Gazza: Sad But Predictable

In much the say way as when a character in a soap opera will say something like "the worst is behind us," or "things are going to be great from now on" and you know that the scriptwriters have some disaster planned for them, then there are times when I read a news story, note the optimism and expectation and think to myself, this will end badly.

So it was when the story appeared on the BBC website that former England international Paul Gascoigne had signed for Sunday League team Abbey in Bournemouth. Abbey manager and taxi driver Chris Foster was apparently driving Gascoigne, stopped to buy cigarettes and got the ex Spurs and Lazio midfielder to complete a signing on form. [1] I might be cynical, I might be uncharitable, but I don't think that I'm wrong in believing  that it is unlikely in the extreme that Gazza will ever take to the field in a Bournemouth park to play for Abbey, especially after another news story that appeared about him almost simultaneously. Doubtless you will have seen the story of his being admitted to hospital after being found in the street near his home in Poole, wandering in an apparently drunken state while clutching a spirits bottle.

Gascoigne's goal against Scotland in 1996. Picture: Daily Mirror

Gascoigne last week. Picture: Daily Mail.

That expression about the fine line between genius and madness may be somewhat overused, but in the case of Gascoigne it has some truth. On a football pitch, with the ball at his feet, he could be a genius. His sublime goal against Scotland in Euro '96 at Wembley was just one stand out moment in a career that ought to have made him one of the game's all time greats, but then there were incidents like the ill advised tackle on Gary Charles of Nottingham Forest in the 1991 when Gascoigne was playing for Spurs. That tackle ruptured Gascoigne's cruciate ligament, causing him to miss a whole season. On and off the pitch Gascoigne has been haunted by demons; on it with ill timed tackles like the one on Charles and the miming of flute playing (a la Orange Order marchers) when playing for Rangers against Celtic; off it with his well documented descents into alcoholism, drug abuse and mental illness and his frequent visits to the Priory for rehab.

Gascoigne's challenge on Charles was bad for both men. Picture: The Guardian.

Professional sport, especially professional football, is a field where at the very top level the athletes are cosseted, indulged and generally divorced from the real world that to a very great extent it is understandable that at the end of their careers they may find that real world quite difficult to deal with. Even more so than the office worker or factory worker who retires in their sixties and finds a world without work difficult to come to terms with, professional sportsmen (and it does only seem to be the men) have much more of a culture shock to deal with and at a very much younger age. It is not uncommon for them to go off the rails; Gascoigne however was off the rails during his career and it was only the structure and routine that the game gave him that prevented him from oblivion at a young age.

At the same time that Gascoigne was reportedly signing for a Bournemouth Sunday side, and at the same time as he was being taken to hospital, QPR manager Harry Redknapp was offering him a small coaching role at the club. The fact that people like Redknapp, and others before him have tried, and will continue to try helping the very troubled Geordie comes down to the fact that despite all of his problems people like him and genuinely want to help him. He still betrays that childlike innocence that endeared football fans to him when he began his career with Newcastle United in 1984; talented, daft as a brush and apparently down to earth, it seems that people can't help but like him, regardless of what he does.

This is beginning to read a bit like an obituary and sadly I don't think it will be many years before a real one will have to be written for Paul Gascoigne. Stan Seymour, his onetime chairman at Newcastle described him as "George Best without the brains" and we all know what fate befell Best. The fact is that we look at people like Paul Gascoigne, with their enviable lifestyle, their exuberant apparently happy go lucky personas and wonder how they can ever get themselves in such a mess. The sad death of Robin Williams just recently sparked many tributes on social media along with some people wondering how someone like him could come to take their own life, "What," some people asked, "could he have had to be depressed about?" Exactly the same things as anyone else. Fame and fortune are no barriers to depression; celebrity and riches are no impediment to addiction. In the UK over 15,000 people die every year due to alcohol related factors; the World Health Organisation estimate that 121 million people suffer from depression worldwide. Age, gender, race, religion, wealth, occupation; none are barriers to alcoholism, drug addiction or depression so we should never be surprised that those who appear to have it all are as vulnerable to these problems as anyone else.

Robin Williams...many people wondered what he could have been depressed about.

Why, one might ask did Gascoigne sign for a Sunday team when he was quite obviously not in any fit state to contemplate playing football again, even at that level? It has always struck me that he, like so many people is unable to say No. Some people are unable to say No to another drink, unable to say No to placing another bet, unable to say No to dubious business deals, unable to say No to people in general. Obviously I don't know Paul Gascoigne, nor am I a psychiatrist, but what I see in him is a vulnerable person who wants to be liked, a relatively naive person who has been exploited and whose addictive personality has been driven by his vulnerability and desire to be liked. It may be a truism that his addictive personality prevents him from saying No, not just to other people but to himself but that difficulty in being able to say No is also a symptom of fear of conflict. Saying No can be hard; it can lead to confrontation, to argument. Far easier to say Yes and deal with the consequences later (or not, as I suspect is Gazza's way). There's a bit of me speaking there; I know that I have trouble saying No sometimes. Maybe because I don't want to upset someone; maybe because I want to appear helpful; maybe because I am afraid of appearing rude. Sometimes saying No now is less painful, even if it merely delays the inevitable.

Someone once said," You learn, right, a lot of people's problems - why they get upset, why they get down, why they turn to drink - is because they can't say one word and it's N-O, no." And the man who said it? Ironically, it was Paul Gascoigne himself.

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[1] See http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/28876767

The Internet Is A Scary Place

Turn Your Bullshit Detector Up To Eleven

The internet is a scary place. There are dangers lurking everywhere. Everyone is permanently at risk from viruses, malware, trojans and phishing attacks[1]. Your email account is a minefield. Whatever you do, don't open that attachment if you don't recognise the source! Don't click on that link! Don't reply to people you don't know!

And no matter how hard you try and protect yourself, what can you do when the details you store online with other people, people you trust, are stolen? In recent years we have seen the payment details from 40 million credit and debit card numbers stolen from US retailer Target, eBay had customer details compromised in an attack that saw passwords and other data stolen and Yahoo! have had customer data hacked so no matter how hard you try, you are still at risk. Makes you want to unplug your router, drop off the grid and go back to the more innocent days before the internet came along, doesn't it?

Except that you aren't safe off the net either. Courier fraud [2] has been well publicised lately so perhaps you are now wise to that, although there have been enough scary stories in the papers to make you want to stop answering your telephone too. The thing about these sorts of scams is that they evolve quickly, catching people unaware before the threat is publicised and potential victims become too savvy to be caught. By then the fraudsters have moved on to something else. Of course we all think that we are too street-wise to be caught out, but the plain truth is we aren't, not all of the time anyway. 

Sometimes no matter how astute we think we are, we get caught off guard, I did a few years ago although thankfully nothing seemed to come of it. It was in the days when broadband was relatively new. We had a dial-up internet connection but were thinking of upgrading. One evening the phone rang and the man at the other end said he was calling from BT and would we be interested in having broadband installed? Yes, I replied and he took some details including asking my date of birth, full address and mother's maiden name by way of security checks. He told me to expect the router through the post within a week with instructions on installation. A week or so elapsed and nothing came, so I rang BT. They had no trace of any order for a router or broadband at my address. I gave them the name of the chap who had phoned (work habits die hard, I still always ask for caller's names) and they said that they had no one of that name working at BT. I have no idea who phoned, why or what they did with the information I gave them, but it has made me very cautious when people ring and ask me security questions to prove who I am. After all if someone phones purporting to be your bank and says that they have to identify you by asking some security questions you could be revealing crucial information to a fraudster for all you know. You could do what a former work colleague of mine did and give an incorrect answer; if the caller doesn't notice (as that particular caller didn't) then you know they are not who they say they are.

There are 24 million daily users of Facebook in the UK, 206 million in Europe, 228 million in Asia and 152 million in North America. The sheer size of Facebook and the incredible number of users make it potentially a very dangerous place in many different ways. On a very basic level Facebook users voluntarily make a whole lot of personal information about themselves available to just about anyone who wants to see it, despite the site's security settings, and that information can be useful to anyone with even the most casual of malicious intentions.

Then there is the content. My wall, your wall, everyone's wall is inhabited by links to this site, that site, sites you have subscribed to, sites that your friends have shared, sites of whose provenance you have absolutely no knowledge, yet we all merrily click on them. And some of them offer us all sorts of fun, like the one that promises that you can hack your friends' Facebook pages. Ok, so that is not a very nice thing to do, but it's between friends, so what's the harm? Anyway, once you've done it you will tell your friend and no damage done, eh? Not exactly, because what this alleged hack does is grant the scammers access to your Facebook account.[3]

Now if you are a Facebook user (and given the numbers I quoted above, the chances are that you are), you will have inevitably seen posts, frequently shared by your friends, warning of scams, hoaxes and frauds being perpetrated both on the internet and offline. Warnings about dodgy emails, dodgy phone calls and the activities of fraudsters and crooks out there in the "real world." Like the warning that key rings are being given out at petrol stations and contain a tracking device enabling crooks to track you to your home or where your car is parked and rob you or steal your vehicle. Setting aside for a moment the huge cost involved in the supposed crooks setting up such a scheme when they could simply follow their victims or pick people at random, this warning has been going about for years, since 2008 in fact and appears to have started after a petrol retailer in South Africa began giving out genuine promotional key rings. The hoax has been debunked numerous times in the last six years, but continues to circulate. Similarly the story that regularly surfaces and gets posted on Facebook etc, suggests that cars are being stolen by carjackers who stick a piece of paper over your rear window obscuring your view, making you leave your car with the engine running to remove it, whereupon they hop in and drive your car away. This has been doing the rounds for nearly ten years and while it is both plausible and potentially possible that this could happen, there are no recorded cases of it happening anywhere.

Emails suggesting that System32 was a virus on your computer and needed to be uninstalled is another malicious prank that has been doing the rounds for many years.

You may have seen posts inviting you to "Like" something and maybe post a comment to win a prize. The most common of the prize scams seems to involve Tesco vouchers. Share the offer of a free Tesco voucher, post a comment ("Thank you Tesco") and you may win a £75 voucher...except you won't because this "offer" has nothing to do with Tesco. What you will do however is be asked to complete a survey, questions in which will include your name, address, phone numbers etc. Your details will be harvested by scammers who will earn commission and you will be inundated with all sorts of unwanted promotional emails, phone calls, text messages and junk mail.

You have probably seen these Facebook posts offering the chance to win Tesco vouchers, which have nothing to do with the supermarket at all.

It's fair enough that people will pass on what appear to be genuine warnings or offers to their friends; they do so in good faith, but whenever I see one I Google the content. Nine times out of ten it takes me to http://www.hoax-slayer.com.

That isn't to say everything is a hoax. I saw one I was suspicious of about a pay at the pump petrol station where the machine had been rigged to steal debit and credit card details. When I Googled that one it proved to be true.

Staying safe online, not falling for hoaxes and tricks, is a constant war in which vigilance is essential. I suggest that you invest in some decent anti-virus software and pop down to Maplin or Radio Shack and buy the biggest, best and most expensive bullshit detector that they stock.

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[1] I had one this very day, purporting to be from PayPal, informing me that my account was suspended.

[2] For an explanation of how courier fraud works, see http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/fraud-az-courier-scam

[3] Details here: http://www.tomsguide.com/us/facebook-self-xss,news-19224.html

Optimism And Delusion

It strikes me that there is a fine line between optimism and delusion. The optimist may expect a positive outcome given favourable conditions whereas someone who is deluded may expect a positive outcome despite markedly unfavourable conditions. Sometimes it is difficult to tell whether football supporters are optimists or are deluded; fans of Hereford United and Salisbury City must have trodden that line a great deal in recent months.

On the final day of 2013-14 Conference Premier season[1] Hereford United won 2-1 at Aldershot to finish one place outside the relegation spots and the seven hundred or so Bulls fans who made the journey to Hampshire breathed a collective sigh of relief. The preceding months had been fraught as the club's very existence was in doubt. In December last year, struggling to pay their wage bill and unable to meet their latest PAYE payment to Revenue and Customs, Hereford appealed for help from fans to raise £35,000. This followed the threat of administration which the club had fought off during the previous season. In January the club announced that a winding up order had been made against the club by HMRC for a debt of £36,500 despite the fact that the club had raised £20,000 through donations and share sales and that the directors had put in a further £35,000. Following these events fans naturally hoped for a relatively calm summer in which the club, having assured its playing position in the highest level of English non-League football, could put itself on an even keel. In June the club were taken over by London businessman Tommy Agombar but the club's perilous financial position saw them expelled by the Conference and relegated to the Southern League.

To describe the events that engulfed the Edgar Street club in the summer months would take more room than this blog allows, but suffice it to say that the efforts to avert the financial crisis that arose in December last year were  the equivalent of a sticking plaster being applied to a broken leg. Despite promises that creditors had been, or would be, paid it appears that some cheques are still in the post. Creditors included ex-manager Martin Foyle who issued a winding up petition against the club, while groundsman Ian Pritchard walked out over unpaid wages and alleged that back in December he had been instructed to flood the pitch to cause a postponement. On the football front teams representing the club played two matches on the same day. One was a mysterious friendly behind closed doors in Yorkshire, against Turkish club Besiktas, which was lost 6-0 while a Hereford United Supporters Team were beaten 6-2 by Ledbury Town, with over 600 Bulls fans present.

The local council initially refused to issue a safety certificate for the ground and when they eventually did it was with a capacity reduced to 1,000 spectators. Hereford's first Southern League game resulted in a 2-0 home defeat to St Neots Town with 568 in the ground and an estimated 250 outside protesting about the club's management. The protestors got their wish just four days later (well, part of it anyway) when it was confirmed that Mr Agombar had failed the FA's fit and proper persons test and would have to walk away from the club. Still, at least the Hereford fans had a game to protest at, unlike Salisbury City's fans.

Hereford supporters protest about their club's new owners

While Hereford were narrowly avoiding a relegation place last season, Salisbury City finished in mid-table  but the fun (if that is an appropriate term) began in early June when it was first revealed that the club had a new owner, Otail Touzar, and that they had signed a Saudi Prince, Prince Khalid Bin Bader Alsaud. Touzar was described as a wealthy Moroccan businessman, although it appears that the majority of his wealth was in his imagination. Prince Khalid Bin Bader Alsaud meanwhile was not, as some might have thought, signing from a glamorous side in Europe or a club in Saudi Arabia but from the slightly less thrilling surroundings of Bromley Reserves, except that Salisbury's transfer embargo put the kibosh on the deal.

Otail Touzar (second right) is unveiled as the new owner of Salisbury City. They could at least have taken the price tag off the shirt!

It probably came as no surprise to anyone that things began to unravel almost immediately. The Conference relegated Salisbury to the South division for financial irregularities, and this just four years after the Conference had expelled them altogether for similar reasons. Equally it can have come as little surprise when City were later expelled from the Conference completely due to their failure to pay their football creditors. The supposed takeover of the club by a consortium left the actual ownership of the club in some dispute; both the consortium and Otail Touzar claimed ownership and both claimed that they had appealed against the club's expulsion from the Conference. The FA heard an appeal from Touzar, although apparently those who dispute his ownership tried to attend as well, being described by Touzar as " a gang of idiots that was barking outside the FA offices." I say that the FA heard an appeal from Touzar, but in fact he did not attend the appeal meeting in person and attempts by the FA to conduct a conference call with him failed when the connection was cut within a minute or so; the appeal was dismissed[2]. The people who dispute Touzar's ownership of the club cannot have endeared themselves to either the Conference or the FA, calling them "idiots" and describing the fit and proper persons test[3] as "pathetic and farcical", language hardly likely to persuade the Conference to re-admit them, particularly since it was they who were so taken in by Touzar, not the Conference, not the FA.

The only website in the world that contains no punctuation whatever.

So with the season in full swing, Salisbury City have no league in which to play, although the Wessex League have offered them some degree of hope, provided that issues of ownership are resolved soon, which seems unlikely.

At Conference level, one division below the Holy Grail of the Football League, the game is an uneasy mixture of small and large clubs, some of whom seem to have no idea into which category they fit. There are the small clubs like Braintree Town, who know that they are a relatively small club and cut their cloth accordingly. There are the large clubs like Bristol Rovers, recently relegated from the Football League or Wrexham or Barnet who all may realistically harbour ambitions to return to League Two. Then there are clubs who live like a man living in a penthouse and driving a Ferrari while earning the minimum wage, clubs who go full-time and pay top dollar to their players while attracting tiny attendances. Unless they realise their dream of League football these clubs inevitably implode when the money runs out, and it always does run out sooner or later. Sadly the game is littered with clubs who lived beyond their means and ultimately paid the price.

The Premier League may be awash with foreign owners prepared to sink millions into a football club with the reasonable expectation that this will buy them success on the pitch, but anyone approaching a non-League team with promises to inject a King's ransom into the club, to recruit a top manager and top class players should be treated with the utmost suspicion. There's an old saying that if it seems too good to be true it probably is. Sadly, while the optimist might hope something is true but reject it in the cold light of day, the delusional will believe in spite of the evidence.

In the case of these two clubs it seems that the optimists are to be found in Hereford and the deluded in Salisbury.

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[1] In 2013-14 the Conference was sponsored by Skrill; this season it is sponsored by Vanarama. To avoid confusion I have referred to it throughout as simply the Conference.

[2] See http://www.thefa.com/news/governance/2014/aug/salisbury-city-appeal-dismissed for the full reasons.

[3] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fit_and_proper_person_test

We're Not Going On A Summer Holiday

The schools have broken up for the six week holiday, the great British summer is in full swing (several sweltering days punctuated by violent thunderstorms and a temperature swing of about 20 degrees Celsius) and naturally the Passport Office have threatened strike action. Yes, welcome to August, the summer holidays and the most self inflicted stress you will suffer since last Christmas.

Holidays are frequently reported as being among the most stressful things that we do, certainly they are one of the most stressful things we do through choice, right up there with moving house and so the question is why does something that should be so enjoyable cause so much tension and anxiety?

Holiday ads; beautiful people in beautiful places without a care in the world.

There are several reasons and one of them is having spent a great deal of time, effort and money on booking the holiday, we want it to be perfect and those expectations, which can be as unrealistic as the holiday adverts that lured us into booking in the first place, often failure to materialise. Secondly we are now thrown into close proximity with our spouse and other family members on a 24/7 basis rather than in that short space of time we normally spend with them between work, bed, school and all of the other routine activities. Divorce lawyers report that September is a busy month as couples find that their two week summer holiday has exposed all sorts of tensions that the weekly grind had suppressed. Again the holiday ads, with their carefree families frolicking on golden beaches, dining under the stars and sipping cooling drinks by an immaculate pool, create an image of holidays that travellers may feel obliged to try and emulate; many will fail.

Holiday reality: Crowds, delays, stress.

One of the most difficult things to do, at least during the first few days of a holiday, is to unwind, especially to put aside the cares of work and relax. This is especially true if one's holiday destination involves a long haul flight. A few years ago we holidayed in Hawaii, at the Hilton on Waikiki beach and in theory this should have been really relaxing and eventually it was, but after an eleven hour flight from London to Los Angeles, several hours waiting at LA airport, a further five hour flight to Honolulu, missing our transfer to the hotel where we arrived to find that our travel company had made a mistake with our booking, my initial thoughts were that I wish I hadn't left home. I am sure that many people have the enviable ability to switch off from their work and other routine cares and woes when they go on holiday and start enjoying themselves from the word go, but personally I always found it hard going.

The Rainbow Tower at the Hilton on Waikiki beach.

A temptation into which I have often fallen on holiday is trying to cram too much in. There is a feeling, especially if one has travelled a long way or is visiting somewhere that is world renowned, to try and see everything, to do everything. After all, how galling would it be to return home and be asked by a friend, "Did you visit so and so?" only to have to admit that you didn't visit what, in some people's eyes, would be the major reason for visiting the place. This can lead people, and I would be one of them, into treating a holiday more like a military operation than a rest, rushing hither and thither in an attempt to cram as many activities and sight-seeing photo opportunities into two weeks as possible while constantly worrying that something has been missed. Our last two proper holidays (as opposed to short breaks) were to The Maldives where the temptation to rush around like a demon is tempered by the fact that there is nothing to rush around to see or do, forcing even the most restless of souls to lounge around for hours with the occasional dip in the bath-temperature Indian Ocean filling the time between meals and bed. Even I managed to unwind completely.

Bandos in The Maldives. Difficult to imagine being stressed here!

That isn't to say that our Maldives trips were without potential for stress, but the funny thing is that there are things that happen on holiday that should be stressful, but which turn out not to be and this is because the prime causes of stress are self-induced. Where an outside event that could be stressful occurs a different pattern of behaviour kicks in, as happened to us in Bandos in The Maldives and in Tobago.

On one of our trips to Bandos Val developed toothache and despite being given painkillers by the resort's doctor, it wasn't getting any better. Having been told before we left home that she had an unerupted wisdom tooth coming through it became apparent that some sort of dental surgery was necessary, which wasn't available on the island. This could have prompted a whole bucket load of stress with associated bickering but strangely it was all quite calm. After confirming with our travel insurers that they would pay the necessary costs, we were whisked over to the mainland by speedboat, fast tracked through the local hospital by a rep from the resort and four hours after leaving the island we were back on it again with Val now minus one tooth. Val reported that the dentist was so good that initially she didn't even realise that he had extracted the tooth!

Tobago

A couple of years previously, while staying at the Hilton in Tobago, Val had the misfortune to put her foot down a pipe that was buried in the grounds, causing a very deep and long gash in her shin. Again this was a potentially really stressful incident and wasn't helped by having to leave our daughter Sarah, who was only ten at the time, at the resort while we went to the hospital to have Val's leg stitched. Then it was a couple of trips to a local health centre to get Val's dressing changed and to get a "fit to fly" certificate from a local doctor. Once back in England I had the slightly unusual experience of pushing Val around Gatwick airport in a wheelchair.

This is what happens when you put your leg in a pipe when you shouldn't.

So it is odd then that while things can happen on holiday that we don't expect, can't plan for and which are filled with stressful possibilities, these are actually easier to deal with and are in fact less stressful than the things that we manufacture in our own mind. Certainly the biggest cause of stress in our family holidays is, I have to confess, me, and I am certain that in most cases holiday stress is caused by one or more of the holidaymakers and not by events.

We aren't having a proper summer holiday this year, not for any particular reason and not as a means of avoiding any holiday related stress, although if we were going away I like to think that some of the experiences of the last few years would better equip me to calm down and enjoy it and not get so stressed out!

If you have a holiday planned in the next few weeks I sincerely hope that you have a stress free one that you enjoy and from which you return refreshed because sadly the rest of the year is stressful enough, but holidays don't have to be.