More serious than life and death …

 

Blimey – I thought I’d never see the day again when some reporters in our MSM actually went back to their professional roots and did what they used to do! Outrageously enough they didn’t do this regarding covid or indeed politics. They did this in regard to football and that planned European Super League which has now ignominiously collapsed. So forgive me when I look at this event in detail below.

There are also some covid news which are truly breath-taking. Although ‘Our MSM’ have given them prominence, they can be subsumed in a few sentences. BJ told the breathless Westminster hacks yesterday that he’ll now instal ‘a task force’ to look at other treatments for covid, in form of pills (link)! The broadsheets have provided a nice list of what all these pills could be made of. These are apparently going to be based on already existing other antiviral treatments using monoclonal antibodies which usually have fanciful names ending  in ‘~mab’.

One big producer of these is … Pfizer. Ah – where have we heard that name before? They are also very expensive, so BJ’s ‘dream’ looks more like a plan to enrich certain entities, but it’s nice because BJ wants us to be able to ‘avoid’ going to hospitals:

“Pills taken at home will stop people getting severe Covid-19, Boris Johnson promised as he warned that the country would have to deal with a third wave of the virus this year. The prime minister set a goal of finding two treatments to stop people in the early stages of the illness ending up in hospital as he sought extra ways to ensure that lockdown could be eased safely.” (link, paywalled)

No – don’t ask why this couldn’t have been the first step in dealing with covid rather than creating vaccines at high and unsafe speed. No, you won’t find Hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin on that list. No, don’t ask how we ordinary punters or indeed ‘Our NHS’ will be able to afford such treatments. A year ago, The Times reported that a five-day treatment with Remdesivir would cost nearly £2,000 for a five-day course, compared to 50p per dexamethasone pill (link, paywalled). In this morning’s DT, their ‘health editor’ helpfully lists all those possible ‘new’ antiviral treatments, also mentioning dexamethasone.

Apparently, even using the mouthwash Corsordyl as well as lozenges might help – not by treating the virus once it’s in the lungs, he writes, but by preventing it from getting there in the first place (paywalled link). How extraordinary! Why wasn’t a recommendation to use that mouthwash included in the ‘covid rules’ in the first place? It surely would’ve been a lovely slogan: ‘Save the NHS – Use Mouthwash!’ It might have been because doctors would rather “we” didn’t treat ourselves without their explicit supervision. Or perhaps it was because this covid government, SAGE included, has been in thrall to Big Pharma from the start? At the moment we’re still allowed to ask such inconvenient questions.

And so to football. Bill Shankly was clearly correct when he said that “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it’s much more serious than that.” So it turned out to be. In a nice example of proper reporting we read in the DT that Chelsea fans had:

“flocked to an empty Stamford Bridge and sat in Fulham Broadway to block the team bus entering for the fixture against Brighton. […] From an undisclosed location, on an undisclosed phoneline, the Russian owner pulled the plug on Chelsea’s involvement and very soon the European Super League would be no more. […] First Chelsea went, then Manchester City and then Atletico Madrid. In quick succession, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester United and Liverpool all withdrew.” (paywalled link)

Even better – there’s an actual report from an actual reporter who was actually there. Bear with me because, for once, the protesting footy fans aren’t denigrated as being unwashed hooligans by the sniffy metropolitan MSM. For once the actual people – us, footy fans or not – are shown in a positive light. That’s not the natural attitude of the esteemed metropolitan MSM editors, so enjoy this:

“Was it the sheer ferocity of the chants, the genuine anger on their supporters’ faces, that made them [the billionaire club owners] finally realise the severity of what they were doing? In the moments following this remarkable development, in the shadows of Stamford Bridge, there was no doubt what the fans thought. To them, rightly or wrongly, this triumph was their triumph. The mood switched in an instant as the news was passed from one protesting supporter to the next. “We’ve pulled out,” they called to each other, the words snowballing through the bodies. And just like that, the jeers turned to jubilation. “We want our Chelsea back” became “we’ve got our Chelsea back”. Cardboard signs were tossed to the skies, as were the cans of beer. It was as if Chelsea had won a trophy, and there was no doubt who the fans considered to be the key players of the success. “We’ve saved football,” they roared. “We’ve just made history.” (paywalled link)

The next quote may be just a bit over the top, but it’s nevertheless worthwhile keeping on file:

“What a lesson this must be for those owners who sought to execute these plans. The message can hardly be clearer: you can have so much in this world, but you cannot take our football. […]They did not say it quite so directly but the statement from the fans was simple: this is still our sport, not yours. […]They [the billionaire club owners] were not here to see events themselves, to hear the fury of the fans who would not accept what was happening, but those chants and screams must have echoed across the globe. They will surely reverberate for some time, and it is hard to imagine a more empowering moment for the modern supporter.” (paywalled link)

Indeed – and not just for the ‘modern supporter’! Looking at the photos from that non-violent protest we can discern an entity which has been maligned, suppressed, talked down to, denigrated and jeeringly made fun of: white working-class males. Yes, they’re still around and if this protest puts fear into the hearts of international billionaire club owners then just imagine what our more discerning politicians will think. Mind you, I’m sure some of the more prominent editors in the MSM will soon try to sweep this under the carpet and start denigrating them all again. 

Moreover, there were some other MSM journalists also actually doing their job. The Times has suddenly found out that this proposal was long in the making, going back to 2016. Why nothing was reported at the time – well, something else happened that year which used up all the strength of The Times, didn’t it … Having been reduced to copying from the SUN, crawling into the archives and reporting that “Five executives from the Premier League clubs who originally signed up to the new league were photographed at a meeting in 2016 to discuss an early version of the proposal.” (link, paywalled), we note that The Times has actually found out something even more interesting:

“This week it was announced that the £3.4 billion launch cost would be financed by a debt deal underwritten by the US investment bank JPMorgan Chase, where Woodward [ManU] used to work. It is thought that JPMorgan did not anticipate a backlash from fans denouncing it for providing the cash to finance the league. The bank’s involvement is believed to have been approved by an internal reputation committee which weighs up prominent deals to consider potential controversies. The committee’s members failed to “fully expect” the widespread anger of fans around the world at the announcement of the plans, according to The New York Times. JPMorgan declined to comment yesterday.” (link, paywalled)

Amazing, isn’t it, that even in this giant international bank the powerful had no idea, no inkling, that fans, that actual people, would actually not obediently accept what these billionaires were proposing. And then, in a ‘you count make it up’ report, we read that France and their tiny Nap immediately went on the attack, demanding the EU to step in – yes, really:

“France urged the European Commission to assume new powers to regulate football yesterday amid fallout across the continent from the unravelling the Super League plan. […] President Macron’s ministers seized on the row to press their case for the EU to wrench football in particular and sport in general out of the hands of capitalists and to place it under bureaucratic control. Roxana Maracineanu, the sports minister, said that the French system, which involves administrative supervision of sporting federations, should be extended across the EU. “We have to invent at a European level a special relationship between the EU and the sporting movement,” she said.” (link, paywalled)

Good luck with that! “Our” Remain lot better remember that footy fans weren’t Remainers and that they might easily create another Chelsea protest. Perhaps this protest, just like that by the Bath pub landlord, indicates that “we”, the peasants, might go along with Westminster ‘covid rules’ or with multinational billionaires’ power grabs only up to a certain point. Once our patience is gone, we’re capable of showing those in power that our patience is indeed not endless.

Is it too much to hope that perhaps the woke MSM and NGOs, the BLM fans and the lefty antifa ‘protesters’ might reflect on what happened yesterday at Stamford Bridge? After all, what can be done for footy can be done for other issues, especially since the much maligned white working class males aren’t as dead as TPTB would wish.

 

KBO!

 

 

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