Museum for Human Rights

If you drive through downtown Winnipeg, you may be excused for thinking it is the berg that development left behind. The same empty buildings, the same tatty graffiti-tagged derelict dumps waiting for some deus ex machina to drop in and solve the core’s woes.

But the funny thing is, Winnipeg led the nation in growth for building permits over the last two years. Now, that is growth rather than value, but it is an odd stat.

It also points to a continuing problem. There isn’t a lack of money in the city, or a lack of confidence in building, but there is a distinct lack of either will or ability to direct that money and willingness to build toward the downtown.

Each morning, I drive by a couple of large and interesting buildings being built at the Smart Park at the University of Manitoba. I know the concept is to have these research facilities close to the teaching and science centre, but imagine if Winnipeg had someone figured a way to get all that development downtown. What an interesting place the downtown could have been. And with all those boffins and egg heads downtown, the sort of housing and support businesses would also have been pretty cool.

But alas no such luck.

It is also pretty clear that the key to more downtown development is residential. So where are the incentives to put reasonably affordable apartments downtown? There are developers and money enough for this, but most incentives haven’t worked. So time to put up the incentives.

The area near my house has condos and seniors’ places going up all over the place. Why isn’t the city leveraging its money to get some of that development into the Exchange and downtown? And not just more expensive condos on the river drive.

A large chunk of the building in Winnipeg is government funded. The University of Winnipeg buildings, the airport, the museum for human rights, the WHRA building. But this isn’t sustainable. The idea is an expensive one —  that if you build these types of buildings the support infrastructure will move in. It has yet to be proven. Winnipeg has a long history of urban renewal projects that have failed. Time to be radical.

The time is here for the city to make some assertive and aggressive efforts to redirect development away from the ‘burbs and back to the downtown. Create communities and development zones that can take the drive, capital and creativity of those who are willing to build in the donut around the core and direct it downtown. Build it and they will come.

It is time for a plan, and a bold vision. For once.

One of the things about being a new father is the understanding you gain of how responsible you are for the behavior of your child. If your kid repeats the same bad behavior or continually gets into the same predicaments, don’t get mad at the kid, get mad at yourself for putting them into the same position. Your kid doesn’t know better.

This is a long way to get to the point of this blog, namely that Harry Redknapp should wear today’s cock up in Birmingham not Jermaine Jenas.

Everyone knows Jermaine Jenas is a useless tit. He can only pass sideways or backwards. He runs around like a chicken with a spastic colon, gets the ball passes it backwards and then runs at the opposition goal. To what end know one knows. He doesn’t tackle, score often or set up goals.

Jenas completely changes the dynamic of the team. No one wants to pass to him as they know the ball is going to go backwards. The defence doesn’t trust him to protect them and therefore sit further back, with the full backs uncovered. The other central midfielder has to pick up more slack and the attackers have to come back to collect the ball. I didn’t see the game against Liverpool, but all the comments I read said Jenas was awful and largely responsible for the loss. Last weekend, he was awful and responsible for Leeds’ first goal. Today he comes on with a minute left in regular time, he gives the ball away, leaving Corluka up the field, tracks back where he gets the opportunity to close down the winger who crossed to the eventual scorer but stands around and misses it while a knackered Curluka looks like a goat for missing the scorer. Nice work for three minutes.

But here is the point. We know Jenas is crap. The rest of the team knows it and the fans in the ground know it. But he is going to go out and play when he is asked. It is not his fault.

The fault lies with Redknapp. I don’t want to knock a guy who has kept Tottenham in the top four for the last three months. He knows what he is doing. In reality the team has only lost once in 12 games and is having its best season since the 1960s.  So why does he have such a blind spot when it comes to Jenas? Why keep playing the guy who is apparently getting worse and is directly responsible for goals against. Why can’t the manager see this? If it is a problem with squad depth, why did he bring him on as a sub? Why did we ship O’Hara to Portsmouth? The team was playing well until then. They worked hard to work an opening against a tough team. It was a huge let down after a strong effort. Redknapp should ship Jenas if only to stop the temptation of playing him again.  

And with all the rivals for fourth winning today, it puts huge pressure on the team and with Man city playing last place Portsmouth tomorrow, it is likely that three teams will be within a win of Tottenham by tea time.

Winnipeg in Winter

I think I am finally a Canadian. I now am getting smug about how freakin’ cold it gets here. It is a Canadian disease. It may have a contagious element or maybe repeated brain freezings bring it on. Whatever it is, it is the tendency to take pride in how ridiculously cold it gets is a particularly Canadian affliction. There is a strange pride in living in a place that can get to minus 40 degrees C. I wonder if people who live in the north of Sweden or Norway are like this and the southerners in Oslo and Stockholm have to endure northerners rabbit on about just how cold it can get up in the Arctic and how tough they are as a result and it’s a dry cold. I am sure they get asked the same question I have always asked…why on Earth would you choose to live in such a place?

So now having drunk the Canadian cool aid, I have watched with some level of glee at the fate of Britain and its complete collapse under the weight of a couple of inches of snow. It was quite amusing to see the BBC reporters talking about the country coming to a halt and the fears for the elderly as the temperature “plunged” to minus seven Celsius.

Of course, here is sunny Winnipeg it was minus 20 something and a couple of inches of snow is a light dusting. It was somewhat funny to think of those English chavs stuck in their homes with nought but pot noodles and some old tins of Hemlin. Puddles are freezing. Oh the humanity.

Now, I read that England is struggling with a rash of potholes. Welcome to my world.

Some of the pictures have been quite beautiful I must say. I think I can count on one chillblained hand the number of times it snowed in Ramsgate as a kid. Slush and it was gone the next day. Now, I am like an Innu I can tell about 20 different types of snow.

My wife asked how I dealt with my first winter here in Canada. I must say it seemed OK at the time. I had gone out and bought an absolutely ridiculous parker with a tube hood that would be good for the winter on Baffin Island. I soon ditched it in favour of the much more fashionable ski jacket. Much colder, but much easier to get in and out of a bus. I did manage to freeze my ears solid one afternoon walking to my friend’s house. Turning your ears into rubber isn’t nearly as painful as thawing them out. I did walk home one evening and was so cold I wanted to lay down and die. I elected instead to buy a car. It isn’t really as bad as it sounds – minus forty. It is just crisp and bracing and you dress for it. And you just get on with it and appreciate the heat when it arrives. It is also incredibly sunny here in the winter and the sky usually clear and blue, which is very different from the slate grey of an English winter.

There is a city here now and all the amenities of a city and lots to do in the winter. The one questions I have is those Scots who turned up here 200 years ago and said “aye, minus 40 and nowhere to live, let’s stay here!” Grand.

Roman Pavlyuchenko on his way out the door

I will not let myself slip into pessimism here but Wednesday’s game against Man City even at this stage of the season will be the defining point of the season.

After a very strong start that saw Spurs in the top four, the last month has been patchy to say the least. In the last few games, Tottenham have outplayed both Aston Villa and Everton and come away with ties. On Saturday, the team folded to the footballing powerhouse that is Wolves, a team destined for relegation again.

If Spurs had not conspired to give up two late goals and miss a penalty in extra time against Everton and then lose to those suburban brummies, they would be a point behind Man United and in third. As it is, Spurs are now in fifth and only just point aahead of Man City and Liverpool and behind Villa.

The team has to develop the killer instinct of those top teams. Tottenham all too often can’t break difficult teams down. We like our free-flowing, sexy football, but get a team that wants to kick us around and keep eleven men behind the ball, then we fold and end up giving up a lame set piece and losing. It is the sort of thing Chelsea and Man U don’t do. They can get dirty and get stuck in. They can be patient and work the problem.

I think the team misses Modric more than they know. The little Croat knows how to change games and he can produce that minute of magic. The problem is the rest of the team has to learn how to hang onto the ball, be patient and wait for that moment.

January will, of course, bring the mid-season trading season and there may be a couple of people shown the door, but Redknapp really must keep the core of the team together and get rid of a few of the distractors and get one or two really solid additions.

Obviously, Bentley will be gone, he really is a tit and a self obsessed pretty boy who is wasting his talents because he is lazy; Bale was just brutal against Everton – he looked like I would have looked out there — he can’t defend and isn’t fast enough to be proper left winger. Pavlyuchenko just isn’t fitting in and, finally, Redknapp just doesn’t like Hutton.

So what do Spurs need? Other than a kick up the arse? A left sided winger, who isn’t afraid to get stuck in and a solid experienced full back. Of course Spurs will pick up another striker and a centre back.

Wednesday won’t break the season, but it will show whether the team have to cojones to beat the nearest rivals, to pick themselves up after the Wolves fiasco and prove they can deal with the pressure that is now on. The season doesn’t get easier from now on and people are getting the measure of Spurs. Don’t expect too many more 9-1 thrashings.

Crouch gets it started

Well that was fun wasn’t it?

Spurs pump nine goals past Wigan’s goalie and the team is back in the top four.

It was probably the one of the best performances I have ever seen by the team. How many would we have scored if Modric had been playing?

And a special plug to Harry Redknapp, who after the game, rather than gloating or bragging was very classy in expressing sincerely his concern for how Wigan’s coach was feeling.

Admitedly, Wigan were pretty awful and hardly played after they went 3-1 down. But take nothing away from Spurs, they were spectacular. The defence and Gomes barely had anything to do, but all the midfield were magnificent and Defoe was fantastic in bagging five.

This was the highest scoring Premier League win in 12 years, the first time a player had scored five since Shearer scored did it in 1999 and the second fastest hat trick in the league’s history.

I remember watching the last time Tottenham scored nine…against Bristol Rovers when Spurs were down in the Second Division for year long time out. I think Martin Chivers bagged a hat trick that day back in 1977. That was a happy day too.

If only Spurs could play like that every week. Today’s game certainly vindicated the first choice eleven as an assertive and ambitious team. Lennon, Palacios, and Huddlestone were always pushing forward, looking for options and fighting for every ball. Today’s performance by Lennon was one of the best performances of the year by anyone in any position and surely he must be a first choice for England now. Krancjar, who has been up and down for me, today showed that he can be a great fill in for Modric.

The next three games are against Aston Villa, Everton and Wolves. These games could cement the team in the top four, especially as Liverpool and Man City are dropping off and Arsenal have to cope without Van Persie. While it did seem like wracking up the score at the end of the game, it does mean Tottenham cut into Arsenal’s superior goal difference and put a few goals between Spurs and fifth place Villa.

Perhaps were could repeat this performance in a couple of weeks when we play Man U in the Carling Cup and we should be gunning for some revenge. As one of my kid’s TV show characters says, that would make my heart super happy!

I usually have this sort of post up by November 11, but was away this year…so belatedly here is something to reflect upon.

The Soldier by Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)

 I should die, think only this of me:

That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust conceal’d;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

A body of England’s, breathing English air.

Wash’d by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

I was reading a favourite blog the other day that is, quite frankly, much better than mine on the subject of what Americans think of the English. The writer is a Brit who lives in New York and has experienced something I have always found odd too; the propensity for North Americans to assume that being from the UK somehow makes me posh and a bit smarter.

I used to get annoyed at the whole “You have a cute accent” thing . I suspect it was a fear that it was just the first part of a longer comment that concluded “Just as well because you are an ugly git.” But, I eventually learned to accept it and use it for nefarious dating purposes, which probably explains why it has stuck around like a mutated wart. Anything that makes you stand out from the crowd i guess, is a good thing too.

The English have a myriad accents — from Geordie, to Brummie to Scouse to Esturine. My accent has flattened out a little from being over here but most Brits would place me somewhere in the south – Surrey, Sussex, Kent, Hampshire maybe. I’ve been told it changes depending on my mood. Somewhat posh when calm a bit more cockney when angry. Imagine Roger Moore morphing into Jason Statham.  

But over here, even if I came from Sunderland, everyone would think my accent was very posh and hoity toity. I guess it is all about ear….it took me some time to discern that the Ontario accent is slightly different than that of the west. They really do say “oot and aboot” down there.

As opposed to us Brits who all say “ieght and abieght.”

I get “what part of Australia are you from?” a lot. Now, maybe you have a hard time between Australia and New Zealand. But c’mon, a British and Australian accent is as different  an accent as Boston is from Arkansas. I usually tell people I am from Zimbabwe just to screw them up.

Some Brits over here do “posh-up” their accents. You talk to some ex-pat and they sound like they just stepped out of their Lined Rovah after arhftanun tea at Asscut with aych are aych. The look on their falling faces as you ask where in Yorkshire are they from is priceless. “Aye up yar right, how thee guess?”

One of things I hated about England is that whole accent-defining-who-and-what-you-are thing. You have to be English to understand it. But open your mouth and your education, class and status is instantly communicated. And it is rubbish. That’s the great thing about Canada — aside from Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and the North End of Winnipeg, there are no accents and they certainly have no bearing on you education level or status in life. But when people try to lord it up over the rest of us with some fake Oxbridge banter, well then you have to prick that balloon don’t you?

People accept that if you have an English accent you must inherently be smarter. Ability to list at least one of the colleges at Oxford or Cambridge is tantamount to being accepted as having gone there. People are a little puzzled that there are actually other universities in England. I dont know where this comes from but it is endemic.

And people don’t believe you when you tell them people from England are just as stupid as everyone else. Well, people who have never met English package tourists anyway.

The flip side of the positive assumptions of being identified as being English is that you are emotionally remote, cold, crap in bed with really bad teeth. I fight the good fight by pointing to the works of Henry Fielding and Byron et al to dispel the bad in bed thing. The bad teeth thing is slightly harder. But the English are very emotional. You should see how I got when Stoke scored that crap goal the other day. But the English are, I admit, not as sentimental as North Americans. I’ve lived here for ages and I still can’t figure out why people cry on television when they win 200 bucks on Wheel of Fortune.

Now to work on my Terry Thomas impression. “Absolute Shah!”

The premier league has hit the one quarter mark and Tottenham are about to face the dreaded rivals from up the road, so it seems as good a time as any to look at where Spurs are and where they are likely to go.

What a difference a year makes. At this time last year, Spurs were bottom of the table, had just fired the coach and director of football (where are those twits today??) had two points in total and were flopping around like an epileptic seal on an ice floe. Today, Spurs sit fourth and had it not been for a really crap game on Saturday could have spent a couple of hours in first place.

So what is the difference? One word  – organization. The team appears to know what it is doing now. People do their jobs and there is a shape and form to the team. It doesn’t seem like rocket science to me. But perhaps it is.

Last year, no one knew the formation or what they were supposed to be doing, the team folded during adversity, got kicked off the park by whatever Lancastrian team was on the pitch were simply out played or just got stuck with floaters like Bentley and Bale. This year, Palacios and Huddlestone have given the midfield some bite; there might be kicking but at least they give as good as they get. Another key change is non-striker scoring, last season, Tottenham got a lot of goals but few from midfield. That is the difference between the big boys and the others. Those top four teams get lots of goals from midfield. Spurs are even getting them from the defence.

Other positive things include Gomes getting his groove back and not being an accident prone pratt like last year. Bassong proving to be a solid stand in for King or Woodgate and boy do you need that with the balsa-twins, and Assou-Ekotto turning from Tottenham’s worst player of recent memory into a solid if not spectacular regular. He even scored this year, although he stepped back into it on Saturday.

Worrying is the drop-off in form since Modric got injured. A couple of those games were tough ones, but Modric really has become an important part of the team system. Last week against Stoke, Tottenham lacked that creative spark to open up The Potters. It is the sort of thing a Gerrard or Fabregas gives you. Modric is the type of player who can do something different and unexpected that can turn plodders like Stoke inside out. But on Saturday Spurs ended up trying to out plod Stoke and got burned. It highlights what is infuriating about Jenas and Krancjar. They are fine players who can score and kick things around but they lack that little bit of genius that takes the team up a notch. Spurs have a superstar winger in Lennon and great strikers in Crouch, Keane and Defoe but they don’t have a solid enough creative back up to Modric.

Tottenham were clearly outplayed by Man U and Chelsea (although a penalty call the other way may have changed things), so there is still a long way to go. But against other teams, Spurs are proving to be solid contender for top four. Spurs are in the last eight of the Carling Cup too after last night’s pedestrian beating of Everton. The match against the Gooners, however will be a sterner test and will a better indication of how the team is progressing. COYS.

Last post, I mused upon the origin of the The Blue Bombers name. That leads me to the origin of Spurs’ moniker.

Tottenham Hotspur’s name is a convoluted one. During the 15^th century, the Duke of Northumberland owned considerable land in the Tottenham area of north London. The Duke’s son was named Sir Henry Percy, nicknamed Harry Hotspur after his courageous cavalry charges. He is famous for leading one of the rebellions that make up the Wars of the Roses. He appears as a major character in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, where he and young Prince Hal do man-to-man combat. Prince Hal kills Hotspur, saves the kingdom and in doing so becomes a man and is ready to become the future Henry V. In reality, Prince Hal would have been about four when Percy  was leading his rebellion against Henry IV. He didn’t die at the hands of a Stewie-like Prince Hal, but was killed at the battle of Shrewsbury, where after leading a typical charge he lifted his visor to catch his breath and got an arrow down the throat. Owch.

The Tottenham Cricket Club met and played at Northumberland Park (named after the Duke) and began calling themselves the Hotspur Club. Cricket Club became Football Club and Tottenham Hostspur was born (and not Hotspurs you North American loogins).

Harry Hotspur’s favourite pastime was cockfighting (stop sniggering back row…(didn’t we just use that joke?)) and the team adopted the logo of a spur-wearing cockerel. “Awriight, it’s a chicken but one that could do you up a treat mate, so watchit!”

I also happened to listen to a podcast from the UK last week that was talking about clichés and idioms and the English phrase “as sick as a parrot” came up. Apparently, its birth as a phrase lay with events surrounding Tottenham Hostspur’s past.

In 1908, Tottenham went on a playing tour of Argentina. On the boat ride home, a fancy dress party was organized by the passengers and crew and a couple of Spurs players showed up as Robinson Crusoe and Friday. The captain, to make the outfits more complete, gave Crusoe the ship’s parrot as a prop for his shoulder. As you do.

The outfits were a great success and the parrot became the player’s companion for the rest of the trip. Upon reaching England, the Captain gave the parrot to the team and it lived at White Hart Lane for the next eleven years.

Enter the nomads Arsenal into the story. The Gooners began life in south London as the Royal Arsenal, made up of guys who worked at the army’s Royal Arsenal. Useless as they are, they failed to attract much attention in south London. They changed their name to Woolwich Arsenal to no avail and then the team relocated into Tottenham’s backyard in 1913after being bought by some shifty bastard who changed the name to plain ole Arsenal. World War I decimated many teams and organizations, and so the Football League was reformatted in 1919. Arsenal, who finished sixth in the second division in 1918, basically conned the League into letting them into the new First Division and having Tottenham demoted because it would be impossible to have two teams so close to each other drawing on the same fans. Or so the argument went. The League accepted the Arsenal argument and probably some brown paper envelopes and Tottenham were relegated and the gooners prompted. Thus was born the bitter hatred that continues to this day.

But more interestingly, while all this was going on, Tottenham’s parrot was getting noticeably sicker and died on the very day the Football League announced that Tottenham were going down. The parrot didn’t give a squark about The Great War, but relegation? Thump…he’s dead, he has ceased to be, shuffled off this mortal coil and rung down the choir invisibule…(OK stop). From this episode was born the phrase “As Sick as a Parrot,” meaning worrying about impending doom.  

Strange but true.