Death & Taxes

Bending the law in a time of crisis.....

You know what’s worrying me about the further extension of this lockdown, apart from the obvious? Northumbria Police and how they will respond to any perceived insubordination or disobedience by members of the public as the warmer weather comes. Historically, the force were zealous enforcers of moustachioed lothario, former Chief Constable and institutional swinger Michael Craik’s vicious and authoritarian The Party’s Over strategy, ready to take up cudgels with minimal reason to eradicate any shows of hedonism.

When one sees that constabularies across the country have already received public censure for disproportionate responses to innocent activities and menacing threats to dissuade any thought of freedom or enjoyment, such as the officer in Cambridge claiming that shoppers’ trolleys will be inspected to ensure no “non-essential” items have been purchased, Derbyshire Police’s incessant and intrusive surveillance of the general public and South Yorkshire’s finest, responsible for the Orgreave riot and Hillsborough disaster it must be remembered, threatening people with arrest for the crime of sitting in their front garden, then the shadow of authoritarianism is cast across us all. We truly are in danger of seeing darkness at noon.

The bar, in terms of human rights abuses, has been set pretty high, but I’m sure Fuhrer Keenen will insist his crack stormtroopers exceed all previous assaults in an effort to make the Northumbria Police patch a de facto region under improvised Martial Law. Having been a repeated victim of frankly illegal police oppression, courtesy of the inexplicable hold serial vexatious complainants Reuben Soxha and Elaine Gray-O’Connell have over the force, this does not bode well for me.  Before they cause my disappearance under cover of darkness, I’ll state this once only; the current lockdown can only be maintained indefinitely by peaceful, civilised consensus, not by the actions of baton wielding, gun toting thugs in uniform. Otherwise, the state apparatus risks a proliferation of transgressions of the common law that will result in mass civil disobedience, which would clearly be the fault of the state and its functionaries. We live in dangerous, unprecedented times and blaming someone taking their dog for a walk for the nigh on 1,000 deaths a day we’re currently enduring is a sordid and specious narrative.

This leads us on to the real reason why the filth may end up behaving like the Keystone Kops choreographed by James Ellroy; the fucking Tories. Not that any of us with a shred of intelligence or a soupcon of compassion for our fellow humans expected any difference, but the chuckleheaded, braying inadequates in grey suits and positions of power, have performed in a nightmarish way throughout this whole crisis, making crass and avoidable errors at every possible step. If COVID-19 has a sense of karmic humour, then striking down Johnson, Hancock and the vile Cummings is the greatest killing joke of all time. With Raab and Patel joining Hancock in a competition to see if anyone on the front bench can walk and chew gum at the same time,  until Johnson lurches back onto the scene, we’re seeing repeated evidence of the professional incompetence of a gang of fraudulent clowns who are the least suitable candidates for public office since Caligula appointed Incitatus as his consul. Even the equine Roman would have thought twice before blaming 1,000 deaths a day on NHS workers misusing their largely non-existent PPE supplies. This offensive and spurious claim, allied to the painfully inadequate levels of testing, as well as the discredited and deadly strategy of herd immunity, is precisely why the last deaths related to coronavirus should be the summary executions of the cabinet and the bastards who advised them to go down the path of social genocide.

Not only has Hancock used his 15 minutes of infamy to shamefully castigate NHS employees, he has somehow come out with the theory that footballers are to blame for the chronic underfunding of our hospitals over the last decade, by not agreeing to wage deferrals. The relevant point of employment law in this situation is that players at the highest levels do not have generic contracts; each and every player has an individual, bespoke document that details the terms of their engagement with the employing club in minute detail. Ergo, there is no possible way to impose or even construct a blanket salary surrender scheme. As ever, the truth was not seen to be relevant by the chattering classes when the usual, tiresome social media hysteria came into play, along the lines of the “give care workers footballers’ wages,” but such crass sloganeering and Hancock’s devious posturing were cut off at the knees by the #PlayersTogether initiative, which came into being as the news of more and more former players being hospitalised with COVID-19: Kenny Dalglish, Norman Hunter, Jimmy Greaves and, just as I write, the late Peter Bonetti.

Organised by Jordan Henderson, and fair play to the fella, #PlayersTogether oversaw direct funding at a local level, courtesy of donations by players. Currently, £4m has been distributed to the NHS at a local, direct level. No delays. No administration charges. No bureaucratic wrangling. Of course, footballer generosity doesn’t just exist at the top level either; in the Northern League, West Auckland Town were the first set of players to donate their end of season pot to local medical causes. Several other clubs have followed suit. The amount of money at a grassroots level may be almost negligible in the grander scheme of things, but the gesture is a fine one. I hope Hancock, allegedly a Newcastle United fan, appreciates what has been organised by Henderson and supported by more than 150 top flight players thus far, but I doubt it. 

Let’s face it, the Tories, despite their unintentionally Keynesian fiscal response to the coronavirus pandemic, still haven’t identified the proper targets for emergency funding. I don’t mean their £10,000 emergency payment to all MPs; that is essential spending to keep the wheels of democracy turning, or it will be once that genuflecting pile of excrement Rees Mogg opens the Commons again. My beef is the fact the likes of Branson, Martin, Stein, the Barclay Twins and Mike Ashley have predictably avoided the scrutiny of HM Government and kept their obscene personal wealth intact, while laying off zero hours, gig economy, minimum wage workers or exploiting the furlough scheme to divest themselves of any responsibility to pay their employees. You didn’t need to be skilled in the arts of clairvoyance to forecast that Mike Ashley would lower the bar in terms of any moral response to the current situation, in a manner that would have made a Victorian mill owner blush.

The entirely predictable nature of the speed Ashley availed himself of the 80% furlough scheme for NUFC employees, just as soon as they’d done their bit to ensure he could continue to bathe in money as the direct debit payments for season tickets were rolling in, meant that criticism of the Sports Direct oligarch was muted at best. It’s what he does, without apology or communication. How I wish Newcastle United fans would display some discernible sense of outrage and class solidarity with Sports Direct workers, being paid a pittance and still forced to work in that cursed mega warehouse in Shirebrook.

There have been louder notes of displeasure, to eventual discernible effect, about Daniel Levy putting Spurs in the same kind of economic suspended animation, but the loudest outcry was when Liverpool unveiled plans to place all non-playing staff on furlough. This response was almost entirely provoked by fanciful notions of the supposed socialist DNA of Liverpool as a city (you know the place that was a Liberal heartland until 1980 and still elected Protestant Party candidates a decade earlier). Whatever the historical political legacy and influence on Merseyside, the club admitted a mistake and went back on their initial plan. Well done to all Liverpool fans, no doubt rigidly disciplined by Spirit of Shankly, in a way that the chief constables of Cambridge, Northampton and South Yorkshire would do well to take notice of.

There is, of course, a very easy way to dissuade football clubs from gobbling up state funding they should not be entitled to; ban every club who take these handouts from any transfer dealing next season, whenever that may be. Let’s look at the case of Sunderland AFC, who have placed every single employee on the 80% scheme, for instance. In some ways it makes sense, as the players and fans can bond over the fact, they’re both now reliant on state benefits for their income.

Talking of Sunderland, I’m coping with the lockdown by entering the 21^st Century and paying for Netflix. It’s fantastic; I’ve watched the Bob Dylan Rolling Thunder Review twice already. Not only that, Scorcese’s The Irishman is on a par with Goodfellas. What a performance Joe Pesci gives; utterly mesmerising, while Bobby De Niro is effortlessly brilliant, Pacino is typically histrionic, and Steven Graham is just horrible. I would have liked to see more of Harvey Keitel though. The same is true of the naïve chancer Donald Stewart and Etonian boor Charlie Methven in Sunderland Til I Die. I binge watched both series over 2 days and it’s far better than Premier Passions was, even if we don’t get Bob Murray whining about crisps being stale or fingering with distaste small black and yellow cushions, designed to be placed in the visitors’ changing room to create negative vibes pre match. We don’t have Tommy the boring groundsman with a permanent plug of cotton wool in his ears, the tragicomedian wanker in the pie shop or one eared simpleton Davey Flannigan from Shields either, though we do have the borderline hydrocephalic, porcine Nat Jackley simpleton, trying to get his fleshy grid all over Series 2 Episode 6 by doorstepping Donald Stewart after the Wembley loss to Charlton. Other than him, I genuinely feel sorry for the fans, as the skilful editing has removed every trace of drooling, one-eyed FTM style barking at the moon. However, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Series 1 hints at the fact Simon Grayson was completely out of his depth when he was appointed; presumably the financial catastrophe behind the scenes was kept from him while he negotiated his own deal. The rapid jettisoning of that dull dinosaur saw Chris Coleman come in and commit career suicide. Like Bain, who seems to spend most of his time waiting for his Nespresso machine to fire into life, or driving aimlessly in his sleek Beamer while spouting corporate inanities, both come to learn that wearing expensively tailored suits with a crisply laundered open neck shirt is not a convincing strategy when trying to avoid relegation. It’s a shame we don’t seen Bain luxuriating in his personal cryotherapy chamber when Ellis Short dishes out the P45s after demotion to the third flight has been assured.

 

The change of ownership for series 2 could be seen as a reason to laugh uproariously at the new kids on the block, who clearly came in with the idea of gaining (a supposedly easy) promotion and then flipping the club to fill their pockets with as much loot as they could carry, before high-tailing it back down south.  However, if you can engage in a willing suspension of disbelief as to their true motives, you can buy into what they’re doing. Methven rolls his sleeves up and micromanages an unwilling and indolent commercial arm who wouldn’t sleep in the same room as a pair of work boots. Trying to kickstart a range of loafers who seem allergic to graft is only partly successful, but he achieves more than Donald Stewart, who is the alleged football man. Suffice to say the departure of Josh Maja and the famed non-negotiations that end up seeing £4m poured down the drain on Will Grigg is genuinely tragic to see. I’ve no room for amusement as my club wasted ten times that amount on Joelinton.

As regards the players, it seems hard to get a focus on them will such an immense turnover of players. It is no real surprise that Darron Gibson comes across as a shifty pisspot, Jack Rodwell a narcissistic parasite and Jason Steele as inadequate a communicator as he is a keeper. That said Johnny Williams seems a lovely bloke, determined to do his best, though injury robs him of that chance. It is a strange irony his cross leads to his new club Charlton grabbing a 96^th minute winner in the play off final. The attempt to turn Luke O’Nien into his replacement is doomed, as the plummy-voiced bit part player isn’t essentially any good at football. Actually, that’s the problem with Sunderland full stop, as it appears, they may be facing a third successive season at this level, if they survive now that Methven has quit and Donald Stewart has the whole club up for sale, once again.

Let’s be honest; we don’t really know much about what is going to happen in the professional game, either side of the border. My instinct is that the Premier League, being a different beast and playing by different rules than everyone else, will play the season out behind closed doors, but live on TV, in the hot summer months. The rest of the leagues may well try to complete if, and only if, the extent of the COVID-19 pandemic comes under control. If we don’t achieve stability, it’ll be PPG and potentially no relegation. This, of course, will not be decided for a while yet, to allow the legal ramifications to become intensely troubling, though as ever the political minutiae of the Scotch game will leave the Saxons in the shade.

The trial of Alex Salmond and the conduct of Scotland’s former chief medical officer, Dr Catherine Colin-Calderwood show that Jeanette Mugabe’s potential Banana Republic is slipping into social disarray and towards probable anarchy. Such a disastrous state of affairs may also befall the SPFL. Bespectacled dullard Neil Doncaster is in danger of being thrown out on his arse unless he can work a magic compromise regarding the potential curtailment of the bottom 3 divisions, with the added proviso of being able to apply this to the Premier League as well, at an unspecified later date.

As you can imagine, when presented with a resolution to curtail the bottom 3 divisions with immediate effect, clubs almost uniformly voted to serve their own interests. In the top flight, everyone was in favour other than the Huns and Hearts. The latter obviously wouldn’t sanction their own relegation and the former, as ever displaying a scarcely credible belief in their own importance, wanted prize money handed out now, but no end to the season. This dash for cash is simply a ruse to keep them out of administration, as surely the most one-eyed Billy Boy must accept the title is off to Parkhead for 9-in-a-row.

We’ll come back to The Championship in a bit. Leagues One and Two stand 16-3 in favour, with Stranraer, like Hearts, declining to vote for their own demotion, while play-off hopefuls Falkirk, currently in second spot in League One, and fifth placed East Fife registered their opposition as well. As yet, I have no information on which club hasn’t voted from the bottom 2 divisions, but it’s Dundee’s vote that is awaited in the Championship, with every sign the election is likely to acquire a similar status to the Floridan hanging chads that kept Al Gore out of the White House in 2000. According to the SPFL, Dundee sent an email at 17.00 on Friday last saying that any voting slip that arrived from Dens Park should be ignored. An hour later, their no vote (presumably engineered to deny the Dirty Arabs across the car park their rightful promotion to the top flight) arrived and was discarded. Since then, it has become apparent Dundee, and the mystery non-participating lower league side, actually have 28 days to submit their vote.

Meanwhile, Patrick Thistle, following the same self-preservation principle as Hearts and Stranraer, voted no, as did play off hopefuls Inverness Caledonian Thistle. The SPFL rules state 8 votes in favour must be cast by Championship clubs to pass the resolution, following the Premier League (9/12) and lower division (15/20) thresholds being achieved. Currently only 7 clubs have voted for, which means Dundee’s vote is crucial. The disappearance of said voting slip is causing no end of intrigue, with veiled hints of skullduggery being whispered from the more staunch elements of Scottish football. To be honest, it’s almost as entertaining as the stuff on the pitch normally is.

However, there’s no chance of my seeing my beloved Newcastle Benfield on the pitch in the near future. The FA Council voted overwhelmingly to end all football from steps 3 to 7, with neither promotion nor relegation, not to mention league reorganisation, being involved. From a Benfield perspective, we finish 8^th if the season ends and 10^th if it was arranged on a PPG basis. No big deal for us, but morally it really should be decided on PPG to enable the awarding of league titles. I feel desperately sorry for Stockton Town and Shildon who had their sights on promotion to the new, currently mothballed, NPL East division, as well as Consett and Hebburn Town as their FA Vase dream appears to have died at the semi-final stage. From Division 2, the only possible promotion contenders (Redcar Athletic, Crook Town and West Allotment Celtic) should morally be replacing Northallerton Town, Penrith and Thornaby who were all detached at foot of D1 as this would not affect any other leagues. Although at least the integrity of the top flight will be maintained in the absence of any reconstruction.

To be honest, I’ve really not missed football all that much. What I’m finding hard to cope with is the probable absence of recreational cricket this summer, as the effects of that on my wellbeing scares me more than the thought of Northumbria Police going postal does. As the late Genesis P Orridge pointed out; we need some discipline here.