I had intended to experience the film Mission to Mars in 2002 in theatre but the reviews were negative and space technophiles slammed the technical inaccuracies and improbabilities, but this may not have been the reason then why I did not see the film, but the use of subsequent knowledge applied to the past. On Friday February 8th I devoted my full attention to the film which was thoroughly enjoyed and much thought provoking, and where I also looked for relationships with work undertaken before.
The premise of Mission to Mars is a credible tale in which millions of years ago Mars was a living planet inhabited by a colony of advanced humans living a vast distance away from their home planet but with the means to return and to travel elsewhere. When the colony faced destruction they returned home or went off to settle in new worlds but in relation to our planetary system they took two decisions. The first was to launch human DNA potential onto the one planet which also had the potential to sustain similar beings, hence the comparatively sudden evolution of humankind on earth, and secondly they left a construction on Mars which comprised a hologram explanation what happened to the colony, the decisions then taken and the early development of beings into human kind on the earth. Given the proximity of the two plants one query potential story flaw is why some of the being did not immediately settle on the earth, or why it was necessary for the new races of humans to have to evolve in the way we have, reaching only a limited way along the journey of knowledge and enlightenment of the beings in the film, although one explanation for this latter point could be their knowledge of human evolution and that beings needed to advance to the development of having a world space station before deep space exploration becomes possible. The evident weakness of the film is that it is an American enterprise when anyone with any understanding of the way nations develop and then fall away understands that it will be a Chinese domination mission perhaps with Indian, Russian and a token American if such a Mission was to become a reality.
In fairness while the film does not go as far as stating that humans are the superior beings within the universe, the former Martian colonists have taken precautions to prevent non humans or humans without a level of knowledge and understanding, from being able to access the record fo what happened to the plant and its inhabitants. The film story also provides one craft to enable the humans to travel back to the home world/planetary systems. Or home galaxy. The film therefore has a more positive feel akin to Close Encounters of the Third Kind than The War of the Worlds or the Day of the Triffids. The film also has something of the pace of 2001 and 2010 which influenced me greatly at the time they were first released, then more recently because of their black monoliths, which was one inspiration for my concept of creating black monolithical constructions, large black four drawer filing cabinets with welded fronts to enclose the volumes of confidential material included in my 100.75 artman project.
It was purely coincidental that the film arrived within days of talking about the mind boggling endlessness of space and the possibility of individual human life existing in different dimensions. Increasingly I am of the view that although human beings have existed in their billions, speak different languages are of different skin colours and appearances their behaviour is remarkably similar at its core, There is the endeavour to create clones when is seems to me we are cloned already and given the collective sub conscious and collective memory it is understandable that we come to believe we have existed in different times.
This morning I awoke for the third time of the night having a dream where images have bee b retained. I was with a group of survivors rescued where the rescuer was requesting payment from what we had on us. The source of this aspect may have been the news that two sisters aged 106 and 104 and been robbed of cash kept under a settee by men posing a workers from a water company needing to make a check on their system. It will be evident from the report that the two men would have had prior knowledge fo where the money was located and that they kept such an amount of cash, although the amount was not stated. It reminded of the situation before I took over some responsibility for managing the affairs of my mother and her sister and where they kept all their day to day money fro making payments in envelopes in two metal boxes in their respect wardrobes, but as the illness of my mother progresses she commenced to spread the envelopes around he house until I was able to persuade that most of the income was paid direct into bank accounts which they agreed to open and for direct debits for the standing payments for services. They were particularly vulnerable in that they would give gratuities to any and everyone who visited or performed any service to them.
The next part of the dream was that on being rescued, by boat and brought ashore, I found myself in Wallington, but not of today but before I was born, moreover I met someone who had come forward and where trhere had been an article in a the local newspaper about someone with a vivid recollection of things past, which suggested that there had been some form of rip in time at particular place, themes of science fictions TV series and other films and where the concept of time travel and the ability to intervene in time and change the outcome, or not is also a common theme in series such as Dr Who and the Star Trek series.
While my interest in science fiction and the possibility of space and time travel continues to interest me as well as the philosophical and scientific questions of the nature and dimensions of space and time, I am more interested in the present day capacity to view, record and manipulate what we do and say at anytime and anywhere with the appropriate technology, from one computer to another and from satellites in space as well as from planted sound and vision devices and which in terms of my work and I believe the work of any creative contemporary artist should mean that what they do and the way they do it should be available at anytime to anyone anywhere with the technology although with the important caveat of separating that which can and should be public from that which should remain private.
I rarely miss the late night shown programme This Week in which the highlights of the previous political week are discussed by a regular participants chaired by Andrew Neil and former Ministers Ms Abbot and Mr Portillo together with an assortment of studio guests some more articulate and of substances than others. On Thursday of last week one subject which appeared to unite the regulars and those who appeared on Question Time beforehand was the disclosure that conversations between a Member of Parliament and a constituent had been monitored on the authority of the police. The sense of shock outrage by the politicians was not that this was being done in general, but it was being done to them, as many still cling to the belief that because they have become politicians they are exempt from the laws which govern everyone else. It was also evident that some politicians did not understand that the power to bug telephones is different from the power to exercise monitoring and surveillance, or the extent to which we are all now subjected to surveillance by different authorities and agencies officially as well as unofficially.
It is customary for those who operate in business for example or other areas of official and public life to arrange for their premises to be routinely checked for surveillance devices as well as maintaining surveillance system of themselves.
In Thursday evening's programme a studio guest made the accurate point that the controlled work of the official British Security Services was only a fraction of the extent to which public and private agencies were empowered to monitor and collate information and although this was said in defence of the official security services with the argument that because surveillance involved bureaucratic procedures and was time consuming in manpower and processing, its use was restricted to situations of special situations and therefore the Services and Governments could be trusted not to misuse or two widen to everyone. In this programme or discussions on the Daily Politics show the example was given of the situation in one former communist country, I believe East Germany, where it was established that one in every, a small number was involved in providing information to the authorities, a situation which existed to some level with the Communist counties in general, in Nazi controlled nations and dictatorship but not of course in democracies where the rule of law is supreme.
What surprised me in the media discussions is that no connection was made between the news that it was the police who had been empowered to bug the Member of Parliament and the granting by government of the power to monitor and collate information to hundreds of authorities and agencies, thus bring widespread surveillance of all us within the law. These powers often protect and therefore restrict the use of information gained to the particular authority and agencies without permissions. When I was shown around the surveillance system at Newcastle Football club which covered every seat within the ground, we were told that they were only empowered to monitor movement outside the ground within a define radius. I also had the experience of being shown around a different kind of surveillance system which arranged for surveillance both of private sites such as business premises and public car parks for local authorities, so that contact could be made with the those paying for the service and the police or the emergency authorities if a situation arose. There were audio visual records by every camera. In the United Kingdom there are now more surveillance cameras in operation in public and private places than anywhere else in the world. It does not take a genius to work out that it is not necessary for the official British security services to undertake most of the surveillance themselves as they can rely on any and all of the other empowered bodies to cooperate in relation to particular individuals and situations, or to draw attention to particular individuals and situations arising in the course of their day to day work. This however only covers official and legitimised surveillance from within the UK and there are two other sources which are additional to the accumulative and quantitative extent covered so far. The first is illegal surveillance conducted by competitors, the media and villains with the celebrated instances in recent decades involving member of the Royal family. However there is also the work of other security forces conducted from outside the shores of the UK and from space.
I decided to pass on this information to others before writing something of this which was intended to be put online through myspace last night but through tiredness did not do so and therefore could have incorporated the row which developed yesterday, but which because I was out for the greater part of the day and more interested in football than the news, until the ten pm news before Match of the Day, that the Oppositions leaders were calling for a major enquiry following the disclosure that police had operated a comprehensive surveillance of conversations at a maximum high security prison accommodation both those held or imprisoned in relation to security matters and other major criminals. The programme pointed out that an official statement did not deny the practice and a well known human rights lawyer argued that if this was correct then it had implications convictions where information obtained by such means had been used without the knowledge of the individuals and their legal representatives.
.
It amazes me, and it also does not that Members of Parliament, especially those in the Commons, have only recently appeared to understand the law of unintended consequences as it applies to government, the making of or amending of laws and their administration. The subject was also recently covered in an exchange on the Daily Politics Show. It has been my experience that most politicians, the media and most of the general public take no interest in the implementation of new legislation and monitoring its effectiveness and usually the interest is only aroused when something goes wrong. Most legislation is not in fact implemented as intended by the Government or those within Parliament who scrutinise and debate. Sometimes the government does not introduce specific changes, although this usually happens when governments change, or change their minds with the most effective way of achieving inaction is not to subsequently approve the finance and the staffing required. Usually however the problem is that insufficient attention is given to unintended consequences. This is typical of bureaucracies especially those led by politicians. In business before any new plan or development is given the go ahead there is a detailed investigation into things like potential markets and costs and options available, but also to what can go wrong in relation to materials, and government and trade union involvements, hence the wisdom of moving production to countries with loss cost and fewest regulatory controls and that most companies aim to spread their interests between countries so that no one country can have a disproportionate influence over the direction and profitability of the company. I find it difficult to believe that governments of recent decades do not undertake an analysis of unintended consequences whenever legislation is brought before the Parliament in relation to new legislation, This used to be the situation and I retain the vivid memory on a visit to the House of Lords where I was monitoring the passage of legislation and had access to the visitors area on the floor of the House, where the Commons stands for the Queen's speech at the state opening of Parliament, to be advised that following representations by an interest over a good meal the Minister had instruction a new amendment which meant that an independent person had to be appointed in situations where a young person in what had been an approved school and which became a community home with education on the premises has been resident for three months without a visitor. Previously the responsibility for visiting such children had rested with the probation service and there was anxiety in some quarters about child care workers undertaking this role. However the amendment was introduced and passed in the lords, reported to the Commons who also agreed and the matter became law. Now here is the rub, when the matter came to be implemented it was discovered that no one in the approved schools/community homes with education on the premises qualified for the appointment of any independent visitor who had to be selected, trained and worked organised and monitored. However it was then discovered that the legislation did apply to special schools where overall responsibility rested with the Education Ministry.
This was clearly a good thing although it was an unintended consequence. The obvious way to avoid such situations is to ensure that before any new legislation is introduced or amended an analysis is undertaken of likely unintended consequences, Ever since attending the Henley Management college twenty years ago it has been my understanding the upper echelons of the civil services included creative intellects as do businesses of any substance and therefore I assumed that by now government, at least at national level would be automatically including an analysis of unintended consequences as part of the drafting and implementation planning process. I now suspect given the way the cost of some building projects have escalated from the Dome to the Scottish Parliament and the 2012 Olympic games, and the way in which collated data has being going astray, that this is not the situation, although the decision of the Prime Minister to initiate some fifty reviews hopefully indicates that this will now become the situation.
This brings me on to two other examples of the law of unintended consequences occurring over the past 48 hours or so. The minor one is the decision of the Premier League Chief executive to announce that consideration has been given to extending the league by one game a season to be played outside the united Kingdom, and this follows the decision to play one regular season American Football game at Wembley which was sold out. There has been almost universal horror expressed that this is a bridge too far, from the Prime Minister, top sports commentators and fans. What a lot of hypocritical baloney.
Some twenty years ago Professional football in Britain was in terminal decline, with grounds appalling and unsafe, attracting the foul mouthed, racists and bigots, breeding grounds for violnce in and outside the stadium. We were rightly kicked out of European competition. It has taken two decades and the involvement of Sky and other commercial TV interests to produce the situation today with all seater stadiums with a wide range of facilities to cater for most pockets except the poor, in safety, freed from violence, racism and swearing, enabling everyone to see live some of the best players in Europe and from further affield, whether they go to the stadium or on television, terrestrial, digital, satellite and cable and the internet in their homes or places of entertainment. The ambition of most premiership clubs and their supporters is also watch their team compete against other teams in Europe and when this happens there are always sufficient supporters willing and able to meet the costs of doing so at home and away, as well as for game played away from the home ground. The amount of games shown live with repeated viewings has been increasing and it is also possible to experience games from other European leagues particularly those in Spain and Italy which also compete for the best players and managers. It is not accident that some of the proven great managers now come to England, and that one of these has become our national manager or that clubs are being bought by individuals and consortia from around the world. It is inevitable that there will be development from a European to a an international scale. There have been and will be unintended consequences for all this.
The atmosphere at individuals games has changed and has at times to be organised, such as at Newcastle with the provision of free scarves to wave, or the issuing of coloured cards to create ground wide visual effects, whereas fans would congregate for an hour before game started now the majority take their seats within ten minutes of the start. This is sometimes bemoaned but was an inevitable consequence however unintended. If the majority of seats are season and controlled then families, friends and groups cannot chose where to congregate within the stadium seating so they meet up beforehand around the bars within and outside grounds. Another moan is that the time of games used always to be at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon with only international games played midweek and domestic cup replays games played midweek. Now games are not only played every day of the week but at weekends there are midday games early and late afternoon and early evening games played in addition. This is because of the increase in competitions and the commercial logic of not holding live televised games at times which could affect crowds at other games particularly the other league games using the traditional 3pm start. Doing this, far from adversely affecting the number of those buying tickets, travelling awayr or buying into viewing systems has had the opposite consequence and the only reason why fans stop going to games is when their team plays badly over a long period although some clubs can drop divisions or play badly for years and still command great support as with Sunderland and Newcastle who can fill 100000 seats although neither club has won any competition for thirty years and more, or at regulated Leeds or Manchester City before the arrival of an overseas coach.
For me with an interest in the creation of a European and Earth World order all moves which superimpose internationalism on nationalism are to be commended especially if there is appropriate analysis in advance of unintended consequences and planning to deal with these if the consequences are adverse to the extend that they will undermine the effectiveness of the desired change.
This brings me to the Archbishop of Canterbury and his statement part of a the world wide move by religious leaders that state law should take account of religious fundamentals as part of the growing awareness that the common ground of Godliness, morality and spirituality between religions is of great significance that the differences when it comes to confronting the ungodly and those without any morality or spirituality. Time has run out for me to day so I will refer again tomorrow.
The premise of Mission to Mars is a credible tale in which millions of years ago Mars was a living planet inhabited by a colony of advanced humans living a vast distance away from their home planet but with the means to return and to travel elsewhere. When the colony faced destruction they returned home or went off to settle in new worlds but in relation to our planetary system they took two decisions. The first was to launch human DNA potential onto the one planet which also had the potential to sustain similar beings, hence the comparatively sudden evolution of humankind on earth, and secondly they left a construction on Mars which comprised a hologram explanation what happened to the colony, the decisions then taken and the early development of beings into human kind on the earth. Given the proximity of the two plants one query potential story flaw is why some of the being did not immediately settle on the earth, or why it was necessary for the new races of humans to have to evolve in the way we have, reaching only a limited way along the journey of knowledge and enlightenment of the beings in the film, although one explanation for this latter point could be their knowledge of human evolution and that beings needed to advance to the development of having a world space station before deep space exploration becomes possible. The evident weakness of the film is that it is an American enterprise when anyone with any understanding of the way nations develop and then fall away understands that it will be a Chinese domination mission perhaps with Indian, Russian and a token American if such a Mission was to become a reality.
In fairness while the film does not go as far as stating that humans are the superior beings within the universe, the former Martian colonists have taken precautions to prevent non humans or humans without a level of knowledge and understanding, from being able to access the record fo what happened to the plant and its inhabitants. The film story also provides one craft to enable the humans to travel back to the home world/planetary systems. Or home galaxy. The film therefore has a more positive feel akin to Close Encounters of the Third Kind than The War of the Worlds or the Day of the Triffids. The film also has something of the pace of 2001 and 2010 which influenced me greatly at the time they were first released, then more recently because of their black monoliths, which was one inspiration for my concept of creating black monolithical constructions, large black four drawer filing cabinets with welded fronts to enclose the volumes of confidential material included in my 100.75 artman project.
It was purely coincidental that the film arrived within days of talking about the mind boggling endlessness of space and the possibility of individual human life existing in different dimensions. Increasingly I am of the view that although human beings have existed in their billions, speak different languages are of different skin colours and appearances their behaviour is remarkably similar at its core, There is the endeavour to create clones when is seems to me we are cloned already and given the collective sub conscious and collective memory it is understandable that we come to believe we have existed in different times.
This morning I awoke for the third time of the night having a dream where images have bee b retained. I was with a group of survivors rescued where the rescuer was requesting payment from what we had on us. The source of this aspect may have been the news that two sisters aged 106 and 104 and been robbed of cash kept under a settee by men posing a workers from a water company needing to make a check on their system. It will be evident from the report that the two men would have had prior knowledge fo where the money was located and that they kept such an amount of cash, although the amount was not stated. It reminded of the situation before I took over some responsibility for managing the affairs of my mother and her sister and where they kept all their day to day money fro making payments in envelopes in two metal boxes in their respect wardrobes, but as the illness of my mother progresses she commenced to spread the envelopes around he house until I was able to persuade that most of the income was paid direct into bank accounts which they agreed to open and for direct debits for the standing payments for services. They were particularly vulnerable in that they would give gratuities to any and everyone who visited or performed any service to them.
The next part of the dream was that on being rescued, by boat and brought ashore, I found myself in Wallington, but not of today but before I was born, moreover I met someone who had come forward and where trhere had been an article in a the local newspaper about someone with a vivid recollection of things past, which suggested that there had been some form of rip in time at particular place, themes of science fictions TV series and other films and where the concept of time travel and the ability to intervene in time and change the outcome, or not is also a common theme in series such as Dr Who and the Star Trek series.
While my interest in science fiction and the possibility of space and time travel continues to interest me as well as the philosophical and scientific questions of the nature and dimensions of space and time, I am more interested in the present day capacity to view, record and manipulate what we do and say at anytime and anywhere with the appropriate technology, from one computer to another and from satellites in space as well as from planted sound and vision devices and which in terms of my work and I believe the work of any creative contemporary artist should mean that what they do and the way they do it should be available at anytime to anyone anywhere with the technology although with the important caveat of separating that which can and should be public from that which should remain private.
I rarely miss the late night shown programme This Week in which the highlights of the previous political week are discussed by a regular participants chaired by Andrew Neil and former Ministers Ms Abbot and Mr Portillo together with an assortment of studio guests some more articulate and of substances than others. On Thursday of last week one subject which appeared to unite the regulars and those who appeared on Question Time beforehand was the disclosure that conversations between a Member of Parliament and a constituent had been monitored on the authority of the police. The sense of shock outrage by the politicians was not that this was being done in general, but it was being done to them, as many still cling to the belief that because they have become politicians they are exempt from the laws which govern everyone else. It was also evident that some politicians did not understand that the power to bug telephones is different from the power to exercise monitoring and surveillance, or the extent to which we are all now subjected to surveillance by different authorities and agencies officially as well as unofficially.
It is customary for those who operate in business for example or other areas of official and public life to arrange for their premises to be routinely checked for surveillance devices as well as maintaining surveillance system of themselves.
In Thursday evening's programme a studio guest made the accurate point that the controlled work of the official British Security Services was only a fraction of the extent to which public and private agencies were empowered to monitor and collate information and although this was said in defence of the official security services with the argument that because surveillance involved bureaucratic procedures and was time consuming in manpower and processing, its use was restricted to situations of special situations and therefore the Services and Governments could be trusted not to misuse or two widen to everyone. In this programme or discussions on the Daily Politics show the example was given of the situation in one former communist country, I believe East Germany, where it was established that one in every, a small number was involved in providing information to the authorities, a situation which existed to some level with the Communist counties in general, in Nazi controlled nations and dictatorship but not of course in democracies where the rule of law is supreme.
What surprised me in the media discussions is that no connection was made between the news that it was the police who had been empowered to bug the Member of Parliament and the granting by government of the power to monitor and collate information to hundreds of authorities and agencies, thus bring widespread surveillance of all us within the law. These powers often protect and therefore restrict the use of information gained to the particular authority and agencies without permissions. When I was shown around the surveillance system at Newcastle Football club which covered every seat within the ground, we were told that they were only empowered to monitor movement outside the ground within a define radius. I also had the experience of being shown around a different kind of surveillance system which arranged for surveillance both of private sites such as business premises and public car parks for local authorities, so that contact could be made with the those paying for the service and the police or the emergency authorities if a situation arose. There were audio visual records by every camera. In the United Kingdom there are now more surveillance cameras in operation in public and private places than anywhere else in the world. It does not take a genius to work out that it is not necessary for the official British security services to undertake most of the surveillance themselves as they can rely on any and all of the other empowered bodies to cooperate in relation to particular individuals and situations, or to draw attention to particular individuals and situations arising in the course of their day to day work. This however only covers official and legitimised surveillance from within the UK and there are two other sources which are additional to the accumulative and quantitative extent covered so far. The first is illegal surveillance conducted by competitors, the media and villains with the celebrated instances in recent decades involving member of the Royal family. However there is also the work of other security forces conducted from outside the shores of the UK and from space.
I decided to pass on this information to others before writing something of this which was intended to be put online through myspace last night but through tiredness did not do so and therefore could have incorporated the row which developed yesterday, but which because I was out for the greater part of the day and more interested in football than the news, until the ten pm news before Match of the Day, that the Oppositions leaders were calling for a major enquiry following the disclosure that police had operated a comprehensive surveillance of conversations at a maximum high security prison accommodation both those held or imprisoned in relation to security matters and other major criminals. The programme pointed out that an official statement did not deny the practice and a well known human rights lawyer argued that if this was correct then it had implications convictions where information obtained by such means had been used without the knowledge of the individuals and their legal representatives.
.
It amazes me, and it also does not that Members of Parliament, especially those in the Commons, have only recently appeared to understand the law of unintended consequences as it applies to government, the making of or amending of laws and their administration. The subject was also recently covered in an exchange on the Daily Politics Show. It has been my experience that most politicians, the media and most of the general public take no interest in the implementation of new legislation and monitoring its effectiveness and usually the interest is only aroused when something goes wrong. Most legislation is not in fact implemented as intended by the Government or those within Parliament who scrutinise and debate. Sometimes the government does not introduce specific changes, although this usually happens when governments change, or change their minds with the most effective way of achieving inaction is not to subsequently approve the finance and the staffing required. Usually however the problem is that insufficient attention is given to unintended consequences. This is typical of bureaucracies especially those led by politicians. In business before any new plan or development is given the go ahead there is a detailed investigation into things like potential markets and costs and options available, but also to what can go wrong in relation to materials, and government and trade union involvements, hence the wisdom of moving production to countries with loss cost and fewest regulatory controls and that most companies aim to spread their interests between countries so that no one country can have a disproportionate influence over the direction and profitability of the company. I find it difficult to believe that governments of recent decades do not undertake an analysis of unintended consequences whenever legislation is brought before the Parliament in relation to new legislation, This used to be the situation and I retain the vivid memory on a visit to the House of Lords where I was monitoring the passage of legislation and had access to the visitors area on the floor of the House, where the Commons stands for the Queen's speech at the state opening of Parliament, to be advised that following representations by an interest over a good meal the Minister had instruction a new amendment which meant that an independent person had to be appointed in situations where a young person in what had been an approved school and which became a community home with education on the premises has been resident for three months without a visitor. Previously the responsibility for visiting such children had rested with the probation service and there was anxiety in some quarters about child care workers undertaking this role. However the amendment was introduced and passed in the lords, reported to the Commons who also agreed and the matter became law. Now here is the rub, when the matter came to be implemented it was discovered that no one in the approved schools/community homes with education on the premises qualified for the appointment of any independent visitor who had to be selected, trained and worked organised and monitored. However it was then discovered that the legislation did apply to special schools where overall responsibility rested with the Education Ministry.
This was clearly a good thing although it was an unintended consequence. The obvious way to avoid such situations is to ensure that before any new legislation is introduced or amended an analysis is undertaken of likely unintended consequences, Ever since attending the Henley Management college twenty years ago it has been my understanding the upper echelons of the civil services included creative intellects as do businesses of any substance and therefore I assumed that by now government, at least at national level would be automatically including an analysis of unintended consequences as part of the drafting and implementation planning process. I now suspect given the way the cost of some building projects have escalated from the Dome to the Scottish Parliament and the 2012 Olympic games, and the way in which collated data has being going astray, that this is not the situation, although the decision of the Prime Minister to initiate some fifty reviews hopefully indicates that this will now become the situation.
This brings me on to two other examples of the law of unintended consequences occurring over the past 48 hours or so. The minor one is the decision of the Premier League Chief executive to announce that consideration has been given to extending the league by one game a season to be played outside the united Kingdom, and this follows the decision to play one regular season American Football game at Wembley which was sold out. There has been almost universal horror expressed that this is a bridge too far, from the Prime Minister, top sports commentators and fans. What a lot of hypocritical baloney.
Some twenty years ago Professional football in Britain was in terminal decline, with grounds appalling and unsafe, attracting the foul mouthed, racists and bigots, breeding grounds for violnce in and outside the stadium. We were rightly kicked out of European competition. It has taken two decades and the involvement of Sky and other commercial TV interests to produce the situation today with all seater stadiums with a wide range of facilities to cater for most pockets except the poor, in safety, freed from violence, racism and swearing, enabling everyone to see live some of the best players in Europe and from further affield, whether they go to the stadium or on television, terrestrial, digital, satellite and cable and the internet in their homes or places of entertainment. The ambition of most premiership clubs and their supporters is also watch their team compete against other teams in Europe and when this happens there are always sufficient supporters willing and able to meet the costs of doing so at home and away, as well as for game played away from the home ground. The amount of games shown live with repeated viewings has been increasing and it is also possible to experience games from other European leagues particularly those in Spain and Italy which also compete for the best players and managers. It is not accident that some of the proven great managers now come to England, and that one of these has become our national manager or that clubs are being bought by individuals and consortia from around the world. It is inevitable that there will be development from a European to a an international scale. There have been and will be unintended consequences for all this.
The atmosphere at individuals games has changed and has at times to be organised, such as at Newcastle with the provision of free scarves to wave, or the issuing of coloured cards to create ground wide visual effects, whereas fans would congregate for an hour before game started now the majority take their seats within ten minutes of the start. This is sometimes bemoaned but was an inevitable consequence however unintended. If the majority of seats are season and controlled then families, friends and groups cannot chose where to congregate within the stadium seating so they meet up beforehand around the bars within and outside grounds. Another moan is that the time of games used always to be at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon with only international games played midweek and domestic cup replays games played midweek. Now games are not only played every day of the week but at weekends there are midday games early and late afternoon and early evening games played in addition. This is because of the increase in competitions and the commercial logic of not holding live televised games at times which could affect crowds at other games particularly the other league games using the traditional 3pm start. Doing this, far from adversely affecting the number of those buying tickets, travelling awayr or buying into viewing systems has had the opposite consequence and the only reason why fans stop going to games is when their team plays badly over a long period although some clubs can drop divisions or play badly for years and still command great support as with Sunderland and Newcastle who can fill 100000 seats although neither club has won any competition for thirty years and more, or at regulated Leeds or Manchester City before the arrival of an overseas coach.
For me with an interest in the creation of a European and Earth World order all moves which superimpose internationalism on nationalism are to be commended especially if there is appropriate analysis in advance of unintended consequences and planning to deal with these if the consequences are adverse to the extend that they will undermine the effectiveness of the desired change.
This brings me to the Archbishop of Canterbury and his statement part of a the world wide move by religious leaders that state law should take account of religious fundamentals as part of the growing awareness that the common ground of Godliness, morality and spirituality between religions is of great significance that the differences when it comes to confronting the ungodly and those without any morality or spirituality. Time has run out for me to day so I will refer again tomorrow.
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