The World Cup should be political

Predictably, when Peter Tatchell, a long-time gay rights campaigner, was detained in World Cup-crazy Moscow last week, there were plenty of wails along the lines of "Why can't people leave politics out of sport? What did he expect when he broke the law in Russia?".

Tatchell held up a banner that accurately said: "Putin fails to act against Chechnya torture of gay people", was arrested, questioned and detained for a few hours and then released on bail to appear in court on 26 June. He has since been allowed to fly home.

The protest put the Russian authorities in a sticky predicament - on one hand, the government had temporarily tightened already tight laws on freedom of assembly, making it illegal for a single-person protest to take place during the World Cup. On the other hand, Russia is desperate for the World Cup to be a public relations triumph. It would have been a marketing disaster if it emerged that Tatchell was locked up without charge or experienced any kind of police brutality. 

Tatchell himself said he was treated well by the police. It was a stark contrast from his visit to Russia in 2007 in which he was attacked so viciously by Russian neo-Nazis that he suffered brain damage, compounding the effects of an attack in 2001 by thugs in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. He is way more courageous than the random bellends on Twitter complaining because someone might have made the World Cup a little bit political. Those same random bellends have probably never been beaten almost to death because of his sexuality. I say "his" because it is almost always a man who gets upset when someone shines a light on an important issue during their ball game. And Katie Hopkins, because of course she did. 

When football associations around the world are working hard to fight homophobia and to ensure that all players, regardless of sexuality, feel comfortable and safe when they play, represent their country and socialise after the match, it is only right that Russia's record on gay rights be questioned. The tragedy of Justin Fashanu's suicide could easily happen again, particularly in Russia. 

By making a statement in Moscow, Tatchell joins a long and distinguished line of people who have politicised sport to great effect.

The most obvious example is that of Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who both bowed their heads and raised their fists in the black power salute when they won gold and bronze respectively at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. The silver medallist, Australia's Peter Norman remained close to Smith and Carlos, both of whom were pallbearers at his funeral in 2006. It is one of the most iconic images in sporting history and it is still relevant today. 

In 1936, Jesse Owens' triumph in multiple events at the Berlin Olympics dented Adolf Hitler's desire to use the games as a showcase for Aryan superiority and it emerged that Jewish athletes were banned from competing, apart from one athlete with a Jewish father. Many Jewish athletes who had competed at the highest level perished in concentration camps and Captain Wolfgang Furstner, the head of the Olympic village, killed himself two days after the games after being dismissed from the military because of his Jewish ancestry. 

It is ironic that Jesse Owens' presence and success at the Berlin Olympics was, in and of itself, a political statement against Nazi racism and at the same time, the pageantry of the Berlin Olympics set the tone for patriotic spectacles at the Olympics in the decades to follow. It is, therefore, only right that the Olympics, as well as World Cups, are used as an opportunity to contemplate what it means to be patriotic and whether patriotism should be blind loyalty to your country.

In tennis, the late Arthur Ashe turned his AIDS diagnosis into an opportunity to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS. He used his last years well and his high sporting profile played an important role in overcoming prejudice and ignorance and certainly helped pave the way for better health policy, increased accessibility to medications, effective prevention campaigns and fundraising for research.

Meanwhile, in South Africa, sport played a role in ending the scourge of apartheid. While it would be fatuous to say that apartheid would not have ended without international sporting boycotts, particularly in rugby and cricket, from 1968 until the early 1990s, they were important in keeping the issue in the news. The decades of sporting wilderness were an acute reminder for South Africans of a racist and untenable political situation.

And it's not just Peter Tatchell getting political at this World Cup. Alliance For Choice, a group which is campaigning for abortion rights in Ireland and Northern Ireland, has been tweeting comparisons between abortion rights for every country competing in the World Cup as they play their opening matches this week. Even Paddy Power, the betting shop chain with a mischievous marketing team, has got in on the act, pledging to donate £10,000 to causes which are working to make football more LGBT+-inclusive every time Russia scores. With Russia giving Saudi Arabia a 5-0 drubbing in the opening match of the tournament, the fundraising is off to an excellent start.

With the next World Cup scheduled to be held in Qatar, it is clear that politics is not going to vanish from football, or indeed most other sports, any time soon. Qatar's human rights and worker safety record has, quite rightly, been widely reported - and its ability to retain the right to host the tournament could well depend on the political situation in the Arabian Gulf over the next four years. Meanwhile, Trump supporters have lost their collective shit over American footballers taking a knee during the national anthem as part of the Black Lives Matter campaign - this most peaceful of protests, amid examples in the streets of violence, has played no small role in keeping stories about race relations in the US on global news cycles.

So enjoy the World Cup, cheer on your country's team, get a bit excited if your team wins in the office sweep - there is nothing wrong with any of that. But if you think politics is going to vanish from sport any time soon, you're naive and you are siding against people of courage from across the decades.

Photography by Коля Саныч

The uncomfortable truths about grid girls

 


It doesn't really matter if you are outraged that Formula One and the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) in the UK will no longer use attractive young women in decorative roles or whether you are outraged that such a job existed in the first place - there are plenty of circles you might want to square in your mind before you vent on your social media outlet of choice.

But it's probably too late because there has already been a predictable flurry on Twitter and Facebook, regardless of where you sit with this particular argument.

There has been hypocrisy across the board. The people who claim to mostly be concerned about saving these young women's jobs are not necessarily the same people who have spoken out about pay and working conditions for countless other jobs in the hospitality industry, where countless young women are exploited, harassed, underpaid and undervalued if they are seen mostly as decorative - or dismissed as decorative even if they are serving customers, pulling pints, waiting on tables or cleaning the toilets.

If you are only concerned about the economic status of these young women but have never said a word about other women in hospitality, you are being selective in your outrage.

For those who are celebrating the decision made by Formula One and PDC, it is uncomfortable to acknowledge that plenty of women are happy to be "grid girls" or "walk-on girls", even if the very job title is infantilising. Plenty have spoken out to say they do not feel exploited, they enjoy the work and it pays better than many other hospitality jobs. Some of these women are genuine sports fans who enjoy the opportunity to get paid to go to events that come with a high ticket price.

When I used to cast models for fashion shoots for a women's magazine, it was rare that anyone I hired was making a full-time career out of it. Most were students earning extra cash, there were a few bored housewives who did it for a bit of a lark, some were trying to make it as actresses or TV presenters. In the case of the women hired for Formula One and PDC events, this is often the case as well, but there are some who do earn good money doing this sort of work all year round, with their agencies sending them all over the world.

If the women who make a living out of this sort of work lose the Formula One and the PDC jobs, it will certainly make a dent in their annual earnings but, as any freelancer in any field knows, you can't rely on all sources of work to be there for all time.

The pictures at the top of this page indicate that it's not just Formula One hiring attractive young women at races. While there may well be not more young women holding flags and helpfully standing with signs on the grid so the drivers can find their cars, it is unclear whether the sponsors got the memo or even have to comply with Formula One's decision to send grid girls the way of the dodo.

While the days of Formula One organisers kitting out women in what are essentially tight-fitting office dresses are over, other companies may still be hiring, albeit in outfits that the Daily Mail would deem more "daring". Perhaps these women will be the next target for a ban. I don't know - I have been to motorsport events as a journalist and as a spectator and I am largely oblivious to the women hired as eye candy. However, if the photos above are any sign, there is still work to be had at motorsports events in a beer company crop top and mini skirt, a boiler suit rendered useless by amputated arms for a major financial institution, or a space-age silver boob sling on behalf of a manufacturer of electrical goods. 

Or perhaps this is the start of a subtle move towards encouraging women to take a more active part in other aspects of motorsport - as engineers, drivers, marshals, team bosses - after all, there is only one Claire Williams at the moment - she is the only woman who is a deputy team principal of a Formula One team.

Indeed, I noticed a distinct shift in the role of women when I was at the Dubai International Motor Show at the end of last year. While previous motor shows, in the Middle East and elsewhere, have become well-known for their "booth professionals", the glamorous women who are paid to pose all day long, usually in short dresses and uncomfortable shoes at the stands of different car manufacturers, last year's Dubai show was a bit different.

And it certainly wasn't about stereotypical Middle Eastern prudery - for the last 12 years, I've been to plenty of events in the region, motoring-related and otherwise, where women are paid to stand around looking pretty and, trust me, none of them are wearing hijabs or abayas. But a lot of them were looking really bored. This time around, at the Dubai motor show, there was a distinct lack of bored models. The women I encountered on the stands - and there were plenty of them - were knowledgeable about the cars they were promoting and they were not standing statue-still all day with ankles wobbling in high heels. Good.

Like most things, it all comes back to economics.

Formula 1 and the PDC darts competition are both big business. While it's all too easy for the likes of the Sun and the Daily Mail to declare that they are snowflakes who have bowed to political correctness gone maaaaaaaaad. But neither sporting organisation would have made the decision to ditch the girls if they thought it was going to have a serious impact on their bottom lines. And it probably hasn't - where are the outraged motor sport and darts fans tearing up their tickets?

Will there be a mass boycott of Formula One and PDC by furious spectators? Probably not. Will both sports continue to make money? Probably.











Photography by ph-stop/Flickr

Random rants from a busy Rant Mistress...

I've started a new job, I've been in and out of the country, I'll be out of the country and back again soon, I've been busy, I've neglected to rant. Here, in no particular order, are some random thoughts that I have not gotten around to committing to paper, or indeed the internet.

- Frankly, if the junior doctors' strike was only about pay, so fucking what? I want to live in a country that respects doctors enough to pay them properly. The race-to-the-bottom nonsense of wanting everyone to live in penury is pathetic.

- Richard Dawkins' absurd (and now deleted) tweet saying Queen Rania of Jordan is a good Muslim, showing off her lovely hair, is merely another tragic example of the fetishising of said queen. Sure, she is an attractive, articulate woman with good hair. But, thanks to her position of privilege, she has the luxury of being outspoken in a way that many in her country, particularly journalists do not.

- I don't think Jeremy Corbyn will ever win a general election.

- Trying to get people to understand that PFI and the cost of administering the marketised NHS are the two main cost pressures is bloody exhausting.

- The world will need fossil fuels for a while longer. If you own anything made of plastic or a T-shirt that is not 100% cotton, or you'd prefer to abseil using nylon ropes instead of hemp ropes, then you are using petrochemicals. Sorry.

- Stop asking stupid questions of women over 35 who do not have any children. If she wants to discuss the reasons behind her child-free life in detail, regardless of whether she is childless through choice or circumstance, she will volunteer the information. If not, butt out of her uterus.

- The Revenant is a completely overrated film.

- It is tiresome and ridiculous that the Zika virus outbreak is once again dragging non-scientific anti-vaxx arguments out of the woodwork yet again. Give it a rest. Learn some science. You are embarrassing yourselves.

- Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States of America.

- The UK will vote to stay in the EU - and I suspect the vote won't be as close as people think it will be.

- If you seriously think the homeopathy-mad, failed marmalade mogul, Jeremy Hunt, is a good Health Secretary, you are deluded and I am not sure I can help you.

- Does anyone find Keith Lemon funny?

- It was really moving to see the Stade de France full of spectators watching the France vs Italy Six Nations match yesterday.

- David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt are all pathetic negotiators and I refuse to take any of them seriously.

- It is time for long-standing refugee camps in the Middle East to be turned into proper towns with proper schools, hospitals and economic activity, such as businesses and industry.

- Deutschland 83 is excellent television and should cure people of Ostalgie, even if it is a fictitious account. If not, read Stasiland by Anna Funder instead. Romanticising East Germany is ridiculous and makes elements of the left look completely stupid.













Photography by Kim Rempel

The FA, BA and a load of BS...

Negotiations between the Football Association (FA) and British Airways (BA) over flying the English football team to Brazil for next year's World Cup have broken down. As a result, BA will not be flying a plane-load of multimillionaires for free to Brazil to play in a tournament in which they will be lucky to get past the pool stage.

Good on BA.

A source told The Sun newspaper that it would cost BA up to £10 million to take a plane out of service for the exclusive use of the English team, reschedule timetables and reassign crews. The source said: "In return, BA gets no more than a photo of the back of a plane in a few newspapers. In brutal terms, it just doesn't make sense."

Last time I checked, BA was a business, not a charity. And it is certainly not a charity that is obliged to fly the English football team for free. It's not as if we are talking about a kids' football team holding cake stalls and raffles to fund train fares for a match in the next county. We are talking about a team of players where they could all afford to pay everyone's return first class airfares and barely notice the cash missing. And it's not as is the FA is short on cash either.

The source is dead right. It is not worth the expense and logistical nightmares for BA just for a few photos in a few newspapers. The FA can pay for their own shit.

Here's the thing. If anyone from the FA is seriously trying to tell BA that flying England will be great publicity, they are not living on this planet. Thanks to booking flights online, a lesser reliance on travel agents and frequent flyer cards that involve multiple airlines, the way customers book flights is completely different compared to decades gone by.

People are not necessarily loyal to the one airline anymore.When people jump online to book flights, it's a matter of weighing up factors such as price and convenient times rather than slavish devotion to a "national carrier" (which in the case of most countries is an airline that was privatised years ago). Nobody is going to book a BA flight because one of their planes appeared in a photo in a newspaper with the English football team and a couple of pretty cabin crew posing on the stairs.

Now the word on the street is that Virgin might fly the team to Brazil. I guess £10 million for Richard Branson to pose with the team and act all patriotic-like is cheaper for him than paying his fair share of tax.