ENGLAND WANKERS DUMP ON SUPPORTERS

A brief message to all those misguided followers and fans of England’s football team. It is as I’ve said in my recent post about England’s chances in the World Cup. After last night’s game against Uruguay perhaps you’ve now got the message. A two-one defeat and almost certainly dumped out the tournament. I’m sorry, I really wish it wasn’t the case but that’s how it is. It’s almost certainly not entirely the fault of the players who in last night’s game showed some spirit. Trouble is their passing and shooting skills were often woeful and they gave the ball away more times than I care to remember. And I’m talking about basic professional skills for which they earn so much money. Furthermore if I’m talking about woeful and inadequate it’s because that’s what they were. A huge but entirely predictable disappointment.

Let’s face it, it was all on the cards. Two pathetic pre-tournament draws with Ecuador and Honduras, teams they should have beaten out of sight, should have told us the worst. Then a pathetic defeat by Italy after which the signs were so big on the wall that it could have been Banksy. True against Uruguay they at least showed some fighting spirit only it just wasn’t enough. There was no sign that coach and management had sat down with players to seriously work out what had to be done. Victory was everything and in order to achieve this a serious assessment had to be made of exactly what was needed. Into this equation the return of the brilliant Uruguayan player Suarez had to be placed foremost. Blot him out and their opponents would be reduced to the kind of team who were thrashed by Costa Rica. Allow him to run free and do what he liked almost certainly meant doom and that’s exactly what happened. Two opportunist goals by their unmarked star player and it was all over.

Question then. Why wasn’t Suarez who’d shown such deadly form playing for Liverpool in last season’s Premier League not man marked? Tracked and followed by at least one defender? Two would have been best! After all, Uruguay had already demonstrated that they were virtually useless without him. The man was not only a devastatingly skilled player but also inspirational for his team and a talisman. With this more than clear and a victory in the game so important for England’s ability to progress in the tournament a serious risk assessment should have been made and appropriate action taken. The result of this failure is there for all to see. What we are looking at here is a serious lack of professionalism by coach and management resulting in a dreadful disappointment for all the millions of fans at home and those who paid large sums of money to go to Brazil.

I don’t need to imagine the pain and disappointment, the ghastly frustration. I myself not only felt it but knew it would happen. All the signs were there weeks and months back. All the millions of fans full of high hopes and led to the trough only to taste mild and bitter. We’re talking of professional players who earn serious dosh turning out to be unimaginative, semi-skilled dilettantes, indulging in the lazy habit of too often passing the ball backward. True, it was better than the fiasco against Italy, talked up as a great performance by television pundits earning great money whose job it is to do just that. Talk up rotten performances for the great army of hopefuls. So already defeated by Italy something had to be done. Aggressive, adventurous positive play guarding against any danger, the only real one being Suarez! And the result of this appalling failure… to carefully consider the circumstances, carefully analyze and realistically assess exactly what had to be done… was the real possibility of defeat. Exactly what happened.

Imagine what the players felt? All the talk on the television, all the endless talk in the press. In this kind of situation there’s no room for tactical error let alone that of strategy. England never had a united consolidated team to begin what with all the chopping and changing of players over the last year but some had shown themselves to have skill, like Lallana and Barkley. So exactly how prominent a part were they given?

And then what was the other result of it all. Millions of hopes dashed and endless rowdy liquor fuelled parties of people maybe somehow edging just a fraction closer to reality. That England’s performances over their last four games, two friendlies and two deadly serious were rotten. Sorry, never mind how all the talk it up boys are talking it up. Their play was plain rotten so let’s go away and face up to it all. Forget about a great qualification miracle. Beating Costa Rica ten-one and maybe progressing. I don’t even want to think about it! England’s progression doesn’t depend on them anyway! No, there’s only two things that need to happen when they get back. Firstly Roy Hodgson resigns, which he’s already said that he won’t! Secondly, that those with the power in the business go and talk to Harry Redknapp, get down on their knees and beg him to take over. That way in four years’ time millions of English people will have something to celebrate.

And that’s all I’ve got to say about that!

THE SUN AND THE MILLIPEDE

This is a tale of the Sun Newspaper and the Millipede aka Ed Miliband and takes the form of an open letter.

Dear Ed Miliband, I write to you in connection with the photograph you posed for holding the free issue of the Sun Newspaper on the front page of which was a montage of living English people over the block capital headline THIS IS OUR ENGLAND.

I note immediately that you have publically apologized to the people of Merseyside for this in view of their natural sensitivity about the filthy lying reportage by this paper in respect of the Hillsborough Disaster and implication that those who’d died had behaved badly and brought their demise on themselves. Your conduct in posing for this paper holding the full page deepened a great insult to all the poor and working people of the region and beyond.

This letter however is neither about your conduct shameful as it was nor your apology. Neither is it about the ghastly expression on your face, a compendium of pride and publicity opportunism with the visage presented plain horrid. No, what I want to talk to you about here are two other matters connected with this incident. One being your personal political character, the other about the kind of people who appear in the montage and what they represent.

Now I’m aware of course that you are a self-declared social democrat with a middle class educational background and values that go with this. That you are certainly no socialist and are much closer politically to Nick Clegg than Nye Bevan, founder of the National Health Service. I am also clear in my own mind that you are unlikely to understand what I am saying here. Not because you don’t want to understand but because you’re simply unable to because of the political creature you have become as evidenced by the kind of advisors you have surrounded yourself with who had doubtless suggested that here, on the cusp of an England national sporting day, with the leaders of the two other main political parties offered substantial national publicity to show them standing at one with the public, the opportunity offered by this long time Tory paper could simply not be refused.

Well if you’d actually had the courage and conscience you could have said NO, but with an eye on publicity value you were simply too afraid of the consequences  i.e. of antagonizing the powerful Murdoch Press in the run up year to a General Election. Just another part of your political soul sold and your values compromised for the sake of expediency. Another small step on the road to becoming a clone of Dark Gordon, your dark master in whose calamitous Government you so faithfully served.

This letter then isn’t about what you did, your gross insensitivity, your judgement or personal character all of which I find wanting. It is in fact about what you saw in the composite and how you judged it. So what did you note in the photo the Sun presented of OUR ENDLAND? It was indeed the newspaper’s England, those who “sum up the essence of England today.” Okay Mr Miliband, let’s see who they are. Well, they’re mainly politicians, royals, and people from the world of sport and entertainment. Many are television celebrities. These are the broad classes with a few businessmen like Philip Green and inventors like Berners Lee being exceptions. So, the Sun’s view of England, and yours, because of your pose with the composite signifying your acceptance, is of an England best represented by entertainers and media celebrities and it is this Mr Miliband that is so deeply offensive and the fact that as leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party you should believe it.

So what kind of person are you actually who believes that the essence of English people, the English at their best, is made up of entertainers, politicians, sports people, royals and media celebrities. Well you see I believe that the page should have been BLANK. A tribute to the countless unknown people of great heart and generosity of spirit who do vital work helping others in countless situations and places… those who struggle against poverty and injustice on a daily basis, those single parents and families who struggle to make ends meet, those people who silently and anonymously do great and valuable science research work and last but not least those who tirelessly work in the NHS to protect the health of the nation. ALL OF THESE ARE OUR ENGLAND, who represent that which is best of the spirit of the nation. Whose lives and conduct are altruistic rather than the crowd of busily self-promoting celebrities you posed with. It is the former, those whom Rudyard Kipling once called ‘the mere uncounted folk’ that the Labour Party once cared for but whom you and your wretched advisors now deem to be unimportant. And it is this fact that in itself reveals what you are politically and where you stand. That in posing for the photo same as Clegg and Cameron you are basically no different to them in your values.

This has been recently confirmed by your statement that a Labour Government if elected next year will take away any financial benefit that unemployed young people between the ages of 18 and 21 receive to live on and help them find work. Unemployed young people are among the poorest and most needy in our country. They face daily disadvantage and cheap labour, unregulated employment prospects. They are among the worst off and most put upon, often coming from highly disadvantaged family circumstances that are surely no fault of their own. This often depressed youth needs an arm to help them rise not a slap in the face to punish them. TAKING THIS SUPPORT FROM THEM, AS YOU SAY, TO HELP REDUCE THE SO CALLED FINANCIAL DEFICIT WHICH FOR GOD’S SAKE WAS CERTAINLY NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN IS A HATEFUL THING TO DO AND REVEALS EXACTLY HOW LOW YOU AND YOUR PARTY HAVE SUNK.

IT IS VINDICTIVE AND MALICIOUS AND HAS ALL THE SMELL OF ANTI-WORKING CLASS TORYISM ABOUT IT.

I won’t be voting for you at the next General Election Ed Millipede. It’s because of what your photo with the Sun revealed about you, and because you then immediately confirmed what you are. Someone who’s values are twisted and rotten. That you only care about the privileged, the rich and the famous, not most of our youth… the anxious and troubled, the hard up and desperate, the homeless and poor.

PEOPLE WHO GO TO GLASTONBURY

ARE YOU GOING TO GLASTONBURY FAIR… STINKING TOILETS AND NOXIOUS MULLED WINE

People who go to Glastonbury are mellow souls. They need to be for the money they pay to get in. And there collecting it all is farmer, Michael Eavis, that mellowest of men! How-de-do dude and those mellow vibes of yours. See you at the mulled wine stall at Glastonbury. And no, it’s definitely not made of those 4 litre plastic bombers you get at Sainsbury’s for a couple of quid topped up with piss. The stuff’s genuine man! You can taste the cardamom and cloves so see you at the big one man!

Okay, Glastonbury! Are you going this year? Well better make sure your bird is taking her tampax because a leaky lady in a small nylon tent is a recipe for, well, a perfect Glastonbury experience when it’s combined with deep mud, having your tent robbed, buying a joint from a plain clothes policeman – and there are large numbers on site for just that purpose who’ll take your money then immediately arrest you for dealing, listening to the group you really love and always wanted to hear live only something goes wrong with the sound and can’t be fixed till tomorrow, eating vegetarian food that’s not really veggie at all ‘cos it’s got maggots in it, oh yes and the toilets stink, I mean really stink because the people supposed to be emptying the latrines haven’t turned up and you’re literally sitting on shit only it’s someone else’s. Well, ALL the above is quite okay and you don’t mind any of it because you’re a Glastonbury person you see… and if you’re not, I mean you’re Michael Gove with those glasses he wears these days trying hard to look like Clark Kent in the Superman comics, well it doesn’t matter because you only go to places like that once a year and it’s for the experience of it really. I mean you’re only doing it once aren’t you so you can tell your friends how much you loved it having somehow suppressed all those unsavory memories!

And if you just happen to see Nigel Farage there, which of course you won’t, just give him a wave and say Hi man, how yer doing? And neither will you see Michael Gove! Nick Clegg on the other hand is a much better possibility! You know, being Nick Clegg and showing how much he’s in tune with everyone’s needs.That he’s easy going and mellow, and that you can actually talk to him ‘cos that’s what he wants more than anything. Showing people how much he likes them. That he’s not one of those Westminster politicians after all but really and truly just like anyone else so if you run into him maybe you can buy him a mulled wine or something very Liberal Democrat like a salad with organic ‘leaves’ which reminds me… Exactly what kind of people go to Glastonbury?

Well ask around. People who go there like talking, especially if you tell them that you support the Green Party and you’re very pro-Palestinian. No, better if you tell them you’re anti-Israel and been busy supporting the Free the Occupied Territories Campaign! Yes, and that you really hate UKIP and for good measure chuck in the Tories! People who go to Glastonbury all have their definite likes and dislikes and you’ll find most are the same. Quite a few have upmarket ambitions like doing something in IT or that they’re already at university, most ‘doing’ politics, media studies, psychology or something in the arts. Not many into engineering or the sciences. Their aspirations go hand in hand with a mellow mentality and for now, for the Glastonbury experience, they’ll tolerate the rough. Being unable to wash or clean themselves up properly unless it’s a cold shower tap. Walking around with crusty arses and eating shit overpriced food like stale humus that last saw a fridge two weeks back. Everything nicely calculated to give them diarrhoea. That’s why you need a cast iron stomach to get fifty feet of the portaloos but then if you’re a Glastonbury type either you simply don’t mind or simply don’t care, or alternatively you’ve somehow psychologically acclimatised yourself and you feel all brave and heroic ten days after it’s over because you know you put up with it all and from a distance in time and space you’re aware you’ve survived what can best be described as a serious filth job!

Yes you’ve been there and done it! You’ve been to Glastonbury and it wasn’t so bad after all, but of course, while you were there the nature of your existence changed and you reached a new low. But it wasn’t all that low really. Not really, you tell yourself then. Anyway, you bought a necklace with a crystal on it with points at both ends to make you at one with the generalised karma along with one of those Glastonbury hats you saw everyone wearing and wanted to be at one with the crowd. Besides, now you’re back home with a fridge full of food! What kind of people go to Glastonbury? Well all-sorts. But some are Glastonbury types more than others. They’re people who can deal with the toilets, the food, the strange characters, the cold dirty nights in a tent, the deep mud that’s more there than not because much of the site is basically an un-drained swamp. It’s a place for people with easy, mellow views about everything. Nothing that’s seriously thought out. Just something to be for the moment!

If they’re under 20 and they don’t like you or something about you then you’re a dick, a dickhead, or nob. If they’re adults, guys with beards and their ladies in floral dresses or shorts and sandals, and it’s something similar then you are just unpleasant and troublesome! I mean like letting it be known that you support the English Defence League and are definitely anti-immigration! What I’m saying is that people who go to Glastonbury are very predictable types more often than not with very definite social and political views. It’s a place for generalised dissent where dissenters of whatever kind will find kindred spirits and be mellow and at one with similar views! As long that is, as it’s acceptable rather than nasty dissent! It’s definitely not a place for hard-nosed Tories or Daily Mail readers. Neither is it a place for the lower middle class generally speaking. You won’t find thousands of adults from Essex there for example but maybe, just maybe a few of their kids who’ve heard enough about garden patios to last them a lifetime and want out once in a while! So they go to Glastonbury wanting to be mellow and escape their semi-detached existence rather than having to endlessly listen to their permanently uptight fathers!

You often meet the same people at Glastonbury that you met the year before! Hi man, what have you been doing. Long time since we saw you. Now they’re definitely not likely to reply, Hi man, long time no see. I joined the police since we met up! End of conversation! That’s because the police represent authority rather than generalised mellow and despite the silly faces they put on at Glastonbury pretending they’re cool easy dudes, no-one would ask them to puff on their spliff, speaking of which the Festival’s awash with drugs more often than not. Mostly weed of various sorts but sometimes pills that are nasty along with dangerous powders. The former often brought in by Afro-Caribbeans the latter by East Europeans.

The Festival though is mainly a place for those young and white or middle-aged hippies still living the seventies. It’s not one for Asians, especially Muslims. It’s too spaced out for the bearded faithful or ladies in burkas. Wrong faith, too uptight. Men with beards need to be mellow! In that respect compliance with a certain code or creed is also worthy of note, namely to the faith of coolness. In order to enjoy the music and atmosphere you are required only to worship at the altar of mellow, not on a carpet unless it’s your birds!   

Glastonbury’s a great place for a very special experience. It’s the Glastonbury Experience. Something outside normal life like having to work and pay bills, having to listen to your arsehole of a supervisor or employer, or hearing old people talk about the War and others going on about the Sixties. You know, going on about the past all the time or talking about boring things. No, for a few days once a year you can seriously chill, listen to the beat, wave your arms around at the Main Stage Arena with tens of thousands of others before you puke up the mulled wine you guzzled earlier on your way back to your tent, if you can find it that is without mistakenly breaking in on an oldie blowing her husband… whoops, wrong tent… then eventually finding your own and looking up at the stars while Brenda pulls off her bra.

Ah, the joys of a Saturday night at Glastonbury. Meanwhile you came across an old friend. One of the stallholders selling those Gem trees of his. You bought one for your Mum last year and she really loved it to pieces. Yes, they’re back again this year. That really nice couple who make them and those little animals on marble they do. They’re old timers. Part of the Glastonbury scene these days. Mind you, Brenda says the guy’s full of shit. Doesn’t know how his wife puts up with him. Such a nice lady too!

Well actually you’re talking about me you sonova bitch blogger! One more remark like that and I’ll cut your dick off… Sorry mate, I thought what I was saying was private… No worries man! It’s Glastonbury! Loosen up! Chill out like all the rest of us!

That’s another more recent part of the Glastonbury Scene. People taking their Tablets along. Tens of thousands of people with Tablets and I don’t mean the ones that take you into another place man. One of the best places these days is the Television Presenters’ Tent. Channel Four and BBC2 have resident presenters on site these days, each competing against one another to sound maxi-cool dude. That Krishnan Guru Geezer being breezy with questions about why we go so we just tell him any old shit. Put it on posh like we’re from Eton and tell him that Daddy’s someone well in with Labour! It’s so easy, those people from Channel Four’ll believe just about anything!

Well got to be going man. Mister Toastie’s waiting for me at his mulled tea stall with his magic toast making machine. Meanwhile it’s pissing with rain and someone’s making a fortune selling black plastic bin liners a quid at a time. Nothing better to keep off the rain. As for the mud. Tough shit! We’re all going Abbo now, dancing to the sound of a didgeridoo in our bare feet. It’s really great man. You know, back to primitive nature and all!

Talking about the types of people who go to Glasto, as many of its aficionados call it, we mustn’t forget the traders. From the food, drinks and clothes people to the jewellery and crystal crowd. For the big rigs like food the set up prices are stunning. We’re talking thousands. And for those who trade in such it’s not just the swingeing start prices but also the cost of staff, electricity for refrigeration and then the cost of ingredients. The jewellery, crystals and gifts stalls are very much smaller. A metal frame and a few tables at best, therefore cheaper. Everything depends on size and location. Pitches on A and B sites on the drag to the Main Stage are royal and much coveted, rather like those on the drag up to the Green Fields, the place where hopeless hippies hang out trying to make a shilling.

For the big timers the three days max is a serious business. We’re talking finance capital here not industrial though the selling of cooked foods, mainly burgers or pasta, or salads with pasta or rice is a highly mechanized process very much on the lines of conveyor belt production. In Glasto terms it’s the equivalent of big money with everything else the province of small timers. Scuzzy dudes and their molls who finish at eight and give themselves to the music. Most traders, big or small, sleep on the site of their pitch in caravans, camper vans or tents The food and drinks boys stay open well into the early hours mopping up the late night hungry who drift in from the stages. Most others cover their rigs with plastic and have someone stay up all night on guard duty because thieving at Glastonbury is serious business and the police, eyes wide shut as ever, don’t give a monkey’s.

Few small traders stay open all night but we did, Friday, Saturday and Sunday and it did make a difference. Mainly because we were well lit with powerful spotlights, the whole of our rig shone out in the dark so that late-nighters and insomniacs came to look and tell us their life story. Sunday and Monday mornings they often came back to spend. Yes we were there to make money so after packing up and leaving midday on Monday, still taking money while stragglers where drifting out, we drove back to Bath, made for the bank then spent the next three days sleeping it off.

Hard-nosed traders like ourselves and the food, drinks and clothing mob were worlds apart from all the rest who took little money, and the genuine music fans who often had little to spend most of which went on food. Anything left over we worked hard to take and often did. Most of them we liked, mellow as we were to take money from people, same as George Osborne or any other self-respecting Tory Chancellor, Well actually you can chuck in any of the Labour Creeps too. Especially Dark Gordon!

Large numbers of youths who go to Glasto are simply plain skint. Any dosh they had mopped up by the price of admission or paying to climb a strategically placed ladder on the security fence by Caribbean get rich quick operators who quickly move to other sites once they’ve been sussed by the security patrols. Such pickings are only lucrative for very smart operators, ultra-fast on their feet who can smell a blue-bottle half a mile distant! They’re also a part of the Glastonbury scene. It’s private enterprise man! One minute they’re helping people bunk in, the next they’re Chief Executive of an Energy Company or a banker working some filthy swindle or other. Both so beloved by Liberal Democrats.

Glasto itself is full of artists. Whether cooked food or veggie performers, the piss artists who perennially surround the mulled wine and cider huts, those who strut the stages screeching out noise and guitar twang that can barely be recognised which doesn’t matter at all for audiences out of their skulls one way or another for whom the main thing is being there to see their favorites play and finally the few genuinely creative artists up on the Green Field Site who make things in wood or metal. That’s not to discount the big handmade craft fraternity most of whom will soulfully tell you how they struggle to make it themselves back home in their workshop when it’s actually carried home in a rucksack from Nepal!

Yeah, we love you too baby. You and your addiction and bullshit!

But then why be so cynical? None of these traders and fans do any harm. One way or another they’re only there to enjoy. To escape reality for a short while and after all, most of that reality is made up of rotten cheap labour jobs or fast vanishing benefits with Top Tory Ian Duncan Smith’s name written all over them, but then Glastonbury isn’t the kind of place he’d be seen dead in. For someone like that it’s the equivalent of hell!

That being the case lighten up dude. Put a little conical gold hat on your head then give us a twirl so that the white pom-pom on top jiggles about! That way you’ll learn to chill. Learn to be merry and smile!

WORLD CUP FOOTBALL BRAZIL 2014 : ENGLAND’S CHANCES

I’ll preface my views about the England football team’s chances in the upcoming World Football Cup being held in Brazil with the following remarks. It may have escaped the attention of the large numbers of football fans and supporters in England but the national sport and focus of so much of their attention and devotion is no longer simply a game or a sport and hasn’t been for at least twenty years. These days it’s a business and very much so for the teams of the Premier Division and some in the Champions League. As businesses, many of which are owned by millionaire backers with additional investment coming from the equity market, their essential function is to make profit, not simply to entertain their lemming-like supporters. That said the  serious money is not made from supporters who devotedly pay increasing sums to pass through the turnstiles or buy merchandise. The real profit is made in the buying and selling of players. What is euphemistically known as the transfer market where the skills of individuals are bought and sold on what is essentially a professional meat market.

So let’s get it clear for all those romantics who love the game and follow their clubs and their heroes. The Premier League of English football was created as a meat market for you to do your weekly thing and watch those you think are great with the ball earn the kind of money for ninety minutes’ work a week that might otherwise take you many years to accumulate! You need to think they’re highly skilled and marvellous with the ball anyway because you’re attending your weekly ritual and paying for them and while they earn very serious dosh the real money is made in deals done in the back rooms over their names. One of the more interesting results of this evolution from sport to business is the relationship between a footballer’s pay and his value on the transfer market. Most of the players, whether they’re foreign or British, come from working class backgrounds and are often poorly educated at best. When lads in their late teens suddenly find themselves much in demand for skills real or pretended and soon earn huge salaries enabling them to indulge in a fantasy lifestyle, something happens inside their heads. They become prima-donnas. And so many of these players in the English Premier Division teams are simply just that with varying degrees of ability.

The important thing is that they don’t have to demonstrate wonderful skill. What really counts is their name. One that’s regularly mentioned and talked about in a media carefully geared to the interests of a barmy footballing public. This not only includes newspapers but television where commentators for football games, particularly those involving the English national team, specialize… absolutely specialize in talking players up so that a hopeless performance full of missed opportunities and a serious lack of skill is turned into a dull performance or an off day! And nowhere is this best typified than by those supplying commentaries on England’s games on television where quite frankly, judgements verging on double-think over ghastly misses sound plain pathetic. And quite frankly even more so because the people they’re talking about earn a weekly wage that’s simply staggering.

England’s players primarily come from the Premier Division of the English Football League. It’s a Division whose teams incorporate very large numbers of highly paid teenage prima-donnas attached to whom are eye-watering values on the transfer market. It’s the value that counts. One that’s supposedly based on their footballing skills but more often in fact depends on a value acquired by proxy from the media. The Premier Division indeed is more often a place full of talked up names rather than players with brilliant professional skills. At best a weak combination of mediocre skills and names. Skills more suited to club performances where they are regularly surrounded by supportive colleagues than the English national team.

This said, it is from among such players that English football team managers and coaches make their selections for the English national team. Among whom, I repeat, are many players with poor all round skills who have a tendency on and off the field to conduct themselves like prima-donnas! Especially so with the attention of a football-mad clientele at the time of a World Cup tournament and it is here that I wish to comment on the very unusual overall selection procedure used by England football managers both now and in the recent past for creating their team. Anyone with any basic common sense would think that when a new manager takes charge and begins the process of creating a national team, the word team here is crucial, you might think that for the first six months to a year the manager would immediately create a pool of best players from those available and spend the next three years blending them together, harmonizing their actions and performances and further developing their skills to the sharpest level possible. In other words spend all his time building a united, skilled and disciplined team.

In the case of creating England’s football team of today exactly the opposite has happened. In fact, right now, with only a few days to go before England’s first match against Italy, no-one yet knows who’ll be playing! Not even those in Roy Hodgson’s pool of players! Now having what may be described as a TEAM essentially involves players who are very experienced in working together and know each other’s capabilities and skills. It’s something entirely different from putting together people in an ad hoc fashion, changing the composition of the group from one game to the next and even more jokingly, swapping them around by making endless substitutions within the course of a single game. Such a procedure is a plain recipe for disunity and disharmony… players not knowing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing which leads, in the case of uncertainty, to them repeatedly passing the ball back. In only too many of England’s games recently that’s exactly what they’ve been doing! Passing the ball back when they should be pushing forward with imagination, confidence and drive. Knowing where they are going and what they are doing because they all know each other and are blended together as a fighting unit.

In short, Roy Hodgson’s creation of England’s football team over the last few years has been little more than a joke when you compare it to the creation of the national teams of Germany, Brazil, Spain and Argentina. Even of Portugal! All these countries have been carefully building their units for years, just as the great French team of recent times was put together. With these national sides it’s been a matter of careful construction. Of harmonization. In the case of the English team it’s been more like chucking people together and hoping.

If anyone needed evidence of how true all this is then think about what you just saw on television against Ecuador and Honduras! You’re talking of big name players here earning big time money at their clubs, yet the performances were dismal. Deep shit at best… and players like Welbeck and Sturridge are being put up for England when so many of their previous performances are puce. Is that a joke or something? They are essentially club players nothing more, same as Wayne Rooney. Presumably, to play for England you need to be better than that. Presumably!

But I guess that all of this will escape the attention of the large numbers of England fans all heading for Rio who will, I prophesy, wind up drowning their sorrows after games against Italy and the Uruguay in the arms of those world renowned Rio de Janeiro mulatto prostitutes and have to attend certain clinics back home in England before getting into bed with their girlfriends and wives. Sure, how I’d love to see them beat the Italians only the latter are sharp, slick and dirty, and England just can’t afford any misses; and as for Uruguay they can kiss it so it’s out in the Group Stage I’m afraid. But then never mind. If British men in front of the telly and those being laddish together inside and outside the pubs can join in singing In-ger-land, Rule Britannia and God Save Our Gracious… with the Army inside Brazil’s stadiums then that’s what really counts. They’ll all be back in a week or so, excuses prepared! It was too humid… too hot… too cold… The food gave us all belly ache… Yes the excuses are ready and waiting, same as they’ve always been!

Honestly, I really don’t want it to be that way. I’m rooting for the team same as everybody only what team is that? When England start preparing in the right, methodical, disciplined way with serious professionals rather than puerile prima-donnas, then I’ll know. In the meantime, best of luck. And please, you boozed up English fans in Rio, or wherever, unless you want a much greater agony than watching England go down the plughole, try using a condom.  

AMERICAN HELLBOY : BARAK OBAMA

If the United States Intelligence Services are monitoring this Post, same as they’ve been bugging the phones, emails and other electronic communications of Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande and most other European Heads of State, just as they’ve done to others round the rest of the world, to say nothing of their own citizens, those of Europe and just about anywhere else, then good! To those who work for your security services I really hope you enjoy what you read. You can add my name to your lists of hundreds of millions anytime. Please, be my guest. I’d consider it an honor!

A few days back, condemning what he described as Russian “aggression” in the Ukraine, American Hellboy Barak Obama said in Warsaw, “How can we allow the dark tactics of the 20^th century to define the 21^st.” The comment was made apropos what he and his State Department describe as the Russian “annexation” of the Crimea and verbal support for the pro-Russian dissidents in the Donetsk region of the Ukraine.

Looking at the Ukrainian situation factually it is more than clear that the American State Department actively supported a takeover in Kiev by violent gangs of thugs from Nazi political parties to oust the then democratically elected pro-Russian President of that country. A new Government was then installed in Kiev without any elections taking place. After this a democratic election took place in the Crimean Peninsula to determine whether or not the people who lived there wanted to remain Ukrainian citizens or join the Russian Federation. An overwhelming majority voted for the latter. It should also be noted that the Russian Federation had and still has an ongoing treaty with the Ukraine to station the Russian Black Sea Fleet at its Naval Base in the Crimea and allow twenty thousand Russian troops to be stationed there. Finally it should also be noted that the vast majority of the population in the Donetsk Region of the Ukraine are Russian and have participated in various referendums to join with the Russian Federation. The legitimacy of these votes have been denied and condemned, along with that in the Crimea by President Obama, the American State Department and heads of all states in the EU. Currently the so called dissidents of Eastern Ukraine are being bombed by aircraft from the new unelected Government in Kiev and attacked by its ground forces.

None of these circumstances matter to Barak Obama and his State Department whose ultimate aim is to have NATO nuclear forces stationed in the Ukraine right up to the Russian border.

This Post however if not essentially about the situation in the Ukraine and how the Americans view it. It’s about how President Obama and State Department view Russian history of the 20^th century. True, there was a great Revolution there in 1917 which freed countless millions of Russians from servitude and slavery, and true, Joseph Stalin, subsequently leader of the Soviet Union for three decades committed many atrocities against his own people one of which was to murder all his old early associates in Lenin’s Bolshevik Party and turn Russia into a semi-fascist State. But then the Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany in the Second World War at a cost of 30 million of its citizens and soldiers. So be clear about this American Hellboy Barak Obama, it wasn’t the hundred thousand American troops at ‘D’ Day who defeated the Nazis and captured Berlin but the Russians and citizens of the Soviet Union.

Okay then, if Russia of the 20^th century doesn’t altogether come up smelling of roses for your sensitive nose Mr American Hellboy let’s see what kind of record America’s got going for you. Let’s see what you’ve done and what kind of heroes you came up with. First though let me point out that black people in your country were being lynched from trees on a regular basis up till the 1930’s and beyond in most of the southern states of your so called land of the free just because of their colour. Now I’m hoping they’re not the kind of dark tactics you’re referring to Barak Obama or maybe they’ve just gone out of your head.

Okay then, dark tactics. America in the 20^th century. Firstly after your war with Spain at the end of the 19^th century to break its grip on its former Central and South American colonies you continued your Monroe Doctrine and basically turned these countries into your very own Banana Republics, run by your protégés who were mainly murderous dictators. A policy that continued well into the 1980’s.

Secondly, with the horror of the greatest war the world had ever seen beginning in 1914 and already running for three years in Europe, YOU SINGULARLY FAILED TO INTERVENE, ONLY DOING SO  AS LATE AS 1918 AFTER MANY BRITISH, FRENCH AND COLONIAL SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS HAD DIED. You stayed out of this war almost till its end in order to see what you could get out of it. Such dark tactics were repeated just two decades later when the United States turned its back on Britain and France, already fighting to the death against Nazi Germany with British cities being bombed on a daily basis. Yes, all those Nazi sympathizers you had in America helped you maintain your dark tactics of isolation. That is until Pearl Harbour, December 1941, when you finally joined up with the British. You stood by all that time, unwilling to join us while our cities and people were being attacked. And then you only came in AFTER the same had happened to you.

Well your War Record in Europe doesn’t smell at all sweet to me Hellboy Obama. Some might call it dark and cowardly tactics. Others less kind might say it stinks.

And in between the two wars weren’t you engaging in some seriously dark tactics at home? Worthy of mention is the long and brutal attack on the Labor and Trades Union movement around most of America by police, state troopers and armed gangs of private security operatives. The use of thugs and strike breaking organizations to attack demonstrations for worker’s rights followed by the gigantic strike by corporate America against its entire working population heralded by the Wall Street Collapse of 1929 in which the bankers and financiers ripped the heart out of the American people much as they did recently are very significant dark tactics. Dark tactics then for ten years or more during which most rural black Americans were living in slavery. But then I suppose none of this is what you’d call dark tactics President American Hellboy Obama because such things don’t qualify as dark when they happen in your own country.

And when the Second World War ended, you know, the one America only entered reluctantly, your political system threw up something real special. You surely remember him don’t you, that very special master of dark tactics, Joseph McCarthy. Surely you haven’t forgotten the long anti-communist witch hunt that gripped your country in the late forties and early fifties. Surely you know about the attack on so many American Jews, accused of being communist not only by Joseph McCarthy but also by one of your very own predecessors, that very eminent master of dark tactics Richard Nixon. Well we really don’t want any of those dark tactics of the 20^th century to get into the 21^st, now do we? Or did you just forget about all the evil you got up to at home in America Mr Finger Pointing President?

But then let me remind you what you go up to outside your country while all these dark tactics were going on. Firstly what America’s armed forces were doing in Korea in the early 1950’s After installing puppet government of monsters in the south of that country you began dropping endless quantities of bombs on the north. It began a fifty year spree beginning with the ten year bombing of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos which saw American soldiers on the ground engaged in endless killing and massacres of civilians. Soldiers... civilians... It didn’t matter who or what. Just fire-bombing and shooting. But those weren’t dark tactics were they? Those weren’t what you’d call War Crimes because all those people killed were killed in the name of democracy. American democracy!

During this time the world witnessed the splendid behaviour at home of Richard Nixon, earlier master of accusing innocent people who became master of spying on opponents in the Democrat Party. Well I’m sure you don’t want any of that Watergate stuff to get into the 21^st century do you Hellboy Obama?

Not long after another of America’s Presidents with help from the State Department and Central Intelligence Agency organised a military coup in Chile led by openly fascist General Pinochet against the democratically elected Government of Salvador Allende. Getting rid of someone who wasn’t much more than a liberal like Allende was a great victory for the CIA. Now they had a murderous fascist running the Government of Chile. A dictator who’d control the world price of copper for businesses back home. Democratically elected Government out, military dictatorship in. Dark tactics? No, surely not! We wouldn’t want any of that in the 21^st century. Certainly not in the Ukraine!

Oh wait a minute, I forgot to mention that America sponsored and supplied the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by émigrés and gangsters after Castro took over, then the Iran Contras Scandal in which President Regan secretly supported an invasion of Nicaragua without Congressional knowledge after a socialist Government took over there.

And who came next? Pray help me along! Wasn’t it President Clinton’s favorite intern in the White House. You know the one who regularly sucked his cigar while he was busy dismantling Yugoslavia. As America manipulated a war between the separate states that Tito had united into a single country, using religious and ethnic tensions to pull it apart, Clinton then turned American forces and those of the EU against Serbia, bombing the hell out of the country month after month. Dark tactics? Not a bit of it. They were spreading democracy!

And after Yugoslavia came Lebanon, and after Lebanon the invasion of Iraq, and after that the bombing of Libya and then the Iraq War and ousting of Saddam Hussein. And after that the War in Afghanistan. Now this last one is special. Early in this conflict the Taliban were quickly defeated by an alliance of troops from neighboring states led by General Dostan and his Northern Alliance. The Muslim extremists were all but wiped out but then American stepped in! The Northern Alliance was sidelined and eventually disbanded by the American military and a year or so later the Taliban were allowed to return. This increasingly drew in American troops and a whole multi-national force including the British. All the time the Muslim extremists were increasing their foothold so that today they are back where they were. Very far from being defeated, with the full armed forces of America engaged in a major armed conflict in that country. Just like Iraq, Vietnam, Korea…

Was any of it dark tactics? The kind of thing we don’t want to bring into the 21^st century? Why certainly not! Not a bit of it! Once again it was America exporting democracy. Same as it’s now doing in  the Ukraine! Supporting the Nazi-inspired takeover in Kiev by the same kind of nationalists who served as Concentration and Extermination Camp Guards at Sobibor, Auschwitz, Treblinka and elsewhere assisting in the mass murder of Jews during the Second World War. Nice people you’ve got for friends these days Hellboy Obama.

Is it dark tactics for Hellboy Obama and his neo-conservative run State Department to turn the heat up on Putin. Promising to bring American troops into Poland and the Baltic States bordering Russia along with NATO military hardware? No, it’s defending democracy! Is it dark tactics to currently threaten China with serious consequences, namely the American Far East Fleet, in its dispute over territorial waters with its neighbours in the South China Seas?

Well from the point of view of Barak Obama none of the above constitutes dark tactics. America’s conduct both at home and abroad is a beacon of light. Especially now that it’s threatening both Russia and China with consequences…

Think of America today. Its civilians shooting each other en masse on a weekly basis. The dark horror of its criminal justice system and program of ritualized state executions. Its State and Federal police openly attacking and beating up civilians on a daily basis and regularly doing the same to working people striking for better pay and conditions, or students engaged in lawful protest. Just think of America today with a minimum wage officially less than 6 dollars an hour. Think of the 5% of the population who own 80% of its wealth and the 40% of its population who go hungry each day.

America we don’t want you to export anything into the 21^st century because your record in the 20^th stinks. Stop bombing, shooting and killing people actively or by proxy all over the globe and start treating your own citizens like human beings.

Threatening people here, there and everywhere is a sure sign of a nation that’s morally bankrupt. Today America itself is economically bankrupt and with its history of vile behaviour around the world we are living in the most dangerous of times. The world’s people don’t want America bringing any more of its  dirty dark tactics into the 21^th century Hellboy Obama so stop lying about everyone else just to hide your long time record of murder, lies and oppression.  

THE TURD THAT WON’T FLUSH

The Newark by-election is over and the Liberal Democrats have been wiped out. Annihilated! Just over a thousand votes out of thirty-eight thousand and their share down by 17% plus. Fifth behind an Independent candidate and the Greens. Kicked up the arse by the people of Newark and lost their deposit. Poor things, nobody wanted to know. Wanted to hear how keen they are on having unlimited numbers of immigrants coming from East Europe to take away British jobs on a daily basis or how much the love the vile EU bureaucrats who make it all possible. No, the voters of Newark didn’t want to hear the Lib-Dem shit anymore so they put a boot up their backside. But wait, what’s this? Friday morning and their Party Leader invisible! Hiding away somewhere with his face white as a sheet and trying to work out what to say. Maybe  planning to tell us all over again that they’re paying the price for a good cause. About the heroic sacrifice they made by hooking up with the Tories.

Sorry Nick, did I hear you say something? Did I see you open your mouth? Sorry mate but I don’t understand. After the kicking you got are you actually still with us? I mean, I thought you’d have stuck your head in the dustbin by now. Stood up like a man, taken responsibility for all the election defeats and resigned. Handed the job over to the nation’s favourite Scarecrow by now. The man you were having a well- rehearsed Nigel type pint of beer with in a pathetic publicity stunt just a few days ago. But no, you still  haven’t appeared. Probably figuring out that what with all the D Day stuff covering the headlines there it will all go away with a couple of aspirin and you won’t need to show yourself looking like a born loser all over again.

Your current lead role as Silent as the Grave wimp in David Cameron’s Court however raises another point. Why, pray, are you still out there pretending you’re half decent when the British people, at every chance they get, think you’re an opportunist political shit? Well truth to tell Nick we’ve only just got the lowdown. After the next General Election, when you your Party get the caning you deserve and lose most of your seats, what’s left of your Party we’ve heard, are planning on pulling another sordid political number like offering yourselves up to the Milipede and Labour in another stinking Coalition! Don’t try and hide it Nick! The secret meetings between your senior associates and the Milipede’s top henchman like Lord Adonis…  and no we’re not talking Greek Gods here, more like skinny runts… also once bosom pal of Dark Gordon Brown are now public knowledge! But then isn’t it true Nick that you’ve also been having your own secret meetings with the Milipede recently about drawing up plans?

Yes, you’re planning on doing a dirty deal with Labour if the election looks hung and the Tories can’t bear the smell of you anymore. You and what’s left of your Party in the middle all over again. On heat for another sniff of political power and ready to sell yourselves to whoever flashes the biggest bundle of jobs in the Government.

Yep, you and whoever’s left of your crew lip-sticking it in with the Milipede’s lovelies. That’s why you’re still there Nick. Why you’ll always be there never mind the kicking you’ll get every time British voters get the chance to express an opinion. Doesn’t matter if you lose every deposit you and your Party stick up… Doesn’t matter if your share of the vote drops below 2% … Doesn’t even matter if the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Chief Rabbi and the Pope all send you texts telling you to get the hell out. No, none of it counts. You’ll still be there for the next General Election, never mind that everyone hates you. Never mind that the whole country’s praying… No, your cheesy face will still be around with the same old policies that make everyone puke. Waiting to make one final deal with whoever you can climb into bed with.

Trouble is, after the next General Election when your Party hasn’t got enough seats to fill a public toilet, who’ll want you then baby? Ten seats left out of fifty and betrayal written all over your faces you can go kiss it from here to eternity!   

Yes we all know what the Liberal Democrats are Nick. After you lied about student fees you lied about energy prices. And after you lied about energy prices you lied about controlling bankers bonuses, getting rid of their filthy practices and more.

And now we all know you’ll do anything to stay in Government no matter who’s running it.

Okay Nick it’s now Friday, the day after Newark, so go take a look at yourself in the mirror. The public know you’re not going anywhere Nick. Just toughing it out as the turd that won’t flush.

FASHION: DEDICATED FOLLOWER OF…

The words of the title belong to a really good pop song sung by The Kinks in the 1960’s. In this post however they refer to the very visible habits or popular fashions adopted by the British people in recent decades many of which would be strange or peculiar to say the least to observers of British cultural life before 1980. Today there are strange fashions abroad among the British people to do some very strange things. Some are so strong that they’re almost cultural imperatives, calling for the adoption of practices that would have seemed seriously out of place in the 1940’s and 50’s, and unusual at best even from the 1960’s, a supposedly swinging and liberated time, up till the end of the eighties.. Essentially the habits and fashions to which I currently refer here have been aspects of British cultural life that have rapidly exploded onto the scene since the mid nineteen-nineties.  

They do not belong to youth alone. Generally speaking they are certainly not the sole property of teenagers nor do they belong to any distinct social class though some I’d point out are the almost exclusive property of one particular social class or another. Therefore unlike the individual adept to whom I refer in the title, the people of whom I speak here are broad social groups, sometimes within social classes, occasionally almost entire social classes themselves that take up the habit or fashion. Something  that’s so pronounced, so observable that it might almost be described as a social fact, a sociological phenomenon.

Let’s therefore take a look at some of the habits and fashions of these times. The growing, ever accelerating fashion among men, mostly between the ages of 18-40 for individual self-adornment took off from the early 1990’s. However it has also taken hold among those who are older, even in their sixties and seventies! The phenomenon is predominantly an underclass, working and lower middle class pre-occupation. In this there is a clear and direct correlation with the demise of traditional male roles in an industrial society that were an outcome of Margaret Thatcher’s economic policies of the 1980’s which brought about a severe decline across the whole spectrum of industrial production from mining, shipbuilding and heavy engineering to manufacturing and the building trades. These were replaced by the services and financial sector. More importantly however large communities of the industrial working class along with a communal philosophy were replaced by a new philosophy of personal individualism. It is from within this context that the growing phenomenon of individual self-adornment should be viewed.

The nature of this individual self-adornment is now visible for all to see and consists of the new general fashion of men in the social classes referred to above wearing earrings and being engraved with tattoos. The fashion for both is now commonplace so that individual self-adornment is no longer an individual attribute but a social characteristic. It’s something new. Something not previously observed. There are many reasons that might account for this but the most plausible to my mind revolves round the issue of identity. Alongside the demise of industrial occupations and communities has come that of old certainties. Society has evolved as a shiftless, amorphous and uncertain entity, particularly in the realm of employment, and with it has come an uneasy sense of individualism. With past certainties doomed and behind them among which is the breakup of traditional family structures and the stability they engendered, young people were and are faced with a growing identity crisis. The spirit of community in Britain is dead. The spirit of individualism alive and kicking. It’s new manifestation cannot be communal, with the prime exception of support for a football team. It has to be individual and personal. Hence the explosion of the fashion for personal bodily adornment.

Stud earrings for men. Also a generalised habit in the gay community. Tattoos for men and women. Arms, legs, faces and heads, and for many middle aged ladies a rose tattooed above the bottom crease. One can only think that large numbers of husbands don’t find the irony distasteful! In recent years this search for identity has become a copycat habit. In the hands of skilled practitioners it has become a skilled art form and mighty expensive. Here I leave the subject with one simple thought. Those who’ve adorned themselves in their need to establish identity might just as easily have found self-adornment in mind as much as body through education, travel and self-awareness. Tattoos and earrings are a concerted attempt at visible display Educated men and woman can equally display their new identity to others through their intelligence and a caring spirit.

* * * * *

Another new social fashion among young men and women not seen as a social fact until recently is alcohol abuse, drunken and anti-social behaviour openly and publically on the streets of towns across Britain. As a mass phenomenon it’s widespread and has spilled over into the package holiday resorts of south and east Europe as a vile and distasteful attribute of uncontrolled individualism. For the Europeans this expression of our youth is also something new. The fashion for this conduct home and abroad undoubtedly has its origin in the removal of restrictions which licensed the sale of alcohol by the New Labour Government of Tony Blair.

Pubs, clubs and bars could now sell alcohol round the clock, a fact exploited by manufacturers and retailers through the medium of price reduction. It meant unlimited alcohol being available to youths and adults 24/7, the former entirely incapable of dealing with the danger now put on a plate.

The streets of city centres on Friday and Saturday nights are a public forum for uncontrolled behaviour that quite frankly is needless. Young people going out to have a drink and enjoy themselves become prey to other emotions that have nothing to do with pleasure. In the late hours of night too many of them become victim to their own hopeless ineptitude. To an uncontrolled individualism that has its psychological seeds in a violent, turbulent family life. They become the flotsam and jetsam of recent history.  Products of rapid and violent social change over which they have no understanding and little control. Their conduct is an expression of the new individualism. Bad enough for the lads but entirely new and particularly disturbing among women and girls. A kind of wholesale liberation of female individualism in public displays of lewdness and foul-mouthed verbiage that was once though unladylike.

It’s part of the new social fashion for an individualism lacking traditional values and personal control. And with a future that may run in tandem with anger and aggression and entirely more sinister modes of personal conduct

 

* * * * *

I now want to touch on another notable though somewhat sordid fashion of recent times and that is the gruesome, stunningly embarrassing phenomenon of Hen Parties. Many of us have seen their participants. A dozen or more scantily clad ladies if you can call them that staggering out of their hotel onto the street wearing a furry red antennae headdress, ultra short bum revealing skirts with their fat legs and thighs encased in fishnet stockings perched on four inch stilettos and large L Plates pinned to the backs of their carefully contrived bulging blouses. Don’t worry, it’s only a suggestion. Clearly they’re no longer learners by any means, the majority more like instructors, married or not, capable of giving just about any man a serious refresher course after six vodka tonics. Sorry, I forgot to mention the balloons. In the case of these randy adventurettes most important for buoyancy!

For the more upmarket parties they may be seen getting out of a stretch limo and piling into a City Centre bar but for most it’s a walk to a pub for a well-planned last night as a single girl for the bride of the morrow. Her last night as a single woman with her friends all around her, all play acting at being randy bitches or are they? I mean only play acting! The pub specializes in such antics. They’ve become routine. Almost a drag. Well not quite if you know what I mean. It’s well known for catering for such sexually explicit heat-fests with dirty suggestive language galore and an experienced male stripper with bulging pectorals and tight leather pants to put the whole atmosphere on a Bunsen burner and titillate the Hens to a frenzy if not the Queen of the Night who they might heavily prompt, if she’s foolish enough to comply, to do something on her knees in front of the stripper with her head covered by a towel that she might have serious cause to regret later!

Most Hen Parties are lewd but then there are distinct levels of lewdness. What a Hen Party is not is sedate. They are explicit expressions of licentiousness among and between women for the purpose of giving their friend, a soon to be bride, a memorably bawdy send-off that will accompany her into the world of domesticity. A reminder of the loss of freedom. An experience of the last chance saloon of eternal pleasure!

 

As a social phenomenon Hen Parties date back no further than three decades and as a serious fashion probably closer to two. There are specific areas of the United Kingdom that are famous well established venues such as the north-east of England with its center in Newcastle. In fact the pubs and bars of whole sections of the city are given over to such jollification. This gives us a clue into the character of these events and the social class of their participants. There’s no denying it. Hen Parties are the prerogative of working class and lower middle class women. They are most definitely not a self-expression of middle class femininity. Their aim, essentially, is to achieve a sexual communality at the most basic and common of levels. True, they’re basically meant to be fun. A sexually frivolous send off. But copious amounts of alcohol having been consumed they can fall off the sharp end of the spectrum of naughtiness.

Working class Hen Parties are full of working class values and behavioral norms. Different today to what they once were thirty years back they now contain the individualism and a sexually liberated mentality that saw its first spark in the sixties but only bloomed thirty years later. Even so there’s a real contradiction at work here. This particular rite of passage has now achieved the status of fashion but it’s a rite celebrating an essentially ancient tradition and just as important, mass phenomenon though it may be it’s also a highly lucrative business.

That said there’s still something deliciously sordid about them. Women young and old dressed up in a kind of perverse desperation… only too often looking and acting like tarts in a public display that comes close to the ludicrous to any outside observer. Looked at dispassionately, as an increasingly fashionable and popular ritual, this new form of self-expression is part of a generalised shift of working class female identity. Of a sexually liberated identity perhaps that could only emerge in the new post-industrial Britain.

Most men are happy taking a peep at a Hen Party on the move but they’re not allowed in. Sorry, didn’t you know they’re restricted!

 

* * * * *

Finally one of the new fashions I wish to consider is that of obesity. I’m talking female obesity. Grossly fat women. Today they appear before our eyes just about everywhere. We’ve become familiar with oversized, overweight women in recent decades and now it’s a sight that we live with. Something that’s relatively new. A condition we might have seen only occasionally in the four decades following the Second World War. Today we see it on a regular basis. Again it’s an underclass, working and lower middle class phenomenon. In some cases its cause is physical. A medical disorder of one kind or another. In other cases its cause lies in psychological factors. An eating disorder perhaps. Even so there’s no getting away from the fact that both men and women eat far more these days than they did four, five or six decades back.

Consider the circumstances. Twenty years ago few people regularly snacked out on the streets or drank coffee likewise. Now it’s a habit adopted by millions. The lunchtime snack has become fashionable, served by the newly created availability of a wide variety of comestibles provided by supermarkets, sandwich and baguette bars and cafes. Weightwatcher type pasta and salad snacks have become highly fashionable along with the continental baguette. In short people are eating more because it’s only in recent decades that snack type meals have become so readily available. Without it the new eating out habit would barely exist and less food be consumed. It is therefore safe to assume that the new commercially fed availability of pre-prepared food is responsible in most cases for overconsumption and obesity.      

True, other factors such as those outlined above may come into play. However the cause of obesity plainly lies in over-eating but then it’s not as straightforward as that. In large part the growing wave of obesity ties in with eating food containing excessive fat and the participants of the habit taking little to no exercise. To put matters plainly the fat isn’t burnt off and has nowhere to go except circulate within the body of the consumer so a habit of years results in the obesity we witness today. And alas, equally serious is the fact that it has increasingly become visible in children.

This is a working class, underclass phenomenon among whom eating fast foods in burger or chicken restaurant chains became fashionable from the 1980’s and has now evolved into a tidal wave of quick and easy consumption. It became fashionable. Relieved women of the burden of cooking, turning consumption into an equitable outdoors social affair rather than the traditional shared experience of eating at home. A new commercial tradition therefore replaced that of family, much in line with the fragmentation of old communal values of a former industrial society. More broadly it became part of a new less active culture, that of consuming rather than doing.

Readily available consumption in the shape of food with a higher fat content, coupled with the changing less active character of work has slowly but surely led to the fashion for obesity that’s with us today and it will take far more than the strictures of celebrity chefs to free a fair volume of the population, especially women, from the excess fat they carry. It will take a revolution more than anything. A situation where working class women don’t much like how they look and the discomfort of the weight that they carry, start getting hard- nosed about their condition and become determined to change it. Eat less and healthier, start taking exercise in any spare time that they have, regain their confidence and begin looking lovely all over again.

Tattoos, earrings and Hen Parties are fashions that are silly. Obesity is a fashion that’s harmful. All of these will eventually pass, when people start respecting themselves once again.