Margaret Forrester and the real reason for her ‘dismissal’
02 Jun 2012 1 Comment
in Current Affairs, Opinions, Politics
A story that rather tickled my fancy this week was that of Margaret Forrester, who is taking legal action against the NHS after her ‘dismissal’ for handing a virulently anti-abortion pamphlet to one of her colleagues.
My first response to this was that it seemed a bit harsh. Whilst I may violently disagree with Forrester’s views on abortion I am also pretty clear in my own mind that people shouldn’t lose their jobs because they hold and state views that other people find objectionable. There are plenty of cases of the NHS silencing dissent, people with views outside of the ‘mainstream’ and whistleblowers, and it’s a trend that will only get more pronounced now that privatization is proceeding apace.
However I dug a little deeper. This paragraph in the Telegraph article was actually quite telling, although I didn’t realise it on first inspection:
“The ultimate reason for her dismissal was her refusal to work in a new role in a different mental health team, which her lawyers say involved demeaning tasks.”
She wasn’t sacked as such. She was given another job but she didn’t like it.
This piece over at the excellent site Ministry of Truth provides a lot of useful background of what is actually going on in this case, and the reality of what Forrester wished to use her job to do. It would be quite irresponsible to allow her to continue to spread her obnoxious message to women who are under enough stress and pressure as it is. It is probably not an exaggeration to argue that Forrester was abusing her position to push an agenda that is immoral, unscientific and an outrageous breach of her profession’s ethics. It wasn’t an issue with her views on abortion, it was her previous attempts to propagate those views and the reasonable suspicion that she would use her job to do so. Considering the sensitivities involved, what else could they do other than re-deploy her?
Forrester was only finally dismissed when she refused to perform the duties of her new role and her trust had its hand forced. Forrester obviously wished to make herself a martyr. So the truth is rather more nuanced than the Telegraph report suggested. Why am I not surprised?
Forrester’s dismissal of course is exactly the sort of story that the Telegraph loves as it allows them to attack the NHS, the pro-choice movement and the ‘liberal elite’ that they argue (but surely don’t believe) is tyrannizing the good folk of Britain with their ‘cultural Marxism’.
Forrester herself clearly has a wider agenda, and it’s a pretty scary one. Whenever religion gets involved in the public sphere the effect is always a messy one, and it is the anti-abortion lobby that is violently ‘totalitarian’.
I still don’t get why people in these people in the anti-abortion lobby get so teary-eyed about unborn foetuses when those very same people are usually criminally indifferent to the fate of those who are actually alive but are having a hard time. It’s very bizarre and extremely inconsistent, and no one on the mouth-foaming right ever even tries to justify it.
And of course what this little story goes to show is that one has to be immediately suspicious of any story like this that appears in the right-wing press. Very occasionally they may have a point or be on to something but invariably they are manipulating the facts to suit their agenda.
If the Telegraph really want to investigate serious wrong-doing the NHS, why don’t they devote their not inconsiderable resources to exploring the practical effects of NHS privatization and the people who will be getting their greasy little maulers over heaps of taxpayers money whilst delivering worse services?
Euro 2012: 6 lesser-known players to watch
01 Jun 2012 Leave a Comment
In today’s global game, there are few secrets to be discovered from tournaments such as this summer’s. Europe’s finest young prospects are common knowledge and the likes of Mario Gotze, Christian Eriksen and Yann M’Vila need not star in major tournaments before awareness of their potential becomes commonplace. As such, instead of profiling the top tier of the continent’s burgeoning stars, The Mambo has chosen to highlight those perhaps less vaunted outside of their native lands but who nonetheless boast the ability to become mainstays of their respective national sides for years to come, as well as maybe illuminating the forthcoming championships in Poland and Ukraine.
(Youtube compilations have been included; apologies for the universally awful choice of music sadly featured. Such montages are of course, hugely flawed ways of gauging a player’s talent and the fondness of those who make them to insist on endless replays of often pointless ‘tricks’ is hugely irritating but we have tried to select those which have not indulged in such futile exercises. Anyway, they are there for anyone interested).
In recent years, the Poles have hardly been known for nurturing creative talent and have instead produced functional, largely dour international sides which made their automatic qualification for Euro 2012 as co-hosts a somewhat underwhelming prospect for The Mambo. However, with buccaneering right-back Lukasz Piszczek, quicksilver (if limited) winger Jakub Blaszczykowski and especially, the goals of classy striker Robert Lewandowski fundamental to Borussia Dortmund’s retention of their Bundesliga crown, hope abounds that the Poles may prove a less prosaic proposition this summer.
Still, it is perhaps Legia Warsaw’s teenage trequartista Rafal Wolski that has the greatest potential to excite. With just a solitary full season of senior football behind him, Wolski is nevertheless being hailed as his nation’s greatest talent since the emergence of Zbigniew Boniek in the 1970s. Just as Boniek would go onto star in Serie A for Juventus, Wolski’s imminent departure from Poland’s Ekstraklasa seems inevitable, with Dortmund unsurprisingly said to be heading the queue of suitors, as they seek to replace the Old Trafford-bound Shinji Kagawa.
Despite his confidence, imagination and exceptional technical skills, Wolski’s natural position as the central creator in Poland’s 4-2-3-1 will likely be occupied by French-born schemer Ludovic Obraniak. Instead, as a 19 year-old whose international bow came only this month, Wolski will consequently have to console himself with a role cutting in from the left of his team’s attacking trident or hope to make an impact from the bench. Regardless, Wolski has the skill and momentum to force Europe into taking note of his remarkable talent in the coming month, even if he may be forced into remaining patient before taking centre stage.
Much like Oleg Blokhin and Andriy Shevchenko, the most illustrious of his club’s alumni, Andriy Yarmolenko is a lightning-fast, technically-proficient forward who boasts a prolific goal-scoring record. Of course, the 22 year-old Dynamo Kyiv left winger-cum-striker has some way to go before justifying such comparisons, yet 8 goals from 19 international appearances offer encouraging evidence of his ability to exist alongside such exalted company. Sharp and skillful yet simultaneously rugged and industrious, Yarmolenko spearheads a richly promising Ukrainian generation that also numbers possible breakout stars in the rugged yet refined stopper Yaroslav Rakitskyi, clever midfield all-rounder Denys Harmash and wonderfully gifted winger Yevhen Konoplyanka.
Although a regular member of Lokomotiv Moscow’s squad for the past 4 seasons, attacking midfielder Denis Glushakov can be seen as something of a late-bloomer. Now 25, it is only over the past season that the Russian has complimented his tidy playmaking with a steady flow of (often spectacular) goals, with his haul of 11 strikes providing a portfolio of pearlers that even Matt Le Tissier would be proud of. Zenit’s title-winning midfield triumvirate of Roman Shirokov, Igor Denisov and Konstantin Zyryanov will perhaps see Glushakov’s game time restricted but if given the opportunity to add to his 9 caps, his awareness and delightfully clean ball-striking certainly provide intent to impress.
The Czechs have long struggled to replace the generation of Tomas Rosicky, Petr Cech, Milan Baros and Jaroslav Plasil, so with the current squad still heavily reliant on such veterans, even reaching this summer’s championships must be viewed as a success. Indeed, with the careers of much-vaunted prospects such as Tomas Necid and Vaclav Kadlec stalling, the nation will be expecting such of talented winger Vaclav Pilar. Quick, skillful and at his best cutting onto his strong right foot from the left, the diminutive Pilar was part of the Viktoria Plzen side that surprisingly reached the Champions’ League group phase, where his performances earned him not only international recognition but also a move the German Bundesliga, where he will join Felix Magath’s swelling squad of youthful foreigners at Wolfsburg next season.
Sadly for Luuk De Jong, the Dutch are not short of striking options. Most countries would dearly love to call upon a 21 year-old striker who ended the campaign with 32 goals to his name yet for De Jong, the more established Robin van Persie and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar also travel to Eastern Europe having enjoyed the finest seasons of their respective careers (and in more competitive leagues). Still, Swiss-born De Jong is a 6ft 2in target man with exceptional aerial ability, allied to customary Dutch technical assurance whose natural finishing ability has long since marked him out as an outstanding prospect and consequently, has all the attributes required to leave an impression this summer should he called upon. Irrespective of opportunities for his country, De Jong is likely to have played his final game for FC Twente with a move to more prestigious surroundings all but inevitable. Older brother Siem, an Ajax midfielder with a keen eye for goal, is also a Dutch international but has not made the squad for Poland and Ukraine.
Similar competition may also stifle the impact of PSV Eindhoven playmaker Kevin Strootman. Robust and tactically astute, the 22 year-old also possesses great range in his astute left-footed passing and is another unlikely to remain much longer in the Dutch Eredivisie.
Once hailed amongst the continent’s most precocious talents when making his Panathinaikos debut aged only 16 before going onto to become the club’s youngest-ever captain at 18, Ninis for all his talent, has nonetheless failed to maintain such an impressive career trajectory. Despite being born in a Greek-speaking enclave of Albania, Ninis’ subtlety and close-control will be fundamental in to an otherwise functional, negative Greece’s hopes of escaping their group. Recent seasons however, have seen Ninis succumb to a series of injuries, the latest of which sidelined him from September through to March. Nevertheless, doubts about the 22 year-old’s physical frailty are clearly not shared by Serie A club Parma, who perhaps buoyed by the glorious form of the equally-Lilliputian Sebastian Giovinco, have agreed a deal bringing Ninis to Italy for the start of next season.
Another worthy of note in Greece’s squad is Ioannis Fetfatzidis, whose left-footed class and adolescent diagnosis with a growth hormone deficiency have drawn parallels with Lionel Messi. Such comparisons are of course ludicrous, particularly as the young winger often starts games for both his club, Olympiakos and country from the bench, though nevertheless, Fetfatzidis’ clever dribbling and eye for the spectacular could prove an interesting option for manager Fernando Santos.
DC
Notes on the Syrian piece I have just re-blogged
30 May 2012 1 Comment
The piece I have just re-blogged is something I just spotted over at Shiraz Socialist.
I have deliberately not said anything about Syria and the alleged massacres in recent days as to be honest I haven’t really known what to say. If the media reports are true then the regime has been responsible for the most evil atrocity and even if they were guilty of this one act and none of the others they are probably responsible for over the last couple of years then they still need to go/be got rid of. It was an act of calculated, cold-hearted wickedness to slaughter people in that way and the world is right to be up in arms about it.
I’ve discussed previously my concerns about the left putting a minus wherever the American or British government puts a plus and vice versa, but that said I’m still highly dubious about what direct intervention in Syria would accomplish. I remain unconvinced that the conflict in Libya was the great success that it is being painted as and some of the accounts that are coming out of the country are a little troubling, to put it mildly. The triumphalism in some quarters when Gaddafi fell seems a little misplaced. It’s a good thing he’s gone (although he should have been put on trial and not murdered) but the degeneration of the ‘revolution’ into brutal tribal conflict and warlordism is a real danger and there is no guarantee that the bloodshed is even close to being over.
It sounds like a bit of a cop-out I’m sure, but I really think the left outside of Syria needs to listen to what leftists actually based in the country are saying and offer as much support (even though most of it can only be moral) as possible. I wouldn’t dare lecture Syrian leftists being shot at or massacred by the Assad regime on my own particular theory of ‘imperialism’, which is what some seem to think is a serious policy. Real human lives are not expendable in the left’s quest, which is always undertaken vicariously as they aren’t in a position to do it themselves, to defeat the ‘evil empire’.
During crises like this one, one often sees how out of touch many sections of the British left are. They try and apply their abstract principles and theories on international questions to reality and the reality usually doesn’t fit. So they ignore reality and dismiss out of hand the experiences of the people on the ground. It is dreadful, cowardly, schoolboy politics.
The Stop The War Coalition have done some very good work over the years but they are wrong to be acting as de facto cheerleaders for Assad. I’m sure their reasons for doing so are often perfectly noble but they are seriously mistaken. The Syrian ruler (who is essentially a monarch) and his cronies are demonstrably no friends of the left, in exactly the same way that Saddam Hussain clearly wasn’t. The fact that right now the Assad regime is in the crosshairs of some Western governments doesn’t mean that it has suddenly been endowed with progressive credentials.
There is a bit of a discussion going on at David Osler’s blog that some of you may find vaguely interesting. Many of the contributions are rubbish but a few interesting points have been raised. If anyone has another opinion either way, then obviously use the comments box below!
Open letter to the Stop the War Coalition (STWC), or real solidarity is needed!
30 May 2012 Leave a Comment
On 15 March 2012, the Syrian revolution “celebrated” its first year with more killings and repression. The death at this date toll in the regime crackdown has exceeded 10,000 martyrs, while there are more than 35,000 injured, over 65,000 missing and more than 212,000 prisoners. The regime’s repression has continued since then.
The determination of the Syrians in their struggle against this criminal dictatorship is nevertheless doubted by some left-wing currents around the world, and even among some comrades in the Stop the War Coalition who have even been relaying the Syrian regime propaganda.
“We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes…”
29 May 2012 3 Comments
in Current Affairs, Individuals worthy of contempt, Opinions, Politics
Christine Lagarde was asked for her reaction to being denounced for a second successive day by the Mambo. She said that “DC was an amazing writer but he just didn’t produce enough articles”. Asked if that wasn’t a slightly tangential point to be making, she apparently told the reporter to “swivel”.
I’m sure I’m slightly prone to hyperbole on occasions when writing short opinion pieces for this blog. But I can honestly say reading that Christine Lagarde doesn’t pay any tax on her salary literally left me speechless for several minutes. I couldn’t believe what was in front of me on the screen.
I honestly didn’t think anything could top the head of the International Monetary Fund using the same uninformed rhetorical tactics as the racist pub bore that we all know and despise. But finding out about Lagarde’s tax affairs well and truly put the tin hat on what I discussed yesterday.
I e-mailed my dad (an even more cynical man than I) about it and he thought it was absolutely hilarious. And there is a degree to which it is just funny that Lagarde can berate a whole nation (wrongly) for evading tax when she doesn’t even pay any tax on her own immense (and grossly over-inflated) salary.
But there’s also a degree to which it just isn’t funny. It’s incredibly irritating that the head of the IMF has the nerve to say these things. The sheer hypocrisy of Lagarde is truly breathtaking. It betrays a lack of self-awareness that you normally only find in children and psychopaths.
It’s difficult to imagine the kind of social conditioning that one would have to receive over a period of years at a time to think that it is ok to so publicly and shamelessly denounce people for not doing something that one doesn’t do oneself.
But that’s what it is, I’m sure.
She is surrounded by people who behave that way and are constantly telling themselves that they are special, different to the rest of us mere mortals and after a while I’m sure they start to believe it. In fact I’m sure they need to in order to get to where they are and stay there.
Even a moment’s contemplation of the havoc that the IMF has wreaked on millions of lives over the years would lead anyone with even the weakest moral compass to conclude that it is untenable to be in their employ.
So Lagarde and her mates have presumably managed to just switch that section of their brains off.
I’m sure Lagarde hasn’t even the slightest inkling of how grossly offensive and hypocritical her comments and actions are to most of the people reading or hearing about them. I’m sure she genuinely thinks that she is entitled to be judged by different standards to the other 99.9% of the world’s population.
We have an international ruling elite of financiers, bankers and politicians that are increasingly above the law and what is more think they deserve to be above the law. To the likes of Lagarde mundane exercises like paying one’s taxes are inconveniences that are beneath her. That’s something that only the little people should have to do.
If you needed a simple demonstration of how irrational and immoral the modern capitalist system we’ve created is, then this would be it.
The arrogance of Christine Lagarde
28 May 2012 3 Comments
in Current Affairs, Individuals worthy of contempt, Opinions, Politics
Upon hearing that the Mambo had decided to say some mean things about her, Christine Lagarde’s response was surprisingly juvenile. A senior IMF official was quoted as saying: “the difficulty is that Representing the Mambo is by far the best website ever. So when we get criticised in it’s hallowed pages, most of us just fucking listen. Christine just gets moody though.”
A quick scan through Christine Lagarde’s Wikipedia page reveals a formidable, extremely successful woman.
She also appears to be as thick as pigshit.
A controversial statement? Maybe.
But that can be the only possible explanation of her surreal attack on the entire population of Greece a few days ago, one that has quite rightly prompted fury and criticism across the Greek political spectrum.
Apparently Greeks are all tax-dodgers and she has no sympathy for those suffering the effects of austerity, according to the IMF’s resident genius Lagarde:
“I think more of the little kids from a school in a little village in Niger who get teaching two hours a day, sharing one chair for three of them, and who are very keen to get an education. I have them in my mind all the time. Because I think they need even more help than the people in Athens……..Do you know what? As far as Athens is concerned, I also think about all those people who are trying to escape tax all the time. All these people in Greece who are trying to escape tax………..I think they should also help themselves collectively……..By all paying their tax.”
Amongst the right-wing chatterati all this stuff has gone down a storm. She’s the toast of the Telegraph-reading classes.
It’s just a slight shame that her whole argument is complete nonsense.
A few things to bear in mind here.
- The last time I checked the IMF isn’t doing a great deal to help the people of Niger. In fact, everything the IMF touches turns to shite. Everywhere their economic prescriptions are followed to the letter things have got very messy. Just ask the people of Argentina.
- Because the plight of the Greece isn’t quite as abject as that of Niger, we shouldn’t be helping them? Is that the argument that Lagarde is actually making? Here’s a crazy idea. How about helping both? Or is that just crazy talk?
- There is plenty of tax evasion in Greece. There is plenty of tax evasion everywhere. Considering that tax evasion isn’t a new problem in Greece, why weren’t the IMF talking about it until recently? Can Lagarde name a single measure that the IMF took to act against Greek tax evasion in the years leading up to the crash?
- Considering that it is the hard left that will take steps to seriously crack down on tax evasion and not the establishment parties that have presided over this mess, can we now expect Lagarde to come out in support of Syriza at the forthcoming elections?
- The people who have been doing all the tax evasion over the years aren’t the ones who are suffering right now. Quite the opposite in fact, it is ordinary Greeks who haven’t had those opportunities available to them that are paying the price for the behaviour of others. Behaviour that the IMF has historically accepted without a murmur of criticism.
- That level of analysis is beyond Lagarde however. To her, they are all at it. Every single one of them. Can you imagine the outcry if she said that all Jews were usurious crooks? Is that the level of this fool? Sub-Richard Littlejohn national stereotyping?
- Clearly there are plenty in Greece who need to be held accountable for what has happened in recent years (you can bet your life they won’t be though). But it is surely now beyond doubt that the austerity that is the standard response of the IMF to any economic crisis of any sort is making things worse. Greeks are suffering because of the policies that Lagarde and the IMF support and have helped implement. Austerity exacerbates the problem. Those of us on the left predicted this at the time and that is what has come to pass. Lagarde et al were wrong. End of story.
In which case, wouldn’t it have been wiser for her to keep her mouth shut? Or is she so blinkered that she just cannot see the utter incoherence and self-evident imbecility of what she has been saying?
I hope that this blows up in her face spectacularly, I really do. In the words of Kevin Keegan, I’d really love it.
(NB: a further essential read on this subject can be found here)
Eric Joyce and Stuart Andrew: what the papers failed to mention
28 May 2012 Leave a Comment
It was the political story of the month. It was a gift that had fallen into the lap of the subs on Fleet Street. “Labour MP, Eric Joyce headbutts Tory MP in the Strangers Bar in the House of Commons”.
We heard that Mr Joyce was slightly worse for wear or “pissed up” in the common parlance, but what was the spark that ignited the flame, so to speak?
Gary Younge on working class Romney supporters
27 May 2012 2 Comments
in Opinions, Philosophical Meanderings, Politics
Gary Younge’s article about the failure of Democrats to persuade white working class people to vote for them is definitely worth a read if you missed it. It’s a theme he has discussed eloquently before and he raises a number of pertinent questions that are relevant on both sides of the Atlantic. Working class people in the UK aren’t as wedded to guns, god, and gay-bashing as many of their American brothers and sisters but both countries pose a similar dilemma for any aspirant left-wing party or politician: why do working class people vote ‘against their interests’ in such great numbers?
I think there are a number of linked issues here.
1) Younge is right to argue that it is the height of condescension to simply suggest that working class people who vote for the right are thickos who don’t know what’s good for them. Other issues are at play when someone makes a decision about how to vote: religion and morality are the two obvious ones particularly in an American context. People have been conditioned from birth and often fed outright lies in the media and if all your reference points tell you to vote Republican/Tory then can any of us honestly say that we would turn out differently to the Alf Garnetts and Joe Plumbers of this world? I’ve been lucky to grow up in a progressive environment where intellectual inquiry was encouraged and I’ve been given free rein to explore ideas as I have seen fit. Progressive and socialist reading material is widely available to me and I have been given the tools to look at both sides of any debate. Not everyone has had that good fortune. It isn’t a question of stupidity. It is a question of one’s environment.
2) Where Younge really hits the nail on the head however is in supposing that understanding one’s ‘objective interests’ should automatically lead one to vote Democrat. The Obama administration has been a huge disappointment in exactly the same way that Labour’s last period in office was. The Democratic Party has historically certainly been no friend of ordinary working class people:
“It was Bill Clinton who cut welfare, introduced the North American Free Trade Agreement and repealed the Glass-Steagall Act – which helped make the recent crisis possible. If you were going to trade your religious beliefs for economic gain, you could be forgiven for demanding a better deal than that.”
I’ve discussed the failings of the last Labour government ad nauseam on this blog, but if you needed the definitive verdict on the New Labour cabal and in particular Tony Blair’s disdain for ordinary people you could do worse than read Nick Cohen’s latest here. While the Democrats and Labour are marginally less reactionary than the Tories/Republicans, there isn’t a great deal in it right now.
3) This raises a wider point about how ‘left-wing’ political parties should proceed. Here at the Mambo, we think the situation is quite simple: there is a crisis of political representation for ordinary people. Government right now serves the interests of the rich more than ever. There probably hasn’t been a qualitative change but there has been a significant quantitative change in recent years. In order to reverse that Labour (for the purposes of this article) needs to shift sharply leftwards economically and put forward a programme for the democratic transformation of society (abolition of the Lords and the Monarchy, PR, cuts in MPs salaries, exclusion of all corporate interests from decision-making, complete separation of church and state, to take just a few examples). It is liable to provoke a ferocious reaction from the media and opinion-formers in the short term but that is a price worth paying in my humble view. It is easy to berate working people for supporting the right but if no alternative is being offered to that intellectual consensus then why are we surprised that people continue to vote that way? If we continue to play the right’s game on their territory when why are surprised when they keep winning?
However, in Labour the prevailing pressure is always to shift rightwards and Ed Miliband has done very little to challenge that consensus, regardless of what you have read in the Telegraph. When Liam Byrne, Frank Field, David Miliband and Jim Murphy, or in America the likes of Rahm Emanuel are setting the intellectual tone then why are we surprised that people aren’t interesting in voting for the centre-left?
4) The brief period when the BNP were making some headway is illustrative. Part of the appeal was clearly in blaming foreigners for the nation’s ills. But another part was in highlighting Labour’s years of failing ordinary working people, treating their views with contempt and taking their votes for granted. The socialism part of national socialism featured heavily in BNP propaganda, which highlighted that there was an appetite for the sorts of ideas that should be bread and butter for Labour (I’m referring to the anti-cuts, pro-public services ideas, not the racial war ones, obviously…….)
When working class people vote Republican or Tory the left should be blaming itself, not them. Right now we are failing to offer an alternative and failing miserably to make the case for that alternative.
Birmingham City Ladies win the FA Cup
26 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in BCFC, Football, Individuals worthy of contempt
Many congratulations are due to the Birmingham City Ladies team for triumphing in today’s FA cup final against Chelsea. The cockneys played pretty well and it took a penalty shootout to separate the two teams.
It’s the club’s first trophy in 44 years (sexual equality clearly exists when it comes to BCFC…….) and is richly deserved. The club faced meltdown less than a decade ago so it is quite some achievement .
It’s also a testament to all the hard work that chairman Steve Shipway has put in over the years in helping the club back from the brink. His unstinting efforts cannot be praised enough, and is quite a contrast to the shitbags that pollute the men’s game.
I mentioned this a few months ago but if we have one thing to be thankful for at Blues it is that Carson Yeung has actually backed the women’s team, unlike the parasitic mercenaries Brady, Gold and Sullivan, who weren’t interested as there was no money to be made from it. Cos that’s what football is about, obviously………..
Sadly the BBC didn’t show it on TV. I suppose the F1 qualifying was a far bigger priority and as Arsenal weren’t playing, in London, it wasn’t likely to get our media very interested.
The BBC’s scandalous indifference aside, it’s excellent news for BCLFC and for women’s football more generally. The grip that Arsenal have had over the women’s football in recent years has been suffocating the game and it’s good that someone else is capable of winning something (and challenging them).
It’s boring when the same team keeps winning all of the time.
Hopefully it’ll be the first trophy of many. But this is Birmingham City we’re talking about of course…….
Here we go again………
25 May 2012 2 Comments
There is a worrying predictability about the pre-tournament media cycle with England’s national team. Over-confidence and hyperbole still abounds, and any legitimate concerns about tactics and selection are swept under the carpet and forgotten. The flags come out, the morons start singing ‘Rule Britannia’, any critics are dismissed as unpatriotic and rationality is thrown out of the window.
Recent history has seen this cycle being completed with abject failure at the first significant hurdle when the tournament proper arrives, then a few weeks of recriminations and much high-minded talk of ‘learning lessons’, all of which abruptly stop when the Premier League circus starts again and the real business, making loadsamoney, begins again in earnest.
The dismal performance of England in South Africa was merely the latest in a long line of disappointments. The ‘English way’ of playing doesn’t work and it is high time that we stopped trying to persist with it.
But we don’t stop, and the cycle is beginning all over again.
The first moment of confirmation that normal service had resumed was Roy Hodgson’s appointment and conservative squad selection. Many of the same old faces have been retained, with no explanation provided to answer the obvious question: why will they now fare any better than in previous tournaments?
Otto Rehhagel, formerly the coach of the Greek national team, persisted with his inexplicably triumphant Euro 2004 players for far too long. He at least had the excuse that he had actually won something with them. What’s Hodgson’s excuse?
And this frankly ludicrous puff-piece that appeared in the Guardian acts as the rather neat second type of confirmation. England’s new boy-wonder (there always has to be one) Andy Carroll produced a stellar performance in a training match amongst the England players. He was up against Gary Neville. Who as we recall isn’t actually in the squad, because he has retired from professional football and I’m guessing wasn’t particularly match fit. What with not playing anymore.
Carroll, who I have discussed before in less than flattering terms, is only in the squad on the strength of a couple of not-too-abject performances at the back-end of the season, allied to the fact that the rest of the eligible English strikers are shit. And yet now he is poised to lead England’s attack in the absence of the suspended Wayne Rooney.
One bit of the piece amused me greatly;
“You don’t have to use short passes,” the new England manager could be heard shouting at one point. “Not if you want to use your big man up front.” Carroll put the ball past Joe Hart and Hodgson nodded his head appreciatively. “Well done, son.”
How very Roy of the Rovers (no pun intended by the way). It’s good to see that the lessons of Spain’s and Barcelona’s recent pre-eminence have been completely ignored. The commitment to the brand of football that has failed us so utterly time and again remains impressively steadfast.
Does anyone really think that Europe’s best defences are going to be quaking in their boots at the prospect of facing a team who belts it long to a slow, clumsy donkey?
Have we really learnt nothing?
I finish with this largely rhetorical but important question: just what is it going to take to shake England’s insipid football culture out of its mindless arrogance and collective complacency? How many more humiliations do we need?
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