With no other higher moral authority being available I thought I’d draw my line where West Ham do…

I have to admit I find Facebook’s block button it’s most magical feature allowing one to banish from one’s life people who one would not hang out with in real life or who one does not like to listen to the views of.  This might be creating my own echo chamber but I don’t want to depress myself listening to people who bang on about how awful I am or other people are.  I know this already.  Some people I have blocked simply for posting wild conspiracy theories.  You meet them in real life and they seem like perfectly reasonable people and then you listen to their views and you think … yeah you’ve got a problem, mate.  Some people I block because I know them and don’t want to spoil their illusions about me.  A minority I block for peddling porn.  And some people I block because can.  For let’s face it …it’s as one near as one can get to ...being Ip Man?

The other day I blocked a football loving comic for posting about how the DFLA and their march were misunderstood.  Now I'm not a branding expert but if you don't want to come over as a bunch of knuckleheads ...maybe a better logo lads?

 

The DFLA logo - a fist ready to thump someone.

For those of you who are unaware of the DFLA it’s an offshoot of the FLA – the Football Lads Association.  The Democratic Football Lads Association.  The FLA / DLFA split was a bit like the NUM / UDM split but without any industry or work being involved or any meaningful cause being attached and 20 years later.  I also wondered if there is a Democratic Football Ladettes Association.  Funny one never hears about Ladettes anymore.  I miss the days when they were a great stride forward for feminism.  However, those days seem to be gone.  I’m not saying the title is misogynist but… Okay, I am.  Not that I’m a feminist but it’s enough to make you wonder if there’s something to it…  But simply saying you can see the point of view of the DFLA is not what annoyed me of what he said...  What annoyed me was …the people trying to rationalise with him beneath his posts and his comment that he had a wide variety of friends with differing points of view on the DFLA. 

At that point the ghost of the Saint Jimmy Hill suddenly appeared before me in a vision and spoke unto me saying: “Look mate, this bloke thinks you’re his friend.”  And then it hit me … this man thinks because I’m a Facebook friend I’m a real friend and he doesn’t actually seem that friendly?

Then I looked at his friends.  One of them had posted a video that was a parody of Blur’s Parklife but with the substituted lyrics that all the white people were branded as far right.  It was very well done and quite amusing but it left an unpleasant taste behind in my mind.  Now, I’m not exactly a music fan but I did a bit of google to find out how closely it matched to the original video and quite a bit.  Then I started to think well, it is a parody but it’s also a bit close to stealing someone’s material.  It had a man in it with a toothbrush moustache who wasn’t Charlie Chaplin and soon, like Phillip Larkin, I started to feel one of the less deceived. 

Then I thought to myself I’m over-reacting.  Just because this man apologises for a bunch of football casuals doesn’t mean that he is one.  Except that he did seem to say on a blog somewhere a few years back that he had been imprisoned for “fighting at football”.  “Millwall. I got attacked. I was defending myself. It’s not something I’ve ever hidden,” he said to a friend of mine who ghostwrites gangster autobiographies.  Sadly the judge did not see it as self-defence just offence but it’s good to discover that everyone in prison is still innocent.  The again, who knows?  Maybe he was just offside.

Okay fair enough I suppose… he isn’t hiding it … but then again it’s pretty hard to hide that you were jailed for nine months and given a six-year football banning order when it’s on the BBC News website.  In that situation the best one can hope for is to hide in plain sight.  Then again what do I know?  I’m “ignorant”.  I wouldn’t mind so much if he hadn’t had the cheek to ask me what exactly it is about football that I don’t like.  Well, … apart from it being as boring as watching paint dry … you.

So where does one draw the line?  Using google I discovered that West Ham had suspended a youth coach who had been on the march.  With no other higher moral authority being available I thought I’d draw my line where West Ham do…