All in the game

I hate having to make political posts - not because politics is not important, but often it tends to achieve very little. The BBC has blanket coverage on it website and you can read about it here. Whilst it’s worrying to see the transportation through which I have and will travel attacked like this (this will not make an iota of difference to wheter I will travel on the tube, terrorist attack is still one of the least likely ways to die), It should not come as a great surprise, the underground system is, I suppose, the most vulnerable to attack. This is also a time to keep a sense of proportion and not overblow the impact of these attacks.

Sometimes watching the blanket news coverage that I see on the BBC, there is a sense I get of the reporters wanting to exaggerate and make it bigger than it is. The deaths of any people is terrible enough. I just hate it when reporters urge all their guests to somehow give them death tolls that are ever increasing. There is a mix of morbid fascination and bizarre self promotion in being the first to get the exact death toll. This is sickening. I think one of the ills of blanket coverage as opposed to bulletins are there are these tonnes of reporters all over the place who often arrive after all the action has taken place and thus have no live action to report upon but have the cameras ready to roll. Rather than taking their time to assess the situation and providing a cool and rational analysis, reporters are forced to parrot for hours on end the same thing they said 10 minutes ago as though it was new news. Thus if each time they are asked to report, and they have news in terms of increased death toll, or wild speculation on the perpetrators of the attacks or ill informed reports from the scene of the action, the greater the justifications of their jobs. Get all these stupid reporters out of here. For every ambulance or police worker there seemed to be ten news reporters parroting the same ill informed crap again and again. I think bulletins, followed by a news programme at a specified hour is more than sufficient. This blanket news coverage is not at all useful and at times like this, I believe, harmful.

I hope they catch the terrorists and try them appropriately. However, a sense of proportion is called for. In Iraq the joint actions of the Americans and British forces has estimated to have cost the lives of about 10,000 civilian Iraqis. These terrorist attacks, possibily caused by the presence of British troops in Iraq (wild speculation I know),have cost, so far, the lives of 38 Britons. Absolutely not a justification of the terrorist attacks but a sobering thought …

An exciting game as I have seen in a long time. Read about it here, here and here. For my two cents worth I thought the game was exciting as any and goes to prove that high scoring matches aren’t always the best and can often lead to a conclusion well before the end of the match. I hope England produce such helpful wickets during their test to nullify the threat of Shane Warne and also provide some heat for Harmison.

Also saw the Roger Federer winning Wimbledon for the third time in a row. I think Federer is overated not because he is not a fantastic player - he is skillwise, but the lack of serious competitveness is galling. Also that Andrew Castle (BBC commentator) seems to be trying to win the Federer ass-kissing award of the year, some of the comments are so fawning I was about to puke. I think he (Federer and Castle) is mentally fragile and whenever an opponent is able to match him for skill his character shows up his insecurities and weaknesses. Its just that his skill is far superior to other players out there, some of the shots he played were just not in the armoury of Roddick, who is worryingly no 2 in the world. I think its sad to see no real competition that he has to face. Its more a problem of the lack of proper coaching these days. It seems they just teach youngsters to slam the ball from the baseline rather than a more effective all court game. Almost to a person the player seeming to be produced is a baseliner that will pummel the ball harder and run the baseline faster. Also the two handed backhand has singularly reduced the effectiveness of half the potential greats out there. I think maybe a redesign of coaching is required. Start with kids of 12-13 when they can actually hold a proper tennis racket rather than the oversize monstrosities that kids appear to use. Teach them a all court game with some skill at the net. Then we may see some real tennis rather than ball bashing. In that sense I hope Federer is an inspiration for the game to start producing players with all-court skills.