World Cup: are there any grounds for optimism?
England no longer expects, said Paul Wilson in The Guardian. Not after the last World Cup, where they “crashed out” before the group stage had even concluded; not after Euro 2016, where they were humiliated by Iceland. So disappointing have the national side been in recent years that it’s tempting to conclude they’ve simply “lost the knack of playing well in tournaments”. But last Saturday, in their penultimate friendly before the World Cup, England showed that they are at least heading “in the right direction”, said Sam Wallace in The Sunday Telegraph. Rarely has the side looked “more cohesive” than in the first half of their 2-1 win over Nigeria. In the second half, however, they found themselves “stretched”.
Since Gareth Southgate became manager in 2016, he has experimented with different tactics and formations, said Matt Lawton in the Daily Mail. But against Nigeria, he made it clear that his priority is simply “getting the best players on the pitch”. So instead of choosing between Kyle Walker and Kieran Trippier, who play as rightsided wing-backs, he picked both of them, putting Walker in central defence. Likewise, he found a way to deploy both Dele Alli and Jesse Lingard in midfield. What’s refreshing about Southgate is that he’s capable of ignoring the glare of the media, said Barney Ronay in The Guardian. He has picked a squad that “reflects everything he wants to do and nothing else”. Unlike so many of his predecessors, he has been willing to drop big names, including goalkeeper Joe Hart. That makes this a notably inexperienced group of players: only five of them went to the last World Cup. It’s a squad that suits Southgate’s “brand of forward-thinking, possessionbased football”, said Alistair Magowan on BBC Sport online. And, with Raheem Sterling, Lingard and Walker on board, it has “pace at its heart”.
At earlier World Cups, England squads were riven by club rivalries and north-south divides, said Ian Whittell in The Sunday Times. And at Euro 2016, the side adopted a “siege mentality”: they were so hostile to the press that Hart even “refused to divulge which player had won a team darts competition”. But this squad, by contrast, is open and united: players talk happily about their bonding over computer games. In short, there’s some cause for optimism, said Matt Dickinson in The Times. But to make progress in Russia, England will need to be more prolific in front of the net. They have proven scorers: Harry Kane, Sterling, Lingard and Alli scored 91 goals between them for their clubs last season. Kane aside, however, they’ve been far less “ruthless” for the national side. England scored a mere 25 goals in Southgate’s first 17 matches; at this level, that’s just not good enough.
To The Guardian
Only 33,000 workers went on strike in 2017. Even now, critics of trade unions still refer to the 1978-79 “winter of discontent”. But that was decades ago, and post-thatcher industrial relations are radically different. Less than 25% of employees are now trade union members. The draconian Trade Union Act 2016 further restricts strikes and should be scrapped.
Attacks on the right to strike are undemocratic, especially when too many workers already have so little collective bargaining power, evidenced by falling wages and even by the rising food bank use by the low-paid. The power pendulum has swung too sharply towards employers. Many nonunionised workers are largely unprotected from exploitation, with worrying echoes of Victorian Britain in today’s “modern, flexible labour market”.
It would be incorrect to imply from the decline in strikes that workplaces are now bastions of harmony. Conflict at work remains widespread, but is often driven underground and less visibly manifests itself through grievances, absence, turnover, the withdrawing of commitment, sickness and new forms of protest.
Compared with 276,000 working days lost to strikes last year, 137.3 million working days were lost to sickness and injury in 2016. Professor Tony Dobbins, University of Birmingham