Monthly Archives: July 2024

Jul 22

Good Move, Joe!

Last night, President of the United States of America, Joe Biden, finally caved in to mounting international pressure and dropped out of the race as the Democratic candidate for re-election to the White House this coming November.

In the current state of affairs, this is the best thing that Mr. Biden could have done.

Biden is already a history maker: at the time of the election he will be 82 years old and it’s just daft to consider reelection for a four-year term at that age, especially given the fact that he has shown symptoms of almost every age-related condition in the last few weeks alone. I feel very sorry for him.

It must be simply dreadful to have to surrender to age when ambition still burns in your soul; and what’s worse, you have to do it in front of billions of people. Furthermore, you must listen to countless advisors, politicians and journalists, all of whom have an agenda of some kind, telling you to step down while at the the same time trying to pretend to the public that, don’t worry, everything’s just as normal, nothing to see here, etc. etc.

I think that’s the worst thing about politics; it’s the sheer amount of fakery involved. It’s all about what the public can or is allowed to perceive. Honesty goes right out of the window. If you do this, the public will think that. If you do that, the public will think this. And of course the vehicle by which that so-called “information” gets to the public is our old friend the news media.

Former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher used to say that the makers of the sit-com Yes Prime Minister had somehow managed to get the relationship between politicians and civil servants exactly right. Spot on. She should know. She was prime minister for eleven-and-a-half years until that glorious day in November 1990, I shall never forget it, when she was brought down by her own ministers and booted off to retirement.

The media can’t wait for a news story. I just cannot fathom why any politician would want to go on TV to be interviewed by, say, that awful Laura Kuenssberg, who addresses the political elite with such venom and red-eyed vitriol, that it must make them want to tell her to, er, clear off or words to that effect. But what it does show is that the news media has a death grip on the political classes that is so tight politicians will say anything just to get out of it.

Politics is cutthroat, nothing less. My experience of it comes largely from the UK, but from what I have seen, there is very little difference in the US, Canada, Australia, France, Germany; you name the country, their press and TV news will have that death grip on their politicians.

Which is why, in a roundabout way, President Biden is in no way fit enough to run for reelection in November. He can barely walk. He’s fallen over repeatedly during his presidency. He’s stumbled over his words, got mixed up, and even simply wandered off.

The question now is whether Vice President Kamala Harris has the charisma to take on Donald J. Duck in the election. She’s been endorsed by Biden, but in truth he could have endorsed nobody else. I’m not so sure if she’s the right one for the job, but please God no more Hillary Clinton! x

Jul 17

USA Part II / England!

Dear USA:

Me again. You would hardly expect someone to take a pop at Donald Trump and for me not to make a comment about it.

A young man whose name will not even be mentioned here was allowed all the time in the world to climb up to a rooftop, position an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, take aim and fire eight shots into a rally that President Trump was holding in Pennsylvania at about six o’clock in the evening.

Fortunately, President Trump suffered only relatively minor injuries, but it did result in the death of an attendee who bravely shielded his wife and daughters from the hail of bullets. I hope somebody realises the bravery involved here and awards this guy the Medal of Freedom. The Secret Service, tasked with protecting the former (and likely next) president of the United States, took him to the ground, covered him completely and then blew the perpetrator of this terrible act into the middle of next month.

The Secret Service acted quickly and decisively, and once the situation was made safe, they removed President Trump out of there and on to his home in New Jersey. It’s what they’re trained to do, and they did it.

Or did they?

The question most are asking is why a shooter was allowed several minutes to position himself in such a way as to give Trump and his supporters a mighty scare, when he (the shooter) had apparently been spotted by police (who tried to climb up and stop him), reported by members of the audience and, I believe, photographed. Furthermore, it also came to light that the young man, just twenty years old, was a registered Republican, but had donated money through the left-wing, Democratic, fundraising platform ActBlue.

Once again, an attempt on the life of a U.S. president was made by a lone shooter, with no history of mental illness, and with no connection to any terrorist group or political activism on either side (left or right).

The biggest injury was not sustained by Trump, or the two other audience members who were shot on that occasion last Saturday, not even by the man who sadly passed away protecting his family. I feel sure that his family would feel his death was not senseless if it led in some way to the end of trying to settle political differences at the wrong end of a gun barrel.

No, the biggest injury was sustained by democracy itself. Firstly the USA is not ruled by some military-led junta whose path to power was settled by killing all of their opponents in a “Free and Fair” election. The USA is a democracy, just like the UK, France, New Zealand, Australia, Canada… If the U.S. doesn’t want Donald Trump as its Republican nominee they had their chance to find an alternative candidate which apparently, among a population of 340 million people – the third highest in the world – they could not do.

The president of the United States is, apparently, the Leader of the Free World. How can they be so if their path to power has been cleared by bullets? How bad would it look for Joe Biden, already clinging to power, if Trump had been turned into a distant memory? Conspiracy theorists would love the opportunity to link Biden to Trump’s assassination, the F.B.I. having secured the services of a “lone shooter.” I don’t think Biden could or would have organised it, he’s got enough trouble with his own party and his own ability to govern for the next four years.

America, please put your guns down and vote, vote, vote! Vote for the candidate you feel can lead the country, don’t be bullied by the Republicans or Democrats or “lone shooters,” there are alternatives out there. They say if you don’t vote for one of the two parties it’s a wasted vote, but not if many of you do it. You can’t please everybody, but you can please a majority and that’s what democracy’s all about – it’s about those who accept opposition as much as those who vote for change.

…

Speaking of voting for change, England’s football / soccer* fans have voted with their voices, and manager Gareth Southgate, who will undoubtedly one day be Sir Gareth Southgate, has resigned from his job as England coach, having been in the job for eight years, the third longest-serving coach in the history of the Football Association, after Sir Alf Ramsey (1962-1974) and Sir Walter Winterbottom (1946-1962).

Southgate, during his tenure as England manager, got the national side to the semi-final of the 2018 World Cup, the Final of Euro 2020 (held in 2021), the quarter-finals of the 2022 World Cup, and the final of Euro 2024. Despite having lost in both finals, Southgate has achieve more than any England coach has done since Sir Alf Ramsey in 1966. There was no doubt in the minds of fans and journalists alike that Southgate could have the power to take the side all the way to the final and defeat the opposition, whoever they may be. If only he could…get those…pesky tactics…right.

From the first game at Euro 2024, held in Germany, Southgate faced criticism. Though England beat Serbia 1-0, Southgate’s tactics were judged to be too conservative. Despite scoring early in the game, England sat back for the rest of it and were, according to many, lucky to come away with three points.

In the second game, that’s where the trouble really started. Once again, England went 1-0 up, thanks to a strike by an unfit Harry Kane, then sat back and invited opponents Denmark to come at them, which they did. Sixteen minutes later, it was 1-1. Despite almost an hour of football thereafter, England were unable to add to their tally and ended with a disappointing draw.

In the third group game, the opponents were Slovenia, and with all due respect to them, all England had to do was put out an attacking side and wait for the goals to come. But the goals didn’t come and the game finished 0-0. England topped the group, more by luck than judgement, and Southgate was the target of objects, including cups, being thrown at him from the crowd.

In another stroke of amazing good fortune, England’s path to the final couldn’t have been easier if UEFA had said, “Look, just turn up at the final.” England still managed to sludge their way to said final, making life difficult for themselves by doing exactly as the manager asked them to do – play defensively, sit back, let them press, pass the ball among themselves, then nick it off them and score.

Aside from two moments of genuine magic throughout the whole tournament, one from Jude Bellingham and one from Ollie Watkins (and one from Cole Palmer in the final), they did everything except the nick it off them and score bit.

Southgate’s shortcomings as a coach are two-fold: first, he’s a theoretical manager. Blessed with an unusually gifted intellect, his method of team selection consisted at looking at the available players and picking the best ones. I’ll give you an example: Oh look! Harry Kane! Number nine! He’s got to go in. Captain as well. Er…gaffer…Kane’s unfit and has been for about the last third of last season. Shouldn’t we at least rest him until the later stages to give him a chance to recover? No! What are you talking about? Drop Harry Kane? He’s Harry Kane! I’ve brought him up since he were a wee nipper, I have!

Second, Southgate doesn’t seem to know what his players are good at. Yes, he’s brought the team together and he’s brought hope to England fans that the country could actually win something in men’s football, but what’s the point of that hope if the team ultimately fall short because Southgate is telling them to play out of position or otherwise against their strengths? Without wishing to be an armchair manager – I hate those, don’t you? – he could have had Bellingham and Phil Foden going down the right and left respectively, hoofing in crosses for Kane to simply head in from the box, or getting into scoring positions themselves (as Bellingham did when he forgot what he was supposed to do). He had plenty of other attacking footballers on tap, such as Antony Gordon, who were hardly used at all. And if he had, he would probably have put him in goal. The saddest sight was to see the ball being continuously passed back to keeper Jordan Pickford to hoof up the pitch in the hope that a wheezing Kane could get on the other end of it.

So Southgate is gone, and now we wonder who is going to replace him. Once again, England fans are split down the middle. Do we go for an English coach or a foreign one? The “He’s got to be English!” camp are rooting for Newcastle United’s Eddie Howe, who has done such great work at the north-eastern club that England fans are sure he could reproduce it for the national side.

The “I don’t mind if he’s foreign!” camp, which I must admit I prefer, are hoping for Mauricio Pochettino, formerly of Tottenham and Chelsea, now currently unemployed. I think he probably is our best bet. We’d better learn some Spanish if we’re going to support England through the World Cup in 2026. x

*In the UK, the words “football” and “soccer” are interchangeable.