The value of players is derived simply from their ability to attract media coverage for the sponsors’ logos on their shirts.

While their skill with a ball is what gets people to pay them any attention at all, a top footballer’s primary function is no different from that of anyone wearing a sandwich board advertising a Golf Sale in any town centre.

Similarly, the naming of a top club’s stadium after a sponsor gets that sponsor mentioned in media reports even on the BBC, a channel that cannot otherwise easily be used for brand promotion.
 
The recent frantic acquisition of as many top attractions as possible by a few big name brands to gain maximum market share of media attention is to blame for the currently overhigh wages.

What we are seeing now are the final throes of madness before the bubble bursts. That even a top brand like CFC is in debt shows the old sums don’t work anymore.

Today’s simple economic truth is that the more coverage of sport there is on TV the more choice a football fan has of which games they watch and which games they don’t watch and the harder it is for any one brand to even hold their existing audience share, let alone to increase it.

The big UK clubs have been bidding frantically in the world markets for new attractions and wider international media coverage on behalf of sponsors with a global presence for some while now and still the sums don’t work.

So if you think the ticket price is too high don’t pay it and if you don’t favour a particular mobile phone service, airline or insurer don’t pay your own good money for the privilege of advertising it on a “replica” sandwich board.

Instead, go and support your local team raised from local talent. Create viable modest opportunity from your own community instead of subsidising the super-rich playing global brand games at your ever increasing expense.

Gate prices would have to fall if supporters just stayed at home for a few games until they did. Player wages will come down only when the big investors get bored of having a football club and buy something else to throw their money at or if the EU plan to relate expenditure to turnover comes in, whichever is the sooner.

The quality of the game wouldn’t suffer greatly, I am sure the John Terrys of the future would still rather kick a ball about for 150k a YEAR than go and get a proper job.

The deepest thing about Gordon Brown is his voice.

Today at his party’s conference he spoke well. His diction was clear and he sounded confident, confident that he can “lead” Britain out of the number of pickles it finds itself in just now.

What he resoundingly failed to mention was that it was his own direction, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, that drove us inevitably into this mess.

So why should anyone believe he is prepared to change his direction now?

Across Europe houses are built of brick, stone, concrete and other durable materials.

Mediaeval houses had the stoutest of timber frames with solid infills. The timbers were connected with simple push fit joints and held in place with wooden pegs.

Even in the changing climate, at least for now, Europe does not suffer destructive typhoons and hurricanes.

Yet, in almost every photo of the aftermath of a seriously destructive storm in the USA I see a pile of wood, a bank, a pile of wood, maybe a hotel, a pile of wood, a gas station, a pile of wood etc..

I suspect even George W Bush could be explained to that it isn’t just when big bad wolves huff and puff that houses of sticks and straw offer little protection.

Surely it is cheaper for the taxpayer to subsidise the building of strong houses that will last for generations, even in such vulnerable areas, than it is to deal with emergency evacuations and the constant rebuilding of homes just as fragile as those they must replace.

If average house prices rise more swiftly than average earnings

The standard of accomodation available to successive generations

Becomes lower and lower.

The Commissioners of the Church of England manage assets worth more than £4 Billion. Which goes to show how little from the donations from well-meaning people over the years has gone anywhere other than to the church itself. 

Churches in the US, too, have been shown to have enormous cash reserves. These they have been able to draw from to pay legal settlements and fees arising from their employees bad behaviour. I doubt that was the intended purpose of the donations to them from which they amassed this wealth.

Gordon Brown is our new Prime Minister. Which probably serves him right.

He can’t blame his predecessor for the state of the economy. 

The cracks in which are showing.

June has come and gone since the McCanns met Benny the 16th.

Which would have happened anyway.

The BBC reports the McCanns’ meeting with the Pope as being emotional and mentions that he touched their arms and blessed a photograph of their missing daughter. What exactly the blessing of a photograph entails or how it might help the subject of it to be found safe and well is not stated.

But it is definitely positive media coverage of an otherwise worthless gesture from the CEO of one of the biggest worship clubs in the world, recently famous for trying to hide the kiddie-fiddling exploits of its own employees, given free of charge to the club.

A couple, sufficiently uninteresting to have Catholicism as their most apparent trait in recent weeks, take their kids to a holiday village in Portugal. They elect not to avail themselves of the value for money child-minding service on offer and the worst comes to the worst. A child goes missing.

In desperation after some weeks the unhappy couple turn to the Pope, presumably to plead their case for divine intervention. But all the Pope ever advises is to close your eyes and hope for the best quietly to yourself. Which is the same as saying, Shut up and go away.

If you take away the theatre and costume of the religion you are left with an ordinary couple going to see an old bloke in a foreign country for comfort following the abduction of their innocent child and being told in a posh voice to, “Phuck off.”

Due to the couple’s overt religion and the massive media coverage they have managed to maintain, their child’s plight has swelled the coffers of worship clubs magnificently.

But it would make the world a much safer place if all the well-meaning worshippers gave their spare money to training and equipping their local police instead of their worship clubs.

Parliament is a place in which people talk. The word comes from the French “Parler”, to talk. For as long as talking goes on and decisions are not arrived at the talkers are paid their fee.

It is not in the interests of politicians to find reasons why they need not exist.