E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

Have you seen many murderers in public?  I hadn't, until I saw Oscar Pistorius run, at the 2012 Summer Olympics, in London.  At the time, like almost everyone else in the stadium and by extension the world, I stood and cheered, marvelling at his speed, grace, courage and physical charisma.  He was the great blade runner, a hero to children and adults, and one of the major sporting figures of the age.  That was then - six months ago more or less.  Half a year makes a big difference. Now, the day after Valentine's Day, and the cruel irony is not lost on anyone, at only 26 years of age, he stands accused of murdering his girlfriend.  Given that she was a beautiful swimwear model and covergirl, and he a millionaire icon of the new South Africa, it is hard to imagine a more swift or cruel fall from national and international grace in terms of celebrity infamy - the fall is truly Olympian.  With four shots to the head and body, Oscar has go ne from a grea...

The fact that teams and individual athletes are beginning to pull out of attending India's pending Commonwealth Games in Delhi is unquestionable - but is the nature of the health scare debatable?  One of the Indian officials responsible for cleaning up the contested athletes' apartments complex noted that standards of cleanliness might be different for some nations in the West - a fascinating moment of "relativism" at work.  The comment is both startling and, in a sense, apt - are there universal standards of cleanliness? If societies are to be encouraged to develop their own belief systems, and cultural values - if multiculturalism is to be allowed to flourish even in a globally-connected capitalist system, which India is clearly a triumphant recent member of - then can they also continue to maintain their own particular, indigenous levels of hygiene?  Might the pampered Australians, or Europeans, expect a sparkling deep clean that in India, with its monsoons and...

The BBC commentary said it all - abject.  Hammered.  Individuals not a team .  What went wrong?  Top English players went out to the worst English result in a World Cup.  Ever.  Yes, the second England goal was stolen.  That was an outrage.  But there was no defence.  Precious little offence.  Germany outclassed England when it mattered in South Africa.  In four years time, hopefully, lessons will have been learned.  This great nation deserves players worthy of the world-class heart of its fans.  Germany, meanwhile, could go all the way.

Why is that when the Olympics roll around, Team GB competes for these isles, but at the equivalent World Cup, England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland (the UK "nations") have their own potential teams. This seems odd, if not wrong. Surely, a British football team would make more sense, - in terms of sure-footedness. There is no English parliament, and no England seat at the UN. France, Brazil, Spain, South Africa, the US of A - all teams. There is no Texas team. England maybe should be its own nation state, just as Scotland and Wales could be (should be?) - but in the meantime, let's consider this - if all four of the great nations of the UK played together in the beautiful game's greatest contest, they'd quadruple their chances of raising the trophy high.

The Olympic torch - once a near-inextinguishable brand (or is that symbol?) of something good - is guttering in London . The culprit is China, whose recent brazen incarceration of a man whose chief crime seems to have been to critique obvious flaws in the system, is sadly obscuring the glory of the Olympian flames, with rather shady behaviour. Eyewear had hoped this would not be another 1936 - but it seems increasingly likely. China doesn't get it - it can't host a wonderful, open, world event, and also continue to be a bullying tyranny.