(Un)appealing

Unappealing appealing

There's a whole lot of stuff that needs to happen before an umpire can give a batter out. The ball has to land (or be on the way to landing) here, here, but not there. It has to hit in front of the stumps, and be going on to hit the stumps. Blah, blah, blah. I got a bit of a ticking off for asking the “owzat” question too frequently by one of our trained umpires. I've got my own rules. If I think the ball was going on to hit, I'll ask (that's how umpiring, as opposed to refereeing, works, you ask, they arbitrate) and leave all the technical stuff to the bloke in the ice-cream seller's coat. I'll not die never knowing. If it puts opponents off, that's their hard cheese. If the ump makes a bad call, that's their hard cheese, we've had our fair share of bad calls.

Sorry to keep on...

My point of view is this: I can live on sport and art and love, without anything else. Science I understand. Business is sharks eating other sharks, bereft of honour, decency and backbone. Politics is worse. Religion is level with politics. That’s my starting point.

Here’s some facts:

Tim Nice But Dim

The education secretary, Tim Nice But Dim, has approved of the disposal of more than twenty school playing fields since coming to power. Almost one a month. Ministers declared in the coalition agreement that they would "seek to protect school playing fields". Presumably, protect them from being used for sport for their developer mates to exploit.

Jeremy Hunt (rhyming slang), the culture secretary (not the sport secretary, sport don’t justify having its own bloke), has described school sport provision as "patchy". Bit like describing Nick Clegg as a “tad ineffective” or Seb Coe as “just slightly slimy”. Politicians, and Anne Widdecomes and the like continue to confuse fitness, dance, swimming up and down, with proper, competitive sport.

The lot we’ve got now once described the sale of school playing fields as a betrayal of Labour's commitment to school sport. A DfE spokesman said ministers would only sanction the sale of school playing fields if the sports needs of schools can continue to be met. As long as 'provision' means that salsa dancing replaces cricket, this is meaningless. This lot have cut school sports funding by £164 million a year.

The opposition don't have a leg to stand on. They sold off pitches as fast as they could. They have developer mates, too.

The mob before them started it. Thatcher and Major had henchmen with developer buddies eager to tear down the rugby posts and build rabbit hutches.

So. MPs and politicals. Stop pretending. Admit it. Come out of denial and put your hands up. You'll pretend to like sport while the vanity games are going on, then you'll all go back to your main objective: career progression and nest-feathering.