So which one of you are an official of the 'hateful regime that is the UAE''?
Yesterday the Guardian published this
https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2019/may/24/welcome-to-elite-football-great-summer-of-hate very prominently on Guardian football. It is written by Barney Ronay who is the same journalist who accused City fans of siding with the UAE when Matthew Hedges, a Durham student was arrested and charged last year.
Barney Ronay has the cheek to refer to a "Summer of Hate", and yet for the second time in a matter of months he has made a direct attack on the supporters of Manchester City. No one has been named personally, but elements of the City support are now referred to as the 'hard edge of the UAE regime.' In other words, some of the opinions expressed here, and online are fraudulent and put up by paid employees of the UAE regime. It is one thing to express an opinion on a middle-eastern state, but quite another to equate some football supporters with that regime. I regard this article as malicious. It is seeking to damage the reputation of Manchester City supporters.
The question is what do we do about it? It is libel. It falls short of naming any individual supporter. Fundamentally I believe in free speech. I support the right of people from any spectrum of society to express an opinion. I don't think that the law should be used as a weapon in politics.
Traditionally the Guardian was regarded as liberal newspaper with it's journalists on the left of political opinion, but nowadays the concept of left and right have become pretty meaningless. When I was young, the East v West referred not to the middle-east and ex-colonies but to NATO v the Eastern bloc. The cold-war is history. People are no longer defined by fundamental affiliation to one bloc or another. The polarised field that underwrote the political landscape has weakened. The political compass spins. We now have a situation where former radical journalists are adopting political views that I used to associate with the Spectator, Norman Tebbit or Enoch Powell.
Britain's Empire is now all but gone. It struggles now to maintain it's own borders and to define its relation with Europe, and yet here we are with the liberal democracy of Britain being counterposed to the 'oil-rich states' and 'hateful regimes' of the UAE and Azerbaijan.
How did we arrive at a position when radical opinion has been completely lobotomised? It was only a decade ago that Britain was allied to 'Shock and Awe' as hundreds of thousands died in the invasion of Iraq. Mugabe, Gadafi, Saddam, Africa, Middle-Eastern states, Islamic Fundamentalism have become Public Enemy no. 1 for the new right.
The modern world is built on the edifice of history. British schoolboys are taught about Britain's imperial past. The Knights of the Round Table,the Fields of Agincourt, Henry the 8th, the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, American war of Independence, the slave trade, the Boer War, the Russian Revolution, the First and Second World Wars, Korea, the collapse and fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism and the war on Terror. In my lifetime it was always understood that the freedoms enjoyed in this country had been bought through Empire-building. Britain was the first industrial power. Coal, steam, engineers, and science brought untold riches and political power to Britain that its Kings and Queens could never dream of. Britain ruled literally half the world through the power of the British Army but more importantly through the supremacy of its economic factory powered first by coal and steam, and then by the magic of electro-magnetism.
The world of 2019 is a product of empire-building and then the subsequent collapse as predicted by 19th Century political philosophy. The British Empire is lost now, hardly able to launch an aircraft carrier. Ex-colonies like the UAE are now able to send probes to Mars, and to build nuclear power stations with the help of the Chinese something that 50 years ago was unthinkable, but these colonies fast emerging are just 50 years old borne in the aftermath of the second world war.
How on Earth did we get to the position where a writer for the New Statesman is now penning articles about the hateful regimes of the ex-colonies. He of all people should have an understanding of history and a knowledge of how we got here. Sheikh Mansour, Manchester City's owner, holds the OBE, order of the British Empire. That illustrates the relationship of power between the two nations. To compare the liberal world and political rights we enjoy with those in the cockpit of a war zone shaped by this very nation is the height of stupidity. Barney Ronay labels City fans as supporters of a hateful regime whereas the truth of it is that Barney Ronay has somehow become thoroughly lost and confused and found himself expressing views on the world that as a young ideal man I am sure he would have abhorred.
There is a reason Barney whilst most of the world does not enjoy the freedoms that you enjoy. A pity that you use these freedoms so destructively. You sit writing in Fleet St, whilst my compatriots live on the edge of existence in refugee camps. Their rulers may live in palaces with taps of gold, but that division is a product of your countries empire building and imperial past. Hateful regimes as you call them, are not a product of good and evil Barney, that is schoolboy, religious clap-trap.