jonathan.rawle.org

In the run up to the World Cup, it was impossible to avoid the hype in the mainstream media over whether Wayne Rooney’s fractured metatarsal had healed sufficiently for him to play in the competition. Surely, football is a team game, and whether or not one player can make it shouldn’t matter, as you have a whole team of top-class players. How can the others feel to be collectively written off just because one individual isn’t playing?

When it was finally announced that Rooney would be playing, I thought: wouldn’t it be ironic if, after all that hype, he’s the one who puts England out of the competition – most likely by missing his penalty, as that’s how England normally lose?

Well, in the event it wasn’t quite like that, but it was close. Rooney was sent off for stamping on an opponent, meaning his teammates had to play on for over an hour with only 10 men. England then lost the subsequent penalty shoot-out.

Whether or not Rooney’s dismissal prevented the team from scoring a winning goal can be left for the pundits to decide – and ultimately no-one will ever know. But it can hardly have helped, and will certainly have given the opposing Portugese team extra confidence.

For a team game, surely you need a good team? Yet the media persist in concentrating on one or two players who make the headlines.

By all accounts, Rooney is an unpleasant young man both on and off the pitch. He’s an extremely bad role model. It’s time the media stopped glorifying this sort of behaviour, and revering this type of person. People would do well to remember what Rooney’s most significant contribution to the 2006 World Cup was.

A refreshing report from the Consumer Council for Water this week has praised the quality of British tap water and dismissed bottled water as a waste of money.

It has long been my view that bottled water is a con, or an expensive fashion accessory at best. Tap water in the UK is always perfectly safe to drink. It has to be, that’s the law. People pay their water bills, then that’s it, an endless supply of drinking water on tap. The Consumer Council says tap water costs about 0.1 pence per litre, compared to £1 for bottled water. So tap water is 1000 times more expensive.

So why do so many people insist on only drinking water bought in plastic bottles? Some people think that tap water is harmfull, which means they are simply misinformed. Others claim not to like the taste. That’s a matter of preference (I prefer taste of tap water) but there many methods of filtering water if they really insist on it. Then I suspect the issue becomes one of convenience – filtering water actually requires some effort. The hard water, which many people claim to like, possibly helps to prevent heart disease.

One unfortunate consequence is the effect on foreign visitors. In their home countries, tap water may well not be safe to drink, so bottled water is a necessity. However, this bottled water is usually much more reasonably priced than in the UK. These visitors arrive in the UK, see so many of the natives buying their bottles, so feel they have to do the same. They might even ask, “Is tap water safe?” To which they are often misinformed, “No it isn’t.” The UK already has a reputation as an expensive country, so having people pay a premium for water will ultimately not be good for the tourist industry.

Some brands of bottled water carry with them a certain image, a lifestyle of which people want to be a part. As usual, those foolish enough to follow fashion burn a hole in their pockets, although it has to be said that even the most exclusive designer clothes don’t normally cost 1000 times more than the unbranded equivalent. All I can suggest is, buy one bottle, then re-fill it from the tap. One of the leading brands actually prints on the label, “This bottle is intended for the exclusive use of (brandname) natural mineral water.” In other words, don’t re-fill it. It wouldn’t surprise me if in America it’s a criminal offence to do so under some draconian trademark law. Anyway, I’ll leave you to look out for which brand it is!

Buying water in a bottle is also bad for the environment. Think of all the energy that goes into making the bottles, into the bottling plant, into transporting the water to the shop, into transporting the bottle home from the shop.

Bottled water isn’t better for you. In fact, sometimes it can be harmful. In 2004, Coca-Cola attempted to launch their Dasani branded water in the UK. It soon emerged that they were taking tap water, filtering it, then adding some chemicals to improve the taste. This resulted in ridicule in the press, particularly as it resembled a scheme thought up by crafty east London market trader Del Trotter in the TV series Only Fools and Horses. Shortly after the launch, the authorities discovered that one of the additives was potentially carcinogenic. The Dasani brand was subsequently withdrawn from sale in Europe.

So the message is simply, when in the UK, do drink the water! The tap water, that is. Ignore people who say it isn’t safe, try filtering it if you don’t like the taste. But please don’t waste money by buying all your drinking water in bottles.

The First Minister of Scotland, Jack McConnell, said that, as Scotland failed to qualify, he would be supporting Trinidad and Tobago in the World Cup football competition rather than England. This has generated a lot of comment, with an English company reportedly cancelling a pre-booked conference in Scotland in response to the First Minister’s “anti-English” attitude.

Mr McConnell has said this is about football not politics. Others have pointed out that six players in the Trinidad and Tobago team actually play in Scotland. However, believing that the First Minister of Scotland saying he won’t support England has no political motivation at all is being rather fanciful. He’s a politician in the public eye, and everything he says will be crafted to garner the support of the electorate. For the same reason, two Scotsmen who would each like to be the Prime Minister of the whole of the UK, Gordon Brown and Menzies Campbell, have said that they will be supporting England.

McConnell’s spokesman said, “The First Minister has never encouraged anyone to be anti-English, or made any anti-English comments.” Unfortunately, for certain elements of society, hearing the First Minister say he would not support England will encourage exactly those sentiments.

Friendly rivalry is one thing. If England are playing Scotland, then of course people will support their most local team. But people refusing to support their neighbours when their own team isn’t playing, and even backing opposing teams, is simply small-minded. And unfortunately, for some people on both sides of the border, the “anti” feeling has much more unpleasant consequences than just influencing which football teams people support (as these attacks on a little boy and a disabled man wearing England shirts show).

I’m not the least bit interested in football. I don’t know if I’ll even watch the final should England make it through. But I know that I’d be just as likely to cheer Scotland on if they were the ones playing in the final.

All of this needn’t just apply to the four “home nations” of the United Kingdom, but to our European neighbours too. There is a distinctly unfriendly rivalry of English supporters towards the Germans (although I suspect it’s not reciprocated to anywhere near the same level). This raises interesting questions. Who would die-hard England supporters support if the team who knocks out England in an earlier round plays Germany in the final? And what will happen if ever the final is between Germany and Scotland? Perhaps it might mean fewer people watching the final, and a little less hype about the competition, although I think that’s probably wishful thinking.

Last month I described how a new licensing regime has meant that listeners from outside the UK may no longer listen to British independent radio stations. But certain stations, including Classic FM, only required the listener to enter a valid UK postcode to listen.

Then, at the start of this month, something changed again, and people outside the UK could no longer connect to Classic FM even after entering a correct postcode. I’ve received lots of messages from disappointed listeners who wanted to know if there was a way they could still listen.

How to listen

Please note: These instructions are intended for use by people in the UK whose IP addresses are identified as being overseas, preventing them from listening to Classic FM. While the instructions may also work for people located outside the UK, it is the responsibility of the reader to ensure that they are not breaking any laws of their country by listening, and that any royalties due are paid.

Update 11 June 2006:
To listen, open the following URL in your media player:
http://gcap5.planetwideradio.com/ClassicFM
For example, if you use Windows Media Player, go to File > Open URL, then enter that address.

Listening via a proxy

If the above URL doesn’t wory for you, you could try listening via an anonymous proxy server located in the UK. A list of these may be found on the Great Britain (UK) Open Proxy List. Note that sometimes servers on this list are not in the UK as claimed, and that others won’t allow audio to be streamed via them. At the time of writing, 213.177.255.60 (port 80) appears to suit our purposes.

I don’t endorse the use of Microsoft products by any means, but I’ll assume most people are using Windows Media Player (WMP). The principles remain the same whatever media player you are using.

In Windows Media Player, go to Tools > Options… > Network. You should then see “Streaming proxy settings”. Select “HTTP” and click “Configure”. Choose “Use the following proxy server” then enter the IP address and port number of the proxy given above.

Now you are ready to listen. Go to File > Open URL and enter the following address: http://mediasrv.musicradio.com/classicfm
The station should now start playing!

There are several things that can go wrong. The proxy might be down, in which case you won’t be able to connect. Latency is another problem: the extra stage of using a proxy might cause interruptions to the stream. If you have problems, try using a different proxy, or tweaking settings in WMP such as the buffer size.

Please feel free to leave a comment if you have any problems, or if you have any listening tips to share.

More than 3000 English football hooligans have had to hand their passports in to the police before the World Cup to prevent them from travelling to Germany to cause trouble. This is considered such an important measure by the authorities that the penalty for failing to surrender a passport is a £5000 fine and up to six months in prison.

The government continues to press ahead with its plans for a national ID card scheme with the claim that they will help combat terrorism. (This is despite the fact that all the most recent terrorist attacks – or attempted ones – were carried out by British citizens who would have been perfectly entitled to carry cards.)

ID cards are controversial for many reasons, but it also seems they would have allowed trouble-makers to travel to Germany this summer. Passports are not required for travel within the European Union. All that is required is a form of identification proving EU citizenship. Unlike passports, the police could not confiscate ID cards as people need to carry them to identify themselves – one day it could even be compulsory to carry them. Therefore the thugs would be free to travel.

Admittedly, suspected hooligans are supposed to report to a police station each day that England is playing. However, the size of the penalties indicates that handing in passports is considered an important measure – one that would be almost pointless if a national ID card were to be introduced.