David Squires

[Kimbo]

The vast majority of these people don’t give a shit about the Saudi’s or any other human rights abusers or sports washers. Newcastle fans gets Jamal Khashoggi thrown at us when it’s Man Utd that were in bed with the Saudi’s when he was murdered. Nobody gave a shit, everything is selective outrage.

[mattypnufc]

TLDR his comics anymore. 

[Jackie Broon]

37 minutes ago, Kimbo said:

The vast majority of these people don’t give a shit about the Saudi’s or any other human rights abusers or sports washers. Newcastle fans gets Jamal Khashoggi thrown at us when it’s Man Utd that were in bed with the Saudi’s when he was murdered. Nobody gave a shit, everything is selective outrage.

 

I think a lot of Guardian readers genuinely will, and I think David Squires genuinely does. I think it's a bit tired and overdone by him, and so a less effective message, but I think it is coming from a genuine place.

 

The Farage and Robinson loving, human rights act abolition and bring back the death penalty supporting mackems on the other hand...

[Kimbo]

6 minutes ago, Jackie Broon said:

 

I think a lot of Guardian readers genuinely will, and I think David Squires genuinely does. I think it's a bit tired and overdone by him, and so a less effective message, but I think it is coming from a genuine place.

 

The Farage and Robinson loving, human rights act abolition and bring back the death penalty supporting mackems on the other hand...

If I’m being generous I’ll guess 12 guardian readers boycotted the Qatar World Cup, but no more, in the end everyone swallowed it and went along with it. I’m also not aware of any of these media outlets or journalists, left or right wing, ever talking about Man Utd’s Saudi partnership. I don’t take any of them seriously.

[Hanshithispantz]

5 minutes ago, Jackie Broon said:

 

I think a lot of Guardian readers genuinely will, and I think David Squires genuinely does. I think it's a bit tired and overdone by him, and so a less effective message, but I think it is coming from a genuine place.

 

The Farage and Robinson loving, human rights act abolition and bring back the death penalty supporting mackems on the other hand...

To the extent it would inconvenience them and then they won't, like the vast majority of people.

 

It's like that meme 'good people' like to share with the little lad popping out of a well, telling someone with an iPhone that they're a hypocrite, and the iPhone holder explaining how it's completely different, and the people sharing the meme somehow thinking it is?

[TRon]

2 hours ago, Jackie Broon said:

 

I think a lot of Guardian readers genuinely will, and I think David Squires genuinely does. I think it's a bit tired and overdone by him, and so a less effective message, but I think it is coming from a genuine place.

 

The Farage and Robinson loving, human rights act abolition and bring back the death penalty supporting mackems on the other hand...

 

I think Guardian readers are probably mostly good people tbh, or well meaning for the most part. They just don't live in the real world which operates along some pretty ruthless principles. Football is no different these days, if anything it's riddled with hypocrisy and greed.

[Kaizero]

Much too wordy, and he's lost the magical "implication" touch in his text where the joke's kinda hidden beneath the surface. Like his first attempt at a Saudi-diss, if he'd left it at "desert city", it'd have been amusing. He didn't, which made it feel "in your face" and kinda like what writers do when they don't believe their readers are clever enough to get the joke unless it's telegraphed directly into their dumb faces

 

That said, this frame absolutely destroyed me:

 

 

 

[Nowhere Man]

Andy Capp is so much funnier 

[Ghandis Flip-Flop]

Might've appeared less of a hatchet piece if it had also taken a panel to discuss the scandal Standard Chartered has been embroiled in, or maybe the FSG links to US Arms firms too. But as it is it’s just nuance-less. 

[Coastie]

7 hours ago, gbandit said:

Anyone who didn’t shine a light on Mike Ashley tearing the club to pieces for his own gain for 14 years can fuck off with shining a light on the easiest topic in town to reference. The Saudi regime and its human rights abuses are awful. What exactly do you want football fans to do about it?

Go follow Sunderland instead?

[Newcastle Fan]

He's just boring and repetitive now, i stopped following him a while ago but i noticed there is a clear and organized effort by the guardian to try and shame our club and fans, even posting multiple videos on their instagram and interviewing a fan who said he wasn't comfortable seeing Yasir on the pitch celebrating the title win  

 

I used to think well of the Guardian but they seem to be just as bad as the rest of them to be honest. and I'm not just pointing out their criticism of our ownership but living in the middle east and seeing the clear propaganda they have against countries in the Gulf Region annoys me.

[Irish Paul]

Squires is endlessly sticking the boot into Islamic states like Saudi and Qatar but I've never seen him(and I'm open to correction on this as I don't read every week) have a pop at Israel, who are inflicting more death, destruction and human misery in the Middle East than the rest of the regimes combined. The same could be said about the US and UK governments actually with their war in Iraq, arming of Israel etc. and yet there's a ceaseless effort to make us feel bad for supporting our team. Given the sheer evil being inflicted by the West on the people of the Middle East, all this Western handwringing about the Saudis is a bit fecking rich imo.

 

I looked back to see if Squires had anything on the Maccabi fans when they were on the rampage in Amsterdam and chanting that "there are no more schools in Gaza because there are no more children" & disrespecting a minute's silence for the flood victims of Valencia, but not a mention. Couldn't find anything about Israel not being banned by FIFA/UEFA either. He dedicated an entire week's edition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and football's reaction. 

 

So it seems he's a great man to highlight human rights abuses as long as they're not being done by the (by far) worst human rights abuser which is also (by far) the most politically influential in the West. It all looks a bit politically motivated to me, purporting to be a champion of human rights in the Middle East while turning a blind eye to what's happening in Palestine is just ludicrous.

 

 

Edited Saturday at 22:46 by Irish Paul

[TheBrownBottle]

Nah, fuck that.  I’m perfectly comfortable with dictatorships and human rights abusers being called out.  The reason Israel hasn’t been called out by the likes of Squires is because it isn’t trying to buy every sport going, which is why this stuff finds its way to the back pages.  What context would he have been able to call Israel out on in football terms?  When did Israel start buying European clubs or hosting World Cups? 

 

It is actually possible to condemn Israel and the Gulf states without any fear of hypocrisy.  I hate this type of whatabouttery.

 

There’s little football fans can do about this stuff, which is where it does stick in the craw.  But we hardly need to start defending the ultimate owners of the club or pretending that they’re basically the same as any other govt.  
 

On 20/03/2025 at 08:05, Newcastle Fan said:

I'm not just pointing out their criticism of our ownership but living in the middle east and seeing the clear propaganda they have against countries in the Gulf Region annoys me.

Easy to say when you’re not the poor cunt who’s been worked to death in 40C+ temperatures to build a stadium, having had your passport confiscated by your gangmaster.

 

The abuses of workers from the subcontinent are not made up. 
 

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/11/qatar-fifas-qatar-world-cup-legacy-fund-ignores-exploited-workers/

 

 

Edited 17 hours ago by TheBrownBottle

[Groundhog63]

I love the phrase "whataboutary" 

 

Much like "woke" & "snowflake" in modern parlance in as much as meaning nothing other than a hierarchy of morality. 

 

You HAVE to engage with the chosen immorality because any other, wether, similar or not is irrelevant. 

 

Granted, chopping up a journalist is way way worse than, say, locking one up, in solitary confinement indefinitely, for whistleblowing. Or targeted them with sniper's bullets and airstrikes to lessen witness reporting. 

 

Granted, the wealthy Arab nations have pumped a fair bit of wedge into Sports. They've pumped a fair bit of wedge into many industries as well. But then so have Zionists. Obviously it's "antisemitic"  (😉) to suggest Zionists own/control everything so I won't 😂

 

There is, however, a definite disconnect between the reporting of Arab "sportswashing" as opposed to anything an apartheid state engaged in genocidal war crimes is partaking in. 

Russia gets banned easy enough while the Israelies strut about, competing without a whiff of criticism. That's not "whataboutary" that's 2 tier geopolitics and a hierarchy of morality. 

[Irish Paul]

2 hours ago, TheBrownBottle said:

Nah, fuck that.  I’m perfectly comfortable with dictatorships and human rights abusers being called out.  The reason Israel hasn’t been called out by the likes of Squires is because it isn’t trying to buy every sport going, which is why this stuff finds its way to the back pages.  What context would he have been able to call Israel out on in football terms?  When did Israel start buying European clubs or hosting World Cups? 

 

It is actually possible to condemn Israel and the Gulf states without any fear of hypocrisy.  I hate this type of whatabouttery.

 

There’s little football fans can do about this stuff, which is where it does stick in the craw.  But we hardly need to start defending the ultimate owners of the club or pretending that they’re basically the same as any other govt.  
 

Easy to say when you’re not the poor cunt who’s been worked to death in 40C+ temperatures to build a stadium, having had your passport confiscated by your gangmaster.

 

The abuses of workers from the subcontinent are not made up. 
 

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/11/qatar-fifas-qatar-world-cup-legacy-fund-ignores-exploited-workers/

 

 

 

There have been numerous opportunities to raise what Israel is doing. The Maccabi fans in Amsterdam was a huge news story, bigger than anything Squires addressed that week, but the reporting on it in Western media, as so often with anything  Israel-related turned the truth on its head. The BBC reports for example, spoke about "a pogrom" and "Kristellnacht" and Jews being hunted like it was Nazi Germany all over again, because some of the local Muslim community came looking for retribution, but based solely on the facts they were Israeli and celebrating a genocide, nothing to do with their religion. A bit of run of the mill fan violence where no one sustained serious injuries would have been absolutely dwarfed by chanting about the mass slaughter of children if these were fans from any other country. That stuff should be absolute gold for a satirist, but nothing from Squires.

 

 

When Russia invaded Ukraine he dedicated a week's edition to football's reaction. Israel's far, far more brutal invasion of Gaza - again nothing afaik ( and I state again, I'm open to correction and would genuinely like to be proven wrong if such a piece exists and someone can link it).

 

Russia  was hit with severe sanctions by UEFA but the same governing bodies have taken absolutely none against Israel, and along with the clubs themselves, have suppressed protest on it. Israeli teams being allowed to compete at all is an egregious example of sportswashing . We had the ICJ ruling that there was a "plausible" case of genocide against them and ICC arrest warrants out for it's PM and former Minister of Defence, but still not a footballing sanction in sight. A piece on Israel's destruction of Gaza and football's non-reaction would surely have been satirical gold and right in Squires' wheelhouse if his motives for highlighting rights abuses are genuine.

 

 

South Africa's ambassador to the US called what is being to the Palestinians "apartheid on steroids" and it's been doing it to them for 8 decades. Many SA commentators have echoed these sentiments that Israel's version of apartheid is actually a much more brutal version of what was done to them. Sporting sanctions played a huge role in ending that. Several players from the Palestinian national football team have been killed, stadiums blown up and their team endures massive struggles just to train and fulfil fixtures due to Israel's restrictions on their freedom of movement, one of thousands of breaches of international law that Israel is guilty of. There have been several examples of kids being blown up while having a game of football and a kickabout turning to carnage. The lack of sanctions on Israel allows it to carry on the lie that it is not a completely rogue state - that is the very definition of sportswashing, a more successful version than the Saudi one which leads to the highlighting of their human rights abuses as much as the concealing of them.

 

 

Not only does Zionist-influenced Western media whitewash Israel's crimes, it seeks to dehumanise Muslims and lump them all in together. When there were articles recently about Iraq considering lowering its age of consent (to 9  🤮 absolutely disgusting if true) it was being retweeted by every pro-Israel account on social media, as though that somehow justified their treatment of the Palestinians. It would be like blowing up Irish people and pointing to something unsavoury that the Portuguese are doing as justification, sure those Western European Catholics are all savages. There's statistical evidence and studies have been done that show the media bias and attempts to dehumanise. Muslim crimes are much more likely to be reported on and the person's religion is far more likely to be mentioned if they are Muslim, even where the crime is not religiously motivated. It makes slaughtering their kids more palatable to a Western audience I suppose.

 

 

By highlighting human rights abuses in Islamic states while ignoring Israel's, Squires is helping that propaganda machine that enables Israeli war crimes. I'm not denying the crimes of the Saudi or Qatar regimes or saying he shouldn't cover them, but he relentlessly accuses Newcastle fans of ignoring the elephant in the room (which most of us don't imo) when he's well able to ignore a giant one s**tting all over his own one.

 

 

Edited 14 hours ago by Irish Paul

[TheBrownBottle]

13 hours ago, Groundhog63 said:

I love the phrase "whataboutary" 

 

Much like "woke" & "snowflake" in modern parlance in as much as meaning nothing other than a hierarchy of morality. 

 

You HAVE to engage with the chosen immorality because any other, wether, similar or not is irrelevant. 

 

Granted, chopping up a journalist is way way worse than, say, locking one up, in solitary confinement indefinitely, for whistleblowing. Or targeted them with sniper's bullets and airstrikes to lessen witness reporting. 

 

Granted, the wealthy Arab nations have pumped a fair bit of wedge into Sports. They've pumped a fair bit of wedge into many industries as well. But then so have Zionists. Obviously it's "antisemitic"  (😉) to suggest Zionists own/control everything so I won't 😂

 

There is, however, a definite disconnect between the reporting of Arab "sportswashing" as opposed to anything an apartheid state engaged in genocidal war crimes is partaking in. 

Russia gets banned easy enough while the Israelies strut about, competing without a whiff of criticism. That's not "whataboutary" that's 2 tier geopolitics and a hierarchy of morality. 

No issues from me re criticisms of Israel’s acts of genocide, war crimes and general cuntishness.  But that doesn’t let the Gulf states off the hook for their own abuses; it is also irrelevant when Israel is not the issue at hand.  It seems impossible these days to criticise dictatorships in the region without a ‘well what about Israel’ being thrown in.

[Kaizero]

Just a random thought I reminded myself of having had when I saw this thread bumped again; critiqing Squires is fair, but far too often it's felt like it's only come when he's making fun of something related to us. I'm not a fan of that, as it makes the fanbase as a whole look like we can't take a joke when it's at our expense – yet laugh at most of his jokes when they're at the expense of other clubs   If we can laugh at others, we should have self-insight enough to know there's things to be made fun of when it comes to our club as well.

 

That's not related to the discussion about his or the telegraph's political views and so on, that's another debate entirely. Just regarding the general reaction, over time, when we're the butt of a Squires joke being the majority starting to post stuff like "he's shit", "he's lost it" and "he was never that funny anyway!"