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Bitter humbling.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

(Pic from Al Jazeera).

We don’t like to let nuance or complexity nose their way in much these days, eh? Big Money and the algorithms of Big Tech don’t let them. But I have mixed feelings about many things – including football.

Foolishly, I’m gonna out myself as a (relative) supporter of Thomas Tuchel. I was medium-gobsmacked at his appointment, because the English Football Establishment doesn’t generally offer significant roles to mavericks &/or the highly-strung, but somehow the boy Tuchel swam through the net. That surprised and pleased me. I wonder to this day how the interview must have gone: I imagine he was superb and kinda thrillingly convincing. I’ve no doubt that (maybe particularly in a confined space), he could do that thing.

I have said many times that the now pilloried ‘hysterical German’ once turned Chelsea into the best club team in the world, at a time when Klopp’s Liverpool and Pep’s City were magbloodynificent.

It was a short peak – perhaps unsurprisingly – but Chelsea were fabulous, just for those few months. This, and the brilliance that TT gives off during interview and analysis (in a second language, of course) has medium-convinced me that the fella is either The Real Deal or A Real Deal. He’s good; yet hysterical. He’s better and brighter than Southgate… and I thought more likely to actually to win a major tourney, because he’s tougher and sharper. He’s explosive in the manner (well, almost) of a Ferguson and cerebrally strategic in the manner of a Wenger. He’s a mad, top-end, inspirational, obsessive, pro-active coach.

Yebbut most of you want to eat him alive – and I get that. So, not wanting to find myself entirely in the wrong camp here, let’s say that I reckon it’s fair to indulge the following arguments (or mitigations) that arise for some of us, post Argentina.

England had a decent, not brilliant squad. The defence, even at full strength was mediocre *at defending*. (Guehi/Konsa/Stones/Quansah. Neither genuinely robust nor especially watchful). Even when England were thrashing teams in the qualifiers, most of us looked at the chances offered, the holes in and around the box and thought ‘Jeeesus. Issues incoming’.

Zone right out and there may be a sense that this team is something of a symbol of the general malaise/improvement/culture-shift – delete according to prejudice – and not just because they wear the Three Lions, (although this is surely in play?) These guys are under massive, unreasonable scrutiny *and* they are of their era. It’s kinda like you have to be: there’s a mould.

They all play like academy defenders. Smoooooth on the ball; elegantly easing sideways; nonchalantly impervious (well, largely) to incoming attackers – taking the ball ‘under pressure’ in a way that would seem unthinkable and ridiculous to Terry Butcher. Doable, for the most part, because they are better in possession than Terry Butcher: better, in fact than generations of fine, fine players who played a different game. They used to defend and clear. Now they pass and look to draw the opposition in.

This new ‘academy game’, where everybody is comfortable on the ball, is significant progress. Skills have been upped – some of them. But it also means players who aren’t mentally or physically tough enough to defend may find themselves, nominally or otherwise, ‘defending’.

In my moments of anger after the Argentina debacle I called the England team ‘lily-livered’. In a sense I regret that because some folks will assume it has a deliberate racial undertow. It didn’t. It was about lack of spirit (or courage) letting lack of concentration seep in. About eyes glazing over just a little, as though to protect someone or something – probably me, probably us – allowing the feared or inevitable to wash through. I think this affected most of the team… and perhaps in a different way, the manager.

The bus-parking, the low-bloc(k)ing, the re-jig to ‘see the game out’ is being widely described as one of the grossest failures of strategy since the Light Brigade. Understandably, in a sense; we feel like we own that team – and it does, after all, represent us. It was embarrassing.

Argentina are not immediately renowned as great headers of the ball. How many crosses were met – often unchallenged – by Argentinian bonces, late in the game on Thurs? That in itself was a scandal; a scandal of bad defending. With extra bodies in there, how can it possibly be that even well-targeted crosses weren’t nutted away into row Z? (It’s a narrow example, I get that. But symptomatic of an extraordinary collective failure to defend, in the broadest sense. Yes, England should have tried to close on the opposition, win the ball and keep it… but with six or more defenders lined across the box it felt particularly painful that the tradition for committed nutting of the pill absented itself so completely).

He can’t come out and say it but I think that one of the things in Tuchel’s mind, after England finally flung in a great cross themselves (and surprsie, surprise, scored from it!) was that all of Saka, Rashford and Madueke had pretty much played their way out of his side by being somewhere between meek and depressingly wasteful in earlier games. He may have thought he had no option to ‘make positive changes’… and consequently erred towards Mourinho-esque negativity. “Burns; anybody else who’s played in defence. Get them on. And – oh, shit – where’s the lad Maguire when we need him?”

That move – the one that will haunt him and has destroyed his reputation in most quarters – was medium-probably unrepresentative of Tuchel the man and the coach. It almost certainly deserved to fail in the way it did. He was both wrong to seek that route and unable (actually) to drive, inspire or harass his players towards any heroic rearguard action. It was horrible; it was weak.

I do blame the players as much as Tuchel. A) They are nowhere near as good as we or they think they are. (Particularly the defenders). B) They did not do their jobs – particularly the defenders. C) (Argentina were predictably spiteful but) as a group, throughout the game, England spent as much energy looking to flop over the ball under any contact as they did trying to build a move/play some football.

That too, is a disease probably cultivated through academies. Anderson was notably guilty – and I do mean guilty – but the likes of Guehi at the back relentlessly look to feel contact and flop. We, as kids, would shield the ball then take the bloke ‘up our arse’ right out of the game with a smart pass or a shimmy. The sport of football dies just a little every time Kane or whoever ‘draws’ this kind of foul.

Oh – and D) Honestly? Argentina are not that great. Messi is a god but a god you can get at, nowadays. Stay cool, stay busy: get in their faces.

Look, England only very intermittently looked a good a side, in this World Cup. Bellingham and Kane showed quality but were almost non-existent against Argentina. The Three Lions best player and *best attacker* was Djed Spence. He alone(?) showed the spirit and dynamism that Tuchel has surely been after.

If the gaffer succumbed to the temptation to Bring It Home On A Parked Bus, this is profoundly disappointing and obviously, ultimately foolish. I wish he’d brought Rashford on and told the whole team to press. I wish he’d eschewed the low bloc approach for ambitious, cultural, crowd-pleasing reasons. Years later he can note in his autobiography that he knew his defenders weren’t up to it. Get fresh legs in to squeeze and press – just for 20 minutes. Force an error and the game is over in England’s favour. But no. It was a bitter humbling.

The state of ‘play’.

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Woke up angry so may be tough to break out of inflammatory language. Forgive any offences – either in ideas or expression(s). Onwards then, to exorcise some of this heavy (and yess, I know) unattractive baggage.

Labour.

Dead to me and most of my circle, as previously reported. Because Gaza; because the capitulation (or worse) to lobbying – whether from Friends of Israel, private medicine, private utilities or other ‘interested parties’. The one job – to restore some faith and decency – catapulted outta sight so that business (for which read everyday corruption) can continue as normal. So different-level hypocrisy, from Starmer, his puppet-masters and his acolytes.

High in the Anti-Labour List of Labour Travesties is the obscene ‘strategic’ targeting of migrants. Simply unforgivable from any remotely progressive or fair-minded party. Driven by McCluskey (probably), shamelessly continued by Mahmood. A wisdom brought to us from deep within Blue Labour.

Plainly the whole Blue Labour malarkey is a cheap, sour, deliberate operation to ‘counter’ populism and throw red meat to the brain-dead and decency-deficient. But more widely (and strategically less obviously?) it’s there to promote lack of change. So the establishment, the corporate-capitalist order remains snug and tidy and can continue to quietly thrive, unchallenged by any conscience from within the body politic. McCluskey, Glassman, Mandelson & co as agents of quiet, killing, arch-conservative stealth. Kings of networking: hand-maidens to the Epstein Class.

Of course politics has always been this way inclined. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be calling-out its shallowness, its evil.

Let’s offer some (BBC-style?) balance. Starmer and Labour are scratching around and ‘being active’. At times they are both nudging things forward and showing a certain level of competence. But still supporting endless war-crimes; enabling them, even, and still militarily involved in the madman’s illegal and monstrous adventures and distractions. (Sure, Starmer is inching closer to Europe and signalling he knows what Trump is but where are the red lines on moral grounds and on the basis of international law?)

Hope or speculation? Clive Lewis must surely be close to joining the Greens? Rayner and others understand what Labour is. I think they understand that they have no hope of getting it back; maybe not even post-Starmer?

Tories.

Are a joke. An irrelevance. Poorly-led; disappearing; good riddance. The series of governments before the Starmer aberration *really were* the worst governments of my lifetime.

Reform.

Are so obviously a one-policy party it’s almost funny. But not… because that policy is to hate people of colour.

The matrix within which this sits is profoundly telling: Farage’s transparent grifting and open worship of ‘market freedoms’ (for the Epstein Class). Been said many times but the idea that frog-face, Tice, Yusuf and Braverman are in some way anti-establishment is an insult to the intelligence of the universe: yet it may be that some of their supporters perceive themselves thataway. These people are, obviously, the establishment! They are wealthy; they walk amongst wealth; they know how to protect their wealth. Reform voters can of course be lovely family people – I know some who are. But they are suckers on a monumental scale and, clearly, most of them are racists.

Lib-Dems. (Are they still called that?)

I have no issue with people supporting the Liberals. They are a relatively progressive party, made largely invisible by our crap and skewed media and by the absence of compelling leaders or story-tellers. They have a certain integrity… and may have a role to play – perhaps an important one – in some sort of Progressive Coalition, in the future.

Greens.

Greens are The Story – quite rightly. Polanski has strikingly reinvigorated UK politics by being humane and bold and articulate. He has called obscenities obscenities. He opposes bad shit and proposes good shit. He appears to be un-bought. He *actually tends to answer questions* and openly admits to being fallible and relatively inexperienced. In short, by being honest and sounding genuine, he has changed the space. Who’d a thunk it?

Of course there are only currently a hand-full of Green MPs, but this is certain to change next time folks cast their votes. Soaring membership will mean (particularly enthusiastic?) boots on the ground, making the other parties look and feel kinda limp: because they are. Polanski is young enough and suss enough to smash the socials scene. Young people (and disillusioned Labour-types) are flocking in, not just because the leader speaks their language but because (unusually, in politics) the messages are overwhelmingly good and true. Gaza is a genocide; billionaires should and must pay more; immigrants should have our sympathy and support.

The Greens are patently right about most things. They will need to handle the influx of Angry Lefties with care but thank god there is a place to go for those who want to exercise compassion, intelligence, social justice, fairness.

SNP/Plaid Cymru.

Appalling to lump the two nationalist parties in together, and to offer such a brief word. I am in Wales, and will probably vote for Plaid. A) because they are a largely progressive party and b) because the Greens may have no realistic chance in my own constituency. (But let’s see. Let’s see too, what happens with Labour – although I have almost no hope of a transformation there).

I fully understand that voting Plaid need not at all be a protest vote – likewise the SNP. Both have a singular, valuable tradition, which I do respect. I hope followers of these two parties can forgive me for saying that many might see them as potential recipients of tactical votes. In that sense (too) they can serve our flawed democracy. I am sympathetic to both Wales and Scotland being independent nations; partly because Westminster has served them so poorly. We have lacked social justice almost entirely.

What’s the point?

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

My previous post on McSweeney and Starmer was full of anger towards both. Principally, this is because they have betrayed a zillion solid Labour values. Specifically, they cynically and deliberately weaponised ‘feeling’ against immigrants, in a way that was shamefully reactionary and should have no part in the thinking or activity of any reasonable or progressive political party. (And that particular approach goes on, through the hostile language used in government socials accounts and through Shabana Mahmood’s calculatedly weighted grandstanding on these issues). McSweeney plainly ordered them to shift hard right… Starmer utterly capitulated… and it really stinks.

Interestingly – or not – there’s been a lot of stuff in the political ether around how votes are won or cast because of feeling rather than understanding or fact. So maybe, by roaring my opposition, I’ve just fallen into that Modern Way. Government People (or their advisors) might recommend a ‘time for reflection’ before the issue of an ‘I could do better’ statement: and yes, they might have a point. Calling our Reform-voting friends ‘neanderthals’ was neither wise nor fair. It smacks of pomp and maybe even contempt for The Working Classes. But I can promise you I am not guilty of the latter: I just really don’t like racism.

The fella Ratcliffe’s recent intervention makes it clear that people *do have* opinions about immigration. But I would argue that most of these opinions are either racist to their core, or those propounding such notions have been coached towards xenophobia (+) by (what I would view as) our appalling and bigoted press. Ratcliffe is a special (and an especially foul) case because of his obscene wealth. Private-jetting-it waaay above all economic plight and yet scapegoating the most vulnerable. On the one hand to further empower and bejewel himself, and on the other out of sheer and obvious prejudice. Find your own four-letter word.

Starmer has, I believe, *actually called-out* Ratcliffe over his offensive, Reformist nonsense. Hoo-rah! Tiny steps?

I wrote in my last blog that I cannot abide the Prime Minister, for his spinelessness and the HUGE (MORAL) FAILURES around immigration/Gaza/abetting Trump/Mandelson/Palantir etc etc. For the general failure to bring back honesty and decency. Finding ourselves with this or any Labour leader being even remotely in the frame of comparison with Johnson for duplicity and corruption is an astonishing failure for a party predicated upon social justice.

Starmer is not as wildly amoral as Johnson. And he palpably doesn’t drive agendas in the way Alexander Boris de Pfeffel did. But the more we find out the more it seems that his failures of judgement have been contingent upon being ‘won over’ by lobbyists, influencers or multinationals.

Weirdly, I think maybe Starmer should stay – for now. There is merit in those making ‘politically-mature’ arguments around both the unfairness of coverage of Labour – no question! – and the need for ‘some stability’. Give the PM a little time… but don’t necessarily forgive, or forget. Despite his feeble protestations, he is not a Labour Man – or perhaps more exactly, he has drifted, shockingly but perhaps not surprisingly, from core, progressive views. (As I write this I can hear the voices calling out from the List of Good Things ticked-off, which I acknowledge. But you know as well as I do that Blue Labour is not Labour and not right).

So. In the face of billionaire ignoramuses, a mostly diabolical media and a Labour government absconding from the very decencies it was founded for and upon, what’s the point? Where do we go or look? In terms of voting (obvs), we get tactical. In terms of political philosophy, surely we either literally follow Polanski and the Greens, or we follow what they do with interest and maybe even some hope.

Zack Polanski has barely put a foot wrong, since becoming leader of his party. He is bold and real and he cuts the bullshit. He has been overwhelmingly right on immigration, Gaza, Trump and the whole repulsive White Supremacist Project – so across Musk, Thiel, Bannon and the rest. He is all over the Epstein thing and all over the umbilical links between that and the privileged, untouchable few. At home he has been in a different league in terms of compelling narratives and calling-out the economic injustices and imbalances the Labour Party was set up to address. He is killing it on necessary monopolies and progressive state intervention. His plausibility, manner and willingness to speak are different league. The Powers That Be – and they really are out there – will be looking to crush him. Don’t let them.

You had one job.

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McSweeney’s gone and even those of us who’d never been in the man’s orbit are punching the air. We didn’t need to be in those eight zillion meetings where he flew his poisonous kites or ‘took account’ of the murderously stupid or prejudiced and then ‘made policy reflect their concerns’. The world is better for his going. If we could believe this was somehow a turning-point towards widespread intelligence and fairness in the public domain then we might expect *things* to actually get better. But we know, do we not, there’s almost no chance of that?

Labour came in on a huge wave of nothing; meaning there was no real enthusiasm for Starmer but the universe had at least, at last understood that the Tories were unelectable, either for their incompetence or their contempt for decency, fairness and respect for the law. Starmer and McSweeney had a huge opportunity, a playing-field to frolic in, with just the one job – to restore some faith. They could have been radical: they could have really done some good.

Their failure lift us, at a moment of such opportunity, is an affront on so-o many levels, it’s hard to know where to start. It speaks to a remarkable level of soullessness and even cowardice. (And, of course, a pitiful narrowness – the sole ambition being to stay in power. Career politics of the most repulsive kind).

The longer the McSweeney-Starmer together-thing endured, the more wrapped in clingfilm they seemed. How, despite all the focus-groups(!) could they not hear/feel/see most things revolve around massive concentrations of wealth and influence? Why nothing meaningful to address either that or the associated control of media and corporations?

Falling back into Tory/Reform-lite tropes which are patently, deliberately and knuckle-draggingly racist (and therefore foul and indecent) registers pretty high on the list of offences with me. More importantly, in a stroke it repulses (and therefore alienates) most of what we might provocatively term the Good Labour Folk out there. So as vile as Farage and Trump, morally wrong and politically stupid. Driven by a foul, ‘popular’ ideology that sets theoretical vote-winning beyond any sense of that which is right. Laughably but obviously, this ‘listening to the concerns’ of neanderthals*…

(*get that this is offensive; don’t care; am angry and I know I’m right – in both senses).

resulted in a net loss of support. Because despite the scary levels of xenophobia (or worse) out there, almost no Reform-leaning clown was ever going to ‘come back to Labour’. And yet the language of division continues almost daily, from Labour’s execrable Home Sec, who thinks Powellite soundbites are still the way to go. They are not. They are grotesque and unworthy of us and of any progressive party. Labour is dead to many of us as long as it continues to deliberately demonise ‘illegal immigrants’.

McSweeney we can pretty sure – alongside the cabal of Blue Labour influencers – has shaped the imagery and language around the government’s lurch/capitulation/strategic realignment to the right. It would of course not have been possible without Starmer’s characteristic spinelessness.

Dull Prime Ministers are a commonplace – and not in themselves a particular issue – but Sir Keir’s feeble malleability and susceptibility to influence put him in a kind of world-level category for vacancy and lack of direction. It’s as though he wants to disappear. The ideas, the motivation, the sense of any compulsion towards re-balancing patently obscene injustice or privilege – local or international – has gone. Replaced by McSweeney’s ‘targets’ and subsumed in endless fire-fighting or briefing to hold things together against revelation, corruption, dissent. Plus, let’s be clear, on the biggest issues of all – Gaza; Trump; Epstein; Mandelson; Palantir; Russian interference – Starmer’s regime has been disastrously wrong, on every single one.

To err is human (as they say) but for leaders to be so wrong on the major issues of the day is extraordinary. To be wrong because you or your processes have been so blatantly corrupted or influenced by sources of power known to all of us – whether that be the machinery of the Israeli or Russian states, or the machinery of technocrats and the obscenely rich – takes political misjudgements into a whole new realm. That of blatant, Kafkaesque or Orwellian falsehood. Plainly we are there now. Presented with imagery, with narrative, with economic truth and necessity which is outrageously false.

The one job that Starmer and McSweeney had was to bring back a bit of honesty and truth. And ideally bring the discourse back towards a level of civility and tolerance. They have scorched away in the other direction. Lobbied. Bought. And in any case immune to the stuff that decent people know will always be right. Both have contributed – almost unbelievably – to a further degradation in the quality of political life in these islands.

Everything and nothing.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

I’m not bad at using time. Sometimes this means using it to rest but mostly I’m medium-decent at being productive: unlike Bowie, who had that thing about pleasuring himself to the floor. (Niche; don’t stress).

Today I did work stuff early doors – sorting some indoor cricket action – then tootled back to my Fake Framer’s Lair. There was a hitch. Having jogged the thirty-seven yards through the cooling rain into the house, opened up my bag, tabled my lap-top, it became apparent that the ancient iphone was missing (again-again).

Being mildly accepting of this fairly high frequency event, despite the gathering suspicion I might need to go back into town (and check the table we’d recently decanted the Essential Electro-valuables of Modern Living upon), I jogged back to the car – yup, still wincing at the rain – and found nothing. Then re-jogged back into the house, whilst weighing-up The Likelihoods. Na. ‘Godda be in the car’. Re-jogged out.

The phone was in the car; having fallen – nay somersaulted – as they do, against the grain of the universe, out of my jacket pocket and not merely down behind my right ankle but clunkety-clunked into the footwell of the rear passenger-side. Spread-eagled; in the open; but where *it could not be* but for the intervention of devilry of a high order. Practically flicking the vees. Still, it’s a relief, I think, as I jog back in through the rain.

#Lifesrichwotnots. Those little(?) micro(?) challenges. Digging at those little(?) anger-points. At what stage do we bite? (I’m medium-decent at not biting). If I swore, I did it in the Quiet Voice. I knew the fekker would be in the car, really… and it really was. In plain sight – just in the ridicu-place. Maybe all along I knew it would be there, because of the angles: my smallish, contorted pocket; that seat; my general level of clumsiness. Boom. A quiet result.

The Galaxy of Loss.

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Rick Walton is something of a cult writer who works in sport. His latest book – Power Chords – is about growing up through punk and ‘the power of music and ideas, pouring in to teenage life’.

(PROTESTING) THE GALAXY OF LOSS.

‘I guess the thing that stirs me the most is the urgent need to change the universe. And that really may be a direct result of punk and Margaret Thatcher’.

So sayeth the 2025 version of my good self. In Power Chords, my recent book. And yes I am aware of how dumb, dated or estranged from the all-consuming now that bold bluster might sound, but I wrote the book because that anger feels fresh. (With white supremacist fires a-burning, why wouldn’t it?) You don’t need to be a zeitgeist-obsessive to sense that the furies I felt in 1976 we may need to feel now.

‘Bit loathe to put dates into this baby (oops) but it may be inescapable. Absolutely not telling you freeloaders my birth date – not until we’re mates and you’ve proved you’re worth it – but suppose I can offer the rough figuration that I was a furious and pyrotechnically hormonal late-teen when the over-combed one began to preen through and over our lives. She, and Rotten’s voice, and Strummer’s heart, and Costello’s lyrics and my father’s death were the things that made me. They were contingent and co-forming energies that powered and power me towards trying, at the very least, to live a life that opposes’.

The energy around and beyond punk was the thing – more than the vinyl *produced within the category*. Don’t get me wrong, The Pistols, Clash, Jam, Buzzcocks were all magbloodynificent: but any tight definition of great punk or great punk bands throws up a confoundingly short list. However, open your hearts to New Wave or Bands Patently Unthinkable Without Punk and one of the most thrilling and conscious periods in popular music pogo(e)s into view.

Some of that was the result of the sort of peak political discontent many of us are experiencing now. Specific hatred – I’m afraid it was! – for Thatcher’s rancid but rising pomp and the prejudice she so brazenly bore against minorities and communities that opposed her. Plus we angry teens were profoundly shifted by the new, articulate raging: Weller, Costello, Devoto and Mark E Smith wading in compellingly against the analgesic banality of The Biz and Normal Life itself.

Not sure the phrase ‘they spoke for us’ was rilly around in 1977, but they did that thing. There was a different drive, over and above the phlegm-heavy sonic charge. This was righteous, electrifying, raw-but-eloquent objection. It smelt like change and de-mystification and it brought both.

‘Punks identified anyone who sounded like The Bizz, or was complicit in its pitches as the enemy. This was of course almost everybody. If you swam complacently along with the major record labels, the machinery of production and the Gods of Commerce then you were traitorous filth: all of you. If you deliberately made your musical sound easy to access, you were shameless, vacuous scumbags. Plus energy. If your energy was that traditional thing aspiring to loveliness and sweet diversion then you were, despite your smashtastic success, a joke’.

If this all sounds a bit judgemental then yes – guilty as charged. But new wave coloured and fleshed-out and was in any event witty and hearty from the start. Lydon may not have been (not intentionally, at least) a bundle of laughs but everywhere you look from Talking Heads, Buzzcocks, Postcard Records to B52s there’s a flush of humour, of the mischief of young people. Reminding me, at least, of the brilliance of purveyors of placards elsewhere and always.

‘The three chords and less than three minutes thing that punk was predicated upon is very pop. It’s also obviously anti-indulgence… and therefore may be supportive of smart choices. Knowing is everything: this includes knowing there is nothing wrong with ‘music to wash up to’. The two poles of what we might call engaged or protest songs and ephemera can absolutely subsist – and did. 1979 may have been the peak of the history of popular music – albums and singles – because of the energy and drive of punk and the sparkling wit of energized pop’.

I express in Power Chords some wee frustration at the lack of articulate voices about or from within punk, at the time, whilst noting that what really matters, of course, is the choons. Sure, Lydon’s reactionary rants and his butter commercials undermine The Cause. The Clash had a kind of daft dressing-up box, full of photogenic rebel gear. Image has always been huge, to Weller. And yet the legacy – the real legacy – is stellar and seminal to so many of us.

‘Lydon was and is somewhere between the various caricatures of force of nature, clown and cultural icon. He was and is punk, for better and worse. For all his loudmouthery and those moments where we Guardian-reading liberals had wished he would ‘just stop!’ Lydon has produced material of staggering ambition and import. (So I for one largely forgive him). The Pistols singles are almost as sensational now as they were then. ‘Public Image’ the single is an extraordinary and well-executed re-birth. ‘Poptones’, ‘Careering’, ‘Flowers of Romance’, ‘Keep Banging the Door’ and ‘Rise’ are all giants’.

Power Chords was generously described as ‘a life in music. Beautifully told’ on the cover. (Many thanks @memorialdevice). Meaning it’s not just about punk – although it may be about growing up through punk. I wrote it last year because it felt that my anger was spiking to teen levels because of the crassness and racism and deconstruction of the truth in the ether now. I’m glad I did that – put on record my daft association of the current galaxy of loss with my precious experience of equivalently-perceived evils. I was there, then, and *I did learn stuff* so this is my protest song.

‘Foolish to remotely compare how things felt from Year A to F, but the parallels around race and wealth, between Thatcherite Ingerland and Trumpian North America are striking. Thatcher (for us) was an obvious bigot and likely white supremacist: see also Trump and Musk. In both eras there is an extraordinary sense of the rich getting richer – by design. That shamelessness, now so epitomized by Trump’s cohort of oligarchs and technocrats is both the exercise of increasingly authoritarian power and triumphalist cruelty. Meaning a particular kind of wickedness’.

There are challenges.

‘Where lies progress in all this? On a political level I suppose we need to elect governments that will be a) strong enough morally to oppose prejudice and b) smart enough economically to improve the lot of the disaffected. Clearly, sadly, the momentum appears to be going the other way in certain key democracies’.

And yet, as always, there is hope. In this most recent book I call out to our next-generation Angels of Protest, invoking the power of tremendous and life-changing songs of meaning, wherever they are, however they sound, to carry us somewhere better.

Stormy Weather.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

I’m heavily overdue a political/philosophical rant… so here goes. I’m a profoundly contented man in many ways but some kinda blowout feels inevitable and necessary. The world – as well as being treble-fabulous – gets darker and dumber every day. Wilder.

Gaza is a cruel and obvious stain on all of us. We Brits are culpable, even in our powerlessness, for the appalling support successive governments have lent to the machinery of the Israeli state. For a Labour government to actively assist a world-level butcher and fiend like Netanyahu is acutely, enragingly, grievously painful for a feeble soft-leftie like myself to ‘deal with’. (Poor me). Expected (but was appalled) to see Sunak stand next to the man and say “We want you to win”… but not quite this. On the ground, the murder and spiteful subjugation of the Palestinians (by Israelis in and out of uniform) in plain sight, is an apocalypse for those on the receiving end and for the idea of international law. We shouldn’t need to say it but both matter, yes?

We’re in extremis, here. A patent genocide – the single-most troubling and serious violation of humanity within the lifespans of many of us – and Netanyahu gets feasted and trumpeted (sic) at the White House at New Year’s. Starmer selling weapons and facilitating by providing reconnaissance. Protestors, young and old, becoming terrorists under a *particularly selective* British law, driven-through by Labour. A ‘ceasefire’ that insults us all. Palestinian journalists wiped-out; media excluded from the scene so that killings and clearance can continue.

Now Venezuela. There’s a pattern of sorts, not just centring around a demented president: bigger even than his petty, mendacious lunacy. Around the degradation of international law itself.

Trump is central. He’s stupid and vile and corrupt and probably subject to blackmail or the threat of it from other world powers and by individuals. His gangsterism is almost endless because he sees no boundaries to what he (or those he approves of) can do. There is no law because he is it.

But of course this petulant but dangerous clown facilitates anarchy elsewhere. Probably negotiates towards it – certainly if the historic stories regarding a Venezuela/Ukraine swap-deal-thing with Putin are true, which seems likely. These guys think they can do anything. And in the States and in the UK not enough of us kick up enough of a fuss. ‘Twas always thus.

Okay. That may be more leftie self-pity. But the concern around there being no red lines should be and is cross-party – is beyond the realm of the politically-motivated. Or’nary People know that this is wrong. They know that Starmer and his ministers have embarrassed us all by not calling out the US ‘action’ in Venezuela.

Even Or’nary People recognise that a UK Prime Minister needs to take care around how he or she describes contentious American interventions. But this one is so patently transgressing of international law – and so obviously *all about resources* in any case – that some form of criticism is necessary and right. Take care with your language but draw the red lines. It *may be* that Starmer is discreetly expressing ver-ry different views to colleagues and partners in Europe… but these appearances matter: his; his ministers’. Repeatedly ‘refusing to be drawn’ on matters this evident and this fundamental to national conduct has further damaged his reputation – for lily-livered feebleness and poodledom.

You don’t need to be a top-of-the-range political analyst to see that failing to condemn gross acts of piracy emboldens pirates-in-waiting: in Moscow and Beijing, say. So gather and protest. In our case, gather with Europe, more quickly. Do it clandestinely if it helps. Trump has already effectively cut us loose. Prepare for the moment of No Return – could that be Greenland? Or whatever happens next in Ukraine? – by being profoundly of the European bloc. Do that now. Commit to that, even if it’s only ’til the Trump storm blows over.

pic from The Guardian.

This is not a love-song (to 2025).

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

It may be the fabbest day of the year – it’s certainly the last. Blazing sunshine. Cows getting frisky coz of that distant, overdue tractor. Hard, hard frost. Crows.

Up earlyish to take son to the train. Scoot round Lidls sharpish, before the Party Animals pile in to charge their trolleys with fruity beer and cheesy wotsits. Home to stack my own medium-frugal stash and sweep out the fire. Then quiet. And time.

The things in my head are clamouring to get away from the front of the queue. Some are too angry and obvious; some too sporty and technical. Nobody will read so this may assuage the selection of material but also maybe not? You guys *really are irrelevant* to The Flow. I’m ‘standing outside’. Outside in some weird, lush, white-but-verdant farmyard where the beat don’t stop. With the pheasant, the finches, the cows. Only I can hear them – not you.

Sure I have to think a bit about the turning of the year and what I’ll do tonight but: have food; have a little booze; have every confidence I could go to three different places or none. The choice, as always, is drink or drive – or would be if I wasn’t driving. And daughter; daughter is a factor.

So the usual, genuinely serene contentment and the option for off-screen social interaction. (Remember that?) For now, stare at the screen and let the thoughts come.

Recent and brutal and hard-to-avoid, for any kindof writer, for any kind of human. Timelines that are relentlessly Gaza and Trump and the kind of impossible evils that should drive our righteous furies. Genocides – one flaunted, one gone missing – that a staggering and shameful number of our alleged leaders either conciliate or contribute towards. Why aren’t we (The West? The East, The North, The South?) doing stuff?!? Why no tanks circling Netanfuckingyahu? Never mind the boycotts and the diplomatic niceties, why aren’t we threatening the machinery of the Israeli state with the kind of evisceration they’ve inflicted on the Palestinians? Plainly it would be righteous!*

*Yeh yeh, I know. It couldn’t happen with Trump in the White House and Starmer in the kennel. But however irresponsible my anger on this, I have a point, yes? The Provocation is not without meaning. And it’s This Year’s Story – again. Gaza is a genocide in plain sight. Trump’s part in it is vile and inhuman – driven by both prejudice and bottomless greed. Netanyahu should be in jail, at best. Starmer is an accomplice. If there were decent and progressive administrations in place in Washington and London, even mighty Israel could have been forced to withdraw, or face meaningful consequences. Instead, the fact and the idea of International Law is crushed.*

This ‘backdrop’ is inescapable, or should be. But because I’m as feeble as you are, I retreat into sport and books and walks. And the fucking internet.

Last night, MU again. And rinse and repeat. Amorim kinda worthy but still lost in that programme of over-coaching and unconvincing ‘changes’. Previous game: the team is woeful but ahead; make defensive changes. Last night – against a historically abject Wolves – make more ‘proactive’ decisions to bring creativity and shore-up the side. (Wolves were palpably the better footballing side, for much of the game). Everything fails. Manchester United look less of a unit, less purposeful, less convincing, after the Bright Young Things (making debuts or injecting The Fearlessness Of Youth) look as shot of confidence and ideas as those who started.

Yes this team has somehow climbed the table. And yes Mount (again briefly) and Fernandes had looked like potential Manchester United players and partners… but who else? Dorgu is so utterly mediocre it’s almost funny. Dalot has disappeared. Zirkzee is probs a Div 1 player. Casemiro is ‘seasoned’ but should be nowhere near the line-up. Amad is majoring in that flatter-to-deceive malarkey, producing almost nothing. Mbeumo *has something* but has been poor of late. Cunha could play in a legit side but was awful last night. Mainoo ‘didn’t fit the system’ and/or his face didn’t fit, when he plainly should have been a banker.

Week after week, month after month, performances are garbage – even whilst stumbling up the league. The fans understandably jeered the team off, after last night’s further embarrassment. The black hole is still calling, sucking the lads in, whilst eight coaches frantically wave their ipads.

Wolves were themselves repeatedly shocking in front of goal; otherwise the home keeper (who has done okay, to be fair) might easily have conceded five. Gary Neville waxed lyrical about Heaven, three or four days ago but neither he nor Yoro convince me. And out wide they have been unforgivably weak at closing down crosses: just one mind-blowing flaw amongst many, meaning United *really do* always look like they will concede.

It’s true that injuries are hurting the club at the moment. A central defensive three of De Ligt, Maguire and Martinez might sort some of those frailties. Perhaps with Dalot and Shaw on the flanks. But almost endlessly there is the feeling that *on the pitch* Amorim has diabolical players and no answers – even when making his now characteristic and theoretically dynamic changes. Astonishingly, Manchester United appear to need another mass clearout. Whether ditching Amorim will be part of that next upheaval, who knows? But his face and his pressers indicate that this gaffer is honest enough to know that he’s made no real improvements.

The Cricket. Some of you may know that I have worked in cricket for many years and that I have kinda specialised in women’s cricket (I say that ver-r-y loosely) for about a decade and have therefore written comparatively little, in recent times, about England men. This is partly because I could be in bother if I wrote widely and fully.

McCullum allegedly hates the term Bazball but as the universe turns against him it feels fair enough to use it. Perhaps we should describe it; what it means, what its implications are, as we understand them?

There are some good things – some profoundly good things – perhaps especially this notion that performers should be liberated. That maybe this should be a right, as well as an essential component of the development towards excellence. Players *really should* ‘go out there and express themselves’. That’s an undeniable truth, surely?

Well no. It’s a simplification that has a lot of truth in it. The job of the coach is multi-faceted but maybe it starts with this thing ‘environment’. Build an environment which is actually kinda lovely: supportive; inspiring, hopefully; challenging-but-fun. Probably don’t over-complicate it but do make it clear that there are disciplines and even responsibilities in play as well as fabulous freedoms. Games are complex even when we reduce them to simple notions or aspirations. We need game intelligence.

But hang on, for factoidal counter-thrust.

Many of us have likely underestimated both McCullum and Stokes in terms of their intelligence. It may be the case that despite the obvious laddishness around the England camp, and the entirely reasonable assumption that this has *informed*, even directed the playing approach, more measured conversations than we imagine may have taken place. The machismo that we believe to have been at the centre of the running towards danger *may* have been tempered by notes on the particular demands of Test cricket. Or not.

For what it’s worth, I think largely not – or not enough. I suspect (and I may be wrong) that Brook has been encouraged to ‘play his natural game’ right to the end. Probably by McCullum himself. Bazza probably believes in no compromise. Believes that positivity can’t really work unless it’s utterly unweighted. And in any case this is only a game. There is an imperative to entertain.

Hard to argue with that. Other than to again fall back into those complexities. Test cricket being a test over time; batting collapses being of their essence a theoretical nonsense – one wicket should have no bearing on the next – and yet they happen, as a function of wonderfully unknowable stuff, including psychological as well as technical processes. (So mitigate or re-gather against falling in a heap: that, after all, is one of the challenges. Respect the opposition and the format).

The signal failure of Bazball is of course the resources, timespan and the realignment of the wider game around these Ashes. Shocking, soulless ill-judgement and wastefulness. For many of us that feels like a con-job and yet not a surprise. Embarrassing, dumb and disrespectful. Like seeing Brook charge to play tennis or baseball shots at the great bowlers of the age. All very 2025.

A chinwag with BB…

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Go to the Pembrokeshire Music Show of 30 Nov (& go 90 minutes IN, if you want to cheat and go directly to me warbling).

Enjoyable, briefish chat with MC MC . (I think both of us would have liked to talk for longer but rock’n roll, eh?)

We do talk about a) my book, Power Chords and b) some of the political/philosophical backdrop, which I was pleased to hear that Malcolm/BB Skone was genuinely interested in and sympathetic towards. We both rate Clash/Buzzcocks et al and acknowledge the role that awareness and anger – much of it politically-charged – played in shaping punk and new wave as an energy and phenomenon. But maybe I’ll let our talking do the talking.

https://www.purewestradio.com/catch-up/

Palavers and publishing.

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I promise you I’m more philosophical than angry about this but wow – the Capitalist Universe is a right old game, eh?

I have a book upcoming. I like it and it’s important to me. Ideally I’d have an agent, a publisher and people, all colluding towards sales and impact. I have none of those things and this (I swear!) is fine. I like the indie bubble I live in.

The whole experience of writing three self-published books has been pretty fabulous: in the three or four year rush, without hardly thinking about it, I let it re-direct my life in a way I’m completely and kinda casually-deeply happy about. (Writing’s taken precedence over earning a living. Been surviving on bugger all for three years. No issues). But there are buts.

Have loved the fact and the process of self-publishing, cos just like being on an Independent Record Label. Complete Control – to coin a phrase. But despite being an indie sort-of-a-guy, and in some ways relatively suss, you still get trapped.

No fan of Amazon and the rest – and not just because they rob more than £4 per book, leaving me with about £1.20-40, depending on sale price. So I have never wanted to sell primarily online, but as a nobody, inevitably, you do.

I can’t get my books into bookshops – not many of them. Impractical and uneconomic. Indie (and particularly quirky or leftie bookshops) should absolutely be my natural territory but they don’t know who I am and I can’t afford to go globetrotting. What I have to do is buy in to the package at Grosvenor House that sets me up in the retail behemoths systems. (Not just Amazon’s; about twenty of them, I think). The hope is that strong sales in the ‘pre-sales period’ may possibly trigger a sort of alarm-call that lets stores know that this book might be worth holding. So it miraculously appears in bookshops, biggish and small. We’re in that pre-sales period now.

My publisher warned me that the likes of Amazon ask for a one-month pre-sales period because (weirdly, in 2025?) it can take weeks for all the book data and links to printers (or something) to be fully functional… and it appears that this may be the case. Thinking back to the previous books, this tends not to be a smooth ride.

But because a few really wunnerful people supported Power Chords early-doors, it burst into the Top New Releases, Music charts on Amazon. (Most of these people I’ve never met, by the way, so imagine the level of gratitude, here). The book went to Number 10 in that hit parade, meaning almost nothing except (I confess) a little low-throttled excitement *and the distant prospect of strongish sales triggering that aforementioned algo-wotsits*. That is, a kind of actually low-impact impact which would mean a huge amount if it got my actual book into actual bookshops. That’s the hope, right? Try to use The System to game the system and ultimately Do The Right Thing. Smart fulfilment.

I/we can’t win entirely in this. On socials I’ve been pointing people to their fave indie bookshop to order *as well as* offering the link to Amazon &/or Waterstones, because of the potential importance of that chart in the former. Which is kinda twisted, I know. (And I don’t or can’t know, in any case, where or how exactly any algorithm or notification kicks in, to alert shops to Books Worth Stocking). So this is another Trumpian, deal-making universe where I/we are not holding any cards.

In some ways it gets worse. Power Chords was at 20-something then 10, soon after pre-sales opened on about November 1st. (Shoulda been Oct 24th but that’s another story). So good start: some excitement. Then there’s a hitch. Amazon and Waterstones have the book at ‘temporarily unavailable’ or similar, meaning you can’t actually order. Which of course means we go down those charts. I wait a few days, checking (I confess) regularly. Nothing: no change.

This morning – Sunday 16th November – the Amazon site is saying you can order Power Chords for something over £16… which is a bit alarming and concerning. I have no rights here (goddammit) but I don’t want my book to sell for any more than the £10.99 my publisher advised. Plus this is likely a mistake, right, more ‘getting the ducks in line’ stuff – a temporary cock-up. Whichever way it’s crap – unhelpfully so. It is, bottom-line, another obstacle to sales.

Update: as of Mon 18th Nov. Power Chords is still being advertised at £16.24 on Amazon – so the cock-up goes on. I have tried to make contact (in fact succeeded in making contact!) but got into one of those horrendous loops where they offer you bloc A to H, with none of those blocs being the one that really covers your issue. Then you try to approach any of them… and they point you to KDP Publishing, who then tell you your book – or this book – isn’t with them. So mindless, unhelpful circling. Same via twitter: you get pointed to the same place, which can’t help you.

It should be pret-ty straightforward, you’d hope, for a multinational with eight zillion employees to find you one who could either strike-out an error in pricing on one of their weblinks, or get the sales process – from which they benefit about 3 times more than I do (about £4 to my £1.40) – going smoothly. Power Chords has been on their system for a fortnight or so. I repeat that I had been warned that glitches do happen: but clear errors and painfully prolonged issues affecting their bottom line as well as mine clearly should not.

I haven’t checked elsewhere, other than Waterstones – who, to their credit, had the book live and buyable before Amazon did. Power Chords appears to be available through Waterstones website. I think.

Further update: 25th Nov 2025. One day *after* Publication Day. Again the hugely gratifying feeling of lurv flowing towards me – some of it from people I’ve never met. (This on various socials). After those genuinely painful contacts with Amazon, where I got relatively close to claiming compensation from them, having been slightly steered thattaway by someone on their staff*. (*Notes to universe. They raised the notion of compensation for the 10-12 days where Power Chords disappeared. Their Whatsapp Team sent through a form to apply; at which point I thought ‘know what? These clowns prob’ly should reimburse me for the hassle and the lost book-sales’. But the form looked a bit suspicious. Fearing an admittedly rather elaborate scam, I withdrew). Still don’t know the truth of that scene… because I swore to myself to waste no further energy on Amazon.

Eventually – I think on the eve of Publication Day, and after my publishers had pushed back on behalf of several of their authors, all experiencing systems failures – something clicked. We were back live and buyable.

Of course this is all linked to the pre-Christmas rush to get books to market. Zillions of us have been drawn towards that flame. I could claim that the two dates I built my ‘sales campaign’ around – my dad’s birthday, 24 Oct, then mine, 24 Nov – absolve me of the crime of capito-cynicism but whatever. Power Chords went out ‘before Christmas’. But Amazon, with their unlimited resources, should have a) been completely aware of any building avalanche and b) taken the necessary avoiding action. They didn’t. It was, for me, crap. Weirdly, as if some algorithmic apology was tripping out, two of my brothers received the copies that they’d ordered from Amazon on Publication Day, rather than the two or three days afterwards which had seemed likely (and acceptable). Go figure.

Hey. Can only apologise for the overdose of indulgence here. You may not believe it but lots of this really isn’t about me. 1. Am really not driven by money. 2. Entirely happy to be an obscure geezer writing obscurely. But 3. I do know that there are other people out there considering publishing or self-publishing routes. I hope that some of the above offers some ideas of some of the pitfalls and the pleasures – which do exist – within this particular sphere of the capitalist universe. It’s great. And it’s as shite as the rest of it. Good luck.