I’ve been there. I know what it’s like to try to become well read. I understand that it all seems so daunting, almost overwhelming. You can feel like you need to be well read, or at the very least highly educated, before you can even attempt to read classic literature. But you don’t. It’s easier than you think. So where should you begin? This series is here to help you, to walk you through the veritable minefield that is classic literature.

Why should you choose to read classic literature? Classic literature is the best of the best from a bygone era. It offers a glimpse into our former social habits and customs, the foundations of our modern society and intellectual reasoning. In coming to understand those times and people, you will know our modern life better.

photo of Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott was a maverick thinker, activist and writer. She fervently believed in and actively worked for women’s suffrage, the abolition of slavery and integrated schooling - boys and girls, blacks and whites educated together. She was a woman who was unafraid of the world, or of being alone in it. Famously a spinster, a fate worse than death for most women of the 1860s, Louisa May was unconcerned and even uninterested in others opinions of her unmarried status and explained it once in a interview saying “I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man”.

She came by these feelings and beliefs quiet naturally. The bohemian world in which she was raised was filled with forward thinkers, liberal minds and unorthodox educators; most notably her father, the philosopher, educator and influential Transcendentalist, Bronson Alcott. Bronson surrounded his young family with the people who would help to direct and shape the modern world, people like Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Margaret Fuller. So it may come as a surprise that she should write a book full of such strong conventional, even traditional values.

Little Women was not Alcott’s first book, but it is by far her most well known. Considered her seminal work, Little Women was originally published in two parts in 1868 and 1869, part two was titled Good Wives in the UK and Europe and still is in most cases — an important fact if you’re looking for just one book, when what you really need is both books.  It revolves around the life of four sisters Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March and is based heavily on her own life in Concord, Massachusetts in the family home Orchard House.

photo of Orchard House by Leon H Abdalian

Alcott’s simple tale of four girls growing-up, learning to love each other and themselves, follows the group from early adolescence (Meg 16, Jo 15, Beth 13 and Amy 12) through to adulthood. Alcott’s moral message and the themes of family, god and simple pleasures can frequently feel a bit heavy handed to the point of preachy, but her charming characters, their fun and lively society and friends more than make-up for the moral battering you sometimes feel you’re receiving.

Main character Jo is the centre of this tale and obviously meant to be Alcott herself. This rambunctious, curious tomboy loves writing plays to be performed at home with her sisters for the sparse but appreciative audience of her Mother, Father and maid Hannah Mullet. These plays are a forerunner to the sensational stories she will eventually write and sell to the tabloid papers of the day, and form the cornerstone of her writer’s education.

Jo is the down to earth and sensible, but passionate, sister with sparse physical possessions and a grumpy distrust of physical beauty or societal attributes. Strong and independent, it is easy to see early feminist attitudes in the lovely Jo, although Alcott wouldn’t see that herself. Jo is all strong character with a wide stubborn streak, prickly on the outside, but tender, caring and kind on the inside. Although she tries to hide this softer side, all those who know her best help her protect this. Her sisters’ characters are all significantly different than Jo’s, which allows Alcott to teach her moral lessons. Each sister has a different strength and each suffers from a different character flaw.

Meg is the natural mother and her goals and desires mostly revolve around home, husband and children, but with a desire for material things that she will always struggle with.

Youngest sister Amy is blessed with natural grace and beauty. She is also possessed of a true artistic talent and instinctively understands and respects those little niceties of society that make her charming in company. Unlike Jo she understands the need to return social visits and be polite, holding her tongue rather than blurt out honest opinion, things Jo just can’t seem to comprehend.  But Amy is vain and strutting, spoiled by her sisters and her parents, who all indulge her in her little vanities.

Middle sister Beth is painfully shy and stoic, always labouring to ease her sister’s burden. She loves with an open innocent heart and is the person Jo will try to emulate but will never quiet succeed. Although her shyness prevents her from truly experiencing the fullness of life and love, Beth’s journey is fated to end far too soon. Beth and Jo have the special bond between helpless babe and protector, with both girls alternatively being either protector or vulnerable child. Jo and Beth share the most emotionally wrenching moment in the book and in their singular moment of need they will both comfort and be comforted until the end.

Although Little Women can feel a bit preachy and Christian-centric, the basic tale is one of love, self-improvement and family and is well presented. The Marches are a strong, close, loving family with their share of trials and tribulations. Alcott’s ability to convey the young girls’ personal catastrophe of not having the right gloves or dress is entertaining and enchanting and will evoke your own personal memories of adolescent devastation upon discovering a blemish on Prom Night or spinach stuck between your teeth on a first date.

The images and ideas are unmistakably of a century long gone and a life most of us wouldn’t even recognise, offering us a glimpse of the beginnings of recognisable contemporary social attitudes and the start of the classlessness and equality that society has worked so hard to finally achieve.

Yes, the Credit Crunch is coming home to roost.  Make no mistake, the recent events in the world financial markets have changed the world as we know it and it will never be the same again.  Everybody has been affected by the turmoil in the financial markets, directly or indirectly.  Rich and poor alike, in fact the rich have been hit so severely you can’t imagine.  This recession will be a great equaliser.

Free market philosophy has a lot going for it, but at times like this you have to question the underlying wisdom of this approach.  Purists would argue that we should let the markets sort themselves out but with the current downward spiral the obvious concern is that the world will rapidly disappear up its own backside.  The economy is rapidly coming to a standstill.  Banks won’t lend money to each other, yet alone you or me.  The housing market is dead and woe betide car manufacturers.

At the moment we are in a surreal phase where life is going on as normal.  Christmas is coming and the economies of the western world are still chugging along under the inertia of consumer spending, but what happens when the credit card bills arrive on the doormat in January?  2009 will be an uphill struggle for most, people will pull in their haunches and look to reduce their debt burden.  Consumer spending will slow rapidly and profit warnings from manufacturers and service providers will be plentiful.  Stocks will crash even more and the downward cycle will continue.

This recession has the potential to be deeper and longer than no other the world has ever known.  Yet I sense hope; there is so much talent out there, so many hard working , diligent, talented individuals bursting with enthusiasm and innovation that I cannot see how the downturn can last too long.  In addition, when recovery comes it will come in a way that has never happened before.  The standard of education, communication and technology will enable the realisation of smart business ideas in a way and with a pace that has never been seen before.  This time it will be an a truly global basis with more and more Third World nations participating.  I truly believe the world will be a better place with harmony and cooperation taking place like never before.

I see China and India as major players, no longer emerging markets but powerhouses of the new global economy.  Africa will also participate as there is so much untapped  potential there.  Turning the Sahara green will be the way to save the world from threats of global warming/climate change.  The deforestation in the Amazon will be offset by the greening of the Sahara.  True carbon offsetting. There will be a surplus of food and this can be used to make carbon neutral fuel.  A totally renewable source of carbon fuel which is effectively solar energy.  The new plants will extract carbon from the atmosphere, in exactly the same way as other plant life, but we will be revitalising an area of land that is totally wasted right now.  Sea water irrigation and salt resistant crops is the answer!

I see a brave new world where communication and cooperation are key.  Talented individuals will run their own businesses from the comfort of their own home/office whilst collaborating with their personal networks around the globe.  They will employ a few key workers and a few more service operators, plumbers, builders, gardeners, nannys and the like.

This is the new business model for the 21st century and you IT savvy, creative, problem solvers out there are at the heart of it, you can change the world with your innovative ideas and communication skills.  How many of you reading this are out of work right now, spending your waking hours searching the internet, looking for the right role?  With approximately 200 people applying for the same role as you, you would be right in thinking that the job market is extremely competitive right now.  Don’t worry, in the new world you will be masters of the Universe.  You just have to find your niche!

But all of that and more has happened. The names of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have become internationally known because of the crisis caused in the US by the collapse of the two giant mortgage lenders. I woke up recently to hear on the radio that the UK government has just bought a major interest in the Royal Bank of Scotland, where I am a customer. Job insecurity is no laughing matter, so I resisted the temptation to ask the friendly staff in my local branch how they felt about suddenly becoming civil servants; I just have to trust that the changes won’t affect their ability to look after my overdraft.

I’ve been saddened to hear about the effects of the financial crisis in Iceland, the most beautiful country I’ve ever visited, where the national economy came close to collapse. I can see the effects closer to home, too: suddenly there’s a severe shortage of job opportunities being advertised in my local paper. When I visited a recruitment agency in Leeds recently, I was told that there was just one area in which new jobs were being created rapidly: debt collection. The queues for bargains at my friendly neighbourhood discount food shops in Bradford have never been quite so long.
I’m genuinely sorry that so many people are suffering because of the economic problems, but at the same time I’m relieved that deregulation is now thoroughly discredited (a word that seems singularly apt) just as surely as Communism was discredited by the collapse of the Soviet Union. The economic era that gave us Reaganomics and Thatcherism has now been pronounced dead by no less an authority than Francis Fukuyama, the economist who previously saw the free market as the natural final state of human society and announced ‘the end of history’. Fukuyama has now admitted that ‘…there are certain jobs that only the government can fulfil’, and called for the rebuilding and revitalising of the American public sector. I am no economist, but I like to think that the species I belong to is capable of more than just mercilessly competing and trying to sell things to one another, so I’m glad that greed is no longer believed to be good. As our credit is crunched, we can see all too clearly where over-consumption has led us.

Meanwhile, in the midst of all the economic chaos and worrying news, I’ve found one personal consolation: I no longer have any difficulty in finding people with whom I can have a good discussion about politics. A crisis of this magnitude causes lots of people to watch the news more closely and to look to our elected leaders for some sort of solution. The state of the global economy has drawn more attention to the US election, and probably decided its outcome, as the Republicans have taken the blame for the crisis. This is at least partially fair, since they have been the loudest American cheerleaders for the free market, and Reaganomics certainly carried the Republican brand. The true extent of the Bush administration’s culpability for the present crisis is endlessly debatable; it’s hard to gauge how much control national governments can have over economic changes as seismic as the ones currently shaking the planet. But in hard times, incumbent politicians tend to get punished by the electorate.

The relentlessly negative tone of the Republicans’ campaign has surely made matters worse for

them. In troubling times, people naturally look for hope and reassurance rather than for more reasons to worry. Barack Obama has at least sounded like someone trying to bring his nation together to combat problems. The personal attacks on Obama from the McCain/Palin camp have seemed irrelevant, a bout of petty name-calling as the house burns down.

The stories that emerged about McCain and Palin’s personal wealth and extravagance were also given greater power by the difficult circumstances in which many voters suddenly found themselves. If you’re worried about the mortgage payments on your family’s only home, then reading that John McCain owns seven homes can hardly inspire confidence in his ability to relate to your hardships. Meanwhile, the Republicans’ spending of $150,000 on clothes for Palin seemed staggeringly insensitive, the supposedly down-to-earth Alaskan visiting the most expensive, exclusive designer shops just as many voters were buying their own clothes from charity shops or budget stores.

In one limited sense, the imminent election is now less important. Whoever is handed the reins of government will be dealing in damage limitation; there will be no magical remedy to fix things quickly coming from the White House or anywhere else. President Obama or President McCain will be overseeing increased government intervention in the economy whether it suits them ideologically or not. But for a wide variety of other reasons, the election still matters enormously. The new President will certainly need to be calm under immense pressure, and Obama has gained great credit by retaining his cool in the face of some outrageous attacks while McCain has appeared irritable and impulsive on the campaign trail.

And then there are the questions of war and peace. Leaving aside all the moral and humanitarian questions about the American presence in Iraq, the USA needs a less aggressive foreign policy for financial reasons; the American economy simply cannot afford the vast cost of war on multiple fronts.

International co-operation is going to be required to solve the international economic crisis. The election of Obama would have huge symbolic importance in convincing the rest of the world that the world’s most powerful nation would in future be using its power in a more conciliatory manner. I can only agree with the editorial verdict in a journal that endorsed President Bush at the last US General Election, the Financial Times: ‘The challenges facing the next president will be extraordinary. We hesitate to wish it on anyone, but we hope that Mr. Obama gets the job.’

Anyway, we’ll soon know, and I won’t be lonely in my waiting. For one thing, the coverage of the election by the BBC and by Britain’s serious newspapers has become comprehensive and excellent lately.

What’s more, it so happens I spend a lot of my social time around the University of Bradford, where one of the specialities is archaeology. Many of my friends have been trained in that science, and even the most conservative church regulars among them are affronted that the most powerful politician in the world could conceivably soon be Sarah Palin, a believer in creationist theories that they know are demonstrably absurd. The student union bar there is staying open till 4am on the morning of November 5 so that we can watch the results come in while clutching a glass of something calming or celebratory. Hopefully I’ll be back here soon afterwards to tell you what the atmosphere was like. But if I’m a little late, I’m sure you’ll understand.

You see, it’s like this: I simply cannot get enough of the US Presidential election.

My habit causes me pain. It reinforces a depressing sense of helplessness in the face of human irrationality and overwhelming power. I can, and do, subscribe to Barack Obama’s e-mailing list

Barack Obama photo by SEIU International

to get the latest updates directly from the candidate I hope to see win; but US electoral law prevents an un-American like me from responding to his frequent appeals for money. I don’t have the funds to commute across the Atlantic to help with canvassing, and I’m sure that even if I could go knocking on doors in a crucial swing state like Ohio or Florida, some voters would tell me that America’s choice of leader was none of my goddamn business as soon as they heard my English accent. But I’m still fascinated by the electoral events – partly, of course, because the choice that American voters make will be so important for the whole planet.

From an environmental point of view, there’s a world of difference between Obama’s enthusiasm for alternative energy sources and John McCain’s loyalty to the oil-centric energy policies that have characterised the Bush administration.

International relations will be strikingly different if American voters reject the neo-conservative demand for US domination of global affairs contained in Republican foreign policy, and instead give Obama the opportunity to repair old alliances and restore his country’s good name in the world.

John McCain photo by Image Editor

McCain voted for the invasion of Iraq and has declared that the USA’s military presence there should last for a century if it furthers America’s aims. Obama opposed the invasion and wishes to withdraw the troops as soon as practically possible, while striving to end the dependence on oil that focuses so much American attention on the Middle East.

These practical policy considerations are reason enough to take an intense interest in the choice of leader for the planet’s dominant nation; but what really fuels my fascination is the drastically different views of human life that are represented by the American right and the American left. It is a clash between faith and reason; between an embrace of diversity and a craving for a simpler time when life had clear rules and authority always prevailed, between an acceptance of progress and equality, and a longing for a mythic past when men and women knew their God-given places and everything was so much more certain. It’s the 21^st Century versus The Waltons and John Wayne; and of course religion makes this clash of philosophies so much more passionate. Perhaps the biggest choice before the American electorate is the one between plurality and theocracy: between those who truly accept that there can be more than one valid view of an important issue, and those who see the election as a ‘culture war’ between their God and sinful, un-American depravity. It is this latter group that brings into American elections issues that thankfully do not usually greatly intrude into British party politics.

Abortion may be a minor issue at the next UK General Election; Conservative leader David Cameron supports a reduction in the time limit for late abortions. But we certainly won’t see any mainstream British politician echoing Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s call for a total ban on all terminations, even if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.

Likewise, the legal rights of British gays and lesbians should stay much the same regardless of who the Prime Minister might be following our next General Election; but the issue of same-sex marriage is more important than the economy for many voters on the American religious right. It was courageous of Obama to demand during his speech to the Democratic Convention that ‘…our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters…’ should not face discrimination; he must have been well aware that for many American voters, supporting anti-gay discrimination is quite literally an article of faith.

Then, of course, there is the American citizen’s ‘right to bear arms’, enshrined in the Constitution and so dear to much of the electorate that even a would-be reformer like Obama dare not threaten it, however strong a case for doing so might be made by US violent crime statistics; even the most tentative moves towards tighter gun regulation must be couched in terms that reassure rural voters that their hunting rifles will not be taken away.

Finally, there is the American addiction to ostentatious, sentimental patriotism that has made a genuine election issue out of the occasions on which Obama has or has not worn a ‘flag pin’ stars and stripes badge on his lapel.

Would I want these things in British politics? Most definitely not. And yet, at the same time, American politics awakes in me a kind of nostalgia for the days when our elections generated such visceral passions. Part of me misses the days of Thatcher versus Old Labour, when our political parties stood for dramatically different outlooks on the world rather than representing subtly different approaches to free-market capitalism, as they do today. It is strangely refreshing to view an election with real partisan zeal, fervently rooting for one side and feeling revulsion towards the appalling attitudes of the other.

Having said that, I’m very well aware that Obama is not actually the Messiah, even if that is the sneering nickname that some Republicans have given him, For all his charisma and charm, he can be a ruthless political operator when necessary; and after the barrage of attacks he faced at a relentlessly negative and fear-fuelled Republican Convention, that’s just as well. Obama’s election as President would only begin a process of change in America and across the planet over which the USA holds so much sway. Indeed, one of the most endearing things about Obama’s style is the way that he stresses empowerment: his slogan is ‘Yes, we can’, not ‘Yes, I can’. Popular opinion at home would render him unable to change some of the things that appal outsiders about America; the gun culture would remain, as would the death penalty. Even so, the choice before the US electorate is stark.

The Democrats offer a plan to withdraw from Iraq and repair America’s relationships with the outside world, a programme of taxing the richest to help the poorest, policies aimed at making health care affordable for all Americans, broad-minded social attitudes, an appreciation of eloquent intelligence and plans for huge investment in alternative energy.

The Republicans stand for war and conquest, religious intolerance, entrenched privilege, narrow national self-interest, support for the free market at its most merciless, disdain for welfare, a mistrust of intellect and an attitude to environmental protection summed up by the chants of ‘DRILL! DRILL!!’ at their Convention, demanding that nothing must get in the way of the search for American oil. For a liberal European like me, it looks like the closest thing I’m ever likely to see to an election between good and evil.

The US Presidential Election 2008 is a story with most of the elements that make for great dramatic entertainment. There’s a dashing hero to cheer on, loathsome villains to despise, the future of the planet at stake, a plot with plenty of startling twists, and now the certainty of history being made one way or another: either the first African-American President, or the first female Vice-President.

If a screenwriter had come up with the story of Sarah Palin,

Sarah Palin photo by Thomas Roche

the obscure woman from the backwoods suddenly transformed into a serious contender for the most powerful position on earth, then surely the script would have been rejected as absurdly far-fetched. Come to that, rarely in even the most lurid of soaps can so many skeletons have come clattering out of a single character’s closet in so short a space of time; yet it seems that a lot of Americans love Palin no matter what powers she’s abused or how many lies she’s told. It’s a bit like what happened when Jade Goody first stomped into the British Big Brother house; some viewers were appalled by her behaviour, but she became a star because many others were thrilled to see someone a bit like them become famous and important.

So I’ll keep missing sleep waiting for the latest developments, anxiously scanning the opinion polls and scouring American political blogs for the background detail. Some good friends of mine follow their favourite soaps or TV talent contests with comparable intensity, yet cannot understand how I can find politics so compelling. All I can say to them is that this US election is anything but boring. Bizarre, yes; frightening, frequently – tedious, never. Our own domestic politics may have become pretty dull; but for better or for worse, they do things differently over there.

]]> http://www.eurocriticsmagazine.com/politics/us-politics/the-loneliness-of-the-long-distance-election-watcher/feed http://www.eurocriticsmagazine.com/sport/football/ebbsfleet-united-a-different-kind-of-football-club http://www.eurocriticsmagazine.com/sport/football/ebbsfleet-united-a-different-kind-of-football-club#comments Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:04:49 +0000 Christopher Rose http://www.eurocriticsmagazine.com/?p=137 Possibly as an antidote to the increasingly pervasive influence of big business in football, I have recently joined the over 30,000 football fans from 122 different countries that have invested the modest sum of £35 a year to own our very own football club, Ebbsfleet United.

The members of MyFootballClub.co.uk bought the club for £600,000 in February 2008 and just three months later Ebbsfleet United won the FA Trophy at Wembley, the club’s greatest achievement so far in a history that dates back to 1890.

There are many benefits to this modest investment, far less than the price of a ticket to most Premiership games. I get to actually help pick the team, decide on transfers in and out, get a free match day programme sent to me via email and vote on everything from marketing/promotional strategies to the performance of the manager and the board.

There is also a dedicated forum where I can chat with other football fans about any and all football matters, either about Ebbsfleet or more general issues affecting the game.

Ebbsfleet United are currently mid-table in the Blue Square Premier League, only 4 promotions away from the Premier League, and on something of a high right now. Not only is former Ebbsfleet (then called Gravesend & Northfleet) player Jimmy Bullard, now with Fulham, called up to the latest full England squad for the imminent 2010 World Cup qualifying matches against Andorra and Croatia but the team also has 3 players, goalkeeper Lance Cronin, central defender James Smith and striker Luke Moore in the England C squad.

The club is handily located close to the high speed Eurostar hub Ebbsfleet International, making it easy for the club’s international fanbase to get to the games.

Here is a list of some of the key milestones in the history of the world’s first and only internet community owned football club:-

2007

26 April - My Football Club launches.

31 July - 53,000 register their names and email addresses on the website.

1 August - £250,000 is collected on the first day membership fees are accepted.

10 August - £500,000 is collected in 10 days and MyFootballClub has over 12,000 members.

August to November - Nine football clubs approach MyFootballClub, asking to be purchased.

13 November - A deal in principle is reached to buy Ebbsfleet United (EUFC), from the Blue Square Premier division.

2008

12 February – Members vote to accept Nike’s offer to become the club’s kit and merchandise supplier.

21 February - MyFootballClub members vote to complete the purchase of EUFC for around £600,000. Over 21,000 members from 70 different countries own 75% of the club.

14 March – Members elect seven members onto the My Football Club Society Limited Board.

15 March - EUFC reach Wembley for the first time in their history, beating Aldershot 4-2 over two legs in the FA Trophy Semi Final.

8 April – Members vote to freeze season ticket prices at the club.

9 May - Members travel from over 20 countries to watch the Final, including Australia, America, Canada, Turkey, Croatia, Italy and Sweden.

10 May - EUFC lift the FA Trophy at Wembley after beating Torquay 1-0. Up to 5,000 overseas members watch an online feed provided by the FA and Sky, and over 26,000 Fleet fans at Wembley - old and new - witness the historic victory.

June/July – Ebbsfleet United enjoy record season ticket sales for the 08/09 campaign.

9 June – Members vote to set the weekly playing budget at £10,000.

August – Members and supporters raise £20,000 among themselves to buy striker Michael Gash from Cambridge City.

Most recently the members voted to allow the transfer of star striker John Akinde to Championship side Bristol City for a club record transfer fee of £150,000.

Obviously it remains to be seen if this kind of transfer of power from faceless corporations to grassroots fans can be sustained if and when Ebbsfleet United progress up the league ladder but it is a great feeling to be so intimately involved in the day to day running of a real (as opposed to fantasy) football club.

Due to a whole ton of reasons which will one day be chronicled elsewhere, I haven’t been keeping About Manchester United (™) up to date, but it features match reviews and news stories about the World’s Greatest Football Team (© 2008 Christopher Rose), nothing totally original, just one guy’s small tribute to his home town team.

About two years ago, at the start of the 2006-2007 season, I published an article looking forward to the coming season and detailing United’s fixtures for the season ahead.

It was no big deal, just a list of fixtures that I compiled myself from a variety of sources such as the online BBC Football section and from the Red Devils’ own site. I even went so far as to incorporate links back to all the other clubs’ home pages in the fixture list. Hey, even though I support the Greatest Football Team in the World (™), I’m not above giving the little guys a break.

Some time after posting the fixtures, I received an email from some overly excited law firm demanding that I remove the fixtures from the article as it breached the Premier League and/or the FA’s copyright. What? My tiny blog, which has a combined readership well into the dozens, was a threat to these mighty organisations or was somehow going to put these mighty organisations out of business? Surely this is the law gone mad? Or at least with too much time on its hands.

I was actually very busy struggling to survive at the time (some things never change) and never actually got around to removing the list. My bad!

Fortunately, the legal eagles somehow overlooked my terrible crime of loving a football club and never followed up on their threats to throw me out on the streets, seize all my vast possessions and curse my entire gene line until the end of time. Lucky me.

This was a salutary lesson on the power of big business gone mad and, to show my respect for the great powers that be and the wonderful corporations that now control the World’s Greatest Game (™), I present you the latest list of league fixtures facing the Red Devils in the coming season.

AIG v Northern Rock Sunday 17 August 2008, 16:00

Oki Printers v AIG Monday 25 August 2008, 20:00

Carlsberg Lager v AIG Saturday 13 September 2008, 12:45

Samsung v AIG Sunday 21 September 2008, 14:00

AIG v Reebok Saturday 27 September 2008, 15:00

Crown Paints v AIG Saturday 4 October 2008, 17:30

AIG v T Mobile Saturday 18 October 2008, 17:30

Chang Beer v AIG Saturday 25 October 2008, 12:00

AIG v XL Holidays Wednesday 29 October 2008, 20:00

AIG v Karoo Saturday 1 November 2008, 15:00

Emirates v AIG Saturday 8 November 2008, 12:45

AIG v Britannia Building Society Saturday 15 November 2008, 15:00

Acorns v AIG Saturday 22 November 2008, 17:30

Thomas Cook v AIG Sunday 30 November 2008, 13:30

AIG v Boylesports Saturday 6 December 2008, 15:00

Mansion v AIG Saturday 13 December 2008, 15:00

AIG v JJB Sports Saturday 20 December 2008, 15:00

Britannia Building Society v AIG Friday 26 December 2008, 15:00

AIG v Garmin Sunday 28 December 2008, 14:00

AIG v Samsung Saturday 10 January 2009, 15:00

Reebok v AIG Saturday 17 January 2009, 15:00

T Mobile v AIG Tuesday 27 January 2009, 19:45

AIG v Chang Beer Saturday 31 January 2009, 15:00

XL Holidays v AIG Saturday 7 February 2009, 15:00

AIG v Crown Paints Saturday 21 February 2009, 15:00

AIG v Oki Printers Saturday 28 February 2009, 15:00

Northern Rock v AIG Wednesday 4 March 2009, 19:45

AIG v Carlsberg Lager Saturday 14 March 2009,15:00

LG v AIG Saturday 21 March 2009, 15:00

AIG v Acorns Saturday 4 April 2009, 15:00

Boylesports v AIG Saturday 11 April 2009, 15:00

JJB Sports v AIG Saturday 18 April 2009, 15:00

AIG v Mansion Saturday 25 April 2009, 15:00

Garmin v AIG Saturday 2 May 2009, 15:00

AIG v Thomas Cook Saturday 9 May 2009, 15:00

AIG v Emirates Saturday 16 May 2009, 15:00

Karoo v AIG Sunday 24 May 2009, 16:00

Welcome to the future, sports fans.

I note that AIG have a particularly difficult start to the new season with the opening fixture against Northern Rock followed by three consecutive away games against Oki Printers, Carlsberg Lager and Samsung. Typical!

The author would like to convey his personal appreciation to the unnamed company that designed the almost identical web sites of a large proportion of the Premier League clubs. I especially like the obligatory two pages of adverts one has to view before actually accessing the web site content. What a great idea! It doesn’t make the football clubs seem somewhat of an afterthought at all…

First off,  a short history lesson entitled “My Mobile Life” by yours truly. I’ve always been one of those people that has to have the latest nifty phone and after a while that’s evolved into a kind of phone dependency. I’ve been a heavy user of mobile browsers for awhile, so much so that mobile browsing has probably replaced the newspaper and magazines in my daily routine. Over the years I’ve sampled a number of phones, from Nokia’s earliest smartphones, to Windows Mobile devices of numerous size and shape, to, yes, Apple’s original iPhone.

I’ve tried both flavours of N95 and a procession of HTC devices (such as the T-Mobile Vario, Vario 2, Vario 3, and HTC’s own Touch), amongst others. A comparison of these three different platforms - Windows Mobile, Apple’s Mobile OS X and Nokia’s weapon of choice Series 60 - will almost certainly be a topic for a future article. For now, we’re here to focus on the iPhone 3g.

Or are we? Some of the 3g’s most important features are actually part of Apple’s 2.0 software update. Which means they’re not exclusive to the 3g at all: you can easily get them on your first generation iPhone.

The most prominent of these are, of course, Apple’s iTunes App Store and support for Microsoft’s Exchange server. Both of these work brilliantly. Much has been written on the App Store’s game changing introduction, and it’s certainly the most impressive mobile app installation experience I’ve had since, well, the jailbroken iPhone I owned before this one.

Many will claim that Apple’s offering is actually less capable than the jailbreak + installer combo, as applications for the store can’t run in the background on the device. This kills any potential MMS applications, chat applications, or even Last.FM’s excellent Scrobbler utility - which would monitor the tracks you listen to and upload them to Last.FM.

Current Apps range from novelties to budget trackers, to games, to blogging apps (hooray for the recently released WordPress client). There probably really is something for everyone and this is growing on a daily basis.

Combat! was a sixties American TV show that ran for five seasons. This 4 DVD set contains the first half of the inaugural season, kicking off with the D-Day landing in “A Day in June” and covering the push through France, culminating with the liberation of Paris. The show focused on King Company, with the late Rick Jason (Lt. Gil Hanley) and the later tragically-killed-by-helicopter Vic Morrow (Sgt. Saunders) as the show’s stars. Through these early episodes the supporting players come into their own and the show develops more of an ensemble feel, with Pierre Jalbert (Caje), Jack Hogan (Kirby), Shecky Greene (Braddock) and the rest as important to the show as its stars.

Combat! Season 1 Campaign 1 DVD artwork

As with all episodic television the quality is variable but it’s never less than watchable and at its best it ranks alongside far bigger productions. There’s a grittier, more ‘real’ feel to Combat! than the star studded, mega budget The Longest Day for instance.

There are several recurring plot themes – scouting missions, new recruits, and three members of the squad are, at different times, captured by the Germans – but the best episodes transcend these basic plot ideas.

The three standout episodes are “Forgotten Front”, “Escape to Nowhere” and “Cat and Mouse”.

In “Forgotten Front” the squad are sent behind enemy lines to get the location of hidden German heavy artillery. They find a good hiding place in an abandoned factory to phone in the coordinates of the big gun, but things get complicated when they discover a German deserter hiding inside.

The episode highlights the moral complexities of war, as Saunders must decide what to do with the prisoner when it becomes clear they can’t take him back and he’s overheard too much information that would be useful to the Germans to be allowed to go free.

Morrow gives an outstanding performance as the man forced to make the morally repugnant yet necessary choice, while Pierre Jalbert and Steven Rogers as the battle hardened Caje and the more innocent Doc offer exemplary support.

In “Escape to Nowhere” it’s Hanley’s turn to get captured (Saunders had been nabbed in “Just For the Record” and Pvt. Braddock in “The Prisoner”). When the Lieutenant is captured a German officer involved in a failed plot to assassinate Hitler enlists his aid in order to get across to the American side, but first they must make their way through the German lines.

It’s a tense episode that manages to keep Hanley’s fate in question, no mean feat for a weekly TV show, as the American is forced to masquerade as a German officer to reach freedom. This episode features possibly the most haunting image of the series, as Hanley and the German are held at gunpoint by a group of children in a desolate graveyard. It’s a moment that brings home the real horror of war far more than any explosions and gunfire could.

Good though both of those episodes are, “Cat and Mouse” is even better. We don’t find out what Saunders did before the war (at least not in this set) but in “Cat and Mouse” we learn that he wasn’t a soldier. Stumbling back after an ill fated scouting mission that left his men dead, Saunders is ordered out again. This time he’s to accompany Sgt. Jenkins, a professional soldier who resents the ‘shoe salesmen’ who have been drafted in to fight the war. The episode is a battle of wills between the two sergeants, one a professional soldier the other a gifted amateur, which escalates when the farmhouse they’re hiding in becomes a makeshift German command centre. Morrow meets his equal in Albert Salmi as Jenkins, one of the shows most complex characters – bitter and arrogant, yet also undeniably heroic. The episode features an appropriately downbeat climax.

Apart from Salmi the series features such notable guest stars as Jeffrey Hunter, Tab Hunter, Keenan Wynn and Dan O’Herlihy as well as before-they-were-famous appearances by Tom Skerritt, Walter Koenig and Harry Dean Stanton. But it’s the names behind the camera that show why Combat! is such a quality piece of television.

All three of those standout episodes I mentioned were directed by film legend Robert Altman (“Cat and Mouse” was also written by him) while Burt Kennedy, a director more famous for westerns, particularly the comedy variety, also helms a couple. Both men were war veterans and bring a level of realism to the show that helped elevate it above its TV budget. Also worth a mention is the writer of “Forgotten Front”, Logan Swanson, better known under his real name Richard Matheson.

While watching this set I’ve been reading Audie Murphy’s memoir of his wartime experiences, To Hell and Back and I was struck by how similar the two seem, not in plot but in the gritty feel. There are little touches, like taking off helmets before going on a night reconnaissance mission because they would make too much noise, that also feature in Murphy’s book and add to the shows feeling of authenticity. In fact Combat! is far truer to the spirit of the book than the more gung-ho 1955 Hollywood adaptation.

I’ve no idea if the show ever aired in the UK or other parts of Europe, I can find no mention of any such transmissions online but it’s hard to believe such a quality production could have slipped under the radar of European TV executives. One thing is for sure - its powerful performances, strong scripts and assured direction all come together to make Combat! a series well worth unearthing from the TV tomb.

The series is currently only available on Region 1 DVD.

Following yet another lethal stabbing of a young man in the Greater London area, I heard this morning that this was the 18th death this year.

It’s bad enough when it’s one on one but there have been several headlines highlighting gang beatings literally kicking and stamping people to death and then gleefully boasting.  Just one step beyond ‘happy slappings’, except when the outcome is lethal even they’re not stupid enough to create video evidence.

Why, why, why do they do it?  Is human life so worthless?  What is it about us as a race that allows such behaviour?  Even if we as individuals happened across such an event, what could we do to stop it?

Yes, we know that these teenage killings are testosterone fuelled with some kind of quasi tribal motive.  Territory and ‘respect’ are factors.  In essence it’s no different to football related violence where young men (and not so young men) gang together for the sake of a coloured jersey and engage in violent activity.  Maybe at a major event like the World Cup they will form alliances and take on the local constabulary.  For some reason this doesn’t seem to happen in Rugby circles.  But these knife killings and savage beatings are a step beyond.

What kind of society are we that breeds callous killers, a knife carrying gang culture and gratuitous violence?  I do believe anonymity is at the heart of this and could be addressed by more extensive of use of CCTV.

It may be that the media plays a part by providing the inspiration in the form of violent movies and graphical console games, but at the end of the day you can’t say they are the root cause.  I don’t believe anybody is born evil, we are all a mixture of nature and nurture and I am sure that the violence is a function of the nurture.

In the past, a criminal would be known in their community and would suffer from the ongoing ignominy even after a sentence was served.  The community would be wary of them and they would have to earn respect over a long time.  Today, in our crowded towns and cities, everybody is virtually anonymous.  If criminals commit crime today they are not recognised by the rest of the community, in fact it is this lack of sense of community that is the underlying cause of our troubles.

I believe technology has a role to play, CCTV is a good preventative measure but currently the quality is too poor to secure solid convictions.  We need more cameras and better cameras.  What about the ‘Big Brother’ overtones? Frankly, I don’t give a damn, if it is used responsibly and it makes our lives safer, what’s the problem?

At around 9 p.m. this past Wednesday, on a baseball field in Omaha, Nebraska, a young right fielder named Steve Detwiler took a catch that made sporting history. His team, the Fresno State Bulldogs, had just beaten the University of Georgia to win the College World Series - the national championship of university baseball.

Fresno State Bulldogs win College World Series

The Bulldogs’ amazing run to the title - winning their local league, then regional and super-regional championships, brushing aside the challenges of national powerhouse schools Arizona State, Rice and North Carolina before defeating 8th-ranked Georgia in the championship series - has rightly been called a Cinderella story. The team from a modest university in rural California was rated 89th in the country going into the tournament, and ended up as the lowest-ranked school ever to win a national college championship in any sport.

Fresno State Bulldogs welcome home

To put their achievement into perspective, it is as if the current world number 89 tennis player, Galina Voskoboeva (yes, that’s right… who?) were to win the women’s singles at Wimbledon, or as if Notts County - the team that finished 89th in English senior football last season - were to lift the FA Cup. As implausible as both those scenarios seem, they go some way to explaining why jaws have been dropping across America and why Fresno is suddenly on the map for more than bad air and being the birthplace of Sam Peckinpah.

The popularity of college sports in the United States is hard for outsiders to fathom. In Britain, the only college sporting event that gets any national attention is, bizarrely, the University Boat Race - in a sport which otherwise inspires total apathy among the general public except when the likes of Redgrave and Pinsent are performing their Olympic heroics. The only reason the Boat Race is watched at all is probably because it takes place on the Thames: back when the river was London’s main artery of commerce, the race would have brought the entire city grinding temporarily to a halt so that there was nothing else to do but watch it.

British universities do play other organised sports, of course, but they tend to be strictly low-key affairs. Stop a passer-by in the streets of Loughborough, for example, and ask him how his local university’s rugby team is doing, and he will probably give you a blank stare. A game between the Uniteds of Oxford and Cambridge, even though both teams are now languishing in the Conference - the fifth tier of English football - will draw a much bigger crowd than a match between their university counterparts.

College teams have occasionally had some measure of success competing against the professionals rather than each other: Oxford University reached the FA Cup Final a couple of times in the 1880s, and more recently an outfit named Team Bath - comprised of students from the university in that city - has actually outstripped the achievements of the local professional club.

But those are rare exceptions. Professional sports in Europe do not look to universities to recruit, preferring to nurture young talent under the auspices of their own youth development programs. The situation in the United States is radically different. Surprisingly perhaps for such a materialistic culture, the concept of professional sports took a long time to catch on. Sport was seen as a gentlemanly pursuit, and prior to the Second World War, although there were professional leagues, being paid to play was regarded as sleazy, if not downright dishonorable. For most ‘athletes’ (as they are generically called here) who wanted to play at the highest level, college therefore offered the best opportunities.

As they tended to be the largest organisations in their communities, the universities were beacons not only of academia but also of athletics, and often became the focus of a city’s identity. In the absence of any press attention for the despised professionals, people followed the fortunes of their collegiate teams and identified closely with them. Fans were as passionate as any Manchester United or Real Madrid supporter. Some colleges became world-famous in large part because of their athletics programs: Notre Dame’s football team - ‘The Fighting Irish’ - is perhaps the best-known example. Even in today’s world of the multi-billion dollar NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball and other sporting circuses this tradition has endured - particularly with football and basketball, which professionalised much later than baseball and ice hockey and are followed as keenly as the pros, often even drawing larger TV audiences for the big end-of-season matches.

The relationship between a community and its college athletes is especially intense in towns like Fresno, which does not have a major league team. Home football games at Bulldog Stadium regularly draw capacity crowds of 45,000 - one-tenth of the city’s population. The university’s new 15,000-seat indoor arena, the Save Mart Center, is always packed for both men’s and women’s basketball. And although baseball receives somewhat less attention - especially now that Fresno has a minor league professional club with a brand new stadium downtown - the excitement and anticipation that rippled through the town as the ‘Diamond Dogs’ disposed of opponent after superior opponent was palpable. What had been unthinkable only a few weeks ago suddenly seemed like more than a dream.

Still, the town braced itself for disappointment. Fresno State’s first and only national championship in any sport had been ten years before, in women’s softball. That team had gone on to make up the bulk of the American gold medal-winning squad at the Sydney Olympics. Since then, nothing. The football and basketball teams often promised much but failed to deliver, beset by scandals involving cheating, unethical coaching practices, sexual harassment and payment for playing (college sports are still strictly amateur). The baseball program had avoided being tainted by most of this but even so, the team was so lowly-ranked that they surely could not go on causing upsets.

But they could.

As thousands of well-wishers lined the streets around the university and filed into the baseball stadium the next day to welcome them home, the reality and magnitude of the Bulldogs’ achievement was still sinking in - for the players as well as the townsfolk. Though they clearly enjoyed soaking up the adulation as they rolled slowly past the cheering masses of red-shirted fans atop two borrowed city fire trucks, they also seemed genuinely touched by their reception, not to mention a little bewildered. Some of the players had already been drafted by major league clubs before the team’s victory, and several more now most assuredly will be offered pro contracts. Only a very small number of them will go on to a successful career in baseball, but for all 25 members of the squad, life will never be the same.

In one sense these are regular college men, showing up to classes and sitting in rows just like any other student. The majority of them are not due to complete their degrees for a year or more. But their phones are undoubtedly ringing off the hook already, and for some the pressure to forego the rest of their education and sign a pro contract will be relentless. Already they are household names.

For an outsider - even a semi-outsider like me - it’s hard to grasp. I know which boat crossed the finish line at Chiswick Bridge first this spring, but I could not name a single member of the victorious Oxford eight or their cox - and neither, I suspect, could 99% of people. Matthew Pinsent rowed in the event three times, but it was his Olympic exploits which brought him fame. For the general public, the Boat Race is a straight shootout: the only thing of importance is which crew won. But a tickertape parade through the streets of Oxford? Probably not.

It doesn’t take much to feel the lift this national championship has wrought over the town. Fresno is something of a national joke - a kind of Californian Croydon - struggling as it does with its remote and ugly location, high unemployment, poverty and rampant pollution. Everywhere you go you see the university’s red and blue colors in store windows, in front yards and on the local buses. People have been queueing around the block outside the Bulldog Shop to buy commemorative T-shirts, flags, bumper stickers and other merchandise. Young people are going online to say that the College World Series triumph has made them proud for the first time to be a Fresno State student. A city starved of success - sporting or otherwise - can finally say it is the best in something. And at least for a short time, until the fall and yet another football season of promise and disappointment brings us back to reality, perhaps that will prove to be an even greater achievement for Steve Detwiler and his teammates than any victory on the baseball diamond.