After medal successes in the last summer Olympics, the haul from the Beijing Winter Olympics was a disappointment.
Despite high hopes in various disciplines including snowboarding, slalom and bobsleigh the team managed only two successes: a gold for Eve Muihead’s women’s curling team and silver for Bruce Mouat’s men’s curlers. That these medals were achieved, albeit in the last 24 hours of the Winter Olympics, came as an immense relief for the team and all involved.
Funding of £6.4m for the skeleton section and £9.5m for GB Snowsport (skiing and skateboard) and £5.25m for curling may be dwarfed by funding at the last Olympics – from National lottery and the Government the figures included £23m – athletics, £12m – boxing, £16m – canoeing, £24.5m -cycling, £12.m – equestrian, 13.4m – gymnastics, £24m- rowing, £12.9m hockey and many millions more.The winter Olympians may feel very much the poor relations.
Could curling become a sport to inspire the nation? It dates back to 1511. Perhaps the provision of more curling facilities? Not to be confused with an increase in hair stylists, beauty facilities, curling tongs, wands and wavers.
It is of course the curling brush or broom which is used by the sweepers on the team. In the wake of the medal haul, supermarkets have reported a surge in brush sales.
There is a current tendency to regard all longstanding traditions with disdain and even opprobrium. In 2018 the Equality and Human Rights Commission warned that an increasing tendency of people to define themselves by identity (whether ethnicity, race, gender, class etc ) was undermining empathy and mutual respect in Britain.
Such gestured posturing is seen in the lamentable decision of the Mareylebone Cricket Club (the MCC) to decree that this summer’s futures between Eton and Harrow, and Oxford and Cambridge will be the last to be staged at Lords. The decision prolongs the ‘Toffs v Toughs’ mentality. The matches date back to 1805 and 1827 respectively.
It must be possible ‘to extend playing opportunities’ at Lord’s without cancelling traditions loved by so many. It will not increase the reputation of the game (leaving aside the recent Test debacle and enquiries into racism in cricket) by removing an imagined blight from the historic fixtures. Replacing them with other matches will hardly express diversity. By all means include more women’s matches or perhaps Roedean v Cheltenham Ladies College.
The national project of the Association of Jewish Refugees – 80 trees for 80 years – is to commemorate the arrival of refugees from nazi persecution and the contribution they made to the country. The planting of one such tree in Gosforth by Monica and Gerald Stern was to honour their late fathers George Loble and Freddy Stern who settled in the North East and created significant businesses with many jobs and enhanced life of the North East. A very suitable memorial. The Wordle daily puzzle game has become an international obsession. Not quite the Times crossword or even countdown, but it does encourage vocabularial exercise, challenging players to guess a five letter word in six moves. It was developed by the aptly named John Wardle to entertain his partner but was sold in January to the New York Times for an undisclosed seven figure sum.
This has raised again the argument about the use of US spellings, regarded as preferential by the NYT and supplying more five letter options – favor, labor, honor, rumor, humor’. Such versions have long been regarded by many with scorn as indicating an inability to spell.
This is despite the words center, color and gotten appearing in Shakespeare’s First Folio.
Surprisingly Susie Dent, the Oxford educated lexicographer of Countdown, says it is high time we ‘get over’ our aversion to American spellings, suggesting that much of it was ‘ours’ to begin with as it was used by the Bard.
It may be that a less sympathetic stance should be taken to editorial policy of the NYT removing from Wordle words deemed to be offensive such as ‘slave’ and ‘wench’. Next step a woke edition of the Oxford Dictionary?