I thought the new Spuds version was 'Adebayor, Adebayor, his dad's a doctor, his mum studies law'....
Utter toss, I'm afraid. At best, this was a supposedly well-meaning move with unintended consequences because those behind it were not capable of thinking about this issue carefully enough. When I think of my (Jewish) wife and her brother being on the wrong end of anti-Semitic abuse when they were pupils at a secondary school with very few other Jewish pupils, I understand why my brother-in-law, particularly, winces every time he heard the word "Yid" uttered by someone who isn't Jewish. I just don't believe that a bunch of largely non-Jewish people have any more right to "reclaim" the word Yid than I have to start calling myself "******" or "paki" without expecting people black and south Asian people to think I've got it wrong. Given that, as you say, very few away fans in England now fling much anti-Semitic language at Spurs supporters (the odd, rare but admittedly notable incident aside), I honestly believe that your fans would be better of phasing out the use of the word "Yid". While I don't believe that Spurs fans singing "Yid Army" and so on is anything like the most important reason for the lessening of anti-Semitic language heard from fans of your opponents, perhaps you can all kid yourselves that you've won some sort of battle against prejudice and just stop singing that stuff because it's not needed any more. Of course, I understand that this won't happen and that the time will soon come when I need to explain to my son why going to a match against Spurs will involve him hearing thousands of Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Turks and whatnot shouting the word that used to be used to bully his mum and his uncle.
Yid, after our last game against Spurs I made a sarcastic comment about your username. It resulted in me being banned for a month. I must stress however that it wasn't you who started jumping up and down about it, it was a Telletubbie of our own who saw it as a chance to settle an old score. What's my point? When I saw you calling yourself a Yid I presumed (erroneously as it turned out) that you were "up for a laugh" with regards said term. If I can make that mistake on a message board, how can you then expect hundreds of tanked-up football fans to see the double meaning? To be honest, you're saying the Spurs fans have reclaimed the name is a load of nonsense. If you call yourselves Yids or Yid army or whatever, you can't then complain when people use it against you. Its just the way of the World my friend.
I was going to write you a reasoned response but since you're going to be a patronising twat I don't think there's much point.
TIME, I have to take issue with you Sir. Last week I saw you launch an attack on Stan over something rather innocuous he had said about a Jewish politician who had fled to the UK during the war and you just stopped short of calling him an anti-semite. I'd not seen you react like that to anyone on here before so I said to myself: he has Jewish relatives. And so it proved. However, you wrote a blog a few months ago in which you sprayed the entire Welsh nation and people with so much vitriol that I thought someone had hacked into your username and was trying to besmirch your character by pretending that you were a xenophobic ignoramus. I was shocked when subsequently I realised it was indeed you and that you was just "Avin' a laugh". Don't take this the wrong way mate. I thoroughly enjoy your blogs and I think you're a fantastic contributor to this site. But you must realise that just because you have relatives of one particular race or creed that you're entitled to take offence on their behalf whilst having a go at anyone else that takes your fancy. You can't have it both ways.
What you said afterwards, as I recall, was more of a testing of presumed self-deprecation from my name. Frankly, I was fairly shocked and still am that a football fan didn't know that we call our team the Yid Army and ourselves Yiddos but hey it's not something that happens often and was easily solved. I'm not saying we've reclaimed the term but we have added a new meaning to it which when used in context is in no way anti-semitic. The fact is that we were the subject of a lot of anti-semitism as a club because of our Jewish heritage and Jewish following, instead of sitting in silence and ignoring it we stood together, regardless of religion under the Yid Army banner. There's not any that I've heard argue that we were in anyway wrong to do so, the argument seems to be that now that we should not use the term as it's not "ours" and encourages anti-semitic abuse at games(contrary to what the other guy said). It's funny that Baddiel has such a problem with us using it despite, by his own admission, it being his fellow Chelsea fans who come out with the anit-semitism that makes him uncomfortable which led to him moving where he sat at SB rather than reporting those responsible. A lot of the others that have a problem with it aren't involved with football and don't understand it and there is by no means any kind of consensus on it from the Jewish community so frankly the calls for us to stop are always going to fall on deaf ears and only serve to boost the profiles of attention seekers like Peter Herbert.
I don't want you to stop mate. You are all well entitled to sing what you want. I'm just saying, when you activate that entitlement, you lose the entitlement to tell others to stop using it. We can't have a situation where one group of people are allowed to use certain words and others are not. That would be absurd. And Peter Herbert is nasty little cu*t. Baddiel? You on about David Baddiel, the bloke wot used to be on fantasy football?
That may have been your inference but none of that was meant to be implied. The guy made what looked like a flippant/throwaway remark about people's difficult choices when fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe. I suggested it was a bit crass and he then conceded he'd written what he'd written without having read/thought all that much about the period in question. If you call that "launching an attack" then you're a much, much more sensitive person than average. Doubtless you find me over-sensitive about some of the issues I've discussed here today. For me, the same goes for you if you consider my exchange with Stan to be an attack. I don't recall the exchange ending with Stan having taken offence. Yes, let's look back of all that vitriol and out-and-out racism: If you take that to be "spray[ing] the entire Welsh nation and people with so much vitriol" then I strongly advise you not to read anything by Spike Milligan or any other writer who riffs fairly gently on a few well-worn elements of national stereotyping to achieve comic or otherwise marked effect. Apropos of Milligan, I've been reading the volumes of his war memoirs lately. Spike fairly regularly riffs on the idea of the tight-fisted Jew. But he's quoting from conversations he had with Jewish FRIENDS he made in the army - friends who returned fire with similarly good-natured teasing about Milligan's Irish roots. But I think you'd hate it, because I sense you might take every word at face value rather than in the spirit intended. I genuinely don't believe I am having it both ways. You've not convinced me of that at all. It seems you equate a (possibly failed) attempt at a bit of comic writing riffing on the sometimes uneasy relationships between the English and the Welsh on one hand with, on the other, the use of a term that every Jewish person I happen to be close to associates with out-and-out prejudice and racism. Clearly my writing on that occasion didn't appeal to you. But I am genuinely surprised that you read those very obviously (I thought) cartoonish and over-the-top words and took them both literally and as a genuine attack on the Welsh. Oh, and what I said about Spike Milligan goes double for Jerry Sadowitz. I would really urge you not to go to one his shows. My sides are still aching from seeing him last week. The bit where the Glasgow-raised secular Jewish comic wildly distorts a number of national, religious and racial sterotypes (including that of the rich, well-connected media/entertainment Jew): I think it might send you into cardiac arrest. My lady wife was laughing harder than I think I've ever heard her do. Funny old things, aren't they, nuance, irony, marked rhetorical styles and all that. Sometimes we get the wrong end of the stick even when the person we're objecting to was, in good faith, trying to create a quite different effect altogether. Anyway, I thought that was a half-decent match today, wasn't it? I didn't appreciate the early kick-off given the state of my hangover.
You're doing your integrity no good there at all mate. I never said you were being racist and well you know it. "It's impossible to cross that bridge and enter the Principality................ Sometimes you even get the impression the cheeky buggers would kinda like to go their own way, taking down those Union Flags and hoisting everywhere the ancient (adopted in 1953) Y Ddraig Goch. What's that? You don't like merrie England, Mr. Taffy Thomas? Not a fan of the sturdy bulldog breed then, Mr. Dai the Steam? Is that ugly beast on your standard a bit of a green-eyed monster? Pissed off that you have not won first prize in the lottery of life? Fair enough. **** happens. But if you feel that way, do please pick up your bastard Swansea City and your ruddy Cardiff Lucky Red Dragons and take them to where they belong. Take them to play their natural opponents - Airbus UK, Cefn Druids and the snappily named The New Saints of Oswestry Town & Llansantffraid Football Club (no more dancing on the streets of Total Network Solutions). In the meantime, though, we must entertain visitors from that hostile little province." I remember now upon reading it. Its the not so subtle digs at their flag and calling them a "Principality" and a "Province" which I thought lacked class at that time. Whether you were technically correct or not was not the point. I found it odd that you would give so much time to slighting a Country in what was a pre-match blog on a football match. Nevertheless, you were well entitled to do so and no doubt some found it highly entertaining. My point is simply that I see a glaring inconsistency in your views: I can have a go at someone but don't you have a go at my people. I do find it a tad hypocritical to honest mate. That's my point. To you it might be a bit of "comic writing riffing" on someone but to others it may well not be. It would be interesting to hear what a Welsh person thought of your article. And again, you make clear that Jewish people are "close associates" of yourself indicating that because its close to your heart, it shouldn't be allowed. If you had Welsh people in your family instead of Jews you would probably take the opposite position. Inconsistent. Besides, the whole basis for this discussion is that Spurs fans call themselves "Yids". If they don't want others to call them by that name they should cease using it themselves. But on that point I think you and I may be agreed.
If you want a Welsh perspective on that blog then I suggest posting it on the Swansea and Cardiff boards and asking for opinions, if you dare.
Ah right, as long as it's used in the right context then yeah, there's not a problem with it. You've started virtually all your replies to me by calling me Yid on here but obviously in the context of the alias I use on here. The trouble is that that's not what opposition fans sing, we still get "I've got a foreskin haven't you", hissing to mimic gas chambers and more recently the rather charming "Adolf Hitler, he's coming for you" which are all clearly anti-semitic and nothing else. West Ham are the only English set of fans stupid enough to sing those kind of songs en masse at games though these days but you only have to look at the lack of action from the FA and West Ham for why they think they can get away with it, only one fan got done and that's because he's on camera giving a Nazi salute to the section of our ground known for having a lot of Jewish fans.
I am a bit concerned that this looked like my quote. Just to be clear, I was quoting the Spurs fan and I am of course QPR.
