"A history without desire, without passion, without tension, without real events, where the problem is no longer one of changing life, which was the maximal utopia, but of surviving, which is the minimal utopia".
"This disproportion between the human brain and the specific task of the species is a glaring one in the immense majority of our activities (gambling on horses, jogging, TV, not to mention 'sleaze' and politics)".
"... those hyperbrains glued to their computers which, though already considerably underused, diminish themselves even more by having a machine function in their stead".
The Illusion; The Self-Legitimation of Reality; The Self-Legitimation of Knowledge.
The Silly Season was invented for Baudrillard; the absence of any Reality forces a compliant media to focus on waves of Illusion, Hyperreality and Neoreality in order that our conversational agendas are positively correlated with the system's hidden agendas.
And this post is proof that the self-legitimation process works. We are engaging in their Illusion, albeit from a postmodern perspective.
So, Deloitte-Touche have produced their Annual Rich List for World Soccer. For 17 years, this nonsense has been launched and lauded by the media. It is virtually valueless. Why so?
Out of a whole host of reasons, we'd like to focus on just three. And these three areas relate, respectively, to the Baudrillard statements at the top of this post.
* The Deloitte-Touche figures only provide a thin slice of Reality. Far too much of the financial activity in Global Soccer never reaches anywhere near the balance sheets and profit and loss columns of Accountancy World. Proprietary gambling by clubs, the under-the-table payments lubricating the transfer markets, the black-market-economy relating to the buying off of match officials via kickbacks, bribes and/or coercion, illicit capital flows between various power loci within the industry, the offshore financial centres, the money laundering and tax evasion, the perks of a non-regulated trading environment across the board - none of these exogenous major parameters are included in the Deloitte-Touche "analysis". This renders their document worse than worthless - just because you are monitoring the weather, doesn't mean that you comprehend the changes in the climate.
* By feeding irrelevancies into their autistic model, the accountants have produced tabloid research of the lowest degree.
Allegedly, Premiership revenues exceeded £1.5 billion ($3 billion) for the first time in season 2006/07.
Some Premiership matches are liquid to the tune of £1 billion on the Asian Underground Betting Markets.
Total annual revenue = £1.5 bn. Total betting on one match =£1.0 bn.
This next season, the Illusion will ignore the Hyperreality whereby the global betting turnover on one Premiership game will be the equivalent to the total declared annual revenues of the entire Premier League. How Illusory do they wish to be?
* Not content with seeing a very small section of a very big picture, the number-crunchers, those "hyperbrains" with their quantitative "models", do what they do best - they press some buttons that allow a machine to think on their behalf. Illogical Inputs lead to even more Illogical Outputs - Rubbish In, Rubbish Out. So, Deloitte-Touche tell us that all 20 Premiership teams are in the Global Top Fifty. The report also speaks out in support of hyper-owners, saying it was confident that the Premier League's new foreign owners, such as former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, will have a positive effect on the game. The study pointed to the fact that the 2008 Champions League finalists Chelsea and Manchester United both have foreign owners. And Al Capone was fairly successful for a while but that does not make the business model valid.
The Psychopathic will get The Prizes.
"The improvement in cost control which would demonstrate a normal business culture of maximising profitability does not appear to be happening at Premier League clubs" - Dan Jones of Deloitte-Touche.
"The maximisation in illegal revenue streams which would demonstrate a normal business culture of maximising profitability most definitely appears to be happening at Premiership clubs" - Football Is Fixed.
We warned on Monday to expect "backstabbings" at Stamford Bridge and Cuddly Kenyon did not let us down. "Half an hour before Chelsea made the announcement about Grant officially known, I was called by Kenyon. He informed me that the departure of Grant will not affect me" - Henk Ten Cate. Five days later, Kenyon, always his own man, sacked him.
Such dysfunctionality is replicated at the FA. Three times last year, Jack Warner, the controversialist FIFA man at CONCACAF, contacted Geoff Thompson from the FA to request a visit from England to help celebrate Trinidad & Tobago Football's centenary. Three times he was rebuffed.
Warner lost the plot, a response which is rare when he is in close proximity to a financial pot, and erupted: "Nobody in Europe likes England [true]. England - who invented the sport - has never had any impact on world football. England, at no time, has had the love and support of Europe. For Europe, England is an irritant [true again]. There are moves to give it [the 2018 World Cup] to England. I must fight that".
Then, in came European Consultancy Network (ECN) and the world became a different place.
You are going to be hearing a lot about ECN in the next decade. ECN is FIFA's and Sepp Blatter's way of gaining a slice of all of the action for the inner sanctum of their coterie of non-meritocratically elected staff. Markus Ziegler and Peter Hargitay are the FIFA men behind ECN and they will be advising the English FA on which pockets have to be stuffed in order to land the hosting rights to the tournament. Top of the greasing list was Jack Warner. Thompson gets back in contact, Warner clarifies his comments, the match gets the go-ahead, no mention is made by the FA, even off the record, of the 2018 World Cup Bid while one has to assume that Jack has got his fingers in the till, again.
Wow. An ethical entity?
An Autocrat's All Star XI against England Reserves so that highly paid consultants might bribe the three CONCACAF representatives to support the English World Cup Bid, OR, a celebration of the T&T Centenary featuring the founding nation of modern football?
Or, for comparison, check out last night's bookmaker-controlled Friendly between Eire and Colombia in London with Mark Clattenburg refereeing. Inevitably, it became a betting event. What happened to the ethic of referee neutrality in international matches?
And ethics bring us to the final port of call on today's version of our serial moaning-on-and-on...
Yesterday, we satirised the BBC's "Who Will You Support?" promotion in an incredibly witty and, some might say, ironic fashion. Today, we have heard about "Who Should I Cheer For?" which is an ethical take on the Euro 2008 competition.
Quoting Amin Alkhatib: "With no British team qualifying for Euro 2008, many football fans are asking: who should I cheer for? The World Development Movement has developed an ethical ranking website that may help football fans to answer just that question.
"At www.whoshouldicheerfor.com globally conscious football fans can find out how well each country performs on a range of ethical indicators. So if you want to find out which country is doing the most to protect the environment or which spends the most on aid or the military, www.whoshouldicheerfor.com could be just the website you’re looking for.
"The criteria include aid spending, carbon emissions, military spending and corruption... England’s ranking, if they had qualified, would have been second to last".
Oh my gosh, who would win if goals were given for the banning of cluster bombs and the closing of outdated nuclear reactors? Lets check out how Euro 2008 would progress.
GROUP A
1. Switzerland; 2. Portugal; 3. Czech Republic; 4. Turkey.
GROUP B
1. Austria; 2. Croatia; 3. Germany; 4. Poland.
GROUP C
1. Romania; 2. France; 3. Netherlands; 4. Italy.
GROUP D
1. Sweden; 2. Spain; 3. Greece; 4. Russia.
QUARTER FINALS
Switzerland - CROATIA
AUSTRIA - Portugal
ROMANIA - Spain
SWEDEN - France
SEMI FINALS
AUSTRIA - Croatia
Romania - SWEDEN
FINAL
Austria - SWEDEN.
So, there you have it. Sweden should win it. It is interesting that the only nation regarded as less ethical than England is Russia, firmly placed in 16th position. And it was that self-same Russia that we focused on as a wild card bet for this summer's tournament in our post yesterday.
A Spectacular Illusion in total negative correlation with an Ethical Illusion.
Although, how Austria got to the Final when they possess Jörg Haider and a propensity for child abuse, we're not sure. The World Development Movement doesn't measure degrees of autocracy/fascism, nor does it rank child poverty/abuse. Perhaps a more exacting and exact version of the Ethical Table might be produced including these parameters and others such as sexism, unemployment, speciesism etc.
However, most probably, Sweden would still win and England and Russia would still occupy the lowest two positions...
For some reason, England is proving to be a particular culture shock on this visit. Everything is just so tacky and wacky... The pensions industry is fretting that people are cancelling pension provision in order to be able to afford to live now - an entirely rational economic decision. The pensions sector simply hasn't factored in the Reality that there is a mass defection from their games of fear and, increasingly, more and more people neither see retirement as a necessity nor an option.
Work, with a suitable Work/Life Balance, until you drop. If it gets really shit then take a Hegesian route away from an undignified end to one's life. No Fear. No Cost. Simple.
The weird bubble of yummy mummy pseudo-ethical reality is also a major reactionary force in all locations which base their culture on Islington. Yoga teachers are swapping their skills with plumbers without any money changing hands as the yummy's (of both genders) rediscover community, and people are staying in one another's homes as a vacational strategy as the yummy's rediscover friendship. Alienated by their capitulation to a system, whose sole purpose is to maximise the economic input-output ratio, these masses are now rediscovering a more social, ethical and environmental way of living.
The really weird thing is that all these yummy's think that they represent The Awakening. Not so. For thirty years while these yummy's have been grabbing the fruits of an invalid and vicious autocratic system in order to line their existences with plundered gold, to the detriment of all others crushed by this pyramid selling scheme, there have been others who warned of the consequences of unfettered shareholder capitalism while, in parallel, rejecting the consumerist, share-buying and property-owning route to pseudo-wealth. The yummy's took the bait and are now lecturing us on the error of our ways, in their tut-tutting, reactionary and elitist fashion.
It is not known if there are (m)any yummy's reading this blog, but just in case any have slipped through the net, we are finishing today with a joke that must be remembered for all future altercations with this new-moral-army. Offence is the best form of Defence.
Q: What were the first words uttered by Alice Fritzl on being released from the Austrian cellar after 24 years of being incarcerated and sexually abused by her father?
A: "haben Manchester City alles schon gewonnen?" ("Have Manchester City won anything yet?").
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Friday, 30 May 2008
Wednesday, 28 May 2008
Police And Thieves On The Street... Oh Yeah
Today is a Big Day.
After three-quarters of a century where the inventory of British racecourses has been steadily and uninterruptedly declining in numbers, today sees the formal opening of the first new racetrack since prior to World War II. Which, as we are now on to World War IV, is a pretty long time ago.
Great Leighs in North Essex is this new venue. Originally costed at £5 million ($10 million) with an opening date of 2004, Great Leighs has come in greatly overpriced at £40 million, a mere four years behind schedule. It must have been a private finance initiative (PFI) project.
So, what have we been offered in return for our patience. Well, the bookmakers have got another result-randomising all-weather track that allows 12 months per year racing. This positive news for the layers is equivalently negative for the punters. And, for the very same reasons...
"Only in Essex can this much happen in one place" claims the Great Leighs website.
"If the thrill of racing is not enough [it isn't], Great Leighs means entertainment... You will not need to leave Essex to enjoy Euro 2008". What are they on about?
"The two storey grandstand will be the place to be in Essex" - What? THE place? Really?
Already behind schedule in a Brownian economy, today's Big Day might have to be cancelled too. A service road for official vehicles, including ambulances, must be completed by 09:00 BST or the British Horseracing Authority will stop the meeting. The Real opening meetings have already taken place in April as the bookies couldn't wait to get their grubby hands on the cash. No spectators were allowed to attend the Real opening as, if anybody had suffered a heart attack after losing a big bet in a fixed race, the ambulance would not be able to rush the patient to hospital. Potentially, this is a loss of future revenues - death must be averted.
At least eating is safe in Bernard Matthews Land. "Food isn't a Gamble at Great Leighs" boasts the racecourse promo. This reveals too much of the advertisers psychology - we were not actually thinking that food would be a "Gamble" (their capital letter, not mine) but thank you for drawing our attention to it. Poultry eaters should check where their decaying flesh is sourced; salad eaters should check where their greens are chopped.
Its like those daytime tv ads in Britain, seeking out unfortunate proles who have suffered some accident or other - you know the sort of thing, always something semi-hilarious like a woman slipping on a wet floor or a bloke falling off a ladder. "If this has happened to you, contact our team of Real solicitors..." - like the professional advice was originally provided by a call centre, or the cleaner, or whoever...
Britain is always behind the US in innovation as innovation in Britain simply represents the copying of the most psychopathic business models recently invented in the US.
This is our Special Relationship.
Already, Great Leighs would not have been built in the Land of the Free, where the new Big Thing is Racinos. Combining the twin spectacular society corruptions of horseracing and casinos, these paradises of entertainment are the new way for the Fat to address their obesity issues via a creative strategy of asset reduction, which eventually leads to food intake reduction. Hence = taking control of their lives. This will be in the marketing blurb somewhere.
Britain does not always need to be reactive. Think proactively psychopathic, and innovation, or at least innovation as measured by the shareholder capitalist system, is the outcome. On this level, we would like to suggest Foothound - a combination of the virtually identical "sports" of football and greyhound racing, where the pitch is surrounded by the track and a race is run every time the ball goes out of play. In fact, build a Foothound stadium using the PFI, takeover an ethical brand, say, FC United of Manchester and bob's your uncle. Profits flow in from the productive mix of pseudo-sport, gambling and television.
It must be serious because it is on Sky.
It cannot be serious because it is on Sky.
In areas like gambling, where Britain does behave proactively (and then some...), the island state demonstrates a clearly definable edge in the market. Although one might struggle to find any references to such things in the mainstream media, the takeover of English football by the gambling sector is the prime structural dynamic underpinning the "sport" at the moment. We have the Pompey 9 (including Harry Redknapp, Milan Mandaric and Willie McKay), we have top notch managers with tens of millions of pounds squirrelled safely away from prying eyes, we have Portsmouth being run by an arms dealer with a French arrest warrant on his head, we have Chelsea purchasing semi-glory via kickbacks, we have the England manager speaking in English when his time might have been better spent defending himself of tax fraud allegations in Italy, we have Thaksin Shinawatra as a fit-and-proper-person, we have Alisher Usmanov who has never had anything whatsoever to do with the heroin distribution trade, we have West Ham United buying Premiership survival, we have manufactured and entirely fake finales to fictitious branded hyperrealities.
Mark Spragg, the excellently named lawyer for Harry Redknapp, said following our 'Arry's successful complaint against the police (only successful in a spectacular sense as the the response of the police was to question Redknapp again hours after the hearing): "...its very rare that people take the police on and complain about it [search without warrant] as most people don't have the guts to do it, or they think the police can do whatever they like. Obviously, more people should do. Otherwise they're behaving like a police state".
Police and Thieves... The Pompey Nine and the Tapas Seven - these marketable entities suit the comic strip realities that the media alludes to.
Meanwhile, not content with the shenanigans over the Luzhniki pitch for the Champions League Final nor the officiating of the same event, Slovakia has elbowed its way to the Reuters Breaking News site again when the Slovakian Justice Minister called its Special Anti-Corruption Unit "a fascist institution". Manned by highly paid security-vetted judges, this anti-corruption unit bears no resemblance to Quest nor to the City of London police inquiry. And, that would be in any way, whatsoever...
Ticket prices for next year's brand of fake footie are, on average, 7.2% higher in the Premiership with Portsmouth cashing in on their bribery-based success with a top notch 17.5% increase. Interestingly, Newcastle, who haven't released their season ticket prices yet due to Mike Ashley's complicated financial situation, are intending to reduce prices in some sections of the ground and are introducing "singing sections" to try and create some atmosphere. We would suggest further areas being set aside for "moaning", areas for the supportive self-harmers who do the work of the visiting team via their incessant projections onto the field of play.
Chelsea are not increasing their prices at all - extortionate remains extortionate. Money appears to be a minimal object, however, although even the richest have their limits. The amount of kickbacks necessary required to remain competitive made the Avram Grant package (and the Mourinho walkout) a very expensive collection of outgoings. New manager? We would say that it will not be Mourinho or Rijkaard. They could do worse than to choose Frank Arneson... no, they couldn't, that was a joke. There is nobody worse than Frank Arneson...
And, as I write, I am hearing that Great Leighs has passed the inspection - horseracing likes inspections as it suits both their collective psychology and the necessity to find as many fatuous jobs as possible for establishment types - which is truly marvelous. We'll be counting down the hours to the 2:30 Lookers Land Rover Handicap over 5 furlongs where we think there is likely to be a lot of Irish money around. Lord Of The Reins, Almaty Express or Silver Prelude look the likeliest to us but its all-weather, so its a lottery. It can only be a matter of time before these animals are expected to be running in glue from their own hooves.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
After three-quarters of a century where the inventory of British racecourses has been steadily and uninterruptedly declining in numbers, today sees the formal opening of the first new racetrack since prior to World War II. Which, as we are now on to World War IV, is a pretty long time ago.
Great Leighs in North Essex is this new venue. Originally costed at £5 million ($10 million) with an opening date of 2004, Great Leighs has come in greatly overpriced at £40 million, a mere four years behind schedule. It must have been a private finance initiative (PFI) project.
So, what have we been offered in return for our patience. Well, the bookmakers have got another result-randomising all-weather track that allows 12 months per year racing. This positive news for the layers is equivalently negative for the punters. And, for the very same reasons...
"Only in Essex can this much happen in one place" claims the Great Leighs website.
"If the thrill of racing is not enough [it isn't], Great Leighs means entertainment... You will not need to leave Essex to enjoy Euro 2008". What are they on about?
"The two storey grandstand will be the place to be in Essex" - What? THE place? Really?
Already behind schedule in a Brownian economy, today's Big Day might have to be cancelled too. A service road for official vehicles, including ambulances, must be completed by 09:00 BST or the British Horseracing Authority will stop the meeting. The Real opening meetings have already taken place in April as the bookies couldn't wait to get their grubby hands on the cash. No spectators were allowed to attend the Real opening as, if anybody had suffered a heart attack after losing a big bet in a fixed race, the ambulance would not be able to rush the patient to hospital. Potentially, this is a loss of future revenues - death must be averted.
At least eating is safe in Bernard Matthews Land. "Food isn't a Gamble at Great Leighs" boasts the racecourse promo. This reveals too much of the advertisers psychology - we were not actually thinking that food would be a "Gamble" (their capital letter, not mine) but thank you for drawing our attention to it. Poultry eaters should check where their decaying flesh is sourced; salad eaters should check where their greens are chopped.
Its like those daytime tv ads in Britain, seeking out unfortunate proles who have suffered some accident or other - you know the sort of thing, always something semi-hilarious like a woman slipping on a wet floor or a bloke falling off a ladder. "If this has happened to you, contact our team of Real solicitors..." - like the professional advice was originally provided by a call centre, or the cleaner, or whoever...
Britain is always behind the US in innovation as innovation in Britain simply represents the copying of the most psychopathic business models recently invented in the US.
This is our Special Relationship.
Already, Great Leighs would not have been built in the Land of the Free, where the new Big Thing is Racinos. Combining the twin spectacular society corruptions of horseracing and casinos, these paradises of entertainment are the new way for the Fat to address their obesity issues via a creative strategy of asset reduction, which eventually leads to food intake reduction. Hence = taking control of their lives. This will be in the marketing blurb somewhere.
Britain does not always need to be reactive. Think proactively psychopathic, and innovation, or at least innovation as measured by the shareholder capitalist system, is the outcome. On this level, we would like to suggest Foothound - a combination of the virtually identical "sports" of football and greyhound racing, where the pitch is surrounded by the track and a race is run every time the ball goes out of play. In fact, build a Foothound stadium using the PFI, takeover an ethical brand, say, FC United of Manchester and bob's your uncle. Profits flow in from the productive mix of pseudo-sport, gambling and television.
It must be serious because it is on Sky.
It cannot be serious because it is on Sky.
In areas like gambling, where Britain does behave proactively (and then some...), the island state demonstrates a clearly definable edge in the market. Although one might struggle to find any references to such things in the mainstream media, the takeover of English football by the gambling sector is the prime structural dynamic underpinning the "sport" at the moment. We have the Pompey 9 (including Harry Redknapp, Milan Mandaric and Willie McKay), we have top notch managers with tens of millions of pounds squirrelled safely away from prying eyes, we have Portsmouth being run by an arms dealer with a French arrest warrant on his head, we have Chelsea purchasing semi-glory via kickbacks, we have the England manager speaking in English when his time might have been better spent defending himself of tax fraud allegations in Italy, we have Thaksin Shinawatra as a fit-and-proper-person, we have Alisher Usmanov who has never had anything whatsoever to do with the heroin distribution trade, we have West Ham United buying Premiership survival, we have manufactured and entirely fake finales to fictitious branded hyperrealities.
Mark Spragg, the excellently named lawyer for Harry Redknapp, said following our 'Arry's successful complaint against the police (only successful in a spectacular sense as the the response of the police was to question Redknapp again hours after the hearing): "...its very rare that people take the police on and complain about it [search without warrant] as most people don't have the guts to do it, or they think the police can do whatever they like. Obviously, more people should do. Otherwise they're behaving like a police state".
Police and Thieves... The Pompey Nine and the Tapas Seven - these marketable entities suit the comic strip realities that the media alludes to.
Meanwhile, not content with the shenanigans over the Luzhniki pitch for the Champions League Final nor the officiating of the same event, Slovakia has elbowed its way to the Reuters Breaking News site again when the Slovakian Justice Minister called its Special Anti-Corruption Unit "a fascist institution". Manned by highly paid security-vetted judges, this anti-corruption unit bears no resemblance to Quest nor to the City of London police inquiry. And, that would be in any way, whatsoever...
Ticket prices for next year's brand of fake footie are, on average, 7.2% higher in the Premiership with Portsmouth cashing in on their bribery-based success with a top notch 17.5% increase. Interestingly, Newcastle, who haven't released their season ticket prices yet due to Mike Ashley's complicated financial situation, are intending to reduce prices in some sections of the ground and are introducing "singing sections" to try and create some atmosphere. We would suggest further areas being set aside for "moaning", areas for the supportive self-harmers who do the work of the visiting team via their incessant projections onto the field of play.
Chelsea are not increasing their prices at all - extortionate remains extortionate. Money appears to be a minimal object, however, although even the richest have their limits. The amount of kickbacks necessary required to remain competitive made the Avram Grant package (and the Mourinho walkout) a very expensive collection of outgoings. New manager? We would say that it will not be Mourinho or Rijkaard. They could do worse than to choose Frank Arneson... no, they couldn't, that was a joke. There is nobody worse than Frank Arneson...
And, as I write, I am hearing that Great Leighs has passed the inspection - horseracing likes inspections as it suits both their collective psychology and the necessity to find as many fatuous jobs as possible for establishment types - which is truly marvelous. We'll be counting down the hours to the 2:30 Lookers Land Rover Handicap over 5 furlongs where we think there is likely to be a lot of Irish money around. Lord Of The Reins, Almaty Express or Silver Prelude look the likeliest to us but its all-weather, so its a lottery. It can only be a matter of time before these animals are expected to be running in glue from their own hooves.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Monday, 26 May 2008
"I'm Not A Fighter, I'm A Lover"
"Not the open revolt of a few, but the immense, latent defection, the endemic, masked resistance of a silent majority, but one nostalgic for the spoken word and for violence. Something in all men profoundly rejoices in seeing a car burn" - Jean Baudrillard.
"I see nothing intrinsically wrong with robbing a bank" - Yiorgios M.
Sitting in your conservatories and lounges, safely cocooned in your false placebos of optimism as to the state of your world and its sustainability, there is a wide continuum of economic and eco-systemic reasons for you not to feel so cheerful.
The mainstream media in Britain and the US have played a structural part in the development of a bubble economy, an economy that is systemically unstable. The housing markets have not just recently become distorted markets but have been so for half a decade. This increasing Unreality between Market Price and True Value forms the hyped-up bases of all bubbles.
It is in the media's interests to delay the onset of any recessionary pressures, think advertising, and, even when the recession is the active economic template, the governments and the media faithfully release "official figures" showing that all is fine and well in Milton Friedmanland. The arbitrariness of these data in relation to the Fiscal Reality is neatly given perspective by the close correlation between the requirements of big business and, by association, the government and the positivity-slant of the basic data in the media.
So, the US is in recession and, yet, the comedians insist on utilising phrases like "on the verge of a potential recession" - enough implied doubt to further defer the inevitable. Preferably until after November's election, of course. If the recession was announced as Real, there might even be a chance that a nation's inherent racism might not prevent a Black man getting into the White House.
Not only is America already in recession but there is turbulence throughout the global financial system. All that stuff and nonsense from the new paradigmists about long-term sustainable growth stretching out into infinity is already to be seen as hilariously misguided - the "dismal science" generally refers to the quality of the research rather than the moroseness of the subject matter.
Continue involving yourselves in their Tyrannies of Fun but consider the reasons to be uncheerful while you do so. To act otherwise might be construed as delusional behaviour, and we wouldn't want that now, would we?
* Analysts at Goldman Sachs reckon Black Gold will reach $200 and, with a $10 rise in the last week alone, crude is getting cruder. Of course, government economists like to leave things like fuel prices out of inflation assessments as they prefer to focus on a core structural determinant of the statistic. Unfortunately, your wallets and bank balances do not behave similarly.
* The same argument would have to be included in the assessment of food prices which is already leading to a resurgence in inflation in the emerging economies and Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs). With the systemic backdrop of climate change, we are expected to believe that the global great and the global good have undertaken joined-up thinking with regard to the impacts of man's adjustment of our climatic conditions. Food was not grown so that biofuels might be. Did nobody out of these great and these good actually consider the impact of this? Environmentalists pointed out the inevitability of this rationale immediately but a concerted media campaign allowed an absolute killing to be made by the huge industrialised hyper-agriculture of the American plains. And killing is the outcome at the bottom of the pyramid too as starvation is the only gift of shareholder capitalism.
* The banking crisis is, by no means, over. The Economist: "Complete apocalypse for banks MAY have been avoided". But: "Credit growth is sluggish and defaults are set to rise. Securitisation is in the doldrums...". Banking stocks are still overvalued and there is more correction to come. RBC Capital Markets suggest that around 150 banks will go bust in the next 2/3 years. Good job we are not in a recession... Banks deserve to be robbed if only to offset the robbing process in the opposite direction. While rifling your pockets, banks desire our affections - Garanti Bank's "Banking from the Heart" or Isbank's "Trust Us" campaigns - but they simply gamble with your money. Fortunately for depositors and banks, this risk game is now, in the shadow of Bear Stearns and Northern Rock, evidently backed by government guarantee. The moral hazard introduced into the financial system by this desperate attempt to sustain the unsustainable will only produce a more cataclysmic downturn when such dysfunctional pressures break out once again.
* The Third World are in for a particularly tough time. Apart from food price inflation, HIV/AIDs, the robbery of globalised commodity thieves and the strictures of the IMF, US money flow is drying up apart from pet projects that are seen as strategically, ie militarily, key. Furthermore free trade is a one-directional abuse of a system and even The Economist can't help but utter: "Economists have struggled to find a strong link between freer capital flows and speedier economic development".
* If any doubt exists as to whether the media and the advertisers cosy up to mutual benefit, the more open world of India offers a revealing media unmyth. The Mumbai Times, in a bid to increase advertising revenue, printed: "Money cannot buy our integrity. Make the headlines tomorrow by paying for it". Such public appeals are not necessary, of course, in the masonic world of NewsCorp. It does not matter where you live, if the powers-that-be wish for you to be fed a certain line, a certain line is what you will be fed.
* Lets revisit the non-existent recession again... Donald Kohn (A Fed Bank governor) recently stated: "In informal terms, we are uncertain about where the economy has been, where it is now and where it is going". Mr Kohn helps to make the decisions on interest rates and guaranteeing banking deposits to avoid the financial system unravelling. But what about the feedback loops? The economy is in recession and the global nature of this recession will rapidly spread. Tax revenues across the world will plummet. Governments will be tied to arrangements with the modern day robber barons to underwrite the risk involved in their games of speculative capital. Such speculative capital will become more risky in a more volatile trading environment. The weak will succomb. Across the board...
* Unbelievably, there are still some delusionals who believe that the Housing Crisis is a purely American affair and that the bubbles in Britain, Ireland and Spain, among many other countries, are, in some way, sustainable. Of course, when your own money is wrapped up in the maintenance of an Illusion, delusion might be a tempting psychology to "maintain" the value of your shrewd investment.
Try getting an evaluation of your property in Cloud Cuckoo Land, knock off 20% and see if you can sell it. Comprendez...?
Football is entirely unsustainable too.
It will forever remain as a Product but not as a Sport.
There were four feasible holistic scenarios to this year's Champions League Final and one prevailed and, yet, each potential scenario was dependent on a corruption. In what way is that a sport? Like mainstream shareholder capitalism, the Reality has been converted into a Gambling Illusion. This is an environment heavily skewed in favour of Insider's and the Self-Elective who are able to deal away the existences of the global poor/football fan on the roll of a speculative dice.
Abramovich has sacked Grant. Mourinho offers about Grant: "Maybe, in the philosophy of a loser, this was a great season". Abramovich bought Mourinho a £250,000 Ferrari following the League Cup Final defeat to Tottenham. Our contacts tell us that the atmosphere internally at Chelsea is rancid. "There are cliques and rumours of backstabbings that prevent any hope of creating an efficient operation". If Abramovich hadn't established such a psychopathic environment, they wouldn't have had to buy so many games. Interestingly, there is no knowledge within the Chelsea empire as to whether these "loans for inducements" are an additional part of the club's debt to the oligarch.
So, United have won and who gains? The fans? No. Either fleeced for a mini-vacation or denied a home-coming parade. With an increase in season ticket prices on the horizon, the fans have only gained in a spectacular sense. The real beneficiaries of United's success are the banks who underwote the debt that the Glazer's used to takeover the company. Great.
Some clubs are so dysfunctional that they are unable to disguise their institutional murkiness. Newcastle United and Manchester City would fall under this banner in any honest assessment of the game. Eriksson, hanging on in there for his financial pay-off, has described relations with Shinawatra as being "good". "Good to Soft, with Heavy Patches" would be our overview of this particular course. Meanwhile, Newcastle, having appointed a manager who had forgotten how to manage, followed by a Director of Football who didn't even know how to do the job at all, the Toon have brought in a gambling merchant to take over from Chris Mort. Derek Llambias is a close friend of Mike Ashley and was formerly managing director of the exclusive Fifty casino in London. Excellent! Exactly the sorts of skills that might be needed by a gambling club... Meanwhile, the grapevine says that Michael Owen is moving up the scale, in evolutionary terms, with a move to the snappily named JEF United Chiba in Japan. Michael has a "veerus" at the moment which is preventing him becoming a serial England substitute but perhaps he is not quite thinking straight.
"Capital markets are racing ahead of the regulators, which remain rooted in their national systems" - The Economist.
Football Betting Markets are racing ahead of the regulators, which don't exist.
That's the difference. Football writes its rules as it goes along with the likes of Platini, Scudamore, Blatter, Beckenbauer etc etc etc reaching a hidden consensus. There has been a complete absence of ANY dynamic from any institutional and/or regulatory body to the unedifying sight of football being consumed by the gambling monster. And why would they? Insider's make tidy profit from their proximity to the core of this corruption.
The only administrator to rival Scudamore in his degree of psychopathy is Sepp Blatter. He can produce a real corker can Sepp. Check out his response to the potential banning of the Iraq national team due to the omnipresent government interference: "Can you imagine the reaction of the [Iraqi] people if we had to suspend them from football? I think the minister should think twice about what he has done". Phew! Blackmail, threat of violence... I love it when Blatter morphs into Dick Cheney - such sensitive handling of a war zone.
Global regulation is an absolutely fundamental necessity in both capital and betting markets. The national and regional bodies that do exist, are out of their depth; you wouldn't ask the West Midlands police to monitor Helmand province. Globalised regulation is anathema to the very people who are at the heart of the corruptions underpinning the system. Globalisation is fine on the exploitative side of the equation but not on the assessment of impacts side, thank you very much.
Rights. Thats what its all about. Who has rights? Who has absolution of responsibility for the impacts of their actions? Who are psychopathic in profile?
E. Herman and D. Peterson have developed "The Principles of the Imperial New World Order (INWO)" - Aggression Rights, Terrorism Rights, Rights to Ethnically Cleanse, Subversion Rights, Rights to Impose Sanctions, Rights to Resist Aggression, Rights to Acquire Nuclear Weapons, Right to Exist, Right to Force Enemies to Acknowledge Your Right to Exist.
This is the new template where once the Geneva Conventions lay.
The Meek shall Inherit the Earth. But, what about the Mineral Rights?
All sectors are progressing to a psychopathic cartelised or monopolistic structure with a complete absence of global regulation or oversight. Any slight murmur of governmental independence with regard to regulation and the globalised franchise threatens to take its limited-tax-production-entity elsewhere. Cowboy territory territories gain financial advantage at all layers of the system from Chicago to Macau, from Hong Kong to Bermuda. The free-for-all attracts antisocials and the system progresses in its unsustainable and destructive fashion. Psychopathy cannot undertake strategic planning and this short-termism has established climatic uncertainties that the globalised elite will struggle to solve. The feedback loops are beyond anyone's comprehension or computer modelling. The changes in the weather patterns that are already becoming accepted may, in future, become anything. The Meteorological Office in Britain binds all of its employees with the Official Secrets Act so it is difficult to gauge a real-time professional overview of the freaky weather conditions that are commented upon wherever you travel nowadays.
Anyway. Globalised Regulators with Incentives and Teeth. That is for starters.
Also. As we all live within an Imperial State, the State of the INWO, otherwise known as America, we should all be able to vote in their electoral spectacular. The racist decisions made in the US election will impact upon all of our lives. In a True Democracy, we should be able to have our say.
Anyway. Its a recession. Don't believe anything you read. Including this.
Football Is Fixed is Not Serious. Its a Comic.
"I'm not a fighter, I'm a lover" shouted Joey Barton before adding a further 15 blows to the five already landed on his victim.
Don't believe anything you read.
In other countries in the world, public holidays are in celebration of some religious, class, national or cultural Reality - carnivals, fiestas, workers days, liberation days. And Fatland? What does Fatland have to offer in order to link the proletariat with the deep state in a unified mass of humanity? Bank Holidays!?
A culture that defines its recreation time by its savings institutions...
And you wonder why someone might be pissed off to be back here again...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
"I see nothing intrinsically wrong with robbing a bank" - Yiorgios M.
Sitting in your conservatories and lounges, safely cocooned in your false placebos of optimism as to the state of your world and its sustainability, there is a wide continuum of economic and eco-systemic reasons for you not to feel so cheerful.
The mainstream media in Britain and the US have played a structural part in the development of a bubble economy, an economy that is systemically unstable. The housing markets have not just recently become distorted markets but have been so for half a decade. This increasing Unreality between Market Price and True Value forms the hyped-up bases of all bubbles.
It is in the media's interests to delay the onset of any recessionary pressures, think advertising, and, even when the recession is the active economic template, the governments and the media faithfully release "official figures" showing that all is fine and well in Milton Friedmanland. The arbitrariness of these data in relation to the Fiscal Reality is neatly given perspective by the close correlation between the requirements of big business and, by association, the government and the positivity-slant of the basic data in the media.
So, the US is in recession and, yet, the comedians insist on utilising phrases like "on the verge of a potential recession" - enough implied doubt to further defer the inevitable. Preferably until after November's election, of course. If the recession was announced as Real, there might even be a chance that a nation's inherent racism might not prevent a Black man getting into the White House.
Not only is America already in recession but there is turbulence throughout the global financial system. All that stuff and nonsense from the new paradigmists about long-term sustainable growth stretching out into infinity is already to be seen as hilariously misguided - the "dismal science" generally refers to the quality of the research rather than the moroseness of the subject matter.
Continue involving yourselves in their Tyrannies of Fun but consider the reasons to be uncheerful while you do so. To act otherwise might be construed as delusional behaviour, and we wouldn't want that now, would we?
* Analysts at Goldman Sachs reckon Black Gold will reach $200 and, with a $10 rise in the last week alone, crude is getting cruder. Of course, government economists like to leave things like fuel prices out of inflation assessments as they prefer to focus on a core structural determinant of the statistic. Unfortunately, your wallets and bank balances do not behave similarly.
* The same argument would have to be included in the assessment of food prices which is already leading to a resurgence in inflation in the emerging economies and Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs). With the systemic backdrop of climate change, we are expected to believe that the global great and the global good have undertaken joined-up thinking with regard to the impacts of man's adjustment of our climatic conditions. Food was not grown so that biofuels might be. Did nobody out of these great and these good actually consider the impact of this? Environmentalists pointed out the inevitability of this rationale immediately but a concerted media campaign allowed an absolute killing to be made by the huge industrialised hyper-agriculture of the American plains. And killing is the outcome at the bottom of the pyramid too as starvation is the only gift of shareholder capitalism.
* The banking crisis is, by no means, over. The Economist: "Complete apocalypse for banks MAY have been avoided". But: "Credit growth is sluggish and defaults are set to rise. Securitisation is in the doldrums...". Banking stocks are still overvalued and there is more correction to come. RBC Capital Markets suggest that around 150 banks will go bust in the next 2/3 years. Good job we are not in a recession... Banks deserve to be robbed if only to offset the robbing process in the opposite direction. While rifling your pockets, banks desire our affections - Garanti Bank's "Banking from the Heart" or Isbank's "Trust Us" campaigns - but they simply gamble with your money. Fortunately for depositors and banks, this risk game is now, in the shadow of Bear Stearns and Northern Rock, evidently backed by government guarantee. The moral hazard introduced into the financial system by this desperate attempt to sustain the unsustainable will only produce a more cataclysmic downturn when such dysfunctional pressures break out once again.
* The Third World are in for a particularly tough time. Apart from food price inflation, HIV/AIDs, the robbery of globalised commodity thieves and the strictures of the IMF, US money flow is drying up apart from pet projects that are seen as strategically, ie militarily, key. Furthermore free trade is a one-directional abuse of a system and even The Economist can't help but utter: "Economists have struggled to find a strong link between freer capital flows and speedier economic development".
* If any doubt exists as to whether the media and the advertisers cosy up to mutual benefit, the more open world of India offers a revealing media unmyth. The Mumbai Times, in a bid to increase advertising revenue, printed: "Money cannot buy our integrity. Make the headlines tomorrow by paying for it". Such public appeals are not necessary, of course, in the masonic world of NewsCorp. It does not matter where you live, if the powers-that-be wish for you to be fed a certain line, a certain line is what you will be fed.
* Lets revisit the non-existent recession again... Donald Kohn (A Fed Bank governor) recently stated: "In informal terms, we are uncertain about where the economy has been, where it is now and where it is going". Mr Kohn helps to make the decisions on interest rates and guaranteeing banking deposits to avoid the financial system unravelling. But what about the feedback loops? The economy is in recession and the global nature of this recession will rapidly spread. Tax revenues across the world will plummet. Governments will be tied to arrangements with the modern day robber barons to underwrite the risk involved in their games of speculative capital. Such speculative capital will become more risky in a more volatile trading environment. The weak will succomb. Across the board...
* Unbelievably, there are still some delusionals who believe that the Housing Crisis is a purely American affair and that the bubbles in Britain, Ireland and Spain, among many other countries, are, in some way, sustainable. Of course, when your own money is wrapped up in the maintenance of an Illusion, delusion might be a tempting psychology to "maintain" the value of your shrewd investment.
Try getting an evaluation of your property in Cloud Cuckoo Land, knock off 20% and see if you can sell it. Comprendez...?
Football is entirely unsustainable too.
It will forever remain as a Product but not as a Sport.
There were four feasible holistic scenarios to this year's Champions League Final and one prevailed and, yet, each potential scenario was dependent on a corruption. In what way is that a sport? Like mainstream shareholder capitalism, the Reality has been converted into a Gambling Illusion. This is an environment heavily skewed in favour of Insider's and the Self-Elective who are able to deal away the existences of the global poor/football fan on the roll of a speculative dice.
Abramovich has sacked Grant. Mourinho offers about Grant: "Maybe, in the philosophy of a loser, this was a great season". Abramovich bought Mourinho a £250,000 Ferrari following the League Cup Final defeat to Tottenham. Our contacts tell us that the atmosphere internally at Chelsea is rancid. "There are cliques and rumours of backstabbings that prevent any hope of creating an efficient operation". If Abramovich hadn't established such a psychopathic environment, they wouldn't have had to buy so many games. Interestingly, there is no knowledge within the Chelsea empire as to whether these "loans for inducements" are an additional part of the club's debt to the oligarch.
So, United have won and who gains? The fans? No. Either fleeced for a mini-vacation or denied a home-coming parade. With an increase in season ticket prices on the horizon, the fans have only gained in a spectacular sense. The real beneficiaries of United's success are the banks who underwote the debt that the Glazer's used to takeover the company. Great.
Some clubs are so dysfunctional that they are unable to disguise their institutional murkiness. Newcastle United and Manchester City would fall under this banner in any honest assessment of the game. Eriksson, hanging on in there for his financial pay-off, has described relations with Shinawatra as being "good". "Good to Soft, with Heavy Patches" would be our overview of this particular course. Meanwhile, Newcastle, having appointed a manager who had forgotten how to manage, followed by a Director of Football who didn't even know how to do the job at all, the Toon have brought in a gambling merchant to take over from Chris Mort. Derek Llambias is a close friend of Mike Ashley and was formerly managing director of the exclusive Fifty casino in London. Excellent! Exactly the sorts of skills that might be needed by a gambling club... Meanwhile, the grapevine says that Michael Owen is moving up the scale, in evolutionary terms, with a move to the snappily named JEF United Chiba in Japan. Michael has a "veerus" at the moment which is preventing him becoming a serial England substitute but perhaps he is not quite thinking straight.
"Capital markets are racing ahead of the regulators, which remain rooted in their national systems" - The Economist.
Football Betting Markets are racing ahead of the regulators, which don't exist.
That's the difference. Football writes its rules as it goes along with the likes of Platini, Scudamore, Blatter, Beckenbauer etc etc etc reaching a hidden consensus. There has been a complete absence of ANY dynamic from any institutional and/or regulatory body to the unedifying sight of football being consumed by the gambling monster. And why would they? Insider's make tidy profit from their proximity to the core of this corruption.
The only administrator to rival Scudamore in his degree of psychopathy is Sepp Blatter. He can produce a real corker can Sepp. Check out his response to the potential banning of the Iraq national team due to the omnipresent government interference: "Can you imagine the reaction of the [Iraqi] people if we had to suspend them from football? I think the minister should think twice about what he has done". Phew! Blackmail, threat of violence... I love it when Blatter morphs into Dick Cheney - such sensitive handling of a war zone.
Global regulation is an absolutely fundamental necessity in both capital and betting markets. The national and regional bodies that do exist, are out of their depth; you wouldn't ask the West Midlands police to monitor Helmand province. Globalised regulation is anathema to the very people who are at the heart of the corruptions underpinning the system. Globalisation is fine on the exploitative side of the equation but not on the assessment of impacts side, thank you very much.
Rights. Thats what its all about. Who has rights? Who has absolution of responsibility for the impacts of their actions? Who are psychopathic in profile?
E. Herman and D. Peterson have developed "The Principles of the Imperial New World Order (INWO)" - Aggression Rights, Terrorism Rights, Rights to Ethnically Cleanse, Subversion Rights, Rights to Impose Sanctions, Rights to Resist Aggression, Rights to Acquire Nuclear Weapons, Right to Exist, Right to Force Enemies to Acknowledge Your Right to Exist.
This is the new template where once the Geneva Conventions lay.
The Meek shall Inherit the Earth. But, what about the Mineral Rights?
All sectors are progressing to a psychopathic cartelised or monopolistic structure with a complete absence of global regulation or oversight. Any slight murmur of governmental independence with regard to regulation and the globalised franchise threatens to take its limited-tax-production-entity elsewhere. Cowboy territory territories gain financial advantage at all layers of the system from Chicago to Macau, from Hong Kong to Bermuda. The free-for-all attracts antisocials and the system progresses in its unsustainable and destructive fashion. Psychopathy cannot undertake strategic planning and this short-termism has established climatic uncertainties that the globalised elite will struggle to solve. The feedback loops are beyond anyone's comprehension or computer modelling. The changes in the weather patterns that are already becoming accepted may, in future, become anything. The Meteorological Office in Britain binds all of its employees with the Official Secrets Act so it is difficult to gauge a real-time professional overview of the freaky weather conditions that are commented upon wherever you travel nowadays.
Anyway. Globalised Regulators with Incentives and Teeth. That is for starters.
Also. As we all live within an Imperial State, the State of the INWO, otherwise known as America, we should all be able to vote in their electoral spectacular. The racist decisions made in the US election will impact upon all of our lives. In a True Democracy, we should be able to have our say.
Anyway. Its a recession. Don't believe anything you read. Including this.
Football Is Fixed is Not Serious. Its a Comic.
"I'm not a fighter, I'm a lover" shouted Joey Barton before adding a further 15 blows to the five already landed on his victim.
Don't believe anything you read.
In other countries in the world, public holidays are in celebration of some religious, class, national or cultural Reality - carnivals, fiestas, workers days, liberation days. And Fatland? What does Fatland have to offer in order to link the proletariat with the deep state in a unified mass of humanity? Bank Holidays!?
A culture that defines its recreation time by its savings institutions...
And you wonder why someone might be pissed off to be back here again...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Thursday, 22 May 2008
The Murky Mug It For Manchester
"Its a match of great memories, and there's more memories to come" blurted Mark Hughes at the end of normal time.
"Both goalkeepers must be dreaming, while concentrating, of course" offered David Pleat with 10 minutes of non-normal time remaining.
"Peter Kenyon, you're a wanker, you're a wanker" - Mancunian Realism greeting the most unpleasant man at Chelsea, apart from all the other unpleasant men at Chelsea, that would be.
This was, by some considerable distance, the most Real occurrence in a Hyperreal Extravaganza. For Peter Kenyon is, undoubtedly, a wanker. And, he's becoming a serial loser too. Of course, it will not cross his mind that things might have been just a little bit different if Jose was still around.
If you're having a tough day, visualise Mourinho's face as Terry's shot hit the post or following the vastly overrated Anelka's amateurish spotkick...
We had a very complicated range of positions on the Champions League Final although we still managed to come out very slightly down on the event. The market complexity was evolving in real-time and rarely have we been more proactively involved in some of the more abstract areas of input eg creative arbitrage. The dichotomous nature of the television commentaries compared with our Trader's intranet linkage was entertaining. The narratives would suggest that we were each observing very different events but, behind some of those media narratives, there is a shared knowledge on the Illusion taking place.
We are not going to detail the various inputs to last night's event beyond suggesting that one match official, one player, one owner, one federation president, the impact of one season long corruption and the market posturing of a few leading bookmakers, determined the outcome. Each of these inputs had their own particular dynamic - the proprietary betting undertaken by one insider is heavily rumoured from good sources to have been on the 90 minute market, for instance. The dominant dynamic, however, became that of a United victory as one of the core power bases took a firm grip on the outcome in extra time.
Still, it was exciting in its way. Two teams, with £1.5 billion worth of debt, slugging out at 2am in Gazprom City, having bought their way both via debt and the purchase of match outcomes to be present at this, the biggest branded hyper-event. This didn't matter to Carlos Tevez who is the main reason Ronaldo is getting all those goals. Tevez should have been Player of the Year, just like Paul Ince should have been the League Managers Association (LMA) League Two Manager of the Year. Evidently, Las Islas Malvinas have not been forgotten yet while the racism implied in the Ince decision is an outrage. All other League Title winning managers received the LMA gong apart from the one Black manager, you're messing...
Chelsea are non-sustainable. David Conn is totally correct in itemising the degree to which they are beholden to Roman. If the smugly-grinning-one were to take his investments elsewhere, Chelsea would have only 18 months to repay a loan of £578 million - its going to take some serious betting on the Far East markets to clear that little debt... Chelsea are merely running towards a cliff edge at speed, picking up as many of the scattered dollars as they can in the meantime...
The Illusion must be sold. The match itself stood up as a pseudo-competitive event. It is just that there were a number of corrupt influences attempting to gain control of the event for proprietary and/or organisational benefit. Sometimes these multi-rigged events deteriorate into farce on the pitch but the majority of the players were in the right territory of focus. Just in case the match did the damp squib thing, a spectrum of emotional sub-plots were attached to the brand. These served as a temporary link between the Hyperreal Spectacle and the lives-of-normal-people. Paul Scholes playing after heartbreak; Frank Lampard playing after heartbreak; Bobby Charlton (and other invisible Munich survivors) attending after heartbreak; Ryan Giggs beating Bobby Charlton's record for number of match appearances but Bobby was so immersed in heartbreak that he forgot to applaud the passing of his record.
A day earlier, the funeral of Tommy Burns took place while tonight the Scottish Premier League (SPL) Title will be decided. All of this overload of Spectacle and Emotion, I want to be back on the beach.
I managed to be in Athens when Manchester held the Commonwealth Games and in Manchester when Athens held the Olympics; I was in Manchester when Greece won Euro 2004 and I was in Kerkyra when god's-own-city was wrecked by an uncouth hun. Fear of the Spectacle, perhaps. As a result of the latter great sporting occasion, there are still high level hyperreal deliberations taking place between the self-elective to determine whether the Reality of a Celebration for the Disenfranchised is allowed to welcome the Mancunian Giants back home. A society which is used to highly marketed pseudo-promotions should not be allowed room for anything so independent as self-expression. Unless Britain really has become totally Orwellian, a Parade must ensue. What is it with the English? Can you imagine Rio (de Janeiro, rather than Ferdinand... although, thinking about it...) having any qualms about having a Party? Paris? Roma? Madrid? In fact, anywhere else on the planet?
Its a People's Celebration. A Power Base controlled the Final. The Illusion has been Sold. A Power Team has defeated another Power Team. Twice. And, Peter Kenyon is a wanker.
We are in ecstasy. We demand that Richard Scudamore, Gordon Smith and Michel Platini get together and provide us with a Super Summer Of Play-Offs. We are convinced. Scudamore is Prescient. Every single day somewhere on the globe, Celtic will play Rangers or Chelsea will play Manchester United to determine the Hyperreal Winners of The Products. In no time, the Illusion will become the equivalent of the Virtual Sports aka Virtual Betting Manipulations offered by the leading bookmakers. There is a Virtual Horserace at Coral Downs every two minutes 24/7, they proudly boast. It won't matter that the crowds will make the few hundred that turned up to watch rudderless Manchester City lose 3-1 to a Thai All Stars XI (Thai? All Stars?) seem like an atmosphere. As City spontaneously combust, Shinawatra's hissy fit and a 8-1 mauling, United do the Double while FC United of Manchester achieved a third consecutive promotion after beating Skelmersdale 4-1. Not too many Blues out there taking in the rays...
If Celtic win the SPL Title tonight, we feel that we will have played a small and yet significant part in their Title Success. In recent months, our range of negotiations and meetings have included two individuals who are close to Craig Levein, the manager of Dundee United. Levein's reaction to the conspiratorial events at Ibrox when his team were fairly and squarely corrupted in a 3-1 defeat was a product of conversations that we, effectively, initiated. The crass stupidity of the officiating in that match made any further public manipulations at Motherwell a much riskier Hyperreal Scam. A primary rule of corruption is "don't do it when they're looking". So, assuming nothing untoward goes on tonight - a reasonable assumption or not? - we feel that we should be able to wear one of those little Gold Stars that winners wear on their merchandise when they have won a Big Prize.
We're also aware that our information was utilised by Mohammad al-Fayed and Roy Hodgson when they had a meeting with Keith Hackett, the Chief Scudamoric Officer at the PGMOB, to complain about the corruptions undertaken against Fulham's interests. Following this meeting and an acceptance of deep state justice, Fulham survived and Hodgson deservedly received a £1 million bonus.
And us, we just feel really really good, like really good, that we helped prevent two Illusory Injustices.
For Nothing... In fact, it cost us financially... Its little wonder that everybody still wants to talk with us...
Still, we're not Bitter. We've got our Gold Stars.
And, at least Celtic have won the League???
Dostoyevsky: "Once you have mathematical certainty... there will be nothing left but to bottle up your five senses and plunge into contemplation".
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
"Both goalkeepers must be dreaming, while concentrating, of course" offered David Pleat with 10 minutes of non-normal time remaining.
"Peter Kenyon, you're a wanker, you're a wanker" - Mancunian Realism greeting the most unpleasant man at Chelsea, apart from all the other unpleasant men at Chelsea, that would be.
This was, by some considerable distance, the most Real occurrence in a Hyperreal Extravaganza. For Peter Kenyon is, undoubtedly, a wanker. And, he's becoming a serial loser too. Of course, it will not cross his mind that things might have been just a little bit different if Jose was still around.
If you're having a tough day, visualise Mourinho's face as Terry's shot hit the post or following the vastly overrated Anelka's amateurish spotkick...
We had a very complicated range of positions on the Champions League Final although we still managed to come out very slightly down on the event. The market complexity was evolving in real-time and rarely have we been more proactively involved in some of the more abstract areas of input eg creative arbitrage. The dichotomous nature of the television commentaries compared with our Trader's intranet linkage was entertaining. The narratives would suggest that we were each observing very different events but, behind some of those media narratives, there is a shared knowledge on the Illusion taking place.
We are not going to detail the various inputs to last night's event beyond suggesting that one match official, one player, one owner, one federation president, the impact of one season long corruption and the market posturing of a few leading bookmakers, determined the outcome. Each of these inputs had their own particular dynamic - the proprietary betting undertaken by one insider is heavily rumoured from good sources to have been on the 90 minute market, for instance. The dominant dynamic, however, became that of a United victory as one of the core power bases took a firm grip on the outcome in extra time.
Still, it was exciting in its way. Two teams, with £1.5 billion worth of debt, slugging out at 2am in Gazprom City, having bought their way both via debt and the purchase of match outcomes to be present at this, the biggest branded hyper-event. This didn't matter to Carlos Tevez who is the main reason Ronaldo is getting all those goals. Tevez should have been Player of the Year, just like Paul Ince should have been the League Managers Association (LMA) League Two Manager of the Year. Evidently, Las Islas Malvinas have not been forgotten yet while the racism implied in the Ince decision is an outrage. All other League Title winning managers received the LMA gong apart from the one Black manager, you're messing...
Chelsea are non-sustainable. David Conn is totally correct in itemising the degree to which they are beholden to Roman. If the smugly-grinning-one were to take his investments elsewhere, Chelsea would have only 18 months to repay a loan of £578 million - its going to take some serious betting on the Far East markets to clear that little debt... Chelsea are merely running towards a cliff edge at speed, picking up as many of the scattered dollars as they can in the meantime...
The Illusion must be sold. The match itself stood up as a pseudo-competitive event. It is just that there were a number of corrupt influences attempting to gain control of the event for proprietary and/or organisational benefit. Sometimes these multi-rigged events deteriorate into farce on the pitch but the majority of the players were in the right territory of focus. Just in case the match did the damp squib thing, a spectrum of emotional sub-plots were attached to the brand. These served as a temporary link between the Hyperreal Spectacle and the lives-of-normal-people. Paul Scholes playing after heartbreak; Frank Lampard playing after heartbreak; Bobby Charlton (and other invisible Munich survivors) attending after heartbreak; Ryan Giggs beating Bobby Charlton's record for number of match appearances but Bobby was so immersed in heartbreak that he forgot to applaud the passing of his record.
A day earlier, the funeral of Tommy Burns took place while tonight the Scottish Premier League (SPL) Title will be decided. All of this overload of Spectacle and Emotion, I want to be back on the beach.
I managed to be in Athens when Manchester held the Commonwealth Games and in Manchester when Athens held the Olympics; I was in Manchester when Greece won Euro 2004 and I was in Kerkyra when god's-own-city was wrecked by an uncouth hun. Fear of the Spectacle, perhaps. As a result of the latter great sporting occasion, there are still high level hyperreal deliberations taking place between the self-elective to determine whether the Reality of a Celebration for the Disenfranchised is allowed to welcome the Mancunian Giants back home. A society which is used to highly marketed pseudo-promotions should not be allowed room for anything so independent as self-expression. Unless Britain really has become totally Orwellian, a Parade must ensue. What is it with the English? Can you imagine Rio (de Janeiro, rather than Ferdinand... although, thinking about it...) having any qualms about having a Party? Paris? Roma? Madrid? In fact, anywhere else on the planet?
Its a People's Celebration. A Power Base controlled the Final. The Illusion has been Sold. A Power Team has defeated another Power Team. Twice. And, Peter Kenyon is a wanker.
We are in ecstasy. We demand that Richard Scudamore, Gordon Smith and Michel Platini get together and provide us with a Super Summer Of Play-Offs. We are convinced. Scudamore is Prescient. Every single day somewhere on the globe, Celtic will play Rangers or Chelsea will play Manchester United to determine the Hyperreal Winners of The Products. In no time, the Illusion will become the equivalent of the Virtual Sports aka Virtual Betting Manipulations offered by the leading bookmakers. There is a Virtual Horserace at Coral Downs every two minutes 24/7, they proudly boast. It won't matter that the crowds will make the few hundred that turned up to watch rudderless Manchester City lose 3-1 to a Thai All Stars XI (Thai? All Stars?) seem like an atmosphere. As City spontaneously combust, Shinawatra's hissy fit and a 8-1 mauling, United do the Double while FC United of Manchester achieved a third consecutive promotion after beating Skelmersdale 4-1. Not too many Blues out there taking in the rays...
If Celtic win the SPL Title tonight, we feel that we will have played a small and yet significant part in their Title Success. In recent months, our range of negotiations and meetings have included two individuals who are close to Craig Levein, the manager of Dundee United. Levein's reaction to the conspiratorial events at Ibrox when his team were fairly and squarely corrupted in a 3-1 defeat was a product of conversations that we, effectively, initiated. The crass stupidity of the officiating in that match made any further public manipulations at Motherwell a much riskier Hyperreal Scam. A primary rule of corruption is "don't do it when they're looking". So, assuming nothing untoward goes on tonight - a reasonable assumption or not? - we feel that we should be able to wear one of those little Gold Stars that winners wear on their merchandise when they have won a Big Prize.
We're also aware that our information was utilised by Mohammad al-Fayed and Roy Hodgson when they had a meeting with Keith Hackett, the Chief Scudamoric Officer at the PGMOB, to complain about the corruptions undertaken against Fulham's interests. Following this meeting and an acceptance of deep state justice, Fulham survived and Hodgson deservedly received a £1 million bonus.
And us, we just feel really really good, like really good, that we helped prevent two Illusory Injustices.
For Nothing... In fact, it cost us financially... Its little wonder that everybody still wants to talk with us...
Still, we're not Bitter. We've got our Gold Stars.
And, at least Celtic have won the League???
Dostoyevsky: "Once you have mathematical certainty... there will be nothing left but to bottle up your five senses and plunge into contemplation".
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
"I Will Not Take The Hen-House For The Mansion"
Not wishing to make a long nose on the sly, leaving an island of two CCTV cameras to return to one with 4.2 million is a culture shock to the system.
And Her Majesty's Customs and Excise must have been expecting global jihad to be imported on a charter flight from Kapodistrias if the multicultural array of uniformed stasi welcoming us "home" were anything to go by. At least the practice of illegally fingerprinting travellers which, until recently, was the new code of illicit conduct at Heathrow, has been terminated after Privacy International (PI) advised flyers to photograph the officers performing the illegal act. Entertainingly, PI are seeking the prime minister's fingerprints for a poster campaign regarding this massive infringement of your human rights.
PI lists Britain as an endemic surveillance society and as we returned to our inner city office space, we were CCTV'd to a movie set of the gathering ghetto. Homeland Security, the War Of Terror, the Clash of Cultures... it sounds like the backdrop to another one of Sky's extravaganzas but this postmodern surveillance is omnipresent in our Mancunian Reality. In fact, there is but one route out from our offices where we might avoid detection only to be picked up in the next cell of their surveillance web after we have appeared to have quantum tunnelled our particular existence to a new state.
Britain is supposed to be waging a war of terror whereas, actually, it is in a state of war with itself. Fear is beneath this veneer of big brother militarism - fear of strangeness, fear of difference. The camera impacts upon the citizen, the observer affects the observed. Some of the new cameras allow two-way conversations and some are now equipped with loudspeakers to shout societal commands at those perpetrating minor indiscretions. We no longer look at the camera as the camera's monitor our every step; it can only be a matter of time before these watchtowers are fitted out to deal with biometrics and DNA swabbing as the database of Black genetics reaches full fruition. There are routes which might take us into the "appearances" or "phases of the image" of Baudrillard - the camera is recording you within a state of Hyperreality, is this valid evidence? - but such pomos mutterings are not for this place. Although, one might envisage future court cases where fractals, simulacra, resolution, the dislocation of time and image are the defining arguments in a defence case...
Of course, Baudrillard knew what was going on: "A switch from the panoptic mechanism of surveillance... to a system of deterrence, in which the distinction between the passive and the active is abolished". As we dodge the cameras just for the sheer hell of it (we know how to enjoy urban fun in god's-own-city), we are comforted by the local Territorial Army keeping us abreast of the trends relating to the national state of emergency - Bikini Black presumably being a rather heightened level of national insecurity... We should wear disguises and avert our profiles from close ups, sunglasses would seem a necessary item of fashion as we adapt our appearances to suit the projections of a Police State Hyppereality. Britain is attempting a fractalised real-time version of Google Earth where the cameras focus into the lives of the disenfranchised and away from the property of the gated communities and futuristic commodity malls. Behavioural monitoring both on- and offline as the marketeers perfect their campaigns of promotion. "Imprisoned in a flattened universe bounded by the screen of the spectacle that has enthralled him, the spectator knows no-one but the fictitious speakers who subject him to a one-way monologue about their commodities and the politics of their commodities" - Debord.
A reader might infer that I am not too delighted to be back in this country when I had scheduled watching the Champions League Final from a beach bar in Lakka. But meetings must be attended. The juxtaposition of living in the least invasive European culture and returning to the most invasive is striking. The smothering effect of the state is omnipresent in the inner cities and it reminds us that a political sousveillance - observation from below - is a necessary retort to the increasingly nosey crown.
Sousveillance is our only weapon in an autocratic system. The Perfect Crime leaves clues and traces that reveal the perpetrators and the hitmen of spectacular realities. Dietrological use sousveillance in every aspect of our organisation from market analysis to negotiation, from big picture modelling to monitoring insider trading. Sousveillance is our edge. Our spider trawls the ether for prices of consequence, our software munches the money numbers before delivering to our desktops the trading realities of the Illusion.
And the Illusion's Final Offering is upon us as the leveraged buyout merchants take on the oligarchical oilman. Matthew Frost, the groundsman at the Luzhniki Stadium, is "totally disappointed" with the pitch. He then rationalised: "That's Russia, I'm afraid. Its not a perfect world". A Baudrillardian groundsman? Indeed, perfection is not something that should be expected on the menu this evening as all of the major parameters (and there are a considerable number of them) impacting upon this event are Hyperreal, Illusory and Corrupt - the perfect template for the seasonal conclusion. Frost is a bit of comedian though - when asked what he would do if approached by Sir Ferguson regarding the state of the pitch, the lawnmower man stated: "I think I'll just pretend I'm Russian and I don't speak English" - not a valid tactic against the hairdryer but... Platini claims "not to have heard of any problem so far" regarding the pitch which is a concern as the plastic was initially replaced by a green meadow of a monstrosity before a further £160,000 was shelled out to some Slovakians to produce a pitch with bare patches and many bumps, while blocks of frozen grass have not bedded down as hoped. Slovakian grass and Slovakian match officials - what's going on?
Enjoy the Spectacle...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
And Her Majesty's Customs and Excise must have been expecting global jihad to be imported on a charter flight from Kapodistrias if the multicultural array of uniformed stasi welcoming us "home" were anything to go by. At least the practice of illegally fingerprinting travellers which, until recently, was the new code of illicit conduct at Heathrow, has been terminated after Privacy International (PI) advised flyers to photograph the officers performing the illegal act. Entertainingly, PI are seeking the prime minister's fingerprints for a poster campaign regarding this massive infringement of your human rights.
PI lists Britain as an endemic surveillance society and as we returned to our inner city office space, we were CCTV'd to a movie set of the gathering ghetto. Homeland Security, the War Of Terror, the Clash of Cultures... it sounds like the backdrop to another one of Sky's extravaganzas but this postmodern surveillance is omnipresent in our Mancunian Reality. In fact, there is but one route out from our offices where we might avoid detection only to be picked up in the next cell of their surveillance web after we have appeared to have quantum tunnelled our particular existence to a new state.
Britain is supposed to be waging a war of terror whereas, actually, it is in a state of war with itself. Fear is beneath this veneer of big brother militarism - fear of strangeness, fear of difference. The camera impacts upon the citizen, the observer affects the observed. Some of the new cameras allow two-way conversations and some are now equipped with loudspeakers to shout societal commands at those perpetrating minor indiscretions. We no longer look at the camera as the camera's monitor our every step; it can only be a matter of time before these watchtowers are fitted out to deal with biometrics and DNA swabbing as the database of Black genetics reaches full fruition. There are routes which might take us into the "appearances" or "phases of the image" of Baudrillard - the camera is recording you within a state of Hyperreality, is this valid evidence? - but such pomos mutterings are not for this place. Although, one might envisage future court cases where fractals, simulacra, resolution, the dislocation of time and image are the defining arguments in a defence case...
Of course, Baudrillard knew what was going on: "A switch from the panoptic mechanism of surveillance... to a system of deterrence, in which the distinction between the passive and the active is abolished". As we dodge the cameras just for the sheer hell of it (we know how to enjoy urban fun in god's-own-city), we are comforted by the local Territorial Army keeping us abreast of the trends relating to the national state of emergency - Bikini Black presumably being a rather heightened level of national insecurity... We should wear disguises and avert our profiles from close ups, sunglasses would seem a necessary item of fashion as we adapt our appearances to suit the projections of a Police State Hyppereality. Britain is attempting a fractalised real-time version of Google Earth where the cameras focus into the lives of the disenfranchised and away from the property of the gated communities and futuristic commodity malls. Behavioural monitoring both on- and offline as the marketeers perfect their campaigns of promotion. "Imprisoned in a flattened universe bounded by the screen of the spectacle that has enthralled him, the spectator knows no-one but the fictitious speakers who subject him to a one-way monologue about their commodities and the politics of their commodities" - Debord.
A reader might infer that I am not too delighted to be back in this country when I had scheduled watching the Champions League Final from a beach bar in Lakka. But meetings must be attended. The juxtaposition of living in the least invasive European culture and returning to the most invasive is striking. The smothering effect of the state is omnipresent in the inner cities and it reminds us that a political sousveillance - observation from below - is a necessary retort to the increasingly nosey crown.
Sousveillance is our only weapon in an autocratic system. The Perfect Crime leaves clues and traces that reveal the perpetrators and the hitmen of spectacular realities. Dietrological use sousveillance in every aspect of our organisation from market analysis to negotiation, from big picture modelling to monitoring insider trading. Sousveillance is our edge. Our spider trawls the ether for prices of consequence, our software munches the money numbers before delivering to our desktops the trading realities of the Illusion.
And the Illusion's Final Offering is upon us as the leveraged buyout merchants take on the oligarchical oilman. Matthew Frost, the groundsman at the Luzhniki Stadium, is "totally disappointed" with the pitch. He then rationalised: "That's Russia, I'm afraid. Its not a perfect world". A Baudrillardian groundsman? Indeed, perfection is not something that should be expected on the menu this evening as all of the major parameters (and there are a considerable number of them) impacting upon this event are Hyperreal, Illusory and Corrupt - the perfect template for the seasonal conclusion. Frost is a bit of comedian though - when asked what he would do if approached by Sir Ferguson regarding the state of the pitch, the lawnmower man stated: "I think I'll just pretend I'm Russian and I don't speak English" - not a valid tactic against the hairdryer but... Platini claims "not to have heard of any problem so far" regarding the pitch which is a concern as the plastic was initially replaced by a green meadow of a monstrosity before a further £160,000 was shelled out to some Slovakians to produce a pitch with bare patches and many bumps, while blocks of frozen grass have not bedded down as hoped. Slovakian grass and Slovakian match officials - what's going on?
Enjoy the Spectacle...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Friday, 16 May 2008
The Men Behind The Wire
There is nothing more frustrating for the purveyors of a fake reality than a real Reality threatening to block out the projected spectacular one. When such a loss of control of the spectaclised media agenda is brought to our attention, there needs to be a concerted strategy from all interested power parties to alleviate the potential damage to the branded pseudo-entertainment delivered for our delectation. As Guy Debord states: "For what is presented as true life turns out to be merely a more truly spectacular life".
This week offered us a prime example of this template with the latest developments in the inquiry into bungs in the transfer market.
First, we need to check up whether you know your history. This charade has now dragged on for 18 months since Mike Newell whistleblew the rampant corruption in the transfer markets, with money being passed both under the table and between inappropriate parties. We stated at the time that Newell was pushing his luck if he thought that the English game would be grateful for his input and integrity. And, sure enough, we were correct.
Newell was sacked as Luton Town were targeted across the board for their disclosures of criminality - last season, Luton were relegated from the Championship; after going into administration in November 2007, a points reduction ensured that this year they were relegated from League One; and they will start next year in the lowest league with a 15 point penalty and, consequently, a real likelihood that they will end up in the Conference. With a likely three relegations in consecutive years and having additionally lost a large part of their playing staff due to the financial uproar, one would have to expect that the mad lessons meted out to the Hatters will act as a suitable warning for any other insiders attempting to clean up the murky English game.
If the strategy of allowing whistleblowers to provide evidence of criminality is to be dealt with in such an aggressive and pro-corruption style, we are going to find football mimicking other areas of institutional corruption in its collective myopia to the criminal machinations. For example, The Economist quotes: "Government whistleblowers have repeatedly been punished or fired - even when they have been trying to expose threats to national security that their bosses prefer to overlook... In the US, the Office of Special Counsel, which was established to enforce laws designed to protect the rights of whistleblowers, is widely regarded as inept and even hostile to the whistleblower". So, at least Luton Town and Mike Newell are in good company.
Once our attention had been diverted from the fallacious conclusion to the Premiership, the FA and the mainstream media this week announced that one of the two charges brought against six football agents over the Luton fiasco had been dropped. The spinning of this reality in the week following the season is a standard practice of a controlled media attempting to hide away bad news stories that might negatively impact upon the brand. And, despite the Guardian headline screaming that charges had been dropped, the aptly named David Conn disguised the true Reality that one of the charges was still outstanding unless you were willing to slither through his syrupy journalistic waffle to find the truth. The headline = "Charges against agents dropped"; The Reality = "One of the charges against the agents dropped".
The six agents, Sky Andrew, Mike Berry, Mark Curtis, Stephen Denos, David Manasseh and Andrew Mills, have had the charge of illegally accepting payments from Luton Town's holding company dropped while the charge relating to there having been no written agreements to work with the club when conducting the transfers is still outstanding (no doubt to be brushed under the carpet on a wet Inter Toto Preliminary Round Tuesday in July).
We have recently had negotiations with several firms of agents regarding our Holistic Sabermetrics business project and two of the agents mentioned above work for one of these outfits, Key Sports. One of the most striking structural aspects of our interactions with this company was their refusal to apply anything to paper - everything is word of mouth, cash in hand, verbal dealmaking with no feedback to the perpetrators of any particular bending of the rules. This is, however, the standard climate in the world of football agents - it is a highly informal grey market improperly regulated and prone to liaisons with the worst aspects of the black market. For example, when Celtic were negotiating to bring Stilian Petrov to Glasgow, his agent's opening salvo was to place a revolver on the table. Evidently, business is business in Bulgaria!
We could, if we wished, name numerous other similar examples of the standard practices of this sector of our corrupted sport but we wish to link to one of the other areas of corruption that has been filed away in the mainstream media away from any prying eyes. We are aware of a little anecdote regarding a leading agent. This particular agent offered two fellow agents a suitcase containing £40,000 to drop their interest in a particular player who was interesting a particular team. The agents refused but these are obviously the formal business tactics of certain agents.
There is a further issue regarding the grey areas relating to football agents. Individual agents might represent both the clubs and the individual players in a deal. The wide range for potential conflicts of interest together with integrity issues relating to the slicing of a percentage from both sides of a deal are obvious. This whole sector needs thorough regulation rather than the standard lack of oversight endemic in the English game.
Interestingly, one of the prime reasons that we unanimously decided against teaming up with any agents for the launch of the Holistic Sabermetrics project was the issue of our not being able to determine the "real" financial deals undertaken at meetings at which we were not present. One always must take trust to be a non-existent concept in western business.
Of course, the Pompey Defendants are still awaiting news of the police inquiry that has been dragging on for a year and a half since the BBC Panarama programme exposed the bung culture underpinning the English transfer market. 18 months and nothing - this is all rather inefficient for a police state! Mind you, it took 10 years to conclude the hyperreality that drink was responsible for the death of Diana so we should not be surprised by the slow rate of progress of societal inquiries into their own criminalities, should we?
Much of the evidence being used against Redknapp's mob comes from a French citizen who wishes to remain anonymous. So fearful was this person regarding his life if he were to go public himself that the allegations were released by a Parisien lawyer on his behalf.
Guns, fear of being taken out, suitcases of money, massive insider gambling, money laundering and fraud all hover around the arms dealer's plaything, Portsmouth FC. What has been the strategy of the mainstream media to this outrageous conspiracy of corruption? Well, dutifully the news gains its moment in the spectacular spotlight before being dropped so that we might be able to focus on the neoreal news stories that run and run in the press eg Beckham's move to LA Galaxy, Hicks v Gillett, the Messiah returning to Newcastle etc etc. Nice safe spectacular stuff of no consequence to anyone. Indeed, the alleged uproar behind the scenes at Liverpool neatly coincided with the Scousers best run of the season! Reality? What Reality?
All of which rather neatly brings us to the spectacular irrelevance of this year's FA Cup Final between two corrupt teams, Portsmouth and Cardiff City. We know directly of 5 players who are involved in this event who privately trade on matches in which they are involved. Meanwhile, Ridsdale, who should have been barred from the game for life following his interesting approach to financial matters at Leeds United, is known as a bit of an operator while Gaydamak ("I am the biggest man in Israel") and Redknapp are closely linked to certain aspects of the Tel Aviv, Gibraltar and Moscow betting markets. Oh, the magic of the Cup!
The match official for this "vulgarised pseudo-festival" at the Food Mall is none other than Mike Dean. Banned for two months only the season before last for his inappropriate business linkages to an online betting syndicate, Dean was also named by Avram Grant (another pillar if disrespectability) as being: "Good for one team... The referee changed the result for sure. We know that" when he officiated the highly corrupt Man Utd v Chelsea game. Grant took chutzpah to new heights with his assertion that: "...there are a few referees you can influence, like you saw" in reference to the Wigan v Man Utd title pseudo-decider. Following Grant's outburst, Dean declined to comment.
Chelsea should certainly be more than aware that certain PGMOB match officials may be bought by the powerful clubs as they and Portsmouth are the two most avid utilisers of this illicit tactic.
Corruption will only be targeted within the English game when credence and respect is given to the likes of Mike Newell who expose the rampant corruption. As it stands, the incentives are entirely skewed in the opposite direction with the most criminalised Premiership teams being given a place in the seasonal climaxes of the FA Cup and the Champions League Finals. Proper football?!
Debord: "Its [society's] vulgarised pseudo-festivals are parodies of real dialogue... they may incite waves of excessive economic spending, but they lead to nothing but disillusionments, which can be compensated only by the promise of some new disillusion to come".
Can't wait...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
This week offered us a prime example of this template with the latest developments in the inquiry into bungs in the transfer market.
First, we need to check up whether you know your history. This charade has now dragged on for 18 months since Mike Newell whistleblew the rampant corruption in the transfer markets, with money being passed both under the table and between inappropriate parties. We stated at the time that Newell was pushing his luck if he thought that the English game would be grateful for his input and integrity. And, sure enough, we were correct.
Newell was sacked as Luton Town were targeted across the board for their disclosures of criminality - last season, Luton were relegated from the Championship; after going into administration in November 2007, a points reduction ensured that this year they were relegated from League One; and they will start next year in the lowest league with a 15 point penalty and, consequently, a real likelihood that they will end up in the Conference. With a likely three relegations in consecutive years and having additionally lost a large part of their playing staff due to the financial uproar, one would have to expect that the mad lessons meted out to the Hatters will act as a suitable warning for any other insiders attempting to clean up the murky English game.
If the strategy of allowing whistleblowers to provide evidence of criminality is to be dealt with in such an aggressive and pro-corruption style, we are going to find football mimicking other areas of institutional corruption in its collective myopia to the criminal machinations. For example, The Economist quotes: "Government whistleblowers have repeatedly been punished or fired - even when they have been trying to expose threats to national security that their bosses prefer to overlook... In the US, the Office of Special Counsel, which was established to enforce laws designed to protect the rights of whistleblowers, is widely regarded as inept and even hostile to the whistleblower". So, at least Luton Town and Mike Newell are in good company.
Once our attention had been diverted from the fallacious conclusion to the Premiership, the FA and the mainstream media this week announced that one of the two charges brought against six football agents over the Luton fiasco had been dropped. The spinning of this reality in the week following the season is a standard practice of a controlled media attempting to hide away bad news stories that might negatively impact upon the brand. And, despite the Guardian headline screaming that charges had been dropped, the aptly named David Conn disguised the true Reality that one of the charges was still outstanding unless you were willing to slither through his syrupy journalistic waffle to find the truth. The headline = "Charges against agents dropped"; The Reality = "One of the charges against the agents dropped".
The six agents, Sky Andrew, Mike Berry, Mark Curtis, Stephen Denos, David Manasseh and Andrew Mills, have had the charge of illegally accepting payments from Luton Town's holding company dropped while the charge relating to there having been no written agreements to work with the club when conducting the transfers is still outstanding (no doubt to be brushed under the carpet on a wet Inter Toto Preliminary Round Tuesday in July).
We have recently had negotiations with several firms of agents regarding our Holistic Sabermetrics business project and two of the agents mentioned above work for one of these outfits, Key Sports. One of the most striking structural aspects of our interactions with this company was their refusal to apply anything to paper - everything is word of mouth, cash in hand, verbal dealmaking with no feedback to the perpetrators of any particular bending of the rules. This is, however, the standard climate in the world of football agents - it is a highly informal grey market improperly regulated and prone to liaisons with the worst aspects of the black market. For example, when Celtic were negotiating to bring Stilian Petrov to Glasgow, his agent's opening salvo was to place a revolver on the table. Evidently, business is business in Bulgaria!
We could, if we wished, name numerous other similar examples of the standard practices of this sector of our corrupted sport but we wish to link to one of the other areas of corruption that has been filed away in the mainstream media away from any prying eyes. We are aware of a little anecdote regarding a leading agent. This particular agent offered two fellow agents a suitcase containing £40,000 to drop their interest in a particular player who was interesting a particular team. The agents refused but these are obviously the formal business tactics of certain agents.
There is a further issue regarding the grey areas relating to football agents. Individual agents might represent both the clubs and the individual players in a deal. The wide range for potential conflicts of interest together with integrity issues relating to the slicing of a percentage from both sides of a deal are obvious. This whole sector needs thorough regulation rather than the standard lack of oversight endemic in the English game.
Interestingly, one of the prime reasons that we unanimously decided against teaming up with any agents for the launch of the Holistic Sabermetrics project was the issue of our not being able to determine the "real" financial deals undertaken at meetings at which we were not present. One always must take trust to be a non-existent concept in western business.
Of course, the Pompey Defendants are still awaiting news of the police inquiry that has been dragging on for a year and a half since the BBC Panarama programme exposed the bung culture underpinning the English transfer market. 18 months and nothing - this is all rather inefficient for a police state! Mind you, it took 10 years to conclude the hyperreality that drink was responsible for the death of Diana so we should not be surprised by the slow rate of progress of societal inquiries into their own criminalities, should we?
Much of the evidence being used against Redknapp's mob comes from a French citizen who wishes to remain anonymous. So fearful was this person regarding his life if he were to go public himself that the allegations were released by a Parisien lawyer on his behalf.
Guns, fear of being taken out, suitcases of money, massive insider gambling, money laundering and fraud all hover around the arms dealer's plaything, Portsmouth FC. What has been the strategy of the mainstream media to this outrageous conspiracy of corruption? Well, dutifully the news gains its moment in the spectacular spotlight before being dropped so that we might be able to focus on the neoreal news stories that run and run in the press eg Beckham's move to LA Galaxy, Hicks v Gillett, the Messiah returning to Newcastle etc etc. Nice safe spectacular stuff of no consequence to anyone. Indeed, the alleged uproar behind the scenes at Liverpool neatly coincided with the Scousers best run of the season! Reality? What Reality?
All of which rather neatly brings us to the spectacular irrelevance of this year's FA Cup Final between two corrupt teams, Portsmouth and Cardiff City. We know directly of 5 players who are involved in this event who privately trade on matches in which they are involved. Meanwhile, Ridsdale, who should have been barred from the game for life following his interesting approach to financial matters at Leeds United, is known as a bit of an operator while Gaydamak ("I am the biggest man in Israel") and Redknapp are closely linked to certain aspects of the Tel Aviv, Gibraltar and Moscow betting markets. Oh, the magic of the Cup!
The match official for this "vulgarised pseudo-festival" at the Food Mall is none other than Mike Dean. Banned for two months only the season before last for his inappropriate business linkages to an online betting syndicate, Dean was also named by Avram Grant (another pillar if disrespectability) as being: "Good for one team... The referee changed the result for sure. We know that" when he officiated the highly corrupt Man Utd v Chelsea game. Grant took chutzpah to new heights with his assertion that: "...there are a few referees you can influence, like you saw" in reference to the Wigan v Man Utd title pseudo-decider. Following Grant's outburst, Dean declined to comment.
Chelsea should certainly be more than aware that certain PGMOB match officials may be bought by the powerful clubs as they and Portsmouth are the two most avid utilisers of this illicit tactic.
Corruption will only be targeted within the English game when credence and respect is given to the likes of Mike Newell who expose the rampant corruption. As it stands, the incentives are entirely skewed in the opposite direction with the most criminalised Premiership teams being given a place in the seasonal climaxes of the FA Cup and the Champions League Finals. Proper football?!
Debord: "Its [society's] vulgarised pseudo-festivals are parodies of real dialogue... they may incite waves of excessive economic spending, but they lead to nothing but disillusionments, which can be compensated only by the promise of some new disillusion to come".
Can't wait...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Tuesday, 13 May 2008
Do You Wish For Your Life To Be Better Or Not?
Once per year, Dietrological/ Football Is Fixed do the Berkshire Hathaway thing and we adjust our thresholds of proprietary isolationism to take account of the new market sector realities. We are able to undertake this cyclical review due to our considerable competitive edge in the marketplace. This edge allows us to provide our non-core analyses both for the content of the Football Is Fixed blog and for the annual sale of a selection of High Level Consultancy Documents.
The remainder of this post is related to these Consultancy Documents and, consequently, is only really of relevance to the following groups - bookmakers, professional and serious amateur traders, brokers, market makers, market analysts, journalists, plus football agents, strategists and managers.
Each of the Consultancy Documents cover the global football betting markets and/or the football transfer markets and are offered on a semi-exclusive level with a maximum of five clients for each document. As we defer away from any vestiges of self-promotion, and cash is only marginally interesting to us, we are not particularly bothered how many of these Consultancies achieve maximum uptake. Indeed, generally, we refuse to link with some of the potential recipients of these Consultancy Documents but, in this annual informational extravaganza, our only common interest is your books!
The Consultancy Documents offer cutting edge analyses but we must add a proviso with respect to the global betting markets. The most mature market sectors (Premiership, Serie A, Primera Liga etc) require extensive quantitative analysis and any focus solely on, for example, the fundamental parameters underpinning the outcomes of football matches must also take into account the extensive corruption that is Siamese-twinned with such mature markets. The fundamentals still have a major analytical value but it does not matter how fit a team is if they are up against Howard Webb on a mission, for instance! Despite this proviso, the fundamentals may be developed to actively model ALL secondary territories.
With regard to the football transfer markets, most of the Consultancy Documents may be crafted with basic sabermetric techniques to yield a more accurate reflection of a real market price. It should be remembered that, in an inflated marketplace, a 5% adjustment is valuable and, yet, the application of these data will demonstrate much larger evaluation discrepancies.
Taking it from the top - two, three, four...
* The Ultimate Listing Of The Fundamental Parameters Most Affecting The Outcomes Of Football Matches - This Document covers the 100 most influential factors impacting upon games - from team fitness to the match officials, from rogue players to performance enhancing substances, from analysis of trends to the filtrations that limit the value of all such parameters. Each parameter is thoroughly explored, explained and weighted for market relevance. We also provide some insights into the manners in which such parameters might be combined in creative ways to establish increased market value through configurative and systems thinking approaches. For example, within the Document, a configurative structure is developed to assess the impact of midweek Champions League games on the matches on the following weekend, yielding serious profits in the process.
The value of this Consultancy Document to participants in both the football betting markets and the transfer markets is evident.
Over 90% of the European Leagues may be modelled and traded using these fundamentals and, additionally, these fundamentals form the basis of the assessment of all the more elaborate cartelised and monopolistic Leagues around the world.
With regard to the transfer markets, sabermetrics is only as useful as Titus Bramble unless it is dovetailed with a more serious analysis of the fundamentals. Think about it.
To receive this Consultancy Document, we would require 10,000 of your English pounds ($20,000) - at merely £100 per parameter, this represents extensive generosity and then some.
* The Clattenburg - Regular readers of the blog will be aware that Mark Clattenburg is a bit of an operator. This English referee is of particular interest within the corrupt grouping of PGMOB match officials in that he is ploughing a lone furrow, albeit under the yoke of one Thaksin Shinawatra. Obviously, the rather simplistic angle of The Clattenburg's refereeing of Bangkok City's games forms a minor part of this Document but this is merely the tip of a rather extensive iceburg. The Clattenburg cannot do anything, and we mean anything, without us knowing as we know where his entourage are placing their bets. At only £2500, this not only represents value for trading on The Clattenburg's 25 Premiership games per season but also is just entertaining on the level that last season's best referee has become this season's most corrupt - remember Everton 1 Liverpool 2? We do.
* English Premiership and Scottish Premier League Referee Club Biases - Members of our Trading Team and some poor cash-in-hand merchants have laboriously monitored every single match in these leagues for the last 10 years and 5 years respectively. We have put together an extensive listing of the club, regional and, believe it or not, religious biases of the match officials in the two countries. This data has relevance to both the betting and the transfer markets as the corrupt input of the match officials contorts all of our footballing realities - match outcomes, betting market liabilities and player evaluations. Furthermore, we provide details and weightings on how to monitor any given match official to determine whether or not the said ref is kosher or not. £5,000 and £2,500 are the relevant prices and some of the links are so explicit as to exist as stand-alone models due to the extent of the inappropriate linkages.
* Serie A, Bundesliga and Primera Liga Referee Club Biases - It isn't only the island mentality states that do corruption big style. In this Consultancy Document, we provide the regional and club biases of the match officials from the other three main European Leagues. Not only is this profitable from a trading perspective but also the data may be utilised to assess territorial power gradients. For example, the data for Italy clearly demonstrates that the calciopoli crisis resulting in the relegation of Juventus to Serie B was actually a political act performed on behalf of Berlusconi's Milan who were, if anything, more culpable than the Old Lady. £1,000 each or £2,500 for all three territories are the amounts that will be put towards the house that I intend to build!
* Media Disinformation Sub-Model - In heavily corrupted territories, such as any of those outlined above, the League institutions, the bookmakers and the media work together to provide disinformation to the masses. The creative and configurative modelling of such information establishes stand alone sub-models which may be traded without any access to the more quantitative and complex analytical techniques used by top analysts. This Consultancy Document applies only to the English Premiership but adapatation of the process will yield similar returns in other territories. You are going to make a lot of cash out of this one so we demand a payment of £10,000.
Anybody who is prescient enough to purchase more than one of these nuggets of profit will receive a 10% discount. And, anybody who really wishes to help my construction process can have the whole lot for 25K (a saving of 23%).
Interested? Contact me at footballisfixed@googlemail.com.
Disinterested? Its your life...
To provide examples of the artistic canvas where these types of Consultancy might show their true worth, we will examine the last few days in the only parts of Britain worthy of habitation, Scotland and Manchester.
Craig Levein after the Arabs were miraged out of the fantasy game at Rangers at the weekend: "Its impossible to beat Rangers at Ibrox. The referee bottled it at the penalty. He knew it was a penalty but if he gave it he would have had to send off David Weir. The referee could have just phoned me in the morning and just told me 'Rangers are going to win so just stay home'. There was absolutely no point in even turning up".
In response, Gordon Smith (the SPL version of Scudamore): "To suggest that there was any kind of agenda behind the decisions does a massive disservice to the game".
Similarly, after massive corruptions against their interests over the entire season, Fulham deservedly stayed aloft in the Premiership thanks to the victory over the Pompey Israelites. Yet, surely it is an issue to Reading and Birmingham City that at least one of the match officials for the Pompey/ Fulham game was betting on the Londoners' victory pre-match. The English Premiership - Reality or Illusion?
Okay so, after rolling around laughing for a minute or two, who is really doing the "massive disservice to the game"? Craig Levein? Or Smith, Scudamore, Clattenburg, Shinawatra, Hackett and a whole posse of market makers? And who is going to get fined...?
And tomorrow brings Zenit Leningrad and Dick Advocaat to Manchester to meet the Scottish Premier League. Proper football? Or what...?
We're good at winding things up.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
The remainder of this post is related to these Consultancy Documents and, consequently, is only really of relevance to the following groups - bookmakers, professional and serious amateur traders, brokers, market makers, market analysts, journalists, plus football agents, strategists and managers.
Each of the Consultancy Documents cover the global football betting markets and/or the football transfer markets and are offered on a semi-exclusive level with a maximum of five clients for each document. As we defer away from any vestiges of self-promotion, and cash is only marginally interesting to us, we are not particularly bothered how many of these Consultancies achieve maximum uptake. Indeed, generally, we refuse to link with some of the potential recipients of these Consultancy Documents but, in this annual informational extravaganza, our only common interest is your books!
The Consultancy Documents offer cutting edge analyses but we must add a proviso with respect to the global betting markets. The most mature market sectors (Premiership, Serie A, Primera Liga etc) require extensive quantitative analysis and any focus solely on, for example, the fundamental parameters underpinning the outcomes of football matches must also take into account the extensive corruption that is Siamese-twinned with such mature markets. The fundamentals still have a major analytical value but it does not matter how fit a team is if they are up against Howard Webb on a mission, for instance! Despite this proviso, the fundamentals may be developed to actively model ALL secondary territories.
With regard to the football transfer markets, most of the Consultancy Documents may be crafted with basic sabermetric techniques to yield a more accurate reflection of a real market price. It should be remembered that, in an inflated marketplace, a 5% adjustment is valuable and, yet, the application of these data will demonstrate much larger evaluation discrepancies.
Taking it from the top - two, three, four...
* The Ultimate Listing Of The Fundamental Parameters Most Affecting The Outcomes Of Football Matches - This Document covers the 100 most influential factors impacting upon games - from team fitness to the match officials, from rogue players to performance enhancing substances, from analysis of trends to the filtrations that limit the value of all such parameters. Each parameter is thoroughly explored, explained and weighted for market relevance. We also provide some insights into the manners in which such parameters might be combined in creative ways to establish increased market value through configurative and systems thinking approaches. For example, within the Document, a configurative structure is developed to assess the impact of midweek Champions League games on the matches on the following weekend, yielding serious profits in the process.
The value of this Consultancy Document to participants in both the football betting markets and the transfer markets is evident.
Over 90% of the European Leagues may be modelled and traded using these fundamentals and, additionally, these fundamentals form the basis of the assessment of all the more elaborate cartelised and monopolistic Leagues around the world.
With regard to the transfer markets, sabermetrics is only as useful as Titus Bramble unless it is dovetailed with a more serious analysis of the fundamentals. Think about it.
To receive this Consultancy Document, we would require 10,000 of your English pounds ($20,000) - at merely £100 per parameter, this represents extensive generosity and then some.
* The Clattenburg - Regular readers of the blog will be aware that Mark Clattenburg is a bit of an operator. This English referee is of particular interest within the corrupt grouping of PGMOB match officials in that he is ploughing a lone furrow, albeit under the yoke of one Thaksin Shinawatra. Obviously, the rather simplistic angle of The Clattenburg's refereeing of Bangkok City's games forms a minor part of this Document but this is merely the tip of a rather extensive iceburg. The Clattenburg cannot do anything, and we mean anything, without us knowing as we know where his entourage are placing their bets. At only £2500, this not only represents value for trading on The Clattenburg's 25 Premiership games per season but also is just entertaining on the level that last season's best referee has become this season's most corrupt - remember Everton 1 Liverpool 2? We do.
* English Premiership and Scottish Premier League Referee Club Biases - Members of our Trading Team and some poor cash-in-hand merchants have laboriously monitored every single match in these leagues for the last 10 years and 5 years respectively. We have put together an extensive listing of the club, regional and, believe it or not, religious biases of the match officials in the two countries. This data has relevance to both the betting and the transfer markets as the corrupt input of the match officials contorts all of our footballing realities - match outcomes, betting market liabilities and player evaluations. Furthermore, we provide details and weightings on how to monitor any given match official to determine whether or not the said ref is kosher or not. £5,000 and £2,500 are the relevant prices and some of the links are so explicit as to exist as stand-alone models due to the extent of the inappropriate linkages.
* Serie A, Bundesliga and Primera Liga Referee Club Biases - It isn't only the island mentality states that do corruption big style. In this Consultancy Document, we provide the regional and club biases of the match officials from the other three main European Leagues. Not only is this profitable from a trading perspective but also the data may be utilised to assess territorial power gradients. For example, the data for Italy clearly demonstrates that the calciopoli crisis resulting in the relegation of Juventus to Serie B was actually a political act performed on behalf of Berlusconi's Milan who were, if anything, more culpable than the Old Lady. £1,000 each or £2,500 for all three territories are the amounts that will be put towards the house that I intend to build!
* Media Disinformation Sub-Model - In heavily corrupted territories, such as any of those outlined above, the League institutions, the bookmakers and the media work together to provide disinformation to the masses. The creative and configurative modelling of such information establishes stand alone sub-models which may be traded without any access to the more quantitative and complex analytical techniques used by top analysts. This Consultancy Document applies only to the English Premiership but adapatation of the process will yield similar returns in other territories. You are going to make a lot of cash out of this one so we demand a payment of £10,000.
Anybody who is prescient enough to purchase more than one of these nuggets of profit will receive a 10% discount. And, anybody who really wishes to help my construction process can have the whole lot for 25K (a saving of 23%).
Interested? Contact me at footballisfixed@googlemail.com.
Disinterested? Its your life...
To provide examples of the artistic canvas where these types of Consultancy might show their true worth, we will examine the last few days in the only parts of Britain worthy of habitation, Scotland and Manchester.
Craig Levein after the Arabs were miraged out of the fantasy game at Rangers at the weekend: "Its impossible to beat Rangers at Ibrox. The referee bottled it at the penalty. He knew it was a penalty but if he gave it he would have had to send off David Weir. The referee could have just phoned me in the morning and just told me 'Rangers are going to win so just stay home'. There was absolutely no point in even turning up".
In response, Gordon Smith (the SPL version of Scudamore): "To suggest that there was any kind of agenda behind the decisions does a massive disservice to the game".
Similarly, after massive corruptions against their interests over the entire season, Fulham deservedly stayed aloft in the Premiership thanks to the victory over the Pompey Israelites. Yet, surely it is an issue to Reading and Birmingham City that at least one of the match officials for the Pompey/ Fulham game was betting on the Londoners' victory pre-match. The English Premiership - Reality or Illusion?
Okay so, after rolling around laughing for a minute or two, who is really doing the "massive disservice to the game"? Craig Levein? Or Smith, Scudamore, Clattenburg, Shinawatra, Hackett and a whole posse of market makers? And who is going to get fined...?
And tomorrow brings Zenit Leningrad and Dick Advocaat to Manchester to meet the Scottish Premier League. Proper football? Or what...?
We're good at winding things up.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Saturday, 10 May 2008
Fantastic And Phantasmagoric
Richard Scudamore: "Its a fantastic end to the season".
It is fantastic. It is a fantasy.
Sky Television Advertising: "The most amazing weekend ever".
Guy Debord: "... increasingly extensive campaigns are necessary to convince people to buy increasingly unnecessary commodities".
Mohammed bin Hammam (Asian Football Confederation President): "Political and vested interests must be completely eliminated... Corruption and match-fixing in the Asian game remain prime concerns".
Richard Scudamore: "... a last day decider is the most important thing for us".
And so we reach the fake finale courtesy of the Premier League, Sky Television and the fragmented cartel of European bookmakers.
Scudamore is a wordsmith as well as a goldsmith and his choices of words are revealing. By describing the seasonal conclusion as fantastic, he elevates the Illusion to spectacular heights. By declaring the importance of the title race going to the wire, Scudamore also exposes the types of hidden agenda that presumably preoccupy the board meetings between himself and his knighted sidekick - "if we can't have the 39th Game to grab some extra profits then we better ensure that the competition covers the full 380 game season".
Scudamore's cage had originally been rattled by Kevin Keegan's assertion that the Premiership is "boring" which, of course, from a footballing perspective, it most certainly is due to the twin impacts of power and fantasy. Always quick to defend his criminalised brand, Scudamore carefully addressed the issue of the Big 4 dominance: "I heard someone say that there are four teams who monopolise - my definition of monopoly is when one does". And, for once, the antisocial-personality-disorder-wordsmith is correct. The leading league protagonists are cartelised rather than monopolised.
However, Scudamore failed to refer to the problems relating to the real monopoly - the monopoly called the Premier League. The peculiar structure which allows virtually all of the major decisions to be made by one heavily tarnished individual is entirely monopolistic. As small a pool of referees as possible directly governed by Scudamore's hidden hand has ensured that we have been presented with the allegedly ultimate weekend in return for the ultimate profit for the bookies, the media and the Premier League coffers.
Monopolies are very difficult to undermine as monopolistic providers have a wide array of tactics to undermine any potential competition. Think back to Kerry Packer's attempts to form a parallel reality to Test Cricket in the 70's. Despite being one of Australia's richest men, Packer was only able to split the sport temporarily before the game adjusted to the new realities, and the unprincipled greed merchants who sold out to the apartheid rand were merely self-harming career wise. Monopolies are also impossible to break up as the feedback loops demolish the profitability of a whole range of sectors who leech off the monopoly body in a parasitic manner. Indeed, US lawyers, in the light of the XM-Sirius deal, are wondering what it would take to get any monopolistic merger stopped.
Which brings us to the product, the commodity that is the Premiership. Just as the Greeks refer to the Turkish rape of Smyrna as "The Catastrophe", the demolition of English football at the hands of a bunch of oligarchs and bookmakers is also catastrophic. The laws of the game have proved immaterial as the match officials have worked to ensure the reality of the Illusion.
We have reached the ridiculous stage where Avram Grant, not content with having presided over the massive corruption which has ensured that Chelsea, a team the equal of Everton, are in the Champions League Final and in the Premiership Title decider, is now suggesting that the rules of the game be altered to allow a play-off between Manchester United and The Fucking Immigrants if the teams are level on points tomorrow evening. When we suggested last week that a series of global play-offs would be a serial moneyspinner, we were not expecting anybody to be really thinking such thoughts. At least, not yet!
It is evident that, if you are manager of a business that is in the game of buying success through corrupt mechanisms, you are going to bend the rules and regulations to seek proprietary profit. Grant speaks it but Abramovich does it; Scudamore speaks it and does it.
This is not football. There have been numerous comparisons made with 1968 when the two Manchester giants went into the last day level on points while Paris burned. The title was won by the less powerful outfit before the more powerful one went on to win a glorious European Cup Final due to Best and Stepney. There is no link between these phases of the image - 1968 was proper football; 2008 is a phantasmagoric fantasy. 1968 was proper revolution; 2008 offers colour-coded pseudorevolutions spectacularised by global power.
Martin O'Neill stated this week that: "Rafa doesn't respect anything". But, who does? Liverpool buy off match officials and Benitez stays schmuck; Chelsea buy the Champions League Semi Final and Benitez does the apoplectic thing. Rafa's rule = corruption is cool when it is in our favour but a travesty of justice when against the Texan Reds. Rafa evidently doesn't do rationality of argument either.
So, what about the fantastic best ever weekend brand? Well, there have been numerous "private" discussions between referees within the PGMOB regarding the choice of match officials for the relegation fantasy. In that relegation will cost a team a small fortune, believers in proper football might have hoped that integrity might have been invited to the Final Day Extravaganza. Not so. One team is down whatever happens and one team will have a heavy dose of corruption against their interests courtesy of a PGMOB official. Considering the £20 million that will ooze out of this club's bank account as a result of demotion, this particular outfit should have spent the week brainstorming trade hyperrealities rather than anything so Real as team formations and tactics. As we said, this is not football.
And the Title? There is not one major Asian layer who still believes the title race to be a going concern. C'est fini. And the winner is... Well, Dietrological clients will find out tomorrow whether we are still with our season long position on United, or whether we have hedged our positions, or whether we are going with Abramovich's money.
Debord: "pseudoplayful enthusiasms are aroused by an endless succession of ludicrous competitions, from sports to elections". Anyway, in 24 hours time, we will be able to start looking forward to the next brand of the product. And, it will be different if only because New Labour has gone and done the xenophobic nonsense thing again. Fresh from his success in achieving 20,000 less immigrants over the last year, the Immigration Minister who hails from an Irish immigrant family, Liam Byrne, has declared that all non-EU footballers who sign for English teams will have to prove their knowledge of the English language. But, why pick solely on players. How good is the English of Rouble Abramovich? Or Thaksin Shinawatra? Or Alisher Usmanov? This is a standard English template - if you are a refugee fleeing persecution then fuck off home; if you are Boris Berezovsky looking for somewhere to park your ill-begotten gains then welcome to Blairworld. Ignoring the fact that behind every great fortune is a forgotten crime, the psychopaths are allowed in while their victims are revictimised. To have The Filthy Rich you have to have The Dirt Poor.
We'll finish today with Debord's description of the spectacle: "... where the real world is replaced by a selection of images which are projected above it, yet which at the same time succeed in making themselves regarded as the epitomy of reality".
We hope that you take ironic pleasure from the completion of this Illusion - a pseudo-justification for a counterfeit life - and we may all look forward in anticipation to Senegalese forwards swearing allegiance to the crown just to be able to partake in Scudamore's Hyperreality 2008/09.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
It is fantastic. It is a fantasy.
Sky Television Advertising: "The most amazing weekend ever".
Guy Debord: "... increasingly extensive campaigns are necessary to convince people to buy increasingly unnecessary commodities".
Mohammed bin Hammam (Asian Football Confederation President): "Political and vested interests must be completely eliminated... Corruption and match-fixing in the Asian game remain prime concerns".
Richard Scudamore: "... a last day decider is the most important thing for us".
And so we reach the fake finale courtesy of the Premier League, Sky Television and the fragmented cartel of European bookmakers.
Scudamore is a wordsmith as well as a goldsmith and his choices of words are revealing. By describing the seasonal conclusion as fantastic, he elevates the Illusion to spectacular heights. By declaring the importance of the title race going to the wire, Scudamore also exposes the types of hidden agenda that presumably preoccupy the board meetings between himself and his knighted sidekick - "if we can't have the 39th Game to grab some extra profits then we better ensure that the competition covers the full 380 game season".
Scudamore's cage had originally been rattled by Kevin Keegan's assertion that the Premiership is "boring" which, of course, from a footballing perspective, it most certainly is due to the twin impacts of power and fantasy. Always quick to defend his criminalised brand, Scudamore carefully addressed the issue of the Big 4 dominance: "I heard someone say that there are four teams who monopolise - my definition of monopoly is when one does". And, for once, the antisocial-personality-disorder-wordsmith is correct. The leading league protagonists are cartelised rather than monopolised.
However, Scudamore failed to refer to the problems relating to the real monopoly - the monopoly called the Premier League. The peculiar structure which allows virtually all of the major decisions to be made by one heavily tarnished individual is entirely monopolistic. As small a pool of referees as possible directly governed by Scudamore's hidden hand has ensured that we have been presented with the allegedly ultimate weekend in return for the ultimate profit for the bookies, the media and the Premier League coffers.
Monopolies are very difficult to undermine as monopolistic providers have a wide array of tactics to undermine any potential competition. Think back to Kerry Packer's attempts to form a parallel reality to Test Cricket in the 70's. Despite being one of Australia's richest men, Packer was only able to split the sport temporarily before the game adjusted to the new realities, and the unprincipled greed merchants who sold out to the apartheid rand were merely self-harming career wise. Monopolies are also impossible to break up as the feedback loops demolish the profitability of a whole range of sectors who leech off the monopoly body in a parasitic manner. Indeed, US lawyers, in the light of the XM-Sirius deal, are wondering what it would take to get any monopolistic merger stopped.
Which brings us to the product, the commodity that is the Premiership. Just as the Greeks refer to the Turkish rape of Smyrna as "The Catastrophe", the demolition of English football at the hands of a bunch of oligarchs and bookmakers is also catastrophic. The laws of the game have proved immaterial as the match officials have worked to ensure the reality of the Illusion.
We have reached the ridiculous stage where Avram Grant, not content with having presided over the massive corruption which has ensured that Chelsea, a team the equal of Everton, are in the Champions League Final and in the Premiership Title decider, is now suggesting that the rules of the game be altered to allow a play-off between Manchester United and The Fucking Immigrants if the teams are level on points tomorrow evening. When we suggested last week that a series of global play-offs would be a serial moneyspinner, we were not expecting anybody to be really thinking such thoughts. At least, not yet!
It is evident that, if you are manager of a business that is in the game of buying success through corrupt mechanisms, you are going to bend the rules and regulations to seek proprietary profit. Grant speaks it but Abramovich does it; Scudamore speaks it and does it.
This is not football. There have been numerous comparisons made with 1968 when the two Manchester giants went into the last day level on points while Paris burned. The title was won by the less powerful outfit before the more powerful one went on to win a glorious European Cup Final due to Best and Stepney. There is no link between these phases of the image - 1968 was proper football; 2008 is a phantasmagoric fantasy. 1968 was proper revolution; 2008 offers colour-coded pseudorevolutions spectacularised by global power.
Martin O'Neill stated this week that: "Rafa doesn't respect anything". But, who does? Liverpool buy off match officials and Benitez stays schmuck; Chelsea buy the Champions League Semi Final and Benitez does the apoplectic thing. Rafa's rule = corruption is cool when it is in our favour but a travesty of justice when against the Texan Reds. Rafa evidently doesn't do rationality of argument either.
So, what about the fantastic best ever weekend brand? Well, there have been numerous "private" discussions between referees within the PGMOB regarding the choice of match officials for the relegation fantasy. In that relegation will cost a team a small fortune, believers in proper football might have hoped that integrity might have been invited to the Final Day Extravaganza. Not so. One team is down whatever happens and one team will have a heavy dose of corruption against their interests courtesy of a PGMOB official. Considering the £20 million that will ooze out of this club's bank account as a result of demotion, this particular outfit should have spent the week brainstorming trade hyperrealities rather than anything so Real as team formations and tactics. As we said, this is not football.
And the Title? There is not one major Asian layer who still believes the title race to be a going concern. C'est fini. And the winner is... Well, Dietrological clients will find out tomorrow whether we are still with our season long position on United, or whether we have hedged our positions, or whether we are going with Abramovich's money.
Debord: "pseudoplayful enthusiasms are aroused by an endless succession of ludicrous competitions, from sports to elections". Anyway, in 24 hours time, we will be able to start looking forward to the next brand of the product. And, it will be different if only because New Labour has gone and done the xenophobic nonsense thing again. Fresh from his success in achieving 20,000 less immigrants over the last year, the Immigration Minister who hails from an Irish immigrant family, Liam Byrne, has declared that all non-EU footballers who sign for English teams will have to prove their knowledge of the English language. But, why pick solely on players. How good is the English of Rouble Abramovich? Or Thaksin Shinawatra? Or Alisher Usmanov? This is a standard English template - if you are a refugee fleeing persecution then fuck off home; if you are Boris Berezovsky looking for somewhere to park your ill-begotten gains then welcome to Blairworld. Ignoring the fact that behind every great fortune is a forgotten crime, the psychopaths are allowed in while their victims are revictimised. To have The Filthy Rich you have to have The Dirt Poor.
We'll finish today with Debord's description of the spectacle: "... where the real world is replaced by a selection of images which are projected above it, yet which at the same time succeed in making themselves regarded as the epitomy of reality".
We hope that you take ironic pleasure from the completion of this Illusion - a pseudo-justification for a counterfeit life - and we may all look forward in anticipation to Senegalese forwards swearing allegiance to the crown just to be able to partake in Scudamore's Hyperreality 2008/09.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Sunday, 4 May 2008
How Much Is Michael Owen Really Worth?
If you think that the football betting markets are a bit of a grin, you should check out the football transfer markets.
Highly inefficient and even more highly subjective, with no valid modelling to underpin the pricing process, the transfer market is sometimes askew by over £10 million due to the utter guesstimation of the evaluation process.
Was Michael Owen worth £16 million when he moved from Real Madrid reserves to Newcastle? How about £17 million for Darren Bent?
Both of these transfers were heavily based on the use of sabermetrics - an area of pseudo-science which is the foundation of the transfer "strategies" of many leading clubs. Images of Premiership matches are trawled over in the workhouses of India so that Opta, ProZone and the other sabermetric database firms are able to sell this allegedly valuable information to the analytically gullible.
Sabermetrics is, at best, marginally useful. It is like voting. Microfocus on peripheral data is rarely a basis for a sound evaluation model. Holistics are what you should be after.
And this is why we are launching Holistic Sabermetrics at the end of this month - just in time for Euro 2008 - a massive structural breakpoint in the transfer marketplace and one which yields value on both the buying and selling sides of the arrangement.
By focusing on the irrelevant, the current market participants develop a highly nuanced and, consequently, barely credible version of a true price. On these blog pages, we itemise some current corruptions in the footballing world - we tend to avert our gaze to historical examples and the particularly newsworthy current shenanigans that keep us all entertained. There is a whole body of proprietary knowledge which is never discussed on these blog pages nor, indeed, anywhere else other than our internal meetings. This is proprietary value to our Holistic Sabermetrics model.
With regard to betting markets, we are looking at a mature sector. For Holistic Sabermetrics, the market is still young as there has been no serious attempt to improve the efficiency as the cowboy evaluation territory allows the unscrupulous middlemen to maximise their slice of the action through a fake inflation of value.
Holistic Sabermetrics will be the first service to offer player evaluations using the big picture as the foundation. The impact of betting markets on match outcomes, the input of rogue operators on the pitch, the utilisation of performance enhancing substances, the manipulations by the institutional power bases etc etc etc - all of these areas have a far greater impact on the price of a player than the pseudo-data whizzing around the game today.
Of course, this is not to say that there are not some nuggets of value in the basic sabermetric data - yardage covered and other fitness data are always important, for example. But, these data are only a small part of the overall picture.
We were originally going to launch Holistic Sabermetrics as a joint-project with Key Sports - a London based firm of football agents. Our opening assessment was that the subjective evaluation of a player by a trained eye might have some value with respect to the model. And, it does. But certainly far less than might be expected intuitively. The built-in biases generated by personal experiences and psychologies are big negatives and subjective pricing is too noisy for our liking. Additionally, the cultures of the two groups did not dovetail - we are efficient and strategic while Key Sports are something else. But the key factor in the choice of going-it-alone was the development of an innovative and efficient business model.
Because we have no desire to proactively seek out players, the model is able to exist without inventory, so to speak. Using historical transfer data together with our proprietary inputs, we have created a highly robust model which provides us with two evaluations of a player. The first one relates to the price as dictated by the spectrum of evaluations currently accepted in the marketplace. The second value relates to the Real value of a player - for some individuals are, in Reality, worse than worthless. These rogue players are a liability!
The service will offer a 24 hour turnaround and will cover 16 territories and 28 leagues across the world. Our analyses will not only provide an evaluation of transfer prices but will also provide background and reasoning for our positions.
This is exciting. Testing the Unified Trading Model against a new market is always more interesting than run-of-the-mill trading of a mature sector. Our scenario analysis suggests that we should enjoy a considerable window of competitive advantage prior to a suitable competitive pricing system coming on to the radar. Our edge cannot be mimicked at speed, our proprietary databases are unique. By the time that we have competition, we will have established a reputation. These are good things.
We are also able to offer a more complete service than our competitors. Our second new business, Trade Hyperrealities, will offer clubs our analyses of the global football betting markets and their impact on outcomes. Clubs should do far more to protect themselves than is currently the case - points may be gained via an holistic strategy. There are other things in the pipeline too but we will save those for our selected recipients.
It is more interesting to work closely with one entity than to sleep around, so to speak. Consequently, we are seeking an exclusive arrangement with one club for the full array of Holistic Sabermetrics and Trade Hyperrealities packages. Once relegation and promotion issues have been confirmed, we will refine our shortlist of six, if necessary. By working exclusively with one team, we will demonstrate our competitive edge through the massive benefits accruing through a more multidisciplinary approach to modelling a market sector. Such relative isolationism will also be an upward pressure on the length of our window of competitive advantage.
These transfer evaluations don't only have resonance in the boardrooms but also on what used to be terraces. Not only are there positive adjustments for teams affected by corrupt inputs but also for the ratings of players. Some examples from the current season. David James was named in the Premiership XI based presumably on his high public profile and on the incredible degree of bias in favour of the Portsmouth team over the season. Our ratings show James to be no better nor worse than a whole range of keepers at similar status clubs. Indeed, over the 2007/08 season, the goalkeepers who stand out above from their accomplices in action are Howard (Everton), Friedel (Blackburn) and Kirkland (Wigan).
Managers are affected too. Wenger should be being toasted as the architect of a victory of Total Football. Not so. Obviously. He should be getting the Manager of the Year award instead of Ferguson, or god forbid, Avram Grant. That would surely be too hyperreal to be untrue!!! Running Wenger a close second should be Roy Hodgson, Juande Ramos, David Moyes or Steve Bruce and, yet, outrageously Fulham are still mired in a relegation struggle.
Anyway. Every so often, in the underground world that nowadays governs the major football leagues, a glimpse of the totality of ludicrousness is presented to us. These occurrences prove a point, so to speak. On Wednesday morning, we were alerted to one of the major market makers in the Far East who was already pricing up the Champions League Final - this was 12 hours before the start of the second Semi Final between Chelsea and Liverpool. The anonymous layer was pricing up a Man Utd/Chelsea Final only. We requested prices on the other option only to be told that he only deals in realities! Fucking perfect...
The big question of the week is this: "Who called The Sun journalists to 'Arry's place?". Is there a leak in the City of London police? Was it a deliberate leak? Is 'Arry playing games? Why doesn't 'Arry want any more hyper-owners in the light of the Thaksin Shinawatra fallout? Why did Andrew Cole get Cardiff City defender Darren Purse sent off last weekend? Did 'Arry speak to Andrew? Oh my gosh, this is proper football.
In the enhanced pyramid selling scheme that is shareholder capitalism, football takes its place as a corrupted cartel. Even The Economist is having to reframe its marketed face: "Cartels look as if they are more sophisticated and commoner than anyone thought". Really. The Office of Fair Trading should take a glance at the British bookmaking industry. Psychopaths veer towards cartels to cement their power base while, concurrently, attempting to undermine those self same colleagues in a dog-eat-dog fight to the death. As, Ray Kroc, the lovable founder of McDonalds endearingly stated about his competitors: "...if they were drowning, I'd put a hose in their mouth".
At least politics is still serious. Berlusconi, Bush, Schwarzenegger and Boris, you're messing about... Meanwhile, Rome has elected a former neo-fascist, Gianni Allemano, as mayor. At his victory rally, there were cries of "Il Duce! Il Duce!" accompanied by fascist salutes. Nice.
Manchester, being a global capital of the absurd, should go for Steve Coogan for mayor when the next illusion of local democracy is unfolded.
Only messing.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Highly inefficient and even more highly subjective, with no valid modelling to underpin the pricing process, the transfer market is sometimes askew by over £10 million due to the utter guesstimation of the evaluation process.
Was Michael Owen worth £16 million when he moved from Real Madrid reserves to Newcastle? How about £17 million for Darren Bent?
Both of these transfers were heavily based on the use of sabermetrics - an area of pseudo-science which is the foundation of the transfer "strategies" of many leading clubs. Images of Premiership matches are trawled over in the workhouses of India so that Opta, ProZone and the other sabermetric database firms are able to sell this allegedly valuable information to the analytically gullible.
Sabermetrics is, at best, marginally useful. It is like voting. Microfocus on peripheral data is rarely a basis for a sound evaluation model. Holistics are what you should be after.
And this is why we are launching Holistic Sabermetrics at the end of this month - just in time for Euro 2008 - a massive structural breakpoint in the transfer marketplace and one which yields value on both the buying and selling sides of the arrangement.
By focusing on the irrelevant, the current market participants develop a highly nuanced and, consequently, barely credible version of a true price. On these blog pages, we itemise some current corruptions in the footballing world - we tend to avert our gaze to historical examples and the particularly newsworthy current shenanigans that keep us all entertained. There is a whole body of proprietary knowledge which is never discussed on these blog pages nor, indeed, anywhere else other than our internal meetings. This is proprietary value to our Holistic Sabermetrics model.
With regard to betting markets, we are looking at a mature sector. For Holistic Sabermetrics, the market is still young as there has been no serious attempt to improve the efficiency as the cowboy evaluation territory allows the unscrupulous middlemen to maximise their slice of the action through a fake inflation of value.
Holistic Sabermetrics will be the first service to offer player evaluations using the big picture as the foundation. The impact of betting markets on match outcomes, the input of rogue operators on the pitch, the utilisation of performance enhancing substances, the manipulations by the institutional power bases etc etc etc - all of these areas have a far greater impact on the price of a player than the pseudo-data whizzing around the game today.
Of course, this is not to say that there are not some nuggets of value in the basic sabermetric data - yardage covered and other fitness data are always important, for example. But, these data are only a small part of the overall picture.
We were originally going to launch Holistic Sabermetrics as a joint-project with Key Sports - a London based firm of football agents. Our opening assessment was that the subjective evaluation of a player by a trained eye might have some value with respect to the model. And, it does. But certainly far less than might be expected intuitively. The built-in biases generated by personal experiences and psychologies are big negatives and subjective pricing is too noisy for our liking. Additionally, the cultures of the two groups did not dovetail - we are efficient and strategic while Key Sports are something else. But the key factor in the choice of going-it-alone was the development of an innovative and efficient business model.
Because we have no desire to proactively seek out players, the model is able to exist without inventory, so to speak. Using historical transfer data together with our proprietary inputs, we have created a highly robust model which provides us with two evaluations of a player. The first one relates to the price as dictated by the spectrum of evaluations currently accepted in the marketplace. The second value relates to the Real value of a player - for some individuals are, in Reality, worse than worthless. These rogue players are a liability!
The service will offer a 24 hour turnaround and will cover 16 territories and 28 leagues across the world. Our analyses will not only provide an evaluation of transfer prices but will also provide background and reasoning for our positions.
This is exciting. Testing the Unified Trading Model against a new market is always more interesting than run-of-the-mill trading of a mature sector. Our scenario analysis suggests that we should enjoy a considerable window of competitive advantage prior to a suitable competitive pricing system coming on to the radar. Our edge cannot be mimicked at speed, our proprietary databases are unique. By the time that we have competition, we will have established a reputation. These are good things.
We are also able to offer a more complete service than our competitors. Our second new business, Trade Hyperrealities, will offer clubs our analyses of the global football betting markets and their impact on outcomes. Clubs should do far more to protect themselves than is currently the case - points may be gained via an holistic strategy. There are other things in the pipeline too but we will save those for our selected recipients.
It is more interesting to work closely with one entity than to sleep around, so to speak. Consequently, we are seeking an exclusive arrangement with one club for the full array of Holistic Sabermetrics and Trade Hyperrealities packages. Once relegation and promotion issues have been confirmed, we will refine our shortlist of six, if necessary. By working exclusively with one team, we will demonstrate our competitive edge through the massive benefits accruing through a more multidisciplinary approach to modelling a market sector. Such relative isolationism will also be an upward pressure on the length of our window of competitive advantage.
These transfer evaluations don't only have resonance in the boardrooms but also on what used to be terraces. Not only are there positive adjustments for teams affected by corrupt inputs but also for the ratings of players. Some examples from the current season. David James was named in the Premiership XI based presumably on his high public profile and on the incredible degree of bias in favour of the Portsmouth team over the season. Our ratings show James to be no better nor worse than a whole range of keepers at similar status clubs. Indeed, over the 2007/08 season, the goalkeepers who stand out above from their accomplices in action are Howard (Everton), Friedel (Blackburn) and Kirkland (Wigan).
Managers are affected too. Wenger should be being toasted as the architect of a victory of Total Football. Not so. Obviously. He should be getting the Manager of the Year award instead of Ferguson, or god forbid, Avram Grant. That would surely be too hyperreal to be untrue!!! Running Wenger a close second should be Roy Hodgson, Juande Ramos, David Moyes or Steve Bruce and, yet, outrageously Fulham are still mired in a relegation struggle.
Anyway. Every so often, in the underground world that nowadays governs the major football leagues, a glimpse of the totality of ludicrousness is presented to us. These occurrences prove a point, so to speak. On Wednesday morning, we were alerted to one of the major market makers in the Far East who was already pricing up the Champions League Final - this was 12 hours before the start of the second Semi Final between Chelsea and Liverpool. The anonymous layer was pricing up a Man Utd/Chelsea Final only. We requested prices on the other option only to be told that he only deals in realities! Fucking perfect...
The big question of the week is this: "Who called The Sun journalists to 'Arry's place?". Is there a leak in the City of London police? Was it a deliberate leak? Is 'Arry playing games? Why doesn't 'Arry want any more hyper-owners in the light of the Thaksin Shinawatra fallout? Why did Andrew Cole get Cardiff City defender Darren Purse sent off last weekend? Did 'Arry speak to Andrew? Oh my gosh, this is proper football.
In the enhanced pyramid selling scheme that is shareholder capitalism, football takes its place as a corrupted cartel. Even The Economist is having to reframe its marketed face: "Cartels look as if they are more sophisticated and commoner than anyone thought". Really. The Office of Fair Trading should take a glance at the British bookmaking industry. Psychopaths veer towards cartels to cement their power base while, concurrently, attempting to undermine those self same colleagues in a dog-eat-dog fight to the death. As, Ray Kroc, the lovable founder of McDonalds endearingly stated about his competitors: "...if they were drowning, I'd put a hose in their mouth".
At least politics is still serious. Berlusconi, Bush, Schwarzenegger and Boris, you're messing about... Meanwhile, Rome has elected a former neo-fascist, Gianni Allemano, as mayor. At his victory rally, there were cries of "Il Duce! Il Duce!" accompanied by fascist salutes. Nice.
Manchester, being a global capital of the absurd, should go for Steve Coogan for mayor when the next illusion of local democracy is unfolded.
Only messing.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
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