The Premier League has pledged significant support in the battle against coronavirus, with clubs agreeing a £20 million donation to the NHS and players setting up a separate fund for health workers and hospitals.
The government is currently printing whatever money the NHS might need. Shovelling – a pittance, for that’s what this sum is given the NHS’s size – more money in doesn’t solve anything.
But, you know, national religion, propitiate the Gods by sacrificing and all that.
Double fools as they’ll need every penny once folks can’t afford tickets any more. That printing will send prices soaring and loads will be job/business-less.
The Premiership doesn’t make its money from gate receipts, it comes from TV and merchandise. I’ve seen an argument that it can cost money when you add in the costs of policing etc.
A welfare fund for front line staff wouldn’t go amiss and there will be cases of hardship and struggling families, but we all know who will benefit the most from it.
Health workers get tested right? Have Prem Leaggue positive and negative games where they can attend for free.
OT
In a previous thread Tim asked about Covid-19 ICU survival rates. This is dated but useful:
Its not a pleasant read.
An advantage of football clubs over governments is that they might have access to local individualised knowledge. For instance, their physios and doctors could ask around the local physios and doctors to find out about people who fall through the cracks of government plans. Ditto their supporters’ clubs, the people with wheelchair access to the grounds, and so on. Football money would almost certainly be better spent locally than pouring it into the maw of the NHS.
Brilliant by BiND
Dearieme Manchester City are doing just that donating to local food banks and ringing round elderly and disabled supporters checking in on them and offering help to those that need it. My dad has had two such phone calls in the past two weeks from the club offering to get their shopping done for him and my mum.
The tendency of celebs/famous people to give money to gov’ts or NGOs that piss it away never ceases to amaze. There are people near your home in financial distress, but give money to the NHS? Even if they were a better than average bureaucracy (NOT), your money won’t actually make it to helping a human being for a very long time, if ever.
Some years ago I was struck by what a wonderful job the unpaid civilian volunteers in our local hospital Outpatients section did – for instance, in wheeling patients to the right clinic.
I enquired: how could I donate towards giving them, say, a good summer lunch together by way of celebrating their efforts?
My enquiry was greeted with blank amazement. “I don’t think we have a fund for that purpose.” I’ll bet they fucking don’t.
It baffles me that so many sports executives have no faith in their product.
You organize people running around on a field kicking a ball. You sell tickets – and TV rights – to pay for it and make money.
Coronavirus has FA to do with it.
NFL has breast awareness month in October. I remember back when football was good enough, I’d watch to see . . . football.
We see the collective neurosis of professional sports.
Fundamentally they’re buying advertising. Look what nice people we are! It may be worth it, bearing in mind that the alternative was to appear callous, and they depend on personal loyalty from their fans.
They have breast awareness leaflets in the office I’m currently working. I thought of asking just how much more aware I need to get, but HR doesn’t have a sense of humour.
Apparently someone has worked it out and already made the point that the lost tax from their pay cut is more than they are donating anyway.
@BiND my wife was an ICU nurse for many years, she has very strict instructions about when or even if she may be put on a ventilator that I have to follow if she’s not capable of deciding for herself, it’s usually a last resort measure and she has said she’d rather die quicker without it than slower with it.