 - Last login: 2 months agoJaCk044
- Jack is a 45 year old guy from England, UK.
- Likes 1,212 pages, 1,139 videos, 1 photo • 89 fans • Received 53 reviews
- Member since Apr 21, 2007
A wandering wordsmith, professional tea drinker and consumer of web-trivia ... "Hang the sense of it and keep yourself occupied".
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Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wrote in his 1858 book 'The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table'; "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day, like a football, and it will be round and full at evening."
And the manager of Newcastle United, Kevin Keegan, sparked a ragged debate at the end of this season by saying it's become nigh on impossible to break the growing gap between the 'big four' (Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool - just - and Manchester United) and the other teams which make up the richest football league in the world: the English Premier League. This debate has ebbed and flowed over recent years, washing ashore various statistics and arguments like debris from an obscure shipwreck. Many people simply take these arguments at face value and blame the 'get-rich-quick' culture spawned by Maggie Thatcher in the 80s but this is to ignore a long and inglorious 'tradition' of bungs, bribes and sheer greed throughout the history of "the beautiful game".
In fact, the first 'financial irregularity' led to the formation of the professional league --- in 1884!
spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Fcorruption.htm [spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Fcorruption.htm]
A police investigation into football corruption is making sudden swoops upon clubs, like Birmingham City and Portsmouth in recent weeks, like cartoon-cop-characters out of a 70s B-movie (a cross between officer Dibble and Sweeny Todd - the John Thaw version, not the all-singing Johnny Depp), tipping over filing cabinets and confiscating computers to find the elusive gold-dust of hard evidence. This is a bit like looking under the cheating-wife's bed when the husband comes home unexpectedly...it's the most natural place to look first - and is always completely the wrong place to start.
George Graham, when in charge of Arsenal in the early 90s, was caught red-handed offering 'bungs' to Norwegian agents (I know, now it sounds a bit like a scene from a cheesy 50s b/w war movie) and sacked from the club. Of course, sacking him from one club didn't prevent him getting a job with another...or lucrative work in the media.
An analogy between this state of affairs in our Football League and the system of government is worth bearing comparison.
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