I see that ignoring H&M is now being pursued down to the granular level of property square footage. One more push lads and they’ll disappear in a puff of smoke.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Modern era starts from the WC when you first paid proper attention to the games. For me that was Mexico 86 or at a push Spain 82. For a Gen Z youth though the 1980s is very much the olden days.
Interesting decade the 80s. Across many walks of life - economics, pop culture, sport, working life, technology - it's the transitional decade, between the definitely old school 1970s and the definitely modern 1990s.
At the start of the 80s there was no Neighbours or Home and Away, our economy was still in the pre-Thatcher phase, the Berlin Wall was resolutely upright, people didn't have home computers. By the end we'd had the big bang, globalisation was getting into gear, electronic music was dominant, everyone had a computer or games console and the internet and email were just around the corner.
Showing your age there though. Who knows what Neighbours or Home and Away is nowadays?
To my kids, the idea of the 90s may as well be black and white when you speak about it. Couldn't pause or rewind the TV, no streaming or choosing what you wanted to watch, no online deliveries, if we wanted to speak to a friend on the phone we'd have to use the landline and call their landline. The internet while it existed was rarely used and required dial up modems that couldn't be used if anyone was on the phone..
The 90s are already getting dated. For me the millennium was a transition - not just from the 20th century, to the 21st, not just from childhood to adulthood, but to the modern handheld/digital/detached/on-demand world that we live in now.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
I know what you mean, but in the 60s if you watched something set in the 20s you would consider that period drama. It is just we are old I'm afraid. I find lots of stuff crops up that I think is obvious and younger people look at me as if I'm talking gibberish. The other day I was trying not to get the names Kas and Cass mixed up. I remembered it was Cass by thinking of Mama Cass. I said this to the person concerned (I would guess in her thirties). Had not a clue what I was talking about.
Yes, spot on. Decades are artificial constructs but having constructed them each one is exceptional and at the same time not exceptional. Which decades are deemed by consensus to be the best or the most interesting etc depends largely on the age of the influence mongers forming the consensus.
Very sensible to step away from the footie discussion.
’Poll shows Tory wipeout in north-east as SNP gets boost after Supreme Court ruling’ - The Scottish Tories are headed for disaster in their north-east stronghold, including leader Douglas Ross's Moray seat, according to a major new poll.
An Ipsos Mori poll last week found support for independence at 56% among those who were confident about how they would vote.
In a blow to Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, his party would win only two more seats north of the border… Mr Starmer’s party wants to implement their proposed reforms even if they perform poorly in Scotland…
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Modern era starts from the WC when you first paid proper attention to the games. For me that was Mexico 86 or at a push Spain 82. For a Gen Z youth though the 1980s is very much the olden days.
Interesting decade the 80s. Across many walks of life - economics, pop culture, sport, working life, technology - it's the transitional decade, between the definitely old school 1970s and the definitely modern 1990s.
At the start of the 80s there was no Neighbours or Home and Away, our economy was still in the pre-Thatcher phase, the Berlin Wall was resolutely upright, people didn't have home computers. By the end we'd had the big bang, globalisation was getting into gear, electronic music was dominant, everyone had a computer or games console and the internet and email were just around the corner.
Showing your age there though. Who knows what Neighbours or Home and Away is nowadays?
To my kids, the idea of the 90s may as well be black and white when you speak about it. Couldn't pause or rewind the TV, no streaming or choosing what you wanted to watch, no online deliveries, if we wanted to speak to a friend on the phone we'd have to use the landline and call their landline. The internet while it existed was rarely used and required dial up modems that couldn't be used if anyone was on the phone..
The 90s are already getting dated. For me the millennium was a transition - not just from the 20th century, to the 21st, not just from childhood to adulthood, but to the modern handheld/digital/detached/on-demand world that we live in now.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
Every decade was actually largely how you picture the one before.
That said, a theory I trot out quite regularly is that we have culturally stood pretty still since the mid 90s. Modern music isn't so very different from the music of 25 years ago - music of 2022 is certainly more alike music of 1997 than music of 1997 was like 1972, or music of 1972 of 1947. Ditto television, film, clothes. Look at a picture of 1997: it looks different, but not that different.
I grant you technology has moved on a lot. But my main reference point is popular culture.
At the risk of opening up a can of worms, the main difference in film and television is the cultural politics. Watch a film or television programme from the late 90s, and the only really thing that strikes you is that the producers have not particularly tried to ensure all minority groups are represented in the way they would today; nor is there a background noise of judgement. Watch Point Break again, for example. There are goodies and baddies, but the baddies are not baddies because they represent the American Cultural Hegemony Which Must Be Dismantled, they are baddies because they carry out bank robberies.
But that aside, Point Break looks like it could have been made - if not yesterday, only a few years ago. The same could not be said, back in the 90s, of, say, Get Carter.
Hmm not sure about this. I reckon decades always take a shape but only do so looking back and with sufficient distance. At least 20 years. So the 60s started to take a shape in the mid 80s and it was finalized by the early 90s. The 90s were an indistinct fuzz until around 2012 and needed until quite recently to complete their journey to decadehood. The noughties are quite fuzzy atm but will 'fill out' over the period from 2027 to 2032. As for the decade we're in - the 20s - this won't assume a fully fledged shape and personality until around 2052. So I'll be 92 by the time the period we're living through now has any sort of definition. Quite a thought.
The sixties were self-consciously swinging even at the time, and certainly remembered as such by the eighties.
I think your theory is bunk.
Having said that, I tended to view the nineties as vaguely the same as today, until I watched the movie “The Paper” last year. Michael Keaton and Marisa Tomei. 1994? It might as well have been made in 1974.
My point is that what each decade was 'all about' emerges in hindsight and its shape needs a certain temporal distance to be discerned.
Eg what you've just noticed. The 90s has its shape now. The 00s doesn't but will get one before the 10s do. Etc.
This is not bunk!
I often agree with your posts, kinabalu, but as yesterday with the charitable places policy, I have to take issue here.
Even now the 1990's have a far, far more diffuse and difficult to identify shape than the 1980's, I would say. This is partly to do with the very heavy recycling of cultural forms that was starting to take shape in the 1990's, and much less that was genuinely completely new , particularly towards the end and second half of that decade.
It's the postmodern condition, n'est-ce-pas. Now I can't tell a 2012 amateur youtube video from one from 2022, quite often enough.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Modern era starts from the WC when you first paid proper attention to the games. For me that was Mexico 86 or at a push Spain 82. For a Gen Z youth though the 1980s is very much the olden days.
Interesting decade the 80s. Across many walks of life - economics, pop culture, sport, working life, technology - it's the transitional decade, between the definitely old school 1970s and the definitely modern 1990s.
At the start of the 80s there was no Neighbours or Home and Away, our economy was still in the pre-Thatcher phase, the Berlin Wall was resolutely upright, people didn't have home computers. By the end we'd had the big bang, globalisation was getting into gear, electronic music was dominant, everyone had a computer or games console and the internet and email were just around the corner.
Showing your age there though. Who knows what Neighbours or Home and Away is nowadays?
To my kids, the idea of the 90s may as well be black and white when you speak about it. Couldn't pause or rewind the TV, no streaming or choosing what you wanted to watch, no online deliveries, if we wanted to speak to a friend on the phone we'd have to use the landline and call their landline. The internet while it existed was rarely used and required dial up modems that couldn't be used if anyone was on the phone..
The 90s are already getting dated. For me the millennium was a transition - not just from the 20th century, to the 21st, not just from childhood to adulthood, but to the modern handheld/digital/detached/on-demand world that we live in now.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
I know what you mean, but in the 60s if you watched something set in the 20s you would consider that period drama. It is just we are old I'm afraid. I find lots of stuff crops up that I think is obvious and younger people look at me as if I'm talking gibberish. The other day I was trying not to get the names Kas and Cass mixed up. I remembered it was Cass by thinking of Mama Cass. I said this to the person concerned (I would guess in her thirties). Had not a clue what I was talking about.
Yes, spot on. Decades are artificial constructs but having constructed them each one is exceptional and at the same time not exceptional. Which decades are deemed by consensus to be the best or the most interesting etc depends largely on the age of the influence mongers forming the consensus.
Very sensible to step away from the footie discussion.
I see that ignoring H&M is now being pursued down to the granular level of property square footage. One more push lads and they’ll disappear in a puff of smoke.
(Honestly) I wondered why you were going on abut ignoring the clothing retailer then, before the penny dropped.
Former Wimbledon champion Boris Becker has been released from prison after serving eight months of his sentence for hiding £2.5m worth of assets and loans to avoid paying debts.
How as Boris got out of the clink after serving less than 1/3 of his sentence?
Non violent/non sexual convicts can be released on HDC after a quarter of their sentence, in Becker's case, he's getting deported.
Ironically, economic crimes like this are more likely susceptible to cost-benefit analysis: profit vs time away. Impulse-driven violence and noncing less so. Perhaps we have it entirely the wrong way round.
Does anyone think Sir Keir remembers the moment when he realised that he'd changed his mind from being a staunch republican to being in favour of an hereditary monarchy?
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
I know what you mean, but in the 60s if you watched something set in the 20s you would consider that period drama. It is just we are old I'm afraid. I find lots of stuff crops up that I think is obvious and younger people look at me as if I'm talking gibberish. The other day I was trying not to get the names Kas and Cass mixed up. I remembered it was Cass by thinking of Mama Cass. I said this to the person concerned (I would guess in her thirties). Had not a clue what I was talking about.
Anything to do with music, popular culture and especially electronics dates very quickly (though at the Abba Voyage show the other day I was struck by how many young people were there). More interesting, perhaps, are the subtle ways that widely-accepted culture changes. For all that some here rail at woke attitudes, they're very widely accepted as normal even among older, quite conservative people. To declare that you dislike gay or black people has moved from being common to being offensive to being simply peculiar, like declaring that you don't trust anyone with brown hair, and when did anyone last sneer at "women drivers"?
I go to concerts focused on 60s and 70s music often (Stones, Fleetwood Mac, Eagles, etc, etc [original or tribute]) and everyone there only looks like they just have a pulse. And then it dawned on me.
A year or so ago I saw Manfred Mann and Georgie Fame made a guest appearance. He was very good, but I thought he wasn't going to make it across the stage. I could have gone for a pee in the time it took him to get from the wings to the microphone.
Does anyone think Sir Keir remembers the moment when he realised that he'd changed his mind from being a staunch republican to being in favour of an hereditary monarchy?
I'm sure the SNP will blame him, but I was thinking more about the implications elsewhere in the public sector. It will probably make it harder to resolve the ongoing tension with the EIS and SSTA, both of whom are due to strike next month as well.
I know some people with a very poorly grandmother/mother in hospital in Scotland at the moment. She hadn't been taking her medicine - she had difficulty swallowing so her pills were just dropped on the floor. Couldn't feed herself easily so that wasn't happening either. My friends obviously remonstrated with the staff, but frankly it'll be a miracle for her to make it out alive, let alone better. These people don't need a payrise, they need the sack and starting again.
Good luck with that. There might be a case for pills being replaced by French-style suppositories or other delivery methods. Replacing health care workers with shelf-stackers, not so much.
The point is, they didn't give a shit if she took them, or ate anything. Her buzzer was dropped on the floor too - so much the better for the staff. The lady herself is a lovely meek lady who wouldn't say boo to a goose, she's not a 'problem patient'. Shelf stackers wouldn't do worse.
What actually needs to happen imo is everyone needs an NHS charge card for services, and everything is 'paid for' during a hospital visit. A non-administered pill isn't paid for and a hastily cleared away meal 'not hungry today petal?' isn't paid for. People choose where they go, and private hospitals and health providers are able to offer services to NHS users too. The whole rotten system needs flushing out with competition a la the supermarket sector.
Does anyone think Sir Keir remembers the moment when he realised that he'd changed his mind from being a staunch republican to being in favour of an hereditary monarchy?
I wonder what changed his mind
I wonder too. Surely not?
I consider myself in principle a staunch republican (though it would be far down my list of priorities). But I imagine I could also change my mind pretty quickly if the monarch/heir had a sword to my neck
On the subject of several things being better in Northwestern Continental Europe, a good article from Martin Kettle here today, on the need to go in what is actually a more German direction in industrial relations. I knew little about how far Britain had actually already attempted to do this, in fact before the Germans, between 1926 and 1929, knowing only the failures both of feudally-minded management and obstreperous unions in the 1970's, "solved" by Thatcher one-sidedly in favour of management ; and with the increasingly obvious economic and social costs we're i seeing all around us today .
Why the hell should unions get a seat on the board....they don't represent the majority of workers, and most of those they do represent are public sector workers. I can think of worse idea's but not by much.
Perhaps corporate performance would be better if they did? Or is it speaking a different form of Germanic that makes the difference?
What has corporate performance got to do with what I said and frankly I doubt it as I wouldn't trust most uk unions to run a whelk stall.
Simple fact unions do not represent the majority of british workers in most firms except public sector and from my experience of unions in the private sector firms in the 80's I wouldn't piss on one if it was on fire.
The 90s only took definitive shape once we realised what the 00s and 10s were (increasingly dystopian). They’ve been defined in a sense in terms of what they were *not*.
The 00s were ushered in by 2001. The 10s were bookended by Covid.
Difficult to demarcate the two, despite the GFC in the middle.
Does anyone think Sir Keir remembers the moment when he realised that he'd changed his mind from being a staunch republican to being in favour of an hereditary monarchy?
I wonder what changed his mind
I wonder too. Surely not?
Plus the fact that most openly Republican Labour leaders eg Corbyn and Michael Foot get trounced at general elections. The ones who back our constitutional monarchy eg Attlee, Wilson and Blair are the only Labour leaders who win and become PM
The 90s only took definitive shape once we realised what the 00s and 10s were (increasingly dystopian). They’ve been defined in a sense in terms of what they were *not*.
The 00s were ushered in by 2001. The 10s were bookended by Covid.
Difficult to demarcate the two, despite the GFC in the middle.
The 90s only took definitive shape once we realised what the 00s and 10s were (increasingly dystopian). They’ve been defined in a sense in terms of what they were *not*.
The 00s were ushered in by 2001. The 10s were bookended by Covid.
Difficult to demarcate the two, despite the GFC in the middle.
Smartphone ubiquity happened round about then, and that was a pretty huge change
Constituency: SNP 50% (+1) Lab 25% (-1) Con 13% (nc) LD 7% (-1)
List: SNP 40% (+2) Lab 24% (nc) Con 13% (-1) Grn 11% (-1) LD 6% (-2)
(YouGov, 6-9 Dec; changes from 30 Sep - 4 Oct)
Interesting for Scottish domestic policy, irrelevant for indyref2 now the SC has ruled the UK government and Westminster can refuse it indefinitely. It will likely need a hung parliament and SNP balance of power at the next election for any change, otherwise even Starmer probably doesn't grant one for years
Deleted picture of Franco
If you know anything about Franco's time ruling Spain you would know that worse than just an insult to insunuate that Starmer or HYUFD* is similar to Franco.
*(it is unclear to me which you were referring to)
Take it up with HYUFD. He is a great admirer of Franco, on record with praise for him, his regime and his successors.
I never said I was an admirer of his but Franco was better than the Communists threatening to take over Spain in the 1930s and as Fascist dictators go was far less evil than say Hitler or even Mussolini. In fact more akin to say Peron or Pinochet.
Constituency: SNP 50% (+1) Lab 25% (-1) Con 13% (nc) LD 7% (-1)
List: SNP 40% (+2) Lab 24% (nc) Con 13% (-1) Grn 11% (-1) LD 6% (-2)
(YouGov, 6-9 Dec; changes from 30 Sep - 4 Oct)
Interesting for Scottish domestic policy, irrelevant for indyref2 now the SC has ruled the UK government and Westminster can refuse it indefinitely. It will likely need a hung parliament and SNP balance of power at the next election for any change, otherwise even Starmer probably doesn't grant one for years
Deleted picture of Franco
If you know anything about Franco's time ruling Spain you would know that worse than just an insult to insunuate that Starmer or HYUFD* is similar to Franco.
*(it is unclear to me which you were referring to)
Take it up with HYUFD. He is a great admirer of Franco, on record with praise for him, his regime and his successors.
I never said I was an admirer of his but Franco was better than the Communists threatening to take over Spain in the 1930s and as Fascist dictators go was far less evil than say Hitler or even Mussolini. In fact more akin to say Peron or Pinochet.
His pitch appears to be the reasoned voice of bigotry, and it's working with the target audience. ...And DeSantis’s actions continue to attract attention among those with ties to the former president. Former senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, appearing on Fox News on Wednesday afternoon, called DeSantis’s remarks on same-sex marriage, which the governor delivered a night earlier on Laura Ingraham’s show, “quite eye opening and remarkable” and showed he is not a moderate...
Note for @HYUFD , there are zero headlines for Pence in recent days.
He doesn't need them, just to let Trump and DeSantis bash each other to bits while he does the cold town halls and meet and greets in Iowa diners
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Modern era starts from the WC when you first paid proper attention to the games. For me that was Mexico 86 or at a push Spain 82. For a Gen Z youth though the 1980s is very much the olden days.
Interesting decade the 80s. Across many walks of life - economics, pop culture, sport, working life, technology - it's the transitional decade, between the definitely old school 1970s and the definitely modern 1990s.
At the start of the 80s there was no Neighbours or Home and Away, our economy was still in the pre-Thatcher phase, the Berlin Wall was resolutely upright, people didn't have home computers. By the end we'd had the big bang, globalisation was getting into gear, electronic music was dominant, everyone had a computer or games console and the internet and email were just around the corner.
Showing your age there though. Who knows what Neighbours or Home and Away is nowadays?
To my kids, the idea of the 90s may as well be black and white when you speak about it. Couldn't pause or rewind the TV, no streaming or choosing what you wanted to watch, no online deliveries, if we wanted to speak to a friend on the phone we'd have to use the landline and call their landline. The internet while it existed was rarely used and required dial up modems that couldn't be used if anyone was on the phone..
The 90s are already getting dated. For me the millennium was a transition - not just from the 20th century, to the 21st, not just from childhood to adulthood, but to the modern handheld/digital/detached/on-demand world that we live in now.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
Every decade was actually largely how you picture the one before.
That said, a theory I trot out quite regularly is that we have culturally stood pretty still since the mid 90s. Modern music isn't so very different from the music of 25 years ago - music of 2022 is certainly more alike music of 1997 than music of 1997 was like 1972, or music of 1972 of 1947. Ditto television, film, clothes. Look at a picture of 1997: it looks different, but not that different.
I grant you technology has moved on a lot. But my main reference point is popular culture.
At the risk of opening up a can of worms, the main difference in film and television is the cultural politics. Watch a film or television programme from the late 90s, and the only really thing that strikes you is that the producers have not particularly tried to ensure all minority groups are represented in the way they would today; nor is there a background noise of judgement. Watch Point Break again, for example. There are goodies and baddies, but the baddies are not baddies because they represent the American Cultural Hegemony Which Must Be Dismantled, they are baddies because they carry out bank robberies.
But that aside, Point Break looks like it could have been made - if not yesterday, only a few years ago. The same could not be said, back in the 90s, of, say, Get Carter.
Hmm not sure about this. I reckon decades always take a shape but only do so looking back and with sufficient distance. At least 20 years. So the 60s started to take a shape in the mid 80s and it was finalized by the early 90s. The 90s were an indistinct fuzz until around 2012 and needed until quite recently to complete their journey to decadehood. The noughties are quite fuzzy atm but will 'fill out' over the period from 2027 to 2032. As for the decade we're in - the 20s - this won't assume a fully fledged shape and personality until around 2052. So I'll be 92 by the time the period we're living through now has any sort of definition. Quite a thought.
The sixties were self-consciously swinging even at the time, and certainly remembered as such by the eighties.
I think your theory is bunk.
Having said that, I tended to view the nineties as vaguely the same as today, until I watched the movie “The Paper” last year. Michael Keaton and Marisa Tomei. 1994? It might as well have been made in 1974.
My point is that what each decade was 'all about' emerges in hindsight and its shape needs a certain temporal distance to be discerned.
Eg what you've just noticed. The 90s has its shape now. The 00s doesn't but will get one before the 10s do. Etc.
This is not bunk!
I often agree with your posts, kinabalu, but as yesterday with the charitable places policy, I have to take issue here.
Even now the 1990's have a far, far more diffuse and difficult to identify shape than the 1980's, I would say. This is partly to do with the very heavy recycling of cultural forms that was starting to take shape in the 1990's, and much less that was genuinely completely new , particularly towards the end and second half of that decade.
It's the postmodern condition, n'est-ce-pas. Now I can't tell a 2012 amateur youtube video from a 2022 one, quite often enough.
The 'private school subsidy', I think you mean, Oracle. I was surprised that somebody - toi - who normally has a strikingly deep and structural take on things would go so reductive and shallow on that one. Wondered whether it was influenced by some sort of personal angle. Eg you went to one and have good memories? Or you used the system for your kids with positive outcomes?
As to decades, I think what you've noted here supports what I'm saying. The 80s has a clearer shape than the 90s because it's further on in the 'with hindsight' shaping process. And, yes I agree, 2012 looks barely different from 2022. The 00s are far from being shaped yet let alone the 2010s.
Of course there's a counteracting effect, which is 'crowding out'. The 1870s are longer ago than the 1970s but this doesn't mean they have a firmer shape than the 1970s to our eyes. Or much of a shape at all. They would have had to our equivalents a century ago but for us they have dropped off the radar, crowded out by more recent 'in living memory' decades.
Having said all that, 'decades' themselves are an artificial construction. Eg many would say the 70s in America started with the RFK assassination and ended with Saturday Night Fever.
The sadly inescapable fact , for the Britsh right , is that the Thatcherite model of industrial investment and workplace relations is failing, and the German collaborative model with unions and corporations is succeeding.
Even Theresa May arrived at a realisation of this, and tried to copy or window-dress with some of Ed Miliband's policies, but was eventually inevitably overruled by the donors and short-term financial interests who nowadays make up the core of tory funding.
Reading that thread confirms that I was correct in not watching the series.
"Nottingham Cottage" sounds "very regal"?
It’s a massive family house by (almost) anyone’s standards, only really a ‘cottage’ when comparing it to the castle next door!
Is it massive? It's 123 square metres (Wikipedia).
Nearly a third of Dublin homes listed on daft.ie, including flats, terraces, etc, are larger. If you look at a rural area then two-thirds of properties are larger.
Are British houses really that small?
Gosh. That's quite a small house. H and M were a bit hard done by there.
They were gifted a 2 bed house in Kensington and Chelsea. Most people couldn't even afford a shoebox there!
The 90s only took definitive shape once we realised what the 00s and 10s were (increasingly dystopian). They’ve been defined in a sense in terms of what they were *not*.
The 00s were ushered in by 2001. The 10s were bookended by Covid.
Difficult to demarcate the two, despite the GFC in the middle.
Smartphone ubiquity happened round about then, and that was a pretty huge change
Yes, true. Yet for some reason 2006 feels indistinguishable from 2014. Maybe just me.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 but I’d say full smart ubiquity was more like 2012 or even later.
Remember Cameron thinking LOL meant “lots of love”?
On the subject of several things being better in Northwestern Continental Europe, a good article from Martin Kettle here today, on the need to go in what is actually a more German direction in industrial relations. I knew little about how far Britain had actually already attempted to do this, in fact before the Germans, between 1926 and 1929, knowing only the failures both of feudally-minded management and obstreperous unions in the 1970's, "solved" by Thatcher one-sidedly in favour of management ; and with the increasingly obvious economic and social costs we're i seeing all around us today .
Why the hell should unions get a seat on the board....they don't represent the majority of workers, and most of those they do represent are public sector workers. I can think of worse idea's but not by much.
Perhaps corporate performance would be better if they did? Or is it speaking a different form of Germanic that makes the difference?
What has corporate performance got to do with what I said and frankly I doubt it as I wouldn't trust most uk unions to run a whelk stall.
Simple fact unions do not represent the majority of british workers in most firms except public sector and from my experience of unions in the private sector firms in the 80's I wouldn't piss on one if it was on fire.
I can see you're not entirely convinced about the benefits of unions yet ;-)
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Modern era starts from the WC when you first paid proper attention to the games. For me that was Mexico 86 or at a push Spain 82. For a Gen Z youth though the 1980s is very much the olden days.
Interesting decade the 80s. Across many walks of life - economics, pop culture, sport, working life, technology - it's the transitional decade, between the definitely old school 1970s and the definitely modern 1990s.
At the start of the 80s there was no Neighbours or Home and Away, our economy was still in the pre-Thatcher phase, the Berlin Wall was resolutely upright, people didn't have home computers. By the end we'd had the big bang, globalisation was getting into gear, electronic music was dominant, everyone had a computer or games console and the internet and email were just around the corner.
Showing your age there though. Who knows what Neighbours or Home and Away is nowadays?
To my kids, the idea of the 90s may as well be black and white when you speak about it. Couldn't pause or rewind the TV, no streaming or choosing what you wanted to watch, no online deliveries, if we wanted to speak to a friend on the phone we'd have to use the landline and call their landline. The internet while it existed was rarely used and required dial up modems that couldn't be used if anyone was on the phone..
The 90s are already getting dated. For me the millennium was a transition - not just from the 20th century, to the 21st, not just from childhood to adulthood, but to the modern handheld/digital/detached/on-demand world that we live in now.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
I know what you mean, but in the 60s if you watched something set in the 20s you would consider that period drama. It is just we are old I'm afraid. I find lots of stuff crops up that I think is obvious and younger people look at me as if I'm talking gibberish. The other day I was trying not to get the names Kas and Cass mixed up. I remembered it was Cass by thinking of Mama Cass. I said this to the person concerned (I would guess in her thirties). Had not a clue what I was talking about.
Yes, spot on. Decades are artificial constructs but having constructed them each one is exceptional and at the same time not exceptional. Which decades are deemed by consensus to be the best or the most interesting etc depends largely on the age of the influence mongers forming the consensus.
Very sensible to step away from the footie discussion.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Certainly no later than 1990, I would say. Even that preceded the TV era and all its effects (not least the domination of the big few European leagues in hoovering up talent from all over the world). There's an argument that 1993 (CL won by Marseille) and 1995 (Ajax) were a different era too.
The real “Big Bang” moment in European football, was the founding of the Premier League in 1992, and the start of the massive influx of TV money seen since then.
Yes - especially with the European Cup becoming the Champions League at the same time.
The year club football died.
Not really. Still plenty of club football out there.
Club football in the 70s was pretty shite tbf... Hooligans, rampant racism, deathtrap grounds, mud pitches, leg-breaking tackles, ponderous football, etc, etc.
Sadly the hooligans bit is back. Big style. Largely cocaine-fuelled.
Speak to plod and they will say that the situation is back to the "bad old days".
A lot of goes under the radar, because it is focused away from the top leagues.
Fair enough but I don't see trains being trashed or running street battles outside grounds.
I personally don't believe it is as bad as the 70s, but there is a surprising amount going on which really doesn't get much coverage. There is definitely plenty of footage of running street battles.
Here is Wrexham and Oldham fans have a nice afternoon out,
I fairly regularly go to lower league games, including away games, and *maybe* there is trouble if you look for it (and every fanbase has its band of morons who treat football as a fight club). But policing and supporter management is generally pretty good. The casuals usually have to enact their stupidity away from the ground and the main fan thoroughfares. I often go with one or other of my kids and never feel unsafe (in fact the idea that I'd feel unsafe doesn't even occur).
I wasn't around for football in the seventies or eighties, but the impression I get is that it was much worse then.
EDITED for the context that I am a bespectacled, nebbishy milquetoast.
Reading that thread confirms that I was correct in not watching the series.
"Nottingham Cottage" sounds "very regal"?
It’s a massive family house by (almost) anyone’s standards, only really a ‘cottage’ when comparing it to the castle next door!
Is it massive? It's 123 square metres (Wikipedia).
Nearly a third of Dublin homes listed on daft.ie, including flats, terraces, etc, are larger. If you look at a rural area then two-thirds of properties are larger.
Are British houses really that small?
Gosh. That's quite a small house. H and M were a bit hard done by there.
They were gifted a 2 bed house in Kensington and Chelsea. Most people couldn't even afford a shoebox there!
Were they 'gifted' it though?
Did they sell it back as according to Wiki some other royal space-wasters were offered the place in 2021:
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Modern era starts from the WC when you first paid proper attention to the games. For me that was Mexico 86 or at a push Spain 82. For a Gen Z youth though the 1980s is very much the olden days.
Interesting decade the 80s. Across many walks of life - economics, pop culture, sport, working life, technology - it's the transitional decade, between the definitely old school 1970s and the definitely modern 1990s.
At the start of the 80s there was no Neighbours or Home and Away, our economy was still in the pre-Thatcher phase, the Berlin Wall was resolutely upright, people didn't have home computers. By the end we'd had the big bang, globalisation was getting into gear, electronic music was dominant, everyone had a computer or games console and the internet and email were just around the corner.
Showing your age there though. Who knows what Neighbours or Home and Away is nowadays?
To my kids, the idea of the 90s may as well be black and white when you speak about it. Couldn't pause or rewind the TV, no streaming or choosing what you wanted to watch, no online deliveries, if we wanted to speak to a friend on the phone we'd have to use the landline and call their landline. The internet while it existed was rarely used and required dial up modems that couldn't be used if anyone was on the phone..
The 90s are already getting dated. For me the millennium was a transition - not just from the 20th century, to the 21st, not just from childhood to adulthood, but to the modern handheld/digital/detached/on-demand world that we live in now.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
Every decade was actually largely how you picture the one before.
That said, a theory I trot out quite regularly is that we have culturally stood pretty still since the mid 90s. Modern music isn't so very different from the music of 25 years ago - music of 2022 is certainly more alike music of 1997 than music of 1997 was like 1972, or music of 1972 of 1947. Ditto television, film, clothes. Look at a picture of 1997: it looks different, but not that different.
I grant you technology has moved on a lot. But my main reference point is popular culture.
At the risk of opening up a can of worms, the main difference in film and television is the cultural politics. Watch a film or television programme from the late 90s, and the only really thing that strikes you is that the producers have not particularly tried to ensure all minority groups are represented in the way they would today; nor is there a background noise of judgement. Watch Point Break again, for example. There are goodies and baddies, but the baddies are not baddies because they represent the American Cultural Hegemony Which Must Be Dismantled, they are baddies because they carry out bank robberies.
But that aside, Point Break looks like it could have been made - if not yesterday, only a few years ago. The same could not be said, back in the 90s, of, say, Get Carter.
Hmm not sure about this. I reckon decades always take a shape but only do so looking back and with sufficient distance. At least 20 years. So the 60s started to take a shape in the mid 80s and it was finalized by the early 90s. The 90s were an indistinct fuzz until around 2012 and needed until quite recently to complete their journey to decadehood. The noughties are quite fuzzy atm but will 'fill out' over the period from 2027 to 2032. As for the decade we're in - the 20s - this won't assume a fully fledged shape and personality until around 2052. So I'll be 92 by the time the period we're living through now has any sort of definition. Quite a thought.
Well my (first) point isn't to try to define decades - just to say that the past is different to how it's perceived. Most people in 1967 weren't hippies or smartly dressed go getters: they (and their houses) actually looked, and lived their lives, how we imagine people looked in 1957. Etc. Situation comedies from the 1970s are rich seams of social history. I commend Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads and I Didn't Know You Cared not only for their (slightly dated, but still worthwhile) humour but also for a look at what the 1970s actually looked like.
Though I'd say the 80s were fully formed by 1993 - I remember the 80s nostalgia industry being in full force by then; and 80s discos being a thing ("Mrs. T's Big Night Out", weekly at Sheffield University. Fun for the first couple of times but quickly got repetitive. Because the DJ could only play the records he physically owned, rather than having free reign over an almost inifinite selection, and he always chose 'Come on Eileen' over the preferable 'Geno', which he didn't have.) I still don't really have a handle on what the 90s were like, however.
Thatcher was so influential in and coterminous with the 80s that her sudden exit did maybe help to give it a full stop more quickly and definitively than is the norm. But it didn't become a fully mature decade with a finished shape and personality until around 2008 at the earliest.
I'd say the 80s were properly cooked the moment John Major came to power. The 80s had Thatcher, Reagan the end of the Cold War and a sort of dreamily optimistic pop music which hadn't really happened before and hasn't really happened since (by which I don't mean all pop music in the 80s was dreamy and optimistic, but that - well, listen to Stepping Out, or Electric Dreams, or Don't Stop Believing and you'll see what I mean.) All came to an end very suddenly. There was relatively little bleed between 80s and post-80s. I'm not saying they were uniquely brilliant. In many respects (chiefly the end of the Cold War) the 90s were far better. But the 90s didn't have the same instantly recognisable shape. Checky shirts and steady but unremarkable growth do not by themselves a cultural touchstone make. Culturally, the decades since the 80s are so hard to get a feel for because - and this goes back to my second point earlier - aside from mobile phones, they aren't so very different from each other. We can look back fondly on our indestructible non-smart Nokias with snake, but it's not really the Breakfast Club, is it? It doesn't even sit neatly in one decade or the other.
No it's because less time has passed for them to assume their shape!
Bet you a billion pounds that in 20 years time the equivalent of you will be feeling exactly the same about the 00s compared to the decades since then.
Scottish budget seems to be going well. The planned announcement of the higher rate of income tax going up got leaked to the media minutes before the statement was due to begin which has caused the entire budget to be delayed. Chamber suspended for now.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Modern era starts from the WC when you first paid proper attention to the games. For me that was Mexico 86 or at a push Spain 82. For a Gen Z youth though the 1980s is very much the olden days.
Interesting decade the 80s. Across many walks of life - economics, pop culture, sport, working life, technology - it's the transitional decade, between the definitely old school 1970s and the definitely modern 1990s.
At the start of the 80s there was no Neighbours or Home and Away, our economy was still in the pre-Thatcher phase, the Berlin Wall was resolutely upright, people didn't have home computers. By the end we'd had the big bang, globalisation was getting into gear, electronic music was dominant, everyone had a computer or games console and the internet and email were just around the corner.
Showing your age there though. Who knows what Neighbours or Home and Away is nowadays?
To my kids, the idea of the 90s may as well be black and white when you speak about it. Couldn't pause or rewind the TV, no streaming or choosing what you wanted to watch, no online deliveries, if we wanted to speak to a friend on the phone we'd have to use the landline and call their landline. The internet while it existed was rarely used and required dial up modems that couldn't be used if anyone was on the phone..
The 90s are already getting dated. For me the millennium was a transition - not just from the 20th century, to the 21st, not just from childhood to adulthood, but to the modern handheld/digital/detached/on-demand world that we live in now.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
Every decade was actually largely how you picture the one before.
That said, a theory I trot out quite regularly is that we have culturally stood pretty still since the mid 90s. Modern music isn't so very different from the music of 25 years ago - music of 2022 is certainly more alike music of 1997 than music of 1997 was like 1972, or music of 1972 of 1947. Ditto television, film, clothes. Look at a picture of 1997: it looks different, but not that different.
I grant you technology has moved on a lot. But my main reference point is popular culture.
At the risk of opening up a can of worms, the main difference in film and television is the cultural politics. Watch a film or television programme from the late 90s, and the only really thing that strikes you is that the producers have not particularly tried to ensure all minority groups are represented in the way they would today; nor is there a background noise of judgement. Watch Point Break again, for example. There are goodies and baddies, but the baddies are not baddies because they represent the American Cultural Hegemony Which Must Be Dismantled, they are baddies because they carry out bank robberies.
But that aside, Point Break looks like it could have been made - if not yesterday, only a few years ago. The same could not be said, back in the 90s, of, say, Get Carter.
Hmm not sure about this. I reckon decades always take a shape but only do so looking back and with sufficient distance. At least 20 years. So the 60s started to take a shape in the mid 80s and it was finalized by the early 90s. The 90s were an indistinct fuzz until around 2012 and needed until quite recently to complete their journey to decadehood. The noughties are quite fuzzy atm but will 'fill out' over the period from 2027 to 2032. As for the decade we're in - the 20s - this won't assume a fully fledged shape and personality until around 2052. So I'll be 92 by the time the period we're living through now has any sort of definition. Quite a thought.
The sixties were self-consciously swinging even at the time, and certainly remembered as such by the eighties.
I think your theory is bunk.
Having said that, I tended to view the nineties as vaguely the same as today, until I watched the movie “The Paper” last year. Michael Keaton and Marisa Tomei. 1994? It might as well have been made in 1974.
My point is that what each decade was 'all about' emerges in hindsight and its shape needs a certain temporal distance to be discerned.
Eg what you've just noticed. The 90s has its shape now. The 00s doesn't but will get one before the 10s do. Etc.
This is not bunk!
I often agree with your posts, kinabalu, but as yesterday with the charitable places policy, I have to take issue here.
Even now the 1990's have a far, far more diffuse and difficult to identify shape than the 1980's, I would say. This is partly to do with the very heavy recycling of cultural forms that was starting to take shape in the 1990's, and much less that was genuinely completely new , particularly towards the end and second half of that decade.
It's the postmodern condition, n'est-ce-pas. Now I can't tell a 2012 amateur youtube video from a 2022 one, quite often enough.
The 'private school subsidy', I think you mean, Oracle. I was surprised that somebody - toi - who normally has a strikingly deep and structural take on things would go so reductive and shallow on that one. Wondered whether it was influenced by some sort of personal angle. Eg you went to one and have good memories? Or you used the system for your kids with positive outcomes?
As to decades, I think what you've noted here supports what I'm saying. The 80s has a clearer shape than the 90s because it's further on in the 'with hindsight' shaping process. And, yes I agree, 2012 looks barely different from 2022. The 00s are far from being shaped yet let alone the 2010s.
Of course there's a counteracting effect, which is 'crowding out'. The 1870s are longer ago than the 1970s but this doesn't mean they have a firmer shape than the 1970s to our eyes. Or much of a shape at all. They would have had to our equivalents a century ago but for us they have dropped off the radar, crowded out by more recent 'in living memory' decades.
Having said all that, 'decades' themselves are an artificial construction. Eg many would say the 70s in America started with the RFK assassination and ended with Saturday Night Fever.
;.) I certainly did enjoy my private education, but I know many others who didn't. My children went to the same grammar, which also has its own issues. From my point of view I would just prefer more radical reform to gesture politics, really ; why not give schools like Eton no choice but to become state-funded selective schools ?
On the decades point, I think your last point is the most interesting one. In the 1990's people stopped believing in the future, and stopped believing that *they could actually make the future* , simply because it was a new decade or timeframe. The end of modernist optimism, that people describe.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Certainly no later than 1990, I would say. Even that preceded the TV era and all its effects (not least the domination of the big few European leagues in hoovering up talent from all over the world). There's an argument that 1993 (CL won by Marseille) and 1995 (Ajax) were a different era too.
The real “Big Bang” moment in European football, was the founding of the Premier League in 1992, and the start of the massive influx of TV money seen since then.
Yes - especially with the European Cup becoming the Champions League at the same time.
The year club football died.
Not really. Still plenty of club football out there.
Club football in the 70s was pretty shite tbf... Hooligans, rampant racism, deathtrap grounds, mud pitches, leg-breaking tackles, ponderous football, etc, etc.
Sadly the hooligans bit is back. Big style. Largely cocaine-fuelled.
Speak to plod and they will say that the situation is back to the "bad old days".
A lot of goes under the radar, because it is focused away from the top leagues.
Fair enough but I don't see trains being trashed or running street battles outside grounds.
I personally don't believe it is as bad as the 70s, but there is a surprising amount going on which really doesn't get much coverage. There is definitely plenty of footage of running street battles.
Here is Wrexham and Oldham fans have a nice afternoon out,
I fairly regularly go to lower league games, including away games, and *maybe* there is trouble if you look for it (and every fanbase has its band of morons who treat football as a fight club). But policing and supporter management is generally pretty good. The casuals usually have to enact their stupidity away from the ground and the main fan thoroughfares. I often go with one or other of my kids and never feel unsafe (in fact the idea that I'd feel unsafe doesn't even occur).
I wasn't around for football in the seventies or eighties, but the impression I get is that it was much worse then.
EDITED for the context that I am a bespectacled, nebbishy milquetoast.
As I understand it, in the 70s and 80s the police treated all football fans as trouble makers, which led to more trouble than was necessarythere otherwise would have been. I started going in the mid 90s and there was still a bit of that at certain grounds (Wrexham sticks in the mind as a bad one) but really the attitude started to go away after Hillsborough.
Edit: obviously no trouble is "necessary". I knew what I meant...
Former Wimbledon champion Boris Becker has been released from prison after serving eight months of his sentence for hiding £2.5m worth of assets and loans to avoid paying debts.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
I know what you mean, but in the 60s if you watched something set in the 20s you would consider that period drama. It is just we are old I'm afraid. I find lots of stuff crops up that I think is obvious and younger people look at me as if I'm talking gibberish. The other day I was trying not to get the names Kas and Cass mixed up. I remembered it was Cass by thinking of Mama Cass. I said this to the person concerned (I would guess in her thirties). Had not a clue what I was talking about.
Anything to do with music, popular culture and especially electronics dates very quickly (though at the Abba Voyage show the other day I was struck by how many young people were there). More interesting, perhaps, are the subtle ways that widely-accepted culture changes. For all that some here rail at woke attitudes, they're very widely accepted as normal even among older, quite conservative people. To declare that you dislike gay or black people has moved from being common to being offensive to being simply peculiar, like declaring that you don't trust anyone with brown hair, and when did anyone last sneer at "women drivers"?
I go to concerts focused on 60s and 70s music often (Stones, Fleetwood Mac, Eagles, etc, etc [original or tribute]) and everyone there only looks like they just have a pulse. And then it dawned on me.
A year or so ago I saw Manfred Mann and Georgie Fame made a guest appearance. He was very good, but I thought he wasn't going to make it across the stage. I could have gone for a pee in the time it took him to get from the wings to the microphone.
My daughter 22 loves Abba.
Back in my home village in S Yorks I'd say some of the prejudices @NickPalmer mentions are not far from (and sometimes actually on) the surface - though gibes at women drivers et al are more likely to be made with self-aware irony. If I were gay, I'd still think twice before holding hands with my partner (though tbf not just there).
The ABBA point hits on something though that is maybe more interesting - not what dtaes, but what endures. My kids - 5 and 9 - both enjoy listening to ABBA and The Beatles, and enjoy films as old as The Wizard of Oz (which is a bit of an exception being so old, but plenty of stuff from the 70s onwards too).
To merge threads of conversation a little - one of the fascinating things about football chants is which songs and melodies end up being preserved this way.
Does anyone think Sir Keir remembers the moment when he realised that he'd changed his mind from being a staunch republican to being in favour of an hereditary monarchy?
I wonder what changed his mind
I'd guess that, in common with many people on the left, it's when he turned his mind from what he thought was ideal in theory, to what he thought was most urgent and important in practice.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Certainly no later than 1990, I would say. Even that preceded the TV era and all its effects (not least the domination of the big few European leagues in hoovering up talent from all over the world). There's an argument that 1993 (CL won by Marseille) and 1995 (Ajax) were a different era too.
The real “Big Bang” moment in European football, was the founding of the Premier League in 1992, and the start of the massive influx of TV money seen since then.
Yes - especially with the European Cup becoming the Champions League at the same time.
The year club football died.
Not really. Still plenty of club football out there.
Club football in the 70s was pretty shite tbf... Hooligans, rampant racism, deathtrap grounds, mud pitches, leg-breaking tackles, ponderous football, etc, etc.
Sadly the hooligans bit is back. Big style. Largely cocaine-fuelled.
Speak to plod and they will say that the situation is back to the "bad old days".
A lot of goes under the radar, because it is focused away from the top leagues.
Fair enough but I don't see trains being trashed or running street battles outside grounds.
I personally don't believe it is as bad as the 70s, but there is a surprising amount going on which really doesn't get much coverage. There is definitely plenty of footage of running street battles.
Here is Wrexham and Oldham fans have a nice afternoon out,
I fairly regularly go to lower league games, including away games, and *maybe* there is trouble if you look for it (and every fanbase has its band of morons who treat football as a fight club). But policing and supporter management is generally pretty good. The casuals usually have to enact their stupidity away from the ground and the main fan thoroughfares. I often go with one or other of my kids and never feel unsafe (in fact the idea that I'd feel unsafe doesn't even occur).
I wasn't around for football in the seventies or eighties, but the impression I get is that it was much worse then.
EDITED for the context that I am a bespectacled, nebbishy milquetoast.
Back and fed.
It is according to plod as bad as it was back then, as I said largely cocaine-fuelled. I have no idea how it works at lower league games but in the higher leagues all-seating stadiums did a lot to change the dynamic. So the violence moved outside and, usually, farther away from the grounds. No police, no civilians such as yourself, etc. And as it was all organised there were fewer "pushing from the backs" than in and around the ground.
Now it is becoming more mob-handed again as you can see from plenty of vids out there, and not just from the clubs' firms who are obviously not going to be walking down the street with a scarf round their necks, albeit the (literal and metaphorical) noise ratio can be high in such vids.
Does that mean football violence is coming to your lower league club? Of course not but it is back in a big way and plenty of clubs.
I haven't been at a football match for years and the last time I went I was in the very, very fancy bit at Arsenal so no idea about the current state first hand beyond hearing from plod.
Former Wimbledon champion Boris Becker has been released from prison after serving eight months of his sentence for hiding £2.5m worth of assets and loans to avoid paying debts.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Certainly no later than 1990, I would say. Even that preceded the TV era and all its effects (not least the domination of the big few European leagues in hoovering up talent from all over the world). There's an argument that 1993 (CL won by Marseille) and 1995 (Ajax) were a different era too.
The real “Big Bang” moment in European football, was the founding of the Premier League in 1992, and the start of the massive influx of TV money seen since then.
Yes - especially with the European Cup becoming the Champions League at the same time.
The year club football died.
Not really. Still plenty of club football out there.
Club football in the 70s was pretty shite tbf... Hooligans, rampant racism, deathtrap grounds, mud pitches, leg-breaking tackles, ponderous football, etc, etc.
Sadly the hooligans bit is back. Big style. Largely cocaine-fuelled.
Speak to plod and they will say that the situation is back to the "bad old days".
A lot of goes under the radar, because it is focused away from the top leagues.
Fair enough but I don't see trains being trashed or running street battles outside grounds.
I personally don't believe it is as bad as the 70s, but there is a surprising amount going on which really doesn't get much coverage. There is definitely plenty of footage of running street battles.
Here is Wrexham and Oldham fans have a nice afternoon out,
I fairly regularly go to lower league games, including away games, and *maybe* there is trouble if you look for it (and every fanbase has its band of morons who treat football as a fight club). But policing and supporter management is generally pretty good. The casuals usually have to enact their stupidity away from the ground and the main fan thoroughfares. I often go with one or other of my kids and never feel unsafe (in fact the idea that I'd feel unsafe doesn't even occur).
I wasn't around for football in the seventies or eighties, but the impression I get is that it was much worse then.
EDITED for the context that I am a bespectacled, nebbishy milquetoast.
As I understand it, in the 70s and 80s the police treated all football fans as trouble makers, which led to more trouble than was necessarythere otherwise would have been. I started going in the mid 90s and there was still a bit of that at certain grounds (Wrexham sticks in the mind as a bad one) but really the attitude started to go away after Hillsborough.
Edit: obviously no trouble is "necessary". I knew what I meant...
Places like Wrexham and Scunny, 'island towns' definitely attract a bit more bother.
But you're right on the approach to policing. The coppers I tend to see round grounds are more helpful and cheerful than anything else. Just my experience of course, and I'm not there as part of a bunch of boisterous twenty-something lads. That football fans were lumped in with Maggie's 'enemies within' didn't help.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Modern era starts from the WC when you first paid proper attention to the games. For me that was Mexico 86 or at a push Spain 82. For a Gen Z youth though the 1980s is very much the olden days.
Interesting decade the 80s. Across many walks of life - economics, pop culture, sport, working life, technology - it's the transitional decade, between the definitely old school 1970s and the definitely modern 1990s.
At the start of the 80s there was no Neighbours or Home and Away, our economy was still in the pre-Thatcher phase, the Berlin Wall was resolutely upright, people didn't have home computers. By the end we'd had the big bang, globalisation was getting into gear, electronic music was dominant, everyone had a computer or games console and the internet and email were just around the corner.
Showing your age there though. Who knows what Neighbours or Home and Away is nowadays?
To my kids, the idea of the 90s may as well be black and white when you speak about it. Couldn't pause or rewind the TV, no streaming or choosing what you wanted to watch, no online deliveries, if we wanted to speak to a friend on the phone we'd have to use the landline and call their landline. The internet while it existed was rarely used and required dial up modems that couldn't be used if anyone was on the phone..
The 90s are already getting dated. For me the millennium was a transition - not just from the 20th century, to the 21st, not just from childhood to adulthood, but to the modern handheld/digital/detached/on-demand world that we live in now.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
Every decade was actually largely how you picture the one before.
That said, a theory I trot out quite regularly is that we have culturally stood pretty still since the mid 90s. Modern music isn't so very different from the music of 25 years ago - music of 2022 is certainly more alike music of 1997 than music of 1997 was like 1972, or music of 1972 of 1947. Ditto television, film, clothes. Look at a picture of 1997: it looks different, but not that different.
I grant you technology has moved on a lot. But my main reference point is popular culture.
At the risk of opening up a can of worms, the main difference in film and television is the cultural politics. Watch a film or television programme from the late 90s, and the only really thing that strikes you is that the producers have not particularly tried to ensure all minority groups are represented in the way they would today; nor is there a background noise of judgement. Watch Point Break again, for example. There are goodies and baddies, but the baddies are not baddies because they represent the American Cultural Hegemony Which Must Be Dismantled, they are baddies because they carry out bank robberies.
But that aside, Point Break looks like it could have been made - if not yesterday, only a few years ago. The same could not be said, back in the 90s, of, say, Get Carter.
Hmm not sure about this. I reckon decades always take a shape but only do so looking back and with sufficient distance. At least 20 years. So the 60s started to take a shape in the mid 80s and it was finalized by the early 90s. The 90s were an indistinct fuzz until around 2012 and needed until quite recently to complete their journey to decadehood. The noughties are quite fuzzy atm but will 'fill out' over the period from 2027 to 2032. As for the decade we're in - the 20s - this won't assume a fully fledged shape and personality until around 2052. So I'll be 92 by the time the period we're living through now has any sort of definition. Quite a thought.
Well my (first) point isn't to try to define decades - just to say that the past is different to how it's perceived. Most people in 1967 weren't hippies or smartly dressed go getters: they (and their houses) actually looked, and lived their lives, how we imagine people looked in 1957. Etc. Situation comedies from the 1970s are rich seams of social history. I commend Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads and I Didn't Know You Cared not only for their (slightly dated, but still worthwhile) humour but also for a look at what the 1970s actually looked like.
Though I'd say the 80s were fully formed by 1993 - I remember the 80s nostalgia industry being in full force by then; and 80s discos being a thing ("Mrs. T's Big Night Out", weekly at Sheffield University. Fun for the first couple of times but quickly got repetitive. Because the DJ could only play the records he physically owned, rather than having free reign over an almost inifinite selection, and he always chose 'Come on Eileen' over the preferable 'Geno', which he didn't have.) I still don't really have a handle on what the 90s were like, however.
Thatcher was so influential in and coterminous with the 80s that her sudden exit did maybe help to give it a full stop more quickly and definitively than is the norm. But it didn't become a fully mature decade with a finished shape and personality until around 2008 at the earliest.
Again, this doesn’t sound right at all. The sound, politics, and spirit of the eighties were understood both at the time (“Greed is Good”) and almost immediately in hindsight.
Your argument makes more sense for the 90s, which I don’t think took on a definable flavour until, say, 2015.
To show I'm right (or not) we'd have to go back to (say) 1996 and see what The Eighties looked like at that time. I think what we'd find is it wouldn't look like it does today. The canvas would appear rather abstract. We'd be standing too close to it to get the picture. Then as we move further away it emerges. You can't tell this is happening as it happens, it's too slow, you'd have to do a long term, real time experiment, ie make a note of how the recent past looks to you, then wait a few years, then revisit and compare.
Tensions between France and Morocco supporters briefly spilled over in the centre of the city as flares were lit and police responded with tear gas. France has a large Moroccan community of some 1.5 million people.
Celebrations in cities across France were largely peaceful, although police used tear gas to halt trouble involving far-right youths in the centre of Lyon.
There has been rioting across numerous cities in France, Belgium and Holland after every Morocco game, but the BBC highlight the far right. CNN levels "mostly peaceful" descriptors.
Of course in France, it isn't just the Moroccans, they have a bit of a culture of smashing shit up after winning or losing.
As the ex-colonial power there is of course plenty of baggage around a France v Morocco game.
Legendary French striker, 89 year old Just Fontaine, was born in Marrakech and started his amateur career with Casablanca
Did he play opposite Bogart?
It was only eight years after the movie was made
Amazing, what happens As Time Goes By.
I must remember this.
Is that a Sam-ple of your humour?
Of all the puns on all the threads in the world, that one doesn't amount to a hill of beans.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
I know what you mean, but in the 60s if you watched something set in the 20s you would consider that period drama. It is just we are old I'm afraid. I find lots of stuff crops up that I think is obvious and younger people look at me as if I'm talking gibberish. The other day I was trying not to get the names Kas and Cass mixed up. I remembered it was Cass by thinking of Mama Cass. I said this to the person concerned (I would guess in her thirties). Had not a clue what I was talking about.
Anything to do with music, popular culture and especially electronics dates very quickly (though at the Abba Voyage show the other day I was struck by how many young people were there). More interesting, perhaps, are the subtle ways that widely-accepted culture changes. For all that some here rail at woke attitudes, they're very widely accepted as normal even among older, quite conservative people. To declare that you dislike gay or black people has moved from being common to being offensive to being simply peculiar, like declaring that you don't trust anyone with brown hair, and when did anyone last sneer at "women drivers"?
I go to concerts focused on 60s and 70s music often (Stones, Fleetwood Mac, Eagles, etc, etc [original or tribute]) and everyone there only looks like they just have a pulse. And then it dawned on me.
A year or so ago I saw Manfred Mann and Georgie Fame made a guest appearance. He was very good, but I thought he wasn't going to make it across the stage. I could have gone for a pee in the time it took him to get from the wings to the microphone.
My daughter 22 loves Abba.
Back in my home village in S Yorks I'd say some of the prejudices @NickPalmer mentions are not far from (and sometimes actually on) the surface - though gibes at women drivers et al are more likely to be made with self-aware irony. If I were gay, I'd still think twice before holding hands with my partner (though tbf not just there).
The ABBA point hits on something though that is maybe more interesting - not what dtaes, but what endures. My kids - 5 and 9 - both enjoy listening to ABBA and The Beatles, and enjoy films as old as The Wizard of Oz (which is a bit of an exception being so old, but plenty of stuff from the 70s onwards too).
To merge threads of conversation a little - one of the fascinating things about football chants is which songs and melodies end up being preserved this way.
S.O.S. by Abba is one of the best pop songs ever made IMO. It's difficult to believe it's from 1975. It doesn't sound that old at all.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Certainly no later than 1990, I would say. Even that preceded the TV era and all its effects (not least the domination of the big few European leagues in hoovering up talent from all over the world). There's an argument that 1993 (CL won by Marseille) and 1995 (Ajax) were a different era too.
The real “Big Bang” moment in European football, was the founding of the Premier League in 1992, and the start of the massive influx of TV money seen since then.
Yes - especially with the European Cup becoming the Champions League at the same time.
The year club football died.
Not really. Still plenty of club football out there.
Club football in the 70s was pretty shite tbf... Hooligans, rampant racism, deathtrap grounds, mud pitches, leg-breaking tackles, ponderous football, etc, etc.
Sadly the hooligans bit is back. Big style. Largely cocaine-fuelled.
Speak to plod and they will say that the situation is back to the "bad old days".
A lot of goes under the radar, because it is focused away from the top leagues.
Fair enough but I don't see trains being trashed or running street battles outside grounds.
I personally don't believe it is as bad as the 70s, but there is a surprising amount going on which really doesn't get much coverage. There is definitely plenty of footage of running street battles.
Here is Wrexham and Oldham fans have a nice afternoon out,
I fairly regularly go to lower league games, including away games, and *maybe* there is trouble if you look for it (and every fanbase has its band of morons who treat football as a fight club). But policing and supporter management is generally pretty good. The casuals usually have to enact their stupidity away from the ground and the main fan thoroughfares. I often go with one or other of my kids and never feel unsafe (in fact the idea that I'd feel unsafe doesn't even occur).
I wasn't around for football in the seventies or eighties, but the impression I get is that it was much worse then.
EDITED for the context that I am a bespectacled, nebbishy milquetoast.
As I understand it, in the 70s and 80s the police treated all football fans as trouble makers, which led to more trouble than was necessarythere otherwise would have been. I started going in the mid 90s and there was still a bit of that at certain grounds (Wrexham sticks in the mind as a bad one) but really the attitude started to go away after Hillsborough.
Edit: obviously no trouble is "necessary". I knew what I meant...
In 73/74 in Manchester I was in a hall of residence not far from the city centre. We never went out if United were at home. Nobody did, it was that scary. There were also issues with the NF at the time. Although at Manchester Uni, in my first year I lived in a hall above the UMIST union. The NF trashed it one day and when I say trashed it I mean fully smashed it to bits. The police wouldn't appear until it was all over. Very, very scary.
The 90s only took definitive shape once we realised what the 00s and 10s were (increasingly dystopian). They’ve been defined in a sense in terms of what they were *not*.
The 00s were ushered in by 2001. The 10s were bookended by Covid.
Difficult to demarcate the two, despite the GFC in the middle.
Smartphone ubiquity happened round about then, and that was a pretty huge change
Yes, in the 00s you could turn up somewhere and have someone else ask you for the latest score in the Test Match (2009 Ashes). In the 10s everyone interested would have access to the latest score on their smartphone.
The speed of information transmission is really quite a transformation. This is also something that marks out the 90s as a bygone age. I'm just old enough to remember when the appearance of the West End Final edition of the Evening Standard meant something, or the first editions of the morning newspapers late in the evening at London tube stations.
I found out about 9/11 when my mother phoned me on the mobile as I waited for a bus. Completely different pace.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
England in main play teh diddy teams and win big , making the fans think they are a good team. They need to be playing eth big teams often to be improving. We see every tournament , when they get to a big team they get humped.
Scotland, on the other hand, mostly play the diddy teams and get humped.
You halfwitted cretin , being unseeded we get real teams to play. Plus you will find since 1967 Scotland have won as many cups as England.
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Look, I sense you're put out, which we don't want. Chatting football is the ultimate democracy. Everyone can join in if they want. It's all fine.
Which of the two fluent and fluid 'top 10 teams' involved do you fancy for the final on Sunday?
- The Scottish Tories are headed for disaster in their north-east stronghold, including leader Douglas Ross's Moray seat, according to a major new poll.
An Ipsos Mori poll last week found support for independence at 56% among those who were confident about how they would vote.
In a blow to Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, his party would win only two more seats north of the border… Mr Starmer’s party wants to implement their proposed reforms even if they perform poorly in Scotland…
https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/politics/scottish-politics/5158984/conservatives-north-east-savanta-poll/
Even now the 1990's have a far, far more diffuse and difficult to identify shape than the 1980's, I would say. This is partly to do with the very heavy recycling of cultural forms that was starting to take shape in the 1990's, and much less that was genuinely completely new , particularly towards the end and second half of that decade.
It's the postmodern condition, n'est-ce-pas. Now I can't tell a 2012 amateur youtube video from one from 2022, quite often enough.
And lunch calls.
I wonder what changed his mind
A year or so ago I saw Manfred Mann and Georgie Fame made a guest appearance. He was very good, but I thought he wasn't going to make it across the stage. I could have gone for a pee in the time it took him to get from the wings to the microphone.
My daughter 22 loves Abba.
What actually needs to happen imo is everyone needs an NHS charge card for services, and everything is 'paid for' during a hospital visit. A non-administered pill isn't paid for and a hastily cleared away meal 'not hungry today petal?' isn't paid for. People choose where they go, and private hospitals and health providers are able to offer services to NHS users too. The whole rotten system needs flushing out with competition a la the supermarket sector.
Simple fact unions do not represent the majority of british workers in most firms except public sector and from my experience of unions in the private sector firms in the 80's I wouldn't piss on one if it was on fire.
The 00s were ushered in by 2001.
The 10s were bookended by Covid.
Difficult to demarcate the two, despite the GFC in the middle.
He also kept Spain united
As to decades, I think what you've noted here supports what I'm saying. The 80s has a clearer shape than the 90s because it's further on in the 'with hindsight' shaping process. And, yes I agree, 2012 looks barely different from 2022. The 00s are far from being shaped yet let alone the 2010s.
Of course there's a counteracting effect, which is 'crowding out'. The 1870s are longer ago than the 1970s but this doesn't mean they have a firmer shape than the 1970s to our eyes. Or much of a shape at all. They would have had to our equivalents a century ago but for us they have dropped off the radar, crowded out by more recent 'in living memory' decades.
Having said all that, 'decades' themselves are an artificial construction. Eg many would say the 70s in America started with the RFK assassination and ended with Saturday Night Fever.
Even Theresa May arrived at a realisation of this, and tried to copy or window-dress with some of Ed Miliband's policies, but was eventually inevitably overruled by the donors and short-term financial interests who nowadays make up the core of tory funding.
Yet for some reason 2006 feels indistinguishable from 2014. Maybe just me.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 but I’d say full smart ubiquity was more like 2012 or even later.
Remember Cameron thinking LOL meant “lots of love”?
I wasn't around for football in the seventies or eighties, but the impression I get is that it was much worse then.
EDITED for the context that I am a bespectacled, nebbishy milquetoast.
Did they sell it back as according to Wiki some other royal space-wasters were offered the place in 2021:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nottingham_Cottage
Bet you a billion pounds that in 20 years time the equivalent of you will be feeling exactly the same about the 00s compared to the decades since then.
Leaky SNP/Greens?
On the decades point, I think your last point is the most interesting one. In the 1990's people stopped believing in the future, and stopped believing that *they could actually make the future* , simply because it was a new decade or timeframe. The end of modernist optimism, that people describe.
was necessarythere otherwise would have been. I started going in the mid 90s and there was still a bit of that at certain grounds (Wrexham sticks in the mind as a bad one) but really the attitude started to go away after Hillsborough.Edit: obviously no trouble is "necessary". I knew what I meant...
The ABBA point hits on something though that is maybe more interesting - not what dtaes, but what endures. My kids - 5 and 9 - both enjoy listening to ABBA and The Beatles, and enjoy films as old as The Wizard of Oz (which is a bit of an exception being so old, but plenty of stuff from the 70s onwards too).
To merge threads of conversation a little - one of the fascinating things about football chants is which songs and melodies end up being preserved this way.
It is according to plod as bad as it was back then, as I said largely cocaine-fuelled. I have no idea how it works at lower league games but in the higher leagues all-seating stadiums did a lot to change the dynamic. So the violence moved outside and, usually, farther away from the grounds. No police, no civilians such as yourself, etc. And as it was all organised there were fewer "pushing from the backs" than in and around the ground.
Now it is becoming more mob-handed again as you can see from plenty of vids out there, and not just from the clubs' firms who are obviously not going to be walking down the street with a scarf round their necks, albeit the (literal and metaphorical) noise ratio can be high in such vids.
Does that mean football violence is coming to your lower league club? Of course not but it is back in a big way and plenty of clubs.
I haven't been at a football match for years and the last time I went I was in the very, very fancy bit at Arsenal so no idea about the current state first hand beyond hearing from plod.
But you're right on the approach to policing. The coppers I tend to see round grounds are more helpful and cheerful than anything else. Just my experience of course, and I'm not there as part of a bunch of boisterous twenty-something lads. That football fans were lumped in with Maggie's 'enemies within' didn't help.
The speed of information transmission is really quite a transformation. This is also something that marks out the 90s as a bygone age. I'm just old enough to remember when the appearance of the West End Final edition of the Evening Standard meant something, or the first editions of the morning newspapers late in the evening at London tube stations.
I found out about 9/11 when my mother phoned me on the mobile as I waited for a bus. Completely different pace.
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