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Attila the Stockbroker Diary
Rejuvenated by a month of touring and seeing a local council give a bloody nose to developers with grotesque plans comes the disappointment of the Seagulls manager taking the yankee dollar
Graham Potter looks for patures new

TODAY’S column comes live from Leeds, where I’ve just done a poetry set on the CWU posties’ picket line and enjoyed delicious drizzle cake for breakfast in the equally drizzling rain.

Solidarity with every striking worker – let’s have co-ordinated action to kick out this brutal, incompetent and unwanted government, with the unelected (bar 140,000 Tory dinosaurs) Truss at the helm now the most right wing in modern British history.

Had a cracking “piss up in a brewery” gig (specifically the Horsforth Brewery) last night with my band; tonight we’re in Middlesbrough and tomorrow another brewery piss up at the Angel Brewery in Nottingham. Which proves, conclusively, that unlike this chaotic, heartless government, I can indeed organise the aforementioned.

These gigs are the final three in an amazing period of about 30 in 40 days which started at Rebellion punk festival in early August, continued at the Edinburgh Fringe and then on to a week-long stint in Germany and Austria.

I was so thirsty for gigs after the barren years of Covid that I gave my Brighton season ticket to my stepson Tom and went for it. Festivals every weekend for a month and loads of others in between.

And the highlight of them all was two days at the UZ Pressefest in East Berlin, a brilliant event  organised by our sister paper Unsere Zeit (Our Time) and attended by some 10,000 people.

It was lovely to be back in Rosa Luxemburg Platz, my old GDR stomping ground of nearly 40 years ago, performing in English and German, playing fiddle with Calum Baird and meeting a Krautrock hero, 81-year-old Dieter Klemm from early ’70s proto-punk cabaret agitprop monsters Floh de Cologne.

And in the midst of all this I spent my most recent evening off accompanying my Labour councillor wife to an Adur Council planning meeting where a grotesque application for a new harbour residential development containing precisely NO affordable housing (and, to add insult to injury, a bleeding penthouse!) was summarily thrown out to the cheers of local residents. Hooray for local activism.

Now onto the latest episode in the rollercoaster ride which is being a Brighton supporter. So Potter is going to Chelsea: I must say I’m surprised.

He is a very clever man with a huge understanding of sports psychology and exchanging the calm onward trajectory of the Albion for the ghastly bearpit of Chelsea is an unlikely choice for me, even given the extra rewards.

The “top six” will be a different and perhaps difficult challenge for him. He is a genius at masterminding football subversion: trying to impose his vision on one of the perennial entitled fat playground bullies is very different to plotting a route for the clever new kid outsider.

If he goes, I wish him well. The greatest manager in our history by far. We are the best run club in Europe, with a five year plan and an incredible scouting system, and I think we can survive our best players and manager being cherrypicked with aplomb.

Cheerio Potter, go and join Cucurella, White and Bissouma on the gravy train. Our next manager will be someone else you haven’t heard of, and he’ll be brilliant. I reckon he is currently managing Bodo/Glimt.

It is, of course, completely ridiculous that this tedious “big club/small club” scenario exists, especially since Brighton is a far more interesting place than Chelsea, but there you go.

Twenty five years ago bottom of the League with no ground. Now supremely adaptable and ready for anything. A just reward for all the years we fought for the existence of our club. Onwards. SEAGULLS!

 

For further info please visit http://www.attilathestockbroker.com/merch.php, https://www.facebook.com/attilathestockbroker/ or Twitter: @atilatstokbroka

 

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