I couldn't get a ticket for the 1961 Final even though people kept giving me ballot cards.Couldn't get one for the 1962 Final until I was given one at work.I was working at Hackney Greyhound Stadium at the time and,it seems,Greyhounds got a couple of Final tickets sent to all London tracks.Why?Anyway,they knew at Hackney that I was Spurs mad,so they gave me one. The seat was up near the roof behind the Royal Box.Couldn't see the Royal Box,of course,and there were about a dozen or so men sitting on hard wood chairs.Everyone looked at me thinking I'd gone mad,jumping up and down after Jim's goal. So I suppose the remaining 30,000(?) tickets will be taken by disinterested people spending the match looking at their phones,or whatever!!!!?
My home made shrine is getting more and more persnickety. To think I passed up organized religion in order to give careful consideration to what shirt will be lucky on game day. Oh, well, I guess I’m with Andy Kaufman. "My ancestors believed, and I believe with them, that mindless ritual and pointless superstition are all that separate us from the animals." And people wonder why I won’t go anywhere without my tinfoil hat.
A nice theory but if it wasn't for the advance income from the 15,000 or so boxes and debenture tickets which include a guarantee for all the cup finals and England matches they could only have afforded a 50,000 seater stadium so the allocation would be smaller.
They could've just had finals rotating between the biggest stadiums in the country, along with England, giving more fans a chance of seeing England and not screwing over northern fans everytime their team makes it to a final. Also Wembley was well over budget. It's not so much how much it costs to build a stadium of that size but the inept planning that made it cost £700mill. I might be wrong but I think I read something awhile ago saying that even the arch cost about £80mill to build. I'm no architect but I think you can build a stadium without an arch. As it is what we've got is not the stadium dedicated to showcasing the best English football but a money hungry whore that will rent itself out to any event that has the money regardless of the damage it does to the pitch.
The cost of Wembley looks even worse compared to the costs of other stadia built at the time, such as the Millennium Stadium (which cost £190m) and the Sapporo Dome (which cost the equivalent of £265m) Just to let that sink in, a stadium with a pitch that could levitate, rotate, and float out of the stadium cost 1/3 of Wembley. Even the initial quoted cost of £458m comes across as grossly inflated. Then again, it's not like The FA are the only frauds in British sport. Remember how UK Athletics said that London could host an Olympics for £3bn? We're supposed to forget that one, aren't we?
The Japanese seem to know how to keep corruption and waste to reasonable levels. Japanese spend about 1/3rd of what Americans spend per capita on health care, and live five years longer. They regulate health care fees so strictly that medicine tends to attract only those motivated by a desire to help people. Their world-leading longevity demonstrates the catastrophic effects of this policy.
Yeah - football in England's a bit short of cash, isn't it? These unfortunate realities must be faced since the FA certainly does not have a world-leading football brand on its hands that generates billions of pounds. Oh. Hang on...
I mean perhaps I'm wrong but your argument does sound a bit like a Tory government saying that "tough decisions have to get made" so freezing teachers' pay or cutting essential services whilst giving themselves huge pay increases and inviting their mates to make a fortune buying off the tastiest bits of the NHS. Saying "X or Y needs to happen" is almost always a statement imbued with politics rather than genuine, sheer necessity. And as such should be questioned.
In the case of Wembley the people with money are effectively subsidising the other fans. I don't think that is the same as the approach of the detestable government. I'd much rather have an egalitarian system but unless everyone joins me in voting Green we are stuck with the current one
What were we saying about imitating all of America’s bad habits? We couldn’t keep homeowners from losing their homes because of "moral hazard:’ that is, the risk that we would encourage irresponsible behavior, even though this would have been a very sensible investment for the country as a whole. Socializing Wall Street’s losses while Wall Street always had and always would pocket all their winnings, on the other hand, posed no such risk, luckily enough. It certainly wasn’t caused by people taking wild gambles on the grounds that that was already our policy. Americans view the fact that Japanese health care begins with diet and lifestyle choices as discrediting it as a whole. What could be nuttier, after all, than doing that?
Unless, like me, you hate raw fish!....I've been to Tokyo twice, I can't say there was much I enjoyed about the place - least of all the food. I pretty much follow the Mediterranean type diet ( with a few beers added in) must as healthy, and far more tasty, IMO.
Raw fish is good! Apparently, the best diets are those which process the food the least. The Icelandic diet - also with lots of raw fish - is best as most foods are eaten in their rawest, most natural form without any processing. The Mediterreanean diet is not bad, but probably too much oil. Of course, the UK and the US are world leaders in processing food. Most things are processed and contain high amounts of added fat, sugar and salt. Fortunately, we are rich enough to pay for health care or our life expectancy would be 50! This has gone off topic, hasn't it?
The pleasing prospect of a cup final was tempered for me when I realized that the UK, which had created the beautiful game and so many other great things, now has a choice between two health care systems: Japan’s, which may be as good an example as there is of a society successfully making the tough choices needed to promote civic welfare, and the United States’. in which all considerations of the public good have long since been forgotten, and the only working motivation is helping HMOs loot the public treasury. Guess which one the UK has chosen to imitate. I believe you ought to consider what can be done to derail what amounts to an epic swindle in the buildup to the Chelsea match, before there’s so much money sloshing around in it that all the politicians have been bought. Right back on topic!
I expect it has, but the original topic is a dead issue now, so WTF? Sorry, but I detest raw fish. Sashimi is my idea of food hell. Who wants to eat raw squid, anyway? Where I live, I buy fresh fruit and veg from the local weekly market - all ridiculously cheap. The freshest fish I can buy direct from the local fisherman right on the beach. Chicken is fresh and plentiful too. I very, very rarely eat anything processed. As for oil. Personally I love Olive Oil and dump loads of it, along with oregano on my salads.
