One hardly knows where to begin, or indeed, why one must, with this latest dispatch from the sporting pages—which, it must be said, are rarely the bastion of serious thought at the best of times. We are informed, by those who apparently monitor such vital matters, that a professional basketball player, one Mr. Jonathan Kuminga, has engineered a move based primarily upon the 'intangible vibes' of his previous locale. A 'vibe deficit,' they call it. One notes with some concern the increasing intellectual poverty of modern parlance, particularly when applied to the allocation of multi-million-pound contracts (or dollars, as the case may be, one struggles to keep track of the specific flavour of excessive remuneration).

In my four decades of covering actual disputes—industrial action, parliamentary squabbles, the occasional genuine famine—I have encountered a good many reasons for individuals to change their employment. Compensation, certainly. Working conditions, occasionally. Competence, rather less frequently. But 'vibes'? It truly beggars belief. One suspects this is another of those peculiarly American linguistic inventions, designed to obscure a lack of proper consideration with a certain ephemeral flair. Much like 'synergy' or 'empowerment'—words that mean precisely nothing until one is forced to sit through a dreadful seminar on them.

This Kuminga fellow, apparently an athlete of some repute in the American basketball leagues—a sport one maintains is largely an excuse for tall men to shout and jump—has reportedly relocated his considerable talents based upon, and one must truly grit one's teeth to type this, the emotional resonance of a place. Not minutes played, not coaching philosophy, nor indeed the rather more concrete prospect of 'championship rings' (an aspiration that sounds rather more Hellenic than modern athletics generally warrants). No, merely the 'vibe.' One can only imagine the sheer banality of the meetings that led to such a weighty conclusion. I covered the 1983 budget debates; this is hardly a comparable level of intellectual rigour.

Nevertheless, the facts, such as they are, must be relayed. Mr. Kuminga, whose past contributions I confess I know nothing of, and care even less, has moved from one institution—the 'Golden State Warriors,' a title which sounds rather more martial than the activity itself dictates—to another, the 'Atlanta Hawks,' a similarly aggressive avian nomenclature. One expects the salary, which is surely vast, played no small part in assuaging any lingering 'vibe deficit.' But then, reporting on actual motivations would hardly make for such diverting, if utterly vacuous, copy, would it? File it, then, and let us move on to something with actual consequence. Perhaps a particularly egregious pothole in Islington, or the perennial disgrace of the rail network.