Some people have contacted me, after my appearance on the Nolan Show yesterday, and suggested that I sounded a bit lefty. I sounded like I was having a pop at toffs and the privileged. To an extent I was – in the context of sport and the Olympics. I also made the point that it was elitism in sport that I had a particular issue with.However, I don’t have an issue with elites. Rather, I have an issue with the Blair/Cameron brands of elite.
I can’t claim that this is my own idea alone. I have written elsewhere on this blog about George Walden’s excellent critique of the Blair/Cameron project – that commenced with his book New Elites. Since then he has developed this argument very well.
The argument is this. The elites of old were based on privilege: landed gentry and squires lording it over the rest of us. Their elitism was based on nothing but privilege, accident of birth and money. However, because of hard-won reforms we were able to replace the privilege-elites with elites based on merit. And the United Kingdom has been one of the more successful developed nations in creating merit-elites. However, that has changed since Blair/Cameron came into power. The gains that we won in the past are being lost. Once again the old elites are being re-established.
In my view, merit-elites are good and privilege-elites are bad. Merit elites – where excellence can emerge without any requirement for accident of birth or social position – can be fostered and encouraged by government. However, under both the Blair and Cameron administrations, merit-elites have been eroded. And the London 2012 Olympics, in my view, are the crowning achievement of the Blair and Cameron administrations as far as the re-establishment of privilege elitism is concerned. The 2012 Olympics represent the ultimate, hysterical glorification of celebrity and vanity that this country has ever seen.
To an extent this is because both the IoC and the UK government share the same ideals. Both are dizzied by celebrity and the extent of its power to confuse and manipulate the masses. Now that the games are over Team GB (because we’re told we’re all in it together) can hold its head high in the world, we’re told. The Prime Minister can point at the medals table and say just how well we’ve done as a nation, and how important sport is for the nation.
Ironically, the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games praised and glorified industry and the civil engineering genius of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. In fact sport was barely mentioned. Instead we applauded the genius of Tim Berners Lee (inventor of the world wide web) and the world’s first national health service.
And yet the industrial revolution and the world wide web are wonderful exemplars of merit elites. Brunel was born into a hard-working family but by eight had mastered geometry. By the time he died he had helped transform Britain’s transport infrastructure by building some of the finest bridges and tunnels. Berners-Lee created the concept of hypertext mark-up language and aligned this to the early internet protocols to create the world wide web. Although he probably had no idea at the time how successful his idea would be. Both Brunel and Berners-Lee are exemplars of how effort and ingenuity, applied, can produce wonderful outcomes. However neither, I would suggest, was working for glorification or celebrity. Celebrity arose out of ingenuity and talent. Such people are at the backbone of merit elites.
Ironically, Berners-Lee, at the opening ceremony, tweeted, “This is for Everyone”. The tweet, maybe, but not the Olympics.
So why is the Olympics not a merit-elite? Surely, it is argued, everyone can aspire to win gold?
Well, no. Let me explain.
Article 6 of the Olympic Charter makes clear that the Olympic Games are competitions between athletes in individual or team events and not between countries.
The charter also states “Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good example, social responsibility and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.
“The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practising sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.”
In short, the Charter makes clear that the Olympic movement’s focus is on ethics and the joy of effort. Not on winning, not on nationalist fervour, not on self-aggrandisement.
Yet the reality is this. In London the Olympic officials stayed in one of London’s finest hotels, cordoned from the public. The officials ride in chauffeur-driven limousines on specially demarcated roads. They arrive at Olympic venues paid-for, at vast expense, by the host countries – the Olympic organisation pays for nothing. Indeed it also pockets vast chunks of commercial sponsorship.
Research undertaken by Bent Flyvbjerg and Allison Stewart, from Oxford, show that just about every recent Olympic Games has had vast cost overruns. The London games cost approximately £9.5Billion – and cost overruns have been eye-watering. The researchers show that the cost consequences can be catastrophic – with the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004 cited as a significant reason for the crisis in the Greek economy in 2008 – ultimately resulting in its bail-out by the EU. Other host cities such as Montreal and Barcelona have been crippled by debt for years.
Meanwhile, rather than being competitions between individuals, the Games’ main protagonists are the countries that jockey for position on the medals table. Athletes are measured, controlled, honed and filtered by training teams drawn from international talent pools – with the best coaches moving to where the most money is to be had. In the case of the UK that means a lot. 20% of lottery funding for “good causes” now finds its way to specialist sports facilities focused on nurturing “elite talent”. The US invests heavily in swimming and other big medal-haul events whereas Britain focuses on sitting-down sports like rowing, riding and cycling. Cycling equipment is tested in wind tunnels and component technologies are sourced from across the globe to ensure that British cyclists can gain micro-second advantages that might just result in another gold medal for the medal league table.
And winning sports-people can make rich gains. Press reports have suggested that Usain Bolt might earn as much as $20m this year from celebrity endorsements. Sir Chris Hoy has negotiated licensing deals with a host of sponsors including Kellogg, Adidas, BT and B&Q. Media reports have suggested he’s a multi-millionaire. Similarly many other successful members of Team GB such as Rebecca Adlington and Jessica Ennis have negotiated lucrative commercial deals on the back of their success. There is nothing wrong with that, of course, and sporting success can be short-lived. But it clearly shows that the Olympic movement, and the most public manifestations of it, have little to do with philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind.
In fact the focus is on nationalism and sponsored celebrity. The process for selection of athletes is based on rigorous training, selection and recycling of talent that is ruthlessly dispassionate – all aimed at winning medals.
So why is this not a good thing? Surely, some might argue, this is a merit-elite?
But it isn’t…because the elite creates no real benefit to society (apart from entertainment) but at huge cost to society. Moreover, the social cost – lottery funding – is analogous to a tax on the poor to the benefit of a tiny number of elite sportspeople. And members of this sporting elite derive huge benefit through their celebrity status in terms of social influence and money – based on their abilities to perform very mundane tasks (running, rowing, throwing) very well.
Olympic focused sporting activities are different from other overtly commercial sport such as golf or football – which are self-financed. But in the case of many Olympic sports the elites and the celebrities are created by money that could be used for other social benefit – such as community sports facilities or indeed other social facilities that are less to do with sport and more to do with creating a way of life based on the joy of effort. That, after all, is a founding Olympic principle that has little to do with the modern Olympics.
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