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Germany lose but let's be grateful it's not war
By A.N. Wilson. Last updated at 00:00am on 01.07.02The World Cup Final result was peculiarly depressing. Apart from a brief patriotic wobble in the middle, when I shared my compatriots' fervour and began to dream of English world dominance as in 1966, I had hoped for a German victory. The enthusiasm for Brazil, exhibited in the streets and pubs of London, and by some of the sports commentators, demonstrated how clearly we are still a nation of Captain Mainwarings, fighting the battles of 60 years ago in our minds.
"That noble, patient, deep, pious and solid Germany should at length be welded into a Nation and become the Queen of the Continent, instead of vapouring, vainglorious, gesticulating, quarrelsome, restless and oversensitive France, seems to me the hopefulest public fact that has occurred in my time."
So spoke the sage of Chelsea - not the football club, but Cheyne Row: Thomas Carlyle, in a letter to The Times during the siege of Paris in 1870.
The last few weeks must have been torment to those who hate football. As a game, it still bores me; but I am no longer bored by it as a phenomenon. Of course, it is embarrassing to watch the childish behaviour of the mostly male fans sitting anxiously in front of the telly set clutching their tins of beer and screaming every time one of the overpaid players kicks the ball anywhere near the net.
Just as going to the zoo reminds us painfully of how close we are to the other apes, so seeing grown men watch football on telly reveals how close they are to toddlers. Only the female sex ever grows up.
But this is to ignore the wider fact: namely that international football is a benign substitute for world war. Nothing demonstrates this better than the fact that so many inhabitants of this island would prefer a victory by Brazil - hardly the most enlightened or elevated political entity on our planet - to one by the Queen of the Continent. Never mind. The Fatherland fights on.
Sock it to them Barbara
It was clearly in the public interest that Stephen Byers's moment of passion in a Cardiff hotel with "Labour blonde Barbara Corish" should be splashed all over the Sunday newspapers. The public interest would have been even better served if we had been given a consistent account of what the former Transport Secretary was, or was not, wearing when the Labour blonde knocked on the door of room 205 at the Marriott Hotel, Cardiff, on the fateful evening.
The front page of the Sunday Mirror told us that when he opened the bedroom door, he was wearing nothing but a pair of black socks. (What if it had been Jo Moore or Martin Sixsmith knocking at his door to, as it were, brief him about transport policy?) In the News of the World, he was wearing trousers and shirt, but without tie or shoes. Another paper had our hero in a shirt but no underpants. At least the Press did not try to invent some humiliating detail, such as a string vest.
The person we all feel sorry for, of course, is the Labour blonde herself. This poor, defenceless 52-year-old woman, who made her way to the Cabinet Minister's bedroom and then took off all her clothes, was so appalled by the rude words that he muttered under the sheets that she had no alternative. She had to shop him to a tabloid newspaper. What else could the poor woman have done? She will probably have to spend most of her earnings on therapy.
Before leaving Mr Byers's room, she asked: "What do you think I am? A prostitute or something?" No, no, Barbara. You are just a woman who goes to bed with a complete stranger, and then tries to make cash out of it. That is something quite different.
Brave new world of edyewkashun
In 1870, before "state" education was pioneered by the Victorians, literacy in Britain stood at 92 per cent. Most people picked up some schooling somewhere, even in workhouses. After more than a century of "state" education, it is doubtful whether literacy is anything like so high. Three hundred and fifty trainee teachers have just failed a simple English and maths test, but they have been told by Education Secretary Estelle Morris that they are still needed to instruct our children.
The 350 dud teachers are inferior to Mr Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby and his "English spelling and philosophy" classes at Dotheboys Hall: "We go upon the practical mode of teaching, Nickleby; the regular educational system. C-l-e-a-n, clean, verb active, to make bright, to scour. W-i-n, win, d-e-r, der, winder, a casement. When a boy knows this out of a book, he goes and does it ..."At least Squeers's boys learnt how to clean winders. The next generation of our schoolchildren probably won't learn anything.
