2021 and all that

Dear reader, it is that time of year again.

This is probably the nearest thing this site has to a tradition.

In the week between Christmas and New Year, it seems the appropriate time to have a look back at the past twelve months.

If you’re new to this place then what you are about to read is very much MY 2021.

It does not purport to be a definitive review of the year.

Merely how it was for me and what I, at the back end of December can recall by looking back.

So, the following is an entirely subjective take on the last twelve months.

Therefore,  with those usual caveats in place and a long read alert, here we go.

The year started with the awful realisation in Brexitland that the much-promised “oven ready deal” was full of dodgy additives.

The first to find this out were fishermen in places like Loch Fyne.

It was just the start.

Later in the year pigs would be culled and incinerated  on farms  because a lot of those pesky foreigners no longer worked at abattoirs

Somehow this didn’t look much like “taking back control”.

Empty shelves in British supermarkets would become a thing.

It was only the start as Britain became the Sevco of Europe.

On Planet Fitba Celtic’s awful season crashed and burned after an ill-judged winter break in Dubai.

The club’s omnipotent CEO appeared on Celtic TV looking shaken.

Parkhead’s Teflon Don was entering his last year in charge of the richest club in Scotland.

He had stayed too long.

Oh, and the outgoing President of the United States incited an attempted coup d’état.

No biggie…

It all looked very Ibrox.

In March Sevco clinched their first-ever league title.

Despite the city being in Covid Lockdown someone in  Police Scotland decided it was a good idea to give the klan an escort as they marched from Ibrox to the city centre.

The evidence of criminal damage and racist chanting was clear for anyone who was paying attention.

It was also a super spreader event.

It was a worrying portent of what was to come.

In March the civil war that had been brewing inside the Scottish nationalist family was out there for any anorak who was interested.

Although fascinating for Holyrood anoraks I got the sense that very little of this landed with the ordinary folk in Fair Caledonia.

At the end of it First Minister Sturgeon survived any infraction of the Ministerial Code.

Her one-time mentor and ally now, to be fair, her sworn enemy launched his own party in the same month.

I think that it’s fair to say that it hasn’t been a success.

From the outside looking in ALBA simply looks like a vehicle for his personal revenge.

At the start of May  First Minister Nicola Sturgeon once more that she is the towering figure in Scottish politics.

Alex Salmond’s revenge mission, ALBA, crashed and burned.

When a football club wins their first-ever topflight title it should be a cause of joyous celebration. When the klan arrived in George Square law and order effectively broke down for several hours.

The police withdrew and put a cordon sanitaire around several city centre blocks.

Inside that zone was mayhem.

Finally, the guid folk o Scotland got to witness what everyone on Planet Fitba already knew in their bones.

Here were the grotesques of Ibrox on show.

It was just the klan and the emergency services in George Square.

Consequently, the Stenography Corps couldn’t “Old Firm” it.

Of course, they did obediently deploy the S-Word. Thankfully the following week what was on show in the centre of Glasgow was accurately called out.

Humza Yousaf, the then justice minister, and James Dornan MSP used the term “anti-Irish racism” in the Holyrood Parliament to describe the cultural output of the Ibrox klanbase.

It felt like a significant moment.

The people of Glasgow showed a better side of the city than the racists of Ibrox.

An impromptu uprising in Kenmure Street stopped the UK Home Office in their attempt to detain two Sikh men of Indian origin following a ‘dawn raid’ at a property on the street.

If this had been put into a novel it would have been too contrived that it happened on the same weekend as the klan riot.

Across the city, the Grey Brigade in the Parkhead boardroom shoed that there wasn’t any limit to their incompetence.

This meant that their “memorandum of understanding” was no such thing.

The ex-Bournemouth gaffer was able to simply Do Walking Away.

It meant that Celtic was facing a crucial summer with no manager and, crucially, no plan.

2021 was season two of Covid and the new character in the saga was the vaccine.

In May I got mine.

At the time of writing, I am “triple jabbed”.

These are the good old days.

Two of my brood are in the frontline of this battle.

Baby Doctor spent the first half of this year on a Covid ward and her big sister is in the vaccine business.

Proud of both of them.

In June many Celtic fans had to ask Google about a guy called Ange Postecoglou.

Of course, Hoops fans Down Under didn’t need any search engine as the ex-boss of the Socceroos was a household name in Oz.

The rest of us just wondered where it was all going.

Celtic was almost in as bad a state as the DUP.

On June 17th their leader  Edwin Poots resigned after 21 days in the post.

Given that he believed the planet to be only 6000 years old then I don’t know what three weeks actually mean to him.

Apart from the Protocol, the leaders of Unionism were facing up to the reality that Sinn Féin were the biggest party on the island.

It isn’t up for debate who the next Taoiseach will be.

In July football decide to go Rome.

Obviously, I was gutted that England had made the final.

However, in the end, it worked out well.

Being beaten on penalties is a tradition that they should definitely maintain.

Of course, it wouldn’t be Ingerlund without THEIR racist klanbase.

The young lads who failed to score suddenly weren’t English enough.

In July  Glasgow was finally home to an appropriate memorial to the dead and displaced of An Gorta Mór.

Unveiled at St. Mary’s in the Calton the sculpture by Donegal artist John McCarron is hauntingly stark.

In August Kabul airport was the scene of the Dunkirk Spirt.

Once the US military had decided that the Taliban had won then the Brits had to follow their big cousins and get the hell out of the North West Frontier.

The scenes of desperate people hanging onto the side of a US transport plane was the iconic image of an ignominious defeat.

This was a total victory for the Taliban.

What it meant for the British Army is that they had been defeated in their last two major operations by lightly armed militias.

Lest we forget…

This book, by an ex-Brit officer, forensically shreds the myth of British military competence.

It’s highly recommended.

In the days after the Kabul evacuation, I was in Westport, my father’s town, to honour my Fenian kin.

The West Mayo Brigade, in which my grandfather Joe was a staff officer, took on the  Brits when they were the global superpower.

Today the writ of the Saxe Coburg crime crew does no longer runs in the lanes and boreens where the Crossley Tenders hunted for our fellas a century ago.

History forgotten is a betrayal.

History remembered is a weapon.

Also in August Police Scotland were in the racist escorting business again.

Perhaps as a response to the unveiling of the statue to An Gorta Mór the Ibrox klanbase decided to give the people of Glasgow a rendition of the Famine Song.

The local media continued to deploy the S-Word.

Dear reader, they’re a central part of the problem.

On my personal joys, this year as a citizen of Planet Fitba has been the growing influence of high-quality fan media.

As a Hoops fan, I rarely miss an ACSOM bulletin, although my personal favourite is the Huddle Breakdown.

Across the city, they do things differently and in September Mr Edgar et al had a different type of breakdown.

It was a case in point of what can happen when the succulent rules are temporarily suspended.

I suspect that this was down to the less than welcoming stance of Sevco’s PR guru, the man from the DUP.

The year-end accounts in 20921 showed that the new entity at Ibrox continued to rack up appalling losses.

However, the chaps in the Blue Room seem willing to plunder their personal wealth to keep the show on the road.

As the year drew to a close there was a sliver of normality in my schedule. Unlike in 2020, I was able to spend the first week of that month in wonderful Lisboa.

Being back at the Web Summit was amazing for a whole range of reasons.

As I boarded a plane for the first time in almost two years the world and her significant other was meeting in Glasgow to work out stuff about the end of the world.

COP26 ran from Oct 31, 2021 – Nov 12, 2021, and wee Greta went native and told them to shove it!

The First Minister had a look at what it would be like to be the leader of a sovereign parliament rather than the head of a regional assembly.

Her selfie insurgency showed that she’s definitely a trier.

While I was in the capital of Portugal back on my island the bit still nominally part of the United Kingdom was having some issues.

The Northern Ireland Protocol, which is an integral part of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement means that Larne is now, in terms of the trade in goods, a border town.

Essentially the Bradaish folk in Narne Arne do not like being reminded that they live on an island called “Ireland”.

It upsets them.

Working out the mangled contents of their worldview would strain the abilities of Kari Sorjonen.

At the end of November, a Sevco side turned up to Hampden within touching distance of a cup final.

However, playing in front of their delightful fans they Hibsed it.

In the previous season this year, I had found myself in agreement with the Sevco players.

Things go better if the klan is nowhere near you!

Just before that match, Mr Gerrard had decided it was time to quit Ibrox.

Covid had favoured him and empty stadiums had created the conditions where his charges could become title winners.

In the same month, a cheeky genius who lit up my Celtic childhood went to his rest eternal.

Bertie Auld was unique. We will not see his likes again.

In the English Channel desperate people seeking a better life drowned. The response from many in the British political elite was appalling.

It was the sort of mindset that was outed when Allegra Stratton was caught on video laughing about breaking covid rules.

Her tearful resignation was an object lesson in the value of a functioning Fourth Estate.

Hat tip to Pippa Crerar and her colleagues at the Mirror.

In December the British state finally capitulated to the survivors of the Miami Showband Massacre.

Collusion is no illusion.

Also in the last month of the year, a half-fit Kyogo was still too much for the men from Easter Road.

Bertie would have approved.

Despite the utter shambles of the summer Celtic’s new manager has overseen a remarkable turnaround.

Celtic are still in touch in the league and the club has the finances to replenish an injury-ravaged squad.

My best book of 2021 is Murder at Roaringwater by Nick Foster.

It is investigative journalism at its best.

The eagerly awaited second edition will undoubtedly have more information on an unsolved murder that shames us here.

My best film of 2021 is Arracht.

Dónall Ó Héalai in the lead role is heroic in every sense.

Set in Conamara during An Gorta Mór it captures the genocidal cruelty of those times.

Events that are apparently deemed to be humorous by the Ibrox klanbase.

Best TV series This Way Up.

Aisling Bea is just wonderful and this is way funnier than Fleabag.

The ex-weather girl Irish mammy played by Sorcha Cusack is the stuff of genius.

So that was my 2021 dear reader.

I hope that the next twelve months will be good for you and yours.

13 thoughts on “2021 and all that”

  1. All the best to you and yours Phil, again I’m a happy chappy to have found your site and the content is more favourable than many a rag delivered by MSSM.

    Love the quote “believes the earth’s 6000 years old so I don’t know what 3 weeks means to him” LMFAO

    Hopefully we continue in the vein of listening to our managers needs and providing what he wants and that is a theme we’ve lost other to in the past.

    Hail hail

    Reply
  2. Well summarised review of 2021, another fine read and many thanks for all that preceded it.
    RTÉ has some great shows only available online, although; a source I use has started posting more and I’ve enjoyed a few series too, simply better quality than most.

    Celtic are looking in great shape atm, I bet them @7/4 to win the league after those two high scoring games in early August, I’m reasonably confident in that. With Celtic FC now aka Japans National Reserve Squad, we are far more advanced than most thought possible, me, I hoped for better… and it’s happening that way
    We, Celtic, have unearthed a real gem in Ange Postecoglou and I’m firmly of the opinion that he will become a true legendary Club manager. Those new signings completed before the window was even open show change and real intent from the Club, and a much needed positive change to conducting business.

    Phil I hope 2022 brings you and yours health and happiness.

    Awraverybest 🍻

    HH 💚🍀🌱😂☮️🌎✅

    Reply
  3. Does it not worry you that the vaccine you received and the booster are made by different companies and could prove to be incompatible?
    Many are finding the booster makes them ill or the minimum gives them a sore arm and a headache for a couple of days. Mixing a vaccine and booster from different origins seems rather dangerous to me.
    Why not give the vaccine you already have a boost?

    Reply
  4. Great review of the year Phil, lets hope Big Ange and his Bhoys can make 2022 a memorable year on the football front and that the world can get back to some kind of normality.
    Good health and good times to you and yours in 2022.

    Reply
  5. Excellent review of the year.

    It was almost the exact opposite of the reported SMSM version

    I see Clyde SSB are now a Rangers fan media partner, signing the 25k contract and as such they are very pro-sevco in their reporting or more pro-Sevco I should say.

    Old Keevins now silent on his slamming of the 25k contract.

    Reply
  6. And that is why you are able and suitably qualified to call yourself a journalist. Best to you and yours. Stay safe and well and let’s hope 2022 brings us all some sort of humanity and less hubris. HH

    Reply

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