For the hard of thinking

 Public ownership of, let's say, trains, means:

* Profits - if any - go back into the trains system, to make trains better, cheaper, nicer, more frequent, and thus kill the planet less than cars

* Because we own it, collectively, through our taxes, the money stays within the economy instead of going into the pockets of shareholders. We are all shareholders in a public utility, which trains would be. Lots and lots of money goes out of the UK from our train tickets (and bailouts, and tax breaks) into the pockets of... and the irony is... other sovereign states. We are therefore subsidising our continental friends and have achieved internationalist socialism, for them anyway.

Public ownership of, let's say, energy utilities:

* Profits, which there always are, can go into alternative energies: wind, tidal, solar, and whatnot. This would have two main effects:

1. Freeing us from the clutches of the oil/gas bastards

2. Oh yeah, and saving the planet we live on, a little bit.

* Because we'd own it, we'd be well on the way to energy self-sufficiency, and the money we'd therefore pay would not be bound to the planet-killing oil and gas bastards. The only way this could be a bad idea would be if:

1. You are a fucking oil and gas bastard yourself, or your mates are.

Essentially, if that is true then you are a thief who steals lives from poor people and cashes them in to make somebody so insanely rich that money is meaningless.

To paraphrase Stalin, who was a cunt himself: "Being £5 short of the rent is a tragedy. Having £5 billion is a statistic."

Why, and I know this is one of those questions that I keep repeating, but why the fuck would anyone want their country being whipped and kicked around by a few billionaires, a few big companies, a few nation-states who want to keep the Middle East occupied (in every sense)?

What's in it for us?

I suspect the answer is that the word 'us' is one that these regrettable wastes of protoplasm do not, will not understand. 

Ya know what, the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's ideological logic traps against it.

Atlas, Mugged

People talk about the banality of evil but it’s the matter-of-factness of grief that gets me. 

That split-second or less of blissful normality between dream and waking, that instant of the universe being back to what it ought to be. 

Dashed again, and again, and again, day after day after day, when reality screams and it hurts from the back of my eyeballs, gazing at the burnt and desiccated ruins of false hope.

AMWAT: The BBC investigated, and then the whole thing finally went to shit

 Not much to be said really. BBC picked up on non-payment of wages and all the rest of it. It was, kinda, half the story. The other half has been detailed elsewhere, but it is the previous owners (on paper) who started the rot. 

This Italian weirdo just took the edifice down. Here's more. It's quite a good little programme, for what it's worth. Sideshow Bob's criminal cousin seems to be quite the chancer. The programme reveals a sort of link to someone who might be linked to the mafia.

One can speculate as to how he got himself into the position of fronting all this, but the fact remains that there is one big question unanswered: why?

Now let me say here that this is a propos of nothing, but there is a lot of money to be made betting on relatively low-key games. A LOT of money to be made, by taking what might not be totally legit cash, and running it through a cash business. But who knows.

It's all finally died. The zombie club has at last given up the lease on Nantporth.

And, as of this month, the club is also facing a strike-off order from Companies House. This means that in two months' time - October, 2022 - Bangor City ceases to officially exist. Of course, it has been a farrago and a lie for several years. Hence 1876. 

As for the football ground, CPD Merched Bangor 1876 have it as their new home stadium, and that's bloody excellent news. The men's team are more circumspect about matters, noting that Treborth can be Tier 2 compliant without too much trouble, which I think is an excellent idea. Treborth is ours. Nantporth, to me, is cursed beyond belief. Maybe if we get Barry Fry involved, that might help.

In 2012 at some stage, I was at a game in Nantporth - visiting from my base abroad at that time - and I got roped into doing Radio Bangor, which was always bloody ace and kept me and various other Bangor expats informed and entertained and bemused with bizarre and occasionally searing commentary. The host asked me what I thought of the new ground.

I said, "Well, it's tidy and new, and it's the future." Even then, I wasn't convincing myself. Farrar Road was such a wonderful place. A proper ground. Crumbling under the weight of a million dreams and sixty thousand dodgy offsides. Lots, and lots, and lots, of swearing. Anyone who ever went there can still smell the honking stench of the men's 'urinal' - an open-air, brick building with guttering to aim at, whilst you stuck your elbows out lest your 'mate' push you forward and into the micturations.

But it was ours. City centre, a hop and a sip from several excellent pubs, and a stagger to the station round the corner. Farrar Road won us games. Won us leagues and cups. When it went, something broke. And the long, slow death was under way. We just didn't recognise it. But it was written in the breeze blocks that replaced the twisting, buckling wooden stands. The farts of countless arses, expelled in disgust at recalcitrant referees. All gone, like piss in the rain.

Nantporth - well - as soon as that 30k of People's Terrace money had to go instead to keeping the club afloat, we lost any chance of it being the new Farrar Road. Perhaps it never will be. The team's never played there. 1876, that is. Maybe we never will. Unless, perhaps, one day we get to Europe. 

Treborth - that's ours. Ours and the university's. A proper partnership that seems to be flourishing. Students play for us too. It's symbiotic. And, beautifully, behind one of the goals - and across an access road - there's a sharp-rising hill. On there have appeared three wooden crush barriers. A path leads up. It is, by anyone's standards, rudimentary. But it is, and could be, our kop. Currently it holds about 20 at a squeeze. Perched up top, a nest of moiderers, the beginnings of a new dream.

The J word rears its head here: journey. From that first 12-1 hammering at FC United, where we bonded again over taking back our past and safeguarding the future, in a fug of boozy magic and sheer visceral belonging, we have been on that J-word. 

We started in Tier 5. Won that. Got to Tier 4. Came second. Got invited to fill a sudden space at Tier 3. 

That the zombie club, the racist comedians, the stealing of artefacts, the sacking of groundsmen, the sacking of managers, the dodgy books and the failed licenses, that they had withdrawn from the system - opening up a place - is one of the most beautiful ironies you ever will see.

Administrations go bust and start again. Chairmen come and go. Players move on to better or worse things, eventually retiring through age or injury. Stadiums - grounds - are demolished to build hideous, chucked-up-swiftly supermarkets. But one thing prevails. There's one thing left once everything else has fled, has flown, has tainted the world with its hideousness. Once all the horror has seeped into the wider conversation, causing consternation and vile deeds; once all those emotions have left the (directors') box, what is left is this:

hope.

And it is in hope and belief and belonging and community that we sing together, the ancient battle-cry:

Shoes off if you love Bangor

Shoes off if you love Bangor

Shoes off if you love Bangor

Shoes off if you love Bangor