Politician Overload and How to Solve it

If, like me, you are suffering from an overload of politicians and their promises, it may be worth embarking on a visit, in your mind at least, to the Alaskan town of Talkeetna. It's really only a large village, with a population of around 900 and there is very little to distinguish it from other similar remote places in Alaska. Its main claim to fame ended in 2009 when the annual Moose Dropping Festival erupted into chaos and violence.

The festival comprised a two-day celebration held each July. The highlight was a lottery where participants would place bets on numbered, varnished pieces of moose droppings that were tipped from a helicopter onto a target. Sadly, according to the Anchorage Daily News, the 2009 festival turned into a "weekend of mayhem" with "a lot of drunken, high, stupid people doing stupid things." Worst of all, the manager of Nagley's General Store had his bike stolen. Mayhem, indeed. Unsurprisingly, the festival has not been repeated since. The Daily News is silent on whether the inhabitants are still polishing their moose turds and what they do with them now that they can't do the obvious and drop them from a helicopter.

So, since 2009, there has been little more to say about life in Talkeetna. Where, then, are the links to our Politician overload?

That is where Mayor Stubbs comes in.

As politicians go, Mayor Stubbs of Talkeetna takes some beating. He’s celebrating over 15 years in office, has an almost 100% approval rating and has never raised taxes at any time. Not once has he broken any promises and he is totally untainted by scandal. There are no suggestions of financial impropriety, no sexual indiscretions and no accusations of lucrative contracts being awarded to close friends and associates. He is a clean, decent citizen who goes about his daily tasks with a quiet dignity almost unknown in the sometimes grubby world of politics where pride and inflated egos often flourish.

Of course, there's always a snag with such stories and in this case there are a couple of extra things you need to know. The first is that Mayor Stubbs is actually a cat. The story is that he was initially put forward as a joke candidate for mayor but easily beat the two human candidates.

The second is that, sadly, the story isn’t true.

The false feline tale was launched by an Alaskan TV station a couple of years ago and rapidly spread around the world. Headline writers couldn’t resist references to the cat’s pyjamas; and the non-word “purrfect” appeared many times. What everyone had missed in the original piece were the words “as the story goes”.

Apparently, Talkeetna doesn’t actually have a mayor and the district mayor who covers Talkeetna is a man.

All is not lost, however. The feline Mayor Stubbs does actually exist, resides at the aforesaid Nagley’s General Store and is unofficially regarded as the honorary mayor of the town, though he has never been elected. All that has happened is that, by accident or design, Mayor Stubbs has been turned into an international attraction and has generated significant tourism revenues for the town.

So the story isn’t such a catastrophe (sorry!) after all. Having someone in office who doesn’t actually do any harm but attracts tourists and revenue doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

What the whole episode maybe demonstrates is how open we are to the idea that no political leadership is better than the bad leadership of cynical, self-interested politicians, whatever their political complexion. It seems that we might prefer our politicians to be not red, blue, yellow or even green but tabby.

After all, a couple of years ago, Belgium managed to go 541 days with no government at all without too many negative consequences. If only the unimaginative Belgians had thought of appointing a handsome Belgian Shepherd dog as prime minister, they might have lived off the tourist influx for years. And if they had launched a lottery based on collecting his turds, polishing them and dropping them from a helicopter, the whole Euro crisis might have been averted.

So there you have it, Mr. Cameron and Mr Miliband. Forget the promises that we all know that you won't keep. Find a suitably cuddly and appealing pet, create a Turd Collection and Airdrop Quango and just watch the deficit disappear. Just remember, however, that you read it here first – and give due credit to Mayor Stubbs and the good citizens of Talkeetna.

A rose is a rose is a rose - update

More than two years ago, I wrote about the rose bush that my mother gave me.
It was a positive story about the survival of a rose bush down the years and the generations.  When I wrote about it, the bush was in full bloom outside my front door.
Sadly, my optimism was mis-placed.   Last winter, the rose bush, for no apparent reason, died.  My brother's cutting didn't survive, neither did one I gave to my daughter.  This seemed like the end of the line.  I even went to the house where my mother and father used to live in Hockley Heath to see if "their" bush still survived but there was no sign of it.
My last hope was my next door neighbour, who lives mainly in France, near the Swiss border.  I had given her a cutting.  Sure enough, she was able to confirm that it  had survived.  Better still, she arrived back in Bristol last week with the cutting in a pot and has given it back to me.
My job now is to nurture it to full health and growth and then if possible to take some cuttings.
And so the story goes on  Wish me green-fingered success!

The legacy of Phillip Hughes

The death of Australian cricketer Phillip Hughes was a tragic accident that has touched millions of people (cricketers and others) around the world. This has been most vividly symbolised by the cricket bats put out on doorsteps and in public places by those wanting to honour the memory of someone that most of us never really knew. He was just a name on a scorecard or an image on a television screen.

Now that his funeral has taken place, maybe we can begin to take stock and reflect on the possible long-term consequences of this tragedy. I am not thinking in particular about helmets and bouncers. No doubt the helmet manufacturers will look at improvements that might have prevented the fatal consequences of that blow to the neck. But there is a trade-off between safety and mobility. Being safe from the rarity of a blow to the neck is of little use if the batsman has insufficient neck movement to twist and turn. As for bouncers, they have been part of the game ever since Australian fast bowler Ernest Jones sent a ball through W.G. Grace's beard. “Sorry, doc, she slipped,” he is alleged to have said.

No, my thoughts concern the whole way in which players conduct themselves on the field. Over the last quarter of a century, it has become the norm, in international cricket at least, for players routinely to swear at, abuse,mock and threaten their opponents. The kind of behaviour and language that might cause you or I to be arrested if we indulged in it on a night out on the town has been celebrated and praised as being evidence of a manly competitive spirit on the cricket field. The same Australians who are now mourning Phillip Hughes were largely responsible for initiating this approach. Steve Waugh coined the euphemistic phrase “mental disintegration” to describe the purpose of the behaviour. Successive captains continued to endorse the practice by their words and their deeds. The term sledging came into being to describe everything from the occasional (supposedly) witty remark to the crudest personal verbal attacks. In America, they call it trash-talking, which gets closer to describing a set of behaviours intended to demean the receiver but that also taints the deliverer.

How did we get to this point? Probably because it's in our nature as human beings. Australian psychologist Dorothy Rowe got it right in her profoundly wise book Friendsand Enemies. We need enemies because we can project onto them all those attributes we find unacceptable in ourselves. Our enemy binds our group (or team) together. The anger and aggression which might tear our team apart we can turn on our enemy. In order to make this work for us, we have, to a greater or lesser extent, to dehumanise the enemy. The less that we see our enemies fully as fellow human beings, the easier it is, on the cricket field, to humiliate and abuse them – or, on the world stage, to kill them.

Sometimes, events occur that change our narrow view of friends and enemies, of “us and them”. Sadly, it often has to be a tragedy like the death of Phillip Hughes that achieves this. Undoubtedly, within the world of cricket in the last week, there has been, in the short term at least, a major attitude shift, most clearly demonstrated by the words and actions of the Australian captain, Michael Clarke. This is the man who told tail-end England batsman James Anderson to “look out for a ****ing broken arm” at the start of the last Ashes series and who has, since he was appointed as Australian captain, orchestrated, condoned and encouraged the sledging efforts of his team.

Clarke's response to the death of his teammate has been moving for all to behold. He has grown in stature day by day and, in the process, has redefined for himself and others what it means to be a real man. We know now that it can include opening your heart for the world to see, shedding public tears and expressing deep emotions.

In his funeral oration, Michael Clarke said of his fallen comrade:

“His spirit has brought us closer together..... He always wanted to bring people together and he always wanted to celebrate his love for the game and its people.

Is this what we call the spirit of cricket?.....The bonds that lead to cricketers from around the world putting their bats out, that saw people who didn't even know Phillip lay flowers and that brought every cricketing nation on earth to make its own heartfelt tribute.....

This is what makes our game the greatest game in the world.

Phillips's spirit, which is now part of our game forever, will act as the custodian of the sport we all love.

We must listen to it. We must cherish it. We must learn from it. We must dig in and get through to tea. And we must play on.”

Hard though it must have been for Michael Clarke to stand up and say those words, the real challenge lies ahead when deeds take over from words. There surely must be no more threats of broken arms, no more of James Anderson calling MS Dhoni a “f***ing fat c***” and no more of Dhoni threatening to “squeeze the life out of” the England bowler.

So here is the challenge. If we want to live out the fine words spoken by Michael Clarke, those of us who play the game, who write about the game, who umpire the game , who watch the game, need to re-set our standards, to raise our sights and, in our own actions and in our reactions to others, reject the idea that being aggressively boorish is the best way to play the game.

Can the world of cricket rise to the challenge? It won't be easy because a whole macho culture has developed that will refuse to disappear overnight. But if enough people stand up to be counted, maybe – just maybe - a change can come to pass. This thing can be done if, as Michael Clarke says, we listen to the spirit of the game as expressed through the life of Phillip Hughes. We will need to take it one step at a time. We must dig in and get through to tea. And we must play on.

Review of the season - Warwickshire

My review of Warwickshire's season, as published by Deep Extra Cover:
See
I'm glad that they haven't edited out the very personal bits at the beginning and end about Kim Jones.  I'm also pleased that my deliberate dig at Michael Vaughan has survived the sub-editor's vigilant eye.
Just a pity that George Dobell's supposed Tweet of the Season has somehow become the Twee of the Season!

Taking the long view

I've had my say elsewhere about the spat that has developed between Warwickshire and Kent about the pricing policy that the Bears are applying for the Royal London Cup semi-final match between the two counties this Thursday (4 September) -see http://deepextracover.com/2014/09/02/kent-chief-executive-gets-cross-with-bears-admission-policy/#.VAXOlrtX6zs

I've had some additional thoughts about this. The short-term economics of the situation are obviously important. Kent want to get the most they can out of their 25% share of the gate receipts. Too many freebies and their “take” may be much smaller than they would have liked. On the other hand, Warwickshire will be hoping that plenty of spectators will be attracted by the cheap prices and the free offers and will not just turn up but will spend well at the food and drinks outlets and in the Club shop.

But there's a wider picture with a longer time horizon. 

Let me personalise it. I write as someone who has supported Warwickshire County Cricket Club for a very long time. To be precise, I first saw a match at Edgbaston on 6 August 1953. It was the second day of the match between the county and the Australian touring team.

I don't have any recollection of the admission charges for that match. They can't have been that excessive because there were hordes of kids there, sitting on the grass just outside the boundary. I was up in what was then the Rea Bank stand with my mother. She had cycled about six miles to pick me up from my grandmother's house and taken me on three buses to get to the ground. Neither she nor my dad had any personal interest in cricket. So she must have been indulging her number one son's latest whim. That being so, there must have been a price cut-off point at which my mother would have decided that she couldn't quite afford to take me. Without going into details, we were not wealthy. My dad made his living as a cobbler. If there was a week when not enough people wanted their shoes repaired, we certainly didn't starve; but we probably didn't eat so well and any treats were out of the question.

My point is this. What would the long-term consequences have been if the Warwickshire authorities had upped the prices beyond what my mother could afford? “Some other time, maybe next season” she would have said; and I would have accepted it. But possibly, by the following April, I would have found a new passion and my devotion to Warwickshire cricket would have been strangled at birth.

I'm not sure how much money Warwickshire have made out of me. I've been a member for well over fifty years and have spent my share of money on food and drink. Whatever the total, I have no doubts that, from my point of view, it has been well worth it. I am also sure that Warwickshire would have survived without me. But every time prices are lifted, they will exclude some youngsters who have the potential, like me, to give half a century or more of loyalty to the Club; and every time prices go down or are maintained at a realistic level, another few boys and girls may get their first chance to see the best county on the best ground in the country and may become fans for life. So the economics of these decisions go well beyond the short term calculations of the turnstile and bar takings on the day.

Maybe Kent's Chief Executive might wish to reflect on this.

As for me, when I am settled down in the Press Box on Thursday, I will glance across at what is now the Eric Hollies Stand and try to pick out the spot where that young lad and his mum sat just over 61 years ago. Possibly I'll see another boy or girl of a similar age; and maybe they will be there because they have been allowed in for free. Thursday may just be the day when they fall in love with the game of cricket and with the Warwickshire team. I hope so; and if they do, I can tell them that it's likely to be a lifelong passion. Believe me, I know.

Finals Day Preview - Birmingham Bears

Here is my preview of the Birmingham Bears' appearance in the NatWest T20 Blast Finals at Edgbaston.
http://deepextracover.com/2014/08/20/finals-day-preview-birmingham-bears/#.U_XDFrtX6zt
I'll be there for what should be an exciting day's cricket.

Sam Hain Profile

Here is the profile of young Warwickshire cricketer Sam Hain, as published by Deep Extra Cover:

http://deepextracover.com/2014/06/14/dec-introduces-warwickshires-sam-hain/#.U5xNnHQU-Uk