Starmer

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.

(Back to the glorious days of psycho-political meandering). Nailed-on certain.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

(Pic I think from Sky News).

Was nailed-on certain that today was Saturday. So gently building to a crescendo of sports-fixated lounging: really looking forward to that, on a shocker of a day. (Can hear the wind in the window-frames; have heard the Doomsday Revisited forecast but it’s only raining intermittently here. Sounds like some folks will be in trouble).

Have no car – not on the road, currently – and am still in one of those No Expenditure Moments until a wee wedge of money lands with me in about three weeks, meaning really eeking-out stuff. Sometimes that’s hard to the point of depressing but it’s also enjoyable and kinda sustaining – or the bit where I walk two miles to get food from the farm shop is – as is the longer walk to see family, *actually speak to people* and maybe partake of caffeine in the village. Both yomps are medium-lovely, through farmland, down a quiet minor road. I’m doing both as a form of discipline, and to earn the right to food and possibly coffee.

Might be too gross out there to do the walk today, but that was kinda factored-in to yesterday’s purchase of an oggi (non-taffs go search) and milk from the farm shop. I think I now have a nourishment kit for the day, and ju-ust enough coffee to build a cafetiere-sized supply, which I’m not remotely addicted-to, but I do enjoy the indulgence in taste, time and slo-mo gestation that comes with a brew that lasts forty minutes. (Yes I do make hot milk in an old pan. In a farmhouse kitchen. Checking in on the cattle in the quilt of fields thrown delightfully but damply around the place. And how is Swindon, today?)

I look forward to and really value the two or three cups of coffee, knowing I’m only going to do that once every other day or so: that it really is an indulgence. And yes – interestingly or sadly or something – that filling of time is important… and kindof enriching.

Maybe I should explain that? It’s in the current context of a life temporarily very much in Struggling Artist Mode. (And sure, you can take that however you like: I know how feeble it might sound. But it’s true that I’ve part-chosen, part fallen-in to living day-to-day, working part-time and having or needing lumps of headspace. To write books, asitappens).

The thought suddenly strikes that walking may have been a more essential part of the thinking/writing process than I have given it credit for. Although we all know that we promenade or yomp or jog or whatever partly to give us ‘time to think’, yes?

Having finished my third book not too many months ago, and despite being in the throes of ‘publicising it’, I have the luxury RIGHT NOW of whole days where I don’t have to do anything. Meaning I can absolutely choose to make them feel productive or meaningful in any way I want.

Ten days ago I read three books about golf in crazy-quick succession. Initially partly out of loyalty to a good mate who leant me them, but then entirely because they were brilliant and even revelatory stories, about genuinely great sportsmen (largely), between about 1900 and 1950.

I’m not particularly a golf fan – except during the Ryder Cup – and rarely play, but was genuinely captivated by Mark Frost’s storytelling and I learned many things. Like why my pal thinks this time period was special: because men (in sport and in general) had a particular kind of humility and honour that we can barely even talk about, without drawing performatively unstifled yawns. And how sensational and god-like and yet quiet was the genius and talent and application of Vardon/Jones/Nelson/Snead etc etc. So we should in a sense celebrate and even grieve their passing and the passing of that era of innocence. Or certainly respect the simple truths – I bet you could guess at them? – that they would not transgress.

Yes. I was proper-collared by the integrity and courage and inviolable goodness of many of the protagonists in those books. And it will both re-inforce my inclination to call out shit-housery and cheating in modern sport and (therefore) expose me as a reactionary clown to many of my contemporaries. Those guys are worth it and so are these daft games of ours.

All of which points a sort of conservatism, or worse. But no. I am absolutely not advocating for a Better Time Now Lost, in a wider or more general sense. And I hope to (your) god(s) that arguing for the existence of certain perennial truths is not the same as *being a reactionary.*

Whatever. Life IS more complex now, because we do know more and we ARE more aware. These should not be bad things. Family life has changed; the whole idea of careers-for-life and of typical lives or a sort of common level of perceived happiness or acceptance has lurched somewhere new and different.

There were World Wars in the period of those books, so difficult and maybe obscene to suggest that our own multifarious predicaments can remotely compare to that, but it’s likely true that our (yes I’m talking as though there is some universal ‘we’, which I know is a nonsense, but) our headspaces are, percentage-wise, as traumatised or deluded or numb as ever. There *really is* a mental health epidemic. They’re not the only ones culpable but media and the internet really are colluding – not entirely but significantly – towards a dehumanised flux where, having been coached towards apathy or bigotry, we don’t recognise truths of any sort. The codes that we have followed are obscured.

Many of us are too entrapped by the images we see or want to project to penetrate moral, political or philosophical truths. In the standout distraction of the moment, most of us are being coaxed towards hating or fearing The Other. The BBC endlessly platforms Farage, enabling a xenophobically-driven Brexit and the rise of one-issue politics. Starmer wins then capitulates. Trump and Musk make White Supremacism kinda fashionable again – or possible. Immigrants – that we in the UK need; that statistically and culturally and practically contribute – are demonised. Thiel and Murdoch and Bannon and the arch technocrats stoke the pot: they get to control the ether. And in maybe another standout feature of contemporary life, almost no politicians have the guts or integrity to call them out.

All these things are in my head. It’s why I walk and why I write. (Why my current book is about Angels of Protest). I think we need to re-position truths that should have been everlasting, about decency and commitment and hope.

This is no party political broadcast but Polanski (UK, Greens leader, for those at a distance) is most notably calling-in most of these messages. Racism is nailed-on wrong. Obscene wealth – the sort that utterly controls dominions of thought and opportunity – is nailed-on wrong. Austerity, the shameful charade that protects obscene wealth, is nailed-on wrong. We must act, in whatever way we can, upon these things.

I’ve never voted for anything other than a progressive party in my life. Genuinely most people I know could not vote Labour at this time, because Starmer has been so weak and unprincipled generally, and particularly around Gaza and issues of race. He and Reeves have also been pathetically and intransigently protective of the wealthy and super-wealthy. Polanski, on the other hand, has been smashing it out of the park. Now coffee.

The personal and the possible.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

The personal stuff. A Tory-free Wales. Pembrokeshire red. (Grimsby red, too!) Feels almost great.

Deeply pleased that not just my own former MP – Crabb, Pembs – but every Conservative clown or thug or xenophobe has been cleared-out, from Haverfordwest to Harlech. This is a triumph, of sorts.

Watched Neil Kinnock on the tellybox, last night. Really interesting. For one thing he was beautifully and next-level articulate: he was also bold and honest enough to target the appalling behaviours he views as being central to the debacle. Nellie bach nailed the badness of the central characters, without needing to name Johnson and Braverman and Truss. We all know what kind of people they are. Kinnock described the ‘revulsion’ we feel for their entitlement, their mendacity, their cheap and shameless waving of that race-card as a symbol of electable(?) single-policy hatred. Good, finally, to hear a prominent Labour figure express the obvious: that policies matter but so does decency – so do morals. We can be better than that.

Strangely now, (or maybe not?), I’ve heard Conservatives finally and belatedly call this out, too. George Osborne had moments of clarity and decency, during last night’s coverage. As did Buckland, this morning. They both directly addressed the sleazy-shiftiness, the shittiness, the behaviours that characterised Johnson-ism and its corrupted hinterland. So if we get into reasons for the Tory wipeout, for the scuppering of twelve Conservative Ministers, for the quiet, seamless ushering-in of the Low-thrumming Starmer Machine, we maybe can or should park political ideologies… and look at urges and feelings.

Cannot stand Farge and deeply resent the platform offered to him. Would go so far as to say that I hold the BBC partly responsible for Brexit, on account of the ridicu-level of airtime the boorish dunderhead received – chiefly, of course, on Newsnight. That airtime felt suspicious to the point of being corrupt. (Oof. That word again). The media generally have been heavily guilty of making Farage the story and thereby changing the story. Extraordinarily, editors have baulked at challenging the wrongness and badness at the heart of his ‘schtick’: instead they have courted and thereby encouraged racism in the ether. This has been a signature disgrace.

Wales has a concerning number of crass right-wing citizens – hang on, let’s call them what they are; racists – so following the vote-counts the story here has already been twisted towards ‘Reform Success’. That’s the headline: not the fact that there will be no Reform MP’s within Wales. Similarly, there is and will be a disproportionate dollop of coverage across the nations. It will be noted that folks have voted ‘in protest’ at the government’s manifest failures. They’ve ‘struck out in anger’, (bless ’em).

The fact (and it is surely a fact?) that the overwhelming number of Reform ‘supporters’ are dumb, effectively apolitical xenophobes-plus will continue to stew but remain unsayable. This is problematic territory: people have the right to protest but racism (and the advancement of what we euphemistically label ‘populist policies’) is and are stupid and wrongheaded. In fact they are just plain wrong. Wilful, negligent, cowardly or overt support or appeasement of Farage has put us here – in a place where danger lurks. The media have served us badly, again.

But hey. Reform are not the story: the Tory Wipeout is. There are no Conservative MPs in Wales. They have been decimated everywhere else. This is a profound change for the better. Starmer has steered Labour with caution but some skill. I nearly couldn’t vote for him – but did. His blandness and that whole deliberate strategic policy-vacuum-thing did my head in but worked. Retreats on green-ness and social policy are concerning; his invisibility then appeasement on Gaza was appalling. His complicity in the wretched and everlasting demonisation of Corbyn* is an embarrassment and insult to the collective intelligence. But he’s used these things (godammit) to win big.

*Where is the Corbyn victory story, in the media, by the way? Mysteriously lost)*.

There is almost no chance that even with a super-majority, Starmer will shift towards the transformational change previously aspired-to. This is another, ‘realist’-centrist new Labour. Despite using the word relentlessly, the new Prime Minister knows he can’t afford to change much – even if he had the appetite. No dosh for Big Projects; not really. But the fella is cute enough to know that decent, steady politics will douse most of the fires. There will always be racists and dumbos: we must all hope their urges can be appeased or defused by good governance and improving circumstances. Not easy; not swiftly achieved; but possible. I wish Starmer and Labour well.

pic from BBC.