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This is England, not Europe and not even Britain. This is where we live now. So, if we’re not European and only tenuously British, we must be English. And we all know what that means. Don’t we? How do we usually answer this perennial question of identity: we’re tolerant? Fair minded? Play to the rules of the game? Something like that. Maybe. It is safe to say one of the most obvious characteristics of the English is, of course, moaning. We love to moan. We moan about the weather, the transport system, the government; anything, in fact, which is, safely, beyond our control. For 40 years we have moaned about the EU and now its gone we can moan about those who have taken us out of the EU. Although a convenient means of introducing polite conversation, breaking the ice between the insular and reticent individuals of our island, moaning also serves another, less attractive purpose, providing a comfortable and collective habit of avoiding responsibility for our own lives. A natural extension of moaning is blaming and there must always be someone to blame, usually some superior power-broker: the infamous They. Who ‘they’ are seems to shapeshift from one cliche to another, depending on the irritation; from devious, conspiratorial world movements (foreigners) to hapless, ‘establishment’ organisations (the government) so inept they fail to organise piss-ups in breweries or manage railways as well as failed dictators. It is, however, always someone else. Sometimes, however, the ‘They’ are us. There is some serious blaming going on now, a blood sport so serious it has broken free of its usual Twitter confines, spilling out into wider social life where the ‘They’ this time seems to be very clearly defined: they are, of course, the evil, opportunistic leaders and the miserable fools who followed them in taking us out of Europe. The Who here is unquestionably clear, we can see them exposed on Google, in the bright blue swathes covering the BBC map of betrayal. We can even explain and analyse the ‘logic’, the lies and the emotion with which they were lead to the point of no return: who would have thought the simple act of placing a cross on a ballot paper to have contained such seismic power? When has it ever felt so sexy, so dangerous? ‘Not like real politics, is it?’ So, on the regretful morning after, the data of a not so secret ballot located the culprits with some precision and the blaming could begin, as somehow, what the democratic majority should have considered a win felt like a loss. With industrial strength spite, the young could blame the old (‘Why don’t they just hurry up and die?’), the privately educated, the graduates of the local sink comp (‘See what happens when you let them vote?’), the cosmopolitan, liberal, PC London ‘elite’, the parochial, racist North, East and West (‘That remote no-go zone of Benefit land’). The blame victims, of course, could turn on the unscrupulous ‘House of Cards’ politicians, which the media could eagerly package and present as players in a tabloid Shakespearian tragedy. The leaders, in turn, could turn on each other. In this way we all have someone to blame and happily absolve ourselves of all responsibility: ‘It was them what did it.’ However, beneath it all, lies the anxiety of a shock of far greater significance then whether an island remains attached to its extended land mass. It’s a shocking awareness of how far this island is barely attached to itself. Let’s pause from blaming for a moment to think. Had the young turned out in force, the decision might well have swung in their favour. Taking responsibility and blaming themselves, however, is hardly on the agenda; it has to be the fault of someone else. Perhaps it is. Can we blame them for their political apathy when they, for the whole of their lives, have been cosseted by over-protective parents in a child-centred culture where everything is provided to ease their passage: protected from failure in school, shielded from ‘offensive’ speakers in university. Guarded from the threat of any real challenge, risk or danger, the debate carried on outside the bland soundtrack to their lives until, emerging from the soporific daydream of Adele and Coldplay, they awoke drowsily in the mud of the sanitised, corporate ‘adventure’ of Glastonbury to the shock of a another decision made on their behalf when it was too late to do anything about it So, what did they do? Blame their ‘selfish’ parents. Or their grandparents (many of whom in their own youth had energised a failing country through inventive and entrepreneurial enterprise, not only powering ‘Swinging’ England into the centre of the cultural world but doing so without the need for European assistance). Had the Etonian/Islington ‘intelligensia’ ever bothered to venture outside their comfortable London bubble to see their neighbours at close quarters rather than through the corrupt filter of Jeremy Kyle, they would have known what was in store when you offered ‘these proles’ not more call-centres and zero-hour contracts but the power of genuine democracy; had the South been less concerned with political correctness and more understanding of the conditions of those ‘racists’, those who actually live in the deprivation of migrant choked towns in that distant country called England, they might have seen the starkly obvious. Well, they’ve seen it now. Had the leadership acquired greater experience, greater life skills, greater knowledge of the people it was supposed to lead; had the whole debate been clarified by articulate adult speakers devoid of self-interest, so the public could be made fully aware of the arguments, unclouded by deceit, knowing exactly what their small cross would mean...we would probably be living in another country. This, however, is England. The time for excited debate has passed, the time of quiet moaning is nearly upon us. There should, however, be no time for dark pessimism. There’s no need for suicide. No need for murder. The economic fallout is less than the predicted Biblical destruction and the gain might be self definition. We may have left the heart of a genuine family of nations. We may have escaped the subtle imposition of a Soviet-style totalitarianism. Whatever. So what? It’s done. Time to move on and begin the real work of creating a new Jerusalem rather than remain wallowing in the Babylon this whole sorry business has exposed: a country more shambolic than its football team. If we are to avoid descending into self destruction we need a vision of who we are and how we move forward. We now have a fresh start, a new England and, like the opportunity offered to the first pioneers arriving on the shores of a new world, we should be thinking about what we can do rather than what has already been done. Its time to take responsibility. A new country requires a new leadership; one with compassion, strength and purpose, an Edgar calming the chaos of Lear in that original Game of Thrones; leadership with a vision naturally derived from greater life experience than career politics, which sees a world wider than Westminster and whose strategic planning involves more thought than the most acceptable PR move to gloss over a crisis until next Monday. ‘England’ could be a vision we saw in the collective spirit of Iceland in that other Euro conflict: players who know who they are and who they represent, working for each other with a controlled passion to systematically brush aside a rudderless England of lost and frozen souls, before passionately bonding with their support, as if that bonding was the whole point of the enterprise. There, you might have said, is Iceland; now, where is England? DG
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We’ve all seen them, we’ve all been to school, maybe even sat in their classes: the earnest, fragile, well meaning or merely arrogant middle class souls fresh out of ‘uni’, friend to all students and keen to change the world, for the first week; by the end of the second they have travelled up some Richter scale of mania, wide-eyed, out of control, tearfully screaming into gales of laughter as the previously calm, bright-eyed class (carefully selected for a probationary year) has transformed, lesson by inevitable lesson, into a feral zoo; one which, despite advice, support or psychological aid to their purse-lipped, palsied apprentice, fails to return to civilization until the broken, betrayed and irreparably scarred individual departs in search of another, less traumatic life. ‘Teach First’? Think first, would be better advice (then find a more suitable occupation). Where do these bruised and battered failures relocate when mercifully released from their duties: trauma wards? Library reception desks? A safe life in some quiet, safe space? Well, yes: private education. Unchallenged in this unchallenging, undemanding environment, trauma-soothed, they slip easily into the comfort zone of stress-free classes (15 undemanding, house-trained students) and just as easily, comfort slips into complacency. Surely, you’d think, this is a false tranquility; surely, they are descending into greater, less visible stress. Surely. Parents are paying for their child’s education so teachers would naturally be more accountable, be placed under greater scrutiny, greater pressure to produce the A grades already ‘bought and paid for.’ You’d think. How is it then we find many of these parents even more detached from the system than their comprehensive counterparts? Let’s look at a case study. Buckinghamshire (or ‘Bucks’) is an obvious example, high end home counties comfortland with a high percentage of thriving private schools, like Berkhamsted (or ‘Berko’), founded in 1541 and lying camouflaged as an ‘ancient pile’ with an ancient reputation in its woodland watershed. However, here’s a modern (guerilla) extension: alongside this profusion of private schools lies a corresponding host of private tutors, a symbiotic relationship spawning businesses and websites like ticks on a hippo, all working industriously (and unconsciously) to support the good name of the school. Why, you might be forgiven for asking, would parents pay extortionate fees for their children to attend these schools then happily (even desperately) pay all over again for private tuition? Interview any of these students for a half hour and the answer is clear: teaching in private education can be shockingly poor: dull lessons, little sense of progression, painfully limited feedback (the paltry ticks and comments on sparse pages of textbooks tell you there are few late nights for these ‘teachers’). Shocking, until you recall who might be doing this teaching. So, how do they get away with it? Why do parents (some, in fact, who can ill afford it, who sacrifice holidays and new cars on the alter of education) who would be more demanding of poor service in their local John Lewis; why do they pay and pay for a substandard product? Partly, it seems, as they have little evidence to make comparative judgements, they are paying for the name of the school and take the teachers at their word. However, the real answer lies in the position of education in the English consciousness (and perhaps why we continue to lie so low in educational world rankings). It is in the image of the private school as a source of social mobility, an institution in which the focus on academic achievement ranks lower than the promotion of self confidence and a file of contacts for later life. These privileged students, products of the monied system may often be inferior to their counterparts in the comprehensive sphere but they’ll never be allowed to feel it; ‘inferior’ has been deleted from their vocabulary, something which will become painfully clear when both attend the same interview. No, the ‘teaching’ in private schools occurs not in the classroom but outside, on the playing field, in the debating chamber, in the range of extra-curricular activities and positive reinforcement on offer. The impoverished level of academic teaching is compensated by private tutors (drawn, oh so ironically, from comprehensive schools) while the failures can bask in their protected safe rooms, taking an enthusiastic pride in the quality of their annual results, like real teachers, as if these results actually were their own achievement. DG Nostalgia these days, it’s not what it used to be. It’s quite possible no one under 30 can remember a time without computer games, mobile phones or the Premier League. So, here’s a short history lesson in football: In the old days your local club was your club, ‘part of the community’; if your community was a council estate. Your neighbourhood was an extension of your home and your birthright (or albatross) was your local club. No choice, mate. Family, innit. In fact, you were a ‘ponce’ to follow anyone else (or worse, Man Utd). On match days, you weren’t driven to the ground to sit in a ‘poncey’ stand, you strolled across the terraces as you would your estate (Lords of your manor), into fights and out again and even if you’d paid to get in, you’d still have change for the chippy on the way home. In the old days a manager was for life not just for Christmas; with only a basic squad of home grown players, he could turn a mediocre ‘second division’ club into European champions in a handful of years. So old were these old days, Chelsea were just such a club (Mourinho has obviously been trying to revive nostalgia in the Shed this year). In the old days, my club, Charlton Athletic were a genuine, rank-and-file football club. Now they are a business, not however dealing at Chelsea’s Tiffany end, more a Ratners market stall, with a range of short-term managers (3 this season alone), a policy of selling home grown players as soon as they’ve learned to drive, an owner who has visited the ground on only three occasions and a CEO (Belgian, female and a lawyer) happily ignorant of football, tradition and nostalgia. To this regime, football is just ‘another business’ and the fans are ‘customers’. ‘What do these weird people think’ asks the CEO ‘that they own the club?’ At Charlton, yes, they probably do. Charlton Athletic. Probably the only English club genuinely created (salvaged and recreated) by the fans for the fans. Fans who remember the homeless, wilderness years of the Eighties, suffering the dire, egotistical business decisions of another whimsical ‘CEO’ (his failing company actually called FADS); the home games at Selhurst Park, Upton Park (when Charlton Park and jumpers for goalposts seemed the next inevitable destination); fans who defied bankruptcy, campaigning week after week, year after year for a return ‘home’ to the Valley; in the midst of which, Lennie Lawrence’s heroic, annual battle to remain in the top division was the Homeric tale spanning four seasons. ‘Charlton survive again’ ran the trailer for the club video at the end of the decade ‘and this time do it in style’ (a 3-0 defeat of Derby in the final home game allowing the delirious luxury of losing to Forest the following week!). This painful, joyful history: the bankrupt notice, the exodus from the Valley (midway through a promotion winning season), the fight for the return, the defeat of Greenwich council, volunteers clearing the intervening years of weeds, weather and wreckage, rebuilding the stadium, making it happen; this is serious nostalgia, serious passion. The roar greeting Colin Walsh’s clinical strike against Portsmouth, Charlton’s first goal in the first game back at the Valley, echoing his namesake’s 1947 Cup Final winner, was the vocal essence of what it means to be a fan. Yes, these fans, more than most, have a right to feel they own ‘their’ club and will fight again when they feel (as they do now) it is being taken out of their hands. However, Is this CEO really so wrong? Isn’t she just stating a hard fact to face? Are the old days in the past? Football has, of course, been little more than a business for some time (ask FIFA); a ruthless business, where, despite the embarrassing flood of money from TV you can still charge £77 (‘cheap for opera tickets’) for ninety possibly mediocre minutes at Anfield. Has this business just moved on into a new dimension since Walsh’s goal? Has the day of the fan just disappeared? If so, what does it mean to be a customer in football today? I’m a customer with Eon but only because they’ve offered me the best deal on my gas and electric for the current year. I may well be with someone else next year. Could football operate a price comparison site? For a century clubs have depended on fan loyalty, the sort of loyalty that lasts a lifetime, they budget for it every year in the sale of season tickets; but when does this dependence become complacent abuse? What have these customers gained since the inception of the Premier League? Shelter (the popular end at Charlton was actually called The Covered End), seats out of the rain and real toilets replacing the old converted cattle troughs. Yes, clubs no longer treat fans like the working class animals of old, they are now middle class customers of a corporate enterprise. What, however, do they offer them; what is the real cost of this comfort, safety and dignity? Exclusion; the glass wall through which we are permitted to watch the millionaires at play. Football’s a serious business and we live in the capitalist world. They might wear the shirt, but fans don’t own the means of production (there isn’t even a John Lewis Partnership club). The greatest losers in this scenario, however, must be the new generation being formed within this clinical environment; priced out of the market, kids without wealthy connections can’t wander into games when they feel like it (unless on occasional schemes sounding like pedo bargain hunts: ‘Kids for a quid’). So their ‘local’ team is now the team in their front room at the weekend (alongside Strictly and the X Factor) and it’s a meagre ponce choice of the usual suspects: Chelsea, Man City or United, etc. Unless they somehow end up playing for a club, how will these young viewers ever develop a sense of connection of any real depth? Where then is football’s future fan base? Football will, of course, follow its Darwinian evolution. Those who can afford it will buy the Championship; it’s written into their budget and anything less will require an explanation to their shareholders. For the rest, despite the billionaire bubble of television money, survival is at the top of the agenda. In this future struggle they will need their fans. It’s a cliche from the old days but no less a truth: the fans rather than the game itself have made football what it is today. Without them it is nothing. Will I be the only fan in the country desperate to see Leicester and its passionate local support take the Premiership this year? I don’t think so. For the sake of football, we can only hope. DG I believe in Father Christmas.
Absurd? Ludicrous? Feebleminded? No, I’m not writing from a pre-school playgroup, nor some slow learner refuge; no, I have never seen him, his reindeer nor any of his workers; no, I have no evidence of his existence beyond the sleepy childhood memory of teethmarks in a homemade mince pie (which basic forensic investigation might identify as the imprint of my own father’s dentures); I have no explanation for how he and his legion of elves deal with the administration of their formidable annual correspondence in the face-tearing cold of the North Pole, managing almost unfailingly to produce and deliver the requested gifts to several billion of his followers with just a sleigh and a 24 hour window of opportunity (accessing chimneyless, securely alarmed properties without trace); I just believe. I am only too well aware of the snarling and the smug, the cynics who’ve rejected his love and his very existence. You ‘believe’?, they sneer, as if the question is enough in itself, hardly bothering to list their ‘overwhelming’ banks of evidence. Don’t be such an idiot. Don’t be such a child. Grow up. My belief, however, is relatively modest. Santa is just doing a good job well. He’s a model professional. I’m not claiming he can part the seas, walk on water, rise from the dead or has ever had any divine laws dictated to him by archangels. That would be insane. Yes, he has given in to commercial pressure over the years, swopping pagan green for Coca Cola red, inspiring some of the tackiest store sideshows, pedophile fantasies and the worst ‘family’ movies ever made; sponsorship, however, is the lifeblood of any growing business (and every charity is a business); how else could he satisfy his expanding numbers? It is hardly his fault if sometimes it’s difficult to police the franchise. In any case, who have his followers ever harmed? These are a priori innocents schooled in his disciplined teaching. Although no disciplinarian, his solitary lesson in deferred gratification, rewarding only good behaviour (assessed through an annual log of individual thought and action) provides restraint and self control in a grasping, chaotic world. His people are, therefore, good people; they don’t preach, they convert by example not belligerence. There are no slavish rituals, no extreme ceremonies: they neither starve themselves for weeks nor have any desire to consume his (rather bloated) body to be ‘one with him’. They’re not primitive savages. There is no history of abuse, no crusades, no jihad, no ‘justified’ massacres of those cynical unbelievers; just the warmth of human kindness, joy and celebration. So, call me what you like, I believe in Father Christmas. Where’s the harm in that? DG A recent minor illness confined me to the sofa and more TV than my doctor might have prescribed (everything from the calming liquid geometry of snooker to the grubby Sophie Raworth lookalike, Saga, traversing the excellent Bridge). Don’t try this at home, might be the sound medical advice for avoiding depression; however, although the experience is disablingly passive (if you’re not a TV critic) it can be enlightening, particularly for students of female body language. If Cameron is really committed to shutting down free porn, forcing the ‘working class’ to purchase their pleasure with tax credits, mainstream TV, it seems, is doing its bit to compensate. From the extraordinary daytime 1,000 Heartbeats in which (I kid you not) contestants confronting tasks of mental dexterity have to control the rate of their heartbeat while distracted by a female string quartet who seem to be wearing nothing below the waist but six inch heels, to the competitive soft porn leg show of the Emilys and Allegras in the low lit, post-watershed Newsnight studio, sex, it seems, has its hand up the short, tight skirt of ratings. Nice...but how do they get away with it? You might well ask (if you’re not too distracted). Where is the usual Feminist fuss? Well, surprisingly alive and transforming into something far more confident and assertive (and pleasing on the eye) in the guise of the ‘New Women.’ New Women are Feminists comfortable with their sexuality. Old (style) Feminists (we can’t call them ‘Old Women’), having discarded their 70s boiler suits, were for a while content to ‘power dress’ in sober masculine (even trouser) suits (imitating the men they hoped to usurp); now those suits, seen occasionally in old footage, look distinctly Old Skool. Female anchors, seated behind the false modesty of low level coffee tables, have been scene stealing from their male counterparts for years with the flirtatious crossed-leg, ‘unconscious’ knee reveal. Now the table has been whipped away and the whole operation has moved to another level. Invigorating as this may be to a sick man confined to his sofa, it does suggest something more socially significant (maybe even sinister) about the language of the body. While the coronary-inducing quartet of Heartbeats are in the business of light entertainment, the ‘serious journalists’ are among the growing percentage of those women who demand rather than expect to be taken seriously. Yet, clearly they see nothing inappropriate in their choice of presentation (we assume the choice is theirs, although the, presumably male, producer is always ready to provide ever more accommodating viewing angles). So the question arises: What is their motivation? The release of a long suppressed desire to be the popular bad girl at the back of the class? Overcompensation for years spent in the late night library of the Head Girl syndrome? Maybe some visual empathy with the plight of prostitution? (Real prostitutes, ironically, invited on to TV, invariably dress as if in court, like Amish-smart conservatives.) Could it be we are witnessing a new confidence in the new Feminist, whose real business is intimidation and control? The answer might lie in the even more intriguing lack of any visible reaction in the studio, where everyone behaves as if it is entirely natural to see an intelligent, Oxbridge-educated Milf presenter discuss the false dawn of an economic upturn or grill a politician on his part in the demise of the NHS, dressed as if she’s in the endgame of a hot date, skirt riding several inches up her crossed thighs, daring the interviewee (and viewer) to notice anything incongruous in the situation. Did she dress like this for her job interview, you wonder. Far from failing to take her seriously (like Old Skool males), however, the men on camera unanimously ignore the goods in front of them, keeping their eyes determinedly straight ahead, cowed perhaps (they can’t all be homosexual) by the vision of Twitter storms, crashing careers and lost lives risked on a raised eyebrow, an innocent glance or a spontaneous smile; which makes bedroom attire, I suppose, a usefully unsettling tactic in some political arenas. As a sofa bound patient, I’m hardly complaining (although I’m not the father of teenage girls) but I’m looking forward to the interview one of these half-dressed Emilys conducts (in basque, stockings and heels?) with the author of a report on rape culture. DG It’s a funny old game, was the catchphrase of Jimmy Greaves, the 1960s free-scoring legend turned ‘pundit’ in the early days of televised football, one half of the ‘comedy’ duo ‘Saint and Greavsie’. Think of Ant and Dec on an uninspired, tiresome day in the jungle (quite a regular event at this stage in their career): Greavsie’s lame, obvious one-liners accompanied by 30 grueling seconds (so it seemed) of the Saint’s laboured laughter. Top class players indulged and living off their reputations in sport. They were top class players, they weren’t expected to be top class comedians.
The recent furore over Tyson Fury suggests we expect so much more of our sportsmen today. They have to be role models. In public life. To be outstanding models of excellence in their own sport is not enough. They must exhibit some form of purity of the human spirit seen nowhere else in society. They must be genuine all round Hollywood heroes (or at least inoffensive to those so willingly sensitive to offense). They must be Jesus Christ among the Pharisees. They must be gods. If this is what we expect of those who have spent their formative years devoted to the systematic destruction of heavy bags and sparring partners, what then might we expect of those whose job it is to deal in diplomatic discussion, those we elect to make the laws on our behalf? Surely these must be the most severely judged of all our role models. In the same week as Fury relentlessly held the front pages and thousands were signing up to have him removed from the Sports Personality of the Year (a BBC institution even older and more tedious than Wogan), the scandal of an unknown MP was buried so far into the depths of the same papers only those seeking out crosswords and horoscopes would have found her name. The scandal? She falsified an email (objecting to her decision to vote for the bombing of Syria) from one of the people she represents, adding words which turned an unwisely vigorous expression of an alternative view into a death threat; before reporting this ‘threat’ to Scotland Yard. Fortunately for the constituent he had the evidence of his original copy. Manipulative? Lacking sound judgement? Criminal? Or just plain stupid? Surely, whatever your position, for an MP it has to be an act which requires instant dismissal; if anyone knows about it. Somehow a gaggle of editors judged this misdemeanor to be so far down the scale of public interest, few even now can remember the MPs name. The fact that Lucy Allan was a woman and a Conservative in a marginal seat, highly vulnerable to any hasty by-election conducted during a heightened wave of Corbynism, had, of course, nothing to do with it. This is our world today. An immoral and criminal act carried out by someone who might in the future be constructing laws to govern our behaviour (and possibly our freedom) is seen as nothing in the face of a few casual comments from an uneducated boxer, indistinguishable from those heard in any bar throughout the country on any day of the week. Ironically (if irony still exists in this world), Fury’s attention-seeking antics will continue to sell more seats; Boxing has always courted the world of Show Business, where no publicity is bad publicity. And no publicity has helped keep Lucy Allan (or Alan Lucie or whoever) off the radar, preserving the career she would have lost, not through any moral judgement but merely the embarrassment of exposure. It’s a game, all right; but funny? I’ll leave that up to you. DG |
