OCCUPIED COUNTRY

How Can This Be Love?

I've just returned from the "Theatre of Base Comedy" (© Stuart Hall, City fan and BBC broadcaster) as angry about a mere "game" of football as I've ever been in my life. I've just heard Stuart "I'm a Patriot me" Pearce's blasé post-match interview. Who the fuck does he think he is? I'll tell you what is: a clueless, here-today-gone-tomorrow undergraduate at the Manchester City Academy for footballing under-achievers.

Mr Pearce that was CRAP!!! Reading at home - and we play 3-5-2 with no width and a baffling reliance on the long ball. Samaras played like he didn't know what a football was. £6 million and he falls over the ball instead of kicking it. Vassell? How many more chances does he need? Dabo? What is he for? Beasley? Overpaid, over-hyped and over-here. It was that bad that, when it started getting foggy I was praying for the ref to blow the whistle and call it off. It was a farce.

I fear another relegation battle come April and May. It is written. Our last home game of the season is against the Red hordes from Salford - a Wayne Rooney back heel into Weaver's net and down we go as United secure the necessary points to clinch the title after a late surge from Chelsea and Liverpool. IT IS WRITTEN.

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On the left you can see the little bit of public art commissioned by Manchester City Council to commemorate the Commonwealth Games of 2002. I took this pic this afternoon just before the debacle referred to above from one of the spiral walkways at Eastlands. Directly to the left is the area where Manchester's "Super-Casino" is to be built in the next few years. It's going to regenerate the area apparently. Again. I say again because the area has been regenerated to death over the past few years and it is still referred to as "one of the most deprived areas in the UK".

Are we allowed to say "Regeneration isn't working"? I was privy - at a very early stage - to some of the meetings of politicians, businessmen and women, faith leaders and educators involved in the embryonic grand plan for East Manchester. An East Manchester that, at the time, was best described as decaying. An area full of dying heavy industries, demolition and sink estates.

Now, OK, these days that same area has a world-class velodrome, football stadium, tennis centre, athletics track, 24 hour ASDA Wal-Mart and a few other bits of businesses unconnected to the "SportCity" that now occupies the site of Manchester Steel and Bradford Pit. But could it be that local folk aren't employed there? Possibly because they lack the skills to do so? Could it be that these businesses and services are managed by commuters from places like Wilmslow, Didsbury and Saddleworth? Even the minimum wage jobs are taken by foreign students with a minimal grasp of the language. The sink estates have been tidied up and repaired but the communities in them would still appear to prefer the "Social" or petty theft and drug dealing to get them through.

Regeneration benefits nobody but Big Business and the smug ego-driven politicians who climb into bed with them in order to get their face on the TV and a cushy little number once their political careers are over. It seems to me that some areas are in danger of being regenerated to death. The same will happen in East Manchester - more and more of the upwardly mobile will move into the newly thrown up "City centre apartments" (at £750,000 or so) - and the poor will have to find somewhere else to live.

Still, a casino. That'll be nice.