The Leisure Review: La Flamme Rouge

La Flamme Rouge edition 7; dateline 26 September 2014

The vote that did say ‘Yes’ for Scotland
So much Scottishness in the news in recent times that even the most ardent newshound could be forgiven for missing some of the bigger stories. Of all the votes taking place, the decision by the Royal and Ancient to turn its back on 260 years of traditional misogynistic self-righteousness and admit women to its membership was perhaps the most heart-warming. Three-quarters of the 2,400 members cast a vote, 85% of which included a tick in the box marked “Aye, go on then”, putting club secretary, Peter Dawson, on the right side at last. Dawson had previously defended the ban on women members but had more recently urged members to do what was “right for golf”; not, it would be churlish to note, do what was right but do what was right for golf. “The R&A has served the sport of golf well for 260 and I am confident that the club will continue to do so,” he said the morning after. Given the willingness of this royal and ancient governing body to permit and facilitate the transformation of the game by commercially lucrative technological innovation, this is a moot point but perhaps even we can concede that, taking the last two and half centuries as whole, they have done their bit.

Gathering clouds
Four of biggest gambling companies – William Hill, Ladbrokes, Coral and Paddypower – take out full-page ads to outline their change of tack on their advertising campaigns, including no special offer ads until after 9pm, more space for responsible gambling messages and no promotion of gaming machines in the window of shops. Only the most cynical of observers would suggest that such magnanimous self-regulation usually only appears when the threatening clouds of legislation can be seen to be gathering but it is, as even cynics would concede, a start.

The better bag
The Advertising Standards Authority may be overworked or they may spend the day throwing playing cards into a top hat. They can only respond to the challenges placed before them and their recent workload includes arbitrating in a dispute between two tea brands (we won’t add to their profile by mentioning them) regarding the various merits of round or pyramidal teabags. Perhaps once this important issue is settled they can turn their attention to the issue of why advertising specifically aimed at children (and yes, we mean you, CITV) is still allowed.

Wiggo’s helping hand
Earlier this summer while his colleagues at Team Sky toiled through sun-drenched Yorkshire and other English counties before heading for a rain-sodden France, Bradley Wiggins arrived in Glasgow for the Commonwealth Games and made it clear why a few of Brailsford’s boys find him to be such a difficult room-mate. Having barely paused to unpack his England skin suit, Wiggo launched into a critique of the Sir Chris Hoy velodrome, or more accurately the profile afforded to the man after whom it is named. “I’d be a bit pissed off if I were him because they’ve stuck a great big Emirates sign over his name,” said Hoy’s fellow cycling knight. “He won’t complain because he’s far too nice, so I’ll complain for him.”

Adieu to you and you and Hugh
A pre-election reshuffle by the prime minister blew some new blood into the cabinet room and proved anything but an ill wind for a number of outgoing ministers, a former sports minister among them. Hugh Robertson, once our man in the sporting hot seat, was ministerially minding his own business at the Treasury when he was told to pack his calculator and Post-it notes and prepare to take delivery of a knighthood in recognition of his contribution to public life. Perhaps they will name a velodrome after him?

Evidence of business brilliance: another Croc
Here comes another case study to add to the folder of evidence that is kept handy for when anyone tries to explain why only the profit motive and brains that drive business can save our society. Crocs, the US water- and beach-friendly footwear company, was reported to be laying off staff after a 40% drop in profits. Launched in 2002, the brand grew to include 600 stores around the world and a production of one million pairs a month by 2005. The company floated on the stock exchange in 2006 but by 2009 profits began to slip as the management team slowly realised that once everyone had bought as many pairs of the virtually indestructible shoes as they felt they needed demand was liable to drop. Thus Crocs will be added to the long list of companies that were once offered as a living example of inherent right of free-market economics to consume everything in its path before being added to the A-level economics curriculum as a clear illustration of the blinding stupidity of business.

Taking a stand the FA way
And speaking of consuming everything in its path, Fifa has recently been able to add the English FA to its list of organisations and individuals that have had the temerity to be mildly critical of the international governing bodies internal integrities. Greg Dyke told the Commons culture, media and sport select committee that the FA will not be bidding to host a World Cup until Fifa reforms its bidding process. Should Mr Dyke every get round to reading the Leisure Review’s back catalogue of editorials he would find plenty of reasons for the FA to have nothing to do with Fifa ever again rather than just declining to bid for a World Cup. We may well send one of the La Flamme Rouge editorial interns down the corridor to suggest to the editor that he might like to send Mr Dyke a little gift by way of a reminder; and that he should be sure to leave the price on.

The only way is ethics
And speaking of Fifa, it seems that the international governing body is stepping up its efforts to ensure that the reservoir of stupidity and venal self-interest from which satirists draw their raw material is topped up to the brim. The latest signals from Planet Blatter (the body around which Planet Football is seen to orbit) show that the footballing overlords are now going to great lengths to make sure that the findings of its own ethics committee do not find their way beyond a readership of four people, never mind into the public domain. Michael Garcia, former district attorney for New York and now head of the Fifa ethics committee’s own investigatory team, has spent 18 months exploring the details of the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. Having delivered his report, which weighs in at some 350 pages, Garcia is wrestling with the people who actually commissioned this exercise in openness and illumination about what should happen next. Publish it, says Garcia. Oh no need for all that, says Hans-Joachim Eckert, head of the committee’s adjudicatory arm. And so it continues, making sure that the cash continues to flow in the right direction for the benefit of everyone that matters most.

Sticking to our knitting

The following item was compiled just days before Brooks Newmark hit the headlines and so bizarre has been his demise that it seems fitting to offer this as the LFR office junior intended.

Remember David Cameron’s big society? Time for a brief recap, if only to bring the new minister for civil society, Brooks Newmark, up to speed (and yes, that is his job title, and yes, that is his name). When Cams walked in to Number 10 and told Ozzy to get on with making the paupers’ pips squeak, someone sold him the idea of the ‘big society’ as a way to cut government spending and get other people – volunteers, charities, those sorts of people – to do the things government should be doing. The first fly in the ointment came when Cams’ domestic staff and the people employed at work to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself with the scissors explained that in the real world beyond country suppers and inherited privilege this was already happening. The ointment jar was then smashed to bits by charities explaining that not only were they already doing all of this but that the chancellor’s brilliant economic plan had cut their resources while vastly increasing the need for their services. Eventually the need for food banks reached the prime minister’s own constituency and, after no more than four or five relaunches, no one mentioned the big society again. Until, that is, some criticism of the Lobbying Act prompted Mr Newmark to stick his oar into the debate, which he did by saying charities should be “sticking to their knitting” and staying “out of the realms of politics”. When it was quietly brought to his attention that, even in a political environment in which Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage are taken seriously, such comments made his own stupidity, ignorance and incompetence all too apparent, he tried to explain that he hadn’t actually meant what he’d meant but had merely missed the adjective ‘party’ from in front of the noun ‘politics’. Of course he had.

Mrs Smith