The Boiling Frog: The Real Thugs

Monday, 26 March 2012

The Real Thugs

Above is a picture of my view yesterday from my seat in the shithole more popularly known as Wembley, at the JPT final. A second visit hasn't changed my views of the place, particularly as it took over 20 minutes at half time to queue for the Gents' toilet, in a stadium less than half full, and far longer than it did in the old Wembley. Still that's £798 million worth of progress for you:

Football games were held on the pitch and visitors tested the 2,618 toilets - more than any other venue in the world.

On the right of the picture above is an example of copious blue coated so-called stewards that walk about the place 'keeping order'. Generally in football stadia stewards tend to have two kinds of colours - yellow and orange (Orange ones are the important ones apparently). However blue was a new colour - to me - and on the back were the words; 'Response Team'. So not stewards then. Their attitude was no different though. By keep walking in front of the supporters, so obstructing our view, they were politely asked to stop - after all Wembley tickets are not cheap. The response was robustly unhelpful along the lines of; "tough we'll kick you out if you don't like it".

And previously despite the day passing off very peacefully, with warm weather and friendly banter between opposing fans sharing the same pubs, 'England's law and order' decided that wasn't acceptable, and so confiscated cans of beer from numerous fans outside the stadium (including from myself) and tipped it away down the drain, much to the delight of female police on horses.

One can only come to the conclusion that authorities are being deliberately provocative.

9 comments:

Anonymous26 March 2012 at 17:57
.........Anyway why did we need an international stadium at all?

Wembley, a 'pink elephant' vanity project of that girls blouse and total scrote, Adam Crozier. For gawds sakes, the [you know...] FA - very apt description of the board and chairmen from before Croaker and onwards, such utter braindead 'anal' imbeciles.

National stadium, in Birmingham, a new build would have cost £300mill' and have had far, far superior transport links [you know it's in the centre of the country...no ****].

EVERYBODY KNEW THAT: it was better for England to have games played in Newcastle, Manchester and the North, where the fire and passion are legendary and vex opponents, all the other European national teams do this. Whereas our weak headed FA play on the Wembley 'mystique'[certainly it works for the opponents of England!!!]
....... and - London fans are a weak minded fickle set of kids, ignorant, impolite and with absolutely no feel for the great game itself.

So the decision was "lets spend 800 million and rebuild in a central part of LONDON" - vintage FA b^77^x.
Never mind lets put up another statue of Bobby - that'll make it OK.... .
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TheBoilingFrog26 March 2012 at 18:29
@Anon I did enjoy watching England games when they 'traveled' round the country - particularly when Beckham scored against Greece at Old Trafford - I broke a seat at the time celebrating

Sadly like most things - the media, politics and sport etc everything is London-centric...
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Anonymous26 March 2012 at 20:23
There's no mystique around Wembley anymore. Its a corporate identikit stadium, not the hallowed ground with history.
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TheBoilingFrog26 March 2012 at 20:37
@Anon I couldn't agree more
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Sean26 March 2012 at 20:56
I thought you were an Owl Mr frog?
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TheBoilingFrog26 March 2012 at 20:58
@sean An Owl? Nope - I'm a Robin
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Sean26 March 2012 at 21:09
Owl, Frog, Robin? Tattoos? Now I am really confused
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TheBoilingFrog26 March 2012 at 21:20
@Sean :-) Nope not an Owl - used to watch Blades during time as a Sheffield Uni student - 'footie for a fiver' plus a free pint promotion did the trick.

Life-long Robin (Swindon) fan, since I was 12ish, for my sins
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James Higham27 March 2012 at 13:25
particularly as it took over 20 minutes at half time to queue for the Gents' toilet

That's equality, BF. They had to for centuries, now this is the payback.
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"Once the interlude of [WWI] was over, [countries] all went back to the rules and customs of traditional parliamentary democracies. I felt out of my depth."
(Jean Monnet 'Father of Europe')

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(Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner 2014)

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(Jean Monnet, 'Father of Europe')

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Euro quotes

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(Nick Clegg, 2002)

"We're happy to give the Greeks anything, just not money".
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(Tony Blair 1998)

"Britons will come round to the idea [joining the euro] once they’ve handled euro money".
(Adam Boulton Sunday Times, 2001)

"Staying out of the Euro will mean progressive economic isolation for Britain".
(Peter Mandelson, 2003)

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(Andrew Duff Lib Dem MEP 2011)

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(Hans Tietmeyer, head of the Bundesbank, 1991)

The single currency is the greatest abandonment of sovereignty since the foundation of the European Community: the decision is of an essentially political nature".
(Felipe Gonzalez, a Spanish former PM, 1998)

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(European Council conclusions, 2001)

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(Then Greek Finance Minister, Yannis Papantoniou, 1999)

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(Virgin Group Chairman, Richard Branson, 2000)

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(WPP Group CEO, Sir Martin Sorrell, et al., 2003)

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businesses means more employment".
(Then BP Chairman, Lord David Simon, 1997)

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(Former Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, former CBI Director General, Lord Adair Turner, et al., 2002)

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(Former Business Secretary, Lord Peter Mandelson, 2003)

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(Former Labour Party leader, Neil Kinnock, 2002)

"The euro may well come to be regarded in the coming years as part of the answer to saving the City from permanent decline. It was easy to dismiss the fledgling euro as a ‘toilet currency’ before we realised our own economic growth was built on sand".
(Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, 2009)

"Obviously joining a currency that everybody in Europe - including soon all the new European Union members - are using, a currency that American and Japanese and overseas businesses understand, has to make sense".
(Then UK Europe Minister, Denis MacShane, 2003)

"The euro, despite gloomy predictions from anti-Europeans, has proved to be a success".
(Former Lib Dem leader, Charles Kennedy, 2002)

"In reality the economic integration between Britain and the Continent is so close, and we have confirmed this because we all belong to the common market, that it can't be good in the long run to stay out of such a cardinal element as the currency union".
(Then German Finance Minister, Hans Eichel, 2002)

"There are no real benefits and some real costs to the UK of monetary independence... it makes sense from a financial stability perspective for the UK to contract out monetary policy to the ECB".
(Citigroup Chief Economist, Willem Buiter, 2007)

"Taking part in EMU would improve policy and performance enough to eliminate many of the strains that sceptics predict would emerge without the safety valve of devaluation".
(BBC Trust Vice Chairman, Diane Coyle OBE, 1997)

"The euro is like a breastplate that will become more and more resistant. The stability of the currencies within its area is without question".
(Then EU Monetary Affairs Commissioner, Yves Thibault de Silguy, 1998)

"The strict rules attached to the euro could emerge as one of the best ways to persuade the markets that we will put Humpty Dumpty back together again, put the public finances in order".
(Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, 2009)

"The question of entering the euro is worth a lot more to Britain than the wild anti-federalist fantasies peddled by those who think Britain should have nothing to do with Europe. Nobody of any consequence in Europe wants to create a federal super-state".
(Former Business Secretary, Lord Peter Mandelson, 2003)

The British Government Knew The Consequences In 1971

Foreign and Commonwealth Office 30/1048 - 1971

...the transfer of major executive responsibilities to the bureaucratic Commission in Brussels will exacerbate popular feeling of alienation from government. To counter this feeling, strengthened local and regional democratic processes within the member states and effective Community regional economic and social policies will be essential.

Parliamentary sovereignty will be affected as we have seen. But the need for Parliament to play an increasing (if perhaps more specialised) role may develop. Firstly, although a European Parliament might in the longest term become an effective, directly elected democratic check upon the bureaucracy, this will not be for a long time, and certainly not in the decade to come. In the interval, to minimise the loss of democratic control it will be important that the British Parliamentarians should play an effective role both through the British membership in the European Parliament and through the processes of the British Parliament itself.

Test

Monday, 26 March 2012

The Real Thugs

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