Phillipe Scolari
Thank God the FA haven't offered the job to Mclaren or Curbishley. It might be seen as a vote of no confidence in our own managers but the alternative would have spelled dismal performances and no trophies. True, Scolari's success with Brazil at the last World Cup can be countered with Gary Lineker's argument - "even my nan could probably have steered Brazil to World Cup success" - but at least he will inject something new into England. Mclaren would certainly have engineered yet more of the same. The quarter finals will not be enough to satiate the appetites of England fans.
Should the FA have pursued Wenger? It's highly unlikely he would have acquiesced. He's been in the country long enough to have this mythical "connection" with the English game that people like Lineker and Harry Redknapp bleat on about. But the flipside of that is he has seen firsthand the intense spotlight England manger's lives are subjected to. Who knows? Perhaps the reputation of the British media might yet deter Scolari from accepting a role he would otherwise almost certainly relish.
To my mind, there is one man above all else who possesses the necessary skill, knowledge of the English game, and armour plated ego thick enough to withstand any tabloid assault on his character. But we Brits don't really like winners. We secretly hanker for noble men-of-the-people, capturing hearts but never the elusive trophy. Much more important he display that humble attitude, so graceful in defeat, than he display the indigenous killer instinct so sorely missed by the current England squad.
No, we'd never accept a man like Jose Mourinho, we'd rather carry on as we are thanks.
A humble piece of the criminal pie.
Kingston upon Thames is apparently the borough which saw the highest level of bicycle theft last year. While applauding the boroughs residents on their achievement of this dubious honour, I feel I should stake my claim for a share of the accolade.
Late one night after visiting my mate who lived in the borough, I had decided I didn't much fancy staying in his flat until the morning. My drunken wisdom told me it would be much better to steal a bike from the row of them chained up in the shed round the back of the building and cycle home. Problem was, most of the locks didn't look like breaking when pulled (surprisingly) and in fact the only one that did belonged to a complete piece of junk with no tyres. Worse, it was the sort of old fashioned bike you might see a granny riding. Memory is a bit hazy, but if it didn't have one of those little baskets on the front of the handlebars, it should have had one.
Unperturbed, I yanked the bike from its harness and saddled up, realising it was quite small, a fact not helped by the absence of inflated rubber around the wheel frames. In all honesty, the ridiculously long journey home might have been shorter if a sober person had walked it, as I spent as much time zig zagging off course as I did moving forward in a straight line. It was a painful journey, and the lack of tyres made it very hard to actually make the thing move, which would have been more obvious to me in any other situation.
For a while, the police followed me. Trailing along on the road beside me they might have looked like curb crawlers with a bizarre interest in drunken bike thiefs if their car wasn't covered in neon. Bet they had a right laugh though, I would have done. So anyway, if you're the granny or young person with suspiciously pensioneresque taste in wheeled transport affected by my dreadful crime - cheers for the bike.
Dangerously subversive dad.
Occasionally perusing the world of blogging can throw up some real gems, such as
this one from the Philippines. Then other times I come across bloggers so vile I wish I could reach through the screen and out of theirs, and smash their stupid faces in. So without any further ado let me introduce
Dangerously Subversive Dad - the link is to just one of his venemous diatribes, entitled Invasion of the grey criminals, in which his initially reasoned argument against the BBC's depiction of non-white criminals degenerates into thinly veiled racist rage.
Suggesting black on white racist crimes have become so prominent they are now "run of the mill", DSD bemoans how, if a white on black racist crime were ever to take place (don't think it actually does in his world - he asks his reader to "imagine" it happening, having no examples of such cases himself, despite a ready supply of examples of black on white crimes to hand) it would be all over the papers. What a national ignominy this is, when the hordes of black rapists and thugs are allowed to carry on savaging the poor English every day in their own land.
Reading the comments readers have left in reply to this piece of sage political observation, it becomes clear what type of animal DSD caters for. Hoping for at least one response from a non-racist lunatic, I read on in vain. Dave said that black on white crime "doesn't bother (him) as much", because, the dim-witted brutes, they "attack each other as much." Ah yes, the old black on black crime. They're all a bunch of violent thugs. Thick. If only they could learn from the example of the excessively peaceful white man, who is never to be seen committing acts of violence against his own.
DSD sympathises with Dave's worries about English political correctness, though. The English, he enthuses, "aren't ALLOWED to protect our own".
"If whitey so much as looks funny at anyone who isnt whitey in this country -
especially a Muslim - whitey finds himself inside a prison cell on hate crime
charges."
Obviously any non-whites are not considered English by DSD.
Last but by no means least, a scumbag going by the name No Mercy rants about the Muslim pollution in Berlin, and finishes thus:
"Muslims are like locusts and they have to be treaten (sic) like locusts!The answer is
not 42 but Gas."
I did type a little response of my own, but DSD employs comment moderation, and judging by that last comment, it's clear he maintains meticulous scruples when deciding which comments be published and which not. So perhaps my reply will not scrape through the net.
Update: Well in response, it has to be said DSD comes across different second time around. It's only fair to reproduce his words here, as I have seen fit to attack him.
"All the post was about is arguing for equality of reporting and prosecution -
no special treatment for ethnic and/or religious minorities. None at all. That's
ACTUAL equality old boy, as opposed to the 'only whitey is racist' nonsense you
think is anti-racism. I'm sorry if its not to your liking.And for the record, as
far as I presnally am concerned ANYONE born in England who wants to regard
themselves as English, is English. Anyone who legally enters this country and is
willing to abide by its laws and respect its culture, is English to me. But
anyone who wants to reserve the right to live in my country but still only obey
their own 'cultural laws' like subjugation of women, murderous homophobia, rabid racism and anti-semitism can fuck off because they are NOT English."
As with everyone coming from your angle, DSD, you simply assume that anybody who expresses absolute disgust at the suggestion of gassing Muslims is some sort of "phoney anti-racist" who doesn't think that a black man murdering a white man should be punished. Couldn't be further from the truth. It is not the shrouding over of inconvenient realities I seek in order to push some political motive (an inconvenient reality for you though seems to be that white people do attack blacks too). I can't deny there are some so eager to stamp out the racism they see they become blind to racism on the part of those they have designated as victims. But to use those people as some sort of easy get out clause enabling the instant dismissal of any anti-racist thought (which doesn't include poor whitey playing the victim) is unacceptable.
You also cite your experience of growing up in a very Asian area of NW London, how you have seen all the "stick it to the white boy" stuff for yourself. I also reside in London, a very multiracial area south of the river, and have also in my time seen racism on the part of non-whites, as well as on the part of whites. Your calls for equality are in fact reasonable, as far as you bother to take them. But for all the racism you or I have seen in the schools, streets, pubs, etc, I can think of an area where I have seen more racism than any of these put together.
The workplace frequently provides the perfect breeding ground for racism. In the workplace I have often witnessed overt exploitation of non-whites, such as constantly giving them the most menial jobs to do. Worse still is the refusal to employ non-whites, I have seen many turn up on the same bus as me to do the same job, but not come back the next day, when the supervisor shares a joke with us about how he didn't want any coons working in his factory.
Perhaps when these very real social conditions change, and the equality that you hunger for really does take hold, then ethnic minorities will begin to reap the benefits of an equal standing in British society. And if that ever happened, then maybe there would be less of those examples of anti-white feeling that you are rightly angered by.
Monday musings. Of empire and commerce.
It has been argued that globalisation is a force for good. The consumer allegedly gets better products at cheaper prices, and can always find a McDonalds when faced with eating some fowl concoction cooked up by the locals when on holiday (insert symbol denoting irony here). But the real achievement of globalisation that its chief advocates celebrate is its conquering of the nation state. Corporate dynasties now command much more revenue than many countries, and demand the loyalty of their subjects, who may come from anywhere across the world. The national sovereignties on which human society has based itself for so long are becoming defunct.
It could hardly be argued that transnational commerce is a new development, obviously. The crossing of borders in search of profit has been going on since recorded history began. But until the 1970s any company that had factories and markets overseas viewed them as adjuncts to their home operations. It was during that decade the big businesses, overwhelmingly American of course, began to visualise the entire world as a single economic unit. Charles. P. Kindenberger, one of the leading US authorities on global economics of that time, suggested the international corporation had "no country to which it owed more loyalty than the other, nor any country where it feels completely at home."
So theoretically, all would be equal in this new world of the Great Market. Regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality and so on, all would enjoy equal standing in the eyes of the corporate gods. A twisted yet somehow noble veneer almost emerges, before the reality check hits you between the eyes and you wise up to the facts.
The nation state is said to be outdated, made obselete chiefly by technological progress and economic developments which have seen companies like Exxon and Microsoft gain much more muscle in the global market place than many countries. But if "down with borders" was once the call of ideological students, Lennoned-up and seeking peace and love, did they really envision swapping national identity for a homogenous, centralised existence devoid of character, dictated by those with enough money to buy control of their lives?
And in these days of ferocious US imperialism, when the PNAC manifesto sears itself across the Earth, who really believes that the mass Americanisation of the global market place has been intended to aid the progress of all men as equals, rather than the progress of American interests above all else? Man has always sought to control his surroundings. From Alexander the Great and Attila the Hun to the British Empire and Hitler, the use of military force has been seen as the most effective means of achieving this dominance. Invariably though military strength alone has always eventually failed. The introduction of the One Great Market, under the false guise as liberator of man from his "outdated" nation state may well have been the breakthrough in the eternal pursuit of hegemony. Although breaking down those national borders may have been the dream of the naive ideologists of the past, they have long since woken up from their LSD induced dream world, and are faced with the reality of an entire world of unique cultures and traditions being swallowed up by the most virulent and effective empire the world has yet seen.
But what can be done? The world cannot be expected to step back into its pre-Ipod, Pre-Walmart existence. The path of the human race will not retrace upon itself any more than the teenager will give up his/her eighth of skunk and go back to spending pocket money on penny sweets. As usual there are no simple solutions, but identity-preserving measures need to be taken. Faced with the option of hanging out with the bad crowd, skipping school and smoking weed all day instead, we need to take control of our destiny, focus on the things that matter and work towards achieving them. And keep the weed smoking down to a minimum.
