Qatar-strophe

I was a little baffled to learn this week of FIFA’s decision to host the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. I think it might be the most ridiculous decision FIFA has made since its decision to host the 2018 World Cup in Russia. But actually, I think it might even be worse.

OK, so Russia is ranked 148 out of 169 countries according to the United Nations Development Programme’s Empowerment and Governance index, and envisaging the opening ceremony conjures up images of tanks rolling past the Kremlin on a grey and rainy day, with hordes of the gruel-fuelled proletariat a little over-enthusiastically cheering at the unfurling of a 50m-high photo of Vladimir Putin shaking hands with Stalin, whilst nervously glancing over their shoulders at a posse of trench-coated neo-KGB types lurking in the background, menacingly encouraging appropriate displays of “exuberance and patriotism”…

…But at least it’s a country with a footballing history (world class linesmen, for example). Qatar has about as much footballing history as a small island in French Polynesia, that was completely isolated from the rest of the world until a Mitre Size 5 floated over there last week, and the chief of the island’s tribe cut it in half, and used one hemisphere for a large bowl, and the other for a hat.

And if Russia ranks pretty low on most human rights indices, The Economist’s Democracy Index puts Qatar in 144th place out of 167 countries – 8 places below Google-banning China, and 1 place ahead of Iran. And then there’s gender relations. Personally, I don’t think it’s right that women should only show their eyes and not their face in public, or that they should have to walk 5 paces behind their husbands (I think it should be at least 8). Qatar is ranked 142 out of 143 countries on “Gender” by the UNDP. But then again, women never liked football anyway…

I lived in Qatar for 8 months, and I was also pretty appalled by the Qatari people’s attitudes towards the immigrant population of Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and Filipinos who basically ran the country. I sensed a severely racist attitude on the part of local Qataris – not a great quality in a World Cup host. Another thing I notices whilst living there was that the people are really unfriendly, going on down-right rude. Everywhere I have travelled in the world, I have without a single exception found the local people to be very friendly and welcoming (it’s probably because my point of comparison was England). Except for the single exception of Qatar, where I found the opposite to be true. This is verging on vitriolic, but if I could use four words to describe the Qatari people I met, it would be “lazy, conceited and rude”. (Although I should point out that the aforementioned immigrant populations were fun, friendly and fantastic folk). If I could use 13 words, they would be “what the hell were we thinking letting these guys host the World Cup?!”.

But perhaps this is just my own personal impression. What is less subjective however, is the fact that Qatar is a very hot country. The average temperature in Qatar in July is 106 degrees Fahrenheit (41 degrees Celsius). If my mental image of the final in Moscow in 2018, is of an old-school orange ball being kicked around a snow-laden pitch in Siberia, my mental image of the final in Doha in 2022, is of the English team collapsing about the centre circle from heat exhaustion, and Wayne Rooney having to wear a baseball cap for the whole tournament to mitigate against sunburn. OK, so that's not strictly true. Even I am no longer naive enough to hope that England will make it to the final.

And another point on the objective front – Qatar is a really small country. Its landmass is slightly smaller than that of Connecticut, which is itself the third smallest American state. By 2022, there will have been 17 World Cup hosts. Their average landmass is 229 times bigger than that of Qatar, and most of that is desert. The population of Qatar is about as large as that of Phoenix, Arizona. The second largest city, Al-Wakrah, has 30,000 inhabitants. Given the crass and obscene affluence of the country, they will probably just build some more cities to host some of the games, but at the moment at least, one of the semi-finals is going to be held at the Al-Sharma oasis.

So, no footballing tradition, a pretty average human rights record, an unwelcoming and unfriendly people, a scorchingly hot climate, and an absence of cities – could there be a worse choice for a World Cup host? I can’t think of one. At least North Korea have a footballing history, and I hear the climate is fairly mild in Pyongyang in the summer.

I can only surmise that Qatar paid someone at FIFA a lot of money to host the World Cup in 2022. (With the third biggest natural gas reserves of any country in the world, they have certainly got the cash). And I think that’s a bad and sad way to determine the host of one of the most exciting and anticipated events on the planet.

They say football is the beautiful game. This was an ugly decision.

Health(no)care

There are a lot of problems with the National Health Service (NHS) in Britain. I am sure the system could be more efficient. And my mum, who has been a doctor in the NHS for about 30 years, has become frustrated with the ever-growing mountains of bureaucratic paperwork towards the end of her career (I blame the management consultants).

But then you come to America.

I love America. I love the people, their enthusiasm, their patriotism, their sports. The customer service is outstanding and the Bay Bridge looks beautiful right now.

But I do not love the American healthcare system.

In Britain, if you get sick, you do not have to pay for your healthcare. You have already paid for it through your taxes. Everyone has paid for it through their taxes.

In America, if you get sick, you have to pay for a not insignificant portion of your healthcare bill.

Not all of it. Those kind people at the Insurance Companies pay most of it. (And I have never had to deal with them, but I am sure they go out of their way to do this justly, generously and easily, with no hassle or wrangling whatsoever).

But a not insignificant portion of it.

Let's say that healthcare payments equate to taxes. That is, for every dollar that people spend on healthcare payments in the US private healthcare system, the alternative would be to spend an equivalent amount of dollars on taxation to provide for public healthcare (like in Britain).

• Of course, this is not strictly accurate. The taxes that you would pay would be lower, because in a public healthcare system, your taxes would not go towards the profits of the Healthcare Companies.

• But then again, a private system should in theory be more efficient and keep costs down (and I think the word theory is an important caveat here), which would make healthcare taxes relatively higher.

I do not know which of these two effects (profit and efficiency) is bigger, but I have my suspicions and a small selection of rapidly-Wikipedia-assembled facts to support them:

1. The US spends more on healthcare per capita than all other OECD countries. The US spent 16% of GDP on healthcare in 2007, compared to 8% in the UK and 10% in Portugal. That is, healthcare costs in the UK were half what they were in the US as a proportion of GDP per capita. Presumably then, healthcare provision in the US is much better…

2. …Well not according to life expectancy (which I would argue is a pretty good assessment of healthcare provision). Life expectancy in the US was 78.2 between 2005-10, compared to 79.4 in the UK and 78.1 in Portugal.

3. Not according to infant mortality either. The infant mortality rate in the US was 6.3 deaths per 1,000 births between 2005-10, compared to 4.8 in the UK and 5.0 in Portugal. That is the infant mortality rate was more than 30% higher in the US than in the UK during this period.

4. According to the IMF, US GDP per capita was $46,400 in 2009, compared to $35,700 in the UK and $20,700 in Portugal.

So in summary, the US is more than twice as rich as Portugal, and a third richer than the UK. And the US spends 3.5 times the amount of Portugal and 2.5 times the amount of the UK on healthcare per capita. And yet the US has lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality rates.

This is obviously a very simplistic, naïve and bullet-hole-ridden analysis, but it does seem clear that in America we are paying quite high healthcare payments for the service we are being provided with – perhaps because we have to pay big bonuses to the already well-paid executives of Healthcare Companies (and let's remember that when Healthcare Companies make high profits, this basically means that they have received a lot of payments from the public, and have incurred relatively lower costs in the provision of healthcare).

And perhaps, on some small level, it’s also related to incentives. In the American medical system, as far as I can make out, doctors are (at least financially) incentivised to treat their patients. Whereas in Britain, doctors are incentivised to cure their patients. I am not for a moment suggesting that American doctors deliberately do the wrong thing by their patients in order to make more money, but I do find the misalignment of social objectives and financial incentives slightly ironic, given that the private provision of healthcare is justified on capitalist principles, which are strongly linked to the importance of incentivisation. And I do wonder if this has something to do with the relatively high costs of US healthcare. If there are two treatments for a disease, the first is 85% effective and earns you $500, and the second is 87% effective and earns you $1,000, as a doctor which would you recommend? What about if they were both 85% effective?

But this is beside the point.

The point is that the American system of private healthcare provision is a regressive tax. Wikipedia describes a regressive tax as one that:

"Imposes a greater burden (relative to resources) on the poor than on the rich".

Now I know that Medicare is available for some people in America, and I think this is a good thing. But imagine that you do not qualify for Medicare. If you are earning $100,000 per year and your medical bills come to $5,000 in a year, this will be 5% of your income. But if you are earning $50,000 per year and your medical bills come to $5,000 in a year, this will be 10% of your income. That is, if you are poorer, you pay a higher proportion of your income for the same amount of medical care. A 2007 study found that 62% of all personal bankruptcies are caused by medical debt.

Isn’t that tragic?

As if poverty of health isn’t bad enough, it also results in poverty of finance. If your income is $5,000,000 your $5,000 is inconsequential. In Britain, in this example everyone would pay more or less the same proportion of their income. And dividing $15,000 by $5,150,000 I make it that the tax rate would be 0.3% across these three examples. Of course, these are made up numbers but you get the point. In my opinion, the British system is fairer because it says that everyone should pay an equal proportion of their income for the medical costs borne by society. (In fact, rich people will end up paying a slightly higher proportion of their income because income taxes increase with annual salary. In my opinion, this is even fairer still).

But it gets worse. Because not only do poor people pay relatively more for healthcare in America, but sick people do as well. If you are healthy, all you pay is your pay-cheque payments. But if you are sick, you have to pay the deductibles, the co-payments, the co-insurance etc. etc. Is it fair that sick people should pay higher taxes than healthy people? If you get cancer, is it your fault? Surely, if anything, sick people should pay lower taxes because they are less able to work. In Britain, sick people and healthy people pay the same amount for healthcare (again, in terms of proportion of their income). That is, healthy people are providing for sick people. My friend Pete once said that he thought societies should be judged on how well they provide for the poor and the marginalised and the dispossessed in their midst. As far as I can tell, the American healthcare system discriminates against the sick in favour of the healthy. I think this is unfair.

I do not know much about it, but I doubt that Mr. Obama's healthcare scheme is perfect. But change of this kind rarely, if ever, happens seamlessly. And given the choice between the maintenance of the status quo, and a suite of changes that, if nothing else, at least raise the issue and catalyse smart people into developing and refining a solution to this problem, I would opt for the latter. I would vote for the latter.

Of course the British system is open to abuse - to hypochondriacs unnecessarily clogging up waiting lists because Mars is not aligned with Venus for example - but I don't really think this happens much. And I definitely don't think it happens to the extent that would justify a system that charges poor people relatively more than rich people for healthcare, and sick people relatively more than healthy people.

And of course I have painted a simplistic caricature here. And I openly confess that I speak from a position of minimal knowledge of either the British or the American healthcare systems. And I would welcome any thoughts and comments and counter-arguments.

This is just an impression.

Except it's not a just impression.

Numbers Games

Let’s do some maths. (i.e. Readers of a non-analytical bent stop reading now).

ENGLAND

Football

• Premier League: 20 teams, each plays each other twice. 10 matches per round, 38 rounds per season, therefore 380 matches per season.
  
• FA Cup: 64 teams from the third round (when the Premiership clubs enter). That’s 63 matches. Plus 15 replays this year. Makes 78 matches in a season.
  
• Carling Cup: 32 teams from the third round (when all Premiership clubs enter). That’s 31 matches in a season.
  
• Champions League: 8 groups of 4 teams each. 16 matches per round, 6 rounds in the group stages. That’s 96 matches in the group stages. 16 teams go through to the knockout stages. And each round is two legs up to the final. That’s 29 knockout matches, so 125 in total.
  
• Europa League: 12 groups of 4 teams each. 24 matches per round, 6 rounds in the group stages. That’s 144 matches in the group stages. 32 teams go through to the knockout stages. And each round is two legs up to the final. That’s 61 knockout matches, so 205 in total.
  
• England internationals: England have played 118 internationals in the last 10 years. That makes an average of about 12 matches per season.

So the total number of top flight football matches played in England each year is around:

380 + 78 + 31 + 125 + 205 + 12 = 831

Cricket

The ECB website tells me that there are (a quite frankly, baffling array of) 729 domestic and international cricket matches this summer. 144 LV County Championship matches, 151 Friends Provident Twenty20 matches, 6 npower test matches etc. The average length of these matches will be a little over 2 days – if they are all rain-unaffected and last for the maximum possible duration. Allowing for this, but adding on some internationals in the winter and the recent Twenty20 world cup, let’s call it about 1,500 days of top flight cricket this season.

Rugby Union

• Guinness Premiership: 12 teams, each plays each other twice. 6 matches per round, 22 rounds per season, therefore 132 matches per season.
  
• Heineken Cup: 6 groups of 4 teams each. 12 matches per round, 6 rounds in the group stages. That’s 72 matches in the group stages. 8 teams go through to the knockout stages. That’s 7 knockout matches, so 79 in total.
  
• Challenge Cup: 5 groups of 4 teams each. 10 matches per round, 6 rounds in the group stages. That’s 60 matches in the group stages. 8 teams go through to the knockout stages. That’s 7 knockout matches, so 67 in total.
  
• LV= Anglo-Welsh Cup: 4 groups of 4 teams each. 8 matches per round, 3 rounds in the group stages. That’s 24 matches in the group stages. 4 teams go through to the knockout stages. That’s 3 knockout matches, so 27 in total.
  
• Internationals: England have apparently played 104 internationals in the 21st Century so far – so an average of about 11 per year.

132 + 79 + 67 + 27 + 11 = 316

I could well be missing out on some rugby union competitions here, but that would not really matter, because most English people don’t really care about domestic rugby union. Not only are there only a third the number of matches in the top domestic league of rugby union compared to football, but the average attendance at a Guinness Premiership match is less than 12,000, compared to 36,000 for Barclays Premiership games. Although the average attendance for domestic Twenty20 games in England is less than 7,000, and for county championship games it was a pitiful 3,215 in 2005 – as this fascinating Wikipedia link attests. Unsurprisingly, NFL matches have the highest average attendance per match (68,000 people), followed by the IPL cricket league in India (58,000), and then the German Bundesliga (42,000). The poor Rugby Union National League 3 (North) must be wishing that someone had not bothered to count the 229 people that turned up to watch its fixtures on average in the 2008-09 season. It’s not the greatest accolade to be the “Least watched domestic professional sports league in the world”. You know you are struggling when your attendance figures can be beaten by the Lithuanian Association Football league, the Norwegian Premier Handball League, and the Finnish Pesapallo League (which is apparently some sort of colder version of baseball).

Rugby League

• Super League: 14 teams, each plays each other twice. Plus one an additional match at a neutral venue on the “Magic Weekend”! 7 matches per round, 27 rounds per season, therefore 189 matches per season. Plus 9 playoff games equals 198 matches in a season.
  
• Challenge Cup: 32 teams from the third round (when the Super League clubs enter). That’s 31 matches in a season.

198 + 31 + a handful of internationals = 235

Grand total for the top 4 professional team sports in England

Football (831) + Cricket (1,500) + Rugby Union (316) + Rugby League (235)

= 2,882 matches.

AMERICA

Baseball

30 teams in the Major League, and each plays 162(!) games. That’s 2,430 regular season games. Then you have the four Division Series playoffs (best of 5 matches), the two Championship Series games (best of 7), and the World Series (best of 7). That’s 41 playoff matches, but let’s say only 35 happen. That makes 2,465 baseball matches in a season.

Basketball

30 teams in the NBA, and each plays 82 games. That’s 1,230 regular season games. Then 16 teams make it to the playoffs, and there are 15 playoff match-ups. Each match-up consists of the best of 7 games. Let’s assume that the average match-up is concluded in 6 games. That makes an additional 90 playoff games. So 1,320 matches for the season as a whole.

American Football

32 teams in the NBA, and each plays 16 games. That’s 256 regular season games. Plus 11 playoff matches makes 267 matches in a season.

Ice Hockey

30 teams in the NHL, and each plays 82 games. That’s 1,230 regular season games. Then 16 teams make it to the playoffs, and there are 15 playoff match-ups. Each match-up consists of the best of 7 games. Let’s assume that the average match-up is concluded in 6 games. That makes an additional 90 playoff games. So 1,320 matches for the season as a whole.

Grand total for the top 4 professional team sports in America

Baseball (2,465) + Basketball (1,320) + American Football (267) + Ice Hockey (1,320)

= 5,372.

AND THEN THERE’S COLLEGE SPORTS!

I don’t know how to calculate this one easily, but it seems to me that there are about 15 weeks of college football in the season, and about 50 matches each week. This makes 750 matches. And then each college plays about 35 basketball matches. So if there are 100 big colleges, that makes an additional 1,750 matches. I will not count college hockey and college baseball because I understand they’re not as well-followed (i.e. I rarely see them on ESPN).

Professional sports (5,372) + College Football (750) + College Basketball (1,750)

= 7,872

CONCLUSION

The 1,500 days of cricket above should probably not be counted. The average attendance at county championship cricket matches was 3,000 in 2005, and even this was spread over 4 days! This compares to an average attendance of over 30,000 at MLB games in 2009. But even if you include all of these days of cricket, the number of sports fixtures per season in America is nearly three times what it is in England. 7,900 matches vs. 2,900 matches, or thereabouts.

Now we should not be surprised by this. The US has 6 times the number of people as England, and 107 cities of over 200,000 people, compared to only 20 for England. In fact, this means that England has significantly more top-level sporting matches per head of population.

But for the armchair sports fan, this is not the important statistic. The only thing that matters is “the number of games that I can watch”, and this number is much higher in America than in England. ESPN Sports Center’s “Plays of the Day” is about the greatest 3 minutes of TV in the world. My thanks to the volume of American sports matches that make it possible.

Sports 4 Good

So far it’s 2-1 to American sports. I think they could be improved by relegation, but they get bonus points for being engineered to preclude the decades of dominance endured by most fans in English football, and college sports are fantastic.

But here’s the equaliser (still resisting that “zee”): Internationals.

During the English football season, there is a break in the Premiership fixture list every couple of months for internationals. Sometimes friendly matches, but more often than not, qualifiers for the World Cup or the European Championships. And then every two summers (on the assumption that England qualify, which is admittedly about as safe as the assumption that Parcelforce will deliver an “urgent parcel” within the “guaranteed delivery time”) everyone goes crazy with World Cup fever. The whole country gets behind the national team, the usual English flag-waving reticence rescinds, and young and old alike dream of the prospect of World Cup-winning glory. And then Germany beat us on penalties, or Brazil remind us that they are “still quite good four years later”, and our hopelessly naïve hopes are cruelly crushed by stark realities. But we don’t have a 4th July in England (well OK “Imbecile Test” app on my iPhone, yes we do have a 4th July, but we do not celebrate our independence by eating hot dogs on that date. If anything, we mourn the loss of America’s. And when England “became a country” in 1066 I don’t think anyone was really counting dates. And anyway, if we’re being pedantic then the Norman Conquest was more about “well-armed French people invading Britain”, than a heroic struggle of British self-emancipation – I would say it’s more of an Anti-Independence Day. Maybe that’s why we don’t celebrate it), I don’t know either of the Queen’s birthdays, and the World Cup is about the closest we come to patriotism.

Now, it’s not like these international fixtures are without their pitfalls. And principally I’m referring here to their propensity to draw the underbelly of English society out in their droves – the Gazzas, Bazzas and (in honour of Rooney, King of the Chavs) Wazzas, swigging Carling from tins, and chanting obnoxious profanities through the national anthem of England’s opponents. (Although this jingoistic loutishness should not be seen as being confined to England – when Egypt beat Algeria in a recent football match, a mob of angry Algerians rampaged through the streets of Algiers, vandalising the properties of Egyptian businesses in the city. Gazza, Bazza and Wazza are models of sobriety, decorum and civility by comparison). And there’s also the problem of England’s perennial underachievement on the football pitch. (Although in the spirit of the previous piece on relegation, I suppose I should be grateful for McLaren’s brolly-wielding antics, because when England do finally get their act together, it will make the success even sweeter).

But whatever their drawbacks, these matches give everyone in the country an opportunity to root for the same team.

And I think it’s a “good thing”.

And of course, it’s the same for other countries as well. I was in Malaga when Spain won the European Championships a couple of years ago, and the whole town erupted in the most dramatic and terrifying scenes of celebration I have ever witnessed. (It was also about the only time I have ever known Spanish people to outnumber English people in Malaga, which was a pleasant side-effect). The Norwegians like to join the patriotism party too, as this outstanding diatribe attests.

And it’s not just football. Rugby to a lesser extent, as it is a game alien to the vast majority of English people that are not called Humphrey, Hugo or Hubert. But in the last two Ashes series held in England, in the days and weeks leading up to the final match, the entire country has been gripped by a fervently excited spirit of national unity. When people talk about “atmosphere being electric”, I think it normally sounds trite. But it was absolutely true of London in the late summer of 2005, as Freddie Flintoff raised himself to deified status, and the England cricket team triumphed over the Aussies in thrilling, nail-biting style. I genuinely believe that if Gordon Brown had held the recent election in the immediate aftermath of that Ashes series, the national euphoria would have seen him secure a significantly higher number of votes. Thank goodness he didn’t.

I think it’s a shame that the American people are not given similar opportunities to rally around their national teams.

I think the Olympics comes closest. But it only happens once every 4 years; it’s often more about individual than national achievement – my over-riding memory of Beijing will always be Usain Bolt’s 100m, rather than a British gold medal in a particular and obscure model of sailing boat; and I honestly couldn’t tell you what position Great Britain came in the medals table (whereas I could easily rattle off how they finished in the World Cup going back over the last 20 years). Of course, the US also competes in the football World Cup, but until the current quartet of American sports (am I right to count hockey?) is extended to include “soccer”, Messrs. Donovan and Dempsey will never enjoy the same national support accorded to their English equivalents. (In fact, come to think of it, perhaps that’s why Landon was so irked by Becks’ decision to return to Europe, in the hope of reviving his career with the national team). There are also individual sports like tennis and golf, and there are of course plethore [pretentious sic.] of Star-Spangled Banners unfurled every year at Flushing Meadow and Augusta, but again the protagonists are “Andy Roddick” and “Phil Mickelson”, rather than “The United States”. The Ryder Cup is an obvious exception, and I guess a large part of the country unites behind “Team USA” during this long weekend. But imagine this happening about a sport people really care about.

It’s difficult to see how this can be changed really. The idea of Adrian Peterson, Larry Fitzgerald and Peyton Manning taking on Italy at American Football sounds about as evenly-matched a contest as a debate on “The socio-economic ramifications of globalisation” between Bill Clinton and Miss South Carolina. (Or Bill Clinton and George Bush for that matter). And I think it will be many years before “soccer” is elevated to the same popularity status as “football” or basketball. (And I think there is about as much chance of Americans embracing cricket or rugby as there is of South Carolina flummoxing Clinton with a brilliantly-argued, factually-based argument linking deteriorating economic conditions on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border with the resurgence of fundamentalist Islamic terrorism in the early years of the 21st century). I think basketball and baseball are the best bets. So what about a world cup of each sport, every 4 years, in the month after the season ends?

And I expect this last part is ridiculously over-the-top and complete “baloney”, but you only live once: It is a shame, because I have always known the American people to be incredibly warm, welcoming and friendly, but I think the perception of many people in Europe (and other parts of the world?) is that Americans can be “isolationist” at times. You hear statistics that “70% of Americans do not own a passport” (although I think young Americans’ willingness to experience other cultures is increasing all the time); Bush (and Blair) went to war with Iraq without a UN mandate; and…they play different sports to everyone else. I am sure it will take more than a Basketball World Cup for Jean-Pierre, Gunther and Giuseppe to lay aside their differences with Rod, Todd and Barack, and embrace a “new-found spirit of global brotherhood and partnership”, but it might be a start. (Or Jean-Pierre, Gunther and Giuseppe might be so enraged by the magnitude of the margin of their defeat at the hands of the merciless Kobe and Lebron, that they follow in their Algerian cousins’ footsteps, and brick the windows of every McDonald’s restaurant and Gap store in Paris, Berlin and Rome).

Post script:

OK, since I wrote this article, my highly knowledgeable friend Zack "Mr. Baseball" Turner has pointed out to me that there is, in fact, already a baseball world cup in existence. However:

1. I did not recognise any of the players on any of the rosters - where are the Rodriguez's, the Pujols, the Jeters, the Lincecums?

2. (Perhaps for the above reason) I was in the US during September 2009, when this tournament allegedly took place. But I did not hear one mention of it in the press.

3. A quick search of the BBC website reveals no mention of the 2009 baseball world cup.

Which is to say, I think the point of this blog still stands. The request just changes from "Please start a baseball world cup", to "Please make a baseball cup where big-name stars compete, and that people are aware is happening".

Ups and Downs

When I was 18 I went to Africa on my gap year. I taught at Chengelo School in Zambia for 8 months, and on one occasion, me and a few friends spent a week cycling through the South Luangwa Game Park. It was about the most exciting thing I had ever done (although I have since built an Excel macro that highlights alternate rows of a selected range), and it was also about as close to "roughing it" as I have ever come. We cycled hard through difficult terrain for about 8 hours each day; we camped out every night; I wore the same pair of pants (British) and socks for the entire week; our food was meagre - even on the few nights when Tim "Butterfingers" Brown didn't spill the prized packet of Supernoodles all over the African earth; and on one occasion Matthew almost got eaten by a hippo.

And then, on the last night, we arrived at this place. The owners had children at the school were we were teaching, and incredibly generously allowed all 4 of us to stay there for the night.

This was incredibly generous for at least 2 reasons:

1. A night in the lodge usually costs hundreds of dollars, and

2. No sooner had we arrived, than the aforementioned Mr. Brown launched a savage verbal assault on the family actually paying to stay in the lodge, unfortunately demonstrating that his conversational adroitness matched his manual dexterity:

Nice husband of paying family: "So what do you do Tim?"

Brown: "Well I was studying law at Christ Church, Oxford. But I dropped out as I really hated the course and all the people were horrible. What do you do?"

Nice husband of paying family: "I'm a lawyer."

Brown: "Ah. OK. Where did you study?"

Nice husband of paying family: "Christ Church, Oxford."

All: [Nervous laughter. Sound of cutlery scraping plates.]

Anyway, we arrived at Tafika and took our first showers for a week looking up at the stars. They were hot. (The stars were also hot I suppose, but I was primarily referring to the showers). We feasted as lavishly upon barbecued meat as the malaria-ridden hordes of mosquitos had feasted on our exposed flesh over the preceding week. The bed was the comfiest I had ever slept in. It was paradise.

And the great thing was that the hardship of the previous week made the luxury and comfort even more exquisite.

And it's the same with relegation.

The bottom 3 teams in the "EPL" (grrr...) each year get relegated to the (rather ridiculously-named) Championship; the bottom 4 teams in the Championship get relegated to the (even more moronically-named) 1st division etc. DOwn about 127 levels, until you reach the Ryman Stationers' League, the Unibond Northern Premier League, and the Beazer Homes League.

American sports do not have relegation, and I think it's a flaw in their structure. (And actually, come to think of it, it's another pretty good example of their cushy communism...).

If you're a Bolton fan or a West Brom fan or a Middlesbrough fan in England (and admittedly their total combined fanbase can be counted on the fingers of one finger [sic.]), you spend most weeks with the heartache and frustration of watching your team get outclassed and beaten. You scrap, you struggle, you win the occasional 6-pointer, you sneak a point at the Emirates by performing GBH on Arsenal, and it all comes down to the last day of the season, when you need 6 other teams to lose, and to beat Man United by at least 13 goals at Old Trafford yourselves. And some (most in the case of West Brom) years, you lose, and you go down. And it's misery. But some years, results go in your favour, you pull it out of the bag, against all the odds Akinbiyi is more prolific than my hyperlinking and nets 14 at the Stretford End. And you survive.

And it's fantastic!

It's as good as winning the league. It's probably better, because you haven't been spoiled by success.

Supporting Man United, this feeling is not one that I have experienced much as a fan (although I am also an avid follower of the mighty Barrow AFC, who do their best to compensate in most years).

But the sports teams I play for are, pretty much without exception, about as competent as Parcelforce. My record as King's College Football Captain was:

Played: 9

Won: 0

Drawn: 0

Lost: 9

Scored: 2

Conceded: 54

Needless to say, that year we were relegated (and, to compound the despair, we lost our lucrative deal with the Curry King, when our sponsor realised that we were to sporting excellence as Tiger Woods is to marital fidelity).

But in a thrilling climax to the 2008 season, Old Habs II cricket team - once again despite the shackles of my staggeringly incompetent leadership - conjured a couple of victories from nowhere, benefited from the bankruptcy of a relegation rival, and survived by the narrowest of margins in the (this time more aptly-named) 10th division of the Hertfordshire Cricket League. Honestly, I think it was a better feeling than if we had got promoted.

Here's some reasons why relegation is great:

- It keeps things interesting for unsuccessful teams, right until the last day of the season.

- It gives unsuccessful teams a taste of glory.

- It allows teams in lower divisions to fill the vacated places (i.e. it keeps them hungry and rewards their success).

- And...the hardship (or the threat of hardship) makes the Coppinger's guesthouse even more glorious.

Dear America, Relegation is great. You should try it.

Varsity Blues

I'm watching the NCAA Championship Game between Butler and Duke right now. It's half-time and Duke are up by 1 point.

And it's great.

There's a brass band, cheerleaders, 70,000 people in the stadium, and…wait for it…IT'S ON TV!

I know less about basketball than I know about the political system of Burkina Faso, but I know it's exciting (the Championship Game that is, not the Berkinabe government - although I am intrigued as to whether Compaore will stand for a third term in the forthcoming elections). And I'm also learning all the time. Because IT'S ON TV!

College sports in America are awesome.

Beaver Stadium in Pennsylvania holds 107,282 people.

In England, the crowd at even the biggest university football games consists of:
- About 4 or 5 WAGs
- 3 substitutes
- An elderly couple who are down for the weekend to visit their grandson
- The elderly couple's dog (in most games, the dog runs onto the pitch on at least one occasion, and sinks its teeth into the ball, puncturing it. 64% of games are thereupon abandoned, because that is the only ball that either team possesses. The remaining 36% of games are finished by replacing the indentured ball with a collection of plastic bags wrapped up extremely tightly in elastic bands).

Most American college teams are sponsored by Nike.

My college football team was sponsored by the Curry King, which lucrative deal entitled us to free poppadoms on Thursday nights.

American college sports are ON TV!

The closest an English university football match got to televised coverage was when Greg Foot did an episode of Whizz Whizz Bang Bang on ingenious potential uses for recycled plastic bags.

The Boat Race is an exception to the rule. And I do think it would be great if college football had a similar end-of-season competition to the Big Dance…

…But American college sports are to English college sports as Amazon is to Parcelforce.

And did I mention THEY'RE ON TV!

Customer Service

Someone probably once said: "There are two types of forces in this world. Forces for good and forces for evil". Kiva is a force for good. Gravity is a force for good. Armed forces can be used for good (the defeat of Hitler during World War Two) or evil (the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in the 1930s). Parcelforce is a force for evil.

This might sound like a slightly overblown claim (in contrast to my compensation claim from Parcelforce, which was, in my humble, if admittedly subjective, opinion, fairly modest in relation to their incompetence), and obviously that's because it is. But if "evil" is a strong word, I would strongly recommend that Parcelforce should not be a force you send parcels with.

For those of you who have not yet given up on my ridiculously complex sentence structures, and fortunate enough never to have encountered it, Parcelforce is a UK-based parcel-delivery company.

On December 7th I paid £62.89 to deliver a parcel from London to San Francisco in 24 hours using Parcelforce's "Global Express" service. I thought this was quite a large sum of money. I mean, it's not like I was sending a grand piano or transporting a live elephant, I was sending a small bottle of perfume and a picture frame. But I was impressed by the 24 hour delivery "guarantee", and it was a belated birthday present for my girlfriend, so I thought I'd blow the bank on it.

The "authorisation date/time" of my parcel was recorded as 00:33 on the 7th December, so I was a little surprised when the parcel was not collected from my house until 15.09 later that afternoon. By my maths, that left Parcelforce only 9 hours and 24 minutes to deliver the parcel from my house in Harrow, England to my girlfriend's office in San Francisco, America. But I reassured myself with the assumption that Parcelforce must have some "technologically ground-breaking new super-fast-jet design prototype that reduces transit time by 78% and eliminates carbon emissions". I also assumed that this prototype had VTOL capabilities so it could land in a vacant parking space just outside my girlfriend's office, and that it was piloted by Usain Bolt.

I was a little bit more surprised when the parcel was returned to my house in Harrow on the 9th December because it had "insufficient paperwork". I was surprised for several reasons, but principally:

1) I had spent about 30 minutes on the phone to 4 different Parcelforce employees on the 7th December, to ensure that the parcel had "sufficient paperwork". And I had been told by the 4th employee that the parcel had "sufficient paperwork".

2) The driver of the Parcelforce van did not know why the paperwork was "insufficient".

3) The driver of the Parcelforce van was not Usain Bolt.

4) No paperwork was added to the parcel before it was taken away again, with the guarantee that the paperwork was now "sufficient".

I was unfortunately not able to witness these events in person (my heroic dad was left holding the fort in my Parisian absence), but I imagine the exchange went something like this:

[Doorbell rings]

Dad: Hello.
Not Bolt: Er…hi, I have your parcel here. It has "insufficient" paperwork, so I am returning it.
Dad: OK. What is "insufficient" about it?
Not Bolt: I don't know.
Dad: OK. Shall I just keep it here then?
Not Bolt: Er…yeah, that would be great.
Dad: OK. But that's not really going to work is it, because then it wouldn't reach San Francisco, which is sort of the intended destination.
Not Bolt: Yes I suppose you have a point there.
Dad: OK. Is there a way that we can establish what paperwork will be required to facilitate the parcel's delivery?
Not Bolt: I suppose we could call up the office and ask?
Dad: OK.

[Dad calls up the office to ask. Is put on hold. Music plays in the background. It is Wagner. Entire Ring Cycle completes before Parcelforce employee picks up the phone. Employee does not work in the right office. Transfers dad. Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven (extended version) repeats 3 and a half times before next employee in the right office picks up the phone. Tells dad that paperwork is "sufficient". Hangs up immediately.]

Dad: OK. According to that man, the paperwork is "sufficient".
Not Bolt: Oh yes, I see it now. It says here "sufficient" paperwork. I had misread it as "insufficient" paperwork. OK well that's fine then.
Dad: OK. Can my son get his money back?

[Driver is seen sprinting back down the drive, slams door to van, and speeds off, knocking over 3 garden gnomes and a young sapling in course of hasty exit. Dad closes door. Sighs.]

Well this banterous tete-a-tete took place on Wednesday 9th December. So did the parcel arrive on Thursday 10th December (I hear you ask). Er…actually…not. And nor did it arrive on Friday 11th December, or in fact any of the days following that, until the day of Monday 21st December (please see the timeline below). I am most intrigued by the 8-day period between the 8th and the 16th of December, during which the parcel was "awaiting export documentation". I wonder what this documentation was. I wonder who provided it (I certainly didn't). I wonder if this is code for "Oops. Fiddlesticks. That's the parcel we forgot about". I have visions of the parcel being put down for a minute in the middle of the Parcelforce common room by Not Bolt, who then nips out to use the loo. During his 5-minute absence, I imagine another driver coming in, assuming that the parcel is a coffee table, and covering it with a wide array of chocolate biscuits. Not Bolt returns to the common room a few minutes later, but can't see the parcel for the biscuits, and assumes that it has been returned to the sender due to "insufficient" paperwork. It is then only 8 days later, once all of the biscuits have been consumed, thereby revealing the label of the parcel, that Not Bolt realises what has happened, and sheepishly, covertly forwards it on to the outward Office of Exchange.

Unfortunately, by the time the parcel arrived in San Francisco, my girlfriend had already left for her Christmas holidays, so she didn't actually pick up the parcel until mid-January. But I suppose even I can't blame Parcelforce for that one.

But at least I would be compensated right? And presumably pretty promptly and easily right? Wrong.

I sent in my compensation form to Parcelforce and it arrived with them on the 15th December. I sent it in by post. Honestly. Believe me. Some people do use the internet in England. Just not Parcelforce. In mid-February I received a cheque in the post from Parcelforce by way of compensation. But I had 2 problems with this:

1) It was mid-February. That is, it had taken them 2 months to process my compensation claim. It took England 3 weeks to win the World Cup in 1966. How long does it take to address a claim form? Do they get that many claim forms? (Actually, probably yes.) Does Not Bolt have to run with the claim form from the Parcelforce office in London to the outsourced claims processing centre in remote Nepal because the Parcelforce vans that would normally take it to Nepal have been buried under a mountain of chocolate biscuits? This time I imagine the 3 Parcelforce employees in the "Claims Processing Unit Centre Department" all staring at the claim form. One of them says to the other "Shall we deal with it today?". The other one pulls the lever on the fruit machine in the corner of the office. One cherry…two cherries…(they both stare at the screen in growing anticipation and excitement…)…tangerine. "Insufficient paperwork" flashes up on the screen of the fruit machine. "Nope. Let's play again tomorrow", says the second employee, as they return to updating their Facebook stati.

2) It was for only £15.23. 25% of the £62.89 I had paid. I wasn't too happy about this so on Monday 1st March I rang up Parcelforce to ask if I could get the remaining £47.66 because my parcel would have reached San Francisco faster if I had personally rowed it across the Atlantic:

I rang up Parcelforce. The lady I spoke to told me that I had sent it on Global Priority (a slower service - 3-5 days rather than the "guaranteed" 24 hours of the impossibly-ironically-named Global Express). I said that this might explain a few days between the 8th and the 16th December, but that I thought I had sent it on Global Express. She said she would check the paperwork and get back to me.

Half a day passed. She didn't get back to me.

I rang up Parcelforce again. The next lady I spoke to was more helpful, and got the information in 2 minutes (which begs the question of why the first lady couldn't have done the same thing. But maybe she had looked for the paperwork before the mid-morning chocolate biscuit break). She told me I had sent it on Global Priority. She hung up.

But I was not to be out-smarted. Oh no. I am a stubborn and resilient man when there is £47.66 at stake, and I craftily re-entered the details of the parcel into the Parcelforce online (gasp!) price quotation form. The price of Global Express was £62.89 - exactly what I had paid.

I rang up Parcelforce again. I explained to the third lady that the price I paid corresponded exactly to the Global Express price. And if I was paying £59.19 to send a parcel in 3-5 days, why would I not pay the £3.70 extra to send it within 24 hours ("guaranteed")? She re-checked the records and discovered that I had…

…In fact…

…After all…

…Sent it Global "Express".

She "guaranteed" to send me a cheque for the remaining £47.66. I asked her if I could receive some sort of additional compensation for the gazillions of hours that my relatives and I had spent exchanging pleasantries with Parcelforce employees and enduring the Ride of the Valkyries. Or for the risk to my relationship with my girlfriend that the tardiness of my birthday present had posed. But she said that there was some political upheaval at the moment in Kathmandu, and it might take the claims centre a little longer than usual to get around to processing it. I told her not to worry.

By contrast, let's take a look at Amazon.com.

I sent a cafetiere to my girlfriend via Amazon, which arrived on the 8th December. (I was trying to buy redemption for the absence of the perfume and the picture frame.) Unfortunately it was broken. I sent an e-mail to Amazon on the 9th December explaining the situation.

Within 19 minutes, I had got a response from Amazon saying they were "truly sorry to hear that the item was damaged". And that they would give me a full refund to my Visa card. I think this is outstanding customer service - both because of the promptness of the response, and because they did not even need proof that the cafetiere arrived broken. (By contrast, Parcelforce knew that they had failed on their "guarantee" to deliver the parcel within 24 hours by the time the 336th hour had passed and the parcel was still "arriving in destination country", but they still required a hand-written, posted compensation form and 2 months of processing time to repay me a quarter of the amount I had paid).

At the bottom of my e-mail from the nice man at Amazon, it said: "We're Building Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company". And I believed him.

America is great at customer service.

The Wealth of Nations

Adam Smith. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Year of publication? 1776.

Ring any bells?

That's right.

And so maybe it's excusable. Maybe their military endeavours and heroic struggle for freedom against foreign oppressors distracted the American people from the economic lessons emanating from those same oppressors, and I should therefore exercise leniency in my judgement.

But I am not going to.

In England people don't really file their own taxes. I mean, I think sometimes they do, but generally they don't. I certainly never did In the 27 years that I lived there. In the 27 days that I have lived in America, I have.

I didn't understand the forms. I never understand forms. They use long words like "withholding" and "dependents" and "deductible", the boxes are always too small for you to write your name in (and I'm not even Sri Lankan), and I invariably find that no sooner have I "finished" the form, than I discover that it's invalid because I didn't fill it in in indigo (and if anyone can repeat the letters in four times in a row then I will be inpressed). And these forms were no different. In fact they were harder. It felt not a lot unlike my A-level pure maths exam:

"If you entered 3 in section 127b (iii), enter your average weekly salary as of April 1st in this impossibly small box.

Now subtract your forecasted charitable contributions for May through October (excluding August).

Multiply this number by the number of dependents in your household, but only if you are the supervalidatorian of your household and the number of subordinated beneficiaries in your household does not exceed the number of American automobiles parked in your drive on Tuesdays.

Divide this number by 3650. (And honestly I did not make this one up).

If you did not enter 3 in section 127b (iii), please refill the form in indigo."

And then I find out that these are just the withdrawal forms. Or the withholding forms. Or some long word beginning with w. And the real tax returns are even harder still.

In England, a helpful person in the equivalent of the IRS works out how much you owe, fills in the paperwork for you, and taxes you the right amount.

I don't think I ever grasped the significance of Smith's Division of Labour until I filled in my withstanding forms the other day. It probably took me an hour to understand the forms, and then I probably misunderstood them. And filled them in wrong.

The helpful person in the English IRS would not have had to spend the hour trying to understand the form, and he would have understood it perfectly. And he would have filled it in right. Because this is his job. And he is very good at it. MUCH better than I am.

So here's my suggestion, Mr President. Why not centralise the completion of tax returns? Sure you might have to employ a few helpful people to do it, but I reckon you would save at least as much administrative resource in no longer having to chase up ignorant Englishman who have filled their form in in the wrong colour of ink. And yes you might face some political opposition from people who are willing to trust the Government with national defence, but are unwilling to trust it with their tax returns, but I would not be surprised if that opposition melted away the moment those people realised they would NEVER HAVE TO FILL IN TAX FORMS AGAIN.

And I would be happier.

And Adam Smith would rest more peacefully.

Fair play

I have only been in the country for a few days, but I get the impression that American people don’t like Communism. Senator McCarthy certainly didn’t. But while the chances of my immediate deportation might be significantly increased by the following statement, I think that one of the best things about American sports is their communism.

Now I’m not talking about Bread Lines and Gulags here, but let’s face it, the idea that the team that wins the Super Bowl gets the last draft pick the following year is pretty anathema to the capitalist ideal. And I love it!

In the “EPL” (an acronym that still nauseates me to the core), if you win the league, you get some prize money, you use this to buy better players, and your chances of winning the league again next year go up.

Now I am a Manchester United fan, but even I see the attraction of a system that prevents one team from winning the league in 11 out of the last 17 seasons. And Manchester United is about the most tolerable example of enduring success in English football in the last decade. By which I mean that Alex Ferguson earned it.

When he arrived at the club in 1986, United were not a dominant force in the English game. Sure they had the legacy of Best and the Busby Babes (at which point, those reading this who understand football as a game of four quarters will probably conjure images of Hungarian hat-wearing honeys), but they hadn’t won the league for 20 years, and had even got relegated to the old second division as recently as 1974. Even the most bitter Liverpool fan would have to concede that Ferguson was incredibly astute in the transfer market in the early 1990s (at least before he temporarily lost his mind with the purchases of Kleberson, Jordi Cruyff, and the one-trick wonder). But he bought Peter Schmeichel, Eric Cantona and Roy Keane – arguably the three most influential players in the history of the Premier League, for the combined sum of £5.5m. That’s the same as Leicester paid for Ade Akinbiyi. Ferguson crafted a title-winning team out of nothing, and it is difficult to argue that United’s unprecedented success over the last 20 years has been undeserved, even if the vast majority of Englishmen have found it unpleasant, and even a Manchester United fan like myself might concede that it has been unexciting – or at least undiverse, which might amount to a similar thing (if you believe in “old adages”. Which I do. Even if only because I think adage is a nice word, and therefore adages must be nice things).

And I would add Arsène Wenger’s Arsenal to this category as well. Wenger made some great signings in his early years at Highbury, and Arsenal’s success during his tenure has also been earned, even if it has been less enduring (he added, smugly).

And then there’s Chelsea. Chelsea basically bought their 2005 title with money supplied by a profiteering Russian oiligarch. Which I find a little depressing. And add Manchester City to this category. If they do ever actually break into the top 4 (he added, even more smugly).

But the point is, whether it is “deserved” or bought, success in English football is self-perpetuating.

By contrast, in American sports, “many that are first shall be last and the last shall be first”. Now of course, there are teams that have enjoyed prolonged periods of success – due to great coaching, great players and great fans. And of course there are the Chicago Cubs.

But the NFL system is set up to mitigate against the concentration of power that characterises English football (and Spanish football, and Italian football, etc.) in at least two ways.

Firstly, the team that comes first in the previous year gets the last draft pick in the next year.

And secondly, the schedules for the teams that win their divisions are tougher in the following year.

I think this keeps things interesting, and is a “good thing”.

The number of teams that have won the English Premiership in the 18 years since its inception in 1992? 4. The number of teams who have won the Super Bowl in the same timeframe? 13. The number of different teams that have finished in the top 4 in England in the last 7 years? 5. The number of teams who have reached the NFC and the AFC Championship games in the same timeframe? 20.

I’ll take the American numbers.