Racist Friend

This article will appear in issue #3 of the absolutely superb View magazine, which I urge you to buy from their Twitter account at @ViewFootballMag, but hurry as they're not accepting orders after Monday 29th June...

The last game I saw before lockdown was an absolute cracker. Saturday 14^th March; denied the chance to see my beloved Benfield away to FA Vase semi finalists Hebburn Town because the Northern League had gone into preventative lockdown, I sampled the lower rungs of the non-league pyramid to see a step 7 contest where Percy Main Amateurs got the better of Winlaton Vulcans in a Northern Alliance Premier Division encounter by a margin of 2-1. For clarification, this is the level of our game where clubs are denied entry to the FA Cup and FA Vase, do not need seats or covered standing, but must have a permanent rail around the pitch. Round our way, almost all the teams at this level, unless they are Reserve, U23 or Development squads from clubs higher in the pyramid, play on council, school or university pitches. Several clubs own or lease their grounds, but even then, the facilities are basic. The Northern Alliance, formed in 1890, is a brilliant competition over 4 divisions of 16 clubs each and I’m actively looking forward to seeing the 2020/2021 football season kicking off at this level. Social distancing is not an issue when there are more people on the pitch than off it. Whispers of a September 5^th start are circulating, and I feel heady with excitement at the thought of Cullercoats against Rothbury and other arcane treats.

Going back to the start of lockdown, it soon became apparent to me that I had a lot of spare capacity in my head now I had no reason to think about football, cricket, gigs or pubs. It was quite a sobering experience realising just how much time I usually spent thinking, imagining, planning, fantasising, attending, and writing about football. Never has the opening page of Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby been so relevant; for alarmingly large chunks of an average day, I am a moron. As Hornby explains, this is not to denigrate the intelligence of football fans, but to point out that the amount of obsessive thought given over to the game by most of us means that the potential for reasoned debate with people who have no interest in football, who are often our nearest and dearest, is somewhat restricted. If nothing else, this whole, hideous pandemic has answered the question, posed by Scottish author Gordon Legge in his 1989 collection of short fiction; What do You Think about in Between Talking about the Football?

As I’ve ham-fistedly hinted above, I got massively back into reading during lockdown. Not since I was an undergraduate, did I pore over so many books by so few authors, devouring the entire written output of Michael Houellebecq and BS Johnson. At the last count, I’d read 26 books in 2020: 22 of them from late March onwards. I’d like to think the reason I got so clever in the first place is because I ‘ve read books all my life. Others, or so it seems, prefer to stick with a single, grammar and factually error-strewn GIF, Meme or whatever you call them. You see, sadly the anecdotal evidence from this bizarre, unplanned and unregulated social experiment in physical distancing and cyber association we’ve been subject to since March 22nd, is of a whole swathe of football fans moving inexorably to the furthest extremes of ultra, right wing politics. It’s demonstrated to me that your Average Joe prefers a simple lie (All Lives Matter, for instance) to a complicated truth (All Lives Matter is a racist slogan).

I suppose this isn’t a new phenomenon; the hideous, pernicious racism on the terraces during the 70s and early 80s was sickening to behold. Thankfully, at Newcastle United, the 1985 Geordies are Black & White movement, inspired by the volleys of abuse our first black player Tony Cunningham was forced to endure, was successful in driving National Front paper sellers away from the gates of St James Park and abusive chanting on the terraces. I’m not naïve enough to believe that a certain percentage of boneheads still harboured racist beliefs, but at least they kept their sick opinions to themselves.

The world changed after that; Britain became multicultural, multi-ethnic, and ostensibly tolerant. William Hague’s 2001 Tory party general election campaign based on xenophobia and naked Euroscepticism foundered very badly, as the sentiments he espoused seemed rooted in a bygone era of race hate that died out with Enoch Powell’s demise. By 2007, British Sea Power seemed to have summed up the zeitgeist with their anthemic Waving Flags; a love song to citizens of the 2004 EU accession states who had made Britain their home. And then Cameron won the 2010 election and the whole Tory shouting match about Brexit kicked off, resulting in the 2016 referendum that punctured a hole in our social fabric that nobody has sought to mend.

I noticed in the run up to the referendum that large numbers of people I knew or interacted with on social media were swallowing the Farage-inspired Take Back Control nonsense. In almost every instance, these were not people I’d recently become acquainted with, largely because of the Against Modern Football ideology and the resurgence of the fanzine movement both seemingly embracing those with a more inclusive, progressive set of norms and values. On my timeline, the ideological dinosaurs retweeting and sharing opinions I was more than uncomfortable with, were either current or former Newcastle United fans for the most part; luckily I was able to disengage by ignoring or blocking because, if there is one thing I have learned from bitter experience, there is no point in trying to argue logically over 280 characters with a meathead who simply won’t listen, never mind think.  Quite interestingly, the home towns of these intolerant paranoiacs were in constituencies such as Blyth Valley, North West Durham or Bishop Auckland. More of that later.

Nationally, the evidence of this rightward drift in the conduct of the sort of bloke I’d rubbed shoulders with from the early to mid-70s was demonstrated by the depressing, but thankfully brief, existence of such organisations as the Football Lads’ Alliance and the, presumably ironically named, Democratic Football Lads’ Alliance. The whole history of the extreme right in Britain has been one of splits, internecine squabbling, and electoral failure. However, with Johnson, Cummings and Gove at the throttle, who needs a fringe Fascist party when there’s a mainstream one that appeals to the same base instincts as Jaya Frandsen, Nick Griffin or John Meighan? Consequently, the unending stream of lies pumped out by the state propaganda machine have been taken as Gospel and unthinkingly parroted across every social media platform from then unto the present day.

The immediate result of such authoritarian populism has been an alarming increase in the number of people I actually know, who I’ve known for decades and stood on the terraces with at local non-league games in many instances, who endorse opinions that, if they were shared by a professional footballer for instance, would result in a rightful ban and fine for unacceptable conduct. I was, and continue to be, taken aback by the bigotry, hatred and prejudice demonstrated by people who had never given, to my knowledge, any public show of Islamophobia, racism, virtue signalling or other prejudicial behaviours. Stuck indoors, spending all day on social media hasn’t done these people any favours, as firstly the Black Lives Matter campaign, that they completely fail to understand the purpose of, and also the ludicrous, discredited save our statues demonstrations, that simply provided a collection of old style pretend tough guys with a chance to throw bottles at middle class students, has given these ageing, armchair authoritarians a reason to act as  vociferous mouthpieces for the state and its right wing fellow travellers.

Things reached rock bottom in the North East during the first two weeks of June, with Saturdays 6^th and 13^th days of outright shame. Firstly, the save our statues nonsense first reared its head, with a wholly unfounded rumour that the war memorial in Durham market square was supposed to be under threat, when actually what was happening was a Black Lives Matter protest a mile down the hill on the old racecourse. As is generally the case in such febrile times, truth went out the window and 30 or so middle-aged, balding, semi-retired “football lads” from outlying towns such as Bishop Auckland and Consett turned up to defend the statue from nobody at all. I’d tried to reason with those on Facebook and Twitter who sought to praise the actions of these brave patriots, but they weren’t for telling. Still I suppose it made a change from endless All Lives Matter propaganda or frankly disgraceful references to the death of Lee Rigby.

The following day saw the toppling of the Colston statue in Bristol which, with the redecoration of the Churchill one in Whitehall had many people frothing at the mouth about things they had never previously known about, much less understood, especially when a website, of dubious provenance that appeared to have the dread hand of MI5 behind it, listing all statues in major English towns and cities was launched. Presumably, it was the work of a cyber agent provocateur designed to inflame opposition passions. In Newcastle, the absolute centre of the city is Grey’s Monument; a 125 foot basalt column that bears a granite representation of the Prime Minister who piloted the 1832 Great Reform Act and 1834 emancipation of slaves through parliament, as well as giving him name to a repugnant, scented brand of tea. Not only was he ideologically at total variance from the likes of Colston, but any attempt to destroy his statue would require a feat of engineering beyond the realms of reality. Unless there was a secret, as yet undiscovered, cabal of anarchist steeplejacks, scaffolders and demolition experts, ready to wreck the iconic centre of the city, nothing remotely destructive was going to happen. Just to be sure, about 150 cartoon hard lads, many of whom would be entitled to concessionary travel passes, assembled under the name of Defenders of Newcastle on Saturday 13^th.

On Monday 8^th, social media was aflame with a pair of videos, originally posted on Instagram by a Northumbria University Law student Melis Altinors, which showed her in conversation with her boyfriend; a personal trainer by the name of Richard Heslop.  At Altinors’s prompting, Heslop repeatedly issued racist, Islamophobic and homophobic statements that were inflammatory enough to not only attract the interest of Northumbria Police, who issued the pair with cautions, but to cause Heslop to lose his job in very short order. Meanwhile, Altinors awaits her fate, as the University is debating what action to take against her. This whole episode was a low watermark in the life of my city, but it was about to get a whole lot worse the following weekend.

I really wanted to attend the Black Lives Matter silent protest that had been scheduled for the same day and same time, but as my partner is still shielding, it would have been foolish to do so. Instead, I sat gloomily in the house, watching footage of the day unfold. The demonstration ended predictably with an unprovoked attack by the right-wing thugs in chunky Italian knitwear on the peaceful BLM protest, with bottles and smoke bombs filling the air before raining down on the wholly innocent anti-racists. To my eternal shame, I recognised more of those among the ranks of conservative casuals than the progressive protesters. That appears also to be the case for Northumbria Police as they’ve lifted 30 or so fascists for public order offences.

Meanwhile, despite irrefutable video evidence to the contrary, many of these grassroots bigots continue to insist that BLM matters protesters are to blame for violence and that the message on the shirts of Premier League players ought to be to do with the NHS or even, depressingly, All Lives Matter. I’m aware though of a slight reduction in the frequency of such falsehoods, which I’m tentatively ascribing to the resumption of the Premier League and Championship. Perhaps now we have football to think about, the non-league Nazis will stop being a problem. Of course, even if they are, the beauty of Northern Alliance games is that social distancing from the opinions of Tommy Robinson’s grandpa can be easily achieved.

A Law Unto Himself

Sometimes, you just have to take the law into your own hands.

My complaint is in relation to a course of action by an employee of Northumbria Police, PC Doyle. It is not directly to do with police activities, but it is the case that he has pursued a course of bullying and harassment specifically directed to me, that I would contend should be properly regard as the Civil tort of Misfeasance in a Public Office. If Northumbria Police, with whom I’ve had many tiresome dealings in the past, do not satisfactorily, deal with my complaint, I am prepared to take the matter to a Civil court.

Over the past decade, I have been subject to repeated harassment from Northumbria Police, from both Newcastle and North Tyneside scions. In particular, the force's zeal to pursue unfounded, mendacious allegations made against me by Elaine O'Connell-Gray and Robin Fisher, as well as David Caisley. This has seen me pursued, detained and interviewed on about a dozen occasions. As can be seen, not one single allegation has resulted in so much as a caution; the actions of the officer who arrested me at Mr Fisher’s request in January 2017 (I do not have her name), plus the grievous conduct of PC 8151 Pilgreen in September 2017 are enough to demonstrate the course of persecution against me, as should the two reports I made of assault against my person in January and May 2020, neither of which were investigated.

I have been aware of PC Doyle since October 2016, through our mutual support of a local football club who I have followed since 2003 and became the programme editor for the club in July 2014. PC Doyle, prior to his involvement, was a non-league referee, but I did not know him. I first met him at a game and subsequently, for the remainder of that season, we had little direct contact. From the start of the 2017/2018 season, he took a place on the club committee as webmaster and I began to have more dealings with him. Since that time, despite being fully aware of the fact that I have struggled with mental health issues since I was a teenager, Doyle has sought to bully, denigrate and abuse me, by means of the spoken and written word, in real life and on line, specifically through his Twitter account.

In short, I believe he has demonstrated an abuse of public power or authority by a public officer who knew that he was abusing their public power or authority and was recklessly indifferent as to the limits to or restraints upon their public power or authority. Furthermore, I believe Doyle both acted and omitted to act, on numerous occasions, with both the knowledge of the probability of harming the claimant and with a conscious and reckless indifference to the probability of harming me, psychologically and mentally.

It may seem unlikely that a police employee would seek to further undermine the fragile mental health of a vulnerable adult, as well as destroying the main source of sporting pleasure in their life, but this is precisely what Doyle sought to do. If you were to examine Doyle’s Twitter account, especially a litany of deleted tweets, it would be apparent that Boyle’s secondary obsession, behind horseracing, was destroying my reputation. For instance, in March 2020 he described me as a “scruffy, irritating, fat, keyboard warrior.” He was clever not to use my name, but his endless screed of abuse towards me, much of which was hidden as he protected his account, had a deleterious effect on both my life and my mental health.

I am aware that members of the police are prohibited from involvement in party politics. This, of course, does not preclude them from holding political beliefs; to say the least, Doyle and I held divergent opinions. Once he learned I was a Remainer, he began an insidious whispering campaign at the football club. In the time between referendum and withdrawal, he sought to portray me as some kind of terrorist sympathiser. As he had been in the Navy and I am an avowed pacifist, we had differing views regarding Remembrance Day; suffice to say, my choice of a white poppy inflamed him and caused him to embark upon a social media blitz about me. I tried my best to ignore him, but in June 2018, I was called to a meeting at the club chairman about Doyle’s allegations.

We found common ground in the meeting, but Doyle was soon furious when he learned of my Labour Party membership, seeking to have me removed as programme editor because of my political views. He saw this as a job for him, though his weakness with spelling and syntax, as can be seen from his Twitter account, precluded him from the job.

Things came to a head in the late summer of 2019 when Doyle engineered my removal from the role of programme editor; a complaint was made about an article in a programme that referred to an incident of unpunished racism by a Guisborough player some years before. A Guisborough fan demurred and Doyle inflated this to a major incident, resulting in me being removed from my position. Even worse, come December 2019 I was actively campaigning for the Labour Party in the election; an act that infuriated Doyle, to the extent he organised me to be banned from all  home games. He wanted it to be a life ban, but the club made it until the end of the season, which Coronavirus curtailed.

Ordinary people may find it baffling that I am so sure of Doyle’s misfeasance but, despite his poor command of written English, he is a skilled exponent of the whispering campaign.  He planted seeds of doubt in the minds of my colleagues and resulted in me being excluded from the club I love and have done for many years.  He used his police influence as a way of making me suffer. Because I am a Socialist and he is an authoritarian right winger, he sought to abuse me at every point. Check his recent Twitter, it is still full of abuse about me.

Doyle has left the club, but continues to have a go at me on social media, meaning I am still suicidal and banned. Please sort him out.

Jayne Mansfield's Bum

What's the worst job you've ever had?

It’s almost exactly 40 years since I finished my O Levels and started my first job as a YTS warehouse operative at RH Dinning Wholesale Electrical Factor on Earlsway in the Team Valley, for the king’s ransom of £26.50 a week take home. Ironically, I’d not wanted to start work; my only wish was to leave school, as I’d grown heartily sick of being shouted at and regularly clouted by socially inadequate bald men in chalk-stained barathea sports jackets and yellow nylon shirts. My unhappiness in the education system had even caused me to spend a night in hospital in February 1980 after my first serious suicide attempt was brought on by the endless grief I got from teachers, peers and parents. You see, I simply wanted to read some books in peace and do my A Levels at Gateshead Tech. Unfortunately, in one of the multiple divergences of opinion with the old fella that characterised my teenage years, he’d decided I wasn’t going to College, because the Students’ Union apparently held discos at dinner time or some similar heinous crime against decent society that I couldn’t possibly be exposed to, so it was either stop on or get a job. Out of sheer obstinacy, I opted for the latter, which neither of us wanted, regretting my choice almost instantly the schools had gone back, and the reality of my situation became my own personal September Song. In actual fact, I had cause to repent at leisure, on the 7.25 bus from Felling Square every morning generally, until the following August when I enrolled for A Levels in English, French and History at Gateshead Tech after all, basically because no school would take me after my unorthodox and unproductive year out among the drums of cable and sleeves of conduit in Bob Dinning’s warehouse. Wrong method but right result, I guess.

Other than collecting the modest stakes of pin money punters for Littlewoods pools coupons (28p for the 8 from 10, 82p for the 8 from 11 and £2.56 for the 8 from 12) around the local area, or delivering papers (50 copies of the Evening Chronicle on a night time was less rewarding but far easier than the complex task of correctly distributing 100 assorted Fleet Street titles in a pre-dawn fug of  exhaustion, caused by staying awake until after 2, listening to Night Owls on Metro), I’d never known the concept of an honest day’s work before. In time, I came to learn that graft, whatever it consisted of, was like a worse version of school with more swearing, and discipline meted out via a clenched fist rather than an open palm. I’ve never really taken to it if I’m honest.

When I think of all my experiences of work, one constant theme has been the endless conveyor belt of petty, intransigent, lying bullshitters I’ve had the misfortune of being line managed by over the past four decades. Throughout that time, I’ve never sought a single promotion that would have given me any kind of instrumental power over colleagues who would have magically been transformed into subordinates. I’ve endlessly questioned the motives of anyone who has attempted to crawl up the ladder of executive career development, unless they simply wanted a few more quid. It’s funny how people change when they get a shot at leadership; I’ve seen numerous decent colleagues absolutely ruined by the chance to lord it over their inferiors. Yes, we could say it shows more about them than us mere mortals, but the problem is bosses, like coppers, are only there to make workers’ lives a misery. Considering all I’ve ever wanted to do with my life is read books, listen to music, watch football, drink beer and express my thoughts on paper, you’d think the rest of the world could have accommodated my needs and aspirations before now. Thankfully, this furlough carry on has provided me with the ideal conditions in which to do just that.

The work at Dinning’s, as far as recall, was less than arduous, though repetitive and mindless, with far more sticks than carrots, but it kept me in beer, books and records, which was all that has ever essentially mattered to me. The boss was a baldly, big nosed bloke called Doug, who had zero interest in his occupation and spent most of the time singing along to the radio or practising his golf swing using a busted-up Tony Jacklin number 3 wood and blocks of polystyrene. If you did your job to a reasonable standard, he ignored you; if you did anything wrong, he swore at you in a desultory manner for about a minute, then you were supposed to put things right.  Generally, we did, but slowly, keeping out of his way while we did so.

If Dinning’s showed me that work could be funereally paced and tedious, moving into the pub trade was the exact opposite. Taking a 4-nights a week job at The Greyhound in Felling in September 1982, once I’d turned 18 and could legally serve alcohol, was an intensive crash course in male, working-class culture. Mondays; stowed out for darts games. Thursdays; packed for the pool league and first hints of the weekend. Fridays; enough said. Sundays: couples’ night in the lounge and even the blokes in the bar were in suits and ties. Back then pubs were only open until 10.30, so speed drinking was of the essence. For instance, my old fella would always have 5 pints when he went out, which was never before 9. He was far from uncommon in that habit, as many other blokes did the same. Pubs ran themselves in those days; serve decent Ex and Scotch at the going rate and you’d be packed most nights other than Saturday, when people went into Newcastle as a rule, generally because of the centrality of football to our social experiences. There were no real ales to look after or catering, other than pies, to worry about, so managers tended to assume a more front of house ambassadorial than administrative role. My boss John Richardson was a dull, phlegmatic pool fanatic, who survived on endless halves of Ex that he poured himself and never paid for. His right elbow, with cue or glass, was in perpetual motion while his lips never moved. Every Friday he gave me a pay packet, wordlessly, but with a wink. I never fully decided whether this was a nervous twitch or a sign of gratitude. When I put in my notice to go to university in September 1983, he acknowledged it with a nod of the head, but no words, though he did say Ta-Ta when I finished my last ever shift on Sunday 15^th of that month. By the time I returned at Christmas, he’d moved on to run another bar out by the airport and I never saw him again. Not that I was bothered I must admit.

Without question, working in pubs has been one of the most rewarding and stress-free jobs I’ve had. For a start, I’m quite good at it, both in terms of managing queues and pouring pints. Also, it has given me an inexhaustible fund of one liners and shit jokes which, bearing in mind the need to keep an expectant audience entertained, helped me in my teaching career. I grew up behind the bar of The Greyhound and I’ll be eternally grateful to my late uncle, John Hird, who worked alongside me, showed me the ropes and turned me into a bloke, if not a man. Working in The Anchor in Portstewart, Co Derry while at university, under the unbalanced, hilarious and mercurial ownership of the late, great Larry Duffy (a Pioneer like all the best Irish pub owners) was equally as enjoyable, as it afforded me the opportunity to sit and read books, while getting paid to do so. In that sense, time spent sat on the wooden benches in front of the bar’s roaring fire on deserted midweek late afternoons in Winter, reading Romantic poems, Renaissance drama and Victorian novels, was as much part of my education as managing a 10-deep counter, all in full voice, intent on establishing cruel England was to blame, for a traditional Saturday late bar. Whether you’d played football or hurling, soccer or rugby, golf or hockey in the afternoon, this was the only place with a BT postcode I could ever imagine being that night of the week. Larry sat in his back lounge, drinking Club Lemon, until it turned midnight and then he turned up to watch us all like a hawk, with the unsaid knowledge that we had a 4 am curfew, but carry-outs were still available after that. Most weeks I ended up owing him money.

Strangely, moving to London and working in pubs, was never so satisfying, mainly due to incompetent management, though I’d guess having a Iii in English Literature meant I was setting my sights a bit low, but I’d never thought about a proper job. I was too anarchic, too unhinged and implacably opposed to the wage slavery of the working week to even consider looking for graduate employment. I arrived in the North West Frontier of Canons Park in late July and took up work on August 1^st in the, now demolished, Green Man on Honeypot Lane. Sounds bucolic, but it wasn’t. The manager was a lazy, Brummie psychopath called Frank Kaminski whose wife left him three times and returned twice during the time I worked there. He nicked my smokes, £10 out my tip jar and would have had my wallet if I’d not caught him in the act, on the day he paid me up and told me not to come back. Crazy bloke, as was my next boss, Brendan Clifford at The Alma (now demolished) in Harrow Weald. Now here was a big, thick Kerryman pisspot. Only over the water for a year and previously employed at The Cock in Kilburn, he was in charge of this place after a refurb, ready to open again on September 1^st; after a calm initial fortnight, the bar ambience deteriorated rapidly and the place became a Paddy pub, thronged with thirsty, bibulous first, second and third generation Boys of the Old Brigade; Brendan drank in triple rounds with them all and crashed out every night beneath one of the tables in the bar. On Saturday 27^th September, he fell over unconscious behind the counter at 7pm and I left his employ the same night with half the takings and a shelf full of bottles. It was cathartic I suppose, but it didn’t prepare me for the drudgery that came next.

I’d ended up in London as I’d been turned down for a post graduate scholarship to do an MA in Twentieth Century Literature at Newcastle, because I’d missed out on a first. The fact this kept me awake every night was unsurprising. Hence, I needed something to do before my PGCE at Leeds, which didn’t start until September1987. In retrospect I’d have been better claiming the dole back in Felling, but a stilted sense of adventure kept me down south and, with little irony, I took up the position as a Clerical Officer for the British Academy, who administered the postgraduate finance in the Humanities. Those days you wandered into the Job Centre and, if you wanted, could pick up a job the same day. For administrative jobs, it took a week. Hence, on my first morning, Monday 6^th October, I accessed my application which had UNSUCCESSFUL stamped right across the top. Welcome to Jude the Obscure, Redux. Except my branch of the British Academy had as much to do with arts-based research as it did with folk dancing or water divining; we were pay clerks, pure and simple. What was worse, my boss, a particularly ugly and unpleasant woman called Pat Phillips who bore an uncanny resemblance to Bernard Manning in specs, was a bigoted, racist Tory, chain-smoker. She was universally despised I’m glad to say.

Office work was a revelation to me; as a profession, it is almost an entirely pointless activity that could be done by a moderately sentient chimpanzee in half the time humans are allocated. At the British Academy, I was required to sign about 100 replies a day, along the lines of “thank you for your letter, the contents of which have been noted,” which were almost always changes of address or phone number. Anything more complex got a “thank you for your letter, the contents of which are receiving attention,” which bought some time while Bernard read the file. Eventually, instead of signing these replies, I began my own minor Situationist rebellion, by placing an unshod foot on the red ink pad that ought to have been married up with the date stamp, then smeared my inky toes across the letter. Goodness, it amused me, almost as much as deliberately misfiling client documentation did. I was never caught for these petty, but administratively destructive indiscretions but, once ensconced in my Headingley student house, thoughts of how Bernard and the rest reacted to my salad days of administrative terrorism, sent me sniggering to sleep.

Thus, ended my juvenile workplace experiences. Moving forward on the educational treadmill, getting chronologically older but remaining resolutely immature, I became aware of the diffuse and confusing multi-tentacled hierarchy of school management structures. After a spell at Boston Spa Comprehensive near Wetherby, where I was occasionally managed by the aloof and distant Steve Waddington, a bookish study in grey, I took my first permanent role at Brinkburn School in South Shields. I spent 9 years there, which was far too long, but I was infected with a naïve loyalty to an institution that gave me fuck all in return and was deservedly pulled down a decade or so ago.

Like all jobs, it was half a pleasure and half torture. I taught some wonderful kids and made some great mates. My first Head of Department was Dick Atkinson; a fabulously intelligent raconteur who helped me cope with the worst excesses of outrageous fourth years. Sadly, he moved on after a year to a deputy headship and I had the appalling experience of the being a victim of the unethical management practises of manipulative, furtive Jennie “Big Psycho” Dalton and her vindictive, airheaded deputy Fiona Thompson as my immediate bosses. Thompson, who is one of the most arrogant, selfish morons I’ve ever had the displeasure to meet, moved on and was replaced by the educationally subnormal Sue Russell, who didn’t like poetry as it was “too difficult.” In the big office, incomprehensible Welsh Max Headroom body double John Hughes was replaced by the vile, fundamentalist Christian paedophile Ivan Hargreaves as Head Teacher. The school served some of the most impoverished areas of South Shields, with a prevailing ideology that was closer to Colditz than Summerhill. Most teachers swaggered like prison guards and the kids were either aggressively defiant or passively cowed, other than about 10% who were keen to learn and aware that education was their only possible passage out of the fetid hole they had grown up in. Eventually, after seeing my mental health wrecked, I had to escape and, after a period as a freelance writer and supply teacher while I completed my MA in Twentieth Century American Literature and Creative Writing, I headed to Slovakia to teach English as a Foreign Language in Bratislava in the autumn of 1999. As I always say, I arrived the day Newcastle had their biggest home win in 53 years; 8-0 over Sheffield Wednesday.

I’m glad I made the trip, as I passed two of the most congenial years of my life. TEFL teaching was a complete breeze compared to secondary school, probably because I took to it instantly, feeding my innate pedant’s curiosity about recondite points of syntactical mystery,  but it was the social experience that made Bratislava pure heaven on earth. It’s no surprise I’ve got more pals from Akademia Vzdelavania than from anywhere else I’ve worked and one of the very best was my boss Liz McCubbin, who somehow managed to keep the oddball collection of pissheads, radgies and random sociopaths who washed up by the side of the Danube each September, in some kind of semi-professional order.

Back in England, I spent a precarious year in the Cinderella section of the education profession, as a domestic TEFL teacher. It’s a job I’d not advise anyone to try; lousy pay, zero employment rights and terrible accommodation, unless you were at one of the prestigious Oxbridge institutions meant I drifted from York to Slough to Bournemouth and back to York again, with an attendant crew of itinerant colleagues and pals, before landing a job at Sunderland College. There were some smashing people teaching English there, big shout outs to Jerry, Robin, Andrea and Stevie. Sadly, as I was split between Access, which I loved and EFL, which was brilliant with Asylum Seekers and refugees, but less enjoyable with fee-paying Chinese students, who did not want to be there, I was placed in the less functional college accommodation, where the staff were odd as well; eccentric folk singer Terry Freeman was a disorganised, volatile control freak who worked offensively in concert with sly, passive aggressive hypochondriac Joanne Conway to ensure smooth-talking, cockney wideboy bullshitter Andrew Patience had his own way, while persecuting the staff. The worst was Nigel “Camp David” Harrett; a man so thick he described his A Levels as “the hardest five years of my life.”

Strangely, it wasn’t so much this shower of clowns that drove me away from Sunderland College, but the dreadful privations of travelling by unreliable, tardy and inefficient public transport, back in the days before the Metros were cancelled. Thankfully, I found salvation by swapping to Tynemouth College, which became Tyne Metropolitan College when we merged with North Tyneside College in 2005, which became Tyne Coast College when we merged with South Tyneside College in 2017. Of the 15 years I spent there, I would wager 13 of them could be described as wonderful, though this enjoyment often had little to do with my manager, as once I accepted the role of UCU Branch Secretary in 2007, I fought as hard for my members as I did for my learners.

When I first arrived at Tynemouth, to teach Access and ESOL, filling a vacancy occasioned by the disinclination of my Oxbridge-educated Tynemouth colleagues to soil their intellects with such a demeaning timetable, I discovered not only my worst ever boss, but someone who is among the 3 most evil human beings I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter. Meet Shana Nethercott: intellectual pygmy, narcissist extraordinaire and layabout sociopath. She was utterly bereft of emotional intelligence and would have delegated breathing if she could have done. I actually had to block her from sending emails on the staff intranet as I’d never come across such a relentless flow of horseshit in my life.

I’ll despise Nethercott to my dying day and vigorously celebrated the merger of two Colleges that took me out of her orbit in 2005. My next boss was the unique, Wonderwoman obsessive Janet Lamb, before I had the honour of grafting for the two best blokes I’ve worked under. Rob Mackins and then Mick Quinn, who had your back 100% of the time; they simply let you get on with your job and didn’t seek to undermine, micromanage or belittle your efforts. Sadly, the next two bosses of Adam Clemerson, an almost invisible paper clip counter and Denise Bolton, a two-faced, old school narcissist whose only urge was self-aggrandisement, didn’t stack up and, after Access to HE was killed, partly by the ending of Government funding for over 21s in 2015 and partly because of the inability of evil witches like Eve Maxwell and Angela “Keyhole Kate” MacLean to defend the general good, preferring instead to build their own empires, I stopped enjoying work and actively began to hate it.

From late 2015, I was effectively comprehensively deskilled as a sentient human being. Having spent a decade and a half debating the greater part of the Literary canon with some of the finest and most intelligent people North Tyneside has ever produced, as well as revelling in the honest endeavours of those who needed an English Language qualification to gain a place at university, I was devastated to have this honour torn from me. Having overseen approximately 1,500 adults head for university each year, this was the academic equivalent of the Second Defenestration of Prague.

Because of the weak cowardice and obsequious telling of tales by Bolton, McLean and Maxwell, I plummeted intellectually to the scholastic sea bed, being redeployed as a Functional Skills tutor for Level 1 BTEC cretins in Health and Social care, who subject teachers were only a fraction less imbecilic than the  cretinous, potential Beverley Allotts and Myra Hindleys I was supposed to somehow teach. The fact my direct and ultimate bosses were 100+ stone of vapid, subhuman excrement, in the shape of functionally illiterate slave driver Warick Stephenson and vindictive, cruel, morbidly obese florist Audrey Kingham, who was as evil as Shana Nethercott but blessed with infinite power and another 30kg of girth, made me hate the last 2 years at College. I’ll never, ever forgive the Big Florist for almost driving me to suicide; she was, and no doubt still is, as evil, destructive and vindictive as both Elaine O’Connell-Gray and Robin Fletcher were, though at least the Big Florist didn’t have Northumbria’s finest in her back pocket.

Getting made redundant on April 1^st, 2018 kept me alive and allowed me to rediscover my love of people and sarcasm, working behind the bar at Tynemouth Cricket Club, under the benevolent aegis of wisecracking super cynic Steve “Fanta” Mordue. Sadly, it wasn’t enough money and that’s why I had to move to the role I’m currently not doing, which the most rewarding job I’ve ever had.

 

Project Solipsism

Fans of Hearts & Sunderland should look away now....

Apologies for the delay in getting this missive out to you. Over the past couple of weeks, the arrogant and contemptuous refusal of the unelected, money and ideology driven demagogues with their hands firmly grasped round the reins of power, to adequately explain and take responsibility for their palpably illegal actions, has meant that while every single day I’ve thought about sharing my thoughts with you, the sands of obfuscatory disinformation have shifted once again, meaning my opinions would have been rendered anachronistic.

You probably expected me to mention Dominic Cummings, or even do an article on the layers of ludicrous lies heaped on his trip to Durham. Equally, the sickening murder of George Floyd and the nauseating, lying response by the racist US state apparatus should be written large in blood red capitals by a better author than I.  However, I decided that debating such topics would be a pointless act; firstly, because I didn’t feel equipped to adequately encapsulate the extent of the misfeasance at the heart of the current British and American governments and secondly, because John Crace of The Guardian says everything that needs to be said in his daily column, which I implore you to read.

Moving back to football, I had hoped to start on this piece on Sunday 24^th May, as it was eleven years to the day that Newcastle United were relegated from the Premier League for the first time which, as national footballing authorities had been supposed to submit detailed plans for the future of the domestic game in their country to UEFA by 25^th May, seemed to be appropriate in several ways, including the hinted conclusion of the glacially paced takeover by the amoral butchers from the House of Saud, blowsy nicotine addict Amanda Staveley and the elusive philanthropic billionaires, the Reuben Brothers. However, the Premier League’s admirable refusal to provide assent for this sordid gang of ne’er-do-wells to assume control of NUFC, albeit for completely the wrong reasons, means that the whole deal appears almost certain to fail, which has caused a pandemic of cognitive dissonance among the entire NUFC Twitterati, who have declared a cyber pogrom on Hatice Cengiz, whose appeal for justice for her murdered fiancé have been met with contemptuous abuse at every turn. It is sickening behaviour and, as must be pointed out at every turn, certainly not her fault that arguments over broadcasting rights of Premier League games have holed the pirate ship PIF below the waterline.

A perhaps surprising side effect of the vacuum created by the derailed and discredited attempted takeover has been the emergence from underneath rocks of the usual suspects from leafy Ouston and arid Dubai, in a so far unsuccessful attempt to rehabilitate their ruined reputations by getting their gnarled grids and tawdry timepieces all over a series of demotic publicity shots with a startled and slightly revolted Chris Mort, like it’s Baha Beach in 2007 all over again. Instead, the unlikeable lads are emerging, tentatively and shamelessly by turns, from a year of peer-imposed social media lockdown, by means of a regular drip feed of widely-ignored and otherwise derided populist articles and podcasts, claiming the future for NUFC is so radiant as to be indistinguishable from a paradisal afterlife.  Somebody needs to show these lads some love and understanding soon, or they’ll explode from being ignored. Perhaps a few pairs of comfort socks might help.

On Thursday 26th May, the Premier League finally announced that the season would recommence in exactly three weeks, on Thursday 17th June. Fair play to our very own Adonis Brooooth mind; the fella who looks like he lives on fishcake and chips four times a day has expressed his reservations as to whether elite professional athletes will be back in the correct shape in time. I think that’s a question best answered by Jack Grealish, Kyle Walker, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Alexandre Lacazette, Moise Kean, Phil Foden and all the other moneyed transgressors who broke COVIS-19 lockdown laws this past while. However, Broooth’s compassion does stand in sharp relief to the deeply distressing tales of nice guy Rafa endlessly bullying Craig Bellamy, for instance.

Of course, during the long period of silent uncertainty when we didn’t know if English football would embark upon the tortuous processes related to Project Restart, there was the soporific sight of German football effortlessly gliding back into place, albeit with grounds devoid of spectators, stripping the games of any atmosphere. This minor detail wasn’t enough to cool the burning ardour of the Brownshirt Bupastadt Brits: Der Stanabteilung mit Schwein und Hund who tweeted endless moist gusset shots of their unseemly excitement and hazy comprehension of ihre Unzureichendemannschaft  until die Kulturellenaneigner endured a four goal chasing second time out and they went back to self-mythologization as their default pastime: ich war kein Bergmann, ich war kein Maurer, ich habe nicht auf Baustellen gearbeitet nach dem Krieg…

Being serious, despite several positive tests and Troy Deeney slipping his ankle tag to avoid training, the Premier League seems to be heading forwards with the minimum of fuss, the occasional positive test result notwithstanding. Don’t get me wrong; I’d rather they play these two previously postponed PL games, then call the table on a PPG basis, as well as handing the FA Cup to the side who’ve scored the most goals in the competition, in recognition of Newcastle’s superb commitment to attacking football in the first part of the season, but in the elite strata of the game there’s no room for selfishness or sentimentality; sport rules the waves. The dates and times for all games are now in the public domain and the participating clubs have given their assent. Oh, if only this were the case among the professional plankton in the lower depths of the game.

It’s no secret that my Scottish team is Hibernian, but it is a less well known fact that I have more than a passing affection for both Bradford City and Port Vale, who are the two sides I follow in League 2. In the case of Bradford, it was and affection caused by regularly attending games at Valley Parade when I was a student at Leeds University, while Port Vale is more difficult to quantify; I suppose simply enjoying my visits to Burslem where I saw Newcastle win on both occasions, was enough, especially as it contrasts with memories of near death experiences at nearby Stoke City in the League Cup back in 1995. Not only do they both have my affection, they have my total respect after they selflessly abandoned hopes of a play off place by voting to curtail the League 2 season, rather than imperilling the continued existence of their rivals by embarking upon a fiscally ruinous course of events by playing out the rest of the season behind closed doors. It is an example of the kind of sense of responsibility for the sport as a whole that is sadly lacking in League 1.

The top of the table in the third tier is fascinating to behold; while Coventry and Rotherham are rightly being regarded as over the hills and far away, the play off places are incredibly tight. Currently, there is only a single point separating Oxford in third from Wycombe in eighth, with Peterborough holding onto the last play off spot on goal difference from Sunderland and Wycombe. There is, of course, a crucial ace in the pack that Wycombe are delighted to lay down; if PPG is applied to the table, the Chair Boys have a crucial game in hand, which moves them to third and bumps Peterborough out of the play offs entirely. The Mackems, it should be noted, have played 1 more game than their rivals, which means they drop to eighth on that basis.

Remembering the events of early 1998 in the FA Cup, I have little to no sympathy for Stevenage and their imminent relegation from League 2, enabling the infamous radgies of Barrow to return to the Football League after a 48-year hiatus. I have even fewer fellow feelings for Donald Stewart’s mob. If natural justice is applied, they must endure a third successive season in the third tier and Peterborough, though my memory of one wonderful trip to London Road in September 1992 remains undimmed, must sadly accompany them.

For the overwhelming majority of League 1 clubs, including Sunderland if truth be told, the expense of holding games behind closed doors, removing the major income stream of matchday income, is an impossible burden. Cancelling or curtailing the campaign is the only realistic way forward. We’ve come too far to entertain the first option, so the second must be embraced and PPG is the only possible fair way to compile a final table. The sheer length of time it has taken to come to a decision means that it is totally unfeasible to try and schedule up to 10 rounds of ordinary league fixtures and then the play-offs, if we want the season finished before the clocks go back. As a result, the teams in the play-off places should continue the season to a natural conclusion, albeit without fans to see it. Donald Stewart, up to his oxters in debt and sinking fast, has admitted, like so many from Wearside before him, that taking the matter to court without support from Legal Aid is a complete non-starter, though Peterborough’s wannabe DNS Howyeh owner Darragh MacAnthony, always keen to reinforce his Love\Hate persona, has muttered dark thoughts about stepping the argument up to Hutch–Kinahan levels of debate. We shall see, after the EFL constituent divisions hold definitive meetings in the week beginning 8^th June.

Mind if you think Peterborough, Stevenage and Sunderland are behaving like spoilt brats, you should see the sickening and selfish plans being tabled by the frighteningly scarified Ann Budge, owner of Heart of Midlothian, for Scottish league reconstruction. For the past 7 seasons, the Scottish game has bumbled along as usual under the current structure of 4 divisions of 12-10-10-10, with Celtic winning it every year of course. Having last kicked a ball in mid-March, the SPFL came together to vote on the season’s end. After a tortuous process blighted by the arrogant selfishness of Rangers FC, who are only 1 year older than the SPFL it should be remembered, the bottom 3 leagues were curtailed, with some important modifications. Firstly, Brechin City were spared the indignity of every previous wooden spoonist by not having to play off against either Kelty Hearts or Brora Rangers to keep a spot in League 2. Secondly, Cove Rangers swapped places with Stranraer and Raith Rovers with poor old Partick Thistle. Thirdly, Dundee United were declared Champions of the Championship, but their replacements weren’t immediately confirmed, as the Premier League went into suspended animation.

Throughout their 8-year existence, Rangers have always adopted the default position that whatever inconveniences Celtic must be ruthlessly pursued. They screamed and cried like bairns with colic to try and prevent Celtic getting their hands on 9 in a row, demanding Neil Doncaster be suspended and hinting at the existence of a weighty dossier of corporate misfeasance that turned into the square root of jack shit in the clear light of day. Consequently, the Premier League was called, the Huns took the huff and Hearts took the tumble to the Championship, finishing four points adrift at the foot of the table, having only won four games all season; two of those against Hibs, I am ashamed to admit…

Being dispassionate, Hearts deserve to be relegated on merit. They are palpably and demonstrably the worst side in the division over a period of 30 games and seven months and nothing can hide that fact. Unfortunately, to the universal derision of Scottish football, other than followers of Partick Thistle, Rangers and possibly the mighty Stranraer, the Grandmother of King William, Worshipful Sister Budge, simply won’t let it go. In the Crazy World of Annie Budge, the restoration of the natural order isn’t the fault of Craig Levein, Austin McPhee, Daniel Stendal or two dozen unmotivated, underperforming players in maroon, it’s all the fault of SPFL that COVID-19 wrecked the season. In the Gorgie dreamworld, the only way to solve all the problems in Scottish football is to reconstruct the league set up in a way that benefits Hearts.  Budge’s proposals are for three divisions of 14, or possibly 16 in the bottom tier if Kelty and Brora are invited on board. Incidentally, that bottom tier will include Stranraer, so quite how Hearts have salvaged the souls of the Stair Park stalwarts isn’t immediately apparent. Partick Thistle seem keen though and that’s about all the positives to be taken from this proposal.

Early indications are that the proposals are doomed to failure; there is absolutely no chance of 15 lower division clubs voting for this farce. For instance, why would Cove Rangers deny themselves promotion? And yet, never rule out the possibility of corruption masquerading as compromise in Scottish football administration, with Neil Doncaster moving the goalposts, by changing the question top flight clubs are being asked. Instead of saying will you agree to a 14-club top division for 2 years? Doncaster has asked the far more nebulous, what will it take you to accept a 14-team top division for, possibly, the next 5 seasons?

In my eyes, it appears Doncaster is angling for a 14-10-10-10 structure, with Brora and Kelty given seats around the campfire. A cynic would suggest that at least a division’s worth of teams will go to the wall, if they’re required to play behind closed doors from 1^st August, so any reconstruction will embrace the salient principles of Social Darwinism. However, one thing Budge has done is persuade billionaire philanthropist James Anderson (not the Burnley Lara, incidentally) to have a rake around the back of his sofa and come up with a £2m donation to be spread out equally among all 42 (or perhaps 44) member clubs. Nigh on fifty grand may not even pay for Leigh Griffiths’s latest hair weave, but for the likes of Annan Athletic it’s probably enough to keep their heads above water for the next while, until such time as their average 200 crowds come banging on the door again.

Certainly, were such a state of events to come to pass, I’d regard it as a price worth paying for the devious machinations of the maroon Machiavellis. As regards League 1, there’s no chance I could ever support anything other than PPG as a means to ending the season.