Fees, cuts and rises in pay: David Eastwood shows the way

Smug

In a week that saw Fernando Torres move to Chelsea for a British record fee of £50m, it was also announced that the Vice Chancellor at Birmingham University received a stunning 11% rise to his pay, bringing it up to £392,000 "including pen­sion contributions". You may think the two are irrelevant, but they're not. They are both demonstrations of how, despite the recession and deep government cuts, those at the top continue to live on a different planet. 

I will not bother with footballers and their fees-the newspapers have dedicated much of their back pages to that nonsense. My main concern here is Mr Eastwood's pay rise at a time when schools and departments are being 'reviewed', staff are made redundant and the cuts are biting hard those at the bottom of the pile. 

According to a 2010 report, Mr Eastwood also enjoys: 

• a university car (full of fuel) and a chauffeur
• university accommodation including a gardener and cleaner (I suspect it's not one of the tiny rooms students pay through the nose for)
• Credit cards and expenses

At the same time, all Birmingham University staff have received the princely pay rise of 0.4%, which for most people amounts to the price of a dodgy curry per month. 

The division here is clear. Mr Eastwood is not even performing a job. His is a vocation, a calling and a duty, a mission to make Birmingham the Barcl...sorry, Harvard of red brick universities. The services he provides the University are so invaluable that his salary and perks cannot of course come into question by anyone. On the other hand, a 0.4% rise in the pay of University staff (who also pay their own travel expenses, inflated public transport fees, fuel prices and taxes) is probably not necessary. Why oh why do we give a pay rise to people with a mortgage to pay, families to feed and clothe and the likes? 

No, the recipients of proper pay rises and perks should be the likes of Mr Eastwood. His duties and services to society and his institution are beyond doubt. He goes to meetings, gives speeches, cuts ribbons. His salary is not enough to ensure him a home, a car and fuel-the students need to pay for that. The man was on the committee which suggested that tuition fees should be tripled, stating that "[G]raduates should make a larger contribution to the cost of their higher education, which delivers higher lifetime earnings". This clearly worked really well for the man himself, as he himself STUDIED FOR FREE and look at what he takes home every Friday! Talk about bringing home the bacon, he brings home a fucking sausage factory. 

I hereby propose: 

• all university staff should donate their 0.4% increments towards Mr Eastwood's professional expenses-his work is clearly more important than theirs
• 10% of all top-up fees be channelled to Mr Eastwoods gardening and car pool, so that he can perform his duties even better
• all working class pupils with aspirations should do a vocational course, in the hope that the ever-expanding Eastwood household can absorb them-know your place!
• a significant percentage of the new super-profits should be channelled into hiring more security so that protesting students can be, ahem, collided accidentally with, more effectively
• Mr Eastwood, like his namesake Clint, rides off into the sunset with the gold

That's all. Here's a nice reminder of how things should work:

Bah humbug! No World Cup for England. Back to the protests then.

What disaster! What a huge injustice and monumental failure of the system to send the 2018 World Cup to the home of football. What a blow to the English (British) economy.

As the tabloids (and not only) are screaming at the perceived injustice, I must tell you that I for one thing am happy England didn't 'win' the right to organise the 2018 World Cup. There are a number of parameters here, and a number of reasons.

Firstly, there is nothing here on the level of states. FIFA are a corporation, milking the World Cup to the extreme. An extremely corrupt club for that too. The way royalty, politicians and others got involved in the England bid you'd think this had something to do with the public. It doesn't. World Cup football (and Premier League football while you're at it) are privately run entertainment events with the sole purpose of generating their owners and their partners maximum revenue. There is no morality here to be broken. Private business is profit-driven, end of story. I for one thing would not be happy to pay for the infrastructure, policing and security which would facilitate FIFA, Coca-Cola, Adidas and the rest of them to reap maximum profits.

Which brings me to my second point. All the arguments we hear about all the revenue that would come in, the tourism, the jobs, have no real foundation whatsoever. There has been no estimate (published at least) of the projected costs of hosting the World Cup. According to Panorama last Monday, the Dutch have in fact undertaken a study and it turns out that when FIFA and their partners have taken their profits, the nation would be £100 million worse off. On top of everything, the Dutch weren't favourites as they were unwilling to change their legislation to satisfy FIFA's demands or allow FIFA tax exemption during its activity in the Netherlands. Benefit? Bollocks. That's just sheer populism.

Thirdly, the cries against corruption on the part of the British media are only coming out after the English bid failed. In fact, I suspect that some of those bent officials who were exposed in Panorama would even be voting for England. Make no mistake: the English bid and its proponents were fully aware-nobody was robbed of anything here. The English have simply been bested at this game by others. The World Cup will be well placed in Russia.

The above phenomena exist whenever there is a huge sporting event with global appeal, it's nothing new. How did an impoverished country with sky-high crime rates get to organise the World Cup last summer? What happened to the infrastructure now it's all over? And have the townships, crime and poverty been eradicated as a result of the World Cup's all-healing impact? We don't know, as the patronising, flatulent journalists who were there during the event are not interested any more. And don't you think that given Joao Havelange's grip on FIFA for decades and his association with cases of bribery, it is hardly surprising that Brazil also got to organise the World Cup in 2014? Will the World Cup eradicate the favelas of Rio? Allow me to be deeply sceptical, although I'm sure it was also part of their bid: the social project, the benefit, the impact.

If you think these big events give economies a boost, think again. The only ones who get a boost are politicians who get to milk the glamour and the fireworks and the multinationals who really run the show. It is disgraceful for the prime minister of a nation hit hard by budget cuts to be throwing his weight behind what is simply a nice celebration of back-scratching and keeping money in the family. The inappropriate excitement about the World Cup bid, just like the pompous announcement of Will's and Kate's engagement, only serve to temporarily shift our attention from the more pressing issues. Unemployment, unfair distribution of taxes, further social exclusion in health and education, accommodation of an upper-class-run exclusive club of politicians, businessmen and their friends. Bread and circuses don't save the day. Just ask a now-bankrupt Greece. The Athens Olympics were only six years ago. And although the Olympics served to temporarily tranquillise them and make them forget the state of the economy, they soon woke up again. The British will too. Good luck to the Russians-they'll need it once Blatter and his partners are done chucking all the sacks of roubles into the truck...