A POLITICAL FOOTBALL

Coining it in: Wayne Rooney is paid £500,000 per day and is laughing all the way to the bank. James Campbell reveals an uncanny similarity between professional footballers and their bosses, and politicians. The solution: don't support professional football and in the political arena, don't vote.

Whether it’s voting or supporting, the solution is in our hands

Guest blogger JAMES CAMPBELL offers a solution to football supporters who are fed up being ripped off. He explains how direct action against the ills of football can also be applied to politics.

I WAS talking to a Newcastle United fan the other day and he was bemoaning the fact that money had ruined football.  In general terms he thought it was obscene that the likes of Wayne Rooney was getting paid £300,000 a week and that Mike Ashley was using Newcastle United to make money for himself and had no interest in the footballing success of the club beyond that.

I asked what he was doing about it. He didn’t have a clue what I was on about.  So I asked if he held a season ticket at Newcastle or a Sky Sports subscription to watch football.  Yes to both.

So I said OK, cancel both, don’t go to another game, buy another shirt or any other merchandise until things change.  Encourage others to do the same.  The response: “Ye cannot dee that, ye’ve gotta support ya team man.”

I asked if he’d protested in any way. He said they often chanted anti Ashley slogans at games and once turned their back on the field before a game….so he pays the man he hates his hard cash to shout abuse at him.

So I explained that he was as responsible for the ruin of the game as Rooney, Ashley and all of the others fleecing it.  He looked utterly scoobied.

So in really simple terms I went on.  What do you think would happen if everyone just refused to renew their tickets and cancelled their Sky Sports?

Blank look…..

GUTLESS ED 'MR BEAN' MILIBAND MAY NOT EMBRACE LIVING WAGE

Sir George Bain, credited with devising the UK minimum wage has told the Financial Times that his system of protection for the low paid is outdated

By HARRY BLACKWOOD

WITH impeccable comedy timing, the Manchester United footballer, Wayne Rooney, signed a new contract today that will see him earn £300,000 a week. Yes you read that correctly £300,000 A WEEK for kicking a football.

Now I realise that's not funny. No, what's funny is that on the same day as an oafish footballer was putting pen to paper on a contract that will see him earn over a million quid every month, Sir George Bain - the man credited with coming up with the UK minimum wage - was telling the Financial Times that his system of protection for the poor had run its course.

You bet it's run it's course. It had run its course the day it was introduced because minimum wage was never going to lift people out of poverty. It was only ever going to keep them IN poverty. After 15 years that's EXACTLY what it's achieved.

The same poor bastards that were working all week on minimum wage In 1999 to earn enough just to scrape by are doing precisely that in 2014. Earning £6.31 an hour (the current legal minimum for adults) certainly isn't living. Hell's teeth, it's barely even surviving. That's what millions in the world's sixth richest country are doing - working their backsides off just to exist.

What Sir George failed to properly address in his FT article is how his minimum wage concept has actually failed miserably. What it's done is normalise low wages instead of acting as a benchmark to create a ripple effect and drive wages upwards.

There has been no ripple. There are 1.2 million UK workers who are paid £6.31 (or within 5p of that) and a further 1.4 million who are on within a measly 50p more. Employers think they are gushing philanthropists if they pay a few coppers above what they are legally obliged to.

In total there are five million workers in the UK who are 'low paid' by using the "official yardstick" of two thirds of the typical hourly wage. AND THERE IN A NEAT LITTLE PACKAGE IS THE PROBLEM.