Dougie Brimson's Blog: A Write Old Life, page 21

Why Arsenal have snatched a major victory from the jaws of the drubbing monster!

Gutted Gooners (possibly gay).

Like many people, I was somewhat stunned by the hammering Manchester United dealt out to Arsenal at the weekend. It was the stuff of legends and will no doubt haunt the Gunners and their fans for decades. Certainly every time they travel to Old Trafford!

However, whilst I was impressed by the antics of Rooney and Young on the day, the response from Arsenal FC has left me positively reeling with admiration.

I refer of course, to the apology offered to the North London faithful who travelled to Manchester only to endure the most torrid of afternoons and the accompanying promise to cover their expenses for a forthcoming away game.

For years now I have ranted on about the way the game has systematically taken the piss out of the very people who fund it and here, finally, we see an example of a major Premiership club recognising that they owe a debt to the fans who follow them. It doesn't matter that in financial terms it'll cost Arsenal less than a weeks wages for a second string player, it's the thought that counts. Or more specifically, it's the fact that someone high up in the club had the sense, if not decency, to have that thought at all!

There's a word for that, and it's one almost every other club in the land would do well to learn; class. And I tell you what, I doubt many Gooners will forget it in a hurry.

I Blame Telly. Really, I do!

It fucking doesn't!

In all the soul searching and hand wringing that has gone on since the riots that engulfed London, Birmingham and Manchester barely two weeks ago, little has been mentioned about what I regard as one of the major factors to have impacted on the fabric of British society over the last 50 or so years.

For whilst much has been made of the role computer games have played in the desensitisation of violence and the fact that music videos are increasingly portraying women as little more than sexual objects (and where are the feminists in that debate? Gyrating to Rihanna along with their 8 year old daughters perhaps?) little has been made of the most powerful medium of all, television.

Now I love TV. It is an amazing thing and the people who work within it produce some incredible programming. Yet as a weapon, it is unrivalled. For it has the potential to shape public opinion in a way no other medium can and only a fool would deny that it has certainly been wielded plenty of times over the years and for all kinds of reasons.  Some good, most bad.

Never is this more graphically illustrated than in the soaps. Soaps are different to all other forms of entertainment in that they are infinite. Characters come, evolve and go, storylines unfold and die but the essence remains constant. This is of course, one of the great attractions and for many viewers that essence becomes so familiar that it takes on a sense of reality. A place it stops being the product of some writers imagination and is instead somewhere where the characters change from jobbing actors into into real people who actually experience real things. It's Truman in all but name.

The arguement often put forward in defence of this type of programming is that it's art mirroring life which would be fine if they showed lives, communities and problems which were actually 'normal' in the sense that yours and my lives are normal but they do not. Instead they paint a warped and necessarily condensed picture of a drama. One where hatred, shouting, violence, criminality and dysfunctional families are everyday normality.

And if you're 7 and your evenings involve sitting in front of some screaming banshee supposedly living in a Manchester suburb and your only datum point is a home life which isn't that far removed from what you're seeing on screen, it simply becomes an extension of reality. When that is so destructive (and so repetitive) it can only have a negative impact because if anti-social behaviour is something you witness on a daily basis and it is rarely if ever condemned, how can you hope to learn that it is unacceptable in the real 'real' world? 

TV... do your job!

Therefore, those who develop these storylines must be made aware that they too have a responsibility to society to portray life is it actually is as opposed to the twisted vision they trot out for us. Because whilst I'm sure everyone involved with Eastenders is happy to work there, I doubt any of them would actually want to live there in real life.

And that has to be the defining question all producers and commissioners need to ask themselves before they put their signature on that line to sign off that script. Because if it's not good enough for them, why on earth should it be good enough for us?

National Service – I Think Not!

Sargeant Major bastard

Predictably, the screams for a return to national service have begun to appear on the front pages as journalists up and down the land seek desperately to fill their pages with a new angle on the riots story. Quite why they do this escapes me because as a tax-payer, I'm more then happy to see page after page of mug-shots of the guilty finally getting their just deserts. That can carry on for weeks thanks.
 
However, the fact of the matter is that editors do not see it as I do and so that old chestnut 'a spell in the Army would sort them out' has been dragged out and placed in the public consciousness as if it's a good idea. Well as someone who served 18 years in the Military and is a veteran of theFalklandsconflict and Gulf War one, I speak with some authority when I say that it isn't. A return to conscription would be a disaster for all kinds of reasons, the main one being that the military do not want it. And given that they are currently fighting two wars and keeping the peace in various places across the globe whilst all the time facing scathing cuts of their own, I think that not only should we listen to what they have to say but in fact to even suggest it is to take the piss.

That said, I do think that there is a very strong case to be made for some kind of compulsory service for anyone between 18 and 20 who is not in full time education. And by education I mean learning something useful such as medicine, teaching, engineering or science as opposed to the impact of 15th Century Peruvian art or the history of Hollyoaks.

My own view is that a scheme based on the military model but dedicated not to the use of weapons or even defence (teaching the use of weapons to individuals who you are trying to stop using weapons is slightly barking even for the British!) but to service in and to the country as a whole would be perfect.

Through such a scheme, not only would this so-called 'lost' generation be provided with paid employment and be taught a trade, it would also learn the core values of British life generally, many of which are failing to be taught in schools or by parents (or parent) too many of whom seem to regard Jeremy Kyle with more reverence than their local coppers. Most importantly of all, they would discover that everything we do as individuals has a consequence for someone else. Or as it is better known, a conscience.

But equally, working with others would instil a sense of self-worth and that is something which does seem to be lacking in many of those dragged before the courts so admirably by the police this week.

The problem of course is that the adoption of such a system would involve a major sea-change in pretty much every aspect of British life and it would certainly not be popular with everyone under 18 which is why it will never happen. Because that age group also happens to be the next generation of voters and the party who proposes it would be committing political suicide.

And no matter how much hand-wringing and political gesturing we hear from10 Downing Streetor the House of Commons, the simple truth is that most politicians are too afraid of being kicked out of power to risk doing anything which might cost them a vote or two.

Which is exactly how we've ended up in this situation anyway.