So we are now two weeks into 2024. How has it been for you so far? We've all had a week or two back in 'the swing of things', or not as we are all skint after Xmas, the weather has been either cold or wet and we have that collective hangover known as 'dry January'. I always take two weeks off booze at the start of the year. This year, I allowed myself a couple of days off this. Last Sunday, I went up to Manchester to watch City play in the FA Cup with my son. Having paid a silly amount of money for the train, ticket etc, I thought it would be silly not to 'enjoy' the day. We had a pint before, a pint at the game and a couple after, before getting the train back to London. Then on Wednesday, we went down to Clanfield in Hampshire for a night. We stay in a hotel called The Hampshire Hog, which is dog friendly and by the South Downs. We had a couple of amazing walks on the Downs and on Thursday we visited Bosham, on Chichester Harbour which is lovely. On Saturday night, I shared a bottle of wine with the family. Again, I felt that the circumstances justified it. As I started the fortnight a day early on December 31st, I felt I had some leeway. If I took the amount I normally drink on New Years Eve, it would be less than these two relatively moderate days.
Tonight I go to see 999 at the Resolution Festival at The 100 Club. This was the day I designated that I would start drinking again. I've not made my mind up yet as to whether I'll have a pint or not. I am quite enjoying not drinking. Since I had surgery for Prostate cancer in August, I've not really enjoyed drinking in the way I did previously. Yesterday, I went to watch Hadley FC play Waltham Abbey in the Isthmian League. I had three pints of Guinness Zero. It was an amazing game, with Hadlye scoring a dramatic winner in the last minute, in a 4-3 thriller and I can honestly say that I didn't miss drinking at all. I then went home and watched Manchester City play Newcastle on TV. I joked to my son that I hoped City didn't shred my nerves in the way Hadley had. Again it was a brilliant game, with five of the best goals you will see this season and another last minute winner. Normally I may have had a drink as I watched, but I had a cup of decaf tea. The sheer stress of watching a tight and important game of football, where there is real jeopardy, and you have a stake invested is one of the most stressful feelings of all. I joked to one of my mates at Hadley, that it was good that Waltham Abbey brought the game to 3-3, after Hadley lead 3-1, as it made the final victory all the sweeter. In truth, until Jordan Edwards banged the winner in, I felt completely different.
I sometimes wonder why I like football. Nothing in my life has made me more miserable. There were 36 years when Manchester City were rubbish. I lost count of the relegation, the false dawns, the managers, but still I supported them, with the blind faith that one day things would be better. 25 years ago, I saw them at Wembley in the third tier play off final against Gillingham. They were 2-0 down in the 89th minute, heading for another season in the doldrums, when in a famous comeback, they made it 2-2 and won on penalties. When I came out of Wembley, I was frazzled. I took my nine year old nephew along. In the 110th minute, he told me his heart was racing and he thought he was having a heart attack. I explained that this was excitement, and only football can do this to you.
But why do we put ourselves through the pain? I love music, there are ecstatic highs, but no jeopardy. If I had no interest in Football and had just been a muso, my life would have been infinitely happier. No weekends, sitting in the dark, with curtains drawn, as City get relegated again. When City won at Wembley, I'd have said you were insane, if you'd told me that in 25 years time, they'd win the treble and be world club champions and have a bigger turnover than Manchester United. My dream at the time was that they'd be in the Premier League and occasionally win a cup and score the odd victory at Old Trafford. Anything more seemed ridiculous. But this reflection is not about football, although I have used football as an analogy.
Things change. Human beings are strange things. We adapt to change, almost seamlessly. Things that seemed permanent turn to dust. Things that seem trivial and insignificant, turn out to be monumental. I grew up in the 60's and 70's. It was the time of the cold war. There were two superpowers. The USA and the USSR. This had been the order since the second world war. Then the USSR simply disintegrated. I watched Caesar recently. Before he came along, Rome had a stable government run by the Senate, for 500 years. Within a decade Caesar had destroyed the model. The Roman Empire was the original superpower, but a few centuries later, it simply dissolved. I could never understand how that happened.
Last year, Queen Elisabeth died. Consider her reign. When she became the monarch, Winston Churchill was PM and Great Britain ruled much of Africa and many other far flung places. When she passed away, Rishi Sunak was Prime Minister and it is not even clear whether the UK will survive the reign of her successor. Why do Empires, dynasties and even successful football teams fall apart? Surely the people who run these organisations can read? Surely they study history books and acquaint themselves with why things can fall apart so suddenly? Back to Football analogies. In the 1960's Manchester United were the finest team in the land, under Sir Matt Busby. He retired and they were rubbish for the best part of two decades, even being relegated. It was only when Alex Ferguson came in, that they reclaimed their crown, one which as the richest club in England, logic said they should never have lost. Ferguson overcame all, until he retired. What happened then? Exactly what happened under Busby, the success ended and the club had a succession of managers, none of whom could harness the huge resources to produce a consistently successful team. Did the owners not read what happened after Busby and thing "Lets sort the succession out this time and not have a decade in the wilderness". It seems that the people who seek power are not interested in learning the lessons of history. Historians end up becoming professors, the people who run things are often borderline psychopaths, who believe they know better and there are no lessons to learn.
But as to why things fall apart so spectacularly, so quickly, that is far too simplistic a solution. Take the latest crisis. Most of us would have struggled to identify Yemen on an atlas two weeks ago. As to the Hoothi's, when I first heard of them, they sounded like a tribe from a silly Carry on Film in the 60's. We no so little about them, that we don't know their leaders name, what they want and why we are bombing them, beyond the fact that they launch missiles at ships. Surely there is more to it than that? It reminds me of when the UK went to war with Argentina over the Falklands. Before the war, almost no one had heard of them. No one knew about the dispute with Argentina. Out of nowhere, we had a war with a huge death toll and thousands injured. What was the lesson learned? At the time, papers such as The Sun and The Mail said it was that we should never have "run down the Royal Navy". Was the lesson learned? The Navy is now a quarter of the size it was then. The first major act of David Cameron, in regards to defence, was to scrap the Harrier jump jets that saved the Falklands. This meant that we were the only country ever to have aircraft carriers with no planes to fly off them. How on earth could we have such a stupid situation?
:Look at the UK today. We've spent billions on a railway, that was meant to connect London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. They bought the land, signed contracts and then gave up, wasting billions. It is clear to me that it will eventually be built and cost even more. I use trains all the time and I follow the industry. What makes me say this? Well look at the line that goes through Mill Hill, the Thameslink line. When it was opened in the 1980's and it became clear it was a major part of London's transport infrastructure, the powers that be realised it needed to be done properly and a huge project was set up to realise the potential that the route had. It was called "Thameslink 2000" as the new, upgraded line would be completed in the year 2000. The government prevaricated. It was only when the channel tunnel link was moved to St Pancras, that the government spent the money enabling the project to be done. It was finally completed in 2017. It cost ten times what the original estimates. What it delivered is the UK's busiest railway. Why? Why is it that we, the UK never learns. What is it that means that we don't learn.
I have come to realise that HS2/Thameslink gives an insight into why Empires crumble. The problem is that the people who make decisions are not interested in anything else other than the present. We elect parliament for a maximum of five years. A project such as Thameslink/HS2 lasts two or three times this. As such, the people who initiate the scheme are long gone by the time its delivered. When problems and cost overruns happen, the current incumbents see a quick political win by cancelling necessary projects. This then means that the country gets more inefficient and less able to function. The bureaucrats running the show, rather than learning become ever more risk averse, until the point where nothing gets done and the empire crumbles. The trouble is that you don't realise that the inside is rotten and not working until it falls apart. The examples of this go beyond HS2 etc. One of the reasons that Manchester United have lost their gloss is that Old Trafford is literally falling apart. The owners have not invested in it. What was once the finest stadium in the land has a laky roof, uncomfortable seats and feels derelict. City fans gleefully chant "Old Trafford is falling down". As to the UK's armed services. The Navy simply doesn't have the tools to mount an operation like the Falklands today. God help us, if we ever find ourselves in such a situation where we need our armed forces to face down an existential threat to the UK, because we'd run out of bullets, tanks, planes and ships in no time at all and we have no industries to rebuild them.
I sometimes wonder what the UK will be like in 50 years. I am now sixty one. I had the same thoughts when I was eleven, in 1973. I didn't foresee the internet, mobile phones, the downfall of the USSR, Brexit, The Falklands war, Ryanair, Global warming, Covid, Lockdowns, Hong Kong returning to China, Thameslink whisking me from Mill Hill to Brighton. I thought we'd have colonies on the Moon and Mars. I thought we'd have next generation supersonic Jumbo jets, building on the Concorde design, whisking us to Australia in two hours. My biggest fears were nuclear war. The UK was going into the Common Market and I thought we'd all be proud Europeans and not need passports.
When I look at the world today, I find it impossible to work out how we got here. We put a man on the moon in 1969, no one has been back for over 50 years. We still have passports and it takes longer than ever to get through airports. Global warming took over from Nuclear war (although it is making a comeback), passenger planes are no quicker than in 1973 and we don't even have Concorde. It all makes no sense to me. How did we end up here? When the Berlin wall came down, I felt that we were on the verge of a period of peace, unparalleled in history. Look where we are now? At the start of this blog, I asked why I put myself through the stress of 90 minutes watching football. The truth is that only the stress I experienced yesterday lifts truly distracts me from the fact that human beings are extraordinarily good at buggering things up. Why do we never learn? The sad truth is that there is no answer.
All we can really do as individuals on a planet with 8 billion people on is to try and get through as best we can. With that thought, I leave you and suggest that if you need cheering up, come and see my band, The False Dots on Friday 3rd February at The Dublin Castle. It is our 45th Birthday party. When we started James Callaghan was the PM and we were in the tail end of the Winter of Discontent. Scary really
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