We Have A Big Job On Our Hands

 
All eyes looked north last week. The very future of the nation was at stake, we were told. In fact, in recent weeks this is a motif that has frequently (and portentously) chimed.

To prove it, Alex ‘Big Eck’ Salmond and Dave ‘Pretty Boy’ Cameron circled each other warily, like prize fighters landing a couple of early blows, like a pair of big old stags readying to lock horns.

Besides the constitution, football was the focus. Rangers, one of Britain’s oldest and biggest clubs, was placed in administration.

This illustrated how financial mismanagement on an incredible scale leaves, ultimately, the fans - the people who really build clubs and without whom clubs are just men in suits congratulating each other - lost, broken and treated like rags in a breeze.

It was ever thus.

Micawber’s advice on money matters has long been ignored by football clubs living well beyond their means. It is ironic that with Rangers the rising cry is not ‘why did you spend it?’ but ‘where did it go?’ The case of the missing £24m has some way to run.

During this week of big stories, it was in a small detail that real truth lay. On a BBC radio show about unemployment, conducted in front of a live audience, a man was applauded for announcing he had a job.

He was emotional, his voice cracked, but he had incredible pride that after months of hunting he could lose what he called the "shame" of being out of work.

And there it is, I thought, this is the state we’re in. A job is a thing to really prize. The constitution business is but a sideshow in the real dramas that make a nation. 

It led me to think of our vendors, people taking the bold step to move up and on, to work and begin to build self-respect. Support them, support their work. Buy their magazines and applaud them as you meet them.