Men can’t comprehend the complex rules of television broadcasting, say women

Women everywhere were overheard this morning claming that men clearly don’t have the capacity to understand the complex broadcasting guidelines for UK programmes, and that they have no place using words on television.

Most amusing. Read the rest here.

Strikers We Can All Support

Whoever you are supporting in the World Cup, here are some strikers we can all support: football security stewards being ripped off by employers paying them wages much lower than promised.

From Soccernet website ...

Police break up Durban protests:June 14, 2010

The long-standing dispute between workers at South Africa's World Cup stadiums and the authorities again spilled over as riot police fired tear gas into crowds of stewards in the hours after Sunday's match between Australia and Germany.

Witnesses said several hundred stewards assembled underneath the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban in an impromptu protest over wages. When the police moved in to break them up - reportedly firing two percussive grenades in the process - they moved outside the stadium where an AP reporter witnessed tear gas being fired.

"They're giving us 205 rand ($26)," one worker told the New York Times. "We started at 12 noon and worked until midnight, and they want to give us 205 rand. Different things have been said to people, but we were promised 1,500 rand per day. We started to protest because we wanted to negotiate."

Others said they had been abandoned after the match and would have to walk about four hours to get home. They said no transport was provided for them.

Later, about 100 police later surrounded a group of about 300 protesters on a street near the stadium and separated the men from the women. The protesters later left peacefully after discussions with police. There were no injuries or arrests reported.

A FIFA spokesman declined to comment, but he head of the World Cup organising committee said there had been "an internal pay dispute between the principal security company employed by the organising committee and some of the static security stewards employed by the company at the match.

"This happened, however, long after all spectators had left the stadium after the match and the incident had no impact whatsoever on the matchday security operations."

Local Organising Committee (LOC) chief communications officer, Rich Mkhondo, says the organisation is fully aware of the matter, but insists it is not something directly linked to it.

"It's an employer-employee dispute over wages, that's all it is,'' Mkhondo said. "Our constitution in this country allows people to express their views when it comes to strike action.

"However, we do have a relationship with that company and we will continue negotiating with that company to make sure this kind of situation does not arise again. We will be investigating that (whether they were paid what they were promised) and everything else around the issue.''

No Gold Medal for Workers' Safety

Oddly, this appalling story of a worker's gruesome death on the mega-shopping centre site adjacent to the Olympic site in East London has barely registered in the media - only, apparently, on a trade website.

Are we only allowed to read good news about the 2012 Games?

Worker injured on Westfield Stratford City site dies

Employer 'deeply saddened' by death of Shaun Scurry one week after sustaining injuries on a scissor lift

The worker injured on the Westfield Stratford City construction site has died after a week in hospital.

Shaun Scurry sustained serious injuries on 9 December after using a scissor lift on the development near the 2012 Olympics site in east London.

A statement issued on behalf of Scurry’s employer, Firesafe Installations Ltd, said they were “deeply saddened” by his death and that their “thoughts and prayers are with his family”.

Ongoing investigations into the cause of death are being made by Firesafe Installations and the Health and Safety Executive.

Women in Sport: two notable events today

We don't do sport very often here on Stroppyblog, but since I mentioned blokes' footy last weekend, I could not let today go past without mentioning a couple of notable events involving women in sport. We are a socialist feminist blog after all.

First up, Michaela Tabb is today (and yesterday) the first woman to referee snooker's World Championship final. And yes, the Daily Mail is on hand to tell us how much she spends on tops and accessories.

And Arsenal have just beaten Sunderland 2-1 to win the FA Women's Cup. One of BBC Radio Five Live's pundits was speculating as to why the Wearside team had changed its name to Sunderland Women from Sunderland Ladies, and was reliably informed that it was the result of a merger with another club. I wonder when any radio rent-a-quote will speculate as to why the other Sunderland team are not called Sunderland Gentlemen?!

Anyway, both these events seemed to merit a mention more than the thirtieth anniversary of the election of Britain's first woman Prime Minister, which is also today. Sod that.

Up The Posh!

As a lifelong follower of Peterborough United, please indulge me while I record my delight that the lads have achieved promotion for the second successive season!

OK, so I don't go to the match as often as I used to (most home games as a teenager, many away games since departing Peterborough a quarter-century ago), but I'm still over the moon. Follow a team like the 'Borough and success doesn't come as often as it does for the likes of Chelsea or Manchester United, but that just makes it taste more sweet when it does come.

Mind you, the big-money-domination that has steadily aleinated me from footie in general has now got its claws into the Posh, and it is horrible to admit that we might still be languishing in the nether reaches of league football were it not for the dosh of owner Darragh MacAnthony, chairman of MRI Overseas Property. Let's put today's success down to manager Darren Ferguson and his talented team instead.

Tiocfaidh Ar La

Courtesy of the London Underground Celtic Supporters' Club, I recently had a good read of Tiocfaidh Ar La Fanzine - "for Celtic and Ireland".

The first thing I'd say is that the people running it have done something quite impressive and which should be of interest to those of us concerned about building a genuine base for left-wing politics in working-class communities. They produce a popular publication with a big audience by combining their political agenda with an important part of people's social and cultural life: football.

But the second thing I want to say is to knock that political agenda. The lead article in the latest issue - which I unfortunately can not find on their website - is an interview with an ANC member. The choice of interviewee itself says a lot - not a South African trade unionist, or community activist, but a government supporter.

There is very little discussion of common politics between TAL/Irish Republicanism and the ANC: perhaps that is taken for granted. But there is plenty of discussion - in fact, it dominates the interview - of the details of the bomb that the ANC member planted, the number of casualties, and his subsequent arrest and imprisonment. It comes across as though the fanzine's empathy with the ANC is about their common method of struggle rather than any common politics.

TAL does ask the ANC man about current problems in South Africa, but accepts his reply uncritically. He denounces the recent anti-immigrant riots - rightly perhaps, but with no acknowledgement that the policies of the ANC government might be responsible for some working-class people turning to reactionary xenophobic violence. The ANC has, after all, pursued policies of privatisation, cuts and union-bashing that keep many black people in poverty.

This is particularly interesting because TAL is proud of its anti-racist and anti-fascist stance, and many of its supporters would readily accept that New Labour's abandonment of the working class has fertilised the ground for anti-immigrant prejudice in Britain. If the answer in Britain is to assert working-class politics and to challenge the government, then that should be the answer in South Africa too.

It seems to me that the ANC should be a warning, rather than an example, to Irish republicans - or at least to socialists who support Irish republicanism. The anti-working-class ANC government shows where you end up if you cheerlead a national liberation struggle but allow it to be devoid of working-class, socialist politics, and do not insist on working-class political independence.

The Torch's Progress

As I watch the news, the Olympic torch is proceeding through London, surrounded by coppers keeping demonstrators at a distance, and the police have so far arrested 25 people.

I’m a massive sports fan (more in the spectator than participant sense, admittedly), but the argument that politics should be kept out of sport is just banal. Do I really have to point out that the Chinese regime’s crimes - including executions, sweatshop exploitation and denial of self-determination – are actually more important than who wins the 110m hurdles? I also tend to think that the belief that you can achieve real political change by boycotting sporting events is also banal. But using a sporting event as a backdrop to get attention and support for your cause? Yeah, go for it.

I would happily hold a placard reading ‘Free Tibet’, or ‘Solidarity Against Sweatshops’ as the torch goes past – though I’ll not be waving anything lauding the Dalai Lama – and were I younger, more energetic and actually available to do these things, I’d probably do something more dramatic than wave a placard too.

But what of our ‘Labour’ government? There will be words in support of the right to protest, but the overall approach of the workers’ movement’s political representatives has been to discourage protest and protect the image of one of the most repressive regimes in the world. Gordon Brown manages only to ask the Chinese government to ‘talk to the Dalai Lama’ – whoa, that’d be a meeting where democratic working-class interests got no look-in at all. You don’t suspect fear of protests in 2012, do you? Still, at least they haven’t killed anyone.

Latest: The torch has now hitched a rise on a bus. Any runners in the Marathon fancy trying that?

China - Olympic 'beauty bootcamp'

Can you stand for two hours in stilettos, balance a book on your head whilst gripping chopsticks in your mouth ? If so you could be a hostess in the Chinese Olympics.


China has begun training the first of 1,250 teenage girls as hostesses for next year's Olympics, at what is billed as a charm school — but is more like a boot camp for beauties.

For girls hoping to be selected to take part in the award ceremonies, that means enduring a gruelling schedule of etiquette and movement classes as they are groomed, just outside Beijing, to appear alongside medal-winning athletes.
....

More than 560,000 people have applied to be volunteers at the Games — the largest number in Olympic history.
....

Making the grade requires a discipline unusual in teenagers. Like the other girls at the Beijing Changping Vocational School, 17-year-old Wang Hong gets up at 5am every day.

She spends hours standing in stilettos, while balancing a book on her head and with a pair of chopsticks clamped between her teeth to improve her smile.
"Once I had to stand and smile for two hours," Miss Wang told a Chinese newspaper. "I have to wear three bandages on my feet after walking in the high heels."
....
For Miss Wang, all the effort and pain will be worthwhile if she can help hand out medals to China's most famous athletes, such as Liu Xiang, the reigning Olympic and World 110 metre hurdles champion, or escort visiting VIPs.

Some of the girls, though, have already been ruled out for not meeting the Beijing Olympic Committee's stringent criteria. These include fair and unblemished skin and, according to some Chinese reports, not having a big bottom.



Somehow I don't think I would stand a chance, I mean the ability to get home when pissed wearing DMs probably isn't ladylike enough is it, let alone the fact that my arse wouldn't meet their 'stringent criteria' :-)
Oh and I wonder if something similar will happen in Stratford, East London , for the 2012 Olympics ? Knowing the area quite well I'm not sure these are 'attributes' that abound in the area.

What do you think Mja ;-) ?

pic :two Newham women having tea:-)

Friday rant....

I am a regular swimmer as it relaxes me as just the mindless laps up and down the pool sends me into a trance. Unfortunately the chlorine play havoc with my hair and skin, and the lanes are usually called "slow", "medium" and "fast" though should be known as "a tortoise could overtake you", "mediocre" and "show-off".. And another downer, lots of Speedo...

But I like it and have always liked swimming since childhood. And it is the best form of exercise as you use all your muscles, apparently.

So...for my morning endorphin fix (Wow, that first rush is better than sex!) I wandered off but when I got there the pool was closed. It was explained to me that the swimming pool won't be opened again until June 2008 as it is being refurbished. And the nearest swimming pool for me is over 2 miles. Bloody marvellous...

Fine, it is being refurbished but where are people meant to go as it is a popular pool? So many swimming pools are closing around London and in other parts of the UK. The government bang on about obesity rates and health issues but they would rather plunder cash into that elitist monstrosity known as the 2012 Olympics.

Many swimming pools are indeed old and in need of refurbishment (the pool I go to was built around 1960s) but many councils seem to close them as opposed to replace them. And some of these swimming pools have beautiful 1930s architecture (for example, the now defunct Marshall Street Baths).

The government has claimed that it is unsustainable to run many of these swimming pools due to subsidies and there are many private swimming pools. Well yeah, there are but they cost a lot especially gym membership. This has an dramatic impact on poorer sections of society who can ill afford these rates. Cheap and affordable council run sport centres are needed.

So the government will carry on pouring money into the Olympics yet council run sports centres are usually the first to get its budget slashed and also selling off the swimming pool sites is rather similar to selling off green spaces as it makes a massive profit. That's what it's all about!