I’m a Liverpool fan. If you know anything about football you will be aware of the intensity of rivalry between Liverpool and Manchester United - it borders on hatred, but thankfully, there have not been any major incidents or flashpoints between fans for a decade or more.

Unfortunately for me and my team, “we” got beaten by Manchester United at Old Trafford on Sunday by a last minute header from the laconic, but indispensable Rio Ferdinand. He misses drug tests, but manages to turn up for the last minute of a crucial game to win it for his team. Fair enough.

A lot has been made in certain quarters of Gary Neville’s apparently over the top goal celebration. Some people are ccalling it an incitement to violence. (Maybe he could be prosecuted under the new ant-terrorist legislation). Did he spit at a fan? Did he punch the referee? Did he urinate on a Liverpool mascot? No. He ran almost the lenth of the pitch to the Liverpool end to kiss his shirt.

Look, I dislike Manchester United as much as the next person. OK, maybe not the next person, because the next person is a Londoner and those who haven’t jumped onto the Chelsea-turncoat-bandwagon are invariably Manchester United fans. The point is, I probably detest Manchester United as much as any scouser. When “we” were beaten in the 1977 F.A. Cup Final, 2 goals to 1, when we could have won the ttreble of European Cup, League Division 1 title (those were the days!) and F.A. Cup, but ended up with the only slightly less noble double of Division One Championship and European Cup, I cried. Yes, I cried.

So it will come as a source of profound disbelief to other Liverpool fans to find me siding with Neville on his recent escapade. His team won. He gets stick. What did he do that was so wrong? It’s not like he kung-fu kicked some fan in the head in the style of his erstwhile Gallic comrade. Do we want all our footballers to behave like Michael Owen? I didn’t think so.

Let him celebrate. It’s football. Passion should not be bled out of the game.

“They” still won’t finish above “us” in the Premiership. And they finished bottom of their group in the Champions League, thus eliminating them from any further part in any European contest this season. So it’s not all bad news Liverpool fans, is it?

(Saw the following today and wondered how this country can live with itself.)

Harpers has a chilling excerpt from a radio communication transcript between an Israeli company commander and his subordinates. The commander is facing a three-year sentence in prison.

SENTRY: We spotted an Arab female about 100 meters below our emplacement, near the light armored vehicle gate.
HEADQUARTERS: Observation post “Spain,” do you see it?
OBSERVATION POST: Affirmative, it’s a young girl. She’s now running east.
…
HQ: Are you talking about a girl under ten?
OP: Approximately a ten-year-old girl.
…
cc [to HQ]: We fired and killed her. She has . . . wearing pants . . . jeans and a vest, shirt. Also she had a kaffiyeh on her head. I also confirmed the kill. Over.
HQ: Roger.
CC [on general communications band]: Any motion, anyone who moves in the zone, even if it’s a three-year-old, should be killed. Over.

I should explain. Bed and Breakfast is Paki Rhyming Slang (that’s made up too) for “B&B”. Of course, B&B are Bliar and Bushler. Two of the biggest Satan-fuckees this planet has ever had the misfortune of getting fucked over by.

Oh, the picture? It’s how we in the civilised West treat the enemy. This is our humanity. Oh, we gang-rape women, we cluster-bomb civilian villages, we use napalm variants on children and we carpet bomb mountain-dwellers. Civilised, aren’t we? That’s how we carry people, on C130 transporter craft, to various torture centres around the world, including the oh-so-civilised-Qur’an-flushing-rock-playing-nipple-shocking-Gitmo.

This is our humanity. This is what marks us out as civilised compared to those barbarians who are trying to take away our freedoms. Except that we have no freedom. What we do have, is freedom from napalm. For now.

Look, we trashed Afghanistan because they wouldn’t hand over Bin Laden. They didn’t hand him over, because they didn’t have to, it’s their sodding country. And they probably couldn’t find him anyway. So what did we do? We bombed them back to the erm, they were already in the stone age, weren’t they? Anyway, we fucking showed them.

What remains to be asked, with some legitimate and wholly justified concern over the death of fair-play it should be added, is simply this:

What was to stop Chile cluster bombing the shit out of us when we didn’t hand Pinochet back?

RESIGN, PAEDOPHILE EVANGELIST!

Dear America,

You have just struck a village in Pakistan, killing 18 innocent people. Pakistan is your ally, thanks to your post-colonial-stoolie Musharraf, you stupid numb-nut monkey-minded-morons - or had you forgotten who your allies are - with your eyes clouded by your own bullshit fumes? Wait - you’re the inept morons who killed more of our British soldiers in the first Gulf War than the enemy managed. The only place you ever win a war is in a Hollywood movie.

Fuck you America. May your country burn with the pain of self-awareness - awareness of what you have become and what you now stand for. May you all experience what you have caused others to suffer. May the (just under) half of America that is still decent, survive the coming hell you will surely face and rebuild it anew, in the spirit about which you boast, but without the hollowness or duplicity that hangs around you like a fart in a lift.

What are you going to do when a billion plus Muslims finally have had enough of your evil and lies? You have killed without reason, the world knows that, and you know what? You have lost. You have lost the moral high ground, you have lost the respect of the world and you have lost the war in Iraq. A war that was illegal and a war that you knew was illegal. Hell, generals the world over think the leadership of Britain and America should be impeached for mocking the ideals of war - if there can be such a thing.

Remember you oppressors of humanity - Muslims love death like you love life. You can never, ever crush our faith. We believe in a better future. You believe in selfishness, arrogance, totalitarianism disguised by Fox TV and you believe in your own superiority. Your hubris will destroy you. You don’t understand the selflessness of our way. You call it a cult of death, but that shows just how shallow your understanding is. Allow me to explain a bit of it…

Ever seen how a father in an Islamic country lives on when you or your Zionist fuckbuddies have killed his entire family? Still with faith, still with hope, still with love - and without Jerry Springer, CNN or a season of 24. That is what we mean by loving death more than life. You will never get it. You will lose your empire before you understand.

You wonder why peopple hate you? You have got the ordinary Muslim hating your evil ways now. I’m sure most decent Americans didn’t want that. The moderates are looking at you and wondering when your empire will fall and make way for something better. You are decadent, wasted, culturally moribund and ethically bankrupt. You will end.

May it be soon, insha’Allah - and may something less greedy, less fat, and less SUV take your place. Ameen.

Eid Mubarak to all readers.

Today is Eid-ul-Adha. I went to my local mosque and met a dear friend from out of town and we prayed together.

We had a long chat over coffee about the state of Islam and the West. It was wonderful. Food for the mind - always an inspiration, I am lucky to have such a friend.

On a separate note, I hear that they have detected some brain activity in Ariel Sharon. That will be a first then. Seriously though, I hope he makes a partial recovery and suffers for a while before meeting his protege, Satan, in Sharon’s real promised land, hell.

It will be interesting to see if the next leader has as much blood on his hands, but it’s not so likely. With the old guard pretty much gone, Israel could go in a number of directions. I hope for the sake of its people, they elect someone a bit more forward thinking. Shame they killed Rabin, he was moving the country in the right direction.

Anyhow, enough on a subject I’m not qualified to write about - I hope you all have a good day.

The day started off poorly. The first three buses from Cricklewood to Kilburn were full and sailed by, the occupants no doubt happy that they weren’t to be subjected to further squashing indignities. Meanwhile, the throng at the bus stop swelled to 80+. Nobody queues for buses anymore, despite what AA Gill says in “The Angry Island”. And anyway, when was the last time he took a bus do you think?

The motley bunch of bus-riders assembled at the Cricklewood broadway bus-stop, like any other bus-stop, throng. Throng like third-worlders waiting for the aid truck to chuck a bursting bag of rice at them. The fittest get on first, the old, the sick, the disabled, the kids and mums get on last. No queue. No order. just survival of the fittest.

The fourth bus accommodated me and part of the swelling throng. We didn’t make it very far before a temporary traffic light claimed our morning. As we approached the lights, the driver unwilling to let anyone off, despite the fact that a veritable plague of cyclists and a flock of pedestrians had overtaken us; I saw that the small area at the top of Shoot-up-Hill (Crawl-up-Hill most days) that was the cause of the temporary lights had nothing happening there whatsoever. It had taken us half an hour to do a three minute journey. I was late. I was not happy.

At the summit, the driver urged us off the bus, indicating that those wanting Kilburn station should walk the rest of the way. Then halfway down the hill, he overtook us in the clear bus lane. Thanks.

It had taken me 35 minutes to get to the station. Fortunately, the Jubilee line is (usually) excellent.

“Thank you for choosing the Jubilee Line Service. We aks (sic) you to mind the gap between the train and the platform” announced the lady driver of the train, ever so politely, but still innocently betraying her heritage through the transposition of the letters “k” and “s” in a three-letter-word that she should have been corrected on at school if the teachers weren’t such pathetic liberals. You don’t hear Sir Trevor McDonald fucking up a three letter word.

Anyway, we had no choice in the line. So please stuff your pathetic customer services crusade - and do try not to sound like an airline captain, because you are a striking idiot who brings misery to Londoners, even though you get paid more than me for driving something most boys managed quite happily aged five.

The train then sailed past Baker Street as we were informed that due to some passenger-initiated emergency (that’s right, blame it on the passengers - poor workmen etc. - except that you London Underground - are the tools) we would not be stopping at my station. I watched the empty platform helplessly as I was reminded, painfully, that my past treks on buses were no preparation for daily commuter-rush-hour-hell.

The day got better. It had to.

I left the office for a walk to Duke Street St. James during my lunch break. The air was crisp and the streets were lively. The darkness of the oppressive, smog-seeded clouds was held in check by the sheer force of hope of the buried and distant sun.

It whispered a promise of spring and I hoped it would return my call, but my hopes were fading like the light.

It strained as hard as it could for an hour to keep Londoners free of the will of the night, but no sooner had my lunch hour expired than did the sun’s hope. Darkness was beginning to descend. The afternoon blurred into the evening in the space of a lunch-break and the long winter night was waiting, like a tax-collector, or the grim-reaper even.

I paused to exit Davidoff to allow a swiftly walking, stick-aided gentleman of advanced years by. He was pushing 70, not daisies, so let’s hope he keeps the daisies off longer than the sun is currently keeping darkness off. He thanked me. In a perfect, distinguished, English accent. Perfect, clipped tones. Richard Baker would have been proud. And I smiled broadly and answered “You’re welcome”.

I love London sometimes. It was a beautiful, haunting evocative afternoon. Like being shown a world where you used to live, but all of the people you knew have gone. A life review. A city review. The bright lights after the white light at the end of the tunnel.

By the time my walk back to the office was done, it was measurably colder, but hope still burned somewhere. I could smell it, like a distant smoke signal, or maybe even a raging fire. Somewhere. Soon.

Happy New Year. Welcome back.

You don’t get much in a bag of crisps nowadays, do you? This is a 25g bag, freshly opened. I’m sure they used to be fuller and heavier. Missus.

When I was a ten-year-old, space travel was a believable dream for kids of my generation. We thought the speed of light was a barrier just like any other, there to be broken, not just in the realms of science fiction, but in reality. We thought Asimov and Clarke were documenting the future.

We are a generation betrayed. Our hopes were greater, our potential mightier than any generation before. What have we made, what have our parents made? A dystopian nightmare where the rich get tax breaks they won’t spend and the poor aren’t helped with money they need to spend.

So what has this got to do with a bag of crisps? Well, it’s about the crushing of hope on the back of a fraud that everyone sees and nobody opens their mouths about. I am hopeful. And I am going to start building on the hope by continuing to talk about the naked emperors and the empty bags of crisps.

Not that I should be eating crisps anyway…

I had a Blogger problem a while back and I’ve had a few minor problems with Midphase, my ISP. The value on both of these is terrific of course - Blogger is free and midphase, for what they offer, good. However, right now I can’t update my template and this is reflected in the ugly mess you get on the right hand side when you come to my site.

What is concerning is that after my recent attempts to re-publish just my index, that this post won’t come up to explain the problem. Sorry for the mess.

(Update: I got in touch with Midphase who have cleared space off the server that hosts my domain. Worrying given that I was only using a hundred megs when they supposedly have 3 gigs allocated to me. I understand that it’s all done dynamically, but still! This time, Blogger wasn’t at fault, which is just as well. When it’s a midphase problem, their customer support gets me going within hours. When it’s Blogger, it can take more than a week, and you’re not really a customer, so they don’t really care)