#WeStandTogether to defeat this evil no matter how long it takes

YESTERDAY was a dark day for the capital with innocent lives taken and others changed in ways we cannot comprehend.

Hopefully any broken bodies will heal and in time some of the horrors witnessed yesterday will be locked away deep in the recesses of the victim's minds.

The stories of the victims from the brave PC Keith Palmer who ran towards danger rather than away to the American man on a 'trip of a lifetime' to celebrate his 25^th wedding anniversay, are utterly tragic and emotional.

My heart goes out to their families and all those whose loved ones were caught up in this murderous rampage.

And I sincerely hope PC Palmer was welcomed to a higher plain with a pat on the back from his fellow fallen bobbies for bringing the target down. It's heartbreaking to think it cost him his life.

But already some on the right are seeking to make political gain from this, including Ms Hopkins and messers Farage and Nuttall, speaking from his home in......where does he live again?

'Britons are scared' 'Muslims need to do more', etc etc. The same old claptrap trotted out everytime something like this happens.

The problem is this mantra is so deeply flawed that actually if we dared ever take their views seriously we'd be playing straight into the so-called ISIS's hands.

Firstly, we aren't scared – look how quickly London has bounced back, nervous yes but normality has ensued today. Remember Hitler tried to flatten London and we simply drank tea and hit him with everything we had!

Secondly, terrorism is not a new weapon exclusively available to the Islamic world, it's been a cancer on all races, creeds and religions since the year dot.

When diplomacy and democracy don't work – the tapped amongst us turn to bombs and bullets.

Has it ever worked in the modern world? No of course not!

Do you really think the Muslim community across the UK is turning a blind eye to this radicalisation of young men? Of course they aren't. But a number of men and women are being sucked into a vicious vacuum where jihad is there only way out.

I recoil when the phrase Islamic Extremism is used – what happened yesterday and on other occasions is simply terrorism, it didn't work for the IRA (We never called that Catholic Extremism did we?) and it won't work now.

The terrorist failed in his mission yesterday, as well as multiple deaths on Westminster Bridge he wanted to take victims in the seat of our democracy and be taken down as a martyr.

Instead, thanks to the compassion and care of British people, the casualties were heavily reduced, although one wishes the only death had been his.

Look beyond the attacker's religion, give him no name other than 'the terrorist' and stand together with your fellow man and woman of all races and religions.

The threat we face today is not from Islam, from immigrants to our country or from people who look and sound different to us.

It's from people who don't accept our way of life, our values, our tolerance and our respect and have bastardized a peaceful religion to achieve their wicked aims.

All of us, in London, the UK and the rest of the world won't let them win.

#WeStandTogether, today, tomorrow and always....

Criticise Blair all you want, he's just become leader of the opposition...

IT'S INCREDIBLE that 10 years after leaving Downing Street, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair still provokes as much bile and vitriol as we have seen today.

His 'crime' this time? To dare to suggest the British people voted to leave without knowing Brexit's terms and conditions and opine that a space existed where he and other people could persuade voters to change their minds.

Basically the former PM is suggesting the sort of insurgency which has brought the likes of Farage, Nuttall, Le Pen and President Trump to the fore except this time in reverse.

His speech has predictably been ripped to shreds by the Brexiteers and the media who whip out their favourite 'affront to democracy' lines when anyone dares suggest Brexit isn't full of milk and honey.

However on this Blair is spot on. The British people did vote leave without knowing the terms and conditions of an exit and a space does exist to change people's minds....it's called the Her Majesty's official opposition.

In a single speech, Blair has done more to oppose Brexit than Jeremy Corbyn has since June 23, 2016 and shown a clear, decisive approach to what is a thorny issue for the Labour Party.

Let's remember the current 'opposition' to the Government have pretty much waived Brexit through the House of Commons, yes amendments were tabled but they failed and many Labour MPs still voted in favour apart from a hardy few who stuck to their principles.

The Liberal Democrats have been principled opponents as have the SNP but the overwhelming narrative is Brexit MUST happen. No, the ATMs must have money, our hospitals must have doctors and nurses and our schools must have teachers.

Against this backdrop, a tissue of lies and half-truths and hypocrisy has been allowed to be 'the norm' and to go unchallenged for fear of being labelled 'unpatriotic'.

It was wonderful to see the Foreign Secretary tear into Mr Blair....Because we all know Boris led the Leave campaign with facts, not with lies such as buses promising £350million extra for the NHS .....

This would be understandable had our nation voted overwhelmingly to leave, such as the 10 percentage point result of the Scottish referendum result. But Brexit was decided by less than the three percentage point margin of error used in all opinion polls.

It was also decided by a margin previously described by Nigel Farage as 'unfinished business' had it been the opposite way around......but shhh we aren't allowed to talk about that.

It's therefore right for someone to squeeze into the gap and pose the awkward questions, because Brexit should only mean Brexit if we can negotiate an exit which ensures our wonderful isle can continue to prosper.

That should be the message from the Labour Party but while Her Majesty's official opposition continues its breakdown, running scared of UKIP while taking even further away from its core voters, then the space exists for someone to exploit.

Ask yourselves this, if not Blair, then who?

Brexit is a shambles but will anyone admit it?

WELL this is going well....

Halfway through the House of Commons debate on Article 50 and Labour MPs are resigning, Conservative MPs are seriously falling out with their own party's whips and there are so many amendments being suggested that we could be here until Christmas debating them.

Why? Could it be the sheer vacuous nature of the original referendum question put to voters?  It simply asked leave or remain when in truth a lot more information should have been provided in the event of a leave vote. It wasn't even made legally binding.....

Did all those wanting to leave want a 'hard Brexit'? Indeed did anyone want a 'soft Brexit' or is everyone so fed up now that all they want is a 'stiff G and T'!

As a remain voter you'd probably expect criticism of the current situation but I do so not to over-turn the democratically decided result but simply to shine a light on the mess in our Parliament.

A decision which will last for the ages has been hijacked by the alt right in this country to deliver a warts an all exit which a) we don't know if we will get from the EU and b) could do untold damage to our economy for generations to come.

Yes, the economy is doing OK at the moment thank you very much but we haven't got divorced from the EU yet. The only way to gauge the health of the economy is when we have packed up our things and left her for good.

The truth is satire and real life have blended into one almighty daily shambles where politicians of all sides have cast aside pretty much anything else for 'Brexit, Brexit, Brexit'.

Answering the Europe question was supposed to heal the Conservative party when in fact all that has taken place is some serious war wounds have been brutally picked open.

Labour is....well Labour, confused, muddled and rather like me on a treadmill - lots of noise but no real end result.

The Liberal Democrats are trying to step in as the anti Hard Brexit party and oppose the Government but when you can fit all their MPs into a booth at Wetherspoons its not easy to oppose more than 300 on the other side.

The Greens' don't want to leave at all like the SNP but any chance of upsetting the applecart is again thwarted by numbers.

The blame here should go to former Prime Minister David Cameron and his 'Deal or No Deal' referendum. Like on the Channel 4 show, voters were asked to open one of two boxes without truly knowing what was inside...

A poor piece of party management and a craven bid to win votes has reduced this process to an almighty shambles. Don't think the EU powerbrokers aren't watching and laughing.

No vote on the final deal could well cost the PM her premiership. She is walking the narrowest of tightropes; fall and the consequences are shattering, stay true and take a walk into the unknown.

We're leaving, but this divorce won't be a quickie, it will be messy and truly shambolic and to paraphrase the late Geoffrey Howe, our team captain is heading to the middle with a broken bat.

"There is no plan, they (the Government) should have had a plan," the words of Faisal Islam, Sky's political editor on June 26,2016.

How true those words still ring today....

Dear Arsene.....

THE ESTEEMED John Cross tells us in the Daily Mirror you want to ‘feel loved’ before you sign a new two year deal, a contract you will once again observe to the day I’m sure.

All true Gooners do love you Arsene, you are the greatest modern-day Arsenal manager and we have memories to cherish until our dying days. The first double including that phenomenal run to haul Manchester United’s 12 point lead in and of course 2002 when we won it in their backyard.

None of us will ever forget 2003/4, the unbeaten season during which you and the players delivered the best football I have ever seen from an Arsenal team.

Those were seasons where we felt everyone was aiming high, pushing each other to win, win and win again. Since then I suspect many Gooners including myself feel an attitude of ‘that’ll do’ is the message, much of it coming from you.

We understand moving home was a nightmare financially and meant we had to sell the best players, but please remember before the move us fans were told it wouldn’t affect the team.

We do appreciate your loyalty and understand others wanted to prize you away, but that doesn’t mean we will just accept things.

And we do appreciate Champions League football every year Arsene and the stadium you enabled to be built. Personally if the Emirates deal ever ends I would be happy for us to play at the AW Stadium

But too often in the Champions League we end up throwing it away against sides we should beat or rest players in the group stages and end up with a harder draw in the knockout phases.

Arsene, we also pay some of the highest ticket prices in the country so it’s massively galling to see our team get so close and throw things away.

The Carling Cup final in 2008, we should have beaten Birmingham out of sight yet we went into the game thinking it was won already. AC Milan were disposed of in the Champions League 3-0 at our place, just a shame we were 4-0 down from the first game!

Put simply, when the pressure is on, a lot of us now think an Arsenal team under you cannot handle it.

Last year we beat Manchester City at the Emirates to go top of the league at Christmas. We then won just two out of the next seven league games and went a month without a victory.

We don’t understand Arsene how Leicester, a team which was all but relegated the Christmas before, held it all together to win the league. A team we beat home and away.

We struggle to understand how the current very talented team isn’t running away with the league like Chelsea – under a manager in his first season in English football.

And Arsene, we don’t like the fact them lot down the road seem to be building a pretty decent team!

We have a huge, beautiful stadium, a cracking team which you have assembled but then we lose to Watford, go 3-0 down to Bournemouth and inch past Preston North End.

We are football fans Arsene, we are forever asking ourselves ‘Would this happen to Man United, Chelsea etc’ and nine times out of 10 it wouldn’t.

That’s why we are frustrated and yes angry with things. We don’t want ‘that’ll do’ mentality, we want the Arsenal of old, the flourishing football with an insane desire to win trophies.

You are your own man and make your own decisions Arsene and we will always respect that.

If this is the end though, please be assured all true Gooners, even your fiercest critics will stand and applaud as you leave and thank you for taking a football club in a right state when you arrived in 1996 and putting us among Europe’s elite.

We do love you Arsene, but we love Arsenal Football Club as well. It was here before us and it will outlast us all too.

Merci pour l’écoute

Neville is right, so prove him wrong

GARY Neville was the special guest on Sky Sports Sunday Supplement over weekend and provided a fascinating insight into football writing, journalism and the way ahead for our industry.

The former Manchester United full back and well established Sky pundit almost invited himself on some weeks ago when he took issue with some of the more modern aspects of the sports journalism industry.

But to say he is no fan of journalists would be a mistake, with every criticism there was praise and the desire for players to be MORE involved with journalists not less.

For me as a journalist it was a fascinating snapshot of where we are in 2016, where something needs to be 

published seconds after it happens not in a few hours.

He was particularly good on the row with Loic Karius which saw the Liverpool keeper and indeed Reds boss Jurgen Klopp bite back at some of Neville's criticisms of the man between the sticks.

No personal offence seems to have been taken, instead there was a frustration that actually a relatively mild form of criticism (what Neville is paid to do as a pundit) became such a story.

Neville criticised the goalkeeper after Liverpool lost to Bournemouth but later that afternoon saved his stronger criticism for Maarten Steklenberg the Everton keeper and memorably labelled Marouane Fellani 'pathetic' for conceding a last minute penalty.

Yet the Karius story stuck and became red hot when Karius decided to have a go back and Klopp chimed in by pointing to Neville's not great record as Valencia head coach.

But Neville provoked scorn by saying 'shut your gob' to Karius – his appearance on Sunday Supplement allowed him to elaborate on it. Neville simply said it was advice from an old pro to shut up, play well, win the title then ram his criticism down his throat.

Because that's how players should take criticism, think 'Right, I will prove you wrong!'

I don't get this 'rise of the super pundit' stuff, Neville (and for that Carragher, Souness, Keane et al) are simply being honest.

The best analysis of football is when the former pro doesn't make excuses and simply calls something for what it was.

Neville is searingly honest, which for me as a fan is what I want to hear not the cosy Match of the Day dressing room banter with Gary and his mates or BT Sport's 'look at us we are all new' approach.

Is he always right? No of course not. Is he biased against Liverpool because of his Manchester United career? No, if you have listened to Neville in the last three years he has eviscerated Van Gaal and certain Manchester United players.

Can subjects of his criticism and scorn prove him wrong? Of course they can. That's the beauty of a nine month football season.

We need journalists to bring us the insight and match reports and pundits to analyise the matches as former pros.

Long may both parts of the Beautiful Game continue.

Leave the humble poppy alone

NEVER has a small paper and plastic flower worn once a year caused so much 'offence' and debate, turned sensible people silly and handed power to those who really don't deserve it.

Yet the poppy is at the centre of so many issues today, from its adoption by far right groups, it being banned from the shirts of England and Scotland footballers who will meet on Armistice Day itself to the ludicrous debate on when is the 'right time' to start wearing it.

On the last point, does it really matter when someone chooses to first wear it? Does it make them a bad person if they only wear it in Remembrance week? No of course it bloomin doesn't!

Let's face it, most of us lose at least one but happily dig deep to replace it out of embarrassment and admiration for the fallen!

James McClean has been attacked for not wearing one on his West Bromwich Albion shirt for their last home game before Remembrance Sunday. He has spoken of the reasons why and said: “If the poppy was simply about World War One and Two victims alone, I’d wear it without a problem.

“I would wear it every day of the year if that was the thing but it doesn’t, it stands for all the conflicts that Britain has been involved in. Because of the history where I come from in Derry, I cannot wear something that represents that.”

Is he a bad person for his refusal? No of course not, he's expressing the very freedom of speech people fought and died for. The freedom not to have something imposed on you by the 'those in charge'.

As for FIFA banning England and Scotland's footbalers wearing them well it's just a case of a governing body, and a troubled one at that, having way too much power.

FIFA regulations outlaw nations wearing anything that can be construed as commercial or a political or religious statement. The poppy is neither, it's an act of Remembrance – why we wear it on Remembrance occasions and not on Easter Sunday for example!

The silly mandarins at FIFA should remember that on Christmas Day 1914, British and German troops laid down their arms, wished each other Merry Christmas and played football.

102 years later, two other great rivals will meet on the football field at a time of great unease around the world. How wonderful would it be to see those players who want to take to the field with a poppy on their shirts?

Sometimes I wonder if veterans look at the debate around the poppy and wonder whether their sacrifices, what they saw and heard was worth it?

This weekend, buy a poppy if you want to, wear it with pride and remember those brave souls who never came home.

And please, after the commemorations, can we just all agree that the poppy is just a poppy and not a stick to beat people or nations with?

Now where's the pin for mine.....oh dear!

Lineker's no liar, it's the Brexiteers who are lying to themselves.

THE SUN is upset at Gary Lineker and wants him sacked. Why? Because he dared to have an opinion which didn't fit with the post-Brexit view of the world we all MUST subscribe to.

The crisp flogger and Match of the Day presented took to twitter this week to despair at the headlines over the arrival of Syrian refugees to Britain.

The tweet in full: “The treatment by some towards these young refugees is hideously racist and utterly heartless. What's happening to our country?”

Nowhere does he name anyone, nor does he abuse anyone and ends with a question and expresses a fear, something we in a democracy are allowed to do.

He continued when a false claim was made that one particular individual was identified as a translator but fiercely defended himself.

Did he lie? Did he commit a crime, did he assault someone? Did he make a sexual/racist joke live on air in his job? No he expressed his opinion.

But this is what life is like in post Brexit Britain, if you don't get on board the bus heading towards the exit from the European Union you are a 'Bremoaner' 'Unpatriotic', 'whinging Brit' or something more vulgar.

Worried about the calamity which is currently the pound? Don't bother it will all be fine

Want to express your anger over the blatant lies used such as £350million for the NHS, don't because the chief cheerleader of that claim is now Foreign Secretary.

Those who voted to remain have been pushed to one side despite the result being 48 per cent v 52 per cent, a result Nigel Farage said wouldn't be 'conclusive'. Fair to say he doesn't say the same thing now.

Our new un-elected Prime Minister is going all out for an exit, ignoring the will of 48 per cent of people, attempts for Parliamentary scrutiny are attacked while concerns about the economy are simply 'scare-
mongering'.

This is very real and very dangerous moment for our times, while we are obsessing about leaving the European Union and retreating to a weird 2016 version of the British Empire, Russia is flexing its might, a city in the Middle East is being raized to the ground and we have the worst refugee crisis this world has seen.

In this country we have a pound worth very little, an economy which can never get better and keeps getting infections, inequality which is just getting worse and a political system where the Government is not being held to account but just attacked by a populist party of protest.

A media where Nigel Farage is given air-time, where no one questions how Boris Johnson could be make Foreign Secretary despite lying in the EU Referendum.

And heartbreakingly where people who don't look or sound like us are increasingly in fear of life in what used to be Great Britain.

The truth hurts the Brexiteers - not every Johnny Foreigner comes over here for the 'benefits', a huge number come to build a new life.

Think of the nurse from Sierra Leone who treated your mum in hospital, the Polish shop owner who always stocks that beer you like, the Pakistani taxi driver who loves to talk during your journey or that lovely waiter from Italy who was so friendly during your meal out.

Then look at the benefits office in your town, I'd put £350million on betting not all the voices you will hear are foreign.

But hey, that would just be another inconvenient truth wouldn't it?