The Wales-Wide Web

The Observer | Sport | Rugby: 6 Nations: Wales 11 - 9 England:
In all of rugby, there is no fixture to match Wales-England in Cardiff for the depth of feeling generated from the pub to the ruck.

Away from the blog for a week and what better way to return. So sad I couldn't make it. But the joy is felt by exiles the world over.

Yo- proud to be the Wales Wide Web.

Sounds like a strange concept. And it is. passive offside is football rule which allows a player to be offside (if you don't know what offside is you will probably be better off going to the next post) if they are not involved in play. Trouble is how you interpret passiveness. Why am 5 going on about it. Because on Saturday Werder Bremen lost 2-1 to Shalke and the player who scored the goal - ex Werder striker Ailton - was judged to be passively offside when the killer pass was made despite the fact he was only about a meter from the ball.

I don't blame the referee - its the rule which needs sorting out.

Otherwise a good game which as so often this season werder could and should have won. Ah well - there's still the Champions League to aim for.

Note to ed-tech people who have syndicated the Wales Wide Web. Sorry about this, but one of the quirks of Wales wide Web is a weekly footy slot. Hope you enjoy it.

Guardian Unlimited Football | Special Reports | Irony not lost on Dortmund:
Question: What do you call a football team which regularly attracts crowds of more than 75,000, yet currently suffers from a financial crisis unparallelled across Europe?

Answer: Borussia Dortmund

Following up on previous postings on the German football scene, this Guardian article provides a useful analysis of Dortmund's decline.

Guardian Unlimited Football | Special Reports | Irony not lost on Dortmund:
Question: What do you call a football team which regularly attracts crowds of more than 75,000, yet currently suffers from a financial crisis unparallelled across Europe?

Answer: Borussia Dortmund

Following up on previous postings on the German football scene, this Guardian article provides a useful analysis of Dortmund's decline.

I have been too quiet on this blog lately but cannot resist a short celebration of Werder Bremen winning the Bundeliga.

In best fashion the title was secured with a 3-1 away win over arch rivals Bayern Munchen - in the process being the first team to score three goals against the Bayern club in the first half of a match for 30 years.

I am in Pontypridd and followed the match on the internet but will have a quiet celebratory drink tonight.

Ansd then back to the educational technology tomorrow

OK - so there are not a great deal of comments or trackbacks here. But do not think the World Wide Web has no influence. Got this fine email from Marc Jones - the editor of the Welsh monthly newspaper Seren - to which I contribute a column with the same name as this blog

"By the way", he says, "my son Huw and I have become confirmed Werder Bremen fans - we watch the Bundesliga every Monday night on Sgorio - a fine example of Welsh internationalism! Cracking striker - Ainson? (can't remeber the spelling)"

The name's Ailton, Marc, or Tony to the fans. Thanks for the feedback. Keep the internationalism going.

Back on line after a three week break caused by a broken computer (after its car crash I talked about previously, the iBook kept going for another ten days, then expired quietly with a power management failure).

I write a monthly column for the Welsh socialist newspeper, Seren. Here is this months contribution.

A belated happy new years greetings. Its good to be back. Whilst I would really like to talk about football (courtesy of the winter mid season break, Werder Bremen have been top of the Bundesliga for the last five weeks!) there are an awful lot of politics going on at the moment.

For the last five months the students have been protesting against attempts to impose fees for courses. There have been strikes, occupations and numerous demonstrations with many of Germany's leading universities now on strike until the end of the semester in February.

I think the students are right. The fees may look minimal by UK standards but as students in England and Wales have found to their cost, its the principle that counts. Once the idea of fees is established then they can quickly be increased.

It is striking how the issue of student fees is so contentious throughout Europe. Ok, it could be explained by the influence of what are known here as 'old 68ers'; as the parents of the present generation of students. The press tries ot explain it as a "middle class revolt". I do not find either of these explanations convincing, even though they may contain a grain of truth. I think that at the heart of the protest lies far more important issues - the question of whether learning and by extension, knowledge, are a public right or a private good.

Putting it bluntly, what is going on throughout Europe is an attempt to privatise education, with market forces determining the level of fees and parental and student income depending the quantity and quality of education available. Forget all that nonsense form Blair and Schroeder about access - its just a smokescreen. The German government showed its true hand last week when the education minister published proposals to establish elite universities. Even the EU's leading education bureaucrat, Commissioner Vivienne Redding, was led tyo comment that Germany should sort out the basic problems with its education system before thinking about elite universities. Even more strangely, Bild am Sonntag, Germany's equivalent of News of the World, carried a full page interview with Redding!

It is not just university education that is effected. The European Commission has set in train a series of meetings between European education ministries through something known as the Copenhagen process with the overt aim of harmonising Europe's vocational education and training systems. Once more the real intent is to liberalise education and training provsion and open up the market for private training providers.

But privatising education is only part of the battle. The real fight is over knowledge. Before you rush to say the idea of private knowledge is stupid, think of how the idea of private water must have seemed a couple of hundred years ago. With capitalism ever more dependent on the knowledge and skills of employees as part of the process of producing surplus value and productivity, they desperately want to treat knowledge and skills as a commodity, to be exchanged on the market as any other. Witness the attempts to patent the human genome.

It is not all doom and gloom though. The emergence of open source software has shown the possibility of other collective models of development and licensing. At the same time the widespread use of file sharing programmes on the internet has shown that people are not prepared to pay rep-off prices for music . Music is a form of human expression, just like speech, and cannot be treated as just another commodity.

That's it for this months rant. As ever I would be delighted to hear back form any of you. Keep up the protests. But before I go I cannot resist telling you the latest German football story. Werder Bremen have asked FIFA to extend the half time break to allow fans more time to purchase and consume Wurst (sausages) and Bier (beer). That's one change I do support.

Blogs should have a significant starting point. Mike Malloch from Knownet set me up this blog over a week ago. And I have spent a week trying to think of something significant to start with. What could be better than Werder Bremen going into the winter break top of the Bundesliga.

Let me explain a little. It is not just that I live in Bremen and support the local club. But it is that despite big business taking over sport (like everything else) and turning it into a commodity to be bought and sold, small community clubs like Werder still turn over the big business backed teams. Compared to Schalke, Dortmund or Leverkusen - let alone Bayern Munchen - Werder have little money. But they have still been consistently the best team of the season.

And that is what makes a sport like football still exciting. Once money rules there is no reason to follow a club any more.Just for the record Werder overcame a nervous start last night to win 3-0 against Rostock. Interestingly, for the top team, this was Werders first match they did not concede a goal.

Long may Werder stay top. I shall keep you in touch.