Hillian1
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One of the better Twitter accounts in my opinion
I presume that punchline followed some sort of setup?Watch ricky gervais: Humanity.
You don't see a sign for guitar lessons and call the number to shout that you don't want guitar lessons.
Genius.
I am always surprised how many people haven't worked this out, maybe some people only notice their Twitter account after an awayday defeat.
Blimey. It's not that it's easier to pick on more recent cases, it's just the right thing to do. It is of course right to reflect on the problems of the British Empire, other empires, slavery, etc. We should understand and remember the mistakes of the past in an effort not to repeat them. But it's too late to help the slaves of the past now, they're all dead. It's not, however, too late to help the 21st century slaves. Of course we should be picking on the current cases of human right atrocities seen in the wealthy middle-east.Every country has skeletons in the cupboard. It's easy to pick on the more recent cases than the older ones.
Maybe that's what you're doing.And it's always easier to see the faults in others rather than looking closer to home first.
Tell that to all the people dying whilst build the stadiums for the 2022 WC.Politics has no place in football imo
I presume that punchline followed some sort of setup?
You know that feeling you got when you first discovered there are people out there who are famous because they make inconsequential video blogs on youtube, and somehow millions of people follow them, and their appearance at a birmingham shop is causing travel issues, and you ask your kids about this person who you've never heard of and they can tell you everything about them and you feel old and like you've lost touch with pop culture and so on?
I kinda have something similar to that, but on a smaller scale. A sense of who the heck is 'we are brighton'?! Are they like the north stand chat or the arsenal fan tv - a feed that is viewed by people both within and outside of the clubs' fanbase as a voice for said fanbase? A twitter feed that "any true brighton fan on twitter should be following"? Never heard of them, but a thread like this would suggest that I should have.
Blimey. It's not that it's easier to pick on more recent cases, it's just the right thing to do. It is of course right to reflect on the problems of the British Empire, other empires, slavery, etc. We should understand and remember the mistakes of the past in an effort not to repeat them. But it's too late to help the slaves of the past now, they're all dead. It's not, however, too late to help the 21st century slaves. Of course we should be picking on the current cases of human right atrocities seen in the wealthy middle-east.
You are indeed correct when you snigger at the question of how many Arabs died, because it's not the Arabs who provide Sheikh Mansour's wealth, but those irrelevant slaves from south Asia. How very smart of you.
The tweet was of course clumsy and ill-timed, but I cannot agree that we should turn a blind eye to the atrocities being committed in the middle-east. The rulers use football to legitimise their disgusting regimes and we should keep the spotlight on what they're doing to fund their wealth.
Maybe that's what you're doing.
Unfollowed them last night.... Just posts crap and never backs the club or players.
Tell that to all the people dying whilst build the stadiums for the 2022 WC.
So, firstly, full disclosure x 2. To start with I have not read the tweet as it appears to have been deleted. Secondly I know one of the authors (who I suspect had control of the twitter account last night) and know who the other one is.
Yes, there have been some very unfortunate tweets from that account at the end of a long boozy day when we've lost and I've absolutely no doubt that beer was taken throughout yesterday. But, come on, for a lot of us that's what it's all about. Like it or not for a sizeable percentage of football fans game day, especially an away day, is about a long, boozy day at the game with mainly, but not exclusively male friends. The worries of the week are cast off and the idea is to have a laugh and a good time and, yes, drink too much.
In the pre social media days what happened on tour stayed on tour. Even Gulls Eye would hint at some of the things that happened on their trips but would never publish the full story. On away days with Brighton I've nearly fallen out of a high speed train from Plymouth, been chased round Stockport, offended an entire train carriage full of people, joined in with songs I thought were stupid because "Brighton" were singing them and smuggled in a friend who was so druink he spent the entire game spewing up down the terraces. But I've seen the country and made friendships that will last for life, people who are now older and a lot more sensible and are now encouraging my own son to have a day out at the football that is still fun but without the daftness that occurred pre social media.
When [MENTION=2139]Soul Finger[/MENTION] was still running The Albion Mag there were a lot of contributions from real actual journalists and serious writers and then there were the We Are Brighton boys with their fanzine style stuff and my writings about long forgotten away days that only had arriving at pub opening time in common. And that's because, as much as there is now a lot of good tactical and finance content out there about football, including here, there is still a need for that fanzine style, jolly boys (and girls) outing type of writing. And piss taking (which WAB do very well). And holding absolute scumbags to account.
Because however clumsy the tweet was (and, as I say, I didn't see it) it was seeking to point out the massive hypocrisy involved in the BBC w**king themselves silly over a despotic oil rich state buying the Premier League. And that's what we should be getting annoyed with and more than annoyed. When the revolution comes it needs to put City first up against that wall - not a pissed up fanzine writer.
BTW this whole thread is a bit mischievious anyway - the OP should know perfectly well who WAB are.
Triggaaar, I've greatly enjoyed reading your contributions on NSC for a number of years now, so it's right to respond in a conciliatory tone and look for areas of agreement. Hopefully that might clear up a few misconceptions. It's all too easy for viewpoints to be unnecessarily polarized.
Yes, I'd agree with you that human rights atrocities across the world should be exposed. There shouldn't be anything that's off the table here. It's particularly painful when sport that we love so much is involved. Of course, this isn't limited to this part of the world. Russia hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi - here's a link to an informative article about the hundreds of migrants, mainly Uzbek, who died in the construction work there. https://www.rferl.org/a/ghosts-of-sochi-olympics-migrant-deaths/26779493.html
That said, it's realistic to expect that it may take some time to change. As an example, in March 1807 the Slave Trade Act was finally passed in Parliament, but the first bill had been presented by William Wilberforce in April 1791, some 16 years earlier. Even then, it was only the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 which formerly freed 800,000 Africans who were then the legal property of Britain's slave owners. And what's worse, that act contained financial compensation to the slave owner for loss of property. This was 40% of the Government spending for 1834 and was the equivalent of between £16bn and £17bn in 2015. Every penny went to slave owners - nothing went to the slaves. And in 2007, 200 years after the Slave Trade Act, Tony Blair said sorry and stated the need "to remember what happened in the past, to condemn it and say why it was entirely unacceptable".
George Orwell once likened Britain to a wealthy family that maintains a guilty silence about the sources of its wealth. He saw it from a first-hand perspective - his own father was involved in the opium production near the Indian-Nepalese border that was then exported to China. So yes, let's definitely call things out on a global scale, including the Middle East, but let's be aware of our own shame as well. As someone who's taught History to secondary school students, I'd certainly agree with you with the need to "understand and remember the mistakes of the past in an effort not to repeat them". Even the parts that are too close to home for comfort.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/12/british-history-slavery-buried-scale-revealed
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/29/slavery-abolition-compensation-when-will-britain-face-up-to-its-crimes-against-humanity
In keeping with this post's tone, I really don't want to say too much about the 2nd paragraph. I did mention migrant workers in the 5th line of the original post, so there wasn't any deflection intended. What I will say is that there are charities out here, at least in the UAE, who help migrant workers and those in need, e.g. runaway maids. Care packs are put together at Christmas / Easter / Valentine's Day that include toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, socks, and also a phone card that they can speak with their families back home. I sometimes spend Friday afternoons (first day of the weekend) with guys who live in the labour camps for food and friendship. Recently we've had some Kenyans in who have been training in lift installation here. Jobs in construction are varied - not everyone here is a labourer. So there are definitely things that individuals can do. The guys love their football too, so we usually talk about the Premier League. They've talked about the impact of gambling in Kenya and the devastation that's being caused.
So if people, especially football fans, are looking to call out an example of modern-day exploitation, they could do worse than pressure football to do something about the scourge of betting companies and locking Kenyan kids into gambling addiction with the accompanying debt and poverty. This recent video shows it:
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-48231778/the-gambling-habit-swallowing-kenya-s-youth
Whilst there is certainly a long way to go in this country, there have been recent improvements such as the introduction in 2017 of the UAE Domestic Workers Rights Bill to bring the country's labor law into consistency with the International Labour Organization's (ILO) Domestic Workers Convention, providing migrant domestic workers with the same labor protections as other workers in the UAE. It's a start at least. And it's better than it was.
Finally, as a Brightonian and Brighton fan, I'm glad that the tweet's been taken down. One hopes that they've learned that social media is still media.
Words do have consequences.