An appreciation of my new hero "Minder Bill from ASLEF"

Dear Reader,

you should have seen "Minder Bill from ASLEF", aka Bill Rodgers, in action during yesterday's march in Enfield Town and at the occupation of the possibly doomed hospital of Chase Farm, Ridgeway. Bill has massive charisma and leadership skills. The envisaged closure follows problems involved with the "Social Chapter" or European Workiing Directive, whereby medics can't work more than a set amount of hours per week. So to have a fully functioning A and E, is very expensive with three shifts of doctors, nurses etc. Also, to have an operational accident & emergency unit, the hospital needs a proper service for children
patients.

Other problems comprise British doctors liking 9-5 lifestyles, being money mad and lacking compassion.

There is also a concern over the "feminisation" of the doctor system. In the old days virtually all medics, who passsed their training, went on to become doctors. This percentage is getting lower. There is the suspicion that this is what the authorities want: cheaper women doctors like in Russia, where there are loads of them and they get paid at a discount rather than receive premium pay.

However, one advantage of the old (lets called it English) system of the 100 hours plus a week work total for junior doctors was that they learnt a lot in a very short time.

Apparently, there is statistical evidence that there are more
deaths in hospitals when a new cohort of doctors comes on aboard the merry ship called the National Health Service (NHS), (a service very different in Scotland and Wales). Also, it is not advisable to get ill
during the weekend when the consultants are practising their golf swing or have gone yachting.

To get the medical coverage with the working directive means the consolidation of Accident and Emergency services in bigger sites. This means doctors get wide experience of doing loads of operations etc (ie Portuguse health reorganisation) While often financially stable hospitals have in England been sacrificed to prop up PFI (Private Financial Initiative) disasters. (The entrance to Barnet General goes into a Holliday Inn style area while the car parking is a MAJOR HEADACHE).

So this makes for a paradox. Rather than being a tinsey weensy left wing (Workers Revolutionary Party WRP) wanting to smash the capitalist system and bring in revolution to sleepy old UK, picket guys like Phil, whose only defect I can see is that he is a Spurs fan, should really be
joining UKIP on the other side of the political spectrum so as to get out of the European Union. I have told Phil to worry less about Lenin and hope that Bale stays with Spurs.

I am personally a soft Tory but even I had a sneaking admiration for Old Labour like Woy Jenkins,
who could not keep his dick in his pants, or Denis Healey, who nearly drove the United Kingdom to bankruptcy with his ultra taxation policies. (Healey was a quartermaster on one of the major Italian beach invasions during WWII, so I suppose he was a war hero.)

The operation of a picket outside the main entrance for so long is testament to the organisational abilities of "Minder Bill from ASLEF". I have also met some really admirable people such as Bill from Elephant & Castle. Indeed one of the problems of the picket is the relative lack of people from Enfield. I suppose they are looking forward to going to North Middlesex and Royal Free, Hampstead.

The idea of superhospitals is seen in other countries like Portugal and I think I (and I could be mistaken)
came from consultants at an American investment bank. However, if you are dying from a heart attack near Chase Farm in future, you just hope the "blue light" ambulance makes it to the Harefield or the London Heart Hospital in time.

Sorry for the long blog but there must be a special mention to former Labour MP Joan Ryan, who
forced through a merger of the financially and operationally strong Chase Farm with the PFI mess of
Barnet General. However, I am really impressed by local Conservative MP Nick de Bois, who is trying his best to remedy the mess where a major borough like Enfield, with a growing population rate putting pressure on schools, is expected to provide some kind of medical access.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/5336436/Joan-Ryan-expenses-switch-after-4500-spend.html
www.nickdebois.com

PS> The good old British National Health Service (NHS) lost literally billions on IT systems, which never meshed. While I read in one of the Mail newspapers an article that claimed the NHS chief might have been allegedly a bit naughty claiming 41 first class rail trips to Birmingham to bonk his bint.

Possible organisational changes mooted for Spizz Energi at Coram Fields

Given the number of late withdrawals on Friday, there might be a new rule in place whereby if you can't turn up then let Gashead know by Thursday. We had 5-a-side on last Friday's game (kick, punch, first of the month). I played through the pain barrier and our team ran out worthy winners at
around 11-7 or 10-6.

On the Saturday morning my new hero "Minder Bill from ASLEF" led the march in Enfield against the closure of the district hospital at Chase Farm, Ridgeway. The hospital is being closed down by
salami cuts. I suppose the prospect of a succulent profit from throwing up cheap housing for cheap
foreigners (whoops, might not be politically correct that one but true) is too much to resist.

When the powers-that-be closed Highlands, Chase Farm got a multi-storey car park. Highlands is now dominated by a massive housing estate, a so-so school funded by PFI (massive admin cost to
change a bulb etc) and Sainsbury's for God's sake. A big chunk of the money went to Charing Cross is a bit further away than the main solution of coming under Royal Free, Hampstead. They should be selling that site first given the property potential and the parking is criminal.

So Spizz, nip up and see us at the Ridgeway to defend Chase Farm. (The Guv'nor).

Snowed off (again)

(This from Paul)...

Stop press: Last Friday's game was called off after pitch inspection at 2pm.

 

Gashead Simon was surprised that there was an actual pitch inspection a la proper football. 

 

This was the second game in a row cancelled due to poor weather conditions. The first game saw a splendid turnout of ten a side with a friend of Dan scoring virtually straightaway after coming on late. My side edged it, but we were helped by very solid performances from Dan, Danny and Stevo. For their side Alan was directing things in midfield. Yev scored the first goal of our the new era at Coram Fields while Mick bossed the defence. 

Spizz led their attack!! Some things never change!

Tonight's game - i.e. Friday 1st February is very much ON and a full report will be appearing on the blog early next week.

Come on football! 

STOP: PRESS The footie game, where Spizz makes an occasional appearance, is moving to
Coram Fields.

The first game looks likely to be on Friday, January 11th, 2013. The pitch looks like it can
accomodate eight-a-side up to ten-a-side.The nearest tube is Russell Square.

The Woman in Black

Welcome then, to the final Blog of 2012, but hopefully not the final one ever given the imminent destruction of the hallowed Astroturf at the Finsbury Leisure Centre. Our final seven aside game didn’t get off to the most auspicious of starts with Ross forgetting the Bibs and the ball being left behind on the pitch after last Friday’s game. As Oscar Wilde didn’t say, to lose the ball and the bibs may be unfortunate, but to lose the pitch too is downright careless. Simon Gas should never have gone to Colombia.

With the Bibs being left behind in wherever it is that Ross teaches ‘pop music’ to hormonal teenage girls, I selected two teams of colours for our valedictory match on the doomed pitch. They lined up as follows:

Colours: me, Sam, Ian, Boro Dave, Tom, Simon Ink, Geoff

Bolder colours: Simon Gas, Paul, Joe, Mick, Spizz, Yev, Ross

With fourteen men and no way of differentiating one another (apart from using existential tools like short-term memory and facial recognition), the game was inevitably somewhat harum-scarum at the start, with passes being misplaced even more than usual, (although everyone had a fantastic excuse for kicking the ball to someone other than their intended target). Boro Dave raised a complaint that the number of players in white on either side was confusing given his colour blindness, although as a fellow sufferer I can safely say that this was a red herring. Or maybe a brown trout.

Talking of Dave, (shortly to leave London Town for his native north-east), the man from Middlesbrough opened the scoring. Other scorers on the night included Tom, who has managed to blag a game for the past two weeks (but won’t ever do so again); Spizz, more of whom shortly; and also for the Bolder Colours, Yev, who managed to get what I think was the final goal of the evening and therefore the history of the seven asides at Finsbury Leisure Centre after Ian Gooner in goal kicked it straight out to him.

The final score was, perhaps appropriately, 4-4.

Memories of games and players from the past were never far from the forefront of the mind on an evening that often lurched toward nostalgia, and it was therefore eerily apposite that there was a spectral apparition watching on from the sidelines throughout the game. Somewhat reminiscent of Meryl Streep in the French Lieutenant’s Woman, this figure appeared to be connected to seminal post punk icon Spizz, (to whom this Blog is dedicated). This mystery wrapped up in an enigma, (or was it a pashmina?), as Churchill once described the Soviet Union, was not the ghost of Laurent, nor the personification of one of Tony’s strops, nor even the phantasmagorical embodiment of one of Big Dave’s Celtic war-cries – it was, in fact, Spizz’s “photographer”, (last seen heading toward Camden with some flyers for the Spizzenergi gig atthe Dublin Castle on the 21st December). 

And that, bar a few maudlin pints at the White Lion, is that. Simon Gas will be in touch over the next few weeks to see what people might want to do next, i.e. carry on playing five aside at the Finsbury Leisure Centre, or try to source another seven aside pitch elsewhere in London.

Last word on this week’s Blog goes, however, to a guy named Mitchell Cole. When we were trudging home from the pub last Friday I saw an ambulance parked adjacent to the pitch that we’d been playing on. Tragically, it turns out that the ambulance was there to tend to the former Grays Athletic, Southend United, Stevenage and Oxford United player who had the same condition - hypertrophic cardiomyopathy – as former West Ham and Man City player, Marc Vivien-Foe. Young Mitchell died after collapsing on the pitch. 

For all the doleful thoughts about our Friday night game, this does put things into perspective; perhaps, in the words of David St. Hubbins, too much perspective.

Happy Christmas...

The End is Nigh

As the temperatures plummeted outside and with our spiritual leader still in sunny exile in the Americas we happy few gathered once more to play football at the Finsbury Leisure Centre. I assumed team selection duties and with a motley assortment of gentlemen of various ages fashioned the following two teams

Bibs: Alan, Boro Dave, Dan, Mick, Paul, Simon Ink (hat trick)

Colours: Ian, me, Tom (ringer), Joe, Alex, Ross

With the game underway Paul lived up to his gubernatorial billing and ushered on another chap in the guise of a bloke called Tom to even up the two teams. This had little effect on proceedings apart from restricting our side to ‘stick’ goalie, (we had begun with rush) and given that I had elected to start in nets my toes promptly went numb. The team in Bibs always appeared to be in control and assumed a three goal advantage with Boro Dave and Simon Ink, who went on to grab a hat-trick, among the goals. Big Ian managed to score another long range daisy cutter this week, but it proved an all too rare highlight for the team in Colours who struggled to contain the superior middle passing of the Bibs, with Dan doing much of the damage with plenty of support from Mick and Alan. Too often the Colours struggled to retain possession in the middle of the field, with one stray pass eluding my right foot and resulting in Alan pinging a ball through to the completely unmarked Dave to slot home with studied nonchalance.

Final score: Colours 4 - Bibs 8

Myself, Ian, Mick, Paul, Ross and Simon Ink all repaired to the White Lion where talk touched on a number of topics; Paul, fresh from an eye-wateringly expensive trip to see the Rolling Stones at the 02, brought out his inner Charles Shaar Murray and regaled us with tales of rock’n’roll excess from the 1970’s, including drinking bouts with Gene Hackman and a review of a shambolic Stones gig in Hyde Park.

But all talk was overshadowed by the cripplingly depressing news that next Friday will be the last 7 aside game we play at Finsbury Leisure Centre this year and probably ever. Cliff had received an email saying that after next Friday – i.e. the 7th December – the pitch will be dug up and converted into two 5 aside pitches. Without Simon Gas around to confirm or deny, we had no option but to take this tragic information at face value. Many of the chaps have played here on a Friday night for twenty years or so, certainly dating back into the last century. It is a spirit-crushingly harrowing turn of events, and one necessitated presumably because it will allow Islington Council to make a few more quid from the pitches. Perhaps we should ultimately blame the pressure on local authority budgets (and in turn, the bankers). Perhaps it’s something as simple as a new manager at the centre wanting to ‘maximise income streams’. Who knows.

If anyone is reading this that may not have played recently, this Friday could be the last chance to score a goal or win a game at the FLC. We tentatively agreed to head to the White Lion for the 14th December for a general pow-wow about what to do next and to honour the end of year Christmas festivities; until then, play up and play the game!

Our man in Bogota

 

Many apologies for the dearth of blogs in recent weeks; I missed two Fridays due to various family matters and have had a terribly busy couple of weeks work-wise. Rest assured, normal service will now be resumed.

With our spiritual leader and all-round Chef de Mission Simon Gas currently in high level negotiations in Bogota to bring striking sensation Radamel Falcao to the West Country to ply his trade for Bristol Rovers, (either that or he’s involved with some shady import/export business involving sheaths stuffed with class A narcotics), the remaining ensemble somehow had to cobble together a game on Friday. Dan and Alex took a proactive approach to team selection by forming a three-man committee along with Joe and divvying up the fourteen players before we took to the pitch. 

Said teams lined up thusly:

Bibs – Ian, Alex, Simon Inky, Paul, Steve A, Ross, Boro Dave

Colours – Danny, Dan, Joe, me, Ian West Brom, Geoff, Spizz

As you can see, sometime footballer and post-punk icon Spizz returned to the fray for the first time in some weeks to join a somewhat diminutive side (physically, at least) alongside fellow short-arses like me, Joe and Geoff.  By contrast, the Bibs had a clear lead in the Tale of the Tape as it applied to both height and weight, with colossi like Ian, Boro Dave and Paul. 

Despite physical shortcomings, the Colours raced into a two goal lead via a goal from (I think), Dan and a tidy finish from Spizz into the far corner. This was after Simon Ink had pulled off a trademark great save from my good self with the game still goalless.

I then went between the posts for the Colours and promptly let in three goals. I dropped an absolute clanger for the first; a highly speculative shot from Ian which had his team mates howling in consternation such was its ambition somehow crept under my fingers and left Ian righteous with vindicated indignation. Ross equalised via a tidy finish inside the near post and then put the Bibs in front after I couldn’t get a strong enough hand on his next shot despite closing down the angles. So, 3-2 to the Bibs.

Joe went up the other end and equalised to make it three apiece, after which Spizz was once more amongst the goals, his last strike (which turned out to be the winner) coming from some classic goal-hanging and a Pirlo-eqsue finish to wrong foot Alex in the nets. There was still time for another goal for the Bibs, which came via an unfortunate interception from Dan which left Ian West Brom flat footed between the sticks.

Final score: Colours 5 Bibs 4

And so to the White feline public house for refreshment. A low turnout this week, with Simon Ink, Joe, Spizz, Steve A, myself, Ian and Boro Dave propping up the bar and discussing topics such as the etymology of The Specials classic ‘Gangsters’ (both Ian and Spizz’s assertions that is was about former manager Bernie Rhodes and included an homage to Prince Buster’s Al Capone are confirmed here), Arsenal’s recent travails and the merits of Cornish beer over premium lager.

Senor Gashead is still away on important business in Colombia so assuming that Interpol don’t catch up with him first, we should see him back on Friday 7^th December. Until then, I will be collecting the subs – Alex, Geoff: I haven’t forgotten.