Jam Tomorrow, part 94

A crowd of drunken, knobhead Evertonians leaving The Tesco Arena, Kirkby, on one of the fine Merseyrail trains which run to a timetable of four per hour, four carriages per unit.

Less than reliable sources have mooted the imminent possibility of The Everton Football Club Company Limited being bought by a consortium of Indian businessmen, who had initially flown into Merseyside with the intention of buying up huge tracts of land (presumably with some intention of housing some of the overspill from Mumbai's 19,000,000-plus population), but were so taken with the professionalism, honesty and charm of the directors of The Everton Football Club Company Limited (a club which they had no previous knowledge of) that they immediately tabled a deal to purchase a controlling interest of the shareholding, with the apparent blessing of the chairman, Mr. William Kenwright CBE.

One of Mr. William Kenwright CBE's more endearing traits is his unerring ability to pull rabbits out of the hat, in the form of investors, whenever there is some disquiet among supporter's bodies (or even amongst his co-directors). Bizarrely, these "investors" have never manifested themselves at any other time during his "tireless 24/7 search" for investment; they only seem to appear when the waters around The Good Ship Everton become frighteningly choppy.

The timing of this story, coming as it does just days after the well-attended second meeting of The Blue Union coalition of supporters groups, is eerily reminiscent of many other occasions over the past ten years when salvation from the club's perilous financial meanderings have miraculously manifested themselves in the magical world of Mr. Kenwright, CBE.

So, in a "When Skies Are Grey" kind of way, I present "The Top Five Saviours of The Everton Football Club Company Limited", in no particular order.

1. Mr. Anton Zingarevich (pictured, left, with unknown Russian bumchum)

2004; Mr. Paul Gregg, co-purchaser of the shares of Mr. Peter Johnson in The Everton Football Club Limited  via the "True Blue Holdings" "investment vehicle", challenges his partner, Mr. William Kenwright CBE to find investment, fearing that his partner is rather amateurish in his approach. Mr. William Kenwright proves his partner wrong by unearthing the young Russian "zillionaire", Mr. Anton Zingarevich, as a willing investor in The Everton Football Club Company Limited. 

"Anton is terrific", said Mr. William Kenwright CBE, "He has an encyclopedic knowledge of football and a real passion for the game". That may well have been the case; sadly, what young Mr. Zingarevich lacked was any actual money to make the "£20,000,000 shares deal" which Mr. Kenwright CBE announced in August, 2004. It is true that Anton's father, Mr. Boris Zingarevich, was absolutely stinking rich; however, it seemed that a little gentle probing on the part of Mr. Gregg found that young Anton was, in fact, using The Everton Football Club Company Limited "takeover" as some sort of "practical" exercise his Business Studies course.

2. The Fortress Sports Fund (pictured: Mr. Christopher "Blue For Life" Samuelson, cooking something other than the tax returns of the wealthy, recently).

The departure of Mr. Anton Zingarevich left The Everton Football Club Company Limited's plans for a move to a sensational new stadium on the iconic Liverpool waterfront, at King's Dock, in something if a mess. Mr. William Kenwright CBE had faithfully promised that the £30m required by the club to secure the site was "ringfenced". His partner in True Blue Holdings, Mr. Paul Gregg, knew otherwise, and feared that Mr. Kenwright, having promised the loyal supporters of The Everton Football Club Company Limited untold riches, was about to deliver nothing but ashes. In order to salvage the scheme from the jaw of imminent collapse, Mr. Gregg proposed a "reverse mortgage" scheme, in which the club would effectively be tenants of the new stadium but would have the opportunity to buy back their 50% equity stake at a later date. 

However, this would have spelled the end of Mr. William Kenwright CBE on the board of The Everton Football Club Company Limited; and, obviously, the ghost of his Uncle Cyril, upon whose handlebars Mr. Kenwright used to sit on his way from Gateacre to the boys' pen, had to be appeased. So, Mr. Kenwright conjured up a whole cavalcade of fantasy investors with fantastic names, such as "Robert Steelhammer", "Guy de la Tour du Pin", and "Emily Willi", and introduced them as "The Fortress Sports Fund" to an incredulous fanbase. This band of marvellously generously-spirited individuals were going to invest, in three tranches, a total of £29.9m into the club (NB; £100K less than the "ringfenced" £30m), and the projected move to Kings Dock was seemingly in the bag, or as Mr. Kenwright put it; "an absolute possibility".

In order to prove that this was not just another serving of "pie in the sky", Mr. Kenwright introduced the public face of The Fortress Sports Fund, a Mr. Christopher Samuelson, at the club's Annual General Meeting. At first, things went well, as the "life-long blue" answered the gentle probing on financial matters of various interlocutors, until somebody threw the curveball; "Who scored the winning goal in the '66 FA Cup Final"?

Nervous laughter... a pregnant pause... finally broken by the "life-long Blue's" answer: "Erm... I was a student in Munich in '66". Cue uproar.

By this time Mr. Gregg had had enough of the amateurism, and sold his shares in True Blue Holdings; which, in what was no doubt a total coincidence, was just what Mr. William Kenwright CBE wanted, a fact later confirmed by the Head of Public Relations of The Everton Football Club Company Limited, Mr. Ian Ross. The "three tranches of investment" promised by Mr. William Kenwright CBE were never delivered; and he stated, apropos the "investment", that "only an idiot would read that as what I said", despite it being, erm, exactly what he said.

The King's Dock is now the home of the "Echo Arena".

Mr. Christopher Samuelson is still unaware as to who Mr. Derek Temple is.

  

3. Mr. Robert Earl (delivered Mr. Sylvester Stallone onto Goodison's hallowed turf, once)

The purchaser of Mr. Paul Gregg's shares was, apparently, a Mr. Robert Earl, the founder of the "Planet Hollywood" chain of restaurants. I use the word "apparently" as there appears to be a little mystique surrounding his ability to raise the capital to purchase the shareholding; there are all kinds of conspiracy theories about so-called "phantom investors" providing Mr. Earl with the capital; however, I am sure that this is mere tittle-tattle, as that should violate the rules surrounding the ownership of English Premier League football clubs.

Other than persuading a rather bewildered-looking Mr. Sylvester Stallone to parade onto the pitch at Goodison Park before enduring a piss-poor 1-1 draw versus The Reading Football Club, Mr. Earl does not appear to have provided a great deal in the way of investment in The Everton Football Club Company Limited. However, after Mr. William Kenwright CBE crying that he could not raise any credit for The Everton Football Club Company Limited in 2011, a company called Vibrac, based in the British Virgin Islands, then gave the club a £14m loan at an eye-watering 10% interest rate. Oddly enough the address for the offices of Vibrac is the same as that of BCR Sports, Mr. Robert Earl's investment vehicle, which owns a 23%  stake in the shares of The Everton Football Club Company Limited. Again, a remarkable coincidence.

However, Mr. Earl did have something of a hand in the next timely salvation of The Everton Football Club Company Limited...

 4. Destination Kirkby: Batman Lights, and everything. What's not to like?
 

 December, 2006; The Everton Football Club Company Limited announces that the club had signed "an exclusive deal" to move to a new, 50,000-seater super-stadium, in Kirkby,a town of 40,000 inhabitants, outside the boundary of the City of Liverpool (or, as Mr. William Kenwright CBE put it, "the spiritual home of Z-Cars").

I cannot possibly begin to do credit to the shameful tactics which The Everton Football Club Company Limited, in league with Tesco plc, Knowsley Borough Council, a Member of Parliament or two, and The Liverpool Daily Post and Echo, resorted to in order to railroad this idiotic and completely unviable proposition past the objections of supporters, retailers and local residents alike.

Thank goodness that these gentlemen could, and did, seek to intervene; otherwise there should now be no Everton Football Club Company Limited. Take a leisurely stroll around this site, and marvel at the state of governance of a Premier League football club in the 21st century.

Keeping Everton In Our City

Gentlemen; you have my eternal gratitude.

5. Sir Philip Green

Erm... move along please, nothing here to see... move along... I SAID MOVE ALONG...

Do others marvel at the multiple salvation of The Everton Football Club Company Limited?

Groovin' and movin', in a 1970-stylee

 

 "Staaan' clear of the closin' baaars, pulleze... staaan' clear"

There is nothing that I enjoy more, on occasion, than a funky juxtaposition of leading-edge, space-age,  white-hot British technology and strident Latino brass. The above clip is a marvellous example of such a happy coalition. 

Luxuriate in awe and wonderment, as heroic, unsung session musicians on 39/6 an hour underpin the sterling work of London Underground technicians in pumping gleaming trains around the arterial network of our fine capital! Gaze in astonishment as magnetic tape whirls around at warp speed, switches trip and pretty lights flash in seemingly random patterns, all while the bass player extemporises with gay abandon around the massed trumpets in the middle eight! Suspend your disbelief as the train driver pushes just two buttons to depart from King's Cross St. Pancras on the Victoria Line, while the Farfisa organ glides over the bossanova beat, and arrives at Oxford Circus station... without having passed through Euston or Warren Street stations en route!

Truly, truly wonderful. I wish it was still 1970.

(Actually, it would be easy for those of a cynical bent to scoff at the touchingly passé content of the above clip; however, if one were to attempt to create a 2011 equivalent, the depictions of "technology" controlling the trains would merely be "jump cuts" between executives of Capita, or some other "consultancy", and Department of Transport mandarins slapping each other on the back; project "managers" delivering nothing but endless "management-speak" rubbish in endless meetings; Indian programmers in Chennai with no concept of the project requirements churning out masses of code which is completely unfit for purpose; and a server room full of racks of "blades" gathering dust as taxpayer's money is pissed down the sink at an alarming rate for a command and control system that simply does not work, and never will, whilst frustrated passengers crowd the platforms for trains that will never arrive. Oh, and the music would consist of some tinny, derivative rubbish concocted in half an hour on a Casio keyboard by an impoverished music student who had gained nothing for his efforts but "the exposure").

Do others recall when major infrastructure projects in the United Kingdom just... happened? And worked? And when a brass section consisted of several brass instruments, rather than a keyboard plugged into an iMac?

"Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense"; that's me fucked, then

Someone in this nice, recently expensively refurbished building took the time out to patronise me. I feel honoured, of course.

It would appear that the Correspondence Officer of The Direct Communications Unit at 10, Downing Street, SW1A 2AA did, indeed, forward my letter to Mr. David Call-Me-Dave "to the relevant Government department so that they may reply to you, in detail, on the matters you raise", because on Friday last I received a letter from the Ministry of Justice's Sentencing Policy and Penalties Unit, replying to me, in detail, on the matter I raised with Mr. David Call-Me-Dave, in which they also had the good manners to take a little time to patronise me as well.

A Mr. Nick Pointz (an invention of a name surely? I thought that what what Mrs. Chris Huhne did on behalf of her estranged husband?) wrote to me on the matter: I have reproduced his text in italics below, with my interpretation of the text, my "reading between the lines" if you will, in the standard font (and within parentheses):

Dear Mr. Tampon

Thank you for your letter of 17 August to the Prime Minister, in which you raise a number of issues about sentencing. (Actually, it was just one; to whit, what did he think a appropriate tariff should be for multiple breaches of the Data Protection Act, corruption of serving police officers, perverting the course of justice and obstructing police officers in the course of their duties). 

I hope you will understand that the Prime Minister and his Cabinet receive a high volume of correspondence (usually in the form of invitations to non-executive directors of lobbying firms, investment banks and arms companies, I should imagine), and unfortunately it is not possible for them to reply personally to every letter they receive (because they cannot be arsed, unless you are the CEO of Barclays Capital).  

Your letter has been transferred to the Sentencing Policy and Penalties Unit in the Ministry of Justice (possibly the least taxed Civil Service department serving HM Government). I apologise that it has taken so long for you to receive a reply (irony, or perhaps sarcasm, at work here, one feels).

Government Ministers and their officials cannot comment on individual sentences (unless, of course, there is a reporter nearby willing to capture the "soundbite"). This is not through lack of concern on interest, but because sentencing decisions are made by the courts alone, which are independent from Government (a fact which successive Home Secretaries have seen fit to ignore when political expediency is at stake, but we shall let that one pass).

As a result, I cannot comment on what the appropriate tariff would be for the offences you mention (indeed, as that was not what I wanted; I asked the organ grinder, not the monkey). However, I can set out the maximum penalties available in law for these offences:

• Data protection offences. There are a number of offences under the Data Protection Act, each with their own maximum penalties. For example the offence of unlawfully obtaining personal data has a maximum penalty of an unlimited fine.
• Corruption of police officers. There is a series of offences that might cover this, including bribery (with a maximum penalty of 10 years' imprisonment) and fraud (also with a maximum penalty of 10 years' imprisonment).
• Perverting the course of justice. This carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
• Obstructing a police investigation. Obstruction of a police constable in the execution of their duty carries a maximum penalty of 1 month's imprisonment.

Within these maximum penalties, courts will consider the culpability of the offender (if he is found guilty of the offence, sure he is 100% "culpable"?) and the harm the offence caused. Courts will have regard to these two elements, together with other aggravating or mitigating factors, when determining the appropriate sentence.

Yours sincerely (etc.),

So, according to my new best friend Mr. Pointz (perhaps, given his outlining of sentencing policy as above, I should call him "Bullet"?), the Prime Minister's former best friend Mr. Andrew Coulson shall be looking down the barrel at life imprisonment when his role in the interference in the investigation into the murder of Miss Milly Dowler is tested in court. I wonder if Mr. David Call-Me-Dave shall comment that "it is good that the courts feel able to give out these sentences" if Mr. Coulson does indeed feel the full force of the sword of the judiciary?

Do others feel. however,  that the mooted reply "fuck off, Tampon" may have been nearer to the eventual outcome?

In einem anderen Leben, ich schoss der Hoff

Aww, bless.

Allow me to introduce a friend of mine, named Jens (pictured above at about 13 years of age, I imagine). Jens lives in the south-eastern corner of Germany, in the quiet, sleepy Mittelsachen town in which he was born, and just gets on with life in a modest, unassuming manner. However, had a couple of high-ranking decisions gone in a different direction, young Jens could now be immortal, the most popular man in Europe, yet simultaneously the most unpopular man in Germany.

If this seems somehow mutually exclusive, I shall explain.

Jens lived and worked, until quite recently, in London. We were regular football players, and it was from there that our friendship developed. One evening, during a post-match drinking session, the subject of the fall of Communism was discussed. As you may have discerned from the detail in the corner of the above photograph, young Jens was born in the Eastern side of the divided Germany, the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. I was interested in knowing how the rapidly unfolding turn of events in late 1989 was perceived in the East, given the propaganda campaign waged between the so-called "free" West and the Soviet Bloc since the end of the Second World War.

It transpired that at the time, Jens was in the midst of his compulsory military service in the East German army, stationed near Leipzig (I think). As the trickle of movement from East to West through the hastily (and inadvertently) opened crossings in the Berlin Wall became a torrent, the appratchiks of the East German government panicked, and ordered the infantry (Jens included) to shoulder arms, mount the flatbed trucks, and be ready to travel to Berlin in order to put down the uprising, by force if necessary. 

This fascinated me; this could have been a game-changing event, with far-reaching repercussions across the world. I asked him why the mobilization was not followed through with; Jens stated, blandly, that "the Generals simply told the Government that it was all over, that they were not prepared to go through with it". Thus, the Berlin Wall did tumble, but not before Mr. David "The Hoff" Hasselhoff had his little stab at immortality.

Which gave me cause to ponder... "what if"? What if the mobilization had, in fact, taken place, just at the moment that Mr. Hoff was reaching a crescendo atop Die Wende? Instead of  almost  being hit by a firecracker by an over-excited reveller, Mr. Hoff could well have been picked off, with clinical precision, by my good friend Jens and his trusty 7.62mm AK-47 assault rifle. 

This should surely have made Jens about as popular with the Western half of Germany as a ginger stepson; however, the act would almost certainly have been applauded right across the rest of Western Europe, and most certainly within the United Kingdom, where we should have been spared the Baywatch buffoon's inane exhibitions on such televisual strands as "Britain's Got Talent". The footage of the incident would surely be the most-watched item, by some distance, ever, on the "YouTube".

We should also have been shared the shocking spectacle of Mr. Hoff making a complete and utter arse of himself whilst snacking on a cheeseburger. Which, to be honest, is actually terribly amusing.

However, back in the real world, Herr Krenz and his camp followers submitted to the will of the generals; the wall came down, Germany was reunified, and the nation became one big happy family again. And The Hoff lived to drink another day. And another. And another. Ad infinitum.

As for Jens... well, he put away his rifle and his uniform, and immersed himself in that "decadent Western culture" that the self-appointed guardians of DDR society had warned him about. See below.

Nice headwear, sir.

Do others feel that the imposition of The Berlin Wall would have been a small price to pay for the untimely demise of The Hoff, live and direct on ZDF?

Mr. Dave Call-Me-Dave responds... sort of

The Official Communique from 10, Downing Street.

On August 17, I wrote to the Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury, Mr. David Call-Me-Dave, apropos his thoughts on what should be an appropriate custodial tariff for an individual who had indulged in multiple, wilful breaches of privacy laws and the Data Protection act, the corruption of serving police officers, the perverting the course of justice and the obstruction the police in the course of their duties by hampering a murder investigation. This missive was prompted by Mr. Call-Me-Dave's tacit endorsement of the sentence of four years apiece for two young gentlemen who had had the temerity to say "let's have a riot" on the "Facebook" social networking strand. A riot which, lest we forget, did not actually take place.

Having promised to keep such denizens of the internet who can be bothered to inhabit this corner of cyberspace appraised as to any response from Mr. David Call-Me-Dave, I am pleased to say that the dynamic, no-nonsense office of Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury has seen fit to reply thus, just an month and a half after my initial enquiry:

10 DOWNING STREET

LONDON SW1A 1AA

I am writing to acknowledge your recent correspondence.

The Prime Minister appreciates you taking the time to write.

Your correspondence has been forwarded to the relevant Government department so that they may reply to you, in detail, on the matters you raise.

Kind regards

Correspondence Officer

The Direct Communications Unit

The communication came in the form of a stiff card, rather than the letter which I was expecting; when it arrived, I at first mistook it for an invitation to one of Mr. Call-Me-Dave's ripping garden party soirees, in order for him to explain his stance personally, in his wonderfully, erm, "erudite" manner, over a large Gordon's and Tonic and some canapes. Sadly not. Obviously the austerity measures are hitting hard, and we really are "all in it together". Ahem.

I find it interesting that Mr. David Call-Me-Dave requires a "relevant Government department" to delegate his personal opinions to, as I had initially requested his personal opinion on the matter (underlined by the closing phrase, "What do you think?"). Perhaps if he is committed to cutting expensive, unwarranted bureaucracy in Government, he should start by speaking for himself rather than have some junior Whitehall flunky speak for him.

I do hope said flunky responds with such words of wisdom as "fuck off, Tampon". I should feel cheated otherwise.

Do others concur?