More stupid "organic" propaganda

It assumes that "antioxidants" are good for you -- a myth. Antioxidants are the medical equivalent of global warming -- used to explain just about anything purely on the basis of theory. They can actually be dangerous and can shorten your life

The biggest study into organic food has found that it is more nutritious than ordinary produce and may help to lengthen people's lives. The evidence from the 12m pound four-year project will end years of debate and is likely to overturn government advice that eating organic food is no more than a lifestyle choice. The study found that organic fruit and vegetables contained as much as 40% more antioxidants, which scientists believe can cut the risk of cancer and heart disease, Britain's biggest killers. They also had higher levels of beneficial minerals such as iron and zinc.

Professor Carlo Leifert, the co-ordinator of the European Union-funded project, said the differences were so marked that organic produce would help to increase the nutrient intake of people not eating the recommended five portions a day of fruit and vegetables. "If you have just 20% more antioxidants and you can't get your kids to do five a day, then you might just be okay with four a day," he said.

This weekend the Food Standards Agency confirmed that it was reviewing the evidence before deciding whether to change its advice. Ministers and the agency have said there are no significant differences between organic and ordinary produce.

Researchers grew fruit and vegetables and reared cattle on adjacent organic and nonorganic sites on a 725-acre farm attached to Newcastle University, and at other sites in Europe. They found that levels of antioxidants in milk from organic herds were up to 90% higher than in milk from conventional herds. As well as finding up to 40% more antioxidants in organic vegetables, they also found that organic tomatoes from Greece had significantly higher levels of antioxidants, including flavo-noids thought to reduce coronary heart disease.

Leifert said the government was wrong about there being no difference between organic and conventional produce. "There is enough evidence now that the level of good things is higher in organics," he said.

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Competitive sport making a partial comeback in British schools

In Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857), written by an alumnus of Rugby school during Thomas Arnold's headship, the eponymous hero states: `[F]ootball and cricket, now one comes to think of it, are such much better games than fives or hare-and-hounds, or any others where the object is to come in first or to win for oneself, and not that one's side may win.' It's not therefore competition per se that was deemed morally suspect, but self-interest - hence the emphasis on team sport. Moreover, the moral claims made on behalf of certain team sports drew on their intrinsically competitive nature, indeed, made of it a virtue. Instrumental it may be, but the ends are not extrinsic to the means.

Adding a touch more Empire to this morally robust mix, a later Victorian homilist, TL Papillon, was equally certain of sport's value to a public school boy, especially one who, lacking academic aptitude, `has devoted a great part of his time and nearly all his thoughts to athletic sports': for he will still bring `away something beyond all price, a manly straight forward character, a scorn of lying and meanness, habits of obedience and command and reckless courage. Thus equipped, he goes out into the world, and bears a man's part in subduing the earth, taming its wild folk, and building up the Empire.' (4) It is doubtful that any equivalent rhetoric exists for pedometers.

In an article published in The Tribune in December 1945, George Orwell famously echoed the sentiments above. But he did so darkly: `Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.' (5) The occasion for such a tirade may have been Arsenal's defeat of Dynamo Moscow, but it doesn't take a historian to figure out that the context of recent World War, and incipient Cold War, provided the frame through which Orwell rendered competitiveness as the essence of militarism. Furthermore, the focus of Orwell's declamation is illustrative. For it is always in terms of the competitive element, the very element both regulated and exalted in sport throughout its nineteenth-century development, that sport is judged. The disparagement of school sport during the late 1980s and 90s is no exception. On the basis that competitive sport cultivated selfishness, competitive sports days appeared as free-market induction sessions. While many lost their livelihoods during the 1980s and early 90s, in the anti-competitive parallel sporting universe, wrongs were to be set right by ensuring that eggs were glued to spoons.

But times change. `It was an absurd and perverse political correctness which caused competitive sports to be banned in some schools and I hope we never see a return to such nonsense' announced then education secretary Alan Johnson earlier this year (5). Indeed, school sport has rarely been so high up the policy agenda, nor investment so forthcoming. As last year's School Sport Survey extolled: `Physical Education (PE) and sport play an important role in school life. They help to raise standards, improve behaviour and health, increase attendance and develop social skills.' In other words, school sport does a lot of things the government is keen on doing. Not only that, it also seems to be pretty successful. As David Conn reported, in 1994, only 25 per cent of primary and secondary school pupils in Britain were doing the recommended two hours of PE a week (6). The figure is now 86 per cent (7).

There's no doubt that the stats are impressive. But it's what is driving the newfound sporting zeal that is more troubling. As with many other aspects of education, school sport seems to be acquiring its current meaning in a context of social estrangement. In this sense it appears as no more than a vital mediation between the dislocated state and the populace it seeks to manage. But in the process of reducing school sport to a policy mechanism, a management tool, the authorities run the risk of emptying sport of content, reducing it to an abstraction, units of exercise applicable to everyone - sporty or not. As such it can just about refer to anything that involves a degree of movement, hence its ability to colonise informal aspects of kids' lives - dance or skateboarding, say - and institutionalise them as another school sport.

Likewise, competition changes meaning, and becomes more of a byword for participation, a demand that children find something they're good at. To wit, James Purnell, secretary of state for culture, media and sport: `Schools are offering a greater variety of sports than ever before and children now have more opportunities to try out and find a sport which is right for them.' (8) That is by no means a terrible thing, but as the deathlessly quantitative nature of the research indicates, the aim seems to be to increase the numbers participating in `sport' without thinking about what they're actually participating in. Ed Balls at least has the advantage of honesty here: `The way in which schools provide sports after [the age of 11] has a big impact on participation. Particularly for girls. If you have a wider range of sports on offer, more alternative sports, more things like frisbee or yoga which are as health driving as any other in schools.' (9)

Though Orwell or Thomas Arnold would have argued about the worth of sport, they would at least have agreed that such meaning as it had lay in its inherently competitive nature, and the self-realisation and expression that entails. Today's notion of school sport is in danger of limiting the latter to aerobics.

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Scotsmen criticizing Scots is "racial hatred"??

Sir Jackie Stewart, the former motor-racing world champion, has accused his fellow Scots of being lazy and overdependent on public sector "jobs for life". The racing legend, from Dumbarton, who now lives in Buckinghamshire and Switzerland, said he was astonished at how workshy his countrymen had become. Stewart, the son of a garage owner who overcame dyslexia to become one of the country's greatest sportsmen, said he rarely heard a Scottish voice when he visited hotels and restaurants in his native country.

Praising Poles and Australians, who he said were prepared to work hard in the service industry, he accused Scots of relying on cosy jobs in the country's burgeoning public sector. "I am constantly disappointed by the fact that the Scots don't want to work," he said. "In things like the service sector which is absolutely vital for tourism, I'm served by South Africans, Australians, New Zealanders and Polish people who are really working hard.

"I think social services are too prolific. If you have a job in government you're not going to be sacked. You have a job for life. You don't have to work too hard and you don't have to present yourself well because it is not competitive."

The 68-year-old's comments have reignited the debate provoked by Kelvin MacKenzie, the former editor of The Sun, who claimed Scotland was a nation of subsidy junkies. As a panellist on the BBC's Question Time programme earlier this month, MacKenzie, whose grandfather was born in Stirling and was allegedly a Highland Games champion, accused Scots of living off wealth created in the southeast of England. "Scotland believes not in entrepreneurialism, like in London and the southeast. The reality is that the Scots enjoy spending it, they don't enjoy creating it, which is the opposite of down in the south," he said.

MacKenzie, who is being investigated by police for allegedly inciting racial hatred, said he was delighted a prominent Scot had now endorsed his comments. "The Scots may not want to take notice of someone like me but I hope they take notice of someone like Sir Jackie," he said. "When their own countrymen and someone who has made a success of their life starts making these statements then maybe Scots should think a bit more rather than hitting out. I am not anti-Scot but I am anti the fact we are subsidising a part of the country that should be able to look after itself."

In a separate interview Stewart recalled his own youth when he used to serve petrol in his father's garage in Scotland. "I have heard too many of my compatriots saying: `Oh, I wouldn't want to do that job, it's too menial'," he said. "But I was proud to be involved in a service industry, it taught me how to communicate, gave me confidence, and encouraged me to be positive, because I knew that if I was nice to people, they would like it and give me a bigger tip."

Other Scots disagreed. Sir Tom Hunter, Scotland's richest man, said: "Everyone is born with the same intelligence, just some are dealt a bad hand in terms of opportunity. No one wakes up and thinks they don't want to work, or go on the dole. It just happens that some people find themselves in tough situations. Sometimes they just need a little bit of extra help." Gordon Ramsay, the Glasgow-born celebrity chef, added: "Scots have tenacity, hunger and determination and, most importantly, a pair of balls. That costs nothing and that is how they will succeed

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Evangelical atheism

Richard Dawkins's campaign urging atheists to `come out' and be counted, is oddly reminiscent of an evangelical rally where born-again Christians are implored to rush down to the stage.

Closet atheists in the pious USA and worldwide are to be welcomed with open arms into the sceptical fold. And if sales of Dawkins's The God Delusion and other recent books like it are anything to go by, there is no shortage of people ready to join up. While some critics have labelled Dawkins and co `atheist fundamentalists', the real similarity between atheism and religion today is less fanaticism than a palpable yearning to belong. There is nothing wrong with this very human impulse, but non-belief is an odd basis for belonging.

Of course, the resurgence of interest in atheism is a reaction to the perceived rise of religion, whether in the form of Islamic fundamentalism or US-style Christian conservatism. But in taking their cue from resurgent religions, atheists also adopt something of their inward-looking focus. From attempts to popularise the term `bright' as a positive identity to calls for atheists to be included on the roster of BBC Radio 4's `Thought for the Day', it seems that some want to establish atheism as an alternative, non-religious camp for people to belong to. But atheism itself ought to be the least interesting thing about atheists, who surely have various and often conflicting beliefs and passions of their own.

The most promising term used by some atheists to describe a more positive outlook is humanism, evoking a rich tradition going back to the Renaissance. But this won't serve as a label for the non-religious for the simple reason that humanism does not preclude religious faith. Indeed, those of us with a positive belief in the human potential do not especially need to distinguish ourselves from others who share that belief while also identifying with a religious tradition. Certainly we will object to religious bigotry, but then so do most avowedly religious people. And equally, we will share opposition to antihuman ideas propagated by some atheists, such as biological determinism: the idea that humans are little more than fleshy machines.

The desire to establish atheism as an alternative identity is ultimately conservative. Rather than joining together with others who share a positive vision of the future, self-styled atheists define themselves against an external threat. Worse, it is no longer the conservatism of religion that worries non-believers, but its radicalism, its seemingly irrational passion. Where once religion was disdained as `the opium of the people', today it is seen as more akin to the alcopop of the people: a dangerous and toxic influence that makes people behave in irrational ways. If coming out as an atheist means subscribing to an ersatz religion with the fire taken out, atheists can expect to remain in the cold.

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