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[halfcenturyup]

You're welcome lol. I was actually a deckhand on the hovercraft in Dover for a short time in 1989. There were small craft and large craft. If you copped a small craft in rough weather it could be tough. One thing is they didn't fly in any seas over force 6-7. A totally different motion to ships too. Ships pitch and roll whereas hovercrafts bounce. If it's any consolation I went to work once with a hangover. We were supposed to be on a large craft but got swapped to a small one and it was choppy. My shift was spent lying on a bench on the car deck during the crossing in-between throwing up. Then in port I did my job. All with the delightful smell of diesel too lol. So I suffered too.

:) That's right. I had never seen anything like it. A big wall of water in front, slowly up, over and dooooown. I remember there was one boat and one hovercraft going back before they stopped the service and I thought 45 minutes in a hovercraft must be better than 90 on a boat.

Mistaaaaaaaaake!

Edit: It's all coming back to me now. I was holding the barrier so hard for an hour that when we landed ai couldn't move my fingers. They were locked in a grip position. Actual white knuckles.

 

[SebastianBlue]

I have absolutely no issue with the article itself. Other than being way too long and a bit pointless, but I don't see it as anti City at all in any way. What's counterproductive about it, is it presents one view, which is absolutely fine, and then tries to suggest it as the only right view. And the only way to acknowledge imortant discussion on historical events.

I don’t see it as anti-City either.

I actually welcome these types of debates, as it is one of the best ways to get people thinking about these issues, discussing them with people that may not agree with their stance, and driving us to be better now than we were before.

Progress is messy, as Manchester symbolises.

 

[halfcenturyup]

But it does make us complicit once we are aware of how our way of life is maintained via externalisation of costs via the exploitation and suffering of people elsewhere (there is no such thing as “cheap” goods and services; someone, somewhere is making up the full price).

And I think it is fine to openly acknowledge, discuss, and grapple with what that means.

Which is why I don’t mind the article. I just think the suggestion the ship should be removed is misguided and ultimately counterproductive.

Depends how prone one is to soul-searching I suppose. This one, not so much.

 

[paulchapo]

:) That's right. I had never seen anything like it. A big wall of water in front, slowly up, over and dooooown. I remember there was one boat and one hovercraft going back before they stopped the service and I thought 45 minutes in a hovercraft must be better than 90 on a boat.

Mistaaaaaaaaake!

I don't think they flew in winter due to the weather. It was the easiest job I've ever had in my life.

 

[Cheadle_hulmeBlue]

Seems the guardian has an actual/ much bigger link to slavery than a ship on a badge. Maybe they should get cancelled as well?

 

[SebastianBlue]

Especially since many went on strike in support of the slaves, even if it meant them not being able to feed their own household.

Very true. Though, it took some time for them to come to that stance, after quite a bit of public debate (and no small amount of conflict), which is why articules likes these are important.

People tend to forget that things didn’t just “happen” in the past because history is mostly taught as a series of events and dates, with little in the way of context in between in most cases (and that just out of necessity of group education, unless you specialise in history at uni or out of your own interest).

In reality, each “event” itself was most often actually a large collection of smaller happenings, conflicts, decisions, groups of people, and consequences over a longer period of time coming together to manifest outcomes (rinse and repeat). Even those events we would consider significant and acute were themselves dependent on less obvious factors coming immediately (or long) before they occured.

We’re in yet another period like that, which when it is taught, will leave out quite a lot of the smaller debates and conflicts that comprised it, including the discussion on here about the article.

 

[SebastianBlue]

Depends how prone one is to soul-searching I suppose. This one, not so much.

And that’s fine. But that also means one cannot reasonably claim to care about the less fortunate… when one doesn’t actually care about the plight of the less fortunate. That’s all I am saying. It’s a choice each of us has every right to make, but we have to own it when we do. Depending on that choice, some things we say and beliefs we hold may reasonably ring hallow as a result.

 

[Saddleworth2]

No sports desk hates City or the Sheikh or the UAE more than The Guardian. They’re a bloody disgrace when it comes to our football club. I don’t mind them as a paper in general, but I’d rather buy a subscription to the Daily fucking Mail than the Guardian, just because of their sports writers.

They’ll have been rocking in their chairs when the writer came forward with that article; ‘ooh yay, another thing to have a dig about City over’.

Other than their coverage of City I like the paper. I don’t pay as penny as I access it on line. All the media are disgraceful in their coverage of us. BBC worst of all because they are supposed to be neutral.

 

[MadchesterCity]

The author is a blue.

FFS.

They never used to be part of the City matters committee did they?

 

[When The Levee Breaks]

Interesting article. I always thought the ship was linked to the ship canal too. Never associated it with the slave trade.

Bit weird to set his sights on the Manchester clubs though, and seemingly excused other clubs from having ships on their badges.

Tranmere’s warship signifies the town’s shipbuilding heritage; fishing town Grimsby has a trawler; and Plymouth’s Mayflower commemorates the Pilgrims’ ship that set sail for the new world.

Tranmere; made warships. 3 of which were used by the Confederate States Navy, in the American Civil War. As in the war to abolish slavery

Grimsby; a trawler, to celebrate its fishing industry. Ssshhh nobody tell the Vegans or Animal Rights groups. I dont think they've noticed yet.

The Mayflower; The ship that carried the Pilgrims to the New World...so they could take all the land off the Indigenous people and then spend many years massacring them. And enslaving them.

The journalist in question is seemingly ok with that though!?