I thought we were bad about moaning over Joey Barton but this article is just dreadful. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2145979/Joey-Bartons-intellectual-hes-thug.html Joey Barton stands very close to paintings in art galleries for a very long time. How do we know this? It was a detail included in the footballerâs interview with the Guardian recently. The writer went to the National Portrait Gallery with Barton, as you do, and found him âexceptionally pleasant . . . funny and engagedâ. Just as well she isnât the centre forward for Manchester City, though â she could have ended up looking for her teeth beneath the Gainsboroughs. If football is the working manâs sport, then the intellectual lionisation of Barton is a distinctly middle-class pursuit. Posh media types love him because they believe he epitomises the council house intellectual. When Newsnight wanted a talking head to discuss the appointment of Roy Hodgson as England manager, there was Joey, face-to-face with Jeremy Paxman. Intellectual? Joey Barton is removed from the pitch after elbowing Carlos Tevez, kicking Sergio Aguero and trying to headbutt Vincent Kompany during Saturday's match between QPR and Manchester City He has appeared on the opinion pages of The Times, and sat in as a guest at the editorâs conference at the Guardian. Discussing his most recent outrage â in which Barton committed as many as three sending-off offences in the space of a minute, two assaults and an attempted head-butt, before taking to Twitter to abuse his critics â MP Eric Joyce (Labour, Falkirk) wrote: âBartonâs lapse has morphed into a piece of contemporary action art portraying the fall of man.â More...Barton accepts charge for assaulting Aguero but denies second offence on Kompany So, you cut up rough in the High Street on Saturday night, and itâs GBH, Barton does it on the football pitch and itâs art. Then again, Joyce also has a bit of previous in this area. Heâs the MP who likes a fight, having been careful to choose a profession in which no one else does. You could have a reign of terror in the House of Commons with a balloon on a stick. 'The fall of man': Labour MP Eric Joyce If Joyce behaved as belligerently at Billingsgate fish market, heâd get hung on a hook and locked in a fridge for a couple of hours to consider his options by some genuinely hard men. The same goes for Barton. He is fortunate to exist in modern times when quoting German philosophers and Mancunian pop singers on Twitter, and punching people, makes you a star. Not much of a football star, obviously. A lot of people, not least several managers, the pundits on Match Of The Day and the Football Association, appear to have rumbled Bartonâs professional worth by now. To media types, whose knowledge of the working man appears to come from the novels by Martin Amis, however, his is an authentic voice. It never occurs to them that there are plenty of working men and women holding down jobs of greater difficulty and less reward, without losing control of their senses; that plenty of contemporaries, footballers or proles, had equally challenging upbringings without letting these harsh realities taint their behaviour two decades later. there are, quite literally, millions of smart, ordinary folk who manage to maintain intellectual breadth without also acting like lunatics. A predilection for violence does not make Barton complex, windswept or interesting. It makes him a thug â and the chattering classes not half as smart as they think they are; no matter how close they all stand to the paintings. David Cameron said his favourite album was by The Smiths. Later he claimed it was one by Pink Floyd. Predictably he has been accused of insincerity, of name-checking Morrissey to appear cool. Like his last good record wasnât 25 years ago. Cameron didnât exactly say he was a fan of post-dubstep, or on the guest-list at Fabric nightclub. There could be a simpler explanation. Maybe he just really likes music. People who do tend to be very erratic. âItâs like asking me to name a favourite limb,â said John Peel, when asked to pick out one special record. I can vouch for that. At last count, I have probably cited 20 different albums as my favourite. Right now, itâs Odelay by Beck. Next week, it could be The Avalanches, Van Morrison or The Fall. It has been before. As for individual songs, riffs, basslines, breakdowns, intros, fade-outs, well thatâs a running joke in our house. âIs this the best track ever, then Dad?â asks a cocky teenager as I attempt to explain what makes DJ Pierreâs Masterblaster so wonderful. And yes, at that moment, it probably is. At least Cameron didnât say he liked the Arctic Monkeys, like Gordon Brown. You always knew that was cobblers. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/a...tons-intellectual-hes-thug.html#ixzz1vFf7eT00
The Daily Mail also own The Evening Standard ( or whatever it is known as now ) re;- Patrick Barclay article. They don't seem to like us much for some reason.
A gran reserva? Maybe an '82? Very nice too roller. I too am toasting grant hulks petulance but with a nice 12 year old Caol Isla single malt or three
