Nobbut Laiking, by Ross Brewster
Maybe it’s the major banks that are the new arbiters of morality, deciding who is a fit and proper person to hold an account with them.
But it certainly should not be left to footballers, golfers, cricketers and athletes to take the high moral ground.
The world of professional golf has already been split asunder by the lure of millions of dollars to play in Saudi Arabia’s LIV tournaments, and now they are after top European footballers, admittedly most of them in the dying embers of careers, to play in their Pro League.
Jordan Henderson, a serial trophy winner with Liverpool, has upset members of the club’s LGBTQ+ fan group by taking the Saudis’ money and turning a blind eye to their criminalisation of homosexuality.
But while governments and big business continue trading with countries like Saudi Arabia, where human rights come pretty low on the agenda, it’s unfair to criticise a footballer for doing the same and, with a reported £700,000 a week in wages, setting up his family for life.
The criticism of England international Henderson’s move can be understood to the extent that in the past he has supported the Liverpool LGBTQ+ fan group through social media and the Rainbow Laces campaign.
Joining his former team-mate Steven Gerrard, who is the Al-Ettifaq club’s manager, leaves him open to suggestions of hypocrisy. It’s evident that the Saudis have big plans to challenge the existing order of football by throwing money at it. No doubt foreign players will live in the lap of luxury while they are seen as implicitly backing the host regime.
But Henderson is not a politician. Okay, he’s selling his footballing soul for the money. But he’s doing nothing illegal. It’s the politicians and big business who kowtow to undesirable regimes. Often we accept relationships with foreign despots purely to prevent an even more horrendous regime stepping into the void.
At the end of it all he’s just a player approaching the twilight of his career making a bit more than a few bob.
And trading footballing skills is a lot less unpleasant than trading arms.
Punishment for shoplifting takes more than just the biscuit
I’ve a friend who at one time worked with teenage kids who have education and behavioural problems.
He once brought a group of them on an outdoor trip to the Lake District, with strict orders to keep out of the shops unless closely supervised.
The first night he discovered an Aladdin’s cave of items purloined from outdoor shops by his young charges. The next day was spent not canoeing and climbing, but returning as many of the items as could be identified to the relevant businesses.
It wasn’t that the kids particularly wanted the stuff. It was the fact they thought shoplifting was an easy hit.
I wonder, at this time of year when tens of thousands of visitors are wandering the streets, in and out of the shops, how much businesses write off to theft.
Whitehall promises to get tough with repeat offenders. But how tough? The trigger for custodial sentences is between 10 and 20 instances. Doesn’t sound very tough to me, but then again there are liberal voices that say prison should never be used as a sanction for something as trivial as shoplifting.
That’s part of the problem of course. It’s so rife it’s become regarded as a minor crime. In some areas the police will only act if the shop staff have apprehended and filmed the offenders themselves. I don’t think it should be a shop assistant’s job to risk their own safety chasing thieves.
Some shoplifters target areas like the Lakes. In and out on the M6, working in groups. It’s reckoned that nationwide well over £6bn worth of goods are stolen annually. Often it’s smaller businesses that suffer relatively the most.
I covered courts for many years and there’s a big difference between organised criminals and little old ladies with a tin of salmon in their handbag. It was sad to see people reduced to what were cries for help.
A world apart from the professional thieves who are laughing at honest citizens who pay for their goods. Well let’s face it, they could have 19 offences virtually ignored before prison beckons, and then for no more than a few months. In their criminal world they know it’s worth the risk.
BBC presenter’s slip of the tongue didn’t justify a committee
Did the BBC really need an “executive complaints unit” to decide Breakfast TV presenter Sally Nugent had at the very least chosen her words poorly when describing the wartime Dambusters raid as “infamous”.
Although there was an on-air correction later, it’s only later they have apologised for something that happened in May.
I accept it was inadvertent rather than any deliberate opinion about the raid in May, 1943, by 617 Squadron RAF Bomber Command on three dams in the Ruhr valley.
Many of the crews did not return. There were also significant civilian deaths. Not everyone might agree, but heroic would have been nearer the mark than infamous.
The slip of the tongue, while referring to a Second World War flypast, should have drawn an apology without needing a committee.
