England Flags And Other Matters

"I took her to a supermarket...I said pretend you've got no money, she just laughed and said oh you're so funny. I said yeah? Well I can't see anyone else smiling in here." Jarvis Cocker, Common People.

Without being presumptuous it must have been a rather surreal week for Dan Ware. There he is going about his daily business, his only "crime" being that his house is draped in England flags with a white van parked in his driveway and he becomes, through no fault of his own, the centre of a political scandal and resignations.

It's rather ironic for a chap who himself admits he does not vote that he has created more political waves by hanging up an England flag than casting a vote via the ballot box. How very revealing...

Labour MP Emily Thornberry, who tweeted a picture of the house, then compounded the feeling that Labour et al are out of touch by attempted to excuse her faux-pas by claiming that it was an "amazing image". The phrase "you should get out more" springs to mind here. Not unsurprisingly Ed Miliband does not come out of the episode well either as Labour, run by a metropolitan elite, comes under ever increasing scrutiny that it is losing its core working class support.

It's also interestingly symbolic that the flags on Mr Ware’s house were of England, not of the UK, which he had flown to celebrate the World Cup:

The father of four said he had simply put up the three St George flags to celebrate the World Cup, and that it was 'not political'.

Here we see an example of this unappreciated and largely unnoticed change in recent years of the increasing tendency of England football fans no longer universally flying the Union flag of the nation team but instead waving the flag of St George. As a national sport, national tensions and issues tends to spill out onto "the terraces" thus it can be a good indication of the nation's woes - a canary down the mine.

Local rivalries are a classic example - the bitterness surrounding Chesterfield against Mansfield is a reflection of the 1984 miners strike and the reasons behind the intense rivalry of Liverpool and Manchester Untied is laid bare by the reference to the Manchester Ship Canal on United's badge.

Thus if we look back to the 1966 World Cup final, it is curious from a modern perspective (aside from England actually winning a trophy) to see the number of Union flags being waved among the crowd in support of England:

A practice that continued into the 1970 World Cup in Mexico - here England against Brazil...

...right up to the 1990s. Here are England fans in Italia 1990:

 

And against Germany in the World Cup 1990 semi-final:

Yet fast forward on 10 or 15 years and we see a complete change, hardly a Union flag in sight. The contrast couldn't be clearer.

The World Cup in Japan 2002:

...in 2006:

...and in 2010 in South Africa:

The year of change is relatively easy to pinpoint, it happened almost overnight - 1996, or more specifically the Euro '96 UEFA tournament which was held in England and they played all their games at Wembley.

Euro '96 was a watershed moment where very significant numbers of England fans took to waving the St. George flag and widely ditching the Union flag (below):

 

The reasons why are less easy to pinpoint. It appears to have been a combination of a reasonably successful football tournament for England where it had a very good chance to win it, the success of the song "three lions", the changing dynamics of football fans with the establishment of the Premier League four years earlier and the embarrassment of the Union flag being tarnished with hooliganism a year earlier. All of which was topped off with an added dash of free England flags and hats handed out by The Sun newspaper.

In addition in 1996 there was also the context that the obviously incoming Labour government, against the loser Major, was openingly advocating devolution, particularly to Scotland as promised by Blair's speech in Blackpool 1996:

I vow that, with the consent of the people, we will have devolved power to Scotland, Wales and the regions of England...

Devolution was always a Pandora's Box - give politicians power (in this case SNP) and they want more. Labour is now reaping the "rewards" for unleashing consequences that they didn't understand nor anticipated. In Scotland it has lead to the independence referendum, which despite the "yes" camp losing has not settled the issue. Labour is also now under pressure from the SNP at the next election. And in England it has lead to a rise of Englishness which even Miliband acknowledged awkwardly in 2012. He put Euro '96 down to...

Since Euro 96, English football fans have helped to reclaim the flag of St George from the BNP.

That may have been the unintended consequences, but Miliband overlooks that instead of reclaiming the flag of St George from the BNP, it is a demonstration of the Union fragmenting and England reasserting themselves.

In this respect Labour has an "England problem" where Miliband's "long-term problems will come from south of the border, and in particular how he deals with the question of Englishness." And this brings us back to the real issue of Emily Thornberry's misguided tweet.

"I'll Do Anything To Survive"

For 11 years Sepp Blatter has been President of FIFA and he has not achieved that without dubious practices - his tenure has consistently been dogged by allegations of corruption. For almost a decade, in order to hold on to power at FIFA, Blatter has without question relied on Jack Warner to provide 35 votes that he controls in the Caribbean and North and Central America. In return Blatter has turned a blind eye to Warner being able to make himself, and his family, millionaires; plundering football in his region and FIFA itself.

However, Warner's controlled bloc of votes (including the USA) has come at an increasingly high price, which has lead to less than opaque corruption:

One of Fifa's most senior executives could profit by more than £10m from World Cup ticket sales in a scandal that will horrify supporters and raise fears that some senior officials ­ and individuals within sponsor companies ­ are exploiting their positions to milk the tournament for personal gain.

In a move that has caused outrage in Trinidad & Tobago, who face England in the group stage, the Caribbean nation's entire ticket allocation has been allocated to a travel agency owned by Jack Warner, a Fifa vice-president who is also the president of CONCACAF and a special advisor to the Trinidad & Tobago FA.

Now it seems that with an impeding FIFA Presidential election, and with further evidence of corruption swirling around FIFA, Blatter is dropping his ally, and also his Presidential opponent, in the smelly stuff in a very naked attempt at self preservation:

Fifa presidential candidate Mohamed Bin Hammam and vice president Jack Warner have denied wrongdoing after Fifa opened disciplinary proceedings against them following bribery allegations.

Blatter is up to his eyeballs in this stuff and I don't believe that Jack Warner will let this go without a fight. Cue the popcorn.

A Coincidence?

Two months ago, before the bidding to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups took place, Spain and Qatar were under investigation for alleged vote trading, and although subsequently cleared, Qatar did indeed win the rights to host the 2022 World Cup. Qatar being world renowned for its long standing football heritage.

Now just over a week since the open and honest voting procedure took place we learn that Barcelona has a new shirt sponsor. Barcelona are famous for never having a shirt sponsor, the shirts remaining unsoiled by corporate logos (though they have recently paid to support the UNICEF cause). Something which the fans were rightly proud of.

That has all changed as Barcelona have signed up to biggest shirt sponsorship deal in history, worth £125 million. And the new sponsor? The Qatar Foundation. Surely a coincidence?

A Brief Interlude

Due to work commitments, and other activities (weather permitting) blogging will be slow for the next few days.

Meanwhile here's a cracking post by Autonomous Mind, who blogs, about the recent debacle of Sepp Fatter et al and England's failed World cup bid, far better than I.

The World Cup 2018...

...goes to Russia. I wonder if the BBC will do an exclusive on Russian Mafia 'bribes' to FIFA?

We've clearly lost because of media reports. A Panorama investigation 3 days before? It was obviously deliberately timed as such as to destroy our bid. I can see copious champagne bottles entering Broadcasting House now.

Update: At least we won't have to use the abomination that is Stadium: MK.

The Unpatriotic BBC

The head of England's 2018 World Cup bid criticises the BBC as unpatriotic regarding a planned documentary on FIFA corruption a week before the vote on the next hosts of 2018:

"I'm incredibly disappointed with the timing of what the BBC seem to be proposing with Panorama, to do it the week before the vote - I don't think think it's patriotic."

He has a point. It's a truth universally acknowledged that FIFA is fundamentally corrupt, we don't need yet another documentary to tell us that. The only real surprise regarding the latest allegations is that they didn't involve Jack Warner.

What are they going to do next? Panorama exclusively reveals that the Queen is a woman?

Of course FIFA should be held to account, but showing the investigation a week before a crucial vote. What do the BBC hope to achieve? The timing will do maximum damage to England's bid, perhaps that's what the BBC wants?

Shock Horror...

...an Englishman makes it to the World Cup final. Good luck Howard Webb:

Englishman Howard Webb has been chosen to referee the World Cup final between Netherlands and Spain in Johannesburg on Sunday, Fifa has confirmed.

The 38-year-old Yorkshireman has had a good tournament so far, as have his assistants Michael Mullarkey and Darren Cann, who will join him in the final.

Webb is the first Englishman to referee the final since Jack Taylor in 1974.

Optical Illusions

hattip:Subrosa

Well How Embarrassing

We're out, and deservedly so. I'm sure much will be made about the 'goal that never was', but in truth we were crap. Germany were much more inventive, passed the ball better and quite frankly made it look embarrassing for us.

The so called 'golden generation' have yet again failed to live up to expectations. Supposedly 'good' players are paid handsomely who play well for their clubs yet fail to reproduce their form for their country. I'm sure Fabio will get it in the neck now, but if Fabio (one of the best managers in the world) can't get the best out of this lot then who can?

Bring on tomorrow's papers.

Edit: At least we beat the Aussies at the cricket though:

England weathered a dramatic late collapse to beat Australia by one wicket with five balls remaining and seal the one-day series in Manchester.

The tense victory gave them an unassailable 3-0 lead with two dead rubbers to follow in London.

It's A Knockout

Now we're into the knockout rounds, and next up it's the Germans. Despite a relatively unconvincing start (rather like England) they're not to be underestimated. England have never beaten a top-level team in the knockout rounds of a World Cup away from Wembley, and not at all since 1966. However nor have Germany since 1990 unless it went to penalties.

An inexperienced German team (of whom 11 players are eligible to play for other countries) against an experienced English team. It's an intriguing contest, hopefully we can emulate the score in the picture above.

As expected some of the tabloid newspapers have put their less than dignified hats on, although the German equivalents are hardly innocent in this area either. Me? I love Germany, I worked and lived there for a number of years; it's one of my favourite of all European countries. And they're not as sensitive to this 'don't mention the war stuff' as we might imagine, though I find the '10 German Bombers' chant to be more than a little tedious.

Germany have always been a country that has beaten us fair and square, so it is only on a football level that I would love England to win. Argentina are likely to be our next opponents should we go through, now that's a different matter...

Now Or Never

Well its the final group game, England must win to progress. (well they could draw then it would all depend on the other result) A stuttering start to say the least, but we've been here before in 1966, 1986 and 1990 with less than convincing starts to a World Cup campaign. We could even top the group today.

I would imagine that not alot of work will be done this afternoon across the country? Me? I have a sympathetic boss. The conversation went something like this:

Me: "Boss can I have the afternoon off?"
Boss (me also): "Of course you can, no problem"
Me: "Great I'm off down the pub at lunchtime"

Ah, the joys of working for oneself.

David Miliband Tells Capello What To Do

What's Going On?

In this World Cup most of the big teams have struggled - Spain, Germany, France, England and Italy have stuttered so far. France have even gone one better by going on strike.

Englanditis is contagious it seems.

Parallels

As anyone who has followed the England football team for quite sometime knows, yesterday's result and performance was - well - typical. Yes there was lots of pre-match hype, and occasionally they surprise us by living up to that hype, but we know how it works really most of the time. Lots of talk and optimism, but in the end it's always the same result - a lackluster display and a 'why the hell can't they play like they do for their own clubs?' The rhetoric never matches the substance.

And Rooney despite his 'half-hearted-don't-really-mean-it' apology lets us know what England players really think of their long suffering supporters.

This leads me onto the EU. As highlighted in a previous post any elected UK government, whether it's Tory or Labour, follows the same script. Rather like England it's talk tough - the best for Britain etc - then it begins to fall apart. We give in.

So for all the tough 'referendum lock' talk pre-election, and claiming the first victory in Europe for Tory eurosceptics as predicted, there's a problem:

However, the truce over budget "surveillance" is likely to end within a fortnight when the Commission moves to "fast track" its proposals and bring forward legislation on the plan by September.

One Commission official said: "We are still determined to push for the reforms that are needed. We will take into account the summit today, but we are speeding up the proposals we have set out."

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, insisted the "economic governance" agenda would continue.

"Nothing has been decided definitively," Mr Sarkozy said. "This is only the very beginning. Things are moving ahead."

And from England Expects:

FROM across the Channel we learn that the EU Commission is absolutely determined to secure the passage of two important new laws that hugely affect our prosperity and sovereignty for the worse.

And from Mary Ellen Synon:

Cameron is new in town, so he doesn't know that's not the way it works. The British have now conceded the principle that other nations have a right to interfere in the United Kingdom's budget procedures. Now Sarkozy and his allies wait for the next European Council in October. There will no doubt be another crisis going on then; if not, Sarkozy and Angela Merkel can declare Spain or Portugal or Greece or Ireland a crisis at the time. Then insist the solution is -- as it always is -- 'more Europe.' Which means, more European control of national economies. That is when the real pressures on Cameron to get going with the EU economic government will start.

The first job of any EU power grab is to convince the world -- or at least the British -- that an EU power grab does not exist.

So copious amounts of bluster and promises, but we end up where we always do. The truth is the system is in place with vested corporate intests - the FA decided to build Wembley rather than concentrate on youth development - we're impotent until someones stands up and says hold on, this is not right. Until then it's the same tedious script.

Take 2

After a typical stuttering start to their World Cup campaign, England should get back on track tonight. I can't see anything other than an England win (ha ha famous last words) The Algerians looked very poor in their 1-0 defeat against Slovenia.

The German's have been the most impressive team so far, so England really need to top their group to avoid meeting them in the next round. The same problems will remain though, we'll be too predictable in attack most of the time and Heskey is never going to score goals. But there aren't too many other options. Also Terry and Carragher are vulnerable to pace.

I expect us to progress, but can't realistically see us getting any further than the quarters. But there's always hope...

C'mon England

That is all.