Up the Blades!

Bill Shankly, a famous manager of Liverpool Football Club once said that 'fitba', he was from Glasgow where they speak a language beyond the register of most humans, was not a matter of life and death...it was far more important than that. Given the tragic events in Norway such a statement seems fatuous in the extreme, but I know what he meant.  

For the record, I am not going to dignify that Norwegian monster with any consideration.  It was an act of evil pure and simple and he should be cast with his views into the dustbin of history.  My heart goes out to the victims and their families and the people of Norway...of all colours and creeds. End of matter.

No, today as a new seasons beckons I am going to admit to an obsession that has been with me since birth and which I will take with me to the grave.  I am a football fan - yes, real football. I am not only a football fan I am a sad, mad, obsessed fan of Sheffield United Football Club.

Americans amongst you may offer oblique sympathy because you are still prone to a version of this obsession, even if your so-called 'sports' are by and large silly. Europeans amongst you will fully understand and no doubt share this particular obsession for a game that was to all intents and purpose invented in my home town - Sheffield - and which is now played far better across at least 99% of the planet.  Bill, you are excused at this point (you know who I mean).   The only thing that can really be said for this obsession is that it channels the national, patriotic and local zeal from one entirely violent field of European endeavour onto another marginally more peaceful.  

 

Known as the Blades 'we' (note the depth of the obsession) are renowned for 'our' blunt edge in front of goal.  In fact, last season we not only lost the ability to score a goal, but were by and large unable to locate the goal itself.  And, all this whilst a large neon sign was illuminated over our own goal with the words 'Score Here For Free' emblazoned.  Excessive defensive largesse led of course to much gnawing of teeth amongst the faithful and much departing of managers whose grasp of  tactics seemed by and large to be limited to offering excuses for defeat before a ball was kicked.  We were awful. 

Consequently, having been but three years ago amongst the gods of the Premier League, playing the likes of Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool we are now cast asunder amongst the weeds that make up League One.  Note, I have not mentioned Arsenal as they are not really a club, more an up-market north London beauty salon run by and for the French.

Now, being English nothing is what it seems.  League One is of course the third tier of English football - of course it is.  This morning I received the fixture list from the Sheffield United Supporters Club of which I am a proud member.  Indeed, me and the other bloke see ourselves as the gritty back-bone of supporterdom and jealous guardians of our club's anthem - the chip butty song. 

Next season far from attending the glitzy grounds of the great - such as Old Trafford and Stamford Bridge - we will travelling to those very symbols of post-imperial industrial decline such as Walsall, Tranmere and Huddersfield.  These are teams that have managed not only to avoid a golden age, but are probably more proud than we are of being truly and utterly dire.  If they ever had a future it is now so far behind them as to constitute ancient history.  Solid folk all!

Still, there is one saving grace.  Sheffield Wednesday - the enemy and known justifiably by we Blades as the Wendies - are also in League One.  This means there will be two so-called local 'derbies' at which some 40,000 people will pay very good money - well, pounds - to cram into two fading grounds to watch complete and utter rubbish for ninety minutes - twice!  Worse, I will travel all the way from the Netherlands to watch what is probably the worst football on the planet.  And, I will enjoy it.  Is that obsession or what?

The facts are these.  Both clubs are broke.  Both clubs are rubbish.  In a sense both Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday reflect the great city of Sheffield from whence I hail.  The steel city of an empire now long gone Sheffield is a great city that struggles to avoid relegation into history.  

Some years ago I allowed my strategic head to rule my supporter's heart and wrote to the Sheffield Star, our local paper, suggesting the two clubs merge with Sheffield F.C., the world's oldest.  Then, I argued, the city of Sheffield would have a club that could compete with the best.  Interestingly, my email address was placed at the bottom of the letter by an editor clearly possessed of a strong sense of humour.  Being born no more than 500 metres from Sheffield United's ground, Bramall Lane, I thought I knew most of the words that make up Sheffield's distinct dialect.  Clearly not!

And that is of course the point.  As yet another season approaches you can forget the Champion's League, the Premier League, the World Series (oh, please!) and even the World Cup (bunch of overpaid prima donnas - just like academics, without the overpaid bit).  Most fans support rubbish clubs and are proud of it.  So, spare a thought for me and the millions like me as we watch the 'lads' yet again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on some cold, dark night in front of a few cold, sad people in a dark mood in some cold, dark place. It is the true mark of the human spirit, the triumph of hope over experience and proof if ever needed that we are all in need of a little insanity.

Football is not a matter of life and death, but it matters to me.  I am a football fan, I support a rubbish team and I am proud of it!

Up the Blades!

Julian Lindley-French

   

  

Lions led by Donkeys?

Brussels, 18 July. German First World War Generalissimo Ludendorff reportedly said of his British enemies: "The English Generals are wanting in strategy. We should have no chance if they possessed as much science as their officers and men had of courage and bravery. They are lions led by donkeys." That strategy word again. When I rule the world it will be banned. At the very least I can write to my publisher, Oxford University Press, and insist ‘strategy’ is re-defined in the Oxford English Dictionary to mean leading without due care and attention.

Today in Parliament, Secretary of State for Defence Liam Fox announced the findings of Strategic Defence and Security Reviewette 2 (SDSR): The Further Reckoning. There is good and bad news. Let me give you the bad news first. On the face of it this reviewette smacks of that unholy alliance of end-of-the-world Treasury accountants and beautiful world soft power disarmers who came up last November with the rather silly Strategic Pretence and Impecunity Review. Prime Minister David Cameron showed real chutzpah when he rose in the House at the time to claim that the review would be see no shrinkage of Britain’s strategic footprint. He had just amputated a foot!

So, in this ‘we clearly did not get it absolutely right reviewette’ a further £5bn of ‘uncosted spending’ has apparently been uncovered, on top of the £38bn that had supposedly been missed by the previous and equally strategically illiterate mob.

The British Army will be cut by some 19000 personnel by 2020 reducing the force to 82000, the smallest regular British Army since 1901 (and in those days Britain still had a navy!). The remaining 20000 personnel stationed in Germany will be bought home (that should please Ludendorff). To offset the cuts to the Army the reserves will be increased from around 30,000 to a bit more than 30,000 with a focus on the creation of a fighting force, rather than a support force. The equipments budget will be increased by 1% between 2015 and 2020. This will ensure major projects, such as the Royal Navy’s two super-aircraft carriers can be completed and more Chinook helicopters bought for the Army, although given the planned draw down in Afghanistan the words stable, doors, bolt and flown horses comes to mind.

The ‘strategic’ (aaaargh!) objective remains; to ‘balance the books’ by 2020. Clearly, balancing these infamous books still comes an awful long way before the balancing the force and there still seems little relationship apparent between the fantasy National Security Strategy and the dreaded SDSR – versions one or two. By the way, has anyone ever seen these ‘books’?

Now the good news. Alright, the less bad news. Buried deep in the Sir Humphrey speak there may be just a semblance, a smidgeon, a smearing of strategy and science peeking over the parapet into the no man’s land of Whitehall policy-making. Ludendorff pay attention.

First, some strategic (aaaargh again!) thinking is apparent. Or, rather, the Government has imlictly acknowledged there may be life after financial Armageddon. Reserves can either act as technical support, which has been the traditional British approach, or provide a surge capacity for the fighting force. Hitherto, the British assumed that European allies would provide the surge in the event the British armed forces were doing the heavy fighting during the initial stages of a conflict. It is sad to say that given the sorry experience of Afghanistan and the duplicity of European allies therein, that hope has all but evaporated. With the exception of the French London has no confidence whatsoever in European allies who have proved themselves all too adept at giving their excuses at critical moments in the campaign. They talk solidarity, but never fight it, which helps to explain Britain's veto of an EU strategic (aaargh - ditto!) headquarters which would inevitably involve more cost for London. Indeed, it is noticeable from Secretary of State Fox’s announcement that only the Anglosphere was mentioned – the Americans, Australians and Canadians. 

Second, the move to create a US-style fighting force 120,000 strong with a 70/30 ratio between regulars and reserves will not only reinforce a surge capacity, but also begin to re-embed the British military in civil society. The British like to believe they are casualty tough and there is some truth in that given the three hundred and eighty or so British dead in Afghanistan. One more today sadly. However, having been the first major state to abandon conscription in 1960 one of the reasons for such ‘toughness’ is indifference and ignorance in large segments of British society. Put simply, the massive majority of British citizens have had virtually nothing whatsoever to do with the armed forces, and for a very long time. The military has become a virtual ghetto. Whilst efforts such as Help for Heroes and the Military Covenant raise awareness the gap between the defenders and the defended is dangerously wide.

Even given the ‘goodish’ news there remain profound question-marks that the 2011 reviewette fails to answer. Why, for example, has a professional Army of over one hundred thousand found it so hard to maintain a force of ten thousand in Afghanistan? Such a low level of deployability would suggest that Britain’s hire purchase military has been suffering for too long from an imbalance between personnel and capability – too many boots, not enough weapons and stuff. How, for example, can the management-led approaches to defence reform and procurement reform which have or are about to see the light of day lead to better strategy? Will Liam Fox’s version of Kitchener’s Army be an army on the cheap? If so can it ever really be used for fear of failure?

Certainly, the government does not have the answers. July is the month a British government on dodgy ground makes announcements.  This marks yet again the yawning gap between the self-obsessed governing class and the poorly governed. When will the Whitehall Village learn that it is not clever to announce such a review when it thinks most Brits are turning unmentionable shades of sun-burn on some corner of a foreign beach that will be forever Basildon. It simply reinforces the contempt too many Britons have for their government.

The British Government has made a complete Horlicks of security and defence strategy during its first year in office. Governments are of course like popes – infallible. They never admit mistakes. The 2010 SDSR was indeed a profound mistake. But maybe, just maybe, in what is a very muddled British approach to strategy, corrections are beginning to be made and yes, strategic common sense will eventually prevail.

So, one hundred years on from his caustic commendation some re-ordering of Ludendorff is justified. Until proof is apparent to the contrary the British politician is wanting in strategy. The British could make a real difference and generate real influence if the political class possessed as much vision as their officers and men have of courage and bravery.

Military lions led by political donkeys? That is probably unfair.  It gives donkeys a bad name.

Julian Lindley-French

Euro-Crunch: The Grim Banker is Calling

“If there is no relief, we are going straight into the abyss”. So says, Romano Prodi, one-time Italian Prime Minister and President of the Onion’s European Omission. As European Onion finance ministers gathered in Brussels to disagree about what to do over the deepening Eurozone crisis the sheer scale of the crisis and its potential consequences are now apparent. The Euro-crunch is upon us and Onion leaders face probably the most fateful strategic decision in modern European history – break the Euro up or move to a common fiscal policy, which effectively means the creation of a federal European state. This catastrophic failure of both policy and strategy, the result of many years of irresponsibility by all European leaders of all political hues, now brings us to the edge of Prodi’s abyss.

Greece with a government debt some 143% of the size of its economy will soon default. Italy, led by a buffoon of a prime minister, and with a debt some 120% the size of its economy, now looks like going down the same Mediterranean plug-hole. The debt contagion long feared by Onion leaders is now fact as the cost of borrowing soars for governments that have resolutely refused to make the reforms necessary to balance the books. The European Stability and Growth Pact established to ensure fiscal and budgetary discipline at the creation of the Euro has been derisively and now disastrously ignored. Indeed, governments have routinely lied about their level of debt; and complicit western European leaders have for too long pretended to believe them.

There are of course many lessons from this unfolding fiasco but perhaps the most telling is this; if a political project such as the Euro is not established from the outset on stable financial and economic fundamentals then disaster will sooner or later ensue. There are of course several reasons why the European citizen has been deliberately kept in a state of suspended uncertainty over the Euro. First, the Euro has indeed been first and foremost a political project, designed to foster ‘ever closer union’ in the words of the Treaty on European Union.  Profound, structural weaknesses have thus been ignored. Second, confidence in a currency is the pre-requisite for a stable single European market and of course the very basis for a sound banking system. European banks are still reeling from the 2008 global crisis and are thus deeply vulnerable to shock. Third, information is power; the retreat of democratic oversight in the Onion has fostered a patrician belief in Brussels that we the little Europeans should be kept in the dark for our own good. This noblesse oblige tendency of the Brussels Euro-Aristocracy is as dangerous as it is arrogant.

So, what are the implications? First, it is unlikely that France and Germany will give up on the political Euro until the cost of supporting the financial Euro is so great that over-taxed citizens begin to revolt. Second, if there is a decisive move towards fiscal union, which may be needed given the refusal of southern European states to fulfil their obligations under the Stability and Growth Pact, then the very real prospect will emerge that the United Kingdom and possibly other non-Eurozone member-states could leave the Onion. Third, much more power will be transferred to an opaque, secreacy-obsessed Brussels wholly unfit to exercise strategic sovereignty over the money of European citizens. This will not only render any hope of effective democratic oversight meaningless, but could also break the centuries-old and fundamental link between the European nation-state and its citizens – tax-raising authority and accountability.  Fourth, Europe's precipitous decline will be confirmed and with it any chance to influence a challenging world. 

The paradox? Far from curbing the appetites of avaricious southern European states, it could well stoke further dependency obesity as the gap between the western European payee and those accountable will become so wide as to be in effect broken. And, all of this whilst we the little Europeans slumber on beaches safe in our induced ignorance. By the time summer is over a fait accompli could be fact.

Whatever happens – break-up or state-up, the sorely-tried western European taxpayer will have to pick up a bill that the European Omission suggests could need paying at least until 2030. The alternative?  Sell Europe's debt to China, with all that entails.  Clearly, the political institutions of southern European states long undermined by venal politicians and their assorted hangers-on are simply too weak to cope with the austerity packages needed to bring government debt back down to manageable levels. There will of course be much empty talk of European ‘solidarity’. Sadly, if there is one thing I have long understood about the Onion it is this; whenever I hear talk of ‘solidarity’ it is going to cost me money.

Make no mistake, Europe, the grim banker is calling.

Julian Lindley-French