West Ham Quotes

The Western States nervous under the beginning change. Texas and Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas, New Mexico, Arizona, California. A single family moved from the land. Pa borrowed money from the bank, and now the bank wants the land. The land company--that's the bank when it has land --wants tractors, not families on the land. Is a tractor bad? Is the power that turns the long furrows wrong? If this tractor were ours it would be good--not mine, but ours. If our tractor turned the long furrows of our land, it would be good. Not my land, but ours. We could love that tractor then as we have loved this land when it was ours. But the tractor does two things--it turns the land and turns us off the land. There is little difference between this tractor and a tank. The people are driven, intimidated, hurt by both. We must think about this. One man, one family driven from the land; this rusty car creaking along the highway to the west. I lost my land, a single tractor took my land. I am alone and bewildered. And in the night one family camps in a ditch and another family pulls in and the tents come out. The two men squat on their hams and the women and children listen. Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlarge of the thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here "I lost my land" is changed; a cell is split and from its splitting grows the thing you hate--"We lost our land." The danger is here, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. And from this first "we" there grows a still more dangerous thing: "I have a little food" plus "I have none." If from this problem the sum is "We have a little food," the thing is on its way, the movement has direction. Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this tractor are ours. The two men squatting in a ditch, the little fire, the side- meat stewing in a single pot, the silent, stone-eyed women; behind, the children listening with their souls to words their minds do not understand. The night draws down. The baby has a cold. Here, take this blanket. It's wool. It was my mother's blanket--take it for the baby. This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning--from "I" to "we." If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin, were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into "I," and cuts you off forever from the "we." The Western States are nervous under the begining change. Need is the stimulus to concept, concept to action. A half-million people moving over the country; a million more restive, ready to move; ten million more feeling the first nervousness. And tractors turning the multiple furrows in the vacant land.

During the match I received a text from a mate of mine, Joe (West Ham), saying 'I hope you thrash ‘em.' I replied that their fans were abysmal, and he answered, 'They always are, mate. Even when you go to The Emirates there’s no atmosphere.' And that just about sums it up really. God, I would hate to support Arsenal

Crystal Palace, Man City and West Ham bring good support. They never stop singing. As do teams like Leicester, Cardiff and (although I hate to admit it) QPR. I can’t stand West Brom, but at least they come in fine voice. But it would be fair to say that the Arsenal support is atrocious

Okay then, we’re set” he thought. “Come and get it”. The enemy, his enemy, were walking into the classic football ambush and they didn’t have a fucking clue.

At the end of the school day, we walked the long, cold way home feeling happy and hungry. There we found a warm fire, country ham with gravy and hot biscuits, and a mother to hug us! If snow blew under the doors that night, what did it matter? Christmas time was just around the corner.

The other side of the coin is that fans can panic players into making poor decisions. The more unsettled a crowd gets, the worse the football on show will become - I've seen it a million times. Certain grounds have a reputation. Whenever I've played at Wolverhampton Wanderers or West Ham United , every manager has said "Keep this lot quiet for 20 minutes, and their fans will start getting on their back".

West Ham's mascot is a hammer, with a big hammer head, and he goes by the name of Hammerhead. A hammer, of course, is a tool that delivers a blow with sudden impact and the heads are genuinely made of steel. The origin of a hammer as a mascot possibly stems from East London’s proud shipbuilding history and West Ham’s start in life as Thames Ironworks F.C. in the late 19th century. So a mascot dressed as a hammer is a rather imposing figure, and true to form Hammerhead never deviates from the role he his playing. He’s as broad-shouldered as he is tall, strutting around the ground with a real geezer walk and I couldn’t help but applaud the East London sense of humour. Hammerhead sets the scene for 90-minutes of banter, and I for one loved it!

Heads up lads!” someone shouted. “Here we go!” More missiles, this time not just bottles, but coins as well. And then from the other side of the cordon, a roar went up. Bellowing across the road toward them. Billy watched as the Manchester lads poured forward, desperately trying to force a way through the massed ranks of the police only to be driven back by batons and gloved fists. Another salvo of bottles came flying across, trying to provoke a reaction. But the West Ham lads merely stood and laughed. They didn’t need to respond. The point had been made, the result earned. Billy was happy. Very happy.

Fitchett smiled to himself. He loved this bit, when it’s about to kick off. Half terror, half ecstasy. The adrenaline surging through him like an electric current. His breathing coming in short gasps and his stomach trying to push its way up through his throat. ‘The Buzz’ they called it. And they were right. Fitchett was buzzing, this was what it was all about for him. This blast of magic.

Life's a shock to the young. Shock to have an old man for a father instead of an angel. Shock to eat ham gravy instead of dew drops. And to like ham gravy. That's the worst shock of all. Find yourself fitting into this sorry world.

These days, things were different. Much different. For the most part, what fun there was to be had at Upton Park came from the cat and mouse side of the contest. Thinking on your feet and trying to outwit old bill while still trying to get one over on the opposition. It was like a real life computer game, Theme Hooligan. He still got a buzz from it though, but not the same buzz. And he wasn’t alone. The scene was dying on its arse although that wasn’t always down to the police.

I stick by her side as she heads for the sub stand. Before she can place her order, I call, “Two ham and cheese subs on wheat bread. Four slices of ham, two slices of Provolone each, and a dash of mayo. Thank you.” Briar narrows her eyes at me. “You memorized my order?” “Told you I know you.” “Why did you order two?” “I love what you love.

One headline read: ‘West Ham supporters set light to a yacht.’ Now, if that boat was a yacht, then it probably only needed two paddles to row it. But if the headlines were exaggerated, the events of that night weren’t. Some nasty things happened that night. It was inevitable when you had a thousand young men down for a football match with nowhere to stay and nowhere open. [...] It was well into the wee hours before we at last found somewhere to crash out. We met a bird and bloke who were local, and for some unknown reason they offered us the use of their flat on the seafront. Needless to say, we showed our appreciation of their generosity by guzzling the spirits cabinet dry and trashing the flat. The bloke was so pissed he was half joining in while the bird, who we all thought was a bit odd, was going mental. In fact, she was like a fucking animal. - Jimmy Smith

[Harriet Tubman] also looked out for other African-Americans in town, opening the first home in the country for elderly and indigent blacks. When Dorothy and Ros were small, the elderly Tubman rode a bicycle up and down South Street, stopping to ask for food donations. If she had specific needs, she sat on the back porch and waited for the lady of the house, with whom she would chat and ask for bedding or clothing for her residents. One of Ros's nieces said, "Mother had coffee with Harriet and would always leave a ham or turkey for her for the holiday.

Wessex Heights There are some heights in Wessex, shaped as if by a kindly hand For thinking, dreaming, dying on, and at crises when I stand, Say, on Ingpen Beacon eastward, or on Wylls-Neck westwardly, I seem where I was before my birth, and after death may be. In the lowlands I have no comrade, not even the lone man’s friend – Her who suffereth long and is kind; accepts what he is too weak to mend: Down there they are dubious and askance; there nobody thinks as I, But mind-chains do not clank where one’s next neighbour is the sky. In the towns I am tracked by phantoms having weird detective ways – Shadows of beings who fellowed with myself of earlier days: They hang about at places, and they say harsh heavy things – Men with a frigid sneer, and women with tart disparagings. Down there I seem to be false to myself, my simple self that was, And is not now, and I see him watching, wondering what crass cause Can have merged him into such a strange continuator as this, Who yet has something in common with himself, my chrysalis. I cannot go to the great grey Plain; there’s a figure against the moon, Nobody sees it but I, and it makes my breast beat out of tune; I cannot go to the tall-spired town, being barred by the forms now passed For everybody but me, in whose long vision they stand there fast. There’s a ghost at Yell’ham Bottom chiding loud at the fall of the night, There’s a ghost in Froom-side Vale, thin lipped and vague, in a shroud of white, There is one in the railway-train whenever I do not want it near, I see its profile against the pane, saying what I would not hear. As for one rare fair woman, I am now but a thought of hers, I enter her mind and another thought succeeds me that she prefers; Yet my love for her in its fulness she herself even did not know; Well, time cures hearts of tenderness, and now I can let her go. So I am found on Ingpen Beacon, or on Wylls-Neck to the west, Or else on homely Bulbarrow, or little Pilsdon Crest, Where men have never cared to haunt, nor women have walked with me, And ghosts then keep their distance; and I know some liberty.

Between 2003 and 2008, Iceland’s three main banks, Glitnir, Kaupthing and Landsbanki, borrowed over $140 billion, a figure equal to ten times the country’s GDP, dwarfing its central bank’s $2.5 billion reserves. A handful of entrepreneurs, egged on by their then government, embarked on an unprecedented international spending binge, buying everything from Danish department stores to West Ham Football Club, while a sizeable proportion of the rest of the adult population enthusiastically embraced the kind of cockamamie financial strategies usually only mooted in Nigerian spam emails – taking out loans in Japanese Yen, for example, or mortgaging their houses in Swiss francs. One minute the Icelanders were up to their waists in fish guts, the next they they were weighing up the options lists on their new Porsche Cayennes. The tales of un-Nordic excess are legion: Elton John was flown in to sing one song at a birthday party; private jets were booked like they were taxis; people thought nothing of spending £5,000 on bottles of single malt whisky, or £100,000 on hunting weekends in the English countryside. The chief executive of the London arm of Kaupthing hired the Natural History Museum for a party, with Tom Jones providing the entertainment, and, by all accounts, Reykjavik’s actual snow was augmented by a blizzard of the Colombian variety. The collapse of Lehman Brothers in late 2008 exposed Iceland’s debts which, at one point, were said to be around 850 per cent of GDP (compared with the US’s 350 per cent), and set off a chain reaction which resulted in the krona plummeting to almost half its value. By this stage Iceland’s banks were lending money to their own shareholders so that they could buy shares in . . . those very same Icelandic banks. I am no Paul Krugman, but even I can see that this was hardly a sustainable business model. The government didn’t have the money to cover its banks’ debts. It was forced to withdraw the krona from currency markets and accept loans totalling £4 billion from the IMF, and from other countries. Even the little Faroe Islands forked out £33 million, which must have been especially humiliating for the Icelanders. Interest rates peaked at 18 per cent. The stock market dropped 77 per cent; inflation hit 20 per cent; and the krona dropped 80 per cent. Depending who you listen to, the country’s total debt ended up somewhere between £13 billion and £63 billion, or, to put it another way, anything from £38,000 to £210,000 for each and every Icelander.

The men shouted and screamed songs as the train rumbled out of the urban tangle of inner London toward the clear green of Epping Forest. Every compartment stuffed to bursting with a thronging mass of claret-shirted West Ham goons on their way to meet the old enemy: Millwall. Each man has a hungry look to him, jumping and jostling with his West Ham brothers and spilling beer on anything that happens to be close by. This includes other lay passengers, who let it happen with little complaint. No, they won’t complain today. Not when they can see the look of animal dissatisfaction shining in these men’s

Ron and Hermione joined Neville, Seamus and Dean the West Ham fan up in the top row. As a surprise for Harry, they had painted a large banner on one of the sheets Scabbers had ruined. It said Potter for President and Dean, who was good at drawing, had done a large Gryffindor lion underneath. Then Hermione had performed a tricky little charm so that the paint flashed different colours.

It is futile to pretend the problem doesn’t exist and hope that it will go away. Yet, absurdly, this has been American policy since the September 11 attacks. U.S. officials seem to believe that if they act as if Islam is a religion of peace and the Koran a book of peace, Muslims will feel themselves compelled to behave accordingly. An extreme example of this bizarre assumption came in President Obama’s heralded speech to the Islamic world in Cairo on June 4, 2009.16 Obama was extremely anxious to appear sympathetic and accommodating to Muslim grievances—so much so that he not only quoted the Koran (and did so ham-handedly and out of context, as we have seen), but also signaled in several ways, whether by ignorance or by design, that he was Muslim himself. For example, Obama extended “a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: assalaamu alaykum”—that is, peace be upon you. According to Islamic law, however, this is the greeting that a Muslim extends to a fellow Muslim. To a non-Muslim he is to say, “Peace be upon those who are rightly guided”—in other words, “Peace be upon the Muslims.” Islamic law is silent about what Muslims must do when naïve, non-Muslim, Islamophilic presidents offer the greeting to Muslims. Obama also said the words that Muslims traditionally utter after mentioning the names of prophets—“peace upon them”—after mentioning Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad. Does he, then, accept Muhammad as a prophet? No reporter has asked him, but that was decidedly the impression he gave, intentionally or not, to the Islamic world. Obama spoke of a “relationship between Islam and the West” marked by “centuries of coexistence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars.” He then named three sources of present-day tensions between Muslim countries and the United States: the legacy of Western colonialism; “a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations;” and “the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization,” which “led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.” Significantly, Obama only listed ways in which the West has allegedly mistreated the Islamic world. He said not a word about the Koran’s doctrines of jihad and religious supremacism. Nothing at all about the Koranic imperative to make war against and subjugate non-Muslims as dhimmis. Not a word about the culture of hatred and contempt for non-Muslims that arises from Koranic teachings and which existed long before the ostensibly harmful spread of American culture (“modernity and globalization”) around the world. Obama did refer to “violent extremists” who have “exploited these tensions in a small but potent minority of Muslims.” The idea that Islamic jihadists are a “small but potent minority of Muslims” is universally accepted dogma, born of ignorance of the Koran’s contents. The jihadists may indeed be a minority of Muslims, but there is no solid evidence that the vast majority of Muslims reject in principle what the jihadists do—and indeed, how could they, given the Koran’s explicit mandates for warfare against Infidels?

Paskui jis man pradėjo siūlyti bilietus į "West Hamą". Nes mes prie pat stadiono, ir aš jau seniai pastebėjau, kad eina pro mano FUNERAL minios žmonių su šalikais. Paskui tylu kelias valandas, o tada jie jau grįžta - kaip žemę būtų pardavę. Rimtai, - tokie prislėgti, kad baisu net žiūrėti. Ir taip kartoja tas apeigas maždaug kas porą savaičių. O futbole aš nestiprus. Aišku, žinojau beisiką - "Barselona", "Realas". Ir anglų ten - "Liverpulis"... Bet "West Ham United" - sorry. O čia atskira specifika - mokoma pralaimėti. Ir taip jie visą gyvenimą galvas nuleidę ir vaikšto - užprogramuoti lūzeriai. Dar už tai susimoka - trisdešimt svarų už kartą. Bet pas Azimą pigiau - dvidešimt, kartais penkiolika... Ir kažkaip susigundžiau. Nes norisi integruotis, turėti ką nors su jais bendro - bent jau dryžuotą šaliką. Nu ir šiaip - pramogų. Kas tie dvidešimt svarų, jeigu tu pasikrautum, medžiotum kaip ant sparnų, o dar, neduok Dieve, pagautum - koks tada būtų Fandango. Žodžiu, aš pradėjau vaikščioti, nes kažkodėl įtikėjau, kad va aš pradėsiu vaikščioti ir pradėsim laimėti. Ir nichuja. Pralaimim. Jau trečias kartas iš eilės.

I've been in prison, you see. Only three weeks, and only on remand,but when you've had to play chess twice a day with a monosyllabic West Ham supporter, who has 'HATE' tattooed on one hand, and 'HATE' on the other - using a set missing six pawns, all the rooks and two of the bishops - you find yourself cherishing little things in life. Like not being in prison.

I do like football fans, though, contrary to most people of my skinny-train-enthusiast build. I like how merry they all are. They mean things good-naturedly. I find it sweet that they sing such girly songs with such conviction. The West Ham theme, for example, begins: “I’m forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air”, which is the least manly thing you could ever hear anyone sing, and yet they bellow it with all the testosterone they have in them. What’s more, it’s a song completely ill-chosen to be a football anthem, as it’s about hoping you achieve your dreams but never doing so; after the first two lines, the song continues, “they fly so high, nearly reach the sky, then like my dreams they fade and die; fortune’s always hiding, I’ve looked everywhere; I’m forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air”. It’s poetic, humble and very sweet. Bless those lovely little football fans.

I’ve been in prison, you see. Only three weeks, and only on remand, but when you’ve had to play chess twice a day with a monosyllabic West Ham supporter, who has ‘HATE’ tattooed on one hand, and ‘HATE’ on the other - using a set missing six pawns, all the rooks and two of the bishops - you find yourself cherishing the little things in life. Like not being in prison.

Heritage breeds, with or without Chinese “blood,” are threatened primarily because they are not suitable for the ultraintensive farming practices that predominate in the West today. Generally, they don’t grow fast enough for factory farming, or they require too much space and resources. The Iberico, for example, needs about an acre of oak woodland (called dehesa forest) per pig to supply the acorns for its famous hams.35

necessary provisions—flour, beans, pork, venison hams, bread, butter, and salt.

JUSTIFYING OPPRESSION While history has proven Malthusianism empirically false, however, it provides the ideal foundation for justifying human oppression and tyranny. The theory holds that there isn’t enough to go around, and can never be. Therefore human aspirations and liberties must be constrained, and authorities must be empowered to enforce the constraining. During Malthus’s own time, his theory was used to justify regressive legislation directed against England’s lower classes, most notably the Poor Law Act of 1834, which forced hundreds of thousands of poor Britons into virtual slavery. 11 However, a far more horrifying example of the impact of Malthusianism was to occur a few years later, when the doctrine motivated the British government’s refusal to provide relief during the great Irish famine of 1846. In a letter to economist David Ricardo, Malthus laid out the basis for this policy: “The land in Ireland is infinitely more peopled than in England; and to give full effect to the natural resources of the country, a great part of the population should be swept from the soil.” 12 For the last century and a half, the Irish famine has been cited by Malthusians as proof of their theory of overpopulation, so a few words are in order here to set the record straight. 13 Ireland was certainly not overpopulated in 1846. In fact, based on census data from 1841 and 1851, the Emerald Isle boasted a mere 7.5 million people in 1846, less than half of England’s 15.8 million, living on a land mass about two-thirds that of England and of similar quality. So compared to England, Ireland before the famine was if anything somewhat underpopulated. 14 Nor, as is sometimes said, was the famine caused by a foolish decision of the Irish to confine their diet to potatoes, thereby exposing themselves to starvation when a blight destroyed their only crop. In fact, in 1846 alone, at the height of the famine, Ireland exported over 730,000 cattle and other livestock, and over 3 million quarts of corn and grain flour to Great Britain. 15 The Irish diet was confined to potatoes because—having had their land expropriated, having been forced to endure merciless rack-rents and taxes, and having been denied any opportunity to acquire income through manufactures or other means—tubers were the only food the Irish could afford. So when the potato crop failed, there was nothing for the Irish themselves to eat, despite the fact that throughout the famine, their homeland continued to export massive amounts of grain, butter, cheese, and meat for foreign consumption. As English reformer William Cobbett noted in his Political Register: Hundreds of thousands of living hogs, thousands upon thousands of sheep and oxen alive; thousands upon thousands of barrels of beef, pork, and butter; thousands upon thousands of sides of bacon; and thousands and thousands of hams; shiploads and boats coming daily and hourly from Ireland to feed the west of Scotland; to feed a million and a half people in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and in Lancashire; to feed London and its vicinity; and to fill the country shops in the southern counties of England; we beheld all this, while famine raged in Ireland amongst the raisers of this very food. 16 “The population should be swept from the soil.” Evicted from their homes, millions of Irish men, women, and children starved to death or died of exposure. (Contemporary drawings from Illustrated London News.)

Thirteen years earlier, in the week of David's birth, The Times in its Parliamentary report had carried the famous prediction of the first Labour MP, the Member for West Ham South, Keir Hardie. In opposing a motion that a humble address be presented to Her Majesty to congratulate her on the birth of a son, Keir Hardie addressed the House on behalf of those who disowned any allegiance to hereditary rule. To a background of cries of ‘Order!’ and shouts of outrage, he questioned ‘what particular blessing the Royal Family has conferred on the nation.’ Then he turned his fire upon the new-born child who would be called upon one day to rule over the Empire. “We certainly have no means of knowing his qualifications or fitness for this position,” the MP declared. “From childhood onward this child will be surrounded by sycophants and flatterers by the score and will be taught to believe himself as of a superior creation. A line will be drawn between him and the people he is to be called upon someday to reign over. In due course, following the precedent which has already been set, he will be sent on a tour round the world, and probably rumours of a morganatic alliance will follow, and the end of it all will be (that) the country will be called upon to pay the bill.” Keir Hardie sat down to universal cries of ‘Shame!’ from a House of Commons which, forty years later, would as unanimously shout down Winston Churchill‘s efforts to prevent Edward VIII from fulfilling these dire predictions.

It didn’t take long for other clubs to follow them across the pond. In 2005, Fulham accepted an invitation from Major League Soccer to play in the league’s annual All-Star Game. Chelsea made the trip the next year, and West Ham took its turn in 2008. If the matches themselves weren’t always thrilling spectacles, there was at least evidence that English clubs were treating them more seriously. West Ham’s supporters lent a sheen of authenticity to the whole thing when they engaged in a brawl with fans of the Columbus Crew, an unlikely outbreak of violence at a so-called friendly game that ended only when police administered pepper spray to both sets of fans. “We wanted to show people what we’re about,” West Ham manager Alan Curbishley remarked after the game.

Especially by a cockney West Ham fan who’s too cheap to pay for AA membership, a coke dealer who hangs out with Connie Johnson, an old woman too scared to use her gun, and Joyce. I didn’t kill your mate, but if you keep poking round where you’re not welcome, I’ll kill you.’ He ducks down again.

The next day I watched the highlights on TV. The various Steves even said that Alison O’Brien’s dad had purchased some new device called a video recorder and that he had recorded the game so that we could watch it over and over again.

West Ham was founded at the A. F. Hills shipyard and went by the name of Thames Ironworks; and of course Arsenal was a club set up by the workers at the Woolwich Arsenal factory complex. The surprising thing was that none of these clubs had in common the rules of the game. Could you pick up the ball and run with it? How big was the goal? How many players should there be to a side? These were all questions that had to be settled, or argued about, before the start of a game.

Malfoy certainly did talk about flying a lot. He complained loudly about first-years never getting in the house Quidditch teams and told long, boastful stories which always seemed to end with him narrowly escaping Muggles in helicopters. He wasn’t the only one, though: the way Seamus Finnigan told it, he’d spent most of his childhood zooming around the countryside on his broomstick. Even Ron would tell anyone who’d listen about the time he’d almost hit a hang-glider on Charlie’s old broom. Everyone from wizarding families talked about Quidditch constantly. Ron had already had a big argument with Dean Thomas, who shared their dormitory, about football. Ron couldn’t see what was exciting about a game with only one ball where no one was allowed to fly. Harry had caught Ron prodding Dean’s poster of West Ham football team, trying to make the players move.

I love big breakfasts with new-laid eggs boiled until the yolks are set but still a bit soft, and hot buttered muffins spread with comb honey, and rashers of fried bacon and slabs of Hampshire ham, and bowls of ripe blackberries just picked from the hedgerows-

While other London clubs in fancier neighborhoods—Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea—have all enjoyed long periods as the capital’s preeminent team with championships and trophies to their name, glory has always remained tantalizingly out of West Ham’s grasp. Not that their fans are unduly concerned; they embrace their status as the city’s gruff, blue-collar underdogs with a healthy slice of gallows humor. When Harry Redknapp, a former player at the club, went to inspect the club’s trophy cabinet after taking over as manager, “Lord Lucan, Shergar, and two Japanese prisoners of war fell out,” he wrote. Even the club’s anthem, “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” is an old Broadway tune about shattered dreams and disappointment, and it’s bellowed by thousands of supporters wearing the team’s claret and blue jerseys before every game.