Morals clause......

A big part of the value/cost of players is the monetisation of the elevation of them as icons. Anyone who thinks that Messi went to paris saint german for the wages that he did, because he was at the time playing the best football in the world, is an idiot.

We can all agree that Messi is the best, we can ballon d'or him, we can drool over every touch...the fact that he wasn't anything like the player that people seemed to think that he was, for years, is not the point. Never mind the facts, feel the story....but the legend had been built, the iconography was there for people to gather around. Watch Messi, feel Messi, join the tribe who loves Messi. The bigger the tribe, the bigger the money. Put some other chaps around him to do the running, and pay them handsomely to be his bag man.

So the removal of the prospect of monetising the iconography has completely slaughtered Greenwoods ultimate earning potential...there will be no corporate sponsors, no penetrating new markets based on the name and reputation. It will just be a footballing income from now.

Which will be pretty good....and there will be interest. Let's not forget, we are dealing with an innocent man who might have just made a prank film and social media post with his partner, for the lols, for all we know. Big mistake, costly mistake.

He's now in the value bin, with the gingers.

P.S. this was why he won't go to Saudi. They want the look... as much as the footballer. Bring me clicks, not critical scrutiny.

I see that, as is consistent with the plan, we are being encouraged to focus on banishing an individual from sight, rather than fixing the problems.

Just to be clear. If you are happily engaging in pursuing a witchhunt against an individual, who may or not be guilty of something, rather than seeking to provide viable redress and support to all victims. If this is not a trigger that makes you determined to fight for a timely working justice system, accessible to all. If it does not cause you to have concerns over being invited to give your opinions over something that you can't reasonably judge, and to feel satisfied having meted out consequences by instrument of social media consensus.

Then you and your society are not civilised, and you are not safe, and nor are you free.

By the media whose fixation is on the outcome in regard to one particular case, on a superficial level. They invite the debate at that level, and people acquiesce. There is no, as I think there should be, debate on the role the dismemberment of the justice system, and the lack of status and support for the vulnerable (which includes women in our society), that substantially contributes to that. We are a society that isn't a society, that is driven by gesture, division, and complacency. We stumble from individual instances of dysfunction lending our feels to the world about it, and totally fail to even mention the cause and what we actually want in regard to that.

Everyone who is engaging in an opinion on the latest disaster, without choosing a democratic course to address the actual source of the problem is doing this.

I am pointing it out to you, and to other people, so that you can think about it. I am exercising my role in the democratic process to advocate for social solutions to societies problems, rather than the crass notion that individual responsibility is any level of solution for people who do not have the luxury of financial or social self determination. And I'm not just looking at individual cases of the consequences of that and saying, "oh, that's terrible that is, I know what should be done with them, based on my deep knowledge of the case from twitter".

I have previously done work with women shelters, and rape crisis centres (specific to this particular issue - you may recall me mentioning that I knew the former leader of the opposition from this work). I currently assist in mentoring some young people from disadvantaged backgrounds - such that they (hopefully) feel that they have a stake in society, and an avenue to gain help and support. I attempt to get people to consider the sort of society that they want to be a part of.

You support, and vote, and campaign, or whatever the level of your involvement, for representation and government that actually stands for social justice and law and order, rather than just says that they do. I am here, discussing it with you, and attempting to make the argument that it is a widely important thing that needs to inform peoples values and social behaviour. Rather than just be satisfied with pontificating an opinion.

It's happened because significant financial interests have invested in creating division, inequality, and oppression, in order to propagate the behaviours that maintain their financial interest. We, the people, have been complacent over the advances that we have made as a society, and in the face of a bit of marketing turned supine and bent over and taken it. I would like us the people, to actually discuss the sort of society that we want to be a part of, and use our superior numbers to assert that through our representation and what we demand of OUR governments.

Well of course I am, I'm good at seeing things, but not a brilliant worker drone. That's why like minded members of society need to bring together their different aptitudes and collectivise to bring a power that exceeds that of the individual. Which is why the forces against a strong and fair society work in the opposite direction. I lack sufficient weight of numbers to even assert my values on my village, never mind society wide. I am insufficiently armed to overcome the state armed forces. But I can encourage you to consider collectively exercising the power that we have together, to attempt to assert the sort of values that people pretend that they really want. In tweets.

What do you suggest? Just keep voting for the tories, because the job they have left us to do is too big? Just let them defund our instruments of redress and fairness, and keep the tweet count high, so that we can feel better about ourselves because we can't mentally confront our abject capitulation?

I am not a satisfactory candidate for public office. I lack sufficient firepower to overcome the highly weaponised state controlled forces deployed against us. We are going to have to trojan horse them through the ballot box. You think it's nothing to try to encourage people to think about the sort of values that they actually want to have, and how they go about doing that....and maybe one or two of them might tick a different box as a result. I don't, because I believe in both the advantages of a strong, fair and prosperous society, and achieving that democratically through consent.

Ask yourself this:

If this individual is unequivocally guilty of the behaviours that you believe, why are we as a society unable to bring them to justice, or protect the victim?

Why are you so overcome by the experience and feeling that such behaviour engenders in you, that you can't see beyond a desire for specific outcomes against this one individual? (I thought it interesting when noodle suggested better x guilty people go free, than one innocent person suffer inappropriate justice - apart from in this case, obvs)

I do not believe that these things are an accident. To me there are very clear steps being taken to ensure that's what you think, and that's how you behave, and keep you trying to put out those little fires, and not look at the cunts pouring petrol, and chucking matches.

If your water tank springs a leak, you don't just get to work wiping your floor with a mop. You plug the hole, and turn off the water supply, before you are under water. Then you tidy up.

No, I just quoted the opening, to indicate that I was addressing the post.

Many of us, maybe most of us, have similar stories to tell of women that we have been close to ( or we haven't been that close to women, and had the real truth from them). My point was, are we lashing out at a conveniently provided piñata for our feelings, or are we actually going to try and do something to address the real issue? Women, and other sections of society, are not safe, they do not have equal opportunity, they do not have access to support and redress or justice.

Mason Greenwood not playing for a football club in direct sight does not change the dial on that, in either direction, one iota.

I have read your post very carefully. It seems to me that you have projected your values, experience, and feelings, onto a situation that you cannot have definitive knowledge of the actuality of, as a release for your anger and frustration. If you are open to considering it there are possible alternative explanations in this thread. I am absolutely sure that I have no idea of what actually happened. I am very sure that many of the people who are absolutely certain, are completely wrong (as we all are, about most things, most of the time, as I am carefully trying to repeatedly explain).

What would be worse is if it really was so definitively clear cut, and we as a society had completely failed to do anything substantively about that. Think about all the other victims without press interest. Without any form of societal support. With no money. With nobody to turn to. With no future partner to protect and nurture them. But you can feel the warm and fuzzies because you made Mason Greenwood have to go and play for Milan? Job done, eh?

What I am specifically trying to explain to you is that is their direct intention, by way of a cynical mechanism of control.

Do what you can do, control what you can control. If it causes one person to have pause to think, and waver from reverting their cross back to the box of evil, in the face of the lies, propaganda, and marketed self interest that is being lined up on the tracks, it's worth making. IMV.

You might find that I postulsted exactly this. Zero surprise involved.

Nor me. My point is that there's much bigger fish that we should be targeting with batter and a hot crispy finish. Don't take the invitation to be distracted, and think that you've done any sort of useful service to society by joining the sort of mob that will march on paediatricians.

To be really free. To truly embrace freedom (within the constraints of societies values), is really hard. To actually receive it, you have to extend it to others. Quite often in circumstances where your every instinct is to not want to.