Saturday, February 26, 2005

Don't promise the moon and sixpence, Michael

See: BBC NEWS | UK | Tories aim for sports excellence

The Tories have realised what is wrong with our nation. It's that we aren't sporty enough. Well, there's something to be said for that thought. Obesity is going through the roof (or is it through the floor) and it's linked to increase in our intake of junk food linked with decrease in our physical activity. Campaigning against junk food might offend some of the few friends in business that the Tories have left, so the good, positive healthy message of sport is probably a wise choice for them to focus on.

But what exactly are they offering to do? David Davis, ever a man with an eye for a headline, seems to have slipped up this time.

He says: "By restructuring sport in the UK, we will be able to channel money directly to increasing participation and developing sporting excellence. Our policy will offer real choice and lead to highly-motivated and high-quality support to encourage talent and interest."

So that's it, is it. The problem with UK sport is that it isn't structured right.

Are you seriously suggesting this is the problem, Mr Davis? Or do we detect the shadowy figure of Michael Howard in the background, whispering "Promise anything you like David, as long as it doesn't cost anything."

And then there's David Davis's sidekick, Lord Moynihan, with a nice sound bite: "The British Sports Foundation will bring together the best and most experienced administrators in British sport under one roof."

So. He'll be luring in top managers from premiership football, will he? Or does he actually mean "the best available".

But there's more. He says: "A fit-for-purpose one-stop shop, lean, efficient and accountable, it will champion the voluntary sector on which sport in the United Kingdom is founded."

Nice soundbite, Lord Moynihan. Do you do any sport yourself? Can't seem to find anything about it in your various biographies scattered round the internet, but we mustn't be ungenerous. Because Lord Moynihan is actually a good egg, and has accurately pinpointed the underlying weakness of the Tory promise:

Sport isn't run by the government! It's run by volunteers and supported by commercial sponsorship. That, and by school sports instructors, commercial clubs, universities, and local authority leisure departments.

True, Sport England doles out a fairly meager amount of sport aid, and you can always apply to the lottery (but woe betide if you aren't in the particular categories they like this week). But - seriously - nobody who receives sport aid really cares how the distributor is structured, we just want the cash.

Will restructuring government-funded sport beat the UK's flab-belt and put us at the top of elite sporting nations?

Will it heck.

Michael, please, please, please stop it! You can't deliver a more sporting nation by changing the way Whitehall organises itself. If you really care about sport, then find some of the cash that you claim to save in your £35 billion public sector cutbacks. Just a billion of that money could buy 300 new sports centres, or enable more than 15,000 athletes to train full time until the next Olympics.

Just don't promise us the moon when all you've got is sixpence.

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Kilroy-Silk confuses honesty and truth, and misleads himself

See: BBC NEWS | Politics | Sketch: Kilroy unveils the truth

Stranger things have happened, but there can be few things which carry their own irony quite so far. Robert Kilroy-Silk has launched his own party Veritas -- a name that already sounds like it ought to be a lawyer's union or an expensive recruitment agency -- with the claim that its members will only tell the truth. He is claiming that other parties -- including his own former UKIP -- pedal 'lies, evasion and spin' on immigration and Europe.

It was entertaining to hear Kilroy-Silk on the PM programme defending himself. The journalists must have been queueing up to take him on. Here is a man who is admitting that, while a Labour MP, he lied. He is also effectively admitting that he lied for UKIP as well, since if that party was as committed to the truth as he now claims to be, he would never have had to leave it. So we have a man who has made a career out of lying now telling us that he (and anybody else who will join him) are now the sole guardians of truth in politics.

It begs so many questions that it's hard to know where to begin. Will there be an entrance examination for people who wish to stand for his party at the general election? How will they prove that they people who will only tell the truth. Of course, he could be very trusting and just take their word for it, but how would he know that they weren't lying about their honesty?

Or, how about this one: Kilroy-Silk was asked if someone would be chucked out of the party for lying. He said 'yes'. But then he immediately said that it would depend on the circumstances. Leaving aside the 'oh yes they will -- oh no they won't' quick U-turn, what can he mean by only requiring that his members stick to the truth in some circumstances? How will we know, when one of them makes a pronouncement, whether these are 'mandatory truth' circumstances or 'lying permitted' circumstances.

How would we react if, in court, a witness was asked 'do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?' and replied with: 'well, I probably shall, in most circumstances'?

Of course, the real problem is much deeper. What Kilroy-Silk is pedalling with his new truth-emphasis (the political equivalent of sodium pentothol?) is a platform of rudeness, bullying, and making the kinds of statements that are bordering on inciting racial or religious hatred.

But are these things more 'true' for being undisguised? Put more simply, is 'truth' another word for 'honesty'? Will the blunt really inherit the earth?

People may not trust politicians, but anybody who has been around them for a long time knows that two people can passionately (and therefore honestly) believe two opposing ideas without either of them being dishonest, a liar or a fool. On political ideas, the truth is something hard to come by. This is why we have democracy. If it was simply a question of going into a laboratory and conducting an experiment to determine the most true course of action, we would not need politicians, only scientists. If the truth could be established by forensic means, we would only need a coroner.

Certainly there are things which are true, and things which are not. But if anybody knew how to spot them with 100 percent certainty, then many of the problems of the world would have been dealt with long ago.

No, Mr Kilroy-Silk, you have not established a claim to truth. And, given your track record, even your claim to honesty must be taken with rather more than one pinch of salt. You are fooling only yourself. At least -- we would like to think so. Truth to tell, there will probably be quite a few people who imagine that because your ideas are reprehensible, they must be more true. More fool you, Mr Kilroy-Silk, and more fool them.