Rugger buggers vs
90-minute bigots
Rugby snobs who denounce 'soccer' for its rowdy fans and shocking chants are missing the point: football is theatre.
"There are few things more tiresome in sport than rugby union fans boasting that their pursuit, as a spectacle and in its ethics, is superior to what they refer to as ‘soccer’. (OK, perhaps there are more annoying observations that are constantly regurgitated: that we ‘now have the technology’ to implement video refereeing in football; that the grunting by female competitors at Wimbledon is unladylike and that the price of strawberries and cream has become exorbitant; or that – and I cannot believe I actually heard someone make this point on BBC Radio Five Live the other day – American wrestling is fixed.)
Still it is annoying, and with the onset of the World Cup I guess you can imagine what the rugger buggers have been saying in the media, comparing their sport favourably to that ghastly game for proletariat ruffians..."
Friday, 7 September 2007
Friday, 31 August 2007
In spiked this week
Can canned laughter
The BBC’s new sitcom Outnumbered wasn’t edgy or awkward enough to be aired without a laughter track.
"By the time you read this column, you will have either enjoyed or missed the opening episodes of the BBC’s new situation comedy, Outnumbered. This is because the Corporation took the unusual decision to screen it on successive nights this week, presumably to complement the programme’s overtly quirky nature...."
The BBC’s new sitcom Outnumbered wasn’t edgy or awkward enough to be aired without a laughter track.
"By the time you read this column, you will have either enjoyed or missed the opening episodes of the BBC’s new situation comedy, Outnumbered. This is because the Corporation took the unusual decision to screen it on successive nights this week, presumably to complement the programme’s overtly quirky nature...."
In The Catholic Herald
The Premiership is the Catholicism of Football
Charterhouse Chronicle, by Patrick West
If football is a religion, which denomination would it be?
Charterhouse Chronicle, by Patrick West
If football is a religion, which denomination would it be?
Thursday, 30 August 2007
In The Times
From The Times
August 21, 2007
Don’t take away risk – it’s much too risky
Patrick West: Thunderer
"Overprotective parenting, the banning of school trips and chemistry experiments, the outlawing of conker fights in the playground . . . our fear of letting our children take any sort of risk can be seen again and again. But the idea that it is possible to banish risk is not only itself infantile, it also puts children in even greater physical danger. In short, risk avoidance can be a risky business..."
August 21, 2007
Don’t take away risk – it’s much too risky
Patrick West: Thunderer
"Overprotective parenting, the banning of school trips and chemistry experiments, the outlawing of conker fights in the playground . . . our fear of letting our children take any sort of risk can be seen again and again. But the idea that it is possible to banish risk is not only itself infantile, it also puts children in even greater physical danger. In short, risk avoidance can be a risky business..."
In spiked this week
Patrick West
We Brits invented ‘friendly fire’
"Today's cheap critiques of the US military for its ‘friendly fire’ blunders in Iraq overlook Britain’s own disastrous history of killing its own..."
We Brits invented ‘friendly fire’
"Today's cheap critiques of the US military for its ‘friendly fire’ blunders in Iraq overlook Britain’s own disastrous history of killing its own..."
Wednesday, 29 August 2007
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