jonathan.rawle.org

Following the Olympics, it was hard to escape the return home of the “Olympic Heroes”, which was the main headline in the media, which seemingly found this far more important than a major air disaster or a war in the Caucasus. While not wishing to disregard the undeniable achievements of the Olympic athletes, and recognising that it’s good for the morale of the nation, I couldn’t help thinking how sportsmen are given this sort of special treatment to congratulate them, but that this wouldn’t be extended to others no matter how great their achievements.

Let’s use the example of a Nobel Prize winner. It is unarguably much harder to receive a Nobel Prize than an Olympic gold medal as far fewer are given out. (Let’s face it, if the Nobel Institute copied the way medals are awarded in Olympic swimming, for example, there would be separate Nobel prizes given for Physical Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, and no doubt for Doing Chemistry with your Eyes Closed and One Hand Behind your Back.) Plus, there are no silver or bronze Nobel prizes, the only advantage being that they are awarded annually rather than every four years. Yet do we see a rare British Nobel Laureate deified by the media in the same was as an Olympic medallist? Of course not. And does the government put on a special charter flight for the laureate to go and collect his or her medal from the King of Sweden, or will the said laureate be buying their own economy class ticket to Stockholm?

In an attempt to sell the 2012 Olympics to the whole of the UK, knowing full well that it’s only likely to directly benefit London, the government has said that the legacy of the games will be an improvement in school sport. Following the success of what is bizarrely called “Team GB”, in Beijing (with a proper J), the Prime Minister has expressed a wish to re-introduce competitive sport into schools, after it was effectively phased out so that no child had to feel a failure. Now, I think that sport and exercise has a important role to play in schools, and that some competition is a good thing, as long as it is accompanied by lessons in good sportsmanship. That way, we have the happy situation where the winners feel good about winning, and the losers fell good about their opponents winning. Whether a load of immature school kids will be able to grasp that concept is another matter.

But if we are to concede that it’s OK for some children to be better than others at sport in school, why can’t we also accept that some will achieve better academically than others? Why must everyone pass their public exams? Why must half of those be given the top grades? Why can’t GCSEs and A-levels be awarded in the same way as medals? There are only so many gold medals, then that’s it. Similarly, there should be a fixed number of A-grades. That does away with the needless comparison of grades from one year to the next. Statistically speaking, it’s unlikely the distribution of intelligence from one year to the next is going to vary significantly, and the exams should not be used a a gauge of teaching quality. Excellence should be rewarded in all subject areas, whether they be academic or practical, and we should accept that people have strengths in different areas. We shouldn’t concentrate simply on sport. If all youngsters are taught that only succeeding in sport matters, and then they see the Olympic Heroes on TV, the ones who are hopeless at sport but were interested in engineering are going to wonder what the point is and give up, allowing Eastern countries to overtake us in a ranking far more valuable than any medal table.

The final straw comes when the headlines announce, British athletes ‘to get honours’. We are told, “In the past, almost all Olympic gold medal winners have been have been awarded an MBE as a minimum.” So simply receiving a gold medal isn’t enough for these heroes, they have to receive another gong too (although those in the know, which doesn’t include the BBC, will realise an MBE isn’t a medal – in fact, the person him- or herself is the MBE, and they are presented with an insignia – but I digress). I expect we’ll see the same sort of honours inflation that gave us Sir Steve Redgrave and Dame Kelly Holmes – awards that set a precedent. It’s lucky Michael Phelps isn’t British, otherwise a Dukedom would hardly be good enough, and they’d have run out of things to give him.

Olympic athletes were originally supposed to be amateurs. But these days, aren’t most of the British team in effect professionals? Do they have day-jobs, or do they spend all their time training? They may not receive a salary for training, but their income is from sponsorship. This commercialisation of amateur sport means that the countries that top the medal table are those with the most money to throw at their athletes. It would be much more in the original Olympic spirit if they were true amateurs who held down a job and trained a bit in the evenings, although I suppose it was originally the Communist regimes in eastern Europe with their elite squads of athletes who put an end to that.

I know people will be saying that the athletes were representing their country, and were proud to hold the union flag as they celebrated their wins. But do you really believe that? Which do you think came first, their personal achievement, or representing the country? They wouldn’t be human if it wasn’t the former, and the latter is purely consequential.

There are many heroes who are greater, bolder and braver than Olympic athletes. One might be a doctor working on a new anti-cancer drug. Another might be the person who volunteers to look after the homeless. The former may one day receive a Nobel Prize, but with little fanfare at home, and an eventual knighthood when they are old and grey. The latter will be lucky to be appointed an MBE if someone thought to nominate him or her. There will be no fanfare in the press for them.

I wonder who a patient watching the Olympics on television while recovering in hospital would consider his or her heroes. Put yourself in that position, and consider what is most important in schools: produce a nation of sportsmen; or of doctors, researchers and engineers. Or even better, why not some of both? And is there really nothing better to spend nearly £10 billion on than hosting the Olympic Games? At least they’ll be making one saving: next time around, Team GB won’t need the gold-nosed charter aircraft!

The City Council in Birmingham, England, recently sent out leaflets to all households congratulating them for meeting targets by recycling their rubbish. The leaflets cost £15,000 to produce. Under the headline “Thank You Birmingham!”, the leaflet showed a picture of the Birmingham skyline. Unfortunately for the council, the photo was of Birmingham in Alabama, and not of the West Midlands city.

Very similar views of Birmingham in the US are the first images that are found by a Google search for “Birmingham skyline”. However, the image that was used apparently was bought from the iStockphoto image library. It would appear the image in question is 1478222. When searching for Birmingham on that site, it does default to Birmingham (Alabama), but this is clearly indicated, and it asks underneath if you meant Birmingham (West Midlands). There are actually some nice skyline images of the “right” Birmingham on there.

The worst part of this episode is that when the mistake was pointed out, the council initially claimed there was no mistake, and that it was a “generic skyline intended to symbolise an urban area”. Naturally, it was therefore an amazing coincidence that the city used to represent a generic skyline happened to be the American city that bore the same name.

This is not the first time that a similar mistake has been made. A few months ago, a group of Conservative MEPs also used a picture of the Alabama city on their website by mistake. Perhaps as MEPs for the West Midlands, and Tory ones at that, they had never actually visited Birmingham to know what it looked like.

It isn’t just the British that are prone to mixing the cities up, either. An American company used a picture of Birmingham, UK to advertise the renovation of the Thomas Jefferson Hotel in Birmingham, Alabama.

Spot the difference: the English Birmingham (top) actually has a distinctive skyline, with the Holloway Circus Tower, Hyatt hotel, Alpha Tower, famous round Rotunda and BT Tower, as well as Selfridges visible in the foreground. By contrast, the Alabama city (bottom) does not have a very exciting skyline by American standards. (The aforementioned hotel is the small building on the far left.) Aside from the fact the leaflet was simply wrong, it would have looked far more inspiring had it depicted the correct city!

Birmingham UK skyline (top) by Ian T Edwards; Birmingham AL skyline (bottom) by Andre Natta. Both images used under the terms of their Creative Commons licences. The above derived image is released under a CC Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike licence.

With the 2008 Olympics under way, it is becoming increasingly irritating to hear presenters on TV and radio pronouncing the name of the Chinese capital with a French-sounding “j”. It is as if they think, “Beijing is a foreign word, so it must be pronounced in a foreign way”, and as French is the most widely-taught language in British schools, they use a pseudo-French pronunciation.

In fact, English speakers would do much better just to stick with an English “j”. Although this is not quite the same sound as in Mandarin, it is much closer than the French sound. It also means they wouldn’t appear to be trying to hard to sound foreign. The irony is, the French don’t normally even call the city Beijing, preferring Pékin.

I’m not the only person who is annoyed by this. Two Americans have even posted a YouTube video on how to pronounce Beijing correctly – this still doesn’t attempt to teach the correct Chinese pronunciation, and doesn’t address tones (i.e. whether the voice rises or falls) which are an integral part of Mandarin pronunciation. However, it’s a good guide for English speakers, and also explains how the name of the city is made up of two characters meaning “northern capital”. I’m actually surprised that Americans tend towards a French pronunciation like the British, as I had thought French was not as widely taught in the US, where Spanish is more popular.

Wikipedia has a more accurate example of the correct Mandarin pronunciation.

The video linked above also makes an interesting point about the Beijing 2008 Olympic Emblem, suggesting that the running figure is actually a stylised version of the Chinese character jīng (京), as in Beijing. Others have suggested that it imitates the character wén (文), meaning culture or humanity. Whatever it means, it certainly looks much better than the logo for the 2012 London Olympics, which looks like nothing at all, except a nice earner for the designers who duped the games’ organisers into accepting it. Some people are already suggesting that the success of London Olympics themselves will follow the same trend as the logos.

This week has seen the disgraceful case of a woman, Linda Buchanan, being pushed onto a railway line by two young men, apparently after she had reminded them that smoking isn’t allowed on stations. Interviews the following day give a slightly different version of events, suggesting that Mrs Buchanan had spoken to them about smoking on a previous day, and that on Wednesday, the same two men had made obscene gestures at her as she walked past. She suggested they should grow up, at which point they pushed her.

The fact that smokers become so irritable when they are not allowed to smoke anywhere at any time, or when someone reminds them that they are breaking the law by smoking, is simply an indication of how they are addicted to smoking. They may not realise it, and claim they are simply angry at being “persecuted”, yet addiction lies at the core.

Of course, the “have your say” sections of online news articles have brought out some despicable views, such as people saying it “Serves her right for not minding her own business”. So there are people who think that asking someone not to smoke in an area where it is illegal, or even, as in this case, asking someone to grow up for making rude gestures, is a valid reason for pushing her onto a railway track where she could easily have been electrocuted or run over by a train. It isn’t even as if it was “not her business” – that would only be the case if the men were alone on the platform, and the lady had been driving down the street in her car and had stopped especially to speak to them. As it was, Mrs Buchanan was waiting on the platform, an area where smoking is illegal under the railway by-laws, where she had every right to expect to wait in clean air, unaffected by tobacco smoke. For most of the history of railway stations, people were allowed to smoke where they liked, and anyone who didn’t wish to breathe in the smoke had to move to another part of the platform. That was something non-smokers had to accept, as smoking was permitted. Now times have changed, and it’s no longer legal to smoke on the platform, so it is the smokers’ turns to face a slight inconvenience while waiting at the station.

Another way of looking at it is, if anyone really believes it is OK to push someone (even if not deliberately onto a railway line) for just asking someone not to smoke, why isn’t it equally as valid to take action when someone is smoking, or carrying out some other sort of anti-social behaviour? Equivalent actions could be snatching a cigarette, or throwing water over the person. Of course, none of these actions is acceptable. But how has society become such that so many people believe any sort of behaviour is OK, no matter how unpleasant or antisocial it is, and that the only thing that is taboo is politely asking someone not to do something that’s bothering others?

This doesn’t only apply to smoking, but also dropping litter, using loud, obscene and abusive language, harassing a lone woman, or playing music out loud instead of using headphones. The same people again will complain that the country has too many laws restricting what people can do, with too many on-the-spot fines. The reason is that people are too inconsiderate now, and take no account of how their actions affect anyone else around them. They believe they have a right to do what they want, never mind what that means for other people. Selfish people are the reason for more laws.

If we want to live in a pleasant, clean environment where people feel safe travelling on public transport, we need more people to stand up to yobs and louts. We need more Mrs Buchanans. The first course of action can be to find a member of railway staff, but failing that, I for one shall continue to remind people that smoking isn’t allowed on platforms (naturally explaining that I wouldn’t like them to be fined for their honest mistake); and I shall continue to politely call after people who have dropped something on the pavement, in case it was something they wanted, of course. There’s no need to be confrontational. But at the same time, we can’t allow out society to turn into one where yobs spoil places for everyone else just because no-one will stand up to them.

The EU Commission is proposing an extension to copyright on sound recordings, the same idea having been rejected by the UK government last year. At present, copyright on a recording lasts for 50 years, after which it enters the public domain. The proposal is for the copyright to be extended to 95 years.

Unsurprisingly, the proposal is being backed by big names in the music world such as Sir Cliff Richard, whose first recording will go out of copyright next year, and Sir Paul McCartney, with the Beatles’ first recordings currently set to enter the public domain in 2013.

It’s important to understand that this proposal concerns recordings, and not the copyright on original compositions or lyrics. Copyright on those lasts for life plus 70 years, in recognition of the creativity put into producing an original work. This is quite different from simply performing someone else’s work. A singer who is talented enough to write his own songs should be less concerned about the copyright on the recordings as he (or his estate) will continue to receive royalties from the work itself.

An actor on stage, whether in Stratford or the West End, will be paid for the performance, then that’s it. The same is true of a musician performing live. There is no further income after the performance has finished. When an architect designs a new building, he is paid a fee for the work. Neither he, nor the engineers and building contractors who actually build it, will receive royalties every time someone looks at the building, or from the people who use it.

This is just an attempt by the music industry, and from a few big-name artists, to grab even more money when they have made enough already. If the so-called stars want a pension, they should make sure they put aside some of their income to provide for them in old age, just as everyone else has to, instead of spending it on an extravagant lifestyle. I can’t imagine either Sir Cliff or Sir Paul is living on the poverty line. And as for the argument that they are doing this on behalf of all the small-time artists and backstage staff, the fact is that most of these had to sign away their rights to royalties to the record company in order to receive the modest session fee they were paid at the time.

Copyright has historically been a balance between the rights of those producing the works and the public, allowing artists to have a chance to profit from their work, while ensuring it can still be enjoyed and built upon in the way it historically always has been. The greed of those calling for the change in the law can not be allowed to destroy this principle. The new law would mean people could no longer share or enjoy old recordings that have long since been deleted from record companies’ catalogues, be they of rock and roll, or classical performances by long-dead conductors.

The proposal still has to be agreed by the Council of Ministers and European Parliament, and the latter in particular has been known to listen to the people on similar issues such as software patents. To help defeat the extension of copyright, please sign the petition against it.