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| Football, a world wide frachise. Sign outside a video club in Bardai, about 60p a match, same as a can of Coca Cola |
Last Saturday at about 5 pm with the sun setting behind the
mountains there was a light breeze which made the 18C air temperature feel a
bit cool. Last chance for a wash and a shave towards the end of a busy day,
visiting patients, pulling teeth and helping Andrea do the washing by
hand. The solar cooker had some nice
warm water so whilst Andrea cooked tea I showered and at the same time listened
to the football on BBC short wave. (we are one hour ahead of GMT so it was the
second half)
‘and there’s a goal in the Championship, 10 man Leeds have
levelled Leeds United 2 - Millwall 2’’
A few minutes later
‘’ and another goal at
Elland Road, what a fight back by Leeds in front of their home crowd, it’s Leeds
3 Millwall 2’’
And then Andrea called me for tea, reception
is not great so I heard no more, you have to catch the score as the goals go in
as they only read the final scores for the Premiership, Bundersleague, Serie A
and La Liga. It is after all the World service. Our 2G phone signal can
download simple emails and Whats app text messages but we can’t surf the net
for news, hence the need for the wireless.
Later I spoke to my Mum and Dad on the phone, they said they
would send me the result if I could send them my email address (they’ve just
got reconnected after technical difficulties).
The connection wasn’t good and I
don’t think my message got through. So next day passing Whats app messages
with our daughters, Ruth and Rebecca, they let me know the final score
Leeds united 3 – Millwall 4
Sadly eleven players against ten usually wins. (I presume
that Leeds didn’t lose another player!) The
difference between the sides a man, which makes, as far as I can see, a player
worth 3 points.
Footballers are of course worth a lot more than that, they
are worth real money. I remember in 1980 seeing Justin Fashenu of Norwich
scoring the goal of the season, a volley from about the half way line that beat
the Liverpool goal keeper, next year he was sold to Nottingham Forest as the
first one million pound player. A few years later, in 2000, I saw Rio Ferdinand presented as a new signing
at Elland Road for a record £18 million fee. This was in the days before Leeds
financial meltdown. The market decides how much players are worth, and our ascendant
neo liberal economic model encourages free markets. ‘’ In God we trust’’ but are we
trusting Yahweh or the golden calf?
Last weekend Arsenal and Manchester United finally made a realistic evaluation of the
true value of a player. How much is a player worth? Answer: one player.
You have to admire the logic. After all these years of ever inflating prices, a
transfer that cost no money, they simply swapped players. (I am choosing to use
the BBC headline and ignore the fact that there was still the agents fees to
calculate on the deal, which apparently will not be an insignificant sum, not
sure how they can do the sum I always thought 5% of zero was zero) So one man
is worth one man, a brief outbreak of sanity in a mad market place.
Of course, instead of hard currency as is usual or bartering
as above, they could have done the deal using Bitcoin instead. But then the player might loose 50% of his
value in a month even without breaking his leg. Perhaps something old fashioned and tangible
like gold would be more sensible way of
measuring worth. A typical premiership footballer is worth ten times his weight in gold, 25 million pounds. A golden
calf has to make more sense than the idea of a golden calf in computer code.
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| A small local gold nugget worth about £200 |
How much is one gold digger worth? Not much, life is harsh,
brutal and cheap. Of 4 gold diggers in hospital at the moment, (they are the
only hospitalised patients at the moment), one broke both legs in a rock fall
that killed his friend, one was shot in in the leg when an argument was settled
with an AK-47, and one was deliberately burnt on the legs to get information on
a theft: only the last one has a normal everyday medical problem.
The world markets are thirsty for gold, as an investment in uncertain times, for jewellery and no doubt some for
manufacturing useful electronic devices.
It has to come from somewhere but at what cost?
It seems to me that for every person that benefits and is happy
someone else has to pay and suffer. On the whole the rich get richer and
the poor…………………? Is that how markets are
supposed to work? In the next post I will have some interesting, somewhat
surprising examples from Chad, which can teach us all some positive ways of
doing business. You may think them odd and impractical, but in reality football
transfer fees and Bitcoin probably make less sense and we all seem to get along
with them as ideas.
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| Match at Bardai, can you spot the next George Weah? |
