13 things every Newcastle United fan should know about the club's new owners

In October 2021 the tyrannical Saudi regime completed the takeover of Newcastle United FC, via the nation's sovereign wealth fund. 

Here are 13 things all Newcastle fans should know about their club's new owners.

It's the Saudi state

This isn't just some rich guys from Saudi Arabia who have bought an 80% stake in Newcastle United, it's the Saudi government's Public Investment Fund (PIF).

Their chairman of this fund the murderous tyrant Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), who is also the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.

No matter how much the Premier League tries to maintain the ridiculous pretence that they haven't, what they've done is allowed the nationalisation of Newcastle United, into the ownership of the world's worst regime.

Sportswashing

The Saudi tyrants have invested their oil money all over the world. They've got stakes in Facebook, Twitter, Formula One, Boeing, Bank of America, Disney, Uber ... Wherever you look in the capitalist system, the Saudi tyrants have probably got a stake in it.

The difference between these investments, and Newcastle United, is that their capitalist investments are aimed at making profits, while their investment in Newcastle United is aimed at improving their public reputation, at a massive cost.

Why do you think they've made that appalling wax-faxed woman Amanda Staveley the figurehead of their ownership, despite her only owning a tiny stake in the venture, rather than one of their own head-choppers?

It's all about massaging their public reputation, and putting a slick westernised veneer onto their barbaric autocracy, rather than making any kind of monetary profit.

We've seen it already with Manchester City, and the way huge numbers of Mancs immediately turned themselves into amateur unpaid PR operatives for the Abu Dhabi despots who took over their club.

MBS and the Saudi head-choppers expect to receive exactly the same kind of sycophantic fawning from Geordies.

War crimes

The despotic Saudi regime has been waging war in neighbouring Yemen since 2014, and they've shown absolutely no respect for the normal conventions of war. 

Probably the most famous war crime occurred when they conducted an airstrike against a bus full of school kids, but they've also used helicopter gunships to attack refugees, and deliberately bombed civilian targets across one of the poorest countries on earth.

One of the most despicable tactics the Saudi tyrants use is the targeting of water supplies and food distribution infrastructure, in order to use starvation and disease as weapons of war against the Yemeni people.

Their absolute disregard for human life in the Yemeni conflict has created what the UN has consistently described as "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world".

Terrorism-spreaders

Ever since the oil money started flowing in, the Saudis have been using it to spread their extremist version of Islam (Wahhabism) across the globe. Wherever you find barbaric Islamist terrorists, you'll find financial and logistical links back to Saudi Arabia.

15 of the 19 September 11th attackers were Saudi, and the ideological figurehead of Al Qaida was Osama bin Laden, who came from a wealthy family that's still well connected in the Saudi regime.

During the 2016 US election Hillary Clinton's emails about the Saudis were leaked, and in them she made it absolutely clear that the US administration knew perfectly well that Saudi Arabia funds terrorist outfits like Al Qaida and ISIS.

Jamal Khashoggi

In October 2018 the Saudi government lured the Jamal Khashoggi to the Saudi embassy in Turkey, where he was murdered and dismembered. The remains of his body have never been found.

The aeroplanes used to fly his murderers in and out of Turkey were owned by PIF, the very company used as a front to buy Newcastle United, and the CIA concluded that the murder was ordered by Muhammed bin Salmen himself.

The reason Newcastle United's new owners killed Khashoggi and hacked his body to bits, is that he was a critic of their regime. He was the son of a mega-rich Saudi arms dealer with connections to the Saudi regime, but he saw the light, recognised the vile tyranny for what it was, and began criticising their political repression, and their war crimes in Yemen.

He was a brave man who stood up for what he believed in, and for that, the owners of Newcastle United ended his life, hacked his corpse to pieces, and hid the remains to deny him a proper burial.

They kill journalists just for criticising their horrific regime.

Misogyny

Probably the most famous piece of folk knowledge about Saudi Arabia in the last half-century is the fact that they hate their own women so much, they wouldn't even allow them to drive cars.

Saudi Arabia is still a profoundly misogynistic society in which women barely have any rights.

They're not allowed to travel or get a passport without permission from their male guardian; they're not free to choose who they marry, and until recently Saudi girls as young as 8 were forced into marriages with adult men; they're barred from all manner of professions; they're banned from studying abroad without their male guardian's permission; they're discriminated against in family courts; and feminist activism in Saudi Arabia is treated as akin to terrorism.

Homophobia

Saudi Arabia is one of the most homophobic regimes on earth, which maintains the death penalty for homosexuality.

They kill people for being gay. Do we really need to say any more than that?

Anti-democracy

In 2019 the Saudi tyrants conducted a barbaric mass-execution of 39 people, including one death by crucifixion. Most of the victims were pro-democracy protestors (including a lad who was 16 at the time he attended a pro-democracy street protest!).

These absolute tyrants literally kill people for supporting the democratic rights that British people take for granted. 

Islamist extremism
 

We already know that the Saudi regime is responsible for spreading their violent, extremist Wahhabist interpretation of Islam across the planet, but within Saudi Arabia they're just as bad.

Apostacy (the "crime" of renouncing Islam) still carries the death sentence in Saudi Arabia. 

Most Saudis who renounce Islam are forced into exile, which is especially hard for women because of the travel restrictions they're subjected to. And even then, they're forced to continually look over their shoulders, because Saudi operatives obviously aren't remotely afraid to carry out extrajudicial killings overseas. 

Corruption

The Saudi regime is notoriously corrupt, and they'll do literally anything to get away with it.

The Saudis even threatened acts of terrorism against the UK in order to pressurise the UK government into scrapping a Serious Fraud Office investigation into the estimated £1 billion that Prince Bandar took in bribes from the British arms company BAE.

The threat of Saudi-orchestrated terrorist attacks on British soil was enough to convince Tony Blair to personally intervene to shut down the corruption probe!

Premier League greed

The reason Premier League approval of the Newcastle takeover took so long wasn't that they had any concerns about the corruption, homophobia, democracy-repression, murder of journalists, misogyny, war crimes, terrorism-spreading, Islamist extremism, or even threats of terrorist attacks against the UK ... it's because a TV company with links to the Saudi government had been broadcasting unauthorised streams of Premier League matches!

Once this company put a stop to their unauthorised streams, the Premier League quickly gave the green light to the worst regime in the world to take over one of England's most historic and storied football clubs!

If you're looking for anyone to blame for the absolute shame of these horrific tyrants taking over your club, look no further than greed-obsessed Premier League executives.

Forget whataboutery

"Whataboutery" is one of the weakest debating tactics known to humanity. It's just a distraction strategy aimed at completely derailing the discussion.

• What about other terrible football owners like UAE/Qatar/exploitative US capitalists/Abramovich?
• What about other repressive regimes like North Korea/Iran/Israel? 
• What about other Saudi investments in stuff like Facebook/Twitter?
• What about Mike Ashley's ruthless zero hours contract exploitation at Sports Direct?

All of these other things are varying degrees of bad. And very many people have consistently highlighted and criticised these other things in the past. But the subject of discussion now is the fact that Newcastle United has been bought out by the worst regime in the world. 

The only reason any Newcastle fan is going "what about ...?" is to distract attention and derail the discussion.

It's a shamefully poor debating tactic, which nobody with even a shred of moral decency would try to use.

Buying loyalty?

The Saudi tyrants believe that just because they've bought Newcastle United, they've bought the Newcastle fans' undying loyalty too.

It's up to the people of Newcastle to show them how wrong they are, and that buying the badge doesn't automatically buy them the respect of the Geordie people.

If Newcastle fans have any decency and dignity whatever, the next home game will be absolutely festooned with pride flags, Yemeni flags, women's rights banners, and pictures of Jamal Khashoggi.

Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered by the owners of Newcastle United at the age of 59, so the 59th minute would be a profound moment for the name "Jamal Khashoggi" to ring out around St James' Park, to tell these sick bastards that they might own your club, but they'll never earn your respect if they go around murdering and dismembering their critics.

Will Newcastle United fans put on a show of defiance against the absolutely horrific tyrants who now own their club? Or will the next home game have an absolute party atmosphere, featuring thousands of Geordies giving the worst regime in the world a heroes' welcome with tea towels on their heads?

The game against Spurs on Sunday October 17th will tell the entire world an awful lot about the true character of the Geordie people, won't it?

 

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. Access to my online writing will always remain free. If you see some value in what I do, please consider supporting my work with a small donation/subscription.

OR

Why are footballers held more accountable than establishment politicians?

The mainstream media non-reaction to the Labour Leak scandal, and the ongoing lack of suspensions within the party are extraordinary in their own right.

What the leaks revealed was a bunch of horrific right-wing wreckers embedded within the Labour Party deliberately trying to lose elections, misallocating party funds, engaging in racist and misogynistic abuse against their party colleagues, and endlessly slagging off their own party's leader, policies, and supporters.

But a little thought experiment puts this scandal, and the almost complete non-reaction to it into a clearer perspective.

If leaked WhatsApp chats revealed that several players on a Premier League football team had been conspiring to deliberately lose crucial games in a misguided attempt to drive out their manager, all hell would break loose.

Especially if the players were also caught out spewing racist abuse at their own black team mates, deliberately undermining their own team's anti-racism initiatives, and repeatedly deriding their own team's fans with mental health slurs.

You could bet every penny you've got on these players being immediately suspended, coverage of the story dominating the newspaper front and back pages for weeks, the regulatory authorities getting involved, and several of the worst perpetrators ending up in jail and never playing professional football again in their lives.

But just imagine if the club decided not to suspend a single one of the players.

How do you imagine the club's fans would react if the team just carried on like nothing had happened?

And do you really think the players' mates in the media would be composing articles portraying the cheating racist scunners as the "poor innocent victims of a terrible invasion of privacy" (despite the fact that they only got caught because one of the hypothetical players had been stupid enough to upload the entire WhatsApp chat history onto the club's computer system!).

But we've seen articles from the Guardian to the Telegraph portraying these bigotry-dripping right-wing saboteurs as the poor innocent victims, and whoever blew the whistle by leaking the report as the dreadful horrible monster of the situation.

In reality we don't even need to imagine how football would react to a scandal like this, because we've got plenty of evidence of how the football community reacts to cheating, disrespect, and racism.

When the former Huddersfield, West Brom, and Notts County player Delroy Facey was caught match fixing he was jailed for two and a half years.

Two England managers have been forced out of their jobs, Glenn Hoddle over his bizarre ableist tirade accusing disabled people of being at fault for their own conditions because of "karma" and Sam Allardyce was removed after one solitary game for financial impropriety.

When former West Brom and Manchester United manager Ron Atkinson was recorded saying that a black footballer was a "lazy, thick N-word" he was cancelled. Despite being one of the pioneering managers who brought black players into his teams in the 1970s and '80s, he clearly stepped way over the line with this racial slur and lost his commentary and football columnist jobs over it.

Just think about how many times football managers and players have been sanctioned and fined for "bringing the game into disrepute", and how establishment politicians have been allowed to get away with absolutely egregious lies, expenses scamming, and horrific abuse of each other and random members of the public.

Just think about the vitriol that a whole host of football players have faced over charges of  "going down to easily", even though the referees have shown time and again that they simply don't award free kicks unless players make a big show of falling over at the point of contact.

People who fall over too easily on a sports field get more public derision than politicians who sabotage elections and spew racist, misogynistic, and ableist abuse!

The establishment political class get in comparison to footballers is extraordinary:

Consider Tony Blair's lies that led us into the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the hundreds of thousands who died as a consequence, and how he's still treated as some kind of beloved political oracle by the press, instead of the lying pariah he should be.

Consider David Cameron hiding behind parliamentary privilege like a coward to spew libellous abuse at a random Muslim guy, purely in order to falsely portray Labour's Sadiq Khan as a terrorist sympathiser.

Consider Theresa May's sickeningly racist "Hostile Environment" legislation, and how nobody in the political establishment class has faced any real consequences for the systematic abuse of black British citizens, to the extent of actually deporting scores of UK citizens.

Consider the fact that 88% of Tory Facebook ads were shown to be lies during the 2019 General Election, and absolutely nothing was done about it.

And consider the ludicrous non-reaction to the racism, mental health slurs, delaying of antisemitism investigations, and deliberate electoral sabotage carried out by the Labour right-wingers that was exposed in the Labour Leaks.

It turns out that the United Kingdom is a country with absurd priorities, where the media and regulatory authorities hold footballers, football managers, and football commentators to a vastly higher standard of conduct than the establishment politicians who actually rule over our lives!

We've just become so accustomed to the political establishment lying, and cheating, and scamming their way through their careers that we accept it as a normal part of the job.

But to make matters worse, when one politician showed up who eschewed the lying, and scheming, and self-interested scamming, the mainstream media and the rest of the political class turned on him, continually portrayed him as some kind of repulsive extremist monster, and even deliberately sabotaged his party from within to prevent him from becoming Prime Minister.

Even if it had been players from a football club you don't even like, you'd want them disciplined for bringing the game into disrepute if they'd behaved like the right-wing Labour saboteurs, but somehow, because it's happened in politics rather than football, most of the nation has turned a complete blind eye to it.

And this extraordinary non-reaction provokes the question of how politics can ever be cleaned up if establishment politicians can get away with the kind of deliberate sabotage and rampant bigotry that would result in footballers, or anyone else in any other job, getting sacked, and probably jailed if they did the same.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

Who has got the nuttiest Salisbury conspiracy theory?

In the feverish atmosphere in the wake of the Salisbury nerve agent attack there have been some absolutely bonkers conspiracy theories flying around.

In this article I'm going to attempt to give a measured perspective on the attack before detailing some of the nuttiest reactions.

The difference between questions and conspiracy theories

Like almost everyone reading this article, I don't have access to the chemical analysis that's been conducted on the nerve agent, and I don't have access to any intelligence that may have been gathered in relation to the attack.

This lack of information means that it's impossible to fly off into alternative explanations for the attack without the danger of wandering off into the tinfoil hat conspiracy zone.

However this lack of vital information doesn't prevent us from asking questions about the official position, which according to Tory ministers like Boris Johnson, involved Vladimir Putin directly ordering this hopelessly botched hit on a long-retired double agent.

The glaring problem with this theory is that it relies on the idea that Putin is some kind of idiot with no regard for consequences. Of course Putin is your archetypal strong-man tyrant with a disregard for human rights, but if you've ever actually paid attention to any of his speeches, he's clearly an intelligent man, not an idiot.

So, given that just a couple of weeks ago the Tory government pliantly did Putin's bidding by obstructing Labour's efforts to introduce Magnitsky powers to clamp down on all the Russian dark money sloshing around in the City of London, the UK housing market, and the coffers of the Tory party, why would Putin then decide to personally authorise an attack that would massively increase the chances of Magnitsky sanctions being imposed?

You can attempt to answer this kind of question in whatever way you like, but be careful you don't end up wandering off into the tinfoil hat twilight zone  ...

The fireman conspiracy

The first conspiracy theory to deal with is the idea that the attack was faked because of one out-of-context photograph of firemen with no biohazard suits standing next to people with biohazard suits.

It says a lot about the kind of person you are if you can look at a single photo and deduce a convoluted conspiracy theory from it, which you then believe without giving thought to other potential explanations, like maybe the fact that people in biohazard suits need to take off their biohazard suits at some point. 

Perhaps a much simpler explanation that the whole attack being an elaborate hoax, is that that's what was going on?
The evil mother-in-law


Then there's the theory that Yulia Skripal was poisoned by her future mother-in-law who supposedly doesn't want her son to marry the daughter of an ex-spy.

How the evil mother-in-law got her hands on a supply of highly toxic nerve agent isn't related in this particular conspiracy theory.

It was the CIA

If you really want to get into the kooky conspiracy shit, then UKIP is definitely a great place to turn. I mean who could forget the Ukipper "Somerset floods were caused by gay marriage" theory from a few years ago?

Well Godfrey Bloom has publicly stated his suspicion that the attack was carried out by the CIA in order to ringfence the budget for the military industrial complex.

It's interesting to see the way the hard-right UKIP mob have moved from adoration of anything American to outright hostility and conspiracy theorising against the US intelligence services ever since the Mueller investigation into links between Russia and the Trump campaign started getting serious.

It's all about Brexit

Another bizarre UKIP conspiracy theory is that the Salisbury attack is a false flag attack orchestrated by the British government in order to derail Brexit!

Here's what Richard Wood of UKIP told Sputnik News: 

"Theresa May has been absolutely stupid because she is now in a hole over Brexit with the European Union and the EU is doing its best to keep Britain in and we want to be out. The whole point about this fiasco is that something happened and Mrs. May is now being able to point another finger at Russia and say this is our enemy. They are finding some excuse to actually blame Russia for something else so Russia becomes a big bad man again to take the pressure off Theresa May with the Brexit negotiations because she is not getting anywhere. Everybody I speak to is not on her side and not against Russia. I do think it was staged."

Trust the UKIP loons to come up with a load of batshit crazy nonsense about how it's all a conspiracy to undermine their beloved Brexit.

It's all about the UN

Another theory doing the rounds is that the Salisbury incident was a "false flag" attack designed to ramp up international pressure to get Russia thrown off the UN Security Council.

The idea that Russia could be removed from the Security Council over this incident is as impractical as it is unrealistic.

If Russia and the United States managed to stay part of the UN Security Council together throughout the theft of US nuclear weapons secrets, the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Olympic boycotts, countless near misses and sanctions impositions, and all of that, how on earth is an incident like Salisbury going to register enough impact to essentially destroy the United Nations?

Even if the endgame was to get Russia thrown off the UN Security Council, how would that be achieved given that Russia has a Security Council veto, and China (another of the 5 permanent members) would obviously never let it happen either?

It's all about football

Then there's the probably the most ridiculous theory that the attack was staged to somehow undermine Russia's hosting of the FIFA World Cup, as if football is somehow the most important thing in the world.

The problem with wild conspiracy theories like this is that there's always some absolute dullard who comes along to give credence to such nonsense. In this case the right-wing Labour MP Stephen Kinnock, who has started gabbing on about how the UK should somehow form a global alliance to pressurise FIFA to delay the World Cup until 2019 and ban Russia as the hosts!

If Argentina being over-run by one of the most violent and repressive military dictatorships of the late 20th Century wasn't enough to stop the World Cup in 1978, then it seems a tad unlikely that Kinnock is going to succeed with his plot to get this summer's World Cup taken off Russia.

Trust a right-wing Labour melt like Kinnock to hear the most bonkers conspiracy theory of all, think it's actually a really good idea, and then try to pass it off as his own policy!

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

Jeremy Corbyn's grassroots football policy is simple but brilliant

Jeremy Corbyn's grassroots football policy is simple but brilliant. He wants to boost grassroots football by ensuring that a small portion of the £billions in TV revenues flowing to the top clubs is used to support grassroots football.

This policy isn't just brilliant for English football because it will give many thousands more kids the facilities and opportunities to strive to become the elite players of the future, it'll also be a massive boost for the health of the nation.

Players

Anyone who follows football will be aware of the way Jamie Vardy climbed from the non-league to become a legend in Leicester City's astonishing Premier League winning campaign. Until 2010 he was playing for Stocksbridge Park Steelers FC. Then after stints with non-league Halifax Town and Fleetwood Town he joined Leicester City, going on to beat the Premier League record by scoring in eleven consecutive games and score his first goal for England in a 3-2 win against Germany.

How many more Jamie Vardy's might thrive and climb their way towards the pinnacle of the English game with better funding and facilities at the grass roots level?

Coaches

The benefit wouldn't just be for players either. Better facilities and more opportunities mean that English football coaching can begin to crawl out of the international basement. In 2014 England had just 1,395 UEFA A qualified coaches. In comparison Germany had 6,934 and Spain a whopping 15,423.

Given the lack of qualified coaches it any wonder that it's now an incredible 25 years since the last English manager led a team to the English league title? (Howard Wilkinson, Leeds United, 1991-92)

More money for the grassroots game will mean more aspiring coaches learning the skills to to bring the best out in British kids, and to succeed at the top level where previous generations have failed.

Public health

The public health benefits of more people playing sport are so obvious as to barely need explaining: Regular exercise is one of the most fundamental aspects of a healthy lifestyle, and the bonding experience of being part of a team is obviously a massive mental health benefit too.

The healthier lives people lead, the less reliant on the health service they are. Public health isn't just good for the individuals, it's good for the taxpayer too.

Conclusion

Corbyn's policy of ensuring 5% of the TV revenues are used to support grassroots football isn't some kind of punishment for the elite clubs. They can easily afford it, and the long-term benefits of more kids with decent football facilities, and more adults actively engaged in the game will more than compensate the big clubs in the long-run when the next superstar players, managers and coaches begin to flow up to the top of the game.

Jeremy Corbyn's belief that "football is for the many" is something that must surely resonate with anyone who has ever played at the grassroots level.

It's a fantastically simple policy that will be of enormous benefit to the long-term future of the British game.

And even if you don't much like football, getting more people involved in sport would clearly be a fantastic public health benefit too.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

Paul Nuttall just deleted his website

Even judged by the staggeringly dishonest standards of his political contemporaries the UKIP leader Paul Nuttall is in a field of his own.

• Nuttall put a furious anti-NHS diatribe up on his website, then when called out about it decided to delete the page and pretend that he now loves the NHS. Only the most ridiculous Internet n00b could believe that deleting the webpage makes things disappear from the Internet.

• Nuttall's LinkedIn profile claimed that he had a PhD from Liverpool Hope University which was an outright lie. His excuse for this one is that the page had nothing to do with him or his team, expecting people to believe that his own LinkedIn profile was actually part of some terrible anti-UKIP conspiracy.

• Nuttall was forced to admit that claims that he'd played professional football for Tranmere Rovers were outright lies. Just imagine the stupidity of a person who thinks that the football nerds wouldn't eventually go through the records to check out such a bold claim.

• When he decided to stand as a candidate in the Stoke Central by-election Nuttall registered using the address of an empty house that he had never even set foot in. Doing that is a criminal offence. Nuttall obviously just expected to get away with that lie too.

• When pressed about claims on his website that he'd lost close personal friends at the Hillsborough disaster Nuttall was forced to come clean that he hadn't in fact lost a close friend. A scapegoat was found and his media manager was persuaded to take the blame but then it was revealed that he told the same lie about losing close personal friends to the BBC in 2011. 

In the wake of the Hillsborough lie Nuttall seems to have gone into hiding. I can't see his Twitter feed these days because he blocked me for tweeting this photo at him, but I'm told that he's stopped tweeting. He's also completely pulled down his website, presumably to stop people scouring it for more of his blatant lies.

The idea of going into online hiding just a week before a high profile by-election is quite extraordinary.

Most politicians wouldn't try to hide from the lies so pathetically, but it seems that Nuttall's lies are so numerous and so brazen that he feels that he's got no choice but to keep his head down and hope that the people of Stoke Central are stupid enough to elect such an obvious and distasteful liar, with no connections whatever to the area, as their parliamentary representative.

The problem with Paul Nuttall isn't that he's dishonest. If dishonesty was any kind of political impediment how on earth would it be possible to explain David Cameron's political career?

No - the problem is that Nuttall is such a hopelessly bad liar that surely even the most idiotic of people (Daily Express readers, Britain First enthusiasts ...) can't help but see that he's an absolute bullshitter.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

Theresa May's display of Synthetic Poppy Outrage

It's November so it's become customary in Britain to observe displays of synthetic outrage about poppies and remembrance. If it's not some TV presenter or football player being hounded by the right-wing press for the "crime" of not wearing a poppy, then it's bizarre displays of manufactured outrage about the leader of the opposition supposedly not bowing deeply enough at the Cenotaph.

2016's display of synthetic poppy outrage has taken things to a whole new level of fact-averse hypocrisy.

On the vary same day that Theresa May was challenged by Jeremy Corbyn about how the "monstrously unfair" Tory benefits sanction regime had led to an ex-serviceman dying with no food in his home, she decided to jump on the synthetic poppy outrage bandwagon and start whining about the decision to uphold the rules and prevent players from wearing poppy armbands in an England vs Scotland World Cup qualifying fixture.

One of the first things to note is the way that Theresa May's abject indifference to the appalling plight of David Clapson utterly contradicts the whole meaning of the poppy. If she demonstrably doesn't give a damn about the appalling death of an ex-serviceman, how can she possibly snap into synthetic outrage over the poppy symbol?

Is it really the case in Theresa May's Britain that symbols and flags and banners have so much more importance than actual human beings?

Another thing to note about Theresa May's display of synthetic poppy outrage is the sickeningly xenophobic tone of her anti-FIFA rhetoric over this poppy debacle. It's another example of right-wingers utilising the "how dare these pesky foreigners tell us what to do?" trope that proved so successful during the woeful EU referendum debate.

The massive glaring problem with this "how dare they?" mentality arises if we actually take a look at who actually draws up the rules of football, including the rule banning the display of political symbols during international football fixtures.

It only takes a very cursory bit of investigation to find that the rules aren't drawn up by FIFA at all, but actually by a body called the International Football Association Board (IFAB).

It turns out that IFAB is made up of four representatives of FIFA and one member each from the four British football associations (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). So that's 50% of the votes for British football officials, and 50% of the votes for the rest of the footballing world combined!

Given that it takes a 75% majority decision to introduce or amend a rule of the game, it's absolutely beyond doubt that British football officials approved the rule to ban political symbolism from international football fixtures, which makes Theresa May's xenophobic "how dare these pesky foreigners tell us what to do?" rhetoric look more than a little bit thin.

When you have a massive unfair advantage in any situation, it's normally a sensible policy to keep pretty quiet about it if you want to keep your unfair advantage. Theresa May and the right-wing press in the UK have an alternative strategy, which is to make as much xenophobic noise as possible, and draw as many people's attention as possible to the massively unfair advantage that the four UK Football Associations have over the rest of the world when it comes to amending the rules of the game of football.

When Theresa May whined to parliament that FIFA should "get their own house in order", perhaps she meant that they should scrap IFAB and replace it with a more democratic rule-making body that removes the massively disproportionate influence of the four UK Football Associations? Perhaps she's so fair-minded that the idea of the UK having such a hugely disproportionate advantage over the rest of the world makes her sick to the stomach? Perhaps that's why she chose to make such an enormous song and dance about this particular issue?

Presumably this wasn't what she was thinking. Presumably Theresa May is entirely ignorant of how the rules of the game are actually drawn up and the huge advantage enjoyed by the four UK Football Associations, and she was simply hoping to win some brownie points from the right-wing press by stoking up yet more xenophobic anti-foreigner sentiments.

Theresa May is a shocking hypocrite for brushing off Jeremy Corbyn's question about the appalling death of an ex-serviceman, then putting on a xenophobic display of synthetic poppy outrage on the same damned day. How can she care so much about a symbol, but be so callously indifferent to the suffering of one of the very people that symbol is actually meant to represent?

Additionally Theresa May proved just how ill-considered her display of synthetic poppy outrage was by wittering on about it in parliament. By getting a bunch of politicians harking on about the issue in parliament she proved exactly what FIFA were saying in the first place, which is that the poppy is a political symbol, and that it shouldn't be allowed due to the rules that were drawn up by the UK dominated football rule-making body.

Theresa May is clearly an intense hypocrite who values symbols above human lives. She's a fool who doesn't give a damn about learning the absolute basics of what she's opining about, and worst of all she's intent on stoking the nasty xenophobic fury of tiny-minded right-wingers in order to fuel her own popularity.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

Why Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs deserve plaudits

I was rarely one to give Gary Neville plaudits as a footballer and still find it difficult to believe he's the fifth most capped England defender in history, but I have to say that I'm impressed and encouraged by his refreshing stance on the occupation by homeless people of the building he intends to develop as a hotel with his former Manchester United team mate Ryan Giggs next year.

Background

During the last parliament the Tories and Lib-Dems pushed through draconian new legislation against people occupying vacant buildings. This meant that Neville and Giggs could have used the courts to force the homelessness support group out of their building. 

It's also worth noting that the Tories in central government (and their Lib-Dem enablers) are not the only bad guys in this scenario. Greater Manchester Police, Manchester City Council (Labour controlled) and Manchester Metropolitan University have all been guilty of taking harsh measures against the homeless in the city. This backdrop of increased intolerance towards the homeless across UK society makes the footballers' approach that much more refreshing. 

It's a heart-warming surprise to see that it takes a pair of footballers to lead the way in taking a humane and common sense approach to homelessness, when the government, the police, the local council and the city university have all preferred to adopt the stance that property rights over-rule the welfare of human beings.

The agreement

Instead of initiating legal proceedings to evict the Manchester Angels homelessness support group, the footballers decided to let them stay on the proviso that they don't disrupt any of the surveying/building work while they're there.

A representative for the Manchester Angels has spoken about how delighted they are that the footballers have chosen not to force them out using the harsh anti-squatting laws brought in by the last government. His statement is a brilliant example of what can be achieved when people reach amicable solutions rather than resorting to a legal system that has now been so heavily skewed in favour of capital by the Tories.

"We undertake not to cause any damage to anything and to leave the building in as good if not a better state than we found it in. I have ordered smoke alarms to keep the building safe. I even suggested to Gary that he might be interested in employing some of the homeless people who are living here as labourers to help with the redevelopment work on the hotel."

The fact that both parties could come to such a simple agreement sets a really good example that life in the UK doesn't always have to be as bad as the Tories want it to be. 

These guys have set a great public example by coming to an amicable agreement instead of making a terrible public demonstration of the sickness of our society by having a bunch of desperate people evicted by the courts, which would have shown that in Tory Britain property is considered far more important than people.

Political footballers

I've often thought that elite footballers should try to do more social good with their fame and their extreme wealth: That instead of buying another brand new Bentley or adding another house to their extensive foreign property portfolio, they could do something with more social utility instead. I'm not the kind of guy to tell people how to spend their money though, nor ignore the fact that many footballers already contribute to all kinds of socially beneficial projects. It's just that elite footballers have such immense wealth these days compared to ordinary folk that their power to have a real political influence on society has never been higher.

I think one of the things that makes this case interesting is that it's one of the most overt forays into the political sphere I've seen elite footballers make. I wouldn't be surprised that Gary Neville's generation of footballers might be hesitant to take bold political stances. Giggs and Neville will both remember how their old Liverpool adversary Robbie Fowler was browbeaten and punished by the FA 20 years ago for daring to show solidarity with the Liverpool dockers. 

Deciding not to have the homeless people evicted from their building is a much bolder political stance than routine footballer stuff like setting up a charitable foundation, or telling the press how much of a wonderful guy they think David Cameron is (as Frank Lampard did just before the Tories handed him a vast income tax break while they simultaneously introduced Bedroom Tax on some 600,000 families with disabled members).

The factor that makes it such a bold political stance is that there are many wealthy property owners and defenders of capital who are going to react with disgust at the idea that anyone might actually help people who are occupying their vacant buildings, instead of throwing them out onto the streets.

How some right-wingers react

If you've seen any of the public reaction to this story, the overwhelming response has been "good on them" which is great to see, especially from the supporters of rival clubs. However, interspersed between the flood of positive reactions are a few incredibly bitter comments from people who absolutely hate that these footballers have wavered their own property rights in preference for behaving like decent human beings.

You might think that people bitterly criticising Neville and Giggs and predicting the ruination of their building because all homeless people are all "disgusting lazy scum" are just terminally miserable kill-joys, but in many cases there's more too it than them just wanting to pour scorn on the concept of showing a bit of basic human decency because they happen to be miserable gits.

It seems that several of these people really perceive the footballers' wavering their property rights as an attack on the whole concept of property, and by extension an attack on their own property rights. These people come across as absolutely terrified that some guys reaching an amicable agreement instead of launching eviction proceedings is setting some kind of awful precedent that it's preferable not to go around treating desperate people like inconvenient "scum" who deserve to be shoved back out onto the streets and turned into somebody else's problem, as they themselves would undoubtedly behave.

What seems to have passed a lot of these bitter cynics by, is that the building belongs to Giggs and Neville, so they can do with it as they please. If it suits them to allow homeless people to use it through the cold winter months, that's obviously their decision to make. To force them evict the homeless people out of blind adherence to the Tory principle that property rights are more important than human beings (as some people would apparently prefer) would be an obvious infringement of their right to do as they please with their own building.

Why footballers?

It's worth pointing out that the main reason this story has captured the public imagination is the fact these guys kicked a bag of air around in front of cameras to make their millions. If such an agreement had been reached with people who had made their millions designing computer software, running a taxi firm, speculating on the property market, selling plumbing supplies or whatever, the story would have been unlikely to go further than the pages of the local press. The fact that Neville and Giggs had high profile public careers is the main reason we've even heard of the story.

As for the actual reason they chose to take a non-confrontational approach, I think it would be churlish to say that they did it to avoid bad headlines about former Manchester United players evicting homeless people in the city. I prefer to think that it's because both guys grew up in ordinary backgrounds, and that doubtless they know several former team-mates from their youth and academy days who have fallen on hard times, so they did it out of basic human empathy. I'm pretty sure they both know that if their lives had panned out differently (they'd suffered a career ruining injury when they were young for example), they probably wouldn't be in the position to develop an exclusive hotel, and there's the chance that they might have ended up poor, and in need of a helping hand at some point.

Legacies
   
Having never met either of them I don't know Gary Neville or Ryan Giggs personally, but I imagine that when they're old and looking back at their lives, there's a chance that if this venture works out well, they'll feel a lot prouder of what they did for some of Manchester's most vulnerable people when they didn't have to help at all, than the fact that they owned a 35 bedroom luxury hotel in the city. 

I hope their decision to let the homeless support group stay in their building works out well, and that the Manchester Angels can be found a permanent home at some point in the future. I also hope that it encourages other footballers and ex-footballers to consider helping out the needy in their own communities. A couple of grand in support from a bunch of guys who earn hundreds of thousands of pounds a week might not seem like much to them, but it would be a huge contribution to a homeless shelter, food bank or soup kitchen in the community their club is based in.

It's not just financial contributions either. Many elite football players have enormous social media followings. I know from my Another Angry Voice Facebook page that it's possible to reach out to millions of people per week with fewer than 200,000 followers. Many footballers have millions of followers. Neville has 3 million Twitter followers, his former Manchester United colleague Wayne Rooney has 12 million Twitter followers and 25 million more on Facebook! 

Just imagine the number of people these guys could reach if they used their social media platforms to promote worthy causes and talk about social justice every now and then. I'd love to see more footballers get involved in politics, after all - being good at kicking a bag of air around actually seems an awful lot more meritocratic than the Westminster establishment practice of continually stuffing the unelected House of Lords with failed/retired political allies and millionaire party donors. 

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

More articles from
 ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE 

       
The myth of right-wing patriotism
                          
The Tory ideological mission
           
How David Cameron's House of Lords maths doesn't add up
                  
The incompatibility of Christian ethics and modern Conservatism
           

Why do right-wing people support Iain Duncan Smith's Stalinist Workfare schemes?

                    
The Tory "War on Justice"

             

The JP Morgan plan for Europe
                    
         David Cameron's Orwellian word games