It occurs to me that when I first started blogging on my old Live Journal account some six years ago, I could write two, sometimes three entries an evening. They wouldn’t be particularly in-depth missives, but I would be expressing myself.
Today, I appear to be updating my journal at a rate of one new entry a month. This concerns me somewhat, mainly because I feel its symptomatic of an ongoing descent into creative apathy that’s already been marked by the drying up of my musical font.
This, however, is despite any number of stimuli that invoke my ire and the more argumentative part of my brain. I have been following current affairs a little more closely over the summer months, and the creative arts and sport continue to provide heat for the cauldron that is my spleen, but for some reason I’m unable to transcribe it all. I do wonder why this is; perhaps I’ve just become more acutely aware that any nonsense I peddle in this little blog is of no great consequence to anyone.
That said…there has been no end of drivel spouted by media outlets that really should know better. You probably know of my disdain for televisual and newspaper reportage, certainly in the United Kingdom, and they’ve had no shortage of subjects to toothlessly make a pig’s ear of covering. Since my last blog in July, we’ve had more swine flu, the US’s fear of Universal Health Care, the release of the Lockerbie bomber and so on. But as I know next to nothing about these subjects, I’m going to instead turn my critical gaze to the European Champions League play-off tie between Celtic and Arsenal.
For those of you that don’t follow football closely (I’m thinking mainly of Summer, the only person that seems to actually read this), the UEFA Champions League is a continental football competition involving 32 teams that finished in the top 4/3/2 of their domestic league (depending on the relative strength of said leagues). It’s not very easily to summarise in précis, so instead, follow this link.
One play-off match pitted the team that finished fourth in the English Premier League against the team that finished second in the Scottish Premier League, with the winner going through to the embarrassment of riches that is the group stages (each of the 32 teams collects up to $20m over the course of the six group games, just for being there). There can’t be too many sport teams in the world that would turn their nose up at $20m, and so every one of the ten ties would be keenly contested.
Of course there was an added frisson to a Scottish and English team meeting at this stage; while the two nations make up part of the United Kingdom, they’ve never had an entirely easy relationship. From warfare to politics to regicide to sport, whenever the twain should meet, something that doesn’t unentirely resemble fireworks is bound to follow.
I say this because in recent years, it’s been my observation that the British media has tended to consider facts less, and instead enter into a competition to see who can best impersonate a hysterical parent looking for a lost child in Disney World. For example, Arsenal beat Celtic 5-1 on aggregate over the two legs, leading to much aggrandising about the gulf in footballing ability between the two respective nations. Sadly, such articles have neglected to include the faintest harmony of common sense.
For instance, I got the impression from the general tone of the post-match analysis that this was somehow a confrontation between equals. Not so. Celtic and Arsenal may have similar-sized supports, but in terms of spending power, that’s where the comparisons must diverge.
The two nations of England and Scotland, although historically close in many regards, have developed in vastly different ways over the last century or so. While England’s population has continued to grow, mainly due to increased immigration and static levels of emigration, Scotland’s has decreased. The English Premier League, backed by Rupert Murdoch’s Sky Sports contributions, has become one of the richest sporting organisations in the world. English clubs buy the world’s best talent, from promising 14 year-olds to semi-legendary veterans, and habitually stroll through the Champions League stages to the latter stages, grossing more money.
(Which more often than not goes to servicing the huge debts and overdrafts these clubs have racked up, if not more multi-million pound footballers).
In contrast, with the collapse of the Irish broadcaster Setanta, the modicum of TV money that was trickling into the Scottish game has long since dried up. A new deal was struck with ESPN/Sky, at a fraction of what the previous contract rates were. The Scottish Premier League (SPL) champions, Rangers, have seen their spending power curbed by their bank for a relatively meagre £25m or so debt, despite them gaining automatic access to the Champions League group stages. Any money earned from these endeavours will likely go to paying off creditors. Such is the way of the Scottish, and English games. While the former suffers cascading quality issues based on a feedback loop (less money=fewer quality players=fewer tickets sold & lower money from TV rights=less money=fewer quality players and so on), while the English game aims for the stratosphere. At least until the money runs out, which has surely got to happen sometime, but which doesn’t appear to be on the horizon, despite the economic downturn.
The bottom line is that of the two teams that walked out at the Emirates Stadium in North London last night, one had spent in the region of £60m on their starting XI. This didn’t include the number of star names that were being rested. The other team’s first XI cost less than half that, and was more or less their strongest selection. It’s absurdly pointless to draw any direct comparisons between the two teams, or indeed two teams from each country, as the Scottish side just cannot compete with their English counterparts any longer. This isn’t just on the basis of the calibre of individual player being produced north and south of the border; England’s population being some ten/eleven times greater than Scotland’s, that’s bound to occur. It’s simply that the English teams can supplement these players with the best of the world’s young talent.
It’s not a level playing field, so I would graciously ask the media in this country to stop pretending that it is. It does you no favours.
In other news…
I took a couple of weeks off work this month and did precisely nothing. Well, not exactly. I went to see Camera Obscura and Lloyd Cole at Kilmarnock’s Edition festival with my good friend Alan. I bought several CDs (Pulp’s His ‘n’ Hers, The Cardigans’ First Band on the Moon, Paul McCartney’s McCartney II, Spinal Tap’s album and a compilation of Bond Themes. I’ve read a couple of books, most notably Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, and another couple arrived from Amazon today, namely J.G. Ballard’s Hello America and Vermilion Sands. I’ve invested in a Gorillapod for my camera. I’ve sifted through, organised and tidied up both my mp3 collection and my college notes from last year. I’ve enrolled for this year’s session, and I’ve more or less finished a couple of short stories I’ve been writing. I’ve even been practicing guitar solos again.
However. I still feel as if I’m going nowhere and doing nothing. I barely leave the house these days other than to go to work or play football. I want to take up a new hobby, take more photographs, start playing golf, form a band. I want to finish editing my first novel and start making some serious inroads into the second. I just need to keep my head up, and keep ploughing my way through.
My last little irritation’; September sees the release of the Beatles Rock Band game. It’s the latest in the franchise, and apparently sees a huge amount of attention to detail go into the crafting of the tracks, the visuals, the sound, everything. Even the controllers; the full band pack comes with two guitars, bass and drums, faithfully recreating the great band’s instruments to the finest detail. Well, apart from the fact the bass controller is RIGHT-FUCKING-HANDED. Now, I know as part of the left-handed minority in the world, we’re generally not considered worth a fuck by any multi-national company wherever cost-cutting measures can be implemented (Gibson and Rickenbacker have recently ceased production of left-handed guitars, various IT companies insist on making mouses that are ergonomically designed for right-handers only), but I mean, really! Paul McCartney’s possibly the most famous left-hander in the world (Barrack Obama may be the most famous man in the world who’s left-handed, but I digress), would it really hurt to make the bass controller truly accurate of his instrument? True, the game’s market may be made up primarily of right-handers, but here’s the kicker; why aren’t they burdened with having to turn the instrument upside down for a change? If I want to play Rock Band, or Guitar Hero, it’s what I have to do.
This isn’t a very good blog. Normal service may be resumed at some point. Or it may never.
