Was violence against England fans organised by the Russian government?

Embed from Getty Images

The Guardian says "Whitehall experts" think so:

Senior government officials fear the violence unleashed by Russian hooligans at Euro 2016 was sanctioned by the Kremlin and are investigating links with Vladimir Putin’s regime.

It is understood that a significant number of those involved in savage and highly coordinated attacks on England fans and others in Marseille and Lille have been identified as being in the “uniformed services” in Russia. 

The theory is that the sanctioning of hooliganism by Putin is a continuation of what has been described as Russia’s campaign of “hybrid warfare”. Whitehall experts fear the tactic is a ploy to demonstrate Russian strength while building on a narrative inside the country that the rest of the world is lining up against it. 

Following the violence in Marseille, fake Twitter accounts were reportedly set up to spread the view that Russian fans had been provoked. A senior Russian parliamentarian tweeted, “Well done lads, keep it up!” 

Two England fans, Andrew Bache, 51, from Portsmouth, and Stewart Gray, from Hinckley, Leicestershire, were left in comas fighting for their lives after being attacked with hammers and iron bars by Russian hooligans.

Read More

Six of the Best 605

David Boyle gets to grips with Southern Railways.

"Children in the United States from the very earliest days of the Republic ... were raised with practices conceived in direct opposition to Old World notions of authoritarian power and natural hierarchy." Judith Warner reviews a history of American parenting from life on the frontier to the 'managed child'.

David Crystal says reports of the death of the full stop are exaggerated

Wilko Johnson discusses death, depression, cancer and Canvey Island with Every record tells a story.

"The interiors of Leighton House Museum in Holland Park are not only some of the most spectacularly beautiful in London; they are also the most completely unexpected." Let Nigel Andrew take you there.

David Runciman thinks England's reliance on Spurs players is a weakness: "The biggest reason Leicester finished ahead of Spurs is that their players spent a lot less time on the pitch (since the team had fewer commitments in other competitions) and so were able to hold their form to the very end. It’s not romantic, but it’s the truth: by the time you get to April and May, miles on the clock count for just as much as tactics and talent. And by the time you get to June and July, maybe for even more."

Read More

Eric Dier features in Trivial Fact of the Day

Embed from Getty Images

Eric Dier, who scored England's opening goal against Russia this evening, is the grandson of Ted Croker, the former secretary of the Football Association.

Read More

The greatness of Muhammad Ali and the decline of boxing

In his pomp Muhammad Ali was just about the most recognisable man on the planet. Supreme as an athlete, he risked everything that had earned him to stand up for his people and for what he believed to be right.

One reason for his extraordinary fame was that he was a great athlete in a sport that enjoyed a popularity it hard to imagine today.

Heavyweight boxing was the blue riband event. In the years of rationing after the second world war British men like Bruce Woodcock, who were really no more than middleweights, had to take on American heavyweights so we had someone to compete in it.

When I was a small boy the great heavyweight bouts were global events of extraordinary significance. I have a clear memory of listening to them on the radio late in the evening.

So much so, that when I was in New York I went to look round the foyer of Madison Square Garden, where so many of those great fights were held, just so I could say I had been there. (Admittedly, the recent Clapton and Winwood concert there may have had something to do with it too.)

Time moves on and sports lose popularity. In the first year of this blog's life I wrote:

Thirty years ago the British heavyweight boxing champion was just about the biggest name in sport - think of Henry Cooper. Can you name the current holder of the title without using Google? I can't.

That would have to read 42 years ago today. There are several credible British heavyweights around today, but I have not idea if any of them is British champion.

I fell out of love with boxing when Michael Watson suffered brain damage in a bout with Chris Eubank. That had been an era when there were great British middleweights - Watson, Eubank, Nigel Benn - and their clashes made for wonderful fights.

It was magnificent when Eubank got off the canvass and from God knows where found a punch to knock Watson out and win the fight. But the damage it caused convinced me that professional boxing was insupportable.

I did watch Eubank's son Chris Eubank Jr fight Nigel Blackwell. The younger Eubank is clearly a very talented fighter, but I found the proceedings sickening.

Not just because Blackwell ended up in a coma and almost died, but also because of the dishonesty of the commentators.

It was clear almost at once that Eubank could unload combinations on Blackwell's head at will and that Blackwell lacked the weapons to stop him. Yet the commentators talked up the idea of Blackwell fighting back right up until the point that the fight was stopped.

The nearest equivalent to Muhammad Ali today in talent and personality is Usain Bolt. It is hard to see how a boxer could ever achieve that sort of fame again.

Until things change (and they will), you have to put your money on the next sporting figure to matter beyond sport in the way Ali did being a footballer.

Read More

#mardyVardy wins Hashtag of the Day

Embed from Getty Images

In its Pass Notes style, the Guardian tells the story of Lee Chapman:

Chapman is a postman who looks like Jamie Vardy. He is also a diehard Leicester City fan and came to minor prominence when the team hauled him on to the victory bus to celebrate with his beloved Foxes in the wake of their Premier League triumph. 

That’s nice. Yes, it was. 

Is it not still? It was nice for a while. A lookalike agency spotted the photos the team posted from the bus and offered Chapman work. The Royal Mail has given him six months off to pursue the opportunity. 

That is REALLY nice! He’s got a verified Twitter account with more than 3,500 followers, where he offers fans the chance to make video messages with him and posts pictures of himself in full Leicester kit with them at events. Rumours swirl about a Celebrity Big Brother appearance and UK comedy tour with other lookalikes. 

Sound, hopefully lucrative, moves. But Chapman says that Vardy – and his new wife, Rebekah Nicholson, have blocked him on Twitter and Instagram. 

What?! No?! Why? Vardy’s agent reportedly sent Chapman a text message warning him not to do anything that would put any of Vardy’s endorsement deals at risk.

When this story was tweeted, someone thought of the masterly hashtag #mardyVardy.

'Mardy', for the uninitiated, is a good East Midlands word meaning something like spoilt, childish or sulky.

Read More

Six of the Best 600

Allison Keyes on a rediscovered manuscript that casts light on the Tulsa massacre of 1921 - an attack on a thriving Black neighbourhood.

Alexandra Lange contrasts the reactions to Garden Bridge and Pier 55 - "Two cities, one designer and one strategy – to build a privately funded park above a river."

"Thanks to my older brother, I was an Observer reader as a schoolboy. On most Sundays in the year or two either side of 1960 he would take the bus six miles to our nearest town and return with a paper that augmented the Sunday Post – delivered to the door that morning by the village newsagent – and its claustrophobic worldview formed fifty years before in Presbyterian Dundee." Ian Jack reviews a new life of the paper's editor David Astor.

"[Jack] Cardiff achieved many of the visual effects in camera by drawing inspiration from the use of light and colour by such artists as Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Vermeer and Van Gogh." David Parkinson looks back at Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus.

"One of the reasons I can’t stand United is the air of sanctimony that hovers over the club. If Mourinho takes them back to the summit it ought to puncture that – it’ll show they’re no better than anyone else, just another plaything for the great man’s ego." David Runciman is right about Jose's re-emergence at Old Trafford.

The Beauty of Transport celebrates Tynemouth Station.

Read More

Tim Farron backs Kirsty Williams's cabinet post plan

Embed from Getty Images

And he's right.

In the elections earlier this month Kirsty Williams was the only Liberal Democrat to win a seat in the Welsh Assembly.

She increased her majority over the Conservatives in Brecon and Radnor to more than 8000. It's strange to recall that the 1985 by-election, when the seat first turned Liberal, was a neck-and-neck contest with Labour. (I was there.)

Beyond Kirsty's victory, our results in Wales were universally dismal. We are firmly established as the country's fifth party - that rumbling sound you can hear is Lloyd George turning in his grave.

Though I can't find the figures, I believe we finished behind the campaign to abolish the assembly in a couple of regions.

So the opportunity for the only Lib Dem AM to take up a high-profile position like education secretary is a godsend.

The Welsh Lib Dems are holding a special conference tomorrow to vote on whether Kirsty should take up this appointment.

If they do anything other than welcome it with open arms, they are madder than Mad Ianto Ap Mad, the winner of this year's Mr Madman competition.

Before we finish, let us pause a moment to mark the defeat of Leighton Andrews, Liberal Gillingham Town fan turned Labour Cardiff City fan, in Rhondda.

Read More

The unanswerable case for the canonisation of Richard III

Our text for this evening is 2 Kings 13:21

And Elisha died, and they buried him. And the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year. And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha: and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet.

Miracles have long been associated with royal bones. So it is natural to see a connection between the reinterment of Richard III at Leicester Cathedral and Leicester City's miraculous winnig of the Premier League.

Just look at the evidence.

Richard was laid to rest in the cathedral on 26 March 2015 - I had been to pay my respects to the old boy the day before.

And how does Wikipedia describe subsequent events at the King Power stadium?

Despite the club being marooned at the bottom of the table for four-and-a-half months between late November and mid-April, the Foxes managed to put together a run of seven wins from their last nine fixtures to survive comfortably.

And they haven't stopped winning since.

To be canonised takes two miracles, so if count last season's survival as the first and this season's victory as the second, then Richard is home and dry.

A reader asks: Canonisation, eh? What about the Princes in the Tower? I don't call that very saintly.

Liberal England replies hurriedly: I'm afraid that's all we have time for.

Read More

Six of the Best 598

"His father was a foreign correspondent for The Times, and he was a great-grandson of civil engineer Sir Alexander Meadows Rendel, and a great-great-nephew of Liberal MP Stuart Rendel, the first Baron Rendel, a benefactor of William Gladstone." Paul Walter pays tribute to David Rendel, who has died aged 67.

Ferdinand Mount dissects the Brexiteers: "No one since Greta Garbo has said ‘I want to be alone’ with such feeling. Or perhaps it’s not so much Garbo as the chant sung by the fans of Millwall FC that I should be thinking of: ‘No one likes us, we don’t care.’ At the time of writing, Millwall are lying fourth in Football League One. For the uninitiated, this is really the Third Division."

Jeremy Corbyn is acting like the leader of a minor party and Nick Clegg acted like the leader of a major party, argues William Barter.

Memphis Barker says the next leader of the Greens should not be a water melon.

Lynne About Loughborough attended the commemoration of the centenary of the Zeppelin raid on the town.

The comma splice is becoming more common, Daniel McMahon will tell you why it is wrong.

Read More

Six of the Best 597

The Conservative Party's advice to agents in marginal seats at the last election contradicted official Electoral Commission advice, suggests Mark Pack.

Alwyn Turner remembers Michael Gove as a young Scotsman on the make: "No one could have behaved more naturally than he in a staffroom that looked as though it were unchanged since 1954."

Does Little Sheffield show small economics can revive a post-industrial city? asks Gareth Roberts.

Anthony Gottlieb on the rise and rise in the reputation of the philosopher David Hume.

Simon Kuper examines the reasons for England's World Cup victory in 1966: "Perhaps the men of 1966 really were a generation of giants who put all future English footballers to shame. Or perhaps what happened is simply that the fittest, luckiest and most sober team of that summer squeaked a narrow victory in a three-week tournament at home."

"When police Superintendent Newhouse (Laurence Olivier) tries to find material witnesses for the case, he comes up short. Even stranger: none of the Lake’s are mentioned on the passenger list for the ship they arrived from America on the week before...." The Retro Set watches Bunny Lake is Missing, an minor but intriguing British film from 1965.

Read More

Thomas Denny's stained glass windows for Richard III

After last night's events I had to go into Leicester today.

I cannot claim there were remarkable scenes, but the commemorative Leicester Mercury was selling out as fast as they could print it. This is the first time I have seen people queuing to buy a local paper.

So I went to the Cathedral to thank Richard III, the man behind it all. Since he was reinterred there, Leicester City have not stopped winning.

I found they were flying the club's flag. More than that, I found a former boss of mine from Golden Wonder in clerical garb. I was impressed that she recognised me from almost 30 years ago.

And I also found the wonderful new stained glass windows by Thomas Denny, which depict the life of Richard.

The Leicester Cathedral website will tell you all about them, but the illustrations in that PDF do not do justice to their wonderful, soft, crayon-like colours.

Read More

Chelsea win the Premiership for Leicester

Congratulations to Leicester City on winning the Premiership.

For weeks I have been terrified that Leicester would go to Stamford Bridge on the last day of the season needing a point to be champions.

If that happened we would have beaten them with a late disputed goal - probably handled in from an offside position by John Terry while racially abusing someone - and everyone would hate us even more.

But tonight's draw with Spurs - we were two goals down at half time - has given Leicester the title.

It is great for the club, great for the city and a great relief to this Chelsea fan.

Read More

Six of the Best 594

"People who are not very bright have this terrible tendency to pick a side in major intractable geopolitical conflicts, and support it as if it was a football team." Dan Davies offers a fair-minded account of Labour's problem with antisemitism.

John Blake puts Ken Livingstone right on Hitler and Zionism.

"The evidence built into a startling indictment of South Yorkshire police, their chain of command and conduct – a relentlessly detailed evisceration of a British police force." David Conn on the lessons of Hillsborough and the longest inquest in British legal history.

The Shropshire Star collects local residents' memories of the filming of Powell and Pressburger's Gone to Earth in 1949: "I shall never forget Jennifer Jones’ feet. She did all the running up Pontesford Hill and up to the Devil’s Chair in bare feet, and her feet were bleeding. She was absolutely brilliant, a lovely looking girl."

James Curry remembers his grandfather, the Revd J.P. Martin, who wrote the immortal Uncle books.

Adam Gopnik reviews a new biography of Paul McCartney.

Read More

Zac Goldsmith: "I'm a Bollywood fan"

This must be most awkward exchange since Tony Blair was asked to name one of the Newcastle United players he claimed to have watched as a schoolboy in the 1960s.

Thanks to Tom King on Twitter.

Read More

Filbert Street: Where Leicester City used to play

Take a look at these houses. It looks like just another Victorian terrace in Leicester, apart from the oddly bodged ground floors.

The reason for those is that there used to be a gap here. Until 2002 that gap was the entrance to Leicester City's Filbert Street ground - a wonderful symbol of how professional football used to fit into working-class life.

Go round the corner into Filbert Street itself and you will find the former ground is largely a wasteground. There is, of course, a block of student education - "Filbert Village" - but much of the land remains undeveloped.

It used to be a car park, appreciated by people going to Leicester City's new ground, the nearby King Power Stadium, but the council had it closed.

I am not one to moan about land not being developed for student accommodation, but I would have liked to find more remains of the old ground - perhaps a crumbling terrace colonised by buddleias.

Filbert Street, rather wonderfully, is but one of a number of streets named after nuts. There's Walnut Street, Brazil Street and Hazel Street too.

Lineker Street, which runs across the wasteland, was named after the ground was demolished. At least the graffiti artists seem to have anticipated City's miraculous 2015-16 season.

Thanks to the Leicester Mercury for sending me down to Filbert Street.

Read More

Six of the Best 584

"The UK has gone further down the road of co-opting its citizens into immigration policing than most European countries," says Frances Webber.

Tesco's marketing strategy involves making us feel warm towards farms that do not exist, explains Tom Levitt.

Charlotte Gill is not impressed by a Leeds primary school's decision to ban the game of tag: " I find all of this safeguarding a great shame. It shows how childhood, which should be a free and exploratory time, is now being over-policed."

JohnBoy pays tribute to Barry Hines. Among the facts he is uncovers is that Hines once played in a Loughborough Colleges team alongside Dario Gradi and Bob Wilson.

"Though the origin of Easter eggs and Easter bunnies can be traced back to ancient times, the Victorians did not begin to celebrate Easter in the way that we know now until the late 19th century. It was then that Easter bunnies became fashionable." Some fascinating social history from Mimi Matthews.

Eric Grunhauser on the stave churches of Norway, which combine Christian architecture with Nordic designs and the motifs of a Viking great hall.

Read More

Why is the BBC convinced that everyone loves Manchester United?

This afternoon, as I do every Sunday, I went over to my mother's house to cook her a meal.

I generally listen to the repeat of Choral Evensong on Radio 3. The music is sublime and the Old Testament lessons often barking mad, so it's great entertainment all round.

Today, after it was over, I switched to Five Live to see how Spurs were getting on in their attempt to catch Leicester City.

But Spurs were not on Five Live. You needed their Sports Extra channel to listen to that game. Five Live itself had the Manchester derby - the battle for fourth place, if you are being generous.

This is of a pattern with the BBC's conviction that everyone in the country loves Manchester United.

I can even recall Match of the Day deciding,n during the club's prime under Alex Ferguson, that every goal in its Goal of the Year competition should be from a United player. How other clubs' fans loved that!

There was a short period when Chelsea were cruising to their second title during Jose Mourinho's first coming when the BBC recognised that we were the leading team in the country. You could rely on Chelsea being the commentary game on Five Live and being first on Match of the Day.

Then we slipped a little. The BBC immediately pounced and restored Manchester United to first place in its affections.

Why this obsession? Maybe it's half-memories of the Munich disaster or of United winning the European Cup in 1968.

More likely it is because BBC staff live in Surrey like so many of the club's fans.

Read More

England grand slams and Market Harborough

Yesterday England won their first grand slam for 13 years.

Their team contained a product of my old school in Market Harborough, now called the Robert Smyth Academy, in the shape of Dan Cole.

Back in 2003 it did too - the captain, Martin Johnson.

That is quite an achievement for a small-town comprehensive.

In my day the best sportsman in the school, a couple of years below us, was a footballer. That was Andy Peake, who went on to play for Leicester City in the old first division.

Read More

Six of the Best 581

Garth Stahl explains why white, working-class boys shun university.

"The word 'Zio' was part of the club’s lexicon, despite its connotations eventually becoming widely known." Alex Chalmers on why he resigned as co-chair of Oxford University Labour Club.

Andrew Allen says the government should forget the idea of an trans-Pennine road tunnel.

Sarah Mills looks at the way the Girl Guides' evolving badge programme reveals wider changes in society over time.

"I remember crying all the way through the scene where he did the 'Singin' in the Rain' number. And my sister said, "What are you crying for?" and I said, "Well, he just seems so happy.'" Michael Koresky interviews the film director Terence Davies.

"I don’t think I have ever wanted something to happen more in sport in my entire life than for Claudio Ranieri’s side to win the Premier League," says Gary Lineker.

Read More

‘He just appeared and started singing Neil Diamond’ - mystery of Norfolk’s Sunday League Werewolf

Our Headline of the Day Award goes to the Eastern Daily Press.

And the paper has a video of the incident too!

Read More