It's been an interesting week here at Garibaldi House - a news report on the BBC stating how these flats are no longer fashionable and that's why they're being demolished, instead of the fact that to maintain them is not cost effective. Not sure what that was all about! Then, shock horror we find out that the country is being run by a deviant who puts his penis into the mouth of a dead pig - am I the only person who actually isn't really surprised that we have an alleged pig fucker as Prime Minister!! The Bullingdon Club are made up of a bunch of upper class rich wankers (which also included Osborne and Johnson) who used to allegedly burn £50 notes in front of homeless people as an initiation ceremony, perhaps a smack in the mouth would be the appropriate riposte! After the allegations of drug abuse and pig fucking, all the press want to do is attack Jeremy Corbyn - a normal person!

This week is the Labour Party Conference and the beginning of a new political reality - the media don't seem to have grasped it, the old political process has changed, and we are entering a new era. It will be interesting to see Jeremy Corbyn's conference speech and the fight back against the Tories with his anti-austerity agenda - why should ordinary people suffer while the alleged pig fucker and his mates do exactly what they want. I would rather have a country run by normal people for normal people, than one that is only run for the benefit of a small minority at the top.

Just another quick message to Assam Allam, the Labour Party is not your party, you do not own it! If you don't like what has happened to the Labour Party then fuck off and join the Tories. Stick to trying to change the name of Hull City and leave the Labour Party and trade union movement alone!!
This leads on nicely to the rugby union world cup, which after South Africa lost to Japan seems to have caught the medias imagination - rugby union traditionally the sport of the posh of the south of England, unlike football - I always support Scotland! It was rather amusing to see the royal brothers both sat there at the England vs. Wales game, both English - one supporting England, and the other Wales - just because you've made up your own surname and called yourself Wales doesn't make you Welsh! Anyway, from now on until the end of the tournament I shall be known as Captain New Zealand! However, it was good to see that the Mariners managed an away win at Southport, never the easiest place to go and get three points, but a 4 - nil win and the unbeaten run goes on. It'll be a big game at Blundell Park on Saturday against Forest Green Rovers.

UTM,
Captain New Zealand

Well congratulations to Jeremy Corbyn the new Labour leader, and Tom Watson the deputy leader. It was a landslide victory for Jeremy Corbyn with nearly 60% of the vote, and Watson won relatively easily. However, if you listen to the London based media you would think otherwise, the usual suspects - The Sun; Daily Mail; Daily Express etc have all been an utter disgrace. They talk of a divided party but with nearly 60% of the membership supporting him it is not divided, and those Labour MP's like Simon Danczuk need to remember this - it's MP's that are out of line with party thinking.

Then we had the attacks on Jeremy Corbyn for not singing the national anthem, which is nothing but a pro-royalist dirge anyway - even Scotland and Wales have their own! He stood in respectful silence to honour those ordinary men and women who fought and helped to defeat Nazism, while some of the British ruling class and royalty were cosying up to Hitler and Mussolini, and as we now know even the queen was doing her Nazi salute!! At least Jeremy Corbyn now has time to get used to being in charge and prepare for the future as we enter the conference season, and it should be a united Labour conference behind him. The good thing though is less and less people read the right wing press, especially the younger population who now use social media, and many of these will be able to vote in 2020, and hopefully 'generation rent' will sweep middle england away for good! And Assam Allam can just fuck off!!

The refugee scenes from Hungary look more hopeless by the day, not helped by a right-wing Hungarian Prime Minister, even though ordinary Hungarians are trying to help. It was good to see Corbyn heading to a rally about the refugee crisis immediately after being elected Labour leader, but typical of David Cameron that he flew out a few days later to a refugee camp - going doesn't mean you actually care!

It was good to see the Mariners keeping their unbeaten run going with a late equaliser at Chester, and then another draw (they should have won) in Friday's televised clash with Tranmere. I expect both Tranmere and us, along with Forest Green battling it out for the title come next April. Finally, hats off to the Japanese rugby team for beating South Africa!!!

UTM
Captain Haddock

It could be a very interesting weekend, with the winner of the Labour leadership election being announced tomorrow morning; if it's Jeremy Corbyn that is elected, as I hope, then potentially there will be a leader of the Labour Party with the majority of Labour MP's not supporting him but massive support amongst the membership (a membership that will never forgive or forget those MP's if they bring down his leadership), or a Labour leader with the majority of MP's supporting them, but massive numbers of ordinary supporters opposing them!

It's always a strange time of the year when summer is coming to an end and we start to move into autumn - we are in the last days of the cricket season, and it seems a longtime ago now since England regained the Ashes. We are now well into the football season, and that initial optimism around the Mariners has begun to disappear but the reality is there's plenty of time. However, Grimsby Town need to win tomorrow against Aldershot and improve their level of consistency and build on last week's victory at Boreham Wood.

This time of year is when our television screens are bombarded with mass produced rubbish - from X-factor to Strictly. However, local actor and Town supporter, Thomas Turgoose returns to our screens on Sunday evening on Channel 4 in 'This is England 1990'.

The main issue in recent days and weeks though has been the refugee crisis across Europe, which has been shocking, especially the way David Cameron has done everything he can to avoid doing anything to help until being shamed into it! There are many people doing what they can to help, such as those taking aid to Calais - if you want to help you can pledge money at crowdfunding.justgiving.com/humankinduk.

Finally, today is the anniversary of 9/11, and as someone who lives in aa high-rise, Garibaldi House my sympathises go out to them as usual.

Captain Haddock

The Captain's back in the East Marsh

The Captain is back, after a combination of copious amounts of beer and a few weeks at sea! It looks like most of my neighbours have been moved out of the flats - hope they don't demolish them after I've had a night on the booze. There's been a lot happening since I've been away; the Mariners having signed what appear to look like some decent players and then having a good pre-season, so far; the Labour leadership battle in full swing with Jeremy Corbyn appearing to be in the lead; and England having a good day on the opening day in the third ashes test.

There seems to be a lot of genuine optimism around Grimsby Town FC, after some interesting signings to back up the majority of good players who re-signed after the play-off defeat. It was disappointing to lose Lenell John-Lewis and Carl Magnay - good luck to them both, but they might well live to regret their decisions by the end of the season. Omar Bogle, apart from having the best name in football, looks an excellent prospect, and poaching Andy Monkhouse from Bristol Rovers was a definite up yours to Darrell Clarke! I hope you have all recovered from the pain and heartache of Wembley and are full of optimism for the season ahead. It's the hope that gets me every time - at my age you'd have thought I'd have learnt by now! However, after our all conquering pre-season (nearly), excellent purchases, and operation promotion (£110K), what could go wrong!!!

After Labour's general election defeat, and Ed Miliband's attempt to introduce 'austerity-light' instead of the Tories nasty vengeful dismantling of the public sector and attacks on the poor, we are now faced with a choice - Jeremy Corbyn; Andy Burnham; Yvette Cooper; or Liz Kendall? There now appears to be an anti-austerity surge (at last) within the labour movement towards Jeremy Corbyn, which reflects what is going on in the rest of Europe, with Alexis Tsipras and Syria in Greece, and the rise of Podemos in Spain. I would rather have a Labour party led by Jeremy Corbyn than the one led by Tony Blair who was only interested in his own bank balance! I will therefore be voting for Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader.

As for the cricket, by the time you are reading this, who knows who will be winning!

Captain Haddock

Wembley Blues

I have been lying in a darkened room since late on Sunday night, the effects of the alcohol have now warn off and the painful realisation of a sixth year in non-league football is beginning to sink in! I feel emotionally ripped apart and have no desire to leave Garibaldi House and venture into the real world - what happened on Sunday was worse than any defeat I've known. When we lost our league status that sad day at Burton, it had some inevitability about it but Sunday was despair snatched from the jaws of hope!

However bad Sunday was, there have been some huge positives this season and we have become a proper football team again, playing some excellent football peppered with the odd disaster - who wants to remember losing at home on a Tuesday evening 1 - nil to Southport and he had to score didn't he! There were the two local derbies against Lincoln, losing at Sincil Bank was bad enough but how we capitulated at home to them after going into the lead was a true horror show. It took us a few weeks to recover but it shows the players mental strength because they did recover and if there had been another fives games would surely have gained automatic promotion. Even though Barnet were champions I think the best two teams in the league were Bristol Rovers and the Mariners, in fact the best team to visit Blundell Park all season were Bristol Rovers. Barnet had an excellent goal scorer in John Akinde, but the Mariners did do the double over them, after they got off to a flying start to the season. I think one clear advantage this season was getting knocked out of the FA Trophy relatively early so it didn't become a distraction and lead to a fixture congestion in March/April.

The emotional impact of Sunday's defeat will be difficult to get over for the management, players and supporters. I know we lost to Wrexham on penalties in the FA Trophy final in 2013, but that was nothing compared to Sunday and many of us were more worried about losing fingers and toes to frost bite. I think it would have been easier if we had lost 2 - nil, it was the fact that we took it all the way and were clearly the better side. I have no idea why their goalkeeper was not sent off for handball, even though that apart he actually looked a good player, and their striker Taylor could easily have been sent off. The Grimsby support as usual were immense and even though Bristol Rovers (population of Bristol - 437,500) had twice as many supporters as Town (population of N.E. Lincolnshire - 159,800) we still drowned them out! Darrell Clarke their manager said all the right things about Grimsby Town (even with his shenanigans over the Grimsby Telegraph! I think its a right wing piece of shite), but it will be interesting to see how long he stays at Rovers.

Anyway, there's no point dwelling on it and we must move forward, so let us make 2016 our promotion season and get off to a flying start. This means that we need to get the vast majority of the players signed up as soon as possible (good luck to all those released, especially Ross Hannah). We need to build on both the excellent team spirit and support into an automatic promotion push. If we compare the squad as it is to all the other teams in the Conference then we are clearly better than the rest, obviously the two teams relegated have the advantage of parachute payments (we wasted our's years ago!) but I see Tranmere Rovers being the more dangerous of the two. However, it is likely that it will take time for them to adjust (as it did with Bristol Rovers) and we need to build up a good points gap (like Barnet this season) before they get used to the Conference. We also need to treat the FA Trophy with the contempt that the Conference administrators treat Grimsby. We should play a mixture of reserves and juniors, and play the first team only in league matches and the FA Cup. If they do well in the FA Trophy good luck to them and it will give them more experience.

We need to get the whole community behind the team so youngsters would rather watch the Mariners rather than Man United or Liverpool on television (I can't believe that there will be school children now who have never experienced Town as a league club). Those plastic supporters that you see in the precinct with their premier league team's shirt on need to remember football is more than Man United and Chelsea. It's clubs like Grimsby Town that make football what it is - it's not that long ago that the Mariners beat Liverpool at Anfield, or Manchester City and Chelsea at Blundell Park.

Come on people of North East Lincolnshire get down to Blundell Park, and make it into a fortress - let's make 2016 Grimsby Town's promotion season and build on what we did on Sunday!!

UTM
Captain Haddock.

Welcome to the dis-United Kingdom! What on earth have the British people done? God help us all now we have a majority Conservative government. We now have a recipe for complete chaos with a small majority and moving towards an in-out referendum over our membership of the EU, and a Tory party obsessed with being anti-EU.

The dis-united nature of Britain  can be seen with Scotland turning towards nationalism and away from UK politics altogether, large parts of the north of England turning towards the Labour party (can we join Scotland?), Wales bizarrely swinging towards the Conservatives. The polarisation between rich and poor ended up with the majority of London being Labour. The midlands and the south (middle England) turning more strongly towards the Tories than previously, and 60% of the entire population voting against them.

However, I am proud of the good people of Grimsby voting in a local woman Mel Onn representing the Labour party with an increased majority. It was good to send that vile fascist Victoria Ayling out of town, hopefully to never return! I was disappointed to see our neighbours in Cleethorpes let us down and re-elected Martin Vickers instead of that good man Peter Keith. Apart from the area around Park Street which  is virtually the East Marsh, many people in Cleethorpes see themselves as a cut above the working people of Grimsby. That's the problem with many who become self employed and move to Cleethorpes, see themselves as middle class and then vote Tory and support benefit cuts on the poor. However, they are quite prepared to fiddle the system claiming tax relief on as many things as possible! They should be happy now they've elected the Tories, but when the £12 billion of cuts begin and Grimsby is devastated and the uncertainty over the EU referendum kicks in, they'll have no customers and their businesses will go bankrupt!!

Now the Tories are in power they will be trying to introduce all manner of vindictive shit! They have said they intend to repeal the Human Rights Act - clearly they don't think the poor should have any rights. Say goodbye to the NHS, it was excellent while it lasted - just remember what it used to be like as you pay your GP. When you have no employment rights and your boss can dismiss you because he or she doesn't like the look of your face! When they remove a trade unions ability to take industrial action and undermine any rights that working people have, don't blame me! If you're a fox and you live near Brocklesby, my advice is move into town before the sick perverted Tories repeal the fox hunting ban, hunt you down and tear you apart with their dogs!! Then the £12 billion of welfare cuts are coming and when they do they will destroy people's lives, sending more people to foodbanks to survive, and pushing even more people to suicide.

Anyway, after the general election result I haven't had a particularly good week, the odd result apart (Mel Onn winning Grimsby and Ester McVile losing on the Wirral) but all eyes are now firmly focused on Wembley Stadium and the Mariners play-off final against Bristol Rovers. It's a shame the Conference's two best teams are meeting each other in the final - Barnet were inferior to both teams but with Akinde up front he took them to promotion. It should be a close game and hopefully Grimsby's recent experience of both the play-offs and Wembley will give them the edge. Hopefully, by the end of the weekend Grimsby Town FC will be back proudly in the football league, but if not the same as with the Tories we will fight on forever and never be beaten!!!

UTM and an end to this unwanted Tory government.

Captain Haddock.

Captain Haddock's Election Blog

We are on the verge of the 2015 general election and all of the opinion polls are saying we are in for a close result. However, there is only one real choice, between David Cameron who has nothing in common with the people of Grimsby, and Ed Miliband who represents working people. Grimsby is a poor working class town that has suffered over the last 5 years at the hands of this evil Tory-Lib Dem coalition. At least with the Mariners going to Wembley we have something to look forward to locally.

In Grimsby it looks like the election will be battle between Labour's Mel Onn and the vile Victoria Ayling representing Ukip this time - how can you trust a creature like Ayling when she moves from one right wing party to the next, National Front to Conservative and now Ukip. Those of you thinking about voting Ukip, if they win, Grimsby will be come an irrelevancy at national level.

Our neighbours in Cleethorpes have an interesting battle between Vickers the current Tory MP who in 5 years will be remembered for nothing he did for Cleethorpes, apart from voting for the bedroom tax, and the Labour candidate Peter Keith. A vote for the Lib Dem 's is a waste of time, and a vote for the Greens or TUSC will just split Labour's vote and benefit the Tories. How on earth can you take TUSC's Cleethorpes candidate seriously - Malcolm Morland was the Lib Dem candidate in 2010, what a joke!!

This is the only time every 5 years when we are equal and my vote is no less importance than any wanker who runs a big business and rants on in the Tory press about how good the Tories are - yes for greedy exploitative money grabbing bastards like them! Anyway, if it's good enough for that right wing piece of shite, 'The Sun' to endorse a political party then so can I (and unlike Murdoch I actually live in the UK and have a vote here, whereas, that undemocratic bastard just makes comments). The right wing media don't control social media!!! On the 7th May it's important for the future of North East Lincolnshire, and Britain that people  (and all you good trade unionists flirting with TUSC) vote Labour. People of Grimsby vote for your locally born Labour candidate - Mel Onn, and those of you in Cleethorpes vote for the Labour candidate, Peter Keith. It's going to be a big week for the area with hopefully a new Labour Government, and a Mariners victory over Bristol Rovers in the play off final and a return to the football league were we belong.

UTM and Vote Labour,
Captain Haddock