THIS SPORTING LIFE

THIS SPORTING LIFE

Sport according to most dictionaries is usually defined as "to amuse, recreate, to take one's pleasure", but we live in capitalism and it should probably be more accurately defined as a "business opportunity". When Andy Murray, the tennis player won a tournament in New York the press and TV speculated on how much it was worth. "Scott Barclay, a lecturer in sport business and management at the University of the West of Scotland, predicted that Murray will enter the Forbes rich list next year and that the win moved him "away from the celebrity clutter". ... "Without a doubt, next year he'll appear in the Forbes rich list, among the likes of [Roger] Federer, [Maria] Sharapova, [Cristiano] Ronaldo, [Lionel] Messi, [Rafael] Nadal." (DailyTelegraph, 12 September) Murray, 25, who already has lucrative contracts with Adidas, Royal Bank of Scotland and Jaguar, may also sign deals with other companies. His five-year contract with Adidas, signed three years ago, was worth as much as $5 million (£3.2 million), pushing his earnings last year both on and off the court to $12 million (£7.4 million), according to Forbes. Capitalism distorts everything and it should come as no surprise that a university has a subject entitled "Sport business and management". RD

Bloody mobiles!

With the much hyped release of Apple's i-Phone 5 perhaps it is timely to remember that "It’s possible that two children died so that you could have that mobile phone,” according to Jean-Bertin, a 34-year-old Congolese activist.

 The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has at least 64 percent of worldwide reserves of coltan, the colloquial African name for a dull black ore composed of two minerals, columbite and tantalite. Tantalum, the metal extracted from this ore, is a rare, hard, blue-gray, lustrous transition metal that is highly corrosion resistant. It is used in the production of capacitors for electronic equipment such as mobile phones, computers and tablets. The extraction of coltan contributes to maintaining one of the bloodiest armed conflicts in Africa, which has led to more than five million deaths, massive displacements of the population, and the rape of 300,000 women in the last 15 years, according to human rights organisations.

 “There are many economic interests around the coltan business,” stressed Jean-Bertin. In the meantime, in the DRC, “the killings are real. The blood is everywhere.”

DOUBLE STANDARDS

One of the constant themes pursued by the owning class is that workers should be proud of "their" country and if necessary from time to time take part in wars to protect it. However a recent example of this patriotism not necessarily extending to the owning class was recently revealed. Frances richest man Bernard Arnault (reputed to be worth £32 billion) has applied for Belgian citizenship. "He says the switch is for personal reasons. But few doubt that the "personal reasons" amount to a desire to insulate his wealth from the punitive taxes being threatened by Francois Hollande, France's new Socialist president. These taxes include a promised 75 per cent super-levy on annual incomes over ! million euros." (Times, 11 September) When it comes to protecting their immense wealth the owning class have little time for patriotism. RD

Fact of the day

In Scotland some 15 per cent of adults and 220,000 children living in poverty today.

 A 17-year-old school-leaver is entitled only to a basic minimum wage of £3.68 per hour. Even working full-time they would only earn £128.80 a week.

Food for thought

Canada lost 300 000 jobs in July. There will be more to come caused by the impending arrival of the American chain, Target, taking over Zellers leases for almost $2 billion. Both are almost identical stores in merchandise and prices. Although Target posted earnings of $704 million for the last quarter, they did not take all the Zellers, especially those that are unionized and they will have to close down. Crazy system! That's $2 billion of social wealth squandered!

In the midst of the recession, the banks have some good news(?). Canada's top five banks posted profits of over $8 billion for the last quarter, a record for two of them. Nice work if you can get it.

Americans and guns seem inseparable. A police officer from Kalamazoo, Michigan, on holiday in Calgary, wrote to the Calgary Herald that he felt threatened when two locals approached him and his wife and offered suggestions for sight seeing, including tickets to the Calgary Stampede. He was complaining that tourists should be able to pack weapons to defend themselves. Then in Colorado, the scene of two mass shootings in recent years, the University in Boulder thinks it has the answer to guns. Those packing weapons will be confined to just one dormitory on campus. Come on! It's a handy thing to have when you are studying! John Ayers

Fight the good fight

 
Union leaders have called for a mass campaign of civil disobedience against the cuts. Communities should take direct action to block roads and occupy services earmarked for closure in a show of resistance, union bosses said.

Dot Gibson, of the National Pensioners' Convention, which represents 1.5 million affiliated members, called on the public to "sit down in the road [and] take direct action" to fight the cuts. She predicted greater "radicalisation" across the country as the effects of the cuts started to be felt by ordinary people and said her organisation was already seeing a growing militancy in rural areas, where people were more reliant on disappearing services such as post offices.

Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades' Union, also called on communities to take matters into their own hands. "When they want to close down a youth centre, when they want to close down a school or a hospital, if communities want to occupy them we are going to support them. That's the sort of action we need to take to challenge this Government."
There were also growing signs there will be a fresh round of public sector strikes this autumn. The TUC general council announced it would back a call to consider the practicalities of a general strike – not seen in the UK since 1926 – while members of England's two biggest teaching unions announced industrial action short of a strike later this month.

Bob Crow, leader of the RMT union, told delegates they had to band together to take on the Government. "If you spit on your own you can't do anything," he told a fringe meeting on co-ordinating action, "but if you all spit together you can drown the bastards"

We wuz robbed

Brendan Barber, TUC general secretary, said, “Despite the crash, the economy has almost doubled in size over the last thirty years..." He added that the average full-time worker is now paid nearly £26,000 a year and if wages kept up with the growth of the economy, excluding the gap between high and low salaries, the average worker would now be earning £33,000 a year, making a £7,000 rise in pay.

Sadly, the trade union leader calls for what he describes as fair pay and declares this as a solution to the present recession.

The Party Line

Jim Sillars, a former deputy leader of the SNP, accused the current leadership of operating the most authoritarian regime in British politics by exerting “totalitarian” control over backbenchers.

Sillars pointed to the absence of dissent within SNP ranks over the recent legislation to create a single national police force, adding there had been an “astonishing spectacle” over “many years now of no rebellion against leadership policy and opinion.” He added: “If I did not know better, I would easily believe the leaders had been schooled in the old communist party, where the top, the elite, made the decisions and the rest fell into step automatically, with not a word of dissent. Totalitarian would be a fair description of Scotland’s majority party.”  It was “not possible” for all the SNP’s MSPs to be “in total agreement with Salmond, Sturgeon and Swinney, yet no-one has dared tell them to get lost. Those willing to be told to shut up seem happy to wait until the leadership issue edicts and statements – and follow whatever line is laid down for them.”

Food for thought

The futility of reform -- the Liberal government of Ontario has convened early from its summer recess to pass an education act that forces the teachers to show up on September 4th for the start of school, that forces a contract on them that invokes a pay freeze and loss of benefits such as sick days, that ignores the collective bargaining process entirely, and that suspends the right to strike. After a stormy education scene with the preceding Tory government, the Liberals entered a period of calm and Premier McGuinty actually calls himself the education premier. Many teachers say they feel betrayed but as the economic climate bites, what would you expect. The Liberals have crossed the line into neo-liberal policy. They have given the act the Orwellian title, The Putting Students First Act and have emphasized that they cannot raise wages and deliver all-day kindergarten at the same time, among several other things. The usual claptrap that sounds good but really expects the teachers to pay for educational services out of their wages. This is another example of the recent pit-bull attacks on workers and their wages and benefits, which is what we would expect in any recession.

While we are on the far right, The New York Times reported that Tom Morello, of the metal rap band Rage Against the Machine, described Romney's pit bull, Paul Ryan thus, " He is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades. I clearly see that Ryan has a whole lot of rage in him; a rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor, a rage against the environment. Basically, the only thing he is not raging against is the privileged elite he is grovelling in front of for campaign contributions." Nuff said!

John Ayers

false friends

McDonald’s and Coca-Cola prove capitalism can co-opt anything … even worker uprisings.

“Marketers are adopting the theme of workers’ rights at a time when unions themselves are confronting declines in membership and influence,” notes the New York Times. “In effect, some labor experts say, they are turning a pro-worker theme on its head to serve the corporate interest.”

Advertisers are urging workers to commit small acts of so-called rebellion — like taking a vacation, or going on a lunch break.nThat’s the message McDonald’s sent this spring with a campaign called, “It’s your lunch. Take it.” Meant to promote the Premium Chicken Sandwich and the Angus Third Pounder Deluxe burger, it included tag lines like “A lunch revolution has begun,” “It’s time to overthrow the working lunch” and “A sesame seed of revolt has been planted.”  In one television advertisement, a woman gets up from her desk and announces, “I’m going to lunch.” Her co-workers try to dissuade her, telling her that the days of taking lunch are long gone. An inspired colleague stands up and says, “I’m going with her.” The music swells, he tears off the lanyard around his neck and adds, “I don’t want to be chicken, I want to eat it.”

The appeals to downtrodden workers keep coming. If a mere lunch break or a weeklong vacation is not enough of a respite, workers can enter a contest called “Take the Year Off,” sponsored by Gold Peak Tea, owned by Coca-Cola, will pay $100,000 to the winner to take a year off work to do whatever he or she pleases. The Facebook page features pictures of office workers under various states of duress. In one photo, a man in a suit rests his head in his hands as paperwork piles up around him. In another, a woman is seen kneeling against a file cabinet, her mouth open in a scream of desperation.

 A television ad for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, called “Take Back Your Summer.” shows a woman who has had enough. Amid ringing phones and clicking keyboards she climbs up on her desk and shouts through her speakerphone: “I have 47 vacation days. That’s insane.” “Let’s take back our summer!” she yells as she raises a sign over her head with the phrase “Vacation Now” on it. “Who’s with me?”

“It’s an effort by management to co-opt the Occupy Wall Street spirit and redirect it to promote its product,” said Harry Katz, dean of the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “They are using it in a somewhat manipulative way.”

THE PROFIT MOTIVE IN ACTION

It is now two years since the horrific explosion that led to the deaths of 11 oil rig workers in the Gulf of Mexico and the largest oil spill in US history but it is still being fought over in US courts. "The Department of Justice filed a sharply worded brief with a court in New Orleans yesterday that accused BP of systematic management failures and a "corporate-driven, profit over safety" culture." (Times, 6 September) There is a lot at stake in this legal battle. If the events of the oil spill are judged to be an accident BP could be fined £4.5 billion but if its employees are found guilty of gross negligence BP could be fined £21 billion, followed by almost unlimited punitive damages. Behind the niceties of the legal struggle one thing should be apparent though. Every company inside capitalism has a "corporate-driven, profit over safety" culture. RD

UPPER CLASS ARROGANCE

Gina Rineheart, the Australian billionaire said to be worth A$29 bn. is not shy about boasting about her wealth. She is said to make nearly A$600 (£393) a second and blames Australian workers poverty on too much drinking and smoking. "Australian mining magnate Gina Rineheart has criticised her country's economic performance and said Africans willing to work for $2 a day should be an inspiration." (BBC News, 5 September) The news that a useless parasite such as Rineheart has an income of £393 a second should inspire workers throughout the world to get rid of the capitalist system. RD

A GREEK TRAGEDY

The present economic downturn is worldwide but Greece would appear to be suffering particularly at present. "One in three shops has been forced to close, and national unemployment has reached more than 20%. The number of down-and outs has increased by 25% over the past three years, while prostitutes work the streets of the city centre in broad daylight. Cases of HIV/Aids have exploded at a rate 1,450% since 2010 - a result of the growing sex trade and and a crumbling health-care system, which has suspended needle-exchange programmes used by drug addicts. The number of suicides in Athens rose by more than 25% last year." (Sunday Times Magazine, 2 September) Needless to say this modern Greek tragedy only affect the working class, the owning class in Greece continue to enjoy their usual affluent lifestyle. RD

THE PRIORITIES OF CAPITALISM

Capitalism is going through one of its recession, so politicians have got to find ways to cut expenditure. Cut the billions spent on armaments? Fat chance! Here is a more attractive prospect. "The NHS is putting patients' health at risk by denying them drugs and operations because of growing rationing being imposed to save money, the new leader of Britain's doctors has warned. The drive to meet demanding efficiency targets is so serious that the NHS is offering some GPs surgeries extra money if they send fewer patients for tests and treatment in hospital — a move condemned as "morally wrong" by Dr Mark Porter, the British Medical Association's recently elected chair of council." (Guardian, 1 September) Capitalism has nothing to do with "morals", it is only concerned about profit margins. RD

A WORLD WITHOUT NATIONALISM

During two world wars millions of workers died, often because they imagined they had a country. Today we find all over the world the same nonsense of nationalism. A hatred of people who do not speak the same language , behave differently or have a different life style. Here are some dreadful examples. "A French police were yesterday breaking up gipsy camps and deporting illegal immigrants found in them. .... One hundred people were evicted from a site in Lyon, with similar round-ups happening in other major cities including Marseille. deportations were aimed at ridding France of 'illegal' communities. ..... Greece has also begun a crackdown on immigrants, with Athens claiming the country faced an 'invasion'." (Daily Mail, 9 August) We are human beings we have no country. We are humans! RD

Thai Class

Numbers don't lie and show the social disparity in Thailand.

80% of land in the country is in the hands of only 10% of land owners. Economist used an indicator called the Gini index to measure the disparity. In the range of 0 to 1, the closer the index is to 1, the greater the disparity. On land ownership, the national disparity is .941, meaning the country is mired in a deep, deep problem with land ownership inequity. The biggest land owner has more than 2.8 million rai, the study found. For individuals, the top 20% own an average of 62.5 rai, which is 729 times higher than the lowest 20% who own an average of less than one rai.

The richest 20% own more than half of the value of all household assets ( which include houses, lands, cars and cash worth about 18 trillion baht.)

Stocks and shares are owned by only a handful of powerful business families.

Thai politicians are big landlords themselves. According to their declared assets with the National Anti-Corruption Commission, the MPs own 27,035 rai combined, worth more than 15.7 billion baht, according to MPs' own estimates. The real market value is believed to be much higher. Also, the numbers do not include the land that might have been put under other people's names.

THE HAVES AND THE HAVENOTS

Capitalism is a world-wide system and its basic set up applies everywhere so recent figures about wealth distribution should come as no surprise. "A study by the United Nations suggests the gap between the rich and the poor in much of Latin America is widening. The report by the UN Agency for Human Settlements says that the richest 20% of the population on average earn 20 times more than the poorest 20%." (BBC News, 22 August) RD

FUTURE PROSPECTS?

A constant theme pursued by supporters of capitalism is that modern society provides great opportunities for the youth of today, but recent statistics show that this is far from true. "One in six 16 to 24-year-olds in England were not in education, employment or training at the end of June this year, new figures show. .....With 968,000 young people out of education and employment or Neet, it is the second highest June rate for more than a decade." (BBC News, 22 August) RD

The Gravy Train

Malcolm Rifkind, former Cabinet minister takes home £246,359.27 per year on top of his Westminster salary. He is a director of asset management and farming companies, does consultancy work and makes media appearances, reportedly working on non-Westminster duties for an average of 15 hours a month. 

 However, Gordon Brown was the top-earning MP, with £900,000 a year from work as an academic, author and speechmaker. 

 Labour’s David Miliband earns £410,176.60 from speeches and consultancy work.

WHAT ARE THE OWNING CLASS UP TO?

Have you ever wondered what the owning class do in their spare time? After they have eaten the best possible meal, drunk the best possible wine and shagged the best possible film star they must get a bit fed up moving from one of their mansions in France or California - oops here is something to do. "An 1873 dime from Carson City, Nevada, is displayed on Friday, August 10, 2012, in Philadelphia. The dime sold at auction for $1.84 million. The rare coin was minted in Carson City, Nev., during a one-day run of dimes. An anonymous bidder won the pristine coin, said Chris Napolitano, president of Stack's Bowers Galleries, which auctioned it during an American Numismatic Association convention. ... "Generally speaking, in the coin auction business, you might get a couple of people fighting each other" as they bid, he said Friday. "On this one, we had four or five buyers over a million dollars. We had a fair amount of buyers pursuing it." (gulfnews.com, 10 August) C'mon you have got to do something when you live a life of useless exploitation. RD