Deaths in Sport
This weekend, there was a sporting tragedy. Piermario Morosini, a footballer for Italian team Livorno, collapsed and died during a match against Pescara. There have been tributes to the player from all over the world, as one might reasonably expect. One such tribute was made on the scoreboard at Wembley Stadium prior to today’s FA Cup semi-final. A fine gesture, to my mind.
I do not, in any way, wish to downplay the scale of this tragedy. Instead, I want to highlight two further tragedies that have taken place in sport this weekend. These are not lesser tragedies, but they have not had anything like the same coverage as Morosini in the media – and where they have been mentioned, the two deaths have been cited as merely a risk of the sport.
So which sports stars am I talking about? These were Synchronised and According to Pete, two of the horses in the “Grand” National at Aintree. Now, if you’re about to stop reading this after realising that I’m another whingeing leftie going on about bloody animal rights again, then you’re probably exactly the sort of person who needs to keep reading this. Leave Facebook alone for a moment, and at least read what I have to say. If you don’t agree, leave a comment – free speech, open debate, and all that.
Deaths such as this are not uncommon in the so-called Sport of Kings (see here). But they are ignored, and the general public are often ignorant to them. Not surprising, given how the deaths usually occur. A horse will fall, and break a leg. Because of difficulties in treating a horse with such an injury, there is usually little option other than to have the horse euthanised. Killed, in more straightforward terms. This fate befalls around 400 horses per season. Seriously. That’s a huge number.
Consider football for a moment. If 400 players a season died in that sport, there’d be hell on. There’d be calls from all quarters, whingeing leftie or not, for the sport to be banned. So why does the same not happen here?
“There’s a risk in every sport.” Certainly, there is. I’ve been injured playing charades, so I know. But even in high contact sports such as rugby or boxing, is there really such a high risk of death that 400 competitors a year might die from it? And is it the horses choosing to take that risk?
“It’s traditional.” Illogical, Captain. Doing something just because it’s been done before on regular occasions, despite what problems it might cause? Have a word with yourself.
“They’re only animals.” That gives them fewer rights than humans for what reason, exactly?
Another factor is that most people are unaware that horses are dying, at least in such numbers. Let’s face it, we don’t actually see the horses dying. I myself wasn’t aware of the problem until about six years ago. But the fact remains that we’re forcing animals to compete in a sport in which they have a very real chance of dying. Many of you out there, as I did in the past, will have a flutter on the gee-gees now and again, thinking it to be harmless fun. It really isn’t.
My preference would be for the sport to be banned. It wouldn’t be a popular move, but the ethical choice will not always be the popular one. But without the power to do that, all I can do is boycott any betting, even office sweepstakes on horse races. And I’d urge everyone reading this to do the same. If we can’t stop the needless deaths of horses, at least let’s do something to stop people profiting from it.
Las Malvinas son….whose?
Las Malvinas/The Falklands have recently been in the press quite a bit, mostly due to the 30th Anniversary of the Argentinian attempted liberation/invasion. Probably hyperbole drummed up by the presses of both bald men involved, but nonetheless, their disputed comb has once again become the focus of “tensions”, as the popular press likes to put it, between Britain and Argentina. I’ve heard a fair bit of opinion on the social networks regarding this – particularly comments about how the Falklands are “ours” (i.e., British) and that Argentina should leave them well alone. Now I’m going to put my two penn’orth in for the sake of a healthy argument.
But let us clarify the facts of the case first. The Falkland Islands are a group of 778 rocks in the South Atlantic, two of which are somewhat bigger than the rest. As far as can be ascertained, they have no indigenous human population. Therefore, when people first decided to go there – whether those people were indigenous South Americans, British, Portuguese, Spanish, Pixie or Martian – they would not have had to subjugate a race to claim the islands as their own. And as Human Nature tends toward the finders-keeper-losers-weepers doctrine of possession, whether or not you agree with that, it would be easy to see that whoever got there first, they would naturally feel that the islands were “theirs”.
Another fact is that nobody really knows who did get there first. The best guess for a European nation is either the English, the Spanish or the Portuguese, who were all doing sterling jobs of colonising and subjugating all over the Americas. Of course, There’s nothing to say that South Americans wouldn’t have gone there before that. As it was, the British gained control of the islands in 1833. But does that mean they have the rightful claim to it?
One of the arguments I’ve seen on Facebook is that “Argentina was not even a country in 1833″. Now, let’s get another fact clear. A country is simply an area of the globe with defined borders and and its own government, whose jurisdiction is (usually) confined to the aforementioned borders. But there was surely no rule-book ever written that stated that a person must be from an official country before he or she can claim or use any land they happened to find. So that argument is entirely superfluous. However, the modern argument over “ownership” is not so much about who saw them first. The British, although they may not have discovered the islands, have gained control of them. Most people living there now are of British descent, and wish to remain British Citizens (so why did they leave Britain, I wonder). One might think that it would be reasonable to allow that.
However, the Argentinian side is also understandable. The islands are a shorter distance from Argentina as Edinburgh is from London (oddly, despite David Cameron being keen on keeping Scotland under the yoke of England, the similar distance doesn’t make him see the Falklands situation the same way). The islands are nowhere near England. Any suggestion that it would make good sense for Argentina to govern the islands is not without its merit. After all, if you’d just moved house and had nowhere to park but the street, you’d feel aggrieved if the spot outside your house was used by someone who lived miles away. Proximity is not a factor that we can ignore.
So what would I do? Frankly, I wouldn’t make a fuss over them. I don’t know what it is that the Falklands provides Britain with, apart from the odd funny-looking coin that’s a novelty for precisely five seconds. The bald men fighting over a comb analogy is perfectly right. Why do we even bother?
Perhaps it’s because certain elements of our septic isle still have not grown out of Imperialism. Britain’s insistence that the islands are ours-and-you-can’t-have-them seems childish in this egalitarian, global age of ours. The whole situation puts me in mind of the child in the playground who threatens to take his ball home if things don’t go his way.
So I say, let’s just forget about the Falklands. To those who feel that they’re “ours” and would want to send troops in to defend them from Argentina, let me ask you this: Just how much do you think your life would change if we dispensed with them? Would your pay-packet drop? Would tax rise? Would the Internet break? Would electricity stop working? Would all waterways on Earth suddenly turn into camembert, killing life on the planet forever? Of course not. For the overwhelming majority, nothing would change. So why do you wish to keep them so much?
National Vegetarian Week
Having realised some time ago that National Vegetarian Week was on its way, I thought it might be fun to try to live as a vegetarian for the week. Not with any intention of becoming a vegetarian, it must be said – that’s probably as likely as the Pope marrying Elton John. It was more of a put-yourself-in-someone-else’s-shoes exercise. Here’s how I fared on a day-to-day basis:
Monday 24th May: Lunch was fairly simple to do veggie-style. Normally the only meat in my packed lunch is in the sandwich, so this was replaced by “meat-style” soya slices, of a chicken and sage-and-onion flavour. It wasn’t bad; like most meat substitutes, it’s not quite the real thing, but nice enough. For tea, fish-style finger sarnies. I love real fish fingers, these weren’t too bad, but no substitute, really.
Tuesday 25th May: Lunch the same as the previous day, except with cheese in the sandwich as well. Tea proved my first real challenge, as I wasn’t at home and needed a sandwich or something on-the-go. A cheese pasty seemed a cop-out, as did a fast-food veggie burger. However, the sandwich shops still open in Newcastle has a ridiculous lack of choice for the herbivorous type – Either salad (never good in a sandwich), egg mayonnaise (a substance straight from Satan’s bottom) or coleslaw (what Satan spews after a night chewing Judas Iscariot). WH Smith came to my rescue, however, offering a carrot, hummus and rocket sandwich, which was palatable enough.
Wednesday 26th May: In the lunch sandwich, a veggie Brussels Pate. This was nicely like the real thing, though it might as well have been a gold ingot for its ease of spreading on bread. Tea was a vegetable pie and some fallafel.
Thursday 27th May: Thursday, at work, is the day when the students get sent out for sandwiches. The firm supplying them didn’t have much more on their menu than the sort of nonsense that faced me on Tuesday evening – however, they did have a cheese, tomato and onion panini, which was quite sufficient. For tea, tofu and mushroom rogan josh. Tofu, it seems, is good when marinated and cooked for long enough. I expect I’ll be having more of that in the future.
Friday 28th May: Due to the rest of the bread I owned having turned blue, I couldn’t really make my own sandwiches for work. The sandwich shop offerings there were woeful to say the least. So it was off to the cafeteria, where I could at least get vegetable pizza and chips. The afternoon heralded a drinking session, wherein I imbibed that fabulous level of alcohol required to make take-away pizza seem like a terribly good idea. Thus it was that a spinach, artichoke and olive pizza entered my possession. Spinach is great on a pizza.
Saturday 29th May: In the morning, vegetable pie and fallafel again. In the afternoon, braised tofu. Later on, it was off to Wetherspoons. I’ve had the veggie burger and five-bean chilli there before numerous times, so I thought that’d be a cop-out. Therefore, it was the spinach, chickpea and sweet potato curry that took my fancy. Very nice, too. And no sign of the ubiquitous cumin-flavoured grease that often serves as curry sauce in England.
Monday 31st May: The sharp-eyed will notice that I’ve missed Sunday out. Sunday is usually dinner at the parents’ house, and I was always going to eat whatever they were good enough to put in front of me. Especially as it was lasagne and chips. The rest of the day was veggie, but to make up for this transgression, I stretched the week to eight days. Today, I had a go at making a pasta bake with soya mince. Not with the best results, but it’s the first attempt I’ve has at doing it with any sort of mince. Edible, though (by my standards anyway). And there’s some left over for tea, too.
So the conclusions? Well, the only difficulties were in finding decent sandwiches from shops. It’d be interesting to see if this attitude of providing only token veggie options extends also to restaurants and takeaways – something I’ll bear in mind when visiting such places in the future. It’s not difficult to find veggie food in supermarkets or chain stores like Holland & Barratt’s, but if you prefer to shop locally, not quite so easy. So I can see that for a vegetarian, especially in such a place as the north-east (which isn’t always among the first to catch onto cultural trends), it’s not always easy to feed yourself, but it’s possible. Possible, though, isn’t really good enough. But as predicted, I have no plans to become vegetarian, though I do reckon I’ll be having more veggie food in the future.`
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate…
Right, just a random post to establish some sort of presence. There will be something with actual substance posted later.
By way of an explanation, the title here is apparently from the original Italian of Dante’s Divine Comedy. “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Possibly more portentous than need be, but they can both be recited in iambic pentameter if you try hard enough. Rock.
