So Much, So Quick..

Morning,

Such a lot of things have happened in the last month or so since the last posting. Think we will need to do quite a in-depth posting when I get back from the gym.

One thing is for sure, nothing will ever be the same now.




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Mellow Monday

Well that was rather a painless Monday. Rare for a Monday - didn't spend any time on the blower which isn't a bad thing!

Now heading home, get some FIFA action in before some five-a-side this evening!

Excellent!


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Starting Afresh

Afternoon,

It has been a long time since I last posted on here. A lot of things some good, some not so good have happened in my life - however we are trying to move on as quickly and as easily for everyone concerned.

In keeping with this chain of thought - I am considering closing this particular blog - and starting anew with a much more fresher and in keeping with my thoughts - more positive blog with more random and eclectic thoughts - instead of being fixed on pretty dour and boring topics of choice.

Hmmm. That's what I'll do....


Bob Bob - Posted on the iPhone using Blogpress.

Getting Through The Tunnel

Evening,

Quick post this evening - have had a bad day today to be honest - perhaps it's to be expected. I have had quite a good run in recent weeks without feeling down and fed up.

It is too much to expect probably for me to be constantly smiling and looking like I am on permanent Duracell batteries - but it would be good that I have a good reason to be down instead of just being down for the sake of being down.

Off to bed,

Night, Night.


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Questioning Yourself...

Afternoon,

Do you wonder whether the best time yo answer questions to yourself, regarding your life, future and past is when you're recovering from a heavy night?

Last few times the following day after a heavy night - I have had an hour or so when I have had time to myself to think about the previous few days and to try to plan out some form of plan of action to work towards in the coming days and weeks - whether that is from a professional point of view or personally.

I do think that it could be beneficial to use one's vulnerablilty that we have after a night on the sauce - it allows you to be so far more critical of yourself as none of your nervous defensives are up in the aftermath of a piss-up.


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Critical Friends...

Afternoon,

On my way to meeting a friend for lunch - and am wondering whether or not the best friends are those who will say what they think regardless of whether or not you would agree or not with it.

Had what turned out to be a friendship ending conversation with someone on Facebook this past week - and the crux of the argument was that she was not happy about the fact that myself amongst others did not stand up for her regarding criticism from other members of our team whilst she was unwell prior to her birth of her first baby.

Now, i know full well what is bullying and what isn't. She gathered from a disaffected former employee of where we all work that she had been bad-mouthed about, was tantamount to bullying.

It wasn't. It was people voicing their opinion.

I told her to grow a pair.

She didn't like that and has now removed me from her friends list on Facebook.

Cheers, thanks for reminding me that my friends list is in need of a mass cull.


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Thatcher's Children...

Evening all,

I see that the Home Secretary, Theresa May has announced that she would like to see the end of the much heralded ASBOs - on the basis that they are not working - and is wanting to combat thuggery and disorder by getting communities to work close together. Ah very conservative.

This idea that those communities who are in some of the worst parts of the country, should be encouraged to in effect police their estates is utterly laughable. Such communities have been cowering to the scum of this country for decades - probably since Thatcher's regime was in control. Thatcher's Children? Apt that.

By removing ASBOs, surely the government is encourgaing the lunatic fringe in each town to go about and shooting down thugs and criminals. Fucking make South Central look tame by comparison.

Utter Madness.


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Old Fashioned Ideas?

Morning,

I've just listened to an intriguing and entertaining interview with the Spurs manager, Harry Redknapp. In it he says that the problem with the England team, stems from the fact that we have lost our old fashioned methods of playing the beautiful game from a young age.

And I can see his point, completely. Back in the day, I remember playing Footy in the street, especially in the summer months till 9 or 10pm most evenings. Now, some 20 or so years later, those places are getting more and more reduced. Dare I say, outside Rooney and Gerrard, I am thinking hard of the last player of relevance that came from a working-class background outside of those two.

Perhaps we need to get back to those roots instead of continuing to go down this dark hole of nothingness.


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Slaughter Of The Innocents...

Evening all,

One thing that did not come across as much as the massive levels of cuts that were being proposed in the emergency budget is the way that it is going to affect the most vulnerable members of our society.  Of course, these include those who are unemployed and the disabled.  It is the case sadly, that you are more likely to be one of the former if you come from the poorest areas of the country, particularly in these times of austerity that we are in. 

No surprise, however as in previous Conservative administrations, (and before you start, do you genuinely think the Limp Dems have any power, then you are a fucking twat – that’s why I am a Labour party member now) – it has been the least represented in society who have been forced to take it up the jacksie when it has come to cuts.  Whether that is cuts in public sector workers, or cuts in school buildings, hospitals or the Police, it will always be those members of society who rely on the essential services who will suffer.

As always.

Of all the measures in that emergency budget that has undermined the government's bare-faced claim to "fairness", the paring of unemployment benefit has to be the meanest cut of all. Jobseeker's allowance, to which unknowable crowds of people will be condemned if George Osborne's 25% public expenditure cuts are implemented, is already a pittance, impossible to live on.

People who have lost their jobs are shocked, when forced to sign on, to discover they are expected to eat, pay their bills, clothe themselves and get around – including for job interviews – on just £64.45 a week if they are over 25. For those under 25, weekly subsistence must be attained on just £51.85.

And there is this somewhat twisted idea, that some people who go on the dole have some form of wonderful lifestyle.  Where the fuck do you get a cushy lifestyle on SIXTY QUID a week!  Just wait until the gas and electric companies put up their charges by 30-40% this winter, which they will do and we shall see people starving and freezing in their homes and then those cunts in government and their traitorous friends propping them up can chuckle at the very same people whom they said that they would utmost protect dying in the cold this winter.  Probably joining Ivan in hell.

Osborne's announcement that the rate at which benefits rise will decrease, by linking them to the consumer price index (CPI) rather than, as currently, the retail prices index (RPI), was actually set out by the Treasury under the heading "Fairness". 

Talking about Fairness, what’s fucking fair about those who are under 25 to be getting less benefit?  It’s been the case for fucking years, long before I had to take up the benefit.  There is legislation to ensure that people don't get unfairly treated because of their age at work, so why is it acceptable for the government to deem young adults to be second class citizens?  So much for Fairness.

Of course what would be fair is this, all Call Me Dave has to do is go to the banks they handed £1.2 TRILLION to and say WE WANT OUT MONEY BACK. If the banks go bankrupt, tough fucking shit, cuntflaps.  The post office can easily take over from them for mortgages, loans, savings etc and the government can lower taxes for the workers when they make money from the interest on loans and mortgages that they have seized from the banks.

But of course, they are not going to do that to their friends.  With the sheer level of cuts that are being proposed, and that sadistic misuse of the word "fair", the always ludicrous claim by Osborne and David Cameron, sons, both, of multimillionaires, that "we are all in this together", has irretrievably fallen away.

It is going to be an long, cold winter...

Save My Club...

Evening all,

Liverpool Football Club is in serious and dire trouble.

That has been known to anyone and everyone who has known the situation at the club over the past 18 months or so, which is slowly but surely coming to some form of grand crescendo as we speak.

It is for this reason, that several organisation including the SoS (Spirit of Shankly) movement have been formed in recent times, to not just fight off the owners who are in our midst at the moment, but to prevent anything like this ever again happening at the club.

There has been a website set up for all forms of ideas as well as information regarding the current plight of my beloved Reds at http://www.savelfc.org/

Raoul Moat – The Aftermath...

Evening all,

In the light of the death of Raoul Moat early Saturday Morning, one cannot help but be staggered by the sheer number of messages of sympathy and support that him and his family have go from well-wishers and strangers.

Let’s be fair, sympathy and admiration aren't emotions you'd expect to be engendered by a man who shot his ex-girlfriend, killed her boyfriend, maimed a policeman for life, and had a history of assaulting previous girlfriends.

But sympathy and admiration are, it seems, what a lot of people feel for Raoul Moat. By late yesterday, over 15,000 people had registered their "like" of a Facebook site called R.I.P RAOUL MOAT YOU LEGEND! [♥], and the numbers continue to climb even though (or possibly because) the Prime Minister has come out this afternoon to condemn this.  As we write, that figure is now over 30,000.  Perhaps that has some legs...

On the one hand, are those who bizarrely blamed the entire fiasco on women, from his girlfriend to women in public service: "At his court appearance they would have handcuffed him to a 'policewoman' to prove a point," suggested one. "If there had been any police 'women' armed with guns he should have opened fire on them and taken one down with him. Women are the problem today."  Twisted indeed...

But many thought he might be mentally ill: "Poor Man. He obviously had a problem, what I don't know, but I just think he desperately needed help and didn't know it," wrote one reader of the Daily Mail website. "I don't think this guy is evil or a bad person i think he made a huge mistake . . . Everyone makes mistakes," wrote another.  Hmmm.  Perhaps.

While repulsed by what Moat had done, there were people were also impressed that he had managed to elude such a huge operation for an entire week. "I don't agree with wat [sic] he done but he did have his reasons, the lad is a legend in my book – he out ran and out smarted the police for over a week."

While in some eyes, that created a kind of twisted glory – "enuff respect my man . . . your da best soldier 2ever cum outa da north" – criminologist David Wilson's glib and patronising assessment, to Sky News, that Moat had tapped into "that dispossessed, white working-class, masculine mentality" and become a "kind of anti-hero" might also have a certain ring of truth in it.  The Daily Mail has described it as some form of

And then there are those like myself who felt nothing but pure and utter revulsion at the 24-hour news coverage and size of the police hunt.  Broadcasting the comments from his mum was completely irresponsible – and as for the news conference where he was described as a "nutter"...

Perhaps the tide is turning against the 24-hour news lust for a story by any means.  This might be the start of people standing up and thinking for themselves.

Night, Night.

Blatant Cheating..

Fuck me,

That was an extraordinary game in Jo'burg this evening, ruined by a shocking act of football vandalism by Ajax's Luis Suàrez.

Fucking dreadful handball. Thinking that perhaps something like a penalty goal should be thought about for episodes like this along similar lines as Rugby's penalty try.

But that'll be too much common sense for FIFA...


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What If The Electoral Gamble Goes To The Shitter...

Evening all,

So it looks as though we are going to get that much vaunted referendum on electoral reform – and the alternative vote (AV) model – and much earlier that we all thought it would be, with Mr Clegg having been able to persuade Call Me Dave to go for 6th May 2011, as reported by the media this morning.

If this was easy it would have been done by now, but voters inconsiderately insist on getting on with their own lives and moving jobs/homes without regard to constituency boundaries. The more they move from city to suburb and beyond, the more Conservative votes pile up to no additional purpose – and ditto with the lorry loads of Labour votes stored in the urban areas of deprivation.

And there is the serious possibility that Clegg loses the vote. 

If Clegg were to lose his referendum, he would be put in a situation where overnight, massive party management problems among his MPs and activists could cause an implosion not just within the Parliamentary party but to the coalition – and at a time when the Lib-Con cuts would be biting deep into public services and jobs. Many activists have already jumped ship and joined myself with Labour. 

Worse still, even if he was to win, Cameron might be able to hold the promised 2015 election under FPTP and the current boundaries. 

If we are locked in deepening economic crisis – and we may well be – it may all look a bit frivolous, as the AV deal offered by the Labour minority administration to Lloyd George's Liberals did in 1931.

It's all a gamble, as life so often is.

And it can be argued that he already taken the biggest gamble of all.  Jumping into the same dirty bed as Cameron.

Beautiful.

Coping With My Depression...

Evening,

As I lie down naked on my bed, sprawed all out and sundry, I am suffering one of my all recurring depressive moments. They can come about at just about any time, with or more likely without reason and can keep me down for minutes or days or even weeks.

This time it is in the aftermath of a spat between myself and mother dear - and it's all my fault. I was looking for one of my much adored AllSaints tops (it's the one with the Houston, Touchdown tagline, for those of you into fashion!) and mother dear (bless her) had been constantly telling me that it was downstairs, but of course - yours truly doesn't believe that for one minute and so wants it back in his drawers for future wearage.

Inevitably, mother sees the mess that I leave her room (that's where my wardrobe is) and quite rightly kicks off about it.

It is a typical reason for a row, and normally it can escalate to something else, but this evening I cannot be asked - the weekend is coming and it's gonna be fun and games down
the beach with some of the guys, so I cannot be asked to take up the baton and mouth off.

Getting back to the point of the blog this evening, as readers would have realised from previous postings, I have suffered from depression for about 14 years - predominantly due to some pretty traumatic experiences as a child, which I will not go into right now, because to do that I would need to be in a dark place psychologically and I'm not there at the moment and don't want to go there because that would take a few days to get away from that state of mind.

At first, I found dealing with my depression extremely hard, if not impossible - the counselling sessions I had both at school and particularly back home in the aftermath of Dad leaving Mum was not that great - as it made me have to go and trough through all the shit that had been thrown down on me.

I admit there was times when I was very worried and concerned for my own welfare - in the immediate days after having my birthday money stolen from me by a Crack-Head on a training course just before my 18th birthday, I will admit, the thought of suicide truly did seem like the logical and only plausible option available to me - something that reared it head twice since - the days after Dad left home, and about 3 and a half years later, when I left a Christmas job at Argos and everyone I knew was working but I wasn't and it felt like I was going nowhere.

As time has moved on however, I have been able to deal with it in small and manageable doses. In some aspects it can be a good thing, in getting me off a massive high after a night off.

Having the support of my family (when they themselves are not down there themselves) but more pertinently my friends at work and elsewhere has been invaluable. You cannot deal with depression on your own. I tried for six years, and my sheer stubbornness almost cost me my life. Only with those around you can you deal with it - and work, live and play around it.

End of essay!

Night, Night!!


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The End Of The Party...

Evening,

With the exit of England out of the World Cup, and the inevitable media and social meltdown in full flow - I am getting the feeling that this moment signifies a end of an era. A time for reflection and a moment to think about what does lie ahead for this country.

Whether we want to admit to it or not, the time for spending, partying and generally not having a care in the world is coming to an shuddering halt. This country has a debt mountain which needs to be curbed and curbed immediately. There is a certain part of the social spectrum who have been spending and spending for probably the best part of a decade.

I should know, I'm one of them!

Now, might be a good time to start thinking about how the fuck we are going to individually get ourselves out of the massive shitheap that we, aided and abetted by the financial institutions - have got ourselves into.

The next few years are going to be long, parlour and fucking painful.

Still, the Olympics are just over two years from now, any excuse to start saving!

Night, Night!


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20 Years In The Making...

This embarrassment has been some years in the making - and the reasons behind it have been staring right in our faces for the same period of time.

For as long as I can remember, players in this country have been taught mainly one way to play, that way is to get the ball out of danger by any way and means possible - ala Route One, Crazy Gang style. We put so much pressure on kids when they first play to just win the game that the basics of technique and getting enjoyment out of playing football are forgotten.

Why is it that the likes of Rooney, Lampard, Gerrard and Barry are all at sea when they play for England - its because the tactically and gifted players that they play with in the Premiership are probably playing for England's opposition.

Until, we change the emphasis to technique for our youngsters, and allow them to express themselves in the way that they want to instead of being shackled, we are not going to get anyway from a international football point of view.

A kid sees one of his heroes doing a fancy step over on the TV and tries to replicate it on the pitch and is immediately told to play the percentage ball, there is one of the fundamental problems. We have to allow them to have the freedom to play how they want, develop their own skills and the tactical side of the game can be developed later when they are playing proper football.

The FA was supposed to be having a 'root and branch review' into youth football, and that was to include a Clairefontaine style National Academy at Burton-upon-Trent but they cancelled that when Wembley came in over budget. Today is the culmination of 20 years of mismanagement.

Money, like everything in our dirty, corrupt game, rules.

Out Of Date...

Afternoon,

As I have mentioned on twitter, of which feed you can see on the right hand side of the page here, I am getting increasingly agitated and concerned at the ever continuing barracking of our German opponents ahead of the game in Bloemfontein tomorrow afternoon. The front pages of both the Mirror and the S*n shows three lions being overlooked by a bus carrying the German squad, the idea being that the German team faces being mauled by their English counterparts.

The very idea of the England team being able to even consider mauling a dilapidated doll prior to the Slovenia game would have caused much laughter amongst our beloved Fourth estate.

Of course it is not the first time the media have tried to belittle our German friends - and it probably won't be the last.

But surely you would have expected them to have learnt from past mistakes...


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It's The Old Foe...

Evening,

So we are some 65 hours away from the biggest match for English football since the last biggest match. Of course, the fact that it is our cuddly friends that gave you Vorspung Dus Technik probably makes the situation slightly easier for Capello's boys than say Ghana - on the premise that any game against Germany is automatically going to gee the players up 10 times more than a match against the Black Stars.

Inevitably, everything that has been written by the rags in the previous 96 hours before yesterday's afternoon game has been forgotten - England's Brave John Terry is being seen as some kind of hero by the media - yep, the same media who was ridiculing him some 24 hours beforehand. Wonderful.

I do wonder just how far England are going to go in this tournament - Germany are not the experienced team that they have been in previous tournament - perhaps with the likes of Ozil, Khedira and Schweinsteiger they may play without fear. That could be exactly what England would like - playing on Germany's lack of experience - they could quite easily beat them.


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Going Into Labour

Evening,

I have just completed my online form to become a member of the Labour Party.

I have wanted to spend some time thinking since the election about what sort of action I could take to show my disgust at the Liberal Democrats' jumping into bed with the fucking Tories.

That could not go without a response, in fact in the preceding 48 hours after the coalition came into being, some 4,000 Lib Dem supporters changed their allegiance to Labour.

Big business needs to be given a bloody nose in the aftermath of the madness of the credit crunch, which those bastards in the City initiated in their own selfish manner.

The Tories are the party of privilege and of the aristocracy. They need to be bought to account.

Whoever becomes Labour leader needs to do that.


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Delusional...

Morning,

I have about twenty minutes to get my thoughts down this morning prior to going out on my bike for the morning prior to the Portugal/DPR Korea showdown at lunchtime.  However I have to yet again use my blog to air my latest musings about the on-going comedy down in Rustenburg.

This morning, it seems that the media are split down the middle regarding what the fuck is going on in regards of the players’ rebellion against Signor Capello.  They are either praising Terry for having the balls to say what he said in that press conference yesterday, or accusing him of all out treachery.  Not the first time he’s been accused of that now...

This whole Terry incident is a complete farce. Who does he think he is? I read somewhere he was quoted as saying 'I was born to do this' (i.e. speak his mind and lead his men). Doesn't he give a fucking fuck about undermining the captain (Gerrard), or the management liaison (Beckham) or Capello himself? Rhetorical question obviously, he is an ignorant ego maniac who's pretending that he's 'doing it for the best fans in the world'.  The best fans in the world, wouldn’t be chanting ‘No Surrender to the I.R.A’ – yep I heard that pathetic ditty down the pub on Friday – Cunts...

Given Terry's somewhat stormy history with Capello (losing the armband after inappropriate behaviour), you'd think he'd have the decency to keep his fucking cunt of a mouth shut.  Ah, but I forget he still thinks he was 'born to do this'.  Are you fuck.  Questioning the manager in a press conference puts the whole set up in the fucking shitter. It pours fuel on a minor fire and turns it into a fucking inferno.

It may not have been an 'outburst' or 'meltdown' in the style of the French, but when a player like Terry starts voicing his pathetic, ill-informed opinions to the press when it isn't his place to do so, you know there is something seriously wrong with how English players view their sense of self-importance. I mean for fuck’s sake, telling Capello to pick his mate Joe Cole despite the fact that Cole has done next to nothing this season and is seen as surplus to requirements by his own club!  Isn’t that also undermining Mr. Ancelotti?

Capello is demonstrably a good manager, as were Erickson and, yes, even Shteve McLaren, (actually, let’s scrub that last name...). The common denominator over the last decade hasn't been the manager but a group of players, who are tactically and technically naive – who are only made to look good in the Premiership, but the superior qualities of their foreign counterparts – why is it that Messrs Whiskynose, Wenger and Ancelotti are continuously going around the world scouring for talent – it is because they have more superior technical qualities.  Jesus fucking Christ.  And people are still scratching their heads as to why it isn't working.

You do have to feel for Signor Capello though.

How on earth could he get England to win the World Cup, when the typical England international is just too much of a fucking retard to follow the most basic of instructions on the pitch? Or that the players would feel that being asked to rest in their rooms for a few hours in the afternoon was the equivalent of being waterboarded at Guantanamo? Or that John Terry, a man with less intellectual power than a sack of shit, would feel that he had the gravitas to stage a coup d'état?

England simply can't hack it in a tournament like this, a fact that's obscured by the staggering number of foreign players in the Premiership. Draws with the USA and Algeria aren't an aberration, it's just England's natural level. We should get used to it.