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Wednesday 22 June 2016

A Game of Two Halves. Should We Stay or Should We Go?

It's been a shit campaign hasn't it? It was never going to be thrills and spills but I never thought it would be as turgid as it turned out to be.  Then again I didn't think it was going to be almost exclusively a Tory tag team match between Cameron/Osborne and Farage/Johnson/Gove with most of the Tory press acting as cheerleaders.  It felt a bit like a party I hadn't been invited to, thank goodness and also thank goodness it will be over tomorrow night.  

I'm going down to get my vote in early tomorrow morning before work.  I seriously thought about abstaining but I'm in folks. 

Why?  At the start of the campaign I just had a hunch that it was in the best interests of the British people and I've heard nothing to change my mind.  If anything my view has hardened. Not because I've been inspired by the remain campaign camp but more because of the leave campaign.  From their pronouncements that leaving the EU will mean more money being available to spend on public services to how terrible it is the influx of EU economic migrants have kept wages down.   Like the Tories really care about public services and higher wages being paid by British businesses.  

Sickening of all was their "reclaim our  borders" mantra and the way they deliberately played on people's ignorance and prejudices by blurring the lines between EU Economic and non EU humanitarian and (admittedly) illegal migration.  I will never forgive them for that.  

Not that I was impressed by most of what the Remain camp's campaign, for example the veiled threat And pretty much all the business leaders say we should remain including double billionaires Richard Branson and Alan Sugar.  What, so we can have more austerity measures?

Labour were shit of course although Jeremy Corbyn eventually told it how it is (for most of us anyway).  That said, as helpfully pointed out by The Express and The Telegraph he really should have supported Brexit.  Really, who cares? 

Do I trust the EU more than this Tory government?  I'm not sure but it sometimes feels like the EU is the only thing able to stop the Tories from riding rough shod over anybody other than the rich and powerful.  Actually, maybe I'm being a bit niece (I've been accused of worse) but yes I do.  

I accept that if the country votes to remain we will continue to have problems with bureaucracy, waste, accountability and economic migration but on the other hand if the country votes to leave we will have problems with with bureaucracy, waste, accountability and economic migration.   The outers say the EU is bad because the British don't have enough say how it's run.  Really?  Don't we have MEP's?  

Of course the idea is that if we leave because of our democracy we can all have more say about who decides things on our behalf.  It really is about time to dispel this myth that we all have a say over who governs the UK.  Our electoral system is broken.  In our first past the post system only those voting in marginal constituencies have any say in our General Elections.  I wasn't swayed by the outers anti-democratic EU card.

Yeah, totally uninspiring.  I know my reasons for remaining in the EU are not very good and maybe it would be better to leave the EU but to some it up it all just felt like I was being conned and I just decided the outers were trying to con me more than the inners.

Yep, stay in, reform blah blah blah.

Anyway, as many people know I'm a betting man and I love to make a prediction.  I made the mistake of going against my gut instinct at the last General Election but I'm not falling for that again.  The last time I looked the polls were very close but I think they've got it wrong.  I'm going for a relatively easy win for Remain, 55% to 45%.

You heard it here first and Friday's Euro lottery numbers will be ............

Do I really care? Actually, not really.

Saturday 7 May 2016

We are Premier League, we are Premier League!

People use that expression "it's a funny old world".  Of course it is a cliche but being a cliche doesn't make it wrong.  My football team, the only team in my world, Middlesbrough FC have today won promotion back to the disgustingly filthy world of Premier League.

The Premier League pretty much stands for everything in life I abhor and find repulsive.  It is over-hyped and awash with money paid for by Rupert Murdoch's Sky.  Many of the players are egotistical and  at a time when many football supporters are struggling financially the overwhelming majority of players are vastly overpaid.  Cheating is an accepted part of the game but the managers of the teams castigate the referee for not spotting when opposing players cheat week after week.   I could go on.

When I first started blogging (10 years ago) Boro were an established Premier League team.  No worries about relegation.  We were winning cups (1 anyway) and we competed in the Europa League and even got to the final.  For non football supporters who have no perspective of what that means, it's really good.  For example Liverpool are thrilled they've got to the final this year.

Boro were relegated from the Premier League in 2009 after 11 years in the Premier League and I tried to convince myself pretty much for the reasons listed above I didn't care.  But you can't lie to yourself.  Although I stopped going to the matches I never stopped following the results.  I started getting more interested again and eventually  started going again (this has been the pattern for 45 years by the way). And once you start going again ......

This has been the longest period Boro  have been outside the top division in England since 1975 and if Wikipedia is to be believed 2016-17 will be our 61st in the top Division out of our 107 year history.

Old men (my age) were crying at the match today.  Promotion means so much to them, it means so much to me, it means a lot to the town.  Times are hard in our area for so many.  I don't suppose the people of Middlesbrough will see much of the hundreds of millions that Middlesbrough FC are reportedly going to make in the next few years but it's still great news for the our town.

As we know it wasn't always this way.  Middlesbrough used to be be an important town in this country.  I read an article in the Guardian leading up to today's match which mentioned the famous Stanford’s General Map of the World of 1920.  Apparently Middlesbrough was one of only a handful of  towns/cities in Britain worthy of note.  We certainly were the Boro in those days.

Today was a great day for Boro.  The players and manager are lapping it up and well done but it's their job.  They are well paid (admittedly not yet by Premier league standards) and in time many of them will simply move on to other clubs, I hope they enjoy their celebrations.   But today belongs to the supporters and to the town.   We are still the Boro and we still will be even if we get relegated again next year.  

I know that by the time the next football season starts in August I will be fretting wondering we are going to get to 40 points  (see previous blog entries circa August 2006, 2007 and 2008)  but for now I'm just going to enjoy the thrill of today.

WATB and here's Culture.




Tuesday 12 January 2016

7 Posts in 7 days

These 7 things are all the rage nowadays so why not and I'm going to run them along side 7 reggae songs


Monday 11 January 2016

David Bowie 8 January 1947 - 10 January 2016

Lots of tributes and eulogies on FB today.  I've got a blog though so I thought I'd write mine up here instead.  Like most people I didn't see it coming although I remember one of those spiteful newspaper articles from a few years ago (October 2012) in which the Daily Mail full of its usual bile speculated about DB's health.  As usual, how cool does he look  but with the benefit of hindsight maybe for once DM got it right.

I thought about Bowie yesterday,   I was at the gym and heard this brill Rock'n'Roll Suicide/If I Can Dream segue by Elvez on my iPod.  


I made a mental note to give DB's version a spin....  Maybe later.

And last night I decided to try Blackstar  on Spotify.  I played it through twice. It really is rather good, much better that anything he's done for nearly 35 years and so much better than 2013's The Next Day.  I will listen to it again.

So today his passing was announced and it's difficult for me to know what to say and sound sincere.  It's obviously sad when such an iconic musical figure dies.  I've got some of the rolling news people have tried to find perspective (Mick Jagger laughably mentioned several times) but it is Elvis Presley or John Lennonesque isn't it?

Shamila and I went to see the  V and A exhibition in 2013 I was reminded of the magnificent singles from the'70's and fantastic run of albums from Station to Station to Scary Monsters. His various reinventions and of course The Man Who Fell To Earth.  


I was also reminded the other day that in the seventies I preferred Marc Bolan to David Bowie.  There is no comparison who achieved more and the fact that  Bowie achieved little after 1982 (my opinion) does not diminish his influence and importance on music and popular culture in general.

He was undoubtedly an icon but he wasn't my mam.  I didn't know him and I was never going to meet him so I'm not going to talk stupid  and say how much I will miss him.  In my eyes his body of work stands high and will continue to do so.  Maybe Blackstar is the final word but this is David Bowie so maybe not.  

Long live Bowie.










Saturday 2 January 2016

Boro 2 - Derby 0

Long suffering followers of my Goffa blogs will know all about my torment as a Boro supporter.  I don't always go and to be truthful in recent seasons I have missed many more home games than I have attended.  But my absences and silence is more to do with not being able to take the pain above anything else.

Other football supporters judge my unwillingness to join in the tribal hatred of other local clubs, Newcastle, Sunderland and Leeds as not caring enough about the Boro.  Of course I am not part of that tribe but it is more because in my world there are no other football teams worthy of  me having an opinion.  I am indifferent to them all.  We are simply The Boro.

So although I know it will end in (my) tears (hopefully later rather than sooner) I've renewed my season ticket after an absence which has been too long.

Brief Match Report

At 80 minutes with the score at 0-0 the announcer read out todays crowd, an impressive 32870 to warm applause (not from me, I was concentrating on the match).  The Derby supporters taunted Boro with the chant "you've only come to see The Derby".

By 85 minutes it was Boro 2 Derby 0 and I joined in the Boro fans reply "you've only come to see The Boro".  A taunt?  Not from me.  Why wouldn't they come to see us because we are The Boro.

By the way we are also top of the league!




Friday 1 January 2016

Here's To A Healthy 2016

No resolutions this year just looking forward to hopefully a much healthier 2016.  Also going to try and post a bit more.  Not sure what about yet.  To get these going with a bang here's my second post of the day.

My eldest son has been working/holidaying in Australia for the last month.  I told him to send me some photos as he went along.  In true Dr Mike style all he's sent me are photos of cricket matches plus this photo of a banana autographed by Australian fast bowler Peter Siddle.  There is a joke in there but only the most devoted of us cricket anoraks get it.

National Living Wage - My Mystic Meg

Good thing/Bad thing?

So why are the Tories are rebranding the National Minimum Wage, currently £6.70 per hour as the National Living Wage?  Increasing it to £7.20 per hour in April 2016 and then further to an impressive sounding £9.00 per hour by 2020.  Of course the National Living Wage should not to be confused with the Living Wage Foundation 'Living Wage' which is already £8.25 per hour and £9.40 per hour in London.

Excuse me for being sceptical about whether any good will come out of this for many.

First of all remember how this idea came about.  The Tories didn't agree to these changes to help the poor.  They did it as part of the "jam tomorrow" deal to reduce working tax credits now and increase the National Living Wage in stages by 2020.  The House of Lords blocked the plan to reduce Working Tax Credits now so all's good?  Definitely no bad thing for people relying on tax credits.  But what about in 2020?

From what I understand the tax credits will be cut then and everybody will be entitled to be paid at least £9.00 an hour.  Apart from the full Minimum Wage applies to people over the age of 21 and the Living Wage only applies to people over the age of 25.  So people under 25 will have to stick with the NMW.

So assuming that the majority of workers in places such as fast food outlets like McDonalds or Nandos are under the age of 25 (I think it's a fair assumption) I'm guessing the living wage might not even be relevant there.  Will they even employ people over the age of 25 in the future?  

Fellow socialists may not agree but I have serious concerns as to how this 34% pay rise (£6.70 to £9.00) is going to be funded in certain industries such as the care industry.   I think it is mostly privatised nowadays but funded by local authorities.  Will local authorities be able to afford to pay increased fees?  From what I have seen the care industry is no longer the cash cow it once was.  What will happen if the companies running care homes/home helps decide to just walk away?  

And what about small family businesses such as shops?   Take local hairdressers, cafes, newsagents, florists, pubs and the like.  I can't remember how these businesses looked like to me (I probably just thought all businesses were out to exploit their workers)  in April 1999 (when the NMW came in) but I'm I won't have been too concerned about how small businesses would manage to pay the NMW.  Maybe I'm going soft but they don't look awash with cash now.

And what of the big employers, the national store chains, logistics companies, the factories, those employing the support staff in our hospitals etc? They will still need to employ people for now (until the robots take over) and they won't be able to manage just employing people under the age of 25 (will they?) but I don't see them passing the additional labour costs onto their shareholders.  I can see cuts to employees benefits/rights becoming even more the norm.  Are there any pension schemes left?  Overtime rates of pay will become a thing of the past.  Cuts to paid holidays.  Cuts to guaranteed working hours (more zero hour contracts).  40 hours x £9.00 sounds ok but any less hours, not so.

They have arrived at £9.00 per hour as 60% of median earnings at 2020.  So presumably that mean every time somebody in the country gets a pay rise the NLW will go up.  Sounds like business in general has an incentive not to give anybody a pay rise.

On the face of it the policy is right and if Labour had brought it in I'd be relatively comfortable with it but I just don't trust the Tories.  They really don't give a monkeys about the lower paid and in my opinion have no interest (social or business reasons) in making things better for them.

The crystal ball is read.  Lets see what happens?