Cough, that one game against Spurs, coughOriginally Posted by Letters
Enfield Town FC 4 - Whitehawk 4
Bother. We contrived to let a 3-1 and then a 4-2 lead slip to slump to a disappointing draw.
Cough, that one game against Spurs, coughEnfield Town FC 4 - Whitehawk 4
Bother. We contrived to let a 3-1 and then a 4-2 lead slip to slump to a disappointing draw.
You used to be everything to me
Now you're tired of fighting
Funny, because although I wasn’t born in 1966, I could swear we won 4-2 not 3-2
I’m sorry our country is arrogant and has a sense of false superiority? Compared to who? France?, Germany?, United States (where American exceptionalism is often a platform speech for aspiring presidential candidates)
Orwell remarked that one of the reasons socialism failed to materialise in this country, is that most leftist movements in other countries centred around a sense of patriotism. But here the left (as has always been the case) were largely middle class and found the idea of love of country quaint and embarrassing.
That and the working class had enough about them to realise that they didn’t want to be manipulated into cannon fodder by a bunch of smug, superior political hobbyists who presumed to see themselves as the vanguard
it was 2-2 when that goal was scored to make it 3-2 and as we all know, that completely alters the context of the game, with Germany then chasing
and yes lots of other countries are bad too and not everyone in England is a flag-waving moron, but there's certainly enough of them
as for socialism, I don't disagree with what your;e saying, but I didn't say patriotism was necessarily right-wing - i agree it's often the right which wraps itself in the flag, but New Labour did it '97 and Starmer's doing it now
Yes. I was absolutely bloody livid after that one
Which is another good thing about going to Enfield. I was mildly irritated last night but that was about it. Much less stressful!
What I’m saying is I don’t think the game hinged on that decision, I think would have won anyway. Both of Germany’s goals came against the run of play. And they only beat us four years later because many of our players came down with the Aztec two step.
Patriotism isn’t left or right wing, but it clearly makes sense that if you want to govern a country it would help that you don’t talk it down. It’s not just Blair and Starmer that understood that, but Wilson and Atlee as well. I find it arbitrary personally, Britain’s history and achievements are not mine…I’m a UK citizen by accident of birth. But I see no problem with people who are patriotic, and if right wingers adopt the flag as a kind of blood and soil nationalism…well first it happens everywhere and two patriotism is fostered by a sense of togetherness and shared cultural values…rather than bloodlines which with most people never lasts more than a few generations anyway.
But you see so much of this “Rainy Fascist island” talk from snobs who aren’t especially nuanced or bright themselves
For the love of God, get your cameras out of my house.
You used to be everything to me
Now you're tired of fighting
Ah, but you don't get the highs of a big win either, which are basically my heroin and the whole reason to watch football. Goes both ways.
Yes. I was absolutely bloody livid after that one
Which is another good thing about going to Enfield. I was mildly irritated last night but that was about it. Much less stressful!
You used to be everything to me
Now you're tired of fighting
Personally, I have a certain pride in our achievements as a nation, and a certain embarrassment at our misdeeds. But neither feeling is particularly strong. The achievements weren't mine, neither were the bad things.
It's the line between patriotism and jingoism which is the difficult one not to cross. Some do, but not that many and as you say we're nowhere near the worst offenders.
Some of our misdeeds are hilarious
Take the opium wars, we had a massive trade imbalance with China because they would sell things to us but didn’t want to buy anything from us…well that was until we started exporting opium from the areas of the Middle East we colonised. The Chinese loved opium, a bit too much in fact and led to high levels of narcotic addiction and crime. So they formed a blockade against our ships, which our navy promptly fired upon and sank. On one hand that’s absolutely diabolical behaviour, on the other hand it was almost 200 years ago so fuck it…why not laugh it up.
We are also in no small way responsible for the spread of fundamentalist Islam in the sub continent, we thought that if we had all the scholarly Muslims killed that would just leave the thickos who would be leaderless. Unfortunately the ones we denounced as thickos were the more hardline, violent and less likely to compromise and their descendants make up the populace and culture of Pakistan and Bengal.
Not the brightest move we ever made. About the only progressive value we brought to India was to outlaw the practice of Satee, the practice of immolation of a widow (because her value as a person was tied up in her husband) although many of them continued the practice themselves because the death of their spouse left them destitute.
I was in India one time with work during their independence day.
Kept my head down in the office that day
Funny thing is, they still seem to think we're in charge over there. They're very deferential to us whities.
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