Nightmare!
We're going to have Graeme Poll and Hugh Dallas back in the game as, yet again, the footballing authorities choose a corrupt template rather than meaningful technological advancements.
It is always a disturbing day when you find yourself agreeing with David Dein.
Always.
And Wednesday was one such day.
Speaking at the Soccerex Spectacle in Guateng, Dein backed the utilisation of advanced techie aids to improve the integrity of football, rather than the strategy of the murky ones who desire extra referees instead.
Not only that but retired referees that we are/were fortunate to have seen the back of...
In this post, we explore the hidden agendas of the organisations, bodies and individuals who are backing a Life Of Poll - the expansion of the officiating team to six individuals, with one stationed behind each goal.
Why choose more error-laden individuals when there is technology that is able to remove doubt from virtually all decisions at the top levels of the game?
Why introduce uncertainty and fake outcomes?
When such outcomes are linked to betting markets where total global liquidity frequently exceeds £1 billion on one match, would it not seem a rational route to attempt to establish the most robust template possible to strengthen the integrity of the game outcome?
Apparently not...
There are those who prefer for psychopathic singular or cartelised control of match outcomes.
For this purpose, human input is far more malleable, shall we say, than HawkEye, for instance.
Why choose human error over technological near-certainty?
Really.
Why...?
When an entirely illogical infrastructure is being proposed, and when some of the individuals and organisations involved in the early experimentation of such an infrastructure have form, so to speak, the standard sousveillance techniques come into play.
Who stands to gain most from an expansion in the format of the corrupt template?
Who loses?
Additionally, who would lose the most if advanced technologies were chosen over flawed, and sometimes corrupted, humans?
This is a major battle over the future integrity of the game of football.
It is by no means the only battle.
Total Information Awareness.
Total Vigilance.
Keir Radnedge on the alleged 'buying' of Bayern Munchen prior to the Second Leg of last season's UEFA Cup Semi Final against Zenit Leningrad: "Even if we believe it never happened, the fact that there are more and more, richer and richer, organisations out there are cause for concern. No country, no competition is safe."
The arguments for and against digital technologies being used in football are all superfluous.
There is only one overriding factor, a super-parameter.
It is one of those decisions that has only one logical input.
Integrity.
Football is already teetering on the edge of becoming horseracing, some leagues eg the English Premiership are now analytically identical to the modelling and analytics used in British horserace markets!
How weird is that?
Digital and video technologies are the only salvation.
If the Premier League/ PGMOB are going to continue to insist on such a small grouping of referees then the potential market power of these referees has to be compromised repeatedly.
Instead of the current situation where, as we posted the other day, 62% of Sky's televised matches this season have been refereed by just three referees, why not a hugely expanded roster of one hundred referees, each of whom who officiate at four games per season, including one televised event.
Sorted.
No hyper-owners or bookmakers or other members of the criminal fringe are going to be too interested in 'owning' a whistleblower if you are only buying four Premiership games per season.
Of course, the 'bring back Poll and Dallas' bandwagon are viewing a rather different mathematics.
Stuart Attwell, if he were coerced or bribed into compromising his professionalism in return for lots of money and a nice life away from prying eyes (check out the Newmarket mansions of more than one former jockey!), would be a prize asset to a bookmaker or an underground betting organisation.
The youngest of the Select Group (sic) of English officials, at 25 years of age, his 'owner' could expect direct control of 1250 matches in the next half century (25 years as referee and 25 as one of these newfangled goalline referees).
Wow!
1250 games!!!
If your business practices gravitate towards shady and grey strategies, why on earth wouldn't you seek control of such an individual?
Twenty five games per season, with an average global liquidity in the several hundreds of millions of pounds for each match.
Direct control over each of these events.
Tempting eh?
There is no evidence that increasing the number of match officials to six will improve the integrity of match outcomes.
The above arguments should be enough, but all of the supplementary arguments are positively correlated with the selection of technology over more human error.
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Having six officials, however well co-ordinated and however suitably hierarchical, is going to be a recipe for confusion and yet more public relations disasters.
The Premier League and the PGMOB are refusing to allow an open-mike policy, an obvious indication of integrity that is used in all other sports, as they obviously do not wish for the public to be hearing the conversations between the match officials.
Why?
Why are all changes seemingly made in order to positively correlate with the desires of those who might wish for a corruptible template to be established?
William Gaillard of UEFA, ##########################################, is selling the extra refs idea: "The camera is not a faithful observer of reality, you have no idea of the impact, the intensity of the violence.".
Football Is Fixed: "The referee, his linespeople, the 4th official, and the 5th and 6th officials are not faithful observers of hyperreality, you have no idea of the impact, the intensity of the market manipulation."
David Dein: "There is technology today, it’s been introduced in tennis and they can’t tell me technology is not there. Forty years ago, America put a man on the moon. So the technology is there."
As with all murkiness in the English and European game, the trails always lead to the same locations, the same bodies, the same individuals.
One of these individuals is Our Beloved Leader, ##################################
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But whenever there is a disaster, a misapplication of the rules, a police inquiry, a rigged match, an outburst of integrity, ScudamoreWorld is always omnipresent.
As Keith McCabe said following the latest nail being hammered in West Ham United's coffin yesterday: "The Premier League is under-managed and needs wise football heads on the board. The Football League board is maturer. The [Premier League/ West Ham/ Tevez] affair was mishandled and we have had no choice but to seek financial compensation."
Football Is Fixed: "The Premier League is more than under-managed. It is an autocracy that #########################################################
###########################################################"
The only benefit that I am able to decipher from the 6 Officials ruse is that, at least, it would allow the theatre of an ageing Hugh Dallas, plying his trade defiantly against the taunting hooped masses who will be questioning his parentage, species etc.
Now that would be far more entertaining than anything that might be going on on the pitch.
Unfortunately, the blocked out parts of the posts and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
Our roster is now full for Football Is Fixed.
But, please enjoy the free snippets that we are posting on this site.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Friday 28 November 2008
Wednesday 26 November 2008
Words And Things - Just As It Is
Jean Baudrillard: "'Free to be oneself' in fact means... free to project one's desires onto produced goods; 'free to enjoy life' means free to regress and be irrational and thus adapt to a certain social organisation of production."
World Corporate Government defines the new financial template.
The Deep State is in need of our consumerist support.
The Mainstream Media paints fake hyperrealities on the canvas of life.
This template, with sector-specific micro-adjustments, is the standard infrastructural matrix of Corporate 'Democracy'.
It applies to the financial crisis, insurance, pharmaceuticals, fashion, cosmetics, government and, of course, football.
And, are we convinced?
Are we still buying into this fake Reality?
Noam Chomsky: "The [advertising] industry's prime task is to ensure that uninformed consumers make irrational choices."
Two points...
Firstly, the 'bracketed' industry sector could be replaced by ANY other and the sentence would still be descriptive of a Corporate 'Democratic' Hyperreality.
Secondly, the skewing of incentives in favour of an abusive seller, via the 'buyer beware' legal monstrosity - the true foundation of a psychopathic capitalism - both increases gross domestic unhappiness and implements a system based on corruption and other forms of antisocial business behaviour.
These irrational choices are a built-in systemic risk to what is already a non-sustainable system.
Externalities already render every market price as valueless.
What is the Real price on, say, an oil company, after Peak Oil, and factoring in the necessary responses to climate change, government incentives in favour of alternative energy sources etc?
What is the Real price on a football match where the match outcome is both pre-determined and traded on a proprietary level in the underground and private markets?
The critical cog in the Disinformational Machine is the Mainstream Media, the Corporate Media.
Lets just look at Gordon Brown over the last two weekends.
The primary architect of the Depression, from a British perspective, is old Slack Jaw himself.
Bagehot in the Economist: "Mr Brown is still not charming."
And this shouldn't matter but it does.
When Slack Jaw is on his podium spouting his noxious financial nonsenses, he doesn't have the critical ability to sell himself.
It is a double whammy of a dodgy product.
He caused the crisis, in his own little way...
Yet, after the G20 meeting, ludicrously compared to the original Bretton Woods meetings that saved the world from the last totally psychopathic wave of free market capitalism in the 1930's, Slack Jaw was portrayed as having saved the world.
Of course, he had done nothing of the kind.
It is in the interests of Corporate 'Democracy' that we consumers believe in this man.
Cue the adulatory tyrannies of word association that followed Slack Jaws' Spiv announcing a consumer stimulus worth £21 billion.
Not £21 billion!!??
Crikey, that is fully 4% of what New Labour has already donated to the banking industry.
Or 1% of the $3.5 trillion stolen from the American people by the unelected Director of the Depression, Hank Paulson.
OMG are we not joyous?
Lets put the fear of near-future job losses, and house repossessions after the pain of negative equity, and the inevitable increases in crime and cost of insurance in the inner cities, and all other such rational fears on the back-burner.
And lets go out there and spend money that we haven't got, bolstering a psychopathic system that deserves rubbishing into non-existence.
"Saving The System" screamed the Economist front cover.
"Saving A System" became the popular reply.
Traders must be going doolally, as the FTSE100 experienced its largest ever daily gain on leaked release of this "massive stimulus".
To show that he really is a man of the people, Slack Jaw has made clear that it will be the rich who will be paying for this ruse.
After the next election, that would be, once the Party of the Rich are firmly ensconced in power, after Slack Jaw's financial policies further unravel, revealing the full nature of the Depression.
Just as the government will not get back the money with which it has supported the banking industry due to the omnipresent toxicity in the system, so it will end up that taxing the rich will merely become yet another regressive taxation.
Like all the others...
So the Corporate Media, desperate to engender a feelgood factor out here in MiseryLand, sell Darling's Depression Delayer as a reduction in VAT.
The Corportate Media omits the far more valuable information that the poorest quintile pay TWICE as much VAT as the richest 20%.
Proper Regressive Taxation.
Sounds Fair To Me.
The BBC, in order to sell the fiscal fallacy, sent an old Etonian impersonator of a human being to a factory in the West Midlands, that makes really valuable pieces of specialised metal components for items like seat-belts, for example.
As the Etonian simply could not comprehend these people and their existence, there followed the most condescending piece of journalism that I have ever witnessed, apart from all of the others, as Eton Child simply could not understand why people on the edge of a financial abyss would make risk-averse decisions with regard to their personal finances.
"Bankers do it. Why can't you?"
Totally bemused, the coke-fuelled disgrace, on two occasions, lifted up the metal fastener for seat-belts for the camera to inspect, and a stupid and privileged smirk crossed the man's face as it suddenly dawned on him that "people actually have to make these little things".
Its known as the System of Production, Sir.
Its been around for a couple of hundred years or so.
Sounds Fair To Me.
The BBC increasingly seems to be reliant on people of such gilded provenance, and these individuals are unable to conceive the Realities of our increasingly atomised society.
The two are only able to meet up briefly for those Saturday Night Spectacular Tyrannies of Fun.
At the University of Palermo, there are said to be 230 teachers who are related to other teachers.
We wonder what the figure might be at the BBC :)
Hank Paulson lied again last week when he said that everything was now stable in the global financial system.
For yesterday, the man wrote himself another cheque for $800 billion.
Paulson argued that the liquidity injection was necessary to nudge conditions closer to normal in the markets and restore lending to ordinary consumers at realistic rates.
As the Financial Times states: "But the initiative is a tacit admission that the previous efforts to lower costs of mortgages and consumer finance have not had the intended effect."
Worse still, nobody trusts Mr Paulson anymore.
He keeps changing his mind and seems entirely unable to perceive the big picture as he repeatedly makes randomised and/or reactive responses to market hyperrealities.
He has lost control of his gaming of the system, as we told you over the summer.
What sort of 'Democracy' allows an unelected official such unilateral power over the financial system?
What sort of planet allows such a 'Democracy' to govern all of our Realities?
The total American debt stands at $53 trillion - this is equivalent to the notional total annual global output, give or take a trillion or so, as is commonly heard in the Paulson household.
Sounds Fucked To Me.
Last week, those delightful psychopaths at Citigroup watched their share price lose 50% of its value in just three days.
Having already received a Hank Handout, Citi used that Handout as a slush fund for buying even-more-distressed competitor banks. The global giant then decided that, to help its figures add up, there would have to be 52,000 redundancies.
Never mind, just give them a fiscal stimulus in time for the winter festival, and they'll spend their way out of our Depression.
In your dreams...
Claudio Lotito is a shrewd man.
When forced to answer questions about fascist fans, criminalised ownership, links to the betting markets, di Canio's straight-armed Mussolini salutes, or the same individual's defence of il Duce, that sort of thing, the Lazio owner simply speaks in fluent Latin.
Its time for Paulson to be doing the same, because it doesn't add up, pal...
There is this Hyperreal Poker Table.
The global financial system is dependent on the hands being played out at the Table by a bunch of people who, behaviourly, are the equivalent of over-indulged two year olds.
The players understand that they will always be bailed out by the Deep State.
This adjusts their risk profile and skews behaviour towards the riskier end of the spectrum due to moral hazard.
The more extreme the hands, the more risky the behaviour.
We are the fundamental guarantors of this Poker Game.
Nobody has asked me whether I think this gross regressive redistribution of wealth is valid.
In fact, the Corporate Media are telling me that a pseudo-giveaway of £21 billion is a Socialist policy.
Its not a giveaway, its a loan.
Additionally, the Corporate Media are telling me that a bailout of $3.5 trillion in the US, £500 billion in Britain etc etc etc etc is different because it is necessary to support 'the system'.
Its not a bailout, its a handout.
And, its not 'the system', its 'a system'.
Sounds Fair To Me?
Sounds Fucked To Me...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
World Corporate Government defines the new financial template.
The Deep State is in need of our consumerist support.
The Mainstream Media paints fake hyperrealities on the canvas of life.
This template, with sector-specific micro-adjustments, is the standard infrastructural matrix of Corporate 'Democracy'.
It applies to the financial crisis, insurance, pharmaceuticals, fashion, cosmetics, government and, of course, football.
And, are we convinced?
Are we still buying into this fake Reality?
Noam Chomsky: "The [advertising] industry's prime task is to ensure that uninformed consumers make irrational choices."
Two points...
Firstly, the 'bracketed' industry sector could be replaced by ANY other and the sentence would still be descriptive of a Corporate 'Democratic' Hyperreality.
Secondly, the skewing of incentives in favour of an abusive seller, via the 'buyer beware' legal monstrosity - the true foundation of a psychopathic capitalism - both increases gross domestic unhappiness and implements a system based on corruption and other forms of antisocial business behaviour.
These irrational choices are a built-in systemic risk to what is already a non-sustainable system.
Externalities already render every market price as valueless.
What is the Real price on, say, an oil company, after Peak Oil, and factoring in the necessary responses to climate change, government incentives in favour of alternative energy sources etc?
What is the Real price on a football match where the match outcome is both pre-determined and traded on a proprietary level in the underground and private markets?
The critical cog in the Disinformational Machine is the Mainstream Media, the Corporate Media.
Lets just look at Gordon Brown over the last two weekends.
The primary architect of the Depression, from a British perspective, is old Slack Jaw himself.
Bagehot in the Economist: "Mr Brown is still not charming."
And this shouldn't matter but it does.
When Slack Jaw is on his podium spouting his noxious financial nonsenses, he doesn't have the critical ability to sell himself.
It is a double whammy of a dodgy product.
He caused the crisis, in his own little way...
Yet, after the G20 meeting, ludicrously compared to the original Bretton Woods meetings that saved the world from the last totally psychopathic wave of free market capitalism in the 1930's, Slack Jaw was portrayed as having saved the world.
Of course, he had done nothing of the kind.
It is in the interests of Corporate 'Democracy' that we consumers believe in this man.
Cue the adulatory tyrannies of word association that followed Slack Jaws' Spiv announcing a consumer stimulus worth £21 billion.
Not £21 billion!!??
Crikey, that is fully 4% of what New Labour has already donated to the banking industry.
Or 1% of the $3.5 trillion stolen from the American people by the unelected Director of the Depression, Hank Paulson.
OMG are we not joyous?
Lets put the fear of near-future job losses, and house repossessions after the pain of negative equity, and the inevitable increases in crime and cost of insurance in the inner cities, and all other such rational fears on the back-burner.
And lets go out there and spend money that we haven't got, bolstering a psychopathic system that deserves rubbishing into non-existence.
"Saving The System" screamed the Economist front cover.
"Saving A System" became the popular reply.
Traders must be going doolally, as the FTSE100 experienced its largest ever daily gain on leaked release of this "massive stimulus".
To show that he really is a man of the people, Slack Jaw has made clear that it will be the rich who will be paying for this ruse.
After the next election, that would be, once the Party of the Rich are firmly ensconced in power, after Slack Jaw's financial policies further unravel, revealing the full nature of the Depression.
Just as the government will not get back the money with which it has supported the banking industry due to the omnipresent toxicity in the system, so it will end up that taxing the rich will merely become yet another regressive taxation.
Like all the others...
So the Corporate Media, desperate to engender a feelgood factor out here in MiseryLand, sell Darling's Depression Delayer as a reduction in VAT.
The Corportate Media omits the far more valuable information that the poorest quintile pay TWICE as much VAT as the richest 20%.
Proper Regressive Taxation.
Sounds Fair To Me.
The BBC, in order to sell the fiscal fallacy, sent an old Etonian impersonator of a human being to a factory in the West Midlands, that makes really valuable pieces of specialised metal components for items like seat-belts, for example.
As the Etonian simply could not comprehend these people and their existence, there followed the most condescending piece of journalism that I have ever witnessed, apart from all of the others, as Eton Child simply could not understand why people on the edge of a financial abyss would make risk-averse decisions with regard to their personal finances.
"Bankers do it. Why can't you?"
Totally bemused, the coke-fuelled disgrace, on two occasions, lifted up the metal fastener for seat-belts for the camera to inspect, and a stupid and privileged smirk crossed the man's face as it suddenly dawned on him that "people actually have to make these little things".
Its known as the System of Production, Sir.
Its been around for a couple of hundred years or so.
Sounds Fair To Me.
The BBC increasingly seems to be reliant on people of such gilded provenance, and these individuals are unable to conceive the Realities of our increasingly atomised society.
The two are only able to meet up briefly for those Saturday Night Spectacular Tyrannies of Fun.
At the University of Palermo, there are said to be 230 teachers who are related to other teachers.
We wonder what the figure might be at the BBC :)
Hank Paulson lied again last week when he said that everything was now stable in the global financial system.
For yesterday, the man wrote himself another cheque for $800 billion.
Paulson argued that the liquidity injection was necessary to nudge conditions closer to normal in the markets and restore lending to ordinary consumers at realistic rates.
As the Financial Times states: "But the initiative is a tacit admission that the previous efforts to lower costs of mortgages and consumer finance have not had the intended effect."
Worse still, nobody trusts Mr Paulson anymore.
He keeps changing his mind and seems entirely unable to perceive the big picture as he repeatedly makes randomised and/or reactive responses to market hyperrealities.
He has lost control of his gaming of the system, as we told you over the summer.
What sort of 'Democracy' allows an unelected official such unilateral power over the financial system?
What sort of planet allows such a 'Democracy' to govern all of our Realities?
The total American debt stands at $53 trillion - this is equivalent to the notional total annual global output, give or take a trillion or so, as is commonly heard in the Paulson household.
Sounds Fucked To Me.
Last week, those delightful psychopaths at Citigroup watched their share price lose 50% of its value in just three days.
Having already received a Hank Handout, Citi used that Handout as a slush fund for buying even-more-distressed competitor banks. The global giant then decided that, to help its figures add up, there would have to be 52,000 redundancies.
Never mind, just give them a fiscal stimulus in time for the winter festival, and they'll spend their way out of our Depression.
In your dreams...
Claudio Lotito is a shrewd man.
When forced to answer questions about fascist fans, criminalised ownership, links to the betting markets, di Canio's straight-armed Mussolini salutes, or the same individual's defence of il Duce, that sort of thing, the Lazio owner simply speaks in fluent Latin.
Its time for Paulson to be doing the same, because it doesn't add up, pal...
There is this Hyperreal Poker Table.
The global financial system is dependent on the hands being played out at the Table by a bunch of people who, behaviourly, are the equivalent of over-indulged two year olds.
The players understand that they will always be bailed out by the Deep State.
This adjusts their risk profile and skews behaviour towards the riskier end of the spectrum due to moral hazard.
The more extreme the hands, the more risky the behaviour.
We are the fundamental guarantors of this Poker Game.
Nobody has asked me whether I think this gross regressive redistribution of wealth is valid.
In fact, the Corporate Media are telling me that a pseudo-giveaway of £21 billion is a Socialist policy.
Its not a giveaway, its a loan.
Additionally, the Corporate Media are telling me that a bailout of $3.5 trillion in the US, £500 billion in Britain etc etc etc etc is different because it is necessary to support 'the system'.
Its not a bailout, its a handout.
And, its not 'the system', its 'a system'.
Sounds Fair To Me?
Sounds Fucked To Me...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Tuesday 25 November 2008
Pre-Match Entertainment - How Insider Trading Determines Your Hyperrealities
The blog posting today is for Dietrological Professional clients only.
In it, we discuss a criminalised network involving a Premiership footballer who deliberately underperformed due to betting market requirements in one of the four live televised Sky/Setanta matches this weekend.
In it, we discuss this players betting links to a former manager, a secondary agent, two particular betting market centres, one company of British bookmakers and, of course, his primary agent.
In it, we discuss previous underperformances by this player and we demonstrate how the sabermetric data together with selective forensic psychology reveals players who develop inappropriate links with underground, and not-so-underground markets.
In it, we discuss which of the talking heads are aware of this individuals performances being positively correlated with particular betting market patterns.
In it, we discuss how the match in question was complicated holistically by another insider gamble from a very active stable of operators.
In it, we question how a multi-rigged match is allowed to happen in ScudamoreWorld.
In it, we discuss why the mainstream media, the corporate media, offer us nothing more than a gross abdication of their journalistic responsibilities.
Innit...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
In it, we discuss a criminalised network involving a Premiership footballer who deliberately underperformed due to betting market requirements in one of the four live televised Sky/Setanta matches this weekend.
In it, we discuss this players betting links to a former manager, a secondary agent, two particular betting market centres, one company of British bookmakers and, of course, his primary agent.
In it, we discuss previous underperformances by this player and we demonstrate how the sabermetric data together with selective forensic psychology reveals players who develop inappropriate links with underground, and not-so-underground markets.
In it, we discuss which of the talking heads are aware of this individuals performances being positively correlated with particular betting market patterns.
In it, we discuss how the match in question was complicated holistically by another insider gamble from a very active stable of operators.
In it, we question how a multi-rigged match is allowed to happen in ScudamoreWorld.
In it, we discuss why the mainstream media, the corporate media, offer us nothing more than a gross abdication of their journalistic responsibilities.
Innit...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Monday 24 November 2008
The Artificial Handicapping Of The Premiership #
The standard defence of those who would prefer that all technological aids are kept away from the football field is the one that goes something like "it all evens out in the long run", or some other such fatalistic wishy-washiness.
With regard, respect even, to the English Premiership, does the 'bad luck' level out with the passage of time, or are certain teams, certain regions, certain groupings of teams receiving proprietary handicapping?
Recent posts in recent years have tended to focus on the negative impacts of officialdom on Arsenal, #################################################
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The Real 2008/09 Premiership table is an interesting construct.
Some things don't change - Chelsea are top and West Bromwich Albion are bottom.
But there are some serious positional and points differentials to be explained away here.
* 11 teams are four or more positions away from their Real position. Manchester City are eight places lower than they should be.
* 11 teams are four or more points away from their Real totalisation. Manchester City have had ten points shaved from their total.
* Is there a grudge against Manchester and Lancashire? The five teams in these regions have had a cumulative total of 22 points taken from them to date this season.
* Intriguingly, the most favoured 'grouping' are the three promoted sides, who have on average received a 6 point handicap each, in a desperate attempt to avoid another Derby County, apparently.
* West Ham United would have only picked up one point in the last seven games; Fulham and Hull City would be 7 places lower; Newcastle would be 7 places higher; instead of Wigan and Blackburn in the bottom three would be Stoke City and West Ham United.
* Liverpool are not 10 points better than Arsenal. They are behind them on goal difference, not even in the Top 4. Consider the press treatment of Benitez and Keane if this were the Reality. No more Hicks and Gillett hiding away...
* West Brom would already be 6 points adrift of safety and the fake squashing up of the Premiership does not exist in the Real table. This uniform compression of the league is observationally indicative of a handicap being spread across the field, in much the same way that occurs in horseracing, where the aim of the bookmaking industry is to equalise the abilities of the participants.
We told you it was no different from horseracing...
1. Chelsea 14-35
2. Man Utd 13-29
3. Man City 14-27
4. Arsenal 14-26
5. Liverpool 14-26
6. ##################
7. ###################
8. ###################
9. #################
10. Newcastle 14-18
11. ###################
12. ####################
13. Hull City 14-17
14. Wigan Athletic 13-15
15. Blackburn Rovers 14-14
16. Fulham 13-13
17. #######################
18. West Ham Utd 14-12
19. Stoke City 14-9
20. West Brom 14-6
Unfortunately, the blocked out parts of the posts and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
Our roster is now full for Football Is Fixed.
But, please enjoy the free snippets that we are posting on this site.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
With regard, respect even, to the English Premiership, does the 'bad luck' level out with the passage of time, or are certain teams, certain regions, certain groupings of teams receiving proprietary handicapping?
Recent posts in recent years have tended to focus on the negative impacts of officialdom on Arsenal, #################################################
###############################################################################
######################################################################
####################################################################
###########################################################################
####################################################################
The Real 2008/09 Premiership table is an interesting construct.
Some things don't change - Chelsea are top and West Bromwich Albion are bottom.
But there are some serious positional and points differentials to be explained away here.
* 11 teams are four or more positions away from their Real position. Manchester City are eight places lower than they should be.
* 11 teams are four or more points away from their Real totalisation. Manchester City have had ten points shaved from their total.
* Is there a grudge against Manchester and Lancashire? The five teams in these regions have had a cumulative total of 22 points taken from them to date this season.
* Intriguingly, the most favoured 'grouping' are the three promoted sides, who have on average received a 6 point handicap each, in a desperate attempt to avoid another Derby County, apparently.
* West Ham United would have only picked up one point in the last seven games; Fulham and Hull City would be 7 places lower; Newcastle would be 7 places higher; instead of Wigan and Blackburn in the bottom three would be Stoke City and West Ham United.
* Liverpool are not 10 points better than Arsenal. They are behind them on goal difference, not even in the Top 4. Consider the press treatment of Benitez and Keane if this were the Reality. No more Hicks and Gillett hiding away...
* West Brom would already be 6 points adrift of safety and the fake squashing up of the Premiership does not exist in the Real table. This uniform compression of the league is observationally indicative of a handicap being spread across the field, in much the same way that occurs in horseracing, where the aim of the bookmaking industry is to equalise the abilities of the participants.
We told you it was no different from horseracing...
1. Chelsea 14-35
2. Man Utd 13-29
3. Man City 14-27
4. Arsenal 14-26
5. Liverpool 14-26
6. ##################
7. ###################
8. ###################
9. #################
10. Newcastle 14-18
11. ###################
12. ####################
13. Hull City 14-17
14. Wigan Athletic 13-15
15. Blackburn Rovers 14-14
16. Fulham 13-13
17. #######################
18. West Ham Utd 14-12
19. Stoke City 14-9
20. West Brom 14-6
Unfortunately, the blocked out parts of the posts and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
Our roster is now full for Football Is Fixed.
But, please enjoy the free snippets that we are posting on this site.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Sunday 23 November 2008
Sky Slightly Sub-Prime Sunday #
"Oh, I'm fed up with these storytellers!
Rather than write something improving, nice,
something that makes you feel good, they insist
on digging up all the dirt from under the ground!...
They ought to be banned from writing!
I mean, whatever is it like: you're reading...
and you unwittingly fall into thought -
and then all sorts of rubbish comes into your head;
truly, I would ban them from writing;
I really would ban them altogether."
- Prince Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoevsky.
More stories from the storytellers...
Following today's extravaganzas, the Murdochracy will have provided us with 37 live Premiership matches in the current season.
Guess how many of those matches have been refereed by Howard Webb...
Ten!
And Mike Dean?
Seven!
And Mike Riley?
Six!
Twenty three of Sky's live offerings have been under the control of Webb, Dean or Riley.
62% of Sky televised matches...
Why?
And we have a dichotomous hyperreality here...
For these three officials would appear to be invisibly linked to the Murdochracy, for they have respectively officiated at zero, one and zero live Setanta events this season.
Why?
Indeed, over the last season and one-third, Riley has refereed 19 live televised matches, and all but one has been on Sky.
Why?
Inversely, this season Steve Bennett and Alan Wiley have been favoured in the opposite direction with 5 out of 6 and 4 out of 5, respectively, of their televised appointments being with Setanta.
Why?
Nine of the PGMOB match officials have not had one live match between them.
Why?
Who makes these decisions?
Why are they allowed such omnipotence in this bizarre portrayal of a template seemingly systemically primed for corruption?
Is this supposed to appear to be a legitimate structure?
And the farce continues to play out in front of our disbelieving eyes.
The insider trading at Fulham continues with interestingly sourced money throughout ###########################################################################
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Over ##% of Fulham's matches this season have been betting coups.
Why is nobody in the mainstream media talking about this?
Unfortunately, the remainder of this post, the blocked out parts of the posts and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
Our roster is now full for Football Is Fixed.
But, please enjoy the free snippets that we are posting on this site.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Rather than write something improving, nice,
something that makes you feel good, they insist
on digging up all the dirt from under the ground!...
They ought to be banned from writing!
I mean, whatever is it like: you're reading...
and you unwittingly fall into thought -
and then all sorts of rubbish comes into your head;
truly, I would ban them from writing;
I really would ban them altogether."
- Prince Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoevsky.
More stories from the storytellers...
Following today's extravaganzas, the Murdochracy will have provided us with 37 live Premiership matches in the current season.
Guess how many of those matches have been refereed by Howard Webb...
Ten!
And Mike Dean?
Seven!
And Mike Riley?
Six!
Twenty three of Sky's live offerings have been under the control of Webb, Dean or Riley.
62% of Sky televised matches...
Why?
And we have a dichotomous hyperreality here...
For these three officials would appear to be invisibly linked to the Murdochracy, for they have respectively officiated at zero, one and zero live Setanta events this season.
Why?
Indeed, over the last season and one-third, Riley has refereed 19 live televised matches, and all but one has been on Sky.
Why?
Inversely, this season Steve Bennett and Alan Wiley have been favoured in the opposite direction with 5 out of 6 and 4 out of 5, respectively, of their televised appointments being with Setanta.
Why?
Nine of the PGMOB match officials have not had one live match between them.
Why?
Who makes these decisions?
Why are they allowed such omnipotence in this bizarre portrayal of a template seemingly systemically primed for corruption?
Is this supposed to appear to be a legitimate structure?
And the farce continues to play out in front of our disbelieving eyes.
The insider trading at Fulham continues with interestingly sourced money throughout ###########################################################################
##################################################################
###########################################################################
#####################################################################
##################################################################################
#####################################################################
#########################################################################
###########################################################################
Over ##% of Fulham's matches this season have been betting coups.
Why is nobody in the mainstream media talking about this?
Unfortunately, the remainder of this post, the blocked out parts of the posts and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
Our roster is now full for Football Is Fixed.
But, please enjoy the free snippets that we are posting on this site.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Friday 21 November 2008
Richard Scudamore And His Complicated Moment #
The Great Pretence of ScudamoreWorld suggests that footballing finances are sustainable into the future.
The Fake Reality of ScudamoreWorld not only avoids contrarian Realities within the English game, but fails to take account of the holistic nature of the onset of a global Depression.
The Hyperreality of ScudamoreWorld has only one strategic route ahead to balance the books - the simulacrum of football becoming a gambling sport.
All of the talking heads and the smiley faces are hiding a great lie - the selling out of English football to the bookmaking fraternity.
The people that the fan depends on to share the hyperrealities at large are a part of this lie, just as much so as if they were perpetrating the scams themselves.
"Don't rock the boat, we've all got our fingers in the till to some extent, we are each earning a derivative retainer for staying quiet and trading the inside information."
In the game, it is an accepted wisdom that this is taking place, all insiders have their own particular favourite anecdote relating to the criminalisation of match outcomes to the benefit of insider traders, the layers or, more generally, both parties.
The general attitude is one of shared ownership of the criminality, being in on a societal scam.
It enables the insignificant to develop a feeling of self-importance.
The unsustainability of the English game is perfectly evident to any observer.
* £3 billion worth of collected debts.
* The Big 2 have fully half of this debt on their books.
* Chelsea will have just eighteen months to repay Mr Abramovich his £700 million investment should the Great Man decide to return to the cornering of energy markets in Russia. Paper losses of 60% of the Great Man's assets have resulted in the sacking of 15 coaches and Scolari being told that he must sell before he is able to buy in the January transfer window.
* West Ham United are £40 million in debt, and may face a further £50 million of costs over their illegalities regarding the Premier League, Carlos Tevez and the rules of the game relating to 3rd Party Transfers (in that such rules may be said to exist). Keith Harris keeps informing us that the club is a going concern despite administration rulings starting to take force against the club this week. Apparently, because the club is structured in a financially complex manner, some of these debts will be able to be avoided, initially at least. Financial sleight of hand is a core competency in the fake ScudamoreWorld.
* Arkadi Gaydamak received just 3.5% of the vote in the election to become mayor of Jerusalem - most of these votes came from Palestinians and were based not on his politics but on the fact that he doesn't look Jewish, apparently.
Having liquidated many of his assets in order to bankroll this campaign, the man is now increasingly desperate to get shut of Portsmouth FC, the foreign asset that he cannot be seen to own, as it would be yet another Reality that would expose the myth of legality surrounding ScudamoreWorld. Pompey are non-sustainable. Redknapp's idiotic transfer policies, a systemic gambling culture, £32 million of debts, wages representing 90% of turnover and a financially compromised and fake owner is suggestive of a close race between West Ham and Portsmouth to see which club first shows the non-strategic nature of ScudamoreWorld via bankruptcy.
* Keith Harris of Seymour Pierce investment boutique has a great job. There is no chance in him being successful and yet he gets paid handsomely for this utter lack of progress. Mr Harris is trying to find buyers for, among others, Newcastle United, West Ham, Portsmouth, Charlton Athletic and Everton.
No chance.
These clubs are toxic assets to be avoided or a better price may be engendered by delaying purchase.
Just how many of those 8 bids for Mike Ashley's House of Cards turned out to be Real?
Mr Harris is simply being paid for creating believable hyperreal scenarios that provide the public pretence that everything is okay in the game - a diamond dealers cartel, a Far East bookmaking organisation, a very serious proposition from Lagos businessmen and other such nonsenses.
These clubs will not be sold.
Some of these clubs will cease to exist.
We are in the middle of a twenty year secular bear market - stock market evaluations are no different now than they were 11 years ago, these clubs are distressed assets.
* Attendances in the Premiership are falling. The largest drop of 10% is at Newcastle United and only three clubs have seen a season-on-season rise in people paying to watch the gambles unfold - Bolton, Manchester City and Middlesboro.
A Premier League spokesperson spins this Reality out as: "Some figures are up, and some are down" when a more accurate reflection would be three teams have improved attendances while 17 are showing a decline.
Together with Sky and the disguise of the fall-off in satellite subscriptions, these twin revenue streams are going to severely undermine the fake structure of ScudamoreWorld.
* Gaydamak, Shinawatra, Abramovich, Mansion88, SBOBet, AIG, Mike Ashley, Abu Dhabi United, Hicks and Gillett, just how bad does an entity need to be to fall foul of the Premier League's fit-and-proper-person's test (FPPT)? Or the non-existent rules relating to the efficacy of a club sponsor?
In ScudamoreWorld, there is no public justification for the psychopathic structures.
Just business as usual with no checks nor balances.
Of course, ScudamoreWorld is allowed to continue due to the compliance of the corporate media. There is simply no dynamic within the game to prevent the full takeover of football by the betting industry.
None.
In other territories, concerns are aired in the media and inappropriates are forced to justify their strategies.
In Italy, falling attendances and corrupt referees are seen as part of the same problem, hence calciopoli, the fraudulent assessment of current match officials and a genuine horror at the number of empty seats at the Roma derby last weekend.
In Spain, there are six Spanish teams in administration, including Celta Vigo and Real Sociedad, who were both only recently in the Champions League. Spanish clubs owe over £500 million to the tax authorities alone, and the total debt comes in at a very English £2.5 billion.
Angel Barajas, an economist, states: "I'm really afraid about football because the situation is not sustainable in the medium term."
Javier Tebas, the vice-president of the Spanish Football League is "very worried" about the financial situation, while Jaime Lissavetzky, the Spanish Secretary of State for Sport is concerned that "...if [insolvency rules] continue to be abused as a stop-gap measure, and expenses aren't brought under control, you could call it a complicated moment."
Very complicated...
Even Joan Laporta, a man not renowned for his prescience, at Barcelona recognises that "attendance at the stadium is down from last year due to the global financial crisis."
But ScudamoreWorld think that debt is a good thing.
ScudamoreWorld understand that, when all the distressed assets and dodgy deals are totalised together, the only route out of the morass will be gambling money.
This is why Scudamore himself cosied up so closely to ########################
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Prior to the last round of betting events in the Premiership, referees were under pressure as managers were threatening strike action over the dire quality of the officiating in England's top league.
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Not ScudamoreWorld.
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There's nothing like meritocracy and this is nothing like meritocracy.
Two Premiership matches experienced that peculiarly PGMOB tactic of a late change of referee. Both of these matches were heavy gambling events (Man United v Stoke City and Blackburn v Sunderland).
What were the reasons behind these adjustments?
Illness evidently wasn't the issue for Mr Walton as he was moved from the Blackburn game to Old Trafford. If Mike Halsey, the original ref for the United game, was unavailable or otherwise indisposed, why didn't the PGMOB just change that one referee? Why the delay and the serious impact on the betting markets, obviously with the usual insider trading on the new hyperreality before the changes had been made public?
The outcomes of seven of the last round of Premiership matches were affected by gambling money. Some of this was rogue operators, some of it systemic, some of it cartelised and some solo and proprietary, but all of it was criminal and a damning indictment of the state of play in ScudamoreWorld.
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Colin Calderwood on referees: "They are the rulers of the game."
David Moyes on the FA, the PGMOB and referees: "They are a law unto themselves, aren't they? They make their own rules, they bring their own people in on the panels and make their own decisions, so it is very difficult... We are finding that their [the FA's] rules are very hard for people in the game to respect."
Still, it is good to see that the inappropriate linkages of match officials is not only a ScudamoreWorld issue.
Former leading UEFA official, Ľuboš Micheľ, the man who refereed the Champions League Final in Moscow last year between Champions of England/ Champions of Europe and Chelsea, has accepted a new role in the game post-retirement. He has taken the post of Director of International Competitions at Ukrainian club, Shakhtar Donetsk!
Wasn't this the man's unwritten job title anyway?
Rampant and systemic criminality set against the backdrop of a global Depression.
Instead of hiding in his burrow, trying to find some chameleonesque ordering of words that might explain his support of Thaksin Shinawatra or his dichotomous reactions to the truth in relation to West Ham and Carlos Tevez, Richard Scudamore needs to explain to all fans how he sees that this medium is sustainable without the input of gambling money.
For, as Charlemagne states in the Economist, in reference to the euro rather than ScudamoreWorld, but the scenario analysis is the same: "The euro's defenders are convinced that the currency will still be there at the end of the crisis. That is a reasonable bet. But public support for the euro may still be painfully tested as economies deteriorate. Over-high expectations cannot help. Calling the euro a haven from the storm is not just economic nonsense. It is political bad sense, since nobody is going to be sheltered from this deluge."
Unfortunately, the blocked out parts of the posts and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
Our roster is now full for Football Is Fixed.
But, please enjoy the free snippets that we are posting on this site.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
The Fake Reality of ScudamoreWorld not only avoids contrarian Realities within the English game, but fails to take account of the holistic nature of the onset of a global Depression.
The Hyperreality of ScudamoreWorld has only one strategic route ahead to balance the books - the simulacrum of football becoming a gambling sport.
All of the talking heads and the smiley faces are hiding a great lie - the selling out of English football to the bookmaking fraternity.
The people that the fan depends on to share the hyperrealities at large are a part of this lie, just as much so as if they were perpetrating the scams themselves.
"Don't rock the boat, we've all got our fingers in the till to some extent, we are each earning a derivative retainer for staying quiet and trading the inside information."
In the game, it is an accepted wisdom that this is taking place, all insiders have their own particular favourite anecdote relating to the criminalisation of match outcomes to the benefit of insider traders, the layers or, more generally, both parties.
The general attitude is one of shared ownership of the criminality, being in on a societal scam.
It enables the insignificant to develop a feeling of self-importance.
The unsustainability of the English game is perfectly evident to any observer.
* £3 billion worth of collected debts.
* The Big 2 have fully half of this debt on their books.
* Chelsea will have just eighteen months to repay Mr Abramovich his £700 million investment should the Great Man decide to return to the cornering of energy markets in Russia. Paper losses of 60% of the Great Man's assets have resulted in the sacking of 15 coaches and Scolari being told that he must sell before he is able to buy in the January transfer window.
* West Ham United are £40 million in debt, and may face a further £50 million of costs over their illegalities regarding the Premier League, Carlos Tevez and the rules of the game relating to 3rd Party Transfers (in that such rules may be said to exist). Keith Harris keeps informing us that the club is a going concern despite administration rulings starting to take force against the club this week. Apparently, because the club is structured in a financially complex manner, some of these debts will be able to be avoided, initially at least. Financial sleight of hand is a core competency in the fake ScudamoreWorld.
* Arkadi Gaydamak received just 3.5% of the vote in the election to become mayor of Jerusalem - most of these votes came from Palestinians and were based not on his politics but on the fact that he doesn't look Jewish, apparently.
Having liquidated many of his assets in order to bankroll this campaign, the man is now increasingly desperate to get shut of Portsmouth FC, the foreign asset that he cannot be seen to own, as it would be yet another Reality that would expose the myth of legality surrounding ScudamoreWorld. Pompey are non-sustainable. Redknapp's idiotic transfer policies, a systemic gambling culture, £32 million of debts, wages representing 90% of turnover and a financially compromised and fake owner is suggestive of a close race between West Ham and Portsmouth to see which club first shows the non-strategic nature of ScudamoreWorld via bankruptcy.
* Keith Harris of Seymour Pierce investment boutique has a great job. There is no chance in him being successful and yet he gets paid handsomely for this utter lack of progress. Mr Harris is trying to find buyers for, among others, Newcastle United, West Ham, Portsmouth, Charlton Athletic and Everton.
No chance.
These clubs are toxic assets to be avoided or a better price may be engendered by delaying purchase.
Just how many of those 8 bids for Mike Ashley's House of Cards turned out to be Real?
Mr Harris is simply being paid for creating believable hyperreal scenarios that provide the public pretence that everything is okay in the game - a diamond dealers cartel, a Far East bookmaking organisation, a very serious proposition from Lagos businessmen and other such nonsenses.
These clubs will not be sold.
Some of these clubs will cease to exist.
We are in the middle of a twenty year secular bear market - stock market evaluations are no different now than they were 11 years ago, these clubs are distressed assets.
* Attendances in the Premiership are falling. The largest drop of 10% is at Newcastle United and only three clubs have seen a season-on-season rise in people paying to watch the gambles unfold - Bolton, Manchester City and Middlesboro.
A Premier League spokesperson spins this Reality out as: "Some figures are up, and some are down" when a more accurate reflection would be three teams have improved attendances while 17 are showing a decline.
Together with Sky and the disguise of the fall-off in satellite subscriptions, these twin revenue streams are going to severely undermine the fake structure of ScudamoreWorld.
* Gaydamak, Shinawatra, Abramovich, Mansion88, SBOBet, AIG, Mike Ashley, Abu Dhabi United, Hicks and Gillett, just how bad does an entity need to be to fall foul of the Premier League's fit-and-proper-person's test (FPPT)? Or the non-existent rules relating to the efficacy of a club sponsor?
In ScudamoreWorld, there is no public justification for the psychopathic structures.
Just business as usual with no checks nor balances.
Of course, ScudamoreWorld is allowed to continue due to the compliance of the corporate media. There is simply no dynamic within the game to prevent the full takeover of football by the betting industry.
None.
In other territories, concerns are aired in the media and inappropriates are forced to justify their strategies.
In Italy, falling attendances and corrupt referees are seen as part of the same problem, hence calciopoli, the fraudulent assessment of current match officials and a genuine horror at the number of empty seats at the Roma derby last weekend.
In Spain, there are six Spanish teams in administration, including Celta Vigo and Real Sociedad, who were both only recently in the Champions League. Spanish clubs owe over £500 million to the tax authorities alone, and the total debt comes in at a very English £2.5 billion.
Angel Barajas, an economist, states: "I'm really afraid about football because the situation is not sustainable in the medium term."
Javier Tebas, the vice-president of the Spanish Football League is "very worried" about the financial situation, while Jaime Lissavetzky, the Spanish Secretary of State for Sport is concerned that "...if [insolvency rules] continue to be abused as a stop-gap measure, and expenses aren't brought under control, you could call it a complicated moment."
Very complicated...
Even Joan Laporta, a man not renowned for his prescience, at Barcelona recognises that "attendance at the stadium is down from last year due to the global financial crisis."
But ScudamoreWorld think that debt is a good thing.
ScudamoreWorld understand that, when all the distressed assets and dodgy deals are totalised together, the only route out of the morass will be gambling money.
This is why Scudamore himself cosied up so closely to ########################
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###########################################################################
#######################################################################
#############################################################################
#########################################################
Prior to the last round of betting events in the Premiership, referees were under pressure as managers were threatening strike action over the dire quality of the officiating in England's top league.
#####################################################################
###############################################################
###########################################################################
##################################################################
######################################################################
Not ScudamoreWorld.
#########################################################################
##########################################################################
#########################################################################
#########################################################################
########################################################################
########################################################################
There's nothing like meritocracy and this is nothing like meritocracy.
Two Premiership matches experienced that peculiarly PGMOB tactic of a late change of referee. Both of these matches were heavy gambling events (Man United v Stoke City and Blackburn v Sunderland).
What were the reasons behind these adjustments?
Illness evidently wasn't the issue for Mr Walton as he was moved from the Blackburn game to Old Trafford. If Mike Halsey, the original ref for the United game, was unavailable or otherwise indisposed, why didn't the PGMOB just change that one referee? Why the delay and the serious impact on the betting markets, obviously with the usual insider trading on the new hyperreality before the changes had been made public?
The outcomes of seven of the last round of Premiership matches were affected by gambling money. Some of this was rogue operators, some of it systemic, some of it cartelised and some solo and proprietary, but all of it was criminal and a damning indictment of the state of play in ScudamoreWorld.
##############################################################################
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#################################
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####################################################################
###################################################################
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##########################################################################
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Colin Calderwood on referees: "They are the rulers of the game."
David Moyes on the FA, the PGMOB and referees: "They are a law unto themselves, aren't they? They make their own rules, they bring their own people in on the panels and make their own decisions, so it is very difficult... We are finding that their [the FA's] rules are very hard for people in the game to respect."
Still, it is good to see that the inappropriate linkages of match officials is not only a ScudamoreWorld issue.
Former leading UEFA official, Ľuboš Micheľ, the man who refereed the Champions League Final in Moscow last year between Champions of England/ Champions of Europe and Chelsea, has accepted a new role in the game post-retirement. He has taken the post of Director of International Competitions at Ukrainian club, Shakhtar Donetsk!
Wasn't this the man's unwritten job title anyway?
Rampant and systemic criminality set against the backdrop of a global Depression.
Instead of hiding in his burrow, trying to find some chameleonesque ordering of words that might explain his support of Thaksin Shinawatra or his dichotomous reactions to the truth in relation to West Ham and Carlos Tevez, Richard Scudamore needs to explain to all fans how he sees that this medium is sustainable without the input of gambling money.
For, as Charlemagne states in the Economist, in reference to the euro rather than ScudamoreWorld, but the scenario analysis is the same: "The euro's defenders are convinced that the currency will still be there at the end of the crisis. That is a reasonable bet. But public support for the euro may still be painfully tested as economies deteriorate. Over-high expectations cannot help. Calling the euro a haven from the storm is not just economic nonsense. It is political bad sense, since nobody is going to be sheltered from this deluge."
Unfortunately, the blocked out parts of the posts and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
Our roster is now full for Football Is Fixed.
But, please enjoy the free snippets that we are posting on this site.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Thursday 20 November 2008
Change, Not Being Short-Changed
In the third of our dislocated troika of posts on corporate crime and the corporate media, we have a statement to make...
You should trust the BBC.
It is an Institution.
The other day, BBC News 24 kept repeating a mantra to me, numerous times every fifteen minutes on an eternal tape loop of hyperreal news: "Its official! Prices are falling!"
Accompanied by images suggestive of a festive splurge to save the immense number of businesses that are doing the decent thing, and waiting until January before keeling over, the consumerist message was clear.
But it was a lie.
Prices are not falling.
The rate of inflation fell to 4.5% from the previous month high of 5.2%.
Instead of addressing the volatility in the rate of inflation and the invalid pricing mechanisms that allow oil to be now trading at virtually one-third of its summer highs, the BBC lied to those threatened by the impact of numbers.
As I reeled from this corporate journalism, the following news item told me that "John Sargent has the right to win Strictly Come Dancing."
The right??
The BBC wouldn't be fiddling the figures again, would they?
Meanwhile, in Africa, child soldiers with their western-made 'kiddie-weapons' - nice and light - are butchering one another in the most dreadful realities away from the reality-lite lenses of the BBC.
All we ever get on Africa is Mugabe and Darfur.
Colonial revenge journalism of the worst kind.
The narrative never goes back far enough to address the structural reasons why the countries of Sudan and Zimbabwe are ungovernable. These structures were put into place by the British in the imperial divide-and-rule template.
Read Ryszard Kapuściński "The Shadow Of The Sun" or watch Al-Jazeera.
Forget the BBC.
We also get given international piracy and the 'theft' of the Sirius Star.
How much coverage does the BBC give to the theft in the Niger Delta or Angola?
Corporate theft is fine, thank you very much...
If these 'pirates' showed such ingenuity in the City of London, it would be termed 'innovative' and a fine example of 'free enterprise', and a bonus would be in order.
Somalia is a failed state thanks to the US/Ethiopian assault also, strangely, not worthy of mention on the BBC.
The 'pirates' that have been caught attempting to ply their trade look desperate.
The hyperreality presented to us is not an acceptable narrative.
In the midst of all these fake realities, the BBC foisted 'Children In Need' on us, without anybody making the really obvious point that, if the children dressed up as derivative traders, the government would look after them without the need for charity.
Why do the British so hate their children?
Gordon Brown, along with all other supporters of a boom and bust economy, is trying to rewrite history so that his fingerprints may no longer be found over the files marked 'Recession' and 'Depression'.
When Slackjaw was first presented with the vestiges of power, he released democratic control over the level of interest rates by giving the Bank of England total power over this vital lever of the economy.
While Slackjaw promised us 'no more boom and bust', his policies were deliberately developing this very market cycle type. Central bankers love boom and bust because, overall, it is financially more rewarding for all involved in the financial sector.
Within government, Slackjaw exacerbated the cyclical hyperrealities by rampant public spending (good) and the private finance initiative (very bad).
Now, having thrown £500 billion at the banking sector, and, to the point of puerility, having told anybody who was willing to listen that he had nothing to do with this 'global crisis', we need to deconstruct the Slackjaw Scam.
As the Economist stated: "His bid to disavow all responsibility for Britain's economic plight is another brazen intellectual heist."
And then some...
The financial crisis is only global in one sense, everybody is going to suffer in the Depression.
The causes of the crisis were the psychopathic free market shenanigans in those countries that welcomed a neo-capitalist system in either their financial or their housing sectors.
Or both.
The US, Britain, Eire, Spain etc have brought the crisis to everyone else.
The countries least affected currently are the ones who avoided the free market prescriptions of the IMF, the World Bank and World Government.
The Basel II banking rules repeatedly allowed the banking sector to undertake self-regulation.
And still the ruse continues.
Naomi Klein: "First of all, the equity deals that were negotiated with the largest banks and also some smaller banks, representing $250 billion worth of the bailout money, this is the deal to inject equity into the banks in—to inject capital into the banks in exchange for equity. The idea was to address the so-called credit crunch to get banks lending again. The legislation that enabled this was quite explicit that it had to encourage lending. Barney Frank, who was one of the architects of that legislation, has said that it violates the act if the money is not going to that purpose and is instead going to bonuses, is instead going to dividends, going to salaries, going to mergers. He said that violates the acts, i.e. it's illegal. But what we know is that it's going precisely to those purposes. It is going to bonuses. It is going to shareholders. And it is not going to lending. The banks have been quite explicit about this. Citibank has talked about using the money to buy other banks.
"There's another piece of this puzzle that is also borderline illegal, which is that in addition to the $700 billion that we are discussing, the $700 billion bailout, there's another $2 trillion that's been handed out by the Federal Reserve in emergency loans to financial institutions, to banks, that actually we don't really know who they're handing the money out to, because, apparently, it's a secret. They could be handing it out to a range of other corporations — I think they are — but they're saying that they won't disclose who has received these taxpayer loans, because it could cause a run on the banks, it could cause the market to lose confidence in the institutions that have taken these loans. Once again, that represents an additional $2 trillion.
"The other thing that the Fed won't disclose is what they have accepted as collateral in exchange for these loans. This is a really key point, because, of course, at the heart of the financial crisis are these so-called distressed assets. The value of these assets is enormously controversial. They may be worth very little. So if the Fed has accepted distressed assets as collateral in exchange for these loans, there's a very good chance the taxpayers aren't going to be getting this money back. So Bloomberg News has launched a lawsuit in federal court to find out who has received the loans and what has been accepted as collateral, because they believe that this lack of transparency is illegal."
Joseph Stiglitz: "To too great extent, there has been a race to the bottom in accordance with the myth that deregulation breeds innovation. Instead, the innovation was greatest when it came to getting around the regulations designed to ensure good information and a sound financial system."
It still is...
Stiglitz: "Financial markets are supposed to be a means to an end - a more prosperous and stable economy as a result of good allocation of resources and better management of risk. But instead, financial markets didn't manage risk, they created it."
This week Citigroup sacked 52,000 staff.
Citigroup are looking to use the bailout to takeover distressed banks.
This week, seven Goldman Sachs executives agreed to pass on their annual bonuses as the firm is about to post its first quarterly loss in its history.
No psychopathic market control there, then...
Meanwhile, former Goldman boss Hank Paulson continues to live in an alternative hyperreality: "We have turned the corner in terms of stabilising the system and preventing collapse."
His partner in crime is not so convinced, as Bernanke thinks that "... overall credit conditions are still far from normal."
Paulson has hoodwinked democracy.
This unelected investment banker is able to unilaterally determine the direction this handout/bailout/merger and acquisition fund is going to take.
As Congressman Paul Kanjorski said to Hanky: "We are trying to figure out... the 180 degree change you made in policy."
The Troubled Asset Relief Programme (TARP) was designed to protect the financial sector against toxic assets.
Hanky decided then that the crisis was not one of liquidity but one of solvency.
Hence the 180 degrees...
But Hanky is still missing the point.
As John Authers said in the Financial Times: "But the problems of liquidity and solvency were not mutually exclusive. The liquidity problem remains. With the economy worsening, it becomes harder to raise those troubled assets."
Hanky has scammed it all the way through...
Naomi Klein, once again: "In a moment of high panic in late September, the US Treasury unilaterally pushed through a radical change in how bank mergers are taxed--a change long sought by the industry. Despite the fact that this move will deprive the government of as much as $140 billion in tax revenue, lawmakers found out only after the fact. According to the Washington Post, more than a dozen tax attorneys agree that 'Treasury had no authority to issue the [tax change] notice.'"
Gaming the Recession.
Guilty as Charged.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
You should trust the BBC.
It is an Institution.
The other day, BBC News 24 kept repeating a mantra to me, numerous times every fifteen minutes on an eternal tape loop of hyperreal news: "Its official! Prices are falling!"
Accompanied by images suggestive of a festive splurge to save the immense number of businesses that are doing the decent thing, and waiting until January before keeling over, the consumerist message was clear.
But it was a lie.
Prices are not falling.
The rate of inflation fell to 4.5% from the previous month high of 5.2%.
Instead of addressing the volatility in the rate of inflation and the invalid pricing mechanisms that allow oil to be now trading at virtually one-third of its summer highs, the BBC lied to those threatened by the impact of numbers.
As I reeled from this corporate journalism, the following news item told me that "John Sargent has the right to win Strictly Come Dancing."
The right??
The BBC wouldn't be fiddling the figures again, would they?
Meanwhile, in Africa, child soldiers with their western-made 'kiddie-weapons' - nice and light - are butchering one another in the most dreadful realities away from the reality-lite lenses of the BBC.
All we ever get on Africa is Mugabe and Darfur.
Colonial revenge journalism of the worst kind.
The narrative never goes back far enough to address the structural reasons why the countries of Sudan and Zimbabwe are ungovernable. These structures were put into place by the British in the imperial divide-and-rule template.
Read Ryszard Kapuściński "The Shadow Of The Sun" or watch Al-Jazeera.
Forget the BBC.
We also get given international piracy and the 'theft' of the Sirius Star.
How much coverage does the BBC give to the theft in the Niger Delta or Angola?
Corporate theft is fine, thank you very much...
If these 'pirates' showed such ingenuity in the City of London, it would be termed 'innovative' and a fine example of 'free enterprise', and a bonus would be in order.
Somalia is a failed state thanks to the US/Ethiopian assault also, strangely, not worthy of mention on the BBC.
The 'pirates' that have been caught attempting to ply their trade look desperate.
The hyperreality presented to us is not an acceptable narrative.
In the midst of all these fake realities, the BBC foisted 'Children In Need' on us, without anybody making the really obvious point that, if the children dressed up as derivative traders, the government would look after them without the need for charity.
Why do the British so hate their children?
Gordon Brown, along with all other supporters of a boom and bust economy, is trying to rewrite history so that his fingerprints may no longer be found over the files marked 'Recession' and 'Depression'.
When Slackjaw was first presented with the vestiges of power, he released democratic control over the level of interest rates by giving the Bank of England total power over this vital lever of the economy.
While Slackjaw promised us 'no more boom and bust', his policies were deliberately developing this very market cycle type. Central bankers love boom and bust because, overall, it is financially more rewarding for all involved in the financial sector.
Within government, Slackjaw exacerbated the cyclical hyperrealities by rampant public spending (good) and the private finance initiative (very bad).
Now, having thrown £500 billion at the banking sector, and, to the point of puerility, having told anybody who was willing to listen that he had nothing to do with this 'global crisis', we need to deconstruct the Slackjaw Scam.
As the Economist stated: "His bid to disavow all responsibility for Britain's economic plight is another brazen intellectual heist."
And then some...
The financial crisis is only global in one sense, everybody is going to suffer in the Depression.
The causes of the crisis were the psychopathic free market shenanigans in those countries that welcomed a neo-capitalist system in either their financial or their housing sectors.
Or both.
The US, Britain, Eire, Spain etc have brought the crisis to everyone else.
The countries least affected currently are the ones who avoided the free market prescriptions of the IMF, the World Bank and World Government.
The Basel II banking rules repeatedly allowed the banking sector to undertake self-regulation.
And still the ruse continues.
Naomi Klein: "First of all, the equity deals that were negotiated with the largest banks and also some smaller banks, representing $250 billion worth of the bailout money, this is the deal to inject equity into the banks in—to inject capital into the banks in exchange for equity. The idea was to address the so-called credit crunch to get banks lending again. The legislation that enabled this was quite explicit that it had to encourage lending. Barney Frank, who was one of the architects of that legislation, has said that it violates the act if the money is not going to that purpose and is instead going to bonuses, is instead going to dividends, going to salaries, going to mergers. He said that violates the acts, i.e. it's illegal. But what we know is that it's going precisely to those purposes. It is going to bonuses. It is going to shareholders. And it is not going to lending. The banks have been quite explicit about this. Citibank has talked about using the money to buy other banks.
"There's another piece of this puzzle that is also borderline illegal, which is that in addition to the $700 billion that we are discussing, the $700 billion bailout, there's another $2 trillion that's been handed out by the Federal Reserve in emergency loans to financial institutions, to banks, that actually we don't really know who they're handing the money out to, because, apparently, it's a secret. They could be handing it out to a range of other corporations — I think they are — but they're saying that they won't disclose who has received these taxpayer loans, because it could cause a run on the banks, it could cause the market to lose confidence in the institutions that have taken these loans. Once again, that represents an additional $2 trillion.
"The other thing that the Fed won't disclose is what they have accepted as collateral in exchange for these loans. This is a really key point, because, of course, at the heart of the financial crisis are these so-called distressed assets. The value of these assets is enormously controversial. They may be worth very little. So if the Fed has accepted distressed assets as collateral in exchange for these loans, there's a very good chance the taxpayers aren't going to be getting this money back. So Bloomberg News has launched a lawsuit in federal court to find out who has received the loans and what has been accepted as collateral, because they believe that this lack of transparency is illegal."
Joseph Stiglitz: "To too great extent, there has been a race to the bottom in accordance with the myth that deregulation breeds innovation. Instead, the innovation was greatest when it came to getting around the regulations designed to ensure good information and a sound financial system."
It still is...
Stiglitz: "Financial markets are supposed to be a means to an end - a more prosperous and stable economy as a result of good allocation of resources and better management of risk. But instead, financial markets didn't manage risk, they created it."
This week Citigroup sacked 52,000 staff.
Citigroup are looking to use the bailout to takeover distressed banks.
This week, seven Goldman Sachs executives agreed to pass on their annual bonuses as the firm is about to post its first quarterly loss in its history.
No psychopathic market control there, then...
Meanwhile, former Goldman boss Hank Paulson continues to live in an alternative hyperreality: "We have turned the corner in terms of stabilising the system and preventing collapse."
His partner in crime is not so convinced, as Bernanke thinks that "... overall credit conditions are still far from normal."
Paulson has hoodwinked democracy.
This unelected investment banker is able to unilaterally determine the direction this handout/bailout/merger and acquisition fund is going to take.
As Congressman Paul Kanjorski said to Hanky: "We are trying to figure out... the 180 degree change you made in policy."
The Troubled Asset Relief Programme (TARP) was designed to protect the financial sector against toxic assets.
Hanky decided then that the crisis was not one of liquidity but one of solvency.
Hence the 180 degrees...
But Hanky is still missing the point.
As John Authers said in the Financial Times: "But the problems of liquidity and solvency were not mutually exclusive. The liquidity problem remains. With the economy worsening, it becomes harder to raise those troubled assets."
Hanky has scammed it all the way through...
Naomi Klein, once again: "In a moment of high panic in late September, the US Treasury unilaterally pushed through a radical change in how bank mergers are taxed--a change long sought by the industry. Despite the fact that this move will deprive the government of as much as $140 billion in tax revenue, lawmakers found out only after the fact. According to the Washington Post, more than a dozen tax attorneys agree that 'Treasury had no authority to issue the [tax change] notice.'"
Gaming the Recession.
Guilty as Charged.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Wednesday 19 November 2008
The Evolution Of Theses, The Observation Of Hyperrealities
In precisely two weeks time, I will be raising my bat to celebrate fifty years of trying to get myself killed.
From the hospitalising Hypothermia in the Orkneys when our speed-boat broke down in the northern outreaches of the islands as we pursued a sealing boat nearly thirty years ago this November, to the underworld threats relating to our exposure of various aspects of the takeover of top-flight English football by that very same underworld, I've been quite willing to take personal risk to energise political/social change.
But, you know what, right?
I'm going to spend my second fifty years trying to stay alive instead.
I don't need to do these things and, effectively, there is no option other than a major change in the output of the Football Is Fixed blog.
I've yo-yo'd on this recently as I tried to both deal with the management of change issues and the scenario analyses available via different strategic routes.
But, following two days extensive brainstorming, I've decided on a re-jigged strategy ahead.
There is not one route that leads to a sustainable future for this blog as a source of information relating to the specific criminalisation of football. We shall continue to make general, systemic and holistic statements, but no more personalisation.
Prior to the implementation of all Projects, I clearly define the Exit Route(s).
I understood when I started the Football Is Fixed blog that there would be two distinct phases in the development, with a trappy changeover period between these two realities.
Myself and my colleagues are in these choppy waters now.
We have numerous meetings set up over the next three weeks.
If any of these meetings bear fruit, I will have to adjust the blogs' profile, as it would be inappropriate to continue with controversialist content when I am supposed to be behaving in a more grown up manner.
So, for example, I am meeting with several people within UEFA regarding the creation of a template that will make the rigging of football matches markedly more complex for those who would sell our game to the gambling markets.
I understand that this developmental work does not sit comfortably with crypto-allegations about the integrity of this particular goalkeeper or that particular referee.
I understand that none of the criminals involved in match rigging are likely to be brought to justice.
It would be terminally bad for the brand for this to occur.
So, in these cases, I need to shut up...
Of course, these meetings might not yield any mutually beneficial crossovers as we are very fussy about who we work with, but, in such a scenario, once again the Football Is Fixed blog will need to be wound down.
During the last two years, the blog has been tolerated as it has served the purpose of a source of valuable information about the demise of a once great sport.
Our messages were ahead of the public perception of the hyperreality and, consequently, were of little direct threat to the corruptions taking place.
Indeed, unknowingly, we have probably helped to improve some corrupt templates.
However the next few months play out, if we are not inside the loop, then we have no choice other than to be invisible again...
We've had some incredibly helpful communications with readers regarding the risks we have been taking in our exposing of the criminal activities underpinning the English Premiership.
Two narratives featuring the situations for similar investigative journalists in Italy and Greece will be printed in a future post but, suffice to say, we need to adjust our risk profiles.
I certainly need to adjust mine...
Over the last eight years, I have spent much of the time living in Romania or Kerkyra just to address these type of security issues.
I am invisible in Britain.
I'm tired of living like this...
When a French citizen wished to expose aspects of the money laundering and fraud relating to the Pompey Nine, he went through a Parisien lawyer as he feared for his life.
We confront these same people directly.
We have met with several of the criminal fringe relating to the Pompey Nine grouping, we didn't hire muscle, we didn't have colleagues sitting at adjacent restaurant tables gaming the meetings, we never chose protection.
We have always understood that our Market Analytical abilities are our trump card.
We are able to enhance the trading activities of anyone that we chose to operate with...
Football Is Fucked.
Just suppose the betting monitoring units within UEFA are not under the control of bookmaking bodies (a big 'suppose'), and just assume that myself and my colleagues were given a free rein to create the perfect template for undermining the impact of gambling money on match outcomes, and just believe, for one moment, that these recommendations and templates were accepted higher up the hierarchy, and even dare to consider that the template might be correctly implemented globally.
And, Football will still be Fucked.
If the illegal markets are driven further underground and the systemic nature of the corruption is deconstructed, the same dynamic will regain momentum, gaming the new regulations to proprietary advantage.
If the illegal markets are opened up and regulated, the rewards for gaining systemic control will be even greater than is currently the case. Think Hank Paulson...
Climate change is different.
As The System of Capital insists that we are going to be trading our future existential probabilities as a species in the psychopathic marketplace, then it is critical to game those markets to maximise the possibility of positive feedback loops rather than the non-sustainable sort that Shareholder Capitalism always seems to select.
Markets are both economic and psychological mechanisms, and the mass psychologies relating to the impacts of climate change are colossal.
Just as myself and my colleagues have traded very profitably on short-selling the current system over the early days of this global Recession, we see many strategies to target inappropriate business entities and sectors in the coming decades.
As Shareholder Capitalism refuses to factor externalities into the market prices, all such prices are, in Reality, incorrect.
They simply represent a guesstimate, skewed by singular and collective irrationalities, of a short-termist perspective on a non-holistic perception.
We are going to try to set up the first Green Hedge Fund.
Properly Green.
A Socialist Entity in a Shareholder Capitalist Template - no hierarchy, just a co-operative trading team, profits being used to solicit Real change.
We would be aiming to raise capital to short-sell the sectors who are not taking the lives of future generations seriously enough.
We would be looking to be making medium-long term bets against the market.
We are not interested in playing the psychopathic cycles of insider trading.
In the longer term, the Realities of Climate Change will force a price correction in the Hyperrealities of the Market.
The only risk to the strategic advancement of such an entity would be systemic.
If moral hazard, or any of the other personality styles that define the upper echelons of the global financial system, results in existential threat then there is the risk of counterparty implosion, and so our Exit routes will need to be clearly gamed and defined.
Protesting against the systemic abuse of football, from the outside, is pointless.
Protesting against the systemic abuse of the planet, from the outside, is also pointless.
We have no democratic rights to achieve change.
These people only respect the markets - and I refer both to football and financial markets here - and the only way to target these operations is to confront them in the marketplace.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
From the hospitalising Hypothermia in the Orkneys when our speed-boat broke down in the northern outreaches of the islands as we pursued a sealing boat nearly thirty years ago this November, to the underworld threats relating to our exposure of various aspects of the takeover of top-flight English football by that very same underworld, I've been quite willing to take personal risk to energise political/social change.
But, you know what, right?
I'm going to spend my second fifty years trying to stay alive instead.
I don't need to do these things and, effectively, there is no option other than a major change in the output of the Football Is Fixed blog.
I've yo-yo'd on this recently as I tried to both deal with the management of change issues and the scenario analyses available via different strategic routes.
But, following two days extensive brainstorming, I've decided on a re-jigged strategy ahead.
There is not one route that leads to a sustainable future for this blog as a source of information relating to the specific criminalisation of football. We shall continue to make general, systemic and holistic statements, but no more personalisation.
Prior to the implementation of all Projects, I clearly define the Exit Route(s).
I understood when I started the Football Is Fixed blog that there would be two distinct phases in the development, with a trappy changeover period between these two realities.
Myself and my colleagues are in these choppy waters now.
We have numerous meetings set up over the next three weeks.
If any of these meetings bear fruit, I will have to adjust the blogs' profile, as it would be inappropriate to continue with controversialist content when I am supposed to be behaving in a more grown up manner.
So, for example, I am meeting with several people within UEFA regarding the creation of a template that will make the rigging of football matches markedly more complex for those who would sell our game to the gambling markets.
I understand that this developmental work does not sit comfortably with crypto-allegations about the integrity of this particular goalkeeper or that particular referee.
I understand that none of the criminals involved in match rigging are likely to be brought to justice.
It would be terminally bad for the brand for this to occur.
So, in these cases, I need to shut up...
Of course, these meetings might not yield any mutually beneficial crossovers as we are very fussy about who we work with, but, in such a scenario, once again the Football Is Fixed blog will need to be wound down.
During the last two years, the blog has been tolerated as it has served the purpose of a source of valuable information about the demise of a once great sport.
Our messages were ahead of the public perception of the hyperreality and, consequently, were of little direct threat to the corruptions taking place.
Indeed, unknowingly, we have probably helped to improve some corrupt templates.
However the next few months play out, if we are not inside the loop, then we have no choice other than to be invisible again...
We've had some incredibly helpful communications with readers regarding the risks we have been taking in our exposing of the criminal activities underpinning the English Premiership.
Two narratives featuring the situations for similar investigative journalists in Italy and Greece will be printed in a future post but, suffice to say, we need to adjust our risk profiles.
I certainly need to adjust mine...
Over the last eight years, I have spent much of the time living in Romania or Kerkyra just to address these type of security issues.
I am invisible in Britain.
I'm tired of living like this...
When a French citizen wished to expose aspects of the money laundering and fraud relating to the Pompey Nine, he went through a Parisien lawyer as he feared for his life.
We confront these same people directly.
We have met with several of the criminal fringe relating to the Pompey Nine grouping, we didn't hire muscle, we didn't have colleagues sitting at adjacent restaurant tables gaming the meetings, we never chose protection.
We have always understood that our Market Analytical abilities are our trump card.
We are able to enhance the trading activities of anyone that we chose to operate with...
Football Is Fucked.
Just suppose the betting monitoring units within UEFA are not under the control of bookmaking bodies (a big 'suppose'), and just assume that myself and my colleagues were given a free rein to create the perfect template for undermining the impact of gambling money on match outcomes, and just believe, for one moment, that these recommendations and templates were accepted higher up the hierarchy, and even dare to consider that the template might be correctly implemented globally.
And, Football will still be Fucked.
If the illegal markets are driven further underground and the systemic nature of the corruption is deconstructed, the same dynamic will regain momentum, gaming the new regulations to proprietary advantage.
If the illegal markets are opened up and regulated, the rewards for gaining systemic control will be even greater than is currently the case. Think Hank Paulson...
Climate change is different.
As The System of Capital insists that we are going to be trading our future existential probabilities as a species in the psychopathic marketplace, then it is critical to game those markets to maximise the possibility of positive feedback loops rather than the non-sustainable sort that Shareholder Capitalism always seems to select.
Markets are both economic and psychological mechanisms, and the mass psychologies relating to the impacts of climate change are colossal.
Just as myself and my colleagues have traded very profitably on short-selling the current system over the early days of this global Recession, we see many strategies to target inappropriate business entities and sectors in the coming decades.
As Shareholder Capitalism refuses to factor externalities into the market prices, all such prices are, in Reality, incorrect.
They simply represent a guesstimate, skewed by singular and collective irrationalities, of a short-termist perspective on a non-holistic perception.
We are going to try to set up the first Green Hedge Fund.
Properly Green.
A Socialist Entity in a Shareholder Capitalist Template - no hierarchy, just a co-operative trading team, profits being used to solicit Real change.
We would be aiming to raise capital to short-sell the sectors who are not taking the lives of future generations seriously enough.
We would be looking to be making medium-long term bets against the market.
We are not interested in playing the psychopathic cycles of insider trading.
In the longer term, the Realities of Climate Change will force a price correction in the Hyperrealities of the Market.
The only risk to the strategic advancement of such an entity would be systemic.
If moral hazard, or any of the other personality styles that define the upper echelons of the global financial system, results in existential threat then there is the risk of counterparty implosion, and so our Exit routes will need to be clearly gamed and defined.
Protesting against the systemic abuse of football, from the outside, is pointless.
Protesting against the systemic abuse of the planet, from the outside, is also pointless.
We have no democratic rights to achieve change.
These people only respect the markets - and I refer both to football and financial markets here - and the only way to target these operations is to confront them in the marketplace.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Monday 17 November 2008
Fucked Footie Players - A Football Is Fixed Special #
Today's post details the sixteen most active Schweinmannschaft in the English Premiership.
These players are the ones that Total Information Awareness, our trading network, believe to be the most compromised players in the league.
7 goalkeepers, 3 defenders, 2 midfielders and 4 forwards are indicative of where the match-fixers, in their various varieties, target their criminal attentions.
Seven goalkeepers...
One of these keepers, we know for a fact, is being coerced into underperformance.
Threatened...
This is not good for the ScudamoreWorld Product.
Why 7 goalies anyway?
Two reasons...
Firstly, at the peak of my incredibly limited footballing abilities, I appeared in goal for the University of Manchester 1st XI.
I read goalkeepers better than the other positions.
Secondly, one slip from any other position on the field of play, may result in anything.
One slip from a goalkeeper makes a 1.0 goal difference to the global betting markets.
Alan Hansen thinks it takes five or six players to fix a football match!
We think that he is demonstrating economies of hyperreality...
One agent represents three of the players on our list.
As Declan Hill correctly pointed out in his book 'The Fix', the agents are frequently the first port of call for the match manipulators.
Until recently...
Now the agents are amongst those acting as the primary source of such match corruptions.
Bribery and coercion, familial networks, solo rogue operators, even a mini-systemic infrastructure, they are all here in the first ever Football Is Fixed 'Fucked Footie Players' Listing.
From the top...
1. #######################################
2. ###################################
3. ##############################
4. ##################################################
5. ############################
6. ##########################
7. ###############################
8. ###########################################
9. #############################################
10. #############################################
11. ############################################
12. ########################
13. ############################
14. ##############################################
15. ##############################
16. ##############################
Over the next few months, I am going to be putting together a series of posts focusing on games where these sixteen schweinmannschaft are involved.
I will be teaming up with two of my colleagues for these posts.
A Sports Scientist, a Forensic Psychologist and a Market Analyst assessing #########
########### as he creatively underperforms for ########################### on an imaginative basis highly positively correlated with certain insider betting patterns.
Where else can you get stuff like this?
We will be offering our analyses to a smallish group as High Level Consultative Documents.
These rogue players exhibit their criminal fringe activities in real-time.
The value in knowing the individuals in question and being able to read their match input as the game develops is of marked significance in the market place as well as in in realistic assessment of the hyperreality of this alleged 'sport'.
Originally, the third in our troika of anti-free market posts was to have been published today.
Pressure of work commitments mean that this post is now delayed until Thursday next.
Each of the next two posts will be limited in scope due to several key work meetings and one and three quarter hours total devotion to the Hand of God from the cheap seats at Hampden.
One of the happiest days of my life...
The Argentinian psyche is my favourite, I think.
Italy plus Spain plus South America.
There is equivalent joy in Buenos Aires over the Hand of God goal as there is for the slaloming beauty of Maradona's other perfection of human endeavour on that wonderful afternoon.
Is there any other culture that could provide Lionel Messi virtually mimicking to the muscle strain the exact same goal for Barcelona a couple of decades later?
All of my favourite footballers have been Argentinian.
As a seven year old, I even appreciated Antonio Rattin.
Catenaccio with South American flair trumps any other soccer system.
And I'm going to see this legend in the flesh.
OMG life does not get any better than this...
Las Islas Malvenas Argentina.
Unfortunately, the blocked out parts of the posts and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
Our roster is now full for Football Is Fixed.
But, please enjoy the free snippets that we are posting on this site.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
These players are the ones that Total Information Awareness, our trading network, believe to be the most compromised players in the league.
7 goalkeepers, 3 defenders, 2 midfielders and 4 forwards are indicative of where the match-fixers, in their various varieties, target their criminal attentions.
Seven goalkeepers...
One of these keepers, we know for a fact, is being coerced into underperformance.
Threatened...
This is not good for the ScudamoreWorld Product.
Why 7 goalies anyway?
Two reasons...
Firstly, at the peak of my incredibly limited footballing abilities, I appeared in goal for the University of Manchester 1st XI.
I read goalkeepers better than the other positions.
Secondly, one slip from any other position on the field of play, may result in anything.
One slip from a goalkeeper makes a 1.0 goal difference to the global betting markets.
Alan Hansen thinks it takes five or six players to fix a football match!
We think that he is demonstrating economies of hyperreality...
One agent represents three of the players on our list.
As Declan Hill correctly pointed out in his book 'The Fix', the agents are frequently the first port of call for the match manipulators.
Until recently...
Now the agents are amongst those acting as the primary source of such match corruptions.
Bribery and coercion, familial networks, solo rogue operators, even a mini-systemic infrastructure, they are all here in the first ever Football Is Fixed 'Fucked Footie Players' Listing.
From the top...
1. #######################################
2. ###################################
3. ##############################
4. ##################################################
5. ############################
6. ##########################
7. ###############################
8. ###########################################
9. #############################################
10. #############################################
11. ############################################
12. ########################
13. ############################
14. ##############################################
15. ##############################
16. ##############################
Over the next few months, I am going to be putting together a series of posts focusing on games where these sixteen schweinmannschaft are involved.
I will be teaming up with two of my colleagues for these posts.
A Sports Scientist, a Forensic Psychologist and a Market Analyst assessing #########
########### as he creatively underperforms for ########################### on an imaginative basis highly positively correlated with certain insider betting patterns.
Where else can you get stuff like this?
We will be offering our analyses to a smallish group as High Level Consultative Documents.
These rogue players exhibit their criminal fringe activities in real-time.
The value in knowing the individuals in question and being able to read their match input as the game develops is of marked significance in the market place as well as in in realistic assessment of the hyperreality of this alleged 'sport'.
Originally, the third in our troika of anti-free market posts was to have been published today.
Pressure of work commitments mean that this post is now delayed until Thursday next.
Each of the next two posts will be limited in scope due to several key work meetings and one and three quarter hours total devotion to the Hand of God from the cheap seats at Hampden.
One of the happiest days of my life...
The Argentinian psyche is my favourite, I think.
Italy plus Spain plus South America.
There is equivalent joy in Buenos Aires over the Hand of God goal as there is for the slaloming beauty of Maradona's other perfection of human endeavour on that wonderful afternoon.
Is there any other culture that could provide Lionel Messi virtually mimicking to the muscle strain the exact same goal for Barcelona a couple of decades later?
All of my favourite footballers have been Argentinian.
As a seven year old, I even appreciated Antonio Rattin.
Catenaccio with South American flair trumps any other soccer system.
And I'm going to see this legend in the flesh.
OMG life does not get any better than this...
Las Islas Malvenas Argentina.
Unfortunately, the blocked out parts of the posts and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
Our roster is now full for Football Is Fixed.
But, please enjoy the free snippets that we are posting on this site.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Sunday 16 November 2008
Monitor Market Manipulation, Not Mickey Mouse #
Football fans are not the bewildered hordes that the betting industry build in to their financial projections.
As Sky and Setanta subscriptions start to mimic the bear market, merchandise and ticket purchases pass their summit, betting turnover has ceased its relentless drive upwards.
Over the last few seasons, global betting liquidity on football betting markets has been showing an annual increase of around 22% year-on-year.
The increase on turnover this season is just 2%.
Although the gambling sector generally holds up well in a recession as they thrive on people's desperation, if you are offering a compromised product, the punters will eventually start to spot the manipulations against their interest.
It is at this point that the corporate media rushes in to paper over the cracks.
The League Managers Association (LMA) quite logically threatened strike action this week. Managers were threatening to delay the kick offs in order to embarrass the match officials and the PGMOB, infuriate the broadcasters and to demonstrate to the fans that they too are not happy with the standard of the refereeing.
This is an entirely reasonable stance.
And yet the response from the mainstream media has been apoplectic.
Paul Wilson (The Guardian): "Referees should not have to explain themselves to the media after a game."
Paul Jewell (Derby County manager): "The referees deserve respect but we can't start respecting them if they get major decisions wrong that effect livelihoods."
Paul Ince (Blackburn Rovers manager): "We're trying to respect them [the referees] but they've got to start respecting us. It works both ways."
David Lacey (The Guardian) in response to Ince: "Wrong: officials are not there to please managers."
We agree.
###############################################################################
######################################################################
##############################################################################
In the Mirror, Steve Bennett, one of this elite grouping of referees, claims that managers and players are like "ravenous animals smelling blood".
Bennett continues "... heavy punishments will hopefully act as a deterrent and gradually eradicate these individuals from our game."
Whose game, Mr Bennett?
Football does not belong to the bookmakers.
Football does not belong to the private markets where insiders trade inside information that results in match outcomes being pre-determined, whether the teams arrive on the pitch in time for Kick Off or not.
Football does not belong to the Select Group of the PGMOB.
Football does not belong to the hyper-owners who are responsible for much of the insider trading on matches.
Football belongs to you and me, normal people who have played and watched the sport since childhood and who are able to determine a rigged match despite the very best efforts of certain sections of the media.
The corporate media has focused on Joe Kinnear and his "Mickey Mouse" statement about Martin Atkinson rather than the serious points raised by the militant and radical actions of the LMA members.
The referees are asking for the very things that we at Football Is Fixed have been calling for over the last two years.
* Referee Talent Identification.
* Goal-line Technology.
* Video Technology.
* Proper implementation of Offside and Handball Rules.
* Confirmation of Technical Area Dismissal Rules.
* Goalkeeper Dismissal Rules.
#####################################################################
###############################################################################
###########################################################
#################################################################
##########################################################################
##########################################################
The referees and match officials are at the base of a giant pyramid of free marketry.
When betting turnover is virtually always at the hundreds of millions of pounds liquidity level pre-match, there are considerable fortunes to be made out of the correct outcome being achieved.
Everything must be done to ensure that the PGMOB officials do not become coerced or bribed into this rampant criminality.
Lets return to Fulham, a gambling outfit if ever there were one.
As we have publicised the mechanisms whereby certain individuals associated with the club are trading on a proprietary basis on match outcomes, so the perpetrators attempt to rejig their trading strategies to avoid detection.
This is futile.
Our careful mix of #############################################################
#############################################################################
#########################################################################
It works like this.
A dodgy insider Mr A controls the match. Mr A isn't simply interested in three points or, for that matter, any other total of points. Mr A wants psychopathic control of the betting markets on the event.
At some point Mr A has to show his hand.
##############################################################################
###############################################################################
###############################################################################
##########################################################################
###############################################################################
##########################################################################
##########################################################################
##################################################################################
But we are top tier Market Analysts.
To the fans, all they see is a match that somehow doesn't feel quite right.
Anybody who watched Fulham v WBA, Fulham v Wigan, Fulham v Newcastle or Fulham v Tottenham will understand this feeling.
For example, the trail of insider gambling on yesterday's Fulham match led all the way to our primary broker in Asia.
This midweek, there is an allegedly major International match between two war-mongering nations, one past and one past and present.
The outcome of this high profile Germany versus England game will be determined by the betting activities of certain individuals.
Much of this trading will take place through ##################################
################################################################################
########################################################################
####################################################################
None of this trading is regulated.
None of the trading winnings are taxed.
This is a private underground market where the outcome of this flagship match will be known possibly days prior to the ball being first kicked in anger.
Not that you are likely to be hearing anything about such shenanigans in the media circus.
The likes of Lacey and Wilson prefer for you to focus on the DisneyWorld fairytales of ScudamoreWorld.
Unfortunately, the blocked out parts of the posts and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
Our roster is now full for Football Is Fixed.
But, please enjoy the free snippets that we are posting on this site.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
As Sky and Setanta subscriptions start to mimic the bear market, merchandise and ticket purchases pass their summit, betting turnover has ceased its relentless drive upwards.
Over the last few seasons, global betting liquidity on football betting markets has been showing an annual increase of around 22% year-on-year.
The increase on turnover this season is just 2%.
Although the gambling sector generally holds up well in a recession as they thrive on people's desperation, if you are offering a compromised product, the punters will eventually start to spot the manipulations against their interest.
It is at this point that the corporate media rushes in to paper over the cracks.
The League Managers Association (LMA) quite logically threatened strike action this week. Managers were threatening to delay the kick offs in order to embarrass the match officials and the PGMOB, infuriate the broadcasters and to demonstrate to the fans that they too are not happy with the standard of the refereeing.
This is an entirely reasonable stance.
And yet the response from the mainstream media has been apoplectic.
Paul Wilson (The Guardian): "Referees should not have to explain themselves to the media after a game."
Paul Jewell (Derby County manager): "The referees deserve respect but we can't start respecting them if they get major decisions wrong that effect livelihoods."
Paul Ince (Blackburn Rovers manager): "We're trying to respect them [the referees] but they've got to start respecting us. It works both ways."
David Lacey (The Guardian) in response to Ince: "Wrong: officials are not there to please managers."
We agree.
###############################################################################
######################################################################
##############################################################################
In the Mirror, Steve Bennett, one of this elite grouping of referees, claims that managers and players are like "ravenous animals smelling blood".
Bennett continues "... heavy punishments will hopefully act as a deterrent and gradually eradicate these individuals from our game."
Whose game, Mr Bennett?
Football does not belong to the bookmakers.
Football does not belong to the private markets where insiders trade inside information that results in match outcomes being pre-determined, whether the teams arrive on the pitch in time for Kick Off or not.
Football does not belong to the Select Group of the PGMOB.
Football does not belong to the hyper-owners who are responsible for much of the insider trading on matches.
Football belongs to you and me, normal people who have played and watched the sport since childhood and who are able to determine a rigged match despite the very best efforts of certain sections of the media.
The corporate media has focused on Joe Kinnear and his "Mickey Mouse" statement about Martin Atkinson rather than the serious points raised by the militant and radical actions of the LMA members.
The referees are asking for the very things that we at Football Is Fixed have been calling for over the last two years.
* Referee Talent Identification.
* Goal-line Technology.
* Video Technology.
* Proper implementation of Offside and Handball Rules.
* Confirmation of Technical Area Dismissal Rules.
* Goalkeeper Dismissal Rules.
#####################################################################
###############################################################################
###########################################################
#################################################################
##########################################################################
##########################################################
The referees and match officials are at the base of a giant pyramid of free marketry.
When betting turnover is virtually always at the hundreds of millions of pounds liquidity level pre-match, there are considerable fortunes to be made out of the correct outcome being achieved.
Everything must be done to ensure that the PGMOB officials do not become coerced or bribed into this rampant criminality.
Lets return to Fulham, a gambling outfit if ever there were one.
As we have publicised the mechanisms whereby certain individuals associated with the club are trading on a proprietary basis on match outcomes, so the perpetrators attempt to rejig their trading strategies to avoid detection.
This is futile.
Our careful mix of #############################################################
#############################################################################
#########################################################################
It works like this.
A dodgy insider Mr A controls the match. Mr A isn't simply interested in three points or, for that matter, any other total of points. Mr A wants psychopathic control of the betting markets on the event.
At some point Mr A has to show his hand.
##############################################################################
###############################################################################
###############################################################################
##########################################################################
###############################################################################
##########################################################################
##########################################################################
##################################################################################
But we are top tier Market Analysts.
To the fans, all they see is a match that somehow doesn't feel quite right.
Anybody who watched Fulham v WBA, Fulham v Wigan, Fulham v Newcastle or Fulham v Tottenham will understand this feeling.
For example, the trail of insider gambling on yesterday's Fulham match led all the way to our primary broker in Asia.
This midweek, there is an allegedly major International match between two war-mongering nations, one past and one past and present.
The outcome of this high profile Germany versus England game will be determined by the betting activities of certain individuals.
Much of this trading will take place through ##################################
################################################################################
########################################################################
####################################################################
None of this trading is regulated.
None of the trading winnings are taxed.
This is a private underground market where the outcome of this flagship match will be known possibly days prior to the ball being first kicked in anger.
Not that you are likely to be hearing anything about such shenanigans in the media circus.
The likes of Lacey and Wilson prefer for you to focus on the DisneyWorld fairytales of ScudamoreWorld.
Unfortunately, the blocked out parts of the posts and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
Our roster is now full for Football Is Fixed.
But, please enjoy the free snippets that we are posting on this site.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Saturday 15 November 2008
Freedom From Free Markets #
Over the next three days, we are publishing a triumvirate of posts relating to that financial fallacy, the free market.
In this first offering, we focus on the very concept of a free market and we link these atmospherics to International Financial Markets (IFMs).
Tomorrow, we address the non-regulated global football betting markets.
On Monday, we will compare the demise of the shareholder capitalist model to the equivalent non-sustainability of a sport that may soon find itself totally dependent on a psychopathic marketplace.
Although, not if we have anything to do with it, it won't...
In each of these posts, we will be paying particular attention to the clichéd façade of the mainstream media, and their role in supporting these inappropriate structures.
Exciting eh...?
"True democracy," wrote Penn Jones Jr, "is constant vigilance: not thinking the way you're meant to think and keeping your eyes wide open at all times."
The only strategies available to us in order that we might truly understand the machinations of the marketplace are self-generated. All publicly available information is 'in the price' and private inside information is not allowed to reach market or regulatory daylight, such knowledge being gamed for proprietary benefit on the private markets instead.
Market Analysts outside the corrupt inner cores of these allegedly free markets need to tool up in order to balance the playing field.
Aside from the Analytics, our kit must include #################################
################################################################################# #######################################################
Such big picture approaches must possess the ability to adjust to new hyperrealities in real-time, both holistically and specifically.
Okay so, fundamentally there is nothing wrong with the concept of a free market. All bartering processes and swaps are essentially free, in that they do not have the hand of the state involved in their operation and completion. Such social exchanges are dependent simply on the goodwill of the participants in the deal.
This is, effectively, a social contract.
These micro-free markets are a thing of beauty.
Macro-free markets are something else entirely, however.
A good friend of mine is the Philosopher, John Shand.
We do not agree with one another politically - he upholds the Austrian School of Economics (Hayek etc), the Chicago School and Milton Friedman, and, being a good man, he honestly believes that macro-free markets will always be the most efficient structure for economic growth.
Leaving aside issues of climatic change and the non-inclusion of externalities in price, his optimistic view of human nature does not stand up to scrutiny.
Right wing libertarians like Hayek and Friedman believed that unfettered markets with no regulatory or government obstructions would be self-sustaining.
Not so.
If one allows such a systemic template, the most psychopathic of individuals will be attracted to such marketplaces, precisely because of the complete lack of regulatory oversight.
We were warned when Long Term Capital Management went bankrupt in the late nineties; Enron and WorldCom were further prompts as to the infeasibility of this macro-free market. The current banking and insurance crises are just the icing on the cake.
If there is no social component to a market, individuals with Psychopathic Personality Disorder/Style (PPDs) and Antisocial Personality Disorder/Style (ASPDs) will always come to dominate the markets.
Worse still, the short-termism that is one of the foundations of such psychologies will become the timescale that defines market robustness.
Focus is always on the current market price, the quarterly figures, the annual reports, the annual bonuses, and never on the longer term impacts of the decisions that maximise such short-termist profits.
Our global economy is dominated by the psychopathy of the rapscallions.
We have repeatedly pointed out the various ways that Hank Paulson is seemingly gaming the Recession/Depression on behalf of his 'former' colleagues at Goldman Sachs.
It should not be forgotten that his original proposal for the bailout of the banking sector filled just three sides of A4, and didn't even mention the term "housing crisis".
Money for the Moneyheads was all the man desired...
And, furthermore, he grabbed the money under false pretences.
The $700 billion was primarily supposed to be utilised for buying up the toxic assets that were preventing the fuel of finance from flowing.
But then Hank changed his mind.
Why are unelected officials being allowed to act in this manner with our existences?
As Jim Sarni of Payden & Rygel Investment Management stated: "For the Treasury to come out and now say that they are not going to do what they originally planned, is a real credibility problem."
As was letting Lehman Brothers go under...
As was the banning of short-selling...
As was the rampant targeting of hedge funds...
As was saving AIG with firstly $75 billion, then a further $37.5 billion, and recently a further $150 billion.
Consequently, for just one company, this bailout has cost the equivalent of five years of universal health cover for all residents of the US.
The current chief executive at Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, can hardly believe his good fortune - the market is being repeatedly primed in positive correlation with Goldmans' hidden agendas.
Blankfein stated this week that, although Goldman may post its first ever quarterly loss on November 30th, he saw "historical opportunities for growth".
While all about them have been losing their heads, Goldman have added a further 100 top tier clients to their roster this year.
As Kevin Warsh, a governor of the Federal Reserve, stated: "We are witnessing a fundamental reassessment of the value of every asset everywhere in the world."
The fact that one bank is, in effect, making the decisions that drive these reassessments is, apparently, an example of the free market model.
One might wish to believe that global regulation could protect us from such gaming of the system, but, unfortunately, this is not the case.
Any regulatory template is simply a new format to be psychopathically gamed.
Find the loopholes, corner the markets, trade your inappropriate edge...
So when Mr Paulson was muscling our money off us, claiming that it would be used to bolster the banking system, with its toxic assets, he was lying.
And, furthermore, at the same time that shareholder capitalism was begging with the left hand, they were already planning the next abusive template with the right hand in the form of Dark Pools.
These non-regulated private markets for institutional traders would completely eliminate the possibilities of normal individuals monitoring individual trading activity.
Which brings us on to the global football markets and the lead-in to tomorrow's post.
The football world is full of Dark Pools - private markets where insiders trade their knowledge of rigged matches and markets.
Except in football, there isn't even lip service given to any regulatory framework.
All regulation is weak and, where it does exist, national.
There is currently no obstacle to psychopathic gaming of matches to suit the betting strategies of industry insiders.
Absolutely none...
But, the atmosphere is changing.
When we started the Football Is Fixed blog two years ago, there were only a few individuals from outside the loop who believed our assessment of the state of the game.
No longer is this the case.
And, moreover, there is a broad consensus developing.
If we aren't able to trust bankers, hedge funds, private equity firms, governmental regulators, trading exchanges, investment banks, insurance companies and pensions providers, then why on earth would anybody choose to trust bookmakers and the gambling sector?
The global economy has, in Reality, been in Recession throughout this year.
Only the corporate media has sustained the myth of a different hyperreality.
The same has been true of the media's reporting of the state of football.
No longer is this the case.
As John Pilger states in reference to the legendary Texan journalist mentioned at the beginning of this post: "This was journalism as it had been before corporate journalism was invented, before the first schools of journalism were set up and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around those whose 'professionalism' and 'objectivity' carried an unspoken obligation to ensure that news and opinion were in tune with an establishment consensus, regardless of the truth."
With regard to football, we repeat...
...No longer is this the case.
Unfortunately, the blocked out parts of the posts and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
Our roster is now full for Football Is Fixed.
But, please enjoy the free snippets that we are posting on this site.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
In this first offering, we focus on the very concept of a free market and we link these atmospherics to International Financial Markets (IFMs).
Tomorrow, we address the non-regulated global football betting markets.
On Monday, we will compare the demise of the shareholder capitalist model to the equivalent non-sustainability of a sport that may soon find itself totally dependent on a psychopathic marketplace.
Although, not if we have anything to do with it, it won't...
In each of these posts, we will be paying particular attention to the clichéd façade of the mainstream media, and their role in supporting these inappropriate structures.
Exciting eh...?
"True democracy," wrote Penn Jones Jr, "is constant vigilance: not thinking the way you're meant to think and keeping your eyes wide open at all times."
The only strategies available to us in order that we might truly understand the machinations of the marketplace are self-generated. All publicly available information is 'in the price' and private inside information is not allowed to reach market or regulatory daylight, such knowledge being gamed for proprietary benefit on the private markets instead.
Market Analysts outside the corrupt inner cores of these allegedly free markets need to tool up in order to balance the playing field.
Aside from the Analytics, our kit must include #################################
################################################################################# #######################################################
Such big picture approaches must possess the ability to adjust to new hyperrealities in real-time, both holistically and specifically.
Okay so, fundamentally there is nothing wrong with the concept of a free market. All bartering processes and swaps are essentially free, in that they do not have the hand of the state involved in their operation and completion. Such social exchanges are dependent simply on the goodwill of the participants in the deal.
This is, effectively, a social contract.
These micro-free markets are a thing of beauty.
Macro-free markets are something else entirely, however.
A good friend of mine is the Philosopher, John Shand.
We do not agree with one another politically - he upholds the Austrian School of Economics (Hayek etc), the Chicago School and Milton Friedman, and, being a good man, he honestly believes that macro-free markets will always be the most efficient structure for economic growth.
Leaving aside issues of climatic change and the non-inclusion of externalities in price, his optimistic view of human nature does not stand up to scrutiny.
Right wing libertarians like Hayek and Friedman believed that unfettered markets with no regulatory or government obstructions would be self-sustaining.
Not so.
If one allows such a systemic template, the most psychopathic of individuals will be attracted to such marketplaces, precisely because of the complete lack of regulatory oversight.
We were warned when Long Term Capital Management went bankrupt in the late nineties; Enron and WorldCom were further prompts as to the infeasibility of this macro-free market. The current banking and insurance crises are just the icing on the cake.
If there is no social component to a market, individuals with Psychopathic Personality Disorder/Style (PPDs) and Antisocial Personality Disorder/Style (ASPDs) will always come to dominate the markets.
Worse still, the short-termism that is one of the foundations of such psychologies will become the timescale that defines market robustness.
Focus is always on the current market price, the quarterly figures, the annual reports, the annual bonuses, and never on the longer term impacts of the decisions that maximise such short-termist profits.
Our global economy is dominated by the psychopathy of the rapscallions.
We have repeatedly pointed out the various ways that Hank Paulson is seemingly gaming the Recession/Depression on behalf of his 'former' colleagues at Goldman Sachs.
It should not be forgotten that his original proposal for the bailout of the banking sector filled just three sides of A4, and didn't even mention the term "housing crisis".
Money for the Moneyheads was all the man desired...
And, furthermore, he grabbed the money under false pretences.
The $700 billion was primarily supposed to be utilised for buying up the toxic assets that were preventing the fuel of finance from flowing.
But then Hank changed his mind.
Why are unelected officials being allowed to act in this manner with our existences?
As Jim Sarni of Payden & Rygel Investment Management stated: "For the Treasury to come out and now say that they are not going to do what they originally planned, is a real credibility problem."
As was letting Lehman Brothers go under...
As was the banning of short-selling...
As was the rampant targeting of hedge funds...
As was saving AIG with firstly $75 billion, then a further $37.5 billion, and recently a further $150 billion.
Consequently, for just one company, this bailout has cost the equivalent of five years of universal health cover for all residents of the US.
The current chief executive at Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, can hardly believe his good fortune - the market is being repeatedly primed in positive correlation with Goldmans' hidden agendas.
Blankfein stated this week that, although Goldman may post its first ever quarterly loss on November 30th, he saw "historical opportunities for growth".
While all about them have been losing their heads, Goldman have added a further 100 top tier clients to their roster this year.
As Kevin Warsh, a governor of the Federal Reserve, stated: "We are witnessing a fundamental reassessment of the value of every asset everywhere in the world."
The fact that one bank is, in effect, making the decisions that drive these reassessments is, apparently, an example of the free market model.
One might wish to believe that global regulation could protect us from such gaming of the system, but, unfortunately, this is not the case.
Any regulatory template is simply a new format to be psychopathically gamed.
Find the loopholes, corner the markets, trade your inappropriate edge...
So when Mr Paulson was muscling our money off us, claiming that it would be used to bolster the banking system, with its toxic assets, he was lying.
And, furthermore, at the same time that shareholder capitalism was begging with the left hand, they were already planning the next abusive template with the right hand in the form of Dark Pools.
These non-regulated private markets for institutional traders would completely eliminate the possibilities of normal individuals monitoring individual trading activity.
Which brings us on to the global football markets and the lead-in to tomorrow's post.
The football world is full of Dark Pools - private markets where insiders trade their knowledge of rigged matches and markets.
Except in football, there isn't even lip service given to any regulatory framework.
All regulation is weak and, where it does exist, national.
There is currently no obstacle to psychopathic gaming of matches to suit the betting strategies of industry insiders.
Absolutely none...
But, the atmosphere is changing.
When we started the Football Is Fixed blog two years ago, there were only a few individuals from outside the loop who believed our assessment of the state of the game.
No longer is this the case.
And, moreover, there is a broad consensus developing.
If we aren't able to trust bankers, hedge funds, private equity firms, governmental regulators, trading exchanges, investment banks, insurance companies and pensions providers, then why on earth would anybody choose to trust bookmakers and the gambling sector?
The global economy has, in Reality, been in Recession throughout this year.
Only the corporate media has sustained the myth of a different hyperreality.
The same has been true of the media's reporting of the state of football.
No longer is this the case.
As John Pilger states in reference to the legendary Texan journalist mentioned at the beginning of this post: "This was journalism as it had been before corporate journalism was invented, before the first schools of journalism were set up and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around those whose 'professionalism' and 'objectivity' carried an unspoken obligation to ensure that news and opinion were in tune with an establishment consensus, regardless of the truth."
With regard to football, we repeat...
...No longer is this the case.
Unfortunately, the blocked out parts of the posts and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
Our roster is now full for Football Is Fixed.
But, please enjoy the free snippets that we are posting on this site.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Friday 14 November 2008
Judicial High Jinks
Trotsky: "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."
Our lawyers have warned us in our weekly meeting that there is a reasonable probability that there will be efforts by the criminalised fringe to close this blog down.
Obviously, we will vigorously defend ourselves against any such interruption to our services.
All clients for Dietrological, Football Is Fixed and the Wisdom Of Crowds Project will have nothing to concern themselves about as we will continue our communications in the current manner.
The rest of you need to make some preparations if you would wish to continue reading our pearls of wisdom.
Should the boneheads get busy, in order to be redirected to a safe server, away from prying eyes, please register at either of the following email addresses:
footballisfixed@googlemail.com
jerry_s_bullivant@hotmail.co.uk
We will then ensure that you have access to all of the future posts (in truncated form, obviously).
Do not expect a reply to the email registration as we are all working flat out at the moment.
Thanking you for your time.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Our lawyers have warned us in our weekly meeting that there is a reasonable probability that there will be efforts by the criminalised fringe to close this blog down.
Obviously, we will vigorously defend ourselves against any such interruption to our services.
All clients for Dietrological, Football Is Fixed and the Wisdom Of Crowds Project will have nothing to concern themselves about as we will continue our communications in the current manner.
The rest of you need to make some preparations if you would wish to continue reading our pearls of wisdom.
Should the boneheads get busy, in order to be redirected to a safe server, away from prying eyes, please register at either of the following email addresses:
footballisfixed@googlemail.com
jerry_s_bullivant@hotmail.co.uk
We will then ensure that you have access to all of the future posts (in truncated form, obviously).
Do not expect a reply to the email registration as we are all working flat out at the moment.
Thanking you for your time.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
The Gaming Of Your Realities #
The Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) reluctantly allows twenty match referees to be on their roster, after two referees appealed against their careers being curtailed prior to the start of the season.
To date, only 18 of these officials have been selected due to Clattenburg's financial affairs and Uriah Rennie's skin colour.
In Serie A, 31 referees have been used in the current season, with no one referee having officiated at more than six matches.
Following this next weekend, Howard Webb will have had 17 appointments (including 4th Official slots) in 13 rounds of Premiership games, and twelve of these events have been the high profile live Sky/Setanta events.
For each of the last two seasons, Mr Webb has finished in penultimate position in our Bum Ref Index, and he was sent home early from Euro 2008 for enforcing an unenforceable rule of the game.
With Premiership managers threatening to go on strike over the dreadful standard of the refereeing in the league, it is worth reflecting on why such a small, and largely inept, group are allowed to officiate in the world's biggest league.
When some games are grossing £1 billion pre-match betting liquidity in Asia, having such a structure with so few refs and a high bias in who gets selected for what, is a template seemingly established to be problematical in the integrity department.
Do the mathematics...
The televised matches are the biggest turnover events and, when one assesses the PGMOB selection of referees for these matches, the situation becomes even more perilous.
Only 12 referees ################################################ have been given these appointments, and even within this inner group of the Select Group, there is a hierarchy.
So, Howard Webb has refereed eight of the 47 live events to date, and Mike Dean, who was banned just a couple of years ago for his links to online gambling site, Arbitros Racing, has been given 7 matches.
Riley with 6, Bennett and Wiley with 5 games apiece, Mickey Mouse Atkinson 4 and Dowd 3, suddenly, we are able to see that out of these 47 high turnover live matches, just 7 officials have controlled 38 of these events.
Over 80% of the biggest betting matches are officiated by just 7 officials.
We are not saying in this place that any of these officials are corrupt, although we outline a rather disturbing linkage between one official and one manager below, but why such a structure?
If Premiership managers are threatening to down tools, professional traders are regarding the selection of the particular match officials as of paramount importance in analysing a particular market and when fans are actually discussing the potentially illegal machinations that are determining the outcomes of the matches that they are paying their hard-earned cash to witness, this infrastructure has become invalid.
If I represented a corrupt body that wished to contort hyperrealities in the English Premiership for proprietary gain, I would be desirous of as small a grouping of senior match officials as possible.
After all, how would I go about gaming a pool of 100 officials?
Other territories are significantly more open about the Reality of corruption.
Dynamo Kyiv versus Shakhtar Donetsk games use officials from a different country, La Gazzetta dello Sport analyses referee selections at headline level, etc etc.
Even in Scotland, with its two-tiered bias to Rangers over Celtic, and bias to the Auld Firm over everybody else, there is a momentum to be facing up to the impact of these machinations.
Although it should be added, there appears to be a risk of a distortion of Reality here.
Graham Roberts has just published a book claiming bias in favour of the Auld Firm but he neatly avoids any differentiation between the two Glasgow giants with, if anything, a suggestion that Celtic receive a rub of the green more than 'Gers.
Yeah right...
In a similar manner that calciopoli targeted Juventus, leading to the loss of players, Champions League income and demotion, while equally guilty Milan laughed all the way to the bank despite being more culpable in the match machination department, there is a concern that any evaluation of the bias north of the border will be similarly non-discriminating or selective.
Roberts' suggestion of using foreign referees (not English, please) for the major Rangers v Celtic events surely makes sense though.
There are a couple of other points that need to be made regarding the selection of referees in the English Premiership.
Firstly, there are frequent changes of match official pre-match.
Over the last two seasons and to date for 2008/09, there have been 30 changes of referee in the Premiership.
In 15 years of data for Serie A, Bundesliga and La Liga combined, there have been less than a handful of such alterations.
These changes distort markets and we have evidence that the adjustment process is being gamed by those in possession of the information early. This is both insider trading and market manipulation.
In one weekend, earlier this season, there were 14 changes in the Select Group selections (refs, linesmen, 4th officials) prior to the off.
14??!!
I know its grim living in this island but is there some epidemic that we should be aware of here?
Secondly, why aren't the marks that managers give to officials made public?
Then referees and other officials might be selected meritocratically.
This is such an obvious barrier against corruption that it is ludicrous that the PGMOB doesn't implement it.
It has reached the stage where the managers have had enough. Apart from the threatened strike action, Roy Keane gave Mickey Mouse a 10/10 after three incorrect goals were given to Chelsea in a recent 'game'.
The outcome? A disrepute charge!
Hackett doesn't do Humour.
And, so to the final part of our post, where we demonstrate a rather disturbing pattern between one match referee and one Premiership manager.
We will call them Mr X and Mr Y.
Listed below are the most recent events where Mr X and Mr Y have been in cahoots, or not...
You decide...
###############################################################################
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A few final points.
Why are these patterns not spotted within the PGMOB?
Why has Mr X been given 8 of Mr Y's games in one and a third seasons?
The average should be 2 games per season, even in a tilted environment like the Premiership.
As Alex Ferguson said about the retirement of Graham Poll: "He'd better get out before he stopped smiling."
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
To date, only 18 of these officials have been selected due to Clattenburg's financial affairs and Uriah Rennie's skin colour.
In Serie A, 31 referees have been used in the current season, with no one referee having officiated at more than six matches.
Following this next weekend, Howard Webb will have had 17 appointments (including 4th Official slots) in 13 rounds of Premiership games, and twelve of these events have been the high profile live Sky/Setanta events.
For each of the last two seasons, Mr Webb has finished in penultimate position in our Bum Ref Index, and he was sent home early from Euro 2008 for enforcing an unenforceable rule of the game.
With Premiership managers threatening to go on strike over the dreadful standard of the refereeing in the league, it is worth reflecting on why such a small, and largely inept, group are allowed to officiate in the world's biggest league.
When some games are grossing £1 billion pre-match betting liquidity in Asia, having such a structure with so few refs and a high bias in who gets selected for what, is a template seemingly established to be problematical in the integrity department.
Do the mathematics...
The televised matches are the biggest turnover events and, when one assesses the PGMOB selection of referees for these matches, the situation becomes even more perilous.
Only 12 referees ################################################ have been given these appointments, and even within this inner group of the Select Group, there is a hierarchy.
So, Howard Webb has refereed eight of the 47 live events to date, and Mike Dean, who was banned just a couple of years ago for his links to online gambling site, Arbitros Racing, has been given 7 matches.
Riley with 6, Bennett and Wiley with 5 games apiece, Mickey Mouse Atkinson 4 and Dowd 3, suddenly, we are able to see that out of these 47 high turnover live matches, just 7 officials have controlled 38 of these events.
Over 80% of the biggest betting matches are officiated by just 7 officials.
We are not saying in this place that any of these officials are corrupt, although we outline a rather disturbing linkage between one official and one manager below, but why such a structure?
If Premiership managers are threatening to down tools, professional traders are regarding the selection of the particular match officials as of paramount importance in analysing a particular market and when fans are actually discussing the potentially illegal machinations that are determining the outcomes of the matches that they are paying their hard-earned cash to witness, this infrastructure has become invalid.
If I represented a corrupt body that wished to contort hyperrealities in the English Premiership for proprietary gain, I would be desirous of as small a grouping of senior match officials as possible.
After all, how would I go about gaming a pool of 100 officials?
Other territories are significantly more open about the Reality of corruption.
Dynamo Kyiv versus Shakhtar Donetsk games use officials from a different country, La Gazzetta dello Sport analyses referee selections at headline level, etc etc.
Even in Scotland, with its two-tiered bias to Rangers over Celtic, and bias to the Auld Firm over everybody else, there is a momentum to be facing up to the impact of these machinations.
Although it should be added, there appears to be a risk of a distortion of Reality here.
Graham Roberts has just published a book claiming bias in favour of the Auld Firm but he neatly avoids any differentiation between the two Glasgow giants with, if anything, a suggestion that Celtic receive a rub of the green more than 'Gers.
Yeah right...
In a similar manner that calciopoli targeted Juventus, leading to the loss of players, Champions League income and demotion, while equally guilty Milan laughed all the way to the bank despite being more culpable in the match machination department, there is a concern that any evaluation of the bias north of the border will be similarly non-discriminating or selective.
Roberts' suggestion of using foreign referees (not English, please) for the major Rangers v Celtic events surely makes sense though.
There are a couple of other points that need to be made regarding the selection of referees in the English Premiership.
Firstly, there are frequent changes of match official pre-match.
Over the last two seasons and to date for 2008/09, there have been 30 changes of referee in the Premiership.
In 15 years of data for Serie A, Bundesliga and La Liga combined, there have been less than a handful of such alterations.
These changes distort markets and we have evidence that the adjustment process is being gamed by those in possession of the information early. This is both insider trading and market manipulation.
In one weekend, earlier this season, there were 14 changes in the Select Group selections (refs, linesmen, 4th officials) prior to the off.
14??!!
I know its grim living in this island but is there some epidemic that we should be aware of here?
Secondly, why aren't the marks that managers give to officials made public?
Then referees and other officials might be selected meritocratically.
This is such an obvious barrier against corruption that it is ludicrous that the PGMOB doesn't implement it.
It has reached the stage where the managers have had enough. Apart from the threatened strike action, Roy Keane gave Mickey Mouse a 10/10 after three incorrect goals were given to Chelsea in a recent 'game'.
The outcome? A disrepute charge!
Hackett doesn't do Humour.
And, so to the final part of our post, where we demonstrate a rather disturbing pattern between one match referee and one Premiership manager.
We will call them Mr X and Mr Y.
Listed below are the most recent events where Mr X and Mr Y have been in cahoots, or not...
You decide...
###############################################################################
##########################################################################
##############################################################################
###############################################
################################################################################
#########################################################################
###################################################################
############################################################################
########################################################################
######################################################################
#############################################################################
######################################################################
##################################################################
##################################################################
#########################################################################
#######################################################################
#######################################################################
####################################################################
A few final points.
Why are these patterns not spotted within the PGMOB?
Why has Mr X been given 8 of Mr Y's games in one and a third seasons?
The average should be 2 games per season, even in a tilted environment like the Premiership.
As Alex Ferguson said about the retirement of Graham Poll: "He'd better get out before he stopped smiling."
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Thursday 13 November 2008
Free Willie And The Dodgy Nine #
Free The Pompey Nine!
These men (and one woman) are prisoners of war.
They should not be criminalised.
And what is this battlefield?
The one relating to the integrity of the game of football in England.
The City of London police, who were expected to eke their inquiries into bungs, fraud, money laundering, that sort of thing, markedly forward within the next month, have announced a delay while they evaluate the impact of new information.
These new inquiries are global and one should not expect any prosecution or, for that matter, un-prosecution in the foreseeable future.
The Pompey Nine, who include Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp, Leicester chairperson Milan Mandaric, agent/bookmaker/horserace trainer Willie McKay, Birmingham City managing director Karren Brady, Pascal Chimbonda and Birmingham co-owner David Sullivan, are all still protesting their innocence.
In some of these instances, such protests are laughable.
Mr Sullivan, for example, feels "personally violated", which is a little rich coming from somebody who has earned his money through pornography!
All in all, though, a delay suits all the defendants and, for that matter, the Premier League, which has enough on its plate dealing with Thaksin Shinawatra's 25% stake in Manchester City and the gathering debt crisis that will see at least one Premiership team go to that great betting ring in the sky before the end of the season.
It also allows the extended Redknapp family to jovially promote various Wii games over the consumerist season.
Whatever next?
Willie McKay joining the Samaritans?
These legal travails are just beginning to drag on a little.
Even with just the information, knowledge and data that we possess within Dietrological, there is enough evidence for some of these individuals to be prosecuted and taken out of the game.
So, for example, ############################### told me that ############# had offered him £####### to drop his interest in a Spanish player who was moving to Liverpool - £##K in a suitcase.
Presumably, in ScudamoreWorld, this falls within the rules of the game.
###############################################################################
##########################################################################
#########################################################################
#############################################################################
##########################################################################
#########################################################################
#################################################################
When McKay has his racehorse trainer trilby on, he trains a horse called 'Harry Redknapp' (presumably a serial non-trier), and everybody thinks its just, like, really funny.
Oh those lovable Cockney and Glaswegian rogues, you gotta have a larf, haven't you?
###########################################################################
#######################################################################
##########################################################################
#####################################################################
Meanwhile, Redknapp jumps ship at Portsmouth and, following some very rigged matches, is suddenly regarded as some type of Midas character after his arrival at Tottenham.
A few facts.
Redknapp's transfer policy at Pompey was disastrous - 90% of turnover went on wages.
We're back in the territory of non-sustainability here.
The ownership issue at Portsmouth is farcical. The whole world understands that Arkadi Gaydamak is the Real owner of the club, rather than his inconsequential offspring. But the Premier League rules are non-existent when it comes to proper implementation.
And, don't even get us onto the insider betting within the club.
The club leaked.
The leaks spoke with us.
'Nuff said...
Over the period of Juande Ramos being in charge at Spurs, our institutional bias rating on the London club was 14 (where 0 = total bias against a club by the match officials, and 100 = total bias in favour of a club). Since Redknapp took over, the rating is 100!
What a manager!
We have conclusive proof that ##################################################
###########################################################################
##############################################################################
###########################################################################
############################################################################
#####################################################################
And, yet, still we await any curtailment ######################################
And, while we wait, Mr Redknapp is slowly being rebranded as some kind of national treasure.
'Arry this or 'Arry that...
Harry Redknapp is an adequate manager.
He is many other things as well.
At least Italy exposed calciopoli.
At least Germany prosecuted Hoyzer.
Polish teams are relegated for financial shenanigans.
But, in the really corrupt territories, like Russia, Romania and England, the criminality continues.
Unfortunately, the blocked out parts of the posts and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
Our roster is now full for Football Is Fixed.
But, please enjoy the free snippets that we are posting on this site.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
These men (and one woman) are prisoners of war.
They should not be criminalised.
And what is this battlefield?
The one relating to the integrity of the game of football in England.
The City of London police, who were expected to eke their inquiries into bungs, fraud, money laundering, that sort of thing, markedly forward within the next month, have announced a delay while they evaluate the impact of new information.
These new inquiries are global and one should not expect any prosecution or, for that matter, un-prosecution in the foreseeable future.
The Pompey Nine, who include Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp, Leicester chairperson Milan Mandaric, agent/bookmaker/horserace trainer Willie McKay, Birmingham City managing director Karren Brady, Pascal Chimbonda and Birmingham co-owner David Sullivan, are all still protesting their innocence.
In some of these instances, such protests are laughable.
Mr Sullivan, for example, feels "personally violated", which is a little rich coming from somebody who has earned his money through pornography!
All in all, though, a delay suits all the defendants and, for that matter, the Premier League, which has enough on its plate dealing with Thaksin Shinawatra's 25% stake in Manchester City and the gathering debt crisis that will see at least one Premiership team go to that great betting ring in the sky before the end of the season.
It also allows the extended Redknapp family to jovially promote various Wii games over the consumerist season.
Whatever next?
Willie McKay joining the Samaritans?
These legal travails are just beginning to drag on a little.
Even with just the information, knowledge and data that we possess within Dietrological, there is enough evidence for some of these individuals to be prosecuted and taken out of the game.
So, for example, ############################### told me that ############# had offered him £####### to drop his interest in a Spanish player who was moving to Liverpool - £##K in a suitcase.
Presumably, in ScudamoreWorld, this falls within the rules of the game.
###############################################################################
##########################################################################
#########################################################################
#############################################################################
##########################################################################
#########################################################################
#################################################################
When McKay has his racehorse trainer trilby on, he trains a horse called 'Harry Redknapp' (presumably a serial non-trier), and everybody thinks its just, like, really funny.
Oh those lovable Cockney and Glaswegian rogues, you gotta have a larf, haven't you?
###########################################################################
#######################################################################
##########################################################################
#####################################################################
Meanwhile, Redknapp jumps ship at Portsmouth and, following some very rigged matches, is suddenly regarded as some type of Midas character after his arrival at Tottenham.
A few facts.
Redknapp's transfer policy at Pompey was disastrous - 90% of turnover went on wages.
We're back in the territory of non-sustainability here.
The ownership issue at Portsmouth is farcical. The whole world understands that Arkadi Gaydamak is the Real owner of the club, rather than his inconsequential offspring. But the Premier League rules are non-existent when it comes to proper implementation.
And, don't even get us onto the insider betting within the club.
The club leaked.
The leaks spoke with us.
'Nuff said...
Over the period of Juande Ramos being in charge at Spurs, our institutional bias rating on the London club was 14 (where 0 = total bias against a club by the match officials, and 100 = total bias in favour of a club). Since Redknapp took over, the rating is 100!
What a manager!
We have conclusive proof that ##################################################
###########################################################################
##############################################################################
###########################################################################
############################################################################
#####################################################################
And, yet, still we await any curtailment ######################################
And, while we wait, Mr Redknapp is slowly being rebranded as some kind of national treasure.
'Arry this or 'Arry that...
Harry Redknapp is an adequate manager.
He is many other things as well.
At least Italy exposed calciopoli.
At least Germany prosecuted Hoyzer.
Polish teams are relegated for financial shenanigans.
But, in the really corrupt territories, like Russia, Romania and England, the criminality continues.
Unfortunately, the blocked out parts of the posts and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
Our roster is now full for Football Is Fixed.
But, please enjoy the free snippets that we are posting on this site.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Wednesday 12 November 2008
Drugs In Football/ Gene Doping Is Not A Country And Western Singer - Two Flashbacks
What a kerfuffle!
UK Sport, which oversees anti-doping in the United Kingdom, wants to introduce a system under which a selected group of 30 footballers will be liable for testing five times a year, on any day and at any location, including their homes and holiday accommodation.
But Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA), said he felt the provisions envisaged by UK Sport were excessive.
"We feel that to invade the privacy of a player's home would be a step too far," Taylor said.
"If we complain about anything to do with drug-testing then people think we might have something to hide, but football's record is extremely good and there has been a virtual absence of any performance-enhancing drugs, and that goes back decades."
Really?
In this post, which is one of our twice monthly Flashback posts, we assess the validity of football's self-satisfaction with the alleged non-utilisation of Performance Enhancing Substances (PESs).
We print two separate historical posts, inevitably with some crossover, in an attempt to demonstrate the realities with respect to PESs usage in football.
It is our proposition that PESs are very very widely used in football and we are able to back up our statement through the application of statistical analysis of match data over many years.
For example, it is easy to demonstrate when certain varieties of PESs are administered at Half Time or to determine when drug usage is utilised over a window of high importance matches.
The key area pharmaceutically, and it should be remembered that the majority of leading clubs have close links with this industry sector either via sponsorship, ownership or through their medical teams, is the development of masking substances to disguise the PESs being taken.
Furthermore, as the second post demonstrates, while football is still coming to terms with an historical PESs abuse that has existed for decades, the far more contemporary issue of Gene Doping is of greater concern.
Gordon Taylor is correct on one point.
Why should footballers have to submit to such testing?
The inquiries should be directed at the core of the issue rather than at the periphery.
Numerous Italian footballers, for example, took the pills or injections offered them as it was necessary to compete in a highly competitive environment.
There was/is systemic, hierarchical and peer group pressure to perform to one's maximum.
If UK Sport and WADA wish to target PESs abuse, target the abusers not the abused.
Remember cortisone?
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DRUGS IN FOOTBALL
There are certain stages of the season where the illegal usage of Performance Enhancing Substances (PESs) becomes more prevalent. It is evident that the late season is a key period to develop competitive advantage and, sure enough, PESs are more prevalent from February onwards.
Previous posts (including http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2006/12/doped-up-spanish-giants.html) have touched on this area but we intend to expand our overview in this post.
The key PESs is undoubtedly Erythropoietin (EPO). Having been utilised in cycling for years, the pharmaceutical companies have developed a whole range of masking substances to prevent detection. EPO is particularly sought after as it can improve the performance of a team over a considerable time window. We have developed extensive modelling to determine when a club is on EPO but the market-makers are on top of this potential edge nowadays and such information is in the price.
The authorities throughout Europe are aware of this issue - my favourite response remains that of La Liga authorities who test for EPO in urine when it may only be detected via blood samples!
Various types of amphetamine provide a shorter term buzz. Benzedrine, Methedrine and Dexedrine are typical of this class and some teams use amphetamines at half-time which can be particularly rewarding on a trading level if you are ahead of the market.
Other substances eg narcotic analgesics allow athletes to play on through an injury (frequently creating further damage).
Nandrolone has been the most easy PESs for the authorities to detect of late although we believe that successful masking agents are now available.
Another point that is worthy of note. Illegal drug programmes tend to move with management teams from club to club.
We incorporate all of the above into our trading analysis but, occasionally, there is substance abuse that falls outside published science. In season 2001/02, Bayer Leverkusen were a team possessed. They reached the final of the Champions League where they narrowly lost to the beautiful Zidane - they had lost the final of the DFB-Pokal (German Cup) four days earlier putting out a reserve XI. Bayer were also pipped to the Bundesliga title by one point. A pretty successful season all in all for a team the size of Blackburn. The following year, Bayer escaped relegation only in a fixed game on the last day of the campaign and finished bottom of their Champions League second-phase group with zero points.
Analytically, we have never seen such a reversal from one season to the next. Leverkusen are owned by Bayer pharmaceutical company which is of no relevance whatsoever... obviously.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
GENE DOPING IS NOT A COUNTRY AND WESTERN SINGER
Nietzsche's Superman - the modern marketed paradigm of hyperreal humanity.
The Scene...
Nothing less than the leadership of the Free World (sic) is at stake.
Winning is Everything.
When the skewed incentives create such a competitive and nationalistic template, one may only be certain of one thing.
Cheating...
Firstly, a prediction.
Dietrological are trading massively on a private Olympic Games market in Asia.
Our position is a Buy.
We are of the opinion that a much higher number of World Records will be broken at these Olympics than is usually the case.
And, you know what, the reason that we think that this is a solid position (as well as being a one-parameter market!) is that Cheating is the Core Competitive Advantage in the modern Olympiad.
The cumulative impact of the incentives - personal, cultural, economic, political and national - are marked in Beijing.
Additionally, the incentives are in tandem - unlike, say, when the Black Power protests by Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Mexico City extravaganza demonstrated the real feelings about living in the world's "only remaining primitive society".
The unipolar world is about to become bipolar.
Measured at purchasing power parity (PPP), Goldman Sachs reckon the Chinese will economically overtake the US of A this very year. In reality, 2028 is the projected date for the changeover in No 1 seed in the global economy - this second date is based on the modern concepts of mathematics and statistics, rather than the sleight of hand of a street magician used by proponents of PPP.
So, they're up for it.
Big style.
The People's Republic of China versus Team USA.
How spectacular do you wish for your sport to be?
Anyway.
Back to Cheating.
Herbert Marcuse: "...play is precisely a breaking off from labour and a recuperation for labour".
The Circularity of Play in the Political Economy is equivalent to the Circularity of Cheating in the 2008 Olympiad.
When the prize is so great on so many levels, Cheating will define the games.
This Cheating will, literally, exist on two different strata - Performance Enhancing Substances (PESs) and Gene Doping.
Lets take these two in turn.
PESs - Remember Euro 2008? Remember how much energy Turkey and Russia possessed in a run of their respective games? Remember how tired the Russians looked in their abject Semi Final defeat to the Spanish? Remember how the Turks never stopped running, even in between matches?
PESs are now commonplace in all sports - the information is "in the price", so to speak. As an example of this, count how many of those super-energetic Turkish and Russian footballers have secured moves to the G14(18) teams following their overperformance at Euro 2008. We'll save you the trouble - the answer is zero. No top tier club makes an evaluation based on PESs.
The competitive advantage has turned away from the usage of erythropoietin (EPO), perfluorocarbon (PFC), blood doping, steroids, amphetamines etc, and to the development of masking substances instead.
Originally, the monitoring regimes were so lax that maskers weren't necessary. Indeed, a cynic might argue that the global regulation covering the illegal utilisation of PESs is suitably time-lagged to allow the next wave of 'innovation' to be initiated prior to more cumbersome regulations being developed for earlier forms of Creative Cheating.
But, in spite of this, PESs are secondary in impact to the Next Big Thing.
Gene Doping will distort outcomes at the Beijing Olympics.
Do you need to know the science?
Okay, here's a bit...
This physiological advancement (sic) is based on introducing extra copies of particular genes into the body (transgenes). EPO is the prime transgene target. It was the biotechnology industry that introduced EPO in the late-eighties and an EPO transgene would not be detectable using any technique.
The Perfect Crime.
Repoxygen is already freely available in the sorts of locations where you can purchase guns and things. Other Big Pharma advances include IGF-1 (which is muscle specific - think javelin or tennis), vascular endothelial, Switching Genes that act as an on/off device, advanced endorphins for pain control etc etc.
The specificity of these designer doping genes allows particular products to be aimed at particular sports. One can even game the detection regime via the use of Switching Genes.
Now, when the leadership of the Free World is at stake, surely the unknown health risks to a few athletes are not worth worrying about?
Cortisone? Who cares?
And, in a parallel pharma-verse, notice how quickly Vioxx has disappeared from the hyperreality?
As The Economist correctly states, the decision on Gene Doping should be based on safety and fairness.
However, the right wing libertarians then proceed by totally ignoring the former (profit over people) while producing illogical, unscientific and selective arguments in support of the latter.
The Economist think that Gene Doping is a Good Thing.
Over their column inches, even the name changes.
Gene Doping, with its nightmare-state images of Frankenstein-athletes...
...becomes Gene Therapy, with an altogether more comfortable-couch-with-caring-counsellor sort of image.
If we are going to be objecting to the hunger merchants of the next millennium imposing genetically modified foods on us, we must be equally assertive in our objection to genetically modified athletes.
The Economist uses the case of Eero Mantyranta to promote their case. This Finnish athlete was fortunate. His body produced large amounts of EPO entirely naturally. He won a couple of Olympic Golds in those bizarre sports that involve snow and rifles and forests and things.
So what?
Sport is about natural ability.
That is the point.
Fairness.
No corruption or advantage through PESs, Gene Doping, control of match officials or whatever.
The list of negatives to The Economists' arguments are extensive, too extensive for my working day.
But here are a few points worthy of input (in random order):
* If natural ability is to be artificially equalised using Gene Doping then some of the most beautiful things that we have ever witnessed will never happen again.
Maradona, Tiger Woods, Don Bradman, Gary Sobers would all have just merged into the crowd of heightened mediocrity. The incentives would make it imperative that all athletes partake in Gene Doping - what chance in outrunning or outjumping an android without becoming one yourself?
* In the end, it will still probably be natural ability that provides some edge but not before Big Pharma has made extensive profits out of gullible and desperate athletes equalising their gene intake. The profits of the pharmaceutical industry are one of the foundational bases of this ruse.
* Big Pharma will also game the sector. Generic Gene Doping will be available off-the-shelf, in a manner of speaking, for the poorer participants. The G8(12) will have proprietary Gene Doping established with particular pharmaceutical giants - Team Pfizer USA. This will help maintain the most psychopathic nations at the top of the Medal Table.
* Longer-term health risk is the biggest issue. Corners will be cut in pursuit of glory. The real impacts may only become evident in future decades when the athletes are well away from the lens of the spectacle. And the athletes take on the Total Risk ie Life. The profiteers simply count the cash...
* Numerous unnecessary industries will benefit from the introduction of Gene Doping - advertisers, sponsors, the media, merchandisers, sportswear firms, bookmakers etc etc etc.
For example, lets look at bookmaking.
Natural ability is very annoying to bookmakers.
As we hopefully demonstrated in our recent post at http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2008/07/why-bookmakers-hate-olympics.html, the layers do not appreciate competitions where the incentive to win is considerably greater than the incentive to cheat.
Gene Doping will solve this.
And then some...
As only the leading nations will be able to take advantage of Gene Doping, and as the leading nations have very mature betting industries, the inevitable linking of the Dopers and the Layers will produce internally controlled betting markets on currently dangerous spectacles such as the Olympic Games.
Take the 100 metres.
This is a flagship event.
Of the top ten competitors in the betting markets, 3 are Jamaican, 3 are Trinidadian, 1 is from the Bahamas and the other three are from Team Pfizer.
In a world where the bookmaking and pharmaceutical industries cosied up to one another for mutual advantage, and oodles of insider trading opportunites - all industries love those off-balance sheet little grey and black market earners - the possibilities of gaming the 100 metres outcome for proprietary trading advantage is obvious.
For example, inside knowledge of the use of Switching Genes would be valuable both with respect to historical 'form' and real-time hyperrealities in the race.
The worst two industries, apart from all the others, are pharmaceuticals and bookmaking, and their collusion is not an edifying sight.
The Economist dresses up the whole argument regarding Gene Doping on the basis of fairness. Apparently, it is unfair that the likes of Eero Mantyranta have natural ability providing natural advantage. It would be much fairer, claim a tongue-in-cheeked Economist leader, if rich countries could develop an unnatural advantage for themselves through drugs and doping.
"Why should others be denied the chance to remedy ...[their] deficiency?" argues The Economist.
Aside from all the above (and more), the winners of the prizes should be the individuals who have natural talents, have selected the correct sports in which to demonstrate those talents, have trained while their peers partied and who avoid the competitive advantages bestowed by PESs, Gene Doping or linking to the bookmaking industry.
Exactly the sort of individuals who will not be winning Gold Medals in Beijing, in fact...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
UK Sport, which oversees anti-doping in the United Kingdom, wants to introduce a system under which a selected group of 30 footballers will be liable for testing five times a year, on any day and at any location, including their homes and holiday accommodation.
But Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA), said he felt the provisions envisaged by UK Sport were excessive.
"We feel that to invade the privacy of a player's home would be a step too far," Taylor said.
"If we complain about anything to do with drug-testing then people think we might have something to hide, but football's record is extremely good and there has been a virtual absence of any performance-enhancing drugs, and that goes back decades."
Really?
In this post, which is one of our twice monthly Flashback posts, we assess the validity of football's self-satisfaction with the alleged non-utilisation of Performance Enhancing Substances (PESs).
We print two separate historical posts, inevitably with some crossover, in an attempt to demonstrate the realities with respect to PESs usage in football.
It is our proposition that PESs are very very widely used in football and we are able to back up our statement through the application of statistical analysis of match data over many years.
For example, it is easy to demonstrate when certain varieties of PESs are administered at Half Time or to determine when drug usage is utilised over a window of high importance matches.
The key area pharmaceutically, and it should be remembered that the majority of leading clubs have close links with this industry sector either via sponsorship, ownership or through their medical teams, is the development of masking substances to disguise the PESs being taken.
Furthermore, as the second post demonstrates, while football is still coming to terms with an historical PESs abuse that has existed for decades, the far more contemporary issue of Gene Doping is of greater concern.
Gordon Taylor is correct on one point.
Why should footballers have to submit to such testing?
The inquiries should be directed at the core of the issue rather than at the periphery.
Numerous Italian footballers, for example, took the pills or injections offered them as it was necessary to compete in a highly competitive environment.
There was/is systemic, hierarchical and peer group pressure to perform to one's maximum.
If UK Sport and WADA wish to target PESs abuse, target the abusers not the abused.
Remember cortisone?
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DRUGS IN FOOTBALL
There are certain stages of the season where the illegal usage of Performance Enhancing Substances (PESs) becomes more prevalent. It is evident that the late season is a key period to develop competitive advantage and, sure enough, PESs are more prevalent from February onwards.
Previous posts (including http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2006/12/doped-up-spanish-giants.html) have touched on this area but we intend to expand our overview in this post.
The key PESs is undoubtedly Erythropoietin (EPO). Having been utilised in cycling for years, the pharmaceutical companies have developed a whole range of masking substances to prevent detection. EPO is particularly sought after as it can improve the performance of a team over a considerable time window. We have developed extensive modelling to determine when a club is on EPO but the market-makers are on top of this potential edge nowadays and such information is in the price.
The authorities throughout Europe are aware of this issue - my favourite response remains that of La Liga authorities who test for EPO in urine when it may only be detected via blood samples!
Various types of amphetamine provide a shorter term buzz. Benzedrine, Methedrine and Dexedrine are typical of this class and some teams use amphetamines at half-time which can be particularly rewarding on a trading level if you are ahead of the market.
Other substances eg narcotic analgesics allow athletes to play on through an injury (frequently creating further damage).
Nandrolone has been the most easy PESs for the authorities to detect of late although we believe that successful masking agents are now available.
Another point that is worthy of note. Illegal drug programmes tend to move with management teams from club to club.
We incorporate all of the above into our trading analysis but, occasionally, there is substance abuse that falls outside published science. In season 2001/02, Bayer Leverkusen were a team possessed. They reached the final of the Champions League where they narrowly lost to the beautiful Zidane - they had lost the final of the DFB-Pokal (German Cup) four days earlier putting out a reserve XI. Bayer were also pipped to the Bundesliga title by one point. A pretty successful season all in all for a team the size of Blackburn. The following year, Bayer escaped relegation only in a fixed game on the last day of the campaign and finished bottom of their Champions League second-phase group with zero points.
Analytically, we have never seen such a reversal from one season to the next. Leverkusen are owned by Bayer pharmaceutical company which is of no relevance whatsoever... obviously.
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GENE DOPING IS NOT A COUNTRY AND WESTERN SINGER
Nietzsche's Superman - the modern marketed paradigm of hyperreal humanity.
The Scene...
Nothing less than the leadership of the Free World (sic) is at stake.
Winning is Everything.
When the skewed incentives create such a competitive and nationalistic template, one may only be certain of one thing.
Cheating...
Firstly, a prediction.
Dietrological are trading massively on a private Olympic Games market in Asia.
Our position is a Buy.
We are of the opinion that a much higher number of World Records will be broken at these Olympics than is usually the case.
And, you know what, the reason that we think that this is a solid position (as well as being a one-parameter market!) is that Cheating is the Core Competitive Advantage in the modern Olympiad.
The cumulative impact of the incentives - personal, cultural, economic, political and national - are marked in Beijing.
Additionally, the incentives are in tandem - unlike, say, when the Black Power protests by Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Mexico City extravaganza demonstrated the real feelings about living in the world's "only remaining primitive society".
The unipolar world is about to become bipolar.
Measured at purchasing power parity (PPP), Goldman Sachs reckon the Chinese will economically overtake the US of A this very year. In reality, 2028 is the projected date for the changeover in No 1 seed in the global economy - this second date is based on the modern concepts of mathematics and statistics, rather than the sleight of hand of a street magician used by proponents of PPP.
So, they're up for it.
Big style.
The People's Republic of China versus Team USA.
How spectacular do you wish for your sport to be?
Anyway.
Back to Cheating.
Herbert Marcuse: "...play is precisely a breaking off from labour and a recuperation for labour".
The Circularity of Play in the Political Economy is equivalent to the Circularity of Cheating in the 2008 Olympiad.
When the prize is so great on so many levels, Cheating will define the games.
This Cheating will, literally, exist on two different strata - Performance Enhancing Substances (PESs) and Gene Doping.
Lets take these two in turn.
PESs - Remember Euro 2008? Remember how much energy Turkey and Russia possessed in a run of their respective games? Remember how tired the Russians looked in their abject Semi Final defeat to the Spanish? Remember how the Turks never stopped running, even in between matches?
PESs are now commonplace in all sports - the information is "in the price", so to speak. As an example of this, count how many of those super-energetic Turkish and Russian footballers have secured moves to the G14(18) teams following their overperformance at Euro 2008. We'll save you the trouble - the answer is zero. No top tier club makes an evaluation based on PESs.
The competitive advantage has turned away from the usage of erythropoietin (EPO), perfluorocarbon (PFC), blood doping, steroids, amphetamines etc, and to the development of masking substances instead.
Originally, the monitoring regimes were so lax that maskers weren't necessary. Indeed, a cynic might argue that the global regulation covering the illegal utilisation of PESs is suitably time-lagged to allow the next wave of 'innovation' to be initiated prior to more cumbersome regulations being developed for earlier forms of Creative Cheating.
But, in spite of this, PESs are secondary in impact to the Next Big Thing.
Gene Doping will distort outcomes at the Beijing Olympics.
Do you need to know the science?
Okay, here's a bit...
This physiological advancement (sic) is based on introducing extra copies of particular genes into the body (transgenes). EPO is the prime transgene target. It was the biotechnology industry that introduced EPO in the late-eighties and an EPO transgene would not be detectable using any technique.
The Perfect Crime.
Repoxygen is already freely available in the sorts of locations where you can purchase guns and things. Other Big Pharma advances include IGF-1 (which is muscle specific - think javelin or tennis), vascular endothelial, Switching Genes that act as an on/off device, advanced endorphins for pain control etc etc.
The specificity of these designer doping genes allows particular products to be aimed at particular sports. One can even game the detection regime via the use of Switching Genes.
Now, when the leadership of the Free World is at stake, surely the unknown health risks to a few athletes are not worth worrying about?
Cortisone? Who cares?
And, in a parallel pharma-verse, notice how quickly Vioxx has disappeared from the hyperreality?
As The Economist correctly states, the decision on Gene Doping should be based on safety and fairness.
However, the right wing libertarians then proceed by totally ignoring the former (profit over people) while producing illogical, unscientific and selective arguments in support of the latter.
The Economist think that Gene Doping is a Good Thing.
Over their column inches, even the name changes.
Gene Doping, with its nightmare-state images of Frankenstein-athletes...
...becomes Gene Therapy, with an altogether more comfortable-couch-with-caring-counsellor sort of image.
If we are going to be objecting to the hunger merchants of the next millennium imposing genetically modified foods on us, we must be equally assertive in our objection to genetically modified athletes.
The Economist uses the case of Eero Mantyranta to promote their case. This Finnish athlete was fortunate. His body produced large amounts of EPO entirely naturally. He won a couple of Olympic Golds in those bizarre sports that involve snow and rifles and forests and things.
So what?
Sport is about natural ability.
That is the point.
Fairness.
No corruption or advantage through PESs, Gene Doping, control of match officials or whatever.
The list of negatives to The Economists' arguments are extensive, too extensive for my working day.
But here are a few points worthy of input (in random order):
* If natural ability is to be artificially equalised using Gene Doping then some of the most beautiful things that we have ever witnessed will never happen again.
Maradona, Tiger Woods, Don Bradman, Gary Sobers would all have just merged into the crowd of heightened mediocrity. The incentives would make it imperative that all athletes partake in Gene Doping - what chance in outrunning or outjumping an android without becoming one yourself?
* In the end, it will still probably be natural ability that provides some edge but not before Big Pharma has made extensive profits out of gullible and desperate athletes equalising their gene intake. The profits of the pharmaceutical industry are one of the foundational bases of this ruse.
* Big Pharma will also game the sector. Generic Gene Doping will be available off-the-shelf, in a manner of speaking, for the poorer participants. The G8(12) will have proprietary Gene Doping established with particular pharmaceutical giants - Team Pfizer USA. This will help maintain the most psychopathic nations at the top of the Medal Table.
* Longer-term health risk is the biggest issue. Corners will be cut in pursuit of glory. The real impacts may only become evident in future decades when the athletes are well away from the lens of the spectacle. And the athletes take on the Total Risk ie Life. The profiteers simply count the cash...
* Numerous unnecessary industries will benefit from the introduction of Gene Doping - advertisers, sponsors, the media, merchandisers, sportswear firms, bookmakers etc etc etc.
For example, lets look at bookmaking.
Natural ability is very annoying to bookmakers.
As we hopefully demonstrated in our recent post at http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2008/07/why-bookmakers-hate-olympics.html, the layers do not appreciate competitions where the incentive to win is considerably greater than the incentive to cheat.
Gene Doping will solve this.
And then some...
As only the leading nations will be able to take advantage of Gene Doping, and as the leading nations have very mature betting industries, the inevitable linking of the Dopers and the Layers will produce internally controlled betting markets on currently dangerous spectacles such as the Olympic Games.
Take the 100 metres.
This is a flagship event.
Of the top ten competitors in the betting markets, 3 are Jamaican, 3 are Trinidadian, 1 is from the Bahamas and the other three are from Team Pfizer.
In a world where the bookmaking and pharmaceutical industries cosied up to one another for mutual advantage, and oodles of insider trading opportunites - all industries love those off-balance sheet little grey and black market earners - the possibilities of gaming the 100 metres outcome for proprietary trading advantage is obvious.
For example, inside knowledge of the use of Switching Genes would be valuable both with respect to historical 'form' and real-time hyperrealities in the race.
The worst two industries, apart from all the others, are pharmaceuticals and bookmaking, and their collusion is not an edifying sight.
The Economist dresses up the whole argument regarding Gene Doping on the basis of fairness. Apparently, it is unfair that the likes of Eero Mantyranta have natural ability providing natural advantage. It would be much fairer, claim a tongue-in-cheeked Economist leader, if rich countries could develop an unnatural advantage for themselves through drugs and doping.
"Why should others be denied the chance to remedy ...[their] deficiency?" argues The Economist.
Aside from all the above (and more), the winners of the prizes should be the individuals who have natural talents, have selected the correct sports in which to demonstrate those talents, have trained while their peers partied and who avoid the competitive advantages bestowed by PESs, Gene Doping or linking to the bookmaking industry.
Exactly the sort of individuals who will not be winning Gold Medals in Beijing, in fact...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
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