By Tony Attwood
You can’t take in the news these days without realising that there is a lot of anti-vaccination propaganda going on at the moment. It has different edges to it, as for example if you get vaccinated it won’t bring you any personal benefit, or it will have a negative effect, or it is only there to control the public.
Watching this (as a person who has been vaccinated against coronavirus and who is also vaccinated each year against the flu, and who actually follows the real science rather than Boris’ fantasy science) I’ve started to see a link between the vibrant negativism of the anti-vaccination groups with the way that the negative stories about Arsenal are propagated in the media.
Those who watch the anti-vaccination and similar stories often talk and write about the generalised effect such tales have. It is not just that they encourage people not to be vaccinated, but also that they generate a generalised pessimism which has a negative effect on the way many people feel.
Thus the anti-vaccination campaign deepens mistrust of public-health authorities. In a similar way the endless negativity about Arsenal deepens distrust in the Arsenal management, players and board. Criticism is constant, hope wains, and the new players that the media say we need won’t come to us, because of the reports they read each day in the media.
Of course there is no denying that Arsenal is having a bad time of it in terms of results, but the messaging from the media is nonsensical. We’ve been buying players as never before, and we have slipped down the league as if we were a Bertie Mee team in the mid-1970s. So the idea is we need buy more players.
Of course Arsenal itself has been scoring some own goals, such as the way Guendouzi, Ozil and Sokratis have been treated – that is not the way to say to other players come to Arsenal you will be treated well.
What we could do with is some real open speaking by the club to the fans about what the club is up to in the light of the slip down the league.
Above all it is difficult to see what the overall plan is for Arsenal, apart from the hope that Arteta comes good in the end. He did after all win us the FA Cup, which was very welcome and gave us this season in the Europa.
Why was Ozil treated as he was? Did it benefit the club? If so how? And was it worth the money? And was it worth the risk – given that other players would have seen this and not been very impressed?
I am reminded of the way in which in England it was suddenly decided that children could go outside and have fun in open air playgrounds, but that accompanying adults were told to continue to stand two metres apart while my local supermarket has a daily uncontrolled crush.
Or the great fuss the media made about people turning up on the beach last summer, while what we do know is that transmission in the open air is only a fraction above zero.
Pandemic, or Arsenal. Nothing much is making sense any more.
How to save football
You have every right to take the COVID injection, and I hope you also uphold the right of others to refuse it.
I have had vaccinations against polio, TB, tetanus, measles, chickenpox, mumps, smallpox, yellow fever, flu and pneumonia but I won’t take this one.
Why? Because the others used dead or attenuated viruses to stimulate antibodies against that particular virus. The COVID injection is quite different – it hijacks the cells of your body to create an effect which hopefully creates an appropriate immune response. The bad reactions seen so far are mere allergic reactions – the possible disastrous effects of the injection will be seen after several months or years. And once you have had the injection you cannot reverse it.
To quote that wonderful phrase from Nick Davies, ”So thugs with press cards still bully us all.”
There you have it. Arsenal, vaccination, Diana’s son & Megan – whatever the issue, and issues arise every moment, the discourse is predetermined by the thugs with the press cards and their masters.
We get the public debate that deters any change in the structure of the UK. Whatever other debates exist, continue to happen, do not break through into the arena, do not become part of the discourse we have of how our society functions and how it is supposed to function and what we can do about living with each other in the same space at the same time.
You can have an idea, a memory, a picture from the past, of what a handball in the penalty area looks like, and what then happens in a game of football with a referee, and you might have had this idea, memory, for close to seventy years, but it doesn’t matter. It carries no weight. The whistle does not blow.
How society functions is a pummeled punchbag that can be set to be hit into a certain number of shapes and that certain number is not to be exceeded.
Bad things continue to flourish as long as good people do nothing. I have 2 suggestions as to how the impasse can be addressed or at least slowed down.
– how about a petition to the sports ministry to OPEN the books of PGMO every year, with their meeting schedule & minutes
– petition UEFA to allow rotation of VAR attendees in Europe. Surely it is an educational exercise for referees to deal with another country’s players and to apply the FIFA rules fairly???
-human experience and knowledge develops there is no reason to exclude vaccines from this – how many experts in this field exist throughout the world -if there was an issue it would be forthcoming -the media would jump on it as is their way. seems to be you have cited the latest anti vax rant -started with the vaccine would include a micro chip to control us, then it would change your dna, then they have been cutting corners now it is the long term effect. if you are worried about it speak to your doctor. but as you say ultimately it is up to you
On the strictly anecdotal evidence from standing in the doorway in the 2019 UK election and discussing with voters who they would vote for, and why, even when people were told Johnson had been sacked from two jobs because he was a liar, these same people said they knew he was a liar, but they still would vote for him.
This leaves us in a difficult situation. When the media act as thugs with press cards who are there to bully us into line, and keep us in line, and voters are prepared to vote for someone even when they know that person is a liar, to demand referees act with ‘fairness.” ”honesty,” ”with consistency.” ”in accordance with the rules of the game,” we have little to stand on’
”Fairness” can only exist as an imperative if honesty is already accepted as a condition of existence. A dishonest organisation of referees – PGMO – can be ”exposed” in a society that values honesty and values fairness as a consequence of that honesty.
Maybe we have to start thinking about the only power we do have – withhold our money. Boycott the advertisers who fund the EPL.
Please Untold, stay away from vaccine issues. An experimental genetic therapy with an emergency usage authorisation is not a vaccine no matter how many try to change the definition of vaccine. Lets stick with facts before we have another platform for divisive name calling. I will wait for the minimum 5 years that are usually needed to establish whether this injected material
is actually safe. This is my personal choice and what others may do is theirs. that is not a subject for this site, thank you.