What a load of rubbish from Ms Jones

There was an extraordinary piece from Liz Jones in the Mail on Sunday. Seems we're all Dickensian urchins down the Irons. "I was shocked at the level of poverty," she writes. "At West Ham, there was hardly any claret and blue to be seen: I think the fans are too poor to afford the official strip. But there were many, many hoodies, throwing the pinched faces into shadow. These faces used to be seen as the ‘salt of the earth’, the backbone of Britain, with the tenacity to survive the Blitz. Now the faces are the same, but instead of ancient tweed they are wearing jersey. Now there aren’t  deferential, gap-toothed grins, but, as Grayling says, scowls." 

After rambling on about hoodies she returns to the match: "Back at West Ham, I was peering through the railings at the shiny cars owned by the players: a Ferrari, a Porsche, a huge black SUV. I asked the Oliver Twist character next to me whether or not he was resentful of these young men with their expensive lifestyles. ‘Nah. I was too small to be a footballer. Me mum never fed me enough.” No resentment, no jealousy. But no aspiration, either."

Strike a light, Guv! Obviously no-one wears claret and blue at West Ham. And there's no blokes working in the City among West Ham fans, no comedians, no journalists, no celebrities, no political bloggers, no lawyers, no plumbers, no office workers, in fact no-one with a job, just Oliver Twist-like oiks with hoods and sooty faces. Talking of Dickens, it's tempting to ask Ray Winstone, who played Magwitch in Great Expectations recently, to go to see Ms Jones and have a word about literary stereotypes.