Jimmy Burns's Blog, page 7

The UK in three halves

 

 

By any standards of the UK’s collective diary, Monday of this week was a day worthy of popular attention-and reflection.

Three events between them seemed to define the noble  and the less worthy of the UK nation, and humanity generally.

It began with news that young victims from Syria and other conflict zones stranded in Calais were to be reunited with their families across the Chanell. It developed with live coverage of the celebration of the team GB Olympic and Paralympic teams. By day’s end  millions of football fans were glued to their TV’s  watching the Premier League clash between Liverpool and Manchester United.

The first event was a necessary antidote to the creeping sense of insularity, not to say xenophobia that has affected the minds of hard Brexiteer elements   of the Conservative Party and those in UKIP who have joined it.

The acceptance of the Calais children draws on Britain’s proud history of providing a safe haven to the unjustly persecuted or displaced and serves as a reminder of our responsibility to make amends  for the consequences of wars for which the west must assume moral responsibility on account of its omission if not complicity.

It was a welcome if belated humanitarian act after   the bombing of Aleppo  had drawn comparisons with Guernica while exposing UK hypocrisy given its arming of its ally Saudi Arabia, as brutal in its bombing of Yemeni civilians.

Perhaps it’s worth recording here that during the Spanish Civil War, the British people welcomed some  4,000  Basque refugees children accompanied by teachers and priests fleeing the conflict.

And yet some sectors of the British media -notably  the Sun, Mail and Telegraph- struggled to hide their scepticism that the Calais children might be just illegal immigrants or worse still potential terrorists.

No such scepticism influenced coverage of the thousands who took to the streets pf Manchester in pouring rain to give a warm welcome to Britain’s  Olympic and Paralympic record medal winners.

Thankfully the sports men and women themselves (a broad representation  of the UK’s cultural and regional diversity)  and the live TV coverage steered clear from jingoism, turning the event  less into one anti-EU nation’s victory parade, than a celebration of human solidarity, team as well as individual achievement, whatever one’s social and cultural roots.

A sense of the common good pervaded the occasion as medal winners paid tribute to their teachers and their team mates and expressed delight at the prospect that  they might have influenced younger people to think there might  be more to sport than making money.

Rather different to the lacklustre  Premier League football match that followed, a display of inflated managerial and player egos, in  a game involving fortunes in sponsorship, TV revenues, ad salaries, but  which failed to live up to  the hype that twenty two men chasing a ball can be  heroic.

 

 

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The Joy of Messi

The joy of Messi

Writing in El Pais today the journalist Jordi Quixano notes that the health of FC Barcelona depends on Leo Messi’s smile and the excellence of his football.

Watching Messi play in the pre-season warm-up game against Leicester City last night , I was not alone in feeling elated. The crowd in Stockholm’s aptly named Friends Arena evidently relished, as did TV viewers around the world, his ability to raise the occasion to something worthwhile. It was indeed a necessary tonic after a summer marred by an insipid Euro-championship and the dark menace of terrorism.

Forget the extent to which Messi’s platinum blond dyed hair seems as much at odds with his persona as would be Rastafarian locks on Ronaldo. The Messi tonic came in the sheer creativity and vision of his play, with the precision of his passing contributing to all three Barca goals.

He might be one of the smallest players on the pitch and may no longer have the speed to outrun opponents, but this little big man ,as Alfredo Relano puts it, sees the game with a periscope and places the ball with mechanical accuracy. The stadium chanted Messi, Messi, Messi, and gave him a standing ovation when he was substituted in the 62nd minute. Thankyou for the joy, Leo.

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Brexit: Between the disaster and Hope

A few days ago, I said in a public debate during the campaign that my worst nightmare would be to wake up on June 24 and see Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP, a party that thrives on insularity, intolerance and racism, smiling , surrounded by British flags our screens, and proclaiming independence with a ‘we have won’ Brexit.

Not surprising then that today I am  struggling with a deep sense of what  Winston Churchill in his worst moments of depression called  his ‘black dog’ , along with the 16 other million British who voted ‘Remain’ and lost today by  a margin of four percent.

My reference to  Churchill  is because more than ever we should remember that a man held in high esteem by  his nation, was a great liberal European in addition to  being a British hero who knew how to put together the best of his people in a collective sacrifice to save not only the country but the whole of Europe from Nazism.

At this moment it is difficult to recover the sense of solidarity and international interconnectivity that inspired the best of our campaign against Brexit, that love is stronger than hate, that we are an island that recognizes the good and noble and bridges and we will not easily lose the memory of an exemplary politician, Jo Cox-murdered by by an individual shouting ‘Britain first!)

The reality is that today the United Kingdom  is a country divided  between  those who feel depressed and those who are elated, among those who feel cramped and diminished  and those who feel liberated and magnified, between those who think they are falling into a political and economic abyss , and those who  believe in  their  ability to build a better country, a nationalist and independent paradise, an Anglo-Saxon Arcadia that will  unilaterally determine the way that connects from now on with the rest of the world.

If we look at the detail of the referendum result, there is no doubt that its  represents a seismic shift in the political landscape within and outside the borders of the UK, opening a pandora’s box of uncertainty, but not, in my view, without hope.

The Brexit victory was against not only 48 percent of the voters, but a vast majority of resident and working population in the big city of London, Scotland and Northern Ireland.To  ignore the feeling of these blocks which are  negotiated and decided politically in the coming months would seriously risk not only the economic and financial health of the country, (beyond the turbulence that is already feeling) but would also accelerate a territorial disintegration within UK from Belfast to Edinburgh.

On the other side is the fact that there were 52 percent of the British who voted for the Brexit against the best advice of a majority of British MPs, union leaders, economists, security experts, academics, publishers of the Financial Times , the Guardian and the Financial Times, and not a few moderate religious.

They  include  followers of UKIP, not all extremists, but yes, hardworking people who feel proud of (fake) patriotism blaming an outside enemy by lack of employment, decent housing and living wage.

They have won thanks to the distortions of economic and social reality that has projected Illuminated Brexit in parts of England where the issue of identity has been reduced to a myopic definition of what it means to be British. This definition is faced with the multicultural reality and mutually dependent as we have always considered proud to be British citizens but assuming cultural and racial diversity signing inseparable part of our DNA.

As a British citizen, born in Madrid from a  Spanish mother and a Scottish father, I am aware of how uncertain is the future that from today I face: Spanish friends I have in London, the British friends who live in Spain, and my Gibraltarians friends, are among many who  are worried about the little comments nationalist and sovereignty roosters, who have taken little time out to show off their feathers.

For all the above reasons,it is not the  time to rush things , so that instead of roosters, we should have good statesmen , and good shepherds caring for the common good. I want to continue to believe that there is much more that unites our peoples, and we can learn from each other, and that in a future not too distant division way to a democratic consensus, both in the UK as in the rest of Europe. We seem like  passengers of a ship which is about to sink. And yet  instead of throwing ourselves into the water, we should all  try to save each other , be patient, imaginative, and understanding.

And the process will inevitably pass through  not only a major reform within the EU but a political  process in the UK to save us from extremists UKIP and Le Pen, and replace destructive populists with those with a sense of patriotism not nationalism, that is open to the world, not closed in on itself.

It will not be easy. The referendum Brexit earthquake has left the two major parties in England-Conservatives and Labour are in a situation of existential crisis, with many of its leading figures having fought against Brexit, only to be ignored by a majority of voters. Among them, Cameron has taken an honorable but inevitable decision to announce his resignation, having courted blame on both sides, with the Remain accusing him of sacrificing the stability of Europe, and the Brexit claiming he had not doing enough to protect the nation state from the  interfering  EU.

At least Cameron has acted in the best interest of his country as well as his party.

As to what follows  his initiative, I see a very complex and very risky process of political realignment in the UK where UKIP will try to become the major force of extreme right inside or outside the Conservative Party,supporting, with minimum delay, a break with Europe and pushing the country towards division and violence. But I trust that there will be resistance of a majority of the country, including an avowed fan of Churchill Boris Johnson, who can defend democratic principles and an  international vision of its icon, not Farage, in a positive and constructive relationship in the UK with Europe and the rest of the world. I still believe in British ability to contribute to a better Europe, however hellbent the Brexit result might appears to on its  its destruction. END

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When Ali became my boxing idol

I had  just turned twelve when in 1965 I drew the short straw at my Catholic primary school in London St Philip’s and became captain  of boxing.

I was pretty skinny and of average height for my age, and I was no great boxer. Indeed with the evidence of hindsight I now see  I got the appointment  by default rather than on  merit. I was an improvised choice after several more physically prepared front runners showed no interest, knowing that their reputation lay elsewhere.

Boxing was not considered a key sport at the school –unlike football in autumn and winter and cricket and athletics and swimming  in the summer months. We had a part-time  boxing teacher  in ‘Mr Mates’ – a personable cockney from the East End with a striking resemblance to Ronnie Kray- who turned up whenever he felt like it which  was never very regular.

Mr Mates however did teach me the meaning of fair play. Thus when I was lined up to box someone half my size on boxing day-the one  and only time in the year we had our parents as an audience and could win medals-he stopped the fight after round one, and declared the fight a draw.

But crucially it was Mr Mates who in my early boxing lessons brought to my attention the unique talent of the the named Cassius Clay. I owe Mr Mates a huge debt of thanks  for having urged me to watch the future Ali perform in the  ring rather than out of it which I did with a growing sense of adulation. I remember how pedestrian Clay  made Henry Cooper look, and how graceless seemed Sonny Liston, and how I had longed for the noble defeated  former world champion Floyd Patterson to be avenged.

I never fully understood the motivation that lay behind his conversion to Islam but was hugely impressed by Ali’s  refusal to fight in Vietnam  and the way he found the time   to speak up for  the civil rights of persecuted races . But most of  all I loved his physical beauty and power  and how it transformed the blunt and rough sport of boxing into a seemingly effortless act of balance and movement in the ring, poetry in motion.

The years went by and we grew older. Ali became frailer, physically a diminished  shadow of his former self.  And yet a nobility of spirit towards others endured and shone through his suffering,  in a world over populated by celebrity narcissists.

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Champion’s League Final: Milan

Championship Final : The Beauty & The Beast

Two images endured for me in the aftermath of last saturday’s champions league final in Milan, both taken in the final minutes of a less than memorable encounter .The first that of Atletico de Madrid’s Juan Fran, the other of Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo, just after the two had taken their respective shots at goals during the death by penalty.

Juan Fran’s shot hit the bar and his subsequent drowned dog look and pose was that of a man who for ever would carry within him the memory of defeat. Ronaldo by contrast did what Ronaldo likds to do best-show the world that he is the best- not just the best goal scorer but the physically most beautifully crafted. The championship goal with Ronaldo’s sculptured pectorals and biceps displayed as shimmering golden tan relegated the priestly unshaven pale Juan Fran to the level of an ordinary mortal.

And lest we forget, Ronaldo told us that he had always known he would score the winning goal, which is why he had asked Zidane to have him take the final penalty. A man of destiny,the hand of God.

No matter that up to and including extra time, Ronaldo had utterly underperformed, barely touching the ball during much of the game , and making a hash of the one previous shot at goal. No matter that Juan Fran had assisted in Atletico’s equaliser and worked his socks off for the rest of the game, helping defend against Bale’s relentless assaults and could have been candidate for man of the match had his team won.

But as Simeone remarked later, in these kind of games noone remembers the loser, nor do memories endure about the game itself, beyond the final winning goal that is, not least when it is scored by Ronaldo, the ultimate narcissist, celebrating his own image.

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A game of football not politics

A game of football not politics

In the end it came down to who played the best football undeterred by political intolerance and complicity.

For ninety-minutes and extra time FC Barcelona were jostled and hacked when not exposed to the occasional attacking forays of their Sevilla opponents. The Barca players held their ground, rose defiantly from their batterings, controlled the ball, played it with all the skill and passion they could muster.

A lesser team would have had the soul knocked out of them by Mascherano’s half-time expulsion but they kept rallying, and continued to do so after the shock of Luis Suarez’s withdrawal through injury.

Suarez’s departure in particular energised the team, with Neymar and Messi forced to shoulder the responsibility, together with the Iniesta, of taking the team to a display of collective heroism.

This was a memorable King’s Cup final and its victory a tribute to Luis Enrique and his players and the Barca fans who in the end displayed their club colours in more volume than the Catalan indepedence flag.

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Football without Flags

Football without Flags

I’ve lived the most memorable moments of my life just watching my team-FC Bacelona-  playing great football-the kind that is so magical that it has even fans of its historic rivals  rise to their feet and applaud.

This is football experienced not just as an act of sublime creativity, but as a moment of solidarity, that transcends the terrible prejudices and misunderstandings and shortsightedeness that plague our daily lives, with only a few genuinely good men and women occasionally showing us the light of what it truly means to be human.

As a Barca fan I remember Real Madrid fans applauding Ronaldino  one year and Messi another , just as some had once declared Cruyff the best player since Di Stefano. And what an example I felt was set by Vicente Del Bosque the day he  acknowledged how important Barca as well as Real Madrid players was to forming the backbone of his  his European and World Cup wining teams, and how he wished -he told me this- that La Roja might be allowed to play at the Nou Camp and win the applause of all fans there regardless of region or nation simply by playing well.

I also remember, less happily, at the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland,  club games in Scotland where Irish Republican flags and Union Jacks caused huge distress, anger and violence which had nothing to do with the football many wanted to watch  in peace, with their children and grandchildren. Almost as bad has been the intolerance provoked in one camp or the other, by individuals claiming to be the true followers of FC Barcelona or Real Madrid.

Not so long ago, I witnessed one such group of Barca fans carrying a Catalan independence flag attacking two Barca fans from Andalucia who had travelled to the Celtic stadium in Glasgow with a Barca club flag and a Spanish flag.

Such memories have led me to the view that nationalist flags, like other potentially explosive materials,   should best be  kept out of stadiums not least when groups of people go to a game not to enjoy good football- and let the best team win- but to make a political statement against the other where there can be no respect.

If reason and good sense and indeed the word compromise existed in Spanish and Catalan  politics then we would all be able to enjoy Sunday’s King’s Cup final between Sevilla and FC Barcelona without Spanish national or Catalan independence  flags , just club emblems which speak a more universal language of sporting competiveness than that reduced to political bigotry and provocation.  Instead the final has been turned into a political football at the expense of those who enjoy their football without politics..

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Del Bosque’s hard drive

Pity the housekeeper of  world football’s galaxy.

With just over a  month to go  to go before  his team kicks-off in this summer’s European Championships, the Marques del Bosque otherwise known as Vicente may have a clear ambition to once again defend Spain’s crown , but he is faced  with  limited time to mould a team capable of helping him do so..

A heavy schedule of Champion’s League and national  club Cup finals fixtures towards the end of May  affect a range of clubs from which Del Bosque would like to  pick the cream of the La Roja squad he will announce next Tuesday, giving the players involved little breathing space to recharge batteries and motivation for the tournament in France.

Among the players likely to have energy levels and general fitness put to the most severe of tests are the internationals who regularly play for FC Barcelona  (Iniesta, Pique, Alba, Busquets, ) and Real Madrid (Carvajal, Ramos) .  Not only is Barca reaching the end of a brusing  campaign to try and win La Liga , with a must won final game if it is to hold off its historic rival, it is also in the final of the King’s Cup in Spain, while Real Madrid is in the Champion’s League final with city rivals Simeone’s Atletico  de Madrid (JuanFran, Koke, Saul and Torres could all be called up by Del Bosque) .

Those likely to report late for La Roja duty  include the Spanish internationals  in Oporto (Casillas) , Bayern Munich (Javi Martinez, Thiago, Juan Bernat) , Juventus  (Morata) , and Manchester United (David de Gea and Juan Mata).

More immediately available – were Del Boque inclined to want to pick them- are the likes  of Silva, Pedro, Azpiluceta, Cesc  Fabregas , Alcacer, Nolito, San Jose and Aduriz.

But  absentees from La Roja’s final pre-tournament warm-up friendlies against Bosnia (29th May), and South Korea (June 1st) may  include  several potentially tired players, with those playing in the Champions’ League final in Milan not  called up for duty with the Spanish squad till June 4th, just four days before it flies to France prior to its first game in Toulouse on June 13th against the Czec Republic.

Moreover there is always the risk of a player suffering an injury during the final stages of his club duties from which he may not recover from in the short term, as has happened to England’s Danny Welbeck.

And yet Del Bosque can still look on the bright side, celebrating the fact that he may still benefit rather than fall victim to Spain’s footballing success. However late they up for the team training, he counts on an array of talent  unmatched by any other footballing nation. And If La Roja retains the championship in France this summer, he will make history.  It will be the third time in  succession La Roja   wins the European Crown, twice under his tutelage. He  won Spain the World Cup in 2010, before its  errant debacle in Brazil in 2014 (aprtly b;amed on player tiredness and demotivation-  so Spanish football  is not short of incentives to prove it is unrivaled, as the best in the world.

 

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Celebrating Sadiq Khan

 

As a Londoner this past weekend, I hot foot it  to my nearest human cooperative and patch of nature to enjoy a  rare outburst of  sunny and warm weather.

It is a particular joy to have within walking distance of where I live in south London  , one of the most  inspiring and uplifting of London’s  green spaces –Battersea  Park. With late blossom flowering, plains and chestnuts loaded with young leaf, flower beds in full bloom, swans and moorhens nesting on the lake, and excited birdsong hung on every branch, it is a time of year where the cycle of old giving way to new life can best be appreciated.

Watching the families and partners and friends spread out across the turf, I was struck  by the sheer variety of humanity on display- men and women  and children of all faiths and races, and every class, and the majority of them Londoners, acting out their right to access to this shared space of enjoyment and mutual tolerance.

I happened to have just got back from a week-long visit to Bolivia where for all its mistakes along the way , the democratically elected  Movement  to  Socialism (MAS)  government of Evo Morales can justifiably claim to have pulled off a remarkable social transformation . The government’s recognition of the  plurality and equality of races and  in particular its enfranchisement of the  historically  exploited indigenous culture,  is  the government’s  most  positive  achievement  since coming to power in 2006.

As I walked around my beloved Battersea Park, it was hard not to reflect on how lucky we Londoners are to live in a multicultural society which has evolved in  modern times with a minimum  of the repression and violence suffered by the peoples of the developing world thanks to a political system, that for all its faults, is unrivalled anywhere in the world in terms of its accountability and transparency..

And I thought of the election of Sadiq Khan as the new Mayor of London  , a non-fundamentalist working class English Muslim of Pakistani descent and a member of the moderate wing of the Labour party. I have known Sadiq for several years, as a Labour member but also as a journalist and I had not hesitation in campaigning and voting for him.  I know how  disgraceful  was the   attempt  by his Tory opponents  to try and discredit his campaign by stirring up anti-Muslim  prejudice and fear of terrorism.

A minimum  checking of the facts of Sadiq’s  upbringing record as a lawyer and MP would have confirmed the crude  distortion and dishonesty of the black propaganda used against him.  Which is why I never doubted that Sadiq would prevail, and I am delighted that he has sent his  repugnant detractors  packing with their tales between their legs.

As for the  buzz of life in Battersea Park this weekend, it told a more valid story of our way of life   as Londoners. A huge city that has survived  Nazi blitzes, race and poll tax riots, successive immigrations,  and terrorist  bombs ,and has a majority electorate that believes in a consensual, tolerant existence,  prepared to vote in as their mayor, invoking as his cause the common good,  a man for all races, for all seasons. Which is why I hope  Sadiq will not waste too much time before  meeting and having a long exchange of views  with with  Pope Francis.  It would send a great political as well as spiritual message way beyond UK shores.  With human beings like these, our world  can only get better, rain or shine.

 

 

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Barca needs gladiators

First let me make one thing clear, before the usual fanatics and bigots launch their latest  tirade on me, I have always been open that I am a Barca fan. I have also tried to be clear about why I am a Barca fan.

I love great  football and this I define as something played with  creative originality, skill, and passion, reinforced by an ethos of solidarity, not just as team spirit but in deference to  those who have sacrificed time  and money to watch the game . As Guardiola famously told Barca players just before going out and winning the champions league final in Rome, players should fight like heroic gladiators.

For the first 45 minutes of their champions’ league quarter final against Atletico Madrid at the Calderon , most of the players of Barca hugely disappointed me. The exception was Iniesta and Mascherano, the first trying his best to improve his team’s  link-up play and speed in attack, the second preventing further goals by the home side, both with  the kind of resoluteness  that Simeone demands from all his team and usually gets ,on big occasions like this.

Even when Barca picked up pace in the second half, it is extraordinary to  reflect on how many balls were lost , and how rare were any attempts at goal , and how anaesthetised continued to the three star ‘trio’ , all of whom seemed incapable of dealing with Atletico’s defence and   fired  blanks, on the few occasions they got through.

By contrast Atletico  did not play a creative or particularly skillful  game, still less a game pleasing to the eye-it was rough and tough, psychological and disruptive in its  strategy and tactics,  the kind that wins rugby as well as football games- but it was a team and a fan base  showing  solidarity and passion in spades. Of course it would be unfair on Atletico’s victory to blame it entirely on  Barca’s performance . Theer was soldaity, there was passion, and there were moments of great football played by the likes of Carrasco, and Koke, and two well executed goals by Griezmann.

But  a club of the size and cultural potency  of FC Barcelona and a team of star quality status like Barca’s, with players like Messi, Suarez and Neymar earning fortunes that in  most other professions,  requires  not just a sense of responsibility but also of accountability. And on last night’s performance more than half the team and their   manager , following on from  the dismal League performance  against Real Madrid  and Real Sociedad , deserved if not  the sack, a huge reprimand for showing neither.

As a Barca fan I think it is perfectly justified to ask just what is the point of forming a team that is so dependent on its star trio firing on all cylinders, that on big occasions  like last night they play not as gladiators, but as demotivated underlings over dependent on spoilt mercenaries.

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