The Face of English Football - It's white, male and baying for blood

Photo' courtesey of "The Independent" which captures so well the vein of aggression that runs through English football today.

Just think how proud their collective Mums must be. There are just over 50 "supporters" in this photo', together with that bastion of good taste and charity, Wayne Rooney, who thankfully has his back to us. Of that 50+, 5 are showing the two-fingered "V" sign (that's as in "Fuck-Off" not as in "Victory", you understand) 3 are showing the one-fingered "Up-Yours, Pussy" sign, one has his hand in the downstroke of the "wanker" salute, 1 is so incensed that he's confused by what would be the biggest insult and is flashing a three-fingered salute, 13 are at various points of the "Fuck-Off!" shout, 4 are in the various stages of the "wanker" expletive, all of them, to a man (and one woman) have the word "hate" or "kill" running through what can laughingly be classed as their "mind" and one of them is walking home with an extra £80,000 in his bank account after the game. If you could capture and bottle this venom you'd have enough vitriol to clean the rust off'f the Forth Bridge. Oh, and don't tell me, "Doris, it's not just English football that provokes such hatred, it's all over the world, y' know" 'cos that doesn't exactly make me feel any easier, OK.

I Drink, Therefore I'm Drunk...................

A Open Letter to Maxin Frith of The Independent: -


Hi, Maxine,

Interesting article concerning the Faliraki syndrome destined for the UK, much of it spot-on, but the whole missing the mark by some yardage, I feel……and the fact that we already have a Faliraki drink culture isn’t really an OK reason for opposing change. Yes, we do suffer from ‘binge-drinking’ (although I always thought that to ‘go on a binge’ was to gluttonously but infrequently over-indulge in what is seen as an everyday event of one form or another; many of those accused of this convenient media-strapline do it for three and often four nights per week; hardly a ‘binge’ more a ‘habit’, I’d say). Your description of a couple of instances (the ‘village pub’ requesting lengthened hours to complete the music nights they hold and the actions of ‘sharp-suited young men’ downing pints and chasers as the London pub threatens to close) does in fact go a long way to pinpointing where several of the problems but not their solutions lie.

The fact that young men (sharp-suited or not) and women clamour at the bar for an extra pint in addition to the one they’re drinking (and the ones they’ve possibly already consumed) and a “chaser” shouldn’t beg the reason/excuse that they’re doing it because the licensing laws in this country are so moronic (they are, I agree) this is the only way they have to consume their alcohol, but should the beg the question, “why?” Why do they have the need to down at the very least two pints and a chaser in 7-to-10 minutes? (I guess we should also ask how they’re getting home, but that’s a pointless exercise as I know we’ll be told by all, sharp-suited or on their uppers, that they’re all going to catch a bus or call a taxi, 'onest, guv'). It would, maybe, be better to analyze this (.....hm, good title for a film that; now let me see if I can sort out a story for it……) event and the modern mores and background that lead to this form of expression of self. No, I’m not going to write a diatribe about “modern youth, celebrity role models, too much money, too much time and in some cases too little intellect” etc… but you and I both know that these are just some of the underlying currents that drive these ships in bottles.

The information on your local village pub is also quite revealing. There are very few instances of large scale, drink-fuelled violence and depravity taking place in villages. That’s because there’s a level of ‘everyone being known by someone’ and a certain level of self-preservation through “community”, for want of a better word, which still permeates many of these rural areas. The increase in Saturday closing in your village pub won’t lead to alcohol-fuelled violence 24/7; that’s not what the concern is about. The concern is about inner-city and large suburban areas (where anonymity is certain, cameras or no cameras and the natural progression from this extended drinking time will be to force through the legislation concerning I.D. Cards...........I'm not paranoid, just ask that bloke who keeps following me) upping their opening times, with the alcohol manufacturer’s backing and 'competitive drive at all costs' regime, resulting in the exacerbation an already unpleasant situation.

We know this to be a fact as a visit to any week-end night in any large city will confirm; your Newcastle-upon-Tyne story well illustrates this. There is no need for any more research, by 'Mintel' or any other focus group analyst; for “research” just insert “decision delaying tactic”. In probably 7 cases out of 10 the drinks industry pays for the ‘expert research’ and ‘report outcomes’ that shape policy in their own industry and government legislation. They lobby a centre of government that is hardly a teetotal utopia for favourable findings and special dispensations (viz-a-viz the tobacco industry’s helping hand in the formula one fuck-up recently and the regular budget rise in cigarette duty but not on pipe tobacco and cigars) and manipulate adverse findings made by reputable health practitioners (who really are just trying to help out with the help of the nation in most cases) by paying other well known scientists to contest the evidence, and so muddy the water, for a fee; it’s called 'marketing'. You only have to read Mintel's report on Alcopops to understand where they're coming from............its so full of "market-speak" it should carry a government spin-doctor's health warning, but it never once questions the social ideology of such beverages; they weren't employed to do that. Indeed, ten of thirty-one - or 33% if you prefer - of Mintel’s food and drink clients (that’s the folks who pay the bills) are alcohol producers and retailers; hardly going to get unbiased reports into alcohol and its effects on society from that branch of the “research” industry methinks.

City centres, as opposed to village centres, attract more people, and so attract more businesses selling their wares, and the alcohol trade is just one of the many. Just like the clubs that were fully active when the “E” craze first started, who cut off the water in the toilets then upped the price of bottled water at the bar by ten times the original price (even took the plastic bottles of water that club-goers brought with them 'cos the bouncers said they were a dangerous weapon) the drinks industry will use any and all offers, bribes, favourable reports and attractions to get their wares sold; as long as they print, "Please Drink Sensibly" on their bottles they're rid of the problems that follow. It’s not a charity, it’s a business and there’s more competition on the high streets of our cities so the offers and "specials" become inflated, magnified and hyped.

In villages with one or two pubs the problem only arises when adverse numbers of young people gather (I’ll go into the ethnological and behavioural reasons for this if you like, but I figure I’ve almost exhausted your patience as it is). One of the cases of drink-fuelled violence in a small county town that comes to mind from recent history was in Towcester, and it only gained its troubled time after the city of Milton Keynes was built. The expansion of Northampton into Weston Favell and Stony Stratford into Galley Hill, and a subsequent increase in the population of that area by around seven-fold, together with the welding of once small villages into satellite dumping grounds for East-End of London problem families was about three-parts completed when “country-town violence” made itself felt in that town. Trace back Northampton’s history and read about what it was and what it is now; it’s not a pretty story.

What increases and kick-starts (forgive the pun) alcohol-fuelled violence, alcohol-fuelled depravity and alcohol-fuelled vandalism is…surprise, surprise….alcohol! Whatever you do with it, ban it (prohibition worked well in the U.S of A. didn’t it) ration it (black market would never start up here, not in good old Blighty) let people buy it pretty well wherever and whenever they like (the present proposal for licensed premises, disorganised freeing up of laws being seized on by our supermarket chains as another way of creaming a fast buck…but I’m sure, like it says on the bottle, they’ll "do it responsibly") or give it away free for the first half-hour (even pay to get ‘em in) we’ll always have alcohol-related problems. What it comes down to is people; people, who most often should know better given their level of "education", people and their inability to ration sensible intake of alcohol over sensible times in sensible locations without incentives, and to behave with even a modicum of self-restraint after drinking; this is something that only comes with a level of social responsibility gained through experienced parenting, responsible attitudes displayed by conglomerates, honest, open-handed government, inspiring role models…need I go on? But that'll take time, and governments aren't in it for the long haul; government office isn't for ever, it's just for Christmas.

What you have to do is to lift the level of intelligence and responsibility in a huge section of the population who only wants to become famous. Does anyone really think it’ll be ordinary, sensible folk out taking advantage of these extended hours? Drinking at three in the morning because “the pub’s so much quieter then”? I doubt it. It’ll be those who’ve already had more than their share topping up before they go out onto the streets to turn some student of physics into a vegetable then return home to make their mothers, wives, partners or pets proud of them by vomiting on the carpet and pissing in the wardrobe because, “I thought it was a toilet cubicle, love; honest.”

And, if we did get 24/7 opening hours in some pubs, you only need one in every city to do it and it’ll be the area of attraction for all, that is until the other outlet owners say, "Fuck this for a game of soldiers, they're gettin' all the profit; let's get it on!" And, even after a whole day’s drinking there will always be a number of folk who’ll want to get those two or three extra ones down ‘em before they roll home; nothing will alter that mindset, it comes as part of the package of our hedonistic and careless society; a society that looks at the case of a car driver killing one or more people and takes the fact that the driver was drunk into account as a mitigating factor by prosecuting them for manslaughter. One thing it will do for sure though is increase the opportunity for violence to pursue a 24/7 timetable. Instead of being able to get off’f the streets before the pubs kick out, as now, we’ll be treated to pockets of violent and affray happening throughout the day, and that’ll further increase people’s reluctance to go to the city centres; and you only have to see that level of brutality once, just once, to know you never, ever want to see it again. That every victim whose head is used as a football by a group of piss-head youngsters ("Prop 'im up, Dave, let's 'ave another go"....Wham!) and is then used as a blow-up-bed-pump by the ringleader ('Ere, Dave, e's not squirmin' much now, is 'e? Jump on 'im again") is some mother’s son, some woman’s husband, some young girl’s boyfriend.

“Short on answers, Doris?” Yup, you betcha, but I know the present trend of curtailed opening hours isn’t working (as your article propounds) but, unlike you, I fully believe their extension won’t decrease the levels of drink-related crime one iota. I know, I know, we’ll have to agree to differ. It’s going to go through government whatever "the people" think, it’s got the backing of the drink’s lobby for a start and at the finish that’s the nature of what we laughingly call our “democracy”; our government listen to what we've got to say on the matter then do exactly as they'd planned all along. Maybe, in a couple of year’s time we’ll chat again, you and I, and you can say, “Doris, I told you so” and I’ll be glad I was wrong, you were right and the problem’s solved, honest, I will; but forgive me if I don’t hold my breath.

ATB

Doris

Rio and Beyond - A competition letter from the common man to The Masters of the Universe

After looking forward so much to the Edinburgh fringe (yup, that time when our world leaders put together their own version of the Perrier Comedy Awards and gathered at Gleneagles to booze, stuff their faces and, in between schmoozing with each other, proclaim they were the starving people's saviours..........worked a treat, hasn't it?) and then being so disappointed at the outcome....yup, that prolonged silence was political-speak for "outcome"...... I looked back at my expressions of hope for the Rio conference all those years ago; you'd've thought I'd've got more sense by now, huh? Nope. I'm like so many others who keep getting shat on; I can't work out the circumference of the pan. I wrote the following for entry into some environmental story competition thing for people under the age of 17 for some self-satisfied society or other looking after endangered bricks or some other such great work; can't understand why it didn't make the final three. Anyhow, here it is........fuck-all changed really, has it?

It seems so prophetic, somehow, that the only way my voice can be heard (in two hundred words only, please) is by entering a competition; a competition that I am too old to enter............. Well, I'm about to fail on two counts; so, what's new? So many times during the last quarter of a century, I and millions like me have failed. We have failed each time we have seen countless groups of statesmen gather and "discover" theories and ideas that many of us have known and expounded for the past fifty years. For so much of that past half century we have put forward these same theories and ideas, well ahead of the days of enlightenment of these so-called informed thinkers, only to have them waved away or, more often, diluted by the Cerberus of compromise, isolationism and trade-off; and when agreement has been reached? So many times we have found the agreements wanting, the resolved decisions weakening, and the action lethargic, if it could be arsed to get out of bed in the first place that it. All too often ecological decisions are made that fit only into the maker's political lifetime, and the uniform of environmental and humanitarian responsibility is ill fitting on many.

If we, the rank and file of humanity can recognise these shortcomings, then how come you cannot? How come you, those that we have elevated to posts of authority and trust, and should know better given your education and that of those around you, how come you cannot see? From your elevated position you can look over the mountain; the majority can't. Their wings are clipped by the scissors of necessary self preservation wielded by the servants of vested interest. That is why we look to you for a faithful and open report on global conditions and an honest strategy for improvement; past experience has taught us that in the case of those reports, and on most strategies, the opposite is true. So, when once again you return by first-class travel from your well-fed conference with a bagful of empty promises, the flag of self interest flying high, corporate ideology in your heart and the 'forecast saying rain tomorrow' philosophy indelibly printed in your manifesto, how can you possibly be surprised at unrest or civil disobedience, at people who climb trees, dig tunnels or lie in front of tanks; if you can take this advice from such a one; Welcome to the Real World.

Cessation of human rights abuses, halting the social destruction of indigenous peoples or the reversing of wildlife conservation calamities do not get solved with a white-tie banquet of six courses and a gala ball. It might get people together to discuss them, but eventually they only get solved when someone identifies the countries involved, studies the environmental dynamics of the threatened species or habitat, recommends a series of measures to revert the abuse or decline, and the country in question holds up its hand and puts the recommendations into action, those that need it being funded by the rich countries who will also inevitably benefit. After all the bluff and political posturing is done it really is that simple. All it takes is for those in positions of power to recognise the abuses and announce that they, like us, refuse their consent.

Right now we are told that the people dying in all the terrorist excursions of the present and recent past, either willingly or no, on whatever side, soldier or civilian, guilty or innocent, are dying for a cause; it's a lie. All of these people are dying for nothing. Heroes? Don't kid yourselves. They're just another corpse that died alone and bloody. All it takes is for the leaders to say, OK. I've had enough of this. Let's do something else. Let's talk..... and it all stops.....no more bloodshed........really; cut out the government-backed arms dealers that use these skirmishes as testing grounds' for new weaponry, the banking-backed conglomerates that take cheaply from the poor to sell expensively to the rich, the politically-backed leaders that get away with genocide; cut them out and, ....."Let’s sit down and talk"; and despite all the rhetoric and the thousands that die for the cause, it only takes a handful of strategically placed people to say it and mean it and bugger-me it happens! C'mon. It's not a cause, the bloodshed, the starvation, the infanticide, the butchery, it's just a lack of political foresight deserving of a white stick, an underdeveloped sense of social conscience and an overdose of arrogance. It's not an admission of shame to own that you don't have all the answers to these abuses, we none of us have, but it's a shameful admission to recognise the abuse and do nothing about it.

Here, at Rio Earth Summit +5, you have been granted a further opportunity and been furnished with the necessary information and public support to soar like eagles; to rise above those selfish, earthbound contemporaries who moralise over the rights of countries whose people now want egress to the door marked "equal shares" and a right to decent lives and living as though it were somehow undemocratic to give them the components that we have. The components that would allow them the chance to cease searching the ground for grains of 'now', and lift their eyes to the horizon of 'future'. If current trends and thinking predominate, the horizon you are being shown by the politoglomerates from their false peaks of exploitation and amusement, even viewed through the most optimistic telescope, is, at best, happiness for the few, at worst a mirage for all. In Rio, you are being asked to stand next to an environmental furnace; unfortunately, many there just want you to warm your hands and bake a few chestnuts; don't be hoodwinked by them. If you have the courage to open the door, if you can stand the heat and more, to show yourselves to be good smiths, we will work alongside you; help to create a mould that this time doesn't fracture during the casting. A mould in which we can forge an empathetic, global human network where everyone succeeds with the help of the community, not the few succeed at its expense.

Throughout the past fifty years, like some of you now present, we too have attempted to open the door of that environmental furnace and been burnt for our trouble, yet we still keep returning. We return for no personal profit, just in the sure knowledge that we have got to get the mould right; sooner rather than later. What we have begun to accept, once again and seemingly far earlier than those whose finger is supposedly on the pulse of current ecological thinking, is that our energy and the supply of raw materials is fast running out. Soon we won't have enough sand to make another mould.

You say you are acting on behalf of the people. If that is so, why don't you listen to what they are saying? Listen now. If we point out to you that some people in the world are starving, it's not necessarily because our ultimate aim is to corner the bread market; if someone informs you, after twenty years of study, that tigers and gorillas are becoming extinct through hunting and habitat destruction, it's not necessarily because they deal in aphrodisiacs and are concerned about a droop in the market; if someone tells you that indigenous tribes are being lost through habitat encroachment and disturbance, it's not necessarily because they want to corner the market in ethnic art; if someone tells you they have an answer to the problem twins of a thinning ozone layer and an increase in the number of sunburn victims, it's not necessarily because they are in the fashion business and want to increase sales in the sun-glasses and sun cream market. Strange as it may seem, it could just be they are telling you the truth just because it is the truth, that if they didn't care it wouldn't matter, but they do so it does. That the tiger and gorilla are becoming extinct, indigenous peoples and civilisations are being destroyed, the global warming and the incidence of skin cancer is increasing, that "those people over there with no food and no hope of growing any" actually are starving. Ask us. Strange as it may seem you will find that we do care, that we would offer our unconditional, unselfish commitment in return for someone's, almost anyone's honest, unbiased blueprint for building another mould...... before the sand runs out.

So, with all these feelings bound up in my breast, I look for ways to express them and, after all this writing, I hear the echo of the typewriter keys and find the room empty. Once again I am faced with the only avenue of expression that could ever make a difference; the well blocked ears of the conference delegates that are here, in Rio, to carry out the people's wishes. And I know, even as I write, that the avenue is a dead-end on a distant planet for, try as I might to find a platform upon which to discuss my fears, I find only political quicksand. I search for people of quality and uncover bigotry, arrogance and isolationism; I listen for words of truth and vision and find a sound-bite philosophy standing on a foundation of platitudes and buzz-words. I look into the eyes of the delegates who reel off the pre-bargained, pre-scripted ecological messages as they pose on the steps of some architectural backdrop and, with much sadness, become more convinced in my belief that my voice will never be heard outside my own head, and that the best I can hope for is to rail at a television magazine....... through the entering a competition; a competition that I am too old to enter......