SIR GUESTLING THORN

Surely nothing highlights the gap in wealth more than the amount of money the Premier League has spent in January? At a time of the one of the worst cost of living crisis they spent £600 million! It is simply obscene! The disparity between those who pay to watch and the Premier League clubs themselves is a stark reminder of how wealth is distributed in this country. Most Premier clubs are owned by billionaires or  foreign Sheiks and princes. I have no objection of the players earning obscene amounts, that is the going rate. It is far removed from ordinary working people but they are not the ones who stack the pay structure although they are savvy enough to have agents who jack up their wage demands. You will never see a current Premier footballer who retires poor! Many professional sports Golf, Tennis, Formula 1, have wealth beyond anything that is imaginable to the average working person. Not everyone involved in those sports are rich or highly rewarded but there is a lot of money washing around. 

I got a reply to my enquiry to my MP Philip Hollobone who voted to allow water companies to keep pumping sewage in our rivers for the next 15 years. His reply was long and detailed, quoting lots of figures and percentages. I had to read it more than once to understand it and cut out the bullshit! Whilst he made some valid points the upshot is that private capitalism has triumphed once again over the health of our country. Yes there is a problem with too much sewage and how to treat and dispose of it but there are many proven solutions that can be used other than dumping it in our environment. Naturally these are costly and there in a nutshell is the problem, we could do it but it would cut into our profits and money for our shareholders! I have never had a reply, from an MP, that was not full of meaningless numbers and so called facts or that did not tow the party line. Never has anything brought into stark relief the gap between the public perception and the doctrine that politicians believe! It seems impossible that any one of them would actually express their own opinion even if they do not actually support the policy in question and that says everything you need to know about our MP’s.

Stay well