The Ryder Cup - according to the BBC the greatest sporting show on earth.
Hmm a big claim for an event that doesn’t even get a mention on two of the
biggest Czech Sports websites. So if you have no idea what the Ryder Cup is, let me fill you in before I tell you why it brings out my grumpy side.
The Ryder Cup is a biennial golf tournament where the best male players from the USA take on
the best male players from Europe. (In the dim and distant past it was from the
UK not Europe but the UK golfers got trounced so many times that they had to get the rest
of Europe in to bail them out.)
Now the reason the Ryder Cup makes me grumpy isn’t the hyperbole
that surrounds it in the British media, or the televising of rich men walking
in the countryside in those ridiculous matching uniforms occasionally thwacking a ball after hours of ponderous deliberations.
No, the cause of my chagrin is the complete hypocrisy with which the British
embrace it. I am a European. I believe in the EU and being part of the EU, that
seems to put me in a minority in the UK. There the general consensus is that
the EU are a bunch on interfering bureaucrats who use all our money funding jollies for themselves, making our banana straight and facilitating stinking foreigners to come over to the UK and steal
our jobs. So Europe is viewed with
suspicion, ambivalence or outright hatred.
Except for the three days every two years in September when the
Daily Mail brigade, the Nigel Farage crew, the Tory right forget all their animosity and start waving a blue
flag with 12 stars and hoping that German fella can sink the winning putt. I
wonder if the EU threated to kick UK players out of the Ryder Cup team if
Britain left the EU, would it change a few people’s minds. Worth a thought.
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