Unbelievable

The World Cup is almost upon us and although I have let the football bug slip for the last few years mainly due to a disgust about the amount of money involved I am looking forward to watching the tournament. There always seems to be an increase in nationalism and patriotism when the world cup is on, an exaggerated sense of rivalry that is all part of the tournament. This year however there seems to be more than the average xenophobia kicking in and plain outright racism through the media and facebook groups. I'd been struck recently by the amount of acquaintances on facebook who had been inviting me to such groups like "they don't like our flags but they like our benefits". First I was struck by the fact that they had invited me to an "I'm not racist but..." group that they probably didn't know me very well and that I really need to distance myself from some people. I never really thought much else about it until I spotted this in the paper.

Driver orders toddler off bus for wearing 'offensive' England football shirt

This story struck me last week. It was in the Daily Mail although I'll admit to not reading it there but repeated in the equally awful Metro paper which was sitting in the canteen. I read the piece about a woman and her Toddler wearing an England shirt who was accosted by the bus driver with an Eastern European accent who said he found the shirt offensive. Apparently his exact words were "I find that really offensive. You should dress your family in less offensive clothes." Because that's how evil Eastern European bus drivers speak. I read it and thought, that didn't happen, she has just made that up, I genuinely couldn't believe that they had printed that as a story. Today I found the investigation by the bus company and they have released a statement:

"We have carried out a full investigation and can't find any evidence to substantiate this claim. No driver fitting the description given was working on any routes in this area at that time. Our buses were busy around the time yet no one else has been in touch with us about this alleged incident.

It didn't happen! When I read it I knew it didn't happen but thick fucks will read that and believe it as can be seen by the comments on the piece. The worst that could have happened is that the evil Eastern European bus driver made a joke that was lost on its recipient(not sure how that could happen she looks pretty sharp). What galls me is the media is actively encouraging hatred towards immigrants and is in reality inciting racial hatred. Why is it they can get away with printing this shit and not have to prove the story was true.

There is no ban on England flags to get all riled up about, call it a hoax campaign or even moral panic if you like, created by the right wing media to promote the sale of papers and to incite hatred in order to sell more papers with stories that incite hatred, and so on and so on. Also I spent a long time watching football and in all the home games and away games I went to in 15 years I was never allowed to wear a football shirt in a pub and that wasn't the fault of evil Eastern European Bus drivers. It was because of all the fighting between rival supporters.