INSANITY LOOP

Printed in the Southern League Central Division match v Rugby Town. Saturday 6th November 2010. We lost again, 3-1 in front of 266 people.

That well known football fanatic Albert Einstein famously said ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’ I was reminded of it when I heard the news that Wayne Rooney and his loveable ex vacuum cleaner agent had successfully bribed Manchester United into paying him £200,000 a week.
His timing was impeccable, coming in the same week in which the government announced massive cuts with thousands facing the dole queue thanks to the banker’s big gamble. It was also the week when Portsmouth nearly faced oblivion yet again, thanks to greedy owners and over paid players.
It was as if the world wide economic meltdown never happened.
Top footballers like top bankers now live in this untouchable bubble. While the government tells us ‘We are all in this together’ Britain’s top bosses have given themselves a 55% pay rise over the last year and bankers are getting ready for their Christmas bonus bonanza, while the rest of us turkeys face the chop. The average FTSE 100 chief executive now earns £4.9m a year - almost 200 times the average wage. What’s even more of a slap in the face is that it is these top bosses are the ones urging the Government to make deep cuts in jobs, services and welfare. Meanwhile many football fans facing an uncertain future will start to question whether they can really afford that match day ticket.
Our friends from over the river Windsor and Eton FC may go out of business because of a massive unpaid tax bill while Dundee have been docked 25 points for going into administration. You begin to wonder who would fail the FA’s ‘fit and proper’ test. ‘Hi, I’m a paedophile arms dealer hooked on crack?’ No problem. Just how many clubs will have to go to the wall before the football authorities do anything? Would Manchester United going into administration make someone sit up and listen?
Just like the government, the FA seems scared to take on the people who got us into such a mess. So it’s more government belly aching about benefit cheats, but strangely quiet about millionaire tax avoidance. It’s estimated that Britain loses £100 billion a year through tax dodging! Mind you, doing nothing is not surprising when you find out that the Cameron’s have a joint £30 million fortune, Chancellor Osborne a £4 million trust fund kept offshore to avoid tax and Clegg is the son of a millionaire banker.
The schools PE and sport budgets is cut, and as usual it is poorer students who will suffer. Massive cuts to local authority’s budgets will mean that sport, not a service councils are legally required to provide, will take a hit. Leisure centres, swimming pools, playing fields and the staff who run them easy are cost cutting fodder. But surely this is a false economy? As Steve Gates, the director of sports specialism at Bradford's Tong High School said. “The results and use of sport to help children improve their overall attainment has been remarkable.”
While the £9.3 billion Olympic Budget remains intact, you wonder what is the point of the Olympics if sport funding across the country is going to take a battering. Who will we have to compete in the future if the sports infrastructure is old and crumbling? What effect will it have when one of our major health challenges in society is obesity?
With so much money swimming around at the top of society, so much tax unpaid by the super rich, so many top footballers kissing the badges of the clubs they are helping to bankrupt, I scratch my head and wonder.
Am I missing something here or is everyone else insane?