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.
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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
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
Tuesday, 14 October 2008
Pouvoir-Savoir #
So...
Has capitalism been saved?
If you were to believe the hysterical coverage in the mainstream capitalist media, you would certainly think so.
After trillions of dollars have been simply handed over to the architects of the Crash, the markets bounced back slightly from the 40% losses that they have experienced in the last months.
After all of the previous efforts to create a safety net, the markets plummeted, yesterday, they merely stabilised.
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Quoting John Authers of the Financial Times: "Markets are good at bouncing; their course is naturally erratic and a move like this does not prove the trend has changed. After the 1929 crash, which prefaced disaster, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 18.8 per cent on the next two days. There was a two-day rally of 16.6 per cent after Black Monday in 1987... So the bounce is unsurprising, and sheds no light on where markets will go next... Furthermore, we need to look at what prompted the bounce. The latest actions to bolster the international banking system are extreme. Other actions that looked extreme at the time had no effect. It would have been alarming if they had not had a response now."
Markets are not free and prices are not Real.
Neo-classical economists would have us believe that markets are efficient ie all the information is in the price.
This is patently not the case.
Firstly, there is the impact of our behavioural irrationalities.
Markets are not economic mechanisms but psychological ones.
The prices are entirely fake, and are not based on either the economic fundamentals or the systemic Realities.
Behavioural mechanisms make the 'true' price an imaginary concept.
But, that is not all.
The rampant cornering and insider trading of markets for speculative gain further distorts the 'true' price so that the prices quoted on screens and by brokers are simply figments of the collective imaginations of a privileged grouping of market architects.
It is simply not feasible to build a sustainable system on such a Poker Reality.
Furthermore, as we posted yesterday, neither systemic risk nor externalities are factored into the market prices - we used the example of the car purchase price only representing one of the costs that such a purchase brings to the planet.
All financial markets demonstrate inflated values due to this refusal to accept systemic risk and costs into the price.
The market price is ALWAYS too high.
The combination of fake price and the attempts to create a fake investor psychology are the only levers left as we slump towards the deepest Depression in a century.
So, the US/UK have been in recession throughout 2008 and yet still the prediction markets price the probability of recession in the US in 2008 market at 80 on the indices (a make-up of 100 represents a recession).
Apparently, there is no recession in the US despite trillions of dollars failing to bolster the system, the foreclosure of 3.6 million homes, the fear of hyperinflation through the gaming of the markets via interest rate cuts, the disappearance of the investment banking sector, the biggest weekly Wall Street losses ever etc etc etc.
Quoting Joseph Stiglitz: "A unique combination of ideology, special-interest pressure, populist politics, bad economics, and sheer incompetence has brought us to our present condition... As America attempts to work its way out of the present crisis, the danger is that we will listen to the same people on Wall Street and in the economic establishment who got us into it. For them, our current predicament is another opportunity: if they can shape the government response appropriately, they stand to gain, or at least stand to lose less, and they may be willing to sacrifice the well-being of the economy for their own benefit - just as they did in the past."
We have repeatedly posted how Hank Paulson has been #####################
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The markets would have made a more ordered retreat if he had not deconstructed Lehman Brothers, and even this year's Nobel Prize winner for Economics, Paul Krugman, places responsibility at Paulson's door.
Throughout his tenure, Paulson's public machinations #############################
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But his hidden agendas are equivalent in strategy.
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So a private payment of taxpayers money was made to a group of investment banks, including Goldman Sachs, while, publicly, the Fed refused to state that the rescue came under the auspices of the Depression-era rescue package.
Several days later, the Fed were forced to mention such a Reality when, despite the transfer, Bear Stearns went out of business.
Under terms of the $700 bailout (remember how Paulson described this amount as being the absolute total required to save the system?), the Fed would have to publicise private use of public money as it took place.
But, guess what?
At the Fed's request, this information can be kept confidential!
So Paulson can provide backhanders and kickbacks to his financial friends without any of us being any the wiser.
And this type of template defines the infrastructure that will lead to the next wave of this Recession/Depression.
Just before Paulson allowed Lehman Brothers to be deconstructed, the investment bank was in the process of setting up a new business called Baikal with the London Stock Exchange.
Baikal was a Dark Pool.
Dark Pools are private exchanges where institutional investors are able to trade huge quantities of financial assets away from the regulators' or the public eye.
This infrastructure is primed for corruption.
Indeed, we are preparing an internal consultancy document assessing the different ways that the financial system can be gamed by these Dark Pools of massive liquidity.
These private underground markets are the absolute equivalent of the underground betting markets that are destroying the sporting world.
It is the final phase of capitalism, from the stakeholder to the shareholder to the psychopathic...
A key issue in this crisis has been the focus on the micro - interest rates, inflation, share prices, bond yields, market sentiment etc.
The Reality is, however, defined by the macro.
The systemic risks and externalities that are not factored into this strategy are, by a considerable distance, the more prevalent ones.
The autistic focus on the micro is defining the fruition of the massive negative impacts of the macro.
The fake figures that are being traded simply ignore the systemic risk of climate change, for example.
Some of these trillions of pounds and dollars could have been used for the social - universal healthcare in the US comes out at $50 billion per year, for example.
For years to come, there will be real reductions in the amount of money available for healthcare, education, the social, as we cannot expect that the US/UK imperial war adventures are going to be curtailed.
We are not angry enough about this audacious robbery.
After Paulson had bailed out insurance giant, AIG, with $85 billion of taxpayer's money, the executives of AIG threw a spa party to celebrate.
The cost?
$500,000.
Just weeks later, AIG were back to receive a further $38.5 billion off Paulson.
The cost of Grade A Cocaine is obviously inflating in the Crash.
Unfortunately, the blocked out parts of the posts and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Has capitalism been saved?
If you were to believe the hysterical coverage in the mainstream capitalist media, you would certainly think so.
After trillions of dollars have been simply handed over to the architects of the Crash, the markets bounced back slightly from the 40% losses that they have experienced in the last months.
After all of the previous efforts to create a safety net, the markets plummeted, yesterday, they merely stabilised.
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###############################################################
###############################################################################
Quoting John Authers of the Financial Times: "Markets are good at bouncing; their course is naturally erratic and a move like this does not prove the trend has changed. After the 1929 crash, which prefaced disaster, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 18.8 per cent on the next two days. There was a two-day rally of 16.6 per cent after Black Monday in 1987... So the bounce is unsurprising, and sheds no light on where markets will go next... Furthermore, we need to look at what prompted the bounce. The latest actions to bolster the international banking system are extreme. Other actions that looked extreme at the time had no effect. It would have been alarming if they had not had a response now."
Markets are not free and prices are not Real.
Neo-classical economists would have us believe that markets are efficient ie all the information is in the price.
This is patently not the case.
Firstly, there is the impact of our behavioural irrationalities.
Markets are not economic mechanisms but psychological ones.
The prices are entirely fake, and are not based on either the economic fundamentals or the systemic Realities.
Behavioural mechanisms make the 'true' price an imaginary concept.
But, that is not all.
The rampant cornering and insider trading of markets for speculative gain further distorts the 'true' price so that the prices quoted on screens and by brokers are simply figments of the collective imaginations of a privileged grouping of market architects.
It is simply not feasible to build a sustainable system on such a Poker Reality.
Furthermore, as we posted yesterday, neither systemic risk nor externalities are factored into the market prices - we used the example of the car purchase price only representing one of the costs that such a purchase brings to the planet.
All financial markets demonstrate inflated values due to this refusal to accept systemic risk and costs into the price.
The market price is ALWAYS too high.
The combination of fake price and the attempts to create a fake investor psychology are the only levers left as we slump towards the deepest Depression in a century.
So, the US/UK have been in recession throughout 2008 and yet still the prediction markets price the probability of recession in the US in 2008 market at 80 on the indices (a make-up of 100 represents a recession).
Apparently, there is no recession in the US despite trillions of dollars failing to bolster the system, the foreclosure of 3.6 million homes, the fear of hyperinflation through the gaming of the markets via interest rate cuts, the disappearance of the investment banking sector, the biggest weekly Wall Street losses ever etc etc etc.
Quoting Joseph Stiglitz: "A unique combination of ideology, special-interest pressure, populist politics, bad economics, and sheer incompetence has brought us to our present condition... As America attempts to work its way out of the present crisis, the danger is that we will listen to the same people on Wall Street and in the economic establishment who got us into it. For them, our current predicament is another opportunity: if they can shape the government response appropriately, they stand to gain, or at least stand to lose less, and they may be willing to sacrifice the well-being of the economy for their own benefit - just as they did in the past."
We have repeatedly posted how Hank Paulson has been #####################
#####################################################################
####################################################################
####################################################
#########################################################################
The markets would have made a more ordered retreat if he had not deconstructed Lehman Brothers, and even this year's Nobel Prize winner for Economics, Paul Krugman, places responsibility at Paulson's door.
Throughout his tenure, Paulson's public machinations #############################
################################################################
############################################################
#########################################################################
But his hidden agendas are equivalent in strategy.
################################################################################
#########################################################################
####################################################################################
##############################
################################################################################
#####################################################################
#####################################################################
So a private payment of taxpayers money was made to a group of investment banks, including Goldman Sachs, while, publicly, the Fed refused to state that the rescue came under the auspices of the Depression-era rescue package.
Several days later, the Fed were forced to mention such a Reality when, despite the transfer, Bear Stearns went out of business.
Under terms of the $700 bailout (remember how Paulson described this amount as being the absolute total required to save the system?), the Fed would have to publicise private use of public money as it took place.
But, guess what?
At the Fed's request, this information can be kept confidential!
So Paulson can provide backhanders and kickbacks to his financial friends without any of us being any the wiser.
And this type of template defines the infrastructure that will lead to the next wave of this Recession/Depression.
Just before Paulson allowed Lehman Brothers to be deconstructed, the investment bank was in the process of setting up a new business called Baikal with the London Stock Exchange.
Baikal was a Dark Pool.
Dark Pools are private exchanges where institutional investors are able to trade huge quantities of financial assets away from the regulators' or the public eye.
This infrastructure is primed for corruption.
Indeed, we are preparing an internal consultancy document assessing the different ways that the financial system can be gamed by these Dark Pools of massive liquidity.
These private underground markets are the absolute equivalent of the underground betting markets that are destroying the sporting world.
It is the final phase of capitalism, from the stakeholder to the shareholder to the psychopathic...
A key issue in this crisis has been the focus on the micro - interest rates, inflation, share prices, bond yields, market sentiment etc.
The Reality is, however, defined by the macro.
The systemic risks and externalities that are not factored into this strategy are, by a considerable distance, the more prevalent ones.
The autistic focus on the micro is defining the fruition of the massive negative impacts of the macro.
The fake figures that are being traded simply ignore the systemic risk of climate change, for example.
Some of these trillions of pounds and dollars could have been used for the social - universal healthcare in the US comes out at $50 billion per year, for example.
For years to come, there will be real reductions in the amount of money available for healthcare, education, the social, as we cannot expect that the US/UK imperial war adventures are going to be curtailed.
We are not angry enough about this audacious robbery.
After Paulson had bailed out insurance giant, AIG, with $85 billion of taxpayer's money, the executives of AIG threw a spa party to celebrate.
The cost?
$500,000.
Just weeks later, AIG were back to receive a further $38.5 billion off Paulson.
The cost of Grade A Cocaine is obviously inflating in the Crash.
Unfortunately, the blocked out parts of the posts and all posts labelled # are available in full to subscribers only.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Thursday, 10 January 2008
A Particular System Of Objects
Licensed Betting Offices (LBOs) are a post-modernist artifice in which a traditional betting environment has had its modern objects liberated from their original function. This new infrastructure exists within the societal scam that is British bookmaking but the purpose of the modernity of the environment is to optimise the returns to the bookmakers by utilising a range of post-modernist and/or psychological devices.
"Consumption, insofar as it is meaningful, is the systematic act of the manipulation of signs". And, the LBOs offer a perfect environment to test and prove Baudrillard's differential reasoning. Originally, the bookmakers used primitive forms of psychopathic business strategies to maximise their returns from those with a gambling addiction. Proximity to pubs was one such ruse that remains valid to this day; delayed race start times gave the bookies an edge over the "blind" punter; the security door and the frosted glass psychologically defined the bettor as a societal loser, something to be hidden away; the creation of a chaotic environment made any attempt at pseudo-rationality in decision-making virtually impossible.
To my discredit, I once very briefly considered undertaking a consultancy project for one of the leading English bookmakers. The project aim was to maximise the amount of money that the addicts would hand over to the deserving cause of turf accountancy. The scope of the consultancy was pomo-in-extremis - the company wished to create the model interior to most suit their financial targets utilising colour, form, atmosphere, modular components together with excessive control of the informational flow and the preying on the psychological styles and disorders of the gathered group. We will assess these manipulations in turn.
The LBOs offer a major advantage to the bookmakers in comparison with the racecourse, the internet or the telephone. It is a controlled environment. Totally. Nothing has been left to chance. The positioning of the television screens in relation to the seating, the types of material in the seating, the location of standing places, solo locations and group areas, the disinformational matrix of un-data, the colours of the seats and tv backgrounds, the use of glass/daylight and advertising prompts suitably located, the quality of the images, the misuse of clocks and time etc etc. And, once one steps into this environment with its rarefied atmosphere of reality, the CCTV's ensure that the web performs optimally - the modular design style allowing a process of continuous improvement from the perspective of the abusive bookie.
The control of the information flow is a critical aspect of the reality-mix. Taking the un-sport of horseracing as an example, we are able to immediately conclude that the LBOs are the worst location for maximising the potentially valuable information which might be utilised to limit your losses and exposures. In front of an internet screen, you may access scores of firms and achieve preferable prices by referring to one of the numerous betting odds comparison sites. At the racecourse, one may read the tic-tac, monitor the rails and assess the meaning behind the major bookies returning money to the ring - are they offsetting liabilities by hedging or are they taking a proprietary angle? You can pay extra to monitor the body language of the corrupt trainers and jockeys and, in that it matters, assess the fitness of the poor beasts. When the likes of Toby Balding, Barry Hills, Paul Nicholls or Nicky Henderson, to name but a few, had a hot favourite, my staking level would always be augmented by my behavioural assessment of the key protagonists pre-race. The LBOs, in contrast, are a virtual price monopoly. Furthermore, the prices displayed together with their dynamics may not bear any resemblance either to the prices shown at other LBOs owned by the same company or to the prices available in the ring. Value is further reduced by the refusal of the LBOs to accept a decent size of bet together with outrageous overround percentages and, until recently, a highly regressive tax regime. The LBOs also enforce an obligation to buy - they utilise the psychology of need to create optimistic behavioural atmospheres that engender belief rather than disbelief. The LBOs consequently do not allow the option of trading against an occurrence and all professionals understand that contrarian trading is the first step on the road to investment riches. To quote Warren Buffett: "Be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful". Or Deleuze: "Sense depends on non-sense".
And this neatly brings us on to the behavioural aspects of the LBOs. We have no desire to spend too much time assessing the behavioural traits of irrationality that underpin the investment marketplace that are the LBOs. The psychological styles/disorders mentioned here are merely some of the most prevalent conditions which the bookmakers choose to address for profit maximisation. Punters are disproportionately influenced by the fear of feeling regret, cognitive dissonance is a factor as we cherish long-held "beliefs", anchoring leads to us being overly influenced by external suggestion (a core focus for LBOs), status quo bias is not actually a complete lack of musical good taste but the behavioural term for the chasing of losses (another key area for the psycho's), punters conceptualise without assessing the holistic overview of the reality being presented to them, gamblers are persistently over-confident due to representativeness heuristic, magical thinking takes the bettor even further from the loci of true reality, hindsight bias is another omnipresent feature which is closely linked to memory bias etc etc. The micro-control of this captive group psychology is a major area of research at all the large betting organisations. The serial conditioning of the group engenders learned helplessness and irrational group think as the voices one trusts plead with us to lose our cash by following the twisted logic of the disinformational talking head.
And all of this corruption is dressed up in the illusion of freedom, the creative use of leisure time on the level playing field offered by the toss of a dice. "Free to be yourself" in fact means "...free to project one's desires onto produced goods; "Free to enjoy life" means free to regress and to be irrational and thus to adapt to a certain social organisation of our behaviour with regard to products. As a punter, the only manner to treat the environment offered by the LBOs is to partially invert Baudrillard's overview of "the way the rationality of objects comes to grips with the irrationality of needs" to become a cynical realistic: "the way the irrationality of needs of the gambler comes to grips with rationality of the irrationality of objects of the bookmakers".
The LBOs are a post-modern artifice, a subtle but base deception founded on trickery and greed. In the atmosphere of this artifice, identity, truth, reason and meaning are warped into equilibrium states of behavioural difference producing a herd-like response to the detriment of the gambler's assets.
According to Foucault, we have become our own prison guards and have learned to mould our behaviour in accordance with the needs of modern capitalism. This behaviour of self is augmented, in Lacan's words by "how human subjectivity is formed and shaped by institutions... We live in ideology, blinded by an 'imaginary' consciousness that prevents us from gaining access to objective truth". The object of the gambler's desire is a Baudrillardian "exchange based on nothing other than corruption".
And, what is the response of our guardians to this societal corruption? Gamcare and the Gambling Commission together with the government's free market attitude to gambling legislation/advertising/marketing and a refusal to address the corruption of the markets and our realities. That's the response... Despite the deceleration towards not-so-super-casinos, the public have been persuaded by the general consensus of "it matters more when there's money on it" and "what's yours worth?". And, as Lyotard says: "consensus is the ultimate form of totalitarianism". Those of us who choose to confront corruption as a core competency understand that the corruption generally remorphs itself into a new and equally invalid form, setting off the whole cyclical process of detection and readjustment to the new corrupted realities.
According to Lyotard, it is only the most major narratives that may be made narrative impossibilities - these are stories that can no longer be told as they no longer convince eg Auschwitz. It is a pity that gambling corruption is not yet anywhere near the reality of being a narrative impossibility.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
"Consumption, insofar as it is meaningful, is the systematic act of the manipulation of signs". And, the LBOs offer a perfect environment to test and prove Baudrillard's differential reasoning. Originally, the bookmakers used primitive forms of psychopathic business strategies to maximise their returns from those with a gambling addiction. Proximity to pubs was one such ruse that remains valid to this day; delayed race start times gave the bookies an edge over the "blind" punter; the security door and the frosted glass psychologically defined the bettor as a societal loser, something to be hidden away; the creation of a chaotic environment made any attempt at pseudo-rationality in decision-making virtually impossible.
To my discredit, I once very briefly considered undertaking a consultancy project for one of the leading English bookmakers. The project aim was to maximise the amount of money that the addicts would hand over to the deserving cause of turf accountancy. The scope of the consultancy was pomo-in-extremis - the company wished to create the model interior to most suit their financial targets utilising colour, form, atmosphere, modular components together with excessive control of the informational flow and the preying on the psychological styles and disorders of the gathered group. We will assess these manipulations in turn.
The LBOs offer a major advantage to the bookmakers in comparison with the racecourse, the internet or the telephone. It is a controlled environment. Totally. Nothing has been left to chance. The positioning of the television screens in relation to the seating, the types of material in the seating, the location of standing places, solo locations and group areas, the disinformational matrix of un-data, the colours of the seats and tv backgrounds, the use of glass/daylight and advertising prompts suitably located, the quality of the images, the misuse of clocks and time etc etc. And, once one steps into this environment with its rarefied atmosphere of reality, the CCTV's ensure that the web performs optimally - the modular design style allowing a process of continuous improvement from the perspective of the abusive bookie.
The control of the information flow is a critical aspect of the reality-mix. Taking the un-sport of horseracing as an example, we are able to immediately conclude that the LBOs are the worst location for maximising the potentially valuable information which might be utilised to limit your losses and exposures. In front of an internet screen, you may access scores of firms and achieve preferable prices by referring to one of the numerous betting odds comparison sites. At the racecourse, one may read the tic-tac, monitor the rails and assess the meaning behind the major bookies returning money to the ring - are they offsetting liabilities by hedging or are they taking a proprietary angle? You can pay extra to monitor the body language of the corrupt trainers and jockeys and, in that it matters, assess the fitness of the poor beasts. When the likes of Toby Balding, Barry Hills, Paul Nicholls or Nicky Henderson, to name but a few, had a hot favourite, my staking level would always be augmented by my behavioural assessment of the key protagonists pre-race. The LBOs, in contrast, are a virtual price monopoly. Furthermore, the prices displayed together with their dynamics may not bear any resemblance either to the prices shown at other LBOs owned by the same company or to the prices available in the ring. Value is further reduced by the refusal of the LBOs to accept a decent size of bet together with outrageous overround percentages and, until recently, a highly regressive tax regime. The LBOs also enforce an obligation to buy - they utilise the psychology of need to create optimistic behavioural atmospheres that engender belief rather than disbelief. The LBOs consequently do not allow the option of trading against an occurrence and all professionals understand that contrarian trading is the first step on the road to investment riches. To quote Warren Buffett: "Be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful". Or Deleuze: "Sense depends on non-sense".
And this neatly brings us on to the behavioural aspects of the LBOs. We have no desire to spend too much time assessing the behavioural traits of irrationality that underpin the investment marketplace that are the LBOs. The psychological styles/disorders mentioned here are merely some of the most prevalent conditions which the bookmakers choose to address for profit maximisation. Punters are disproportionately influenced by the fear of feeling regret, cognitive dissonance is a factor as we cherish long-held "beliefs", anchoring leads to us being overly influenced by external suggestion (a core focus for LBOs), status quo bias is not actually a complete lack of musical good taste but the behavioural term for the chasing of losses (another key area for the psycho's), punters conceptualise without assessing the holistic overview of the reality being presented to them, gamblers are persistently over-confident due to representativeness heuristic, magical thinking takes the bettor even further from the loci of true reality, hindsight bias is another omnipresent feature which is closely linked to memory bias etc etc. The micro-control of this captive group psychology is a major area of research at all the large betting organisations. The serial conditioning of the group engenders learned helplessness and irrational group think as the voices one trusts plead with us to lose our cash by following the twisted logic of the disinformational talking head.
And all of this corruption is dressed up in the illusion of freedom, the creative use of leisure time on the level playing field offered by the toss of a dice. "Free to be yourself" in fact means "...free to project one's desires onto produced goods; "Free to enjoy life" means free to regress and to be irrational and thus to adapt to a certain social organisation of our behaviour with regard to products. As a punter, the only manner to treat the environment offered by the LBOs is to partially invert Baudrillard's overview of "the way the rationality of objects comes to grips with the irrationality of needs" to become a cynical realistic: "the way the irrationality of needs of the gambler comes to grips with rationality of the irrationality of objects of the bookmakers".
The LBOs are a post-modern artifice, a subtle but base deception founded on trickery and greed. In the atmosphere of this artifice, identity, truth, reason and meaning are warped into equilibrium states of behavioural difference producing a herd-like response to the detriment of the gambler's assets.
According to Foucault, we have become our own prison guards and have learned to mould our behaviour in accordance with the needs of modern capitalism. This behaviour of self is augmented, in Lacan's words by "how human subjectivity is formed and shaped by institutions... We live in ideology, blinded by an 'imaginary' consciousness that prevents us from gaining access to objective truth". The object of the gambler's desire is a Baudrillardian "exchange based on nothing other than corruption".
And, what is the response of our guardians to this societal corruption? Gamcare and the Gambling Commission together with the government's free market attitude to gambling legislation/advertising/marketing and a refusal to address the corruption of the markets and our realities. That's the response... Despite the deceleration towards not-so-super-casinos, the public have been persuaded by the general consensus of "it matters more when there's money on it" and "what's yours worth?". And, as Lyotard says: "consensus is the ultimate form of totalitarianism". Those of us who choose to confront corruption as a core competency understand that the corruption generally remorphs itself into a new and equally invalid form, setting off the whole cyclical process of detection and readjustment to the new corrupted realities.
According to Lyotard, it is only the most major narratives that may be made narrative impossibilities - these are stories that can no longer be told as they no longer convince eg Auschwitz. It is a pity that gambling corruption is not yet anywhere near the reality of being a narrative impossibility.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
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