h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Everybody who reads the papers, watches the news or does not live on the moon has heard about the violence during the currently held European Championship Football. There has been much talk about whether the English should be banned from watching continental footballmatches. the general concensus is that the good will suffer with the bad(very true), and that such measures should therefore not be taken.

As much as I am an Anglophile(ask around, please ask around) I disagree and would like to get the following off my chest.


1. The English(or maybe even British) so-called 'footballfans' have succeeded in alienating everything and everybody in the last 15 years. They have made people afraid of all English fans and 'fans' because the latter tend to demolish the bar after they had a drink. Mind you, they have not made people afraid of 'The English' in general, only when related to football.

2. If I had invested half of my life in a nice business or a great family I would be tempted to throw the bloody hooligans out as soon as I would spot them. You cannot blame the Belgian policeforce for this. They do not behave like that with all footballfans as they have shown so far, and they are pressured by the local population into protecting their assets.

3. The police cannot recognize the friendly football-lovers from the Isles from the idiots who ruin the game, how could they ? So if 900 people are arrested and 'only' (the word in itself is ridiculous here) about 380 are sent back, the reason may be that the Belgians actually check at the policestation before they ship someone out. It does not have to mean that they are trying to 'score' (sic).

3. I do believe that if the Dutch or the Belgians start a riot, the police are there pretty pronto to end it so why should foreign people be treated special. Remember the Coolsingel last year ? That's what I mean.

4. Most of these 'fans' CANNOT drink properly. The pubs in England still mostly close around 23:00 pm, so the general tendency is to get drunk before that time. On the continent the bars close no earlier than 01:30 am, and that means they keep on drinking after they have had quite enough. Most of those so-called 'footballfans' (my apologies to the real fans) just drink on and on and on, roam the streets with beers in their hands(illegal everywhere), start a fight about nothing(illegal everywhere), etcetera.



So why should they not suffer the consequences ? It would be too bad if they took down English football with them, it would be a shame if no Enlish person could attend a match abroad in the future. But if the choice is whether to ban the English from continental footballmatches or have our houses burned down, I definitely know where I stand.


For the record : Every time I typed fans in this response it meant real ones. Every time I typed 'fans' it referred to the rabble that causes these problems. We used to call them punks but nowadays, according to various sources, the 'army' consists of all sorts ; unemployed people, bankmanagers, lawyers(would you believe it?), etcetera.

Idiots, as I said.



Yours truly,

TM.

Errrm...please do not take offense on this one.
I agree with you on most of the things that you've said in this well compiled list of statements, and I also agree that hooligans are not adding anything to the game. They are some kind of cult that we should get rid of ASAP.
However, don't you think you are getting a bit obsessed with it? You're turning every forum into a discussion platform about hooligans and if, when, how they should be dealt with.
As before, don't take offense, I'm only curious about your motives to do so, but don't you think that a discussion like that should be restricted to the forums that have actually grown into the subject? I noticed the same conversations in forums that were meant as general fun thingies, and I wonder if talking about hooligans (and related subjects) has any effect in those threads.

Yours truly,

Kheldar

Actually my dear Kheldar, I replied to something/someone in a thread and then decided to turn it into a personal journal-entry. As it should be.

OTOH : this subject pisses me off completely and even more so now. The English are out of the game and everybody probably thinks 'phew, problem solved'. Not so.

TM.

Actually, the thread to which you are referring is not the one I meant. That forum was about football and stuff for a long time. I noticed the same discussion going on in other forums that didn't handle that subject though.
Also, I am fully aware of the fact that the problem is not solved, and I think that pisses me off just as much as you. I've been there, I didn't join in (actually I got out just in time) and I sure as H**L didn't get the t-shirt!!
I am not trying to tell you that you can't post things like this, especially in your own journal (that would be the day ). I was merely asking you a question about your line of thinking, and *I* decided this would be a suitable place.

Kheldar

A very suitable place indeed Kheldar ! O.K. then, let me start by telling you how it 'used' to work on h2g2(before topic-drift set in...).

Every once in a while you have something on your chest so you would write a journalentry which would then be discussed by (hopefully) several other researchers. That's right : a lot of the threads stayed on track/with the subject. I have expressed my regrets once or twice before about how topic-drift tends to make the original title of the entry quite useless. I am all in favour of every researcher having one or more 'fun'-threads, as long as the others stay on target. This obviously makes it much easier to deal with one's daily dose of replies and it also helps a lot when working on several threads at the same time(we all do don't we ).

So after a while, when this 'drift' seemed to become indigenous to h2g2 I decided to go with the flow. After all : I am just one person so who am I to say. This means that I can indeed post an entry in a thread that deviates from the original subject. Especially as you say, when I am pissed off a bit(or a whole lot of course). However !!! If this thread becomes too active because of my input, this means that it's obviously worth a separate journal-entry to focus the activities on that subject. No more running around finding all the relevant threads. That is why I added this journalentry. You have probably noticed that I used almost the exact words from the thread-response for my journal-entry.

So as I have now added a journalentry on my own page. This means that I can direct researchers from the other threads to it(as I have already done btw) and leave the other threads alone.

One last thing though : I have not (and I mean NOT) put this all up to scoff English footballfans. England has both the best and the worst footballfans in the world and fortunately there are more of the former then of the latter.


Anything else you would like to know ? Perhaps about towels ?

TM.

Nope. However, did you notice that with extra security in the neighbourhood there were no problems at all yesterday night after the match? The ME didn't even have to act like they were going to get serious

You mean in Alphen ? Nope, I was at home and the website of 'Rijn en Gouwe' is down !! With a gentle note saying we are down but we might get up again in the future(no date or whatever). So I am a day behind on the local scenery.

TM.

However, what does it mean ? Does it mean that the police should be there(as in your previous post) or do they only generate more aggression(as was said in several other posts) ?

TM.

I think that both ways are true. It mostly depends on the behaviour of the police.
If you suspect trouble, you will get it. If you go with an positive attitudeon the streets the chance of less vandalism is more likely.
Of course this is my opinion and I could be wrong, but when you think positive it goes well, think negative and something will go wrong.

You can see or feel if someone like or dislikes you and you respond to that. If you want or not. Everybody is influenced by another person. When you have the attitude that all fans are hooligans, the bad guys between will know and react to this in a negative way. If the police reacts very agressive even the most peaceful supporter will assist the hooligans, because they see it as an attack on every fan.

Don Alfredo

Well, over here the police was dressed up with orange gimmicks as well, so that probably generated less aggression then when they would be standing there with helmets, shields and bats. The cops just asked the people to spread out in a very polite way and all. Most people tend to agree when asked that way.