An online portfolio for the likes of Glen Wilson
An attempt to bring a vague sense of organisation to what a friend once kindly described as my âwriting portfolioâ
In Barnsley the top of the Metrodome sticks up above the town like a minaret, calling the population to aquarobics.
âIn a conversation over your shoulder a middle-aged man is sensing a conspiracy;âMy dad died on the Tuesday, then on Thursday the washing machine went, and then on Saturday the fridge freezer had it. You know, it was too much in one week for it to be just a coincidence.â Rather than contemplate the hitherto unexplored concomitance of death and poor-wiring you gaze through the glass and catch the commencement of a football match; a goalkeeper in a bright orange jersey pulling on his gloves before a set of goalposts wrapped in thirteen seasons of tape.â
I canât stand Theresa May, but thatâs not why Iâm voting Labour
I can't stand Theresa May, but that's not why I'm voting Labour. It shouldn't be why you do. Likewise, not liking Jeremy Corbyn is no reason to vote Conservative. If youâre one of the people Iâve seen or heard say 'Ooh I couldn't vote for him/her'. It's ok, unless you live in Islington North or Maidenhead you can't anyway.
This isn't an election of personalities, despite the attempts by the press to frame it as such. It isn't him vs her. This isn't USA. It isn't reality television, it isn't a football match.
Nor is it an election of histories. What someone once said in an interview 34 years ago shouldn't come into it, and that means neither should what a party did 25 years ago. I used to be adamant I'd never vote Conservative after what they did to my home town but you can't keep thinking that. Whatever your leaning, you have to look beyond the 'he once said' 'she once did' spirals.Â
So forget the individuals and look to what the parties offer. Not a twisted unregulated press perception of what they may do, but what they actually offer and stand for. And instead of asking 'where does the money come from?' or 'how will you pay for that?' Ask instead what would that mean for your community, for the people that surround you, and the generation that will follow.
In reality â for most of us â this comes down to a choice between a party wanting to promote âa fairer countryâ and one championing âa prosperous countryâ. Which of these do you think would truly benefit your town, your neighbourhood, your schools, your children, your grandchildren? More money for those towards the top, or more opportunities for those at the bottom?
One party has presented an ethos that is for the many not the few, whilst the other continues to do what it can to prevent the many from having a view. Itâs evident in their introduction of the lobbying act - an actual parliamentary act which prevents the hundreds of charities nationwide that have to pick up the pieces in the wake of devastating government cuts and policy, from being able to speak out about the impact those cuts have on thousands, millions of people â and itâs evident in their callous attempt to ride on the fear of terror attacks and use that genuine concern as a means to lessen all of our human rights.
The Conservatives have put more effort into preventing charities telling the truth, than they have into stopping the press running opinion in the place of news. The Conservatives have no intention to implement the recommendations of the Leveson Report, you only need look at Wednesdayâs papers to see why that is.
With the help of that same press the Conservatives have worked to vilify the many, and particularly those who have it hardest. Suggesting that all can be solved if we just work a little harder. Itâs easy to say that when youâve never needed a safety net, but the truth is hard-working families still need an NHS, hard-working families still need affordable housing, hard-working families, sadly, still need benefits to get by in this country. So how can you be for hard-working families if you're fixated on taking away their crutches?
On Thursday there is a real opportunity to bring positivity and inclusivity, to leave the scaremongering and the personality bashing behind and focus on the future. Please, for the sake of all our futures, vote Labour. For the many not the few. How can you possibly argue with that ethos?
As the woman speaks the man empathises at pace. âYeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeahâ An unrelenting staccato of machine-gun affinity.
âThe train moves off from beneath the moulding corrugated roof of Liverpool Street station, through tunnels and out into the half-light of late afternoon where an emboldened blue sky has begun to edge out between the clouds that hang heavy over city skyscrapers. Across the carriage a man in a loosely knotted scarf shoves sushi into his mouth with the emotionless regularity of a production line.â
Out of season back gardens are unkempt and overgrown, pubs with weatherproof banners urging people to âWatch rugby hereâ.
âThe landscape rises; mist skirts round bright orange tree tops on the slopes of the valley as we roll on along its base to Taffâs Well. Rust coloured leaves merge into the grooves of a rust roofed warehouse. An old woman carrying a lifetimeâs supply of wrapping paper leaves the train and picks her way over the footbridge.â
At the station a âWelcome to Blythe Bridgeâ sign is somewhat undermined by the shards of broken glass embedded in the wall behind the platform.
âYouâre travelling on the rolling stockâs Christmas leftovers. A trained fashioned of remaining parts; a solitary carriage with no discernible front or back. Undeterred it sets off into bright sunshine, guiding you between concrete walls and factories that tread a fine line between well-worn and abandoned, and beneath footbridges that disappear off over the empty spaces left by lines long forgotten.â
Buildings demolished, all that remains is a huge expanse of concrete; a paved field across which two men with briefcases walk briskly side by side, as if ten years late for a meeting.
'A woman wanders through the carriage and pears in the door of the drivers cab, as if weighing up the merits of a hijack, before shrugging and heading back. The huge floodlights of works yards poke above the trees as we approach Newport. Washing hangs in backyards, a seagull sits on an old air conditioning unit; the suspension bridge is silhouetted on a yellowing sky. âFnf Fnf Fnf Fnf-fn-fnfâ announces the delapidated PA system as we cross the mud of the Usk into Newport station.â
A detailed write-up of Tilbury 1-1 St Neot's Town in the FA Cup 1st Qualifying round
âEssex; from white stilettos and Waynes in Cortinas to spray-tanned simpletons coining catchphrases from their own stupidity, this is a county where reality has often been constructed rather than lived. Not on the Thames estuary; here Essex is very much lived. âPainting?!â exclaims a thick-set man on the train, âWhat planet is he on?â His incredulity at a manâs artistry continues, âHeâs living in a dream world⊠heâs in a fantasy world thatâs what.â On through three more stations to Chafford Hundred, which youâd always presumed to be a miscarriage of justice far greater than the Birmingham Six, but it turns out is just a new estate in commuterville.â
A detailed write-up of Radford 1-2 Spalding United in the Preliminary round of the FA Cup.
âToday you are especially looking forward to Nottingham because arriving there will end your proximity to this stag-do. Two hours on a train hemmed in by incessant loud foul-mouthed banter from numbered polo shirts, of whoâs shagging who, whoâs f***ed who over, and whoâs a c**t. Two hours of cans opening, of gassy lager farts, and the cold, unrelenting, desperate stare of a blow-up doll whoâs haunted eyes seem to follow you round the carriage.â
A detailed write-up of Sevenoaks Town 1-1 Seven Acre & Sidcup in the FA Cup Extra Preliminary Round
âAs you head the same way you catch sight of yourself in the window of a parked car and like Dr Sam Beckett in Quantum Leap are bludgeoned with the stark reality of who you really are; the four men is actually five. You are one of them. Crestfallen. Thirty-two is no age to realise you really are a groundhopper.â
"Although I am both grateful and thankful for all that Ryan has delivered, that does not mean that I will blindly follow and support everything he has done. After all, I am truly thankful to both my parents, but they still read the Daily Mail semi-regularly. No-one is infallible, not even John Ryan..."
"âExpected 08:55â flashes in dots of yellow above my head with an urgency at odds with the subdued station. Couples in scarves and gloves make small talk on cold metal benches. Teenagers heading into Sheffield try to look both on-trend and not cold. On the platform opposite a bright red sign simply states âBeware of Trainsâ. If youâre not careful some of them might cart you off to London."
"As the train swings from Swanscombe into Nortfleet you get your first glimpse of Ebbsfleet Unitedâs Stonebridge Road ground. Red roofs and floodlights backed by a curtain of estuary industry; cranes and warehouses, cement works and wind turbines. If Kent truly is the garden of England, then this is the bit behind the shed."
"The FA wants womenâs football to engage a new generation of fans, to draw in a new audience for the sport. What draw is there in reducing 93% of a professional clubâs fixtures to a dead rubber, a pointless exercise? For all the hubbub and the buzz the FA want to create around the womenâs game as they seek to move forwards and progress one question will always remain; where were you for the first 100 years?"
"Â In stark contrast to the coloured boots and boyband quiffs around him Ricky Cornish is a footballer from a bygone age; heâs got a visible gut for a start, and what looks like a comb-over. He has the appearance of pub landlord from an early 80s sitcom. I can picture him pre-match, smoking a pipe and shoving old newspapers down his socks, shaking his head as his team-mates listen to their hippety-hop music on their boombox. Kids eh?"
"As the train pulls out from beneath the stationâs sprawling canopy and into the open air landmarks rise above the city only to fade into a thick layer of fog. Aside from the recognisable midriffs of The Shard and the London Eye all that is visible in either direction is the tops of houses, chimney pots, aerials and billboards. Railway arches peel off at a mismatch of angles, disappearing among the rooftops. Against the track faded advertisements for Watneys and Courage cling on faintly to soot-blackened walls."
