I’ll be taking a message of goodwill and renewed engagement, letting African countries know that Australia is ready to listen and learn from them, as well as to contribute to their progress and prosperity.I await her report in the coming months on what Australia has learnt from Africa via Her Excellency's ear.
By the way, in another recent speech, the GG lavished praise on women's cricket, saying this:
This is a great achievement for cricket and will mean a lot to the 650,000 females playing cricket around the world. In Australia there are more females playing now than ever before – 70,000 – this has increased significantly over the last 4 years.650,000 females around the world play cricket? This must only be if you count schoolgirls, as the BBC was reporting in 2001 that there were 640,000 girls playing cricket at school in the last 12 months, but only 4000 who played "at club level".
Quentin also claims:
I have observed that many successful achieving women have played cricket. It’s a sport that develops character.Yeah? I reckon she's just buying into a generic sport's stereotype there: that it's inherently "good for character".
I've never quite understood that. When anyone thinks about their high school experience, for example, how many can honestly say "yes, all those jocks on the football team pretty clearly had the best character of all the people I knew." From my observation, they were in fact more likely to be the one showing their 15 year old girlfriend that they had a condom ready in their pocket for the evening's date, as well as being the most likely to be drinking underage and underperforming academically. They could be mocking of people with no sporting prowess (yes, that's me!) and although they could be reasonable people to meet again as adults, it was only with the additional maturity that they became reasonable conversationalists.
For every famous sportsperson of apparent good character, there is always someone you can find one who is the opposite. Seems to me to be self evidently, at best, a neutral influence on character.
Taking part in any group activity makes people feel well socialised and less isolated, so if I had a teenager who dressed as a Goth and spent most of his time in the bedroom writing poetry, I guess I would be happier if he was playing cricket. (Only just.)
But honestly, any group activity that didn't involve drugs would have the same effect.
4 comments:
As probably the only reader of your blog who went to your school, I suspect that we had too small a sample to have many intelligent athletes. I was astonished when I got to first year medicine to find students blessed with the coexistence of sporting excellence and academic skills. Didn't make them nicer people in all cases though and many became orthopaedic surgeons.
Perhaps achieving at an elite level in sport requires a level of perseverance and an ability to put off gratification that may suggest good character, while simply having good hand eye coordination to play sport well in general does not. (The best hand eye coordination I ever saw was a rugby playing orthopaedic surgeon who may have been the most awful person I have ever met.)
Cricket in particular while it has idiots like Warne also has many very civilised exponents and as the game that most resembles life (long, unpredictable, may get no result, often ruled by factors outside your control) has much to recommend it. Unfortunately once they get to the hard ball, kids are not allowed to play it without body armour and helmets which is most unfortunate.
You seem to be indicating that orthopaedic surgeons are a particular unpleasant class of surgeon?
Anyway, I know your "cricket is just like life" analogy is accurate, but instead of playing an analogy, why not partake in the thing itself?
That should have been "particularly unpleasant". I think you may have told me that before, but can't be sure.
I was recently talking to an anaesthetist, and brought up the topic of their high suicide rate. He said one factor (apart from the obvious one of having the knowledge of, and access, to drugs to do it painlessly) was that they can often feel bullied by surgeons.
I'm not sure that the drama that can be caused by bad surgeons has been all that adequately dealt with in fiction, TV or movies. TV shows like ER usually don't dwell on surgeons as such. I don't know about Grey's Anatomy, as I have never even seen an episode. (It looks far too soapy from the ads.) Wasn't one of the 1960's TV shows about a saintly brain surgeon?
I think we need a show that concentrates on (some) surgeons as incredible trouble makers. God knows the likes of the Patel case show disastrous some can be.
I think the stereotypical orthopaedic surgeons are dying out. The one I have in mind thought any annoyance to his routine was a Jewish, lesbian, communist conspiracy directed at him and he was not joking.
As a very junior surgeon on the thankfully rare occasions I was flying solo the anesthetists bullied me! They hated us because we were slow and kept them from their coffee. I can imagine that some surgeons would be frightful to work with but I gather that there really is a far more cooperative scene these days, at least in the private world.
Anaesthetists do get their own back as noted in this very old joke:
A surgeon remarks to the anaesthetist that the blood was looking a little dark. Anaesthetist replies that the patient had been dead for thirty minutes but as the surgeon clearly needed the practice he had decided not to mention it.
Patel was a perfect storm of funding madness, doctors unwilling to venture into country Queensland (I only went to Bundaberg myself because I was bonded to the government), a personality disorder afflicting the surgeon and assistants who were too raw to know the difference between adequate and appalling surgery.
I worked with surgeons in Bundaberg who were mediocre but acceptable because they knew their limitations. (...and we got a lot of practice with postop care on the patients who had less then stellar operations.) The poor sods assisting Patel had almost certainly never seen good surgery and were unable to recognise a man out of his depth.
OK, the pilot for your medical drama needs an minimally competent surgeon who gets by on bluff and arrogance, very innocent young interns who know no better and disinterested nursing sisters with a bullied and depressive anaesthetist. Just add Yes Minister style beaurocracy and you at least a series of hilarious thirty minutes episodes. (Must not resemble Scrubs)
Post a Comment