Gallantly Streaming?

From a British perspective, the Super Bowl is late night entertainment. It’s something to have a party for, or rather it’s something you need to have a party for. Get a group of friends, have plenty of food and booze ready and make the thing have an atmosphere; you’re going to need that adrenaline in the wee small hours. Most of the UK’s Super Bowl happens on Monday morning, which is a far cry from the Sunday evening game in the US – the climax of Super Bowl Sunday. If you do it alone (as I did) it starts off feeling like an illicit thrill, tapping into America’s quarter-day-behind-you energy and reliving your evening all over again after the squares have gone to bed. By 2.00-3.00 a.m. it feels dirty and painful, an endurance contest.

That’s not to say that this year’s game was hard to sit through; XLV was very engaging - thrilling because the belief that it could go either way was sustained for much of the game. Of course, in retrospect that feeling of ‘you just can’t call it’ (more often the BS of sports commentators trying to keep their audience rather than a reflection of the game) is downplayed and the fumbles on the Steelers’ side become the main focus:

Pittsburgh turned over the ball three times, and all three miscues were followed by Green Bay touchdowns. The Packers didn't give it up once, allowing them to prevail when they were outgained (387-338 in total yards), had the ball nearly 7 minutes less than the Steelers and barely mustered a running game (50 yards on just 13 carries).

The Steelers touchdown 39 seconds before half time snapped you to attention, and into anticipation for the second half. Action kept coming out of nowhere, or at least in the moments when expectation for action had come off the boil. That’s until towards the end, when expectations became constantly poised, tense and agonising. With seven and a half minutes to go there were three points between the teams. Wearing headphones the incredible crowd noise coming from the Steelers fans was filling my ears; properly demonstrating its intended purpose of screwing up the Packers’ lines of communication as the plays crept towards the end zone.

I watched the BBC’s live stream of the game online (more fool me, trying to play spot the ball amongst intermittent video compression artefacts). It is fun watching the BBC as they try to anticipate the start of the commercials, or cut back in time for the resumption of game play (they consistently fail in the latter). What they can’t do much about is Fox’s in-commentary acknowledgement of the sponsors (the Bud Light Cam - giving you those incredible, up-close-and-personal shots of the players), or the promise of a Glee episode and Fox’s in-depth analysis of the game to follow. Oddly the Beeb didn’t seek to correct those announcements - no explanatory captions or announcers. During those authentic Fox moments it was nice to imagine that you were spending an evening on a sofa in the States. ‘Don’t go anywhere, folks’ …would that I didn't have to.

Jake Humphrey presented the BBC commentary segments that occupied the ad breaks. He would greet you from the game and then prompt former New York Giants running back Tiki Barber and football pundit Mike Carlson to give their explanations and opinions. Humphrey is of the Richard Bacon’s Beer & Pizza Club school of MAN TV, all matey bonhomie and jocular ribbing. He introduced Barber as ‘a man who we’ll send round to yours if you start dropping off, and it won’t take him long to get there either.’ The lean, mean, supposedly television audience-pummelling machine didn’t know where to look. Once they got going, Barber and Carlson offered an un-patronising and enthusiastic translation of the game for people who may only get to see American football through the Super Bowl.

The next morning (for those who slept and missed the game) Christina Aguilera made even the British news for fluffing the lines to the US National Anthem. Yes, and the Blackpool Illuminations Eyed Peas set was a bit style over substance too. Quite honestly, though, I found it less painful than watching The Who struggle to keep it together during the abrupt transitions and unfamiliar edits in their songs last year.

Chin up, people. We might get Soulja Boy for 2012.

Davos Cameron

‘The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas’ …or something like that. It’s been running since 1971, and has an annual meeting at Davos in Switzerland - a meeting that David Cameron attended this year, his first attendance as prime minister.

In this capacity Cameron authoritatively mentioned the budget for growth that the government will be announcing in about eight weeks: ‘Those who argue that dealing with our deficit and promoting growth are somehow alternatives are wrong. You cannot put off the first in order to promote the second. Average government debt in the EU is almost eighty per cent of GDP.’ The nice thing about giving a speech is that you can put words into your hypothetical enemies’ mouths, and make those words much easier for yourself to knock down than in real life. What about those who aren’t actually arguing that tackling the deficit and promoting growth are alternatives, but suggest instead that they can solve each other – promoting growth to deal with the deficit?

The coalition’s method is to focus first on reducing the deficit, hopefully with the least amount of damage done to the potential for growth. Of course, while pitching for business interest at Davos it was growth that needed to be sold, rather than deficit reduction. Cameron’s sentences thus came out with the emphasis reversed. His government would prioritise growth through its choice of cuts - welfare is cut to pay for transport, and tax increases focus on what people spend, rather than hiking taxes on jobs. As for Europe, we should all cut back on regulations to small businesses: our entrepreneurs, our lifeblood.

Carefully deployed oxymorons-that-aren’t: budgets for growth, cutting back to invest in innovation – it’s not that Cameron’s saying every cloud has a silver lining, but rather he’s having every cloud labelled: ‘silver lining holder.’ It’s pruning a shrub so that it might grow more vigorously in the next season. Yes, a gardening metaphor for politics and the economy – Chauncey Gardiner and Being There. It’s the same thing: vacant man spouts political nous. Everything has its season, after the winter comes the spring. It’s tough but it will get better. Yes, thanks Dave.

Nick Clegg was in Switzerland too. While Cameron gave the Forum deep cuts, Clegg’s cuts were measured: ‘I understand that people, psychologically, when they hear about it, think it's already happened. The vast majority of cuts haven't been introduced yet... They will be imposed gradually over a four-and-a-half-year period.’ It was all about defending the cuts, and ensuring that we all know how confident the coalition is about sticking to them, and to their economic policy in general. On the Friday Chancellor George Osborne told the Forum that we must ignore the ‘siren voices’ urging against the cuts. This is the same phrase he used about a year ago at the Mais lecture at the Cass Business School, City University London. This at least proves that both Osborne and the sirens have been consistent up to now. Coupled with the cuts is an easing of the tax burden on businesses, or rather a promise to achieve the ‘lowest rates of business taxes in the western world.’ Inspiring stuff, though bare in mind Osborne’s audience at Davos.

The World Economic Forum affirms business, tells it that it does a good job, and that, in doing a more profitable, efficient job for itself, our respective populations will be better off materially and otherwise. Those speaking who are in politics are trying to sell their country’s attractiveness to international leaders in business and finance. Obviously the meeting was slightly more interesting this year because the pep talk and inspiring pro-business sound bites had to be reconciled with the ‘it’s a choppy road to recovery’ and ‘we can’t let bankers off the hook for this mess completely’ policy admissions of each country’s spokespersons. Cameron and Osborne confidently offered several explanations as to how the coalition’s cuts wouldn’t affect new investments or opportunities for business - those routes to successful and safer economies and societies.

This meant addressing the recent news-making finding that the economy contracted by 0.5% in the last three months of 2010. The bad weather was cited; it was the wrong type of Christmas shopper (pansies who stay indoors when it snows), and the recovery was always going to be choppy, as the prime mister said. If the downturn continues, however, the deficit reduction plan might be tweaked slightly, what former George Osborne advisor Ken Rogoff calls a ‘slower plan A.’ Channel 4 News’s Faisal Islam noted that. He interviewed Osborne at Davos on Friday, and pointed out that ‘Osborne is also a bit of an Austerity Pin-up for many Americans here who feel that the US government is not getting to grip with its ballooning deficit.’

In the great gamble on who’s in the right over tackling the economic situation those Americans may well be vindicated in their opinion of Osborne. For the moment, however, the British media use a different view of America to contrast with the coalition’s policies. The US government’s perceived reticence to cut, along with America’s superior growth figures for the close of 2010 prove too tempting to ignore. This from BBC journalist Olivia Lang’s live feed from the Forum on Friday (Lang had just wondered if Cameron’s confidence had rubbed off on US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner): ‘1100: But that's perhaps all he's picking up from Cameron. Making deep cuts in spending, Geithner says, "is not the responsible way" to bring down state deficits.’ Ooh, burn.

Whether or not Cameron, Clegg and Osborne did us proud at Davos remains to be seen. Actually, does anyone really care? Does it matter if our prime minister, deputy prime minister and Chancellor succeed or fail in apologising convincingly enough to the banks (for coming down so hard on them, in regulation and rhetoric, for their part in the economic downturn)? Did they really convince as to how humble and sorry we are for biting the hands that feed and drop us a few crumbs in the process? Did the message get across - that this tough economic climate and jobs market will be that much easier to bear if we know that banks and business are interested in coming to our country in droves, or more likely in unimaginative flat-pack office developments?

I’m sure business is capable of deciding for itself, without any governmental sales pitch, which countries to use or ditch in its operations.

Away from the banks, business and Bono crowd, the World Social Forum’s alternative, alter-globalisation discussions and answers will be heard in February, at Dakar.