Brian Bollen's Blog

The UK Taxpayer, and Michael Owen's wages

Now that Northern Rock is being nationalised, do you realise that through the bank's sponsorship of Newcastle United you and I and every other tax payer in the UK is helping to pay Michael Owen's wages?

Doesn't it make you feel good to know that your money is helping to add to the wealth of a multi-millionaire football player? I can hardly stop turning cartwheels, I'm so delighted.

You really couldn't make it up, could you?

One other thing occurs to me: what happens now if Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB, Abbey, or even the much loathed HSBC, or Goldman Sachs, or Merrill Lynch, or Morgan Stanley, threaten to go bust? Do we step in and rescue them too? And if we are going to rescue banks by nationalising them, on what grounds do we protest if other countries do the same? And why is it one law for white collar workers whose jobs are under threat, and quite another for blue collar workers whose jobs have been so readily sacrificed over the past 30 years?

Oh, and finally, now that the UK Government has a vested interest in the stability and overall health of the UK housing market, does that mean we can expect a further cut in interest rates here, sooner rather than later? This could be a TRUE test of the Bank of England's 'independence'...

What's left after you have sold your soul?

It is an obscenity. It is an abomination. It is lunacy. It is a wind-up, isn't it? These are just some of the reactions I have heard first-hand in recent days about the English so-called Premier League's plans to improve its product offering. I have expressed many of them myself over the past few days, as I have tried to absorb the full impact of the announcement that the 20 so-called top teams in England (many of which somehow manage to persuade themselves that they are part of the most exciting league in the world despite the mind-numbing mediocrity of much of the football they purvey, and the fact that hardly anyone other than Arsenal and Manchester United have won the league title in the years since the 'Premier League' was created) have unanimously agreed to consider adding an extra round of fixtures to the league calendar.

These fixtures will be chosen at random, in the manner of a cup draw, with the top five clubs seeded (of course) to make the playing field even more uneven than it already is, and will be played in a series of cities around the world. These cities will, we are told, breathlessly outbid each other for the vast privilege of welcoming into their hearts the league's preening, self-regarding, publicly urinating, fornicating and vomiting multi-millionaires.