Having a ‘rant’ is good for the soul. Just don’t let anyone else hear. Not anyone who might be offended. I ‘rant’ often. Then I read it through (sometimes) and check that what I’ve written will only deeply offend those I want to deeply offend. But writing such things gives you the wonderful, face-saving, ‘power of the edit!’ You can delete whole passages and its as if they were never there.

Gary Neville can’t edit his gob. Ok, there’s a good argument that as his ‘rant’ was on video, he could have watched it through and taken out the offensive bits, the ‘racist’ (we’ll get to that) bits and the downright stupid bits. But that’s basically the entire thing. And Gary is really not the sort of person who doesn’t think that the whole world eagerly awaits and digests every wonderful word that comes from his superlative brain and out of his horrible Mancunian gob. If he’s thought it; THE WORLD NEEDS TO KNOW IT!!!

Its an arrogance. Born out of being lucky enough to be a slightly-above-average right back in a team festooned with superstars. Giving him a status as a footballer he didn’t really deserve. And wealth he could never have dreamed of. But Gary is much brighter than your average football player. And is a really good pundit of the game.

However; underneath it all he’s just a gobby northerner with a chip on his shoulder, from always living in the shadow cast by best mate AND team-mate, David Beckham.

So Gary started his rant, talking nicely about the terrible murders in the Synagogue near where he lives. (Its all ‘up north’, how far can it be?) But within seconds he segued into Union Jacks and cross of St George flags. Being hi-jacked by ‘middle-aged white men’. The bit that’s ‘racist’. Its not racist at all. How can it be? Gary Neville IS a middle-aged white man, ffs. What it is is stupid stereotyping, not entirely off the mark, it must be said, but one of those truisms that ‘mustn’t be said’.

He blamed the rise of ‘the right wing’, the rise of ‘the left wing’ (to which he is strongly attached) and, pretty much, the rise of ‘everyone in the middle’.

The bits he got almost right are that the flying flags are offensive to some. Mainly due to previous association with neo-Nazis. So a week after the Labour conference ‘reclaimed the flag’, en masse, in the most cringe-worthy moment in UK political history, Gary has decided that his party failed to do so and anyone flying a flag is a right-wing, Farage supporting, racist Brexiteer. He calls out the divisiveness in our society, which eventually led to the murders in the synagogue.

And to a degree, that is correct. He just got the particular ‘divisions’ in the wrong place. Flag flyers didn’t attack Heaton Road. That was due to other ‘divisions’ in our society, creating ‘open season on Jews’. Divisions caused or enabled by our hapless government, our prejudiced press and the increasing tolerance of the police in dealing with messages of hate and genocidal intent at protests.

So Gary Neville will soon be an ‘ex-pundit’ on Sky, one feels. The uproar from Sky subscribers, many of whom are probably middle-aged white men, will render him unemployable in his current role. Oddly, it took the BBC about 3 years of vile outbursts from Gary Lineker to get rid of him.

Happy Monday

A xxxx