one time I would have said that to be a proper fan, someone had to go to as many games as possible. Few reasons could legitimately excuse the devoted fan from missing a home game – births, deaths, and marriages might be acceptable reasons, but few others – and they should see as many away games as humanly possible.

The Anfield Kop, some time in the 1960s

It isn’t necessary to buy memorabilia and match programmes to be a proper fan (in fact, sometimes it’s the fan of the more fair-weather variety that indulges in mass buying of replica kits and the like), but the real supporter should emotionally invest themselves completely in their team. Not for them the shrug of the shoulders after a defeat. Losses must be accompanied by an all-encompassing depression; victories must be celebrated euphorically.

The days when such people were in the majority on the terraces at football grounds up and down the country are gone. They exist in smaller numbers – especially outside the top levels of the game – but for most, their relationship with the game has changed.

How today's football fans are seen, especially by advertisers 

Before 1992, when the Premier League came into being and Sky changed the face of football broadcasting forever, most football supporters would see their team play only rarely if they relied on watching them on TV, hence the belief I held then that a proper fan was one who went to the majority of their team’s matches.

Clive Allen (left), and Richard Keys, debuting on Sky's Premier League coverage in 1992

When BBC’s Match of The Day and ITV’s regional football shows broadcast highlights of just a few games each week, even fans of clubs like Arsenal, Manchester United, and Liverpool might see their teams briefly a couple of times a month. Live football broadcasts were confined to the FA Cup Final and an international or two; it was difficult to be an armchair supporter.

At the same time, going to games rarely involved getting a ticket in advance. By and large, it was turn up on a Saturday afternoon, pay cash at the turnstile, and watch the game.

And games universally kicked off at the same time, on the same day, each week: 3pm on Saturdays, 7.30pm in midweek. While it’s true that fans were not really nurtured by clubs, they weren’t disrespected either. With little income other than match day revenue – no big broadcasting deals pre-Sky, no shirt sponsorship before the mid-1970s – clubs really needed the fans through the gates in numbers.

Coronavirus restrictions requiring games to be played behind closed doors has demonstrated that from the perspective of the atmosphere at games, fans are much missed; but financially, do clubs need them?

Liverpool in action behind closed doors at Anfield

A BBC study showed that during the 2016-17 season, half of the clubs in the Premier League would have turned a profit without any fans at their games. In 2017-18, Manchester City's revenue grew to £500.5 million. Of that, £56.7 million was generated by matchday income, £232.3 million was commercial income, and £211.5 million came from broadcasters.

So, are supporters in stadiums becoming less important? Manchester City have recently announced that 1,100 seats are being removed at The Etihad to make way for more advertising boards, a decision that speaks volumes on that score.

The degree to which Premier League clubs value their supporters may be gauged by their reaction to fans being allowed back into stadiums as the season draws to a close. Burnley were not charging fans for their game against Liverpool, but at the other end of the spectrum, Spurs fans had to stump up £60 to watch their team play Aston Villa.

Fans in grounds have seemingly become less and less important since 1992. Match days and kick-off times changed to accommodate TV viewers rather than fans who actually go to games. There have been plenty of complaints over the years from travelling fans who either have to leave home in the middle of the night for a lunchtime kick-off, or find that getting home is nigh on impossible after a long-distance evening game. Now that the Premier League has the taste for even more eccentric scheduling to accommodate TV coverage of behind closed doors games, will we ever see a return to the more orthodox football calendar? I wouldn’t bet on it.

When a European Super League was proposed in April, Uefa must have been delighted on two fronts. Firstly, it detracted from their almost simultaneous announcement of changes to the Champions League format, changes which many were opposed to, but which got lost in the furore about the Super League. Secondly, it allowed Uefa – along with the broadcasters - to occupy the moral high ground over the rights of fans, ground they have subsequently lost with a couple of asinine moves.

With Istanbul ruled out as the venue of the Champions League final because of coronavirus for the second season running, the logical venue for a match between two English clubs – Chelsea and Manchester City – would have been a ground in England. But, no, the game has been moved to Portugal, and although coronavirus limits the attendance to 20,000 (just under 50% of the stadium’s capacity), up to 12,000 fans of the finalists will travel from England to Portugal. Surely this is unwise under the circumstances, even if Portugal is currently a ‘green list’ country.

On top of that, Uefa have reduced the capacity at many stadiums hosting games in Euro2020, thus limiting the ability of real fans - who are losing their seats in ballots -  to attend those games, while continuing to sell hideously expensive hospitality packages to their corporate customers.

In England, the broadcasters’ solidarity with fans evaporated even more quickly, with the announcement that teams that play in Champions League matches scheduled for Wednesday evenings will have their weekend Premier League matches moved to 7.45pm on Saturday nights.

The ill-fated Super League announcement introduced a new expression - legacy fans. These are traditional supporters, the locals who turn up week in, week out, through thick and thin, putting their hard-earned cash into buying tickets and merchandise, and their heart and soul into supporting their teams. These fans are not now regarded by some clubs behind the Super League concept as their core fanbase.

The fans that these clubs are more interested in don’t go to the games – they are not necessarily located in the same country as the team they support – but they support the club by consuming the product through electronic devices and that doesn’t even necessarily mean watching full-length games, but highlights, clips, and other material on their phones and tablets.

No wonder that Real Madrid president Florentino Perez has insisted that football has to "change and adapt" claiming that that 40 per cent of young people between the ages of 16 to 24 are not interested in football, and that one reason is that 90-minute matches are "too long."

Real Madrid president Florentino Perez

Although the European Super League idea is now off the table, the reprieve is only temporary. The term ‘legacy fan’ is unflattering and insulting, and the disdain shown for the fans who have been the lifeblood and backbone of football clubs for decades is appalling. But, sooner or later the traditional football supporter will find themselves confronted with even more inconvenient kick-off times, for games in even more inconvenient locations – that 39^th game idea the Premier League had a few years back will inevitably resurface one day – with tickets more expensive and harder to come by.

The idea that “Football without the fans is nothing” rings pretty hollow these days.

Smart Meter? No Thanks!

Every night, before going to bed, my mother would patrol the house checking that every electrical appliance – apart from the fridge – was switched off, and preferably unplugged from the wall socket too. This applied especially to the television. Whether this was supposed to save electricity or whether it was for safety’s sake, I don’t know.

When I was a child and we went on holiday, every domestic appliance – including the fridge, which would have been defrosted in anticipation – was unplugged. I have a sneaking suspicion that the electricity was turned off at the mains as well.

Mum making sure that everything was turned off reminded me of James Thurber, the American cartoonist and writer, who described an elderly relative as having a great suspicion of electricity, which she believed was dripping invisibly all over the house, and leaking from empty sockets if the switch had been left on.

If there’s a reason for unplugging your television – either when you go to bed, or during the day – then a thunderstorm is it. It is not unheard of for televisions to be affected by lightning strikes, and I did once experience a fried video recorder after a thunderstorm. I have been known to unplug the TV during a thunderstorm, but wandering around the house, unplugging appliances just before bedtime is not an activity I indulge in at present.

In the days when my mum was dutifully defrosting the fridge prior to our annual holiday, our electricity was supplied by the London Electricity Board (LEB), which came into being in 1948 as a result of the nationalisation of the electricity industry. All of the UK’s electricity was then supplied by one of the fifteen regional electricity boards, but under the flurry of privatisations pushed through by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, the LEB disappeared in 1990, replaced by London Electricity plc.

The nationalised, regional, electricity boards circa 1948

There are now around sixty companies from whom one can buy one’s electricity, led by the Big Six:

 

These companies offer consumers a bewildering array of different tariffs, a far cry from the days of my mother’s television unplugging and fridge defrosting, when there was one supplier, and no opportunity to shop around for the best price.

Once upon a time, the quarterly electricity bill could be a shock (pun intended), arriving as it invariably did, between pay days and for an un-budgeted for amount. Those bills were based on meter readings performed by a representative of the electricity board who would root around with a torch in the cupboard under the stairs (where the meter was usually located), once a quarter. Or if there was no one in the house when the meter reader called (which was more often than not), then the reading would be estimated and the bill might not bear any relation to the amount of power used, resulting in the consumer overpaying or underpaying on that particular bill.

Today, my electricity meter is in a box outside my front door; if a meter reader wanted to call to read it, they could do so without me even being aware. Meter readers still call on householders – unsurprisingly, UNISON (the union that represents many of the nation’s meter readers), asked for this to stop as a result of the coronavirus pandemic – but for the majority of us, smart meters, or providing our own readings, mean that visits from the meter reader, and estimated bills, are a thing of the past.

No more estimated bills is a selling point that my energy supplier has been using to try and get me to convert to a smart meter lately.  

“A smart meter means no more estimated bills,” said the lady from the electricity company. “I give my meter readings online as soon as I’m asked,” I replied, “I don’t get estimated bills.” And besides, since I pay monthly by direct debit, I don’t get bills, I get statements, which is not the same thing at all.

The lady from the electricity company then said that all old meters were being replaced for ‘health and safety reasons,’ to which I replied in alarmed tones, “What! You mean my meter is dangerous?” -  I got no response to that. Our current meter was only installed in 2015, so clearly not old enough to represent any sort of safety hazard.

My objection to having a smart meter is based on the premise that there’s nothing wrong with the current system. The idea that a smart meter will make my energy costs more manageable is quite frankly, tosh.

The notion that I can control my electricity costs by referring to the in-home display that is linked to the meter falls down for two reasons. Firstly, smart meters cannot (so far as I can see) allow me to drill down to individual appliances or wall sockets to see how much they are consuming at any given time, and even if they did, daily costs are so small that changes resulting from switching something off (or on) would be unmeasurable. I say that on the basis that in the twelve months from May 2020 to April 2021, we used 3,770 kWh of electricity, which works out at about £1.44 per day, or 6p per hour. At that rate, if I turned off everything bar the fridge, I think a difference in usage might be observable in an hour or two; frankly, what’s the point?

An advertised benefit of smart meters is that they save time as customers no longer have to submit meter readings. That will save me about 40 minutes a year, but I’ll spend much longer checking my in-home display for minuscule changes in expense, and even longer trying to work out which device I should switch off to save me a penny or two. Even the government's own estimates suggest that smart meter savings will amount to no more than £11 per year - that's just 3p per day!

The advertised costs of using certain household devices mean changes
 in use would be almost undetectable under normal conditions.

Although the government has set a target of a smart meter in every domestic property by the end of 2025 (revised from by 2020 for obvious reasons), having one installed is not yet compulsory. Eventually, I suppose I will succumb to having a smart meter because apparently, without a smart meter, I may be denied access to certain tariffs. Why this should be, I do not know, and in fact, I fail to understand exactly why there are so many different tariffs for the same, homogenous, product anyway. After all, whether I pay 15p per kWh as I do now, or £15, the electricity is the same; it’s not like petrol, more expensive power doesn’t mean better quality, doesn’t mean better performance.

With the cost of the programme to install smart meters in the UK around £11billion (which we, the consumers are paying), and given that there are about 14 million domestic electricity accounts in the UK, we are all going to have to save nearly £800 to pay off installation costs before we save any money on the power we consume. 

To save that sort of money I’ll have to become like my dear old mum, prowling around the house each night, turning everything off – oh, and unplugging the telly!