He probably would love to send the thought police round to arrest them all for some hate crime or other. I'm delighted with their chant - it's reassuring. I want the Labour Party in its current incarnation to go the way of the Tories. Since 97 they've completely betrayed the working class who, before Reform came along, have had no one fighting their corner. Even the unions seem to be spouting woke nonsense and care more about virtue-signalling than supporting their members. We have to rid ourselves of these elites in power. The Labour Party should represent the working class, not middle class, virtue-signalling woke-warriors.
Starmer is the type of 'genuine' football fan who has his ticket paid for by his super rich enablers and peers down from the executive seats through spectacles paid for via the same grift.
Ah yes. Who can forget Tony Blair’s reminiscences of going to St James’s Park as a teenager and watching the great Jackie Milburn (who, er, retired when Blair was a toddler); or Hillary Clinton’s lifelong 2008 enthusiasm for the New York Mets; or David Cameron’s genuine passion for Aston Ham - or was it West Villa? He was never quite sure, but he was certain they wore claret and blue.
He may be an ex officio member of the Privy Council, but Jezza will be waiting a long time for a beribboned cocoa tin lid from the Windsors. I mean, how the hell can you trust an honest man?
Still, the voters of Islington North made their judgment last year, in no uncertain terms. In what had been about the tenth safest Labour seat in the country, Praful Nargand and Free Gear Keir were told exactly where they could shove their red rosette.
A K for Khan, eh? Yet another thoroughly disreputable ‘honour’. The Windsors, now full-on globalists, have no idea how much damage they’re doing themselves, in being associated with this sort of performative Woke Establishment sleaze. The working class used to like and admire the monarchy; now, increasingly, the Windsors are being pinged for the cosseted, alien, anti-British, globo-Ruritanian sellouts they really are.
People aren't stupid, they know Starmer is evil and hates this country. What they don't know in detail is just how extensive his instructions are from hard nosed Communists up the Labour food chain. Even after WW2 Labour didn't get elected to help Britain, they got elected by offering goodies to help Communism on its way. Now it's on steroids.
Worth a column, in the sense - as you say - that no British PM has ever been reviled in this way, let alone after just 11 months. The guy is an absolute turkey, chairing a cabinet of turkeys.
'In some respects – and it may seem daft to claim it – the abuse was not personal, at least not in the sense that those hurling it felt antipathy towards Starmer the man.’
No, you’re being too polite, Paul. I think it is daft to claim it. They despise him as a person and are right to do so. I mean, just look at him, with his square head and sweaty, dishonest face; just listen to that grating, robotic, adenoidal voice; just look at his foul, lying career to date; just consider what he has done to us already, with much worse planned. He has the charisma of Theresa May and the personal integrity of Boris Johnson.
'Starmer would have every right to feel insulted by the chants that came from the terraces.’ No, he wouldn’t. He may be only the acme of a thousand other mediocre globalist puppet politicians across the Yookay and EU, but even so, he has already earned every chant they can throw at him.
I'm always reminded of a Covid encounter with the Labour supporting landlord who threw Starmer out of his pub during a visit in the West Country, I think it was.
The landlord did lose it a bit, screaming at Starmer, 'Get out of my pub!', with Starmer responding in a very offended manner, 'I'm not being spoken to like that!'
I'm sure the episode was caught on camera, but I can't find it.
Yes, I’ve seen that. The publican, righteously angry, was being pinned back IN HIS OWN PUB by Starmer’s personal Special Branch guard thug (also ipso facto trespassing), while a ‘how very dare you’ Starmer made a slow and ignominious exit. Must be a shock to him, after 15 years as a made guy in the warm, comfortable embrace of the Security State. Even back in March, at the Cheltenham Festival, the crowd was chanting ‘Wanker!! Waaaaaannkkeeeeerrr!!’ at him.
'I'm not being spoken to like that!’
Oh yes, Starmer, you are, you are.
I expect public appearances by Starmer will be increasingly few and far between, replaced by closed ‘events’ where he wears the statutory hard hat and hi-vis jacket and the ‘members of the public’ allowed in can all be carefully pre-vetted. Will he dare show his furtive, clammy face at Wembley or the Emirates again? That might be Britain's Ceaucescu moment….
I give him till about this time next year, after a Labour wipeout at the local elections he kicked down the road for 12 months. The Parliamentary Labour Party (mostly in a desperate bid to save their seats on the gravy bus) will turn on that lying, self-serving jellyfish of a Kommissar and when it does, he will find he hasn’t a friend in the world ('Lord’ Alli, perhaps, excepted). McDonnell and Streeting are already ‘on manoeuvres’, while Cooper lurks quietly in the background.
Reminds me of Peter Cook saying something like 'I'm not being spoken to like that! I could have stayed at home and been shouted at'. Here's the pub landlord clip: https://youtu.be/jyoDJ1Fk47E?si=Uw5XwOylghhUCtAB
Starmer’s enforcer actually assaulted that man, a criminal offence. Judging by the poor quality haircut and cheap suit, he looks more like a freelance hired goon than SB. Maybe standards are slipping. Either way, of course, the police would have nil interest in a prosecution.
Just as well for the suited thug he was twice the landlord’s weight, because he did enough there to justify getting a punch in the jaw in self-defence. The late John Prescott would have known how to handle him…. Disgusting, really, but so typical of his type, that Starmer wouldn’t fight his own battles but used hired muscle instead, while sauntering off pretending nothing had happened.
I’ll tell you this, though: wherever he goes in Britain in public, now, for the rest of his life, Starmer’s going to need at least a pair of these crew-cut lumps on vigilant watch within 15 feet of him, or he’s likely to find himself covered in phleghm, minus his trousers and with his Y-fronts hauled over his head.
Stalin Starmer isn't deaf, he's happily doing as he's told by his masters who've promised him glory in their new world. That's far more important than pleasing powerless little British voters.
I’m pretty sure that some of the anger is directed at Starmer personally, partly because he is the embodiment of the disdain shown to working class people by the liberal elites, but also because of the stance he took and the language he used during the Southport riots. He dismissed any genuine anger and disgust at the massacre as the reaction of ‘far right’ thugs.
Earlier this year he continued in the same vein, criticising politicians who called for a judicial enquiry into the rape gangs as ‘jumping on a far right bandwagon’.
Whatever he may pretend now, with his ‘island of strangers’ rhetoric, his goose is already cooked.
I think that the lower middle/working classes have really woken up to the fact that absolutely no political party gives a damn about their lives now, or the futures they hope to give their children. We’ve had 40 or so years of promises that things “will only get better” or that they “get” us. It takes time to truly rile us, but the metropolitan elite have doggedly worked at doing so. What really worries me is in the absence of a credible political vehicle for redressing the balance in this country, where does that anger get channelled, as it will out.
As for Starmer’s response to the chants, that’s simple, we can expect new Prevent guidelines making anything other than full support of metropolitan elite’s agenda a sure sign of extremism.
Great piece as ever Paul but I don't hold out much hope that Starmer is prepared to 'listen' to anyone. He may have 'u turned' on the winter fuel payments but only, in my opinion, to finesse the means testing which he will use for god knows what else (NHS, State Pensions, Fuel prices, pay per mile etc...I know, dystopian stuff but I wouldn't rule anything out these days). The man, in my view is a peacock, vain, self important & convinced he's right (much as another well known peacock, Jolyon Maugham, is). The 'elite' are not interested in the poor sods slogging away in drab, lost, broken towns & communities, his plans are 'bigger' & 'better' than anything us plebeians could understand and as he 'knows' he's right, he'll believe that in the end we will tug our greasy, ignorant forelocks to him and be thankful that such a benevolent, long suffering, clever (totalitarian) 'leader' took 'control' and made our lives better.
Ps Prevent are about to make, or have made, questioning the sheer scale of immigration as a reason to add someone to their 'reprogramming' list. North Korea ring any bells!
Spot on as usual Paul, at least you've had some good years lately with Nuno and now the "Let's go down the pub" guy.
It's nice to know that football fans are able to speak for all of us in this land of free speech that is only for those who have sold their souls to the devil 👿 .
I expect the Rainbow FA and the Met will be sifting through the footage, reading lips, identifying faces from the England Supporters Club database. Banning Orders incoming…
I grew up a couple of stops from Upton Park, but I watched Match of the Day when I was five and fell in love with Wolves' old gold and black kit. It led to a lifelong love affair!
Having gone to a rugby playing school, I have never been interested in football and I genuinely find it boring to watch. That said, way back in 1967 when I was at primary school my worst enemy in the world professed himself to be a Chelsea fan. For the FA Cup Final that year I had, of course, to become a Spurs supporter. Ever since, it is the club I "support". The only time I have seen them live was away to Manchester City when I was on a police match commanders' course with GMP to qualify to command the policing of football games in my home force. I was in the police and fire control box way up in the gods. When Spurs put one over the bar I let out a yelp and every single person in the box turned and looked daggers at me. Then Spurs scored the sole goal and I did a little dance to yet more looks intended to kill. The Manchester Superintendent who was my host leaned in and said, "They are all City supporters working for free. I'm a United supporter and I f***ing hate coming here."
Ha, I actually get this. I also liked Wolves’s kit when I was young (and Blackpool and Luton). But liked Wwst Ham’s more, and at my age their players looked like Vikings (Bonds etc) so they got the nod for me.
Exactly. Why blokes (and it seems to be only men) support certain football teams is beyond my comprehension. For example, here in mid-Wales my ex-boss, a first language Welsh speaker and Plaid voter, is a fanatical supporter of Spurs, travelling to their matches as often as he can. My husband, born in the USA but raised in South Africa, supports Man U. Our son in Cape Town punts for West Ham (and of course is constantly in a state of disappointed frustration.) Our son-in-law in Johannesburg belongs to the Arsenal fan club in SA which apparently has thousands of members of all races. Ask them why and they can’t really say other than things such as ‘they always have’. On the other hand the female footie fans that I know of support their home teams. Can any of the chaps commenting here please enlighten us?
It's often as Paul says because of the colours. I liked the West Ham colours and as a child I liked other teams in similar colours - which is why Hearts were always my favourite Scottish team.
(I often found that the girls would sometimes choose a team because of a good-looking star player!)
About 20 years ago, I saw that malevolent lout Campbell jogging, slowly (i.e. c.4 mph) towards me down the canal towpath round Regents Park. He looked like death warmed up: severely asymmetrical gait, tortured face, gasping for breath. On that showing, frankly, I’m surprised he was still alive the next month, let alone now.
Where are Sadaam’s WMD, Alistair? The ones that could ‘hit Cyprus (?!) within 30 minutes!!’ One million Iraqi dead, plus 5,000 or so US and British servicemen KIA and a similar number maimed, Syria reduced to impoverished chaos and ISIS rule in a chain reaction, and we’re still waiting….
But hey, WGAF? The Wolfowitz Doctrine was advanced, Halliburton et al took the US debtpayer for another few $ trillion, ‘Sir’ John Scarlett got his KCMG and that’s what the game’s all about.
Remember when I was about to join the police in July 2001 and also had spent the 4 previous years canvassing for labour to be returned for a 2nd term
Jack straw had stood by ,while people had exploited Stephen Lawrence tragic murder snd police failings to justify their own anti white racism and anti police attitudes
Weaponising one form of racism, to justify another form of racism more recently being used to smear the left of the Labour party or those with legitimate criticisms of the Israel government) taking place now) and Jack Straw ignoring the low morale in the police had gone to the federation conference to say how happy everyone was in the police had received a slow hand clap at the federation conference
There was nothing I wanted more than a 2nd Labour term and bad publicity gif Labour wouldn’t have helped
But I thought as a Labour member I’d have give. Jack straw a slow hand clap even though I thought he’d find a good job in other areas
Forward to taking the knee at Foitball matches during BLM and the booing it got and A black lady Doninique Samuels said she’d have booed it as it was better to keep politics out of football
Remember the most political football match of all time ( Paul McCartney pipes if peace( Christmas Day works war 1 Germany and England stopped fighting in the French trenches had a truce and had a game of football that day
Isnt the problem that the spaces in which we can take part in political comment / reflection / debate are being extinguished and in that void it's popping up in unusual places? What is a -supposed - democracy where we can't air and amend our views alongside our contemporaries? The politics on the terraces surely is also a symptom of growing government control of free speech - whether it's online censorship or the crushing of small scale businesses where people naturally crossed paths - pubs, market places, community centres and the extreme experiments / preparations during "lockdown". Bring on political debate wherever it can find a space I say
Yes! Banter in the pub is now suspect, and wolf whistling is viewed as harassment. Things just get worse and worse with regulations on hate speech and ‘ micro aggressions’. The regulation of informal speech in the public space is not ok!
I read that the football terraces of Bilbao and Barcelona were the only 'safe' spaces Basques and Catalans could keep their language and traditions alive during the Franco era in Spain.
Until recently politics and football have been separate, once football (and other sports) embraced stonewalls "rainbow laces * campaign, embraced the anti semitic BLM movement which was prompted without anyone in the media/sport/ politics apparently reading thier manifesto or doing any basic research into them .when football fans started booing (rightly) the BLM movement they were called "racists " (the irony of anti semites accusing others of racism....) , remember when Wembley lite up it's arch in support of victims and countries of terrorist attacks, except Israel 🇮🇱....
Remember all the pundits and broadcasters that wore the "BLM " badges (while apparently against all racism) ? Compare that with the lack of pundits broadcasters that didn't wear the "bring them home " badge for the hostages kidnapped by terrorists hamas .
Football fans , like the electorate are not stupid.
Another well written piece Paul, I can actually 📸 you in the wolves home kit 😀
Ps I had no luck with mp over council tax , just parroted government policy , extra 1300 this financial year.
He probably would love to send the thought police round to arrest them all for some hate crime or other. I'm delighted with their chant - it's reassuring. I want the Labour Party in its current incarnation to go the way of the Tories. Since 97 they've completely betrayed the working class who, before Reform came along, have had no one fighting their corner. Even the unions seem to be spouting woke nonsense and care more about virtue-signalling than supporting their members. We have to rid ourselves of these elites in power. The Labour Party should represent the working class, not middle class, virtue-signalling woke-warriors.
Starmer is the type of 'genuine' football fan who has his ticket paid for by his super rich enablers and peers down from the executive seats through spectacles paid for via the same grift.
Ah yes. Who can forget Tony Blair’s reminiscences of going to St James’s Park as a teenager and watching the great Jackie Milburn (who, er, retired when Blair was a toddler); or Hillary Clinton’s lifelong 2008 enthusiasm for the New York Mets; or David Cameron’s genuine passion for Aston Ham - or was it West Villa? He was never quite sure, but he was certain they wore claret and blue.
Sir 2TK can now attend Ashburton Grove with that new knight of the realm Sir Sadiq Khan. Bet they won't be sitting next to Jeremy Corbyn though.
He may be an ex officio member of the Privy Council, but Jezza will be waiting a long time for a beribboned cocoa tin lid from the Windsors. I mean, how the hell can you trust an honest man?
Still, the voters of Islington North made their judgment last year, in no uncertain terms. In what had been about the tenth safest Labour seat in the country, Praful Nargand and Free Gear Keir were told exactly where they could shove their red rosette.
A K for Khan, eh? Yet another thoroughly disreputable ‘honour’. The Windsors, now full-on globalists, have no idea how much damage they’re doing themselves, in being associated with this sort of performative Woke Establishment sleaze. The working class used to like and admire the monarchy; now, increasingly, the Windsors are being pinged for the cosseted, alien, anti-British, globo-Ruritanian sellouts they really are.
"Globo-Ruritanian"... I shall steal that... absolutely spot on.👏
Indeed and he's got the oh so important bending the knee bollocks down pat 😈
Just like Pelosi & Co. Ghouls.
People aren't stupid, they know Starmer is evil and hates this country. What they don't know in detail is just how extensive his instructions are from hard nosed Communists up the Labour food chain. Even after WW2 Labour didn't get elected to help Britain, they got elected by offering goodies to help Communism on its way. Now it's on steroids.
Worth a column, in the sense - as you say - that no British PM has ever been reviled in this way, let alone after just 11 months. The guy is an absolute turkey, chairing a cabinet of turkeys.
'In some respects – and it may seem daft to claim it – the abuse was not personal, at least not in the sense that those hurling it felt antipathy towards Starmer the man.’
No, you’re being too polite, Paul. I think it is daft to claim it. They despise him as a person and are right to do so. I mean, just look at him, with his square head and sweaty, dishonest face; just listen to that grating, robotic, adenoidal voice; just look at his foul, lying career to date; just consider what he has done to us already, with much worse planned. He has the charisma of Theresa May and the personal integrity of Boris Johnson.
'Starmer would have every right to feel insulted by the chants that came from the terraces.’ No, he wouldn’t. He may be only the acme of a thousand other mediocre globalist puppet politicians across the Yookay and EU, but even so, he has already earned every chant they can throw at him.
I don't think Starmer will take kindly to it.
I'm always reminded of a Covid encounter with the Labour supporting landlord who threw Starmer out of his pub during a visit in the West Country, I think it was.
The landlord did lose it a bit, screaming at Starmer, 'Get out of my pub!', with Starmer responding in a very offended manner, 'I'm not being spoken to like that!'
I'm sure the episode was caught on camera, but I can't find it.
Yes, I’ve seen that. The publican, righteously angry, was being pinned back IN HIS OWN PUB by Starmer’s personal Special Branch guard thug (also ipso facto trespassing), while a ‘how very dare you’ Starmer made a slow and ignominious exit. Must be a shock to him, after 15 years as a made guy in the warm, comfortable embrace of the Security State. Even back in March, at the Cheltenham Festival, the crowd was chanting ‘Wanker!! Waaaaaannkkeeeeerrr!!’ at him.
'I'm not being spoken to like that!’
Oh yes, Starmer, you are, you are.
I expect public appearances by Starmer will be increasingly few and far between, replaced by closed ‘events’ where he wears the statutory hard hat and hi-vis jacket and the ‘members of the public’ allowed in can all be carefully pre-vetted. Will he dare show his furtive, clammy face at Wembley or the Emirates again? That might be Britain's Ceaucescu moment….
I give him till about this time next year, after a Labour wipeout at the local elections he kicked down the road for 12 months. The Parliamentary Labour Party (mostly in a desperate bid to save their seats on the gravy bus) will turn on that lying, self-serving jellyfish of a Kommissar and when it does, he will find he hasn’t a friend in the world ('Lord’ Alli, perhaps, excepted). McDonnell and Streeting are already ‘on manoeuvres’, while Cooper lurks quietly in the background.
Reminds me of Peter Cook saying something like 'I'm not being spoken to like that! I could have stayed at home and been shouted at'. Here's the pub landlord clip: https://youtu.be/jyoDJ1Fk47E?si=Uw5XwOylghhUCtAB
Thanks. Get aht my pub!
Starmer’s enforcer actually assaulted that man, a criminal offence. Judging by the poor quality haircut and cheap suit, he looks more like a freelance hired goon than SB. Maybe standards are slipping. Either way, of course, the police would have nil interest in a prosecution.
Just as well for the suited thug he was twice the landlord’s weight, because he did enough there to justify getting a punch in the jaw in self-defence. The late John Prescott would have known how to handle him…. Disgusting, really, but so typical of his type, that Starmer wouldn’t fight his own battles but used hired muscle instead, while sauntering off pretending nothing had happened.
I’ll tell you this, though: wherever he goes in Britain in public, now, for the rest of his life, Starmer’s going to need at least a pair of these crew-cut lumps on vigilant watch within 15 feet of him, or he’s likely to find himself covered in phleghm, minus his trousers and with his Y-fronts hauled over his head.
Alas, I fear that Sir Kier is as deaf as a post.
In a similar way to his predecessor Teflon Tony.
Stalin Starmer isn't deaf, he's happily doing as he's told by his masters who've promised him glory in their new world. That's far more important than pleasing powerless little British voters.
His head’s as wooden as his personality.
I’m pretty sure that some of the anger is directed at Starmer personally, partly because he is the embodiment of the disdain shown to working class people by the liberal elites, but also because of the stance he took and the language he used during the Southport riots. He dismissed any genuine anger and disgust at the massacre as the reaction of ‘far right’ thugs.
Earlier this year he continued in the same vein, criticising politicians who called for a judicial enquiry into the rape gangs as ‘jumping on a far right bandwagon’.
Whatever he may pretend now, with his ‘island of strangers’ rhetoric, his goose is already cooked.
I think that the lower middle/working classes have really woken up to the fact that absolutely no political party gives a damn about their lives now, or the futures they hope to give their children. We’ve had 40 or so years of promises that things “will only get better” or that they “get” us. It takes time to truly rile us, but the metropolitan elite have doggedly worked at doing so. What really worries me is in the absence of a credible political vehicle for redressing the balance in this country, where does that anger get channelled, as it will out.
As for Starmer’s response to the chants, that’s simple, we can expect new Prevent guidelines making anything other than full support of metropolitan elite’s agenda a sure sign of extremism.
Great piece as ever Paul but I don't hold out much hope that Starmer is prepared to 'listen' to anyone. He may have 'u turned' on the winter fuel payments but only, in my opinion, to finesse the means testing which he will use for god knows what else (NHS, State Pensions, Fuel prices, pay per mile etc...I know, dystopian stuff but I wouldn't rule anything out these days). The man, in my view is a peacock, vain, self important & convinced he's right (much as another well known peacock, Jolyon Maugham, is). The 'elite' are not interested in the poor sods slogging away in drab, lost, broken towns & communities, his plans are 'bigger' & 'better' than anything us plebeians could understand and as he 'knows' he's right, he'll believe that in the end we will tug our greasy, ignorant forelocks to him and be thankful that such a benevolent, long suffering, clever (totalitarian) 'leader' took 'control' and made our lives better.
Ps Prevent are about to make, or have made, questioning the sheer scale of immigration as a reason to add someone to their 'reprogramming' list. North Korea ring any bells!
Spot on as usual Paul, at least you've had some good years lately with Nuno and now the "Let's go down the pub" guy.
It's nice to know that football fans are able to speak for all of us in this land of free speech that is only for those who have sold their souls to the devil 👿 .
I expect the Rainbow FA and the Met will be sifting through the footage, reading lips, identifying faces from the England Supporters Club database. Banning Orders incoming…
Sorry Paul, I know you said not to ask, but I've got to mate. Why Wolves?
Hailing from Dagenham, I'd have expected either West Ham or Spurs (or 'The Daggers'.)
Sorry, but I'm intrigued.
I grew up a couple of stops from Upton Park, but I watched Match of the Day when I was five and fell in love with Wolves' old gold and black kit. It led to a lifelong love affair!
My brother also supported Wolves although we lived in North London. Like you, it was the gold and black kit!
My son, brought up in Essex, is a Newcastle fan for no other reason than the kit. His mother being from Sunderland, it was a cause of much merriment.
Having gone to a rugby playing school, I have never been interested in football and I genuinely find it boring to watch. That said, way back in 1967 when I was at primary school my worst enemy in the world professed himself to be a Chelsea fan. For the FA Cup Final that year I had, of course, to become a Spurs supporter. Ever since, it is the club I "support". The only time I have seen them live was away to Manchester City when I was on a police match commanders' course with GMP to qualify to command the policing of football games in my home force. I was in the police and fire control box way up in the gods. When Spurs put one over the bar I let out a yelp and every single person in the box turned and looked daggers at me. Then Spurs scored the sole goal and I did a little dance to yet more looks intended to kill. The Manchester Superintendent who was my host leaned in and said, "They are all City supporters working for free. I'm a United supporter and I f***ing hate coming here."
Ha, I actually get this. I also liked Wolves’s kit when I was young (and Blackpool and Luton). But liked Wwst Ham’s more, and at my age their players looked like Vikings (Bonds etc) so they got the nod for me.
Exactly. Why blokes (and it seems to be only men) support certain football teams is beyond my comprehension. For example, here in mid-Wales my ex-boss, a first language Welsh speaker and Plaid voter, is a fanatical supporter of Spurs, travelling to their matches as often as he can. My husband, born in the USA but raised in South Africa, supports Man U. Our son in Cape Town punts for West Ham (and of course is constantly in a state of disappointed frustration.) Our son-in-law in Johannesburg belongs to the Arsenal fan club in SA which apparently has thousands of members of all races. Ask them why and they can’t really say other than things such as ‘they always have’. On the other hand the female footie fans that I know of support their home teams. Can any of the chaps commenting here please enlighten us?
A dear friend, born and residing in the Welsh valleys, is an Arsenal fan with little interest in rugby.
It's often as Paul says because of the colours. I liked the West Ham colours and as a child I liked other teams in similar colours - which is why Hearts were always my favourite Scottish team.
(I often found that the girls would sometimes choose a team because of a good-looking star player!)
Yep same for me. First game I remember watching was the 76 Cup Final and I felt sorry for the team in red who lost. A lifelong bond was formed!
I shuddered when I heard Campbell and Mandleson were back on the scene.
About 20 years ago, I saw that malevolent lout Campbell jogging, slowly (i.e. c.4 mph) towards me down the canal towpath round Regents Park. He looked like death warmed up: severely asymmetrical gait, tortured face, gasping for breath. On that showing, frankly, I’m surprised he was still alive the next month, let alone now.
Where are Sadaam’s WMD, Alistair? The ones that could ‘hit Cyprus (?!) within 30 minutes!!’ One million Iraqi dead, plus 5,000 or so US and British servicemen KIA and a similar number maimed, Syria reduced to impoverished chaos and ISIS rule in a chain reaction, and we’re still waiting….
But hey, WGAF? The Wolfowitz Doctrine was advanced, Halliburton et al took the US debtpayer for another few $ trillion, ‘Sir’ John Scarlett got his KCMG and that’s what the game’s all about.
I
Remember when I was about to join the police in July 2001 and also had spent the 4 previous years canvassing for labour to be returned for a 2nd term
Jack straw had stood by ,while people had exploited Stephen Lawrence tragic murder snd police failings to justify their own anti white racism and anti police attitudes
Weaponising one form of racism, to justify another form of racism more recently being used to smear the left of the Labour party or those with legitimate criticisms of the Israel government) taking place now) and Jack Straw ignoring the low morale in the police had gone to the federation conference to say how happy everyone was in the police had received a slow hand clap at the federation conference
There was nothing I wanted more than a 2nd Labour term and bad publicity gif Labour wouldn’t have helped
But I thought as a Labour member I’d have give. Jack straw a slow hand clap even though I thought he’d find a good job in other areas
Forward to taking the knee at Foitball matches during BLM and the booing it got and A black lady Doninique Samuels said she’d have booed it as it was better to keep politics out of football
Remember the most political football match of all time ( Paul McCartney pipes if peace( Christmas Day works war 1 Germany and England stopped fighting in the French trenches had a truce and had a game of football that day
If they kept politics out of football we all can
Isnt the problem that the spaces in which we can take part in political comment / reflection / debate are being extinguished and in that void it's popping up in unusual places? What is a -supposed - democracy where we can't air and amend our views alongside our contemporaries? The politics on the terraces surely is also a symptom of growing government control of free speech - whether it's online censorship or the crushing of small scale businesses where people naturally crossed paths - pubs, market places, community centres and the extreme experiments / preparations during "lockdown". Bring on political debate wherever it can find a space I say
Yes! Banter in the pub is now suspect, and wolf whistling is viewed as harassment. Things just get worse and worse with regulations on hate speech and ‘ micro aggressions’. The regulation of informal speech in the public space is not ok!
10000 upticks Sylvie
Brilliant comment 👍
I read that the football terraces of Bilbao and Barcelona were the only 'safe' spaces Basques and Catalans could keep their language and traditions alive during the Franco era in Spain.
A simple point to be made. The fans are spot on and I loved the chant.
Hi Paul 👋
I do slightly disagree.
Until recently politics and football have been separate, once football (and other sports) embraced stonewalls "rainbow laces * campaign, embraced the anti semitic BLM movement which was prompted without anyone in the media/sport/ politics apparently reading thier manifesto or doing any basic research into them .when football fans started booing (rightly) the BLM movement they were called "racists " (the irony of anti semites accusing others of racism....) , remember when Wembley lite up it's arch in support of victims and countries of terrorist attacks, except Israel 🇮🇱....
Remember all the pundits and broadcasters that wore the "BLM " badges (while apparently against all racism) ? Compare that with the lack of pundits broadcasters that didn't wear the "bring them home " badge for the hostages kidnapped by terrorists hamas .
Football fans , like the electorate are not stupid.
Another well written piece Paul, I can actually 📸 you in the wolves home kit 😀
Ps I had no luck with mp over council tax , just parroted government policy , extra 1300 this financial year.