Explication du Domaine de sa Lutte

Who is Michel Houellebecq and why are people saying such terrible things about him?

The accurate and subsequently accepted definition of abstract concepts, both new and existing, has long been an essential part of the mechanics of philosophy, with theoretical positions forming the basis of future reasoned debate. It’s a dirty business, but someone has to do it. Take, for instance, the subtle semantic differences between the words life and existence. How can we adequately express the varying shades of meaning, whether metonymically or metaphorically, between the two? Life, other than when it signifies a long and indefinite period of incarceration, seems to be associated with positive connotations of enjoyment and experience, whereas more passive associations of merely surviving, often in straitened circumstances, are linked to existence. Essentially, perhaps, the two words are under consideration contiguous to the terms doing and being, as they are understood in the philosophical domain.

In the current era, I would suggest that the terms life and existence may be best illustrated by the Government’s restriction and almost decimation of personal freedom, by means of what has come to be known as “the lockdown.” It is not my purpose to consider the medical or ideological validity of such actions in this piece, though it is essential to mention that the contradictory statements and actions of the Prime Minister and his associates suggest that if Britain were to become a Police State, then the most appropriate constabulary to wield executive power would be the Keystone Kops.

Rather, I refer to this curtailment of liberty as a way of showing that life is poetic in its vibrancy, while existence is unending, monochrome and prosaic.

This leads me to the question whether it is even possible to exist under lockdown for as much as another 18 months, denied the opportunity to live as social beings: unable to visit pubs or restaurants, to watch or play sports (the inevitable cancellation of the 2020 recreational cricket season hurts me grievously), or even to associate with family and friends. If the alternative is to risk a second wave of infection from COVID-19, then it seems that the joy to be found in life may be worth the risk of death, to avoid the privations of existence.

When the only legal exceptions to house arrest are trips to the shop or the Michael Gove endorsed exercise hour, the task of filling the hours from one day to the next becomes almost as important as the chosen tasks themselves. Aside from unnecessarily long sleeps and the excessive consumption of alcohol, those of us cursed by a restive intellect require more active diversions than the passive consumption of television or films. Music can act as either a passive or an active diversion, depending on the level of concentration the listener brings to the activity, though the most fulfilling activities for me involve the twin disciplines of reading and writing and this piece will contain writing that is a reflection on the reading I have been consumed by since the outbreak of this virus became the sole subject of public debate.

Over the past two months, I have read, in random order, all eight of the published novels by the French author, Michel Houellebecq. What was born out of intrigue has matured into an obsession that has recently seen me begin to investigate Houellebecq’s more recondite activities as a singer and rapper, as well as the somewhat recherche non-fiction elements of his craft. It is relevant to note that the next publication of his work, translated into English, will be his musings On Schopenhauer, due out on May 15^th. With the publication of the latest books by Roddy Doyle, David Peace and Harry Pearson, all being delayed for a minimum of six months, Houellebecq’s philosophical considerations have now assumed greater importance than I could have imagined at the start of this year.

Why Houellebecq? Good question. Serendipity would probably be the most honest answer. An email from Waterstone’s alerted me to the fact I had a tenner’s credit on an old loyalty card. This scheme was ending, so I needed to use it or lose it. Around the same time, while farting around on the internet, researching the Hitchens brothers for a piece that never got written, I came across references to Houellebecq as being as much of a contrarian as the late Christopher, though obviously ideologically very different. Intrigued by this, I took my voucher to Waterstone’s and bought my first Houellebecq, on the basis it was the only one of his priced at £9.99. Thus, my journey began with La Carte et le Territoire (The Map and The Territory). Subsequently, I ploughed through, in the following order : Soumission, Sérotonine, Lanzarote, Extension du Domaine de la Lutte, La Possibilité d'une Ile, Platforme and Les Particules élémentaires.

Despite my use of the original French titles above, I read the books in English, so my thanks go out to the translators: Gavin Bowd, Paul Hammond, Lorin Stein, Shaun Whiteside and Frank Wynne. As regards the books themselves, I will address them in chronological order and refer to them by their translated titles, other than Houellebecq’s first two novels. The facile and lazy Whatever does not do justice to the complexity and importance of his first novel Extension du Domaine de la Lutte, so I will use the original title, not out of pretension, but for reasons of accuracy. It also inspired the title of this blog, though with a sense of regret that Houellebecq isn’t German as I could have named this piece Sein Kampf. Similarly, I regard Atomised as glib and excessively informal rendering of Les Particules élémentaires, so I will use the American title of the novel, The Elementary Particles, instead.  What follows is a series of observations related to the collected works of Houellebecq, though it is important to provide some context to his work and the world it sprang from.

In each and every novel, Houellebecq creates a different but instantly recognizable personal and public dystopia, set either in the current era or in the future. The persistent feature of the narrative voice in each novel is the repeated insistence that it is only the reader who views these portrayals of dysfunctional societies in a negative fashion. Despite persistent allegations of an Islamophobic world view, which I will seek to refute later, Houellebecq is intent on representing society as he sees it, as demonstrated by the quotation from his poem Unreconciled that prefaces this piece. Consequently, as a self-identified misanthropic cynic, he contends he is presenting the world as he sees it when he describes the inevitable breakdown of human relations; work is always unrewarding, except in financial terms, families are toxic,  property and material goods are only of interest as functional objects and, perhaps most crucially, romantic relationships are doomed, witness the tragic deaths of Michel and Bruno’s life partners in The Elementary Particles, or Valérie in Platform. However, it should be noted that the most affecting death in all of Houellebecq’s novels, which include his own murder in The Map and The Territory, is that of the unconditionally loving pet dog Fox in The Possibility of an Island.

The only satisfaction in Houellebecq’s world is found in personal sexual gratification, where the presence of another human being is purely as a vehicle, if not a receptacle, of the narrator’s requirements. All emotion and human connection are absent; sex is transactional like all other purchases in this world. Ironically, the uncommitted and disconnected Houellebecq shows more than superficial similarities with the emotionless Mersault of part one of L’Etranger. Yet Houellebecq is, perhaps mischievously, uncritical of such a state of affairs, repeatedly asserting that because this is how life is, we are powerless to change things, even if wishing to do so was desirable. 

Houellebecq was born on the island of Réunion in either 1956 or 1958. The product of a chaotically dysfunctional family, where his parents were largely absent from his upbringing and subsequently uninterested in his progress as a human being, he explains the confusion over his birthdate as the product of his deeply unreliable mother forging a replacement birth certificate to allow him to attend school two years early, thus absolving her of any responsibility for looking after him. This demonstrates the beginning of the highly troubled relationship between the two that reached its apogee in 2008 when his mother published her account of events in his formative years, while engaging in a very public spat.

After school, Houellebecq attended agricultural college rather than university, which has effectively enabled him to play up to the stereotype of the gauche outsider, rather than a member of the French intellectual elite who were educated at one of les grandes écoles and published his first poems in 1985. His first book was an analysis of H. P. Lovecraft, Against the World, Against Life, but it is with the appearance of his debut novel Extension du Domaine de la Lutte in 1994 that Houellebecq’s importance as a writer becomes apparent.

In his late 30s and working as a computer administrator for the National Assembly, Houellebecq initially appeared as an unlikely spearhead for any new cultural movement, when fame was thrust upon him after Extension du Domaine de la Lutte became not just a literary phenomenon, but a philosophical one, admittedly within the rarefied world of French scholarship, in terms of the message the book appeared to transmit. A nameless, bored computer programmer from the faceless Parisian banlieus is seconded to visit small towns, for the purpose of delivering IT software courses to local civil servants, who have neither the aptitude nor interest to take on board what he is telling them. He is accompanied by a work colleague he despises, who spends his leisure time attempting to lose his virginity aged 28, while the narrator gets incoherently drunk. Eventually the work colleague kills himself in a drunken car crash and the narrator, acerbic, misanthropic and dissociated to the end, returns to his original job just before Christmas, which he refers to as December 25^th.

To attempt to restrict the intellectual parameters of this work by imposing the title Whatever on it, is a kind of anti-intellectual vandalism that has not been seen since the era of the Luddites. Extension du Domaine de la Lutte creates the world in which Houellebecq continues to inhabit; unsuccessful, defeated middle-aged men living in squat apartments among swathes of faceless, grey apartment blocks in the exurbs of a version of Paris utterly at odds with the romance and glamour of most literary representations. It is existence rather than life. Even George Orwell invested a sense of hedonism in his depictions of Parisian poverty in the late 1920s. Houellebecq’s version of Paris can be compared to Bukowski’s take on 1950s and 1960s Los Angeles; Hollywood and Sunset Strip are utterly absent from his narrative, which is centred on the interior of a sorting office, dive bars and low-rent apartments.  Houellebecq’s characters are not bon viveurs or epicures; their diet almost exclusively consists of top of the range microwav meals from neighbourhood mini supermarkets, while the daily routine of getting drunk is just what they do after work, when they’re not jacking off to pornography. Again, this hints at Houellebecq’s other similarities with Charles Bukowski. In the same way that Bukowski bases his main character, Henry Chinaski, on an idealised or expanded version of himself, the first person narrator in six of Houellebecq’s works of fiction can be seen a representation of the author, to a greater or lesser extent.

Houellebecq’s second novel, Les Particules Élémentaires  published in the English-speaking world with the brutal and inadequate title  Atomised in the UK, and the vastly superior The Elementary Particles in the USA, was a breakthrough, bringing him national and eventually international fame, as well as provoking controversy for its intricate mix of  social commentary and passages of graphic depictions of sexual acts, written in a consciously anti-erotic style. Written in the third person, the book narrates the fate of two half-brothers: Michel Djerzinski, who became a prominent biologist, highly successful as a scientist but utterly withdrawn and depressed, and Bruno Clément, a French teacher, deeply disturbed and obsessed by sex.  

The brothers’ lives are not treated consecutively or concurrently, but elliptically. Bruno retreats to a psychiatric hospital after the death of his life partner and drops out of the book, while Michel responds to the death of the woman who loved him for almost 30 years by taking a job in a research laboratory on the very edge of the Wild Atlantic Way, in Clifden, County Galway. Here, as we learn in postscript, Djerzinski engineers human DNA in a way that turns the species into immortal neo-humans. Unlike many of his later works, in which he has been accused of peddling Islamophobia, misogyny or racism, the main criticism of Les Particules Élémentaires  is that it is a manifesto for eugenics. Plainly, this is not the case; the novel mainly focuses on metaphoric representations of the dual sides of human nature, in a kind of Jekyll and Hyde way. The difference being that neither the sensual hedonism of Bruno nor the scientific detachment of Michel offers any protection against the inevitable passage of time and the unbending pressure of society’s requirements.

It would be more accurate to describe Houellebecq’s next work, Lanzarote, as a novella, as it only extends to 84 pages. This is not to underestimate its importance, as the ideas within provide much of the plot and ideas contained in both Platform and The Possibility of an Island. Houellebecq touches upon sex tourism, with detailed, dispassionate descriptions of graphic sexual acts involving a German lesbian couple who, in a telling minor aside, the narrator fails to contact on returning home, having inaccurately recorded their telephone number. The other character, a slightly pathetic, lonely and defeated Belgian, leaves the island without warning after completely failing to impress the endless series of women he has failed to seduce. The narrator is surprised to see the Belgian on the television news, revealed as part of massive child sexual abuse case that involves a sinister quasi-religious cult, which is loosely based on the Raelians. Lanzarote may be a minor work, but Houellebecq’s later career points to its relevance.

Certainly, his next novel, Platform, is a ruthless and excoriating take on tourism in general and sex tourism in particular. It is unique among Houellebecq’s works in its deliberately comic depictions of a gauche and socially inadequate set of tourists, including the narrator describing his holiday attire of a Radiohead t-shirt and long shorts as being proof of how “pathetic” he is. The fact that the repeated depictions of sex acts with prostitutes do not provoke reactions of disgust in the reader, suggesting that the commodification of all personal relationships affects us all. The real point of contention in this novel are the numerous voices who have accused Houellebecq of rampant Islamophobia in this novel, and in his later work, Submission.

The question of the actual existence of Islamophobia is one that can be answered only with reference to the specific social and cultural conditions of particular counties. In England, as opposed to Britain, the continued prevalence of a dominant Oxbridge elite that retains control of the Law, the Press, Parliament, the Military and most of the top Universities, has enabled a narrative based on the attitudes that became ingrained after the Glorious Revolution and were reinforced by the Empire, to retain cultural control. The Church of England, as an institution, has little if any influence on the morals and ethics of the ordinary populace, but the many tentacled hydra of the British Upper Classes, extends its influential power over all aspects of society. Any belief that is not the Anglican Communion is regarded as, by definition, morally and intellectually inferior. This mindset continues to stigmatise all other religions. Non-conformism is the faith of the Valleys and the coalfields. Catholicism is the amoral refuge of drunken, violent Irishmen. Judaism has not gained a better press since Shylock’s day. Other non-Christian faiths are the preserve of savages and slaves. Islam is seen as the modern Catholicism; the preserve of violent insurgents, dedicated to the destruction of Britain. Islamophobia is therefore an institutional prejudice, harboured and encouraged by those who maintain the legal, cultural and financial infrastructure of society. This is not the case in France.

Despite assumptive British ignorance to the contrary, France has not effectively been a Catholic country since 1789. The refreshingly anti-clerical nature of the Revolution was demonstrated by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen that stated “Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom,” though this was followed by the ominous caveat that each citizen “shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.” Following the execution of Louis XVI in January 1793, the dechristianisation of France gathered pace, as the ideas of the Enlightenment took hold. Despite the Reign of Terror and the efforts of Napoleon, the seeds of atheism took hold in France. In 2005, 45% of French citizens identified as atheists; while this figure had dipped to 29% in 2015, a further 62% regarded themselves as non-religious. The only reason religion has not died in France is the arrival of Francophone African citizens, who have both maintained a residual level of Catholicism and created an exponential growth in the number of French Muslims.

Significantly, many of those arriving in France have taken low-paid jobs and moved into the poor-quality housing of the outer banlieus in Paris and other major towns, creating ghettoization in the very areas Houellebecq situated his disaffected and disenfranchised characters earlier in his career. Without a doubt, Houellebecq has been responsible for provocative and inflammatory comments on Islam, but unlike the utterings of the barely literate Marine La Pen or the coarse bigotry of the Far Right in England, his words should be seen not as sloganeering, but as a part of the general public discourse that repeatedly shows he is a product of the French culture of anti-clericalism and semi Socratic outpourings on vaguely formed theories.  In short, Houellebecq has often participated in the typically French philosophical activity of thinking out loud, and in public, where he is asking himself the hard questions and challenging others to answer for him.

From provocative opinions, to provocative artistry, Hoellebecq moved on to the challenging Possibility of an Island. The book contains three different narrators (Daniel 1, Daniel 24 and Daniel 25), the latter two being neo-human clones who live thousands of years in the future, in a post-apocalyptic, arid landscape, populated by a few thousand “savages,” as well as the anatomically perfect and hyper-resilient, cloned neo humans. The latter narrators, at the point of creation, have the full biography of Mark 1, a bitter, cynical and deeply offensive Jewish stand-up comedian from the turn of the millennium, who was cloned by an Elohimite acquaintance, to study and internalise. The Elohimites are based on the Raelian cult, who spend their entire time seeming to worship alien life who they expect to land on Lanzarote and fleecing gullible billionaires for all their wealth. 

Unfortunately, the book doesn’t really work for the first half; possibly because Daniel 1 is so unpleasant. However, once we realise Daniel 1’s narrative is the biographical account all subsequent Daniels are required to study, the structure begins to make sense. Daniel 25 leaves his home in what used to be Barcelona, to walk to Lanzarote, following an event called “the Great Drying-Up” as the book is by turns poignant and affecting, but never less than fascinating. It is undoubtedly Houellebecq’s most experimental, though least successful, work.

In The Map and The Territory, a photographer becomes fabulously wealthy by taking pictures of French Ordnance survey maps and expanding the photos to incredible sizes, producing beautiful and unsettling effects. One of his devotees is the character of Houellebecq, at that time resident in Ireland, who agrees to write the text of the catalogue for another show. Unfortunately, Houellebecq is unexpectedly and brutally murdered. Perhaps the most intriguing innovation is the use of large sections of Wikipedia, used without comment as descriptions in the book. The effect is intentionally comedic, as the absolute and utter lack of opinion in these mundane passages becomes almost surreal with the repetition of this bland style of reportage. This fits with the consciously distant third person narrator, to make it Houellebecq’s most obviously stylish novel to date, but it pales into insignificance when compared to the profoundly cerebral Submission, which was ironically launched the day of the Charlie Hebdo shootings.

Set in 2022 amidst a backdrop of an imagined domestic political crisis, whereby the Front National are deadlocked with the Muslim Brotherhood in a French presidential election, Submission is undoubtedly the most stylishly written of all Houellebecq’s novels. A possible explanation for this is that the narrator, Francois, is a professor of literature at Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle. Though while he is eloquent, measured and conservative in his expression, this is seen as a weakness because he is unable to speak up or speak out in dangerous, unpredictable times. Indeed, Francois is the first of Houellebecq’s protagonists to begin his tale in late middle age, rather than during his putative mid life crisis. Unsurprisingly, Francois views himself as a failure in his personal and professional lives, no longer able to maintain a relationship nor produce academic work of merit. However, this is not simply a story of angst among the aged; it is a subtle exploration of morality and betrayal.

Unlike in various interviews, or through the words of his narrators in Lanzarote and Platform, Houellebecq does not denounce Islam at all in Submission; instead the transformation of bourgeois, academic, intellectual France, and especially the capital, into an Islamic Republic under Sharia Law is described in restrained terms. When the entire professoriate is summarily dismissed, it is made clear they will be employed again, if they convert to Islam. The inducement to do so is not a monetary one, but the promise of a 15-year-old Arab girl as a trophy bride. Under French law, while a girl of 15 is still a minor, she is able to give consent to sex.  Typically, Francois fails to adhere to any principles, which makes the reader more judgemental in tone than his previous actions deserve.  Again though, Houellebecq’s novel springs from the anti-clerical, questioning culture of French intellectualism, where ruthless ambition is seen as a more serious character flaw than the sexual abuse of underage girls. Undoubtedly, Submission is a difficult and at times painful read, but it asks essential questions of our society. Hence, its impact upon French consciousness is significantly greater than in other countries who have a differing cultural narrative and discourse.

 

In contrast, Houellebecq’s latest novel, Serotonin, contains some of his most gratuitously offensive and vacuous writing, specifically uncomfortable references to his former girlfriend’s pornographic film career, where she specializes in group sex with dogs. The ludicrously named narrator, Florent-Claude Labrouste, is a depressed, middle-aged civil servant, who has a pointless job that involves trying to promote cheese from Normandy in France. Having decided he has failed in life (we’ve been here before…), he decides to simply disappear, ending up resident in a holiday cottage owned by a friend of his from agricultural college days, Aymeric. He is an alcoholic whose farm is on the verge of bankruptcy. After his family desert him, he attempts to start a rural insurrection against government policies, but instead shoots himself when confrontation with the authorities grows near. His senseless death provokes nothing in Florent-Claude, other than a decision to move back to Paris and live in a hotel, in obscurity.

The plot may appear to be both transparent and risible, but Houellebecq’s experience in constructing such novels of regret and disappointment has honed his craft. We genuinely pity the narrator’s plight and can almost sympathise at his insane plan to win back a former girlfriend by killing her son, though thankfully he decides against such a course of action. Undoubtedly, Houellebecq is now firmly in the grip of his own late middle age crisis. His twin influences of pessimism and social conservatism mean his novelistic concerns are narrowing, but with the trade off that his writing has become forensically detailed and curiously affecting. Is this enough to compensate for his lack of a sense of wonder? A younger reader than I would need to answer that.

Of course, while this may be the end of Houellebecq’s fictional journey so far, there are other items out there and, armed with the zeal of an obsessive completist, I ventured through Ebay and Discogs in search of obscure artefacts. At the time of writing, Houellebecq’s paean to HP Lovecraft, Against the World, Against Life, has yet to be delivered, though I have made my way through two other books. Firstly, Public Enemies is the entire 2008 correspondence about ethics, moral, politics and society that Houellebecq enjoyed with the notable French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy. Across 300 semi-enlightening pages, they play a kind of ideological ping pong, introducing more and more preposterous theories and showing off their literary and cultural knowledge, rather in the manner of small, precocious children throwing a hissy fit because nobody is paying them any attention. It is, frankly, an inessential purchase. The same cannot be said of Unreconciled, a selection of Houellebecq’s poetry, translated into English. In the main, other than regular diversions into provocative showboating, such as My Dad was a solitary and barbarous cunt, Houellebecq’s poetry is a series of terse, epigrammatic observations on the human condition. It must be conceded that in most instances, endless screeds of short, depressive homilies to decay, failure and loneliness do not provide any great philosophical insights, though there are the occasional passages of truly persuasive writing, such as -:

“We may not live, but we get old all the same

And nothing changes, nothing. Neither summer, nor things.”

Finally, there is the question of Houellebecq’s musical adventures. His first effort, Le Sens du Combat (1996), was the recitation of some early poems over a musical backing provided by the composer Jean-Jacques Birgé. As the cheapest version I found online was £147, I decided I could live without it. I am also living without Établissement d'un ciel d'alternance (2007), Houellebecq’s most recent recording, again in collaboration with Birgé, as it is stuck in the post with the Lovecraft book; don’t worry I will return to them in due course. I am delighted to say that I have taken possession of Houellebecq’s 2000 recording, Presence Humaine and I’m very glad to have done so.

Houellebecq doesn’t sing; instead he solemnly declaims his poetry in a voice that is sometimes sombre, but oftentimes contemptuous, over a mid-70s style jazz rock backing band who sound like Brand X on lithium for the first seven tracks. The last three see him accompanied by a kind of cerebral synthpop backing that sounds like an enthusiastic amateur with a yen for Blancmange or Yazoo. As someone with a decent comprehension of written French, but only a rudimentary knowledge of the spoken version, I am more at home with the sleeve than the libretto (stop it!), in terms of comprehension. It is difficult to connect with the package either in isolation or totality. However, there are two superior cuts that hit the mark; when the band pick up the pace and start to drive, while Houellebecq breaks off from his bad impersonation of Bryan Ferry on A Song for Europe, to spit bile on the opening title track and the final ensemble number, Plein été. These tracks justify the purchase, thankfully for a tenner and not £147.

So, while I await the delivery of a final book and CD, I mark the days off the calendar until On Schopenhauer is published. Once that is out of the way, I may allow myself to move on, though each subsequent Houellebecq novel will certainly prick my attention, pausing only at this point to say he isn’t a French literary messiah, but just another very naughty post-modernist boy.

Blood & Sand

The Tories, the Cops, the Labour Party, Newcastle United and the continuing spectre of COVID-19. Life really is shit...

Last Thursday evening, heading home after my hour of Government approved recreational cycling, a sudden tumult of applause, pot banging and car horn manipulation filled the air. It was, I soon realised, not an attempt at recreating Chairman Mao’s famed and failed 1958 Four Pests Campaign to dissuade sparrows from eating the rice crop by means of a peasant created cacophonous din, but the weekly unspontaneous public outpouring of affection for front line workers, including NHS 111 call centre drones I presume.

There have been three such instances of quasi-organic support plus, I am led to believe, a “get well Boris” event that I also did not take part in. Thankfully, Ben Fogel’s mooted mass singalong of “Happy Birthday” to Elizabeth Windsor on the 94^th anniversary of her parasitic existence, presumably mooted when he was once more hepped up on goofballs, isn’t going to take place. Indeed, Mrs Windsor has asked that the usual salute from state cannons is cancelled this year. Pausing only to mention that I could have imagined a far more creative use of weaponry and the Royal Family, we return to the tacky lauding of the NHS.

The reason I don’t join in with such eulogistic vacuity is not that I’m a miserable begrudger (well I am, but that’s not why), but because I hate how the Tories have accidentally stumbled on a way to turn the NHS and, by extension, the future funding of all health and social care, into a charity. Of course it is amazing that 99 year old Major Tom Moore has made over £17m for the NHS by doing a sponsored walk round his garden, but it makes me ashamed that we are not stopping to question why such a donation is a crucial part of the fiscal armoury required to repel the COVID-19 pandemic, rather than a luxurious bonus. Don’t even mention the appalling idea of flogging NHS lapel badges for £8.99 to care workers making £8.21 an hour.

To anyone with a shred of human decency, the solution to the crisis of underfunding in the NHS that 10 stinking years of chronic and cruel austerity have caused, can be found in the current slogan of the Peace Pledge Union: healthcare not warfare. Stop the arms race by immediately ceasing all defence spending and save human lives by pumping cash into front line services and viral research immediately because, as far as I can see it, 3 week extension notwithstanding, we're not going to get out of this lock down until there's a vaccine in place, which won’t be any time soon. You do realise that it’s a racing certainty there will be no gigs, no football, no pubs and no cricket until 2021. Even once there is some kind of preventative medication available to combat COVID-19 who is to say the vaccine will be automatically provided for everyone? We’re living under capitalism remember; undoubtedly there will probably be an arbitrary maximum age limit for mandatory dosage. In a grotesque re-enactment of Logan’s Run or Brave New World, I can easily imagine there will be a supposed utilitarian decision not to provide the vaccine to those either too old or infirm to make a positive contribution to future economic recovery. Will eugenics kick in at 70, 60 or on a case by case basis?

Don’t kid yourselves that the medical profession will prevent this from happening, as the distribution of vaccines won’t be on their watch. The way things are going, unless the general public wakes up to the fact, we are becoming a dictatorship by stealth, for supposed reasons of the greater good, the Police will continue their unfettered lust for coercive power by overseeing distribution of lifesaving medication. Incidents such as the Accrington confrontation, where appalling threats to fit an innocent bloke up were issued by one crazed thug and tacitly supported by his cowardly colleagues, are only the tip of the current iceberg and will soon resemble the new community policing unless increasingly bellicose chief constables are called to account.

Mind don’t expect much in the way of moral guidance from the ruling Tory Party at this or any other time.  The longer the current crisis continues; the more obvious it is that the scale of the disaster is entirely the fault of the complacent, indolent response of the cabinet back in January and February. While still only admitting that coronavirus is responsible for the 16,000 (at the time of writing) deaths in hospital, that figure is presumed to be less than 60% of actual deaths from the virus when fatalities at home or in care are factored in. Additionally, there are those COVID-19 deaths that have been recorded as of natural causes, because of the continuing inability of the Government to test in any semblance of an adequate fashion.

Without putting to fine a point on it, this is entirely down to the Tories complacently sitting on their overstuffed, purulent arses for 38 days following the first COBRA briefing on January 24^th, rather in the same way that patriotic Brexiteers utterly refused to lend a hand in the fruit and vegetable picking crisis that resulted in nigh on 5,000 Romanian workers being flown in to stop the country starving. When all credible scientific advice pointed to the probable need for lockdown, Johnson poo-pooed the imminent crisis, took a fortnight’s holiday in his grace and favour rural pile and missed 5 successive COBRA meetings. Living under lockdown isn’t great fun, but if the Tories had faced up to their responsibility to the very citizens who had returned them to power with an enormous majority not two months previously, rather than allowing the satanic shithouse Cummings to browbeat the timorous and incompetent elected Cabinet into accepting the presumed 60,000 plus deaths that herd immunity was supposed to require, then allowing the vast majority of the public to believe coronavirus was only like a bad case of the flu and regular handwashing would kill 99% of all known germs, we could have been well on the road back to normality. I know for a fact I was reassured into believing this was a 9-day wonder, no worse than 2009’s Swine Flu outbreak. How wrong I was; how wrong they were. Now, their arrogant stupidity that seems like a revisiting of the conduct of the French Royal Family in the latter part of the 18^th Century, will undoubtedly mean that deaths in Britain will probably be double Cummings initial estimate and that human life will not return to any recognisable pattern for at least another 12 months.

There is, thankfully, much scrutiny of Johnson’s role being undertaken in the quality press, even if such pointed criticism is only in the public domain because the loathsome Barclay Twins are keen on replacing BoJo with the unspeakable glove puppet Gove as their chief errand boy. The Home Office’s extraordinarily detailed and sulky response to The Sunday Times excoriation of Johnson’s conduct read like an angry teenager’s diary entry the night they got dumped by their first love. This story has got legs...

In the last days of his position as leader, the largely discredited Jeremy Corbyn fired off some pretty stinging body shots about our “part time PM” and his role in ending or risking the lives of so many people as live in a city the size of Bristol of COVID-19. Now Corbyn has gone and Keir Starmer has replaced him. Ignoring Starmer’s less than revolutionary economic and social beliefs, he has the brains and eloquence to wipe the floor with the Tories with a forensic analysis of their desperate mishandling of the crisis, should he wish to, as this may actually buy him some time with the rank and file of the party, many of whom are furious with the revelations of treacherous duplicity by senior Labour figures during the 2017 election.

Without question, one of the major weaknesses, indeed his number one character flaw, that Corbyn displayed during his tenure of the role of leader was an apparent indifference to accusations of antisemitism within the party as a whole. The 860 page internal report leaked by The Guardian has concluded that Corbyn’s indifference was only a contributory factor in the failure of the Labour Party to address this issue, with real damage being caused by deliberate and orchestrated sabotage by those opposed to Corbyn on an ideological basis, stating  there was an “abundant evidence of a hyper-factional atmosphere prevailing in party HQ in this period, which appears to have affected the expeditious and resolute handling of disciplinary complaints”.

It also states that “many staff … were bitterly opposed to the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, and seem to have been demotivated, or largely interested in work that could advance a factional agenda … some employees seem to have taken a view that the worse things got for Labour the happier they would be, since this might expedite Jeremy Corbyn’s departure from office.”

Further, the report contains several leaked WhatsApp messages that show many senior officials were hostile to Corbyn when he took over, with references to Corbyn-supporting party staff as “trots”, conversations referring to former director of communications Seumas Milne as “Dracula”, and that he was “spiteful and evil and we should make sure he is never allowed in our party if it’s last thing we do”. There were also mentions of Corbyn’s former chief of staff Karie Murphy as “medusa”, a “crazy woman” and a “bitch face cow” that would “make a good dartboard.”

Frankly, it disgusts me that the top echelons of the only mass party for workers in this country has been systematically undermined by those either in Parliament, who benefitted from the organisation and help of some many unpaid activists, or those on the actual payroll. Instead of turning their guns on the Tories, they embarked upon a plan to destroy the party’s election chances from the inside, resulting in the Tories being returned to power and their implementation of yet more vicious austerity that leaves the NHS in the state it is now. That said, from the benefit of several years distance, if such conduct means the loony Leninists from Maomentum or the Corbynista cult of armchair, 280 character revolutionary bullshit artists who’ve never delivered a leaflet or knocked on a door in their life, leave the Labour Party, only their money will be missed.  If those who remain decide to coalesce around the snippy, mortgage messiah Ian Lavery, then there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. We can make our way through this crisis within a crisis with our dignity intact and sense of moral rectitude repaired.

This is not the case with Newcastle United, I fear. Despite the routine wall of silence from SJP, it appears that a takeover is realistically in the offing, mainly because Ashley is a bit nervous about being short of readies if the lockdown continues, as he’s been told he can’t pretend Sports Direct stores are essential frontline services. Ergo, the magic £300 million tipping point for any deal appears to have been reached. Long thought to have been discredited as a shallow-pocketed fantasist, Amanda Staveley is in for 10% of the deal. All well and good, though I do have reservations about the fact she smokes as it makes her look common, except for the fact she is borrowing this money from Ashley, on the back of an ongoing megabucks legal action against Barclays Bank. I’m unaware of the ins and outs of the case, but it appears she’s considered an odds-on favourite to come out of this smelling of roses. Two cheers for her. Also weighing in with 10% are the benevolent billionaire property and retail entertainment magnates, the Reuben Brothers, who own large swathes of Newcastle city centre. Shame they’re not making much from all the bars and restaurants under their control just now. And then there’s the camel in the room; if this all goes to plan, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF) will own an 80% stake in the club.

Alright, let’s be honest, Mike Ashley’s 13-year tenure of Newcastle United has been a disaster. Two relegations from the Premier League, a lack of care in the fabric of St. James Park allowing the ground to decline into one big scruffy advertising hoarding for Sports Direct with 52,000 seats, a series of inadequate managers and players, as well as an utter refusal to communicate in an honest and open way with a hideously divided fan base who have been at each other’s throats since Bobby Robson left the club; not the greatest of CVs it has to be said. However awful an owner and an employer Ashley has proved himself to be, and this is the crucial bit, he has not stoned women to death for having sex outside of marriage, nor has he executed gay men by throwing them off high buildings, nor has he engaged in the ritual execution by beheading of petty criminals. Saudi Arabia does. And that’s precisely why, if this deal goes through, I’ll be even further distanced from the club than I am now. In all conscience, I cannot give my support to a regime that is responsible for daily breaches of their population’s human rights. When said regime assumes almost total control of my football club, it is time to take a stand and say no.

Okay, I’ve made this point on Twitter several times and the response has been split in three ways. Firstly, and I must say this is the least common reply, people have agreed with me and say they are more than uncomfortable with the idea of a medieval dictatorship pouring blood money into our club. They, like me, see that Newcastle United will be morally diminished by this takeover and fair game for any criticism that comes the club’s way. Unfortunately, morality means we’re stuck with Brooooth in the dugout and Joelinton up top. It reminds me of canvassing for the Labour Party when Michael Foot was leader.

Secondly, we have the pragmatists, who range from the apolitical elements who will go to the game in their replica shirts and cheer the team on, even if Ashley appoints John Wayne Gacy as head of youth development, to the earnestly philosophical. These are the people I disagree with, but who are able to defend their stance in a logical and erudite manner. To summarise, they argue that while intervention from the House of Saud is a serious publicity error, what other way do we have of taking back our club? They accept that PFI are at best questionable owners, but that their conscience, either clear or weighed heavily down, has absolved them of any doubts; being taken over is undoubtedly better for Newcastle United than being a neglected also-ran in Ashley’s stable of shabby businesses. I’d agree with them in almost any circumstances than this.

Thirdly, and most tiresomely, we have the majority, who seem to welcome this takeover, indeed any takeover, as it removes Ashley’s hand from the tiller, regardless of any other considerations. We have either the chuckleheaded clowns who’ve been constructing TikTok videos of Arabs dancing to The Blaydon Races, or flooding social media with selfies where they’re attired in tea towel, sunglasses and NUFC shirt. If they are kids, hopefully they’ll grow out of this infantilist stage, but if they are adults, they are probably beyond redemption. At least such useful idiots don’t provide much of an intellectual challenge, even if their noise is deeply irritating.

Finally, we have the zealots, who’ve come out fighting from the start. They simply do not accept that any Newcastle fan would be anything other than ecstatic about the takeover. I envisage these to include a large number of shaven headed men in their 40s, attired in chunky Italian designer knitwear, who use Raffertys on Pink Lane as base camp. Confrontation and aggression are their touchstones; anyone stating a different opinion on social media may be told at the outset to fuck off, followed by accusations of paedophilia. If this does not happen, any debate follows a depressingly predictable course; fans of other clubs are assumed to be jealous hypocrites, fans of Newcastle are traitorous hypocrites and journalists are avaricious hypocrites. If you further engage in debate, the endpoint will be marked by being told to fuck off, followed by accusations of paedophilia. The block button then becomes the only possible way to prevent further escalation, in the shape of the preparation of an on-line bonfire and the waving of cyber scythes. I can not and will not respect such a blinkered and unthinking response, though it does amuse me that so many of the pro PIF faction are previously unapologetic Islamophobes and ardent Brexiteers, who now find themselves standing in solidarity with a regime that enforces Sharia Law with murderous inflexibility. I genuinely fear for the future of Newcastle United, not as a football team, but as a football club.

That said, my Government approved 60 minute pedal on Saturday took me past my beloved Tynemouth Cricket Club, where I ought to have been celebrating the start of the new cricket season by watching the firsts take on last season's champions Burnmoor and the thirds, just over the fence, if their opponents, whoever they were, managed to turn up. Sadly, the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an indefinite postponement of the cricket season, which pains me grievously. All we can hope is that conditions become safe enough so as we can watch and play the greatest game on earth sometime soon, but I seriously doubt that will be the case as the effect of those 38 days of indolence continue to haunt, punish and limit us.

Scene 1: To the soundtrack of Largo from Symphony No. 9 in E minor, From the New World by Antonín Dvořák, a middle aged man in cricket whites and an NCB style donkey jacket, emblazoned instead with a BUPA logo, emerges from the grand entrance of a palatial home in an exclusive suburb. The day is brilliantly sunny as he grimaces while scanning the heavens, before pulling his donkey jacket tight round his throat, allowing us to see the badges on his lapels display Vote Jeremy on one side and FC St Pauli on the other, before he sprints towards a sleek, German 4x4 and drives rapidly away. The crunch of gravel and screech of tyres can be vaguely discerned over the music.

Scene 2: The middle aged man from scene 1 is seen wheeling his cricket kit bag from the car to the pavilion, where he sets it down, before running with his donkey jacket over his head from the boundary to the square where a crowd of half a dozen other middle aged men, either brandishing outsized golf umbrellas, or attired in sou’westers and oil skins stare grimly into the azure blue sky and blinding sun, muttering and shaking their heads. Almost immediately, they wheel protective covers over the wicket and head towards the boundary.

Scene 3: The 7 middle aged men, divested of outer garments, sit pouring bottles of beer, exchanging laughs and back slaps inside the pavilion, while picking from a trestle table laden with buffet food (pork pies, sausage rolls, sandwiches, cake and other treats). The camera focuses on first middle aged man who speaks directly to the camera, while offering his beer glass in a toast, as the music comes to final crescendo -:

“Rhethreg Gwyllt; dyma'r un y mae'n rhaid i chi alw gemau amdano.”

END

Death & Taxes

Bending the law in a time of crisis.....

You know what’s worrying me about the further extension of this lockdown, apart from the obvious? Northumbria Police and how they will respond to any perceived insubordination or disobedience by members of the public as the warmer weather comes. Historically, the force were zealous enforcers of moustachioed lothario, former Chief Constable and institutional swinger Michael Craik’s vicious and authoritarian The Party’s Over strategy, ready to take up cudgels with minimal reason to eradicate any shows of hedonism.

When one sees that constabularies across the country have already received public censure for disproportionate responses to innocent activities and menacing threats to dissuade any thought of freedom or enjoyment, such as the officer in Cambridge claiming that shoppers’ trolleys will be inspected to ensure no “non-essential” items have been purchased, Derbyshire Police’s incessant and intrusive surveillance of the general public and South Yorkshire’s finest, responsible for the Orgreave riot and Hillsborough disaster it must be remembered, threatening people with arrest for the crime of sitting in their front garden, then the shadow of authoritarianism is cast across us all. We truly are in danger of seeing darkness at noon.

The bar, in terms of human rights abuses, has been set pretty high, but I’m sure Fuhrer Keenen will insist his crack stormtroopers exceed all previous assaults in an effort to make the Northumbria Police patch a de facto region under improvised Martial Law. Having been a repeated victim of frankly illegal police oppression, courtesy of the inexplicable hold serial vexatious complainants Reuben Soxha and Elaine Gray-O’Connell have over the force, this does not bode well for me.  Before they cause my disappearance under cover of darkness, I’ll state this once only; the current lockdown can only be maintained indefinitely by peaceful, civilised consensus, not by the actions of baton wielding, gun toting thugs in uniform. Otherwise, the state apparatus risks a proliferation of transgressions of the common law that will result in mass civil disobedience, which would clearly be the fault of the state and its functionaries. We live in dangerous, unprecedented times and blaming someone taking their dog for a walk for the nigh on 1,000 deaths a day we’re currently enduring is a sordid and specious narrative.

This leads us on to the real reason why the filth may end up behaving like the Keystone Kops choreographed by James Ellroy; the fucking Tories. Not that any of us with a shred of intelligence or a soupcon of compassion for our fellow humans expected any difference, but the chuckleheaded, braying inadequates in grey suits and positions of power, have performed in a nightmarish way throughout this whole crisis, making crass and avoidable errors at every possible step. If COVID-19 has a sense of karmic humour, then striking down Johnson, Hancock and the vile Cummings is the greatest killing joke of all time. With Raab and Patel joining Hancock in a competition to see if anyone on the front bench can walk and chew gum at the same time,  until Johnson lurches back onto the scene, we’re seeing repeated evidence of the professional incompetence of a gang of fraudulent clowns who are the least suitable candidates for public office since Caligula appointed Incitatus as his consul. Even the equine Roman would have thought twice before blaming 1,000 deaths a day on NHS workers misusing their largely non-existent PPE supplies. This offensive and spurious claim, allied to the painfully inadequate levels of testing, as well as the discredited and deadly strategy of herd immunity, is precisely why the last deaths related to coronavirus should be the summary executions of the cabinet and the bastards who advised them to go down the path of social genocide.

Not only has Hancock used his 15 minutes of infamy to shamefully castigate NHS employees, he has somehow come out with the theory that footballers are to blame for the chronic underfunding of our hospitals over the last decade, by not agreeing to wage deferrals. The relevant point of employment law in this situation is that players at the highest levels do not have generic contracts; each and every player has an individual, bespoke document that details the terms of their engagement with the employing club in minute detail. Ergo, there is no possible way to impose or even construct a blanket salary surrender scheme. As ever, the truth was not seen to be relevant by the chattering classes when the usual, tiresome social media hysteria came into play, along the lines of the “give care workers footballers’ wages,” but such crass sloganeering and Hancock’s devious posturing were cut off at the knees by the #PlayersTogether initiative, which came into being as the news of more and more former players being hospitalised with COVID-19: Kenny Dalglish, Norman Hunter, Jimmy Greaves and, just as I write, the late Peter Bonetti.

Organised by Jordan Henderson, and fair play to the fella, #PlayersTogether oversaw direct funding at a local level, courtesy of donations by players. Currently, £4m has been distributed to the NHS at a local, direct level. No delays. No administration charges. No bureaucratic wrangling. Of course, footballer generosity doesn’t just exist at the top level either; in the Northern League, West Auckland Town were the first set of players to donate their end of season pot to local medical causes. Several other clubs have followed suit. The amount of money at a grassroots level may be almost negligible in the grander scheme of things, but the gesture is a fine one. I hope Hancock, allegedly a Newcastle United fan, appreciates what has been organised by Henderson and supported by more than 150 top flight players thus far, but I doubt it. 

Let’s face it, the Tories, despite their unintentionally Keynesian fiscal response to the coronavirus pandemic, still haven’t identified the proper targets for emergency funding. I don’t mean their £10,000 emergency payment to all MPs; that is essential spending to keep the wheels of democracy turning, or it will be once that genuflecting pile of excrement Rees Mogg opens the Commons again. My beef is the fact the likes of Branson, Martin, Stein, the Barclay Twins and Mike Ashley have predictably avoided the scrutiny of HM Government and kept their obscene personal wealth intact, while laying off zero hours, gig economy, minimum wage workers or exploiting the furlough scheme to divest themselves of any responsibility to pay their employees. You didn’t need to be skilled in the arts of clairvoyance to forecast that Mike Ashley would lower the bar in terms of any moral response to the current situation, in a manner that would have made a Victorian mill owner blush.

The entirely predictable nature of the speed Ashley availed himself of the 80% furlough scheme for NUFC employees, just as soon as they’d done their bit to ensure he could continue to bathe in money as the direct debit payments for season tickets were rolling in, meant that criticism of the Sports Direct oligarch was muted at best. It’s what he does, without apology or communication. How I wish Newcastle United fans would display some discernible sense of outrage and class solidarity with Sports Direct workers, being paid a pittance and still forced to work in that cursed mega warehouse in Shirebrook.

There have been louder notes of displeasure, to eventual discernible effect, about Daniel Levy putting Spurs in the same kind of economic suspended animation, but the loudest outcry was when Liverpool unveiled plans to place all non-playing staff on furlough. This response was almost entirely provoked by fanciful notions of the supposed socialist DNA of Liverpool as a city (you know the place that was a Liberal heartland until 1980 and still elected Protestant Party candidates a decade earlier). Whatever the historical political legacy and influence on Merseyside, the club admitted a mistake and went back on their initial plan. Well done to all Liverpool fans, no doubt rigidly disciplined by Spirit of Shankly, in a way that the chief constables of Cambridge, Northampton and South Yorkshire would do well to take notice of.

There is, of course, a very easy way to dissuade football clubs from gobbling up state funding they should not be entitled to; ban every club who take these handouts from any transfer dealing next season, whenever that may be. Let’s look at the case of Sunderland AFC, who have placed every single employee on the 80% scheme, for instance. In some ways it makes sense, as the players and fans can bond over the fact, they’re both now reliant on state benefits for their income.

Talking of Sunderland, I’m coping with the lockdown by entering the 21^st Century and paying for Netflix. It’s fantastic; I’ve watched the Bob Dylan Rolling Thunder Review twice already. Not only that, Scorcese’s The Irishman is on a par with Goodfellas. What a performance Joe Pesci gives; utterly mesmerising, while Bobby De Niro is effortlessly brilliant, Pacino is typically histrionic, and Steven Graham is just horrible. I would have liked to see more of Harvey Keitel though. The same is true of the naïve chancer Donald Stewart and Etonian boor Charlie Methven in Sunderland Til I Die. I binge watched both series over 2 days and it’s far better than Premier Passions was, even if we don’t get Bob Murray whining about crisps being stale or fingering with distaste small black and yellow cushions, designed to be placed in the visitors’ changing room to create negative vibes pre match. We don’t have Tommy the boring groundsman with a permanent plug of cotton wool in his ears, the tragicomedian wanker in the pie shop or one eared simpleton Davey Flannigan from Shields either, though we do have the borderline hydrocephalic, porcine Nat Jackley simpleton, trying to get his fleshy grid all over Series 2 Episode 6 by doorstepping Donald Stewart after the Wembley loss to Charlton. Other than him, I genuinely feel sorry for the fans, as the skilful editing has removed every trace of drooling, one-eyed FTM style barking at the moon. However, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Series 1 hints at the fact Simon Grayson was completely out of his depth when he was appointed; presumably the financial catastrophe behind the scenes was kept from him while he negotiated his own deal. The rapid jettisoning of that dull dinosaur saw Chris Coleman come in and commit career suicide. Like Bain, who seems to spend most of his time waiting for his Nespresso machine to fire into life, or driving aimlessly in his sleek Beamer while spouting corporate inanities, both come to learn that wearing expensively tailored suits with a crisply laundered open neck shirt is not a convincing strategy when trying to avoid relegation. It’s a shame we don’t seen Bain luxuriating in his personal cryotherapy chamber when Ellis Short dishes out the P45s after demotion to the third flight has been assured.

 

The change of ownership for series 2 could be seen as a reason to laugh uproariously at the new kids on the block, who clearly came in with the idea of gaining (a supposedly easy) promotion and then flipping the club to fill their pockets with as much loot as they could carry, before high-tailing it back down south.  However, if you can engage in a willing suspension of disbelief as to their true motives, you can buy into what they’re doing. Methven rolls his sleeves up and micromanages an unwilling and indolent commercial arm who wouldn’t sleep in the same room as a pair of work boots. Trying to kickstart a range of loafers who seem allergic to graft is only partly successful, but he achieves more than Donald Stewart, who is the alleged football man. Suffice to say the departure of Josh Maja and the famed non-negotiations that end up seeing £4m poured down the drain on Will Grigg is genuinely tragic to see. I’ve no room for amusement as my club wasted ten times that amount on Joelinton.

As regards the players, it seems hard to get a focus on them will such an immense turnover of players. It is no real surprise that Darron Gibson comes across as a shifty pisspot, Jack Rodwell a narcissistic parasite and Jason Steele as inadequate a communicator as he is a keeper. That said Johnny Williams seems a lovely bloke, determined to do his best, though injury robs him of that chance. It is a strange irony his cross leads to his new club Charlton grabbing a 96^th minute winner in the play off final. The attempt to turn Luke O’Nien into his replacement is doomed, as the plummy-voiced bit part player isn’t essentially any good at football. Actually, that’s the problem with Sunderland full stop, as it appears, they may be facing a third successive season at this level, if they survive now that Methven has quit and Donald Stewart has the whole club up for sale, once again.

Let’s be honest; we don’t really know much about what is going to happen in the professional game, either side of the border. My instinct is that the Premier League, being a different beast and playing by different rules than everyone else, will play the season out behind closed doors, but live on TV, in the hot summer months. The rest of the leagues may well try to complete if, and only if, the extent of the COVID-19 pandemic comes under control. If we don’t achieve stability, it’ll be PPG and potentially no relegation. This, of course, will not be decided for a while yet, to allow the legal ramifications to become intensely troubling, though as ever the political minutiae of the Scotch game will leave the Saxons in the shade.

The trial of Alex Salmond and the conduct of Scotland’s former chief medical officer, Dr Catherine Colin-Calderwood show that Jeanette Mugabe’s potential Banana Republic is slipping into social disarray and towards probable anarchy. Such a disastrous state of affairs may also befall the SPFL. Bespectacled dullard Neil Doncaster is in danger of being thrown out on his arse unless he can work a magic compromise regarding the potential curtailment of the bottom 3 divisions, with the added proviso of being able to apply this to the Premier League as well, at an unspecified later date.

As you can imagine, when presented with a resolution to curtail the bottom 3 divisions with immediate effect, clubs almost uniformly voted to serve their own interests. In the top flight, everyone was in favour other than the Huns and Hearts. The latter obviously wouldn’t sanction their own relegation and the former, as ever displaying a scarcely credible belief in their own importance, wanted prize money handed out now, but no end to the season. This dash for cash is simply a ruse to keep them out of administration, as surely the most one-eyed Billy Boy must accept the title is off to Parkhead for 9-in-a-row.

We’ll come back to The Championship in a bit. Leagues One and Two stand 16-3 in favour, with Stranraer, like Hearts, declining to vote for their own demotion, while play-off hopefuls Falkirk, currently in second spot in League One, and fifth placed East Fife registered their opposition as well. As yet, I have no information on which club hasn’t voted from the bottom 2 divisions, but it’s Dundee’s vote that is awaited in the Championship, with every sign the election is likely to acquire a similar status to the Floridan hanging chads that kept Al Gore out of the White House in 2000. According to the SPFL, Dundee sent an email at 17.00 on Friday last saying that any voting slip that arrived from Dens Park should be ignored. An hour later, their no vote (presumably engineered to deny the Dirty Arabs across the car park their rightful promotion to the top flight) arrived and was discarded. Since then, it has become apparent Dundee, and the mystery non-participating lower league side, actually have 28 days to submit their vote.

Meanwhile, Patrick Thistle, following the same self-preservation principle as Hearts and Stranraer, voted no, as did play off hopefuls Inverness Caledonian Thistle. The SPFL rules state 8 votes in favour must be cast by Championship clubs to pass the resolution, following the Premier League (9/12) and lower division (15/20) thresholds being achieved. Currently only 7 clubs have voted for, which means Dundee’s vote is crucial. The disappearance of said voting slip is causing no end of intrigue, with veiled hints of skullduggery being whispered from the more staunch elements of Scottish football. To be honest, it’s almost as entertaining as the stuff on the pitch normally is.

However, there’s no chance of my seeing my beloved Newcastle Benfield on the pitch in the near future. The FA Council voted overwhelmingly to end all football from steps 3 to 7, with neither promotion nor relegation, not to mention league reorganisation, being involved. From a Benfield perspective, we finish 8^th if the season ends and 10^th if it was arranged on a PPG basis. No big deal for us, but morally it really should be decided on PPG to enable the awarding of league titles. I feel desperately sorry for Stockton Town and Shildon who had their sights on promotion to the new, currently mothballed, NPL East division, as well as Consett and Hebburn Town as their FA Vase dream appears to have died at the semi-final stage. From Division 2, the only possible promotion contenders (Redcar Athletic, Crook Town and West Allotment Celtic) should morally be replacing Northallerton Town, Penrith and Thornaby who were all detached at foot of D1 as this would not affect any other leagues. Although at least the integrity of the top flight will be maintained in the absence of any reconstruction.

To be honest, I’ve really not missed football all that much. What I’m finding hard to cope with is the probable absence of recreational cricket this summer, as the effects of that on my wellbeing scares me more than the thought of Northumbria Police going postal does. As the late Genesis P Orridge pointed out; we need some discipline here.

111 is a Joke

Would you trust me with your life? While the profit motive is more important than public health under capitalism, you may have to....

Despite what my employer thinks, and we’ll come to that anon, I’m no medical expert, though I can declare without fear of contradiction that COVID-19 is able to leap from humans to shape shifting lizards, as demonstrated by Big Ears (aka The Ponce of Wales) being incapacitated by the virus. The probable infection of the swivel-eyed, Brown Jenkin Dominic Cummings suggests also that coronavirus may live in the ideological sewers inhabited by the far right think tanks. It remains a mystery to me why the feral demagogue has not been pursued through the streets by the common multitudes and thence required to face a fate almost grisly as Vlad the Implaer, Rasputin and Mussolini combined. We can but hope, though we may see that karma, unwilling to allow the farcical and vainglorious herd immunity horseshit policy pressed on uneasy medics by the loathsome Cummings, has its eyes on the top prize. At the time of writing, our estimable First Lord of the Treasury BoJo is sucking on an O2 tube in a private intensive care bed. By my reckoning, that’s a bad choice as, without a doubt, I’d have been pumping pure Carbon Monoxide into his system. Don’t despair though; Ian Duncan Smith has declared the Honourable Member for Uxbridge to be fit for work.

Let’s be clear about this, the COVID-19 pandemic is, despite my earlier schadenfreude at the expense of poorly toffs, a class issue as well as a medical one. Those most likely to die are the economically and socially vulnerable, either forced to stay at work because of their economic needs, albeit dressed up in the offensive repetition of specious key worker rhetoric spewed forth by the ruling elite that dares suggests a round of applause every other Thursday makes up for the lack of adequate PPE in the workplace. Not only this, key workers are statistically far more likely to be forced to endure inadequate social distancing on public transport, at work and in the home. Witness Dr Catherine Calderwood giving the most ineffective display of hand wringing in Fife since the Thane of Cawdor’s better half suffered a bout of guilt driven PTSD, after being spotted weekending in her second home.

The middle class 4x4 drivers who flocked to see the Greatest Hits of the National Trust a fortnight back have been replaced as folk devils in popular culture by those in the parks and open spaces of Greater London. Why are they there? Well, I’d imagine in 99% of cases, they don’t have 80ft terraced south facing gardens with mature lawns; they live, often in overcrowded conditions, where social distancing is only possible in the bog or bathroom.  Self-isolation in such circumstances is either impossible, meaning whole (often extended) families stuck on top of each other, or requires one or more occupant, most often crucial breadwinners, to sofa surf with friends or relatives to keep the household afloat. Even the supposed boon of working from home, when possible, is not the panacea for working class households it is for the middle classes. There are kids to look after, either stir crazy ankle biters home from nursery or archetypal bored teenagers who fail to comprehend, deliberately of course, why they can’t congregate with 50 pals in the park, meals to make and the worry of ageing parents, either isolated alone or taking up space in an already crowded house.

Speaking personally, which of course entails being selfish, working from home came at exactly the right time, Wednesday 25^th March, as the inability and disinclination of my employer to do anything other than pay lip service to the Health and Safety aspects of social distancing, was causing me severe anxiety which, many of you will know, I have suffered from for a good few years now and is a constant impediment to so much of my life when things are normal, never mind during an unprecedented lockdown amidst a frightening global pandemic. The chance to have time indoors with my partner Laura and our 3 wonderful cats, with a soundtrack of Mogwai and Godspeed You! Black Emperor as I worked, was richly appreciated, especially as in the days before home working, our overall boss appeared to be going completely off her rocker, meaning going into work often felt like taking a seat on the top floor of a double decker where the driver was pissed and blindfolded., communicating via daily emails that could have been sent from the US Embassy in Saigon in spring 75…

As you can no doubt imagine, I was delighted to remove myself from the unbalanced stewardship of a cross between Nurse Ratchett and King Lear on the heath. Indeed, everything was going smoothly from home until I took a call from my big boss, who is second rung in the elite praesidium and malicious rather than mad in temperament.  She phoned to tell me that, after “an audit” of my “skill set,” I had been “identified” as the “most appropriate” member of my “team” for “temporary redeployment.” To come to “this decision” there was apparently a “skills matrix” applied. Typically, there is no access to this matrix, not that I wish to see anyone else’s scores of course.  No choice. No appeal. Get back into Castle Covid at 9.00, or go sick. Also, despite the fact I don’t drive and neither does Laura, bring your IT kit in with you. The very idea of fetching 2 screens and a base unit, with associated wiring, either on the bike, on public transport or in a taxi was a complete non-starter. Number one; I couldn’t carry the stuff. Number two; I’m not putting my health at risk by taking public transport. Number three; I’m not shelling out just shy of £20 for a cab to bring their gear back. Being honest, I can’t live off £95 a week SSP so, while it seems that I am undoubtedly putting my life at risk by mixing with the proponents of a fetid brew of exhaled viral spores, I am unable to do anything else.

Without a shadow of a doubt my employer is a greedy and rapacious vehicle, for squalid venture capitalists that unapologetically treat their staff like laboratory rats at the best of times, in order to get rich men inestimably richer by the day. Employees are seen as worthless scum.  The problem for those of us in our workplace who are on the left and wish to unionise is that the vast majority of our fellow workers are predominantly docile, compliant and often transient; or all 3. Call it false consciousness, anomie or hegemony; the fact is they’ll happily accept some of the most atrocious contractual and non-contractual privations without batting an eyelid.

A recent and presciently signed megabucks contract to provide non-clinical support for NHS 111 is proving more than lucrative for my employer.  The coronavirus pandemic is enabling them to bathe in money, partially on account of their strategy of taking on hundreds of new hires, often under 18 year old college and 6th form youngsters cast adrift by the abolition of education.  Daft radgie lads in US sweats or Stone Island apparel who still reel at the complexity of a compulsory hand sanitising regime and Insta influenced lasses with dirty hair, fake tan, false nails,  en flick eyelashes and painted brows that remind me of Donald and Davie Stott.  Their exploitative overlords are scandalously paying these poor bairns £5.82 an hour, while telling the NHS it is actually £10 an hour, as well as claiming a training premium. I was told my “training” would last 4 hours. It took a quarter of that to go through a set of PowerPoint slides that contained the “diagnostic” spiel I have to repeat.  I was amused to learn that the overall boss (her of the emails) has taken bad with COVID-19 symptoms.

Other than the fact it appears that my chances of dying prematurely of COVID-19 have increased markedly, I do not particularly object to my redeployment; for one thing it is 50p an hour more in wages (ten bob is ten bob after all) and for another, harking back to old fashioned, properly unionised days, as the last one appointed to my section, I morally ought to be the first one out. However, which is where it all gets grubby and offensive, we come to the crux of the matter; my employer is, in my belief, discriminating against me under the terms of the Equalities Act. To be blunt, I have suffered with intermittent bouts of depression since 1981, which can be medically attested to. In addition I have suffered constant anxiety since 2014. I take medication to control both conditions which medical members of the Occupational Health unit at Tyne Coast College declared they believe to cover me under the Equality Act. Indeed, in 2015 I was classed as a vulnerable adult by a practitioner psychologist in the Newcastle Community Mental Health team. Sending me back to work in a building that has inadequate social distancing has ramped up my anxiety levels enormously. It is the equivalent of sending a claustrophobic to work in a drift mine.

After finding out about the decision to redeploy me , on Friday 2nd April, I contacted CWU Amalgamated Newcastle branch secretary Mark Hugall, who advised me to contact the HR Manager at graft to request reasonable adjustments; specifically, to allow me to work from home as I find the idea of setting foot back inside the building absolutely terrifying. I did so by email. Suffice to say my request was rejected out of hand, with the observation I should follow normal absence procedures on Monday if I don’t feel capable of attending work. I can’t afford to eat the cake suggested, as I’m economically unable to live off SSP or worse, claim Universal Credit, having had experience of doing so in summer 2108, which left me reliant on the Newcastle East Food Bank.

I went to work on the Monday, had my hour and a bit of training (call me Dr Cusack), then started on the phones. The script I read from is designed to come up with 5 possible outcomes. Only two of them involve any clinical input; if a client metaphorically ticks the boxes, I can refer them to either a Nurse or to the Emergency Services. The other three options require me to provide endpoint advice. The only option I am happy with is the Isolation Note, a kind of 2 week sick note for those who’ve had a week self-isolating and are either recovering or a bit poorly. If your boss pays you full wages when you’re off sick, I’d advise everyone to apply for this.

Finally, there are two options I do not feel comfortable with at all. Firstly, I can tell someone they don’t appear to have COVID-19 and should carry on as near to normal as they can. Secondly, I can tell someone they probably have COVID-19 and should self-isolate.  I am not qualified to make such decisions. As well as potentially putting my life at risk by attending work, I am potentially putting the lives of many of my fellow citizens at risk by making judgements I do not have the skills or even the right to make.

That, far more than a few picnic hampers in a park or surfers on a beach, scares the shit out of me almost as much as coronavirus does.