Forum for Tony Goddard
Political Content [#1720]
He is most famous for emigrating from the United Kingdom after Margaret Thatcher took power for a period of time before returning to the United Kingdom where he lives in council properties in Sheffield, England as of September 2008.
Do we want political content such as the above at Sensei's Library ? Should we limit our material to the game ?
Personally I don't see it as political. It contains no discussion of Thatcher's policies, arguments for or against, etc.
No, I don't think discussion should be limited to the game. There's plenty of "cultural" material on this site that's not directly relevant, not to mention the various humour pages. I think it's perfectly fair for a page about a person to include biographical details.
By the way, you realise that if you quote something in a forum post then the person who originally wrote it doesn't have the option of deleting it? It can only be removed by you or by a librarian. So if you personally object to it being on the site, then quoting it hurts your cause! (Life is ironic sometimes ;-)
I will undertake to delete the quote from my post to the forum should the material be deleted from the Tony Goddard page.
I wonder how long he was out of England and where he was and what he was doing in the interim. It appears he is back there now and living "on the dole" aka welfare or at least state furnished housing. Answers to these questions would be mildly interesting, but would not tell me anything about go or his development as a player....unless the time away from England was spent studying go intensively or a go related activity.
this is as much biographical content as political in my humble opinion. similarly i don't mind sentences like this: "Rui left China abruptly in 1989, just after the Tiananmen Square Massacre."
non-biographical but political content nobody contests is found here.
My reaction is, give me a break! This is a page about a person, and the "political content", such as it is, is about that person. I do not even consider it political, rather biographical.
Suppose that we were a chess site and had a page about Alekhine. It would be ridiculous to leave out material about his politics. The same goes for Fischer. At the same time, it would be ridiculous for us to debate their politics on the site.
Mild political reference in passing seems okay to me. Many things are a judgement call. As long as this is a minor reference in passing, like colouring a picture, not a major exercise in political point scoring, I think it should be ignored. Yes, we don't want non-Go politics, but lets be tolerant. I know this is risky, as politics spirals v.quickly into rant. SL is not the place to debate politics, but tolerance is a good thing too. As a UK citizen who has lived through the period mentioned, I have some grasp of what is being stated. It is a political statement that shouldn't be on SL, but lets be tolerant. Lets just let it be for now.
One person added that he left the United Kingdom after Thatcher was elected.
I added that he left for a period of time before returning to the United Kingdom where he lives in council properties in Sheffield, England as of September 2008.
Now that first person has deleted what I added. So, I have added it back.
Now what ? Do we retain that the left the UK and not mention that he returned. Do we mention that he returned and mention that he lives in council properties. Do mention that he financed his WMSG trip by using loss of housing allowances he received from the local government, as reported on the URL listed in the main page I was able to offer to pay my own way because I had acquired some money from "home loss grants". This came from shuttling between council properties in phase of redevelopment. As I told all and sundry at the WMSG this involved living in the sort of places where being assaulted on the doorstep of ones own home is an ordinary occurence. Such is the social climate of contemporary UK.
One option is to remove this material. Another option is to retain only a portion. Another option is to retain and perhaps expand upon it. It appears that the person that wrote that Goddard left the UK does not want it know that he returned to the UK after an unknown period of time.
What now ?
Well I just don't feel it is particularly interesting to list the various places in the UK Tony has lived since Thatcher left power. He has quite probably been living in different council accommodation in Sheffield prior to 2008, but who really wishes to know that. That he has quite strong political convictions is interesting to me at least, and is alluded to (but not discussed in detail) with the reference to Thatcher. You can find more about his life on his website if you are really interested, but I certainly won't put any of it down here on this page.
Personally, I think that "Leaving the UK because of Thatcher's election" is somewhat more interesting bit of information than "living in council properties in Sheffield". But I don't mind either way whether such information gets included or not.
The only real SL policy on this is that it is not OK to copy large parts of someone's website outright. Summarizing is fine.
If he left the UK when Thatcher was elected, visited friends or relatives in another country and returned within a dozen weeks, its a much different picture than leaving to study go in an Asian country, or leaving an staying away for the years of Thatcher's Prime Ministry. The different behaviors indicate different person characteristics. If he has been living in state provided housing for years on end that also indicate personal characteristics.
When he left the UK, he must have had a passport. In the years since his return to the UK, he allowed that passport to lapse for financial reasons. (Passports in the US are very cheap, one has to divide the cost by the 10 year (?) period of validity. Presumably UK passports are a few Pounds Sterling a year as well.) Evidently, he felt he would not need to leave again or did not plan to do so regardless of government elected or the financial burden? Don't know. But if start to paint a picture of the person, let's not limit it to only one non-go event.
emigrating is the wrong word....perhaps self-imposed exile of limited duration. Emigrants don't return. The US, NA and OZ are lands of emigrants. If emigrants returned to their country of origin, the aboriginals/native populations would be the majority of all three countries.
I really don't propose to go into that much detail, the cv on his website ![[ext]](images/extlink.gif)
http://d4maths.lowtech.org/mirage/cv2000.htm gives some idea of his travels if you need the information. You can access that from the link I provided at the end of the page. The way it is written at the moment makes it sound like he has been living in council properties in Sheffield for over 10 years, which is incorrect and to me uninteresting. I don't think any of this is such a big deal really.
Note that adding:
for a period of time before returning to the United Kingdom where he lives in council properties in Sheffield, England as of September 2008.
gives the impression that he returned in september 2008.
It might be better phrased something like:
for a period of time before returning to the United Kingdom. He currently lives in council properties in Sheffield, England (as of September 2008).
On a further note, the term "council properties" is meaningless to me, and probably to most people not from the UK.
Your wording is clearly. I'll change the page to match. I didn't want to elaborate on council properties as I might get it wrong or the explanation might appear uncharitable. So I used the term that Tony himself used on his webpage(s).
Personally I thought version 12 was about right. Adding extra detail from Tony's website appeared unnecessary to me. Better left on his linked website. ( P.S. I don't know Tony, just to be clear on bias ). As Ian indicates above, the half a sentence at that point was just an allusion in passing.
I can find no reference on Tony's homepage anywhere that he left England because of the election of Thatcher.
I think its clear that Ian knows Tony, so we take his word for it. Anyway, the ambiguity of the english used doesn't actually say he left because of Thatcher. Another reason for going back to the text as it was at version 12.
Well yes, theoretically that is true, but I think the implication is clearly there. Otherwise we might as well write it as "He is most famous for emigrating from the United Kingdom in 1979 for a period of time".
I have changed the wording to:
He is rather famous for leaving the United Kingdom for a period of time after Margaret Thatcher took power. He currently lives in Sheffield, England (as of September 2008).
- I have replaced "emigrating from" with "leaving"
- I have removed "before returning", because this is implied by the "period of time" (and the current residence).
- I have removed "in council properties", "in Sheffield" should suffice, I think.
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