Rich Man's Plaything

I have been a fan of Sheffield Wednesday for almost twenty years now, and nothing, until two days ago, has made me consider no longer being a fan. Through relegations and promotions, the ups and the numerous lows, I have followed them, but please consider the recent developments.

The team as of Wednesday lay third in the league, and only two points behind second place.  After a run of three defeats, they had still drawn a home crowd of 36.600 (the highest in the whole football league this season outside the Premiership) for their game against Sheffield Utd, which they won. The chairman, Milan Mandaric then sacked the manager.

This same chairman had only recently been acquitted of tax evasion, but then since he is a very rich man, he would be.  The trouble with tax law is that it is not black and white.  There are lots of different things that you can do in certain situations, and it depends a lot on your motives.  And motives can never really be proven in a court of law, and least not without reasonable doubt.

It got me thinking about how much the world is now nothing more than a rich man’s plaything.  A bit of a leap from a football club sacking its manager you might say, but hear me out.

Sticking with football, a vast majority of clubs are owned by rich men, and they don’t always treat them as they should.  With Roman Abramovitch at Chelsea who also sacks managers for fun, with the problems at Portsmouth and now Rangers, along with other numerous clubs that have been mismanaged financially, with no thought to the human and emotional side which is the fans and which is what keeps the clubs going.

Then there are the oil companies who happily ruin ecologies all over the world, and the banks who constantly gamble with other people’s money and as we have seen with the recent crash, their lives and livelihoods too.  It’s rare to find a politician (especially in the UK) who isn’t a millionaire and of course there are the media moguls and the advertisers who constantly tell us what we can read and see, and more importantly what we can’t.

We have all become the baby brother who is thrown out of the sandpit, forced to stand by and watch as the older brother accepts payment for his friends to soil into what should be ours to enjoy, before they all go off and destroy someone else’s toys.  How we stop them, sadly I have no answers for.