If praying is what prevents a 23-year-old footballer from dying, then what's the point of doctors?
It's not meant to sound flippant. I was there. It was horrible. I desperately hope he survives.
I was at White Hart Lane yesterday, as I have been for most home games for the past 38 or so years and witnessed scenes that I have never seen before at a football match.
Like pretty much everyone there, I never saw Fabrice Muama fall to the ground but it was quickly pointed out that a player was down and that no one was near him. I saw his leg jerk off the ground as a couple of players tended to him but this may well have been a reflex action as he was rolled on to his back.
Confusion turned to grim realisation that this was not a case of fainting or some kind of fit. Seconds later teams of medics had scrambled to the far side of the pitch to deal with him. You could see a machine brought on which was used to try and jump start his heart and players with head in hands, some clearly in tears.
A man came out of the crowd from the lower East Stand, He was ushered through by fans and stewards, possibly one of those situations where someone shouts "I'm a doctor" and he was applauded on to the pitch and back off again when the medical teams got there.
I later heard a rumour he owns a heart screening business so I'm not sure if that necessarily makes him a medical expert though one would assume fans would not be so keen to get him on the pitch if he'd shouted 'let me through, I'm a medical equipment salesman.'
It was genuinely distressing to be there. And shocking too. What was also striking was just how shocked everyone seemed to be. Fans in particular.
There were some extreme reactions, particularly a young man two seats from me who, coincidentally is also called Solomons (it's not as uncommon at White Hart Lane as it would be, at, say, Spotland.)
I've seen him over the years, coming to Spurs with his dad since he was a nipper. During the drama, he simply burst into tears. His dad consoled him, others looked away embarrassed, I simply patted him on the shoulder because I had no idea what else I should do. Besides, we might be related.
Some dads with kids visibly upset were the first to leave, others stayed, perhaps out of ghoulish curiosity or because leaving seemed to be rude and unsupportive.
No one supposed, for just a minute, that the game was going to go on but people wanted to hear the announcement officially I guess, and when it came, they applauded and then left, quietly and slowly - the exits were rammed anyway but there was no fuss, no arguing. People just made their way out, in turn, and in a very obvious state of bewilderment.
Perhaps, thinking about it, it was bewilderment rather than shock. Watching a young man collapse and, perhaps, die on the pitch, and see the attempts to revive him, is out of context. You feel like you're invading something that should be private, not played out before a crowd of around 35,000 fans.
I sit immediately behind a TV camera (when games are being televised live) and the cameraman had turned the lens away from where the action was happening, under orders from the ESPN management. Later, I wondered if we should have all done the same. But, appallingly perhaps, you can't.
The usual ground noise was gone. On the way out everyone was looking into their smartphones to get the latest newsflash - many were waiting to hear if he had died, I imagine. That's not morbid, but a kind of closure. After all, we had witnessed something dreadful but without a conclusion and that can be even more upsetting.
Then the Twitter cavalcade started. Players Tweeted 'pray for Fabrice'. Managers came on to the radio to say 'he's in our prayers' and even before that, on the pitch, some players were notably praying.
I wonder if they considered why their religious belief would help the player now when it hadn't stopped him having a heart attack in the first place. Does God let these things happen to see if we pray for them to get better? And if that's the case, why do people die suddenly without a chance to see if their faith can be resurrected.
Or indeed, all those millions of others who die of heart attacks, cancer, war, famine and whatever other fate befalls them. Many of those are probably in someone's prayers every night.
And if praying is all it takes to bring people back to life, then did we need the wonderful medics, doctors and St John's Ambulance lot who got to the player within two minutes of his collapse.
After all it is they, and not God, who may, just, have given him a chance to live.
Spurs right-back and a neighbour of mine, Kyle Walker, Tweeted 'even if you aren't religious, pray for Muamba.' Poor Kyle, he doesn't quite get this whole religion thing does he?
You see, neighbourino, there's no point praying to a God you don't believe in - it doesn't make sense and if there is a God, he's probably saying 'Oh, NOW you want my help do you?'
But I accept the sentiment. Although it would have been nice to see a few more players Tweet about how brilliant the medical staff from both clubs were in that situation.
So why others put their faith in an ancient myth of which there is no proof, I'll put my faith in science, medicine and the hard work and dedication of people who have gone through years of training to deal with this kind of incident.
I'll hope for his recovery as much as anyone else in the country but forgive me if I don't pray for it.
Get well soon, young man. And if you do, don't thank God, thank doctors....Solly
Sunday 18 March 2012
Sunday 11 March 2012
Cor Blimey Trousers
Why do football managers have their initials on their track suit tops? I've never been able to work it out. Surely everyone else knows who they are. Perhaps it's for the laundry staff so they can hand them back but then why doesn't everyone have their initials on their training kit?
And the Fulham staff, for instance, have got to realise which king-sized zip up top belongs to Martin Jol without needing the letters MJ on it.
Which leads to the obvious conclusion that it's either vanity or perhaps one manager started it all off many years ago and the others have simply followed.
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The government wants to step up the old Thatcherite policy of buy-your-own council homes after a few years of Labour trying to discourage it.
It was, of course, introduced in order to get more Tory votes in working class areas and succeeded, in particular in the kind of towns built to cope with the overflow from major cities - the British version of white flight. Here in the south it helped the Conservatives to win seats like Basildon and Harlow for instance.
But with an estimated 74,000 council flats and houses a year going private, it does create an enormous shortfall of public housing. That, in turn, lets in enterprising private landlords who can secure a decent and guaranteed rental income from a local authority.
It also leads to six bedroomed houses in Hampstead being rented out to a family of 11 Eastern European benefits claimants which in turn sparks the kind of Daily Mail protest that so worries the Tories.
Now I'm not against working class people moving from council to private. I did it, when my parents went from an East End council house to their first home for instance. It was the first time any of us had lived in a house that wasn't owned either by a council or a brewery.
But how about some kind of rule that for every council house bought by its tenants, the local authority has to provide another one of its own to replace it?
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What's the point of the Halifax? Apart from its ability to make the worst adverts on television, is there really any need for this High Street chain of banks?
The Halifax is owned by the pisspoor HBOS group which in turn was foisted onto the much better-run Lloyds TSB (and the name TSB might as well be ditched too, come to think of it.)
This means the group that owns Lloyds Banks in the High Street also owns Halifax Banks in the High Street.
So you have the ridiculous site of a Lloyds Bank just a few doors down from a Halifax with both offering pretty much the same products to the same kind of customers.
It might be different if the Halifax was still a good old northern run building society which put its customers first.
And that's what Lloyds thinks. It reckons the Halifax has a bit more of a working class image which attracts a different set of customers that Lloyds itself.
This comes from the days when it was mutually run for the benefit of cloth cap northerners who wanted a safe haven for what little they could save in order to build up a nestegg.
Old style building societies - when we had the Abbey and the Halifax and the Woolwich and all those others that are now banks - used to have something like 15 times as much money in savings as it had in loans. Which of course makes it far harder to suddenly go bust owing billions of pounds in failed Ponzi-style mortgage schemes.
But it's not like that any more. The Halifax is nows a greedy, run of the mill bank famous for making crap adverts, overweight staff and tacky interiors.
Having a Bank of Scotland chain makes a bit more sense, if only to satisfy the sweaties and have some kind of historic, national identity north of the border. Though the days when having the word 'Scotland' in a bank's title meant trustworthy and good with money went out the window around the time Fred Goodwin did to the country what he did to that pretty, female worker in his department.
But Lloyds now has a whopping great chunk of our money helping it get through these difficult times (don't mention it lads). And a lot of that is now spent on a chain of banks, expensive promotions and the multimillion pound marketing and advertising budget that no longer has a purpose.
So scrap the Halifax, switch the accounts to Lloyds (or one of it's many other trading names) and spend the money saved on paying off the debt to the taxpayer.
------------------------------------------------------------
Talking of adverts, there is a long running commercial for the Ford Focus which you can't avoid. It shows some Germanic sort called Mattheus wasting his time driving around Europe visiting the sites of 'his favourite book' on two tanks of fuel.
His favourite book happens to be The Da Vinci Code, which suggests Mattheus is one of those people who finds it hard to read without his mouth moving at the same time.
Or perhaps he's only ever had three books and he's already coloured in the other two.
Anyhoo, the point is that when the advert was first shown, the voiceover said, quite clearly 'his favourite book, The Da Vinci Code'. But within a couple of weeks they had edited this down to 'his favourite book' without ever saying what it was.
Were Ford embarrassed by the fact it couldn't find a Focus owner who had ever read a decent novel? Or did Dan Brown feel he was not a Ford-type of guy and order the name of the book to be removed.
So I rang Ford. And they said that the reason they edited the advert was because having too much information in it distracted the viewers from the overall product and message.
Yes, that's right. Potential Ford Focus buyers are so distracted by hearing the words 'The Da Vinci Code' that they plum forget what car was being advertised.
----------------------------------------------------------------
On the programme Room 101 (a phrase from the book 1984 which has inspired me to buy a Ford Focus and try and visit all the places named in the novel) guests were asked to choose something that really annoys them they could banish forever. Predictably, celebrity chefs were picked. They were picked by the panel show fixture Micky Flanagan who has only got to appear on Deal or No Deal and Question Time and then we can have him on the our screens on a permanent 24-hour loop.
And the reason he picked them? Because, in his words, every time you turn on the TV there's a celebrity chef. No. Every time you turn on the TV there's Micky 'I'm a geezer' Flanagan.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
If Catholics are against having gay marriages in church because they can invent a biblical reason why it's God wouldn't approve, then should they not have a medical examination for every bride to make sure she's a virgin and a criminal records check on every prospective bride and groom to make sure they have never been convicted of any crime that is specifically mentioned in the bible?
Of course, they could start with their own priests.
Thus endeth the rant....cheers, Solly
And the Fulham staff, for instance, have got to realise which king-sized zip up top belongs to Martin Jol without needing the letters MJ on it.
Which leads to the obvious conclusion that it's either vanity or perhaps one manager started it all off many years ago and the others have simply followed.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The government wants to step up the old Thatcherite policy of buy-your-own council homes after a few years of Labour trying to discourage it.
It was, of course, introduced in order to get more Tory votes in working class areas and succeeded, in particular in the kind of towns built to cope with the overflow from major cities - the British version of white flight. Here in the south it helped the Conservatives to win seats like Basildon and Harlow for instance.
But with an estimated 74,000 council flats and houses a year going private, it does create an enormous shortfall of public housing. That, in turn, lets in enterprising private landlords who can secure a decent and guaranteed rental income from a local authority.
It also leads to six bedroomed houses in Hampstead being rented out to a family of 11 Eastern European benefits claimants which in turn sparks the kind of Daily Mail protest that so worries the Tories.
Now I'm not against working class people moving from council to private. I did it, when my parents went from an East End council house to their first home for instance. It was the first time any of us had lived in a house that wasn't owned either by a council or a brewery.
But how about some kind of rule that for every council house bought by its tenants, the local authority has to provide another one of its own to replace it?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
What's the point of the Halifax? Apart from its ability to make the worst adverts on television, is there really any need for this High Street chain of banks?
The Halifax is owned by the pisspoor HBOS group which in turn was foisted onto the much better-run Lloyds TSB (and the name TSB might as well be ditched too, come to think of it.)
This means the group that owns Lloyds Banks in the High Street also owns Halifax Banks in the High Street.
So you have the ridiculous site of a Lloyds Bank just a few doors down from a Halifax with both offering pretty much the same products to the same kind of customers.
It might be different if the Halifax was still a good old northern run building society which put its customers first.
And that's what Lloyds thinks. It reckons the Halifax has a bit more of a working class image which attracts a different set of customers that Lloyds itself.
This comes from the days when it was mutually run for the benefit of cloth cap northerners who wanted a safe haven for what little they could save in order to build up a nestegg.
Old style building societies - when we had the Abbey and the Halifax and the Woolwich and all those others that are now banks - used to have something like 15 times as much money in savings as it had in loans. Which of course makes it far harder to suddenly go bust owing billions of pounds in failed Ponzi-style mortgage schemes.
But it's not like that any more. The Halifax is nows a greedy, run of the mill bank famous for making crap adverts, overweight staff and tacky interiors.
Having a Bank of Scotland chain makes a bit more sense, if only to satisfy the sweaties and have some kind of historic, national identity north of the border. Though the days when having the word 'Scotland' in a bank's title meant trustworthy and good with money went out the window around the time Fred Goodwin did to the country what he did to that pretty, female worker in his department.
But Lloyds now has a whopping great chunk of our money helping it get through these difficult times (don't mention it lads). And a lot of that is now spent on a chain of banks, expensive promotions and the multimillion pound marketing and advertising budget that no longer has a purpose.
So scrap the Halifax, switch the accounts to Lloyds (or one of it's many other trading names) and spend the money saved on paying off the debt to the taxpayer.
------------------------------------------------------------
Talking of adverts, there is a long running commercial for the Ford Focus which you can't avoid. It shows some Germanic sort called Mattheus wasting his time driving around Europe visiting the sites of 'his favourite book' on two tanks of fuel.
His favourite book happens to be The Da Vinci Code, which suggests Mattheus is one of those people who finds it hard to read without his mouth moving at the same time.
Or perhaps he's only ever had three books and he's already coloured in the other two.
Anyhoo, the point is that when the advert was first shown, the voiceover said, quite clearly 'his favourite book, The Da Vinci Code'. But within a couple of weeks they had edited this down to 'his favourite book' without ever saying what it was.
Were Ford embarrassed by the fact it couldn't find a Focus owner who had ever read a decent novel? Or did Dan Brown feel he was not a Ford-type of guy and order the name of the book to be removed.
So I rang Ford. And they said that the reason they edited the advert was because having too much information in it distracted the viewers from the overall product and message.
Yes, that's right. Potential Ford Focus buyers are so distracted by hearing the words 'The Da Vinci Code' that they plum forget what car was being advertised.
----------------------------------------------------------------
On the programme Room 101 (a phrase from the book 1984 which has inspired me to buy a Ford Focus and try and visit all the places named in the novel) guests were asked to choose something that really annoys them they could banish forever. Predictably, celebrity chefs were picked. They were picked by the panel show fixture Micky Flanagan who has only got to appear on Deal or No Deal and Question Time and then we can have him on the our screens on a permanent 24-hour loop.
And the reason he picked them? Because, in his words, every time you turn on the TV there's a celebrity chef. No. Every time you turn on the TV there's Micky 'I'm a geezer' Flanagan.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
If Catholics are against having gay marriages in church because they can invent a biblical reason why it's God wouldn't approve, then should they not have a medical examination for every bride to make sure she's a virgin and a criminal records check on every prospective bride and groom to make sure they have never been convicted of any crime that is specifically mentioned in the bible?
Of course, they could start with their own priests.
Thus endeth the rant....cheers, Solly
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