One more reason to hate London (as I do, with a passion).

The screaming headline on the evening standard - "Eartquake hits London".

Eh? You what? Come again? No. "Small Earthquake knocks down Chimney pots in Lincolnshire oh and bythe way some people could feel it as far away as London" might have been more accurate.

You see it's the same old story, anything that happens, anything, be it a train strike, a dusting of snow, council tax rises, anything, then according to the media it never happens anywhere other than London. And it really pisses me off!

Yes I know that 15 million people live iether in or in the counties that surround the big smoke but then another 10 million live either in Greater Manchester or the counties that surround it. And what's moe most Londoners seem to go along with this, they all think that there's fuck all in this country outside of their over crowded, stinking polluted cess pit.

Rant over.

Anyway, back to the cubs, we had a great camp last weekend, joint with 1st Coventry cubs, the kids from the two packs got on really well and they had a fab time. I sometimes get told that you can't do pioneering with cubs. Well we proved that wrong! One 15 foot high swing built with proper lashings by cubs. I thank you.

What was also great was getting them cooking. Some of these kids don;t have a clue, they just don't cook or handle food at home. We got them making very simple pork chop parcels to cook on fires. They didn't have to do much, it was mostly about peeling and chopping their veggies but they loved it and all want to do more cooking.

Its not the first time we've cooked with them, we put a big emphasis on food in our programme and I think that much of the recent press coverage about school dinners and children's knowledge of food justifies this completely. every time we do something that involves food, and I mean proper food, making proper meals not just toasting marshmellows (scouting has moved on in recent years!) the kids love it.

Long may it continue!

Sorry if the following sounds a bit cryptic but I don't have the right to talk about what I want to in a public forum.

How do you help someone that has lost all faith and confidence in themselves? How do you convince them that it's worth turning themselves around and keeping themselves out of trouble? What happens when they don't care what punishment the law might threaten them with because they are quite convinced that they are a right off so might as well carry one the way they are going, they belive they will end up with a lengthy jail sentence eventually, so why fight it? What happens though when you can see the occasional glimpse of what that person is capable of though but you don't have the time, ability, training or resources to know how to coax it out of them?

What then?

I'm feeling lost.

A Matter of Life and Death?

It is now approaching 19 years since 97 football fans died at a stadium in Sheffield.

The causes of that tragedy, the perimeter and lateral fences, the failure of crowd control both inside and outside the stadium, the corroded crush barriers and the many other causes have been rehashed many times before and are not the point of this post. What is relevant though is that all of them were due to the disgraceful and frankly criminal negligence of South Yorkshire Police and Sheffield Wednesday Football Club. And in turn this was derived from the fact that the Police, Government, Football Association and football clubs treated fans like animals. They were an inconvenience, there only to be relived of their money and then herded in and out of stadiums like cattle. Money wasn’t spent on the fans, on improving their facilities despite them being the life blood of the game. The result was tragedy.

Football changed. It could do nothing else. It had begun already, the fanzine movement had given fans a voice as it started off in the mid 80’s but it was the advent of the premier league that really changed it.

Now let’s fast forward to today and the state of football. Fans are again being treated not as the life blood of football but as a source of revenue, whether its for overly inflated ticket prices, over priced team strips or sky tv subscriptions. And of course because of the tv money the actual paying fans on the turnstiles are invited to rock up and stupid times as well as, for example, being asked for £48 for the cheapest seat at Stamford Bridge. And what is the result? Stadiums aren’t filling up any more, even Chelsea are struggling to do so. It’s not the great exodus that there was in the early 80’s, but the process has started. I’ve been to Villa park when it was only two thirds full and it was eerie. Bolton V Blackburn earlier this year, a local derby between two teams competing to get into Europe had ten thousand empty seats.

Who’s fault this bleeding dry of the fans is is difficult to say. It’s an unholy alliance of sky TV, greedy, and I mean pig fucking greedy players, weak chairmen who can’t say no, greedy chairmen who just want more and people like the Glaziers and Abramovitch who just want a play thing.

What it does mean is that with the fans over here having had enough and not willing or able to pay anymore the clubs are looking elsewhere, and where are they looking? Abroad.

The Premier League is looking to play a 39th game abroad in order to increase the audience for the league. That’s right, sod the fans, forget the unique culture that is part of each individual club, forget their traditional homes, lets play abroad where we can get more money shall we?

Make no mistake, this is not about one game a season (which in itself undermines the concept of the league, where everyone plays each other the same number of times), this will go on. If this is a (financial) success then more and more games will be played elsewhere. It is the start of a very slippery slope and once again the victims will be the fans.

No one will die this time, at least I hope to God no one does, what will die will be football culture as we know it today, where people feel part of their club and the club is part of them. In its place will be a soulless franchise feeding the pockets of the greedy.

And who, even those who have no interest in football, can say that that is a good thing?