Friday 16 September 2011

A SPARK

A wonderful thing happens in this first post on new NUFC blog Eyes on Ashley:
Without sufficient proof of his company’s employment record and a PhD in international law there is unfortunately nothing we can do. The degree of the crimes are substantially different and we are in no way comparing the lack of signings with child labour. The problem is that it is the same man who oversaw both organisations and did so with complete self-interest and without a degree of care for the people affected.
When an otherwise ordinary, apolitical demographic links popular culture to an international pattern of exploitation, we should be incredibly hopeful.

In a significant sense, all we're allowed now is pop culture. Our conscious collective existence is limited largely to football, pop music, TV talent shows, high street chain-store scrimmages. As such it seems inevitable that the first glimmer of an organised oppositional response to neoliberalism in the UK will occur on these sites, when even the bread and circuses are popularly deemed to be thoroughly disease-ridden.

It will happen, you know.

4 comments:

Alex said...

The pub-talk amongst us Wolves fans widely acknowledges that a Man City style takeover at Molineux would see the end of many of us as fans. Whether that would bear up, I'm not sure, but I've found it interesting that where, how and why oil-rich Arabs have their money is a big enough issue for the South Bank to draw a line.

Alex Niven said...

That is encouraging. I've witnessed to a rash of cynicism though about this sort of thing over the past few days. Sometimes I think even the most aware fans would be happy to let the game become a sort of walking billboard/PS-3 game, so long as they can still grumble masochistically about the impossibility of things ever changing.

Alex said...

Indeed, I've often had many older fans tell me they "feel sorry for me" because of the impossibility of Wolves emulating the successes of the past. This is held as one of the most significant contributors to the discontent among supporters.

However, being as how middle-aged, middle-class people are the only people who can go with any regularity and are the target audience for much of the marketers I wonder how much of the accompanying, much lamented, decline in atmosphere might just be down to the fact that the crowd have grown older and grumbling is a more appealing reaction to the spectacle once that happens to you.

Alex Niven said...

Yes, the Taylor Report was an even more profound blow to the game than the Murdoch takeover in many ways, wasn't it? The recent relocation of a "vociferous" section of the NUFC crowd by the club illustrated how inimical the old matchday tribalism is to wankers like Mike Ashley.