Posts
I see that the football game between Millwall and West Ham was marred by violence last night. Around 100 fans were the subject of two pitch invasions and battles with stewards and Police.
English football has a stained history of football violence, especially during the 70’s and 80’s but in reality the level of violence has dropped dramatically in the last decade. England’s hopes of hosting the 2018 World Cup would have been dealt a serious blow after last night’s events.
I have been to games where violence has flared. Football is often the most important factor of people’s lives. It gives people a sense of belonging, like a safe tribal rivalry but often it can escalate into mindless violence.
For those children who witnessed the mindless thugery last night I saw to you don’t let it put you off going to a game. For those mindless adults who acted like thugs CCTV will catch you.
When they are caught they should not be put in prison or fined. Hit them where it hurts the hardest ban them from every ground in the UK. A thug without football is like a car thief with no wheels.
The British Government are planning to “ban” file sharers from using the internet.
The amendment to the Digital Britain report would see regulator Ofcom given greater powers to tackle pirates. The technical measures are likely to include suspending the net accounts of "hardcore copyright pirates". It is believed that Business Secretary Lord Mandelson has intervened personally to beef up the policy.
Stephen Timms, minister for Digital Britain, explained the change of heart.
"We've been listening carefully to responses to the consultation this far, and it's become clear there are widespread concerns that the plans as they stand could delay action, impacting unfairly upon rights holders," he said.
It proposes that internet service providers (ISPs) are obliged to take action against repeat infringers and suggests that the cost of tracking down persistent pirates be shared 50:50 between ISPs and rights holders.
SPs have repeatedly argued that it is not their job to police the web. The Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA) said it was "disappointed by the proposal to force ISPs to suspend users' accounts".
Let’s remember file-sharing is not illegal. It only becomes illegal when users are sharing content, such as music, that is protected by copyrights. As I have pointed out before in the past 95% of file downloads in 2008 were illegal. Research carried out in 16 countries by the recording industry body found that over 40bn files were illegally shared in 2008.
So is this rather insane Government of ours going to ban the majority of the population from using the internet? With more and more musicians supporting file sharing and sites like The Pirate Bay becoming more and more popular. Cannot the government just accept that they are out of touch?
Today saw the hottest day in London, a record 31 degrees. The hottest day so far this year! Whatever...
In the UK with our continual abnormal seasons this year has been something of a refreshing and constant regular year of normality so far. The winter of early 2009 gave us the heaviest snowfall in 20 years, the spring was warm, wet and bright and the summer thus far has been warm yet also wet. Something of what we have come to expect in this day and age.
My concern and argument is that u UK people place far too much emphasis on the summer. You cannot blame us, the past few years have just been a continual season of grey, damp and rain. The Early warning that we were in for a "BBQ summer" made us all excited. It is like we suddenly all become these sun worshipping robots, we make the summer the most important time of the year. I was a victim of purchasing a new summer wardrobe/closet. But I played it sensible, three pairs of shorts, six nice designer short sleeved shirts, some nice funky t-shirts, some flip flops (thongs for you Aussies), two pairs of white trainers and dare I say a pink shirt!
I never wore any of them.
Maybe that is my habit of wearing the same few thing each year, perhaps it is that these clothes become buried in my ever existing blocking of Narnia (my closet), maybe it's just because we just hope too much. They say that today was the last warm day of summer and that from here it's downhill all the way.
THE CLOCKS GO BACK IN LATE OCTOBER!!
Cannot we at least save what is left of summer. I see all these women each day that have been on diets, spent fortunes on designer clothes, guys who have been in the gym and in the tanning salon, all for what? To share it to those on a sweaty train from Oxford to Waterloo?
Waste of time if you ask me.
But we never learn do we? We make the same mistake year after year, it is the Sun's fault. No not the paper, the big bright sphere that we orbit. It pokes its face out like a mischievous child, saying "Here I am look how wonderful I be!", but unlike a scampy youth this thing holds us, it knows we worship it, it guides our days and guides our lives.
If we are to worhsip this hot ball of gas. Can't you at least come out more often?!
I overheard a rather interesting debate in a bar last night. Two guys were talking about this years Fantasy Football and who they were including in their team.
One of them said “Well at least that homo(sexual) Ronaldo has fucked off to Real Madrid”. That very statement got me thinking.
In acting homosexuality is accepted. Even in music many homosexual singers have a vast following and loyal fan base. Over the past few years members of former Boy Bands, idolised by millions of girl’s world wide, have said they were homosexual. N-SYNC, Blue, Westlife, Boyzone, to name a few. Yet there are very few male sports stars who will admit to being gay.
Why?
I cannot see the harm in any sports star being homosexual. Just like the singers they have fans, but is it because sports is perceived as a masculine activity? Gladiators in combat, man against man to prove who the best is in a particular event. Pure bollocks if you ask me.
But there is a downside
If any gay footballers have considered going public in the past 13 years, they need look no further for discouragement than the traumatic tale of Fashanu, the first million-pound black footballer, the first and only professional footballer to come out. Fashanu sold his story to the News of the World in 1990 (making a claim, later retracted, that he had slept with MPs), but the reasons are unlikely to have been entirely financial. He may have feared being outed, and chose a more dignified option. Or there may even have been a touch of nobility about it. 'Many people thought I just did it for the money,' he wrote in the mid-Nineties. 'I suppose they have never stopped to consider that my world is based around Sun and Daily Star readers... I genuinely thought that if I came out in the worst newspapers and remained strong and positive about being gay, there would be nothing more that they could say. Of course, I was wrong and lost three years of my career.'
His 'lost three years' are not immediately attributable to homophobia; certainly he was riled by fans and some footballers, but he also suffered recurrent knee problems and a loss of form. He never fulfilled the early promise shown at Norwich (where he is remembered for volleying the Match of the Day Goal of the Season in 1980 against Liverpool) and at Nottingham Forest, where Brian Clough dealt with the early rumours of his homosexuality by banning him from training and calling him a poof whenever the opportunity presented. In a 15-year career, Fashanu played for 11 clubs in England and Scotland before taking up a coaching job in Maryland. He fled the United States in 1998 after a 17-year-old accused him of a drunken sexual assault, and he hanged himself not long afterwards in a London lock-up. This is a unique case, and not a cautionary tale in any conventional sense. And it leaves a couple of questions unanswered: would Fashanu have done better to hide his sexuality until his career was over, or would he have had a better career had he been out from the start?
One in 10 people are said to be gay, which means there are hundreds of gay professional sportsmen and women, including roughly one member of every football team. So why have so few gone public about their sexuality?
David Beckham is a gay icon across the globe, and whilst clearly, heterosexual it shows that any homosexual footballer would be welcome by fans. Of course, like racism, you will have the idiotic minority who will yell abuse each day, but I am sure this is something that they have not heard before.
Footballers are style icons, spend thousands on designer clothes, and look far more camp than a shaven headed tattoo fan. So maybe that is the reason, is it purely down to style and attitude? Would the England fans think anything less of a captain that bled for the team, defended and ran his heart out if her were homosexual rather than heterosexual? It baffles me.
If the statistic that one in ten people are either lesbian or homosexual than that equals a LOT of professional sportsmen and sportswomen around the world. Yet they will have to “come out” of two closets, one personal and one public. It is that public closet that seems to have many padlocks and chains around it, chains that seem to be impossible to break.
Sport is the last domain where homosexuality is not accepted. I hope this will change.
It is with a rather sad and reluctant hand that I type this today. I have just heard that John Hughes has died of a heart attack. Now his name may not be instantly recognised by all. But for those of my generation his movies were nothing short of inspirational to our genre.
In this day and age of High School movies and comedies without Hughes portrayal of the 1980’s youth they would not even be on screen. They way he captured how that generation acted, cared and lived would bring a sense of comedy, sadness but more importantly realism.
His iconic movies including National Lampoons vacation, Ferries Bueller’s Day Off, Weird Science, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink were ground breaking and some of the grittiest and funniest movies written in the 80’s.
Yet it was one movie that he would ultimately be remembered for. The Breakfast Club. This movie that followed five teenagers from all walks of life being forced into detention on a Saturday that defined our generation. No matter who you were or where you came from you could relate to one of the characters. I have watched that movie for the last 20 years and it just gets better and better each time. Even now I still hear children who were born after the film was released say that is was an influence on their adolescent life.
Hughes was a reluctant man, not really into the limelight and parties like so many writers and directors of today. Born in 1950 in Michigan, where he set many of his films, Hughes started out as a journalist and advertising copywriter before turning to script writing.
His biggest hit of all came in 1990 with Home Alone, which he wrote and produced, but did not direct.
The film made the central character, the 10-year-old Macaulay Culkin, the biggest child star for decades and grossed almost $500m (£300m) worldwide.
"I was a fan of both his work and a fan of him as a person," Culkin said. "The world has lost not only a quintessential filmmaker, whose influence will be felt for generations, but a great and decent man."
In a statement, Matthew Broderick said: "I am truly shocked and saddened by the news about my old friend John Hughes. He was a wonderful, very talented guy and my heart goes out to his family."
By the mid-1990s, Hughes had disappeared from the public eye almost totally, though he continued to produce and write screenplays.
He wrote under the pseudonym of Edmond Dantes, a character in the Alexandre Dumas novel, The Count of Monte Cristo.
His credits under the name include Beethoven and Maid in Manhattan.
Dowd says Hughes will above all be remembered for a small number of movies which perfectly captured the spirit of 1980s America.
Today was a strange day. The weather started appalling, and then became sunny before erupting into a complete shower on the way home. Rather than a typical summers day it looked more like winter in Gotham. I don't know who I felt sorry for the most, the men who were trying to cover up their expensive suits with a solitary newspaper or the women who have tried so hard all year to slim for the summer to see their expensive summer purchases drenched like a feather under a waterfall.
But today was strange in more than just one way.
I had absolutely no energy or application for work at all today, in fact I gave up about a quarter of the way through. All I could think of was London. The past few weeks I had bitched and moaned about everything, the transport, the weather the coldness and rudeness of the people and indeed I even bitched about the tourists the other day.
I have lived in London for nine years now and I have had highs and indeed I have had lows but today as I stood on a sweaty train watching every person huddle in the station I just began to watch the world go by. A plethora of nationalities whose vocabulary mingled in the air like a Chinese whisper. Young couples on a first date, old people who probably no longer recognise the city they once knew.
This got me thinking of all the people I have met in those nine years. The people I have loved the people I have lost and indeed the people who breezed in and out of my life like a tube speeding through a baron station. Those people scattered like leaves on an autumn wind, once part of my life now just taken to a land where I know deep down that I will never see them again despite the opportunities that present themselves.
Of the hundreds if not thousands of people that I have met 90% would be from overseas, whether they were on vacation, here on a short term visa or living here London gave me one thing that Bristol never did and that was the knowledge that the world indeed was a big place. Since my move I have travelled to Africa, Asia, Australia, Canada, South America and more. All down the willingness and the kindness of those people that I met in London. From the Bulgarians that I shared a house with in the early days to the Australians I lived with this year, all became long term friends.
The world has given me many amazing journeys and I know there are so many more to come, there will be ample opportunities to travel to countries that I have seen before and those that are new, there will be many new friends made and some amazing memories.
But for now, on this grey, wet and cold summers day I realised that the conclusion is that I am living in the most amazing, wonderful, vibrant, cosmopolitan and beautiful city in the world.
I have once again fallen in Love with London.
