Bijou Drains
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“That doesn’t apply to the South Wales mining values where rugby union was the popular sport. Maybe why rugby league clubs sent out scouts”
Used to do bits of work up in South Wales, up into the valleys, etc. the rugby club culture was very different to that in England.
It’s similar when you go up to the Scottish Borders, Kelso, Galashiels, Melrose, etc. Rugby mad.
Thing is, if they made the ball round, they could kick it properly and they wouldn’t have to pick it up.
“It’s ironic that this is the anthem for a violent sport (rugby).”
It’s actually the anthem for Rugby Union, not Rugby. The Rugby Football League split from the Rugby Football Union because the workers were starting to beat the public school boys at their own game. The claim was that miners and mill workers were professionals because they were given compensation from the clubs to make up for the time they lost playing rugby. The southern clubs, mainly based on old boys from the public school system, didn’t have to worry because they were “independently wealthy” i.e. living off the stolen profits of surplus value. A similar split occurred in Australia.
Rugby Leage was considered to be part of the radical movement in France and the Vichy state banned the game, with the support of the French Rugby Union and transferred all of the assets of the generally working class sport of Rugby League, to the French Rugby Federation. (Perhaps Moo would agree to banning Rugby in a Socialist Society???).
There are many people in the North West and Yorkshire despise the Rugby Football Union and similarly dispise that song.
I would also question whether or not Rugby (or any code of football) meets the definition of “violent”. Violent – “using or involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.”
Aggressive, yes, violent?
And if in a Socialist society people freely choose to play football, rugby, Tae Kwando, Cumberland/Westmorland wrestling, boxing, tiddly winks or lacrosse, who am I or Moo to say they shouldn’t do it?
Lizzie45 “As I’m going away for an extended period (don’t all cheer at once!)”
Don’t worry, you’re not as important than you think you are😂😂
A little quote from that article gives an interesting insight into the SPEW mentality:
“This led us to raise publicly the idea of an alternative workers’ party to Labour. We recognised that this was still a minority view, even amongst those who had retained a socialist consciousness, some of whom could be won to a revolutionary programme and organisation. This was illustrated by the singing of ‘The Internationale’ on mass demonstrations in France in the period following the collapse of the Soviet Union.”
There you have it, spoken from the lips of the vanguard. You can judge the level of socialist consciousness, the level of understanding of the need to reorganise society on the basis of common ownership, the level of public insight into the class struggle between those who own the means of production and those who produce wealth, by knowing that ……………… some French people were having a sing song.
Fuck me rigid, if I had know that 40 years ago I would have learned to play the mouth organ and we’d all now be living in a Socialist society.
I was only pulling your leg, Bonny Lad, although I might start referring you to as Mike Riley, or given your origins, should that be Jeff “bloody” Winter
Wez “Dunno about being placid angels but it would be a mightily embarrassing sight to see socialists sharing the tribalism that Chelmsford describes. ”
You’re free to watch me and my tribalistic and embarrasing behaviour, full of ale, up at “Sid James” Park every other Saturday afternoon (or Friday, Sunday, Monday, etc depending up on the whim of Sky TV, etc.).
1004 as a number of respondents is often used because it provides a magin of error of 3%. A 3 percent margin of error means that there is a 95 percent chance that the survey result will be within 3 percent of the population value.
To put it another way, you would expect to see a less than 3 percent difference between the proportion of people who say “yes” to the survey question and the proportion of people in the population who would say “yes” if asked.
1004 is often seen as the most cost effective sample size. By surveying 4,000 people, you can get the margin of error down to 1.5 percent. This sounds appealingly precise (for example, “The proportion is between 68.5 percent and 71.5 percent”), but it is generally considered an expensive waste of time because public opinion varies enough from day to day that it is meaningless to attempt too precise an estimate.
There are lots of variables though, how was the sample drawn, did the respondents all tell the truth etc.
Personally I cannot see why it would be hard to imagine a socialist society which has competitive sports and games as part of society.
In terms of games, I play bridge at a local club which has run for years with its own premises and works on a completely voluntary basis, no one gets paid, all of the work gets done, there are no leaders, unless you think the Club Secretary (elected annually) is a leader. To me it is an example of how Socialism could work compeltely smoothly and efficiently. There are loads of Bowls clubs, Tennis clubs, football and rugby teams, youth groups, etc. around the areas that operate on exactly the same way.
Another example of how sport might be organised in a Socialist Society would be to model the way that the Gaelic Athletic Association (The GAA) works. Basically you play for the club local to where you live (more or less and there are exceptions) the local Clubs are organised on a county basis. The winner of the county chapiionship progresses to the provincial championships (Ulster, Munster, Leinster and Connacht) the four winners go into semi finals and finals and the winner is the All Ireland Senior Club Champions.
At the same time each county picks a team from all of their county clubs and that team represents the county in the all Ireland County championship.
The GAA is nominally amateur and most local clubs are based on volunteers to function, just like the vast majority of local soccer/cricket/rugby teams are in the UK.
I can’t see any reason why all of the sports we enjoy cannot be adapted to fit in with a socialist society, perhaps Formula 1 might struggle (although why anybody wants to watch is effectively traffic beats me anyway)
Very kind of you to include smoggies in the English speaking world. Frankly, I’m spent enough of my life explaining to folk that I’m not a Geordie to know the difference, but don’t forget the influence of mass culture on shifting dialects: my sister’s kids call her ‘mum’. While I’m there, bairn is old English, but you’re right about Northumbrian generally as a conservative dialect. Teesside has added Irish inflection.
BTW, the second speaker clearly has picked up a few Geordie notes in his accent.
My point, though, wasn’t to criticise the magpie fans – the point was a general human one about how we stand our ground intellectually when we care about something, and how facts are absorbed.
After all, Gibbo is involved in all this freeport nonsense, capitalists are gonna capitalist.
YMS – Aye, divvent worry Marra, the Grandbairns have a Smoggy Fatha. A canny lad, but clearly misguided.
Thankfully grandbairn 1 has chosen the righteous path. Grandbairn 2 may be another issue, not yet two years old and full of hell!
Love the bones of the pair of them!
Her nickname is “Rosa” because of her nonconformity, so red and white might be her choice!
I agree with your general point that in captalism that we all have cognitive dissonance. Scottish and Newcastle Breweries were the biggest bunch of twats in the world, but I’d strangle a new born kitten for a bottle of the original bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale (not the shite on sale now), or a pint of Fed Special, Sold off to bloody Heiniken.
As you say, even Gibbo, who is probably the most popular and decent Football Club Owner, is constrained by the nature of capitalism.
My view is that sport and the joy it brings (as either spectator or participant) is one of the joys of life. I played football competitively until I was nearly 50 and I wish I was fit enough to play again.
In comparison to some of the shite capitalism throws up, sport etc. is small beer. However sport, the arts, travel, music are part of human need and the current system of property ownership continually deprives the majority meaningful access to all of these area of life.
If, as it seems, there is a hard evidence trail for what happened in California, he’s looking at 5-8 years in a secure penitentiary for rape.
Good looking lad like him might need to be careful in the showers, he could end up with a hoop like a clown’s pocket.
However, given what he’s accused of, it might be an appropriate come uppance, if you pardon the pun.
“I don’t mean to be mean to Geordies, but until they develop thumbs and learn human speech it’s just too easy.
Anyway, this video is faintly terrifying:
basically, Toon fans defending taking Saudi money with weak tu quouque arguments against the British state (which are fair enough), but it shows how people can hold some fairly hypocritical POVs when it suits their ideational interests, in this case as footie fans.”A late reply because I was busy developing thumbs and then learning the secret of fire.
Having watched the video I found it a little surprising that the original poster should identify the three people in the video as “Geordies”. The last two speakers did not have a Geordie accents (as any fule kno). The second had a Middle Eastern/Asian accent, the third speaker clearly had a County Durham accent. (Geordies don’t drop their aitches and his pronounciation of food banks as “fewd banks, is a give away as to his linguistic origin).
So, on the basis of one speaker on a dodgy twitter video YMS can Comfortably deride the whole population of Tyneside, no doubt he thinks that all Scousers are thieves, all Welshmen are sheep shaggers (when they are not engaged in choirs), all Glaswegians are violent drunken psycopaths and all Aberdonians are tight fisted.
As to the language issue, we have been able to speak for quite some time. The broad dialectical range known generally as Northumbrian (including Geordie, North Northumbrian, Mackem and Pitmatic) is considered by some to be a separate language. For instance, The Northumbrian Language Society (NLS), founded in 1983 to research, preserve and promote the Northumbrian language variety, considers it divergent enough to be not a dialect of Modern Standard English but, rather, a related but separate Anglic language of its own, since it is largely not comprehensible by standard English speakers. Northumbrian has perhaps an even closer relationship with Modern Scots, and both the NLS regard as distinct languages derived from Old English but close relatives.
Much of the dialect used is much closer to Old English than Standard English spoken in the South, for instance the use “yee” instead of you, “Watter” instead of water, “Hyem” instead of home, “hoose” instead of house, “Toon” instead of town and “Larn” instead of learn or teach. Many other words are close to Scandinavian usage, for example “gan” instead of go and “bairn” for child (Barn in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish). Vowels sounds and use of dipthongs in this dialect are also closer to Old English, whereas Southern and Midland English use of vowels and dipthongs has been changed through the Norman influence (byuts for boots, beor for beer, etc).
It is fair to say, in my opinion, that actually everyone South of Middlesbrough is actually speaking in French.
In fairness though, I can only assume that YMS was attempting to develop a little “banter”, (South Africans are well know for their humour) well YMS, “hadaway n’ poss ya dutt, y’geet glake”.
Interestingly YMS also implies in his posting that Newcastle fans should protest at the presence of the Saudi regime at Newcastle, perhaps he feels that Newcastle fans should attempt to reform part of the Capitalist System and that even more interestingly he perhaps thinks that these kinds of reforms would be worthwhile.
With regard to the response of Newcastle fans to the take over (by the way not all Geordies are Toon fans and not all Toon fans are Geordies, about 50% of those who live on the South Bank of the Tyne from roughly Jarrow towards South Shields follow the Great Unwashed and attend the Stad du Merde and in some of the mining villages whole populations were moved lock stock and barrel from one mining town to another so following family loyalty there are pockets of Mackems in some of the Northumberland ex mining towns and pockets of Newcastle fans in parts of deepest Durham), the view regarding the Saudi takeover has been variable. Some have protested about the takeover others have misgivings but are pleased to get rid of Mike Ashley, others have welcomed it whole heartedly.
One recurrent theme for lots of fans, however, has been the apparent hyprocracy of media reporting. No call for boycott of Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium or their sportswashing sponsership of the authoritarian Rwandan regime, no mention of the fact that Man United were sponsored for years by Aeroflot (prop V Putin), that millions of pounds of sponsorship and prize money was given to Champions League teams by Gazprom (see above), that very little mention was made of Man City’s takeover by Thakswin Shinawatra (responsible for the death of 2,500 people during his “war on drugs”), that the level of discussion about the Man City takeover by the UAE was far more muted than that of the Newcastle takeover. Added to that there is a response that other investors from the UK, USA and China, tainted by human rights abuses, are similarly linked to football clubs without any great out cry.
Of particular interest to those of a Black and White persuasion is the noise made over in Wearside about sports washing and blood money. Funnily enough I didn’t see any outcry from Wearyside when Charlie Methven (who made his money in the democratic hot spot of Bahrain) joined the board, no they actually wanted to get him out because he called Sunderland fans who were watching (and paying for) Beout tv (funded by the Saudi Government) parasites on pirate, when he spoke out about this on TV.
Presumably it was morally acceptable for Blunderland fans to watch and pay happily for what one of their fans on TV at the time called “Taliban Telly”, but throw their hand up about Saudi involvement now.
I might also mention Antonio Simon Vumbaca (one of the current non executive directors of SAFC), who made his dosh providing legal support to Formula 1, which has held Grand Prix in such wonderfully liberal and humane countries such as Russia, Bahrain, Azerbaijan, Qatar and low and behold Saudi Arabia and who was happy to be retained by the Bahrainis from 2010 onwards
Interestingly SAFC are currently owned by Kyril Louis-Dreyfus of the Louis Deyfrus Group of families which has a long history of arms dealing, international commodity brokerage in oil (wonder where all of that oil came, could it be Saudi Arabia?) or their presence in Argentina during regime of Jorge Rafael Videla, president of Argentina during the Dirty War where 30,000 people who were disappeared.
Many also point out that those who throw their hands up at the fact that the Saudis have bought Newcastle United but did not seem to mind that British companies were profitting from the sale of murderous weapons and torture equipment to the same Saudis.
From my own point of view, as part of the capitalist system Football is corrupt root and branch. Get rid of the Saudis and another bunch of corrupt repugnant capitalists will take over. Back in the day there were directors of Newcastle United who owned collieries and mines, how many thousands died in the North East to keep the mine owners of the district happy. How many workers had their surplus value legally stolen to keep Mike Ashley, John Hall, Freddie Shepherd, et al in comfort? If we follow practically any kind of sport, the corrupting tentacles of capitalism will be there.
I like to think that Bobby Robson was right when he wrote:
“What is a club in any case? Not the buildings or the directors or the people who are paid to represent it. It’s not the television contracts, get-out clauses, marketing departments or executive boxes. It’s the noise, the passion, the feeling of belonging, the pride in your city. It’s a small boy clambering up stadium steps for the very first time, gripping his father’s hand, gawping at that hallowed stretch of turf beneath him and, without being able to do a thing about it, falling in love.”― Bobby Robson, Newcastle: My Kind of Toon
I made my first walk up those stairs holding my Dad’s hand in 1967. My little girl clambered up those steps for the first time holding my hand 33 years ago, her 5 year old son did his first clamber up the steps with us both last month. I hope that if he has a little boy or girl that he makes the same journey, preferably at a time when there is a sane social system that doesn’t manipulate, abuse and distort sporting endeavour to meet the interests of the profit system, the greed of the few and the exapansion of Capital. How’s that suit you for Geordie Logic YMS?
“the obligation to resist such barbarism is reinforced.”
Is that the barbarism of the Russians or the Barbarism of the Ukrainians, is it the Nazi barbarism or the barbarism of Dresden, Hiroshima and the Bengal famine.
I think that this video shows quite eloquently how poor Hossenfelder’s use of comparative logic. She has in one part explained that 1g of used nuclear waste would kill you within 2 weeks if ingested and that there is 400,000 metric tons of it. She then goes on to explain that industry produces 400 million tons of “High Level Hazardous Waste”.
The implication is that the two things are comparable, if she doesn’t they are comparable then why is she making the comparison? However using the same information she has provided, they are not comparable. Is she saying that High Level Industrial Waste is equally lethal to spent nuclear waste?
She is mixing her comparators, quantity and quality.
I don’t agree or disagree with the argument she is making regarding nuclear power, what I am saying is that she makes the argument very poorly.
I often wonder why people have started to conflate a skill area or knowledge area in one area with skill, knowledge or even political insight in other areas.
Just because you write great music doesn’t make you insightful in other areas, or because you were or are a talented footballer or even astrophysicist it does not mean that you have any great knowledge about other areas or particularly that your political opinion really matters.
This obsession with the views and thoughts of high profile people seems to me to be a fairly recent phenomenon. We are completely swamped with the media crying out that footballers/actors/musicians, etc are role models. Even more worrying is the way that some people are willing to treat experts or skilled people as “mentors” and hang on every word they way and treat them as demi-gods.
As a young person my musical hero was Keith Moon, my favourite actor was Jack Nicholson and my football hero was Wyn Davies (who was more than happy to stick the brow on an opposing Centre Half). I didn’t use them as a lifestyle guru, if I had I would probably be six feet under.
Even at this callow age I could separate their skills set and talent from them as an individual. None of them were role models to me; I just liked some of the things that they did.
It turns out that Picasso was a bit of an arsehole (a very big one actually), it might be (debate rages about it) that Wagner was a racist, Van Morrison has a history of wacky belief systems and Alan Titchmarsh is a royalist. It doesn’t mean that Alan Titchmarsh’s tips on early flowering climbing roses are null and void, or that I would consider his views on the causes of inflation to be of any import.
A quick example that demonstrates the kind of bollocks Sabine Hossenfelder comes up with, when she talks about economics comes from her posting below.
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/05/capitalism-is-good-for-you.html
In this posting she starts by stating:
“Most economists I know started out as physicists. Being a physicist myself of course means that the sample is biased, but still it serves to demonstrate the closeness of the two subjects.”The fact that she knows some economists who started out as physicists doesn’t in any way “demonstrate the closeness of the two subjects”. This is the level of debate she is reduced to.
That anyone would consider her to be a mentor in any area other than her specialist area, is risible.
And just like Keir Starmer, Dan “The Plan” Smith was an ex Trot.
It appears to be, unsurprisingly, that Trotskyism is a good grounding for those who wish to manipulate, control, intimidate and hoodwink their fellow party members and the general public.
If you have a son or daughter that has ambitions to join the higher ranks in politics and you can’t afford to send them off to Eton, you can always enrol them in the local “rent a spart” branch. Given a fair wind and sharp elbows they’ll end up at least a Junior Minister.
