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First up: I will be using some of my own recent hardships as a fan in this rant, but it's to prove a point. I will not be getting into a "Four Yorkshiremen" argument with others about who is the bigger fan, or who has suffered most. Any real football fan has had their moments of extreme ecstasy and also hit the depths so it's all relative. Secondly, this is not aimed at everyone who doesn't go to watch "their" team. Some people work, some people can't get tickets, some people have other reasons for not going to the ground. But still they follow their team with the same zeal as us idiots who pay in week-in week-out to see your left midfielder not trying hard enough and to get a piece of freezing gristle in your mouth when you buy a "pie". I once only had five pounds to my name when Morton were due to play Cowdenbeath midweek. It's a two hour walk to Cappielow and a fiver in. It would cost another £4 to get buses there and back. I left my house at five to...

JennyPiccolo on te Lust that dare not speak it's name.

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Neds are hot. Believe it.

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I apologise in advance for my Carrie Bradshaw-esque endless rhetoric, but in a subculture where bisexuality, promiscuity, and open relationships are not unusual, where does it leave the soft-hearted young fools like me? I'm sick of only consummating a relationship after fourteen pints of diesel, or lying alone between bouts of intercourse while the eager young man fucks off for a joint or a game on the Playstation, or worse, to write on the forum. I'm sick of chat-up lines like 'I'd cheat on my girlfriend for you' or 'It's five to three, if you were gonna pull someone better, you would have by now'. Have we always been cold, hard people, or do we just treat each other badly because that's the way we're always treated, just because we're different? To look at, I'm hardly a beacon of alternative culture, but it's the only 'scene' if you will, where I've been able to feel comfortable. As an essentially weird person, I only ever felt I fit in surroundings where eccentricities...

In Praise of the Diddy Teams

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"FIFA has a huge responsibility to reach out and touch the world, using football as a symbol of hope and integration". - The FIFA mission Gibraltar got dingied from having their national team become a full member of UEFA recently. This is despite the court of arbitration of sport giving it the OK and Gibraltar being a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). I know a lot of people think there are too many diddy teams but Gibraltar surely have as much right to play as Scotland, England, Northern Ireland, Wales or the Faroe Islands. Where is the harm in playing Andorra, San Marino or Liechtenstein twice over the course of two years? The spokesmen for the Football Association, Deutscher Fußball-Bund (Germany's governing body of football) and Fédération Française de Footbal (The French Football Federation), amongst others, who have raised concern must surely be more afraid of a humiliating defeat to themselves rather than what is best for the game. Spain's UEFA...

Dave

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Does laughing at tragic events mean that we have become a jaded and cynical society? Is the media responsible?

A quick look at the action, or lack of, taken by the game’s authorities to combat homophobia

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Looking at the lack of action taken to combat homophobia in football and also looking at the tragic case of Justin Fashanu

If Merseyside needed an enema they’d plug it in here

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A wee guide to New Brighton

Article

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Various snippets of advice on the technicalities of English.

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Anyone who’s had to listen to one of my many “war stories” in the past is likely to have heard me talking about Joshua Tree. It’s one of the places I’ve been that’s really made me stop and look at how utterly stunning nature can be. Apart from the obvious U2 album recorded there, it’s one of the places credited with the birth of the “desert rock” scene and the bands that it spawned, Queens of the Stone Age, Kyuss, Fatso Jettson and Unida to name but a few. NME said it was one of the places you should go on a rock pilgrimage before you die. But forget about all that … imagine the ‘Fortress of Solitude’ from the Superman movies, but with sand and rocks instead of snow and ice. That’s what Joshua Tree is to me. It’s perfect for escaping the chaos of Los Angeles if you have a couple of days to get away. Just over two hours drive West of LA on the I-10, through the giant wind farms, will have you past both the San Bernadino National Forest and the Mt. San Jacinto National Park...

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Christ, it's already been six months since the last Whitby Gothic Weekend. Time to buy some new eyeliner, pack up all my most ridiculous clothes, and get ready for a big goth holiday. Wednesday (condescension): I can never sleep before Whitby. I haul myself out of bed at stupid o'clock in the morning, which is fortunate, as I still have all my packing to do. Heading over the road to collect Jennie at a slightly more respectable half-past nine, I grab a quick cuppa, then wait another half hour for Erith to arrive in Horus, the small but awesome vehicle we'll be travelling in. The terrain on the drive down seems to consist mostly of in-between bits of countryside. Nothing but train lines, roads, TV booster stations and power cables. Everything that's here exists to take things somewhere else. We make a quick pit stop in Penrith (good chips) and finally encounter some more interesting landscape. Cows Crossing! proclaims one sign, in a pictographic sort of way. Tanks...