Top of the posts: Fascism in football, sexism on the street and ruffling royalist feathers

By Steve Anderson
Notebook
Friday, 1 June 2012 at 5:22 pm

It seemed it was a case of kicking Man United when they were down this week, after narrowly missing the Premier League title earlier in the month to arch rivals Man City, news came that they also came bottom in the ‘injury league’ for the season, meaning their players had suffered the most significant injury episodes. Alex Miller’s post, which also pointed out the double whammy of City then taking the title for the least amount of injury trouble, was the most viewed blog this week.

BBC’s Panorama documentary showing the darker side of the beautiful game in Eastern Europe inspired a post by Polish student Michal Zachodny, who, while admitting there were problems with racism on the stands, defended the behaviour of the majority of his fellow football fans, and criticised the seeming one-sidedness of the programme.

Rolling over from the previous week was Caroline Mortimer’s post on last week’s news that around 40 per cent of London women claimed to have suffered sexual harassment on the streets, giving an account of her own experiences, while Nicky Clark sought to smash the illusions that such harassment is acceptable when described as ‘banter’.

Issues of gender and the body featured prominently in this week’s top ten as Grace Jacobson looked to find a way of explaining women’s negative body image issues without laying the blame directly at men, and Paris Lees attempted to tackle the problem of transphobic bullying poorly masked as an attempt at humour.

Coming up to the big bank holiday weekend in celebration of our dear Queen doing her thing for 60 years, it was no surprise that a Jubilee-themed post did so well in the stats, and as one of this week’s most commented articles, Rob Williams’ letter from a republican to royalists certainly got a few people thinking.

Here are the most read blogs this week, as determined by stats:

1. Manchester City top the ‘injury league’, with Manchester United bottom By Alex Miller

2. Panorama: Stadiums of Hate – a Polish fan’s response from the stands by Michal Zachodny

3. Why do some men consider the street as a female meat market? By Caroline Mortimer

4. Not just the Mail or males: We need to look beyond the usual stereotypes when asking why so many women have such a terrible body image By Grace Jacobson

5. A Jubilee letter from a republican to royalists By Rob Williams

6. Heard the one about the ladyboy? Media jokes about trans people are not acceptable By Paris Lees

7. Banter Bigotry: It’s only a joke, love By Nicky Clark

8. The Debate: Are Cambridge students any more vile than your average British student? By Amol Rajan and Tom Peck

9. Marko Marin is a ridiculous signing by Chelsea By Kit Holden

10. Sepp Blatter: Penalty shoot-outs must remain, they’re football’s great leveller By Josh Barrie