Wednesday 30 May 2012

City are champions, but at what cost?


The football season ended not so long ago in what was probably the most dramatic finish ever witnessed by man. As a whole this Premier League season has probably been the most bizarre one yet with more twists and turns than a day at Alton Towers.

It started off with Manchester United thoroughly thrashing everyone including the hapless Arsenal before losing steam completely, getting knocked out of the Champions League, getting knocked out of the Europa League, fumbling their way to a massive 8 point lead before finally throwing it all away and handing their big rivals City the title.

Yep, Manchester City are Premier League champions for the first time in 44 years. Do they deserve it? Well of course they do, they finished top of the league thanks to goal difference and so they deserved to be crowned champions. Though they had blips of their own this season, knocked out of both European competitions and several stumbles in the Premier League, they were the better side overall and did do the double over United.

Saturday 19 May 2012

Football: a window into the bowels of society.

Football can be a horrible realm at times and although it is just a game it can sometimes act as a window into society. This season alone we’ve seen that racism is far from being eradicated with the treatment of Patrice Evra by a fellow professional and that being of high status will result in preferential treatment by the criminal justice system.

If nothing else, these events that occur within football show that certain things are seen as unacceptable by society. For example Luis Suarez was wholeheartedly condemned by every corner of the footballing universe and beyond (with the exception of Anfield) for abusing Evra and when university student Liam Stacey made unpleasant remarks about Fabrice Muamba during and after his horrible heart attack playing for Bolton in the FA Cup he wasn’t only condemned, he was thrown behind bars for 56 days.

Tuesday 1 May 2012

Keeping in Touch.

It’s local election time again on Thursday so it isn’t much of a surprise to see those familiar red, blue and yellow coloured leaflets popping through letterboxes across the country, each one attempting to persuade us all to vote for so-and-so in any way possible.

My local area has predominantly been Liberal Democrat territory for many a year both in both local and national level. Andrew Stunell has been the local MP for 15 years now and they’ve controlled the local council for a very long while with my councillor in particular being a Lib Dem too. His name is Dave Goddard and he’s the leader of Stockport Council.

Now, I’ve voted Lib Dem at every single local election in the past but on Thursday my cross will not be going into Goddard’s box. Not because the Lib Dems voted in favour of the student fee increase, though that would usually be a good enough reason, but because the communications representing his campaign are disgusting.