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Seven Premier League games were actually scheduled at the start of the season for Saturday 14th May to kick-off at 3pm with the possibility of two games being rescheduled if those teams are in the FA Cup final.  There are a further three games scheduled for the following day.  So why can’t all 10 games be played on the Sunday with any postponed games being rescheduled for the following Wednesday?

Throughout my childhood I would be really excited about watching not only the FA Cup final itself but also the build-up to kick-off, watching the teams coaches making their way to Wembley, being introduced to each player and reliving each round and all the goals; and at 3pm the whole family would sit down to watch the whole match live.  The only other match report that day would be the Scottish FA Cup which, in most cases would include more goals, but not be of much interest to a boy from the Garden of England.

I’m aware that football has changed and it is no more a working class only pastime.

Furthermore the Premier League is a successful brand and as such is run like a business; and if it wasn’t for the profits that are made, English football would not have some of the best players and possibly the best league in the world.  But that is no excuse for the Premier League to act like a spoilt schoolboy who will only let you play with his football at playtime if you agree to play by his rules.

Premier League Football Matches originally scheduled for
Saturday, 14 May 2011

Arsenal v Aston Villa, 15:00
Blackburn v Man Utd, 15:00
Blackpool v Bolton, 15:00
Chelsea v Newcastle, 15:00
Man City v Stoke, 15:00
Sunderland v Wolverhampton, 15:00
West Brom v Everton, 15:00

Premier League Football Matches originally scheduled for
Sunday, 15 May 2011

Birmingham v Fulham, 15:00
Liverpool v Tottenham, 15:00
Wigan v West Ham, 15:00

FA Cup Semi-final Draw
Stoke v Bolton
Manchester United v Manchester City

There are no scheduled nPower Championship games!

The video below clearly shows what happened.  As Wayne Rooney was running for the ball James McCarthy attempted to block his run by leaning into him and in the process gets a very nasty and intentional elbow in the face which could have left him with a broken nose or worse.  You can see both players are aware of their actions.

James McCarthy’s attempt to play the player and not the football is clear obstruction and would have led to a free-kick to Manchester United if the referee had actually seen the incident and Wayne Rooney not intentionally raised his elbow into the face of the oncoming player.

I am not interested in the ridiculous cries that Wayne Rooney and other footballers should behave themselves on and off the football pitch because they are role models for our children.  I simply believe Wayne Rooney acted with aggression and with intent to injury another person and this should be addressed.

If this incident had happened in the crowd or outside a football stadium and was witnessed by a policeman, the least that would have happened is the person involved would be questioned for his aggressive behaviour.  As it is, because the referee, Stuart Clattenburg,  apparently ‘dealt’ with the situation by awarding Wigan a free-kick, no further action will be taken by the English FA against Wayne Rooney.

Football is a highly charged and somewhat aggressive contact sport.  That is the reason I stopped playing even for fun.  Don’t get me wrong, I love to see a full-bloodied encounter where players get ‘stuck in’ and give 110% (or is the current going rate 120% now?) but what I don’t want to see is unchannelled aggression and daylight thuggery on or off a football pitch.

But by far the most galling breed of millionaire are those in their teens and twenties who have managed to somehow tap into a seam of wealth that continues to elude those of us with more experience and who, most likely, have spent the majority of our lives putting in a lot more effort.

So how do these millionaire young guns get their hand on all that money? What do they do with it? And why can’t it be us?

Bankers

Much in the news in recent years that we all love to hate are the bankers. Like professional gamblers in suits, those in high finance get paid to play. Signed up straight out of university, with the arrogance of youth still cloaking their shoulders and allowing them to accept the offer of big bucks and bonuses with barely a thought for those whose money has been squandered in the disastrous hedge fund hedonism that immediately precipitated the credit crunch, these slick young things inhabit London’s square mile, wearing pinstripes in a pseudo ironic homage to their eighties yuppie predecessors whom at heart they much admire.

Their millions are spent on extravagant breaks, which they document on their smartphones and upload to social networking sites under the guise of “sharing” so that former friends and casual acquaintances can marvel at their misfortune knowing they will never have that much money in their lives.

Heir Heads

Of course, there are others who have come into money with even less effort, with a new generation of bright young things from the moneyed families of the world thrust daily into our faces. The “heir heads” as they have come to be known make money simply through having money. With their rich parents having been able to pull enough strings to get them the initial exposure required to gain a place in the public consciousness, this talentless tribe is clogging our TV channels with their own reality show, for which they get paid money that they are never likely to need, considering their families’ existing assets.

Poker Players

Now these guys, these guys we can muster a healthy amount of respect for. Yes, they are loaded, but we know how they got that way and, deep down, all of us hope that we might just possibly be capable of following their example. Ok, so it is far too late to become the child of an international magnate, a little past the point where we could train for a career in finance but poker? Well poker we can play on our computers at sites like Party Poker Bonus Codes that we find online even allow us to get some free play in while we are practicing and one day, maybe one day, we will be the minted millionaire that everyone else envies.

I have been mad about football for forty years and have never felt the urge to cut myself to see if my blood is a certain colour, get upset with a football player who moves from one club to another or get annoyed with anyone, let alone a football player who agrees to change employer for an increased salary.

Whether its retired footballers sulking they are not retired millionaires or ardent fans who think it’s disgraceful when a footballer, who already earns more in a week than they earn in one year, to move from one club to another so as to get even more money, I have never understood or felt this level of jealousy.

Sure, it would be refreshing to hear a football player be honest and say “Of course I moved for the money.  Why else would I want to come to this club?” But to hear people spitting venom over players disloyalty and money-grabbing transfers I can only say that whenever I have got bored of my job I look for another one; and if a new company decides to offer me more money than I already receive, then I bite their arm off.; and furthermore don’t and never have thought footballers are any different to the rest of us.

There are of course many companies and jobs I will not undertake, but that aside, when looking for a new job I have always looked to increase my wages.  Nothing wrong in that is there?

As for whether footballers are overpaid, well that is a loaded question that has several answers.  But surely the ones to blame are not the footballers themselves but their employers; and if clubs or owners are over-stretching their finances or decide to increase ticket prices to pay for inflated wages then vent anger at the club or owner and boycott the accused.

Football players live the same type of lives as other ‘famous’ people in this celebrity-mad culture and get paid according to their star status as much as their footballing skills.  For example, David Beckham is most definitely past his prime but if Tottenham Hotspur could agree a permanent move with his current club they are fully aware they are buying into ‘Beckham the brand’ and in the process like Manchester United, Real Madrid & LA Galaxy will make a profit on the sale of replica shirts alone, however much they pay him in over-inflated wages.

I’m not at all jealous or in any way bothered by the ludicrous amount of money footballers earn these days.  I am only concerned with the way some of them believe their star status makes them untouchable and above the law, but that’s another rant!

The short answer to ‘will England win the next World Cup?’ is definitely not. Furthermore, they won’t win it again until the deep-rooted problems of short term planning,  a disregard for home-grown talent over club football success in Europe, an ultra concern for Premier League football over the good of the game as a whole, and coaching boys from an early age to enjoy football rather than getting them to win at all costs, are addressed.

Some of the fans that I heard cheering from the local pub as Jermain Defoe scored his first hat-trick for England in a 4-0 thrashing of Bulgaria in their first Euro 2012 Qualifying match at the beginning of September,  were the same disillusioned supporters that had agreed with me not six weeks earlier when we analysed the humiliating performance of England in the 2010 South Africa World Cup Finals.

But suddenly, one good result, one reasonably good performance, and all is forgotten.  And that is why I don’t want England to qualify for the Euro 2012 finals and believe the best thing that can happen to English football is for England to lose all their remaining matches until the English FA decide to take measures and put in place a long term strategy to address all the problems that exist in English football, and not simply throw money at the issues and paper over the cracks.

Call 421 – dog on the motorway at junction 24 on the M60
Call 446 – silent 999 from a mobile phone in a drivers pocket
Call 432 – alarm activation in Wigan

I don’t see what the Twitter project is supposed to prove.  It’s their job to answer 999 calls and we are already aware that many people are either stupid or ignorant to the fact that they are wasting police time with prank or pathetic calls.  I’m sure that has always been the case and making those calls public isn’t going to change anything.

What I don’t like is the police thinking they should be somehow immune from the drastic cutbacks we are all having to face up to.  Like other public organisations and services they appear to be spending too much time with paperwork rather than being able to do the job at hand.

I’ve got an idea, why don’t they cutback speed camera vehicles that I see park around town and on motorway bridges?  There is no evidence to suggest that using speed cameras, either fixed or mobile, has decreased the amount of accidents on our roads.  It has simply become an extra revenue stream.

The police are there to serve society and UK citizens.  I’m sure if asked, a survey would show a high majority of UK citizens would prefer police officers on the streets and tackling unsocial behaviour than they would concentrating efforts on catching drivers speeding.

I don’t agree with much of Claire Short’s political beliefs, but I do respect the fact that she resigned as a Labour Party cabinet minister because she couldn’t face being part of a Labour Government policy she totally disagreed with.

Either Ed Balls and Ed Milliband are now lying about their original support for Tony Blair’s decision to invade Iraq or they didn’t have the guts to stand up for what they believed in!

Either way, I didn’t believe a word they said when they were members of the UK Government and I don’t believe a word they say now, as members of the Opposition.

But now both my sons are 12 and over I have noticed just how expensive a family day out can be, as it seems to be the norm at places such as theme parks and festivals that a child between the ages of 12 and 16 requires an adult ticket; even in some cases where children, and they are still children, of that age bracket, are not allowed to enter without a paying adult!

I understand theme parks must cost a lot of money in upkeep, health & safety checks, wages etc, and I am happy to pay a reasonable fee for the services I use.  But adult price entry for a child stinks of being ripped off.

Last week we visited Thorpe Park and decided to buy annual Merlin Entertainment passes.  After visiting their website we thought £400 for 4 annual passes was a reasonable charge for the entertainment we will have over the next 12 months.  But as we went to pay we were asked for £600!  Apparently, because one of my sons is now 14 we were unable to qualify for a standard ‘family’ deal; and the smallest of small print right at the bottom of the scrolling web page told us so.

If this wasn’t enough to make us feel we were getting ripped off, this year Thorpe Park caused absolute and unnecessary chaos by charging £2 parking per car on exit.  Even though annual pass holders were exempt from paying, we still sat in a queue to get out of the car park for over 30 minutes.

Visiting Thorpe Park isn’t cheap but it is a great day out and worth it in my opinion.  But it’s about time companies like Merlin Entertainment considered how their ways of getting as much money out of their customers as possible, is pissing some people off.

But beneath these gorgeous ‘must-have’ electronic gadgets there lurks something very sinister; and it’s about time Steve Jobs and his latest gadgets were given more column inches for the way they are reversing the freedoms open source, mobile phones and now personal computers have enjoyed in the past by the draconian and restrictive measures Apple has placed on third-party software written for Apple products.

It started with the iPhone and is now present with the iPad.  All software for both products is sold exclusively through Apple’s iTunes Store – possibly the worst piece of software in the history of programming.  It is clunky, regularly doesn’t work properly, attempts to control all the music files on my laptop and has me praying it will work and won’t ‘lock’ my mobile phone with every software upgrade.  But exclusivity means that once you’ve bought an iPhone or iPad (and they are great products) you have to use this shit software.

Furthermore, as a developer you have to submit your software for Apple’s approval; and if successful pay Apple a whopping 30% of all sales profit!

The freedom brought to anyone who has a computer and an internet connection to choose what software programs they use on their own computers has been eroded and replaced by an exclusivity that aligns Apple with totalitarian dictators.  Joseph Goebbels would have been proud of the way Steve Jobs has been able to manipulate western civilisation with a great marketing plan and a cunning strategy for world domination.

Along with Facebook’s creator Mark Zuckerberg, I want to see Apple exposed for their underhanded tactics.  The simple answer is to not use either.  But the iPhone is the best mobile phone I have ever had.  I just want to be able to choose to add the software of my choice and not to use iTunes.

The 1930’s had Hitler and Stalin.  Today we have Zuckerberg and Jobs!