Day 38. Look over there. Where? There. (7/2/19)

Let's talk about perspective, shall we?

Let's talk about how information is presented to us, in a very specific example, and let's see what that very specific example has to say about wider society shall we?

I went to watch Everton play last night. You know this, I told you I was doing it. I posted photos on twitter and Facebook. I was positive about why I was there. I was there to support Everton against Manchester City.

We had corporate tickets for the main sponsors' lounge. We had seats in the directors' box. Didn't see any directors. There was a guy sitting next to me making what appeared to be shorthand notes in a small black book throughout the game. As the game wore on I kind of figured out/decided that he was assessing the referee. Every time there was a referee related moment in the game, the pen hit the paper. I could be completely wrong of course, as we were heading back in at half time I passed him meeting up with a friend/colleague and they were discussing exactly what had gone wrong with the last minute of the first half free kick. I really wished I'd asked him what he was doing, but you don't do you? It's impolite. But interesting. Didn't want to interrupt him working.

As it was an Everton lounge, Everton seats, Everton fans, I didn't mention (until the very end of the night) that I am a red. That would also have been impolite. It's their night, why put a touch of discomfort into the room?

And the room was full of really lovey people. Strangely, Evertonians are very like Liverpudlians. Odd that, given that they're basically made up of our friends and family. Weird that we should be similar.

One of the room was a young boy, just turned ten. I won't tell you his story, it's not mine to tell, but I'm fairly sure you'll hear of him in the very near future. The charity work he's about to do, and the reason he's about to do it, are both humbling and inspirational. He, along with the much older gent, sat on the same side of the table as us and representing the Everton heritage society, are prime examples of all the good that Everton do as a club when working with their community. It's something I've seen at first hand many times over the last few years, something they take extremely seriously and need to be lauded for. It's something that's beyond club rivalry.

Although that obviously still exists. They talked about us. Obviously they talked about us. They don't want us to win the league. I'm fine with that, they shouldn't want us to win the league. They'll have to live with us when we do. The rest of the country not wanting us to win the league? Arsed. It's nothing to do with them. I really don't care who West Ham fans want to win the league. It's not a conversation they ever need to involve themselves in. It's like me having a preference over which astronaut I'd like to set foot on Mars first. It's that far removed from reality. The mid table clubs are watching the top three from a different world.

The United fans wanting City to win the league rather than us? That's just funny. They can see us eyeing up our perch and going, "yeah, quite fancy that back thanks."

Everton though? Everton are allowed to want us to not win. I expect them to not want us to win.

There was no nastiness about this though. No, for want of a better word, bitterness. They talked openly, not knowing I represented an interested voice in this. And they talked briefly. They wanted to beat City. But if they didn't? Well, maybe there was a silver lining in that.

There was no obsession. Their interest was their own club.

The match itself? From the moment Dominic Calvert-Lewin raced in space toward the Park End in the opening minutes, I was fully behind the blue cause. "Go 'ead lad!" and I was disappointed when there was no final ball from the move.

I could watch, I could analyse, I could see that the pre-game red supposition that Silva had rested Richarlison and Sigurdsson as they were clearly his best players and he didn't want to win that much was absolute nonsense. He rested them as the shape made better sense without them.

Everton were the better side, without actually troubling the City goal. That's fine, City didn't exactly test Pickford. Until they put the ball in the back of the net.

Man City are an exceptional football team. And last night they won while being nothing special at all.

As soon as City took the lead it was hard to see where Everton were getting back into the game. There's a lack of a natural goalscorer. There's a bite missing from the front line.

But it wasn't a 2-0 game. It was a 0-0 draw that City managed to capitalise on while showing that other teams will exploit their back line to greater advantage. It's the best I've seen Everton since the Derby and they deserved better from it.

It was also the quickest 90 minutes of football I've ever seen. The only thing that moved quicker than the 90 minutes of play was the 15 minutes of half time. By the time we were back to the lounge we had space for a few sips of wine before needing to be back in our seats. Our comfortable, warm, padded seats with plenty of legroom. Terrible problem to have.

Back inside, afterwards. There was brief talk of silver linings again, but it was gallows humour. All in the room knew that they hadn't had the result they deserved and all were interested in nothing other than their own team and its performance.

Then, of course, Twitter spoke. Twitter spoke to me as I was there. "Yeah but did you see the lads in the Gwladys Street celebrating when City scored?"

With a photo.

That same photo appeared again (and again and again and so on).

I'd already replied "no, I didn't see anything like that and I was staring straight at the Gwladys Street as that was where the goal was scored" before the fuller picture appeared. A photo of a goal being celebrated LAST NOVEMBER had been used. A photo of an Everton goal being celebrated last November had been used.

Why worry about facts when you can set your agenda? Why concern yourself with questioning whether something actually happened when the idea that it happened sits better with your pre-conceptions?

Me and J looked at the photo. 'The screen never flashed up 'goal', it only does that when Everton have scored'. The fact that I could explain that, supported by the fact that I was ACTUALLY IN THE GROUND? Didn't alter the views of those who had shared the photo in carefully created disgust. It was ignored.

And this is where we are, isn't it?

As a country, as a society. Too many of us believe everything that's put in front of us without question. Too many of us see a picture and accept the truth in the text. This is how we end up hating each other, this is how easily we are managed, this is how we end up with Brexit.

Look at this photo of 72 million Turks marching on the country. Look what's coming. Errr, that's a photo of Syrian refugees IN Syria. Yes, but it's the principle that matters.

Look at these four lads in a dinghy landing near Dover. This is an invasion. This is a crisis. No, it's not, it's misdirection.

We're being misdirected every moment of the day. We have a man leading the United States whose entire life has been misdirection. We have a cadre of ruling upper class chaos capitalists whose entire purpose is misdirection. And we're paying for these people's lives with our misfortunes, with our misery, with our poverty. But they're making us look in the opposite direction.

And when we bring these ideas up, when we point out that the people running this shoddy magic trick are the ones who should be blamed we're accused of acting as 'project fear'.

We live in a world where this morning's Mail and Express can lead their front pages with stories on the dreadful inability of the ambulance service to attend a dying woman and on how children are dying because of a row over the price of medicine. Both phrased in such a manner in the headline that the blame is lain at the feet of the NHS. Not at the feet of the party that they helped place in power with their headlines propagating 'the threat of the other'. The papers who have helped to stoke racism and bigotry with their articles on 'traitors to the country' and then asked out loud why there is so much hatred in the country. We live in a world where our attention is misdirected again and again by those seeking profit.

And it's so normal that there are those on social media who criticise the mainstream media and refuse to believe anything that trained journalists with actual contacts say (in the case of the right wing tabloids, quite rightly) while employing the same tactics of misinformation, omission and downright creation of untruths masquerading as facts to further their own ends and to ensure that, as a country, we are separated and divided at the very foundations of our lives.

While the people genuinely in charge sit back, content at how well we've learned from them.

That's one photo of one set of fans from a prior moment in time being used to stoke a notion that these lads, who we work with, live with, drink with, have carried out an action that didn't actually occur. We should hate these lads because they're not like us.

I'll tell you what last night told me. Something I already know, obviously, but still; the majority of these opposing fans, from the same city as us, are exactly the same as us and genuinely aren't as interested in us as we're led to think by the few on social media with big mouths and an agenda.

They have idiots. We have idiots. Maybe it's time we stopped ignoring the voices of idiots and concentrated on our commonality.