Joe Blogs: December 2010

Hello everyone.

I trust you have been enjoying the snow and ice of the past couple of weeks, either indulging in some well earned duvet days or guiding the most reliable method of transport during the cold snap, namely the sledge. Unfortunately some of us live close enough to our employer that we were not excused work on the grounds of inclemency. And I hope that none you experienced the kind of cold hearted, wicked crime that was reported by one Kent woman, who called emergency services to report the theft of her snowman, crafted by her own fair hands. As if this act of cruel opportunism was not enough, the woman suffered the further indignity of having her telephone call passed on to the media to highlight the waste on emergency resources. Give the woman a carrot. And maybe some coal.

Anyway, time to digest some of the other news stories of recent times.

Twenty-two unwise men
So, Thursday 2 December saw the result that the country had long been waiting for. Or, at least it did if the country concerned was Qatar. Football's world governing body FIFA announced the results of the Cypriot jury, sorry the results from its Executive Committee and the results spelt bad news for the English delegates and media corps. Predictably, the English reaction to a defeat was measured and philosophical, with every tabloid paper exhibiting the kind of imperialist, xenophobic stereotypes one hoped had been wiped out a generation ago.

As the wreckage of England's latest humiliating defeat was surveyed, several post-mortems were carried out as to how exactly England achieved just 2 votes from FIFA's assembled motley crew of 22 men, with one of those votes being cast by England's own representative. Many pointed to the Panorama documentary that the BBC screened just three days before the vote, while others suggested that it was because England's bid presentation was so polished, that FIFA decided to look to a land of Eastern promise, oil and gold reserves to stage the tournament instead.

First things first here. England actually reached the last four in the bidding rights for staging the 2018 competition. On recent form, that is actually progress for England, given that the last time they reached the semis in the World Cup, Nessun Dorma was all the rage and Paul Gascoigne had got too closely acquainted with Onion Bhajis. Maybe if future World Cup bids are decided by an in-house paper, scissors, stone competition, then football coming home will be a shoo-in.

Wisecracking aside, there is no point in applying logic to FIFA's decision making powers. Just as you are advised not to reason with terrorists, there is no point in arriving at a meaningful or logical conclusion in how FIFA makes its decisions, other than to say that the country's approval rating with FIFA appears to be even lower than its approval rating with Eurovision. What we can at least be certain of is that FIFA's decision to award the World Cup to Russia was not made for pure footballing reasons. FIFA made clear that the English delegation made the best technical bid and the strongest presentation, and also identified that the two countries that posed the greatest risk in hosting the tournaments in 2018 and 2022 were Russia and Qatar, the two countries that ended up winning the day. Just like the girl that is always drawn to the bad boys, FIFA clearly like a challenge.

From what I have read and seen of the bidding process, I certainly felt that England presented the strongest business case for hosting the 2018 World Cup. The beautiful game has a rich heritage and tradition within England, with the world's oldest professional club found within these shores and the oldest cup competition being played here too. But in the here and now, England also has the infrastructure and the transport links in place to host such a grand scale sporting event, as well as having most of its stadia already built and spread throughout a wide area of the country. Sure, the cynics will scoff at the transport point and say that the trains will struggle at the first sign of snow or rain, but the point is that in usual circumstances, you can usually travel from one major city at one end of the country to a major city at the other end within a matter of two or three hours. The sport's place within the DNA of English society, factored in with the transport links and purpose-built stadia all appeared to add up to the most robust package in the field.

The English party's attitude to presenting on match day to FIFA's suited and booted seasoned internationals also seemed to tick all the boxes of how to win friends and influence people. The English entourage was strong with more household names than Proctor & Gamble in the room. Their posse was headed up by three wise men comprising the man in charge of the country, a future king of the country, plus two toffs who support Aston Villa. Or I may have got part of that wrong.

Whatever one felt about 'Just Call Me Dave' Cameron devoting three days of his time to supporting the bid by being present in Zurich at a time when there are other pressing concerns closer to home like a faltering economy, student mutiny and Ann Widdecombe's continued presence in Strictly Come Dancing to deal with, it certainly makes a strong statement of intent about the country's seriousness in wanting to stage the tournament. But maybe where messrs Cameron, Beckham and Wales could only detect the sweet smell of success, the FIFA delegates present detected the not so pleasant smell of desperation.

It is worth reiterating what I said at the top that I do not think FIFA's decisions in awarding the tournament in either 2018 or 2022 were made on football related grounds. If they were, then England and Australia appeared to be the strongest candidates for each of those tournaments, with both countries being passionate sporting hotbeds and having purpose-built stadia already in place. However, England secured just 2 votes for 2018, while Australia managed only 1 for 2022.

England's shortage of support in FIFA's corridors of power goes much further back beyond the recent Panorama expose and there is a long historical context, one which sees the same levels of mutual contempt in place as is seen between the United Kingdom and the European Union. Although founded in 1903, FIFA was not graced by English presence until 1950, presumably on the grounds that the old school tie brigade that were in charge of the English FA did not think FIFA had anything to teach them. By this stage, England's absence from FIFA meant they missed out in participating in any of the first 3 World Cup tournaments, participating for the Jules Rimet Trophy.

Relations between England and the world's governing body have always been a little strained, but this has been particularly apparent during the reign of current FIFA President, Sepp Blatter, a man whose innovative ideas for his favourite sport have been unsurpassed given that he once suggested that women footballers should be encouraged to remove their shirts when scoring a goal, while he is continually opposed to introducing any sensible form of goal-line technology. Blatter, however, has a vice like grip on FIFA and it was his words that allegedly saw FIFA's other delegates withdrawing their support for England.

There are those that would argue that England's lack of love in FIFA corridors is due to their perceived arrogance and conceit and that banging on about having invented the game irritates FIFA. There is some truth in this and we have to accept that just because football has a strong heritage in this country, our country does not have the monopoly on heritage, and therefore has no divine right to host the World Cup. As an island nation, we are sometimes insular when it comes to appreciating what other countries bring to the table. However, England’s lack of friends in Geneva’s marbled halls is also due to their lack of dexterity in the dark arts of schmoozing and brown nosing.

The dynamics in FIFA appear to share a number of similarities to those that are in place in a Masonic lodge. Much like the Masons, FIFA’s Executive Committee consists exclusively of middle aged men who appreciate a fine dine and a good wine (and maybe a Bryan Adams summer), especially if they are not picking up the tab. The other parallel that is shared with the Masons is that FIFA tend to operate a closed shop. To be influential in decision making, you need to sit within the inner circle. England currently appear to be situated nearer to the Arctic Circle than the inner circle. In Masonic parlance, England’s World Cup bid was black-balled.

The timing of the Panorama documentary that made allegations of vote rigging and other corrupt practices within FIFA was far from ideal from a bidding point of view. There were even some accusations of the BBC being ‘unpatriotic’ in some quarters. But, surely it is the media’s responsibility to uncover any supposed wrongdoing and corruption in order to name and shame the culprits concerned, rather than to sweep it under the carpet. If the BBC did not report this, they would not be fulfilling their journalistic integrity. And it made more sense for them to air the programme three days before the bid rather than six months before or after because the items it uncovered would have a more powerful impact on its audience, with the programme still fresh in the minds of the viewers when Sepp Blatter was on envelope opening duties in Zurich.

The double edged sword to this, of course, is that certain FIFA delegates may have spent their Monday night watching the documentary and choking on their olives, and even those that found alternative recreation will have been aware of the allegations raised. Against this backdrop, you would have hoped that the evidence that the BBC was fresh, relevant and damning, meaning that the FIFA bigwigs were caught red handed, banged to rights. Sadly, however, the Panorama documentary just covered old ground and the total sum of their investigation was to refer to incidents that occurred ten years earlier and which had been reported before. The journalist reporting his findings, a Scotsman by the name of Andrew Jennings so happened to be someone that had been banned from FIFA's premises because of previous accusations he had made. In terms of hard hitting journalism, this was a long way removed from The Cook Report. So much for not sacrificing journalistic integrity, this was as lame an effort as England's showing in South Africa in the summer from a point-scoring journalist with a grudge. The irony of a Scotsman possibly being responsible for England's World Cup bid failing is richer than Roman Abramovich, Bill Gates and Sir Fred Goodwin all being covered in Black Forest Gateau.

This is not to say that Jennings' fundamental point was wrong, of course. This point being that FIFA are corruptible and accountable only to themselves. If anything, the results of the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments demonstrates this, as does the bidding process itself. First of all, it does not take a quantum physicist or a brain surgeon to understand that by putting two tournaments up for tender in one foul swoop that this increases the potential for corruptibility because it allows for the kind of back-scratching and horsetrading between delegates where deals are done to suit both parties. So for example, Qatari delegate says to Russian delegate 'I will vote for Russia to host the tournament so long as you vote for us to host it in 2022'. The banker on Deal Or No Deal never drives such an easy bargain as that. FIFA's banqueting halls in the days leading up to the big decision will have bore an uncanny similarity to the Deal Or No Deal studio, except for the absence of a self-important, bearded middle aged man wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Or maybe not. Even the man who gave the world Mr Blobby could not surely be as unpopular with the English public as Sepp Blatter.

But just as bad as the blatant opportunity for deal-making that putting two tournaments up for tender in one block presented was the actual configuring of the FIFA Executive Committee that voted on the destination of the World Cups in 2018 and 2022. The 22 men responsible for determining the England bid's fate were made up of gentlemen who came from countries with a vested interest, namely countries that were bidding for the World Cup in either 2018 and 2022. Now, in most professional circles, this is what would generally be regarded as a conflict of interest. How can you have a Committee adjudicating on a decision where they have their own interests being represented? This is akin to a company carrying out a job interview where the head of the interview panel is the drinking companion of one of the interviewees. The interviewer would be obliged to declare an interest in this situation and would have to withdraw from the panel. Why does the same principle not apply to FIFA's management of its Executive Committee? Oh, silly me, I forgot what a self-serving, unaccountable organisation FIFA are.

But it should not be this way. How difficult can it be to appoint the Executive Committee for a term in office once it becomes apparent who the bidding parties will be for the next World Cup that is up for tender? So, for example, let's imagine that the 2026 World Cup attracts bids from England, France, Japan, the United States, plus a joint bid from Bolivia and Venezuela. Once these bids have been confirmed, FIFA can determine that its Executive Committee that decides on the destination of the World Cup hosting sixteen years thus must not be made up of representatives from any of these six countries. As my right honourable friend Alexander the Meerkat would say, 'Simples!'. There are still over 190 other nations that have a FIFA membership from whom the delegation can be drawn and the representatives from these countries can then be free to focus their energies on championing their country's bid. The simplicity of this concept is there for all to see, but the odds of FIFA ever implementing it are about the same as the ones you would get on Frankie Boyle becoming a UN diplomat, or Russell Brand becoming a monk.

So the die has been cast and the decisions made for 2018 and 2022 and where does that leave everybody? Well, Russia is one of the world's great footballing nations and one of the notable absentees from the list of top nations that have hitherto hosted international football's showpiece event. There is no reason why a country that gave the footballing world Lev Yashin, Andrei Arshavin, and some of the great Spartak Moscow sides should not have the World Cup experience in their neighbourhood. There are undoubtedly going to be challenges though, and Russia's ability to cope with these challenges will determine whether it is the right time for it to be staging a major sporting event. Several of Russia's World Cup venues have yet to be built and one hopes that lessons will be learnt from the debacle of this year's Commonwealth Games in Delhi, where parts of the stadium were still being completed days before the competition started. Fortunately for Russia, Poland is a neighbouring country and so obtaining builders should not be problem in an emergency, with Russia's oil oligarchs well equipped to pay above the minimum wage.

There are two greater issues for Russia to address, however. Firstly is its transport infrastructure. Russia is a vast country and whereas if the World Cup had been held in England then this would enable anyone to travel to one part of the country to another within a couple of hours, then the greater expanse of the largest country in the world by land area means a greater reliance on internal flights in order for players, officials and journalists to get from one venue to another. The concern that this need raises is the recent safety record among Russian air carriers, and most notably, its national carrier Aeroflot. Traditionally, Aeroflot used to be the butt of bar-room jokes in the same way that Skoda used to attract one liners about the quality of its cars. But whereas the input of German engineering has meant that Skoda jokes no longer ring true, concerns persist about Aeroflot and there have been several air crashes in Russia within the past five years which have resulted in fatality. The pressures of hosting a major event will only test Russia's aviation resources further and so clearly things will need to improve within the next seven and a half years, otherwise the potential for a tragedy is prominent, unless people decide that the Trans-Siberian Express is their preferred method of transport.

The social attitudes of some backward thinking natives is also a problem that cannot be swept under the carpet. The West Bromwich Albion forward Peter Odemwingie is testament to this. Odemwingie is a Nigerian international of Uzbek birth and prior to carrying out his day job in the West Midlands, he previously turned out for Lokomotiv Moscow, one of several notable club sides that play in the Russian capital. Despite a respectable return of 21 goals in 75 appearances, it appears that a section of Lokomotiv supporters were not disappointed by Odemwingie's departure to the land of Balti Pie and Lenny Henry, given that in Lokomotiv's next match following his move, a number of supporters unfurled a banner saying 'Thanks West Brom', accompanied by the image of a banana. Such attitudes are fortunately few and far between in the United Kingdom these days outside of the BNP's garden party, but this is sadly far from an isolated example of racial intolerance in Russia, although they are far from the only country where social understanding is backward. In the past few months there have been examples of racist chanting and behaviour at football matches in Italy, Serbia and Poland. This is particularly concerning in the latter's case given that they will be co-hosting the European Championships in less than 2 years from now.

The cynical side of me thinks, however, that Russia's social attitudes and one-dimensional thinking will not have a major bearing on the 2018 tournament for one very simple reason. Not many Russians will be in a position where they can afford to attend World Cup matches. A significant percentage of the tickets for World Cups end up in the hands of the corporates. Attending World Cup matches is a beany for the employees of the sponsors, the Coca-Colas, Fuji Films and Philips of this world, a modern day team building alternative to an afternoon on the golf course or orienteering in the nearest forest. Whether the corporates find attending Russia an enticing prospect is another matter. What is more likely than racist chanting blighting the World Cup in eight years time is that mouth-watering international contests will get played out in front of rows of empty seats, particularly in the more remote venues staging matches.

The potential for empty seats is only going to be increased four years later when the World Cup bandwagon moves on to Qatar. As a country situated in the middle of the Arabian desert, it will come as no surprise that the consumption of alcohol in Qatar is illegal and any contravention of the local laws will result in a permanent and painful forfeit for the consumer. While this might appear like a good strategy for keeping football hooligans away from the tournament, it will also deter a lot of genuine football supporters as well as the corporately entitled from travelling, given that having ready and available access to suitable liquids before and after the match is an essential part of the matchday experience, particularly for supporters travelling from the lager belt countries in central Europe.

There is then the interesting dilemma of whether to stage the tournament in the Qatari summer or the Qatari winter. What a quandary to weigh up! If the World Cup is staged during the summer months, as is tradition, then the temperature outside the stadia will be unbearably hot, possibly in excess of 40 degrees Celsius, even if the stadia themselves happen to be specially air conditioned. Alternatively, FIFA's masterplan to combat this meterological inconvenience would be to stage the tournament in the middle of winter, probably in January. A curious idea given that this would mean playing the tournament midway through most Western European countries' domestic season. One imagines that the Arsenal and Manchester United managers of 2022 will be somewhat overcome by apoplectic rage at the prospect of their players being taken away for a month halfway through a season to accommodate a World Cup. Already club managers are unhappy when they lose African players for a month every two years when the African Cup of Nations is held at a time when the local weather is not oppressive.

Then there is the issue of legacy. It is widely believed that FIFA like to make their decisions on World Cup hosts based upon where staging the tournament can leave lasting social benefits to the hosts and allow the country develop as a footballing nation. This is a somewhat flawed notion, however, in the case of Qatar given that most of the purpose-built stadia that are being constructed specifically to stage the World Cup are going to be demolished soon after the 2022 tournament's end. Far from leaving a legacy, this smacks of desperate short-termism. Would it not make sense to retain the stadia in order to stage further international sporting events? The World Club Championship perhaps, or even staging other sports such as the World Athletics Championships. Building a stadium to be used for just one month only to then bulldoze it straight afterwards seems like a criminal waste, especially at a time when much of the world is experiencing austerity.

As with the Olympics, it is only right that the World Cup is taken around the world so that all figurative corners of the globe are able to have opportunity to sample a sport that provides a common link and language across borders, races and religions. Football's ability to transcend these multinational boundaries is real and can unite otherwise disparate groups of people. But this does not mean that the tournament hosts should be exempt from meeting the practicalities of hosting a major event, and ultimately the decision on where to stage an event should be reached purely on the basis of which country presents the strongest business case and has the most robust package in place. Given that England and Australia already have the majority of their stadia built and have comparatively advanced transport, amenities and communications already in place, their cases appeared to be the strongest. So their shortage of friends when the votes were cast tells you that FIFA's decisions are concluded through political bargaining far more than they are through meritocracy.

This is frustrating and disappointing, but there is little that can be done. England are paying for years of being the white sheep amongst the brown-nosers and back-slappers at the top table, but they cannot just quit FIFA and keep their own counsel. Sure, there are countries that do not have FIFA membership, but playing regular matches against Greenland, Vatican City and Western Sahara is not going to be enough of a sufficiently lucrative prospect to keep the public interested in international football. England supporters want to see their team play against France, Germany, Brazil and Argentina, and these countries are never going to resign from FIFA. Whatever way you look at it, FIFA hold all the cards because however much they treat England like some chewing gum on the sole of the Governor's shoe, England still need FIFA far more than FIFA need England.

Chris fits the bill as Apprentice
This blog is usually suitably under-whelmed by the excess column inches and media output devoted to televisual reality shows. Not least because, in whose universe do they deem that such shows are reality? There is, however, one glorious exception in this genre, namely the BBC's self-proclaimed 'job interview from hell', The Apprentice. This weekend sees the climax of the sixth series of the unofficial idiot's-guide-of-how-not-to-conduct-business and has seen something of a return to form for the programme, after a couple of years where the format was becoming increasingly stale and the candidates were becoming less credible.

This series, however, has been one of the more memorable ones. I would say that the alumni of series 2 or series 3 probably remain the best and most entertaining to date, but this year's crop are certainly an improvement on many of the candidates that participated in series 4 and 5. That is not to say that the series has been devoid of the deluded and the dim-witted types that make the series an entertainment programme rather than a business educational supplement. But there has been a fine balance between the moments of stupidity and hilarity and also the moments of genuine inspiration. The clever editing can, of course, paint a caricature highlighting the moments of weakness demonstrated by the candidates and ignoring some of the hard graft which may be commendable, but which does not make for entertaining television. But on reflection, it certainly seems as though the calibre of candidates in this latest series has gone up a notch from some of the previous terms.

As with every series of the programme, there was a pantomime villain and this year it was the turn of Isle of Man telecoms entrepreneur, Stuart Baggs. Baggs set a record this year by being the youngest ever candidate to enter the senior version of the show, participating at the age of just 21. Baggs demonstrated throughout the process that he was an alpha male of questionable principles, but setting up a business at the age of 18 showed that he was no entrepreneurial lightweight and this will no doubt have made Lord Sugar identify certain parallels with his own formative years, given that he started his business from scratch at the age of 16. The problem for Lord Sugar you sense is that because his own rags to riches story is so well documented, this results in a lot of candidates trying to pass themselves as his second coming, whereas they are only pale imitators.

Nonetheless, the fruits of Baggs' labours which he claimed was without any financial assistance from his parents certainly seemed to strike a chord with the bearded peer and it resulted in a rare misjudgement from the chief firer. In week 10, an empassioned board room speech from Baggs in which he informed Sugar of how he came to set up his business at an early age saw Baggs defy the odds and retain his place in the competition for the interview stage, resulting in the firing of Liz Locke, the attractive Brummie who had been the favourite to gain employment within the AMS empire until that point. Sugar thought that Baggs' maverick nature and technical expertise would provide him with something that none of the candidates had, but it would only take a week for him to realise the error of his ways.

In week 11, the traditional interview roasting took place from Lord Sugar's quartet of troubleshooting Rottweilers, including the welcome return of former aide Margaret Mountford. As well as Margaret's return, the ankle-biter in chief amongst Sugar's cross examiners was his one-time global troubleshooter Claude Littner, a man seemingly with such limited personality that its totality could be stored in a tin of fish paste. And on the subject of fish, Littner provided the memorable line of 'You're not a big fish, you're not even a fish' in response to messr Baggs' assertion that he was a major player in the telecoms business. Further revelations about the questionable status of Baggs' telecoms licence that he had advertised on his CV culminated in a boardroom explosion from Sugar amid the realisation that he had fired the wrong candidate the previous week, resulting in Baggs' sudden but overdue expulsion from the competition.

Baggs' extended stay and Miss Locke's premature departure aside, it has to be said that Lord Sugar's finger has been on the pulse throughout this series with pretty much all of his other firings being spot on and the other four candidates rightly making the interview stage. His decision on the two candidates to put through to the final was also a close call, but on reflection, it would seem like he made the correct decisions again. Property developer Jamie Lester marked himself down as an early favourite to win the candidacy, but his performance seemed to regress as the series wore on while some of his competitors saw their trajectory head in the other direction. Lester is certainly a strong negotiator and salesman, as one would expect from someone who honed their skills in the real estate business, but he seemed to lose his focus at times.

Then there was Joanne Riley, a 25 year old proprietor of a cleaning business from Leicester. Riley, by her own admission, was no scholar and her lack of business acumen became evident during the interview process when she struggled to identify Lord Sugar's main business interests. Riley, however, did show how The Apprentice can be a force for good for its participating candidates by improving significantly throughout the duration of the process. She started out as mouthy and over-opinionated and rather defensive due to her insecurities about her own background. But she also demonstrated that she was nobody's fool and seemed to work hard to take on board any feedback she received from the board. Riley was not a strong enough candidate to win the apprenticeship, but she left with a different perspective on her career, with Lord Sugar advising her to persist with growing her own business.

So to the final two. As quite often seems to be the case with The Apprentice, the two finalists are polar opposites. One male, one female. One born with a silver spoon in their mouth, the other born with a plastic spoon in theirs. One a twenty-something with only nine months work experience since graduating from university. The other a thirty-something with ten years experience of climbing the corporate ladder having left school with no qualifications. In a lot of ways this final particularly reminds me of the series 3 final that was contested between posh graduate Simon Ambrose and the Irish Account Manager with a difficult upbringing, Kristina Grimes. On that occasion it was Ambrose that prevailed.

Assuming the Ambrose role this time is posh graduate Chris Bates, while up against him assuming the Kristina Grimes role is Stella English, who to an untrained eye bears a slight resemblance to a young Amanda Redman, the star of geriatric detective series, New Tricks. Bates' place in the final looked like a long shot in the early stages of the process given that he was on the losing team in five out of the first seven tasks, being brought back into the boardroom and into the line of fire on more than one occasion. This point was not lost on Lord Sugar, who advised the Politics graduate to buck his ideas up. Bates certainly seemed to do this and he will have particularly impressed Sugar on the week 10 tourism task where he took a calculated risk in his negotiation with the London Tourist Centre, given them a 20 per cent cut of all revenue his team made, much to his colleagues' disgust. That this was a gamble was unquestionable and had it gone wrong, Bates could well have ended up getting fired, but Sugar himself will know that entrepreneurship is about taking risks to be successful and this risk was gloriously successful. It was a smart move on his part and he has demonstrated in previous tasks that he has a good business brain and does not shirk his responsibility when it comes to the hard sell either.

Bates' obvious weakness is his monotonous presentational style which has been highlighted more than once during the process, but this in itself is not going to hold him back. The winner two years ago, Lee McQueen, was an even worse presenter but that did not prevent him from being hired. The clue is in the title of the programme, it is to be expected that there are some items that will need to be ironed out in the event of employment being taken up.

His opponent in the final task, Stella English, has consistently performed well throughout the course of the series, despite having to fend off accusations of being wooden, cold and corporate. Some of these accusations are natural and have a grain of truth about them. The Londoner's background as an employee of a Japanese investment bank for some ten years means that she is used to an institutionalised, corporate culture. But it is also worth highlighting that her employers have effectively created roles for her, thereby recognising her importance and abilities. She has also shown a certain steeliness about her during the process and it would appear that she has kept a certain amount of distance between herself and her competitors. But, as she acknowledged herself, she is not there to win friends, she is there because she is ambitious and wants to gain employment in the Sugar empire.

It is worth remembering how well Stella did when managing a team of disorganised, in-fighting men during the second week of the process and her task-focused approach produced the desired result with her team winning the task. But she has also been equally adept at working hard when she has not been Team Leader, coming out of her natural comfort zone when being a tour guide in week 10 and also acting as a beachwear model in one of the other tasks. 'Taking one for the team' as one of the other candidates put it does not appear to be a problem for her if it is a means to an end. Apart from being typecast as robotic, she does not appear to have many points of weakness other than not being the most natural salesperson or negotiator. This was demonstrated in the purchasing task where she bought items for a higher price because she did not barter effectively, which led to her team losing the task.

The final task sees both candidates having to pitch an idea for a new brand of alcoholic drink, targetting adults aged over 25. Given that one of the candidates is called Stella, this seems like an unfair advantage! On the surface, it seems like there is little to choose between the two candidates and the performance on the final task could end up having a bearing on who wins the whole shooting match. However, I can see Chris being a better fit for Sugar's organisation, which is why I make him favourite to win. He is that much younger than Stella and has a comparatively short business career behind him, whereas Stella has worked under one organisational culture for ten years and will require more of an adjustment to then acclimatise to Sugar's enterprises, which will be far removed from the corporate setup that Stella will have experienced working in a bank.

Chris will be prone to mistakes and will sometimes need to be reined in from his instincts, but he has shown that he is able to produce results when working independently. The only question mark that Sugar may have is whether he would be using this as a career stepping stone, seeing him move on within a year to something more lucrative. But I would not think this would deter Sugar from hiring him, and for much the same reason as Simon Ambrose won the third series, I expect this vintage sixth series to close with Chris Bates taking the honours.

Music on television striking a low note
Flicking the channels one Sunday night recently, I stumbled across the Strictly Come Dancing results show, featuring the television presenter I like to call the bookcase, Claudia Winkleman. This epithet I have provided is not because I imagine Eve Pollard's doe-eyed daughter to be an avid user of a bibliotheque, but more that her presentational style is decidedly, well, wooden. But I digress. What was more disturbing than Claudia's apparent difficulty at even uttering her own name without referring to the autocue was the choice of musical guest as the antipasta to the succulent main course of Anne Widdecombe finally being asked to leave the dancefloor. Given that such light entertainment, family oriented shows usually see musical interludes from such accomplished music legends as James Blunt, Michael Buble and Jamie Cullum, I had to do a double take when I realised who was performing. Surely not it couldn't be. I must be hallucinating. This must be my imagination. But no, no it really is them. There in the flesh, on Sunday primetime television on a dancing programme performing their new single was.....THE MANIC STREET PREACHERS!!!

This was no wind-up, this was for real. The Welsh dragons on the drumkit was the telltale sign that here on a family light entertainment show designed for the mainstream was a band who once wanted to start revolutions and rebellions and tear down the walls held up by the mainstream and their MOR preferences. How can it be that this band of musical revolutionaries, who have done more to put the voice of protest into musical form than arguably any other British band of the past two decades, found themselves resorting to plugging their new single in the company of Eastenders cast-offs and professional dancers, and to a watching television audience consisting in no small number of people from the blue rinse brigade?

On one level, this development was just indicative of the ageing process. John Lydon was once uncouth simply for the sake of keeping down with the kids. These days his uncouthness is presented on demand for the purposes of product placement in exchange for a pile of paper with the head of the woman he once condemned in punk prose. Paul Weller was once an angry young man that challenged the elite with such anthemic attacks on the privileged classes as 'Eton Rifles' but in later years, his sound has become more soothing and mellow, much like the musical equivalent of Horlicks. The Manics have been in the business for 20 years as men and boys and messrs Bradfield and Wire are now at a stage where Saga holidays in the Brecon Beacons are looming on the horizon, while jolly boys' outings to Llandudno are becoming a hazy memory.

But there was a more practical reason for the Manics' purposeful selling out to the mainstream. Music television as a platform is a very limited and disjointed medium in the current climate. Back in the day, it was much more simple than this. Band would get airplay on Radio 1 and would get in the charts. Band would then put themselves out in the public consciousness further by performing on Top Of The Pops. These days, competition for places in the charts is fiercer than ever due to the vast amount of choice available through downloading media, be it iTunes, Spotify or whoever else you care to mention. It only takes an advertising campaign which uses a certain song to get that back into the public's consciousness and it can re-enter the charts. Failing that, some out-of-tune wannabe that attracts the support of Louis Walsh can commit falsetto homicide on the X-Factor and propel the original, previously long forgotten track back into the charts. And then at this time of year, there is always the seasonal effect that sees people getting merry on the sherry and coming under the influence while in control of iTunes, resulting in the wholesale purchase of Christmas novelty songs.

Nowadays, the range of choice in terms of radio stations mean that promoting a new single via that medium is that much harder simply because people's listening pleasures are much more diverse, whereas once upon a time music radio's audience would essentially be drawn from two national stations, plus one commercial radio station in the local area. Getting the requisite attention in an ever more competitive music chart has become much harder and this has meant that bands and musicians have had to make themselves available to appear in settings that they would never have dreamt as being an option even five years ago.

The lack of specialist music platforms available to recording artists on terrestrial television is a rather disturbing development at present and it means that children and teenagers in particular are being deprived the opportunity of seeing many of the genuine stars of recorded music, while being subjected to the artificial side of the music industry. Think back a decade and television had several music oriented programmes, most notably with Top of the Pops, but also including the ITV Chart Show, TFI Friday, Friday Night With Jonathan Ross and Later with Jools Holland. Jools remains to this day and his show is fantastic at managing bring together artists and transcending traditional music genres, but the problem is that his show is not on every week of the year. When the Crown Jools of music television is off air (you've got to appreciate what I did there!) there are few other music platforms available, other than T4 and the Album Chart Show on Channel 4. How, and more pertinently why has music television eaten itself up in this way?

The simple answer to this appears to be a case of short-term thinking by television executives. It was the men in grey suits that deemed that Top Of The Pops had come to the end of the road because of consumer buying habits and falling ratings. Yet, there was a much simpler explanation for Top Of The Pops' falling ratings, namely that it was being scheduled at the wrong time. The programme was habitually screened at 7:30 on a Friday night, in direct competition with Coronation Street on ITV1. Given that Corrie has generally been the first or second highest rated television programme for the vast majority of the past two decades, it stands to reason that the BBC's flagship programme was taking a kicking in the ratings. Had it not occurred to the schedulers that simply moving the programme to another night or another time might have made more sense? Wednesday night at 7:00 maybe, or even run the programme as a live show on a Sunday night an hour after the charts have aired on Radio 1 and that way the chart news would be hot off the press and would make the programme feel fresh. Top Of The Pops typically returns twice a year over Christmas and New Year, including its special Christmas Day episode that prefixes the Queen's Speech. It will not take Paddy Power to identify that this episode will poll high in the Christmas ratings list.

The absence of specialist music television shows dedicated to live performances means that established acts have to be more creative and accommodating about where they go to perform their new material and this is beginning to result in credible acts performing their latest numbers in the most curious of settings. For the Manics in the Strictly studio, read also KT Tunstall performing on the Andrew Marr Show and Daybreak. This is perhaps less of a concern for upcoming acts who are more technology savvy in using the likes of YouTube, Twitter and MySpace in order to publicise their material and live performances. But it would seem myopic to believe that just because social media platforms are available that more conventional media should become redundant for the purposes of performing live music.

There is a real possibility that a whole new generation of the British public will grow up and only see live music segments performed on the likes of the X-Factor and as a short interlude on gentle, breezy chat programmes where the material cannot be too edgy in case it frightens the horses, or wakens Alan Titchmarsh from his almost permanent comatosed state. This seems like a terrible waste because the likes of TFI Friday were once programmes where the audience could discover previously untapped gems. The equivalent programmes in 2010 are conspicuous by their absence and only serves to prove that the major media platforms are obsessively concerned with bending over to meet the demands of advertisers and grabbing the all-important ratings, regardless of whether they are removing the contents of their network's soul at one and the same time.

Joe Blogs

Saturday 18 December 2010

Playlists 47 to 51 - I

Saturday 4 December 2010

A winter warmer

Loaded Web

Followers

Blog Archive

About Me