Cheers!

I fell out of love with the Olympic Games when Ben Johnson cheated his way to a Gold Medal in the 1988 Summer Olympics. Having read The Rodchenkov Affair recently, it's clear that, if you can't be certain the athletes competing have not been taking performance enhancing drugs, what's the point in watching? So I don't.

For the next Summer Olympics in 2024 in Paris, cheerleading may make its debut, having been granted full status as an Olympic "sport", along with lacrosse, kickboxing, muay thai and sambo. Ski mountaineering has been added to the 2026 Winter Olympic list. This year (actually last year because the current event is the postponed 2020 one) the new sports are baseball/softball (previously dropped from 2008), surfing, karate, skateboarding and sport climbing - wrestling was removed.

In case you don't know what muay thai is, it is sometimes called Thai boxing, a martial art characterized by the combined use of fists, elbows, knees and shins. I was once required, at school, to enter the boxing ring and attempt to pummel some equally inept pupil to death - or at least that was what it seemed like. We declined the invitation to hit each other which, as you can imagine, didn't go down well. I didn't care since I hated the school. So quite why an event dedicated to "friendship and respect ... with a view to building a better world" should promote violent activities is beyond me.

The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity. [article 2 of the Fundamental Principles of Olympism in the Olympic Charter]

Sambo is another martial art, a form of wrestling which Wikipedia describes as a "Soviet martial art", so not only violent but also representing a decadent, obsolete nation. Like gladiator fighting - now there's a suggestion for the next Olympics.

Why do I report this if I don't care about the Olympics? I guess because I question the purpose/point of the Olympic Games. If I were the head of the IOC, I'd sub divide the Games. After all, the Winter Olympics (which take place during the Southern Hemisphere summer) are separate. You could have all the violent sports in one Games - the Savage Games (to include archery and the women's 10m air rifle) - and all the sports with endemic drug cheating, e.g. cycling, weightlifting, sprinting, into the Counterfeit Games. You would be left with all the harmless sports which promote genuine world values and encourage the youth of today to undertake healthy, pure, honest endeavour, such as sailing, crown green bowls and pasta making. The Universal Games. I might even watch.

The cheerleaders could be employed on the sidelines of all the events. That's what they do. The New Olympism.

Breakfast Music

I was quietly eating my breakfast in Asda and was disturbed by frenetic music being pumped through the store's speakers. It's Asda Radio, which plays continuously. Generally, whilst wandering the shopping aisles and filling my trolley, I don't notice the music. Sitting still, even though reading my newspaper, the music is intrusive.

Why do supermarkets play music? I read one article claiming that stores played "calming music" during the first lockdown; remember the loo roll wars? I'd bet that (a) they didn't analyse the outcomes and (b) it made no difference. Apparently one branch of Morrisons played Roy Orbison’s ‘Anything You Want' at the time; particularly clumsy.

A retail consultancy LS Retail gave "7 reasons why you should play music in your store":

1. Create and differentiate your brand

Are you a carefree, laid back brand? Do you run family-friendly stores with a warm atmosphere? Are you edgy, vibrant and energetic? The tempo, loudness, style of the music you play can help communicate your brand’s personality to customers.

2. Build the right atmosphere

Analyze your store's ambiance, what kind of atmosphere do you want to establish? You could for example create a playful space with high-key pop music, or use slow rhythms to build a relaxed, pensive environment. [ideal for breakfast, I'd say]

3. Create a private space

By masking the sounds of voices and movements, background music helps create a personal space for customers, giving them privacy as they walk around the store, browse the products and make comments to friends or family. [and have breakfast]

4. Set the shoppers’ pace

Studies show that the speed, rhythm and volume of in-store music affects the pace of customer flow through the store. When calm music is playing at a low volume, people tend to wander around the aisles slowly; on the other hand, when energetic, loud songs are playing, people tend to accelerate their pace through the store. Interestingly, the pace of customer flow doesn’t appear to affect sales. [so why are you doing it, exactly?]

5. Shorten waiting times

Music can affect people’s perception of time. A long queue will feel shorter if there is good [?] music playing in the background.

6. Encourage people to shop

Research shows that music can influence what shoppers choose and how much they buy. A 2005 study revealed that people tend to spend more on impulse buys when pleasant music is playing. [I can understand that; punk rock might make the customers run away quickly]

7. Increase productivity

In-store music is not only for the customers, employees and managers benefit from it too. An effective music strategy can be a great tool to boost staff morale, concentration and productivity. In a 2013 research by DJS, 77% of businesses agreed that their staff is more productive when music is playing.

I'll leave you to reflect on this and whether that's a load of old ............

Also this morning and on the same subject, I received the following email from Ipswich Town Football Club:

We've created a page where supporters can vote on the walkout music, the pre kick-off track and the song played when Town score

The options are as follows:

Walkout music

Faithless - Insomnia
Arcade Fire - Wake Up
Lux Aeterna
Kanye West - All Of The Lights
Blur - Song 2

Pre kick-off music

Singing The Blues
Neil Diamond - Sweet Caroline
The Beatles - Hey Jude

Goal music

The Fratellis - Chelsea Dagger
The White Stripes - Seven Nation Army
Kungs Vs. Cookin' On 3 Burners - This Girl

Under each section there is also an "OTHER" option, so you can let us know a track suggestion if it is not on our list.

This is definitely in my playground; I've blogged about it before. Let's consider the rationales.

Walkout music - this is for the players, to set the tone of their play right from the start: slow, methodical, patient possession-based buildup or gung-ho attack? I'm pretty sure the fans want the latter, the coach probably the former. I created a Spotify playlist with all the suggested options and here are my opinions:

Faithless - Insomnia: this is from a genre I call "dull rap", not wild or shouty, no effect on the players.
Arcade Fire - Wake Up: much more like it, strong rhythm, however the vocals too passive IMO.
Lux Aeterna: this seems like a misprint.
Kanye West - All Of The Lights: driving rhythm, mixture of modern pop and rap, it's quite possible this would drive my team on, if there's nothing better.
Blur - Song 2: oh yes, this is the one!. Lots of screaming drive. We'll be two goals up after ten minutes. Wait, won't the opposition be stimulated by this too? Mm...

Pre kick-off music: this is just to keep the fans happy while they're waiting for the match to start.

Singing The Blues: this is the classic Guy Mitchell/Tommy Steele 60s song but I'm assuming this is the version sung by the Ipswich Town squad of the Terry Butcher "Golden Era" (FA Cup winners 1978). Forget the rest, this has to get the vote.
Neil Diamond - Sweet Caroline: ugh.
The Beatles - Hey Jude: not the Fab Four's best

[On reflection after re-reading the email, this might be the track played as the teams are lining up, awaiting the ref's whistle but I'm still going for option 1]

Goal music

Not relevant, rarely necessary. I'll put Barry Manilow's "Miracle" in the OTHER box:

It's a miracle
A true blue spectacle
The miracle come true
We're together, baby
I was going crazy
Till the miracle came through

Terms of Venery Quiz #1 Answers

I suspect there will be a number of correct answers, probably with justifications. I'm giving those that appear in the book, with some acceptable alternates.

1. A Shock of Corn. 'Sheaf' not acceptable; that applies to Wheat.

2. A Murder of Crows.

3. A True Love of Turtle Doves. 'Pitying' an acceptable alternate.

4. A Murmuration of Starlings.

5. An Ostentation  of Peacocks. 'Muster' acceptable.

6. A Trip of Goats.

7. A Sloth of Bears.

8. A Mutation of Thrushes.

9. A Swarm of Eels.

10. A Deceit of Lapwings.

Levers of Power

I don't know Latin. At school, I (or was it my parents? I don't remember) chose Spanish and German as my two foreign languages to study, abandoning Latin (nobody speaks that) and French (only weird people speak that). It was a good choice in some respects: Spanish is easy, particularly to pronounce, German the way of the future. In the sixth form I added Russian, on the advice of a science teacher following my choice of Maths, Physics and Chemistry at A Level. "If you want to be a future scientist, you need to be able to speak Russian". I didn't really want to be a scientist, I just wanted to leave school as soon as possible; maybe even formal education, although later life choices would seem to contradict that. In any case, that (fellow travelling?) teacher obviously didn't accurately predict the declining cultural and scientific influence of the Soviet Union and subsequently Russia. At the time, however, it felt like the Russians and the Germans would come to rule the world and I preferred to be on their side.

Really the only bit of Latin I know is primus inter pares - first among equals, particularly as applied to the British Prime Minister in our parliamentary democracy.

However, news of a prospective constitutional change which might make the PM primus inter dispares connectantur - which is the best I could come up with to indicate first among unequals. If I knew Latin I'd maybe have understood its equivalent of the 'un' prefix; but bear with me.

The report from the Commission for Smart Government, launched on Monday, has a major recommendation for the creation of a "prime minister's department", in order to give more power to the governmental centre to direct departments of state over policy implementation and monitoring.

It sounds dangerously like a move to a more presidential system of government to me. As an antidote to the apparent inability of prime ministers to work through the departmental system and "get things done", it seems to me to miss many points. One of which is that the model, the White House, famously has a constitutionally inbuilt inability to get things done, as a result of the separation of powers and a President's reliance on (a possibly opposing) Congress to pass legislation.

A British prime minister actually has hugely more power than a US President has over domestic policy, to get legislation passed, as a result of having - by definition of our electoral system - an inbuilt majority in the House of Commons and a constitutionally-impaired House of Lords. The report suggests that the problem, once policy is passed into law, is that the governmental system is ill equipped to put that law into effect. Partially because departmental ministers are often incompetent and sometimes recalcitrant. Well, duh, appoint better ones!

I've been mulling this over for five days, trying to decide whether my opinions are worth sharing. Then I read a comment piece in yesterday's Times on the subject by Anthony Seldon and, since many of his views chimed with mine, I decided to publish.

On the "centralisation of power" issue, Seldon tells us "the proposal for a prime minister's department, an old chestnut, ignores history. The best two PMs since 1945, Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher, had very small No 10s but used cabinet and the Whitehall system to stunning effect." He follows with "the last five prime ministers didn't fall short because they lacked firepower ... they came to No 10 not knowing what they wanted to do."

Let's look at the problems for good government to which an administration can give birth: a weak cabinet of ministers appointed as rewards for past endeavours and support, a PM who surrounds himself with only those who are unlikely to contradict him [herself/her], a disdain for parliament by announcing policy in media appearances and ministers sending underlings to answer Urgent Questions in the House of Commons and a willingness to flout the law and challenge the courts. You think I'm referring to our present government? It could apply to every government of the last 24 years.

The report proposes a "solution" of recruiting "expert" ministers - business leaders who can "get things done" - but does not tell us how these unelected people would be accountable to Parliament. James Forsyth in the Times last Friday says "a lack of outside expertise is one of the biggest problems that the British government faces." That's almost certainly an exaggeration but, if it is a problem, there is no reason not to bring in experts from time to time to undertake specific tasks - such as Kate Bingham's excellent management of the vaccine taskforce. But such appointments - and their performance - should be scrutinised by the responsible minister accounting to the House of Commons. Seldon's take on this is "bringing in ministers from outside politics would erode democratic accountability and overlooks the hugely capable potential ministers regularly sitting idle on the back benches." I'm not sure who or where these people are but I guess there are always those who have blotted their copybooks in one way or another, probably by disagreeing with the PM at the time; I think it's true of opposition front benches too.

Despite my scepticism, there clearly are problems of government effectiveness in the UK. Which may be true of all parliamentary democracies, for all I know. The report starts from the premise that the problem is systemic, whereas what I perceive (as an informed citizen) is a lack of quality in our political human resources. In a business context, a company would soon look for better staff to replace those failing to "get things done". If prime ministers and their ministers are not good enough, the question is how to get better ones? It's worth reading Why we get the Wrong Politicians by Isabel Hardman, a very good and interesting book. Its central theme is the cultural and economic barriers to entering politics. She discusses the selection of electoral candidates by parties and the likelihood that those chosen will be "conformers" - "one of us". We subsequently see examples of deselection of those whose views do not chime with their party's.

It seems to me that the report provides solutions to the wrong problem; it seems to accept that there is nothing to be done about the standard of our elected politicians and to propose ways to get around that - in effect, to take power and influence away from them with the sole exception of the prime minister of the day, who will be shielded from making errors by the "Number 10 machine". To accept a fundamental failure of our democratic system - to bring in good people - and, rather than seeking ways to reform that system, to denude it. It's a depressing analysis. The headline on Forsyth's article is "It's time to give No 10 real levers of power". Which sounds dangerously Stalinist. No thanks, it's not for me. I prefer the humility and collegiality of primus inter pares.

I'll give Seldon the final say:

Prime ministers ... underachieve because they cocoon themselves with like-minded figures. They should celebrate diversity of perspective, background and expertise ... let's fix what is broken or redundant and make work what is proven.

Why is a Raven like a Writing-desk?

Riddles: impossible to dislike. In Alice in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter poses the riddle to Alice: Why is a raven like a writing-desk?

Lewis Carroll doesn't provide an answer in the book and it was never his intention that there should be an answer. However, he later wrote that the answer is, "Because it can produce a few notes, tho they are very flat; and it is never put with the wrong end in front!" Carroll also wrote never as "nevar," which is raven spelled backwards but the clever pun was erased by a proofreader. Frankly it's a pretty weak answer anyway. In my opinion, he should have let it remain unanswered, like the writers responding to "what happened to Tony Soprano at the end?" with "It’s for people to decide for themselves."

Want some more riddles?

I speak without a mouth and hear without ears. I have no body, but I come alive with wind. What am I?

You see a boat filled with people. It has not sunk, but when you look again you don’t see a single person on the boat. Why?

An 18th century classic:

As I was going to St. Ives,
I met a man with seven wives,
Each wife had seven sacks,
Each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits:

Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,
How many were there going to St. Ives? 

In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, Oedipus must answer to the Sphinx to save his own life and continue his journey to Thebes. The Sphinx asks: "What walks on four feet in the morning, two in the afternoon and three at night?" If Oedipus answers incorrectly, she eats him. Fortunately he gets it: “Man: as an infant, he crawls on all fours; as an adult, he walks on two legs and; in old age, he uses a 'walking' stick.” Honestly, that's an unsatisfactory literary trick.

I'm re-reading Alice, as a contrast to some heavy stuff I've been ploughing through recently, such as Mao's Great Famine. A bit like relaxing to a Beatles song after listening to Mahler's 2nd Symphony.

Wait, you want answers? OK:

An Echo.

All the people were married.

One.

Terms of Venery Quiz #1

Following my post about An Exaltation of Larks, here is the first quiz. All these terms of venery originated centuries ago, so no modern examples from the 'game of venery'. We start with some animals. Let me know how many you know or can guess correctly. Answers in a week.

1. A ..... of Corn [the number of dots does not necessarily equate to the number of letters in the word]

2. A ..... of Crows

3. A ..... of Turtle Doves

4. A ..... of Starlings

5. A ..... of Peacocks

6. A ..... of Goats

7. A ..... of Bears

8. A ..... of Thrushes

9. A ..... of Eels

10. A ..... of Lapwings

Good luck.