Manchester City and the Money Thing

Manchester City Football Club was purchased recently by the Abu Dhabi United Group, fronted by Dr. Sulaiman Al-Fahim, the Donald Trump of Abu Dhabi. It has raised the debate, once again, about money in football. The debate seems to revolve around whether or not the level of commercialisation in football is “good for the game”.

The Premiership is becoming divided into two tiers: clubs still waiting and clubs who have already attracted foreign benefactors. Success is increasingly determined by this arbitrary, off-the-field concern rather than the sporting but equally arbitrary fortunes of twenty-two men and a ball.

So, why are people so concerned? The game may be more commercial that it once was but club football, by it’s very definition, runs on money. Clubs are businesses and the Football Association is a business. They are creatures of the commercial world. In order to limit the impact of business on the game, rules would be needed, rules that would strangle the enterprise out of clubs and make them poor investment opportunities.

If the supporters want the Premiership to carry less prestige, attract less money, fewer world-class players and promote a more honest game where fortunes are determined on the pitch, then they should go ahead and demand reform. On the other hand, I think what they are looking for is right under their noses. It’s called The Football League. And yet they’d hate to see their club relegated to its ignominy; the hypocrisy being, they love the prestige and the glamour of the top flight.

Of course, there’s always international football. Unlike club football, internationals are not controlled by money. The competitions are as presigious as it gets and the players are world class. Unfortunately, games aren’t local or regular enough to quench the public’s thirst for the beautiful game.

Large Hadron Collider – Timeline of the Apocalypse

Wednesday, 10th September 2008

10:04AM (CET)

Deep underground beneath the Swiss-French border, the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, is used for the very first time. At modest power levels first, the plan is to gradually increase the power while the device and its enormous particle detectors are calibrated.

14:47.23PM (CET)

Initial results are encouraging and the team increase the power for the third collision experiment.

14:48.06PM (CET)

A microscopic black hole is formed from the incredible energy density in the collision proving that gravity is much more powerful over tiny distances, a prediction of the multi-dimensional hypotheses of String Theory.

14:48.07PM (CET)

Contrary to the less than compelling predictions of Prof. Stephen Hawking, the black hole does not immediately collapse in a shower of photons. It is stable and because it doesn’t destroy itself the LHC’s particle detector has nothing to detect. The tiny black hole shoots invisibly out through the walls of the detector’s cavern.

14:48.20PM (CET)

After penetrating tens of kilometres of earth the speeding black hole weighs a few milligrams. It emerges from the ground and like a tiny hypersonic bullet passes through a row of houses on the outskirts of Lyon, on its way upward.

14:50.54PM (CET)

Up through the atmosphere the black hole sucks in ever greater numbers of air molecules. As it grows it slows down.

14:54PM (CET)

The black hole arcs silently out into space. It has slowed too much to escape the Earth’s gravity. Under the influence of the Earth and Moon the microscopic singularity is in a highly eccentric and unstable orbit. The first collision could happen in a few weeks or it could be years, but it will happen. The most likely target is the Earth but the Moon may be first.

Tuesday, 23rd December 2008

An earthquake and a devastating explosion destroy the city of Chicago. Survivors see a comet-like object shooting into the sky.

Wednesday, 24th December 2008

The object is tracked by telescopes as it curves ominously out into space. It is Christmas Eve. Helpless to change the inevitable, the wise men of science look to the eastern sky and realise what shall come to pass.

Thursday, 25th December 2008

Too slowly now to slice through our planet, the growing black hole falls into the atmosphere and begins to gorge itself. Our world is eaten in the space of a few hours, bathed in the glorious light of its own annihilation.

 

It could happen… Merry Christmas.

Of course, you could always find religion. If it wasn’t EVIL that is!

A Price To Pay For Everything

I’m willing to be wrong, in fact I hope I am, but it certainly seems that society has gone to the dogs. I don’t think things are as bad as the media would have us believe but let’s say, for this discussion, there is a growning sub-culture of casual crime and anti-social behaviour. I don’t want to talk about chavs or trailer trash or your own particular local scapegoat, adopted by the middle classes as proof that poor people are in some way diseased. But something has changed and has been changing for decades, generations even, leading to an increasing minority of citizens simply opting out of society.

The saying goes “I blame the parents”, and I do. But why are standards falling with each successive generation? Why the decline?

For those on the bottom rung, life until the middle of the last century was a matter of sink or swim. You worked yourself from poverty to the grave. If you didn’t work, got in trouble or were just unlucky things would get much worse. And the class system was in place to stop you working yourself clean out of the water. Fast forward to today and, pushing the metaphor slightly too far, the water is chock full of flotation devices, rafts and rather comfy little dingies courtesy of the welfare state, human rights, social mobility, national health care and political correctness. At worst, these measures represent a huge investment made by all of us in a kind of institutionalised kindness. Measures that save dignity, suffering, even lives and they are absolutely essential.

But just because something is good does not mean it is without its negative effects. It sounds obvious but this crucial piece of reasoning is ignored by many.

The world order was once simple. You were born into a class, or more specifically into a set of complex social parameters and that was your lot. With no regard for work ethic, intellect or ingenuity your role was determined by birthright and would determine that of your children. Today, the system is no longer static. Call it what you will, social and economic mobility or ”The American Dream”. Society is now ready and willing to reward that which a rigid class system ignored. But it cannot reward everyone. And so, since the old system began to crumble, society has been reshuffling the standings of its members, slowly at first, then with increasing portent.

As first the brilliant, ingenious and aspiring rose to higher station, so the merely conscientious, diligent and keen followed. And as the bloated and lazy fell from grace, there their unwashed bedfellows remained. We are gathering at the lowest level of our society not those trapped by dictate but those who do not possess the will to improve themselves. We have provided the mechanism by which a wholly deserving underclass is formed from those least deserving of anything better.

So, how do we fix it?

Take away the means by which the poor live in comfort? But many, if not the majority of those that benefit, are deserving of help. Rebuild class boundaries? Not likely. The results would be an enormous and brutal step backward for anyone with the slightest social conscience.

Is it even possible to fix? After all, someone will always be at the bottom.

We have to break the mechanism somehow. Can we invest in the assessment and distribution of state benefits, to better target the right recipients? How would they be identified? Can we stop bad parents from raising the next generation of bad children?

I honestly don’t know. But identifying the problem, they say, is half the battle.