Women’s suffrage in the 21st Century?

An excellent post over at the Touchline Bawler about the laudable announcement by the All England Club that they will continue to reward the men's champion with higher prize money than his female counterpart (£655k and £625k respectively).  Whilst this £30k difference is virtually insignificant statistically speaking, the importance is in the message behind the difference.

TB makes a series of effective arguments, and another salient point to note is the vastly greater depth of talent in the men's game in comparison to the women's.  You only need to look at the 45-minute 6-0 6-0 walkovers for the top players in the early rounds of the women's competition to see that this is the case, and the consequence is that it is exceptionally rare in the women's game for a big-name player to exit the tournament (or even have to put in much effort) in the early stages.

Contrast with the men's game, where it is not uncommon for unseeded players (i.e. outside the top 32 players) to reach the later stages and even occasionally the final, and in virtually every Grand Slam in recent memory there have been high-profile upsets and 5-set thrillers in the early rounds of the men's singles.  I'd struggle to think of more than a handful of recent first-, second- and third-round matches in the women's singles at Wimbledon that have provided the remotest interest.

Purely because tennis is probably the single high-profile sport on the world stage where women have almost an equal billing with their male counterparts, I would be willing to acquiesce to equal pay so long as the women played over 5-sets in the Grand Slam tournaments – perhaps even just in the later stages – despite the fact that men would still be providing more in the way of entertainment across the whole tournament.

However for female players simply to demand equal pay based on some vague notion of gender equality without putting forward any cogent argument is effectively a call for positive discrimination, and let's face it they're not exactly living on the bread line.  As for the laughable implication that equal pay at Wimbledon will somehow be the catalyst that effects some sort of gender-blind utopian society…

I don’t like cricket, I blog it

Despite being a reader of blogs for a good couple of years (although I do tend to take extended breaks now and again), I have never managed to find a decent blog covering multiple sports, at least from a British perspective.  I'm unsure why there aren't more such blogs – perhaps sport is more conducive to discussion with friends and colleagues in the Real World than, say, ID Cards and Iraq, on which there is certainly no lack of blog coverage?

I was therefore delighted to discover via Tim Worstall's essential weekly Britblog Roundup, what appears to be a well-written, interesting and insightful blog on sport, The Touchline Bawler.

Certainly deserving of a much saught-after (!) place on my blogroll, as is its less sporty sister Militant Moderate.  Thankfully this is concerned with politics and current affairs rather than the interests of my own less sporty sister, primarily make-up and the current affairs of Z-list "celebrities".

Safety Elephant

It's hard to disagree with Tims Worstall and Ireland (here, here and here) that Charles Clarke is a cunt.  So I won't.

It’s not ‘cos we’re crap…

This story from the Spanish sport website Marca reports that Birmingham City's woes this season have nothing at all to do with the players not being up to Premiership standard – former manager Barry Fry claims it's all down to a curse placed on their St Andrews ground by Gypsies who were forced off the land when the stadium was constructed.

Quite how a curse placed on a Stadium that opened in 1906 is affecting the team in 2006, is unclear – perhaps it's one of those 100 year things?  Nor does it explain why their away form (2 wins and only 8 goals scored from 16 matches) has been so woeful – their form at their 'cursed' home has actually been better than bitter local rivals Aston Villa (19 points against 18).

So, a big load of new-age crap then – but hopefully the management will take it seriously, if only so that current manager Steve Bruce follows Fry's advice of ridding the curse by "urinating in each of the four corners".

Update: It appears this story was originally from the Daily Mirror, and was also reported in last Wednesday's Mediawatch on Football 365.  Lesson learned – the Spanish press is not the optimum source for up-to-the-minute news on English football.  Who'd have thunk it?

Inactivity

The first obstacle I come across as a new 'blogger' (although I wouldn't classify myself as one just yet), is actually to identify a subject on which I can produce an at least vaguely interesting post.

Usually if I don't have anything interesting to say on a subject then I would just shut the fuck up about it, but having my own blog puts the pressure on to come up with something new fairly regularly.

So what is the answer?  Do I contrive an opinion on some story currently in the news, link to an interesting post by another blogger or comment on one of the inanities of my daily life?

Well, none of the above as it turns out – I simply post about having nothing to post about.  Is this post-modern?  (Pun, sadly, intended.  Apologies).

Hello nobody!

Welcome to my new, sure to be short-lived, effort at this blogging malarkey.  Posts here are likely to cover whatever topic I happen to be thinking about at the time, but probabilities include: Politics and Current Affairs, Sport, Language, The Arts and amusing (to me at least) stories and observations.  If you look to your right you'll see I've even got the categories set up already, that's efficiency for you.

In the unlikely event that anybody other than me ever actually reads this, do check back now and again to read my latest interesting (or otherwise) comments.  Unless my most recent post is more than a couple of weeks old, in which case I'll have gotten bored of this and given up.