Ecclesiastes: "The simulacrum is never what hides the truth - it is truth that hides the fact that there is none. The simulacrum is true".
Utilising quotes from the Hebrew bible is not the standard introduction to a blog post regarding disinformation in the sporting media but, then again, Football Is Fixed is not a standard blog. We are the Practical and we refer our observations of a hyperreality to the Post-Modernist Theoretical. Spectacular society images and neorealities form the matrix of this Unreal.
Jean Baudrillard: "Such would be the successive phases of the image:
it is the reflection of a profound reality;
it masks and denatures a profound reality;
it masks the absence of a profound reality;
it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum".
The mass media falls firmly into this latter class of "reality" - a hyperreality. Different strata of the globalised simulacra utilise proprietary templates in order to achieve their aims. We intend to focus on football and the prime purpose of this posting is not to prove to you that football is fixed - for if we have not achieved this already, we have failed in our task, and we haven't - but to demonstrate that, when the hyperreal collides with speculative financial markets, there is money to be made by modelling this spectacular society disinformation.
To achieve this contrarian construct, one is required to develop a laterally thought form of meta-analysis. Effectively, the aim is to combine the various strands of hyperreal media disinformation into a workable model. Lets take a standard window of that particularly hyperreal entity, the English Premiership, as our example.
If football is fixed then the Premiership is fixed and then some. Hierarchically, the Premiership occupies the same tier of corruption as the domestic leagues in Russia, Croatia and Serbia which places it well below such territorial bastions of integrity as Italy, Poland and Romania where the corruption endemic in the game is, at least, purged from time to time. The English spectacle does not do self-regulation which, in the absence of any external regulatory framework, allows a carte blanche for systemic corruption.
The results of Premiership matches are decided on the field of play in only one sense - a hyperreal one. The outcomes have nothing to do with the skills and talents that the playing participants bring to the stage but are determined either by trading activities in illegal betting markets or institutional power play underlying the fragmented cartel structure which defines this extended marketplace. Or both.
So, how do we cash in on this nonsense? Is there a momentum created by this cashing in that enforces an incremental improvement in the degree of unreal that the mass media projects to us? The answers to these enquiries are: "Check out below" and "Yes".
The meta-analysis of media disinformation regarding the Premiership may be modelled without any input from the more formal areas of financial market analysis. It is a stand alone entity. For our argument, we will utilise Sky Television as the media source that misinform us regarding Premiership matches - although we could just as easily have selected The Racing Post and/or The Guardian. All of these media are corrupted from a football perspective. Why? Profit, whether corporate-specific, industry wide or individual, is the only motive.
Team A are playing Team B in a high profile televised neoreality which might help determine some inconsequence or other eg who will be provided with an end-of-season prize. The corrupted media KNOW that Team A will win as the referee is controlled together with one assistant and the increasingly significant 4th official. The only potential concern to the insider traders from the bookmaking and media sectors is a tilted book - if the whole planet and her husband believe that Team A will triumph then the liabilities banked in the bookmakers ledgers will be significant. Of course, we can't have that so a schedule of disinformation is developed to ensure that the insiders win at the expense of the gullible. The benefits to the insiders are manifest - their proprietary trading positions will win; the price gained by insiders will be improved as they are taking on the mug money; corporate profits and returns to shareholders will be enhanced; irrational mug money increases liquidity allowing greater greed on behalf of the insiders.
This disinformation comes in many forms and, once one has chosen the criminalised media, the prime task is to identify individual scallies contained therein. Taking Sky as but one example, if one were to simply invert the views and opinions of a selection of the talking heads and to combine this drivel with the disinformational "data" speeding across the screen informing us that: "Team A have never lost when there has been a south westerly wind on a wet Sunday in March after having scored the first goal", one already has the basis of a meta-analytical media disinformation model. However, it is not just the words from mouth that define the dodgy talking heads - body language, forms of forensic psychology together with an holistic overview of the financial realities of the specific betting markets will enhance the meta-analysis. Some of these inversions and analyses are simple and others considerably more complex and these latter areas fall under our isolationist lens and are not to be read by the likes of you!
Of the former, though, in the printed media it is worth checking out the number of column inches providing a particular match view, the placement of these inches within the newspaper, the journalist involved, the importance of the rigged event with regard to betting turnover etc etc. These inputs need to analysed and weighted in order to form the basis of a model based simply on media disinformation.
Language is another key input and below we detail several kneejerk verbals which help to identify the true outcome of a hyperreality.
Ray "Butch" Wilkins seems a regular sort of bloke with his wide-eyed innocent trust-me demeanour. He isn't. He is a source of disinformation. Last week, Man Utd were playing Bolton in a midweek Sky game prior to the big weekend derby against Liverpool. The only competitive disadvantage for the Manchester Reds was if the Bolton match became tiring which would allow the Liverpudlians a pre-match edge in the fitness department. 2-0 up in 20 minutes and United switched off as the required outcome had been achieved - why press for more goals and increase the likelihood of a reactive kicking from Megson's men in what, after all, was a local derby? At half time, the slimey slaphead informed us: "I think United will go on and score lots more goals, I REALLY DO". Of course, the match fizzled out into the agreed 2-0 outcome and Wilkins had earned his retainer. Similar inversions may be made when Jamie Redknapp, his stock of lies being almost spent, prefaces any muttering with the statement "to be honest" or terminates any assertion with "I really believe that".
Obviously, every time Redknapp Jnr lies to the Sky viewer, it is not a feasible trading strategy to simply go opposite the hyperreal untruth. Disinformation is easily flipped into information and the roles of double and treble bluff cannot be discarded in any analysis. Consequently, the sources of disinformation need to be cumulative and properly weighted to provide a suitable overall picture.
Premiership football betting markets are by no means the only inappropriate neorealities and a similar strategy may be developed for the addressing of international financial markets utilising the financial media, newsletters and other (dis)informational sources.
The shameful complicity of the bookmakers, some footballing institutions and the mass media deserves to be confronted. The current template is psychopathic and, by using their disinformation against their interests, we are able to undermine this specific area of corruption. If we all rumble Butch then he is going to be required to spit a truth from time to time as we force the man to climb the pyramid of Baudrillard's phases of the image - effectively creating the dynamic whereby the "fated" event is driven a small distance towards becoming a "real" event. As a result, any meta-analysis of media disinformation has to evolve analytically in real-time via the use of databases of disinformation.
There is an inevitability that we must conclude this post with a quote from the premier social theorist: "To decipher or decode an event is to analyse its relationship with its double: what can it be exchanged for? (and this will be its manifest meaning) - what can it not be exchanged for? (this will be its true meaning)".
Anyway, surely this has to be preferable to banging on about the criminalised individual input of various England footballers during last night's exhibition of albion xenophobia in Baudrillard's city.
Surely...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Thursday, 27 March 2008
Monday, 24 March 2008
Nah Respect
Twisted fire starter, Richard Scudamore, yesterday finally achieved the desired outcome to his privately controlled and proprietary competition otherwise known as the Premiership. Three months after Dietrological provided a xmas freebie to both our clients and Football Is Fixed readers that a Manchester United triumph was inevitable, the culmination of that inevitability gained fruition with the usual corrupted input from the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) officials.
So, what determined the Red Devil's supremacy? Collusive behaviour, match rigging, bribery and manipulated betting markets, that's what!
The Premier League had a hidden agenda of several core targets for this season and No 1 on the list was a determination that Arsenal should not be allowed to win the title as a punishment for their refusal to sell out to the mafia money which supports the other leading teams. Corrupt cartels work in a much more monopolistic and optimal fashion when the corruption is complete. Arsenal's choice to remain outside the corrupt inner circle severely limits the autocratic power of this grouping of dodgy outfits. Think to the actions of OPEC towards the independent oil producers or NATO towards non-aligned nations (particularly those unfortunate enough to possess minerals or other valuable commodities) for a couple of externalised examples of a similar template.
Without the negative impact of the PGMOB officials, Arsenal would still be sitting at the top of the league. Instead, they are imploding under the pressure of coercive corruption and their sitzfleisch no longer exists. Scudamore must be rubbing his grubby little hands with glee. As must Alisher Usmanov as it can only be a matter of time now before the baby-boiling blubber boy attempts a total takeover of Arsenal - an act which, on completion, will hammer the final nail into the coffin of top flight English football being a sport and introduce a new afterlife of football as the equivalent of greyhound racing.
Bland Scam Sunday, a Sky theatrical extravaganza, was inevitably the media presentation possessing the exclusive rights to broadcasting the corruption in real time. Okay so, Setanta coverage might be mind-numbingly tedious but the viewer is never left with the impression that one has just witnessed a boiler room operation masquerading as a football match. Far too many of Sky's offerings are just that, boiler room scams, as various betting power bases fight for control over the corrupted outcomes of matches.
The pursuit of reality through the masks of illusion is the forensic analysis of our trading operation. But, what is the impact of this fake reality on the average fan or, for that matter, your typical bettor? Reality is trumped by inappropriate financial interests leaving the typical spectator in a strange twilight world of pseudo-reality - "it must be real as it is happening in front of my eyes and, yet, I know that it can't be as I've followed footie since being a kid and this doesn't feel right" must be the most common e-mail that we receive from readers. So, Chelsea's fans who chanted "Come back Mourinho" when the Blues were a goal behind to Arsenal were missing the point somewhat. Mourinho left of his own accord and will never return to West London while the club is under its current mafiosi management. A more appropriate chant might have been "Go away Abramovich" or a more syncopated "Putting the ball in the net when offside against Arsenal is a perfectly good goal la-la-la". Or, perhaps, "Get Cole to feign injury; Get Arsenal to put the ball out of play; Get Terry to kick the ball into the corner and press up; Get the winning goal". So so Chelski - if you are having trouble buying the match outcome then simply resort to cheating and an absence of fair play.
Sky spectaculars require, as a marketing imperative, that the week leading up to the corruption possesses a certain structure of exponentially increasing hype. The choice of template this last week was the referees. Under normal circumstances, we would regard this focus as positive but, David Moyes and Arsène Wenger apart, the output from the other talking heads was misdirected, to put it incredibly mildly. A week ago, Arsenal and Everton were mugged by Halsey and Bennett while Shinawatra City were given an invalid victory over Spurs via Thai stick, Mark Clattenburg. In the midweek, Mike Riley was forced to book Ashley Cole's backside due to the cheeky chap's impudence and the crescendo of claptrap relating to match officialdom moved towards its climax. Examining some of the quotes is more than revealing.
Keith Hackett (head of the PGMOB): "I am obviously very proud of the officials who put themselves forward for what is a thankless task. They are hard working, dedicated and honest, and deserve so much more respect than they get".
David Moyes (whose team have been targeted heavily by the PGMOB officials during the current season): "It is important that we do all respect referees. But I have said many times that I see many incidents when I do not feel the FA have respect for clubs and the situations that arise. Now they seem to want us to stand up and help them, well, it goes both ways. Clubs have made decisions (to appeal red cards) and been confronted with being told they are frivolous. Almost being told, 'sorry, we do not respect you so don't bother coming to us and asking'. There are many times we have asked for decisions, and me personally, for the referee to maybe turn around and say he has got something wrong and made a mistake. But they won't do that. So it seems it is okay to blame the players. We know they want us to give them respect, well they have to give us respect back also".
Arsène Wenger: "We have been very badly done (on decisions) recently".
Combining all this with the vacuous nonsense perpetrated by Ferguson and Benitez prior to the north west's premier derby and it may be seen that referees were all the rage leading up to the weekend. Perhaps a more enlightened body than the PGMOB might have considered laying low for a week or so to allow the accusations to be suitably sidelined by a compliant media. Not so. Hackett selected Bennett and Clattenburg for the big day.
Firstly, Steve Bennett achieved a celebratory threesome - Mascherano was the third influential foreign midfielder from Big 4 visiting teams to have been sent off in the first half at Old Trafford this season, following on from the similarly harshly treated Mikel and Emmanuel Eboué. The fact that Man Utd won these matches 9-0 cumulatively shows the success of such a strategy and offsets Ferguson's moaning about Clattenburg robbing the Manchester derbies, for example. Secondly, the assistant referee who failed to see that three Chelsea players were offside prior to the Russian/Israeli's equaliser, having made a similarly inept decision against Arsenal when Gallas was about to score in the first half, will hopefully have, at the very least, a new Rob Styles-esque patio courtesy of a certain Russian oligarch. He deserves it for the man certainly earned his kickback.
Yet again, fans are left discussing the hidden agendas of the match officials rather than anything so interupting as the beautiful game. Respect issues, as David Moyes so correctly stated, are a two way process. The PGMOB and the match officials expect respect from players and managers and, yet, this small grouping of 14 officials who referee over 92% of the Premiership matches treat everybody else in the game with scant respect - players, managers, clubs, owners, league authorities, the FA and, of course, the entirely disenfranchised supporters. Respect is a serious issue and is most certainly not represented by Mark Clattenburg's childish attempts at a pre-match pseudo-spudding greeting to William Gallas. Clattenburg - gangster's lackey #1...
The Free Dictionary defines "respect" as:
1. To feel or show deferential regard for; esteem.
2. To avoid violation of or interference with.
It is evident that respect is not reciprocated by the PGMOB officials as they tailor their match decisions to the requirements of a whole host of external bodies who should have no influence whatsoever on the match outcomes.
A number of these inappropriates are bookmakers and the short-termism of their psychopathic strategies were also brought into sharp relief yesterday. Global turnover on the Sky branded Sunday was merely 75% of the expected level and it is becoming increasingly evident that many punters are no longer willing to be fleeced by a corrupt cartel of betting companies. The bookmaking fraternity has failed to recognise that cornering a market is not feasible when dealing with an educated viewer.
The solution, of course, is to de-educate the watching masses - a far more rational overview of match realities may be found in inner city pubs than in the seats of the prawn-sandwich-munching-bourgeoisie who have taken over their season tickets. The media plays a vital role in this manipulation of your realities. We expect Sky and their stable of comics to push a Murdochratic agenda and so we turn, in hope, to the broadsheets for an holistic overview of this massive corruption. The Sun is propaganda but The Guardian is supposed to be a serious newspaper, albeit one for the chattering middle classes. Not so. Not only does this organ refuse to address the corruption in the game but also they have introduced a little ruse where readers can write in with questions to ask Keith Hackett. The supremo of the PGMOB is then provided with the column inches to defend his profession, demand respect, confront adversaries etc etc. That the leading left-of-centre paper has taken the corrupt bait is bad enough but The Guardian underlines its invalid position by also providing a platform for the betting industry to market inappropriate outcomes on future matches (via the input of Dan Roebuck of Ladbrokes Radio and Keith Pullein of the Racing Post). And, if this isn't enough to persuade you that ZNet, The Daily Kos and Al-Jazeera are the only valid sources of real news and opinion, The Guardian journalists then enhance the bookmaker's disinformation while, at the same time, making an insider killing on the betting markets themselves. So, Paul Wilson informed us that Liverpool were definitely still in the title hunt prior to Old Trafford (our "internal" price on a Liverpool Premiership triumph had drifted out to 1000/1 even before the game!) and that their advantage lay primarily in the fact that Pepe Reina is a great keeper. Really! Check out the two crosses for the first two goals. Paul Wilson - gangster's lackey #2...
In conclusion, we arrive at that most dysfunctional of locations, St James' Park. As the messiah celebrated his first victory since returning to Newcastle, he decided that it was time to eulogise about his captain marvel, the duplicitous Michael Owen. Little Michael is actually trying at the moment, a rare state of affairs, as he attempts to secure his England place - we've advised you before to check out Owen's goal occurrences in relation to international games. After Saturday's vital victory over Fulham, Keegan suggested that he is surprised by Owen's talents as they were conspicuous by their absence when Keegan was managing England. Of course, Owen was the main reason, along with the bookies, that Keegan was sacked as a string of deliberate underperformances both undermined King Kev and maximised the trading performance of Steve Smith's Goldchip private bookmakers to which Owen is linked via a business association. The messiah should not be counting his celestial chickens as we have no doubt that mastercrook Owen will return to type as soon as his position in Capello's England is cemented. Respect, indeed...
The most surprising happening in a not very surprising weekend was a philosophical comment by Harry Redknapp: "There's very strange rules all around, isn't there?". When it comes to the betting markets, football match outcomes and money laundering, there certainly are, pal...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
So, what determined the Red Devil's supremacy? Collusive behaviour, match rigging, bribery and manipulated betting markets, that's what!
The Premier League had a hidden agenda of several core targets for this season and No 1 on the list was a determination that Arsenal should not be allowed to win the title as a punishment for their refusal to sell out to the mafia money which supports the other leading teams. Corrupt cartels work in a much more monopolistic and optimal fashion when the corruption is complete. Arsenal's choice to remain outside the corrupt inner circle severely limits the autocratic power of this grouping of dodgy outfits. Think to the actions of OPEC towards the independent oil producers or NATO towards non-aligned nations (particularly those unfortunate enough to possess minerals or other valuable commodities) for a couple of externalised examples of a similar template.
Without the negative impact of the PGMOB officials, Arsenal would still be sitting at the top of the league. Instead, they are imploding under the pressure of coercive corruption and their sitzfleisch no longer exists. Scudamore must be rubbing his grubby little hands with glee. As must Alisher Usmanov as it can only be a matter of time now before the baby-boiling blubber boy attempts a total takeover of Arsenal - an act which, on completion, will hammer the final nail into the coffin of top flight English football being a sport and introduce a new afterlife of football as the equivalent of greyhound racing.
Bland Scam Sunday, a Sky theatrical extravaganza, was inevitably the media presentation possessing the exclusive rights to broadcasting the corruption in real time. Okay so, Setanta coverage might be mind-numbingly tedious but the viewer is never left with the impression that one has just witnessed a boiler room operation masquerading as a football match. Far too many of Sky's offerings are just that, boiler room scams, as various betting power bases fight for control over the corrupted outcomes of matches.
The pursuit of reality through the masks of illusion is the forensic analysis of our trading operation. But, what is the impact of this fake reality on the average fan or, for that matter, your typical bettor? Reality is trumped by inappropriate financial interests leaving the typical spectator in a strange twilight world of pseudo-reality - "it must be real as it is happening in front of my eyes and, yet, I know that it can't be as I've followed footie since being a kid and this doesn't feel right" must be the most common e-mail that we receive from readers. So, Chelsea's fans who chanted "Come back Mourinho" when the Blues were a goal behind to Arsenal were missing the point somewhat. Mourinho left of his own accord and will never return to West London while the club is under its current mafiosi management. A more appropriate chant might have been "Go away Abramovich" or a more syncopated "Putting the ball in the net when offside against Arsenal is a perfectly good goal la-la-la". Or, perhaps, "Get Cole to feign injury; Get Arsenal to put the ball out of play; Get Terry to kick the ball into the corner and press up; Get the winning goal". So so Chelski - if you are having trouble buying the match outcome then simply resort to cheating and an absence of fair play.
Sky spectaculars require, as a marketing imperative, that the week leading up to the corruption possesses a certain structure of exponentially increasing hype. The choice of template this last week was the referees. Under normal circumstances, we would regard this focus as positive but, David Moyes and Arsène Wenger apart, the output from the other talking heads was misdirected, to put it incredibly mildly. A week ago, Arsenal and Everton were mugged by Halsey and Bennett while Shinawatra City were given an invalid victory over Spurs via Thai stick, Mark Clattenburg. In the midweek, Mike Riley was forced to book Ashley Cole's backside due to the cheeky chap's impudence and the crescendo of claptrap relating to match officialdom moved towards its climax. Examining some of the quotes is more than revealing.
Keith Hackett (head of the PGMOB): "I am obviously very proud of the officials who put themselves forward for what is a thankless task. They are hard working, dedicated and honest, and deserve so much more respect than they get".
David Moyes (whose team have been targeted heavily by the PGMOB officials during the current season): "It is important that we do all respect referees. But I have said many times that I see many incidents when I do not feel the FA have respect for clubs and the situations that arise. Now they seem to want us to stand up and help them, well, it goes both ways. Clubs have made decisions (to appeal red cards) and been confronted with being told they are frivolous. Almost being told, 'sorry, we do not respect you so don't bother coming to us and asking'. There are many times we have asked for decisions, and me personally, for the referee to maybe turn around and say he has got something wrong and made a mistake. But they won't do that. So it seems it is okay to blame the players. We know they want us to give them respect, well they have to give us respect back also".
Arsène Wenger: "We have been very badly done (on decisions) recently".
Combining all this with the vacuous nonsense perpetrated by Ferguson and Benitez prior to the north west's premier derby and it may be seen that referees were all the rage leading up to the weekend. Perhaps a more enlightened body than the PGMOB might have considered laying low for a week or so to allow the accusations to be suitably sidelined by a compliant media. Not so. Hackett selected Bennett and Clattenburg for the big day.
Firstly, Steve Bennett achieved a celebratory threesome - Mascherano was the third influential foreign midfielder from Big 4 visiting teams to have been sent off in the first half at Old Trafford this season, following on from the similarly harshly treated Mikel and Emmanuel Eboué. The fact that Man Utd won these matches 9-0 cumulatively shows the success of such a strategy and offsets Ferguson's moaning about Clattenburg robbing the Manchester derbies, for example. Secondly, the assistant referee who failed to see that three Chelsea players were offside prior to the Russian/Israeli's equaliser, having made a similarly inept decision against Arsenal when Gallas was about to score in the first half, will hopefully have, at the very least, a new Rob Styles-esque patio courtesy of a certain Russian oligarch. He deserves it for the man certainly earned his kickback.
Yet again, fans are left discussing the hidden agendas of the match officials rather than anything so interupting as the beautiful game. Respect issues, as David Moyes so correctly stated, are a two way process. The PGMOB and the match officials expect respect from players and managers and, yet, this small grouping of 14 officials who referee over 92% of the Premiership matches treat everybody else in the game with scant respect - players, managers, clubs, owners, league authorities, the FA and, of course, the entirely disenfranchised supporters. Respect is a serious issue and is most certainly not represented by Mark Clattenburg's childish attempts at a pre-match pseudo-spudding greeting to William Gallas. Clattenburg - gangster's lackey #1...
The Free Dictionary defines "respect" as:
1. To feel or show deferential regard for; esteem.
2. To avoid violation of or interference with.
It is evident that respect is not reciprocated by the PGMOB officials as they tailor their match decisions to the requirements of a whole host of external bodies who should have no influence whatsoever on the match outcomes.
A number of these inappropriates are bookmakers and the short-termism of their psychopathic strategies were also brought into sharp relief yesterday. Global turnover on the Sky branded Sunday was merely 75% of the expected level and it is becoming increasingly evident that many punters are no longer willing to be fleeced by a corrupt cartel of betting companies. The bookmaking fraternity has failed to recognise that cornering a market is not feasible when dealing with an educated viewer.
The solution, of course, is to de-educate the watching masses - a far more rational overview of match realities may be found in inner city pubs than in the seats of the prawn-sandwich-munching-bourgeoisie who have taken over their season tickets. The media plays a vital role in this manipulation of your realities. We expect Sky and their stable of comics to push a Murdochratic agenda and so we turn, in hope, to the broadsheets for an holistic overview of this massive corruption. The Sun is propaganda but The Guardian is supposed to be a serious newspaper, albeit one for the chattering middle classes. Not so. Not only does this organ refuse to address the corruption in the game but also they have introduced a little ruse where readers can write in with questions to ask Keith Hackett. The supremo of the PGMOB is then provided with the column inches to defend his profession, demand respect, confront adversaries etc etc. That the leading left-of-centre paper has taken the corrupt bait is bad enough but The Guardian underlines its invalid position by also providing a platform for the betting industry to market inappropriate outcomes on future matches (via the input of Dan Roebuck of Ladbrokes Radio and Keith Pullein of the Racing Post). And, if this isn't enough to persuade you that ZNet, The Daily Kos and Al-Jazeera are the only valid sources of real news and opinion, The Guardian journalists then enhance the bookmaker's disinformation while, at the same time, making an insider killing on the betting markets themselves. So, Paul Wilson informed us that Liverpool were definitely still in the title hunt prior to Old Trafford (our "internal" price on a Liverpool Premiership triumph had drifted out to 1000/1 even before the game!) and that their advantage lay primarily in the fact that Pepe Reina is a great keeper. Really! Check out the two crosses for the first two goals. Paul Wilson - gangster's lackey #2...
In conclusion, we arrive at that most dysfunctional of locations, St James' Park. As the messiah celebrated his first victory since returning to Newcastle, he decided that it was time to eulogise about his captain marvel, the duplicitous Michael Owen. Little Michael is actually trying at the moment, a rare state of affairs, as he attempts to secure his England place - we've advised you before to check out Owen's goal occurrences in relation to international games. After Saturday's vital victory over Fulham, Keegan suggested that he is surprised by Owen's talents as they were conspicuous by their absence when Keegan was managing England. Of course, Owen was the main reason, along with the bookies, that Keegan was sacked as a string of deliberate underperformances both undermined King Kev and maximised the trading performance of Steve Smith's Goldchip private bookmakers to which Owen is linked via a business association. The messiah should not be counting his celestial chickens as we have no doubt that mastercrook Owen will return to type as soon as his position in Capello's England is cemented. Respect, indeed...
The most surprising happening in a not very surprising weekend was a philosophical comment by Harry Redknapp: "There's very strange rules all around, isn't there?". When it comes to the betting markets, football match outcomes and money laundering, there certainly are, pal...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Friday, 21 March 2008
Shinawatra Seen Selling Crack Cocaine In Cheetham Hill
Last Sunday in East Manchester around 5:30 in the afternoon, the air resonated with the chant "Thaksin, Thaksin, Give Us A Wave" and the little gangster was helped to his feet by his security consultants to return respect to Harpurhey man.
Curiously enough this same cry was common in southern Thailand where Islamic separatists were gunned down by the gangster's men when his excellency was last in power in Asia.
Yep, to Manchester's, and in particular to Manchester City's, eternal discredit, the human rights abuser is back in town with his entourage. Having sent his wife back to test the legal waters in Thailand and finding that the said waters were not too choppy, Shinawatra decided to return early to Bangkok to lay the foundations for a financial deal regarding his corruption relating to land deals and the selling of national assets to the benefit solely of Shinboy's offshore bank accounts. Shinawatra's initial intention was to remain in Manchester until the end of the season but his PR vehicle, Manchester City, was judged to be surplus to short-term requirements once the idiotic dream of a Champions League place became realistically sidelined.
A new strategy was put in place - Top 10 for this season, UEFA Cup for next year culminating in a Champions League slot in three years time. Apart from being entirely different to the strategies of last week, last month and the mid-season break, this still represents a target of sorts for the Bangkok Blues.
Shinawatra flew back to Thailand to be arrested at the airport on his arrival. Fair dinkum. Criminal, crime, justice... The spectacular nature of the encounter was far more intriguing than the legal, for his excellency decided that he should return home for this date with courtroom destiny accompanied by Man City players Kasper Schmeichel and Kelvin Etuhu. These employees of Eastlands were pulled away from their loan spells at Leicester and Coventry respectively to be dragged halfway around the world so that Shinawatra could make his Siam re-entry with the aesthetic sporting choreography of blonde and Black extremities.
Lets get this straight. This gangster, for that is what anybody with half a brain in Thailand would call the man, is filed by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch for abuses of power against humanity. He sold off a nation's jewels for proprietary gain; he runs the underground betting markets in Thailand; his wife undertakes illegal property deals in valuable Bangkok land; he arbitrarily orders the shooting of the competition in the drugs trade; he undertakes ethnic cleansing and is rumoured to be taking a slice of the trade in trafficking women from the very rural areas that are supposed to be the main beneficiaries of his populist largesse.
Not only is this fascist allowed to be effectively running Thailand again via his proxies but the English footballing establishment seem to be condoning the practices undertaken by Thaksin by giving him the individual equivalent of America's "most favoured nation" status. Richard Scudamore happily ignored the Premier League's fit-and-proper-person's rule to allow the gangster into the English game. Why? For a deal, that's why! What else would you expect from Mr Dealmaker? And the deal from Scudamore is this - you give us some control of the underground betting markets in Thailand and we will allow you to utilise Manchester City as a scam operation to help you regain power in Thailand.
And so it came to pass. In the first half of the season, Man City were "live" in the Far East on 10 occasions - City won 6 and drew 4 of those games and the bias in refereeing in their favour was marked, particularly when Mark Clattenburg, Shinawatra's stooge, had any say in the matter. When Shinawatra arrived back in Manchester for last weekend's game, there was great interest back home as to the great arrival of this great excellency into the great world of English football. Could Mr Scudamore have any influence over the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) selecting Clattenburg to officiate last Sunday's Tottenham game? Is the pope a catholic? Ireland's offside goal and Clattenburg's late disallowing of a Spurs goal and the job's a good'un.
"Wherever law ends, tyranny begins" according to John Locke and that seems a pretty apt appraisal to us. There are no effective laws overseeing the English game at its highest levels and there is even less clarification in the grey areas where football match outcomes share the same ground as the global betting markets. The butterfly effect between Bangkok politics and betting markets is mimicked around the global game as invalid influences leech themselves on to what used to be community clubs. For example, Gazprom should not have any effect on the Champions League Quarter Finals and yet three of the teams have links to the Russian hyper-power-company.
Of course, what we are dealing with here are fascistic and autocratic power abuses. Much mocking and sniggering was heard around Europe when Silvio Berlusconi first got into power in Italy using a heady mixture of mafiosi-links and statute of limitations legal loopholes to create a right wing teflonocracy. He bought Serie A and Champions League titles for the rossoneri while his lieutenant did the backroom deals that ensured suitable outcomes to suitable events. Brinksmanship was a core competency as demonstrated by the relegation of Juventus for crimes that were no more serious than equivalent misdemeanours undertaken by the Milanese. Corruption, mafia cartels and an abuse of power won for Berlusconi in both political and footballing fields. How is His Excellency The Doctor Thaksin Shinawatra any different?
Bored by Baudrillard? Well, you are not welcome on these blog pages then! "Monopoly structures (and any state is a monopoly, since it claims a monopoly in the political and social spheres) cannot but secrete a para-political society, a mafia of some sort, to control this form of generalised corruption. It is pure hypocrisy on the part of the political authorities to fight this mafia, since it is an emanation of those authorities themselves". In what manner is this template different to those employed by Berlusconi/Galliani or Shinawatra/Scudamore? Its not any different, evidently...
So, what will happen to City? We have been pretty accurate so far in our responses to realities at Eastlands. In the summer we said that short-selling the Blues was the trade of choice and that the majority of Eriksson's rushed signings would prove inappropriate. Proven. We then informed you that the nett transfer spend by City in January would be insubstantial. Proven. We followed up with mocking any pretensions to a Champions League slot. Proven. Football Is Fixed then had the temerity to schedule Shinawatra's timetable and we even released a consultancy document to clients highlighting the matches that the good doctor was planning to "buy" in the remaining part of the season. Proven and successful. Our current prediction would go something like this. Shinawatra will continue to use the Bangkok Blues as his PR entity and he will utilise as little money as possible to achieve this aim. Indeed, the smiling assassin was quoted yesterday as saying: "There will not be huge amounts spent this summer but maybe the following summer". Thaksin will continue his liaisons with the Premier League to mutual benefit but the Premier League need to be very aware of one key fact here. Shinawatra looks after himself. Win-win strategies are only achievable in the immediate term with psychopathic operators as such individuals are constantly looking for competitive edge that effectively undermines the validity of the original infrastructure. There will come a point where Shinawatra will see a strategic route that cuts Scudamore and his staff of one out of the equation.
Cioran states that: "You have to choose between the real or illusion" and Premiership football in 2008 offers a perfect experiment to test for realities and the hyperrealities of illusion. We could, if we so desired, prepare a post that would categorically demonstrate the clear mechanisms of this corruption but we choose instead to offer you something rather different so that we might be able to continue to trade the market's inefficiencies ourselves. We, ourselves, have decided to provide you with a plot, generally at least one year out of date, which signifies the corruption underpinning football in England. Because the mainstream media is so determinedly out of touch with modern realities even this one year millstone still allows for our analyses to be ahead of the general perception of a spectacular reality. It is up to you whether you wish to go with the real or the illusory. Its your life.
Baudrillard: "The real... as we picture it to ourselves, with its causal determinations and its truth-effects, is an exceptional phenomenon - in fact, the only true mystery".
Your choice...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Curiously enough this same cry was common in southern Thailand where Islamic separatists were gunned down by the gangster's men when his excellency was last in power in Asia.
Yep, to Manchester's, and in particular to Manchester City's, eternal discredit, the human rights abuser is back in town with his entourage. Having sent his wife back to test the legal waters in Thailand and finding that the said waters were not too choppy, Shinawatra decided to return early to Bangkok to lay the foundations for a financial deal regarding his corruption relating to land deals and the selling of national assets to the benefit solely of Shinboy's offshore bank accounts. Shinawatra's initial intention was to remain in Manchester until the end of the season but his PR vehicle, Manchester City, was judged to be surplus to short-term requirements once the idiotic dream of a Champions League place became realistically sidelined.
A new strategy was put in place - Top 10 for this season, UEFA Cup for next year culminating in a Champions League slot in three years time. Apart from being entirely different to the strategies of last week, last month and the mid-season break, this still represents a target of sorts for the Bangkok Blues.
Shinawatra flew back to Thailand to be arrested at the airport on his arrival. Fair dinkum. Criminal, crime, justice... The spectacular nature of the encounter was far more intriguing than the legal, for his excellency decided that he should return home for this date with courtroom destiny accompanied by Man City players Kasper Schmeichel and Kelvin Etuhu. These employees of Eastlands were pulled away from their loan spells at Leicester and Coventry respectively to be dragged halfway around the world so that Shinawatra could make his Siam re-entry with the aesthetic sporting choreography of blonde and Black extremities.
Lets get this straight. This gangster, for that is what anybody with half a brain in Thailand would call the man, is filed by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch for abuses of power against humanity. He sold off a nation's jewels for proprietary gain; he runs the underground betting markets in Thailand; his wife undertakes illegal property deals in valuable Bangkok land; he arbitrarily orders the shooting of the competition in the drugs trade; he undertakes ethnic cleansing and is rumoured to be taking a slice of the trade in trafficking women from the very rural areas that are supposed to be the main beneficiaries of his populist largesse.
Not only is this fascist allowed to be effectively running Thailand again via his proxies but the English footballing establishment seem to be condoning the practices undertaken by Thaksin by giving him the individual equivalent of America's "most favoured nation" status. Richard Scudamore happily ignored the Premier League's fit-and-proper-person's rule to allow the gangster into the English game. Why? For a deal, that's why! What else would you expect from Mr Dealmaker? And the deal from Scudamore is this - you give us some control of the underground betting markets in Thailand and we will allow you to utilise Manchester City as a scam operation to help you regain power in Thailand.
And so it came to pass. In the first half of the season, Man City were "live" in the Far East on 10 occasions - City won 6 and drew 4 of those games and the bias in refereeing in their favour was marked, particularly when Mark Clattenburg, Shinawatra's stooge, had any say in the matter. When Shinawatra arrived back in Manchester for last weekend's game, there was great interest back home as to the great arrival of this great excellency into the great world of English football. Could Mr Scudamore have any influence over the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) selecting Clattenburg to officiate last Sunday's Tottenham game? Is the pope a catholic? Ireland's offside goal and Clattenburg's late disallowing of a Spurs goal and the job's a good'un.
"Wherever law ends, tyranny begins" according to John Locke and that seems a pretty apt appraisal to us. There are no effective laws overseeing the English game at its highest levels and there is even less clarification in the grey areas where football match outcomes share the same ground as the global betting markets. The butterfly effect between Bangkok politics and betting markets is mimicked around the global game as invalid influences leech themselves on to what used to be community clubs. For example, Gazprom should not have any effect on the Champions League Quarter Finals and yet three of the teams have links to the Russian hyper-power-company.
Of course, what we are dealing with here are fascistic and autocratic power abuses. Much mocking and sniggering was heard around Europe when Silvio Berlusconi first got into power in Italy using a heady mixture of mafiosi-links and statute of limitations legal loopholes to create a right wing teflonocracy. He bought Serie A and Champions League titles for the rossoneri while his lieutenant did the backroom deals that ensured suitable outcomes to suitable events. Brinksmanship was a core competency as demonstrated by the relegation of Juventus for crimes that were no more serious than equivalent misdemeanours undertaken by the Milanese. Corruption, mafia cartels and an abuse of power won for Berlusconi in both political and footballing fields. How is His Excellency The Doctor Thaksin Shinawatra any different?
Bored by Baudrillard? Well, you are not welcome on these blog pages then! "Monopoly structures (and any state is a monopoly, since it claims a monopoly in the political and social spheres) cannot but secrete a para-political society, a mafia of some sort, to control this form of generalised corruption. It is pure hypocrisy on the part of the political authorities to fight this mafia, since it is an emanation of those authorities themselves". In what manner is this template different to those employed by Berlusconi/Galliani or Shinawatra/Scudamore? Its not any different, evidently...
So, what will happen to City? We have been pretty accurate so far in our responses to realities at Eastlands. In the summer we said that short-selling the Blues was the trade of choice and that the majority of Eriksson's rushed signings would prove inappropriate. Proven. We then informed you that the nett transfer spend by City in January would be insubstantial. Proven. We followed up with mocking any pretensions to a Champions League slot. Proven. Football Is Fixed then had the temerity to schedule Shinawatra's timetable and we even released a consultancy document to clients highlighting the matches that the good doctor was planning to "buy" in the remaining part of the season. Proven and successful. Our current prediction would go something like this. Shinawatra will continue to use the Bangkok Blues as his PR entity and he will utilise as little money as possible to achieve this aim. Indeed, the smiling assassin was quoted yesterday as saying: "There will not be huge amounts spent this summer but maybe the following summer". Thaksin will continue his liaisons with the Premier League to mutual benefit but the Premier League need to be very aware of one key fact here. Shinawatra looks after himself. Win-win strategies are only achievable in the immediate term with psychopathic operators as such individuals are constantly looking for competitive edge that effectively undermines the validity of the original infrastructure. There will come a point where Shinawatra will see a strategic route that cuts Scudamore and his staff of one out of the equation.
Cioran states that: "You have to choose between the real or illusion" and Premiership football in 2008 offers a perfect experiment to test for realities and the hyperrealities of illusion. We could, if we so desired, prepare a post that would categorically demonstrate the clear mechanisms of this corruption but we choose instead to offer you something rather different so that we might be able to continue to trade the market's inefficiencies ourselves. We, ourselves, have decided to provide you with a plot, generally at least one year out of date, which signifies the corruption underpinning football in England. Because the mainstream media is so determinedly out of touch with modern realities even this one year millstone still allows for our analyses to be ahead of the general perception of a spectacular reality. It is up to you whether you wish to go with the real or the illusory. Its your life.
Baudrillard: "The real... as we picture it to ourselves, with its causal determinations and its truth-effects, is an exceptional phenomenon - in fact, the only true mystery".
Your choice...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Wednesday, 19 March 2008
In Celebration Of Professional Gambling?
Self sufficient and autonomous, able to survive and thrive in any geographical location that is wired, establishing holistics and models across a range of market sectors and structures, the part of one's life that relates to trading is highly innovative and should be celebrated. Or should it?
Baudrillard: "The miracle of gaming is to make us live our freedom not as reality but as illusion - a higher illusion, an aristocratic challenge to reality. For reality is democratic, and illusion is aristocratic".
"Its A Lottery!" or "Its A Fix!". You pays yer money and takes yer choice.
The Babylonians in Borges's fable chose "to entrust their fate to the Lottery, preferring that uncertainty to the torments of individual responsibility and free will". Not a good call this on behalf of the Babylonians. Some lotteries are fixes and some lotteries, a lesser number unfortunately, are truly randomised events which offer a meritocratic environment in which to accept a voluntary form of taxation. Meritocratic stupidity. If you win, you're fucked. If you lose, you're stupid. This is not a good deal.
But, at least a truly randomised event is a truly randomised event. In a world which demands that we believe in "Centres For Experiments In Totally Random Environments", this is important.
Okay, lets get one thing clear. There can be no celebration of gambling. We are good at it and that is great but it is also sad. Of all the things that could be done, we are doing this. To seek knowledge outside the confines of a blinkered system of science and discovery is our only option when economic performativity defines the applicable areas of research. To work within that system destructs any semblance of a suitable work/life balance so we try and do some good things while creaming a profit off some inefficient and rigged financial markets. Voila!
To virtually everyone else, the gambling industry is not good news. "The Lottery" is your best option and that is not a good life choice as we outlined above. "The Fix" is something else altogether. Markets, betting and otherwise, are primed for corruption and insider trading to the major competitive advantage of, well, insiders. Baudrillard: "This takes us into the worst type of utopia - an insider raving [trading], which slides automatically into cultish practices with the violence characteristic of that type of organisation, where arbitrariness figures no longer as a function of chance, but as arbitrary power". This is "The Fix".
To whatever extent disenfranchised, the gambler lives the Baudrillardian "dream of a radical democracy which haunts the imaginations of all gamblers.., as a refuge for their thwarted demand for 'social' democracy'". But for gamblers choosing "The Fix", "the most liberating principle ends in the most commonplace tyranny".
Dealing with casinos, online poker platforms, bookmakers for all sports, the day trading markets offered by the spread betting firms, the heavily manipulated fringe markets in both sports and the financial sector (think the "Bookings" market or virtually any type of derivative market, for example), these are all tyrannical edifices. For example, it is reaching the stage where a very high percentage of televised sport, with its critically increased liquidity, is rigged to some extent. Only where the prize money and/or kudos counterbalances the bribery bank can a truly competitive event be expected to take place. And, believe us, that is not a whole load of occasions! If you play "The Fix", you are in collusion with the gambling sector against your financial interests. You will misrepresent your losses and create new realities of winnings that only occurred in some parallel pseudo-existence in anecdoteland. You will possess a whole concoction of different personality styles and disorders which will define both your performance in the gambling markets and the targeting of your good self by that self same industry. The European bookmakers not only actively work to develop suitable event outcomes across a range of sports, they also market alternative realities to you to fuck with your already well-fucked-up brain.
On only one level is an interaction with the speculative markets applicable and conducive to a positive self advancement financially and that is when you are ahead of the market. That edge might be due to inside information, cloned trading, quantitative analysis, superior modelling techniques, pattern recognition, purchase of information from prime sources etc etc but unless you have got it, forget it. Even with the benefits of some or all of the necessary attributes, there will need to be extensive time given to knowing yourself, understanding self-psychological mechanisms and self-management issues relating to projects and a work/life balance.
Some people do the I Ching. They trust to fate the major decisions that one needs to make in spectacular society. This is parallelled by the gambler. The randomising of strategy is a foolish option, even more so when one considers the tilting of the markets against one's interests that is built into the very fabric of the particular betting market structure.
"The most liberating principle ends in the most commonplace tyranny" defines our experiences as market traders too. Once we move beyond the self-congratulatory aesthetics of niche superiority, we understand that we are in a dark corner of social and business interaction. I am not convinced that there are any other types of interaction available under shareholder capitalism but that is another moan for another time. You lucky people...
If we choose "real" lives, we are restricted by our options in IT, philosophy, neurology and science. We instead choose to play the hyperreal games offered in the gambling world of First Life but we play fast and contrarian with the intention of getting out of this shoddy little work environment just as soon as we are able.
Not too long now.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Baudrillard: "The miracle of gaming is to make us live our freedom not as reality but as illusion - a higher illusion, an aristocratic challenge to reality. For reality is democratic, and illusion is aristocratic".
"Its A Lottery!" or "Its A Fix!". You pays yer money and takes yer choice.
The Babylonians in Borges's fable chose "to entrust their fate to the Lottery, preferring that uncertainty to the torments of individual responsibility and free will". Not a good call this on behalf of the Babylonians. Some lotteries are fixes and some lotteries, a lesser number unfortunately, are truly randomised events which offer a meritocratic environment in which to accept a voluntary form of taxation. Meritocratic stupidity. If you win, you're fucked. If you lose, you're stupid. This is not a good deal.
But, at least a truly randomised event is a truly randomised event. In a world which demands that we believe in "Centres For Experiments In Totally Random Environments", this is important.
Okay, lets get one thing clear. There can be no celebration of gambling. We are good at it and that is great but it is also sad. Of all the things that could be done, we are doing this. To seek knowledge outside the confines of a blinkered system of science and discovery is our only option when economic performativity defines the applicable areas of research. To work within that system destructs any semblance of a suitable work/life balance so we try and do some good things while creaming a profit off some inefficient and rigged financial markets. Voila!
To virtually everyone else, the gambling industry is not good news. "The Lottery" is your best option and that is not a good life choice as we outlined above. "The Fix" is something else altogether. Markets, betting and otherwise, are primed for corruption and insider trading to the major competitive advantage of, well, insiders. Baudrillard: "This takes us into the worst type of utopia - an insider raving [trading], which slides automatically into cultish practices with the violence characteristic of that type of organisation, where arbitrariness figures no longer as a function of chance, but as arbitrary power". This is "The Fix".
To whatever extent disenfranchised, the gambler lives the Baudrillardian "dream of a radical democracy which haunts the imaginations of all gamblers.., as a refuge for their thwarted demand for 'social' democracy'". But for gamblers choosing "The Fix", "the most liberating principle ends in the most commonplace tyranny".
Dealing with casinos, online poker platforms, bookmakers for all sports, the day trading markets offered by the spread betting firms, the heavily manipulated fringe markets in both sports and the financial sector (think the "Bookings" market or virtually any type of derivative market, for example), these are all tyrannical edifices. For example, it is reaching the stage where a very high percentage of televised sport, with its critically increased liquidity, is rigged to some extent. Only where the prize money and/or kudos counterbalances the bribery bank can a truly competitive event be expected to take place. And, believe us, that is not a whole load of occasions! If you play "The Fix", you are in collusion with the gambling sector against your financial interests. You will misrepresent your losses and create new realities of winnings that only occurred in some parallel pseudo-existence in anecdoteland. You will possess a whole concoction of different personality styles and disorders which will define both your performance in the gambling markets and the targeting of your good self by that self same industry. The European bookmakers not only actively work to develop suitable event outcomes across a range of sports, they also market alternative realities to you to fuck with your already well-fucked-up brain.
On only one level is an interaction with the speculative markets applicable and conducive to a positive self advancement financially and that is when you are ahead of the market. That edge might be due to inside information, cloned trading, quantitative analysis, superior modelling techniques, pattern recognition, purchase of information from prime sources etc etc but unless you have got it, forget it. Even with the benefits of some or all of the necessary attributes, there will need to be extensive time given to knowing yourself, understanding self-psychological mechanisms and self-management issues relating to projects and a work/life balance.
Some people do the I Ching. They trust to fate the major decisions that one needs to make in spectacular society. This is parallelled by the gambler. The randomising of strategy is a foolish option, even more so when one considers the tilting of the markets against one's interests that is built into the very fabric of the particular betting market structure.
"The most liberating principle ends in the most commonplace tyranny" defines our experiences as market traders too. Once we move beyond the self-congratulatory aesthetics of niche superiority, we understand that we are in a dark corner of social and business interaction. I am not convinced that there are any other types of interaction available under shareholder capitalism but that is another moan for another time. You lucky people...
If we choose "real" lives, we are restricted by our options in IT, philosophy, neurology and science. We instead choose to play the hyperreal games offered in the gambling world of First Life but we play fast and contrarian with the intention of getting out of this shoddy little work environment just as soon as we are able.
Not too long now.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Friday, 14 March 2008
Fizzy Legit!
Of late, we have been giving some thought to winding down the Football Is Fixed (FIF) blog. Pressures on our time, a lack of innovative new input, a slight reduction in the number of blog views and a staleness of attitude all are prompting us towards a scaling down of the project. This dynamic has only been offset by our rampant rise up the Technorati ratings (the last two weeks have seen FIF gain 350,000 places and we are now in the top 800,000 blogs!). Despite this, there is only so much corruption that we are able to highlight without entering into areas of proprietary isolationism and this limit of construct results in postings developing similarities of content which is boring for everyone.
Perhaps blogs have a time window and thereafter become dated and repetitive. Perhaps not.
One of my favourite blogs is "Baghdad Burning" (see: http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/) but the writer of this journal of life under an illegal military occupation has also run into the same block of familiarity of story. Her solution has been to vastly reduce the number of posts and yet we keep checking for any new inputs into her new life in Syria. Perhaps this is the route that we should take - reduction of posts, that would be, not living in Syria...
Chaos and creative change are constant competencies in our cell. We evolve to new projects and infrastructures in a progression of attitudes and aims. These decisions are only to an extent dependent on financial considerations with quality of life, the maintenance of a valid work/life balance and project dovetailing being of far greater significance. The breakpoints that engender chaotic creation are often externally generated but the internal process is always the same - how do we create new value and opportunities in this new climate?
Dietrological is about to embark on a very serious assault on the global football betting markets. From the beginning of next season, we will be trading at markedly higher levels and isolationism demands that we develop a secure infrastructure around this project. To this end, a reduction in the number of blog postings would be a benefit. Perhaps to one per week or so... Additionally, we veer towards not sharing our information when we are more actively involved in a marketplace and the selling of information by Dietrological will most certainly be an area of address. In the immediate term, we are not signing up any new clients - we've recently had to discard a couple of hoodlums for selling our info onto bookies, tut tut... In the summer, we will make a decision on future information provision. We'll see...
We have already mentioned that we are getting involved in the markets for football transfers via our Enhanced Holistic Sabermetrics Project (EHSP). We are working on developing a trading model for the evaluation of player values which is to be on a different strata of performativity when compared with the current competition. The transfer markets are highly inefficient and establishing the nascent market is an entertaining project although there is still much work to do on the evolution of a suitable business model.
Inevitably, we must move with the opportunities available and the blog must move accordingly. The FIF blog will morph into different things at different times or it might just die. Creative destruction.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Perhaps blogs have a time window and thereafter become dated and repetitive. Perhaps not.
One of my favourite blogs is "Baghdad Burning" (see: http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/) but the writer of this journal of life under an illegal military occupation has also run into the same block of familiarity of story. Her solution has been to vastly reduce the number of posts and yet we keep checking for any new inputs into her new life in Syria. Perhaps this is the route that we should take - reduction of posts, that would be, not living in Syria...
Chaos and creative change are constant competencies in our cell. We evolve to new projects and infrastructures in a progression of attitudes and aims. These decisions are only to an extent dependent on financial considerations with quality of life, the maintenance of a valid work/life balance and project dovetailing being of far greater significance. The breakpoints that engender chaotic creation are often externally generated but the internal process is always the same - how do we create new value and opportunities in this new climate?
Dietrological is about to embark on a very serious assault on the global football betting markets. From the beginning of next season, we will be trading at markedly higher levels and isolationism demands that we develop a secure infrastructure around this project. To this end, a reduction in the number of blog postings would be a benefit. Perhaps to one per week or so... Additionally, we veer towards not sharing our information when we are more actively involved in a marketplace and the selling of information by Dietrological will most certainly be an area of address. In the immediate term, we are not signing up any new clients - we've recently had to discard a couple of hoodlums for selling our info onto bookies, tut tut... In the summer, we will make a decision on future information provision. We'll see...
We have already mentioned that we are getting involved in the markets for football transfers via our Enhanced Holistic Sabermetrics Project (EHSP). We are working on developing a trading model for the evaluation of player values which is to be on a different strata of performativity when compared with the current competition. The transfer markets are highly inefficient and establishing the nascent market is an entertaining project although there is still much work to do on the evolution of a suitable business model.
Inevitably, we must move with the opportunities available and the blog must move accordingly. The FIF blog will morph into different things at different times or it might just die. Creative destruction.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Sunday, 9 March 2008
The World's Greatest Competition? Get Real
The World's Greatest Competition is not the FA Cup despite the ludicrous marketing attempts of the FA itself, the BBC and a whole posse of talking heads (particularly those like Lee Dixon who are working on behalf of the bookmaking industry).
Barnsley, Bristol Rovers, Portsmouth, Cardiff, West Bromwich Albion and Middlesbrough - you're having a laugh. This is equivalent to a glorified Johnstone's Paint or LDV Vans Trophy.
It is also totally corrupted.
Last year, as longer term readers will remember, Dietrological made a small country's GDP out of the "fix" of a Manchester United versus Chelsea FA Cup Final at the newly opened Food Mall. This year's version of this minor brand of a tournament has been criminalised to a different template as we'll discuss below.
The magic of the cup used to be a reality back in the days when the then First Division clubs took the tournament seriously and when the FA was the paramount organisation overseeing the English game. Then along came the Murdochratic Premiership and the Champions League and, suddenly, the FA Cup was a distraction, a competition in which to give your youngsters the chance of a run out. Initially only the leading teams disrespected the competition but, by this season, the majority of the Premiership teams have exited this nonsense as soon as possible - think Everton against Oldham or Fulham against Bristol Rovers or Chelsea's reserves yesterday at Barnsley or numerous other examples too boring to quote. The only leading team to take this year's tournament semi-seriously has been Manchester United and yesterday they received their comeuppance for such integrity. Of course, this is the same Manchester United that decided against entering the cup at all a few years back when oodles of cash were available elsewhere so we shouldn't feel too sorry for the Glazer Boys and, yet, the corruption at Old Traffford yesterday IS something that is worthy of comment.
Harry Redknapp, Sky Bet, a whole host of journalists, Dietrological and various other insiders were all aware of this scam prior to the off. All participants in the manipulation were quids in and the sight of Jamie Redknapp squirming around his chair in the Sky studio, being far more concerned with the outcome of "a little earner" than anything related to the actual match was a visible weak point in the corruption. As, of course, was the performance of the Professional Game Match Officials Board's (PGMOB) Martin Atkinson. United were robbed and Atkinson did the robbing. Not giving a penalty for a version of actual bodily harm, giving a penalty to Milan Baros for kicking the United keeper in the head, a thoroughly deserved sending off resulting for the new PGMOB rule of "involuntarily bringing your head into contact with an opponent's foot". Farcical. Its not sympathy for the Manchester United business empire that underpins this moaning but the fact that large numbers of fans were expected to part with their hard earned cash to witness corruption to the benefit of certain bookmakers, some Guardian and Sun journalists together with 'Arry's boys. Twice in one month Old Trafford has now seen such criminality.
The quotes are revealing.
Harold Redknapp: "If it had been a pen, he'd have given it. He gave them everything today". Planet earth, pal...
Carlos Queiroz : "Give the referee a red card". A great idea except that a similarly corrupt PGMOB official would perform to the same hidden agenda...
Ronaldo: "...if the referee doesn't want to give yellow cards or penalties, he cannot protect the skilful players. I am becoming scared to go past people. It is difficult to play football in these circumstances. It is just a joke". Sorry mate, its not a joke, it is a massive corruption. I'd move to Spain asap if I were you...
Sir Fergy: "This game was decided when the Ronaldo penalty was refused... that gave them great confidence to hang on knowing the referee was on their side... Keith Hackett is in a nice comfortable position up in his eyrie and does nothing really. I don't think he makes a contribution to the refereeing performances in this country and I think this needs to be assessed as he is not doing his job properly. That guy will go and referee again next week. No problem. We've seen time after time, his favourites always get the games and I think that is the disappointing factor... The refereeing standards in our country are not as good as in Europe".
Lets examine some of Fergy's points in a more realistic fashion in comparison with the girlie shrieking of Lineker, Dixon, Shearer, Le Tissier, Redknapp, Keys etc who were all so desperate to disguise the corruption and to bolster the minimal integrity left in the World's Greatest Competition.
We are able to prove conclusively that PGMOB officials are actively involved in the corruption of English football. The Premiership uses an excessively small pool of officials and the Dirty Dozen (plus two "reserves") who cover the vast majority of games are virtually all known to have inappropriate linkages with the fragmented cartel that is criminalising the game on behalf of the bookmakers and certain institutional bodies. Keith Hackett is the boss at the PGMOB and he has to take responsibility for the corruption of his employees. We have no evidence that Hackett is directly involved in the corruption although it would take a mathematical probability of some magnitude for the selection of the match officials to fall randomly into such a corrupt format. So, mismanagement at best and outright corruption at worst, either way Hackett is failing in his job and should be sacked immediately.
There is no validity in maintaining such a small pool of match officials apart from it being the most suitable structure for the people corrupting the game. The referees performances simply do not warrant it. For example, UEFA have actively sidelined the PGMOB officials since Platini took over as they are more than aware of the dodgy linkages of the English officials. This external benchmarking backs up Ferguson's latter point and also undermines any validity to maintaining such a small grouping of referees for Premiership and FA Cup matches. Following this weekend's Premiership matches, 272 games will have been completed in the current season and 251 of these games have been refereed by Riley, Webb, Styles, Clattenburg, Foy, Wiley, Dean, Bennett, Halsey, Atkinson, Walton, Dowd, Marriner and Tanner. That's 92% of the games. In comparison, Italy's Serie A has used 31 officials not one of whom has covered 15 matches in the season to date whereas 11 of the PGMOB's Dirty Dozen (+2) have covered at least this number of games.
So, who benefits from this corruption apart from the Premier League, a whole host of European bookmakers and the Murdochracy? Well, Portsmouth for one... Last year, Harold Redknapp was caught on camera by the BBC Panorama programme discussing the feasibility of accepting a bung on a player. This self same individual is also currently awaiting trial as part of the Pompey 5 who are allegedly involved in money laundering and other financial irregularities. Rumours around the game also indicate a high likelihood that the manager who placed £12 million worth of bets on Premiership games in just one season might also allegedly have had the initials HR. Additionally, Portsmouth are run by an arms dealer's son who has an arrest warrant on his head in France for such trading and they are also closely linked to the Moscow betting markets so beloved by the Russian/Israeli club owners. Being careful what we say, it is worth doing some back-of-the-envelope figures on how a bog standard football manager is able to afford a £10 million luxury home on the south coast as well as being part of a property empire that encompasses nearly 1000 houses in south and east London.
An alien might think that, in a reasonable society, sport might punish such entities for the scams perpetrated against the interests of the integrity of the sport. Not so. In a double whammy of some considerable magnitude, Portsmouth have this season been the most favoured team in BOTH the Premiership and the FA Cup. What sort of punishment is that?
Portsmouth, the Premier League, the PGMOB, they are all teflon. There is no assessment of the corruption related to these bodies either within the game or the equally corrupted mainstream media. When The Guardian's Paul Wilson boasts in his match report about winning big on his private bet on Pompey yesterday, what is the reader supposed to feel? Delight that the man has profited from inside information is evidently the expected reaction in the eyes of this shoddy little journalist...
Earlier in the week, Roy Hodgson and Mohamed Al-Fayed demanded and received an audience with Keith Hackett to complain about the corruption against Fulham in the current Premiership season. No team has been as badly treated by the PGMOB officials as have Fulham and, yet, Hackett remained true to form and attempted to justify these machinations. To see whether such a process had any impact, one should check out the continuing corruption against Fulham yesterday when that incredibly slimy and weak individual, Mike Riley, totally mugged Fulham once again. The English deep state is after Al-Fayed on a range of levels for having the audacity to complain about the murder of his son and football is simply one example of this range of dynamics. Incidentally, a leading football agent of my acquaintance has seen evidence that irrefutably backs the conspiratorial nature of this establishment cover up but that is another story for another time. The job's a good'un and Fulham are to be demoted, a fact that is only given greater credence by the statement of Ladbrokes employee Lee Dixon on last night's Match Of The Day programme. When asked by some bonehead whether Fulham will stay up, Dixon replied: "I think they probably will. Just...". The man is a disgrace to god's own city. Incidentally, Dixon also reckons Boro will win the FA Cup - you have been warned...
The biggest losers out of the 2007/08 FA Cup are the FA themselves. No matter how exhilarating we are expected to believe this lower division tournament is, it has been a feature of this year's event that the grounds are half empty, the leading teams are disinterested and the PGMOB match officials have been reading from a hidden agenda. We are all expected to celebrate the triumph of little Barnsley and to be joyous that 'Arry is going to the Food Mall for the first time in his career. Oh my gosh, how exciting is that? Perhaps the mugging of Manchester United has more to do with the FA's opposition to the Premier League's 39th game conspiracy than first meets the eye.
Finally, while we were watching the corruption unfold yesterday, the groundwork for future corruptions was being laid at Gleneagles where the International Football Associations Board finally decided to freeze further trials of the HawkEye goalline technology and to push ahead with experiments to have two extra assistant criminals standing behind each goalline instead. This fake marketing trial has cost the Premier League hundreds of thousands of pounds while Adidas and Cairos Technologies have spent millions on microchipping the ball. All for nothing. In a similar manner that the US elections will be warped by non-open source software in the voting machines, the game of football in this country will continue to be criminalised by the match officials. Of course, simply using the television images is not even on the agenda as authenticity of match outcome is the very last thing on the private agendas of the crooks who are destroying the game.
So, credit to the excellent town of Barnsley and total discredit to virtually everybody else...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Barnsley, Bristol Rovers, Portsmouth, Cardiff, West Bromwich Albion and Middlesbrough - you're having a laugh. This is equivalent to a glorified Johnstone's Paint or LDV Vans Trophy.
It is also totally corrupted.
Last year, as longer term readers will remember, Dietrological made a small country's GDP out of the "fix" of a Manchester United versus Chelsea FA Cup Final at the newly opened Food Mall. This year's version of this minor brand of a tournament has been criminalised to a different template as we'll discuss below.
The magic of the cup used to be a reality back in the days when the then First Division clubs took the tournament seriously and when the FA was the paramount organisation overseeing the English game. Then along came the Murdochratic Premiership and the Champions League and, suddenly, the FA Cup was a distraction, a competition in which to give your youngsters the chance of a run out. Initially only the leading teams disrespected the competition but, by this season, the majority of the Premiership teams have exited this nonsense as soon as possible - think Everton against Oldham or Fulham against Bristol Rovers or Chelsea's reserves yesterday at Barnsley or numerous other examples too boring to quote. The only leading team to take this year's tournament semi-seriously has been Manchester United and yesterday they received their comeuppance for such integrity. Of course, this is the same Manchester United that decided against entering the cup at all a few years back when oodles of cash were available elsewhere so we shouldn't feel too sorry for the Glazer Boys and, yet, the corruption at Old Traffford yesterday IS something that is worthy of comment.
Harry Redknapp, Sky Bet, a whole host of journalists, Dietrological and various other insiders were all aware of this scam prior to the off. All participants in the manipulation were quids in and the sight of Jamie Redknapp squirming around his chair in the Sky studio, being far more concerned with the outcome of "a little earner" than anything related to the actual match was a visible weak point in the corruption. As, of course, was the performance of the Professional Game Match Officials Board's (PGMOB) Martin Atkinson. United were robbed and Atkinson did the robbing. Not giving a penalty for a version of actual bodily harm, giving a penalty to Milan Baros for kicking the United keeper in the head, a thoroughly deserved sending off resulting for the new PGMOB rule of "involuntarily bringing your head into contact with an opponent's foot". Farcical. Its not sympathy for the Manchester United business empire that underpins this moaning but the fact that large numbers of fans were expected to part with their hard earned cash to witness corruption to the benefit of certain bookmakers, some Guardian and Sun journalists together with 'Arry's boys. Twice in one month Old Trafford has now seen such criminality.
The quotes are revealing.
Harold Redknapp: "If it had been a pen, he'd have given it. He gave them everything today". Planet earth, pal...
Carlos Queiroz : "Give the referee a red card". A great idea except that a similarly corrupt PGMOB official would perform to the same hidden agenda...
Ronaldo: "...if the referee doesn't want to give yellow cards or penalties, he cannot protect the skilful players. I am becoming scared to go past people. It is difficult to play football in these circumstances. It is just a joke". Sorry mate, its not a joke, it is a massive corruption. I'd move to Spain asap if I were you...
Sir Fergy: "This game was decided when the Ronaldo penalty was refused... that gave them great confidence to hang on knowing the referee was on their side... Keith Hackett is in a nice comfortable position up in his eyrie and does nothing really. I don't think he makes a contribution to the refereeing performances in this country and I think this needs to be assessed as he is not doing his job properly. That guy will go and referee again next week. No problem. We've seen time after time, his favourites always get the games and I think that is the disappointing factor... The refereeing standards in our country are not as good as in Europe".
Lets examine some of Fergy's points in a more realistic fashion in comparison with the girlie shrieking of Lineker, Dixon, Shearer, Le Tissier, Redknapp, Keys etc who were all so desperate to disguise the corruption and to bolster the minimal integrity left in the World's Greatest Competition.
We are able to prove conclusively that PGMOB officials are actively involved in the corruption of English football. The Premiership uses an excessively small pool of officials and the Dirty Dozen (plus two "reserves") who cover the vast majority of games are virtually all known to have inappropriate linkages with the fragmented cartel that is criminalising the game on behalf of the bookmakers and certain institutional bodies. Keith Hackett is the boss at the PGMOB and he has to take responsibility for the corruption of his employees. We have no evidence that Hackett is directly involved in the corruption although it would take a mathematical probability of some magnitude for the selection of the match officials to fall randomly into such a corrupt format. So, mismanagement at best and outright corruption at worst, either way Hackett is failing in his job and should be sacked immediately.
There is no validity in maintaining such a small pool of match officials apart from it being the most suitable structure for the people corrupting the game. The referees performances simply do not warrant it. For example, UEFA have actively sidelined the PGMOB officials since Platini took over as they are more than aware of the dodgy linkages of the English officials. This external benchmarking backs up Ferguson's latter point and also undermines any validity to maintaining such a small grouping of referees for Premiership and FA Cup matches. Following this weekend's Premiership matches, 272 games will have been completed in the current season and 251 of these games have been refereed by Riley, Webb, Styles, Clattenburg, Foy, Wiley, Dean, Bennett, Halsey, Atkinson, Walton, Dowd, Marriner and Tanner. That's 92% of the games. In comparison, Italy's Serie A has used 31 officials not one of whom has covered 15 matches in the season to date whereas 11 of the PGMOB's Dirty Dozen (+2) have covered at least this number of games.
So, who benefits from this corruption apart from the Premier League, a whole host of European bookmakers and the Murdochracy? Well, Portsmouth for one... Last year, Harold Redknapp was caught on camera by the BBC Panorama programme discussing the feasibility of accepting a bung on a player. This self same individual is also currently awaiting trial as part of the Pompey 5 who are allegedly involved in money laundering and other financial irregularities. Rumours around the game also indicate a high likelihood that the manager who placed £12 million worth of bets on Premiership games in just one season might also allegedly have had the initials HR. Additionally, Portsmouth are run by an arms dealer's son who has an arrest warrant on his head in France for such trading and they are also closely linked to the Moscow betting markets so beloved by the Russian/Israeli club owners. Being careful what we say, it is worth doing some back-of-the-envelope figures on how a bog standard football manager is able to afford a £10 million luxury home on the south coast as well as being part of a property empire that encompasses nearly 1000 houses in south and east London.
An alien might think that, in a reasonable society, sport might punish such entities for the scams perpetrated against the interests of the integrity of the sport. Not so. In a double whammy of some considerable magnitude, Portsmouth have this season been the most favoured team in BOTH the Premiership and the FA Cup. What sort of punishment is that?
Portsmouth, the Premier League, the PGMOB, they are all teflon. There is no assessment of the corruption related to these bodies either within the game or the equally corrupted mainstream media. When The Guardian's Paul Wilson boasts in his match report about winning big on his private bet on Pompey yesterday, what is the reader supposed to feel? Delight that the man has profited from inside information is evidently the expected reaction in the eyes of this shoddy little journalist...
Earlier in the week, Roy Hodgson and Mohamed Al-Fayed demanded and received an audience with Keith Hackett to complain about the corruption against Fulham in the current Premiership season. No team has been as badly treated by the PGMOB officials as have Fulham and, yet, Hackett remained true to form and attempted to justify these machinations. To see whether such a process had any impact, one should check out the continuing corruption against Fulham yesterday when that incredibly slimy and weak individual, Mike Riley, totally mugged Fulham once again. The English deep state is after Al-Fayed on a range of levels for having the audacity to complain about the murder of his son and football is simply one example of this range of dynamics. Incidentally, a leading football agent of my acquaintance has seen evidence that irrefutably backs the conspiratorial nature of this establishment cover up but that is another story for another time. The job's a good'un and Fulham are to be demoted, a fact that is only given greater credence by the statement of Ladbrokes employee Lee Dixon on last night's Match Of The Day programme. When asked by some bonehead whether Fulham will stay up, Dixon replied: "I think they probably will. Just...". The man is a disgrace to god's own city. Incidentally, Dixon also reckons Boro will win the FA Cup - you have been warned...
The biggest losers out of the 2007/08 FA Cup are the FA themselves. No matter how exhilarating we are expected to believe this lower division tournament is, it has been a feature of this year's event that the grounds are half empty, the leading teams are disinterested and the PGMOB match officials have been reading from a hidden agenda. We are all expected to celebrate the triumph of little Barnsley and to be joyous that 'Arry is going to the Food Mall for the first time in his career. Oh my gosh, how exciting is that? Perhaps the mugging of Manchester United has more to do with the FA's opposition to the Premier League's 39th game conspiracy than first meets the eye.
Finally, while we were watching the corruption unfold yesterday, the groundwork for future corruptions was being laid at Gleneagles where the International Football Associations Board finally decided to freeze further trials of the HawkEye goalline technology and to push ahead with experiments to have two extra assistant criminals standing behind each goalline instead. This fake marketing trial has cost the Premier League hundreds of thousands of pounds while Adidas and Cairos Technologies have spent millions on microchipping the ball. All for nothing. In a similar manner that the US elections will be warped by non-open source software in the voting machines, the game of football in this country will continue to be criminalised by the match officials. Of course, simply using the television images is not even on the agenda as authenticity of match outcome is the very last thing on the private agendas of the crooks who are destroying the game.
So, credit to the excellent town of Barnsley and total discredit to virtually everybody else...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Friday, 7 March 2008
A Critique Of Nick Hornby's Defence Of Slavery
Silver spoon merchant, Nick Hornby, has never cut a convincing figure and his books on football and music have elevated the word "overrated" to new heights. Who cares that Oxbridge man supports Arsenal? Is it of any relevance that, during his time at Cambridge University, he used to listen to Bob Marley and The Clash? How dire is that muso-poetry pretentious claptrap that he performs with some fourth tier rock band?
Being privileged, however, the man is able to network with the movers and shakers of what passes for British society which results in his already stretched abilities being granted new grounds on which to underperform. The two-part Channel 4 Dispatches programme, The Fake Trade, is his latest stupidity. The first 60 minutes of this nonsense was aired last Monday evening and we will not be wasting our time with the second half next week.
The privileged young, ungifted and white who explore "how the other half (sic) lives" are frequently provided with a public voice to demonstrate a koshered view of some societal reality or trend. It is far safer for the system to allow Hornby to moan on about Marley, Rastafarianism and racism than it would be to allow too much exposure for the likes of Benjamin Zephaniah, The Last Poets or Gil Scott Heron, to name but three, to perform likewise. The resulting pseudo-analysis might sit comfortably in Guardian-world but is entirely alien in the inner city ghettos. By middle age, of course, these cultural commentators always morph back into what they originally started out as - establishment voices maintaining establishment structures. And this brings us on to the incredibly blinkered Dispatches programme that was both written and directed by Hornby.
The Fake Trade had one purpose - to provide "arguments" against the "perpetrators" of the global counterfeit trade. It utterly fails in this aim due to Hornby's incredibly blinkered view of global realities - Third World counterfeiters = bad; globalised capitalism = good. Full stop.
Baudrillard versus Hornby on an intellectual basis is the equivalent of Barcelona versus Havant and Waterlooville on a football level and so it might seem unfair to batter Hornby's pitiful reasoning with such weight of argument. Yet, if some fool-fool ras-clot insists on defending the indefensible system, Baudrillard is always good for a mash up: "We might agree that the world itself is a perfect crime... it has in itself no motive, no equivalent, no alleged perpetrator so we may imagine that, from the very beginning, we are already in a criminal enterprise". In "The System Of Objects", Baudrillard describes a world in which material needs have given way to codified equivalences between commodities and personal identity. This is the branded consumerist reality that forms the bedrock of shareholder capitalism.
"Every object claims to be functional, just as every regime claims to be democratic" is my joint-favourite Frenchman's overview on the meaninglessness of consumption. But it is not just that we are being sold irrelevant branded objects whose "dysfunctionality... is governed by two parallel sets of determinants: the socio-economic system of production and the psychological system of projection", it is also that the strategies in place to maximise the profitability of this globalised scam create intensely warped and strained hierarchical structures.
The architects of globalisation decided to increase returns to shareholders by outsourcing production to Third World centres where workers rights, environmental standards and quality control ceased to be an expenditure item of any consequence. This obviously produces excessive profits eg a $300 I-Pod sold in the US returns exactly $4 to the Far East where these items are manufactured while Apple pockets a cool $160. And that $4 has to cover the wages, the profits for the outsourced factories and the nuts and bolts required to make the item. $4...
The world's major companies are systemically weak in the strategy department, and outsourcing was originally viewed as a win-win situation for the producers and their shareholders. Not so. If you are going to take the piss out of the owners and workers of the non-regulated factories and workhouses of South East Asia, there are two major issues. Firstly, the quality of the product suffers and, secondly, mimicry leads to the development of a counterfeit industry. Lets take each of these in turn.
I used to wear Merrell trainers and trekking footwear. Comfortable and reliable, these products lasted long enough to be regarded as value for money. Once production was outsourced around Asia, the quality plummeted. Indeed, there were even differences between the shoe sizes dependent on which particular factory had been in charge of the manufacture! Cheaper materials, lack of longevity of use and poor workmanship (why put any extra labour effort into the slavedriver's products?) became the new Merrell reality. The result? I no longer buy Merrell shoes. Easy...
It is the second area of concern that The Fake Trade chose to misrepresent extensively. Arbitrage is a core of any financial system. Traders around the world spend copious amounts of time developing quantitative analytical techniques which allow assets to be bought and sold instantaneously to take advantage of small price discrepancies in different marketplaces. Not only is this a core skill at hedge funds and investment banks but it is also "justified" in that such trading increases the efficiency of the financial system by eradicating "incorrect" prices.
The counterfeiters of the Far East are merely employing a similar strategy. Lets go back to our $300 I-Pod. If it is feasible to manufacture an I-Pod for $4 then a counterfeit I-Pod will be cheaper than this as short cuts may be employed by the manufacturer. By pitching a market price a mere fraction of the branded extortion offered by Apple, the counterfeiters are simply arbitraging the system of supply and demand. Of course, they are also abusing workers in this process (as correctly pointed out by Hornby). But, so are Apple in the first place so to utilise worker's rights as an argument solely against counterfeiting is frivilous and fallacious.
The First World companies were originally "happy" to turn a blind eye to counterfeiting as the extra profits more than offset the losses through product leakage. But mimicry has produced the momentum for many of the world's leading businesses to form a globaliser's association to confront the poor who are simply trying to grab a slice of the action. Backed by government and interpol, these First World bastions of capitalism are hiding behind protectionist patents to avoid any meaningful competition as this is a far preferable route for shareholders than reducing the price of the I-Pod to cut the counterfeiters out of the game. On The Fake Trade, some suit bemoaned that 20% of the cigarettes in Germany are now counterfeit. So what? Its a drug trade and battling for control of addicts is hardly likely to persuade impartial observers as to the authenticity of the globaliser's arguments. Competition is anathema to shareholder capitalism even though proponents of the system claim that such competition is at the core of its "validity" - music industry giants, for example, would rather takeover a new competitor and lose considerable money in the process than allow such an upstart to impinge on "their" territory.
Free markets are selective. They are only "free" for selected participants, not surprisingly these participants are always in the "developed" world. The system sells us products with a built in obsolescence at inflated prices and the model/series dynamic allows us all to define ourselves "uniquely" by the products that we choose/are able to purchase - think mobiles where the "marginal differences" of David Reisman are entirely evident. These products are cheaply and poorly made and the system has to brand these shoddy objects so that invalid and superfluous value may be added to the fundamental inconsequence of the objects. This branding process is "achieved" by advertising and we'll give Baudrillard the final word on the lack of validity of this particular area of corruption: "Advertising in its entirety constitutes a useless and unnecessary universe. It is pure connotation. It contributes nothing to production or to the direct practical application of things, yet it plays an integral part in the system of objects, not merely because it relates to consumption but also because it itself becomes an object to be consumed".
We would like to ask Mr Hornby, which trade is the fake trade?
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Being privileged, however, the man is able to network with the movers and shakers of what passes for British society which results in his already stretched abilities being granted new grounds on which to underperform. The two-part Channel 4 Dispatches programme, The Fake Trade, is his latest stupidity. The first 60 minutes of this nonsense was aired last Monday evening and we will not be wasting our time with the second half next week.
The privileged young, ungifted and white who explore "how the other half (sic) lives" are frequently provided with a public voice to demonstrate a koshered view of some societal reality or trend. It is far safer for the system to allow Hornby to moan on about Marley, Rastafarianism and racism than it would be to allow too much exposure for the likes of Benjamin Zephaniah, The Last Poets or Gil Scott Heron, to name but three, to perform likewise. The resulting pseudo-analysis might sit comfortably in Guardian-world but is entirely alien in the inner city ghettos. By middle age, of course, these cultural commentators always morph back into what they originally started out as - establishment voices maintaining establishment structures. And this brings us on to the incredibly blinkered Dispatches programme that was both written and directed by Hornby.
The Fake Trade had one purpose - to provide "arguments" against the "perpetrators" of the global counterfeit trade. It utterly fails in this aim due to Hornby's incredibly blinkered view of global realities - Third World counterfeiters = bad; globalised capitalism = good. Full stop.
Baudrillard versus Hornby on an intellectual basis is the equivalent of Barcelona versus Havant and Waterlooville on a football level and so it might seem unfair to batter Hornby's pitiful reasoning with such weight of argument. Yet, if some fool-fool ras-clot insists on defending the indefensible system, Baudrillard is always good for a mash up: "We might agree that the world itself is a perfect crime... it has in itself no motive, no equivalent, no alleged perpetrator so we may imagine that, from the very beginning, we are already in a criminal enterprise". In "The System Of Objects", Baudrillard describes a world in which material needs have given way to codified equivalences between commodities and personal identity. This is the branded consumerist reality that forms the bedrock of shareholder capitalism.
"Every object claims to be functional, just as every regime claims to be democratic" is my joint-favourite Frenchman's overview on the meaninglessness of consumption. But it is not just that we are being sold irrelevant branded objects whose "dysfunctionality... is governed by two parallel sets of determinants: the socio-economic system of production and the psychological system of projection", it is also that the strategies in place to maximise the profitability of this globalised scam create intensely warped and strained hierarchical structures.
The architects of globalisation decided to increase returns to shareholders by outsourcing production to Third World centres where workers rights, environmental standards and quality control ceased to be an expenditure item of any consequence. This obviously produces excessive profits eg a $300 I-Pod sold in the US returns exactly $4 to the Far East where these items are manufactured while Apple pockets a cool $160. And that $4 has to cover the wages, the profits for the outsourced factories and the nuts and bolts required to make the item. $4...
The world's major companies are systemically weak in the strategy department, and outsourcing was originally viewed as a win-win situation for the producers and their shareholders. Not so. If you are going to take the piss out of the owners and workers of the non-regulated factories and workhouses of South East Asia, there are two major issues. Firstly, the quality of the product suffers and, secondly, mimicry leads to the development of a counterfeit industry. Lets take each of these in turn.
I used to wear Merrell trainers and trekking footwear. Comfortable and reliable, these products lasted long enough to be regarded as value for money. Once production was outsourced around Asia, the quality plummeted. Indeed, there were even differences between the shoe sizes dependent on which particular factory had been in charge of the manufacture! Cheaper materials, lack of longevity of use and poor workmanship (why put any extra labour effort into the slavedriver's products?) became the new Merrell reality. The result? I no longer buy Merrell shoes. Easy...
It is the second area of concern that The Fake Trade chose to misrepresent extensively. Arbitrage is a core of any financial system. Traders around the world spend copious amounts of time developing quantitative analytical techniques which allow assets to be bought and sold instantaneously to take advantage of small price discrepancies in different marketplaces. Not only is this a core skill at hedge funds and investment banks but it is also "justified" in that such trading increases the efficiency of the financial system by eradicating "incorrect" prices.
The counterfeiters of the Far East are merely employing a similar strategy. Lets go back to our $300 I-Pod. If it is feasible to manufacture an I-Pod for $4 then a counterfeit I-Pod will be cheaper than this as short cuts may be employed by the manufacturer. By pitching a market price a mere fraction of the branded extortion offered by Apple, the counterfeiters are simply arbitraging the system of supply and demand. Of course, they are also abusing workers in this process (as correctly pointed out by Hornby). But, so are Apple in the first place so to utilise worker's rights as an argument solely against counterfeiting is frivilous and fallacious.
The First World companies were originally "happy" to turn a blind eye to counterfeiting as the extra profits more than offset the losses through product leakage. But mimicry has produced the momentum for many of the world's leading businesses to form a globaliser's association to confront the poor who are simply trying to grab a slice of the action. Backed by government and interpol, these First World bastions of capitalism are hiding behind protectionist patents to avoid any meaningful competition as this is a far preferable route for shareholders than reducing the price of the I-Pod to cut the counterfeiters out of the game. On The Fake Trade, some suit bemoaned that 20% of the cigarettes in Germany are now counterfeit. So what? Its a drug trade and battling for control of addicts is hardly likely to persuade impartial observers as to the authenticity of the globaliser's arguments. Competition is anathema to shareholder capitalism even though proponents of the system claim that such competition is at the core of its "validity" - music industry giants, for example, would rather takeover a new competitor and lose considerable money in the process than allow such an upstart to impinge on "their" territory.
Free markets are selective. They are only "free" for selected participants, not surprisingly these participants are always in the "developed" world. The system sells us products with a built in obsolescence at inflated prices and the model/series dynamic allows us all to define ourselves "uniquely" by the products that we choose/are able to purchase - think mobiles where the "marginal differences" of David Reisman are entirely evident. These products are cheaply and poorly made and the system has to brand these shoddy objects so that invalid and superfluous value may be added to the fundamental inconsequence of the objects. This branding process is "achieved" by advertising and we'll give Baudrillard the final word on the lack of validity of this particular area of corruption: "Advertising in its entirety constitutes a useless and unnecessary universe. It is pure connotation. It contributes nothing to production or to the direct practical application of things, yet it plays an integral part in the system of objects, not merely because it relates to consumption but also because it itself becomes an object to be consumed".
We would like to ask Mr Hornby, which trade is the fake trade?
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Tuesday, 4 March 2008
A Howard Webb Of Deceit
When the Three Card Poll pocketed his whistle and sulked off back to Tring, there was an inevitability that the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) would promote someone else to continue the man's projects. Police sergeant Howard Webb was the man on the square, so to speak.
Just as we had a problem with Poll so we do with Sgt Webb - they share many inappropriate attributes - but, whereas Poll was enigmatic in his influence upon match outcomes, Webb conforms to a range of particular templates.
In that some things are more important than football, lets begin with the man's racism. Now it should not be a surprise that somebody employed by an organisation whose core competency is institutional racism is capable of displaying a racist bias in his officiating (the DNA database being jigsawed together by the police on behalf of the deep state currently covers 7% of the population but 40% of Black males). Webb's racism may be subliminal but it exists if you evaluate his refereeing over the last couple of years. Of course, it does not help that Webb has chosen the aesthetics of a BNP-styled sloppy slaphead but it is a disgrace that the PGMOB does not monitor for any racist bias in decision making in the Premiership.
If it was merely Webb's racism that was an issue then it would not be worth much more than a passing comment in a country where racism and xenophobia are the only culture. But Sgt Webb displays other "qualities" too.
Firstly, lets check out Webb's role in the Premiership. Before we go any further, we need to add that we are being very careful about what we reveal about Sgt Webb here and there are several other very salient points that we might have chosen to raise but our lawyers have said "Ohi".
Webb exhibits a very clear north-south bias in his officiating - London teams suffer markedly at the hands of the Yorkshireman with the one exception of West Ham United who Webb appears to have a very close relationship with. It must be something to do with East London's inherent racism, I guess. Now most officials exhibit subtle forms of regional bias but, using our index whereby 100 = total bias in favour and 0 = total bias against, Webb scores 84 for the north and 17 for the midlands and the south (excluding West Ham). These are statistically significant levels of bias.
The PGMOB have decreed that Webb is the new Poll and his selection for 15 live Sky or Setanta games this season, when not one other official has reached double figures, is simply not valid. Last season, our Bum Ref Index indicated that Webb was the second worst official in the Premiership although this season he has "improved" to being the sixth worst referee (mainly through various other officials selecting the "fall from grace" route to professionalism). Whatever, his officiating does not warrant being selected for so many major televised events.
Looking at Webb's last three Premiership outings demonstrates a typical range of impacts. Firstly, he destroyed the Manchester derby and saved the bookmakers a small fortune by allowing them to bag the emotional money. Webb followed this up by mugging Fulham against West Ham (denying them a penalty; allowing the winning goal to be "armed" into the net; sending off Andreasen for objecting to the corruption) and, at the weekend, he had a further impact on the relegation battle by stopping Boro against Reading. We could go back further but time and space issues prevent us from doing so.
Now the tricky linguistics bit... Sgt Webb shows a correlation between his decision making and the requirements of certain members of the fragmented cartel who are destroying the sport of football. That's it. That's all I am allowed to say on that matter...
Tomorrow evening, Sgt Webb takes his truncheon and stun gun to Porto as, bizarrely, UEFA have determined that Webb is a top-tiered official. Since Platini took over, UEFA have rumbled the inappropriate linkages of many of the English referees on the UEFA roster and this has resulted in the peripheralisation of PGMOB officials with regard to both Champions League and UEFA Cup matches. The latter stages of the Champions League are simply a marketing process as the European governing body ensures that the correct outcomes occur in relation to their hidden agenda. To this end, it is critical to use a small grouping of match officials in much the same way as the PGMOB does while strangling the life out of the Premiership. There is a general perception that Western Europe is clean and Eastern Europe is corrupt. Not so. UEFA should pay heed to the last truncated paragraph as it applies to all of Webb's events. Once again, 'nuff said...
Sgt Webb must be an early favourite to get this summer's Euro 2008 Final as the officials from the other major countries have the inconvenience that their nations have qualified. Such a travesty would at least allow the bookmakers some influence over the markets on such a huge turnover event and would go some small way to offsetting their losses resulting from the bookmaker-created English non-qualification in the first place.
Throughout the English game, there is the stench of corruption. Only last week Arsène Wenger stated: "...over the last three years we have been the team that has been fouled the most, we have been the team that have made the least fouls and we have been the team punished more than any other team in the league". While we do not agree totally with all Wenger's stats, his general prognosis is undoubtedly correct. The match officials are simply too powerful when there is so much betting money to be accounted for. Until something is done to change this state of affairs, we are going to be faced with numerous other instances of that smugness which comes from untouchability as was demonstrated by Howard Webb at Old Trafford last month.
Pig sick...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Just as we had a problem with Poll so we do with Sgt Webb - they share many inappropriate attributes - but, whereas Poll was enigmatic in his influence upon match outcomes, Webb conforms to a range of particular templates.
In that some things are more important than football, lets begin with the man's racism. Now it should not be a surprise that somebody employed by an organisation whose core competency is institutional racism is capable of displaying a racist bias in his officiating (the DNA database being jigsawed together by the police on behalf of the deep state currently covers 7% of the population but 40% of Black males). Webb's racism may be subliminal but it exists if you evaluate his refereeing over the last couple of years. Of course, it does not help that Webb has chosen the aesthetics of a BNP-styled sloppy slaphead but it is a disgrace that the PGMOB does not monitor for any racist bias in decision making in the Premiership.
If it was merely Webb's racism that was an issue then it would not be worth much more than a passing comment in a country where racism and xenophobia are the only culture. But Sgt Webb displays other "qualities" too.
Firstly, lets check out Webb's role in the Premiership. Before we go any further, we need to add that we are being very careful about what we reveal about Sgt Webb here and there are several other very salient points that we might have chosen to raise but our lawyers have said "Ohi".
Webb exhibits a very clear north-south bias in his officiating - London teams suffer markedly at the hands of the Yorkshireman with the one exception of West Ham United who Webb appears to have a very close relationship with. It must be something to do with East London's inherent racism, I guess. Now most officials exhibit subtle forms of regional bias but, using our index whereby 100 = total bias in favour and 0 = total bias against, Webb scores 84 for the north and 17 for the midlands and the south (excluding West Ham). These are statistically significant levels of bias.
The PGMOB have decreed that Webb is the new Poll and his selection for 15 live Sky or Setanta games this season, when not one other official has reached double figures, is simply not valid. Last season, our Bum Ref Index indicated that Webb was the second worst official in the Premiership although this season he has "improved" to being the sixth worst referee (mainly through various other officials selecting the "fall from grace" route to professionalism). Whatever, his officiating does not warrant being selected for so many major televised events.
Looking at Webb's last three Premiership outings demonstrates a typical range of impacts. Firstly, he destroyed the Manchester derby and saved the bookmakers a small fortune by allowing them to bag the emotional money. Webb followed this up by mugging Fulham against West Ham (denying them a penalty; allowing the winning goal to be "armed" into the net; sending off Andreasen for objecting to the corruption) and, at the weekend, he had a further impact on the relegation battle by stopping Boro against Reading. We could go back further but time and space issues prevent us from doing so.
Now the tricky linguistics bit... Sgt Webb shows a correlation between his decision making and the requirements of certain members of the fragmented cartel who are destroying the sport of football. That's it. That's all I am allowed to say on that matter...
Tomorrow evening, Sgt Webb takes his truncheon and stun gun to Porto as, bizarrely, UEFA have determined that Webb is a top-tiered official. Since Platini took over, UEFA have rumbled the inappropriate linkages of many of the English referees on the UEFA roster and this has resulted in the peripheralisation of PGMOB officials with regard to both Champions League and UEFA Cup matches. The latter stages of the Champions League are simply a marketing process as the European governing body ensures that the correct outcomes occur in relation to their hidden agenda. To this end, it is critical to use a small grouping of match officials in much the same way as the PGMOB does while strangling the life out of the Premiership. There is a general perception that Western Europe is clean and Eastern Europe is corrupt. Not so. UEFA should pay heed to the last truncated paragraph as it applies to all of Webb's events. Once again, 'nuff said...
Sgt Webb must be an early favourite to get this summer's Euro 2008 Final as the officials from the other major countries have the inconvenience that their nations have qualified. Such a travesty would at least allow the bookmakers some influence over the markets on such a huge turnover event and would go some small way to offsetting their losses resulting from the bookmaker-created English non-qualification in the first place.
Throughout the English game, there is the stench of corruption. Only last week Arsène Wenger stated: "...over the last three years we have been the team that has been fouled the most, we have been the team that have made the least fouls and we have been the team punished more than any other team in the league". While we do not agree totally with all Wenger's stats, his general prognosis is undoubtedly correct. The match officials are simply too powerful when there is so much betting money to be accounted for. Until something is done to change this state of affairs, we are going to be faced with numerous other instances of that smugness which comes from untouchability as was demonstrated by Howard Webb at Old Trafford last month.
Pig sick...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Monday, 3 March 2008
Football - One Massive Global Conspiracy
Football is a closed shop industry and outsiders like ourselves are only invited within these hallowed boundaries as we are able to significantly improve the performativity of aspects of the market sector. From our varied experiences in these consultative roles, it is our estimation that everybody of any stature within the sport of football is aware of the massive corruption in the game. Individual perspectives may be as a perpetrator, as a victim or as an observer but there is a widespread general acceptance that match outcomes are dependent on two key fundamentals - i) the global betting market patterns and ii) the institutional power bases. Both of these anti-democratic and anti-meritocratic templates eventually lead to the same location - the hugely liquid Far East underground betting markets.
Lets face it, we're dealing with a massive cover up here.
If one wishes to do so, one may place a £2.5 million bet on any English Premiership match with an Asian layer and the bet will be regarded as merely routine by one's counterparty. This issue of liquidity is key to the corruption of the sport. Taking this last weekend as an example, we can see that, in a rather low key pre-Champions League window, global liquidity on Premiership matches ranged from around £500 million to approximately £50 million. Major events are now realising up to £1 billion turnover.
Now, making the mendacious assumption that this money has NO impact on the integrity of the Premiership as a sporting brand, it would be reasonable to assume that the mainstream media might, just occasionally, mention that there is all this money sloshing around Asia. After all, if the money and the sport are clean, it would be of no consequence to print the "real" reality. However, none of our traders are able to recall ONE instance of any such exposure by the media. But, of course, neither the money nor the game are clean and the reasonings behind the media's claim that corruption always occurs in lower tiered nations is a paralogy. The media exists not to serve a readership but to impose a blinkered spectacular reality on behalf of the corrupt organs destroying the game. Think Murdochracy...
Dietrological prefer a dialectical approach to assessing our post-modern world but we also strive to expose the corruption as we would prefer to make our livings out of a battle of intellects and strategy rather than an assessment of corrupt mechanisms together with inside information.
To elucidate our point, we'll look at the weekend's Premiership matches. Dietrological had a near-perfect weekend on the English top flight matches. Indeed, we approached the Everton v Portsmouth match with our Platinum client having been advised correctly on all nine previous events (Gold/Silver was 6/6 and Bronze 3/3). Unfortunately, we were unable to achieve the perfect 10 as Pompey, despite being in a state of semi-uproar, are unopposable due to the outrageous amount of bias in their favour from the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) referees and their assistants. We went neutral on the game. Still, nine out of nine active stances should create collective grins around the office but we are merely profiting, at some distance from the core, from an evaluation of the corruption underpinning the self-styled "world's best league".
It would not be in our interests to break these games down by type but every single solution that we provided to clients was based on one or more of the following inputs - inside information, institutional corruption, betting market corruption and the impact of solo rogue operators. Not one event was dependent on the fundamentals to any meaningful degree. All the media chatter about formations, injuries, form, motivation, rumours of change, revenge etc are simply irrelevant. As you only get one life, spending any of it reading such media circus nonsense is clearly something that will be regretted as deathbed time approaches. Just don't do it.
As we have mentioned previously, we would vastly prefer a properly regulated and meritocratic betting marketplace. We are able to profit from integrity or corruption but our love of the game demands that we constantly attempt to expose the rampant corruption which is so studiously ignored by all those talking heads, Murdochmen and public schoolboy journalists.
The fragmented cartel that defines the market structure has multi-layered complexities but certain core cartelised groups are markedly more psychopathic in their business practices than others. In order to rein these criminals in, there needs to be a massive shake-up of the football betting industry. The underground markets need to be recognised and regulated; the European bookmakers need to allow winning accounts and suitable liquidity; profiting from inside information should be made illegal; the game format needs to be altered to prevent referees exercising such inappropriate control on behalf of their paymasters etc etc. Obviously, developing more integrated betting platforms will not eradicate corruption by itself - the international financial markets have such platforms and yet insider trading, the cornering of markets, monopolies, cartels etc etc remain the norm. But an attempt at a regulatory framework would enforce that the corrupt influences would be acting outside the law and would create a more defensive posture from the criminality brigades. Think fox hunting in Britain. When we used to spend our Saturday mornings scrapping with hunt supporters and farm hands, while occasionally preventing a kill, we were always in the "illegal" position - trespass, obstruction, violence was always perceived with a rural bias by the PC Plod's of the shires. Fox hunting is now "banned" although it continues pretty much as before but the major difference is that the law is on the side of the fox now rather than on the side of the squires. This is seen as a first step towards a total wide-ranging ban and the development of regulated football betting markets should be seen in the same way.
Of course, it is not just the bookmakers and their accomplices who corrupt football. The institutions also willingly develop outcomes suitable to the marketing of their brand. FIFA could not allow Uzbekistan into the last World Cup. UEFA must ensure that the Champions League is top heavy with teams from the Big 3 territories and that Euro Finals correlate positively with the current political requirements. The Premier League are working alongside the bookmakers directly in a corrupt double whammy that is surely worth just the occasional column inch out there somewhere. The power ensuing from such degrees of control is absolute - consider Scudamore's self-assessed omnipotence regarding Game 39 or Sepp Blatter's hilarious: "At FIFA, we are like the United Nations, only more powerful". Psycho-idiot...
The power loci in global football are the sporting equivalent of the bonesmen in American society - such organisations and individuals utilise corruption "allowed" by satiric laws. If no effort is made to regulate these power lobbies then the great game of football will finally become the standard capitalist product - there will be the model, the series and, of course, a built in obsolescence. This process is energised by a Baudrillardian "misadventure of the person" and our only fallback position as we watch the demise of the game is the self-consoling one that we all know what we are in the long run.
Some compensation.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Lets face it, we're dealing with a massive cover up here.
If one wishes to do so, one may place a £2.5 million bet on any English Premiership match with an Asian layer and the bet will be regarded as merely routine by one's counterparty. This issue of liquidity is key to the corruption of the sport. Taking this last weekend as an example, we can see that, in a rather low key pre-Champions League window, global liquidity on Premiership matches ranged from around £500 million to approximately £50 million. Major events are now realising up to £1 billion turnover.
Now, making the mendacious assumption that this money has NO impact on the integrity of the Premiership as a sporting brand, it would be reasonable to assume that the mainstream media might, just occasionally, mention that there is all this money sloshing around Asia. After all, if the money and the sport are clean, it would be of no consequence to print the "real" reality. However, none of our traders are able to recall ONE instance of any such exposure by the media. But, of course, neither the money nor the game are clean and the reasonings behind the media's claim that corruption always occurs in lower tiered nations is a paralogy. The media exists not to serve a readership but to impose a blinkered spectacular reality on behalf of the corrupt organs destroying the game. Think Murdochracy...
Dietrological prefer a dialectical approach to assessing our post-modern world but we also strive to expose the corruption as we would prefer to make our livings out of a battle of intellects and strategy rather than an assessment of corrupt mechanisms together with inside information.
To elucidate our point, we'll look at the weekend's Premiership matches. Dietrological had a near-perfect weekend on the English top flight matches. Indeed, we approached the Everton v Portsmouth match with our Platinum client having been advised correctly on all nine previous events (Gold/Silver was 6/6 and Bronze 3/3). Unfortunately, we were unable to achieve the perfect 10 as Pompey, despite being in a state of semi-uproar, are unopposable due to the outrageous amount of bias in their favour from the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) referees and their assistants. We went neutral on the game. Still, nine out of nine active stances should create collective grins around the office but we are merely profiting, at some distance from the core, from an evaluation of the corruption underpinning the self-styled "world's best league".
It would not be in our interests to break these games down by type but every single solution that we provided to clients was based on one or more of the following inputs - inside information, institutional corruption, betting market corruption and the impact of solo rogue operators. Not one event was dependent on the fundamentals to any meaningful degree. All the media chatter about formations, injuries, form, motivation, rumours of change, revenge etc are simply irrelevant. As you only get one life, spending any of it reading such media circus nonsense is clearly something that will be regretted as deathbed time approaches. Just don't do it.
As we have mentioned previously, we would vastly prefer a properly regulated and meritocratic betting marketplace. We are able to profit from integrity or corruption but our love of the game demands that we constantly attempt to expose the rampant corruption which is so studiously ignored by all those talking heads, Murdochmen and public schoolboy journalists.
The fragmented cartel that defines the market structure has multi-layered complexities but certain core cartelised groups are markedly more psychopathic in their business practices than others. In order to rein these criminals in, there needs to be a massive shake-up of the football betting industry. The underground markets need to be recognised and regulated; the European bookmakers need to allow winning accounts and suitable liquidity; profiting from inside information should be made illegal; the game format needs to be altered to prevent referees exercising such inappropriate control on behalf of their paymasters etc etc. Obviously, developing more integrated betting platforms will not eradicate corruption by itself - the international financial markets have such platforms and yet insider trading, the cornering of markets, monopolies, cartels etc etc remain the norm. But an attempt at a regulatory framework would enforce that the corrupt influences would be acting outside the law and would create a more defensive posture from the criminality brigades. Think fox hunting in Britain. When we used to spend our Saturday mornings scrapping with hunt supporters and farm hands, while occasionally preventing a kill, we were always in the "illegal" position - trespass, obstruction, violence was always perceived with a rural bias by the PC Plod's of the shires. Fox hunting is now "banned" although it continues pretty much as before but the major difference is that the law is on the side of the fox now rather than on the side of the squires. This is seen as a first step towards a total wide-ranging ban and the development of regulated football betting markets should be seen in the same way.
Of course, it is not just the bookmakers and their accomplices who corrupt football. The institutions also willingly develop outcomes suitable to the marketing of their brand. FIFA could not allow Uzbekistan into the last World Cup. UEFA must ensure that the Champions League is top heavy with teams from the Big 3 territories and that Euro Finals correlate positively with the current political requirements. The Premier League are working alongside the bookmakers directly in a corrupt double whammy that is surely worth just the occasional column inch out there somewhere. The power ensuing from such degrees of control is absolute - consider Scudamore's self-assessed omnipotence regarding Game 39 or Sepp Blatter's hilarious: "At FIFA, we are like the United Nations, only more powerful". Psycho-idiot...
The power loci in global football are the sporting equivalent of the bonesmen in American society - such organisations and individuals utilise corruption "allowed" by satiric laws. If no effort is made to regulate these power lobbies then the great game of football will finally become the standard capitalist product - there will be the model, the series and, of course, a built in obsolescence. This process is energised by a Baudrillardian "misadventure of the person" and our only fallback position as we watch the demise of the game is the self-consoling one that we all know what we are in the long run.
Some compensation.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
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