Now my position on that is clear - and I'm sure yours is too. My grandmother was mugged in this way in Katherine Road and never recovered, dying within the year, her spirit completely broken. Yobs should do time inside, plain and simple. You do the crime and all that.
So how can any decent person justify the rescinding of Green's red card given Bednar looks unlikely to start for Blackpool. The perpetrator of the assault is free to play, whilst the victim isn't. Justice? What justice?
Now please don't trot out the technical justifications. Whether or not Blackpool were denied a goal scoring opportunity or not - and I believe they were because Bednar saw what was coming when Green charged out of the box and played the ball accordingly - is irrelevant, the point is, Green was guilty of serious foul play. He would have seen red for that tackle in rugby, for pity's sake, and the challenge was unquestionably reckless. Morally, he should be out for as long as Bednar is out - at least.
Green got lucky. The red card was shown for a professional foul, not serious foul play, and sophistry and technicalities have been used to get him off that charge. The FA then have this stupid rule that you cannot be punished retrospectively for something the referee saw and acted on in the game. So, had the card been shown for serious foul play, it would have been upheld and Green would not only have missed today's game, but the next two too. He got lucky. West Ham got lucky. And we end up, if Bednar can't play today, with a mockery of justice.
Unless, of course, Green makes a mistake and hands Palace the winner. We should beware, for as Macbeth warns,
We still have judgment here, that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague th' inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips.
Personally, I hope we win, but that Bednar plays and scores. Like that, we can still trust to divine justice without West Ham coming a Roy.
you're an odd bloke
ReplyDeleteVery strange tottenham fan
ReplyDeleteLOL Emlyn, odd or fair minded? Can you fault the logic in my argument. As a West Ham fan, I'm delighted Green is playing - the thought of Boffin between the sticks fills me with horror - but as a believer in justice, it is all wrong if Bednar can't play.
ReplyDeleteI don't think degree of injury enters into this equation.I doubt for one minute Green intended to injure the player and obviously the ref didn't either.He could do the same tackle again a dozen times and the player would come out of it not injured.
ReplyDeleteIpswich almost had the same scenario vs Cardiff. their keeper was kept on, only a yellow shown. maybe they took a look at that incident and took the red away
ReplyDeleteDoes a mugger intentionally break the spirit of an old granny? His intention is to steal, all the other consequences are bi products. Green intentionally fouled Bednar. The foul was reckless and risked very serious injury. Bednar played out the game on one leg and may miss today's game. That is serious foul play by any definition and had the card been given for that, the appeal would obviously have failed. Is it MORALLY right that Green plays and his victim can't? Leave your colours off and answer honestly. How would we feel if it was the other way around?
ReplyDeleteI didn't see it so can't say, but I remember arguments that it should have been a red. Two wrongs don't make a right anyway Emlyn. Judge this one on its merits.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, how about a simple rule change? Foul and injure a player and you can't play until your victim is fit to play again. Wright-Phillips' career would be over. And that horror Taylor tackle (Birmingham v Arsenal) would have been appropriately punished. Players would then think twice about going in two footed and cleaning up opponents like Green did bednar.
Anony-mouse says,
ReplyDeleteTwo points and then I'll be off.
It's pretty low even by your 'standards' to try to use the death of your own granny to try to justify your take on this. Are you really trying to say that her death is remotely relevant, or can be equated to Green having his card recinded? Beyond sad if you are.
And it says so much about you that you have to say 'personally I hope we win'. There is no other West Ham blogger who would find it necessary to say that, because it goes without saying for real supporters. To be honest, you can say it all you like- I doubt many will believe you- you spouted far too much rubbish before, during and after the Blackpool game for anyone to believe you wish the club well.
Not bright are you Anony-mouse. The issue is justice, that doesn't mean what happened to my nan is the same as what happened to Bednar.
ReplyDeleteGreeny was too late and he was correctly sent off for that challenge. It was definitely no reckless challenge, Bednar was just unlucky to get injured. Those things happen in football.
ReplyDeleteThe rule, to sideline a player as long as the injured player needs for full recovery wouldn't work propperly. There is already so much cheating in the beautiful game and I'm pretty sure there would be lots of fake injuries to weaken the opposition/rival. In the end football is an immense money-making business and certain people don't give a rat's ass what's right or wrong.
Anony-mouse - for Christ sake stop and think before you just pour shit on HF. Sure he annoys most of us with his negative comments but you are bloody worse lately. If he says he wants us to win then at least let that go!
ReplyDeleteAs for his granny, I took want he was trying to say, no need to use it for more negative comments.
We are top and I I have never been this happy for years. We may need to improve ten fold in the prem but come on let's enjoy what we have. Promotion is no where near guaranteed yet.
Green plays and bednar doubtful!' LOVE IT!! Bout time we had a bit of luck
ReplyDeleteI'm glad.... **** *** ** ****
ReplyDeleteAnony-mouse I love you..... but obviously not in an HF masturbatory way.
ReplyDeleteAnony-mouse says
ReplyDeleteNick- I do understand what you say but just want to point out that I've been showing no negativity towards the team, just towards HF. But I will wind my neck in anyway cos I'm getting fed up with it myself and also want to keep my blood pressure within reasonable limits!
Dropped points today and didn't play well, but that's always going to happen at some point. And like most of us I've been extremely proud of the lads these last few weeks. Cheers.
HF (11:17) - on behalf of Anony-mouse
ReplyDelete"I am not bound to please thee with my answer"
15:44
ReplyDelete"and so shines a bright light on a naughty blog site"
Anony-mouse says,
ReplyDeleteHello Merchant. I guess the clue should have been in your name, but I had to look up your first quote as it was new to me (i blame my wasted youth).
Getting back to this thread, for what it's worth no matter about the rights and wrongs of the decision (and I did think it was a red btw) I'm glad we have a manager who is professional, cocky and pushy enough to appeal and get the original decision turned over. The bottom line is that had he not done so we would probably have one less point tonight. Rob did what he's done so often this season, and kept us in it. In particular, his reaction save from the deflection off Tomkins was first class.
Cheers - Anony-mouse.
ReplyDeleteYes I agree Rob Green has been top class this season and deserves his England recall. Let's hope he can be persuaded to sign a new contract. The rescinding of the red card was perhaps fortunate but as a WH fan I am not complaining.
The reference to the Merchant of Venice was meant to be a dig at HF following his response to you in an earlier post. He refers to the "ring" joke to deal with the homosexual content of the thread. Shakespeare did of course make implied references to this subject in the play and other works. The "ring" was however, intended to be a crude hetrosexual reference so has beem misquoted in this case.
Anyway keep up the good work defending WHU against HF.
Wrong as it happens 1354. The ring joke is a homosexual joke in TMOV. Antonio has just regiven Portia's ring to Bassanio, asking him to keep this ring better than he did the first. Shakespeare thus enacts a homosexual marriage on stage, to the hilarity of an Elizabethan audience. The comic resolution of the play is that Bassanio "knew not" Portia when she was dressed as the "good doctor" and "to know" meant to have sex with somebody - but now she can dress as a man and "answer all things faithfully" - eg perform anal sex with Bassanio.
ReplyDeleteBassanio is a homosexual prostitute and at the beginning of the play has "much disabled" his "estate" by "something showing a more SWELLING port than his faint means would grant continuance" - his anus has been ripped by a well endowed client - and so he now owes Antonio both "money and love" as he has been paid on account and cannot perform the favours he has been paid for. Antonio offers to swap roles when he says "my purse, my person, my extremest means all lie unlocked to your occasions" but he is old and unattractive so Bassanio can't bat this way as he cannot win at that game "stake down".
Gratiano is bisexual, whilst Lorenzo probably swings both ways because he finds Jessica attractive "in the lovely garnish of a boy". There is an argument, indeed, that Portia and Nerissa are lesbians, centred around the "What would we turn to men?" line and their dressing up in court.
The love that Bassanio expresses for Antonio in court and his offer to sacrifice his wife to the Jew to save Antonio reveals the terrible truth to Portia, that Bassanio has read the casket test because, like the lead casket, inside, he is the opposite of his outside appearance. He looks like a handsome, wealthy hetrosexual, but in truth he is a broke, gorgeous, homosexual. She therefore concludes, after the return of the ring that "nothing is good I see".
The only comic resultion available, therefore, is for Portia to answer all things "faithfully" - to allow her husband to use her back door to make the marriage work. The play ends with Gratiano promising to "keep nothing so SORE as Nerissa's ring! Time to reach for the Vaseline! And some people think Shakespeare is boring!!!
14:57 - Goodness me. I was not listening properly at my English Literature classes!
ReplyDeleteShakespeare was of course a Master at giving his audience snippets of information about his characters. In this way the individual was able to fill in the gaps using his own imagination. It has certainly worked wonders for you!
I would also mention that it is highly unlikely Shakspeare would have intended the story to be interpreted in the manner you suggest above. These things were regarded as a sin in Elizabethan times punishable by death.
I wonder what they would have made of your blogs?
You are wrong again I'm afraid. Shakespeare took all sorts of risks. Macbeth is a play in support of the gunpowder conspirators and a coded call for the assassination of the Scottish King James. Lear expouses very dangerous views on social justice. Shakespeare openly plays with sexual themes and imagery, and his sonnets are written to an unnamed man, a fact that leads many to believe that he was bisexual himself. Antonio, like Angelo in Measure for Measure, is a puritan, and Shakespeare is openly mocking puritanical hypocrisy by making Antonio homosexual and Angelo a would be rapist of a nun. His Catholicism is clearly demonstrated in Hamlet with the ghost openly talking about Purgatory, an illegal concept in England at the time, whilst the Tempest is a thinly veiled call for the return for Catholicism to England: Prospero has the word Pope inside it, Miranda is the Virgin Mary and Ariel the Holy Ghost, with the island a metaphor for Purgatory and Caliban representing Satan.
ReplyDeleteHe could have been executed for any and all of these things had the authorities been so minded or if they had understood exactly what he was writing.
Shakespeare's plays would have been performed before the Royal Court and other well educated noble men, many of whom would have had strict puritan views. It is a bit surprising then that none of what you say was understood or picked up at the time.
ReplyDeleteLife in 16th Century England would of course have been different. For example friendships with the opposite sex would have been much more restricted. It is, therefore, likely that men would have formed close bonds with each other, but not necessarily of a sexual nature. As you mention Catholics were being persecuted so one would have to be very careful who they trusted.
In TMOV Portia is concerned/jealous about her husband's affection for Antonio (portrayed as a man of Christian virtue) but many writers have suggested the relationship should not be considered to be of a homosexual nature.
Likewise in his sonnets Shakespeare expresses his love for the beauty of the fair youth, but again there is no direct suggestion that the relationship was of a sexual nature. Compare this with the Dark Lady sonnets where we are left in no doubt that this relationship is based on lust and loathing.
Shakespeare is also credited with having a hand in the writing of the King James Bible. In psalm 46 the 46th words from the beginning and end of the psalm are "shake" and "spear". Perhaps this is more than a coincidence. Is there anything like that in your blogs?
Shakespeare's plays were also performed at The Globe! And the Groundlings had to be entertained which is why his plays are packed full of bawdy.
ReplyDeleteOf course the plays are open to interpretation, but no serious Shakespeare critic in the modern era will accept the white washed interpretations that originated in the Victorian era. I am not of the opinion that he was bisexual by the way: just as he could write dialogue for both Romeo and Juliet, so his sonnets can be written as if by a female for a male.
If you want to get serious in your study, I would recommend Shakespeare in Purgatory.
Cheers HF, i will delve deeper starting with another look at TMOV wearing different glasses.
ReplyDeleteGood job Shakespeare did not have a twitter account. He would have got himself in serious trouble with his racist and homophobic comments.
One last point. The fair youth, whoever he might have been, is said to be "immortalised" by virtue of the verses of the great poet. Surely if the sonnets were dedicated to him other than by Shakespeare himself, this great compliment is severely diminished. If for example they were written in the feminine context (as in Juliet), then they are little better than fiction.
Anyway you have got me thinking.