Fear Brexit could mean a return to soccer bullying with political slant

The decision by Britain to leave Europe has polarised the country in a number of nasty and dangerous ways.

Could one of the effects be a return to the soccer hooliganism, with an added political slant?

When England played the Netherlands in Amsterdam last week, Dutch police arrested 100 English fans for aggressive or violent behaviour.

Many were drunk and beer bottles were hurled at the police, behaviour a spokesman described as “appalling” and “part of a worrying trend”.

Twelve months earlier there was trouble in Dortmund when England played Germany.

Some English fans were arrested for giving the Nazi salute and hooligans chanted about “winning one World Cup and two world wars”.

ALCOHOL
Supporters of the England team are known for their xenophobic attitudes and lack of respect for foreign customs and culture.

Festooned with union jacks, they usually “occupy” a bar or square in a central city area, drinking heavily and goading the locals with jingoistic songs and chants.

It is difficult not to believe that the prospect of quitting Europe has added flames to their fire as they envisage some “Rule Britannia” of the future, obviously one without foreigners or immigrants.

All of this makes one wonder what was in their minds when the England team ran out to play Holland with seven of the 11 either black or mixed race.

And how did they feel when the goal, which won the game 1-0, was scored by one of the seven, Jesse Lingard?

Or do they actually think at all?

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Wandering around my neighbourhood recently, I spotted hundreds of shiny, new, orange bicycles grouped in various locations, freestanding and not visibly locked.

Why, I wondered, doesn’t somebody steal them?

The answer, as I should have known, lay in technology.

The bikes are owned by a company named Mobike. They are lightweight cycles with airless, non-puncture tyres, a GPS tracker and built-in locks.

They are controlled by a cashless smartphone app, which can be used to find and unlock a bike.

GPS TRACKER
The bikes are intended for anybody’s hire within a designated area, mostly the city centre.

The charge is 50 pence (Sh71) per 30 minutes after a deposit.

When a rider finishes his journey, he just parks the bike and click-locks it shut with a button on the bike.

Steve Pyer, general manager of Mobike, said the bicycles are designed for short journeys and GPS trackers locate any which are left outside the designated area.

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New figures from the Ministry of Justice indicate that prisoners are having more days added to their sentences as a form of punishment than ever before.

In 2016, the total for all prisons was 16,756 days, the equivalent of 46 years and the highest number on record.

More than half of the extra days were punishment for unauthorised transactions, including possession of drugs and mobile phones.

There have been many reports recently of drones being used to fly banned items to the windows of Britain’s prisons where they are retrieved by inmates.

PRISON REFORMERS
Another reason for the increase was disobedience and disrespect, which prison reformers claim is the result of overcrowding.

Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said, “additional imprisonment piles pressure on the prison system and worsens overcrowding, which in turn creates conditions for drug abuse, violence and other types of misbehaviour”.

Extended sentences are not the commonest form of punishment.

That is forfeiture of privileges, such as the loss of personal television, cancellation of extra visits and confinement in the cell.
* * *
Inadvertently last week, I moved Kenya a century backwards.

Referring to a UN report on the comparative happiness of countries round the world, I correctly stated that in 2018, Kenya was rated at number 124 out of 156 countries and that in 2017 it was at 112.

The gremlins then took over and placed the country at 125 in 1915 (instead of 2015) and 122 for 1916 (instead of 2016).

Thank you, Paul Koigi, who spotted the unintended error, for which I offer my apologies.

* * *
A cyclist appeared at the US-Mexican border with two bags.

Asked by Customs officers what they contained, he said sand. Highly suspicious, the officers asked him to empty the bags. They contained nothing but sand.

A week later, the man on the bike appeared again. Again he claimed he was transporting sand, and again he was right.

This went on every workday for six months and then one Monday morning the cyclist did not turn up, nor the next day, nor ever after.

But one night, an off-duty Customs officer spotted the bike man in a bar in the border city and accosted him.

“Come on, we know you were smuggling something, tell us what was it?”

Replied the cyclist, “Bicycles.”

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