This week there was a little stooshie in the media and the blogs about the “banning” of the Saltire during the Beijing Olympics. Jamie Hepburn noticed that the Olympic authorities in Beijing will be enforcing an age-old IOC rule which says that “flags of non-members of the Olympics” should not be displayed during the Olympics.

I suppose the reason why this is a particular issue now, as opposed to previous Olympic meetings, is the fact that the Beijing games enables the nationalists to piggy-back on the Free Tibet campaign (as you can see in the penultimate paragraph of the SNP’s press release). Is it just me who thinks this is particularly low?

It is not even as though Scotland is in anything like the same situation as Tibet. The reason Tibet is an issue is because freedom of speech and freedom to choose your own political beliefs is not an option in Tibet. Without these rights, the people of Tibet are left without a voice. That is the issue. The issue in Scotland is that we do have these rights. The problem for the SNP is that despite this great freedom to express a preference for independence, there is precious little clamour for it in Scotland.

Anyway, I agree with most — e.g. Scottish Unionist, Jeff Breslin, Malc in the Burgh — in that the IOC’s rule on flags is absolutely ridiculous. Stephen Glenn points out why the IOC’s strange rules are inappropriate for someone from his kind of background.

But I still think it is pathetic that the SNP even brought the subject up. As has been noted in some of the posts above, it is not even as though the rule is policed that strictly anyway. But as Political Dissuasion notes, all of Britain’s Olympic athletes agreed to take part as a member of Great Britain’s Olympic team so I hardly think it’s beyond the pale to expect them to stick to that commitment.

After all, could you imagine, for instance, a Scottish international footballer scoring a goal then taking his shirt off during the celebration to proudly reveal, say, a Celtic top underneath? Of course, he could be proud of being both a Scotland player and a Celtic player — but it’s just wrong to confuse the two notions.

As Political Dissuasion points out, this is just the sort of guff we have come to expect from nationalists. I don’t mind people expressing their opinion about this sort of thing, but this is blatant political point-scoring and for what? SNP people always come up with this stuff about the Saltire, whether it’s what flutters above Edinburgh Castle or what athletes fly at the Olympics. It’s just pathetic. Aren’t there, you know, important things to worry about?

It’s worth pointing out, too, that even if Scotland were to become independent this would still be an issue. Because while Scotland would enter an Olympic team, flags like this and this would still fall foul of the regulations. For some reason (*cough*oil*cough*) the SNP are quieter about these flags.

My attitude towards this is affected somewhat by the fact that I just don’t “get” flags in general. What on earth are they for? I certainly don’t know what the appeal is. Maybe it is because I’m not so insecure about myself and my identity that I don’t need to attach myself to these symbols. I might be a Scot, but I don’t go around the place grinning about it. First and foremost I am Duncan Stephen, and that’s what concerns me. I would still be Duncan Stephen no matter what nationality I was, so I just don’t see what flags are all about.

This is also one of the many reasons why I can’t stand the Olympics. The emphasis on the nation just gets me down so much. I have written before about why the notion that sportsmen represent their countries is just absolutely ridiculous. A follow-up post at the height of the media-driven rivalry between Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso subsequently became the most popular post on this blog (according to post ratings).

The Olympics is just the place that shows all the worst aspects of national sport teams. Gibbering, gormless housewives stare at the idiot-box for hours on end watching events such as “discus”, “ping pong”, “yngling” and all manner of other sports that they would otherwise not touch with a bargepole. Yes, it’s great that minority sports get coverage during the Olympics. But they should be getting coverage anyway. At least, if you genuinely did like minority sports you would think that. The fact that it takes the Olympics to get badminton on the television is nothing to be pleased about.

Then when a representative of their country wins a medal, the housewives declare themselves to be “so proud”. Proud of what? They didn’t win the medal — the athlete did! All they have done is sit on their fat arses watching people throwing sticks around. This kind of nationalism only promotes supreme mediocrity and laziness.

And don’t even get me started on the “non political” nature of the Olympics. My hairy arse hole! The fact is that the Olympic Games are the planet’s primary platform for pathetic political posturing. What is the Olympic Spirit? I think it has something to do with Cold War willy-waving.

Then there is all the drugs. I bet you if the Olympics never existed, we wouldn’t even think about drugs in sport. All those countries with dodgy Communist governments come along and drug their athletes to the brim so that they can go around the world feeling smug about themselves for being 13th in the medals table. Yes, the Olympic Games are so noble!

Ah, and don’t forget the great selling-out when they decided there was more money in dropping the requirement that Olympic athletes be amateur. Because of course the pros don’t have enough places to rake in the cash already!

Bleeargh. I’m with Mr Farty. The Olympics can take a running hop, skip and jump.

Well, I say “final thoughts”, but really I mean “first and only thoughts” because this is the first time I’ve actually managed to find the time and motivation to write about tomorrow’s Glasgow East by-election.

It’s difficult to know what I am hoping for. The party I am most sympathetic towards — the Lib Dems — has a pretty low chance of achieving anything meaningful. And let us face it, the only reason Glasgow East has interested people is because Labour have a chance of losing a safe seat to the SNP.

Watching the SNP and Labour battling for votes in Glasgow East is like watching the two biggest bullies at school trying to win a popularity contest. You don’t want either of them to win, but deep down inside you really like it when one messes it up, even if it gives the other guy an advantage.

It’s been quite fun to see, therefore, both parties messing it up a bit. Labour’s woes have been pretty well documented. The former MP, David Marshall, is involved in a slimy corruption scandal. He pocketed half a mill in office expenses when his office was his house and his office staff was his family — while representing the poorest constituency in the country. Yes, that sort of brass neck would make me feel ill as well!

Then the candidate Labour were going to put up for the by-election turned out also to be very possibly a corrupt bastard as well. And the two people who “stood against” him magically disappeared — presumably because they were never intended to have a chance of actually being Labour’s candidate.

So Margaret Curran was parachuted in. She is actually quite good, though the “fourth choice” jibes are pretty damaging. This also leaves “the Labour Party in the Scottish Parliament” in a bit of a pickle because she was going to be their leader. But that’s a worry for another day.

I said Margaret Curran is quite good. I meant that she comes across well on the telly. But of course since she is a Labour politician she is actually a honking liar. She said she’s lived in the east of Glasgow all her life, when in fact she has lived for years in a fancy house on the south side. And she mistook a 67-year-old Labour Party activist for a 93-year-old World War II hero “who looks not a day past 70, by the way”.

Not that the SNP’s candidate, John Mason, seems to be much better. In fact, he seems like the sort of person your mother warned you about. When asked about his views on an independence referendum, his answer was somewhat creepy.

When you ask someone to marry you, sometimes you have to persist.

Lovely.

John Mason also has a history of anti-English behaviour, demanding that a school remove England flags from a World Cup display. Given that the SNP is supposed to be trying to do away with the perceived anti-English element of the party — and does a good job of it, by and large — I am surprised that the SNP should give someone with these views a platform in an important by-election.

I don’t believe the SNP is an anti-English party per se (though undoubtedly many of its supporters are anti-English). But if they do not put a lid on this element more effectively might it become their Clause IV?

This is becoming a running theme of this blog, but I’ll say it again — you can’t blame people for not wanting to vote. And it looks like turnout will be very low in Glasgow East.

That is not just because the two front-running parties keep on fouling up. It is because of the decades of Labour neglect that have been inflicted on the area. Glasgow East is a part of the world that has been held by Labour since 1922. Yet it is in an utterly terrible shape.

The statistic about life expectancy in Glasgow East being roughly equal to that of the Gaza Strip is untrue. Life expectancy in Gaza is 71.01 years. In one part of the constituency, Calton, life expectancy is as low as 53.9 years. You can expect to live longer in Pyongyang than in Glasgow.

(Update: Bellgrove Belle pointed out in the comments that Calton is actually in the Glasgow Central constituency, not Glasgow East.)

It is staggering that this kind of poverty exists in the UK. And this is a seat that Labour have held for eight and a half decades straight. Labour is the party of the poor? If by that you mean they like there to be lots of poor people, then you are bang on.

You can blame the Conservatives all you want, but the fact is that in the 86 years Labour have represented the area, Labour have been in government for around 40 of them. And of course 11 of those have been the last 11 years. Given that it is such a poor area, you would have thought Labour would be eager to help them out. Given that Glasgow East is such a safe seat, where Labour have one of their most convincing mandates, you would think Labour would be eager and willing to repay their voters.

But no. As Fraser Nelson has shown, Glasgow East is the ultimate example of the utter failure of Labour and its policies.

Of course, it is also a shining example of the problems created by Labour’s best pal, the First Past the Post voting system. It was the very safeness of the seat that enabled Labour in the west of Scotland to become the arrogant, corrupt cesspit it became.

That is why David Marshall has absolutely no data on the voters of Glasgow East. He just didn’t care. It is the voters’ very loyalty that has meant that the Labour government has continued to ignore the area. “Not a marginal seat? Not a swing voter? Not interested.”

Given that these very voters are constantly lied to by the media and various other people that Labour is the only party that can act in the interests of the poor, it is no wonder that apathy is so widespread in Glasgow East. If I thought Labour — the party that’s been in charge since 1922 — was the best hope for change, I’d be pretty glum about it too.

The really depressing thing is that Labour will almost certainly win this election. That is partly because of the lies I’ve described in the above paragraph. Is it a cliché to say that a monkey in a red rosette would win in Glasgow East? That is the only conclusion you can come to when, time and time again, the voters keep on re-electing this bunch of failures that have done absolutely nothing for them. It is accurate to describe these kinds of seats in the west of Scotland as the modern equivalent of rotten boroughs.

As for the idea that Glasgow East’s voters will be confused between Margaret Curran and the SSP’s Frances Curran, thereby losing Labour some votes, I don’t buy that. The voters won’t be looking for the name ‘Curran’ on the ballot slip. They’ll be looking for the word ‘Labour’.

I was quite surprised therefore when at the start of the campaign political pundits based in London were confidently predicting an SNP win. I think they couldn’t imagine Labour winning any election in the kind of climate the Westminster Government finds itself in at the moment. But they didn’t count on the trusty voters of west central Scotland, who continue to vote Labour like a dirty old man who likes a good hard spanking.

It shows how out of touch the political pundits in London are with the rest of the UK. Since then, things have stabilised and received wisdom seems to point towards a Labour win, albeit with a hugely reduced majority.

Even though the SNP seem confident, I don’t see Labour losing. I think the SNP are making a big mistake by confidently predicting an “earthquake“. This will allow Labour to present a narrow majority (the most likely outcome) as a victory for them when it is anything but.

The fact that Labour’s victory is even in doubt is the real sign that Labour have failed. It shows that just now there is not really such a thing as a safe Labour seat. But the SNP have given them the perfect opportunity to bounce back.

What do I want to happen? Like I say, the choice between the SNP and Labour is a choice between shit and shite. I want neither party to win. I certainly want neither party to convincingly win.

As such, I want the result to be an extremely narrow Labour victory (1,000–500 votes or less). This would maximise the pain to both parties — Labour barely clinging on to what was one of their safest seats, while the SNP lose an election they predicted they would win. Fingers crossed!

Anyone who has read this blog for long might get the impression that I am anti-mainstream media or anti-journalism. I don’t blame you for thinking this because I am always blaming this, that and the other on the media. I’ve done it twice this week alone, even in this period of “light blogging”.

I must come across one of those awful people who always manages to blame everything on the media. But while occasionally I have a beef with certain aspects of the mainstream media, I know that it would be grossly unfair to tar all journalists with the same brush.

Look in the comments section on any major website, and you will find loons aplenty. I used to be a big advocate of letting people comment on MSM news articles. I thought the BBC’s terrible Have Your Say was just a one-off accident due to the fact that it was among the first major attempts at allowing comments on MSM websites. Now that comments are commonplace, it is clear that it was a mistake to believe that it would enhance accountability or improve debate.

The first time I truly realised that comments on MSM sites were almost universally awful was when Scotsman.com introduced them. I wrote about it at the time. The comment box obviously just attracts loudmouths and morons. Anyone looking for good debate would be sorely disappointed.

This isn’t just a problem with the media. Anyone who has read the comments on huge websites like Digg or YouTube will have probably found their inner misanthrope jumping out and despairing about the state of humankind. It seems as though the bigger the website is, the worse the comments are.

Anseo at North to Leith has written a brilliant post about the comment sections of both Scotsman.com and The Herald’s website.

I`m getting more than a wee bit pissed off at some of the bloody loonies who leave comments on the Scotsman and the Herald’s websites. I`m know a great many of the Scottish Press Corp and on the whole they have my respect. Are there those who are members of the Labour party? Yes, but there are also members of the SNP – and party membership generally among the press corp is very very low…

Some so-called cyber-nats (if they actually are nats and not simply flamers or stirrers) seem to take any story which has any criticism of the SNP as evidence that the journalist behind the piece is some form of Labour ‘fellow traveller’.

Which, in short, is total pish.

Anseo’s description is sadly true. Visit the Scotsman or Herald comments sections and all you will find is a bunch of shouty SNP / independence supporters whining about the great unionist conspiracy and generally making themselves look a bit stupid.

I have sometimes wondered if there is some kind of Ron Paul-style alert system telling SNP activists whenever a relevant story is published. But if this was the case, they would surely have stopped by now, because they will have realised that anyone reading the comments will just get the impression that SNP supporters are a bunch of morons — which isn’t the case.

The likely explanation is that there really is an army of people waking up and visiting the Scotsman first thing in the morning to fire off a few diatribes. I would say they are people who have too much time on their hands, but that’s not necessarily the case because they obviously don’t spend very much time constructing these sledgehammers.

I highly doubt there is any institutional political bias in the Scottish media. My guess is that there are fair few Labour supporters working in the Scottish media, but this is surely a reflection of the huge base of support Labour has in Scotland anyway. In fact, I am surprised that the SNP haven’t been given a rougher ride in the media as a whole since they won last year’s election.

It can be a fun game to guess which parties the major journalists support. But it’s just that — a game. Readers of Brian Taylor’s excellent blog will be aware that he leans to the orange side — but only in football. In politics? Who knows. He is very even-handed. It would be like knowing who David Dimbleby votes for.

These accusations of bias can affect more than just politics. Sport is a prime example. Just look at the many people who (either with their tongues in their cheeks or not) accuse various football pundits of secretly supporting Glasgow Rangers. Chick Young doesn’t really support St Mirren, they say. It’s all a smokescreen as part of the great Rangers conspiracy.

As Anseo points out, the reality is almost certainly that the main political commentators are not aligned to any particular party at all. After all, that is the case with most people. Indeed, I am rather suspicious of anyone who identifies too closely with a political party.

Anseo’s conclusion is neat, and brings us back to the subject at hand:

So to all those supposed cyber-nats out there if you fancy putting your own brand of loony views on the internet…get a blog (like the rest of us loonies)…and try and at least engage in debates rather than simply abuse.

I couldn’t agree more. Increasingly it looks as though introducing comment facilities on media websites are a mistake. They add either no value or negative value to the website. I am not the only one to have come to this conclusion.

A couple of months back a story caught my eye where an expert in online discussion said that some newspapers have made a bit of a hash of introducing comments to their websites. Robert Marcus reckons the problem is the lack of community:

News sites should be wary of comment areas being dominated by campaigners or those seeking ‘their name in lights’, a phenomenon that can occur because of a lack of ‘friendliness’ and community between readers and journalists in this area, he added.

I personally think it might be to do with the size of websites. If a website has a large audience (and therefore a large number of contributors), then the only way to attract attention is to use attention-seeking tactics. Nuanced debate will inevitably fall by the wayside.

I agree with Anseo that people who want to scratch the commenting itch should start up a blog. Despite my bleak outlook on user generated content on the MSM, I still believe that bloggers have inherent qualities that lead to good debate.

Okay, so some blogs are not all that great, and we can probably all think of some big blogs that have bad debate. Cassilis wrote about this last week:

Can there be any more dispiriting a sight than the phrase ‘Comments (86) - Add your own’ - you just know there aren’t 86 insightful observations there (you’ll be lucky to find 6) and the exchanges no more deserve the term dialogue than a rowdy pub brawl does. The invitation to ‘Add a Comment’ feels like being tapped on the shoulder at a football match and asked why you’re not shouting with the other 40,000….

This is the same problem that faces all other websites — the bigger the website, the worse the debate. But for the likes of medium sized blogs like this, and upstarts, blogging is a breath of fresh air and the comment sections are generally good.

There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, blogging is a skill; it’s difficult. How many of us have seen upstart bloggers give up after a couple of weeks? Secondly, bloggers are held to account in the comments section and by other bloggers. You have to be prepared to defend what you say. As such, what you say has to be robust and sensible enough in the first place. Thirdly, trolls get ignored on their own blogs — it’s only when they go elsewhere that they can get any attention.

I admit that this is a rather elitist approach. But if you want good debate you have to set the barrier at an appropriate level.

The loons who dispose of their verbal diarrhoea on popular websites are polluters. Websites like Scotsman.com and The Herald should perhaps consider removing the comments facilities.

But that needn’t mean there should be no discussion about their stories. In its place they could — and should — have a system like pingbacks or a Technorati widget so that readers can see what bloggers have to say about the story. The standard of debate would surely rise.

On Sunday when I wrote about the racist crowd members at the Barcelona test, I said that part of the problem was the media’s debased, distorted coverage of Formula 1. Sadly, their coverage of the racism issue itself does not make me confident that the situation will get any better. The News International stable in particular should be hanging its head in shame — although of course it won’t be.

The Sun has taken the opportunity to drive traffic to its website by buying Google Ads on Formula 1 websites — including this one. As I pointed out in the comments yesterday, the language used is rather inflammatory:

Lewis Hamilton in racism storm. Spanish yobs vile attack on F1 ace

Granted, subtlety has never been a strong suit of The Sun, being as it is a bastion of demagoguery. Read the article itself and things don’t get much better. There are some rather thinly-veiled racist comments in here as well including:

Spanish fans — notorious for racism at football matches…

Not a word of course about English football fans who have been notorious for their hooliganism, as peterg pointed out in the comments.

Too many people have been trying to make it out as though Spain in particular has a problem with racism. One person commenting on The Sun’s website called the racism incident “Typical Spanish attitude” without a hint of irony.

As Pink Peril said in the comments yesterday, wherever you go, sooner or later racism will rear its ugly head. The only reason this has become a “Spanish” problem is because Hamilton happens to have a rivalry with someone who happens to be Spanish.

If Hamilton had had a rivalry with a driver of a different nationality, he would still be at the receiving end of racist taunts. And even if a British driver had a rivalry with a non-British black driver, British racists would soon enough be out in force.

Besides, the last place anyone should go to learn about issues surrounding race is The Sun. This is the paper that once ran a spoof Mr Men strip featuring such culturally-sensitive characters as “Mr Asylum Seeker” who wants everything for free, “Mr Albanian Gangster” who invites people to visit his friends’ sisters and “Mr Yardie”, a gun-wielding, joint-smoking Rastafarian.

When did The Sun run this insightful story? The 1970s? The 1980s? No, it was 2003.

We all know that the only reason The Sun is even paying attention to this story is because Lewis Hamilton is British. They wouldn’t give two hoots if the racism was directed at somebody else.

And this is the thing. The Sun’s nationalism is a symptom of the same problem that the racists in the Barcelona grandstands have. The media here bases its entire Formula 1 coverage on the notion that you should support Lewis Hamilton because he is British and vilify Fernando Alonso because he isn’t British.

The Sun says you should support drivers on the basis of where they come from. Racists taunt drivers on the basis of where they come from. They are both the same thing.

Meanwhile, The Sun’s sister paper, The Times, has written a story today blasting, “Spanish media chose to overlook latest incident” (via F1Fanatic). This is despite the fact that we probably wouldn’t even be aware of many of the incidents were it not for the reporting of Spanish newspapers such as Marca. In addition, El País, El Mundo and ABC have all reported on the issue (via Samuel at F1Fanatic).

The distorted perspectives from gutter newspapers like The Sun and The Times will do nothing to prevent racism. In fact, I am convinced that these newspapers are using the opportunity to tap into the racist attitudes of their readers by making yet more anti-Spanish comments and telling yet more lies about the situation.

I read on GrandPrix.com that FOA has signed a deal with a firm called Kitbag to operate the merchandise section of the Formula 1 website. I’m not sure what it means for the current F1 store. But I certainly hope it means that it will start selling much better products.

Whenever I take a look at the F1 store, I am flabbergasted. This is surely the biggest mistake Bernie Ecclestone has ever made. I can’t imagine many sales are made at all.

I remember a few years back filling in a survey for Formula1.com. One of the questions asked if I would buy official Formula 1 baseball caps and the like. I said no and it asked back, why not? All I could write was, “Why would I?” I mean, why would you?

To the extent that people want merchandise, it is usually to express their support for a team or driver. The same goes for any sport. It’s not too often you see anyone walking down the street wearing an official FA Barclays Premier League t-shirt or any other generic football merchandise.

So quite what possessed Bernie Ecclestone to think that people would be prepared to pay astronomical prices for Formula 1 merchandise is beyond me. T-shirts, for instance, are £30. But that’s just the start of it.

How about £250 for a mousemat? Hell, throw caution to the wind and buy the premium version (!) — £260 for one made out of leather.

How about a £50 keyring? A £24 poster? An £85 photo frame? A £250 ringbinder (”Comes with complimentary Formula 1™ pad” — how generous!)?

The worst product, which I have featured on this blog before, is this baseball cap which features an F1 logo made out of Swarovski crystals. It looks rather chav-tastic to me. The pink one really is the sort of thing an eight year old girl would wear, rather than anyone who’d like to be taken seriously. But it will take a long time to accumulate £125 out of pocket money.

Credit where it’s due though. While the most expensive wallets are £120, Bernie does offer a reduced-price wallet… at £50.

I understand that Formula 1 likes to be seen as a cut above. And this approach does avoid the tackier Nascar products such as Nascar meat snacks (more at Boing Boing). But by asking for £250 for a ringbinder and £260 for a mousemat (not to mention the £390 watches, although they actually look rather nice), it just makes F1 look like it has its collective head up its arse.