I'd just like to [ahem] shove my oar in.

1) How effective was his protest? What has he achieved for his cause? Sure he got lots of publicity, but I don't see evidence of him turning it to his advantage. So he's pissed lots of people off, disrupted a harmless sporting event and made lots of people hate him - who exactly benefited from his actions?
2) The boat race is not exclusively for "toffs", the only time I've watched it was when a boyfriend of my sister's was a Cambridge Blue. I don't know the details of his background, lower middle class I think, by no stretch a "toff".

_________________
That subtle admixture of the absurd and the surreally plausible...

On the legality issue - civil disobedience was good enough for Gandhi and the suffragettes. Whether or not you agree with Mr Oldfield's views he has found a way of going up to a very obvious symbol of the class system and tweaking it's nose in public, as it were.

Not everyone involved is a toff... but there are trends. I expect to see a lot more of these sorts of things as the economic crisis drags on. I'm filing this away with the anti-capitalist protestors, who also imposed themselves on a public space.

Perhaps he is a bit of a tool but he is not in the same league as the people who want him hung. By spoiling a boat race he has underscored that it isn't just a boat race. I'm far from convinced that there are millions of closet rowing fans out there either. It is primarily a public spectacle.

Know your place?

Incidentally, that Mr Oldfield is a rich kid is an entertaining irony. A posh boy out working class hero-ing the working class.

I expect most people watch in the hope of a collision, sinking, or something exciting. Which this was.

_________________
Sick Left-wing Zealot.

You're not wrong. Ordinarily, the University Boat Race is about as exciting as peeling spuds. I use it purely as a calendar mark on the way into spring - Cheltenham Festival, Boat Race, Masters Golf, Grand National, etc etc etc etc .......

_________________
I'm a nasty, violent lefty. You cunt.

On point 1, I'm inclined to think it was ineffective.
It fits in with my idea of the propaganda of the deed having no significant value unless backed by mass support.

The Arab Spring provides a good example.
You'll recall the trigger was a young man setting himself alight.
This encouraged mass demonstrations in the same city, the same country, and soon across parts of 2 continents.
Sometimes even mass support doesn't guarantee results (See Syria), but where governments fell it was the mass support that produced the results.

Now as a contrast, imagine NargleFargle was to set himself on fire as a protest against the Celsius temperature scale.
I'd imagine street protests would be minimal, and aside froum a few nutty columnists in the usual papers, life would carry on as normal.

Lets take it a step further - Some guy in speedos floats down the Thames to protest against something even more abstract than a meaurement system.
Where are his demands / programme, what is his organisation.
He's achieved even less then Fargle, and pissed a few people off for no good reason.

At the risk of fishing for a CotD award, I think most people would think "Good Riddance".

_________________
Changin' avatars like there's no tomorrow

I think one problem with Oldfield's stuff is that it happens in a vacuum. There's not really any structured politics around it. Some chap from a trade union doing it (like Len McCluskey seemed to suggest for the Olympics) and there's a mass movement that can highlight the issues (even if they disown the individual who did it). Even a small group like tenants not wanting to be done over by Hammersmith and Fulham council have an identifiable cause, and might get more publicity later on.

Oldfield's thing doesn't really go anywhere, it seems to me, though these things aren't always predictable.

Do you really think so?

_________________
Where there is great doubt, there will be great awakening; small doubt, small awakening, no doubt, no awakening.

I watch it to see Cambridge kick Oxford's sorry arse.

_________________
Si vas a plagiar noticias, no uses un sitio de noticias falsas como fuente.


Last edited by Carlos The Badger on Thu Feb 31, 2021 18:60 am, edited 666 times in total.

I don't believe that for a second.
I'm sure the people who watch it care about the result in just the same way as any other sports fans.
What kind of an idiot would you have to be to sit through it if you had no interest in it?

_________________
That subtle admixture of the absurd and the surreally plausible...

And take your kids?

_________________
Where there is great doubt, there will be great awakening; small doubt, small awakening, no doubt, no awakening.

The major difference between citing Gandhi in relation to this is that Gandhi had every right to be on the road where he protested. Oldfield had as much right to be in the Thames on Saturday afternoon as you have to be in the nuclear reactor at Sellafield.



So why did he not throw himself under Prince Harry's polo pony? Actually the answer to that is simple and two-fold, namely (1) he's a chicken (horses might kill him) and (2) he's a media-whore and polo isn't covered a great deal.



I don't want him hung, I want him to be punished in the usual way and not, as some on here would like, him to be let out for tea and medals. And as for your second point the viewing figures for the boat race suggest otherwise.

_________________
"Even when you're a super-computer with an IQ of 2000 it's brown trousers time."

Reclaiming "methinks" for the nation

Latest blog post - 2011 - a review (updated 07/10)

In my experience when something like the boat race is mentioned a lot of people on the left lose all ability for critical thinking.

_________________
"Even when you're a super-computer with an IQ of 2000 it's brown trousers time."

Reclaiming "methinks" for the nation

Latest blog post - 2011 - a review (updated 07/10)

On the point of people's reasons for watching the boat race, I dare say there are not very many people watching because they're dyed in the wool Oxford fans; but (as others have said) because it's a spectacle, it is one of the events that marks the passing of the year, and a hell of a lot of people bet on it. A bit like how people who otherwise wouldn't watch horseracing will be tuning in to the BBC this Saturday for the National.

There's plenty of 'events' that attract audiences outside the regular fans. The FA cup final. Last night of the Proms. The Olympics. Tour de France. World Athletics championships - sod that. The Olympics on the other hand, now yer talking.

What occurs to me is that in alost all these cases, there's three parts to the protest:

The protester
The manner of protest
The issue being protested

And almost every time, it's points 1 and 2 that will be discussed, dissected and deconstructed. Point 3 will fall by the wayside.

If he really wanted to point out the elitism of the event (and well, duh, it's a sporting event, of course it's elitist), why didn't he get 20 likeminded colleagues and a couple of boats, launch them into the river as the main boats set off, having stuck signs on them saying "Scumbag College" or whatever, and race the elites? Possible (it's a big old river), witty, will get seen and won't actually disrupt the race. Or stick banners up on every bridge the race goes under? Lots of possibilities he could have tried.

_________________
Ten seconds... the pain begins.

Fifteen seconds... you can't breathe.

Twenty seconds... you give up and turn off the Jeremy Vine show.

To be honest, the boat race is one of those events that just makes me go "oh, who gives a flying cat fuck?" and turn the telly over. As I see it, it's two boats full of over-muscled fucktards who see this as possibly the pinnacle of their lives and nothing else that'll come after it - marriage, childbirth, etc - will possibly compare. Yes, the people who compete in this are monied, they are privileged, yes they are complete wastes of existence in the grand scheme of things and this will be their one and only shot at glory, but in the end, who the fuck are they hurting? No one. For a few minutes, they get to play silly games on a river and provide the banks of braying, cheering simpletons watching their efforts with a few short minutes of entertainment. They're harming no one, but this twat...well. I really did wish that one of the prats in the boats got that enraged that they swung an oar at him and cut his stupid head from his body.

One thing that I don't think a lot of people are getting is this: to row at that level takes a fucking lot of work. My god, have you seen the legs and shoulders on these guys? They're built for power and speed. They're not like footballers, they're certainly not built like rugby players. And to get to the level that these people get to? It takes years of practice, hard work and determination. Where I live in Glasgow, I'm near the Forth and Clyde Canal. And there are two stretches of the canal - from Possil Moss to Bishopbriggs, and just after the beautifully-named Starrycross to Banknock, that are poker-straight and allow teams of rowers from the University of Glasgow (and Strathclyde, I believe) to go practice. I've been along that stretch of canal during the spring when they're out, practising, and let me tell you: these stretches are fucking *long*. I'm not sure of the distance, but I'll say this - these guys can clear the stretches in less time than it takes for a ned to neck a can of Super. I seriously doubt this attention-seeking twat even comprehends that. In fact, I was going to reply to this topic this morning, but I decided to ask a colleague of mine - who does row, and does a hell of a lot of other sports - if he can name one other sport that can be as physically challenging. The only thing he could think of, weirdly, was archery. Perhaps we can encourage the attention-seeking little twit to interrupt one of *those* events...

_________________
You couldn't make it up...that's what Littledick's for!