Time to level the playing field by moving the goal posts

No, this isn't another post about overused management metaphors. It's a serious suggestion to make life more interesting for football fans.

Not enough goals?

As I've been away for nearly two weeks, I haven't seen any of the World Cup matches so far. But I have been fascinated by media complaints about the shortage of goals - not because I think it has to do with the peculiar ball being blamed by the pundits as much as with the long-standing failure of the football authorities to update the rules in line with the way the physique of players has changed over the last 150 years.

Time to update Victorian rules of the game

I've long felt that the watchability of various sports could be greatly improved by recognising the fact that many of the rules are the legacy of the Victorian obsession with writing rules down in the middle of the nineteenth century - since when there have been few attempts to update them in line with physical changes in the population over the past century and a half, let alone with a view to making a particular sport more interesting to watch (a notable exception being Rugby League's break away from Rugby Union).

Tennis, for example, unlike squash, has persisted with allowing players two attempts at serving every time they serve, forcing spectators to sit for hours on end until one or other of them 'breaks serve' as a necessary condition of winning the match.

Abolish the second serve, and tennis-players would have to make some interesting strategic decisions at crucial moments in the game - and we'd be spared the tedium of having to wait for however long it takes for one of them to break through and win a game when they're not serving.

Bigger goals for taller goalkeepers

The rules of football date back to the 1850s - since when, data from Western Europe point to an increase in the average height of males (including, presumably, goalkeepers) of one inch (2.54 centimetres) every 25 years.

If the average height of today's goalkeepers is about 6 feet (183 cm.), their average height when the rule about goal posts was laid down would have been 6 inches (15.24 cm.) shorter at 5 foot 6 inches (167.64 cm.).

For the area defended by goalkeepers to provide the same challenge to them as when the rules were originally laid down, today's goal posts should be 6 inches higher and further apart than they are now - the obvious result of which (see below) would be more goals and a far more entertaining game for spectators to watch.

Ethnic cleansing beyond the grave in former Yugoslavia

After ten days on a friend's yacht, I can report that the Croatian coast (above) is just as beautiful as it was on my last visit there about thirty years ago when it was still part of former Yugoslavia.

But much has changed. Gone are the pictures of Tito in every shop. Gone too are the empty shelves at what passed for supermarkets.

But you don't have to look far to be reminded of the horrors presided over by the late Franjo Tudman, the first president of the new Croatia, in breaking away from Serbia and the remnants of former Yugoslavia during the 1990s.

A taxi driver boasted of having spent a windfall legacy on Kalashnikovs to insure himself against any further trouble from the Serbs.

Areas of 'ethnic cleansing' were marked by empty crumbling houses in areas where Serbs had had once been unlucky enough to live.

Most chilling of all was the sight of neat rectangular tomb stones standing out from the rocks on a beach at the edge of an othewise picturesque Croatian cemetery - evidence that, when when it comes to disposing of Serbs, 'ethnic cleansing' went a step or two beyond the grave:

INTERLUDE: Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible

As I'm about to go sailing along the Croatian coast, there won't be any new postings for a while. I'm definitely not taking a laptop - and extortionate mobile roaming costs should make it easy enough to resist the temptation of blogging from my iPhone.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible - i.e. in the middle of June - when I very much hope that regular visitors will come back to the blog.

When I was last on the Adriatic coast, I didn't realise I was in a place called 'Croatia' and every shop and official building you went into had a picture of President Tito on the wall to remind you who was in charge. So some thoughts on how things have changed since the demise of the former Yugoslavia might be worth blogging about when I get back.

MEANWHILE ...
As for normal service being resumed as soon as possible, you have to be of a certain age to remember the gaps in BBC television output during the 1950s - before there were any other television channels, and before management had realised that blank spaces between programmes could be filled up with the endless trailers of the delights in store for us that we have to out up with these days.

So we had to watch INTERLUDES, which meant enduring some very boring films of a repetitively revolving potter's wheel (above), rotating sails on a windmill, waves breaking on a beach, etc.

One notable exception was the 51 mile train journey from London to Brighton in 4 minutes - and serious anoraks can inspect a selection of other action-packed interlude footage HERE.

Cameron's prime-ministerial debut at PMQ and his choice of a worrying adverb

For collectors of historical political speaking occasions, here's David Cameron's first effort on the receiving end at Prime Minister's Questions for you to inspect.

The worrying adverb

Regular readers will know from previous posts (see selection below) that I've long been critical of the way the Labour government spent thirteen years tinkering with the House of Lords - but systematically avoided doing anything at all to democratise the way its members are selected.

I was therefore very concerned by what Mr Cameron had to say in response to the first question about 'the other place' - for which scroll in 1.26 minutes - where you'll hear the PM referring twice to his support for a "predominantly elected" House of Lords.

Where did 'predominantly' come from and what on earth is it supposed to mean?

Or is he just giving us advance notice that, for all its talk of a major constitutional reform package, the new government is going to be as pussy-footed as the last one was when it comes to removing the undemocratically selected miscellany of former MPs and party cronies from their cosy retirement home in the other place?

P.S. 'Wholly or mainly elected'

Since posting this, I'm grateful to @DuncanStott for informing me via Twitter as follows:

Tories favour "predominantly" elected Lords (80% I think), LDs favour fully elected. Agreement says "wholly or mainly elected".

This may explain Cameron's choice of adverb, but I can't for the life of me see how anyone with a democratic bone in his/her body can justify 'mainly elected', let alone the arbitrary invention of figures like 80%.

Previous posts on the House of Lords:

• The good news from the House of Lords
• Mirror mirror on the wall, whose is the fairest democracy of all?
• House of Lords expenses
• What news of the House of Lords scandal?
• House of Lords expenses: Lord Rees-Mogg and gravy trains
• Bishops' attendance rates and allowances in the House of Lords
• Why it suited Brown and Blair to take House of Lords reform no further
• Will The Times be investigating Lord Rees-Mogg's House of Lords expenses?
• Noble noses in the trough
• Just who does Lord Adonis think he is?

Michael Gove: calling all teachers, governors and parents

If you're a teacher, governor or parent who hasn't yet seen seen Michael Gove's letter about his highly controversial, unproven and rather expensive scheme to turn schools into 'academies', here he is inviting you all on to jump on to his barmy bandwagon:



If you wonder why I think that he and/or the plan is barmy, see my previous post on the subject.

Nor am I alone in having serious doubts about it, as you can see in Gove's claim to be 'freeing' schools is a cloak for more control from the centre by Simon Jenkins of The Guardian.

And, over the last few days, interesting discussions of the issue have been developing HERE and HERE.

A model resignation speech by David Laws

Whoever the next minister to resign from the government may be, he or she could do worse than taking a lesson or two from the short statement made by David Laws earlier this evening:

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg's statement a few minutes later wasn't too bad either:



P.S. Two things that concern me about all this are first that the Daily Telegraph's timing of its 'exposure' of Mr Laws was motivated by their ongoing campaign against increasing capital gains tax and second that Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell might have tipped them off about the story - for more on which, see HERE.

Academies, academies, academies: Michael Gove's 3 Rs?

Education is, of course, something on which everyone is far more expert than the professionals who dedicate their lives to it.

And they don't get much more expert than former journalist Michael Gove, the new Secretary of State for Education.

Parents are keen to run schools?

Somewhere or other (Sweden, perhaps) he came up with the bizarre idea that parents not only can't wait to run their local schools, but would also make a far better job of it than those who are doing it at the moment.

Somehow or other, he managed to sell the idea first to the Conservative party and now to the new coalition government - and has apparently already started writing to primary schools to tell them the good news.

But there are two rather serious flaws in his argument:

1. Most parents only take a passionate interest in the running of schools for the very few years during which their own children are at school - as almost any chairman of school governors (or parent over a certain age) could have told him had he bothered to ask.
2. Only a tiny minority of parents are willing or able to spend the huge amounts of time involved in running a school - as almost any chairman of school governors (or parent any age) could have told him had he bothered to ask.

'Rigour'?

But, as you'll see from this video clip (originally posted on webcameronuk last August), Gove's attitude towards evidence is a bit lacking in the kind of rigour that he claims is lacking in our exam system, especially when it comes to examining 'rigorous' subjects like mathematics and science. And, with an Oxford B.A. in English, Mr Gove knows a thing or two about which subjects are 'rigorous' and which ones are not.

As a former president of the Oxford Union and debating adjudicator, he also knows enough about rhetoric to know that you don't need much in the way of evidence to make an argument sound plausible. All you have to do is pick three examples that support your case, wrap them up as three questions, each of which juxtaposes two contrasting categories, and the conclusion will be obvious for all to see:

Now for some research to prove I'm right

Having 'established' that maths and science exams obviously aren't rigorous enough, Mr Gove goes on to tell us about a rather ambitious project to prove that his assertion holds true on a much wider front.

He doesn't mention what objective (or rigorous?) measurement procedures will be used to assess the quality of exams over the past hundred years - yes, 100 years. But why bother with trivial details like that when you already know in advance that the answers to your two main research questions will be "No"?

Gove's 3 Rs?

For me, the thought of anyone with such a cavalier attitude towards evidence being being allowed to meddle with something as important as education is, to say the least, extremely worrying.

It's reminded me of some lines I wrote for the first speech I ever worked on with Paddy Ashdown - for the launch of the SDP-Liberal Alliance general election campaign in 1987, when he took the platform as their education spokesman.

Nearly a quarter of a century later, the most depressing thing is that the same words apply so aptly to Mr Gove:

"When it comes to education, the Tories have come up with their own 3 R's: rigid, ruthless and reactionary. [APPLAUSE]

"Putting a Conservative minister in charge of education is like putting Herod the King in charge of the Save the Children Fund." [APPLAUSE]

Almost as depressing is the failure of the LibDem coalition negotiators to veto the elevation of Mr Gove to such a crucial job, not to mention the inclusion of his 'fast-track' Academies Bill in the Queen's speech.

See also Simon Jenkins in The Guardian: Gove's claim to be 'freeing' schools is a cloak for more control from the centre.

An interesting discussion of the schools issue is also developing HERE.