Rival watch

There are rumours going around that he was being investigated last year, too.

please log in to view this image

I'm not sure if that's been fabricated or not, but apparently that image was from September 2021.
If it turns out Arsenal were still playing him when he was under investigation for a rape from last year, that makes us look even worse.

 

From 1988 to 1995 I worked with youngsters with mental health issues in their homes, in family centres and in children's homes.
It was extremely uncommon to hear misogynistic language and attitudes from them and was a great cause of concern if it occurred. It would involve case meetings and interventions etc.

I have worked with children in a primary school that deals with children with social, emotional and mental health issues since 2016 to now. Misogynistic language, abuse and attitudes amongst our students (boys and girls) is common place. We report these concerns but it no longer registers as a serious cause for concerns.

Sexualised threats and misogynistic language occurs almost daily from children aged 7-11.

They weren't born like this, they are taught it by adults in their lives.
And society seems to have decided that kids being brought up by hateful people doesn't warrant concern.

The last 20 years have seen the growth in ideas that were dying out.

When I was a teen no one I knew would admit to hit a girl (I hung round with some ****ers too...weren't a PC kid by a long shot) but in the last 10-15 years my girls have told me so many stories about what the boys they knew say and lots think nothing about admitting to hitting girls.

*wrote this through the fog of ****ing awful covid headache... 6 days and counting ... so hope it makes sense

 

City allegedly knew about accusations against Mendy and played him anyway.
It might depend on how credible they are/were and how many footballers get now.
We hear about some of them, but I suspect there are tons and lots of them are crap.

High profile young sportsmen with a lot of money doing stupid **** isn't surprising.
Ferguson used to pay doorstaff in Manchester to report his players if they went clubbing.
Some of them being crappy people is expected. A very small number being criminals is, too.

How to weed out the silly twats from the dangerous predators? It's a tricky balance.
The police getting involved immediately draws a line, but do you intervene before that?
I'd like my club to do a decent amount of work. I don't know if they do, though.

 

'Firstly, I resent this idea that 'modern Britain' agrees with me - as if many British people in the 21st Century don't hold troubling and awful views/behaviours about women? This is a very western-centric, orientalist view. The premise of this is inherently flawed in nature'

Yes my comment was not too clearly phrased. What I meant by modern Britain was young Britain, people under, say, 40.

What does hold back women? Yes it's men, but they can only do it with institutions and the largest and most powerful by far are the religious ones and as religion is a product of men's imagination it's really the same thing.

People feel better with their religion? Of course they do that's why it lingers on. People also feel better after snorting heroine or drinking or climbing a mountain, it doesn't follow it's a sensible approach.

As for the content of religion, I have posted a Christopher Hitchens video because he pretty much says what I would want to say only far far better and with a huge knowledge of Christianity and Islam.

 

I don’t want to keep to’ing and fro’ing with you on this Spurf. I am fully aware of Christopher Hitchens work and needless to say, my views and perspectives do not align with his in the slightest. But that’s ok. That’s life.

I think we will have to agree to disagree and keep it moving. So that’s what I will do

 

I agree Brunel

 

Win at all costs, mate, win at all costs.

please log in to view this image

 

There’s been reports Arteta likes to do lengthy personality, background and psychological profiles of players before he decides to buy them. So I would like to think they have a thorough process before signing a new player.

But it’s hard to know if someone is a serial rapist or not. Sometimes there are signs based on what they say, how they talk about women, but even then, does that premeditate future behaviour? Is there a big discrepancy between talking about women like **** and physically treating them like ****? Also, some people are very good at hiding this side of themselves.

By all accounts, Partey is very well liked by his peers and people he’s interacted with, everyone at Atletico used to talk about how he’s such a nice guy and very respectful/honest/friendly.

If this is the case, it can then be hard to fathom that someone with these qualities would (potentially) be a sexual predator.

Unless you monitor the movement of these players 24/7, you’re never going to truly know what they’re up to. You have to trust them. They won’t always be in your control. But it can be hard to accept this when you know they are capable of acting like such twats.

 

Greenwood acted like a bit of a twat, but nobody would ever have guessed how bad he was.
Being lazy, unprofessional or even a cheating scumbag is miles from being a psychopathic rapist.

Talking to some of their exes and the like might help, but I'm not sure what else you could do.
Nobody's going to give anything dodgy like that away in an interview.
You'd never have got in the position to get one otherwise.

 

Better not to speculate on anything, until the player
is formally charged (and therefore publicly identified) .

 

Exactly. As I pointed out before more speculation makes a fair trial less likely. Something the defence may play on. But also everyone is entitled to a fair trial. There does seem to be a feeling that for certain crimes people are already guilty, and that is a dangerous precedent.

 

Clubs are no more responsible for for the actions of players away from the club than any other employer.

The only thing any employer is responsible for is how they respond after an allegation was raised with them.

Genuinely feel for any fans if this happens to their club.

 

They can potentially be seriously detrimentally affected.
Let's do a "though experiment" ...

I tell you in Jan 2022 that one of Kane or Son are alleged
to have committed forced sexual acts on women.

The club does not field the player to avoid a potential PR
sh*t storm. N months later the claims turned out to be untrue.

Those N weeks out mean Spurs do not get the results
needed to qualify for the CL, which the player would have got.

What financial recourse does the club have for attempting to
do the "right thing" , when turns out that the action was
unnecessary and has cost the club 10s of millions ??

And if the allegations arose from gossiping / sh*t stirring hacks ??

 

I don’t know an awful lot about Christopher Hitchens but some of his quotes struck a cord with me. The two below in particular :-

"My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilisation, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can't prove it, but you can't disprove it either."

"The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more."

 

Where did you find this quote? "My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilisation, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can't prove it, but you can't disprove it either."

I've never heard that one before.

 

The first quote especially is deep, I like it.

It’s sort of similar to a quote by someone called Arthur Clarke - “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying”.

I often wonder if our civilisation is advanced or not in comparison to what could be out there, and the fact we simply can’t comprehend how big space is, there must be others out there I feel.

 

Since you quote Clarke, it is only right to quote something equally profound, by the genius Douglas Adams

“Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."

 

A physics teacher of mine stated to class that he had
observed that biologists tend to be atheists, while
astronomers tend to be theists.

His musings where that the former see themselves
in terms of all other living things (in which case they
are god-like by comparison) , while the latter see
how insignificant and powerless they are in the grand
scheme of the universe (readers of Lovecraft etc
know this well as the "cosmic horror" notion) .

All true scientists and engineers know, is that if
gods exist, and they created the universe, then they
are the supreme scientists and engineers, and
we are "primitive, but kindred" .

 

Interesting. And going about as far off topic as you can go, I am always amused that scientists with a brain the size of a planet admit they don't understand exactly how the universe works (or indeed what it is made of), yet are completely sure that God doesn't exist. There seems to be a contradiction here, which to me is rather arrogant.

Also while scientists often don't get as much credit as they deserve for what they have achieved for humanity, there is also a case that science has from time to time outstripped ethics. Something along the lines of just because something *can* exist, *should* it?

 

Not surprising....if anyone had written such piffle they would have tried to cover it up.