An article in this weekend’s Guardian contains intriguing hints of what gets David Miliband’s goat. Explaining his decision to pen last week’s mini-manifesto, it claims: “Miliband himself was furious about an article in the Guardian by the shadow chancellor George Osborne earlier this month that he regarded as vacuous, adding to his sense that the Tories were not being challenged.” The article in question can only be a piece Osborne wrote a few weeks back in praise of Nudge, a much discussed book by two American academics. In the article Osborne claimed Nudge’s notion of libertarian paternalism for the right. He also argued his doing so showed evidence of the Convervative party’s openness to new ideas. This claim was seemed substantiated when Nudge author Richard Thaler noted that his ideas were receiving little play on the left. Feted by Osborne’s office and lauded by others in the Cameron project, he had received not one single invitation to break bread with government wonks. Thaler can now take heart. His ideas have, by proxy, nudged Miliband into action. If the result is the removal of Gordon Brown, his ideas may save the Labour party after all.
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It’s that warm, apathetic time of year again. There’s nothing in the papers, and precious little going on elsewhere—so we troop onto boats, planes, cars and trains headed for relaxation and pleasure; and we search for a book or four to see us through the workless days and balmy nights. But what to pack? Aside from the compulsory paperback bestseller or two, what could and should we be reading this Summer?
To probe this vital matter properly, we invited an expert panel of readers, writers and thinkers to tell us what they’ll be taking on holiday with them—and what they will, at all costs, be leaving untouched. Respondents included Ian Rankin, Chris Cleave, Gideon Rachman, Nicci Gerrard, Julian Gough and Dominic Sandbrook, and you can read their responses here, among others.
My own vacation preferences are for one absurdly heavy tome—the kind of historical, philosophical work you can only satisfactorily chew through given the run-up of a vacant week and plenty of sleep—mixed with some novels of the science-fiction/thriller variety that I’ve spirited away from the office shelves when no-one was looking. But I digress. What will you be reading; and what would you like to see left safely on the shelf?
This via a good friend of mine currently working in China: a BBC report suggesting that, even in matters of popular enthusiasm, nothing will be left to chance at the People’s Games:
Beijing Olympic chiefs are introducing an official cheer for patriotic spectators to spur on Team China at the Games, Chinese media reports. The authoritative, four-part Olympic cheer, accompanied by detailed instructions, will be promoted on TV, in schools and with a poster campaign. It involves clapping twice, giving the thumbs-up, clapping twice more and then punching the air with both arms. The cheer is accompanied by chants of “Olympics”, “Let’s go” and “China”. The Beijing Olympic Organising Committee has hired 30 cheering squads who will show spectators how it is done at Games stadia, reports Xinhua state media.
A committee official said the simple chants and gestures were designed to help spectators cheer for their favourite athletes in a smooth, civilized manner. The Ministry of Education is also arranging special training sessions in schools for the 800,000 students who are expected to attend the Games. Li Ning, president of the Beijing Etiquette Institute, told the Beijing News that the cheer was in line with general international principles for cheering, while at the same time possessing characteristics of Chinese culture.
You can see the results in action here, or brush up your Mandarin with a beautifully illustrated guide here.
Repeat after me: 奥运, 加油, 中国 !
Just as Mourinho hit it lucky when he arrived at Chelsea, so now he’s hit it lucky again at Inter Milan. Then, as now, he inherited a terrific team. At Chelsea, the much-maligned Ranieri had already brought on John Terry, a graduate from the youth team. Ranieri signed Lampard and Gallas before the Abramovich days, and then Joe Cole, Makalele, Cech and Robben before he was fired. Not a bad inheritance.
Now at Inter Milan, Mourinho has inherited the second great Inter team, one that can be compared with the team of the mid-1960s that won Serie A three times (1962/3, 1964/5, 1965/6) and the European Cup twice (1964, 1965) and famously lost to Celtic in 1967. Since then Inter Milan fans have had to watch the glory years of AC Milan (European Cup- and Champions League winners five times since 1989 and finalists eight times) and Juventus. Now Inter Milan’s time has come again. They have won Serie A three times in succession and have built a formidable team. The defence is part-Italian (Materazzi and the goalie, Toldo) and part-South American (Walter Samuel, Zanetti and Maicon). The midfield is part-French (Olivier Dacourt and Patrick Vieira) and part-Portuguese (Figo, Maniche and Gomes) and up front are the Argentinians, Crespo and Cruz, and Ibrahimovic, the Swedish striker. Both Roma and Juventus scored more goals last season but no one conceded as few. Like Manchester United and Chelsea, their title defence was built on an iron defence.
That, of course, is how Mourinho likes it. 1-0 is his kind of score. There is just one snag, as there was at Chelsea when he left it. Inter are an old team. 17 out of 27 in the squad were born in the 1970s. All the big names (except for Cambiasso and Ibrahimovic) are over 30. Some (Figo, Zanetti, Materazzi, Toldo) over 35. This might be OK for the leisurely pace of Serie A, but as Liverpool showed in the Champions League last season, it is no match for a faster side.
And here’s the rub. Lampard and Drogba, the two players Mourinho’s most likely to want to bring over from Chelsea, are not exactly spring chickens. Mourinho never had a youth policy at Chelsea. he didn’t have to. He either inherited star players from Ranieri or bought his own — he spent over £60 million in 2004 and again in 2005. He bought players at their peak (or, like Shevchenko, past it) and erxcept for Essien and Mikel they were not spring chickens as Grant’s luckless successor will find out.
So you can see why Mourinho jumped at the idea of joining Inter. A good team, on a roll. All the basics are in place and there’s money to top it up with some of his favourites from Porto (Deco? Carvalho?) and Chelsea (Lampard? Drogba? Essien?). Portuguese would go well with the contingent already there and African or English might add something new to the Mediterranean/South American mix. But there’s a second problem. Where are the goals going to come from? They didn’t score in either leg against Liverpool and Crespo and Cruz are past their best. No wonder they want Eto’o and Mourinho’s got Drogba’s number for one last big payday. It’s not exactly building for the future, but who cares? Inter and Mourinho want success and they both want it now.
Visitors to Marrakech will remember the Yves Saint Laurent Gardens. The famous designer was born in French Algeria in 1936, one of that extraordinary generation of cultural figures born between 1913 (Camus) and 1943 (Jacques Attali). Others include: Althusser (1918), Derrida (1930) and Physics Nobel Prize winner, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji (1933). Fanon, though born in Martinique in 1925, later lived in Algeria.
Zinedine Zidane, though born in Marseille, was famously of Algerian descent, but belongs to another generation, which includes Olympic gold medallists and world champions, Noureddine Morceli and Hassiba Boulmerka, both champions at 1500 metres.
What do Sepp Blatter, Jose Mourinho’s appointment today at Inter Milan and Real Madrid’s pursuit of Ronaldo have in common?
Well, two things. The first is football’s relentless move towards globalization: players and managers are now international commodities, moving from Portugal to London to Milan (Mourinho) or from Lisbon to Manchester (and possibly to Madrid) (Ronaldo). This is unstoppable and Sepp Blatter’s blustering won’t stop it. What is interesting is the growing conflict between football fans who are intensely local and the changing nature of the sport which is international.
The second thing these big news stories have in common is more specific. The huge success of English Premiership in Europe over recent years reached its climax in Moscow with the first all-English final. The most revealing image of the night was not John Terry or Ronaldo but the shot of Blatter, Platini and all the other great and the good from FIFA and UEFA. They looked like the old men of the Kremlin, stony-faced and deeply unhappy. Like Milton’s Satan, they saw undelighted all delight. Is it really a coincidence that it is this summer that Blatter has issued his attempt to bring back national quotas for football clubs? Those with any memory will know that it was similar UEFA legislation which punished English clubs in the early 1990s, counting Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish players as foreign/overseas. No wonder no English club won the Champions League during those years. If Blatter’s quota is introduced it will have the same effect. But, like Canute, he is fighting against greater forces than UEFA — the EU’s immigration legislation and the new globalization.
Blatter and the UEFA aparatchiks were not the only ones to be shaken by the all-English final. The Italian clubs took one hell of a beating this year. Roma lost to Manchester United, Inter Milan to Liverpool and AC Milan to Arsenal. Not one team from Serie A made it to the Semi-Finals. It was a huge humiliation. The appointment of Mourinho and the inevitable influx of Chelsea players that will follow is the first step to put Italian football back on top. Meanwhile, in Spain egos were just as bruised. Real Madrid were the biggest losers. Yet again, they failed to even make the Quarter-Finals, losing to Roma. Barcelona lost in the Semi-Final, failing to score against Manchester United in more than three hours of football. Messi, Henry , Deco, Gudjohnsen and Eto couldn’t manage a single goal between them. So, of course, Real Madrid have brought out the cheque-book and are trying to buy the best player in the world from — where else? — an English club. Prepare for plenty of transfer action, hirings and firings, as the big Spanish and Italian clubs try to move the centre of gravity of European football back south.
This should have been Chelsea’s season. They started (and ended) with an outstanding manager. They spent more than anyone else. They were not in transition but had countless players at their peak, in their late 20s (Essien, 25; J. Cole and Wright-Phillips, 26; Malouda and Terry, 27; Anelka and Lampard, 29; Drogba, 30; Ballack, 31). They only had two players under 25. Their team, assembled by Ranieri and Mourinho, were settled: seven players had played over 150 times for Chelsea, key players all through the spine of the team (Cech in goal; both centre backs, Carvalho and Terry; Lampard, J. Cole and Makele in the middle and Drogba up front). Experienced, settled, balanced and at the top of their game. Temperamentally pretty sound.
And, crucially, both their main rivals — United and Arsenal — were still in transition, bedding in new acquisitions (Hargreaves, Anderson, Tevez and Nani) or building a new, young team. United had won one league title without Van Nistelroy, but could they win a second without a big-name striker and with so many new, young players? Arsenal had been even more radical. In two years (2006-07) they had lost Bergkamp, Cole, Pires and Campbell, then Lauren and Henry. Could Wenger’s latest new team sustain a long run with so many new or newish players?
Think of 15th August 2004. Chelsea under their new manager, Mourinho, beat United at Stamford Bridge. The United team that day is unrecognisable. Only Scholes and Giggs, Silvestre and O’Shea played for United that day.
Yes, Chelsea lost their manager. They had the Africa Cup which deprived them of key players at a crucial moment and they had a number of major injuries. But this still should have been their season. The prospect for next year is not as good. They have no strikers worth a damn apart from Drogba (hence those ten 1-0 wins—they only scored more than two goals six times in this season’s Premiership). More important, they only have a couple of young players (Mikel and Kalou). Crucial players are getting old. Makelele, superb against Gerrard in the Champions League, is 35. Ballack, Belletti, Shevchenko, Carvalho and Drogba are all past 30. There are ten players between 29 and 35. And then, crucially, there is the Mourinho factor. Sooner or later the Special One is going to turn up at a top Italian or Spanish club with a big chequebook and Drogba, and Carvalho at least, perhaps Lampard and Terry as well, will find it hard to resist his siren call. These are big players, Chelsea’s heart. Even if they’re possible to replace, it will cost more than £70 million. And then there’s the Grant question, still unresolved. he has done superbly well. Chelsea have made it to a Champions League final and were within a whisker of winning back the League title. But Abramovich still dreams of glory. He doesn’t just want to win, he wants to win gloriously. Grant, like Mourinho, is not a glory manager. He’s done well with the team he inherited from Ranieri and Mourinho. But can he rebuild a team?
This is what separates the great managers from the also-rans. Ferguson has done it again and again. So has Wenger. Think of Wenger’s team which did the Double in 1998: Seaman in goal, Dixon, Winterburn, Adams and Keown at the back, Petit and Vieria in midfield, Overmars and Bergkamp. By the team he did the Double again in 2002, Overmars and Petit had gone. In had come Ashley Cole, Henry and Kanu, Lauren, Pires and Wiltord and then Sol Campbell to replace Adams. Few of these played in the team that got to the Champions League Final in 2006. That famous defence had retired, Vieira, Kanu and Wiltord had gone. In had come Fabregas and Clichy, Flamini, van Persie and Hleb.
This permanent revolution costs money, but above all it takes guts. To dismantle a great team is painful. Think of Ferguson losing Cantona and then Keane, Schemichel, Pallister and Bruce, or the controversial decision to let go Ince, Hughes and Kanchelskis. They thought he was crazy to let Van Nistelroy go to Real Madrid, just as some thought Wenger would never manage without Henry, once he left for Barcelona. can Grant do it? Can he build a new team without the old and familiar heartbeat of Chelsea?
Is this Arsenal’s moment, again, after three seasons without silverware. Wenger’s new team isn’t old like Chelsea. It is young, full of potential. Fourteen players 26 or under. Even after Flamini and Lehmann, there are six players who have played more than 120 times for Arsenal. All of them, except for Gilberto, are at their peak. It could be Arsenal’s year.
And yet… He’s already lost Flamini. he may lose Hleb. if he loses Hleb, then will Fabregas stay? The centre of his team, that exhilarating midfield, could fall like dominoes. All three played more than 30 Premiership games this season. They were key players. It would be like 2006 all over again, when Wenger lost Bergkamp, Pires and Cole. Wenger’s been there before but he’s never had to go through this with a team before it had reached its potential. The team of 1998 did the Double, so did the modified team of 2002. The team of 2008 has not won anything. This raises an interesting question about Wenger. His great teams were a hybrid. European flair up front built on a rock-solid English defence which he had inherited. That famous defence went back to the ’80s (Dixon, Winterburn, Adams) and early ’90s (Seaman and Keown). They were all there before Wenger arrived. He has never built a defence like it and since Keown retired, Wenger has only won the FA Cup. Has Wenger got in him to build a great defence comparable to Arsenal’s then or Chelsea’s and United’s now? It doesn’t seem so. Without it, he is building on sand.
So, if Chelsea are getting old and Arsenal are still too young, what of United? Fergsuon too can hear the winged chariot of time. Neville, Giggs, Scholes and Van Der Sar are all in their mid-30s. None of them have more than one more season in them. But nine of his best players are 26 or under, another three are 27. While everyone has been looking at Wenger’s babes, no one has noticed how young Ferguson’s new generation are. Rooney is 22, Nani 21, Anderson 20. Ronaldo is 23, Tevez 24. Carrick, Fletcher and O’Shea are still in their mid-20s. Evra and Vidic too. Fergsuon has 17 players younger than Gallas, Carvalho or Drogba. There are still gaps to fill, but not as many as one might think. Anderson, Nani, Hargreaves and Tevez have bedded down incredibly quickly, in one season during which United have won the League and reached the Champions League final. Not bad for a transitional season. No wonder Ferguson thinks this might be his best team yet. Hard to beat at the back (even without Neville for an entire season); solid in midfield; thrilling up front. Wenger had one player who scared more than seven goals in the Premiership. Ronaldo, Tevez and Rooney scored almost 60 between them. Even the much vilified Saha scored five goals in the Premiership alone.
All will go shopping in the summer. Chelsea desperately. Arsenal perhaps desperately. Ferguson selectively. He will replace Saha and look for a crucial 4th striker. He needs at least one more top full-back and perhaps cover for Ferdinand and Vidic (who missed only nine matches between them—can he be so lucky again?). And perhaps a new goalkeeper to go with Ben Foster. Then the $64,000 question. Think of Scholes’ goal against Barcelona or Giggs’ at Wigan. Will the current midfield manage without them?
It looks like next year might be United’s. But then this year’s should have been Chelsea’s.
The great faultline in Turkish politics is usually considered to be the authoritarian secularists, as represented by the army, vs the democratic Islamists, who in the form of the AK party are currently in government. The recent attempt by the country’s chief prosecutor to get AK closed down for violating the country’s secular order is seen as merely the latest example of this feud, which dates back to the founding of modern Turkey by Atatürk.
But this is dichotomy is a false one, argues Nicholas Birch in a web exclusive for Prospect. Both the secularists and the Islamists are locked into a “Kemalist” system that ties Turkey’s form of Sunni Islam close to the state in a brew of piety and nationalism. At the heart of the Islamist posturing so hated by secularists is their own authoritarian tradition of co-opting religion for national purposes.
Also this week, John Quiggin and Tim Lambert attempt to rehabilitate Rachel Carson, of Silent Spring fame, from right-wing attempts to smear her as responsible for the deaths of millions from malaria.
PLUS It’s your last chance to vote in the Prospect/Foreign Policy public intellectuals poll. Voting closes on Thursday; be sure to have your say.
In recent years there’s been a general move towards political parties trying to use new technologies to engage citizens in ever more innovative ways. If there’s a latest web trend, you can bet your shirt that politicians will be all over it like a political rash. In the London mayoral elections we’ve seen Brian Paddick Twittering, Boris rally his legions on Facebook, and all candidates push their latest campaign films on YouTube.
Yet beyond these fairly mainstream campaign activities, there are signs of underhand new media tactics. In previous campaigns such moves would usually go unnoticed, but you can now use monitoring services like Opinion Tracker (which I set up) to monitor what people are doing and saying across the internet.
Possibly the most interesting under-the-radar campaign activity to surface in this year’s campaign is the rise of what I call “Tube-stepping.” Tube-stepping is a cross between the old journalistic trick of doorstepping and the new Asbo-generation technique of “happy-slapping,” and involves “members of the public” (actually they usually seem to be largely party activists) asking candidates difficult questions, catching their stuttering responses on a video phone and then posting these films on YouTube for the world to see (and laugh at).
So far Boris’s activists seem to be most adept at tube-stepping, with a whole campaign being orchestrated by a group calling itself Comrade Fidel. Team Ken have also had a go, taking a more conventional approach.
Looking at the numbers of views each of the films have got, I’m not sure tube-stepping is going to have much effect in this election. But no doubt we’ll be see bigger and better campaigns in the future.
I had gone for over two years without regularly attending an office, but it took a mere six weeks for office culture to ensnare my grammar all over again. During a phone call earlier this week, I was horrified to discover the following words coming out of my mouth: “so we just need to confirm up a few things.” Confirm up? UP?? A cold sweat ensued. Shaken, I mumbled some hasty apologies and said I’d call back later.
What was the “up” doing in this sentence? Sitting there at the back end of a verb, it’s as embarrassing and unnecessary as the spoiler on the boot of a Ford Escort. During my life as a PhD student, I regularly get asked if I’m “writing up” yet, to which I grumpily reply that I am about to “start writing” or have “some writing to do.” I never expected to find myself scattering “ups” in this way.
But lest we forget: “please park up over there”, “time to finish up now please”, “I’m now heading up this organisation”, “here’s the membership application to get you joined up”, “we’ll firm up the details” and so on. Of course there are also more legitimate “ups” in circulation - “cashing up”, “adding up”, “washing up”, “sweeping up”, “clearing up”… funny how there are so many which relate to cleanliness. Which may be precisely the point. The metaphor that arises when “up” crops up is of leaves being efficiently swept into a pile, put into bags, then disposed of. A PhD needs “writing up”, only because one assumes that it is a hellish mess of ideas and research that has become scattered over time, and needs gathering, ordering and disposing of.
The flipside of the sweeping metaphor, however, is that the job is never really done. Sweeping leaves is actually a fairly pointless exercise, in the broader scheme of things, as the leaves will always come back. “I’ve swept the leaves” has a Beckettian ring to it, a sense of its own futility. Work has been done, but without constituting a job being done. By comparison, “I’ve swept up the leaves” represents a minor triumph. Some semblance of finality has been achieved, momentarily ignoring the eventual defeat that the sweeper will suffer at the hands of the leaves.
So it is with office work. Offices suffer from too many intransitive verbs - we talk, meet, work, sit - and not enough full stops. A veneer of completion has to be introduced periodically, for fear that time will otherwise just pass and pass. When is something actually “confirmed”? Difficult to say. Far easier to think that it might instead be “confirmed up” once and for all, only for the next act of confirmation to begin and end. And with that, I’ll shut up.
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