Peter Herbert is at it again! Came a sorrowful moan from the Internet. Alas, it was an interview on talkSPORT and not available in full in a newspaper anywhere I could find. Undaunted I decided to transcribe his immissions. I’m glad I did, I wish I hadn’t.
Peter is both intense and intensely dull. I don’t say this lightly. Anyone who can speak about an incident in such a determined manner, at such length, whilst steadfastly ignoring the actual context of that situation, is one seriously dry piece of toast.
Despite the fact that Roy’s anecdote was a completely harmless, analogous tale, Peter is like a semi skilled stage magician, seeking to misdirect the audience. What Roy actually said is ring-fenced with the assertion that it caused offence. So no closer examination is either needed or permitted.
The word “monkey” was used that is all we need to know.
The stage set with this premise, we get what can only be described as an attritional 9 minutes that outline a conspiracy theory where the FA and their lap at Kick It Out colluded to sweep racism beneath the carpet. That and, ‘there’s a lot of it about.’
There’s a lecture in the damage to the wider community offensive can cause, heck, Peter tells even manages to reference domestic violence and child abuse, presumably, just in case we were flagging towards the end.
My overwhelming observation is that Peter is a bit lost. He’s a man that life seems to have passed by. He does care, but he cares to an extent that he’s somehow lost reason.
So I tried to think what I would get, if I reversed him. What would I get if I made him white, female and made got him to cling on irrationally Roy’s story. I need this alter-Peter to be like him, but the total opposite, in order to illustrate just how nuts he actually is.
I came up with a menopausal woman in her early 70’s with a cat on her lap who’s a bit deaf and a bit lonely. No kids and she fell out with an already then sparse collection of relatives decades ago, at her husband’s funeral. She never really spoke to the neighbours and these days most of them don’t look old enough to own a house.
Her primary reading matter; the free newspapers and personally addressed junk mail that gently streams through her letterbox. She’s a devout animal lover. Something she demonstrates through cat ownership and a subscription to the RSPB; who’s most recent literature she keeps on the occasional table next to her chair in the front room where she watches television.
On her local news, they say the England manager has told a joke about chimps being sent into outer space. She becomes distressed and writes a letter to BBC Look East pointing out in detail how experimenting on animals is wrong. She cries a genuine tear thinking about the item on the telly and leaves the envelope containing her letter, on the hall table to be posted. She readdresses the barbarity on the news by giving the cat a small treat from beneath the sink cupboard.
Alter-Peter is nuts, just like the real one.
All races need good role models. White people don’t need people like Jack Wilshere or John Terry. Black people don’t need people like Ainsley Harriott or Peter Herbert.
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Transcription of Peter Herbert interviewed on talkSPORT:
Of course there was a problem, whether it was deliberate or not. If it was done with no intention, then it is lower down the scale.
If you look at the way racism is dealt with in football, it really is about sweeping it under the carpet. There’s a history of using monkey chants in football. Which is well known. And your looking at two players to encourage them, certainly one to say to to others ‘play like him.’ What on earth are you telling a joke supposedly, about that?
I think they’ve swiftly swept it under the carpet. You know as well as I do that in employment you conduct a thorough and proper investigation between this morning (17.10.13) and 3 o’clock or 4 o’clock (the same day) when Greg Dyke went on record as saying it was concluded, that does not sound like any investigation to me, that sounds as if people have decided ‘it’s a World Cup qualifier, there’s lots of money at stake, we don’t want a lot of fuss, like this swirling around the England team, and let’s get rid of this and leave it within football.
Now to my mind, it is not just about causing offence to people that were there. It’s in the public domain. Myself, many other people, who play sport, find that offensive. And … this is not the first time… and therefore an apology is only worth something if it goes with some insight, or training, into what you did.
There is no indication, in fact the reaction by Hodgson and by the FA in particular, suggests there is no training issue, or learning issue or education issue, to deal with. Of course there is.
It’s conjecture on people saying that this is something that disaffected England players. Come on! You investigate, you don’t prejudge, you have an independent, if you like impartial investigation. As Lord Imsley said when he heard these comments, “This is wholly inappropriate.”
So you presuppose people outside of football are not offended by this, they are.
What I’d like to see is, that there is what I would call thorough investigation, not just a glib statement by the FA, “we talked to a couple of people and it’s all okay” …a proper investigation, conducted if necessary with some oversight by people outside of football, and actually some learning done. Nobody comes to a talk in a dressing room like that, telling a joke like that, in this day and age, unless they need some eduction or training around the issues of diversity, and respect.
I’m not going to even give any credence to any jokes that have racist overtones. You know as well as I do that in the workplace that is often how the ignorant or the stupid or the insensitive, cause offence.
Now, I do not know Hodgson, but what I do know is, normally at that level, in an England dressing room, in football or outside, you do not need to cause offence to cause it. It was caused and clearly somebody was upset, and if you ask many people in our community, they will know that if they heard that at school, with their children or anything else, irrespective of whether it was a teacher or somebody else that it is the impact upon people listening in wider community that’s important.
Football has a history of racism, it has a history of ignorance, and it has a history of insensitivity. Of course there are more serious aspects of discrimination. But it is a test, and as a test, it looks as if football has failed yet again on the test of understanding.
I have strong suspicions that what is uppermost in the mind of the Football Association is that this is manged away quickly and effectively, and they get on with World Cup 2014 in Brazil and this will not be clouded with issues of racism. So, it is not the decision the response you would find so quickly, so decisively within one day. That is highly unusual.
I think it would have been, certainly something you needed some outside oversight of what was happening. Kick It Out, although they’ve given their comments, they are funded by the FA, funded by football people in football and therefore even for them they have a delicate position, to manoeuvre around in raising these issues.
We do not. And therefore when the wider group of community activists in Race For Sport that includes many people in the black African and Asian communities complain, we will be putting in a formal complaint and we would like to see – we can deal with confidentiality – a transcript of what investigation actually took place. Who did they speak to?
You know, because you have to understand how justice works and people in football don’t seem to. Justoce and fairness means causing offence, not just to the victim, but to other people in a community. Whether a woman in domestic violence is a bused, or a child is, it doesn’t matter.
It is what is the propensity of the person to do that again, and what is the effect on the wider community? We’re talking about fairness, equality and equal treatment for all in football. That shouldn’t be rocket science. That should be actually, fairly straightforward.
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