The shape of things to come: a north American view of the aftermath that is to come

by Don McMahon

There are many dire and some less morbid predictions being mentioned by the desperately understaffed media as to the future we face as a human collective.

Some media figures like the Muppet in chief in Washington, are inventing their own future based on their most recent brain-fart. Others, whose intellectual gifts and capacity to think rationally, are still functional, are painting a rather diverse and less fantastic picture.

I fall somewhere in between as I am an older gentleman with a greater capacity to find the cloud behind every silver-lining and a profound propensity to distrust anything the ¨authorities¨ propose. But just in case my visions are real, here is s taste of what I forecast for our future;

1. Football will try desperately to return to ¨normal¨ with the competent authorities (this is an oxymoron) pretending that this hiatus was an unanticipated but normal bump in the otherwise cash cow that is modern Football. FIFA has already issued a directive that requires current professional contracts to be extended until well into the summer (end of July?) and therefore have abrogated the legal rights of contracted players, to the delight of their real masters, the rich clubs.

2. The sweet FA and other national associations, EUFA and FIFA, all now faced with a serious cash shortage because their cash cows, the national associations, the professional leagues and the plethora of sponsors they had, are all suffering serious shortfalls in their financing and cash flows.

These noble authorities of world Football are scrambling to come up with ways to get that cow milking again, including rushing back to full operations leagues and competitions that have been prematurely ended due to covid-19 threats.

It is 100% clear to me that these fine people don’t give a tinker’s damn about the supporters, fans, players and team employees, all of whom are vulnerable and unprotected. What the hell, all those potential deaths won’t be visible in Zurich or Nyon, Switzerland nor London for that matter.

3. The PIGMOB, quarantined in their individual pigsties, are feeling the pinch because I am not sure they are being paid or will continue to be for much longer. This is an area that bears further investigation but we’ll leave that for later…..rest assured that they aren’t studying the Laws of the Game but St.Riley’s manual on screwing The Arsenal.

4. Now for other changes we might be facing. The first one will be the enormous costs of fighting this virus and the subsequent debt that panicked politicians will eagerly run up, in the vain hopes that people will forget what constant f**kups they really are and how their pandering to the right-wing nationalists and Brexit fanboys have cost people their lives and livelihoods.

I am sure this applies equally in the UK as it does in North America. Their only hope is that the electorate, who they consider as sheep and morons, will forget their collective incompetence and re-elect them. Indeed it seems poetic justice that Boris has the virus, when it is his policies that have exacerbated this crisis in the UK.

What changes can we expect? The debt will be swept under the table and paid for in increased taxes on the middle class and the poor. The NHS, stressed to the breaking point, will continue to be understaffed and under-funded while the authorities trumpet how great their management of this crisis was.

The real heroes of this disaster, the health care workers, the police, the essential services and volunteers trying to help everyone, will be ignored and life will continue as before…..the rich will find a way to profit off this crisis by downsizing their corporations and companies while raising prices and working their employees even harder.

They’ll close as many offices as they can because working from home was so successful, profitable for them and offers them the option to demand more from their employees for the ¨priviledge¨ of WFH. They will probably try and rehire their employees as free-lancers without any benefits…..we will see.

5. The shift from the cities to WFH will have enticed many people to consider moving away from the expensive and crowded metropolises and their daily commute in tight quarters with others but there is the social communion we enjoy with our workmates and management that will be missed.

Is there a middle ground where partial WFH arrangements can be made to lighten the burden of companies and reduce the risks to their employees?

6.  The presence of your children 24/7 and their need to be educated, entertained and kept from becoming victims of parental voluntary homicide will have two positive outcomes. Teachers will finally be appreciated for the heroes they really are, and the homeschooling positives will become more apparent.

Here is a compromise that we might see; part-time presence in school and a robust online educational option that allows teachers to educate their students from afar, thus reducing the risk of infections and dangerous contact by orders of magnitude.

This is complex and might not please working parents but if the WFH and online schooling can be coordinated, then it could work. Don’t depend on the competent authorities and management to organize this, they aren’t capable of organizing a simple school field trip, never-mind a paradigm as complicated as this….leave it to the teachers and parents…they know what they’re doing and what they and their charges need.

6.  The Health Care system will require an immediate paradigm shift from the passive, underfunded and poorly managed pantomime that it is now, to a dynamic, well-funded, well-prepared and proactive national network which can prevent the spread of infectious diseases, manage the flow of patients and especially home-bound clients (the aged, handicapped and physically challenged) while at the same time developing rapid research facilities and thoroughly networked delivery mechanisms for such emergencies.

Does this describe anything the pusillanimous, narcissistic, greedy, passive political dupes you currently ¨enjoy¨ are capable of? I cannot speak for the UK but in North America our leaders were and still are vane, arrogant and dismissive of the gravity of the situation and their misguided protection of their rich bum buddies has enraged a large percentage of the population, as they watch people die for no reason, other than the political incompetence and greed of their elected officials.

---

Would you like to write an article for Untold Arsenal?  If yes, send in your idea (or if you want to, the whole article) to Tony@schools.co.uk