On Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold.

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Great Lost Hits Part Unknown - Al Bowlly

THE great Al. Bowlly. Incidentally I can highly recommend "Al Bowlly" by Sid Collin & Tony Staveacre which tells the story of most of the big bands that Bowlly played with and his career from rags to riches and back again to rags and tragedy. In the foreword by Dennis Norden he relates the story of how he played some Bowlly tracks to a "glitteringly successful" American film producer. He commissioned a team to look into Bowwly's life but the project never came to anything. "They're not ready for it" the producer told Norden regretfully, after all the research material was in. "It's a story about a loser, There's no third act". Says everything that you need to know about Hollywood.

The Blues- a Rag, Tag and Bobtail Saga.

The club's shirts featured a distinctive bold "V" around the time of the First World War. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Badge of Birmingham City (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 With apologies to my two regular readers but the time has now come for my annual assessment of Birmingham City F.C.  Whilst some endlessly examine the entrails of Chairman Yeung and the boring proceedings of his money laundering trial in Hong Kong the rest of us, as ever, are content with supporting a side which, once in a while gets a promotion and about twice every fifty years gets to a domestic  Cup Final, losing in 1931 and 1956 to The Baggies and Manchester city respectively in the F.A. Cup, which has sadly been allowed to diminish in status from the highlight of the football season to a secondary competition in which the 'big" teams are largely content to demean the early stages of the competition by utilising it as practice matches for their reserves. During the last fifty years however we have hit a winning streak - yes, dear reader, I did use the word "winning"- by lifting the League Cup on two occasions in 1963 and 2011 against Aston Villa and Arsenal.  When the current crop of crap TV and radio reporters eulogise about Manure or Chelski's history in European football, they will of course, the ignorant bastards, fail to mention that we were also the first English club to get to the final of a European competition, losing in two Inter-Cities Fairs Cup finals in 1960 and 1961 to Barcelona and A.S. Roma respectively. The home legs of these games I was privileged to be at. Wiki, as ever provides a concise and accurate record of our history.
 Some of the great players that I worshipped as a boy such as Trevor Smith, Gil Merrick, Dick Neal and Eddie Brown have, I hope, found their heaven in that great pitch in the sky where the adoring fathers and grandfathers and great grandfathers of those still supporting the team today will be chanting their names and marvelling,  at their bravado, passion and skill. As for myself I once cherished the hope that one of these friends might sneak into Stan's one night and spread my ashes on the sacred turf but such is the cynicism that I have acquired along the weary way of life that I no longer wish to be dug up and unceremoniously dumped into a digger when the place is converted into some supermarket or casino.

  Jack London once wrote, "Stone walls and iron doors are to hold bodies in. They can't hold the spirit in. You are first and foremost spirit outside of your body". The flesh decays but memories live on and some of my greatest and most joyous moments, which equally applies to every supporter of every club all over the world,  survive in that spirit, as I recall moments of never to be forgotten skill and breathtaking brilliance. But why waste my half-literate comments  on what the game brings to people when J. B. Priestly in "The Good Companions" wrote this, the best piece of literature that I have come across on the beautiful  game:-

"To say that these men paid their shillings to watch twenty-two hirelings kick a ball is merely to say that a violin is wood and catgut, that Hamlet is so much paper and ink. For a shilling the Bruddersford United AFC offered you Conflict and Art; it turned you into a critic happy in your judgement of fine points, ready in a second to estimate the worth of a well-judged pass, a run down the touchline, a lightening shot, a clearance by your back or goalkeeper; it turned you into a partisan, holding your breath when the ball came sailing into your own goalmouth, ecstatic when your forwards raced away towards the opposite goal, elated, down cast, bitter, triumphant by turns at the fortunes of your side, watching a ball shaped Iliads and Odysseys for you; and, what is more, it turned you into a member of a new community, all brothers together for an hour and a half, for not only had you escaped from the clanking machinery of this lesser life, from work, wages, rent, doles, sick pay, insurance cards, nagging wives, ailing children, bad bosses, idle workmen, but you had escaped with most of your mates and your neighbours, with half the town, and there you were, cheering together, thumping one another on the shoulders, swopping judgements like lords of the earth, having pushed your way through aturnstile into another and altogether more splendid kind of life, hurtling with Conflict and yet passionate and beautiful in its Art. Moreover it offered you more than a shilling’s worth of material for talk during the rest of the week. A man who had missed the last home match of ‘t’United’ had to enter social life on tiptoe in Bruddersford."

 If I recall correctly I paid five shillings to watch my first Blues match in 1957, in the main stand, and the programme is still up in the loft, in a sack, covered in cobwebs and guarded by spiders and the occasional bat. Someone will probably dispute this but I care not for pedants, in my mind it was five bob or even cheaper, because I was still a boy.
I have watched some great players, some of those I have mentioned above but I would add to that list a later generation of Ken Leek, Geoff Vowden, Bob Hatton, Bob Latchford and Trevor Francis, all of whom were prolific goalscorers and I thank them for the memories. Gordon Taylor and Mike Hellawell were flying wingers and the greatest character who has ever played for us was Bertie Auld, who would have a kick around in the streets with the kids on the way from his digs in Small Heath to the ground for a match. He remains a bluenose and at a recent veterans meeting said that the only team that he would leave Blues for was Celtic, to where he returned and masterminded, from midfield, the victory of the "Lisbon Lions" who were the first British club to win the European Cup.  About five years ago on "Singing the Blues" a guy who was writing a book on the ex-England captain Johhny Haynes (who thought Bertie was dead, asked if anyone recalled Bertie knocking out Haynes at Stans). Not only did I witness this but told him that Bertie was very much alive and to contact him via the Celtic press office as he still did PR work for the club. I must check, sometime, if the book was ever published to see what Bertie said about the incident - he rarely saw red but that day Haynes clearly  upset him and although he was much bigger than Bertie he managed to knock him out with a right hook to the jaw.

Bertie Auld and Mike Helawell at a recent Blues veteran Re-union in 2013

 However not to dwell on the past but now to look at the future. Any talented player at Blues is now sold to stop the club from going into administration. In recent years we have been managed by spivs and crooks, and if recent rumours are to be believed that may well be the case sooner rather than later (my source does not have an impeccable record in these things, so who knows)?  Our current owners were so naive or stupid that they paid twice what the club was worth and signed Zigic, who has averaged eight goals a season for us, on a four year contract, with no relegation clause which will have cost 12.5 million pounds, at a conservative estimate, by the time he limps back to Serbia at the end of this season. Despite the efforts of the club nobody else wants him or is prepared to match that ludicrous salary.
 A a result the manager Lee Clark (more on him later) has seen his best players sold off ,  and wasn't allowed to pay £250,000 to retain  Paul Caddis, who did a decent stint for us on loan from Swindon last season. Of the senior pros Elliott,  Burke ( back in Scotland's squad under  Gordon Strachan ) and King are probably the best, but the latter is injury prone and any of them could disappear if any offer came in for them. Clark signed Ambrose, Lovenkrands and Mullins at the beginning of last season and all of them have been disappointing. Murphy , if he stays fit is a more than adequate left back and Ferguson, back on loan from Newcastle, will, hopefully continue to develop as a left sided midfielder or winger.  Spector although much criticised by some is a useful utility player and can play in several positions. He may not be the most technically gifted player, but he puts in 100% which will do for me, compared with some of the lazy sods in the team.
 New goalkeeper Randolph looks useful although I did see him commit one howler for Motherwell last season and Shinne is an attacking midfielder but again I saw him play once for Calle. Thistle last year and he looks a bit lightweight and seemed to disappear for large portions of the match. Eardley has come in at right back and although Blackpool fans were not very complimentary about him let us see what he can do, before passing judgement. Paul Robinson put in a good shift at centre back last season and has been made captain but I have worries about his ability to cope with pacey forwards
 Of the youngsters who are left hopefully Reilly and Hancox will continue to develop. Packwood was coming on well last season but had a horrendous break, in several places, to his leg and is still recuperating. I cannot comment on the rest of the new recruits but the results in pre-season friendlies have been disappointing. 
 We will play Watford, Brighton, Leicester, Ipswich, QPR and Reading by the end of September and these are all tough fixtures against teams who should be going for promotion. Clark has been dealt a lousy hand by the management and will do well to keep the team away from relegation.
 Not only has he had the management to cope with but has had to endure some of the most vitriolic and foul personal attacks and accusations from some of the keyboard warriors and these vermin disgrace the club. They wouldn't have lasted two minutes on the Kop in the 50's and 60's when there were massive cheering crowds of supporters and when KRO was sang at a much slower tempo but was a much more noisy anthem than now. It used to start somewhere at the back of the Kop where people stood on the iron gantries, to get a better view, up around the area of the  tea shed. It would then roll down and around the terraces until fifty thousand people were singing in union, united in their love of their team and their club and it would bring tears to my eyes.. Then if a player missed a pass or made a mistake there was usually some wag who would make a joke about it but never any booing  and the sense of humour was always self depracating and good humoured. The crowds are smaller now and the atmosphere, apart from the odd evening game, has all but disappeared.
 For those who were lucky enough to be at Wembley in 2011 you have had the highs and now we are in, sadly and inevitably a low. It doesn't matter, you get behind the team through the good times and the bad. And for the critics remember those fans of teams like Hartlepool or Accrington Stanley, Kidderminster Harriers or Tamworth Town who have never had the glory days but turn up week after week. These good old boys know what that means:-

The Death of the Left in Europe.

CounterPunch (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

English: John Pilger NS head shot (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In Britain Ed Milliband continues to pursue electoral suicide by forging Blue Labour and attempting to become more Tory than Pinko Cameron. Whilst in France Hollande yearns for that country's colonial past, by despatching his military forces  into Africa,  and assisting the USA in an illegal act by preventing a plane carrying a country's President from overflying its airspace. Long gone is France's pride in being able to demonstrate its independence by keeping Nato at arms' length.
 In this country those once honourable publications of the left, The New Statesman and Tribune, are now  only good for chip paper whilst, surprisingly in the USA  " Counterpunch" is a vibrant, informative and intelligent  source of information with contributors of the highest standards such as John Pilger. It sees Obama for what he is - namely a terrorist and a liar, a placeman, whose role is to oil the greed of capitalism and protect is interests through world wide murder.
 This piece by Diana Johnstone exposes Europe for what it is - a servile satellite of the USA.

The UK Government, the Free West, William Hague and the "Dirty Arab"

Take a look at a a map of Africa or the Middle East and you will see on it, countries divided by straight lines and not by natural, tribal, ethnic and language boundaries like those in Europe. This has come about because colonial powers like France and Britain carved up these areas to suit their administrative, economic and political goals. The results have brought untold miseries to the people of those countries resulting in constant civil wars between the different ethnic groups. The results can be seen  in countries like Rwanda, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Bahrain, Algeria, Chad, Palestine and Israel, and in many other countries. To add to the party the colonial powers exploited the natural wealth of these countries for their own economic ends and used  massacre, torture and slavery to achieve their objectives.

 The same policies resulted in the ethnic cleansing of the native American Indian, the Inuit, the Aborigines  and the Maoris. But, this is not just history, dear reader, these attitudes continue to this day, dictating the economic and political goals of the old European colonial countries,  resulting in the destruction of millions of lives in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Chad, Algeria and now Syria.

 Perhaps one of the worst current day examples is the policy of the  United Kingdom towards the Arabs. It was common in the Foreign Office at one time to use the expression the "Dirty Arabs" to describe the peoples of the middle east. That policy still exists but we now divide the Arab nations into good Arabs (who buy our weapons, are non democratic, do not allow political or gender freedoms and annihilate any opposition) and "Dirty Arabs" who wont sell us their oil, and who have the temerity to develop relations with non western countries. These are the ones that we bomb, invade, and impose economic sanctions against (such as Iran),  resulting in economic ruin and millions of deaths through starvation and the lack of medical supplies. In our free country I am unable to use my Visa card to buy goods from Iran, and in similar fashion make a donation to Wikileaks. Is this living in a free country - bollocks?

 A wise man once said that people “make their own history, but not of their own free will; not under circumstances they themselves have chosen but under the given and inherited circumstances with which they are directly confronted”.

 The de facto purpose of Britain’s foreign policy has traditionally been to advance the interests of concentrations of social and economic power, not to reflect the will or the interests of the general public, or to promote liberal, humanitarian values. Above all, it is the commercial interests of those best placed to influence the government that tend to be prioritised by policymakers.

 This is why Britain supports the US-led maintenance of a global system which is seen as amenable to those commercial interests, and tries to maximise Britain’s influence within that system.

 Throughout the Middle East, Britain has consistently backed those regimes most likely to be accommodating to its interests, no matter how thuggish, how exploitative or how undemocratic. Britain provides training to the militaries and/or police forces of states such as Bahrain, Oman, Libya  and Saudi Arabia. It also sells arms to practically every regime in the Middle East and North Africa bar Syria and Iran, which are strategic rivals. In the 12 months up to September 2010 alone, the value of government-granted licences for military exports to the region stood at over a third of a billion pounds and has increased vastly since then.

On a recent tour of the Middle East, David Cameron poured scorn on the notion that the countries of the region could be expected to produce all their means of defence, asserting that since they could not, it was right that Britain should continue to sell arms to the regimes in question. So the deal is that we  buy their oil in return for our arms. The problem with that argument is that the primary concern for these governments is to defend themselves against their own people and their demands for democratic freedoms or to supply those arms to the oppositions of their enemies in the area.

 So,  William Hague's unceasing efforts to bring ever more misery to Syria, by arming the opposition freedom fighters, rebels, terrorists or whatever you wish to label them is consistent with pursuing British interests against the "Dirty Arab". I am indebted to Dr. Anthony McRoy for this article on anti-arab racism.

 As a footnote have you noted the muted response of the Western bloc to the military coup in Egypt where a "Dirty Arab" had become its elected President. As far as the West is concerned democracy comes with the price of being subservient to its interests. But if you do not toe the line then they will use the military in those countries to intervene on their behalf such as they did in Chile where an elected President was executed.

GCHQ and its collusion with War Criminals and Terrorist States.

GCHQ / Always listening (Photo credit: George Rex)

 Edward Snowden's recent revelations in which he alleged that  GCHQ was even worse in its espionage activities against the ordinary citizen than NSA should come as no surprise. Despite their howls of innocence the organisation has some nasty skeletons in its cupboard. One such example was colluding with the war criminal Henry Kissinger in his notorious life long attempts to suppress his dubious activities. During his time as National Security Adviser and Secretary of State to Nixon's and Ford's administrations respectively Kissinger invoked a power of veto to prevent GCHQ from producing intelligence reports containing information about him AND, to its eternal shame, they willingly went along with this.
 So much for the sovereignty of the UK when an American war monger had the power to to force GCHQ to issue redacted intelligence reports to H.M. Government. The primary reason for this was, and continues to be, its massive reliance on the NSA for funding and access to its huge intelligence resources and information. Move on a few years and another example of GCHQ's over arching desire to maintain its relationship with the NSA was the decision, because of an agreement with the then head of the NSA (Bobby Inman) and the Director of GCHQ (Brian Tovey), to ban Trades Unions at GCHQ. The liberties and civil rights of its employees were secondary to GCHQ's desire to placate the Americans - a nation that has killed, wounded or made homeless well over 20 million human beings, mostly civilians, since 1962.
 Add to this GCHQ's regular supply of intelligence to the Israelis, who come only second to the USA for state sponsored terrorism and you have a murky Orwellian organisation that is out of control and shames the citizens of the United Kingdom. Instead it hides its activities behind the stinking veil of, "National Security". But whose "National Security", ours as citizens who pay for its activities, or that of the secret state that manipulates our lives and is not accountable to the people?