Is it the human condition that we n eed to worship all the gods whether they're false or not? From religions to popstars, via social media, the opiate of the masses in the 21st century.
Its so difficult identifying when football became a religion, just as why war could be fought for Queen and country.
What quaint notions, that cemented themselves into fact. By the time Shankly was at Liverpool, the man from Lanarkshire was explaining that football was more important than life or death. Interesting times as Liverpool prepare to lift the trophy in front of an empty stadium.
This ability to worship seems innate, a desire to cede credence to a higher power. I dont get it, although I do know we are not worthy.
Last night's re-run of the Thatcher Revolution on TV had me squirming again about how hard we fought and yet how foolish that was. This was never a fight to be won, Thatcher came and went. Our problem was that after she had gone Education was forever transformed and one of the great levellers with it. If you cant learn better, you cant do better, someone sort of said once! If you have to go to work at 16 instead of university then you come from an institutionalised weak position and you have a narrower path.
My Mum never went to University and although doing all her bank exams was shunted into the role of wife and mother to 1000 kids. It was free when I went to uni and I remember arguing with fellow students about library closures. There was such polarisation as people wanted to make 'points' instead of the glaringly obvious truth that it was busy some evenings not others. If it was me and I was working there I would've close it on a Friday and Saturday night and headed off to party.
There was a lot of talk in 1980 about inner cities and aspiration. Within 10 years that door slammed shut and by the time Blair arrived with his "Education, Education, Education" mantra it was all "Loans, Loans, Loans". Rhetoric about debt is the last thing someone needs as they start out in life.
North Sea Oil & Gas revneues were going to fund a different kind of Britain in the 80's, needless to say Northern Ireland were not included, wrong side for the North Sea. Team GB carried this forward, clearly realising that this was anything but a United Kingdom. The re-branding of the UK was a bit like the re-branding the Royal Mail, not very successful.
I've ranted before about the 80's, not just in Deadbeat, but more recently when exploring how we could lose 3 fortunes in less than 10 years. We gave the city of London the freedom and they showed how you could take the UK's large fortune, and turn it into a smaller one.
The UK sold off its Council Houses, all its nationalised industries and it banked all its North Sea oil and Gas revenues. For most countries one of these would see a spending spree but for the UK we also told students they could no longer have free university education.
This seems bizarre, a country as rich as we were, as educated as we were to know that our citizens are our future, we turned off the tap of talent.
Thatcher who believed in hardwork and thrift, decided spiffs in strip joints should have the keys to lock up.
How we laugh, she really was off her fucking trolley.
Not content with re-balancing the system to give the rich a less equitable distribution of the country's assets, she then taxed the poor a bit more with the poll tax, class, a French revolution happened for less and the UK should've had one. I'm not Arthur Scargill and we weren't too happy with him at the time, an arse who seemed to worship at his own altar. He wanted to be someone, not realising he was, and he believed he should lead the mining workers and their communities into a glorious jungle in central america and commit suicede, oh, wasn't that Jamestown, ah, same story, same outcome. I
'm also not one for violence, but occasionally you realise one violent act may saved many more lives and the bombing of the Grand in Brighton may just have rescued the country from the Barren Thatcher vision.
That's history, you cant re-write it, well, many do, but the events remain the same, just some facts dont always slip out.
I'm Fat Al, I was Vinny Bee, I've no idea who's talking now because its way to early. I come from a long line of alcoholics and throughout my life I've identified with that part of my gene pool, I've embraced it rather than reject it, its who I am.
In the 80's the expression often used was 'no yer no an alchy, yer a bevvy merchant'
It became heavy drinker, serious drinker, habitual drinker, I think heavy is probably most apt as I am very heavy compared to 40 years ago. Whenever I do the splits I feel my lead leg has just too much to carry.
In the 80's I used to use the word theft and people would say 'its just a pen.'
So I remodelled my theiving theory to describe 'acceptable pockle' and 'takin the piss.'
Acceptable pockle was a pen, pencil, paper clip and borrowing a stapler. Theft or takin the piss was when you stuffed three boxes of pens into your bag as you went out the door. When I was at uni I used to re-use the old folders that I was replacing with new ones in my job at WoodMac. I figured that was recycling so very acceptable pockle, whereas if I stole a box of new folders and then sold them at uni, that wold be 'takin the piss'.
A bit like phone calls. Office phone calls home now and again were accepable pockle but when you phoned that girl from New Zealand every day for a month, not only was it harassment but it was takin the piss.
Nowadays everyone thinks that more rules are the answer, but if we get away from the spirit of the law and why we do things, people just buy 4x4's to avoid the speed bumps. We need education, we need to know why we pay taxes, we need the masses educated so they can reason for themselves and respect each other across the many different #groups, I particularly like the #helpful group and those of us misunderstood left handed subset with 0.4% neanderthal genome.
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