14th October 2012
‘Love United Hate Glazer!’ That’s the slogan isn’t it? Well, sorry, I can’t bring myself to ‘hate’ the Glazers. Although I’m an old school Trotskyite who wants a permanent, global revolution to remove all artificial national and cultural boundaries to forge an international dictatorship of the proletariat, somehow I doubt that’s going to happen any time soon. So I have to accept the reality of the world as it is and now how I’d like it to be. In the ‘real world’ it doesn’t matter if the Glazers bought the club using leverage deals , saddling the club with crippling debts and enriching themselves by exploiting the club’s ‘brand’ in share issues. That’s what capitalists do. That’s the f*cking point of capitalism.
In purely selfish business terms (and they’re the ONLY business terms) , the Glazers have played a blinder. Somehow, through a mixture of moxy and chutzpah, they’ve become the owners of the world’s most profitable football club adding to their ‘portfolio’ of sports ‘franchises’ in the USA. That they did this without spending any of their own dough and can now milk the club for millions whilst they load yet more debt onto the books, may be immoral and unethical but capitalism isn’t about morality or ethics, it’s about greed.
‘Greed is good’ became the mantra of the 80s yuppies seduced by Gordon Gecko wannabes who asset stripped and insider share traded their way to vast riches in the Reagan/Thatcher era. Greed is the engine for progress, the capitalist apologists would say. Greed built us roads and railways, greed built us canals and airports, greed built skyscrapers and suburbs, and we all benefited in one way or another. The Marxist would argue that such relative ‘progress’ was built upon the backs of slaves, real slaves kidnapped from Africa and industrial serfs who worked in factories and mines and shipyards during the 19th and 20th centuries.
The new ‘post-industrial’ economies, are now reliant on former ‘third world’ or communist states to make things for their consumers, whilst they make a last gap scramble for oil in the Middle East and manipulate the global market via abstract transfer of ‘stocks’ and ‘bonds’ on trading halls across the world. Wealth doesn’t ‘trickle down’ it pisses up in huge tsunamis and the so-called ‘wealth creators’ so beloved of both Tory and Labour, Democrat and Republican will always put their own interests above those of others.
In this phoney Wizard Of Oz economy where the deception is maintained by smoke and mirrors and controlled by manically shifting levers up and down, creating money via Quantative Easing , fixing interest rates, bailing out banks, indebting millions via austerity measures, no wonder the myth of ‘The American Dream’ has been shattered. This is no aberration however, it’s always been like this ever since some c**t in the desert ask to borrow a camel and had to pay back two camels in return.
Empires come, empires go, money talks, bullshit walks. The Glazers of this world are a dying breed but there are new sharks in the water, hungrier sharks like the Russian ‘oligarchs’ (you say ‘Oligarch’, I say Gangster’), Arab, Indian and ‘Oriental’ despots and industrialists who now want a piece of the pie. In this world, the Glazers are ten bob shucksters who will in all likelihood take their money and run within the next few years.
Yes, I know this all seems a bit defeatist but the fallacy of ‘fan power’ and futility of revisionism and nostalgia for a golden era that never was, is even more of a defeat. Was Louis Edwards any less corrupt and self-serving than Malcolm Glazer, was Martin Edwards any less opportunist and loyal than Magnier and McManus? Were Bob Maxwell, Michael Knighton or Rupert Murdoch any less despicable than Abramovich, Shinawatra or Sheikh Mansoor?
Peter Swales, Ron Noades, Barry Hearn, Ken Bates, Doug Ellis, all good men and true. The local spivs have been usurped by global gangsters but the game isn’t any less corrupt than it’s always been. And let’s not forget that Sir Alex himself that so-called ‘socialist’ and Knight of The Realm, has feathered his own nest quite comfortably over the past quarter of a century. It was he who almost brought the club to its knees in his greedy dispute over stud fees with the Coolmore mafia, people he brought in to shore up his position against Edwards. It was he who used his own son to conduct transfers in a blatant case of conflict of interest.
Remember then how fans jumped on Magnier and McManus ‘for not even attending games’ but forgetting that their shares were all that was important, not ‘supporting’ the team by sitting in the posh seats. Remember how Roy Keane lambasted the ‘prawn sandwich brigade’ and later poured scorn on modern footballers being only interested in money, when it was he who blackmailed the club into breaking their wage structure thereby pricing yet more ‘ordinary working class fans’ out of Old Trafford?
Hypocrisy? Never, these people are beyond criticism. In the feeding trough, only the runts are left to starve. Ofcourse UEFA and FIFA and the FA and the Premiership could step in but they won’t. Governments could take action but they won’t. Not whilst it suits the careerists, the glad-handers, the shmoozers and the parasites who control international business and international sport.
Love United Hate Glazer. It’s as bland a statement as Love Music Hate Racism. Love Corry Hate EastEnders. As a wise man once sang ‘that’s just the way it is, and some things will never change.’ Unless we have a permanent global revolution leading to a dictatorship of the proletariat that is.
http://www.yerknowthedance.com/double-glazed/