Panini-Zufallsbekanntschaft #12

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (53)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 53rd of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1272 friends!

Recent blogs:

The Bin Man (Garbage Collector)

Joe Hill : Songwriter to the Working Class

Did Communism Collapse?

Top quote for this week:

[From the Socialist Party lecture, 'What Marx Should Have Said to Kropotkin'.

"Three things:

1. "Don't call me a State Socialist! I was putting forward a case for abolishing the State while you were still a toddler".

2. "With regard to paying people in labour-time vouchers in the early days of Socialist society, you were right and I was wrong. This was a silly, unworkable idea".

3. "Like me, you're a Socialist. We both want a stateless, moneyless, wageless society. Why then do you feel you have more in common with non-socialist opponents of the State than with me? After all, your disagreement with them is over ends, while you're disagreement with me is only over means".

Adam Buick

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Panini-Zufallsbekanntschaft #11

Giorgio Chinaglia (Italy - West Germany '74)

Brought up in Cardiff, started his football career with Swansea and scored a shedload of goals for the New York Cosmos.

Random, but eerie.

Panini-Zufallsbekanntschaft #10

Sighted at Best of Craigslist

Sexiest trashman ever! - w4m

Free Man's Toupee

An apology to the Ayn Rand man - w4m

wanted pre 1965 paper money for time travel

Top 5 Myths About America

Trust me, that's the PG version of the best of list. Hope you've got a strong constitution if you do decide to click on the above link.

Hat tip to Madam Miaow blog.

Panini-Zufallsbekanntschaft #9

Newly minted, a French language blog from a supporter of the World Socialist Movement:

Mouvement Socialiste Mondiale

Apparently it's been set up by a sympathiser living in France and will be updated weekly with "news, historic documents and/or socialist theory."

For those of you who feel this isn't enough for you in the here and now, you can a temporary fix at the following links:

WSM Website

http://www.worldsocialism.org/canada/enfranca.htm

'Anglo-Saxon Impossibilism'

UPDATE

Further info here.

Panini-Zufallsbekanntschaft #8

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (50)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 50th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1261 friends!

Recent blogs:

Democracy – and ‘democracy’

The happy slave syndrome

Worldcon

This week's top quote:

"Most workers believe that if only prices came down or were at least stabilised their chief troubles would be over. They should remember that while it is true that at present hundreds of thousands of workers cannot afford to buy a house on mortgage, exactly the same was true between the wars when prices of houses and prices in general and wages) were only a fraction of what they are now. For the workers capitalism means hardship whether prices are high or low or falling or rising." Edgar Hardcastle, The ABC of Inflation (1972).

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Panini-Zufallsbekanntschaft #7

Paul Scholes (England - South Korea/Japan'02)

Paul Scholes: unassuming red head from Salford who has been the hub of the United midfield for well over a decade. Refuses to be part and parcel of the media bullshit that surrounds football . . . can be a bit nasty in the tackle though it's rarely mentioned in the press . . . supports Oldham Athletic, which is always mentioned in the press . . . been known to score the occasional great goal . . . all time favourite player is Frankie Bunn . . . if you need any more information about Scholes, perhaps the blog for the rest of the month will just increasingly piss you off.

I understand that Impossibilist Bill has a blogging sideline in Rugby League reports. Maybe that's more your cup of hot bovril?

Panini-Zufallsbekanntschaft #6

Jean-Marie Pfaff (Belgium - Spain'82)

He played over sixty times for his country, and was part of the Belgium team who were runners-up in the '80 Euro Championship and who finished fourth in the Mexico World Cup of '86, but Jean-Marie Pfaff is best known today for introducing the slang word, 'pfaffing', into the English language.

Goalkeepers have been known to dither over crosses ever since the first ever Scottish International was played way back in 1872 but, for some reason, Pfaff's 27 second moment of madness in a Belgian cup game back in 1979 seems to have captured the footballing zeitgeist of the time. It doesn't seem right, manifestly unfair, but apparently David James has a shrine to Pfaff in his locker at Fratton Park by way of a small thank you for taking his place in the English language slang dictionary.

Trying to think back to Belgium's participation in the '82 World Cup but the best my memory bank can come up with is Boniek's brilliant hat trick against Pfaff and others in the knockout stage of the tournament.

Now that I think about it, combining football pub talk and counterfactual history I wonder what would have happened if Poland had won the World Cup in '82? What would the ramifications have been for Polish society and the political climate at that particular time, coming so soon after the suppression of Solidarność?

Panini-Zufallsbekanntschaft #5

Edwin van der Sar (Netherlands - France'98)

What can one say about van der Sar? He made John Terry cry in Moscow . . . he's just played a blinder against Italy in the Euro Championship '08, and this Panini sticker from 1998 explains why he's been wearing a Rodney Trotter haircut these past ten years.

Panini-Zufallsbekanntschaft #4

Antonio Benarrivo (Italy - USA'94)

Pity poor Antonio Benarrivo. The poor bastard didn't stand a chance.

Catapulted into Italy's first eleven at the '94 World Cup in the States after Italy lost their opening game to the Republic of Ireland, he went on to play every game right up to, and including, the final.

And yet it was to all to come to nothing: losing on penalties to a lack lustre Brazilian team in what was the worst World Cup final since this one, and to top it all he was 2/2 in the runners-up stakes by coming in second to this guy in the David Duchovny lookalike competition to .

For Benarrivo, 1994 was probably the worst year of his life. To this day, he is seen wandering the streets of Parma. A forlorn figure, he is heard mumbling to himself over and over again, 'It was the haircuts that killed us. It was the haircuts that were our downfall. If only Roberto had not gone for the rat pony tail. If only I'd decided against the wet perm look . . . . '94 would have been our year. It would have been my year.'

Panini-Zufallsbekanntschaft #3

Oscar (Brazil - Mexico'86)

Such is the luck of the draw with the Panini sticker random generator.

This time round, José Oscar Bernardi ('Oscar') is thrown our way, but unfortunately it's from the '86 World Cup that took place in Mexico. Unfortunate for Oscar because by that point he was at best a squad player for Brazil and didn't actually have any minutes on the field of play in Mexico. (Wouldn't that have sucked if Brazil had won the World Cup . . . to get a winner's medal just for turning up? The glass would have been half empty.)

That is a tad unfair with regards to Oscar because he had previously played over sixty times for the Brazilian national team, and he was part of that brilliant Brazilian team that lit up the '82 World Cup in Spain. The bastard even scored the second goal against Scotland in that 4-1 drubbing.

Of course, everyone remembers Zico's unstoppable free kick, and Eder's deft chip which is a shame for Oscar but a boon for the unnamed Scottish defender who decided to leave the near post, thus allowing Oscar the easiest of headed goals.

During my exhaustive research for this post, I discovered that someone by the name of Zidane scored against Northern Ireland in the '86 World Cup (they were in the same group as Brazil), and it's claimed on wiki that he's related to Zinedine Zidane.

"Citation" is needed to verify whether or not that is in fact true, so in that wikian spirit I'm claiming that Oscar was named after Oscar Niemeyer. The "citation's" in the post.

Panini-Zufallsbekanntschaft #1

Paul Breitner (West Germany - Spain'82)

Come on, if that isn't a good sign for this series I don't know what is! First random pic to be thrown up by the 11 Freunde page is Paul Breitner of all people. It would only have been more perfect if the random panini sticker generator had delivered Breitner circa 1974 . . . at the height of his revolutionary maoist glory.

I've already been here before with Breitner on the blog, so it's probably best if you just click on the link rather than me having to repeat myself.

I will, however, reiterate again that it turns out that the beard in the pic was a bit of a fraud because prior to the '82 World Cup in Spain he took the cash and shaved it off. Shame that, 'cos the sticker pic gives off a dishevelled Paul-Michael Glaser vibe. If only Bernd Schuster hadn't threw his toys out of the pram after the Euro Championship in 1980, he could have been the Hutch to Breitner's Starsky. Apart from anything else, that would have ensured no German pop career for David Hasselhoff.

Now that I think about it, despite Breitner scoring West Germany's consolation goal in the '82 Final, I always associate him more with the 1974 Final. I think West Germany in '82 and I think Briegel, Schumacher, Littbarski and Rummenigge. Breitner - like his youthful maoism - already came off as a seventies anachronism.

A panini with a baloney filling to go

Brilliant. I need never suffer from bloggers block ever again. Just discovered the perfect space filler courtesy of Socialist Unity blog's posting of Mark Perryman's Euro 2008 article, 'Our Single European Currency'.

I need not concern you with the article itself right now - that isn't a criticism, per se - but I would like to mention that Mark's piece originally appeared in the German footie magazine, 11 Freunde.

Clicked on the link to the German language football magazine, and sad to say that my two years of day dreaming and messing about in German lessons in my second and third year of Secondary School has ill-equipped me to understand 99.9% of what looks like a fascinating website, but my eye did catch the 'Panini-Zufallsbekanntschaft' (roughly translated as 'Panini-chance acquaintanceship') on the bottom right hand side of the page. If and when you refresh the page, you get a new panini sticker from past World Cups staring back at you.

It totally appeals to my inner football-geekery and half-baked nostalgia, and comes at the right time when I'm getting overly excited at the prospect of the start of the European Championships.

Daft thing is that normally I can take or leave the Euro Championships. I usually just keep an eye out for the final itself at the end of the tournament and, before that concluding match, idly speculate on how England will majestically fuck it up this time on the international stage, but I guess that the end of the season high drama of that penalty miss and Celtic retaining its title against the odds has resulted in me wanting more and more football.

So, in keeping with this cheap all you can eat buffet of close season football, I've decided that, whilst the tournament is going on, the blog will be given over to alternating posts between the usual meanderings about the SPGB, cheap pop music and sightings of Glenn Matlock in the East Village, with posts that are about nothing more than subject of the particular panini sticker that is randomly thrown up by refreshing the page on the 11 Freunde website. I'm sure that the blog in the coming weeks will be by equal turn embarrassing, boring and overly verbose. Just another Saturday afternoon on the blog, then.

Two thousand posts here I come.