Posted in Sport

Sports Direct are still using zero hour contracts

SPORTS DIRECT is still recruiting for zero hour jobs in a spite of a promise to scrap them. The notorious sportswear retailer, whose bosses will face a grilling at its AGM on Friday, said a year ago that it would offer guaranteed hours to its staff.

But new job ads on the company website explicitly state that recruits are offered “no guaranteed hours of work”. The ads say that “hours of work can therefore vary from week to week and, as a result, there may be weeks when no hours of work are offered”. Continue reading →

Nothing to lose but our chains: Marx on cycling

As the annual cycling spectacle of the Tour De France begins Mark Perryman argues the case for two wheels good

Who would have guessed it. Karl Marx was clearly a bike mechanic when he wasn’t plotting the downfall of capitalism. “Nothing to lose but your chains” is handy advice when the derailleur slips and furious pedalling propels bike and rider precisely nowhere. Ok, Marx was more interested in liberating the workers of the world than the freedom of the road though with committed cycle-commuter Jeremy Corbyn quite possibly in need of a Downing Street bike rack soon there doesn’t seem a better time to make the case for cycling as the people’s sport. Continue reading →

Review: After the eating and drinking, the sporty?

GAMES WITHOUT FRONTIERS hi res front 11.3.inddA selection of 2017 sporting reads by Mark Perryman for the post-festive recovery period

There’s nothing like Christmas to put on an inch or two where we don’t want to. Sitting in front of the TV for hours, days even, on end doesn’t help much either. For many, a New Years resolution to add more physical activity to the weekly routine of eat, sleep, work, repeat is the self-imposed antidote. So what better time to recommend a sporting title to the 2017 must-read list? Continue reading →

Where have all the poppies gone?

britain-soccer-fifa-poppiesAhead of  the England vs Scotland game Mark Perryman responds to FIFA’s Poppies ban

The last time England played Scotland in a competitive match at Hampden Park, in November, 1999, it was preceded by none of the manufactured row about whether the teams should have poppies embroidered on their shirts. The tabloids were more interested in a good old-fashioned football rivalry instead. The Sun greeting the fixture with the headline ‘Jocks Away’ while north of the border the Daily Record sought to put England manager Kevin Keegan’s over-confidence in its place with ‘Boastbusters’ with the unforgettable tagline ‘Scots v The Auld Enemy : See Pages 2,3,4,5,6.7,62,63,64,65,66, 67 & 68.’ This was pre-Salmond and Sturgeon, the irresistible rise of the SNP and the near wipeout of Scottish Labour MPs. And it was before UKip’s forward march too. Culminating in Brexit, a populist version of English nationalism against all things that Europe, and Scotland, seems to represent in terms of broadly social-democratic values versus a neoliberal free-for-all. Continue reading →

The Social Democratic Team GB v. Freemarket English Football

7976310763_8470c7d8f2_zMark Perryman outlines what  Great Britain’s Olympic success does and does not mean

Team GB’s second place in the Rio medals table is nothing less than staggering. It is only 20 years ago that the squad returned with a solitary Gold from Atlanta ’96 clinging on to 36th in the table. This sporting nation is now ranked alongside the Olympian superpowers of USA and China. If it hadn’t been for the partial IOC ban on their competitors Russia would have been in the mix too but still this remains a remarkable Team GB medal haul.

Unlike the football World Cup, the Olympics Medal Table is by and large an indicator of global economic and political power. These superpower nations, USA, China and Russia, cannot claim a single men’s Football World Cup title between them or have come anywhere close, mostly. The Olympics is different.  So how has Team GB ended up on top of the Olympic pile? Continue reading →