On opinionated artists

I was just reading a blog post by the lovely Tara, in which she divorces herself of a former hero, Morrissey, because of his increasingly outlandish and boorish opinions.

At the entry’s close, Tara writes: “Farewell Morrissey. You ruined it with your stupid ill thought out opinions. You’re a pop star, no one wants to know what opinions you hold*. Just write some fucking half decent songs and stop being a dickhead.

“*See also: Thom Yorke, Michael Stipe, Bono, Nicky Wire and Chris Martin.”

I’m not one to argue with the idea that Morrissey is a dickhead. From what I understand, that’s part of the appeal for some people. But it does raise interesting questions about whether the political or moral attitudes of artists should impinge on our enjoyment of their work.

The most extreme example, of course, is that of Gary Glitter, whose festive hit ‘Rock And Roll Christmas’ is presumably now all but banned from Christmas compilation albums after his conviction for paedophilia.

Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan is another case in point; once a spearhead of the disenfranchised youth music scene in the late 80s and early 90s, the bald singer is perhaps now more famous for his paranoid rants and unbearable Christian proselytising.

I have had to ask these questions of myself in a rather different field recently. As a lifelong Liverpool fan, I have found it increasingly difficult to support the club over recent weeks after the damning verdict on their star striker, Luis Suarez, for using racist language towards an opponent; and, more particularly, in the club’s undignified and embarrassing response to Suarez’s ban.

Should these things matter? Should we allow the views of an artist or sporting institution to affect the way we digest their work?

One could write an entire thesis on this, but in brief: it is unavoidable in some instances, and I believe the tipping point comes when the perpetrator’s ‘crime’ has come to define them so vividly in your mind that they become inseparable from it and you find everything related to them to be insipid, including their work, even if previously you had enjoyed it.

Personally, my memories and sentiments towards Liverpool are too vast and too deeply entrenched for the Suarez saga to turn me off the club, but I can see how it could spill over into resentment – as has happened with Tara and Morrissey.

That should not stop musicians from voicing their opinions, though. I hesitate to say that the music scene needs more characters, as that word itself has become a euphemism for “wanker”, but...well, it does.

Naturally, there are boundaries and there are people so deserving of censure that it is only right that they are pushed out of public life. Up to that line, however, I’d rather have the opinionated, wanky, bizarre or just downright offensive ramblings of Nicky Wire, Thom Yorke, Lady Gaga or Morrissey (respectively) than the vapidity of Joe McElderry or Alexandra Burke, the cold cynicism of Rihanna or Beyoncé, or even the ‘let the music do the talking’ of perfectly good bands like Fleet Foxes or Metronomy. At risk of sounding like an American TV executive, I like a bit of attitude.

Of course, it’s all the better if that manifests itself as an interesting quirkiness (The Fiery Furnaces, The White Stripes), elaborate showmanship (Kiss, Take That, Janelle Monáe, Of Montreal), or simply being really really genuinely nice (Elbow, Dave Grohl). But in an age when pop culture is becoming increasingly beige, I’ll take what I can get.

Amazon's couriers: shit

26 November 2011

Dear sir/madam,

I wish to complain in the strongest possible terms about your useless couriers and marginally less useless live chat service.

Since signing up to the Prime service in May, I have used the next day delivery option a few times. On three of those occasions, the parcels have not been delivered, prompting phone calls with your company to try to rearrange it.

The most recent one was today, when I was expecting to receive delivery of some Christmas presents for my fiancée. The order was sent through HDNL. After waiting in all day to receive the order, I was hardly surprised to go on the tracking page for HDNL to see this:

26/11/2011 03:07:00	LEEDS DEPOT	The parcel has been received into depot
26/11/2011 08:03:00	LEEDS VAN	The parcel has been loaded on to the drivers van
26/11/2011 14:56:00	LEEDS DEPOT	The parcel is in the Depot

After going on Live Chat, I was told that they had tried to deliver to 10:09am but could not gain access to the property. As indicated in the attached chat log, this is complete balls. I was up early on Saturday morning to avoid missing the parcel, and at no point did anyone press the extremely obvious buzzer to our flat. Furthermore, no calling card was left, leaving me to sit twiddling my thumbs like a moron for the rest of the day, expecting the parcel to turn up at any moment; had a calling card been left, I would have picked up it when I retrieved the post at 10:30am, and while I would have been understandably annoyed by its unwelcome presence, at least I could have got on with my life.

(Yes, strangely enough many of your customers have lives and jobs and things – a fact that you evidently overlook by using, as one of your couriers, the dreadful DPD, who bafflingly will not deliver at weekends unless repeatedly cajoled.)

As it happens, I had to wait to see the update on HDNL’s tracking site that the package had inexplicably been returned to the depot, at which point I went onto your Live Chat service. The woman I spoke to, Sarah, was less than helpful. Though I’m sure she has been exemplary in following the company line of a dedicated avoidance of common sense, it really wasn’t much good to be told that I would not receive a refund on a paid service that you have failed to provide three times in six months, as I have used the service on three orders or more.

Let me make this clear: I don’t care how many times I have used the service. I paid £50 to your company in the good faith that doing so would allow me to receive parcels more quickly than I would through Royal Mail, but the fact is that the couriers you use for next day delivery are too useless to carry out their sole duty of delivering packages. This, coupled with the fact that I never have this problem with Royal Mail, means that I have received my parcels LATER than I otherwise would have done, and so in effect have paid £50 in return for a LOWER level of service. If that does not entitle me to a refund then crivens knows what will.

Even more vexing was that I was told I would need to write in to you to lodge a formal complaint.

What is the point of having a Live Chat service if complaints cannot be raised via it? I was also told that sending an email would be equally useless, so at least you’re consistent in your utter failure to provide good service to your loyal paying customers.

I am disgusted that in this day and age I must write a letter to one of the UK’s largest companies to raise a complaint even when I am already talking to what I suspect it would deludedly refer to as a customer service provider, particularly when that company runs its operations almost solely online.

I expect nothing less than the following in response to this complaint. I have arranged my expectations into bullet points, as you seem to have trouble following simple instructions like “please send these goods to me in a timely fashion using a reliable courier” or “could I please raise this as a complaint?”:

· A response within 10 working days of you receiving this letter on November 29^th

· A full refund of the £50 I paid for the Amazon Prime service in May, given that you have failed to provide this alleged service to a sufficient standard (or, more accurately, your couriers have; however, I paid you, not your couriers, so that’s for you to sort out)

· An additional £50 in compensation for the complete waste of time you have put me through in order to sort out problems that are in no way of my creation on no fewer than THREE separate occasions

I eagerly await your response.

Regards,

Steven Chicken
malchickles@gmail.com

On patriotism

Norwegian murderer Anders Breivik's self-expressed admiration for the English Defence League has dredged up a lot of talk in the press this week about patriotism and its place in English society.

Why is it that all this stuff and nonsense only ever seems to spew forth from the mouths and keyboards of the most objectionable arseholes? Are we, as a nation, incapable of holding a sensible and balanced debate on the merits and failings of patriotism?

Worse, the column inches always seem devoted to the idea that we, as a people, should be proud of this great British nation. Or English nation. It depends what you're reading, really. So are we to be proud of the UK, or is that failing to take into account the sentiments of Irish nationalists? Can we be proud to be British, or does the prominence of the SNP preclude that? At least the Welsh are easy enough. Or are they? So we're safest just taking pride in our Englishness then, right? Right?

After all, England has some of the finest universities in the world; we fought off the evils of Hitler and Fascism, not to mention Communism; we spread civilisation around the globe; we have a great tradition of freedom of the press; and sport! Oh, the rounders, rugger (both codes), soccer (yes, soccer, a perfectly good English word thank you very much), cricket, baseball (yes), hockey, snooker, billiards, badminton, tennis, table tennis, Tiddlywinks, even the Olympics in its modern form. All gloriously, wonderfully honest and English and ours.

Oh, but hold on. The universities are now charging extortionate amounts for what should be the basic privilege of education, aren't they? And even then, they're only admitting those deemed socially significant enough to go to a select through schools. We didn't totally defeat Fascism, did we? There are still Fascists in this country, aren't there? And Commies, too, can't forget the Reds under the bed, and I'm not talking Anfield Road thank you very much. And we didn't so much spread civilisation as colonise, enslave, pillage, destroy and then leave with our tails firmly between our legs, much as we did in India and Africa and Myanmar. Freedom of the press? Yes: that is one ideal I would actually go to war for. But when the press behave so despicably as they have recently, forgive me if I lack the will to launch myself onto the streets with a St George's Cross twirling round my noggin.

Therein lies the problem with patriotism in this country: our history and culture is such a fog of contradictions and uncertainty that it is next to impossible for anyone who gives the subject a moment's thought to even know what it is we are supposed to be proud of. For every Churchill there's a Mosley. For every Darwin there's an Oates. For every Brooker, a Clarkson. It is madness to revere a country for its achievements and utterly ignore its failings and atrocities. As a democracy, we can take pride in the good things this nation achieves during our lives, but by the same token, we must also take responsibility for the mistakes it makes. Above all, we don't even seem able to conclusively decide what 'this country' is, for goodness sake.

Besides all of that, who is this 'we' that I keep mentioning? Because I certainly didn't help to bounce the Nazis back into their holes, or found a great university, or take gold at the Olympics, and I've hardly succeeded in being civilised myself, let alone civilising others. Like many people, I've mostly sat in my pants, rattling nonsense and waffle onto a Word document, and gone to work, and eaten food, and generally got on with my life. I might just as well feel a deep-seated sense of pride and fulfilment from the achievements of British cyclist Jason Kenny as find it in the history of our nation, whatever that is, perhaps flying a flag representing Jason Kenny outside my house and playing Jason Kenny's favourite song on official occasions.

At least I will have consciously chosen to embrace Kennyism. Certain sections of the press and of society seem to have this idea that if you aren't proud to be British (or English), something is wrong with you and your opinions are invalid. The attitude seems to be that such a trivial nugget of happenstance as the nation of one's birth should be enough, as and of itself, to inform an individual's entire social, political and philosophical attitudes. It strikes me as akin to allowing one's credo to be informed – or, rather, malformed – by skin colour: which brings us back to the EDL.

What the EDL and others like them fail to understand is that nationality, like race, is nothing to be proud of, and nor is it anything to be ashamed of. The only progressive attitude is one of indifference towards such random and insignificant aspects of a person. Perhaps once they realise this, we can get on with the business of treating people as people and taking responsibility for our own achievements, rather than spouting prejudiced ignorance while basking in a nation's reflected and distorted glory.

On the BBC at Glastonbury

Let's cover one thing first of all: I've never been to Glastonbury festival, and so I feel somewhat reticent to criticise the festival itself in any major way.

But I have watched television before, so I do feel well-placed to go through a few criticisms of the BBC's coverage of the festival.

Let's get the easy shots in first by focussing on BBC Three. A 75 minute show on Sunday night, which purported to feature The Streets and Queens of the Stone Age, both of whom got 25 minutes of airtime. The rest of the programme was devoted to acts that performed on the Friday or Saturday, and who had already been featured on the highlights programmes for those respective nights.

Fine. If you must recap the events of the weekend, the Sunday night seems a fine time to do that. But far too much of the programme was given over to talk, with the competent and likeable Reggie Yates desperately trying to keep some kind of order over three blathering idiots, none of whom seemed to understand that talking over one another is bad form.

Worst of the three is Gemma Cairney, a trendy young thing with barely enough personality to find loathsome – though just enough, it would seem. Cairney is hardly capable of stringing a sentence together, and the fragments of nothing that she does manage to blurt out invariably include the word 'literally'. But hey, that's what you get for being stupid enough to watch BBC Three.

BBC Two is somewhat better, fronted by the canny Lauren Laverne and credible Zane Lowe, and the vibe is all the more enjoyable for its more level tone, but there is still precious little substance to proceedings, with every featured artist enthused over with equal gusto.

I understand that the BBC have a duty to preach to a broad church with their coverage, but to gush over The Streets, whose performance was dreadful and incoherent, in the same terms as Janelle Monáe, who was fantastic, just comes across as disingenuous and makes the presenters look ridiculous.

There are other problems with this approach. Ideally, the links between artists should keep the viewer in 'the mode' and ready to move on to the next act: Jools Holland, for instance, usually does this superbly well on his programmes. But when the praise offered by Laverne, Cairney and co is so generic that it could easily have been recorded last week, it pulls one out of the action and reminds the viewer that they are, after all, just sat in their pants watching the television.

It's a shame, because the festival itself had plenty to keep me interested, and the camera and sound work on the actual performances were of the excellent standard that one would expect from the BBC. If they can work on the presenters, they'll have it down pat.

On the Olympic Stadium

di•lem•ma
dɪˈlɛm ə [dih-lem-uh]
–noun
1. a situation requiring a choice between equally undesirable alternatives.

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The BBC are reporting today that they expect the Olympic Park Legacy Company to give West Ham United the Olympic Stadium after the 2012 summer games.

Unlucky, West Ham fans.

You see, I have reported on Rotherham United at the Don Valley Stadium a fair few times in my short career, and every single visiting manager, to a number, has commented in his post match interview on how difficult it is to play there.

By this they don't mean that the stadium is imposing or that Rotherham are a particularly tough side to beat (though in fairness, they are); they mean that there is absolutely no atmosphere for the players to feed off. This, of course, is because of the running track.

I realise that Rotherham are playing in a temporary home in neighbouring Sheffield, which puts them at slight remove from their home town fans. I also know that they often put fewer than 4,000 people into a 25,000 seater stadium, which is quite different from an Olympic stadium packed with 60,000 people.

So let's look at the other examples, clubs like Bayern and 1860 München, who were both desperate to move away and indeed did, to the Allianz Arena. Look at Ajax, who used the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam for European games, but instead of moving in full time opted to build a whole new stadium, the pompously typeset Amsterdam ArenA.

The richly experienced Oliver Kay of the Times has found that a running track kills the atmosphere on a scale as grand as Rome's Stadio Olimpico every bit as much as it does at Rotherham United.

Worse, I think that keeping the full 60,000 capacity will actually be bad for athletics, not better. Those of you who saw last year's Commonwealth Games in Delhi will probably be able to see where I'm going with this – and those of you who didn't prove exactly my point.

Shamefully, we have little interest in athletics in this country. If we did, Jessica Ennis would have romped to the past two Sports Personality of the Year prizes, instead of pushing the public into a plumping for pair of de facto lifetime achievement awards.

So having a 60,000-seater stadium for athletics will look absurd once the Olympics are over and the world has gone home. Just as it was in Delhi, it will be an embarrassment to the sport when pictures of empty seats start appearing near the back pages of the newspaper. (After all, they will rarely appear on the back page itself.)

So what is the solution here?

Well, Tottenham Hotspur could take it, but that would be even worse for a number of reasons so obvious and well-documented that it is scarcely worth repeating them here.

More preferable is to go with the original plan, which was to renovate the Olympic stadium into a 25,000 seater stadium more suitable for athletics.

But to me, even that is a waste. Why? Because we already have a 25,000 seater athletics stadium, with good facilities, excellent public transport links, and at just 21 years old, still in very good shape. I know it well. Rotherham United play there.

Unfortunately, the Don Valley Stadium is outside the capital, so it never gets so much as a mention in any of the debates about what to do with Stratford's great white elephant.

So I suppose West Ham taking residence is as good a compromise as any. I'm just glad I'm not a Hammer.

On yob culture

On Saturday, I was reminded why I love football.

I had just reported at a thrilling 2-2 draw at Hillsborough, in which Sheffield Wednesday, hosting Charlton Athletic, pulled off a remarkable Lazarus act after an absolutely dreadful performance in the first half.

The following day, I had three derbies to look forward to: the Tyne-Wear derby, the Second City derby, and the Merseyside derby. All that was capped by a promising tie at White Hart Lane, where Tottenham hosted Manchester United.

I was a very happy football fan.

And then I was made to feel embarrassed to be one at all.

That was thanks to a flange of idiots on their way back home from Elland Road, singing songs about the 1958 Munich air crash, a tragedy suffered by their great rivals, Manchester United.

Now, I like to think that I have a dark sense of humour and that I don't offend easily. I enjoy the work of Stewart Lee, Christopher Morris and Penn Jillette, all of whom raise pertinent issues of taste and offense, erring very much towards the liberal end of that scale.

I also understand the joys of football rivalry: as a Liverpool fan who grew up in a Manchester United-supporting area, at a time when United were dominant and Liverpool very much on the wane (how little things change), I know how enjoyable and intense that can be. Any time Liverpool play Manchester United is an exciting day for me.

And I know that a vocal minority of Leeds fans have been singing songs about Munich for 50 years now, so I shouldn't be surprised.

But to me, singing songs and revelling in a plane crash that killed 23 people is disgusting and unacceptable.

It serves as an ugly reminder of the kind of hatred and hooliganism that gave football such a bad name in the 1970s and 1980s, and which led to fans being penned into the terraces like animals, culminating in the enormity at Hillsborough in 1989.

The Taylor Report, published in response to the Hillsborough disaster, eradicated the fences and has largely succeeded in eradicating hooliganism too.

But there are still arrests at some football game or another every week, and as long as the game requires such an enormous police presence, there is still work for the FA to do. As long as football is associated with stupidity and boorishness, there is still work for the FA to do.

Leeds United can take the first step here. It's quite simple: anyone who chants offensive epithets about the tragedy at Munich should be shown out of the ground immediately, have their season ticket revoked, and receive a life ban from the club.

This is how the club would treat racist or homophobic chanting, and rightly so. I would like to see the same applied to these idiots' shameful disrespect of the dead.

Good people should not be made to feel ashamed to be football fans because of the actions of a morally feckless few.

If football wants to tidy up its image, it must first end its association with these morons.

Christmas review: Huddersfield Town

Pre-season expectations

Huddersfield are the third Yorkshire club I've looked at and I feel as though I'm starting to repeat myself already.

In a largely successful campaign last year, the Terriers finished sixth to take the final playoff spot, only to be knocked out by eventual winners Millwall.

That near-miss has set the standard for this year, and Lee Clark's men will be targeting another stab at the playoffs.

Story so far

After recovering from a dip in form a few games into the season, Huddersfield are performing above standard and currently sit third in the table, one point behind second placed Sheffield Wednesday with a game in hand.

The problems

The Terriers seem to have lost the aura of invincibility that they enjoyed at the Galpharm last season, when they lost at home in the league just once – to champions Norwich.

This year, they have already suffered three 0-1 defeats: to mid-table clubs Exeter City and Hartlepool, and to relegation-threatened Bristol Rovers.

Huddersfield also have a slightly worrying tendency to concede late goals: seven of their 32 conceded this season (21.9%) have been after the 85 minute mark.

The successes

Youngsters Jordan Rhodes and Anthony Pilkington have been in stellar form: 24 goals in all competitions, with a combined age of just 42.

Their record against top-half clubs is also excellent: the third best in the division.

Clark has also expressed a desire to take his side to Wembley, and with the club making good progress in the Johnstone's Paint Trophy, he may just get that wish.

Best result

A couple of cup demolitions aside, Town's best day came when they beat fellow playoff contenders Colchester 3-0 away from home.

It was a particular delight for the Yorkshire club as Clark admitted he had got the tactics wrong with his starting lineup, only to rectify the error after just ten minutes, highlighting the Geordie's tactical nous.

Worst result

Those one-goal home defeats have been damaging for a club that once boasted such a good home record.

Huddersfield's first loss this season - a 4-2 defeat away to Peterborough at the end of August – was also painful for Lee Clark, particularly since the visitors had taken a two goal lead in the first half.

Can they still meet expectations?

Definitely, and the Terriers may even exceed them if they can learn to keep their focus.

As I have highlighted, they have slipped a few too many times at home for my liking, and concede too many late goals. That, combined with that loss at Peterborough, indicates a lack of concentration – particularly since they almost did it again a couple of weeks later in the JPT.

But despite this, they have generally got the results they need for a sustained promotion push, as their current league position indicates.

If they can sort out those few frailties, there is no reason they can’t target automatic promotion into the Championship.

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Next: Sheffield Wednesday