Chris Tarrant: Extreme Railways

This is stepping away from the subject matter of my usual blogs, but I just felt like doing a little critique. I saw Chris Tarrant: Extreme Railways on Sky Anytime today, and I decided to watch it. I don't know whether this is normal, but there's always been something about trains that interests me. I don't know why, maybe it's because I was a fan of Thomas The Tank Engine as a kid, but this interest I have is what made me decide to watch the show.

Anyway, from the opening of the show it looked like it might be quite interesting, Chris previews some of the adventures he will be going on and it looks like it will be quite entertaining. From his opening line, he says "I love travelling". Well I'd just like to get this out the way now - bullshit! If Chris loved travelling, he wouldn't have spent half the show moaning, but we'll hear more about Chris's moaning as this blog continues. Back to this episode, and after the interesting opening sequence showing some of the journeys Chris will be going on during the series, he comes out with the line "I aim to discover how these extreme railways are built, how they're kept running, and how they change the lives of the people they connect to the outside world." Thanks for that Chris, but this isn't your dissertation, we didn't really need to know that, I just want to see the choo choos mate.

In the first episode Chris is in the Republic of Congo in Africa, he sums up the journey he'll be taking today by basically saying it'll go through the jungle. He goes the station, and this is were the complaining starts. "This train is going to be absolutely heaving" says Chris after seeing all the people at the station. Well sorry you've traveled to one of the world's poorer countries, to film a tv show about extreme railways, and they haven't laid on a private train for you. Next, the train is late, and Chris isn't happy about this at all. Forget the hundreds of Congolese people who rely on this train, Chris Tarrant, on his jollies paid for by Channel 5, for a show called Extreme Railways, has to wait around a few hours for a train. Chris tells us no ones allowed on the platform, but then he's allowed out to see what he's going on, probably because he's white and has a tv crew with him.

So here's all the Congolese locals waiting for the train...

and here's Chris after he was allowed on the platform...

Hard life isn't it mate.

Chris's moaning gets even worse after that, he even gets the head of the Congolese railway network down so he can have a go at him. Here he is, looking like a bit of a gangster:

So the poor locals who use this train all the time deal with it, but the day Chris is traveling we must get the head of railways down. Sly. I mean, fair play if Chris wants to travel on Merseyrail and his train's late, by all means get the head of Merseyrail down and have a dig, but it's a bit sly to travel to a third world country (I'm guessing they're third world, sorry if they're not) and complaining that their rail network isn't up to scratch. I'm not arsed, I'd gladly get paid by Channel 5 to travel to The Congo and wait for trains. But this isn't the last of Chris's moaning, in fact we're only about 15 minutes into an hour long show. When the train eventually arrives Chris still isn't happy...

The train is heaving, as earlier predicted by Chris, but this is all part of the extreme railways experience is it not Chris? Naturally, so what does Chris do, sit with the locals and enjoy the culture...

Nope. He goes and stands at the front of the locomotive. Bellend. Fortunately, this decision is made more entertaining for the viewer when Chris gets absolutely soaked when the train goes through a tunnel. The tunnel provides more entertainment, as Chris retires to carriages with the riff raff because "he needs some kip" (more complaining), the train only goes and breaks down. This leads Chris to ask the question "does the fun ever start?" And again I go back to the fact he's making a programme called Extreme Railways. Literally the whole time the train is stuck Chris complains, it's so annoying, whilst the local people have a little sing song to pass the time. They quite clearly should've got someone else to present this show. Also, as a side note, the woman Chris is sitting next to on the train has pink eyebrows, but they never mention this or explain why, isn't that a bit weird? 

And also, as another side note, get on how mad this goat is, it proper just bails right in front of the train and lives to tell the tail:

Don't worry though, Chris is eventually rescued from this nightmare, and they reach the next station. We now get a quite a bit of informative content. Chris speaks to another head of the railway network who tells him about where they buy their locomotives from and how they're skint so they can't afford any good ones and also how all the track is ruined, and we also see the workshop where they fix the locomotives. Chris then finds a "new mate" as he describes him, who explains the signalling system they use. It was at this point where I discovered Samuel Eto'o works for the Congolese railway network...

There he is, in the bottom right hand corner. And that's not even me being racist, he's genuinely the spit of him. Nelson Mandela behind him is Chris's new mate Daniel, in case you were wondering. Interestingly, when Chris first meets Daniel, he says "you look so smart", in a rather patronising tone. That's racist. Daniel is good to Chris, he takes him on a trip down the original railway that has been closed for years on a maintenance train. It was built by the French in the 1920s when they occupied the country, and goes through the jungle. Isn't that exciting for train enthusiasts, going down an old railway line that no one has used for years through thick jungle. Of course, Chris complains. Seriously though, how fun does this look:

After spending the whole journey making mock cries for help, and talking to Daniel like he's a child (he speaks French Chris, he's not thick) we get a bit more education from Chris about the history of the railway. After this Chris decides to continue his journey, but for some reason now Daniel is going with him. Anyway, they'll now be travelling on one of Congo's new trains, the Gazelle. "The Gazelle is a luxury passenger service boasting all mod-cons" Chris tells us, and he's ecstatic when he sees they have a bar on board:

Well sorry Chris, but if that's what you wanted from this journey you should have stayed at home and took a Virgin. Anyway, the Gazelle will be taking Chris on the rest of his journey, so he's a bit happier. He even states "if this really is the future of the Congo ocean railway, I like it." Well I'm happy to hear that Chris, and I'm sure the people of Congo are. I'm sure you'll be back, using your own money to pay for the trip, to travel on the Gazelle again. 

Chris is now at the end of his journey, but he tells us there's one more famous sight he still wants to see. This sight being the famous rapids of the great Congo river. However, he can't resist another moan on his way to see it, as he tells us how he was "squeezed into a dugout canoe". Looks like hell Chris...

The show ends with Chris sitting on the rocks at the side of the rapids, he's "always wanted to come here" apparently. He ends by talking about his trip a lot more positively, even though he's just spent the whole show moaning about it. If the railway hadn't been built it "would have been a great shame" for him. Hmmm...

In conclusion, I can't understand why Chris Tarrant made this programme if all he does right the way through is moan. If they would have got someone more positive, who got really involved with the trip, it would have been a lot better.

here's a link to the show if anyone wanted to watch it http://youtu.be/fxHv77QKjGs

@adamheath 

Suarez Revisited

For the second time I have felt the need to write a blog because of Luis Suarez. Again, I find myself defending him, and again, he seems to be the victim of a witch hunt.

Today I read an article quoting Arsenal defender Laurent Koscielny labeling Suarez a cheat. I won't quote everything he said, but one of his accusations was: "He is a player who likes to dive as soon as there is contact."

Koscielny is just the latest in a line of critics to attack the Uruguayan and label him a cheat. Now, as a Liverpool fan, I watch Suarez week in week out, and all I see is a player who gives everything in every game, clearly loves the game of football and wants to win. I honestly don't understand where this "reputation" he has has come from.

Now, I'm not denying Suarez has dived, the dive against Stoke was comical, but it's not something he does on a regular basis or something he does more often than any other player. And when I say player, I don't just mean foreign players, I include British players in this as well, see Ashley Young, Danny Welbeck, Gareth Bale, and our own England captain Steven Gerrard.

However, these players have never come under the same sort of attack as Luis Suarez has. Now, on twitter and facebook, I always see people stating that they hate Suarez, or words to that effect, but I don't know why. Well I do, because he's a brilliant player and he plays for Liverpool. If I asked you to name incidents that make you hate him, I'm sure the response, first of all, would be the handball in World Cup 2010. I really don't understand the controversy surrounding this. One of the unwritten rules of football, that all players will attest to, is that if you're on the line and the ball's going in, and you can't get to it with any part of your body except your hand, you take one for the team. A penalty and a red card is better than a goal. Okay if you're 5-0 up you let them have the goal, but at 1-1 in extra time of the World Cup quarter final, you're not going to let the other team get the winner.

Another incident that would probably be mentioned would be when he bit an opponent whilst at Ajax. Bare in mind he was 23 at the time, this is no excuse, but he was still relatively young. A moment of madness, most people would probably think it was great if Balotelli did something like this.

Finally, and most obviously, is the racial abuse incident involving Patrice Evra. I don't want to go into too much detail on this, as it's in a previous blog. But the punishment in relation to the evidence presented still shocks me, as well as the media uproar it caused. This is what has harmed Suarez the most, and I imagine John Terry will not be subject to the same ordeal. Terry has already been let off with a lesser punishment for what was, in my opinion, a worse crime, that also had clear video evidence.

The media are the biggest culprits in continuing the Luis Suarez witch hunt. In my opinion it is lazy journalism. Ask anyone in football about Luis Suarez, get them to say he's a cheat, and this is, in their opinion, newsworthy. The problem is, the reason the people they're quoting think Suarez is a cheat is because the media told them he is, and not because they watch him week in week out like I do, and see that a cheat is one of the things Luis Suarez actually isn't.

Now I have my own theories about why Suarez has been the victim of this hate campaign, but I won't go into to much detail as I will probably be labeled a conspiracy theorist. However, lets suffice to say I believe Suarez is a great player, up there with the best in the world, and could easily make the first team of the best clubs in the world, ie Barcelona and Real Madrid. I'm pretty sure Suarez will end up at a club like this at some point, because he will be forced out of the country by the hate he receives off his people.

I can compare this scenario to one involving another player, and that is Cristiano Ronaldo. Today, the media praise Ronaldo, they love him, he is one of the best if not the best footballer in the world. But his time in England was tough, he was also labeled a cheat, and was made public enemy number one after the 2006 World Cup. Why? Because of a wink. A wink.

So what will happen to Suarez? He will leave this country at some point, no doubt the media will be made up. Fans of other teams will be ecstatic. Then, when he plies his trade in Spain, or Italy, or Germany... our country's media will love him.


@adamheath 

Justice For The 39

This is a blog I wrote nearly five years ago after the 2007 Champions league final. It doesn't really have anything to do with current events, but I think the treatment of Liverpool and it's fans at the moment has some similarities. Also, the comments I made back then about how people who sing "justice for the 39" to us don't really care about getting justice for them, is similar to the way people are using the racism incidents as an insult to Liverpool fans, or a means to sell newspapers, but they don't actually have any interest in eradicating it from the game.


Justice for the 39. That's what it all comes back to, in fact thats what it always comes back to when your a Liverpool fan. When you're following a club with a history such as ours its hard to go anywhere or do anything without certain incidents being brought up.

Uefa have compiled a dossier labelling the fans of Liverpool Football Club as the "worst fans in Europe". On the surface this is a harsh accusation as the dossier has supposedly been compiled over the past four years, however, this dossier clearly has bitter roots dating back to 1985.

Head of Uefa Michele Platini was a European cup winner in 1985 with Juventus, in the final Juventus opponents were Liverpool. When Liverpool fans charged at Juventus fans in the "neutral" section of the Heysel stadium in Brussels thousands of Italians were forced back against a wall forcing it to collapse. 39 Juventus fans were killed.

It is understandable why Platini should dislike Liverpool. Obviously, like many a Manchester United fan he wants "justice for the 39", or does he? The simple answer is no. What has Platini done to get justice for those thirty nine supporters who died? Nothing. The real reason he dislikes Liverpool Football Club and in particular its supporters is that they denied him the chance to lift the European cup as the presentation of the trophy was cancelled for fear of crowed trouble. This is a very selfish attitude considering thirty nine people lost their lives.

Similarly, do those Manchester United fans and other English supporters who mock our fans with cries of "justice for the thirty nine" really shout this because they want justice? No, they dont give a shit about families who lost loved ones, they wont be showing their support to Juventus. They, like Platini, selfishly do this out of their own bitterness about being kicked out oof Europe. Liverpool fans accept this, but dont bring the lives of people you dont give a flying fuck about into the equation.

On the contrary, we are a club who have had to deal with death on a large scale. This has, perhaps, brought our supporters closer together. More importantly, however, made us understand the situations of those people who lost loved ones at the Heysel more than any other cunt who decides to shout "justice for the thirty nine" in our direction. Unlike Platini, unlike supporterrs from other clubs, Liverpool have lead the fight for Justice. "In memory and friendship" was the message displayed by 12,000 kopites in the match against Juventus two years ago, and this message also resides in the trophy rooms of anfield and the delle alpi, representing the bond that both clubs have formed through our own suffering. There is also a friendship group set up by Liverpool FC, who's most prominent memebr is Peter Hooton from the Farm, who help form bonds with the familes of the thirty nine supporters who died by bringing them over to Liverpool and showing them round Anfield.

So those fans who proclaim "justice for the 96? what about justice for the 39" shoud do some research before they insult us. Of course we have to take the abuse, because like i mentioned before our history will always be brought up. Also, Michele Platini should forget his own selfish campaign against the people of Liverpool, he stood on the pitch at anfield two years ago and accepted a plaque off ian rush, but what does he care about those 39 lost lives?

But he hates us, what can we do. Trouble in Athens was exactly what he wanted. When Uefa's cock up comes to the fore he can simply turn round and say it was our fault, after all we do have a history of it dont we? However the reality is the majority of Liverpool fans our miles ahead of the rest due to past experience. We've travelled to troublesome places such as galatasary where two leeds fans were killed and had no incidents, and been to Rome were Man utd clashed with riot police and had relatively little trouble and none involving the police. Uefa claim that over the past four years there have been 25 recorded incidents of trouble regarding Liverpool fans in Europe, now surely if that was the case it is them who should be learning from their mistakes. To quote the Liverrpool Echo, "If you were told that there'd been 25 burglaries in your street then would you leave the front door wide open and turn the alarm off?" Why play the champions league final in a city with a shite police force and an athletics stadium with no turnstiles if you knew the team playing had the "worst supporters in Europe". It stinks of incompetence, but not as much as the dossier itself being produced to cover Uefas tracks. It is, of course, a work of fiction. The day before the final William Gaillard, chief spokesman for Uefa, claimed that he was not worried about trouble because both Liverpool and AC Milan fans have an excellent record. Now he claims over the past four years we've beeen the worst. The fact of the matter is that Uefa fucked up.

So are we supposed to accept this sweeping generalisation Uefa have made, yes we are worse than the Italian fans who left the wife of a police officer widowed, worse than the French fans who held an anti-semitic rally which turned violent and resulted in the death of an officer from the Gendarmerie, worse than the Inter Milan fans who on one occasion launched a scooter from an upper tier of the San Siro and on another caused a Champions League quarter final match to be abandoned by hurling flares on to the pitch, worse than the Man United fans who clashed with riot police in Rome.

It looks like we are, for even though Uefa's organisation has been at fault once again, we are always going to be their scapegoat for we have heysel in our history books. They are pointing the blame in our direction to deflect themselves, and theres nothing we can do about it because people with lack of knowledg on the events in 1985 and the consequences since then see it as us blaming Uefa again. Liverpool fans have accepted responsiblity for Heysel even though it was only partly our fault, and now responsiblity for another Uefa fuck up is being landed on us. Sky sports can keep showing the same 15 second clip over and over again and people will believe that represents the whole of our support, but whether you choose to accept it or not we have learned from our mistakes.

Suarez...

Basically, I've found the 140 characters available to me on twitter not enough to express my opinions in full on the Suarez racism situation, so I have decided writing a blog on the subject is my best option.

A lot of people have been using the argument that Suarez should have known better than to use the term 'negro' in England as it is seen as racist here, whilst in his home country this is just a regular term that doesn't have racial connotations in the slightest. This is something I agree with to an extent, but I believe cultural differences should not be looked over entirely in this case.

I would like to present an example of how cultural differences can lead to a cross wire in certain situations. In 2007 a teacher from Liverpool was arrested in Sudan, Africa, because she allowed her class to name a teddy bear Muhammed. Naming something Muhammed is deemed as an insult to Islam and is therefore a crime in Muslim countries. When this story broke and it was revealed the teacher, Gillian Gibbons, could be sentenced to 40 lashes, naturally there was outrage amongst the people of this country and we wanted something to be done about this by our government, myself included.

Granted, this is on a much larger scale than the Suarez incident, but on this occasion an English woman was living amongst a different culture, she committed a crime against their religion, yet in this country we could see nothing wrong with what she had done. Now take Suarez, a South American living in England, who has said a word that is deemed racist in our culture, yet people in South America can see nothing wrong with what he has done. Can you see where I'm going with this?

When Mrs Gibbons was eventually sentenced to 15 days in prison for what she did, the people of Britain did not turn round and say "well she deserved it, she should of learned that you can't do that in Muslim countries" did we. She appealed the case with the backing of the government, with then foreign secretary David Miliband expressing "in the strongest terms" the UK's concern at her detention. Mr Miliband went on to say he was "extremely disappointed" the charges had not been dismissed and repeated his view that it had been an "innocent misunderstanding by a dedicated teacher".

Again, I repeat that this is on a much larger scale than the Suarez situation, but surely some parallels can be drawn? Personally I feel both incidents garnered greater punishment than what was deserved. Combating racism is all about tolerance and understanding, so shouldn't we look at this as possibly being an "innocent misunderstanding" the same way we would if it was in English person in this situation in a foreign country.

Sometimes I think things have gone too far the wrong way when it comes to battling prejudice. When my 92 year old gran calls black people "darkies" I don't agree to it, but I know she's not racist, I just understand that she grew up in a time and culture were this was acceptable. The same way Alan Hansen had to apologise for using the term "coloured" on television, it's a word that's just always been acceptable to him. To be honest, I can't imagine anyone would actually find him using that word offensive. Sometimes you just have to tolerate things like this, try and educate people as best you can, but accept the fact they're not racist or prejudice.

So if that member of the BNP wants to tell me I'm a racist because I'm not backing a decision made by the FA, well he can just go ahead and do that. Personally, I'll take my views and opinions that have been formed over many years of education and experience, and I'll stick to them thanks.


here is the story mentioned in the blog, just in case anyone isn't familiar with it http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7119399.stm