Yet again, the comments to a previous post have gone on an interesting tangent. Once again Jeff was behind it. He’s not afraid to get stuck into a debate and he always has some interesting points to share, even though I don’t always agree with him! I thought the discussion was quite good so I want to share some of it in a new post and also expand on my thinking behind abstention and why it is not a bad thing.

Before I start I should point out that I have never abstained in an election that was at local government level or above. In fact, in the local government elections last year I listed a whopping four preferences. Not bad for a cynic! (Having said that, it was admittedly for negative reasons — I wanted to vote for everyone except Labour).

Nonetheless, I struggle nowadays to understand why abstainers are so vilified, as though they are sub-human. I think sometimes people conflate abstention with apathy. In reality it is perfectly consistent to be interested in politics and yet not vote when the election comes round.

In his first comment Jeff said:

I find it incredible that someone can maintain such a thoughtful and intelligent political blog with all these numerous opinions and then, when an election comes around, he may not take part.

Compare and contrast with James O’Malley’s comment:

I think your experiences of becoming more apathetic with age - essentially more apathetic as you became better informed - are pretty similar for a lot of people. I’ve just finished a degree in International Relations, and as a consequence of learning what a horrible bleak mess the world is, I think we all became cynical about almost anything political.

I have gone through a similar process. Being interested in elections and voting behaviour, whenever there was an opportunity to study them at university I took it. I wrote my dissertation on what motivates people to vote. The whole learning experience has led me to become less likely to vote and more sympathetic towards abstainers.

(As an aside, if anyone’s interested, I have decided to upload my dissertation here since it got the best mark of anything I ever did at university so I feel quite good about it! So if you’re interested and you have a bit of spare time, have a read and you might get a bit more insight into my current thinking about voting.)

In short, Jeff asked why someone like me would not vote despite knowing so much about politics. What slipped his mind was the possibility that someone like me would not vote because they know so much about politics.

For a few months now I have been meaning to outline a few problems with elections and democracy as we know it (this post isn’t it by the way, it’s still coming). This is not because I am not a democrat, because I am. However, I am disappointed in the poor standard of analysis of democracy. Discussions about it frequently descend into a list of clichés and slogans. It leads me to think that most people are democrats because of blind faith rather than because they have actually thought about it.

That’s a dangerous situation to be in because it breeds complacency. The flaws of democracy are constantly swept under the carpet. But the only way to improve things is to put the flaws on a pedestal and debate them properly. Simply pulling out that hoary old Churchill quote doesn’t bring us any further forward.

That was the case in the comments to the post about student apathy. All I said was that I understood why some people would not vote. Before I knew it, commenters made out that I was advocating something resembling anarchy, I had no right to complain if I didn’t vote, I was doing an injustice to the people of Zimbabwe, and, yes, that bloody Churchill quote was wheeled out. A who’s who of clichéd arguments that get us no further forward.

Bellgrove Belle began proceedings by advocating compulsory voting — albeit with a ‘none of the above’ option (how gracious of you!!). I let that slip by at the time, but only because I didn’t want to go down that tangent. However, now that I have started a separate post I will outline why compulsory voting is the most outrageous idea.

Firstly — and this should hardly need pointing out — people are not the servants of politicians. Yet. Politicians are the servants of the people. Having a government frogmarching everyone to the polling station is not my idea of freedom. The point about the right to vote is that it is a right. That means that you can choose to use it or not. If you are forced to vote, it is no longer a right — it is an oppression.

A vital principle of our liberal way of life is that people know for themselves what is best in almost all instances unless their actions cause harm to others. If people do not vote, it is not because they are wrong (which is a view typically only found among political elites). It is because, for the abstainers, it is costly to go out and vote. And if it is costly for an individual, in turn it is costly to society.

Beyond the cost of sending everyone out to vote, what is wrong with just leaving people be? People should be perfectly entitled to abstain if they want. Forcing people to do things they do not want to do will only breed even more cynicism and apathy.

Having a ‘none of the above’ option is the ridiculous fig leaf to all of these criticisms. There is already a none of the above option. People know very well that they can spoil their paper when they get to the polling station. If people were screaming out for a none of the above option, we would know it by now.

I have only ever heard compulsory voting being advocated by two groups of people: politicians and aspiring politicians. It is funny that these people should select the one ’solution’ to apathy that is almost guaranteed to give them more votes. What a coincidence! Moreover, it is the lazy option for them to choose. It implies that it is the voters who have done wrong, which is a very undemocratic stance to take in actual fact. For politicians, the idea that it is they themselves who have caused apathy — and that it is their job to fix it — is too difficult for them to comprehend, so it seems.

Jeff was next up, suggesting that the logical conclusion of my defending abstention for an individual is advocating mass abstention. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, it is the very fact that others vote in their millions that makes abstention as an individual a reasonable option.

If no-one else voted then I would find the voting decision very easy — I would cast the deciding vote, probably for myself. We don’t live in that world, and my stance is a pragmatic recognition of that fact.

There is that old guilt trip: “what if everyone else thought like you?” The point is that not everyone does think like me. And it would be rather egotistical of me to think that my actions would be copied en masse by the population as a whole. If it were the case that I was so influential, I would find myself sharing the same bed with six and a half billion others every night. As Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt point out:

Imagine that you and your 8-year-old daughter are taking a walk through a botanical garden when she suddenly pulls a bright blossom off a tree.

“You shouldn’t do that,” you find yourself saying.

“Why not?” she asks.

“Well,” you reason, “because if everyone picked one, there wouldn’t be any flowers left at all.”

“Yeah, but everybody isn’t picking them,” she says with a look. “Only me.”

Then Jeff pulls out that old one — if you’re so dissatisfied with the candidates, why don’t you stand yourself? The answer, I would have thought, should be obvious. Standing for election would involve immense personal financial and other costs. I would have to give up my job to dedicate enough time to campaigning, meaning a loss of income. Then I would have to somehow fund the campaign itself.

On top of that, I would probably lose my deposit. The political system is heavily biased in favour of the large parties — partly because of the voting system, partly because of the media and whatever else. The fact is that if you want to be successful in an election you almost always need the backing of a big party machine.

Independent candidates are successful from time to time, and small parties do break through. But in reality these are all led by either someone with a lot of money or a celebrity figure like Tommy Sheridan or Martin Bell. The other successful independents are single-issue (often local-issue) candidates, and I am interested in more than one local issue.

The point I am making is that were I to stand for election tomorrow, no matter how good my policies were, I would have almost no chance of making any kind of impact whatsoever. Am I supposed to believe, as Jeff suggests, that this is the extent of my democratic powers? You can’t exactly blame someone for not doing this when the odds are so heavily stacked against them.

Get ready for another cliché now. “If you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to complain.” Aaah, *tick*.

This is one of the oldest ones in the book. Yet even though it’s a catchy slogan, what is always omitted is exactly the reason why you don’t have the right to complain. Is that because there isn’t one?

Democracy is about so much more than elections. For sure, an election is a vital cog in the democratic process, but it is just one cog among many. China has elections, but that doesn’t make it a democracy. Just this week we have witnessed a sham election in Zimbabwe.

I would think that the idea that elections are the only valid form of political participation in a democracy would come as a surprise to the many pressure groups, non-governmental organisations, media outlets, publishers, think tanks, academics, mass demonstrators, lone protesters, letter writers, bloggers even, and others — all of whom play a vital role in a democracy. Is it really more valid to enact change “from within”? Then we are to do away with all of these vital elements of civic society? Are these people all supposed to stand for election as well? Are they harassed about their voting behaviour before being permitted to speak up?

Democracy is so much more than putting an X in a box. It is about speaking out, debating and persuading. If you have next to no power in the ballot box, what is so illegitimate about using a different method of trying to improve the world? I think that suggesting that people don’t have a right to speak out because they recognise that their vote is near worthless is actually an intensely anti-democratic view to take.

Jeff’s position is apparently to say that the only valid way I have to express myself is to vote for someone, even if it is the “least worst” candidate. Am I really supposed to believe that the extent of my democratic rights is to vote Lib Dem instead of Labour?

Even when I do express a preference in the polling booth, that vote is a drop in the ocean. My reasons for voting are lost among those of thousands of other voters (or, in a national election, millions of others), each of whom voted for different reasons. The politician then cherry-picks the reasons that suit his agenda best. So what have I achieved by voting?

I can say that the time I have spent voting is a waste when I could have spent that time engaging in another democratic activity. For instance, I could have spent that time writing here. That way I can articulate my views in an infinitely more nuanced way than I would by voting. This makes my voice louder than it otherwise would have been. I believe that I can make more of a difference by doing this. What would be so illegitimate about that?

This is all without even getting into the instance where you genuinely are undecided. If a voter is guilt-tripped or compelled to haul himself into the polling station, what is he supposed to do? Toss a coin? Close his eyes and see where the pencil lands? Given that your vote is essentially a way of enforcing your views onto other people, I am amazed that anyone thinks that the decision to vote should be taken so lightly.

Finally came the guilt trip from Ideas of Civilisation. He brought up the current situation in Zimbabwe saying, “it’s a reminder of the freedoms, and responsibilities, we have here.”

The thing is, I believe that recent events in Zimbabwe support my view. Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out of the contest because the election was a “violent sham”. Was that illegitimate? Or should he have contested the election because otherwise he doesn’t have the right to criticise? Of course not. His voice is louder outside the contest and he has made the point about the current situation in Zimbabwe very forcefully. It is a perfect example of making one’s voice heard outside of official electoral channels.

Of course, the situation in Zimbabwe is very different to the situation we face in this country and other, freer, more democratic countries. I suspect the point IoC was making about Zimbabwe was that, in such countries whenever there is a free election is usually has a comparatively high turnout.

That is right, although it is a very different situation. When you are given hope in the shape of an inspiring candidate you are bound to grab it with both hands. That is the case even more so if the bandwagon theory (discussed in my dissertation) is true — people want to feel a part of making a big change so will take part in the vote.

You don’t have to live in an unfree country for such a thing to happen, so that doesn’t put this country’s politicians off the hook. Barack Obama is currently doing it in the USA by engaging certain parts of the electorate at levels that have never been achieved before. It’s just that right now there is no such candidate in this country.

Back to the unfree country though. Even in the hypothetical watershed election that brings everyone hope, turnout will not be 100%. It might be higher than the turnouts we see in this country, but it will be nowhere near 100%. In fact, if turnout was anywhere close to 100% accusations of vote rigging will be flying.

This fact demonstrates that abstention is a perfectly natural and legitimate position to take in an election. In fact, it serves a very useful function in a democracy. Any attempts to eradicate it should be viewed with as much suspicion as attempts to eradicate any other political view.

I can’t believe that the fact that Lewis Hamilton is moving is still in the news. They were talking about it on the radio last night. I mean, when was this announced? Two, three weeks ago? And the media is still yammering on about it.

I will actually defend Lewis Hamilton here. It is not as if “rich person moves to tax haven” is exactly shocking news. Loads of F1 drivers move to Switzerland. Motor racing is illegal in Switzerland, so an F1 driver can declare himself unemployed. Ka-ching!

But this just underlines how obsessed the media is with Lewis Hamilton. I was just going to let the whole thing pass without commenting on it, but this story has been in the news for weeks now, and there is little sign of it running out of steam.

It is not even the fact that he is British, because Jenson Button and David Coulthard both live in Monaco and I don’t remember the media going on and on about it then. Nigel Mansell has lived in the Isle of Man and Jersey as well.

Moreover, the very fact that the media keeps on banging on about it kind of proves the point that Hamilton has been making — that he can’t get enough privacy in Britain. I can well believe that. The man probably can’t even take a shit in peace.

This is a country with a skewed culture that thinks it is newsworthy if a celebrity has a wardrobe malfunction. If a contestant on Big Brother from five years ago gets a wedgie it makes it onto the front cover of Heat.

And with the tabloids’ relentless obsession over every single female that stands within 100 yards of Hamilton, I would not be surprised if he is rather fed up with it.

And here is the thing. Only two out of 23 F1 drivers currently live in their home country, according to the August issue of F1 Racing, which coincidentally ran an item about F1 drivers moving country. Only Giancarlo Fisichella and Anthony Davidson have stayed at home.

But, it’s not all for tax reasons, as some may believe. While 15 drivers currently live in either Switzerland or Monaco, some prefer to live in the UK, even if they aren’t from there. Mark Webber, Vitantonio Liuzzi and Heikki Kovalainen all live in the UK. Presumably this is for work reasons, as the vast majority of F1 teams are based in Britain. Meanwhile, Rubens Barrichello lives in Portugal. I would guess this is so that he can be based in Europe while still speaking his native Portugese.

What I am worried about now is that the near-inevitable backlash will be every bit as unbearable as the hype. Jenson Button was right yesterday when he said that 2007 was possibly Hamilton’s best chance to win the Championship.

It is conceivable that McLaren will produce a bad car next year. Going by recent form, they are not likely to strike gold twice in a row. And with the FIA getting in the way of the process this year, it’s easy to see how they might get put off for 2008.

Today Hamilton is talked about as a near-certain future World Champion. But say McLaren go into a slump for a few years. Hamilton may be loyal to McLaren now, but that’s what Button said when he was at Williams. Hamilton will get itchy feet if he isn’t given a car that can win. He could move to another team and end up in that classic situation — always being at the right team at the wrong time. Good cars aren’t easy to come by, as Button knows all too well.

All of a sudden, Lewis Hamilton gets a touch of the Buttons. No longer will he be future World Champion. He will revert to Plucky Brit status and the media will start to hate him for blowing his opportunity.

It could happen, although I hope it doesn’t. But if the media is this bad when Hamilton simply moves house, imagine how bad it would be if he stops winning races.

Fernando Alonso’s departure from McLaren is kind of old news now. But Ponzonha asked me to write about it, and I still have some views on it, so here they are.

I guess the first thing to point out is that Alonso’s departure from McLaren is not much of a surprise. There was still a cheeky part of my brain that was saying, “maybe Alonso can stay at McLaren after all.” But clearly the relationship between Alonso and the team had broken down irreparably. Despite a contract that said Alonso was going to be around for two more years, there was no way that was in the interests of either Alonso or McLaren.

The question then turns to what actually happened in the negotiations. Given that a contract existed, there must have been some kind of deal. Of course, McLaren and Alonso are trying to give the impression that they just discussed it and mutually decided to part ways. But few seem to believe that.

I doubt, however, that any deal involved money. A common theory is that Alonso is either not allowed to move to a “competitive” team or not allowed to move to a manufacturer team. I suppose another possibility is that Alonso will go on gardening leave for the two years until his McLaren contract runs out. But I doubt Alonso would want to sit out for two seasons.

Fernando Alonso’s difficult decision

Of course, the most obvious team for Alonso to go to is Renault — assuming this hasn’t been ruled out by Ron Dennis. He has reportedly already been offered a seat there, but seemingly Alonso has not (yet) accepted it.

One possibility for this is that Alonso does not see Renault as a competitive enough proposition. But what other options are there? BMW and Ferrari are both locked out. No-one else is as competitive, except (arguably) for Red Bull.

Another theory that I have heard is that there is “something up” between Alonso and Renault. Perhaps they had some kind of falling-out and they were just much more successful at keeping it a secret than McLaren were. Don’t forget that towards the end of the 2006 season Alonso was talking about how lonely he felt in the team. I had always thought of Alonso as a real Renault guy. But putting the pieces together, it seems to make sense that he perhaps fell out with the team.

The next most popular rumour is a move to Toyota. This has a lot going for it in one respect. There is a big Ralf Schumacher-sized vacancy and Toyota is probably the only team with the willingness and ability to pay the big bucks that Alonso no doubt demands.

Alonso is also good friends with Toyota driver Jarno Trulli. Also, if Alonso really has the ability to give six tenths to a team, who better to give it to than Toyota? This would allow them to mix with the front runners more regularly.

But I just don’t see it. Firstly, the rumours linking Alonso and Ross Brawn with a joint move to Toyota (or any team for that matter) seem too far fetched to me. Why would they join forces like that?

Also, the Toyota team is a disaster. I doubt even Alonso could make the team competitive — the bureaucracy is too overwhelming. Maybe he would want to do what Michael Schumacher did in 1996 and move to a mediocre team and “build” it into something much more successful. But it is one thing to resurrect a team as romantic as Ferrari. Toyota? It has no history, no passion, no tifosi… Just nothing going for it.

This all appears to pave the way to Red Bull. Firstly, they will have enough money to pay for Alonso. Secondly, they have the potential to become a front-running team. Geoff Willis and Adrian Newey are more than capable of building a seriously fast car. As long as they can get the reliability sorted, Red Bull ought to be a serious proposition. Also, it is not a manufacturer team, so if Alonso is forbidden to join one then Red Bull by default becomes obvious choice.

The only thing is that Red Bull already has two drivers for next season. However, it is not totally inconceivable that Red Bull could pay one of them off.

For me, the Red Bull rumour seems to stack up the most. It is not a manufacturer team, so it does not seem to be obvious at first. But there aren’t any major obstacles to the idea. But even if I was a gambler, I would not put any money on it. Everything is too uncertain.

Fernando Alonso seems to have a difficult choice ahead of him. But it looks easy in comparison to the awful choice McLaren has to take! Who shall they choose to replace Fernando Alonso?

McLaren’s difficult decision

McLaren have a really difficult juggling act to perform here. First of all, I imagine that McLaren would be wary of hiring anyone who is remotely as talented as Lewis Hamilton in an attempt to avoid the awful events of the past six months or so.

But they also want to hire somebody who has some experience. As awesome as Lewis Hamilton is, he does not have the same kind of experience that is required in terms of car set-up and whatnot. Teams tend to want to balance fresh talent with experience.

Also, they won’t want to hire another Brit. The media keeps on suggesting that Jenson Button is a possibility, but this is arrant nonsense. It doesn’t make commercial sense for them, because having drivers of two different nationalities encourages sponsors from both of those countries. McLaren is a British team with a British driver. It certainly doesn’t need another one. There is also the fact that Button just isn’t talented enough to driver for a team as good as McLaren.

All in all, it’s difficult to see who could be suitable for the McLaren drive. It is not just the three problems I have outlined above. The fact is that all of the feasible options are either inexperienced or past it.

So, who are the options? Up until today I would have said Nico Rosberg was a possibility. But today he was confirmed as a Williams driver for 2009.

Who else? Heikki Kovalainen appears to be the most obvious candidate. If Alonso moves to Renault, it would be a straight swap. Kovalainen has been quite competent at Renault this year.

I do remember once reading someone say that Kovalainen is an obvious choice for McLaren. Why? A Brit and a Finn — how could Ron Dennis resist?

It is potentially dangerous for Kovalainen though. His reputation has been built on the line that if he was in the McLaren and Hamilton was in the Renault, then everybody would be talking about Kovalainen and not Hamilton. That reputation could be lost if he turns out not to be so hot! However, I don’t imagine Kovalainen would turn down a drive at McLaren, especially with his future at Renault looking (inexplicably) so uncertain.

Lewis Hamilton himself has said he wants his team mate to be either Rosberg (now out of the question), Kovalainen or Adrian Sutil. Hamilton was team mates with Sutil in GP2 and seems to get along well with him. Hamilton has also been favourable about Sutil’s driving ability this season. Many people do think that Sutil is due a drive at a better team. But is he really McLaren material? I doubt it.

Patrick Head has cheekily suggested that it could be Michael Schumacher. This is obviously just Patrick Head being a little bit playful, so shouldn’t be considered too seriously. However, I wouldn’t rule out a Schumacher comeback in the future.

People say that Schumacher is a Ferrari guy through and through. I am not so sure about that. Ferrari post-2006 is a very different beast, and we’ve seen that partly with the whole Stepneygate issue. There is some nasty politics in that team, and a lot of senior figures seem very disgruntled.

I think that rather than being a Ferrari man, Michael Schumacher is a Ross Brawn / Rory Byrne / Jean Todt / etc man. As such, I don’t think it’s unthinkable that Schumacher could make a comeback in a non-Ferrari for a one-off season. Of course, Mercedes would probably love that!

Who are the other options? Ralf Schumacher is so bad that he has already been ruled out by McLaren, even though they won’t say another word on the driver issue at the moment. Giancarlo Fisichella is similarly falling out of favour, and is starting to look very past it.

Pedro de la Rosa is another possibility, and he seems to be advertising himself a bit. He clearly wants the drive. He is trusty, but also rusty. De la Rosa knows his stuff and is an excellent test driver for McLaren, but his occasional race performances haven’t set the world alight (except for Bahrain 2005 — wow!). There also may be a question mark in Ron Dennis’s mind due to de la Rosa’s apparently heavy involvement in the row concerning Ferrari documents this year.

Another test driver is Gary Paffett. He is held in high regard, but is effectively ruled out because he is British.

Perhaps not quite over the hill yet are Rubens Barrichello and David Coulthard. Honda have been saying some astonishing things about Barrichello since Brazil, and the sword of Damocles seemingly hangs over him. Coulthard, meanwhile, may well get the heave-ho should Alonso join Red Bull.

It’s a bit of a shame really. There has been a bit of hype about Barrichello and Coulthard both surpassing Ricardo Patrese’s record as the most experienced F1 driver ever if they complete the 2009 season. All of a sudden, by the looks of things, it seems as though neither of them might make it!

But are they possibilities for the McLaren drive? David Coulthard has already driven for McLaren, and he’s not always spoken about them in glowing terms since he left. But it would make the transition smooth and everyone will know where they stand. Coulthard would surely also be an excellent mentor for Lewis Hamilton.

Similarly for Barrichello. He has not driven for McLaren in the past, but I don’t think he is quite that rusty yet.

All-in-all, McLaren really have a tough choice. They either choose somebody who is not experienced enough, or they hire someone who is on the last legs of their F1 career. I’m glad I’m not responsible for making that decision.

Spot the difference.

• Pitpass: Honda to test three hopefuls
• Autosport: Honda to give test to GP2 trio
• Formula1.com: Honda to test young GP2 drivers
• ITV-F1: Honda to test Conway at Barcelona

Oh yeah, ITV. And what about the other two? Oh wait, I forgot. They don’t count because they’re not British.

It makes me sick!

For me, the worst aspect of this Formula 1 season has been the hopelessly biased media reporting. I have railed against the British media’s love affair with Lewis Hamilton many times. But it is worth pointing out that, if anything, the Spanish media are probably even worse when it comes to Fernando Alonso.

Let us not forget that before Alonso burst onto the scene, Formula 1 was not even televised in Spain! (Apparently this is inaccurate — see the comments.) At least prior to Hamilton F1 was a regular fixture on British television screens. So it should be no surprise that some Spaniards are pretty rabid Alonso fans. This has led to some rather colourful goings-on on the internet.

One of the strangest was the mass invasion of nationalist Spaniards on Ed Gorman’s rather good blog for Times Online. The rabid one-sidedness of the Spanish commenters was quite a sight to behold, and it became all the more entertaining when they began to adopt Anglophone names in a bid to disguise their favouritism.

I suppose it is always possible that someone called George posting on the internet can have terrible English. Have Your Say is testament to this. But seeing Victor screaming to Ed Gorman, “I WANT TO SEE THE EVIDENCES!! GIVE TO ME THE EVIDENCES!!” doesn’t quite convince.

Of course, Ed Gorman did not help himself much by being so blatantly biased (in the opposite direction) himself. And this is the very problem. The British media talks through its arse on one end, and the Spanish media talks through its arse on the opposite end. It is no wonder that different groups of people have ended up with such radically differing views as to what has happened during the season.

In Britain, Fernando Alonso is viewed as a moaner, while Hamilton’s own moans (post-Monaco and post-Belgium) have been downplayed. While Alonso’s comments about not getting equal treatment at McLaren have often crossed over into the realms of the ridiculous, let us not forget that Hamilton was the first to run crying to the media about his treatment at McLaren following the Monaco Grand Prix, long before Alonso hinted at any such levels of discontent.

Meanwhile, in Spain, this season has been viewed as one massive conspiracy against Fernando Alonso. As Keith Collantine notes, the claims are easily debunked.

Why would McLaren want to sabotage the efforts of their own driver? Moreover, why would they go out of their way to upset him when he is a double World Champion? If McLaren were acting in their own self-interest to sabotage the season, it’s not exactly worked out well for them, has it? This season has been one long PR disaster for the team.

This is why I have such a short fuse when it comes to nationalistic sports coverage. I suppose being a Scot I am naturally wired up to have a sensitive bullshit detector when it comes to nationalistic sports coverage. But while for most of my compatriots it stops at pro-English bias in sports commentary, I find myself equally exasperated by all biased commentary — pro-Scottish, pro-British, pro-Spanish, pro-whatever.

Part of me really hopes that Lewis Hamilton fails to win the Championship today just to burst the ridiculous bubble that the British media has blown up. The ridiculous “weekend of British supremacy sporting success” was already dealt a blow yesterday with England’s failure in the Rugby World Cup. With all eyes on Lewis Hamilton today, I really hope the media ends up with egg on its face.

The bias exists in team sports as well. Holyrood Watcher wrote about it today in relation to the rugby. But at least I can understand it with team sports. International rugby is one sport where a team is set up specifically to represent a country.

Formula 1 is a team sport — but the teams do not represent countries. It is also an individual sport, and in no way does it make sense to constantly make references to “Britain’s Lewis Hamilton” or “Spain’s Fernando Alonso” as though their nationality made a blind bit of difference to anything. You might as well talk about “blond Kimi Räikkönen” or “the right-handed Felipe Massa”.

Because you can bet your bottom dollar that Lewis Hamilton doesn’t want to be World Champion “for Britain”. He wants to be World Champion for himself. For an explanation, I wrote here about sportsmen and nationality some months ago.

The recent obsession with F1 drivers’ nationalities particularly saddens me because every single one of the drivers who will be racing at Interlagos this afternoon is an absolute hero. They all do extraordinary things, putting their lives on the line. I can never get my head round how these drivers can travel at 200+ mph, routinely experiencing forces of 5+ gs, yet still manage to hit the apex of a corner, inch-perfect, and complete lap times consistent to a couple of tenths of a second.

It astonishes me. These drivers are super-human. Extraordinary achievements are being made routine. Yet, what is the media coverage reduced to? “Let’s support Lewis Hamilton because he’s British, and let’s throw stones at Alonso because he’s foreign.” It sickens me. To do certain drivers down because of where they happen to come from, when they are every bit as much of a hero, is just not on.

The media’s fixation with nationalities offends me. To me, “Britain’s Lewis Hamilton” (as the media apparently has to call him, by law) does not exist. Nor does “Spain’s Fernando Alonso”, “Finland’s Kimi Räikkönen” or even “Japan’s Sakon Yamamoto”. They are Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, Kimi Räikkönen and Sakon Yamamoto: extraordinary, super-human, heroic motor racing drivers. Every single one of them. No matter where they came from.