Football, Corruption, The Couch Potato And Business.

Football is essentially a mindless pastime with adults playing a children's game for vast amounts of money watched by other adults with nothing better to do. Because of this, in our upside-down topsy-turvy world, it has grown into an industry worth billions. Players, most of whom find it difficult to articulate a meaningful sentence, are paid more than brain surgeons to bounce a ball from one end of a football pitch to the other. Fans will pay huge amounts of their income to watch this inane spectacle and will travel the world insulting local populations as they go while often remaining utterly ignorant of the local culture. With this amount of boneheaded, knuckle-dragging ignorance amongst football fans it is hardly surprising that corruption is a way of life to those organising it all. After sixteen years in charge with absolutely zero progress being made in stamping out graft, bribery and corruption, Sepp Blatter has yet again been re-elected as the president of FIFA. A bunch of crooks have put back in charge the man who has allowed their criminality to go unchecked. Not really so surprising given the level of corruption and racketeering in the rest of the world's business community from international banking to local market stalls selling fashion "knock-offs". Andy Burnham, in his campaign to win the leadership of the Labour party, has described businessmen as "heroes". This would be true if said businessmen were the entrepreneurs of yesteryear, men risking their own capital in pursuit of a dream of excellence. Unfortunately business today seems to consist all too often of slick confidence tricks, double-dealing and misdirection at the expense of a public too busy watching football to realise what's going on around them. The so-called "beautiful game" is neither beautiful nor a game, it is an ugly multi-billion pound business and a poster child for the corruption inherent in the neoliberal economic system.