I know some of you will despise me for this but every Monday morning I do read the Guardian’s football coverage. It’s pretty good about the actual football, and I can usually ignore the more absurd bits of wokery, because even for them Aston Villa vs Nottingham Forest is hardly Israel vs Palestine (unless Israel AND Palestine both qualify for the World Cup, which is thankfully vanishingly unlikely).
This week though they managed to piss me off. Look at this from this Monday’s regular “Talking Points” bit:
Now don’t get me wrong, I am partially Politically Correct. Or Woke, if you insist (I’m actually so old I still think of it as being Right On). I think racist abuse is vile and shouldn’t be allowed, and so, to a slightly lesser extent, homophobic abuse (although I think a case can be made for my beloved PNE’s traditional chant at Blackpool that they are a town full of queers, just a town full of queers, town full of queeeeeers, just a town full of queers. I mean as soon as the visiting fan gets off the train they’re presented with a pub called the Flying Handbag. There’s more rainbow flags per square mile than at Brighton in Pride Week. The whole place is dependent on the Pink Pound (with some contribution from the swingers, heroin enthusiasts and drunken Scots} for its continuing viability, and anyway isn’t queer the word queers like now? I can’t keep up).
I also think there should be at least a moratorium on chanting about particularly horrible events. Hillsborough, Munich, the less likeable Charlton’s passing, in fact any individual who just carked it (although it’d be an interesting moral experiment for the ethical arbiters at The Guardian if PNE’s emergency sub and Legally Not A Rapist But Possibly Not Very Nice Man Ched Evans died saving a baby from a burning car), that’s nasty and to be discouraged. Not sure it should actually be illegal or get you barred from the ground for life, but it’s obviously the work of a bastard and to be discouraged. But from what I can see from that article, all the Luton fans were doing was mocking Scousers for being poor. And that is a) not a protected characteristic, and b) something the Mersey-adjacent will take great finger-pointing pains to tell you ALL THE SODDING TIME. Liverpudlians will ALWAYS tell you how bloody poor they are, they’re PROUD of it. Unlike Mancs, who will boast about how rich they ARE (while implying it may well have been gained through gangsterism - almost always a lie. Have a look at Burnage on Google Maps, the Gallaghers very likely grew up somewhere nicer than you. The place has a tennis club for fuck’s sake), or the various celtic (and indeed Celtic) fringes who’ll tell you how rich they WOULD be if it wasn’t for The Bastard English, or the Brummies and Geordies who’ll tell you how rich they USED to be 100 years ago, the denizens of what I think of as Greater Tranmere (because Half Man Half Biscuit are better than the Beatles) wear poverty as a badge of pride and, somehow, moral superiority. Well, fine, but in that case there’s nothing wrong with a bit of good-natured ribbing about it. Own it! Maybe Liverpool should have an annual Poor Pride festival. They could add a stained-shellsuit-coloured stripe to the ever-more-complicated rainbow flag, and hang them all over town.
Although they’d all get nicked within five minutes.