Dream On

Dear Jamie Oliver,

So while attempting to have a night off tonight I decided to watch your "Dream School" show. I thought the idea of using big names to try to inspire and educate kids who had been failed by the education system was interesting. I liked the notion of finding out how much difference a good school and great teachers could make.

However one thing on tonights show made me really angry. One of the students, a young mum, arrived at school with her child - the kid had chicken pox and so couldn't attend a normal daycare centre. The student was sent home and left the program in floods of tears saying that having a child had ruined all her chances in life.

Can't we even DREAM of a future where a really good school would be able to help a woman in that situation? Is a school hardship fund to cover emergency childcare something we can't even DREAM of? Or what about the possibility of one of the teachers (perhaps someone who has had chickenpox as a child so isn't at risk) going round to visit her later and providing one-to-one catch-up.

To be quite frank - call me - I will gladly do either or both of those tasks. And yes I've had chickenpox!

Add to that that earlier in the same show when other students were bullying her over her status as a young mum the response was to encourage her to toughen up rather than to educate the other pupils to think more carefully about what they were saying. Frankly I can't help thinking your school needs a really good sex education teacher - not of the Anne Widdicombe "it's immoral!!" school of education but, frankly, again, me.

If we as a nation are to accept the message you claim to spread about improving our society and giving our young people the opportunities they deserve we have to include young parents in that. Not least because they are the ones raising the next generation of young people.

And what message are you sending to the wider world if your response to the issues of time management which affect parents is to chuck them out immediately without even sitting down to try and figure out a way of working around the problem? It is deeply irresponsible.

But my guess is it's just inconvenient for you to change your filming schedule or give up a little bit of your free time to actually help someone else. Once the cameras are off the enthusiasm for helping others is off too.

Well some of us don't take that attitude. As I've said above I'd be happy to help. And I mean that whether the cameras are on or off. Seriously contact me, your school could use a head of feminism I expect.

Yours Kate

Big Opinions and Big Conversations

So I was on The Big Questions again this morning. And it's up on iPlayer for the next 7 days if you want to watch it, click here. There's no particular bit to watch - I speak in all three debates.

I didn't get a chance to reply to some points though. I guess the biggest two are:

(1) "Islam's not a sexist religion, what do you know - you haven't read the Koran". Well firstly I have read quite a lot of the Koran but more to the point the people telling me Islam isn't sexist have also just said they would accept their husband having more than one wife but not accept a woman with several husbands. That's erm, what's the word, yes, sexist. And one of the people saying this is veiled to the point of only having her eyes visible - I have never seen a Muslim man dressed like this.

(2) "But as a feminist you must support these women converting to Islam because it's their 'choice'". No. I'm absolutely in favour of women having the right to make choices for themselves but only when they are able to do so on the basis of fair circumstances and true information.

The phrase "pro-choice" is used a lot when it comes to abortion - the right to choose what happens to your own body. But that's different when we're talking about a woman in China who has discovered she is pregnant with a girl in a family and culture where only a boy will do. She might be making that choice but it's not a choice made in fair circumstances. Similarly a vulnerable young woman who chooses not to terminate because a counsellor on a fake help line has told her to do so will give her breast cancer isn't acting on true information so again it's not a case of "her choice".

What we need to do is to take away the unfair circumstances and give women ready access to true information. Then their choice will be meaningful. But in the meantime we need to make sure women are not pushed into choices like this which can ruin their lives and leave them timidly peering out at what is left of their world through a tiny slit in a piece of fabric.

I had a very interesting message on the way home from a viewer: "I work for social services in mental health and I’ve seen a disturbing amount of converts (mostly female) to [Islam] I’m even working with the police as it would seem that there are radicals targeting people with mental health or people with a low IQ. I myself work with 4 people who have converted or are thinking about it. Any who I just wanted to say it’s great to see someone like yourself voicing there [their] opinions on national TV." Now that is both unsurprising and deeply deeply frightening.

This evening I did a much lighter piece on LBC about the British Comedy Awards and how Frankie "isn't Down's Syndrome hilarious" Boyle isn't even up for one or involved in the awards show. My conclusion was: great news, lets hope he stops it and/or goes away now. An on the other awards I'd like to give them to (from the nominees): David Mitchell, Jo Brand, Sarah Millican and Britain's best sitcom: Miranda! Love you all! You can listen to the show on the podcast from LBC but you have to register and I think pay money so I'll leave the link here - you have to follow the Richard Arnold show and today's episode is called 'Colin flying the flag' - but frankly if it's more than £2.50 I will cut you a deal and repeat my words verbatim over the phone for £2*!!

* Which would by the way be £2 more than my TBQ and LBC appearance fees combined, just for the next time someone says since they saw me on TV I must be super-rich!

Nudity At Work

Nudity seems to have become a running theme on here lately so let me cover another variation on that theme that is driving me up the wall at the moment: The Naked Office.

For those of you fortunate enough to have missed this televisual "gem" let me give you the brief synopsis: Seven Suphi, self-styled corporate business training guru, arrives at the offices of a company with falling profits and analyses the way they work in an effort to boost success. So far so good. The week of business coaching however is leading up to "naked Friday" when employees are encouraged to come to work in the nude. Apparently "if you can come to work naked, what can't you achieve?!".

Now I really do subscribe to some of this. I can really understand how pushing people out of their comfort zone and normal routine can be useful for struggling workplaces. However I am very very uncomfortable with the complete ignorance of two massive issues on the subject:

Firstly body image issues. One episode I saw the employees were challenged to try wrestling and one larger woman was unwilling to participate because she was uncomfortable in the tight lycra suit provided. Rather than allowing her to wear a tracksuit and join in - she was sent home and criticised for refusing to participate (can't wait for the episode set in the offices of a Muslim-run business where the women wear burqas). No mention was made of the fact that wandering about in front of TV cameras in a lycra bodysuit might draw a woman's (or a man's) attention to insecurities they have about their appearance. It is assumed at all points that fear is preventing participants stripping off rather than shame or bitter entrenched self-loathing. One woman even mentioned having been bullied about her appearance at school but apparently she just needed to get her clothes off to resolve that...

Secondly sexual harassment at work. Imagine, for a second going to work naked without TV cameras there. I know what would happen to me - I would be shouted at, touched inappropriately and finally asked to leave by upset senior staff. But somehow all the nudity in The Naked Office is entirely non-sexual. The fact is that women who go to work in trousers and loose-fitting shirts get sexually harassed frequently in the UK, I refuse to believe a woman who shows up fully nude will not find her male colleagues passing judgement. Presumably these bits are edited out. And at one point a woman says she feels intimidated at the thought of her male bosses being naked in the office. Some men (flashers/perverts) choose to show their genitals to women with the intention of frightening and upsetting them. Anyone with that behaviour pattern would be congratulated on their bravery in this show and their victim accused of failing to participate.

It would be nice to live in a world where stripping off was seen as simply a handy way to deal with hot weather. But we don't live in that world and it's just daft to pretend we do. There are real issues here - why won't Seven Suphi focus on them?

Not Big Enough Questions

So again I was on The Big Questions on BBC One on Sunday. The replay function is here if you want to check it out. Although I came accross pretty well (I thought, thanks those who messaged me to say nice things) I was a bit annoyed that I didn't get a chance to answer two points relating to the debate on Mother Teresa being canonised. Of course I had my hand up and was halfway out of my seat tugging on Nicky Campbell's jacket and begging but they ignored me. Sulk.

Firstly Louise Bagshawe said that it was irrelevant that Mother Teresa opposed birth control and abortion. Her point was that as a Catholic of course she opposed these things and that as canonisation was a Catholic honour it is up to Catholic leaders (or indeed God) to make the decision on how good a Catholic she was.

But that's total rubbish. If a branch of Islam decided to canonise (or the equivalent) a suicide bomber she would be the first one on her high horse condemning that decision. Mother Teresa did not spend her life at home praying and affecting no-one else - she was deeply involved in international politics and her actions and efforts on birth control and abortion as well as the reprehensible way she ran her so-called charity caused totally unnecessary suffering and death to people around the world. In fact she caused much more human suffering and death than any suicide bomber ever did. If (when) the Catholic church chooses to canonise her any self-respecting Catholic should leave the faith and those who don't should expect to be on the receiving end of serious criticism.

Secondly the guy who claimed to have had his mental health problems cured miraculously after he prayed to Mother Teresa. Isn't it interesting how those who experience miracle healing always seem to have conditions where there are other secular cases of those same conditions spontaneously righting themselves? You show me a guy who prayed to Mother Teresa and his missing leg grew back and I will line up with the faithful!

Listen To Yourselves!

So I'm working on my computer and (without wishing to make excuses) Mr Cru has had his lunch and left the TV on which is now showing the diet and weight-loss show "Biggest Loser USA". One of the competitors, talking about how desperate she is to lose weight because she has family history of diabetes, just said "I want to live to see my son graduate from college, to see my daughters get married..." Bleugh! I want to live to see this woman's children grow up and tell their mum they don't care about stupid gender-based aspirations imposed on them by others when they're still too young to understand them. I want to live to see this woman have to plaster on a smile and pretend she's happy as the daughters pick up olympic boxing medals and the son stays home to raise triplets.

The Trouble With Cruella

Re-posted from The F-Word, where I am currently guest-blogging.

As some readers will have noticed, I was interviewed for a BBC Two documentary about working women called "The Trouble With Working Women" which was shown this evening. You can see the whole thing here on the BBC iPlayer. And if you just want to see my bit - it starts at 37 minutes in, so you can scroll it along.

I've just finished watching the whole thing and I thought it was quite interesting, they do speak to a range of people on the subject. I had a few notes though.

They talk a lot about the extent to which having children holds women back but they never stop to ask whether that in itself is a result of sexism. I mean if having children made you a bad employee we would assume that the small number of women who do get to the top would all be women without children. Surprise - not true! Margaret Thatcher has two children, Segolene Royal four children, Hillary Clinton one child. And the most successful women in business: Dame Marjorie Scardino has three children, Dorothy Thompson two children, Linda Cook three children. There is no evidence to suggest mothers make less valuable employees. What we do know is that female bosses, regardless of the number of children they have, work an average three hours more per week than their male counterparts.

Later they gravely warn that one in four women with a degree is "childless at forty" - something they should probably mention to the noxious woman complaining she wouldn't hire a woman of child-bearing age. Note to any female readers currently navigating the credit crunch job market - why not consider a career-enhancing hysterectomy... oh that's right because it's totally screwed up and sickening.

Even so the one in four figure is useless information without telling us what percentage of men with degrees are childless at the same age - among my college friends most of the women have children but almost none of the guys. And anyway one in five women overall do not have children in their lifetimes so it seems like the degree might not be the main factor. Plus what percentage of these women wanted children in the first place? Maybe getting a degree opened them up to other things that they enjoy more. Maybe they're thrilled to be without children and able to focus their free time on travel and artistic pursuits (as a friend said to me the other day "Oh God Kate I wouldn't have had children if I'd know I was creative!"). Maybe they would prefer to be described with the term "child free".

They then say that 30% of mothers stay at home full time but that two-thirds of working mothers said they did so out of necessity. For me there's a gap there where they should be asking what can be done to support mothers who want to spend more time with kids and why the benefit system forces women back to work so quickly after they have children. There is a lot of talk about women making tough choices but the reality for many women is clearly that it's not a choice at all.

But also I'd like to know what percentage of stay at home mothers do so at least partly because their job prospects are so hampered by sexism - certainly true of all the stay-at-home mums I know.

As so often with these things they seem to get totally sidelined into the motherhood thing and away from the real issue - sexism. Amazing when you consider they actually interview guys who say "women shouldn't be allowed to work", "women aren't put on this earth to work". And then you're telling me it's my choices that are holding my career back? No - it's these assholes!

So where is the documentary asking how so many men manage to "juggle" a career with playing golf and downloading internet porn? Whoops, forgot to make that one!

The notion that women having children explains everything from the pay gap to sexual harassment is totally sexist because only women can be "women having children"! I honestly believe if women rather than men grew the vast majority of beards the government would announce they were unhygienic and we wouldn't be allowed to work in the food industry which would overnight become the best paid industry in the country. And if men had the children they'd be automatically promoted every time they squeezed one out because they were demonstrating an ability to shoulder more responsibility...

We're not victims of biology - we're victims of misogyny.

I HATE Anti Wrinkle Cream Adverts

...and Scary Little Girls kindly took the time to put my rant onto a video/pod/whatever you call it. Enjoy. And if you do enjoy you might pop over to CurrentTV and add a comment about it there.

What Kind Of Tart Are You?

I've just seen Gordon Ramsay on his "Kitchen Nightmare's" show - promoting a vegetarian restaurant in France, putting a sticker on a girl of about three that read "I'm a vegetarian tart". Now admittedly I don't think that "tart" has the same double meaning in French that it does in English, but in case the implication wasn't clear - he was surrounded by women dressed as can-can dancers (similar to the image shown here). He also previewed the promotional exercise by taking the owner of the restaurant to a topless burlesque show and harping on about how "Paris is sexy". Still eh? If it gets people to buy his over-priced food I guess sexualising infants is just fine...

I HATE Jeremy Clarkson

There are some things that just need saying. I HATE Jeremy Clarkson. Phew, now I’ve said it. Maybe it seems harsh of me to single him out from a number of car show presenters and general public personalities. I feel he merits it though and I’ll tell you why:

Clarkson is not just a car show presenter, he’s the car show presenter. He defines the genre. For many years he’s been the driving force behind the way the television-shows-about-cars industry works. When he first worked on Top Gear in 1988 it was a show that mostly reviewed different cars and advised would-be buyers on the advantages and disadvantages of different models. When it was re-modelled in 2002 he was the main presenter.

Now even when the show first started it had a mixture of male and female presenters. The new version has always been 100% male - and for that matter 100% white and British. And the standard of the banter went with it. Cars that Clarkson doesn’t like are referred to as “gay” or “girly” - as though those were insults. Women are standardly referred to as “birds”. The focus of the show shifted from reviewing cars to frivolously taking pointless journeys, racing sports cars against military vehicles and aircraft and sometimes even destroying perfectly roadworthy vehicles.

As the environmental movement raised awareness of the impact carbon emissions had on the climate, the show could have incorporated advice on reducing emissions, on lower emission vehicles and emphasised that high-speed low-efficiency sports cars were the sort of things to be driven occasionally as a treat if you enjoyed that sort of thing. But with Clarkson at the helm of course that didn’t happen. We can only imagine that after all those years of being given privileged access to fancy cars and events he was so far in the pockets of the motor lobby that he couldn’t see the wood for the burnt stumps where once there were trees. Instead he started making insulting remarks about environmentalists. He bragged about breaking speed limits and complained at length about fuel and congestion taxation, which aims to cut emissions.

Now that in itself would be enough reason for some people to hate the man. I am not so quick to use such strong terms. I can sympathise that there is a market for that sort of misogynist, homophobic* planet-murdering prattle and someone was always going to step up to the plate.

The trouble is he isn’t just a (or the) car show presenter any more. He’s gone to great lengths to present himself as a spokesman for the white middle-class male adrift in a sea of political correctness. His website (and I know, I know, it’s a joke…) says “Jeremy Clarkson - Clarkson information, books, DVDs, forum, and news from Britains next prime minister?”. And if that’s just a joke, why have nearly 50,000 people have signed an online petition asking for him to become prime minister? He writes newspaper columns - and they appear in the political pages, not the motoring pages. His books include collections of poltical essays. The style may be “fun” and chatty to read but he’s covering topics like Basque separatism and war in Iraq.

The first article on the Top Gear website is clearly a 100% political piece written by him and titled “CLARKSON: Soon the annual tax bill for a commuter will be £10k”

Firstly that is a straightforward lie. Road tax on even the most polluting vehicles is £400 a year. If your commute goes in to central London (and if so why the hell are you driving!) you’ll pay £8 a day congestion charge (5 days a week, 49 weeks a year = £1960) and if your commute is 50 miles each way (then get the train! or at 8 miles per litre, 65p tax per litre, 5 days a week, 49 weeks a year = £1991) then that’s £4351 a year - less than half the number he is suggesting.

Secondly the whole point of increasing tax on higher emissions vehicles on unnecessary routes is to encourage drivers to switch to other means of travel and lower emission cars. He grumbles the cost of a tax disc on a Lamborghini Gallardo could rise to nearly a thousand pounds. But given the car itself costs £133,000, I think owners can afford it. And given it emits at least 325g of CO2 per kilometer (more than twice that of, for example, a Renault Megane or a Vauxhall Astra) my feeling is great, lets put the tax up even higher. No-one needs to drive a car like that.

Thirdly - and for the sake of my mental health I’m trying to limit myself to only looking at one of his horrible articles - the thing is littered with offensive remarks. The first sentence refers to a woman as “some bird”. He refers to a female politician as “some orange-haired old bat”.

Then he gets on with denying climate change. Now of course he never says it’s not happening, because it is. Instead he says certain events may not be a direct result of it. Sure, sometimes a freak wave gives you wet feet when the tide isn’t actually coming in - but when it’s up to your knees, best to fold up the deck-chairs just in case. People are already dying around the world as a direct result of climate change. There’s no probability about whether or not it’s happening, it is already happening, the uncertainty is how much worse is it going to get.

His conclusion on the cost of taxing so-called “super-cars” is this: “That’s not taxation. That’s rape.”. I won’t even say anything, I think it’s pretty obvious that’s not an appropriate thing to say.

And that’s on his car show website. So it’s not that he’s been “spotted” on his car show and asked to branch out in to politics - he’s actively choosing to use his car show as a platform for his political opinions. And here’s the real rub: It’s working! He’s kind-of accepted on TV as some sort of lovable right-wing not-afraid-to-speak-his-mind pundit. He’s on Have I Got News…, QI, even Who Do You Think You Are? as though he’s an institution that we’re all comfortable with in the UK.

But are we really all comfortable with vicious anti-environmentalism on the basis of lies? With misogyny and homophobia* from someone who is genuinely trying to influence policy-making in the UK? Personally I’d like to present the alternative point of view in a one-off BBC TV special called “Jeremy Clarkson: Who The F*** Does He Think He Is?”

* Actually he’s been pretty racist too, I’ll leave that for now, I think we’ve got enough to be getting on with!

TV Boobs

Never watch Extreme Makeover. Did that really need saying? I was innocently perched on the sofa this morning with a couple of hot buttered crumpets and a mug of tea not paying much attention to the TV when a "top cosmetic surgeon" suddenly appeared talking about breast reduction surgery (having just performed three - or is that six - for three women). This is what he said "breast reduction surgery is one of the most satisfying surgeries you can perform because the patient wakes up and suddenly they're not handicapped any more..." Yes ladies apparently larger than average boobs are a "handicap".

Better go and clean the crumpet and tea splatters off my TV screen now...

Beauty Kit for Little Girls

Really clever spoof adverts for, well, watch and see, creepy and disturbing but not all that far from the messages children are receiving these days. Also watch in wonder/amazement as I successfully embed a video clip...

The Sporting Post

Ok, this is going to be a big one. There are things in life that we take for granted, things we've always known to be true and don't usually feel the need to question. And then sometimes for one reason or another we end up questioning them and sometimes they hold up to that questioning and sometimes they don't. Now I'm going to say something controversial:

Professional sports are a waste of money and resources.

I guess what made me really start thinking about all this was the death of Bob Woolmer. It's still not clear what happened but the general consensus that seems to be forming is that someone cared more about protecting their own match fixing racket than about Bob Woolmer's life. Even if we found out that Bob died of natural causes, the fact that we all assumed there was enough incentive for murder there should be cause enough for concern.

Then a couple of days ago I got a letter from my energy supplier - EDF. They were proud to announce they would be sponsoring the forthcoming rugby world cup. So proud in fact they felt the need to write and let me know specially. All I could think was that this was an excuse by the management to use company money to get themselves ringside seats. Personally I will not benefit at all from their sponsorship. I would benefit much more if they instead reduced my bill by an amount equivalent to my share of the sponsorship. A bit like I would benefit much more from the London Olympics if they just reduced my council tax in line with my share.

Today I read an article from the BBC about the impact of sports on fans. The research showed that winning fans were in fact more aggressive than losing fans. They also found these fans were more aggressive than they had been before the game. Losing reduced happiness, but winning did not increase happiness. It's not the biggest study or the most impressive but it doesn't seem to have found any positive side effects to guys watching sports. And of course we've all seen horror footage of fans rioting after football matches. And I think most of us have been out socialising and had our evening disrupted by the arrival of a big crowd of noisy drunk guys huggging each other and singing something about "One-nil". And many of us have felt intimidated or actually been hurt, deliberately or accidentally by these guys.

Professional sports do nothing for gender equality. The three top sports in the UK: football, rugby and cricket are barely played by women, when they are the matches are almost never televised or promoted and sponsorship is negligible. No women play these sports professionally in the UK. Other minority sports face a continuous uphill struggle to get funding and recognition for the women's side of the game. How can we tell young people that they live in a society where we value equal opportunities, then say "boys you can work as professional sportpeople, sorry girls you can't"?

And finally look at all the other things that professional sports fans are encouraged to do: drink too much, smoke, eat unhealthy pies and chips and waste money gambling. They also are likely to hang around in big groups of guys leaving their wives unsupported and their children feeling unloved. If children are brought along they are dressed up in team colours they are too young to understand, taught how to shout abuse at other fans and exposed to drunken rowdy behaviour.

By now you are probably thinking "bah humbug"and you probably have a few questions racing round your head. A few points about the benfits of sports that have been drummed into us all from birth and are going to take a bit of dislodging...

What about encouraging children to take up sports? Surely we need sports funding more than ever now to combat rising child obesity?

I am all in favour of sport in schools. And indeed my EDF letter assures me that they'll be funding a major school rugby program alongside the rugby world cup. I can't get hold of the numbers but what percentage of the money they're spending is going to schools? I suspect very little. Lots more good could be done if management didn't need to keep their executive boxes.

When I was at school we all played sport twice a week. Well most kids did. We were told in every subject from music to maths that we shouldn't be competitive, it was about doing the best WE could. Except sport. Then is was about winning. And I wasn't good enough at it to win. So I wrote excuse notes, faked illness, went AWOL, etc. And I was wildly depressed about it - all the subjects I was good at I had to shut up about and the one thing I wasn't so good at I was paraded infront of the rest of the school and made to look like an idiot. Parents were not invited in for geography day - no, they came in for sports day and laughed at me.

Funding school sports equipment is the excuse for everything these days. You can even get free school sports equipment vouchers with chocolate eggs. Equipment doesn't make kids fit, bright enthusiastic dedicated teachers and parents who encourage kids to participate without belittling them make kids fit. Chocolate bars and a nation obsessed with sitting on the sofa watching others do sport don't help either. The number of children who will go on to play professional sport is tiny. The number who aspire to do so and see their dreams end in disappointment is much higher. And the number who know from the outset that they'll never be able to live up to that standard and are quickly taught that sport for them is something to watch, is the highest of all.

What about encouraging sports at grass-roots level for adults?

Years after I left school I discovered I enjoyed playing sport. I tried to join a team and when I couldn't find a team I started my own. Over the three years I ran that team (in Tokyo), I spent a fortune out of my own pocket paying for practice courts, balls, bibs, kit, spare shin-pads, socks, adverts to find new players, laundering kit, competition entry fees, website upkeep, hiring refs and linesmen, league subscription fees and internal administration money. Not to mention all the time I put in. Of course I was pretty careful about saving money where I could. We got our shirts from a local mens team who were throwing them out to get new ones, etc. Despite eventually winning the all-Japan women's five-a-side tournament, I was never able to get any sponsorship money from local businesses or government programs.

When I came back to the UK I joined a local FA-registered side. I paid £50 FA registration fee, I paid to train every week, we all chipped in to pay for coaching, I paid for a transfer when I wasn't getting a game and we payed for matches we played and covered our own transport to and from games.

As far as I can see there is NO FUNDING at grassroots level for adult sport in the UK or overseas. Or if there is it isn't coming into the women's games at all. I no longer play group sport, the effort and cost isn't worth it.

Don't men need sports to somehow use up all that testosterone?

Well, as the Cardiff University researchers have established, watching sport in fact generates more testosterone and increases the likelihood that guys will become aggressive. If guys wanted to use up excess testosterone, they could try playing sport. Mr Cru likes boxing - he used to participate but now he just watches it on TV. I'm not a fan but in the interests of domestic harmony I tolerated it when he first moved in. A little over a year later I've started deliberately leaving the room when it's on. If I watch it late at night I don't sleep so well and I have more violent and upsetting dreams. Even as cynical and defensive towards it as I am, I am still well aware that I am affected by it. I thought boxing was the extreme end of sports but I increasingly see similarly agressive behaviour being accepted as the norm in rugby and even in supposedly non-contact football. And of course our screens and stadiums are now welcoming the even more violent option of "ulitmate fighting" where kicking, strangling and breaking arms and legs are also allowed. Occassionally Mr Cru will watch this too to my horror and every time I see it, there is actual blood spilt.

But what if I like watching sport?

So do I. But wouldn't it be nicer to go and see a game where the stakes were a great deal lower, where the games were genuinely played for honour? The prize money came from the ticket sales and thus accurately reflected the entertainment value of the sport? So playing good quality skillful sport became as important as winning and diving and then screaming for a penalty was a thing of the past? I think a happy medium would be that ticket sales could go to pay players wages, sponsorship money could only be given to school sports campaigns and merchandising profits should as a sign of good will be given to charity. Government money should of course be barred from going into sports, other than where needed in schools. I think the fun to be had watching sport under that arrangement would be much greater. And you could genuinely feel that you were doing something positive by going to a game.

But what about our international reputation for being good at sport?

We could trade that in for an international reputation for having the good sense not to waste resources encouraging drunken violent sexist aggression, cheating and in some cases even murder. We could use the money we save to build a new reputation as the country which prioritises improving the human condition across the globe rather than spending all our money on having half a dozen guys who can kick really hard and run really fast...

Awards for effort?

There is a general fuss being made about Zara Philips winning sports personality of the year. People are complaining that she has had an easy route to the top. Well easier than many, sure, but it's not like Paula Radcliffe has to milk the family goat and cook chapattis on an open fire before she goes running. If the award is for the person who has worked the hardest then we'd have to start looking at people who put in hours and hours of time but then never made it due to injury or just not being naturally gifted enough. If Kelly Holmes had broken an ankle before the finals and come home without a medal would we have voted for her for trying ever so hard? No - the award is for winning stuff and frankly on that basis Zara is about the best we've got at the moment, unless you count Matt Dawson getting into the last three on Strictly Come Dancing...