Illusion, Scam, Death, Crime #

Another Little Nail In The Coffin Of The Free Market Fantasy

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And these fake scientists still have the audacity to talk about the efficiency of markets!!!

Another Thoroughly Excellent Scam In The Newspaper For The Glib And Self-Righteous - Theo Guardian

We have posted about Sportingbet before.
This company sponsor Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Sportsbook Review, an independent assessor of the criminality that sloshes around the bookmaking world, rates Sportingbet as follows: "Poor, some risk to players funds. Poor customer service etc".
The only levels below this are "Caution, extreme risk to players funds" and "outright scam, book on the brink of failure. No chance to recover funds".

So Theo Guardian has teamed up with this dodgy bookmaker to establish a tipping competition on their website.
In return for numerous nitwits giving the bookmakers a 'wisdom of crowds' database for each round of weekend Premier League matches, the company will 'pay' each weeks' winner a £25 prize.

This alleged generosity extends further, for the overall winner at the end of the season will win a signed England shirt.
Now who would be signing that, then?

Okay let's rip open the scam.

33 weekends at £25 per time results in a 'giveaway' of £825 over the season.
But there is a catch.
The prize isn't in cash.
As the Theo Guardian smallprint adds: “To collect the £25 bet prize, the winner will be required to open up an account with Sporting Bet.”

The prize is a bet or, if you prefer, a series of bets with a company that offers "some risks to players funds" - if you don't lose all the money at a pace, will you be able to withdraw it?

So a free 'wisdom of crowds' database, lots of free mainstream media exposure and, potentially, no cost.

John Pilger: "A standard issue conscience is enough for all but the morally corrupt and powerful."

Please Please Please Give Alan Shearer A Go At Delivering The Eulogy At The Next Death Service On The Sir Bobby Robson Funeral Tour 2009

Newcastle's gain is our loss.
Or vice versa.
It works either way...

After Lady Elsie Robson, having had to endure all 27 verses of her late husband doing it his way during the half-time interval of the match between Ipswich Town and Newcastle United last weekend, walked with gritted teeth to the centre circle in order to cut a piece of tape that was pertinent to her husband's life in some way or other, the BBC cut to the studio for one of Shearer's extra-special efforts: "I think Lady Elsie was emotional there. And so she should be."

And so she was, the poor woman.
At least Steve McClaren's wife has nothing to fear.
Other than his roving eye and rogue accent.

Crimes, Punishments, And Other Variations On A Theme

West Ham United and Millwall fans - accused of racist abuse of Black players during their recent East End Knee's Up; the clubs might face Real charges but it is probably best not holding your breath, as one little breath of punishment may topple the Hammers over the brink.

Arsenal Fan who threw the photographer's chair at Adebayor - a cult hero, so I'm told.

Craig Bellamy - punches a fan; no charge.

Manchester United fan who threw a coin at Carlos Tevez - no charge; club receive no punishment.

The Stoke City fan who hurled repeated racist abuse at Jason Euell as he was warming up - evicted from the ground, yet to be charged with inciting hatred or whatever they call it nowadays. No charges against Stoke City.

Eduardo - dives to get a penalty, receives a two-match ban, later rescinded because Arsenal are a G14(18) team, villified in the media.

Emmanuel Adebayor - involved in a mutual kicking match with numerous of his former colleagues; celebrated his goal in a 'provocative' fashion; three match ban and villified in the media.

El Hadj Diouf calls a white boy a white boy - the police and the Premier League are looking into this vile matter of racist abuse. Villified in the media.

"It follows a pattern, if you dig what I mean" - Gil Scott Heron.

Meanwhile, in the country that our mainstream media views as having a problem of rampant racism, Spain, the following happened at the weekend.

Referee Alfonso Pino Zamorana halted the top of the table clash between Real Betis and Cartagena in the second division due to the racist abuse being endured by Panamanian, Alberto Quintero Medina.
The match was stopped after 78 minutes and an announcement made that the chanting must stop.

Should have tried it at Stoke...

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© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

Why Buying Items In E-Bay Auctions, Betting On Football Matches And Securing TV Rights To The Premier League Are All Examples Of Rigged Markets #

Why is everything so dodgy?

We were considering selling certain types of market information on E-Bay although the legalities are probably too daunting.
Having experienced the platform for the first time over this past week, we are surprised by the potential for market abuse in any blind auction bidding process on the site.

In this post, as usual, we'll give you the narrative, describe the scam, demonstrate the universality of the abusive structure, mock the perpetrators, and offer a solution.
We'll also point you in the direction of some proper music.

Where else could you gain such joy and happiness?

Right.

The Temper Trap are a remarkable band.
Having spent over a decade in the music industry (from van driving to running a large independent label), I tend to keep away from the industry nowadays.
Too many egotistical narcissistic types for my liking.

But The Temper Trap are different and in celebration of ##########################
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As neither the venue nor the associated ticket agencies functioned in an adequate manner, the gig sold out without me getting my hands on any tickets, and hence the revelation of E-Bay.

Now, one of the primary ways to make money in any market is to create scarcity when you possess the assets that are so prized.
So Robin### of Cheshire decides to buy up four spare tickets and to auction these tickets on E-Bay.
Robin### tells us that he is a big fan of the band and is going to the gig himself, and he even tells us that the new album will be out in the New Year.

Robin### might think he is a fan.
But Robin### is, in Reality, a Snivelling Little Shit from Sale (SLSS).
He is exploiting both the band and the venue, and all auctionees.

Firstly, our SLSS puts two tickets on E-Bay, not at cost or even just a little above cost, you understand, but as a blind auction.
Individuals desperate for tickets started bidding and 2 x £7.50 tickets eventually went for £82.
Having pocketed his £67 profit, our SLSS then put two more tickets on the platform, for sale directly at £85 (he was eventually forced to sell for £80), to increase his eventual profit to £132.

By gaming the process in this manner, Robin### maximised the returns that he would receive in the blind auction - if he had put all four tickets up at the same time, for example, he would have reduced the scarcity factor and, hence, his touted winnings.

And that is what this is - touting, legalised touting.

I was astonished how many of the abusive templates utilised by bookmakers to fleece punters are also to be found on E-Bay.
Firstly, it is a sellers' market.
Doubly so in auctions.
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Thirdly, due to the truncated structure in markets for concert tickets, the same psychological devices may be used by both the platform and sellers to induce desire in the buyer - the E-Bay prompts telling you that you are currently winning the bid but shouldn't you increase the maximum that you are willing to pay in case somebody trumps you are a primary example of this.

It would be more truthful if they were to inform us that we should increase our bid so as to increase the returns to E-Bay's shareholders.
Really...

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Now, people who make their living out of E-Bay auctions will say that this is all just reasonable capitalism, buyer beware and all that.
Not so.
A straight sale of an item on E-Bay is fine and dandy, but a blind auction is a structure deliberately created to exploit the buyer.
That is why Richard Scudamore and the Premier League utilise exactly the same template in the selling of tv rights to the spectacle formerly known as football.
Blind auctions maximise revenue for the seller.

Our Snivelling Little Shit from Sale should be aware that it ain't so cool enhancing your bank balance in this way.

And it undermines the event.

Just as the pricing and reselling of Premier League match/season tickets has resulted in the elimination of atmosphere at most grounds as the new bums-on-seats simply do not know what to do, so it is with gigs.

There must have been large numbers of Real fans of The Temper Trap who were unable to afford the £40+ per head that the likes of SLSS were screwing out of them.
Meanwhile, Ian and Stephanie from Didsbury or a bunch of private income students from the South East were able to dip into their assets in order to see the gig.

The outcome was not difficult to predict.
Despite a totally exhilarating performance by the band, there was a whole bunch of Cheshites who thought that the collective sounds of their shrill voices were more palatable than the "Science Of Fear".
A poor call and then some...

It cannot be easy playing to a bunch of middle class tossers - ask Emmanuel Adebayor!

As ever, we have a solution.
Unless blind auctions are banned then, in the case of concert tickets, a 'tax' should be placed on both E-Bay and the seller so that the money is redistributed to where it warrants being - in the hands of the very excellent musicians who created the event.

Because it is the band that is getting ripped off the most.

If I hadn't paid £42 for my three tickets, two of us could have also purchased The Temper Trap album "Conditions", or a few t-shirts, or merely thrown money at the stage in a Georgian Jewish stylee...
...instead of fuelling the already rampant flow of money from Manchester to Cheshite.

The Temper Trap (http://www.thetempertrap.net/Home/) will be colossal - Soul, some Split Enz, Gospel, some Steely Dan and Fine Young Cannibals, Very Very Tight Band, Great Melodies, Structurally and Dynamically Creative, with top management, Korda Marshall.
And Dougie has the most inspirational and beautiful voice.

Despite the E-Bay Experience, the evening would have had to have counted as a total success, if it had not been for some scruffy Manc eejit pointing at me in the bogs and nasaling: "Eayyy, look. It's Mick McCarffeeeee..."

Runt.

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Are Harry Redknapp And Mike Dean Having An Affair? A Flashback #

Was in Gibraltar briefly this week.

And what a fucked up place that is, to paraphrase a friend.

As usual, Backlog equals Flashback.
On two occasions per month, we merely regurgitate some historical angle on something or other.

Today subscribers will receive a post that was originally published in February this year.
With Mike Dean refereeing the Tottenham versus Burnley match this afternoon, we thought it worthy of another airing.

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You parrot-clawed, thrush-beaked, pigeon-chested, self-opinionated, sod-minded, suet-brained, ham-faced, mealy-mouthed, streptococcus-ridden gang of gobshites, to slightly paraphrase Myles na Gopaleen.

The remainder of this post is for subscribers only.

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Tempus Fugit? Fuck It! #

So were Abu Dhabi United robbed by Martin Atkinson?

This post, for subscribers only, details the Reality behind what went on at Old Trafford yesterday.

But we will inform non-subscribers of one little detail...

OUR TRADERS KNEW THAT MANCHESTER UNITED WERE GOING TO WIN THE DERBY PRE-MATCH.
EVEN AT 3-3 AFTER 91 MINUTES, WE WERE CONFIDENT.
BUT, HEY, THAT'S SCUDAMOREWORLD.

It might have been exciting.
But it wasn't Real.
It was like pornography.

"Time - He flexes like a whore,
Falls wanking to the floor,
His trick is you and me, boy" - David Bowie.

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Grim, Grimmer, Grimmest #

"I think that, all things considered, that second half was the worst Celtic performance I've ever seen. I'd say that match was a clear cut case of selling the jerseys" - Gerry Coogan (ManAtTheWindow).

Well, yet again we have to remind you that we warned of the consequences of allowing not-so-super agent John Colquhoun to oversee the selection process for the new Glasgow Celtic manager.
We got Tony Mowbray in coincidence with an increase in one of Mr Colquhoun's bank accounts and Rangers being presented with the 2009/10 title, because Mr Mowbray is simply not up to the job.

This post, which is largely for subscribers only, addresses the greed merchants ruining the Bhoys and couples such observations with an assessment of the futility of the new Europa Cup six match officials nonsense - let us increase the negative impacts of human error/criminality even more.

We'll discuss last nights' debacle in the Occupied Territories of Palestine first.

As soon as he was appointed, we posted that Mowbray would fail, and badly, but we were not expecting such an immediate implosion.
Two home Champions League defeats after only Barcelona had won at Parkhead since the Easter Uprising, followed by some insipid league performances and capped by defeat to a team currently residing in 6th place in the 21st strongest league in Europe (sic).

After Celtic had dominated the first half in Greater Gaza, Kenny Dalglish warned that the home side were so poor that all Celtic had to fear was "complacency."
Let's have a glance at the betting markets.
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The gamble was inevitably landed.

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Somebody made a lot of money out of something that appeared highly unlikely at the interval.

There is a solution available at this dysfunctional football club.
Sack Desmond, Lie-Well, Reid, Colquhoun and the rest of the faceless pinstripes who loiter around the boardroom and reestablish the club as something belonging to Glasgow and the supporters.
How about trying the 'Barcelona model' of bottom up democracy?
It seems to work, after all.

And onto the latest ruse to maintain control over match outcomes in the necessary loci of power...

The Europa Cup trialling of two extra referees behind the goalline is an exercise in opaque futility.
Many clubs have complained that there has been no directive from UEFA as to how the experiment is to be instigated.
Furthermore, the logistics of communication and hierarchy of control are so complex that only 48 groups of match officials have been trained up to the required standard for the first phase of the Europa Cup.

Countries with functioning national associations, like Germany, have had a clear dialogue between the DFB, match officials, clubs and the fans about the project.
Obviously, in the Murdochracy, we get nothing.
As usual.

Bizarrely though, the two referees deemed qualified to referee at these Europa matches on behalf of Brittania are Mike Dean and Mark Clattenburg.
Just how blind?

If we published everything we know about Dean, we would face a court case, whilst Clattenburg was banned for all last season and yet still remains on the UEFA roster.
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Not only is the 6-referee solution impractical on the field of play - imagine an incident on the side edge of the penalty area which might be seen by the referee, the 6th official, the 4th official and the assistant referee closest to the action.
What a babbling brook of bullshit that would be.
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The degree of Houdini-like contortions that football bends itself into to avoid the implementation of virtually mistake-proof video technology, preferring instead to take their chances with human nature, is becoming a little surreal.
Take tennis.
It is known that there is lots of criminalised gambling in the sport, so the administrators have done everything possible to make the plotters' job more tricky to fulfill. Not only are there nine junior linespeople, there is the umpire and each player is allowed to question three calls per set (ie up to fifteen objections per match in a men's five-setter).
Or either of the rugby codes, that are more similar to football in dynamics etc.
Video technology is used to stop injustices and any corrupt input by the match referee.

In each of these sports, the result is very positively correlated with the action on the court or field of play.

This is simply not the case in football.
And Tony Mowbray's position describes the Reality perfectly.

Before the match, Mowbray decided to question the structure of the 5th/6th officials.
He made this assertion despite the fact that such an official would have spotted Adolf Eduardo's dive at the Emirates, and despite the fact that dissing the officials pre-match is not the most intelligent plan of action.
So, despite being damaged by a miscarriage of justice, Mowbray managed to offend the sensibilities that had been supportive of his position in this very case.
It was a bad decision to question potentially "overenthusiastic officials" before the match had even started.

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If Mowbray questions power, power may question him.

And so it continues.

The grouping of match manipulators expands and the integrity of the game sinks ever deeper into the mire.
But why should we allow these operators to destroy OUR sport?
These people already have nice big houses and cars, and yet their frequent psychopathic greed leads them to seek more and more, without taking any care to cover over their tracks.
They are untouchable.

So we get Peter Kenyon receiving a £2 million pay-off for failure.
And an illegal failure at that.
Still it gives him more time to carry on breeding...
Poor woman.

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© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

Adebayor To Serve Remainder Of Al-Megrahi's Sentence, Americans Start To Buy Kilts Again #

The Police, The Premier League, The FA And The Great And The Good All Blame Black Man For Racism

Their faces contorted with hatred.
And with good reason too.
The object of their racist scorn was tormenting them.
And he sports dreadlocks...

The response to Emmanuel Adebayor's excellent goal celebration - this is what football used to be about, passion, confrontation, battle, until it was rebranded as a casino game - has been what one expects of a xenophobic little island.

There is a nasty undercurrent of racism at the Emirates with numerous English Defence League types having infiltrated the prawn-sandwich eating technical analysts.
Both Adebayor and Emmanuel Eboué (perhaps they have a problem with Black men with girlie names?) suffered from this not-so-folksy racism last season and even Wenger is targeted for not being English and not winning anything due to the colossal annual handicap imposed from above.

These racist simpletons with their homogenisation of attitude should remove the blinkers and see the world as it Really is.

Take John Terry.
The man who told us that "English players are too honest to dive", and went on to describe such shenanigans as being indicative of a "foreign mentality", he showed us what Real English honesty is like last week.
His introduction to Croatian substitute at the Food Mall - Ivan Klasnic with his double kidney transplant - was to punch the man in the kidneys.
Hospital for Spittle, and only Alleged Spittle at that.
Ah! The English mentality.

Whistleblowing The Whistleblowers

All the kerfuffle about Lee Probert sending Arsène Wenger to the astral plane during the mugging in Old Trafford missed one key point.
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Inevitably, Probert has not had a refereeing appointment since while Dean managed to add thirteen minutes injury time at Stoke on Saturday - Chelsea scored both of their goals in this extra injury happy hour time.

And Mark Clattenburg, the man with the weave and a propensity for menaces, the man who was less than two metres from the stamp on Van Persie which should have seen him and one of the Emmanuel's sent off, ############################################
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Yes, that man.
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And, more pertinently, why was he allowed to return to top flight refereeing anyway?

We understand that threats and menaces are part of the brand, unlike goal celebrations, but surely the man should have been given permanent wig-gardening time.

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© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

Pray Silence, Our Great Leader Wishes To Speak #

Twisted fire starter Richard Scudamore generally lies low.
He is a man who was made for the shadows.
And, as ever, his words are carefully chosen, rather too carefully...

Apparently, Adebayor has "damaged the Premier League's brand" which is a bit ripe coming from the android who has sold out top flight English football to ########
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We would have thought that the brand of football had already been damaged quite enough actually.

But this was only a sideshow, Bob.
Our Great Leader is more concerned with UEFA and the Financial Fair Play (FFP) plan which Platini introduced yesterday to a wall of silence in the mainstream English media.
The FFP will prevent indebted clubs from competing in UEFA competitions from 2012 and, with the ban on transfers at Chelsea, suggests a hardening of attitude at both UEFA and FIFA towards the financially unstable English elite.

Now, Our Great Leader is on a rather sticky wicket here.

No matter where one looks in ScudamoreWorld, there is financial disaster.
All four companies involved in Hull City are refusing to produce accounts despite being considerably overdue, and rumours of #######################################
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According to Peter Storrie, al-Fahim is yet to refinance Portsmouth, is struggling to find the money and #################################################################
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Chelsea are banned from the transfer market for child trafficking and other clubs may follow.
West Ham United finally released some accounting figures, not the most recent ones as they are still secret, but the club lost £37 million in 2008 with current debts and liabilities reaching £100 million. If ScudamoreWorld hadn't illegally prevented their relegation, this club would have gone out of existence. Only the goodwill of the banks kept the team afloat anyway.
Birmingham City are about to be taken over by an Asian businessman ################
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Transfer fee spending by Premier League clubs fell by 10% in the summer transfer window despite the Murdochracy claiming that it was a record window (based on Manchester City having spent more than previous biggest spenders!!!).
Meanwhile, there is concern over the number of players moving between Portsmouth and Tottenham Hotspur over the last three seasons with numerous other negotiations having failed to materialise in a transfer. Being ScudamoreWorld, only insiders at Portsmouth and Spurs know the true values of these transfers.
Meanwhile, despite the shirt sponsorship deal with a wunch of bankers, Liverpool's new stadium will not be built until the global recession ends and credit becomes available.
Newcastle and Wigan, through their Sports Direct and JJB Sports brands, are accused of price-fixing by the Office of Fair Trading, which kind of raises the issue of the fit-and-proper-persons-test (FPPT) with regard to Mike Ashley and Dave Whelan.
And, elsewhere, the Premier League's rigid control of 'their product' has run into financial and legal issues in Israel, where Judge Michal Agmon-Gonen threw out an attempt to shut down a pirate website (www.live-footy.org) broadcasting the Premier League matches. The excellent judge wigged: "...watching sports events is socially important and should remain in the realm of mass entertainment, and not just be for those who can afford it."
And further still, at Pluto's core, those nice people at Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC) are targeting the excessive money laundering which is a ubiquitous feature of ScudamoreWorld. Those agents and market manipulators and insider gamblers should beware as the HMRC is targeting offshore accounts belonging to managers, players and the various leech-like middle-people private-equitising the sport.
The asset-strippers, if you like.
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And ScudamoreWorld tarnishes everything that it touches.
Not being a proper national association, it has been necessary for the Premier League to takeover the FA board to render the association useless.
The FA Cup is suffering because of this with EON withdrawing sponsorship (a £32 million four-year contract), and due to Setanta's demise leaving a £70 million shortfall. Those optimists hoping that ESPN or another bidder might come up with a similar figure are to be disappointed as the venerable trophy will be sold off at a cheap price nearer the 3rd Round - trying to sell a bum product in a time-truncated market is not a strong hand.
Still, the FA is proud to announce that it is seeking a £5 million sponsorship deal with a bookmaker.

And that's it.
The same formula.
Always.
Drive the body to the brink of financial ruin.
'Save It' with bookmaking money.

As Our Great Leader delivered: "It is absolutely essential that these clubs are run as viable, going concerns."

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© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

You Can't Keep A Good Man Down... #

... and John Colquhoun keeps popping up again and again and again, so he does.

Being a humble imbiber of sporting journalism, you will not realise that this is taking place, unless you are a regular reader of this blog.
In which case you will understand that we are onto Mr Colquhoun's case.
A tatty little man...

So where shall we start?

Aaron Lennon's overperformance for Engerland had that Butterfly Effect thing going on, in that it guaranteed that Colquhoun would lever one of his Guardian cronies to produce a major Saturday piece extolling the virtues of his client, Theo Walcott.
Just how many times in a year do we have to put up with this 'Walcott Promo Journalism' in this one paper?

This type of Colquhoun Experience is entirely legitimate.

Readers of the Guardian will also have noticed Calamity James fortnightly ghost-written tosh and the repeated focus on Steve McClaren in that really really interesting Eredivisie in the Netherlands.

Again, all good stuff.
Unless you fancy reading some actual news.
Rather than the PR disclosures of the Colquhoun Experience.

Perhaps The Guardian should be more explicit and openly display a banner informing readers that these columns are advertorials for Key Sports.

A similar example was the amount of media space given to the David James 'will he, won't he?' transfer extravaganza on the final day of the transfer window.
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When you select to sail close to the wind (my initial report to my colleagues after meeting the Colquhoun Experience was that "#####################################
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So, nothing peculiar about that very peculiar deliberate handball by Craig Fagan against Sunderland on Saturday. The "daft handball" (as called by The Sun; The Guardian didn't comment) gave Sunderland an early penalty and set the mood on the game.
Mr Fagan is a client of the Colquhoun Experience.

Or in more tragic territories, Calum Davenport who was under threat of leg amputation after the August knife attack at his home, has entirely disappeared from the news as have any of the causes of the assault.
He is one of Colquhoun's too.

And from the serious to the ridiculous.
When, in a pathetic effort to boost sales of his own particular ghost-ridden tosh, Matt Le Tissier decided to 'own up' to being behind a 1995 betting scam on the 'time of the first throw in' markets offered by the spread betting firms, the media collectively threw up their mock convulsions.

Should the police be brought in?
How should we feel about a BSkyB employee being involved in the corruption of betting markets?
Why so much fuss about something which is so triflingly minor when there are billion pound betting markets out there on certain Premier League games?

And, this was one of Colquhoun's too.
This was his ice-breaker, his 'hey, I'm just one of the lads' attempt when we first met - his 'disclosure' that he had been involved in a 'time of the first throw in' scam was supposed to make me feel warm towards the man.
As, presumably, was his description of how he had managed to write off half a million pounds worth of music industry debts using a legal loophole.
Good business, sir...

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And, when we think of these mid-nineties roots of their current 'business strategies', we should remember one of those useful bits of Latin in reference to this sprouting of corruption, concordia res parvae crescunt.

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Don't Believe What You See #

Today we detail an extensive post about the current manipulations of online betting platforms.

Malicious hacking is creating an entirely new Reality where price information is either forbidden or, worse, adjusted when a punter logs in to a site.

As all of this post is of considerable trading advantage, none of it is being published in this place.

To subscribe, see details below.

Otherwise, continue trading in the dark.
But don't believe what you see.

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The Naked Guest Of A Gracious Queen #

Welcome to the Football Is Fixed Live Coverage of England versus Croatia from the Food Mall.

Press 'Refresh' whenever you feel the urge.
Scroll down.
Enjoy.

############################################# bits are emailed to subscribers at the end of the match.

Well, I'm already bored so let us start as we mean to go on.
With a moan.
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Neurally Challenged Beardie Weirdie Speaks Shit, Again

Ken Bates, the man who makes the current array of odious owners seem like par for the course, is speaking a squiggly doogle again when he reckons that little clubs (like recent Champions League Semi Finalists Leeds United???) should be able to take revenge on bigger clubs stealing their young talent by gaining points deductions from the child trafficking outfit.
An excellent idea and one that UEFA should seriously consider in their efforts to make the Champions League more balanced.
Handicap the English with a couple of points deduction at the Group Stage and say, a pre-determined sending off around Half Time in the knockout phase.
That should do the trick.
But Mr Bates is hiding behind his whiskers here for his 'little team' illegally poached Blackpool manager Simon Grayson last season.
Being even littler than Leeds, we demand a points reduction.
Now.

And the 'Pool are coming up under a proper manager now...
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JUSTICE - A Refrain And Some Details Worth Checking Out As It Isn't Often That Major Conspiratorials Spiral Out Of Control In Such A Revealing Manner

Further to the recent post on the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi for a crime that he never committed, ignore the pre-match talking head nonsense on ITV and read John Pilger's overview of British and US Deep State Shenanigans - Lockerbie: Megrahi Was Framed - at http://www.zmag.org/zspace/commentaries/3973.
It's more important than football.

In fact, fuck it, it's too important to allow you the opt-out of not clicking, so here it is in full.
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"The hysteria over the release of the so-called Lockerbie bomber reveals much about the political and media class on both sides of the Atlantic, especially Britain. From Gordon Brown's "repulsion" to Barack Obama's "outrage", the theatre of lies and hypocrisy is dutifully attended by those who call themselves journalists. "But what if Megrahi lives longer than three months?" whined a BBC reporter to the Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond. "What will you say to your constituents, then?"

Horror of horrors that a dying man should live longer than prescribed before he "pays" for his "heinous crime": the description of the Scottish justice minister, Kenny MacAskill, whose "compassion" allowed Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi to go home to Libya to "face justice from a higher power". Amen.

The American satirist Larry David once addressed a voluble crony as "a babbling brook of bullshit". Such eloquence summarises the circus of Megrahi's release.

No one in authority has had the guts to state the truth about the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 above the Scottish village of Lockerbie on 21 December 1988 in which 270 people were killed. The governments in England and Scotland in effect blackmailed Megrahi into dropping his appeal as a condition of his immediate release. Of course there were oil and arms deals under way with Libya; but had Megrahi proceeded with his appeal, some 600 pages of new and deliberately suppressed evidence would have set the seal on his innocence and given us more than a glimpse of how and why he was stitched up for the benefit of "strategic interests".

"The endgame came down to damage limitation," said the former CIA officer Robert Baer, who took part in the original investigation, "because the evidence amassed by [Megrahi's] appeal is explosive and extremely damning to the system of justice." New witnesses would show that it was impossible for Megrahi to have bought clothes that were found in the wreckage of the Pan Am aircraft - he was convicted on the word of a Maltese shopowner who claimed to have sold him the clothes, then gave a false description of him in 19 separate statements and even failed to recognise him in the courtroom.

The new evidence would have shown that a fragment of a circuit board and bomb timer, "discovered" in the Scottish countryside and said to have been in Megrahi's suitcase, was probably a plant. A forensic scientist found no trace of an explosion on it. The new evidence would demonstrate the impossibility of the bomb beginning its journey in Malta before it was "transferred" through two airports undetected to Flight 103.

A "key secret witness" at the original trial, who claimed to have seen Megrahi and his co-accused al-Alim Khalifa Fahimah (who was acquitted) loading the bomb on to the plane at Frankfurt, was bribed by the US authorities holding him as a "protected witness". The defence exposed him as a CIA informer who stood to collect, on the Libyans' conviction, up to $4m as a reward.

Megrahi was convicted by three Scottish judges sitting in a courtroom in "neutral" Holland. There was no jury. One of the few reporters to sit through the long and often farcical proceedings was the late Paul Foot, whose landmark investigation in Private Eye exposed it as a cacophony of blunders, deceptions and lies: a whitewash. The Scottish judges, while admitting a "mass of conflicting evidence" and rejecting the fantasies of the CIA informer, found Megrahi guilty on hearsay and unproven circumstance. Their 90-page "opinion", wrote Foot, "is a remarkable document that claims an honoured place in the history of British miscarriages of justice". (Lockerbie - the Flight from Justice by Paul Foot can be downloaded from www.private-eye.co.uk for £5).

Foot reported that most of the staff of the US embassy in Moscow who had reserved seats on Pan Am flights from Frankfurt cancelled their bookings when they were alerted by US intelligence that a terrorist attack was planned. He named Margaret Thatcher the "architect" of the cover-up after revealing that she killed the independent inquiry her transport secretary Cecil Parkinson had promised the Lockerbie families; and in a phone call to President George Bush Sr on 11 January 1990, she agreed to "low-key" the disaster after their intelligence services had reported "beyond doubt" that the Lockerbie bomb had been placed by a Palestinian group contracted by Tehran as a reprisal for the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by a US warship in Iranian territorial waters. Among the 290 dead were 66 children. In 1990, the ship's captain was awarded the Legion of Merit by Bush Sr "for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service as commanding officer".

Peversely, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1991, Bush needed Iran's support as he built a "coalition" to expel his wayward client from an American oil colony. The only country that defied Bush and backed Iraq was Libya. "Like lazy and overfed fish," wrote Foot, "the British media jumped to the bait. In almost unanimous chorus, they engaged in furious vilification and op en warmongering against Libya." The framing of Libya for the Lockerbie crime was inevitable. Since then, a US defence intelligence agency report, obtained under Freedom of Information, has confirmed these truths and identified the likely bomber; it was to be centrepiece of Megrahi's defence.

In 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission referred Megrahi's case for appeal. "The commission is of the view," said its chairman, Dr Graham Forbes, "that based upon our lengthy investigations, the new evidence we have found and other evidence which was not before the trial court, that the applicant may have suffered a miscarriage of justice."

The words "miscarriage of justice" are missing entirely from the current furore, with Kenny MacAskill reassuring the baying mob that the scapegoat will soon face justice from that "higher power". What a disgrace."
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Right, that should have got you in the mood for a Food Mall Fake Match.
We will try to be neutral in our assessment of the event although our money might speak.

Well, if Ukraine don't win in Minsk, England only need a draw and then the match might turn into a damp squib with both sides happy with the point.
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The markets have been far too interesting for my colleagues to allow me to talk about it but, suffice to say, there is much active disinformation out there.
Nice timing though...

The Ukraine match is going to finish just as the national dirges are sung, which is going to lead to some mad trading in the three minutes leading up to the off.
Good ol' FIFA...

And a draw it is, so the Poms only need a point...
ITV reckon the game is still in play which is typical.

As is the talking over the Croatian anthem.

Big Times in the Balkans these days with Yugoslavia possibly giving FOUR teams to the World Cup - Serbia, Bosnia Herzogovina, Slovenia and Croatia.
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That will certainly have an impact on the outcome here.
Jolly good.

We're off.

The very late money was on England if that means anything.

Penalty?
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
What's Mallenco on then?

Ah! The imaginative booing of Eduardo.
Nearly gets his leg taken off by some thug in Birmingham, looks like he might never play again so give him the bird...

Oooo another penalty.
How exciting!

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Time to purchase your vuvuzelas.
What's the word?
Johannesburg!

Now if that through ball had been towards Calamity or Carson, you would have been sweating.
Great to see a proper keeper between the posts.

Top save by the young lad from Gareth Barry, who should be playing for Eire like Gerrard and Rooney really.
And Lennon.

OMG the French are down to ten men in Belgrade.
Looks like the Play Offs for the astrologer's men...

Well, the dissonant dullards are Engerland til they die, which, from our point of view, is a time which cannot come soon enough.

More boos for Eduardo.
What with Terry bravely telling the world that the English don't cheat (what about Dresden?) and Rooney diving against Slovenia, why are they picking on the little Brazilian?
Must because of the Arsenal thing...

And France are behind after Venus moved into Taurus while Saturn was still in Sagittarius. A facile mistake by the French supremo.....

Yo!!!!
LOADSOFMONEY......................................
2-0.

This is the first time I've cheered on the English since the 1-0 fix against Argentina when Collina gave the penalty etc etc.
It feels a little strange but money is more important than absolutely anything.
Obviously.

Well, if it gets to three, we're off down the pub.

Woooow.
Proper block from Terry.

And the Ecuadoreans have scored in Bolivia as the pressure builds on Maradona.

In a different culture, the saddo's that take their musical instruments along to these events and start up with their commonwealth view of the world are akin to those weird Opus Dei lot in Sevilla, with their chains round their feet, marching round for four days carrying statues.
Until their feet bleed.
Same mentality.

John Terry is looking in heroic mood.

Gosh! You could cut the atmosphere with a knife.
Very quiet at the Mall.

Three goals for Croatia should awaken them.
Goodness me, they are now booing even if the ball is anywhere in the vicinity of Eduardo.
Just hang draw and quarter the little blighter.

And a couple of key goals.
Italy 2-0 versus Bulgaria means Eire need to win in Dublin although second place is secure now.
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And, if Denmark and Portugal match Sweden and win in Group One, what will happen when the Swedes meet the Danes?

And the reappearance of Comet Kahoutec has resulted in 10 men France gaining an equaliser in Serbia. The tailed messenger to the rescue. Bring out the tarot cards for half time.

As expected, Saudi Arabia are in front in the Play Off against Bahrain.
Money talks and Bahrain would be the smallest country ever to qualify for the World Cup finals with only 700,000 people.
Not enough tv income, thank you very much.

The Albanians have equalised against Denmark which means Ronaldo can go to the ball.
Possibly.

Oh Emile!
Oh Lamps!!
Oh Emile!!!

So, at half time, we'll discuss Mike Dean and the sending off of Wenger at Old Trafford. Because there are some things that need to be aired.

Well, apparently Wembley "is believing"...
Believing what exactly?

Anyway.
Mike Dean.

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Well, it is Balkan heaven.
Bosnia-Herzogovina have got the point needed against the Turks for the Play Offs, while Serbia are virtually assured of top place now, and Slovenia are moving into the runners up slot in Group 3. Unless Ukraine beat England, Croatia will also be in the Play Offs.
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Steve McManaman, chum of Carson Yeung, and a possible future manager of Birmingham City, a routine provider of fake information, has jumped from Setanta to ITV.
It all morphs to the lowest common denominator set by BSkyB.

Oh! And by the way...
Only 48 referees are going to be used for the first phase of the Europa Cup with Dean and Clattenburg rumoured to be getting the English slots.
But we cannot be certain as the PGMOB, unlike their counterparts in the other major territories, have not released any information.
as is their wont.

The bloke who says "there's an app for that" on the I-Phone advert deserves a good slapping.
"There's an app for that..."

Off again.

Why don't they sing interesting ditties like "Prince Phillip playing polo on his arse in Stevens Green."?

Wonderful stuff.
The excellently named Okwunwanne has equalised for Bahrain and the Shia's are back in the match against the Wahhabi's, and their own monarchy, I guess.

Anyway, what's happening at the Mall?
Looks like the Three Lions are playing it out and saving their energies for their wage payers at the weekend.
Time for Croatia to score.

And Scotland going behind means that ALL second place teams in the other eight groups are guaranteed a Play Off place.
Super stuff.
And the dole for Burley and Butcher.

And Slovakia's second goal in Belfast means that only Eire will be representing the Emerald Isle in the Play Offs.

Penalty!!
Eduardo - so it must have been a fake.
"His reputation going before him" apparently.
Really.

They could try a spot of extraordinary rendition on Eduardo.
Being hard done by and with Dr John Reid's links, that should be simply another consultancy arrangement for the little Napoleonic one.

"THEY ARE GOING TO THE FINALS IN STYLE"
3-0.
Fat Wallet Time.

Hellas Alas!
Moldova have equalised in injury time as the full impact playing over half the game in Switzerland with ten men hits home.
Touch and go.

4-0
Oh they are "absolutely rampant".
"A platform to go all the way".
Orgasmic in the commentary box.
So to speak.

So the 100% English and the 100% Dutch prepare a Boer Draw in South Africa.
Geddit?
It's been a long day...

Double save and Eduardo, the evil villain, scores to self-righteous boos from the fascistic hordes...

Excellent stuff again. As Klasnic, having survived two kidney transplants comes onto the pitch, he is greeted with the ubiquitous boo.
Think you're a survivor eh?

Well, we've had a profitable night with only the Six Counties letting us down.
Everything is going to plan.

Oh its another.
There you go.
Get rid of James, Carson, Owen and McClaren, and you ain't got a bad team really.
5-1.

If this were a culture with style, there would be celebrations going on now.
Sssssssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

It's just like watching Brazil.
Well, sort of.
Poetry in motion.
Jumpers for goalposts.
Lets have another minutes silence for Bobby Robson.

And they're bringing on Brad Pitt for the finale.

Apparently, Rooney's not quite on the same wavelength as David Beckham.
Who is?

There was another dive by one of those cheating foreigner chappies there...

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

What is it like being "Happy And Glorious", I wonder?

The big gamble that accompanied Martin Atkinson's replacing Baskakov in Romania was landed.
Where did that emanate from, do you think, boys and girls?

Oh look, there's the band.
What a bunch of gobshites.

Defoe makes mistake.
Drop him.
Start of the Bring Back Owen Campaign in The Sun.
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We predict lots of muggings of pissed up Poms in Pretoria, we do.

Finite!

* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.

© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

England Versus Croatia Live On Football Is Fixed

Will it be Misery At The Mall?
Or will it be Ecstasy for the Xenophobes??
Has Fabio packed his brolly???
To have not is surely folly...

That's fuckin' poetry, is that.

What we are going to do, right, is this.

We're going to do one of our live match commentaries on this evening's spectacular at Wembley - we'll talk about markets and where the money is going (and has been), and we'll mock the nonsense on the pitch, and we'll examine why Ukraine are so key to everything, and we'll discuss why there was such a huge plunge on Austria in the betting markets after the match referee was altered from Baskakov to our very own cuddly Martin Atkinson (surely such things should not impact upon the markets.... surely not).

So that will be a hoot, won't it?
You might even be able to determine which way we have traded on the event and make yourself a few extra pennies to furnish yourself against the recession.

And, because all international qualifiers have a certain dreariness about them, and because it is impossible to moan about those bloody musicians with their imperial fare for a full ninety minutes (although we could try if it was put to us as a challenge), we will fill out the post with some pertinent twitterings about life, the universe, everything...

And, for subscribers, we will additionally have the cheek to give this single post a double weighting which means, in effect, we are ripping you off 5.7p or 3.8p depending which subscription level you are on.

But you will let us off now, won't you?
Ah! Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on....

So, visit http://www.footballisfixed.blogspot.com/ at 20:00 BST and waste your life away.

© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

Putty-Headed President Peat Ultimately Responsible For Scotland's World Cup Hopes Hanging By A Thread #

So the Scottish FA president reckons that Chris Ilewumo's miss against Norway at Hampden is the reason for Scotland going into their last group match with the Netherlands needing a victory to stand any remotely realistic chance of qualifying for the Play-Offs in November, does he?

Check out our recent post after the reverse Norway game for an outline of some of the Real reasons that the Scots are not going to South Africa (see: http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2009/08/butcher-and-burley-footballing-bradford.html).

And it continues...

Take Group 3, which following Sweden's victory in Hungary has emerged as the prime Group alongside Group 9 for the unlucky place in the 2nd Spot Musical Chairs Play Off Qualification tangle.
Both of Wednesday's matches in Group 3 are concurrent to avoid any advantage to the teams kicking off later.
There are two further rounds of games in Group 3.
Last Saturday in their penultimate round, Scotland and the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia could have demanded that the Iceland v Norway match kick off at the same time to produce a level playing field.
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Even more short-sighted was the agreement on the fixture list.
By finishing Group 9 two rounds of matches ahead of the other eight groups, the Scottish FA have given the opposition a target figure. Even should Scotland defeat the Dutch, the other nations will understand EXACTLY what they must achieve to qualify for the next stage.

Two days after his subliminally racist faux-pas (just how many Black players are there to blame in the Scottish squad?), Peat apologised.
So, that's alright then.

Scotland must beat their fellow orangemen tomorrow.
And even that might not be enough.
As we pointed out in the previous post, the 0-4 defeat in Norway is the Real reason that the Scots will struggle to qualify as goal difference is the second derivative divider if points totals are equal for the 2nd placed outfits.

With both Rangers not having bought a player for over a year and Celtic looking to offload players via transfers or loans in the wake of the excessive mismanagement of the takeover of Setanta's rights by BSkyB, Scottish football is in proper trouble.
If the Big Two are financially compromised then one may rest assured that Livingstone are not the only other crisis club in the country.

Obviously the various footballing hierarchies in Scotland are dysfunctional but glance at Dublin or London and the view is no different.
But Scotland does appear to punch above its weight in the dysfunctionality department and the rancid nature of the inappropriate power links extend to the club owners, some referees and the primary agents who are all, in effect, shafting the Scottish game for personal aggrandisement.

For example, one of the very few things of consequence that I learned in my meetings with Scottish agent John Colquhoun was that Hugh Dallas, the man who disgracefully head-butted the monarch, has two referees "under his wing".
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What does this one minor piece of information tell us about the links and absence of weights and balances at the top of the Scottish game?

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© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

Why Wayne Rooney Is More Intelligent Than That Rare Thing, An English Intellectual

Pomposity, sharp suits, a clipped accent courtesy of your private or finishing school, the English view of intelligence is a chromatic aberration.

The individuals put forward as innovative, ground-breaking, free-thinking creative types share one common theme - these people are repeatedly incorrect in their assertions.
Think Niall Ferguson or Richard Dawkins.

Meanwhile, Real intelligence is mocked.

In that the fundamental tenet of intelligence is pattern recognition at speed, we suggest that Wayne Rooney is markedly more intelligent than the alleged academics mentioned above.
Pattern recognition ahead of one's contemporaries is the key edge in any discipline - market analysis, economics, biology, music, IT and football.
When Rooney is on the field of play, he sees patterns of movement prior to the opposition, he intuitively feels the movement of colleagues, he is able to deliver exactly the best option of those available.
These analyses are akin to real-time feedback loops in complex structures.
Furthermore, to be able to achieve this, he is athletically primed and psychologically comfortable.

Through nature and nurture and self-application, Rooney has developed these pattern recognition and intuitive intelligence skills to extremely high levels.
He rarely fails to perform.
Moreover, the man possesses strategic and sustainable intelligence, withstanding the pressures of rogue operators like Michael Owen and the mainstream media journalists (54% public school, by the way), to plan ahead while maintaining his short-term competitive advantage.
He has emotional intelligence.
He has sharp focus and the ability to see the big picture.
He is contrarian.
He reduces complicated Realities to simplicity.
He is experimental.
He has the ability to conceptualise.
He undertakes continual self-improvement.
His play incorporates Real joined-up thinking.
He has perfect timing.
He thinks creatively and laterally.

Proper thinking outside of the box.

And, yet, because he has a face like the Map of Ireland, and both he and his girlfriend have northern working class names, the man's intelligence is simply not recognised.
Real intelligence requires a knowledge of Chaucer and Eton Rules, you see.

In "The Postmodern Condition: A Report On Knowledge", Jean-François Lyotard isolates this societal blinkering towards intelligence.
In summation, he views knowledge a little like a bicycle wheel, with the area between each of the spokes representing a particular module of knowledge.
For the efficient performativity of a free market system, only certain of these knowledges have relevance - those that add value, profit and near-future direction to the system.

So IT is raised high above its Real status as are hyperreal knowledges such as marketing, business administration, financial market analysis and economics.

Other areas that do not provide the necessary returns to owners and shareholders are simply regarded as superfluous intelligence - Archaeology, Cosmology, Philosophy, Theology, pure Science that does not have militaristic uses, pure Mathematics, Behavioural Psychology, Latin, studies of consciousness etc etc.

Not only is knowledge limited in scope but the knowledge that is established incrementally in the chosen areas of endeavour are monetised in an antisocial manner.

"Oh my God, I've had an interesting idea. Patent it. Copyright it. Prevent open source solutions for the benefits of all. After all, this is probably my only big one."

This line of thinking does not represent specialised generalism or generalised specialism, this line of thinking does not allow for the changing of one's mind when new information comes to light, this line of thinking cannot determine cause and effect.

What is knowledge?
It is not creative accounting or fiddling a quorate vote, it is not finding loopholes in hyperreal structures, it is not a misuse of statistics and science to produce fake knowledge, it is not cornering a market.
Knowledge is universal, the staying true to evolutionary roots, the refusal to be distracted by fake realities.

This is an issue particularly in the free market ideologue states.
Britain produces Niall Ferguson, Alan Sugar, Jamie Oliver and Carol Vorderman as public intellectuals.
America provides us with the repeatedly failing Lawrence Summers, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and Martha Stewart.

And after all...
Who would you rather father your child?
Wayne Rooney or Richard Dawkins?

© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

Freakonomics At The Core Of Spectacular Society - A Flashback

Twice per month when we are either too horizontal to care, or too snowed under to bother, we fall back on a little bit of historical cut-and-paste to save precious minutes.

Today is one of those days.

The post below was initially conspired in June 2007 and, with hindsight, I think we were too kind to the vastly overrated book effectively reviewed by the post.

So before we reprint our assessment of "Freakonomics" by Levitt & Dubner, we want to deconstruct their fallacious economics more fully.

Being a subject that depends on incrementally innovative advancements that merely reinforce an invalid template, economics is one hell of a fake subject.
Creative and holistic thinking it is not.

The whole issue of freakonomics hovers around the determination of cause and effect.
Rather than employing robust statistical techniques and appropriate modelling, the 'mathematics' behind freakonomics is flaky, largely inappropriate and peripheral to any true understanding of any market or social issue.

At the basis of freakonomics are 'instrumental variables'.
Designed to determine cause and effect in narrow areas of concern, the utilisation of these variables prevents economists from determining "how and why things work", in the words of Angus Deaton of Princeton, and furthermore he says that using such instruments to estimate cause and effect issues is like choosing to let light "fall where it may, and then proclaim[ing] that whatever it illuminates is what we were looking for all along."

Absolutely!

And the direction of causation frequently remains unclear too.

The only relevant use of instrumental variables is in a temporal framework eg the impact of being born early or late in a school year with regard to academic achievement.

But, even here, by focusing on the relevance of one particular parameter, the befuddled world of economics still studiously manages to avoid any implementation of a big picture approach to the problem at hand.

If I was writing the review of Freakonomics again, I would advise it to be read only for the purpose of revealing the simplicity of the intellectual thinking behind the body of people charged with steering the global financial system.
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Holidays inevitably become bibliographical experiences where I catch up on all the items that I really should have read in the previous year. One such book is Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner.
We should celebrate anything that popularises the corruption in the marketplace or in any other societal structure and Freakonomics utilises big picture overviews to assess a range of structures. By addressing the perverse incentives of individual operators within contorted infrastructures, the book focuses on the preferable nature of a moral approach and contrasts with the actual reality of a manipulated economic environment. By incorporating the power of information together with the relative weightings of economic, moral and social incentives in a spectrum of instances, the authors create landscapes that titillate but, unfortunately, trivialise the whole analytical process.
The authors choices of sectors and situations to analyse are illuminating in that, although entertainingly portrayed, they are peripheral to our realities. Selecting sumo wrestling as a corrupt sport when Levitt trades professionally on massively corrupt horseracing markets; the focus on the ku klux klan’s attitude to information and power rather than the masonic WASP hierarchies of modern day America; targeting estate agents (with their lack of a professional trade association) manipulation of property buyers and sellers rather than lawyers with their abusive approach to class action suits or accountants and their consultative corruption; the choice of Black crack rather than white cocaine etc etc. Furthermore, the holistic views presented in the book are often incomplete – any analytical approach that purports to address the selection of a name for your children must incorporate the impact of the selection of names from within your family. A quick straw poll around the office reveals that only one member of our Trading Team is not named after a relative or ancestor, for example. Additionally, by claiming that the internet is shrinking the informational asymmetric advantage enjoyed by the elite, they completely ignore that this very elite also is utilising the internet to enhance their own knowledge and databases. One of the prime reasons political blogs are allowed is that the manipulators wish for an open source world wide web so that they may improve their ability to monitor potential customers and their habits.
Why is there no focus on corruption in the capital markets? Why is the NFL off-limits? What about the warped incentives of the major global accountancy firms and investment banks and their alleged Chinese walls that we are supposed to believe ensure no internal informational advantage? Why ignore the corruptions at society’s core power loci? And don’t even get me started on the perverse incentives of politicians with respect to big business and Wall Street/City of London.
Despite these criticisms, the book should be read by any individual who takes an interest in the corruption endemic in our globalised shareholder capitalist system. The analytical approaches undertaken by Levitt are similar, although significantly less developed, to those utilised at our trading desks. For instance, Levitt repeatedly falls back on regression analysis to show causal links and an expanded version of such analysis is incorporated into our approach regarding the incentives of football referees and horseracing jockeys (to name but two examples). They are also correct that the more recently developed corrupt infrastructures have been established with minimal regard to their in built weaknesses which expose such corruptions to the prying eyes of investigative market analysts. Another big plus is that the book indicates, however fleetingly, that absolute structures are more rewarding (and, hence, more prone) to corrupt than complex systems incorporating information from a range of power bases - think of the corrupt referee whose input can almost always produce a required outcome on a match compared with the manipulation of a financial market where systemic risk may override a corrupting process.
Freakonomics, in many ways, approaches the area of corruption with the same analytical template used by marketing people and spin doctors. By getting the public to gaze at the manipulations on the periphery or the aspects of a product or a political situation that they wish for you to focus on, they avert your eyes from the fundamental systemic corruption that blights all of our existences.
Corrupters view the risk of exposure as a summation of hazard and the ensuing outrage. Football Is Fixed repeatedly presents manipulations at the very core of our systems both in sport and in financial markets by exposing these hazards with the subsequent realisation of public cynicism in the spectacular society constructs that we are all presented with to keep us entertained. Out of all the many emails that we have received since starting this blog, only one has made any attempt to confront our view of these realities and the arguments that were presented were so intellectually flawed as to be not even worthy of consideration. Undoubtedly, some of the corrupt edifices will reconstruct their operations as their manipulations fall under public gaze but, unless the corruption takes on an extremely limited form, investigative analysts will ALWAYS be able to detect the manipulations.
As my hairdresser jokingly (?) exclaimed, while holding a particularly sharp pair of scissors to my neck, “you have ruined football for me."
We prefer to see the process as liberation rather than ruination…

© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

A FIFA Tweak Of The Rules To Cause Chaos In World Cup Qualifiers #

Excellently, the conclusion to the European World Cup 2010 Qualifiers are a mathematical diversion of some consequence.

And all because of one little FIFA rule - that only eight of the nine second placed nations will move forward for the Play-Off head-to-heads in November.
So all your column inches of projection and requirement are mindless chatter as a thoroughly systems thinking approach with a dose of specified game theory is the only way to strategically analyse or plan ahead.
Many matches that would have been dead rubbers are now given a motivational boost, and theorising about outcomes in concurrent matches will be a necessary part of the game plan.

Good for the bookmakers and the pseudo-excitement of qualification, but this is merely a ticket to a potentially hazardous Play Off prior to an inevitable early elimination next summer.

And, because the Qualifying Groups are not balanced, certain nations have carried a millstone throughout the qualification process.
The causes of this nonsense are the quality of the lower tiered nations and 'the remainder' - those lesser nations that are unable to be equally divided between the available Groups.

So, Group 9 featuring the self-harming Scots, has one less team than the other sections. To balance matters out, the results of the weakest teams in the other eight Groups are removed from the hyperreality.
Like, they never happened...
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Surely it would be far more sensible to put these 10 countries together (Malta, Luxembourg, Moldova, San Marino, Azerbaijan, Liechtenstein, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Andorra, Faroe Islands) with all those territories and 'nations' that wish to be a part of the FIFA Family but are not allowed due to geopolitical tilts eg Gozo, Catalunya, Padania, Occitania, Tibet, Greenland, Yorkshire etc.
All of these entities would then enjoy competitive matches against teams of similar quality, with the chance of victory meaning something other than avoiding a 0-13 defeat.

The distribution of these lower level countries in the Group stages in Europe has established imbalances. Groups with 2 of these poorer players are at a marked advantage when the points totals are determined to see who reaches the Play Offs.
The fifth placed team in Group Two is Luxembourg, while the fifth team in Group Three is the Czech Republic. Or how about the option of either Azerbaijan or Liechtenstein, or Romania if we compare Groups 4 and 7?
Not even Sepp Blatter can bend Reality so far as to suggest that it is as easy to take six points off Romania or the Czech Republic as it is off Luxembourg.

With these factors in mind, we decided, just for the sheer 'what if?' of it to run the remaining Qualifying matches through the computer to see how matters might lie at the conclusion of the Groups.
We ignored all externalities and systemic impacts, and we have avoided including any potential for arranged mutually beneficial outcomes and any other form of frigging rigging.
The purpose is merely to detect which of the second placed sides are most at risk of finishing in the hallowed runners up spot only to be told that Johannesburg is not for the likes of them.

Groups 1, 3, 8 and 9 are the key ones.
Irish and British readers will note that these Groups include Scotland and both halves of the 32 counties.

The target number of points to be gained against the top 4 other teams in your section is 13. If a nation reaches this level, it is unlucky for someone else.

Repeatedly running the scenarios through the software suggests that it will, however, be Group # that is the one, meaning that whoever out of ##########################
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More importantly, but also on the subject of the integrity of the game, it is to be hoped that FIFA ensure that the final round of relevant Qualifying matches kick off at the same time.
Having established a template with skewed incentives and a marked tilt, surely the world governing body will not be so crass as to allow differential kick off times to allow the incremental securing of the most marketable 8 Qualifiers.
Surely they wouldn't do this to us.

Still, loads of trading returns if they do...

* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.

© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological

The Expert Medical Examination And One Pound Of Nuts #

So what is the Premier League template to be for Brand 2009/2010?

The early manipulations are always revealing in rigged markets, for that is what the top tier English league has become.
Early last season, for example, we highlighted the 'overperformance' of the three promoted sides as they were handicapped up the table as well as the dichotomous tilts involving Liverpool and Arsenal, and the targeting of the north east clubs and pre-Redknapp Tottenham.

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The relegation race went down to the wire despite the inadequacies of Mowbray's West Bromwich Albion; Liverpool remained in the title race despite being less than moderate; Arsenal were stopped as usual; two of the three north-eastern clubs were relegated; while the reversal in the role of officialdom at Tottenham post-Redknapp appointment has been little short of astonishing.

So, what has our squad of traders and analysts found in the early phases of this season?
What should the real table look like if based purely on football?

To make our adjustments, we address each game as an entity. We utilise sabermetrics, the criminalised impact of the betting markets, the input of rogue insiders, metric adjustments extrapolated from fake match occurrences, all that sort of stuff and a whole load of isolationist "and-then-some" parameters to reveal the Real.

And for subscribers, here is how the Premier League would look if the competition was not under the control of those people pulling the strings of Our Great Leader in his eyrie.

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Now, you'll find Liverpool placed seven slots higher in the ScudamoreWorld version, while Manchester United are 5 rungs up the ScudaLadder.
Nothing new there then.

As we predicted pre-season in our Early Xmas Freebie Bet, Liverpool are very very poor indeed this season, and our suggestion that there was some small value in backing Chelsea for the title both seem valid as the former price has drifted alarmingly while the latter has appreciably shortened.

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We already feel confident enough to go for this as our 09/10 Football Is Fixed Reality Check...

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There you go.
Cancel the subscriptions to the Murdochracy.
Occasionally check in on one of the highlights shows to convince yourselves that you have made the right choice, and mock the Lives Of T'Others as they base their blinkered existences and their desperation for a belief mechanism on the fake hyperrealities of the fake entities that they blindly attach their inconsequential allegiances to.

And I know that is a poor sentence, but that is what the Premier League is...
A poor sentence.
Like 9 months in Strangeways.

* All posts labelled # are only available fully by subscription.

© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological