Blood Diamonds

According to the BBC "There are no more blood diamonds in Sierra Leone".

Interesting statement.

Their extraction in Sierra Leone may comply with the Kimberley Process in terms of the local African situation, but can their journey and impact beyond that country really justify such a statement?

The company that owns the operation, which naturally makes massive profits for itself and its owners, is Beny Steinmetz Group Investments (BSG). It owns BSG Resources, the operations arm for mineral extraction, which in turn operates Koidu Holdings - referenced by the BBC article - who extract the rough diamonds. BSG Investments also owns the Steinmetz Diamond Group. There is undoubtedly a direct line between the diamonds drawn from the earth in Sierra Leone, and the high-end products of Steinmetz, as worn by many celebrities (Steinmetz are proud to lend their products to the BAFTA awards organisers for stars to wear).

As with most companies, the profits inevitably go in various directions. Some is probably kept in reserve, some is perhaps invested in making processes more profitable, maybe investment in new ventures and opportunities, exploring new territories to extract minerals, and so on. Some goes in tax to the nation in which the company is registered, in this case Switzerland. Some likely goes to good causes either for altruistic or tax reasons, and some to the shareholders of the company. In this case the most significant individual beneficiary will be the eponymous multi-billionaire owner, Beny Steinmetz.

Beny does some good works, too, and thus a portion of money goes, either from him or the company or perhaps both, to the Agnes and Beny Steinmetz Foundation (also linked from the SDG web site)- an Israeli charitable organisation.

ABSF, however, alongside work supporting underprivileged youth in Israel, has "adopted" a brigade in the Israeli Defence Force - Givati Brigade - providing them with complementary equipment. Givati Brigade were primary boots on the ground during operations Hot Winter and Cast Lead, operations condemned by the UN as using excessive and illegal force in the subjugation of civilians, and akin to their enemies in Hamas, committing war crimes and potentially crimes against humanity during these operations. The same brigade included soldiers later convicted of forcing a 9 year old boy to open bags they feared to contain explosives, in order to protect their own lives from danger, during these operations.

It is a reasonably safe assumption to make that, as an Israeli citizen, a share of Beny's wealth is paid in taxes to the Israeli government led by Netanyahu, a government which some argue is effectively operating a system of apartheid, and which illegally occupies Palestinian territory.

As a consequence ABSF, Beny, BSG, and thus SDG have direct financial links to the killing of civilians in illegally occupied lands, where collective punishment is perpetuated daily. Perhaps it is time for the Kimberley Process to be brought up to date in order to take into account not only the countries in which rough diamonds are extracted, but those through which they later pass for processing or to which their capacity to generate wealth gives benefit.
If the vast wealth from many diamond producers, and the trade as a whole, generates significant income for a state such as Israel, this surely leaves the diamonds as tainted by blood as they are by being dug from the ground at the point of a militiaman's rifle.

So, are there really "no more blood diamonds in Sierra Leone"?

How to mend F1's broken qualifying system, and give the world a hug.

In 2006 Formula One's knock-out qualifying system was introduced, pretty much as we know it today, with modifications over the years to address increased numbers of drivers competing. Essentially there are three timed sessions with a specific number of drivers being eliminated in the first two sessions, with their grid-slots determined regardless of headline times set in later sessions. The final session determines the top ten.

Controversy has arisen through teams choosing not to compete and set a timed lap in the final session if they believe it is more prudent to conserve tyres for the race, rather than set a hot lap. Sky's pundits have been discussing how this can be fixed, and drivers compelled to set a lap time in the final session to stop the bore-fest induced by half the cars not bothering, or performing little more than an installation lap to leapfrog the other non-competing drivers. I have my own plan. It goes a little something like this.

Take inspiration from the "BMW M Award" in MotoGP, where the riders are awarded points after each meeting's qualifying session in a mini-contest entirely separate from the main riders' championship. The prize is a tricked-up 1 series, and this is awarded to the winner at season's end. In earlier years the competition was run not on points, but cumulative lap-times - allowance was made to protect a rider from the consequences of a terrible session through allowing them to nominate one to drop from the totting-up.

How would this contest work in F1? What sort of prize would make it work? How can a dominant driver not lead to a boring contest?

If points were awarded a-la-MotoGP purely on grid position from first to last, there would be little incentive in Q3 in terms of points-difference between 7th to 10th places for a driver to want to go out for something which is more about bragging-rights than accolades and titles. Little would change. Therefore the system in MotoGP would not simply transfer over. Instead the clock would need to wind back to the cumulative lap-time method used in that championship in days gone by.

In Formula One there is a small problem that makes things tricky - there are three sessions with three different "pole" times being set in each. In theory a driver knocked out in Q2, left in P11 for Sunday's grid, could set a faster ultimate lap-time than the outright pole-sitter determined by Q3. This is where it gets a little bit clever. Stick with me.

Introduce the concept of "Time Behind".

"Time Behind" would mean that the time recorded for any given driver is the precise difference between the time set by a driver and the fastest lap in the final session in which they compete. This is then accumulated across the season. The driver with the lowest total Time Behind wins the prize.
     Therefore if Massa were to qualify in P11 with a 1:32.001, but final pole is 1:32.280, he isn't awarded a negative time to screw it all up. Instead the time set by the Q2 pole-sitter comes into play for him. Let's say Q2 pole was a 1:31.333, Massa's "Time Behind" is 0.668 for the meeting. For those who go through to Q3, the time against which they record a "Time Behind" is the final pole-sitter's lap. The driver on pole, of course, scores zero. In order to compensate for a driver unable to set a time in the final session in for which they were eligible, perhaps due to a crash or mechanical error, a single race meeting from the season could be nominated to be dropped (much as the actual drivers championship used to work in years gone by).

So now we have figured out the system by which competition is generated and measured, how would we compel a driver to take part if it does not contribute to the drivers' championship?

Money.

A prize-car worth $35k may work in MotoGP where the tyres used in qualifying are not necessarily those which will be raced on Sunday, but frankly it is not going to inspire a Formula One driver to set a lap-time on tyres they want to save for the race and potentially score championship points.
     A significant sum of money for which to compete will help grease the wheels a little, and might also provide little interest among the small group of elite drivers in competitive cars who already earn vast sums.

Therefore there needs to be a spark, a very public element whereby a prize fund is established for drivers to take home which is awarded at the end of the season, and another to match it for their chosen charitable organisation which is awarded on a race-by-race basis. I may be being naïve, but the incentive to score significant prize-funds for their favourite cause and simultaneously gain exposure for that cause on global TV is going to be a worthwhile incentive for most drivers who not only want to pursue every possible set of bragging-rights against each other, but do not want to look like utter douche-bags for sitting in their garage saving a set of tyres rather than fighting for their good cause against immediate rivals.

Again this may be my naivete speaking, I believe a drivers' table competing for the season-long cumulative qualifying award that brings with it up to $1m in prize-money for the top driver, $750k for 2nd, and ever-decreasing sums right down to down to $50k for last place, would be fun to see - but a further table of winnings for charity which goes up in value race-by-race, by which a driver can do their public chest-beating and willy-waving would really be the way to end the sight of a driver peering at their cockpit-mounted screen, remote in hand, for ten minutes.
     For the charity money league, lower values than the season-long personal prize would be needed, and would be awarded purely based on grid position and not a "Time Behind" system. Monetarily there would be smaller incremental gaps between places therefore, and as they compete and increase their sums on a per-race basis, such competition would guarantee the possibility of quite incredible sums being generated by the top drivers who consistently qualify in the top handful of grid slots - but a final money-table would be pretty close between drivers on the whole.
     The fact these sums are competed for at every race means that even where a season is dominated by a single driver, such as Vettel in 2011, the spark of competition between those in each lower place is not lost to a shrug of the shoulders that follows a foregone conclusion that the single season-long prize is out of reach. Ifthe "Time Behind" league wasn't very exciting in a given season, the charity league would retain a spark throughout.

And if necessary, back it all up with Sky's suggestion of a mandated run within 107% to make them turn their wheels. The money tables would stop them just scraping through on purpose, though.

How would such a system be paid for? The sums required would be vast. If the per-race charity pots matched the season-long drivers' pots each and every round, then the total would be more than enough to fund a competitive team for a season. In fact, if prize money is paid out for all 26 drivers in the Time Behind tables and this were to be mirrored every round, the charity prize fund would need to be around $150m.

Pie in the sky, ridiculous.

Here's the 'but'... Reduced sums which begin at $250k for the pole-sitter and reduce by $10k for each grid place brings the season total down to "only" $65.1m for a 20 race season. That's still a stupendous amount of money. However, for corporate underwriters who have budgets for both sporting deals and giving to good causes, it represents a way to tie two activities together and would be relatively easy to include in their tax-efficiency strategies that form a pivotal part of why they give in the first place, and would not need to be a burden placed upon one set of shoulders.

Finding a sole corporate sponsor to underwrite this reduced headline sum is still ridiculous. However, a three-name-system could work. This would consist of a  title sponsor whose name appears on the competition at every round. The second should be the individual race's title sponsor  for each round (for example, the 2012 Formula One Shell Grand Prix of Belgium, would mean Shell join the main competition title sponsor - though some rounds do not carry headline sponsorship which is a bump in the plan that needs ironing out!). The final portion should be underwritten from within the sport itself, i.e. Formula One Management (FOM) using the F1 brand so the sport becomes a significant donor.
     I imagine a breakdown being as follows: Season-long title sponsor, 20% of each race's kitty, a total of $13m (tax-deductables!) across the season. The remaining 80% to be split 50/50, so the per-race cost for FOM and the race-sponsor is $1.3m.

For Bernie's FOM this represents around 4.5% of average hosting fees (the fee charged to the circuits for the right to hold a race) which should not dent the coffers overly given that this represents a small part of turnover when considering the vast sums of TV money that roll in, and yet more from app sales, online video packages, and so on... So such sums should not cause much disruption, and of course I'm sure could be included in tax efficiencies.
     For corporate sponsors buying the naming rights to an individual round of the championship season, I may be wrong but I would estimate $1.3m in mandatory charitable donation within the deal for the right to buy in would not hurt them overly, for much the same reasons.

What is in it for the title and race sponsor? Global audiences will see a table of standings at each race for around 30 seconds with their names at the head, thus identifying them as being major corporate givers to good causes. A billion impressions of doing good in the world. The value for FOM of identifying F1 itself as a giver will be positive too, when it often comes in for some stick for being a business that makes just a few men very rich indeed without giving back (rightly or wrongly!).

There is a lot of information to take in, and I would imagine 90% of readers gave up right about when I started talking about prize money and funding. For those who made it this far, and think it's just all a bit too much, imagine this to put it into practice.

Saturday afternoon, Q3 ends, and the anchor in pit lane or in the studio summarises the grid order.
   A second screen now appears with (for the sake of example) the "Tag Heuer Award" standings, a list of drivers and their personal cumulative "Time Behind" for the season so far, indicating who is in the running for a million dollars and a platinum watch for being the fastest driver over 20 rounds of qualifying.
   A final screen comes up showing a money table, PGA style, of drivers with their nominated charity's name alongside their own, and the amount raised by their performances so far in the season. The top of the screen simply bears two corporate names and the F1 logo. The anchor introduces the table as (again brands merely for the purposes of example) "The Santander Formula One qualifying money league, sponsored here in (insert country name) by Emirates".

Sounds a lot more simple and tangible that way, doesn't it.

If the money can be found to underwrite it, imagine the good that can be done. But best of all, imagine a Q3 session with every single driver setting a time, and giving their all. The final added benefit, in a sport where people support drivers passionately, identifying with a charity on such a public and competitive stage and on such a scale, may potentially increase the likelihood that supporters may wish to identify with the charity their favourite pilot also identifies, choosing to donate as an individual too. This would be a side-benefit but naturally a fantastic one that should not be ignored.

I hope you made it to the end, and hopefully have some thoughts you would like to share. Feel free to tear me apart but please be constructive with a little more than "It's terrible" and "It'll never work". Ideas to improve a suggestion would never be unwelcome!