Rangers for the Rangers Fans

Posted: February 15, 2012 in Uncategorized
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My boss’s son recently wrote a letter to Pat Fenlon, the manager of Hibernian F.C. In it he explained that it is essential for Hibs to win the next Edinburgh derby due to the torment the lone Hibs supporter in Primary 5 at Aberlady Primary School has been receiving. Composed by the son of an English teacher, the letter was both professional and articulate. I pray that Fenlon sticks it on the dressing room wall.

Growing up as a Hibs fan in the Nineties was not easy. When I was in my second year of high school, Hearts won the Scottish Cup while Hibs were relegated. Did I mention I went to school in the West of Edinburgh? That the vast majority of my classmates were Hearts fans? Like my boss’s son, I understand the relationship between humiliation and football.

For Celtic fans, things were also difficult. The club veered between extinction and Cambuslang. In the wake of the Taylor Report, the stadium was not fit for purpose, while the football played in it was not much better. Worst of all, they tended to spend every Old Firm derby camped in the Rangers half, only to concede one late, sickening goal. Nonetheless, I cannot indulge in the churlish, possibly delusional, euphoria that some Scottish football fans have reserved for the collapse for Glasgow Rangers. For most fans of my age, it is a Schadenfreude born of the pain they suffered during that era.

I needn’t go over the minutia of Rangers going into administration: the number of football fans suddenly able to boast a knowledge of CVAs seems to have exploded in the past forty-eight hours. Instead, I will focus upon the consequences of this for Scottish football and Scottish society.

In order to understand anticipate these consequences, it is important that we understand where Scottish football is. Most football fans of moderate intelligence understand the Thatcherisation of football. Following Hillsborough, Maggie implemented the Taylor Report. All of a sudden, every single top flight British club was obliged to replace its dilapidated terracing with all-seater stadia.

What happened was the football equivalent of the stock market’s Big Bang. Cash hungry clubs were far more accommodating to television, willing to move fixtures into ludicrous kick off times in order to raise revenue. All of a sudden, money was what mattered in football. And no club seemed to understand that better than Rangers.

Whereas the Eighties had seen Aberdeen and Dundee United win titles and compete on the European stage, the Nineties were the beginning of the money era. Bankrolled by David Murray, Rangers marched (sorry, sorry, I won’t do that again) to nine successive titles. In the process, they acquired the universal resentment held by Manchester United in England and the New York Yankees in baseball.

However, there’s a problem with that last sentence. United, the Yankees and the Dallas Cowboys are global sports brands with global markets. Rangers just happen to be the biggest fish in a miniscule pond. The fans demanded success beyond the club’s means. The arrival of Dick Advocaat saw the club spend in an unprecedented manner, including the much famed £12 million that the club wasted on Tore Andre Flo. It also marked the beginning of the process that has brought Rangers to its knees.

One of the most depressing features of football discourse is the consistent inability of fans and pundits to see beyond their own prejudices. However, as a follower of both football and politics I can tell you that football fans are open-minded and judicious compared with anyone involved in party politics. Those unable to see beyond prejudices have imperiously declared that the collapse of Rangers will herald the end of Scottish football. On the opposite extreme, Celtic Chairman Peter Lawwell seems to view the collapse of Rangers as an event no more significant to his club’s finances than a late fan neglecting to buy a programme. Neither claim stands up to scrutiny.

It is certainly true to say that the television appeal of Rangers, along with the gate receipts generated by their numerous travelling supporters, are essential streams of income for Scottish football. For Celtic to claim that the loss of the Old Firm derby would not adversely impact their finances is ludicrous. Football rivalry creates mutual dependency – it is hatred of the other team that is as much the draw as love of your own. It is for this reason that this Hibs fan is perturbed by the prospect of a bankrupt Heart of Midlothian.

However, Rangers simply aren’t going to disappear. The banking crisis of 2008 has taught me to be cautious when employing the term ‘Too big to fail’. Rangers aren’t too big to fail. However, they are too big to disappear. Even if the club does fold – a prospect that appears more imminent by the day – something else will replace them. If Rangers are not there to take the money of their paying fans, another club of a similar name will be formed to do so. Admittedly, SPL attendances are falling. However, compared with fans of other sports, football fans are inexplicably loyal (ok – I did it again).

A precedent already exists for this. When Airdrieonians went bust in 2002, Airdrie United were formed immediately after. While they were only able to obtain admittance to the league by subsuming Clydebank F.C, it is hard to envisage a situation in which Scottish clubs would not fall over themselves admit Rangers’ reincarnation into league football.

The shape of this new club is something worth considering. If a wealthy buyer for Rangers materialises they will be able to save the club. However, if the club collapses, a fan controlled organisation such as AFC Wimbledon could emerge. That may in turn have much needed civilising effect on Rangers fan base.

Rangers are often dubbed Scotland’s Shame, and not just by Celtic fans. No club in Scotland can quite match their record of violent and sectarian incidents. Other clubs have problems, Hibs included, but no club has a list as long or as embarrassing as Rangers. Not convinced? Just consider that in the last few years elements of the Rangers support have:

- Caused more damage to Manchester city centre than last summer’s riots

- Have been subject to a travel ban due to sectarian singing

- Have been fined due to sectarian singing on several occasions

- Smashed the window of a bus carrying the players of the opposing team

- Fought with police during a tie with Osasuna

- Sent parcel bombs, bullets and death threats to the opposing team’s manager and the head of Catholic Church in Scotland

That is just the tip of the ice berg. Most of the incidents above have come during European games, when the rest of Europe has to witness the cesspool of sectarianism that travels between Scottish grounds every week. Rangers get away with a great deal in this country because the authorities (police and SFA alike) are too scared to challenge them.

Not all Rangers fans behave in this way, but a sizeable section of the travelling fans do.

That is another of the reasons why fans of other clubs resent them. Furthermore, it is why some progressive voices argue that the collapse of Rangers would improve the social fabric of Scottish society. But to take such an attitude, ignores the nature of the problem. These problem fans are not going to go away. They will either start following other clubs whose heritage fits their form of bigotry (Airdrie, Hearts) or, even worse, become involved in politics.

Fan ownership might be the best way to reform the attitudes of this problem element, or at the very least inhibit them. As arrangements stand, when Rangers fans embarrass the club the board gets fined. If these fans had ownership or control of the club they might understand the consequences of their behaviour. That may serve to limit their behaviour in a way that a series Tannoy announcements in vain could never do.

Furthermore, it would introduce a sense of financial reality to the fans. If Rangers fans were given access to club’s finances they would not pressure the board to make senseless and expensive signings.

I am more than willing to accept that these speculations could be dismissed as idealistic nonsense. Perhaps Rangers fans will always behave in grotesque fashion. However, those delighting in the collapse of Rangers have not offered any real solutions to the problem, especially that of sectarianism. Suffering a lot during the Nineties does not justify such a narrow mindset. The crisis faced by Scottish football, and the sectarianism faced by Scottish society, demand original thinking in order to combat them. We need a radical shake-up. What’s more radical than fan ownership?

Hit & Run

Posted: February 12, 2012 in Uncategorized
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“I find real beauty in the most stripped down language possible” – Doug Johnstone

When reading a novel, do you ever find yourself growing tired of tedious description? Are you in the habit of abandoning books on the basis that they are ‘going nowhere’? If so, I may just have the novel for you. Hit & Run is a nought-to-sixty (I couldn’t help myself) novel. There are no de-tours, no turn-offs (okay, okay I’ll stop) no sub-plots.

This is a straight-up page turner with a scintillating premise.

This used to be called The Crags. Read this book and you'll never be able to look at its disabled toilets the same way again.

Billy runs over Edinburgh’s most prolific gangster. A crime journalist, he finds himself covering the case. Before long he’s producing ‘exclusives’ from nowhere, receiving information from policemen he knows more than and ‘comforting’ the dead man’s widow. It’s not so much a whodunit as a howdotheynotknowIdunit.

Johnstone avoids the need for laborious description of setting by confining the action to the South of Edinburgh. Edinburgh residents will be immediately familiar with the novels re-occuring settings from Radical Road to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. They will not be so immediately familiar with the July heat which Billy frequently complains of. Billy is always on the move, but he doesn’t seem to move far, he doesn’t seem to be able to escape physically or metaphorically from what he has done. Similarly, the heat mirrors the tension in the drama which culminates in a gorse bush fire at the end.

Along with his use of setting, his character names are well-chosen – the rival crime family who start their own ‘Ice Cream War’ are called the Mackies. For a man who rejects any attempt to appear “a terribly clever author” Johnstone is still able to slip in a couple of ‘clever’ touches.

The pace of events should reward the Facebook generation reader with a limited attention span. However, the novel does veer into soap opera territory, especially the seeming absence of hospital security. That is not to say the book should be deemed ‘trash fiction’. Fans of Chris Brookmyre or Kevin MacNeil should thoroughly enjoy this novel. An impulsive, perhaps mentally-ill protagonist whose every action leads him closer to his self-destruction is the defining feature of A Method Actor’s Guide to Jekyll and Hyde and the parallel with Billy is hard to avoid.

Hit & Run is a tale of guilt. Readers will identify with Billy’s inability to understand why his actions adversely affect others – “I can’t explain what I’ve done except to say that I never meant anyone harm.” The ‘honesty’s the best policy’ moral might not be the most profound, but I don’t think Johnstone will be at all upset about that.

Hit & Run can be pre-ordered here. It will appear in books shops on the 15th of March.

The view from the top of Radical Road is a pivotal setting in the novel.

Diane Abbott Hasn’t Done Anything Wrong

Posted: January 5, 2012 in Uncategorized
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The last few hours have seen a barrage of apoplectic white liberals berating Diane Abbott regarding her comments on Twitter. Their claim is that she has been “racist” by making a generalisation about white people. Any serious post on this matter must begin by showing the reader what she actually said:

Cue the obligatory histrionics from the section of our society that has little sense of context or proportion. You know the people I am talking about? The faux-PC-actually-reactionary types who think that Loose Women is a sexist TV show. The types that would sooner get Jeremy Clarkson/Jonathan Ross/Frankie Boyle (insert celebrity here) fired than critically engage with what they have said. I can’t help but feel that they call for these dismissals simply because they lack the intellect to participate in a debate in a meaningful way.

I should be fair though. I have shown you what Diane Abbott said – I’ll discuss that in a minute. To provide balance, please look at a mere sample of what the near exclusively white respondents on Twitter have to say for themselves:

For the purposes of brevity, here is a synopsis of Diane Abbott’s detractors’ case. Saying that “White people love playing divide & rule” is racist and dreadfully inconsistent. After all, if a white politician were to write “Black people love playing divide & rule” most sensible opinion would be calling for their head. The chances are that you, reader, may be thinking the same thing. However, there are a few things that must be considered:

a) Have black people systematically brutalised and oppressed white people over a period of centuries?

b) Does British society, explicitly & implicitly, exclude white people from its power structures?

If we accept that the answer to the previous two questions is ‘No’ (if you’ve answered ‘Yes’ to either you’re probably a member of this group) then we accept that our attitude towards race relations cannot be one of blind consistency; the fact is that British society does do this to those who aren’t white. Racism and sexism are wrong because they are forms of oppression, not because they are forms of generalisation. White people cannot be victims of racism because they are not oppressed. Therefore, Abbott’s comments are not racist.

Besides, anyone who does understand the legacy of colonialism will be fully aware that white people do love playing divide & rule! Iraq, Rwanda, the partition of India, I could go on…  The point is that Abbott has not been racist because she is not attacking an oppressed group. Leftier-than-thou respondents with Lenin profile pictures might want to consider this before joining a queue of white people haranguing Britain’s foremost black politician.

Diane Abbott has now been forced to apologise. This is what I find so dreadfully depressing about politics. Her remarks should have lead to a vigorous discussion of anti-imperialism and racism. But to do that would almost certainly lead to her being drowned out by a series of idiots who think too little of her remarks and too much of their own opinion. Why think about colonialism when you could… preserve your white vanity and not think about colonialism?

If Diane Abbott were to come out swinging here, her career would be scuppered by a series of narrow minded fools that have neither the intellect nor the patience to consider these issues. Therefore, for the benefit of herself, her party and her constituents, she apologises. The idiots have won.

Homeless People: Good For House Prices

Posted: January 4, 2012 in Uncategorized
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Occupy Wall St.  Occupy St. Paul’s Cathedral. Occupy Edinburgh. Occupy your living room. Occupy space.

This now tedious refrain is one revolt I have personally chosen to abstain from. I found the initial demonstration in New York as inspiring as anyone; here was a resolute and original resistance to free-market dogma in the most obdurately capitalist nation on earth. But the imitations in Scotland ranged from the cringe-worthy to the disgusting. Occupy Edinburgh is merely a hippy camp in the middle of a city too polite to tell it to move; while Occupy Glasgow’s reaction to a  rape on their site betrayed an alarmingly ill-informed attitude towards sexual violence. 

The whole point of an occupation is to strike at the means of political repression. So occupying a bailed out bank makes sense in theory – might be a bit difficult to do in practice though. Occupying an otherwise beautiful piece of green space (St. Andrew’s Square) does not, unless your message happens to be ‘Down With Freely Accessible Public Space’ or ‘ Up With Tents’. Tiso must be loving the advertising.

For once, I found myself the odd-one out in not supporting the left-wing cause célèbre of the day. Not through any profound ideological objection, but merely from a diffident contempt towards its methods. However, a recent development in Ireland has won me round somewhat. The Irish occupy movement have started to squat vacant homes with a view to handing them over to homeless people.

Brilliant.

One of the many reasons that the Left has become utterly marginalised during the past thirty years is because the politics of protest has become synonymous in the public mind with self-aggrandising gestures – like occupying an otherwise aesthetically please square. This, on the other hand, could make a difference.

An Irish ghost estate: no homeless past this point.

Ireland’s economy is a more extreme version of Britain’s. When we had a boom they had a big boom. When we became overly dependent on the financial services sector and real-estate, they became totally dependent. Now the well of cash has gone dry in Ireland, the government has found itself having to invent a body to buy up all of the repossessed real estate: the National Asset Management Agency. NAMA is now the proud owner of scores of ‘Ghost Estates’ – entire residential areas that have been left unpopulated after Ireland’s collapse in house prices.

So here’s the situation. In Ireland, like any supposedly ‘developed’ nation, there are people who do not have a home. The government has lots of empty homes. Shouldn’t they put two and two together? Why don’t they? It’s the sort of question that a child asks that you aren’t immediately sure of the answer to. Why is the sky blue? Why can we not give the leftover food to the starving people in Africa? Why can we not just put the homeless people into all the empty houses? Daddy? Big Brother? Why?

The boom that caused the bust that afflicts the entire Western world stemmed from real-estate. In the Nineteen-Eighties, the Thatcher & Regan administrations changed financial regulations to make it considerably easier for consumers to obtain mortgages. Home ownership rates soared. So too did house prices; more buyers with the same number of sellers will always push up the price. The proceeding administrations in both countries continued to make borrowing easier, while at the same time starving social housing of funding and building no new cheap housing for rent. In other words, successive governments in the Anglophone world, have structured policy to ensure that demand exceeded supply in the housing market. That way middle class homeowners, even working class homeowners, felt that they were becoming wealthier. 

But it was all an illusion of course. We know the story: sub-prime, applicants being able to write down their own income without proof on forms, 125% mortgages. The collapse of key financial institutions exposed the tenuous & decadent nature of the globalisation dream we were sold with such assuredness at the beginning of the last decade.

If house prices are to remain buoyant – something that the majority of people need – then as many people as possible must be compelled into the market. All capitalism depends on scarcity. In order to necessitate home ownership, it is necessary to make housing scarce. If housing is scarce, the value of properties increases, benefitting home owners and landlords. However, this drives up rents and makes social housing more difficult to acquire. This latter effect exacerbates homelessness.

Again, capitalism works on scarcity. Creating it is a necessity. This necessity is why governments will not hand over surplus goods to those who need them. Sending surplus grain to famine ravished regions would have an adverse effect on food prices; free housing for anyone would have a knock-on effect on the property market.

Not convinced? Think. If the homeless get it for free, others will want it for free. Soon enough there will be a fully fledged discussion as to whether a house is a commodity to be traded or a basic human right. They don’t want you to have that discussion. Soon enough you’ll wonder whether democratic planning is a superior alternative to market savagery. You might be able to answer your kid’s questions.

The Irish Occupy movement have put their government in an awkward position. What they plan to do will put a lot of questions in the minds of citizens. That’s what the Left hasn’t done in a long time. Go Occupy.

My Year in List

Posted: December 28, 2011 in Uncategorized
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It’s that time of year again. Or at least, it’s the end of the year.  I tend to welcome this period by squandering precious time tutting and shaking my head at The NME’s 50 Best Albums of the year. That, or I will simply gaze perplexed at the Guardian’s laconic and pretentious Best Songs of 2011. And I’m far from alone – all across the Western Hemisphere, other self-righteous consumers are venting their spleens on the comments sections accompanying each of the end of year lists.

My behaviour was summed up perfectly in a recent blog: The 20 Unhappiest People You Meet In The Comments Sections of Year-End Lists. It is essential reading for those who become apoplectic at Empire Magazine’s top one-hundred movies of all time, the BBC’s 12 Women of the Year, Channel 5′s list of top 100 lists, or some other such meaningless, arbitrary yet addictive exercise. In fact, I’ll be surprised if no one imitates one of these behaviours at the end of this post.

What is the point of all of these lists? To make other people aware of recent developments in a particular field; one person’s recap is another’s new discovery. So in this constructive spirit, I have produced a list of my ten favourite albums of 2011. Please listen to those bands you have not heard of, perhaps even download something you wouldn’t have done otherwise. Then ridicule away…

1. Los Campesinos! - Hello Sadness

Besides pathetic pedantry, my other favourite online activity is sycophantically stalking this band on Twitter. I’m more than happy to admit I’m obsessed; those who got the reference to the title will have noticed already. 

I can’t decide if the video below is a reference to suicide or auto-erotic asphyxiation. Either way it works. I could easily write a book on this album. So I won’t. I’ll implore you to discover it for yourself.

 

2. Sleigh Bells - Treats

As you can tell, I like music videos that allude to death…

 

3. The Joy Formidable - The Big Roar

They’re Welsh, they play heavy and they’re seriously, seriously good.

 

4. Bombay Bicycle Club  – A Different Kind of Fix

 

5. Metronomy – The English Riviera

I am going to be berated for not having put this higher.  

 

6. Friendly Fires – Pala

I’m sorry, but his dancing is cool (and saying that probably shows I am not).

 

7. Death Cab for Cutie – Codes And Keys Band version can be found here.

I also spend a great deal of time looking up acoustic cover versions of songs on YouTube. I felt the video below almost eclipsed the original.

 

8.  DJ Shadow – The Less You Know, The Better

 

9. Foster the People – Torches

 

10. Yuck - Yuck

A bit raw, but I love the sound of this band; this is the sort of thing I wished I could write when I was seventeen.

 

Failing to add anything by Glasvegas, Sons & Daughters will open me to ridicule from Scots. Omitting albums from Ryan Adams, Radiohead and PJ Harvey will invite criticism from everyone else. Wilfully omitted are Noel Gallagher and the Foo Fighters (pish).

Now please, let your inchoate thoughts loose on the comment thread.

We Are All Wrong in the Land of Opportunism

Posted: August 10, 2011 in Uncategorized
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The opportunists have won. They always do. History is written by the victors and the victors are invariably those who can best manipulate a crisis to their advantage. What we are seeing is history, and the opportunists continue to enjoy their vein of form. What was their opportunity?

On Thursday the 4th of August 2011 the Metropolitan Police carried out the extra-judicial execution of Mark Duggan. At first an attempt was made to characterise this as a fire-fight, but the subsequent Independent Police Complaints Commission report revealed that only two shots were fired. One killed Duggan, the other injured a Metropolitan Police officer. Both were fired by the Metropolitan Police.

The following Saturday a small, and initially peaceful, demonstration was organised. They assembled outside of the police station and waited for hours to speak to someone. Writing in The Guardian a few days later, community activist Stafford Scott described the moment when, eventually, that opportunity arose:

“A woman-only delegation went into the station, as we wanted to ensure that this did not become confrontational. It was when the young women, many with children, decided to call it a day that the atmosphere changed, and guys in the crowd started to voice and then act out their frustrations.”

The Duggan protest was initially peaceful.

Their frustrations were plentiful. The Metropolitan Police have a race-relations record to rival The Los Angeles Police Department – remember Rodney King? When the Met weren’t busy shooting innocent Brazilians, they were ignoring the murder of black teenagers or pursuing a stop & search policy that was time after time condemned as racist. Let’s not forget, murdering a newspaper seller and brutally beating a paraplegic.

History can often seem like a collection of unconnected events, clutter in the attic of the mind that historians must organise, catalogue and sort into volumes. The memorable events can seem like sparks, explosions. But all of them have underlying causes. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria would hold none of its infamy had the European powers not been ready to exploit any excuse for war. The same applies to the barbaric episode we are witnessing.

Duggan’s shooting was the spark. The looting across England was the explosion. A group of opportune criminals saw their moment. The disregard for communities and human life they showed took its inspiration from a genuinely oppressed community’s protest that got out of hand. Those who mugged injured individuals, who assaulted firefighters tackling blazes, who murdered three people in Birmingham, sought no greater end than consumer goods. Previous riots in the UK, though totally counter-productive, usually had a political root cause. The copy-cat riots had no other end than a new flat screen, some Footlocker trainers or, bizarrely, some imodium. The looters were consumer-age zombies, so hypnotised by adverts that they were willing to kill to join the consumer dream.  The shops were emptied and they got what they wanted. 1 – 0 to the opportunists.

There is a missing part of the equation that I mentioned earlier: what was the gas in the room? What built up over the years and made this explosion possible? The one consensus that has emerged in the past few days is that there is something very wrong with society in the UK. Find out what that is and you have your gas.

The society dysfunctional enough to give us these riots has proven it’s no better at coming up with the solution. Where we should demonstrate that we’ve learnt something, that the UK has hit a low and that we must now resolve to change, we are depressingly reverting to type. Right-wingers are calling for more of the gun ‘em down tactics that got us here in the first place. My Guardian reading leftist brethren utter poverty-themed platitudes, but offer nothing immediate to those whose communities are under attack. People who ‘don’t do politics’ have realised how untenable that kind of non-thinking is. Racists blame immigration, despite the fact most of the looters are white. Scottish nationalists smugly assure us it is an English problem.

We’re all wrong. None of us have a clue how to solve this. Our whole country’s broken.

I don’t believe that Britain has a national identity. But then, I don’t think the United Kingdom should exist at all. However, if it was to be said that Britain did have a national identity, then it would draw upon the WWII spirit heavily. The time when the phrase ‘we’re all in this together’ meant sheltering from the Blitz, enduring rations. Nowadays it simply illustrates just how estranged the Etonian Prime Minister is from the living conditions of those he purports to lead. Those who do believe in a British identity believe it is characterised by staring down adversity in the name of a good cause. But our age is one with plenty of adversity and few good causes. Or at least, we ignore the good causes.

Instead, the ‘I don’t politics’ crowd have realised the necessity of catching up on some much neglected political thought. Most have decided to scrawl their chewed up Daily Mail excretions over their social networking pages. Facebook is the most dispiriting. Illiterate elitists will invite you to join groups such as:

Scotland: we might not have riots but we do use offensive language towards people with Down's Syndrome.

“Scotland, where we don’t destroy our own city cause we’re no mongo’s” (46,000+ members)

‘Convicted London rioters should loose all benefits’ (203,992 signatories)

Also doing a rounds is a status update that reads:

“RIP Broken Britain.. You went soft on discipline !.. You went soft on immigration!You went soft on crime.. Parents were told.. ‘No you can’t smack the kids’…. Teachers were prevented from chastising kids in schools.. The police couldn’t clip a troublemaker round the ear.. Kids had rights blah blah blah.. Well done Britain..You shall reap what you sow.. We have lost a whole generation !! Copy & paste if you agree.”

That is not to mention the plethora of calls for the introduction of martial law, or even the use of live rounds. I find the statement above most offensive – as if a crisis of which authoritarianism is the catalyst can be solved by more of it. The young people I teach are not lost. They do have rights. And hitting them won’t teach them anything. Anyone who believes public disorder can be solved by assaulting children is as mindless as they are perverse. Despite being a ‘soft’ teacher, I have offered chastisement to the middle-class professionals who are joining these groups. To do even this will inevitably result in my being accused of siding with the rioters.

It seems almost needless to say, but I wish to make clear how wholeheartedly I condemn those who would take advantage of a crisis for their own material betterment; who believe that a prospect of decline in their own standards of living means that they have the right to behave as savagely as they wish. However, unlike some I have been consistent in doing this.

Our rulers do this all the time. Many of you will be familiar with Naomi’s Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine. You will understand her cogent observation that whenever a crisis sufficiently frightens the public, both governments and major corporations will exploit the ensuing panic to make changes they would otherwise incur the wrath of the populace for pursuing.  When the markets crashed in 2008 they took advantage of the situation to dismantle what remains of the welfare state. 2 – 0 to the opportunists. How will the opportunists that rule us exploit these riots to line their pockets, increase their power and get the third goal?

Given the sentiment of those joining these groups, they will rush through draconian legislation that further erodes civil liberties. The left will be useless in the face of it all again. Lucrative contracts will be awarded to private security firms. High street shops will relocate to out-of-town shopping centres en masse. Criticism of the police will be silenced. The real causes will be ignored. Youth clubs will continue to close. Politicians will continue to ignore the pleas of public sector workers when they warn of the dire consequences of cuts. On the 15th of September 2010, Theresa May assured the public that “we can cut police budget without risking violent unrest”. If our democracy was evenly remotely healthy, calls for her to apologise would be reverberating throughout the media.

But our democracy isn’t healthy. We have become an unthinking society in which individuals either cannot see, understand or act upon our problems. Only the opportunists know how to do this. We call them the successful ones. They are the rich. They are the powerful. They are the winners.

The Forgotten Boomerangs: Law Graduates on the Brew

Posted: July 25, 2011 in Uncategorized
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The bride and I first met when my arrogance and pedantry drew the attention of four hundred people. Or rather, they inflicted themselves upon four hundred people, of which she was one. In my first seventeen years on the planet, I acquired many facts and little grace. Any point-scoring opportunity was enough to bring a giddy smile to my acne-ridden face, even if that meant interrupting our professor during the inaugural lecture of our degree. I can’t remember what I said. However Jenna, the bride, claims to remember my precise words in each of the multiple versions of the story that she tells.

Fife Beckons

The evening reception has now begun and the guests have been able to escape the enforced diversity of carefully planned dinner tables for the shelter of their homogenous clans. We share attributes. My table is: 27, from Fife, a graduate of the University of Glasgow and unemployed. And not just unemployed, but an unemployed teacher. It completed its Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) in 2009. It secured a temporary contract last year. It spent June in an interview suit. It did so squeezed out by this year’s probationer teachers.

The Scottish Government is keen to avoid a third consecutive year in which the number of unemployed teachers increases. To massage the statistics, it appears that priority has been given to those who completed their PGDE in 2010. That’s great for those who have just completed their probation year. But not for us: The Forgotten Generation.

The wedding reception, at Dunfermline’s Garvock House Hotel, is something of a homecoming for this generation. However, poverty has driven many of us back already; The Boomerang Generation returns to the familial home whenever times are tough. Jenna is the only one of us who won’t be on the supply list in August – she has secured a temporary contract that sees her working three days in one school and two in another. 

Are we Boomerangs? Or Forgotten? Or Forgotten Boomerangs? It’s hard to know what to call our generation, or any for that matter. Only the term ‘baby-boomer’ has ever truly stuck from cradle to grave. If my father was born in a baby-boom, we were raised during an economic one. Though at the time, we did not regard it as such. The then Chancellor, Gordon Brown, confidently assured us that he had brought “an end to boom and bust”. This was the New World Order, the consumer paradise that we, the children born during the Thatcher era, were to inherit.

As infants, we had toys that our ‘boomer’ parents could only have dreamt of. University entry was a breeze. Once at University, those of us with slightly better off parents would have flats purchased for us in the certainty they would go up in value.  I’m not the only one with a bit more humility about me these days.

Despite the impressions of some, there has always been some humility in me though; the mere site of a dance floor is enough to bring on a bout of social awkwardness befitting an adolescent. I regard my limbs with all of the trepidation that my less able students regard words with. While the majority make a bee-line for the ‘floor, I cling to the table for dear life.

Not that I don’t love music. My father taught me more about The Beatles than he ever did the Bible. In fact, we even used to play a game in which he would quote one line of a Beatles’ song only for me to respond with the next. Sat next to me is Brian, a fellow chorophobe and Forgotten Boomerang. We take turns guessing each song that the wedding band plays from the opening few bars. It takes all of two syllables in the line “Well she was just sev-en-teeeen” for me to liturgically interject “When I Saw Her Standing There – The Beatles”. Brian responds as an adult would to being told how to tie their own shoe laces. The song is fitting though, given that most of us met when we were seventeen, and now teach seventeen year-olds.

As with all weddings, there are many friends of friends present. Michelle and her new boyfriend don’t share Brian & I’s apprehension. They throw in a very public display of affection for good measure.

“She looks like she’s enjoying herself!”

“Well… she deserves it.”

“What do you mean?”

Brian doesn’t really know Michelle and thus isn’t privy to her open secrets. Inadvertently, and with a News International journalist’s regard for discretion, I proceed to tell Brian about Michelle’s fortunes over the past two years.

 I first met her when we studied Law at Glasgow; when we were just seventeen. We didn’t socialise at the time. However, we were both stunned to find each other in teacher training two years after graduating; I thought I was alone in abandoning a legal career to become a Modern Studies teacher. I was yet more pleased when her boyfriend Ieuan and I hit it off the first time we met.

“A bromance then, eh?”

You could say that. A mutual obsession with all things Welsh, especially rugby. But while our bromance blossomed, Michelle’s friends soon told me what he was actually like. When Ieuan lost his call-centre job in Glasgow he became, controlling, possessive. Just as teacher training had rejuvenated Michelle’s social life, unemployment had obliterated his. He soon told her that her girlfriends were ‘trying to break us apart’ and would feign illness in order to prevent her going out.

“She’s no the type that ‘ill put up wi’ that sort of control, surely?”

Of course she wasn’t. But when she tried to separate with him, Ieuan pointed out that moving out would force him back to the Valleys. Michelle’s parents had bought her the flat during the mortgage boom of the last decade and she sorely needed a flatmate who could contribute to paying it. Still, for his sake, she put that thought aside; Ieuan remained in the flat. However, she insisted that the relationship was over.

That was at the beginning of her probation year – the year’s worth of employment that newly qualified teachers receive on leaving teacher training. They must specify five local authorities in which they are prepared to work. Given that two of Scotland’s teacher training institutions are based in Glasgow, needless to say the authorities in this area are subject to a clamour for places. Not that those people should be blamed; those with no ties waives their preference in order to pocket eight grand for choosing to work anywhere in Scotland.

But Michelle had ties. She had a property that was on the precipice of negative equity – one that cannot be sold. And she had Ieuan. She would come home to him, everyday, in flat strewn with litter, to find him sat playing computer games or watching DVD box sets. Evasive action was taken; she would spend most evenings in her room with marking for company, but it was only a matter of time before the pleading started.

It is not difficult to explain that the woman who had earlier inverted one of Scotland’s foremost gender conventions and proceeded to spin her boyfriend at a nauseating speed during Strip the Willow was a strong one. But has Ieuan eventually did return to Wales, his unemployment was replaced by hers.

Brian nods, more than aware of the fact that barely 20% of Scotland’s probationer teachers secured permanent contracts last year. He knows what it is to cling to the wreckage of temporary contract after temporary contract, whilst the river flow of debt consumed your diminishing disposable income. All of us are wearing dresses and kilts we can ill-afford, drinking what little money we have left before being forced to sign-on.

The bride herself told me that she can’t start a family until she finds that island in the Pacific – a permanent contract. Nor will any bank entertain a mortgage request until she has one. In order to improve her employment prospects, Michelle took an Open University course in History. I often wonder what the dole queues of the depression would make of the idea 21st Century Law graduates on the brew.

That’s why I was delighted for Michelle having her new man. At least she had done something. At least she hadn’t been forced back home. As a seventeen year old pseudo-intellectual, one of my favourite forms of pretentiousness was reading Albert Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus pushed a rock up a hill never to reach the top. And for all that Michelle and I had done, ‘when I saw her standing there’ I realised we were in almost exactly the same place after ten years: broke and at home. Though, at least ten years ago we had our delusions. Where will our students be in ten years?

The above is a work of fiction based loosely on true events.

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