Trivial Pursuits

Those of who recall Kenny Dalglish as a player will know that often he would come from apparently nowhere to make his strike and turn the game. Another talent he has is to say as little as possible for the most part and leave it to the action.

This makes his silence in the business of Suarez instructive and the way in which it was handled. Sometimes what is not said or done matters more that what is. It is a stark contrast to the arm waving, shouting and attention seeking approach of others.

It is possible that Dalglish and the other Liverpool interests are constrained by other issues. Manchester United players have been known to run to lawyers for super injunctions at the hint of a Chinese whisper.

These, as we know, can prevent any comments or statements by others and moreover the existence of any mention of such an injunction may not be mentioned in the media or elsewhere.

As the Football Association proceedings are not courts of law, simply internal disciplinary committees, they will be bound by them as much as another group of persons. If one side also is bound by this form of legally imposed silence then there is not much to be done about it.

All this is wild speculation on my part and purely personal opinion. All I know is the occasional lip reading of footballers in action on TV screens and the very occasional voice picked up on sound, usually bleeped or missed out from replays.

What I am clear about is that in most Premiership games there is ample insult and obscenity between players, often knowingly provocative and sometimes extreme in nature. The difference is that a racial comment is one thing but the other types another however vile they may be.

The upshot is that in the game the latter kind has become almost routine and conventional and disregarded for disciplinary action unless used against referees in a limited number of circumstances.

Yet amongst some peoples and cultures that which we regard as racist can be considered the lesser of the insults motor mouthed out by some players. It should not be too difficult to think of one or two.

It is curious that a player subjected to an insult that is amongst the worst in his culture or religion cannot claim “racism” in the UK and moreover were he to attempt to bring a case in his defence on this basis he is silenced by the UK courts.

We may not have heard the last about all this, because it was a Manchester United player’s lawyers who applied the Principle of Delivery to internet traffic in relation to his case. All this is without a hacker in sight and of course Liverpool fans are not up to that kind of thing are they?

This Principle can be applied in other cases if there is due cause. If some people have been careless in their social networking sites thinking they are protected they could be in for a nasty shock.

Someone could just ghost in and strike.

Free The Redknapp Two!

Are Buster and Lulu about to be put in the slammer of a Kennels and robbed of their right to live in their own home? These dogs are innocent!

They may have had incidental benefits of an expensive upbringing in a top price home and being taken for walkies on the most expensive bit of seaside real estate in the Kingdom but why should they suffer?

Their owner did nothing wrong, other than choosing a tax option that is currently being showered on all the top earners by the present government. If Vodaphone is innocent according to the Supreme Court of India then so are Buster and Lulu.

What is dismaying is how the memory of a much loved dog, Rosie, otherwise known as Leg Ripper by the neighbours, is being defiled in this spiteful attempt by the police to force egalitarianism on the most libertarian of football managers.

Harry Redknapp was being perfectly frank, honest and reasonable to quote a former Prime Minister, even giving his year of birth to the bank in Monaco to mark Rosie’s personal account.

1947, I remember it well, we froze, we nearly starved, there was no TV, only a maundering BBC radio service urging us to greater sacrifices in between comedy that was rarely funny and light entertainment as stodgy as a spotted dick pudding ruined when the gas supply failed.

Most of us only had either Hollywood films to entertain us, something that British films rarely did, or to go to the local football match.

There we watched chaps who lived up the road in cheap rented housing and who went to the same pubs that we did play for a quid or two more than you could get if you managed overtime on double pay.

It is thanks to the need to cherish and house lovely dogs like Buster and Lulu that have driven their owner to greater things. Who would argue against this?

Just as the need to have high maintenance girl friends and profitable media rights have helped footballers park their fortunes offshore with the help of their friends and others.

Yes, I know government borrowing has gone over £1 Trillion, yes I know there is a bit of a problem with the tax revenues going down faster than a footballers trousers in a lap dance club, but let us stick to British fair play.

Or I’ll set the dogs on you.

Habeas Corpus

Hair Today Gone Tomorrow

Today’s main headline is that Mr. Wayne Rooney, currently employed at the Old Trafford Hedge Fund as a public relations consultant, has had a hair transplant.

When I saw this item late last night, for some reason, possibly the high humidity, I misinterpreted the news as “head” which explains the picture above.

We all make mistakes.

A Result!

Unfair To Neanderthals

A declaration of interest, there might be a Rooney in the loft. In 1859 in Liverpool a Catherine Rooney witnessed the baptism of one of great grandma’s younger sisters and looks to have married one of the family.

In the Daily Mail, David Jones suggests that the ructions attending Mr. Wayne Rooney’s expressions of discontent are “Neanderthal”. Mr. Jones it seems met Mr. and Mrs. Rooney in an airport in the Gulf and they discussed an article that Mr. Jones had written which was critical of aspects of their lifestyle.

It is alleged that the discussion was vigorous and used colloquial language that may be common on BBC TV drama, during banker’s exchanges on how to deal with customers and in many school rooms today but which some old fashioned and simple people regard as being impolite.

Coincidentally, there have been a number of reports recently to the effect that more powerful and in depth genetic analysis may have revealed traces of Neanderthal DNA amongst many, maybe most, perhaps all of we humans.

Also, more extensive research and detailed scientific analysis suggests that the conventional view of Neanderthals as ugly primitives operating at a lower functional level than us may be very badly mistaken. There are traces of social civility and kindness to be found.

It is claimed that a typical Neanderthal, dressed in ordinary clothes could amble down Oxford Street in London without being noticed or regarded as different. Perhaps Oxford Street is not the best example as a basis for intelligent human comparisons.

It is all very complicated but it appears the Neanderthals had bigger brains than us, were physically very strong, but more limited in their capability to deal with climate changes and in terms of dietary needs. Moreover, it may be that their body density meant they could not swim.

Then there is my own thesis that after a period of severe change long ago the few surviving humans developed violent predatory habits which with certain mental traits, a combination of subservience with greed and the need for domination meant that other humanoid species were wiped out.

This perhaps was compounded by the Mount Toba event of 75,000 years ago which reduced the humans to a small number and the later ice age which encouraged the development of both their best and worst features.

What does seem clear that humans who have a very limited and unnatural upbringing and whose social and intellectual horizons are both narrow and given to extremes develop characteristics that can represent the worst rather than the best.

However, it could be even worse. Mr. Rooney may have grown up in the political class rather than the football industry but I think that the scale of their faults would have been beyond him. As for journalism……

Dancing To A Russian Tune

The blame game has started. It is alleged that it was disquiet about the London Media that made FIFA frit. Heaven forfend! Not only do we have ferocious libel laws with I suspect many of those involved already protected by fierce super injunctions but we have a media already remarkably shy of offending big money men.

In this weird world of London the paradox is that only media organisations with huge financial resources can stand the legal costs. One is Sky, and Rupert is not going to upset his friends. The other is the BBC, taxpayer funded. There is a deep irony in all this.

When I brought myself to watch a news programme, if only to see Orpington cut off from the world, the bit where Blatter, boss man of FIFA, did his Oscar routine was showed. The camera cut to the Russian group and centred on a couple doing a wild hug, as one does.

But tucked away in a corner was the owner of Chelsea and former Governor of Chukotka in Siberia (the only part of Russia to have a bit in the Western Hemisphere, adjacent to Sarah Palin’s Alaska) Ramon “When Did You Last Sack Your Manager” Abramovich who also owns a lot of central London.

He would have been well able to advise Mr. Putin about how to counter the bid from the English FA. But there was another face well known in London just behind who may not have been recognised by many viewers. A gentleman who knows Mr. Putin very well, indeed it is said that they are godfathers (literally) to each others children.

It was Valery Gherghiev of the Maryinsky, Kirov, London Symphony Orchestra and other major orchestras and opera houses around the world. The lady he hugged, who may well have been his wife, was of a build and deportment of that of a dancer.

Valery has had his issues with the London media, specifically those opinionated and difficult to control arty types who have expressed doubts about the effect of his very busy schedule and individual personal organisation on the quality of some of his performances.

This is far from madding crowd of the ordinary news or personalities that attract the most attention, but it is still unwelcome.

Ramon and Valery no doubt would have been well able to stoke up concern about what treatment might be handed out in London. They could certainly tell FIFA about the problems people have simply getting through airports when there is a security flap. Also, getting out again in one piece.

They could remind them of the burgeoning criminality on the streets, the mob riots police cannot fully control, the expense, the unreliability of services, the overall security issues and above all the increasing dirt and discomfort.

They would have advised of the insults, offensiveness and general lack of courtesy endemic in the capital and to be endured amongst its political and media elite.

Last but not least would have been the gentle hints that Russia (and Quatar) had oil, gas, other resources, wealth and influence well beyond that of the bust English and were much better people to be friends with in the difficult years to come.

So instead of Cameron and The Prince we might have been better off sending Sir Simon Rattle and Darcy Bussell. Dame Monica Mason would have put some backbone into the bid. They could not have done much worse and they may well have made a rather better team.

It is December and one of the traditional Arts items of the season is the ballet “The Nutcracker”, and the picture above is that of the Snowflakes scene from the Kirov DVD with Valery Gherghiev conducting.

The Royal Ballet are not doing it this year, to the grief of many of its fans. But Sky Arts did show their version for people to box.

Outside the snowflakes are falling and are not going to go away for some time.

Meanwhile in Zurich the English were nut crackered by Gherghiev and it hurt.

Football Fiasco

In a better and saner world Prince William’s handlers, along with the speechwriter, who made the nation squirm, would be confined to a hulk in the Thames awaiting transportation to New South Wales.

The business in Zurich was a fiasco and those who are in the Heads of State trade should keep away them, especially when they could see it coming if their people had enough wits to analyse the who, what, why, where and when. But they did not, being caught up in that weird strange media world of London where all is fantasy.

If Prince William was going to be seen out anywhere this week the place to be was in some kind of vehicle or conveyance that was defying the elements to help the sick, disabled and vulnerable in difficulties or perhaps helping to ferry medic’s and nurses to the hospitals.

It is becoming clearer by the week that the same kind of celebrity driven media bungling is attending the plans, correction shambles that is likely to be the Royal Wedding. This is not an accident waiting to happen it is a huge pile-up.

He and his fiancé have been an item for some time now. They do not need it. We do not need it. The wise way in 2011 is to have a low key, strictly limited family do in a village church.

The Cotswolds are littered with lovely little churches and if you want something a little bigger then there is one in Cirencester. My bet would be on the simplicity and quiet of somewhere like Edgeworth. If not then one place could be St. Andrew’s, it is where they met and at least Prince Andrew would be usefully occupied.

As for David Cameron, one of the worst things a politician can do is to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He is beginning to have “form” on this which suggests that either his judgement or his media lackeys are at fault. Given the problems building up in the world he needs to start thinking.

Beckham did what he could but with others scoring own goals he was on a loser. He would have been better off with Sir Michael Parkinson, Nobby Stiles (with or without teeth) and a couple of leading lights from the present or recent England sides who are proficient in media work and can talk.

At least they could lay claim to a football pedigree.

Football Crazy? More Insanity And Stupidity

Am I mad, or just ordinarily deranged? I am looking out of my window at a main road that is now free of traffic. A couple of furlongs away is a railway line that is now silent. The local airports are all shut. The motorway up the road is blocked. The ports to which they go are severely disrupted.

This is not local, it is now happening across much of the UK as communications, communities, public services and ordinary work struggle to maintain any real activity. There is a real crisis here waiting to happen.

What is BBC and Sky telling me? There is a meeting in Zurich to fix the dates and locations for some football matches to be played in 2018 and 2022. In the news this has absolute priority and we are told what interest Spain and Portugal might have and who has spoken to who and which person has made promises to others.

The BBC is taxpayer funded. Why has it not used all its resources to maintain a rolling service of information and advice to the UK concerning the conditions across the country about what is happening where and what people need to know and think about?

It is simply not good enough to tell people to go to the web because what is there is not co-ordinated or full enough to do the job.

More to the point whilst nearly everyone has access to TV or radio very many people do not and cannot use the web. Also, many people on the move cannot use the web.

So what exactly is this meeting? It is being held in Zurich. See my “Racking And Rolling The Swiss” of Thursday 9 July 2009. It is a major tax haven within a tax haven. Many of the most vicious thieving elites of the world have transmitted their loot through here and adjacent Cantons.

Also it is where football’s governing body FIFA is located, made up of a number of self appointed people from…..say no more.

Where is our Prime Minister, David Cameron? Is he in London or Edinburgh or Cardiff or Belfast overseeing the efforts and direction of dealing with the present weather crisis and other crucial financial issues?

He is not, after a fleeting visit for Questions in the House of Commons he has returned to Zurich, not just to check out one of the family Trusts, but to butter up and grovel to the financial elite running FIFA to beg them to stage their football matches in England.

Where is Prince William? Is he out with the over stretched and vital Air Rescue Services we are told he is a key member of? Nope, he too is in Zurich and not just checking out some of the lesser known family bank accounts. He is doing even more grovelling and schmoozing than Cameron around these greasy grotesques.

Add to them the mob of other people, virtually all with serious financial interests in the matter and the well equipped brigade of BBC people, better equipped alas than any of our troops serving abroad and England certainly does expect some return for its money.

And, dear taxpayer, it is you and I who are paying for all this, as we are for the costs of the present weather situation. Also, if the games are allocated to England then we will be paying yet again. None of those doing the talking in Zurich will pay.

None of all the money launderers and other big money people running our Premiership will be paying. None of those very rich people or corporate representatives or politicians yelling Prestige and Economic Growth at us will be paying either.

I repeat, you will pay and the snow is still coming down.

Football Follies

What on earth is Dave The Suave doing cosying up to the Soccer industry? As a business model alone it is an investment to avoid at all costs unless you are in either money laundering or the provision of personal services.

Could someone please supply him with two lists. One should be of the once great clubs now down and out. The other should be the present clubs in the top leagues whose finances are questionable.

Then perhaps there might be a file of clippings about some of those chaps too many politicians scramble to stand at the side of for photo opportunities. It would not go well with protestations about family values or traditional qualities that he and others burble about in their bids for votes.

At No. 10 Downing Street it seems there is a panic to help England (why England, why not Scotland or Wales or one or other of the Irelands or the Isle of Man or Guernsey?) secure the right to stage the 2018 World Cup. Lundy perhaps?

This is an event that has around 80 games of football of which about half a dozen will be interesting or watchable for the benefit of TV companies, assorted sponsors and an international elite hoping to extract both prestige and pockets full of money.

Despite austerity the taxpayer directly and indirectly (especially if the BBC is involved) will be making a hefty contribution. As a TV enterprise they will do this despite being able now to watch any of the games either on TV or computer from anywhere in the world at any time.

Whilst a number of spectators will be at the games, mostly thinly attended, they will be a minority who can afford it or who are freeloading at the expense of us all.

Simon Jenkins in the “Guardian” (this is a new one me agreeing with it) objects to the BBC being put under pressure to “pull” a programme scheduled before the voting on the decisions for 2018 that suggests that a lot of dodgy dealing has taken place.

It is thought that the Football Association was urged by 10 Downing Street to try to stop the potential embarrassment of FIFA with the risk of England losing the vote. It would not be good for Dave to turn up there waving the flag only to be a loser.

Possibly the BBC is up to something linking Dave to a body that works in even more mysterious ways than the International Olympics Committee, the body that has demanded and obtained Zil lanes and special traffic controls for its members.

Here is the Big Idea. In the modern TV saturated easy transport world what is the point of The World Cup at all now? Just as cricket in international terms has become more or less a continuing league system why doesn’t some TV company organise a World League with promotion and relegation.

Say 8 teams to a division with one up and one down and make the whole thing a properly run commercial entity without all this secret elite goings on?

Can you hear me Rupert? And can you have a word in Dave’s ear?

The Premiership, Going Nowhere

There will be a number of anchorites, other persons isolated from much of human life, isolates and ladies spending too much time in the kitchen or looking after the kids who are not aware that the English Premiership begins next Saturday.

The rest of us do whether we like it or not. In the welter of media publicity and personal interest stories that we are enduring may I recommend one intriguing source of information of interest to those who love the game and especially to all those who hate it.

It is www.footballeconomy.com that tells you much of the real story and what it all now means to all and sundry in the media and politics. Money and power as you might expect. It seems that the ownership of Liverpool FC is being contested by persons from India (thank you Dave), China and Syria with maybe a Soviet, sorry Russian oligarch lurking behind the memorials in Anfield Cemetery.

During the summer we have had the fascinating spectacle of the nation’s new blood sport, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in hot pursuit of many clubs for unpaid taxes and the submission of accounts apparently written by the many ghost writers of footballers’ biographies rather than accountants.

It seems that until this year the HMRC have been generous, even lax, in looking at the tax affairs and liabilities of clubs and have suddenly tightened up. There were some spectacular cases before that they could not avoid, albeit arriving very late on the scene. Why I wonder, surely not political pressure from the Government? It is possible that one or other clubs could simply close down, as do many other business firms in trouble.

Rather like the courtiers who hung around the courts of the Medici and the Borgia’s there are administrators from the Big Four and others waiting up on their toes for the next victim of their services. Which club may survive? Which may lose enough points to wreck their season? Which famous name will begin the descent to the football abyss of The Championship and beyond because they lost the Great Gamble of spending to win?

Yougov have asked my opinion of all this. Usually, I do my best to mislead them and skew their results, but this time I weakened and gave some honest answers. Yes, I do want Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United to be relegated. Yes Blackpool should be champions and Scunthorpe United promoted. I will be out of luck. The real issue is whether the huge funds put into Manchester City will finally pay off.

It is all a long time since I first stood on the terrace of a football ground as a little ‘un. One of the grounds of my childhood was Anfield. I recall asking my Uncle why it was called “Spion Kop” (you can look at Google or Bling). He pointed to an ancient propping up the wall and told me to ask him. He explained in brutal terms what it meant. He had been there in January 1900. The lesson I learned was that football at the top was not entirely just a game.

Now it has long been a business of various kinds. No longer can I have a pint with one of the team in the local pub’. I would have to elbow my way through the entourage at a very expensive night club. The player would not longer live over a shop with his parents. He would be in a vast mansion in Prestbury ruining the local economy by spending anywhere but in the village.

The question for those of us with beady eyes looking at where the money is coming from and where it actually goes is whether the whole thing is a financial “bubble”. Is the money coming in for lack of safe places for investment? It is unlikely to be sustainable in the future.

What may happen if suddenly people actually begin to lose interest? I have not been to a match for years now for reasons of cost. My viewing of TV is becoming less and less by the season. What I do notice is the lack of young faces in the crowds. Are viewers watching now more by default or because they think they are supposed to?

There are very many things from the time I first went to a game that have changed in England and The World. Others have come and gone. So I wonder how long the present set up can last and when the collapse will begin and if it will be fast or slow.

Like steam railways it might just run into the buffers.

England Football - A Marxist Analysis

John “Groucho” Terry has decided to spend more time with his media agents after a long session of therapy with Fabio “Chico” Capello who did not want his England stars to be troubled were John to be substituted at any time during the coming games. He has been replaced as England Capitaine by Rio “Harpo” Ferdinand of Manchester and the Moss Side Charm School.

Rio will be throwing a big party in celebration for the England squad, all their WAG’s and as many unattached females as can be fitted into the bedrooms of the 750 room hotel booked for the occasion. It will be a “Fur Coat And No Knickers” party to raise funds for the reduction of the mink population causing so much environmental damage to the waterways in England’s green and pleasant land.

Harriet “Minnie Marx” Harman, the team’s astrologer, has laid a curse on the team until exactly half of the eleven England players on the pitch are female. She will be attending the party but only as a hired consultant on inter-personal relations. Peter “Gummo” Mandelson has been booked as a greeter and fixer and is available also for bookings of stag and hen parties, rugby club dinners, and meetings on the Cote D’Azur for the right kind of donation to his personal Trusts in Monaco.

“Zeppo” Brown has given his full support to England in their World Cup bid. Coral are quoting now England’s odds as 100,000 to 1 against.