Right or Left?

A media storm has gathered apace following the appointment of Paulo Di Canio as manager of Sunderland FC. To be clear, the storm results from his alleged support of facism in the past. Because this is not so attractive to readers, he is now also being portrayed as a racist. For a player who spent so much time playing for West Ham where he was all but an ethnic minority, this seems somewhat baffling. If there is now an edict preventing people from managing a football club because they have alleged political allegiances at odds with others, it means several managers will have to vacate their positions with immediate effect.

On a separate note, the question of player salaries is not deemed newsworthy. At a time when millions are feeling the pinch financially, it seems to me obscene that football players are routinely payed more in a week than Joe Public earns in a year. It was also interesting to observe David Milliband becoming involved. As a director of this football club, he has been complicit in promoting the widening gap between ordinary workers and hyper-inflated player salaries. Not bad for a Labour politician. Of course, the extent of the fall-out with his brother become clearer last week when he revealed he would be seeking pastures new in New York to work for an organisation called International Rescue. To people of my generation, this is synonymous with Thunderbirds, a children's television programme about a family of puppets seeking to save us from evil. I wish him luck and trust politics now represent his past rather than his future. To be remembered as a former foreign secretary is one thing. To be remembered as a prominent member of Gordon Brown's doomed government is quite another. It is an irony that David Milliband represents a Labour stronghold in the North East where a donkey would get elected if put forward as the new candidate. An irony because it is just the sort of union dominated area which was responsible for the appointment of his brother as Labour leader. His resignation as a director of Sunderland FC marks the closing chapter of the David Owen of his generation. He will be remembered as the nearly man of British politics whose hypocrisy was laid bare for all to see in the end.

Today marks a brave new dawn for the welfare system and NHS in this country. Once we have got past the initial resistance which always accompanies change, the country will begin to feel the benefit. At present the financial strain of these two represents an enormous hand-brake which restricts our progress. The hand-brake has been eased with these latest measures but not disengaged fully. For too long, the welfare system has been the national cash cow. An outbreak of reality is no bad thing. There is a grlarge group of people in our country who lived through the second world war and endured rationing for the best part of a decade and they are still here to tell the tale. I shudder to think what they make of our pampered generation but hope we can emulate their resolve of yesteryear.