10 Reasons I Cheered For Each Germany Goal:

1. I'm Scottish. That's how I identify my "ethnic heritage"; the fact I was born and brought up in Dagenham, a particularly insalubrious area on the edge of East London, is an unfortunate fact of geography I prefer to overlook in favour of cultural continuity.

2. Scottish does not equal British. English does not equal British. Given that Scotland and England have been officially politically united for around three centuries, and that for most of that time the Scots have had the impression – rightly or wrongly – that they've had the raw end of the deal, it's traditional in my cultural heritage to be dubious of England and things English.

Okay, political devolution may have, at least partially, settled the grievances, but the cultural rivalry remains. We do not support things English – we may support things British, and every time the media south of the border assume that we'll be backing England it only makes it worse.

Even in today's BBC commentary there was Mark Lawrenson; "Seventy million people will be on the edge of their seat." 70,000,000 is the [projected] population of the UK; 50 million was the figure he wanted. You'd think an ex-Republic of Ireland player would know better.

3. "We can win the World Cup!" Scotland are a fairly crap football team; we've not qualified for a major tournament for a couple of decades, and although there's been a few bright signs and a couple of talented players [most notably...], we're pretty much going to stay fairly crap. We're used to it. We only complain when they're utter crap rather than fairly crap.

England – here I'm talking about the media and a subsection of the fans – seem to somehow believe they have an inalienable right to be one of the top contenders, even though they haven't been for about as long as Scotland haven't. Every major tournament is accompanied with [I'm looking at you, Radio FiveLive, here] journalists sitting round in a studio asking "Can they win?", analyzing in great detail the possible failings of the England team, then somehow forgetting all that and answering "yes".

4. Overkill. Which is a brilliant Motorhead album, a brilliant NYC punk-thrash band, and just the word to use, following on from number three, as to the coverage England get. I heard that ten million people watched the Eng v Slovenia match the other week. Doesn't that leave forty million or so English people interested in something else? I like football, but I don't want to force it on anybody nor for it to dominate at the expense of everything else.

5. England fans. I know that the yob is a small minority, but the problem is that it's a very vocal minority. Staying out of pubs helps minimize the time I'm subjected to them, but they still exist. And despite the campaigns, there is an undeniable crossover between the hardcore England following and the extreme right.

During the 1996 tournament, when England met Germany in the semi-final, I had the misfortune to be "looking after" P., a very difficult – read racist, homophobic, misanthropic cnut – client. His language whilst we were watching was what mainly made me cheer the eventual German victory on penalties.

The England-Germany "rivalry" takes it to another level, with tedious World War II references every time the two teams meet. Again in 1996, in Ipswich several German exchange students had the shit kicked out of them by "patriotic" England fans, for – well, the reasons weren't clear, since they were a mish-mash of things that had happened when none of those present were born. FFS, grow up, fuckers.

6. Other Countries Exist Too. I'm a football fan. I want to hear what's going on in the World Cup – y'know, the other 31 teams – as well, rather than having six-page analyses every time Wayne Rooney farts. England's elimination from the tournament means that journalists will have to look a little wider for their stories. Maybe now we'll hear about how and why Uruguay are impressing the non-blinkered, how Ghana is carrying Africa's hopes, or – thanks, Guardian/Observer – how corrupt the whole FIFA setup is.

7. My Friends: Maxine is half-German, and Birgit is full-on-German. They're lovely.

8. Contrariness. Something in me wants to go against the flow. I'm never comfortable in large groups – metaphorical and real – and mass movements scare the fuck out of me, from Diana Grief Syndrome to the more recent Hate Gordon Brown Syndrome, even though I'd no great dislike for Diana nor any great regard for Mr Brown.

Robert M. Pirsig, in the [even better] sequel to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, "Lila", reports an American Indian tribe in which those who had thought they had suffered a wrong became contrarians, and started doing everything backwards as a sign of protest and "otherness" until it was settled.

I'm not sure I'd go that far, but I certainly recognize the urge. I wanted to laugh on the day of Diana's funeral, but didn't dare. I might have voted Labour last month, just because everyone said they'd lose, if they weren't so crap on certain things. And when people assume that I think a certain way – whether they think I'm a lefty or a righty, whether they think I'm gay or straight, whether they think I'm English or whatever – I want to say exactly the opposite just to shut them the fuck up.

9. David Cameron was "backing England", and flew the flag from 10 Downing Street. Okay, this one's childish, I freely admit. But if that smug cnut came out of the house one morning and said that murdering baby seals with chainsaws was a bad thing to do, something in me would go "hmmm, maybe there is another side to it…"

10. Germany were by far the better team. In the final analysis, that's what it boils down to. Defensively they were wobbly, but going forward they rocked in entirely the way which England didn't.

I have my own theories as to why England never managed any sort of a performance in their four matches – mostly in terms of successive managers picking the best players rather than the best team – but, hey, I'm not the manager. Yes, I'd like his pay packet, but with the media in the frenzy it is, no way would I take the job for all the money in the world…

Today's big news is that I am "reserve choice" for the job I interviewed for a few days ago; as I suspected, it's gone to an "internal candidate" – i.e. they knew who they wanted to appoint but just went through the motions of an open application process because they had to. Good feedback though, they liked me and thought I could do a good job, with one or two minor reservations as to the breadth of my experience.

The position was to work with and for our local "sex workers", ensuring that those forced into it were given an escape, that those who'd been trafficked were removed from harm, and that others were at least keeping out of trouble and not annoying anybody, and had a route out if they wanted it.

Long-time readers will know of my close interest in these issues, and I thought that the job would be very challenging – especially for a man, there's very few male sex workers round here – but ultimately also highly rewarding.

Ah well. I'm not unduly disappointed, because I kept myself more in hope than expectation; nor is it the case that I'm disadvantaged, since I'm still in my current night care/supervision work. I'm still keeping my eyes open…

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At about the same time I took the call, a parcel flopped on the doormat -

Thank you, Ang and Rem; your timing, as ever, is immaculate…

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Of course now the World Cup is taking up major parts of the day; although I'm finding the radio coverage much more to my liking than the TV, which is obsessed with instant "action replays" from six different angles each and every time someone kicks the ball ["less is more" is a philosophy that grows in importance all the time, I find].

After the first round of games, my preliminary conclusions are that Germany looked miles ahead of anybody else; adopted favourite team Slovenija will depend on their match against the USA as to what they do in the tournament; my £5 bet on Mexico, based solely on Giovani's eight games on loan to Ipswich, is pretty much wasted; and I wonder what noise it makes if you fart down a vuvuzela?

All complaints about the above image should be sent to atomic@b3ta through the link, and not to…

I'm pleased to report that, so far, the holiday season has gone smoothly; when the most pain I have is aching thumbs from playing Mario&Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story on the DS, I know I'm not in a bad place.

Xmas Day itself was peaceful, at my folks; it was the Saturday I wasn't looking forward to, what with the visit to the Evil Sister's lair house to drop off presents to the niece and nephew [cold hard cash; they're at the point where that matters more than toy giraffes].

I managed three hours, which is approaching the record for these occasions. Okay, it may not count because a lot of that was Nephew showing off his XBox [and kicking my arse at some driving game], but it at least did the trick of connecting with her kids and keeping my mother, who's always happier when her two children are talking to one another, from moaning at me. ["You'll need her one day!" - yeah, if I ever get that bad, Ma, switch the machine off.]

Let's look at the positive and give her credit though. The one time politics came into the conversation – usually a tasty proving ground for a nice contretemps – it was to discuss the upcoming Griffin candidature in near-to-our-home-ground Barking.

Let's give credit where credit's due: I oppose many things my sister supports, and I'm usually left-of-centre where she's right-, but she has no truck with the extreme forms of rightwingery involving paranoia about brown people, gay people or anyonedifferent people. We share hopenothate.org.uk as a web destination

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Less pleasing was the devotion Niece showed for Man Sodding Utd, and her assertion that "Fernando Torres is a tranny", but sometimes it's easier to roll one's eyes and pretend one's not heard…

Wot, no sparkly heels?

Between her and Arse-supporting Nephew, I was pressed for my favourite Premiership team [Ipswich doesn't count, we're crap and a division below].

It took a few seconds for me to work out which it was – I don't "support" any top-flight team, but there's certainly those sides I'll have a preference for, and definitely those I have a preference for them losing, but in the end I had to concede that the biggest of these preferences at the moment is because of this guy;

Hermann Hreiðarsson, many years ago an Ipswich Town hero

and therefore, his club, Portsmouth.

The fact that Portsmouth are bottom of the league, severely broke, and are, by many pundits' reckoning, about to get relegated, didn't fit with the two young glory-hunters' perception of what football is.

I must take them to a cold January night game down at Dagenham sometime and show them what it's really about…

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My little town appears to have entirely shut down for the whole Xmas week, up to next Saturday. If any of you catch me going stir crazy before then, do poke me with a sharp stick.

I think I've enough diversions between then and now, as well as a couple of shifts including the Traditional New Year's Night "No, I'm At Work, I Can't Be Your Sodding Taxi Driver / Ambulance Driver / Pizza Delivery Boy-Girl-Thingy" stint, so I guess I'll survive.

Here's to the next decade, and hoping this one will have much more of my favourite people – including all of you lot – and much less of my unfavourite cuntulents, especially in Barking.

Not that I'm holding my breath on that last one.

I'm down in London tomorrow for lunch with two rather gorgeous bloggers – normal capital transport chaos permitting – to try another Sri Lankan restaurant and see how it compares to my favourite little one in Walthamstow.

Luckily, Sri Lanka's matches are today [Friday] and Sunday, so the place won't be deserted.

There's a long blog to be written about how and why I feel very close to the cultures of the South Asian sub-continent, even in the face of the "soft" racism in my peer group as I grew up, not to mention the "underlying racism disguised as fear of Islamic fundamentalism" that otherwise smart people sometimes display these days.

Well… it's a lovely day outside and I'm about to wash my hair and leave it to dry in the sunshine, so you're not going to get that entry today…

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Ugg Boot Fetishist Targeted Girls.

Is there really any such thing as an 'Ugg boot fetishist'? Any self-respecting fan of footwear, like myself, would hopefully find something more worthy to harass people about…

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Star winger to join faraway club in shock large-money deal.

Yes, Mark Yeates is set to leave Colchester United and join a bigger team, perhaps Middlesbrough, perhaps Brizzle City.

What? Cristiano Over-Hyped Diving Wanker Glad To See The Back Of Him Who?

The big news round here is the dismissal of Jim Magilton as Ipswich Town's manager, a couple of days after we won the game against bitter rivals Korwich.

It's not like it wasn't coming. Magilton was a great player for us, but was over-promoted to manager too quickly. The team's been pretty woeful all season, one or two games excepted, and many fans like me have drifted away, uninspired and disillusioned by being asked to shell out Premier League ticket prices for third-rate sporting entertainment.

I'm not sure whether today's news comes as too little, too late for the love affair between me and 'Town. Last night, whilst the fans at my work listened to [the thrilling] Liverpool v Arse, I found myself keeping an ear on the Dagenham&Redbridge result [beating league leaders Brentford 3-1] and thinking "ooh, maybe I should pop down to the Victoria Ground a few times next season"…

This of course would be fin de siècle [no, that doesn't mean I like bicycling]: Dagenham is my town of birth, as well as the last bit of London I lived in, heavily scotched, before moving out to more rural parts.

The only thing stopping me is the thought of the Afrogging12 or five miles by car, two trains and a 103 bus there and back on match days….

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One of the [few?] joys of working nights is that at this time of year my journey almost due west of an evening coincides with sunset. As it looms over the flat, unremarkable yellow fields, I press the accelerator/gas pedal down further than I should, wind down all the windows, and play all my seventies Santana CDs at far too loud a volume.

Yes, it's laid-back jazz-funk for over-relaxed hippies; yes, it's shot through with some totally dodgy cultist-guru philosophy which Carlos later, to his eternal credit, walked out of: but man, when that guitar soars…

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Random Poll:

[Note: This might initially look like it's only for football-heads, but don't be deterred: there is a point to it.]

Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the Hillsborough Disaster, in which ninety-six people died at a big football match in Sheffield.

There'll be lots of it on the news and all media today, so I don't intend to go into it in a lot of detail – for anyone interested in the issues and just why two decades later the scars have not healed because nobody has ever been held responsible, as well as debunking some of the myths surrounding the event, see the excellent book The Beautiful Game? – but I want to explain how this became a wake-up call for me, one of the visibile-with-hindsight marker points between Fish the teenager and Fish the adult.

I was an occasional visitor to football matches as a kid. Not very often, because 1980s football grounds were not welcome places to be; facilities were very poor and outdated, violence on the terraces was sporadic but intense, and my immediate London family were never into football – my uncle in Colchester was most responsible for giving me the bug. Colchester United became "my team"; but also in my heart there was a big place for Liverpool, perpetual winners of everything at that time and exemplars of the game as it should be played. I knew one day I'd go see them.

Watching Hillsborough happen was, then, somewhat personal: for the grace of whoever, that could have been me dying on live TV because of police and club official incompetence.

Once the initial shock had died down, however, it was the aftermath and the political fallout of the disaster which really changed me.

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I noticed the effect at my workplace. The tinpot hinge factory I was working at was populated with Sun readers [working-class, not too bright, London/Essex soft-right-wing], and it set the agenda for the day amongst us. We took turns to buy it in the morning, and I too spent money on it when it was my turn. Some of the politics bothered me – in those days the press was very homophobic – and I knew people caught up in the Wapping dispute, but that didn't really 'connect' to me and what I did.

The edition, a few days after the disaster, which claimed drunken Liverpool fans had beat up, urinated on, and stole from dead fans and people trying to help victims – "facts" which the Taylor Report utterly blew out of the water – disgusted me.

I identified with the Liverpool fans and felt solidarity with them. For the first time in my life, I became aware of how the right-wing press pushed [pushes] its own agenda onto innocent groups with blanket condemnations, distortions and – yep, in this case and many others – just plain outright lies.

I've never bought the Sun since. Half my workplace vowed never to either. Anyone who knew the first thing about football amongst my friends and peers were the same. Twenty years later, the circulation of the newspaper in Liverpool is still only a twentieth of what it was.

The paper officially apologized for these lies in 2004. But the editor at the time, Kelvin MacKenzie, who refuses to apologize or admit he was wrong, is still a Sun columnist. Whilst they still pay him money, none of mine will go towards anything News International.

It is from this point that I chart the beginning of my political consciousness; this [along with Section 28 and Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit around the same time] were wake-up calls: the political had just become personal.

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Going to football is a much safer experience than it was twenty years ago. If I was still seriously supporting Ipswich from the terraces – now all-seated and with crowd-control experts rather than coppers whose expertise lies elsewhere looking out for trouble – there's only one game I'd want to avoid each year [and that because of traffic and hassle rather than from safety fears].

Colchester United itself moved from a pigshed of a stadium in the middle of town to a brand new purpose built arena several years ago. Yes, it's not got the soul of the old place, but at least it doesn't feel like you're watching a match in downtown Tirana.

Liverpool FC itself has changed out of all recognition, now a club in the "global" football market; but that didn't stop me cheering every time they scored last night in the 4-4 draw against Chelsea. [Although the slight frisson of "rivalry" against the Chelsea-supporting guy I was watching it with may have helped.]

Purists say that much of the old character of football has gone, partly as a result of the changes the Taylor Report brought to the game, partly as a result of the money pay-TV has pumped in at the top end. This is true, and it's something I bemoan myself as I go through a process of 'divorce' from Ipswich Town and look for a new place, much lower down the pyramid where pure cash counts for less, to call my football home.

But sometimes, like last night, the pure joy of the thing shines through…

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But does Hillsborough still have any relevance today?

It's ironic that the papers this morning were full of calls for an official apology about the smear emails: there are still people who've been waiting twenty years for an official apology; and they had dead children, not just a leaked email. The justice campaign still goes on.

But there's plenty today to reflect on as well as remembering those who
died just because they wanted to watch their favourite football team.

Hillsborough showed exactly what happened in a world where some of the big right-wing demons of today – "health-and-safety", proper authority controls and planning, and, most of all, treating people as individual citizens with rights and not an amorphous mess – were ignored.

Its aftermath showed exactly how lies can disseminate – even now, there are people who believe the Sun version of events – but also, much more positively, how real change can be engineered to a tribal "culture" traditionally very resistant to change given the time, effort and money; using a "carrot" rather than a "stick" – better facilities, better management; not just more laws or threatening welfare cuts to troublesome people.

Post-Hillsborough was one of the prime examples of positive state intervention; how various arms of government – yes, aligned with commercial interests, but not beholden to them – when focused on a positive goal can deliver the goods.

Perhaps that's something also to reflect on on this anniversary…