STADIUM MANIA 3: Vote Yes or No, but VOTE
By
Mickey Blue Eyes

“Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.”
E.B.WHITE, ‘New Yorker,’ 3rd July 1944.

“Prometheus is reaching out for the stars with an empty grin on his face and a totem-symbol in his hand.”
ARTHUR KOESTLER, Sonning Prize Acceptance Address, University of Copenhagen, April 1968.

“Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.”
BERTRAND RUSSELL, ‘Sceptical Essays’ (1928) ‘The Recrudescence of Puritanism.’

“Classicism is a mask and does not reflect transition. How can such a static expression allow interpretation of human life as we know it? A firehouse should not resemble a French Chateau, a bank a Greek temple and a university a Gothic cathedral. All of the isms are an imposition on life itself by way of previous education”
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, America’s greatest architect.

A long time ago someone said democracy is a very bad form of government but all the others are much worse. This has become a cliché because it happens to be true. It applies just as much in the ballot of fans’ opinion of a possible move to a new stadium in Kirkby.

When it comes to a democratic and confidential ballot there is no such thing as “an expert.” All there is, is opinion. Yours counts. If the ballot is conducted honestly, the result (whatever it may be) is what the majority of voters want. In that sense it is “right.” Which is why totalitarians and thugs, retired or otherwise, hate democracy and a free vote. All the bully boys in the world cannot change it without threatening or cheating. Such people always tell those who oppose their viewpoint they are “stupid.” The reason is quite straightforward: A free and confidential ballot leaves a thug and his opinion isolated and impotent.

The big mouth over in the corner of your local pub can suddenly change tune when asked to put opinions to an honest popular vote. Suddenly, the emphasis can change. Suddenly, there is a requirement to do more than create noise. Suddenly, the tedious big mouth can find lack of opposition to a harangue is because most people can’t be bothered wasting their breath on – great scouse expression – a King of the Kids. Such a mentality is actually afraid of popular opinion freely expressed through an honest ballot box. It abolishes its self-assumed “power.” Suddenly, the big mouth is worth no more than one vote. If an honest vote goes against, it invariably produces the tired accusation that everyone else is out of step in one way or another. From which a sensible individual can draw its own conclusion.

Which is why, whatever your opinion, I suggest you should vote in the upcoming ballot on a possible move to Kirkby. Vote Yes or No or even write “abstain”, but VOTE. Make your voice heard in the best way possible. Then abide by the result whatever it may be. A majority either way is acceptable to anyone with a sense of decency. I will vote Yes for reasons I explain below. But if the vote is No, so what? The world won’t stop turning, except for Flat Earth fanatics. Everton Football Club will carry on. Fans will still watch football. Anyone who stamps a foot because they can’t get their own way is entitled to do that, just as I am entitled to ignore them. That is my free choice and I intend to exercise it. Anyone who then storms off in high dudgeon isn’t entitled to surprise when the rest of us wave goodbye and get on with supporting the club.

Stone-brained commitment to a cause – even one as faintly ludicrous as football – does funny things to human behaviour. “Funny” in both senses of the word. The worst it does is to persuade weak character to vacate commonsense, free-thinking and reasonable intelligence in favour of the false and unsustainable certainties of tribal ignorance. It can be contagious too. Appropriately, “The Idiot Culture” is a term coined by American investigative journalist Carl Bernstein (and who should know better?) to indicate hysterical and untrue conspiracy theories and their manufacturers. As we all know, it flourishes at every club in a tiny number of eternal malcontents. It is encouraged by a peculiar combination of self-styled “working class hero,” retired 80s thug, suited-up conman and outright paranoid. Alas, the history of the game demonstrates that glitter-eyed fanaticism is not the sole province of politics or socioeconomics.

This abandonment of commonsense is not limited to the playing spectacle. It extends to non-playing matters too. Nowhere is it more predictable than in the prospect of a new stadium for Everton. This is unsurprising since football performs simultaneously in reality mixed with illusion and delusion. The issue of a new stadium rudely interferes with both. Focus is required, but irrationality appears. You have only to listen, if you can be bothered, to a post-match footy radio phone-in anywhere in the country. Sometimes it is enough to make you look fondly at a rabid chihuahua.

How else do you explain the hapless fellow, apparently a native of Kirkby no less, who tried to persuade the people of Kirkby to vote against the notion of a new Everton stadium there partially on the grounds of fans violence, and showed videos thereof? What does that tell you about his ends and means? Now, I have no doubt whatever that the fellow has strong and sincere feelings on the subject, but so do most of us. So far I haven’t encountered an equivalent ill-willed act by those who think differently from him. And what are we to make of those who have obtained the personal phone numbers of club individuals and made threats against them? Somewhere along the line these people have lost any sense of decency they may have had in the first place. Which is why the vast majority of us want nothing to do with them and their sick behaviour and those who encourage them.

So Bernstein’s Idiot Culture is not limited to the United States or to more serious matters. In British football it exists at virtually every level. For example it has become quite standard to hear the same individual tell you the game is “finished” (which it patently isn’t) because of greed and malpractice (which exists as it always has, though not at the present intensity), and then in the next breath talk up “investment” and “paying the market rate” – or any other jargon for perpetuating the very same greed and malpractice. Quite likely you will also get the same kind of mindset talk of “loyalty” without showing a smidgeon of patience for development of a young player, or a manager trying to build a good team from limited resources. At its worst of course it is nothing more than hypocritical cowardice. At which point this supporter turns on his heel and walks. Life is too short to waste on neurotic wasters.

In a previous essay on the subject (see here) I described how we cannot develop a suitable stadium WITHIN THE EXISTING SITE BOUNDARIES, THAT IF WE WERE TO STAY IN WALTON WE NEEDED THE ENTIRE ADDITIONAL TRIANGLE OF LAND BOUNDED BY WALTON LANE, BULLENS ROAD AND GWLADYS STREET. In other words, the present site is too small. There is no reason why we should squash an unsuitable asymmetric building onto an unsuitable site. If we want a decent, modern stadium we should not resort to cramming fans into a sardine can simply for the sake of it. Nothing complicated there, then. I add emphasis again because some people can have difficulty with plain English, plainly expressed. But the opinion isn’t just mine. You’ll find it endorsed in the Ward McHugh Associates Feasibility Study, June 2000, Part C, once available on the internet but now, alas, no more. Fortunately I printed out a copy before it disappeared. In the study section titled ”Impact of Redevelopment” the first paragraph states:

“Redeveloping on exactly the same footprint would not allow for increase in capacity or for the provision of adequate corporate or commercial facilities. Neither would it provide an appropriate setting for the type of stadium the club wish to develop. It would be essential for the club’s future to secure a larger site area and consider the redevelopment of the whole of the site bounded by Goodison Road, Gwladys Street and Walton Lane.”

So, once again, the existing site is too small, the setting unsuitable. Of course, no responsible or competent architectural professional is likely to come to any other decision. At least, not if he is serious about improving the club’s status in the modern game as opposed to clinging to an erroneous concept of local society and football’s place therein. So let’s move on to the next consideration: Suppose we did develop within the land triangle described above? What would that mean apart from, no small matter, meeting most of the construction costs ourselves?

The first and most obvious observation is that we would get a completely new stadium building whatever else was on the site. The stadium would have to be designed in accordance with contemporary design standards. Which equally obviously means demolition of the old stadium. The much-loved Old Lady, Goodison Park, would be gone for ever. Any argument about “history and tradition” related to its bricks, mortar and industrial grey cladding – which is ugly anyway, as Ward McHugh point out – would be nothing but a memory. In short, the only reason given for staying at Goodison Road is because……well, we’ve been there a long time. And that’s it, nothing more. There could be no greater example of sheer irrationality. This implies that a football ground is a consecrated piece of real estate, a notion most free-thinkers were pleased to dismiss with the absurdities of organised religion. “Consecration” is a meaningless proposition in a secular society. The only exception is that solemn respect must be paid to the wishes of families who had ashes of loved ones scattered on the playing turf at Goodison Park.

So Everton Football Club move to a new location: So what? You move house and job when you feel the necessity. That’s the way of life the world over. You hope to improve. And if you move into a new house you do so because you feel it is different and better, not because it is the same or has similar bits tagged on to it. The past is worth cherishing for what it once was and can’t be again. The memories stay, good and bad. Time moves on. So do people and their aspirations. The future is worth cherishing for what we want it to be.

The proposition that Everton Football Club is an ETERNAL “part of the social fabric” of the area is only valid if you think fabric of any kind lasts and binds you to it for ever. This assumes time freezes, which of course it doesn’t. Society is a living, breathing thing in constant transition, sometimes rapidly, sometimes slowly. This was never better demonstrated than post Second World War flight from city-living and its unmanageable densities or creation of new social housing between the two world wars. For instance many people who were born and grew up in Walton moved away to another life, as they do all over the world. Some came back, many didn’t. If humanity had not had that instinct it could not have evolved and thrived individually or collectively. For instance I have in the past used the lurid analogy of terrace houses nuzzling lovingly against Goodison Park. It is the kind of sentimental, comfortable stuff we all indulge every now and then. But the natural reality is that all living creatures stop nuzzling and eventually make their own life. Sentimental nostalgia is comfortable only for a while. Then it becomes cloying, and then, if you are not careful, it leaves you stuck dodo-like in a lethal time warp.

The fact is, football history and tradition are only partly related to the stadium building itself. Real history and traditions are invested in fans’ memories and their folklore stories. Hardly any of these make reference to a building except in the most peripheral sense. How can it be otherwise when, by and large, you are only in the building on average once every two weeks during the season, and even then only if you are a regular fan? The majority of fans don’t even see the building from one match to the next. Fans relate to great players, great matches, triumphs, disappointments, humorous moments, everything that makes sports commitment worthwhile.

In these circumstances the only argument left would concern design of the new stadium. And of course this would be open to argument WHEREVER IT IS LOCATED. A so-called “soul-less bowl” in Walton is little different to the same building in any other location. Which equally obviously moves you to the next consideration: With the Old Lady gone, what is the point of staying in Walton?

The answer is that there isn’t one. What would we be staying for? Steel-shuttered or empty shops on County Road and City Road? Local chip shops and seedy pubs? Do you think for one second the vast majority of those proprietors care about Everton Football Club except where it suits their takings? I have no problem with them taking that position even if they don’t live in the city. It is their free choice in a free society. Which is why when I go to Goodison Park I go to watch football, not to keep local traders in business. Out of my own free choice I spend next to nothing in Walton. To put it at its most brutal, the area and many of its commercial buildings are in an out-of-date, decayed condition that has absolutely nothing to do with Everton Football Club. And if small firms cannot exist there then they would be better moving out themselves instead of depending on once a fortnight takings. Corner shops are mostly dying because people don’t use or want them or their product, simple as that. No, the idea we should be tied to Walton for the sake of a few small businesses is absurd. Anyone who really knows the area or who regularly passes through it knows how it looks and feels. So getting football-sentimental for a few hours once a fortnight isn’t going to change the socioeconomic conditions of the area. That requires a much wider political will and vision far removed from a mere professional game.

Those who talk about a new stadium in a new location being “in a retail park” would do well to consider what County Road is. It is above all a run-down “retail road.” And if you eliminate it and its pubs and chip shops from the equation all you are left with are rows of old terrace houses, a cemetery, vandalised Stanley Park, a school, and a second-hand car and van business surrounded by razor barbed wire on Walton Lane. Is that reason enough for staying?

As we all know, Arsenal’s new stadium is still in the same awful, litter-strewn, decayed area of north London as Tottenham’s redeveloped ground. The area adds nothing to either, anymore than the dustbins of the East End add to West Ham’s redeveloped ground, the one they now seek to leave. Redevelopment of White Hart Lane did not lead to regeneration of the immediate locale, and even Arsenal’s much more expansive development proposals won’t succeed in regenerating all of Highbury. North London will still be an oppressive place choked with pollution unless it is dealt with holistically – and that is a matter for local and national government policy, not the business of its football clubs.

Doubtless some of those who are willing to use the laughable “retail park” argument weren’t averse to the “retail park” that would have been part of the Kings Dock development, or even to one on the existing site if we were to stay. Nor probably would they use that argument if a similar proposal was made for, say, Aintree – which is also “outside” Liverpool and in Sefton. But of course both of these “arguments” are little more than ludicrous petty snobbery against Kirkby, the kind of thing British culture at all levels is notorious for – and rightly derided – around the world. Of all people, you would expect working-class Merseysiders to have buried that kind of anti-social nonsense generations ago. Needless to say I have even less time for the type of lower middle class hypocrite who argues we should stay where we are, before returning post-match to his out-of-the-city suburban mortgage to complain about his council tax, school fees, the ruinous cost of petrol and the vagaries of Merseytravel buses and trains.

The fact is the site in Kirkby is superior to the existing Walton locality in virtually every sense. Sadly, there won’t be many that AREN’T better. I wish it were otherwise but it simply isn’t. Even if we DO stay inside the city boundaries virtually all of the available sites are in derelict areas not much better than Walton. Some are a good deal worse The north docks for instance are in an even worse state than Walton. So what would the argument then be? That we are moving to a “soul-less derelict area”?

My position on a possible move is lukewarm, but I will continue to support it in principle if the deal is worthwhile. Emotionally I would prefer to stay within the city boundaries, but within reasonable limits, and there’s certainly nothing sacred about it. Kirkby is well within reasonable limits, as would be Aintree, or the north/central docks, or Edge Lane, or Huyton, or even Speke at a pinch. The suggested site at Kirkby is 5.3 miles from Goodison Park on the most direct road and just one mile outside the city boundary. Even then, had the latest boundary not been drawn eccentrically the site would be only half a mile outside the boundary, just the other side of the M57. In reality the so-called boundaries issue is bogus and all genuine locals know it.

And if the proposal to create a “Greater Liverpool” is introduced, irony of ironies, the site ends up back in Liverpool again. Would it be acceptable then? Of course the prospect of such a development is loaded with potential humour. At one fell swoop it wipes out the boundaries argument. In which case its propagators are left to explain to the people of Kirkby all over again why their locale is unsuitable, this time for another reason………………….

Meanwhile, the people and town of Kirkby are overwhelmingly related to the city of Liverpool in the same way as those in Huyton, Aintree, Crosby, Speke, Halewood or Bootle. We’re talking football and human beings, not ground defined by a bureaucrat or a pub group of stick-in-the-mud cranks. Push it down to that level and you can assume the debate has gone as drunk as Elmer Gantry and just as two-faced. But if there’s no better deal available – and there’s no sign there is despite noises off from Liverpool City Council – then I say let’s get on with it and make a good job of it. If the Kirkby deal doesn’t stack up, pull the plug and start looking again at alternative sites wherever they may be.

Liverpool City Council and all its political parties had their chance for years and failed. So far I have heard nothing from council leader Warren Bradley that leads me to think he’s anything other than another opportunist politician in like mode to the Labour councillors who tried to oppose the Kings Dock and now say they are opposed to a move to Kirkby too. Bradley’s disgusting name-calling of Kirkby and its people tells you all you need to know of his “capabilities.” Thankfully, the Labour Party haven’t fallen to the same low. But up to now none of the local political parties have had either nous or ability to make a solid proposal, though now they’ve had a wake up call that might change marginally if Kirkby doesn’t happen. Talk of the so-called “Loop” is just that, talk, until we see a proposal that makes it at least as financially viable as the scheme on the table now. But Bradley has already been quoted as saying the same land deal as Knowsley offered is impossible in Liverpool. And that appears to be that until there is a seismic change of mind by the City Council.

On the other hand the politicians might be suffering from loose bowels at the prospect of the club actually coming back to say, “Okay. Kirkby’s through. What have you got to offer?………No, REALLY offer…….You know, land deal, money……that sort of thing.” That’s when you sort the men from the boys. Anyone can find and “offer” a site, even write up a column or two of figures, but that’s wildly different from putting a viable deal together. A deal of this kind takes time and concentration. Wishful thinking and empty talk takes seconds. Having seen the way Liverpool politicians operate I wouldn’t make book an any of them losing their yahboo inclinations in the near future. Most of them are pretty useless at making solid proposals but very good at saying what they oppose. It is always easier to be destructive than it is to be constructive.

In comparison the club has honoured its promise to ballot the fans and agreed to abide by a democratic decision. If the fans say “No” in majority, then “No” it is. The form of the ballot or its question are not perfect because there is no such thing, not even in a relatively open society like ours. But it does get quite close to our average gate and the heart of the matter and there is an obvious attempt to make it as representative of match-going fans as possible. It is now up to the fans if they want it to be taken to the next stage. So far as I know no other leading football club has provided this opportunity in such an important matter. It is a remarkable and honourable step and constitutes quite a gamble, though of course various crackpot conspiracy theorists won’t see it that way.

None of us who actually reside in the city accept anti-propaganda from those who do not, never have and never will live here, or who have no affection at all for it. When you get someone like that referring to “our” city and/or “club roots” you are proportionately less likely to take them seriously, and that’s before you start pointing out to them some uncomfortable historical facts about the origins of the club, its development, the different venues it played at and the reality of our present status. Then, as now, society was in transition. Like the vast majority of locals, I live in our city because I choose to, because I love it greatly and always have and always will, all of it for my own reasons. I returned and settled down after many years working and living abroad because I have always regarded it as my home. I could have gone anywhere in the world, but I chose to live in our city again. I have never regretted it, not for a single second. And Kirkby and its people are a de facto part of that city whatever anyone says. For those who choose to live elsewhere I say good luck, but don’t think for a minute I am inclined to give your opinion much proportionate weight when that part of the subject is raised. I know one such guy who once said he couldn’t even bear to pronounce the word “Liverpool” – but now can be heard trying to persuade me and others that we should believe him on the location issue. Sorry, but it won’t wash. You can’t have it both ways.

Nor do I have any time at all for the kind of crank who indulges hatred or personal attacks on club individuals. To paraphrase an American president, anybody who manufactures that muck isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit. It is the cheap, small change of life. We can do without such people and their bitter, twisted mentality.

As for What-Will-The Neighbours-Say………..since when has any reasonably articulate and humorous Evertonian not been able to wipe the floor with a pinky in the banter stakes? Any Evertonian who can’t light up at the prospect of taking the mickey out of the analfielders – especially one of their many out of towners – really ought to stay at home quivering with agrophobia. And they are even more vulnerable to a good piss-take now they are in the hands of the Dallas Hillbillies and a massive stadium debt that makes our own indebtness look positively benign. The sensible ones amongst them know it. Pinkies? Phooey.

All of that said, in my opinion the debate reduces to the financial content of the Kirkby deal and how it benefits Everton Football Club. After that comes the quality of the stadium design.

If the finances stack up and enable us to have a decent stadium then the argument becomes conclusive. However, it is fair to say the club has yet to produce crystal-clear figures despite some encouraging generalised statements. Fans are entitled to expect more substantial financial information. They need to know without equivocation (a) reasonably accurate estimates of the construction cost of the stadium and (b) the amount of extra debt it will attract and how it will be repaid. If this is not forthcoming, sensible voting fans are unlikely to support the proposal and nobody could blame them. Nor could the club complain if the fans withdrew their support later if the estimates proved wildly inaccurate.

Given our financial circumstances and the way the deal appears to be set up, the initial stadium concept design is quite encouraging too, though there is clearly a lot of design work to do on it. And I certainly don’t like the prospect of empty corners in the stadium however well treated in the short term. In my view it is far better to complete the design and bear the expense now rather than do it later and it cost more. For most fans their main design concerns will be the appearance of the external envelope, internal facilities and level of service, and how crowd sounds are contained, even amplified – above all they will want something they can identify with. If these concerns are fully addressed (no small task with current financial constraints) then there will be little complaint. But it is well worth bearing in mind that much design and colour is a highly subjective area bound to lead to many different opinions. Genuine architecture is an art form, not a series of antiseptic formulae.

So here we stand. Push the empty heads, loonies and mere noise aside and the choice becomes yours. Nobody can take it away from you. And that’s the way it should be. (07/08/07)

Mickey Blue Eyes - All His Stuff

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