Jean Baudrillard: "Democracy is... based on equality before the law, but that is never as radical as equality before the rule."
The English Disease is what the Native Australians called it.
Well, not the Indigenous Australians actually but the right wing Murdochratic press.
The English Disease referred to active trades unionism by pommies who settled Down Under.
Nowadays, it applies rather more perfectly to how the Laws of the Game are warped and moulded by ########################################################
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Laws and Rules - the difference is key in sporting events dominated by ##############
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The Laws of the Game, whether football, cricket or whatever, remain largely unchanged.
Even with the creation of new formats eg Twenty20 Cricket, the fundamental Laws are set in stone - two x 3 stumps spaced 20.12 metres apart, bails, ball structure, materials allowed in bats, ground size, number of players blah blah blah.
The Rules are much more malleable though.
And the Rules dominate the Laws.
To the extent that the Laws become a simulacrum of their true meaning, contorted to suit the requirements of #######################################################
Yesterday, England completed their victory over Australia at Lords.
One of my colleagues traded the match and brought to my attention the fact that five of the 8 dismissals of the Top Four Australian Batsmen were fake and an incorrect projection of the Laws of the Game.
Cricket, which has moved much further than football in the use of video technology to aid the umpires, still has numerous regulatory loopholes that allow the Rules to destabilise and overcome the Laws.
These five wickets were proof of this superiority in hierarchy.
And cricket is about to get a whole lot worse.
In May, we posted about the change in leadership at the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) - see http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2009/05/who-to-replace-hackett.html - and we were correct in asserting that Mike "Kipper" Riley would get the post.
But Steve Bennett, one of the two unsuccessful candidates, has broken new ground by being elevated to sit as an independent director of the new Association of Cricket Officials Board (ACOB).
ACOB is cricket's PGMOB.
Both of these knickpoints are ###################################################
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Mike Gatting blurted that the appointment of Bennett was an "inspired choice - the right man to take this new association forward."
From the point of view of Real Cricket, this is a simple fallacy.
And why believe a racist right wing bigot on anything of consequence anyway?
And why not take a view of the Rule defeating the Law in football.
Rather than focus on any of the more obvious corrupting influences on match outcomes, we'll seek out the more obtuse ways in which the Rule gains control.
Paul Gardner: "How can it be justified having the game's rules decided by a somnolent clique that includes permanent representatives from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland [sic], but no guaranteed presence from other countries that really matter [!], like Brazil, Germany, Argentina, Italy or Spain?"
But this slumber is illusory.
Gardner has highlighted many of the issues included in the new rule book published by the International Football Association Board (IFAB).
As Gardner wrote: "... deletions from the rules are not identified."
Take Rule 12.
Rule 12 includes: "A direct free kick is also awarded to the opposing team if a player commits any of the following offences... when tackling, an opponent makes contact with the opponent before contact is made with the ball..."
This part of Rule 12 is akin to Clause Four - it now no longer exists.
It has been deleted from the Rules with no mention nor explanation.
This omission is a blatant Randomising Rule.
Skillful play differentiates the elite teams from the masses, and by allowing regulated obstruction in order to compress this differential, outcomes will be randomised or worse.
After all...
There are Random Realities and Fake Realities.
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Because he is absolutely correct, we are going to quote Gardner more fully.
"... referees operate as though they live in the High Middle Ages and are some superior cabal of lawmakers... who do not feel obliged to explain their actions... Every game features calls that remain obscure because the referee is not obliged - as he should be - to clearly signal what he has called."
With Britain a primary base for the corruption of betting markets throughout Europe, it makes no sense for the Home Countries to have such a say in the imposition of Rules that usurp the Laws of the Game.
The Economist this week produces an article on organised crime in Britain.
As it is organised crime that is defiling our sports, some of the newspapers' points resonate with regard to football and cricket.
"Organised crime may do especially well in the downturn because it depends so heavily on the bribery of officials, reckons Michael Levi, a professor of criminology at Cardiff University. A poor border guard is easier to tempt than a rich one, and a struggling business may be persuaded to launder money."
And a poor referee or umpire (#####################################################) is easier to tempt than a rich one too...
Gardner calls for the establishment of a new body to democratically oversee the Laws of Football.
"The new body should do away, once and for all, with the secrecy and the hocus pocus that still surrounds referees and their activities. The IFAB needs a new approach, and one that should ring a few bells with Sepp Blatter - transparency."
Unfortunately in England even the chairman of the FA, Lord Triesman, believes that "transparency lies in an unmarked grave."
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