By Stanley Collymore
At the age of 10 years old and on the eve of my entering the prestigious 18th Century established grammar school I’d academically secured a place at my distinguished maternal grandmother who’d rubbed shoulders with and was also on first name terms with many iconic political and revolutionary personalities of her day and with whom I’ve always had a particularly close and enduring bond told me this:
“Always have faith in yourself and never doubt your God-given abilities or your own potential capabilities for a single moment,” she said. “For if you don’t have full confidence in what you can reasonably achieve or even unprecedentedly accomplish why should anyone else?” She then went on to expound that I should always be true to myself, my gut feelings and significantly my conscience.
“Let these be your perpetual guide, your constant bedfellows in whatever you say and do, and never depart from them.” Adding that I should never jump to conclusions, let alone arrive at hasty or ill-informed ones irrespective of great the temptation to do so was, nor should I ever allow myself to be unduly swayed by the emotive, bombastic or beguiling arguments or deductions of others on any subject matter however well crafted or enticingly persuasively presented these are; no matter who the authors of these charm are, what their perceived social status is nor the power or influence, real or imagined, that they consciously consider that they wield.
And with her forceful words ringing vibrantly and resonantly in my receptive ears my beloved Gran persuasively concluded: “You alone Stanley must at all times be the sole arbiter of all your thoughts, words and deeds and especially in the context in which you employ them. So that when you do you can confidently embark on any defence you might subsequently have to make with a clear mind, an honest heart, and the power of your own personal conviction.
I’ve never departed from this crucially material advice which Gran gave me, and bearing in mind the central and highly positive role she’s always played in my life would I ever have wanted or needed to. All the same as a lasting legacy of our tète a tête of that momentous occasion I had with her on the eve of the auspicious beginning of my educative journey in life that would, with all its twists and turns, roller-coaster like lead me to where I confidently am as an adult, yet I know is still unfinished as it similarly continues to be the exceedingly thrilling, highly exciting and most rewardingly fruitful and controversial affair that Gran anticipated and earnestly hoped it would be, she nevertheless took the additional precaution of writing down her thoughts and words relating to our discourse as well as mutually recording our conversation; invaluable treasures I’ve kept throughout the years, and always shall as long as I consciously draw breath into my body.
Therefore it’s against this impressive backdrop created by Gran and which from my perspective I’m completely and unrepentantly undeterred by any antipathy it might predictably arouse, that I tackle what I’ve genuinely dubbed as the Canonization of St. Mark Clattenburg of Durham: the English FA football referee who on the 28 October 2012 became embroiled in the farcical farrago involving the Nigerian national and Chelsea Football Club midfielder, John Obi Mikel during a Premier League football match between Chelsea and Manchester United at which Mark Clattenburg, momentously on the threshold of his personal canonization although he wasn’t aware of it at the time, officiated as the match referee.
I get very suspicious when people who’re accused of some act of wrongdoing, regardless of whether the matter is a trivial or extremely serious one, together with their friends or supporters deliberately embark on a raft of shenanigans either to justify the actions of the accused, or as is more commonly the case zealously defend that person’s innocence. And a favourite ploy of those involved, other than instinctively going into somewhat strange, extraordinarily tortuous and robust explanations for what allegedly took place that is, is to concertedly set out to rope into their particular camp all and sundry, and the more of these the better, to either authenticate or else give important or crucial support to the protagonists’ carefully scripted version of events.
It’s an enterprise which can assume several guises; like benefiting from and exploiting the numbers among those who’ve given their personal backing to it, capitalizing on the real or perceived social influence of those who likemindedly are known to either overtly or covertly share the views of those they’re invited to show their empathy and solidarity with, in addition to those ill-informed, apathetic, credulous, dim-witted or easily manipulated elements within our society who can be readily counted on to unthinkingly ingest what they’re told and then reliably do what is expected of them, whether or not those manifestly and overly keen to do so can add anything material to what has taken place.
However, this article isn’t or was it ever intended to be a regurgitation of the contentious events that supposedly took place or else never happened at all, depending that is on who or what you believe or more crucially what your gullibility rating is, on the 28 October 2012. Besides, the purported victim of all this fuss, John Obi Mikel has openly said that if any inappropriate remarks were made to or in direct reference about him by Mark Clattenburg he personally didn’t hear them. As a result of which he can’t pronounce with any certainty on the guilt or innocence of Mark Clattenburg.
However his position on this matter, which is either straightforwardly honest or else conveniently dissembling, is left hanging in the air by the comment of his Chelsea teammate, fellow player in that Chelsea squad and on the field of play on that particular day, Ramires whose take on the matter is to say the least quite different from that of John Obi Mikel. For Ramires not only categorically claims he heard Mark Clattenburg make an inappropriate remark to John Obi Mikel but more importantly it was Ramires who reported the incident which ultimately gave rise to the controversy that it evidently stirred up. A remark, “Shut up you monkey” to the black Nigerian midfielder which in the context of its delivery and if true can reasonably be construed as not only racist but also premeditatedly so!
Which brings me to the overall response of and significantly the apology for having raised the matter with the English FA in the first place by Chelsea Football Club’s management whose support, if one can credibly call it that, for John Obi Mikel was at best half-hearted and ranks in my view very much in the category of we’ll go through the motions if we must but don’t see why we should really rock the establishment boat and accepted status quo on an issue so trivial as racism, especially when the victim is black and not a white perpetrator of this social and psychological evil as was the case with John Terry; but having said that any individual with an ounce of grey matter between his or her ears could have sussed that out from the very outset of this farrago of a football farce.
But even more pernicious than the above is the statement by the English FA to the effect that the so-called evidence relating to the Mark Clattenburg affair was considered by “independent QC David Waters”; however independent of whom or exactly what Mr Waters was the English FA didn’t say, while additionally being exceedingly taciturn I must say about elaborating on this particular issue. Nevertheless for those of you who aren’t acquainted with the English legal system or the expressions associated with it, or in this precise case are totally at a lost as to what a QC is, here’s the unabridged and explicit definition of the latter that I’m quite certain you won’t find in any English lexicon by the legal fraternity or for that matter that emanate from the stables of our conventional publishers.
Anyway, the term QC: Queen’s Counsel or KC: King’s Counsel is a sort of highfalutin title awarded through the old boys’ network, but rarely on merit, to likeminded barristers or lawyers who’re often quite arrogant, moronic, narcissistic and egotistically-controlling freaks and popinjays of the first order. And those are some of their most redeeming qualities – with a grotesque avariciousness that is studiously underpinned by a pronounced propensity for greed, garnering money and whatever other material wealth they can manipulatively lay their hands on and salvage for themselves without the prospect of any troubling imposition, externally influenced or internally induced, of even a modicum of probity or conscionable apprehension or concern on their part relative to their activities; and all this callously embarked on wherever the English legal writ still holds sway.
Additionally, the awarded appellation depends entirely on what gender the English monarch is at the time that the designated recipient is granted it; so if there’s a queen on the English throne, as there has been for the past 60 years, the recipient is referred to as a QC. While up until that time under her late father or if Charles or his son William become the succeeding English monarch recipients of this dubious honour and navel-gazing award, also risibly in my view referred to as taking or becoming a silk: a reference to the outlandish, outmoded but quite costly attire that those selected and elevated popinjays adorn themselves with to superciliously set themselves apart from other members of their trade that I shan’t ennoble with the distinction of a profession any more than I would the aspirations and modus operandi of a select whore who works the circuit of London’s upmarket hotels, since the similarity between these two groups of mercenary operators is indivisibly the same, are referred to as a KC.
That said these titles are interchangeable; for when Elizabeth became queen KCs created under her father automatically became QCs, and the reverse will happen with any existing QC when Charles or William become King in her place. But it’ll be completely wrong to presuppose that the monarch has anything to do with the awarding of the title of either a QC or KC, far less that those who’re granted them counsel the monarch in anyway. Yes the Queen and other members of her family undoubtedly have their own briefs, a slang term for lawyers, but they select them on a personal basis as you or I would choose our own lawyer or attorney to represent our interests if required in that capacity.
It’s just that under our somewhat feudalistic and medieval system of justice our courts and in actual fact our entire legal system isn’t strictly English or even British but rather falls under the purview of whoever is the monarch at the time; or more specifically what gender that individual happens to be. So as we have a queen our courts are Her Majesty’s Courts, and all the officials from the judges right down to the lowly court usher who work in them and are therefore part of the justice system, are the Queen’s officials and quite predictably our legal popinjays who’re elevated to the status of silks become QCs.
However, as someone who has constantly impressed upon my students that true achievement should always come from their own efforts rather than them waiting around and sycophantically relying on leg-ups from those who wield power and influence for their own ends or vested interests, I still find it somewhat bizarre that a group of people in the legal trade who delusionally consider themselves to be the crème de la crème of our society when in fact they’re some of the most corrupt and among the worst dissembling group of individuals that one could ever have had the misfortune to come across, embark on going through the most idiotic and obtuse of rituals imaginable and that without a doubt would seriously embarrass the average cerebral seven year old if he or she were asked to participate in them but which our purported learned popinjays display no hesitancy in wholeheartedly throwing themselves into in order to more easily scale that greasy pole of preference through the opportunity presented to them, while at the same time see themselves as cleverly being able to pull one over their less privileged or thought of colleagues or the principled few who conscionably refuse to associate themselves with such asinine and puerile shenanigans by what is fundamentally a party of egocentric navel-gazers, is pathetic conduct to say the very least.
Most people if they were asked would willingly indulge in the odd slap-up meal with friends, family members or colleagues, and if financially they could afford to and really didn’t mind doing so would likewise proverbially stick their hand in their pocket and contribute towards the meal’s cost. But our learned popinjays, primarily a male bonding association with a few token women members thrown in to give the disingenuous appearance of gender equality, which most of these men don’t subscribe to anyway and worst still the symbolic women they’ve begrudgingly permitted into their ranks don’t do themselves any favours since with their aped masculine traits they hardly comprise the epitome of femininity, have taken dining in this posh fashion to a new and quite ludicrous dimension.
For in addition to sycophantically sucking up to and willingly pushing their heads up the collective asses of those who’re most capable of arbitrarily advancing their legal careers and can likewise fast track them on to the extremely lucrative and express gravy train of preferment that will convey them on their premeditated excursion to even more avaricious accomplishments, this permanent ticket to variably ride roughshod over whomsoever they subjectively choose to is synonymous to selling their souls to the Devil in exchange for worldly rewards, and as such is nothing less on the part of these learned popinjays than the physical manifestation of greed in its most extreme form.
Therefore, and to be absolutely forthright with you, I find it extremely hard to take on board or treat seriously anything that these legal popinjays might either care to or actually have to say in relation to any particular issue, nor am I inclined to ever consider trusting them to be even-handed in what they do or be honest regarding the pronouncements they pompously make; since for the most part they’re practised liars who’ve professionally cultivated and made a specialization out of this particular art of deception.
And what’s more, whose natural propensity towards materialism is so unshakeably deep-rooted that effectively they’ve methodically morphed into creatures of predictable habits cheerfully predisposed to ignobly and unethically predetermining the direction and final outcome of those enterprises which they’ve deigned to be a part of, and in whose involvement the financial reward they know they’ll get for their services plays a vital role in the acceptance of their brief, being the fundamental and hugely compensatory factor for their otherwise studied indifference in the first place of the precise matter in hand, which calculatingly they were chosen for and asked to deal with.
Accordingly, and also bearing in mind everything that’s been said, it’s an absolute irrelevance to me, and wouldn’t be anything else in similar circumstances, which highfalutin and so-called big-name legal popinjay that public organisations of whatever nature or supposed status on awkwardly finding themselves thrust into the thick of a rather embarrassing pickle by virtue of events that they’ve either wittingly been a key contributory factor to or else simply got lumbered with the proverbial hot potato through remissly and consistently allowing inappropriate situations or modes of conduct to develop, spread and spiral out of control under their watch scurry to in order to effect damage limitation and cover their incompetent, ineffectual and bigoted asses when as invariably happens, however long it takes for that to happen, the pile of shit they’ve created during that time ultimately hits the fan; and I’m not, believe you me, not about to make an exception here to this golden rule of mine.
The general British public, and that includes even the most apathetic members of it, is well aware of the lengths that our governments of all political complexions customarily go to in order to deceive us when public outrage of one sort or another that they self-interestedly want to placate forces them to grudgingly sanction what usually turn out to be purposely quite expensive enquiries whose eventual outcome are virtually always premeditated whitewashes which the handpicked leading lights of these enquiries, top-drawer legal luminaries we’re predictably always told, hence the exorbitant legal costs involved and bearing in mind also that several of our MPs and especially those that somehow always manage to acquire cabinet or other important government posts usually belong to the legal fraternity themselves and can therefore easily relate to and personally empathize with such avarice, embark on along with their similarly chosen sidekicks of biddable jobsworths or social climbers.
Consequently, it’s a process that inevitably leads to their willing collusion with the governments that hired them and in view of the circumstances in which they were selected not unnaturally expresses itself through the actions of these favoured sycophants who assiduously proceed to painstakingly and collectively set out to fraudulently convince the more credulous among our populace, and not for the lack of trying also attempt to hoodwink the rest of us that the consciously distorted conclusions of these farfetched and far from objective enquires they perversely arrived at are in effect, and solely on the basis of their endorsement, substantive and genuine; when in actuality they’re just a pack of intentional lies concomitant with a prescriptive narrative that’s liberally riddled with legal jargon and untrustworthy obfuscation.
Just three of many such examples, the vast majority of which regrettably go unnoticed by the general public and predictably swiftly get buried in the archives of government dishonesty, disingenuousness and venal corruption of the highest order, prove my point explicitly, and are mentioned in this article because of their high profile nature and the resoluteness of those that fought tirelessly and against the odds for truth, justice and official accountability relative to the victims involved to be acknowledged made known and administered; and conversely that the biased conclusions of these corrupt enquiries that did everything in the power of those who compiled, adulterated and administered them to evilly thwart this from happening be fully exposed for all the world to see.
I’m referring of course to the initial enquires relating to Bloody Sunday, the Hillsborough tragedy and the unfortunate demise of Dr. David Kelly. The first two are now thankfully fully, unequivocally and generally known to be the sham they always were from the outset of their revelations, something that sensible people suspected all along; and shamed into an about face and embarrassing mea culpa that the relevant British government and courts have been publicly forced to acknowledge was the case, with consecutive British PMs apologizing, how sincerely so I still have my doubts about that, for the travesty of justice intentionally perpetrated purportedly by the crème de la crème of our legal system on the British public.
What a turn-up for the books, eh? Even so the enquiry into Dr. Kelly’s murder, for that’s how most Britons see it as and not the suicide that those with their vested interests to obfuscate the facts and hide the truth would have us believe, is still mired in controversy which isn’t helped by the fact that this supposedly honest report, or rather the version of it that the government and its lackeys want us to take to heart, is officially by government decree, collaboratively endorsed by our spineless MPs on all sides of the House of Commons, sealed for the duration of the lifetime of most, if not all adults currently living in the United Kingdom.
A sure-fire method if you ask me of effectively burying the truth and at the same time protect from ever having to face lawful retribution those who’re criminally responsible for Dr. Kelly’s death. But like the Bloody Sunday and Hillsborough Enquiries the truth which has a habit of doing so no matter how long it takes will eventually emerge, even if unfortunately by that time the guilty parties would have long escaped justifiable punishment through being casualties of death themselves. But isn’t that when all is said and done what gutlessly sealing the Dr. David Kelly Enquiry report and also doing the same with similar controversial reports is all about; concealing the truth and sparing our criminal legislators the humiliation of having their multiple and perfidious wrongdoing publicly exposed and themselves from being brought to book for their crimes?
If you ask me there has only been one creditable British government authorized public enquiry in living memory that throughout its entire deliberations was absolutely thorough, wholly conscientious in its investigations to find out the truth, professionally objective in its proceedings, and substantially marked by a profound commitment to probity that readily translated into the kind of action which easily enabled it to subsequently and courageously arrive at and in like manner could and did deliver conclusions that were demonstrably relevant to the situation that HM government was involuntarily and most grudgingly driven by circumstances that it couldn’t effectively control or actually ignore to engage it for, in order to investigate and make recommendations, which was the government’s public explanation anyway, to resolve a perilous and evolving social problem that threatened the very fabric of British society.
Anyway what incredibly but efficaciously occurred was unquestionably a darn sight more principled than can ever be honestly said about all the other government sanctioned enquiries lumped together and that jointly as well as individually, it must be candidly pointed out, epitomized the worst aspects of submissive sycophancy, reflex improbity, disreputable conduct of the highest order liberally laced with disdainful arrogance, and untrammelled corruption of the worst kind brazenly masquerading as conscientiousness, justice or rectitude; and fundamentally those are the best things that can truthfully be said about these erstwhile and completely dishonest enquires and the people that were personally involved with them.
The Macpherson report however was a regrettably long-overdue but nevertheless a much welcomed, in conscionable circles that is, and quite necessary transformative breath of fresh air blowing through an otherwise stinking and boundless Aegean Stable of putrid English legal tradition, dull conformity and sycophantic complaisance combined with a marked penchant by those who’ve willingly allowed themselves to be firmly embraced by this quite corrupting, ignoble, most hypocritical and deleterious system of control freaks for gamely acquiescing in the wishes of whoever it is that holds or manages the financial purse strings of the loot that bankroll and hugely bolster their insatiable greed.
And that’s one of the principal reasons why the vested-interest brigade of House of Commons MPs, government ministers, Prime Ministers, their steadfast and collaborative media supporters and other likeminded nerds in our society who superabundantly and outrageously thrive on social malignities like xenophobia, bigotry, racism and purblind injustices to either shore up their recalcitrant hatred of those whom they absurdly dislike and regard as inferior to themselves or else to conceal their myriad personal deficiencies that range from ineptitude in their daily lives to specific sexual inadequacy in the bedroom or the wider dysfunctional relationships they conduct with each other, from the moment the recommendations of the Macpherson Report became generally known about, collectively seized on it and immediately slated it with a calculated vengeance intentionally designed to rubbish it..
Which was rather bizarre and somewhat self-defeating to be perfectly honest with you when looked at objectively and in the context of what these bigoted morons were consciously doing; since by any assessment realistically worth its salt and that’s fairly applied, these obtuse critics of the Macpherson Report easily rank among the most consciously and premeditatedly hard-done-by victims residing in the United Kingdom, even though they don’t know it. And how so?
Because they’re some of our most cuckolded citizens; men who unsuspectingly father children they either didn’t sire or biologically couldn’t have done so as in the latter case they’re azospermiac - the hapless shooters of spermal blanks in other words – and what’s more are completely ignorant in both instances of these facts that additionally they rarely ever get to know about. Yet all of them are very much involved in personal relationships, whether spousal or otherwise, with perpetrating bitches that deliberately conned them into unquestioningly thinking and actually believing themselves to be what they realistically aren’t, biological dads; and whose female partners make up some 36% of the UK’s general population.
So if you want to know my opinion that’s a hell of a lot of deceitful shagging-cum-bogus-paternal grief for these cuckolded men, albeit unknowingly so, to have to contend with without them rather risibly and somewhat ironically purposely inviting yet more problems for themselves by wilfully and with much malice aforethought going around foisting unwarranted and gratuitous grief of their own on what are specifically selected but none the less innocent victims that have never once intended far less ever done them any actual harm.
That said, ignorance is so blissfully ingrained in these mindboggingly miscreant morons effectively blinded by their own abysmal stupidity and malign prejudices that for them the notion of equality and justice for everyone, whether it’s meted out socially or legally, are the last things they’d want to countenance or God forbid ever lend their support to. By the way, how do you personally fit into this cuckolding lark? Just thinking out loud!
So if the MPs and de facto the government that we democratically elect to supposedly look after our social and national interests and can essentially remove if for whatever valid reasons or even none at all we become dissatisfied with them, yet curiously and somehow always end up it seems with the same donkeys and even identical riders, think nothing at all of using the reliable, tried and tested old boys’ network of legal popinjays to rustle up on demand the odd fraudulent government-sanctioned enquiry.
Enquiries by the way with the singular purpose of endeavouring to hopefully assuage public anger or concern whenever the actions of these governments through the latter’s incompetence or customary criminality, or generally both of these things, lead to something going awry, then with their preferred legal chums collaboratively and shamelessly add insult to injury by fleecing the already impecunious British taxpayers to fork out for them while at the same time being further taken to the cleaners.
Why then should any sensible person be the least surprised when the controllers of similarly arrogant and moreover irremovable and therefore unaccountable public bodies that likewise regrettably wield inordinate power and influence and additionally have considerable amounts of money to burn seeing how the wind blows and exceptionally keen to emulate these crooked governments of ours and their legal popinjays with whom they themselves are familiarly locked in close cahoots, being part of that same highly privileged and elitist-minded set of xenophobic, racist and rightwing, white supremacist morons, take to doing exactly the same thing by elaborately setting up their own fraudulent enquiries or investigations in characteristic navel-gazing fashion and unsurprisingly headed or directed by big-name QCs, whose specific remit is to manufacture predetermined answers when these public bodies similarly find themselves in a spot of troublesome bother?
Money talks and the more of that it one has the louder the monologue often gets and when combined with power, influence and, from the money-holder’s sole perspective, the right political connections the discourse, or more correctly what passes for one, becomes not only perceptibly deafeningly loud but also decidedly one-sided. For lets not forget that these people constitute the small cadre of those who through their enormous wealth not only shape but also directly and considerably, to the point of having a virtual monopolistic control over this process, decide with their biddable political allies and our nationally elected legislators what laws are instituted, how these are administered, and crucially who among us are obligated to obey them and who effectively, because they consider themselves to be totally above the law and so through their political ties get granted the immunity they seek from our lawmakers to be accorded this unjust privilege, don’t have to.
The English Football Association has loads of money to literally play around with and acquires more of the stuff for itself virtually every day of the week; but like the indulgently spoilt, enormously rich, remarkably privileged and insufferable môme terrible it’s analogous to who is familiarly accustomed to demanding and having his or her way, and on given the excessive customary financial allowance they’ve come to expect but no matter how substantial this acquisition is it doesn’t or will it ever have the same effect on them as the contrasting pittance in pocket money undeniably would on a similarly aged child from an impecunious family or social background, the English FA can hardly given those circumstances be realistically deemed by any remotely sedulous advocacy in its favour as being the apotheosis of financial probity or of any other sort come to that.
I don’t know and it’s highly improbable the English FA would ever publicly say how much money it paid to David Waters for making favourable use of his services; but I’d hazard a guess that it wasn’t peanuts in financial terms for what I truthfully believe, even with the English FA’s much trumpeted fantasy affirmation of this man’s alleged independence, was basically an agreed and predeterminedly reached decision on the Mark Clattenburg case; or not to put too fine a point on it was a mutually beneficial done deal!
For starters David Waters’ rather grandiose, self-absorbed, much hyped and evidently commercially-orientated blurb on himself states that he’s highly regarded in legal circles, which isn’t that difficult to comprehend given the state as well as the questionable reputation of the legal trade in the Anglo-Saxon world and most particularly so in England. But then Jimmy Savile was also highly thought of and for decades right up until his death comprehensively feted and similarly enjoyed an untouchable and commendable reputation that was likewise extravagantly nurtured and fulsomely paid obeisance to throughout and right up to the very summit of the entertainment equivalent of the legal trade. And we all know now what happened there don’t we? So the old adage of never judge a book by its cover is still apt in my view in our contemporary English world and applies just as equally to narcissists in the legal trade as it does to those in the entertainment one.
Furthermore, it is claimed that Herr Waters only takes on high profile legal cases, and while you’re perfectly entitled of course as I am to draw your own financial conclusions from that revelation, my most pressing concern, if indeed what’s claimed is actually the case and so far I’ve not seen anything to debunk that allegation, is a much more disquieting one.
I’ve several relative and a few close friends who’re in the medical profession and in point of fact my other half is a Consultant Surgeon; all of whom I know love their work immensely, enjoy doing it and are by objective reports carried out on them by their employers exceedingly outstanding in their respective specialities.
However, if they or their medical colleagues were to cherry pick who they see, treat or attend to and worst still do so purely on the basis of a prospective patient’s financial capacity to pay over the odds for treatment or because this person’s so-called celebrity status while the doctor involved shockingly attached negligible regard or none at all to the patient’s genuine and specific medical needs, I would be deeply appalled as I’m quite sure any other conscionable person would be who got to hear about this sort of unprofessional, suspect and highly immoral conduct.
Yet this is the kind of abominable behaviour that’s not only commonplace but also serves as grist to the mill of the legal fraternity and among whom and the higher up this sordid tree one goes the more apparent and atrocious it becomes, with money, not morality, professionalism or even the ethics of criminal jurisprudence, the sole and obsessive driving force behind what the overwhelming majority of this fraternity’s membership ultimately and with customary aplomb and disdain quite disreputably but clever embarks upon.
No serious search for truth then with them which anyway from the outset is a casualty, but instead a concertedly engaged in scenario solidly linked to the additional encumbrance of having these callous bastards and their female counterparts collaboratively involved in fraudulent activities, then brazenly expecting and even demanding at times that Joe and Jane Public unquestioningly believe and happily accept the shit they then contemptuously attempt to shove down their throats while cruelly passing it off as vintage caviar. Because they’re lawyers you see, and like their legislator collaborators in both houses of the British parliament are indubitably honourable men and women whose every word must always be taken at face value and never doubted. Well rule me out of that conceited equation as I’m entirely capable of thinking and making decisions for myself and rather like it that way. And besides, can also categorically tell a stinking rat when I smell one.
It would be utterly remiss and even churlish of me of course not to acknowledge and also point out that the odd aberrant doctor or other medical personnel, and I’m speaking specifically about the UK in this context, does disappointingly fall short of and even occasionally and deliberately so flouts the highly laudable, well-established, properly regulated and deep-seated ethics of the commendable profession they were quite privileged to be a part of and somewhat sickeningly betrayed, but such occurrences happily one must also say are extremely rare.
Moreover, the stringent procedures put in place and superbly managed within the medical and its associated professions, and I’d very much like to expressly mention the nursing profession here, to promptly and impartially investigate and whenever it’s applicable immediately and professionally suspend those who’re accused of any wrongdoing in order to creditably detect and summarily rout out where it’s categorically proven such unprincipled practices when they infrequently occur, as well as punishingly deal with them ether through having the rogue individual struck off, barred for life and forthwith prevented from practising or being a part of that profession anymore.
Together with the punctual and customary reporting to the police by the miscreant offender’s work superiors any criminal behaviour that’s suspected or actually carried out by the individual concerned, is not only standard and religiously adhered to practice in the medical and its associated professions in Britain that definitely enjoys the full backing of fellow medical practitioners and the British public in general, but additionally invoke the well-thought-out procedures and instruments of fairness that are trustworthily well received and fully accepted by everyone in the British Isles, with a conscience that is, routinely work admirably and efficiently; and significantly and reassuringly in the bargain are transparently and even-handedly administered.
A completely different approach and one which is very much to the contrary of what’s been earlier described typical of our medical personnel, and to be quite blunt is the most charitable or realistic way any prescient-minded person could possibly describe the sentiments and activities of our legal fraternity who as Britain rampaged in Iraq, and Afghanistan, yet again, and ludicrously continues to do so, talk about old mutton dressing up as lamb, in its outmoded imperialistic manner in the Global South, instead of standing up for the noble principles of international law, global order and universal justice, are instead some of our governments’ most enthusiastic cheerleaders regarding these brazen atrocities. And not only that but are themselves very much in the forefront of what’s going on.
Activities that range from their complicity in ardently giving pseudo-legal cover for odious criminal acts like the euphemistically labelled extraordinary rendition: kidnapping to you and me; enhanced interrogation tactics relative to suspects: a fancy and deliberately misleading term for widespread torture of persons who weren’t, aren’t or will they ever be subjected to the due processes of law; and the gross infringement of whose liberty and fundamental human rights comprise on the part of the Machiavellian maniacs that wilfully, maliciously and with blanket immunity sadistically put them in these untenable situations to be largely nothing more concrete than fishing expeditions.
Scurrilous and premeditated activities executed either for power-mad or perverse reasons, or simply because those who instigate and give the orders to inflict these kinds of barbaric atrocities on fellow human beings incapable of defending themselves accompanied by their legal collaborators that quite unconscionably or career-oriented, or both, give them the questionable legal lover to act in the way they do, are pathologically sick minds or power-crazed persons who behave as they do because they know that the corrupt governmental and legal systems in which their affiliated to or operate in ensure that they can and what’s more permits them to cheerfully get away with their crimes.
But most ironically in the process voluntarily adopting, though I unequivocally believe it was always there, and cheerfully employing the same kind of mindset that these disreputable bastards once had a triumphalistic field day severely panning Soviet era regimes for, yet here we are in the 21st Century witnessing a great deal worse from our supposedly upright governments and their sycophantic legal conspirators. Soviet gulags were monstrous they raucously ranted, and so they were; but what about Britain’s covert and avid support for, as well as its active participation in assisting CIA-run and EU facilitated gulags established on European soil, or our own domestic and indigenous legal black hole euphemistically referred to as Belmarsh Prison?
Interestingly enough, and quite ironically so in the 21st Century with Britain and its white Caucasian, imperialistic western partners that at every staged-managed and public opportunity they can grab for themselves to smugly lecture others in the global south about the ethical observance of human rights, the impartial practices of the due processes of law and order, is not at all different from what these same white-supremacist doctrinaire countries routinely practised themselves in their former colonies or against the indigenous peoples that they subjugated and whose lands they stole from them; carry on doing so to this very day, and notably in Britain’s case was previously masterminded with its attendant atrocious consequences in the infernally damnable Black Hole of Calcutta when the Raj’s writ ran rampant across the Asian sub-continent. So Britain and its judicial system have lots of form in this particular issue and are in no position to lecture anyone!
Belmarsh Prison then: our own Stalinist gulag, CIA black hole and Guantanamo Bay à l’Angleterre, lavishly set up and run, no expense spared, even in these austerity-driven times, to ensure its success under the totally dishonest but enormously profitable and to justify the myth they’ve created pretext of fighting a war, never-endingly so it appears, on terrorism, when all sensible people, well certainly those I know, have discussed the matter with at length, or else have interviewed on several occasions about this specific subject instantly recognize that it’s not, but rather something much more sinister which the entire country is faced with.
In effect a calculated and national campaign of fear being nefariously waged to condition the public at large to compliantly accept the consistent circumscription and even the total erosion of its human, legal or constitutional rights in the name of what’s essentially a fictional claim of national security. And moreover that the bulk of terrorism there already is springs from a Neanderthal mindset of not coming to terms with a constantly changing world, the original Neanderthals didn’t either that’s why they’re now extinct, goaded by imperialistic greed and arrogance on the part of those involved but who would have us think otherwise, and is in fact instigated and furthermore additionally and quite diligently regimented by the United States, Britain and the European Union together with their Stone Age Arab satrapies; and consequently what’s primarily directed at us is principally in response to the criminal behaviour and terroristic activities of these aforesaid entities and their elite establishments. Blowback in other words!
Therefore to ask much less so seriously expect someone like me to unquestioningly and fully take on board the supposed report findings of purposely selective members of the British legal fraternity – I’m entirely aware that the same kinds of things happen in other countries as well, notably so in the United States, Australia, France, Sweden, Canada and of course Zionist-apartheid Israel for example, but I am British and therefore most concerned with what goes on in my own country – engaged in these dubious enquiries, whether government or private sector sanctioned, isn’t only an insult to our individual and collective intelligence but also quite ludicrous in the extreme even to those who have only the flimsiest acquaintance with the adage of he who pays the piper calls the tune. Because what these enquiry reports inevitably turn out to be are nothing more than patronizing whitewashes. And appropriately so the one commissioned by the English FA into the alleged inappropriate conduct of Mark Clattenburg is typical of this genre.
For if this is the best that supposedly hotshot lawyer David Waters ostensibly well-regarded if his PR blurb has any veracity to it whatsoever by his legal peers can actually come up with, in my forthright opinion he’s either having a cynical laugh and taking the English FA for a financial ride or those that so highly regard him and he himself have as much probity and professionalism about them as David Nicholson the former chief executive and the other towering pillars of rectitude associated with the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, whose rank incompetence, duplicity, arrogance, obsession with money that wasn’t theirs plus their downright lying to extricate themselves from a fix with the public whom they had an explicit duty of trust to but failed miserably and apparently intentionally to discharge, led to the needless and most humiliating deaths under their tenure of some 1,200 hapless patients at Stafford General Hospital.
They unhappily lost their lives in the most horrific of situations, the Trust members however went on in characteristically unblemished circumstances to much better and far more rewarding things, with David Nicholson now the Chief Executive of the entire NHS; leaving the victims’ families to heart-breakingly pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. And lets be bloody frank here, this is similarly the mindset of those that run the English FA, UEFA and FIFA in addition to those in charge of other corporate entities in the UK where cover-ups and passing the buck, never assuming responsibility for their wrongdoings, have with them become growth industries themselves and morality or even being good citizens and genuinely acknowledging that other people apart from their selfish selves exist and do matter are bridges too far for them to cross.
To start with, and in my honest opinion, David Waters’ report is deeply flawed; and whether this is incompetently or intentionally so, only he alone knows that. Frankly, I couldn’t care less one way or another and see my role as simply one of pointing this fact out.
Anyone who regularly frequents a popular and obviously crowded discotheque, an old-fashioned type English pub especially in a traditional working class area or a trendy wine bar anywhere across the country knows how boisterous the atmosphere in these places is and how very hard it also is to hear one’s self think let alone conduct an uninterrupted conversation with those in one’s immediate vicinity and at whom the discussion is explicitly aimed periodically let alone manage to continuously do so for the entire duration of one’s stay in one of these places. And as for trying to eavesdrop on other peoples’ conversations and hoping to do so with any degree of success is a virtual impossible task to accomplish and let’s face it an absolute no-brainer.
So how the devil anyone against the customary cacophonous backdrop that’s wholly characteristic of football contests can with a straight face claim that football match officials or managers come to that stationed on the periphery of the field of play, substitutes along with the participating clubs’ own in-house officials settled in the dugouts, or anyone, regardless of who he or she was or in what capacity they were at the match, positioned anywhere in the seating areas of the stadium itself could possibly with all that din reverberating around them hear let alone do so with absolute clarity what the match referee said or didn’t say to a player out on the middle of the field of play and actually involved in this contemporary gladiatorial pastime called football beats the hell out of me.
The stark truth is that such a scenario isn’t just improbable, it’s actually absolutely impossible. And it accounts for why all football referees are equipped with whistles as a standard procedure to attract the players’ attention when there’s an infringement of the rules of the game that he or she wants to draw the players’ notice to, needs to temporarily halt the ongoing activity on the filed to resolve this specific infringement, seek necessary help for a hurt or seriously injured player, or call time on play when the latter has reached the statutory half or full time mark.
An implement that wouldn’t be required were football referees coherently able to give and have their instructions understood and fully complied with as you or I would in normal circumstances. I don’t need a whistle to conduct my classes or attract the attention of my students even when I teach them, nor do you likewise require the services of one in your ordinary work or home life regardless of how noisy the atmosphere might appear at the time. After all, we’re not caricatures in the Sound of Music and those who see themselves in charge aren’t leader of that cinematic idealistic household, and even the good Kapitan was convincingly made to see sense by the novice nun, otherwise known as Julie Andrews, and forthwith desisted from this rather farcical situation he’d adopted with his family. So while whistles are generally uncalled for in most aspects our daily lives there are nevertheless quite indispensible in football.
Hence the prima facie and glaringly logical ground for football referees having whistles is the rather obvious reason that without them they otherwise couldn’t effectively communicate with the players on the field amidst all the infernal racket that’s characteristic of football matches. Cricket umpires on the other hand don’t need whistles because the whole culture of and the entire atmosphere at cricket matches are completely different from those associated with football. Consequently, being able to converse and do so civilly with the cricketers on the filed of play isn’t and wouldn’t ever be a problem. And I say this against the background that some cricket grounds and their stadia are much larger than may football ones and in their case equally well attended by cricket fans.
So a whistle is an absolute necessity during a football contest precisely because it’s the only way to reasonably ensure an effective communication between the 22 players on the field and the appointed referee. Which poses a quite obvious and pertinent question: if normal oral communication between players and the referee is generally circumscribed for quite obvious reasons, noise level among them, without the necessary intervention of the periodic blasts on his whistle by the officiating referee in order to draw the players’ attention to the fact that that referee has something to say about the state of play, and what’s more with that referee physically on the filed of play and very much amongst the players themselves, truthfully answer me this question.
How on earth then can someone or persons on the periphery of the field of play or anywhere else in or out of that particular stadium for that matter and therefore well away from that oral incident on the field categorically say what did transpire during a vocal exchange either between bickering football players or players and the referee, unless of course the referee or the person or individuals involved in this altercation and irrespective of its actual duration suddenly and miraculously out of thin air plucks a megaphone and starts shouting out that discourse to the assembled crowd and of course the media in attendance.
It’s a flight of fantasy of course to suggest such a thing just as it is to honestly or realistically expect any sensible, ethically-minded or unbiased individual to swallow such garbage; yet the English FA’s commissioned and evidently wholeheartedly endorsed report on the Mark Clattenburg affair expects us to willingly and unquestioningly do just that. What I wonder do these hopelessly out of touch with reality; patronizing and evidently arrogant clowns associated with this report take us for? As if one didn’t already know the answer to that question.
For it’s totally unfeasible given the one-to-one situation that football referees normally intervene in relation to disciplinary matters against players on the field of play for those not directly involved in the incident or within immediate earshot of the vocal exchange, provided of course that one did take place, and that rules out the vast majority of other players who generally utilize the invariably brief disruption that’s granted them to do whatever pops into their heads, from hawking and spitting: their routine trademark and favourite pastime, to moseying over to the touchline to expediently replenish themselves with fluids or take fresh instructions from their managers, to realistically hear let alone truthfully sum up what was said between the, for lack of a better term, warring parties concerned.
The Chelsea and Nigerian midfielder John Obi Mikel who unwittingly became the focus of what in my view turned into an unseemly controversy when it need not have done and to whom referee Mark Clattenburg is alleged to have made an inappropriate remark with racist undertones, is reported to have publicly said he didn’t hear the remarks that were attributed to Mark Clattenburg and directed at him.
Whether this is really the truth in the footballer’s case or a situation self-servingly analogous to that of a vacuous wife fully aware that her well-heeled husband is a serial adulterer but even so chooses to deliberately block this reality from her mind and furthermore also refuses to confront him with it because she realistically knows on which side her daily bread is liberally buttered and fundamentally quite unprincipledly and venally fosters that state of affairs in her own interests and therefore doesn’t want to challenge her old man and in all likelihood lose out in such an exchange between them and permanently lose him and her milch cow as well, is something that only John Obi Mikel contracted to one of England’s prominent and wealthiest football clubs really knows.
But of course there are footballers that are racially abused every day of the season and where nothing is done about it either because they calculatingly choose to suffer in silence much too afraid to speak out for fear of attracting more racial hatred to themselves, or else find themselves pressurized by their agents, managers and even their clubs not to say or do anything for fear of the embarrassment it might cause these money conscious and fixated officials and the clubs which they’re associated with, or because the owners of these clubs and their managers too eaten up themselves with their venality don’t want their prized financial assets to be branded with the taint of racism, which isn’t at all good for business and they know that.
And with such pressure put on them it’s hardly surprising then that black footballers playing in UK and European tournaments are similarly unwilling to compromise their financial status as players by being perceived as or even worse still targeted by their employers as troublemakers when, if truth be told, it’s they who are hapless the victims of what’s a pernicious conspiracy by all concerned in the European sphere of football. So for the financial good of themselves and additionally be able to keep on playing football which they obviously love rather than morally stand up for their principles but in doing so finding themselves gratuitously booted out of football, the these black footballers cravenly do what their agents, managers and particularly their clubs tell them to do; which is basically to take the abuse, shut up and don’t make trouble; something they themselves wouldn’t do or ever allow any of their family members to under any circumstances if they were on the receiving end of this or any other kind of harassment, but it’s okay for Blacks as they aren’t supposed to have the same, if at all any kind of sensitivities that whites automatically associate with themselves.
And the English FA, UEFA and FIFA are well aware of these practices which are widespread across England and the entire continent of Europe and stretches well into Russia also, however much those involved with football at all its levels in these places and particularly so in England, where everyone from the English FA, clubs, managers, agents and the media like to kid themselves and intentionally con the rest of us that things have progressively moved on over the years and racism in football is a thing of the past. Well it isn’t!
However, if John Obi Mikel really heard nothing, and whichever way one is tempted to come down on that particular side of the fence obligating us to nevertheless take John Obi Mikel at his word, his Chelsea teammate and fellow team player on that day Ramires did say that he personally heard Mark Clattenburg make an inappropriate remark to John Obi Mikel, and more than that it was he who did the conscionable thing and reported the matter.
Now e can all fancifully choose to speculate until the cows come home as to whether or not Ramires is telling the truth, was genuinely mistaken relative to what he assumed he heard on that day, or was maliciously stoking up the already raging inferno of racism concomitant with its associated practices in English and the wider network of European football specifically and which the relevant governing bodies of these entities that are frankly doing bugger all else but cynically engaging in hypocritical, public and cosmetic burlesque antics to mask their own racist indifference but ought otherwise to be formulating and taking essential steps to effectively challenge and permanently eradicate these racist pursuits are, notwithstanding what sensible and well informed folk already know, still bizarrely and lyingly trying to hoodwink us that they’re behaving honourably and responsibly when they evidently aren’t.
Much store is emphatically placed by the English FA on their supposition that Ramires was seriously mistaken about what he thought he heard Mark Clattenburg say either to or about John Obi Mikel, while conversely incredible and ludicrous credence is given by them to what alleged match officials and others, none of whom by the way and even the English FA doesn’t posit this proposition, were players actively engaged in the match and therefore on the field of play at the time claim wasn’t said. A clear negative assertion if you ask me or more significantly so if you’ve any comprehension at all of the English language that’s worth it’s salt that is, that ought really instead to have started with and focussed exclusively given the controversial and likely heated circumstances that would result on an unambiguous exposition, if these people really heard what went on and were in no doubt whatsoever about that, of what Mark Clattenburg actually said; not what he didn’t!
It’s not customary even in private family discussions for normal people to punctuate or persistently accentuate their conversations with unwarranted or irrelevant negatives unless they’ve something to conceal and therefore want to deflect attention away from this. The English FA and David Waters’ purportedly unbiased report forcefully tell us what these supposed but unnamed officials and others claim Mark Clattenburg didn’t say, but oddly enough at no time have they or any of these people to the best of my knowledge saw fit to tell us what he actually did say. Why not; when this would have been the most logical and sensible thing to do and effectively put to rest the whole matter there and then as well as preclude any necessity on the part of the English FA for this ostentatious, extravagant and cosmetic showcase of an enquiry that that body then bizarrely embarked on?
Ramires was actually on the football field at the time that the incident took place and clearly within earshot of whatever remarks Mark Clattenburg made; these officials and others supportive of him weren’t! And unless these match officials and others were audibly linked up to Mark Clattenburg by two-way communication throughout the entire match or even by a one-way eavesdropping one, and there’s no plausible or stated evidence that either or both of these things occurred at any stage of the match or were in progress when the incident between Mark Clattenburg and John Obi Mikel took place, then there’s not a snowflake in hell’s chance that these people, unless they’re extraordinarily endowed with extraterrestrial supersonic hearing that the rest of us mere mortals aren’t blessed with, could have heard what they claimed Mark Clattenburg didn’t say.
And frankly in this particular scenario and my own opinion these people can’t realistically, honestly, morally or even charitably be given the benefit of the doubt by having it asserted on their behalf that they misheard or misunderstood what Mark Clattenburg said as they weren’t present at the scene and are fully cognisant of that fact. Furthermore without the assistance of an effective audio link between themselves and Mark Clattenburg they couldn’t possibly have heard anything. Which in my opinion and taking into account their statements to the English FA make them a bunch of lying bastards and the English FA colluders in this odious and unforgivable travesty of justice. For why else would the English FA be so keen in its readiness to cavalierly debunk the evidence of Ramires: an eyewitness to the incident, yet over generously accept the lies of officials and others who weren’t anywhere near present at the scene of contention? Work out the maths!
Now of course there could be an alternative though highly improbable scenario to this risible, were it not so patently pathetic, farce, which is that these off the field officials and others were electronically audio-linked to Mark Clattenburg and so could quite crystal clear both hear and perfectly understand his every utterance. In which case why did the English FA feel it so necessary to hold what I assume at the exorbitant going rate of QC’s financial rates to hire the services of David Waters in what was a pretty expensive, and I would imagine in the view of any sensible or objective person was an utterly meaningless enquiry?
For wouldn’t it have been a lot simpler, more prudent and a darn sight more economical, even for an impulsive spendthrift outfit like the English FA that could lavishly fork out the proverbial money for old rope largesse to idiotically secure the dubious services of the Italian carpetbagger, Fabio Capello: his country’s football equivalent of Italy’s political reprobate Silvia Berlusconi, in a manner which it absolutely would never have done, and of course most emphatically didn’t, a propos the running of the English national team, for a native, genius football manager like the late Brian Clough, perceived by the toffs who run this pretentious misnomer of an outfit called the English Football Association as far too plebeian for their liking, to go down the more appropriate road of transparency vis-à-vis this racial quandary by publicly telling us what Mark Clattenburg did say, have these alleged witnesses swear on oath that their collective versions of the “truth” were irrefutable, and have the English FA save itself money in the process?
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