Troublesome Legacies

It was necessary to turn to page six of my newspaper before I could find a subject other than the Olympics, or London 2012 as we are encouraged to call it - as if nothing else is happening in the Capital. The article was about the landing of a robot on the surface of Mars (surely a PB for the USA) and it was followed by an analysis of the state of manufacturing in America which, contrary to popular perception, is not dead. Instead it is transformed into a technically advanced, robotised process whose levels of efficiency, output and technological achievement are rising. The downside is that where once it was the source of millions of jobs, now it employs relatively few. The economy of the USA, as measured by numbers of people employed per sector, has reached the tertiary stage having progressed from agricultural, through industrial and on to service-based activities. The same applies in Britain where the economy underpinning Team GB is based predominantly on service industries (although the concept of ‘service industries’ deserves some scrutiny given the rapacious behaviour of its practitioners in our financial sector).

Sports are not generally of much interest to me but even I can get caught up in the excitement of a fiercely contested race if I happen to lower my guard and accidentally see it on TV. It’s impossible, however, to avoid the bloated publicity generated by the much vaunted medal-rankings-by-nation. The winning of Olympic medals, as all but the most naive must know, is an outcome not only of athletic prowess but also of national government policies aimed at capitalising on the reflected glory of being Olympic number one. In this endeavour the most populous nations have an obvious numerical advantage to start with but other factors such as wealth, available resources and the political will to direct them are decisive. If only the Jamaicans and Ethiopians would play by these rules, the rich, populous and/or command economies could slug it out between themselves without bothersome interference from naturally talented outsiders.

As I write, my own Team GB is doing well in the medal tables: we may not have as many people as, say, China or the USA but we have thrown resources at our chosen ones and appropriated some rather useful, professional floaters. And it is our turn to have the advantage of an enthusiastic, jingoistic home crowd. When it comes to providing for the refreshment of the spectators, however, we have called upon the expertise of the Americans, those masters of service, to send us McDonalds and Coca Cola. So the machinery of the Olympics hums along lubricated by corporate interests, impelled by international rivalries and fussed-over by the world’s press. Meanwhile the cost to the public purse is explained as investment in a ‘legacy’.

There is controversy concerning the involvement of McDonalds and Coca Cola on account of the physical health of their habitual consumers - but at least they know that they are in the business of delivering service with a smile. I ponder this as I sit in a typically British cafe. It had just opened for the day when I arrived to be greeted with indifference, treated as an inconvenience and obliged to sit at a sticky, littered table with wobbly legs. Wobbly table-legs are actually a challenge I cannot resist and I soon had them tightened up, twisting them by hand back into their sockets – one of those useful skills which are a legacy of the secondary economic phase. But my coffee tasted of the bitterness with which it was served up and, since it’s been fifty years since we started the transition to the tertiary phase, perhaps it’s time that we had some proper service - from bankers and baristas alike.