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Matt Alexander

With a degree in politics and economics along with quite a few years at the grass roots of the political arena, Matt is well qualified to comment on the political situation in the UK. With a rather satirical view of life in Westminster he manages to put into words what many of us really think of our leaders and the system. He is also an ardent follower of the ‘gentlemans game played by ruffians’  so there is likely to be many a reference to football. Can it be that he actually supports Bristol Rovers!

Articles by Matt Alexander

For England and Al-Khadr?

England in a sunny June - what a time! What a place! The constant on/off of showers and sunshine sends nature into growth spasms I swear the rest of the world never sees.  The gardens have exploded, each carefully nurtured display of floral fireworks paying back it's tender for those many muddy Sunday afternoons in preparation. Now is the time to cash nature's cheque for the work done, to sit in your English garden, and enjoy the sun.

The hilly humps that form the Cotswolds & Quantocks, in winter so uninspiring, now a hundred shades of green, trees, hedgerows, grasses. Every meadow that flies past the train window so simple on the surface yet so intricate in depth, booming with life as the spring bloom is devoured by ravenous summer young, already with one eye on the browning of Autumn. The march of The Green Man and his Mother Nature, England's Dream.

On to more concrete concerns, and more 'modern', digitally re mastered dreams. The red cross, traditionally the sign of sickness, is everywhere as the flag of our new patron is decked from every windowsill.  No time for the Green Man of Old England here, this is the time for Team England, and we're all in it together (funny how we're all suddenly equal when the cupboard is bare and the fat cats have brushed the last crumbs from their flash waistcoats, isn't it?)

I refer of course to the Team of Saint George: Serbia. Sorry, Palestine. No....Malta? Ok, enough leg pulling, I'll get it out of my system by reminding people that St. George, or Al-Khadr as his fellow Palestinians called him, has nothing to do with England. He never came here, his mother was Palestinian and his father Turkish, so today he would much more likely be found defending the Gaza aid flotilla from Israeli attack. In fact if he did try to come to England to lead us to victory, he would end up imprisoned in a detention centre, being racially and sexually abused by staff, and then viciously beaten for being part of a hunger strike (this has all been proven to have occurred in both Colnbrook and Yarl's Wood detention centres). Oh England!

Back 'on message'. The England flags are fluttering everywhere in support of the England football team, as a nation dares to dream of World Cup glory once again. This year promised to be different from the other 44 years of hurt, for two reasons. We had Fabio Capello as manager, with the promise that he would end the era of prima donna player power - he would create a team, with players for positions in a set formation, strict discipline and a decent distance between a pragmatic manager and respectful players. Then we had St. Wayne, supercharged after a stunning domestic season which has seen him mature into a truly world class player, a man who had passion, power, precision and then another three bags of passion.

The day of the USA game was electric here, you could smell the ozone of expectancy in the air. The whole country seemed to be in festive spirit, flags everywhere, not just on the usual suspects – white vans, pubs and construction sites – but literally everywhere: kebab shops, Somali-driven taxi cabs,  south asian carpet shops, even schools and libraries. In many cities huge public TV screens were erected to make 'fan parks', they even allowed people to bring their own booze! The pubs were  packed, the streets deserted, the 'non believers' fed a diet of Pride and Prejudice reruns to keep them busy while the rest of the country crowded round their HD flat screen tv's.

Then the game started and it all went to crap. Capello was playing the same system that had seen us top our qualifying group in unaccustomed style, but now it wasn't working. The discipline that had made us seem so solid before now made us look shifty, nervous, afraid. The formation that Capello had forced the prima donnas to fit into now looked like a straitjacket. St. Wayne looked distinctly human, off form, flat. Thankfully the USA froze just as much as we did, and we got away with a draw.

At final whistle the inquest began, and it continued for the next 6 days. The media had been barred from the England camp, but rumours were abounding of unrest. The players were being forced to stay in the training camp, away from temptation and the potential trouble (and tabloid stings) that has tainted previous tournament preparations.  Whispers came out of Forte Inghilterra – endless games of darts, no booze, no WAGS, more darts, training together, eating together, playing darts together, bored, bored, bored. The public reacted with scorn – shut up and get on with it!. I wouldn't mind playing darts for £250 an hour, would you?

Slowly the plunged barometer edged back upwards, as the traditional English 'pack up your troubles' Optimism came back to the fore. It turns out that our 2 previous best World Cup performances (1966 and 1990) both started slowly. Gareth Barry was fit again so The System would now work. The French were doing even worse than we were, always a source of comfort. By Algeria on Friday the spirit was back in the Team England fans – no one was asking for a performance, no one was being greedy, just get 3 points in the bag and carry on to the second round.

Then the game started and we were the worst I've seen an England team play in 30 years of watching. Capello's formation had moved from a straitjacket to become a death mask, the players stumbling and asphyxiated. St. Wayne looked like a squashed fox on the side of a 'B' road, until he unleashed his baby-eating tendency on the fans at the end of the game. A drunken fan crashed into the dressing room at the end of the game looking to unload himself (verbally or micturally, the jury is yet to decide) – such a perfect metaphor we should make him our new patron saint.

The biggest surprise for me, so far, is the lack of anger in a country with such a fearsome reputation for drunken rages. The two people that instinct says to blame – the iron-fisted manager and the passionate playmaker – are the two heroes who carried us into the tournament on their shoulders, and none of the players are Muslim, so there is no easy target. But it's more than that.

Despite the sunshine, the green fields, the fluttering flags, England is a dark place at the moment. There is a real sense of hopelessness in the air, with an unseasonly Autumnal whiff of browning and decay.  Our new masters keep on drumming negative messages into our heads, preparing us for the coming recession: it's going to be bad, it's going to be tough, we're all in it together, we're all going to feel it. But still people refuse to give up the delusion, still refuse to accept reality, still not planning for tomorrow. Maybe the rage will be unleashed when we go out of the World Cup,  maybe it will be a different trigger, and at who we still don't know. But the feeling is there, and even a perfect English summer won't be enough to cure it.

There is a story in Antony Beevor's book “Stalingrad” that I've always found very powerful. During their nightmare winter in Stalingrad, being slowly strangled by the encircling Soviet armies, the German troops received a package from headquarters, sneaked through the blockade. The near-starved troops were amazed to open the crates and find not food, but Christmas decorations, to 'keep up morale'. So, the troops starved through Christmas, laughing hysterically at the gaudy trees and bunting, then kept them up, through the new year and on into Spring. It makes me think that the yellowing banners of St. George will stay up in the windows, long after the circus is over and Team England have come home.

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