Saudi purchase of UK football club highlights rights issues
Newcastle United supporters dressed in robes pose with 'sold' placards as they celebrate the sale of the club to a Saudi-led consortium, outside the club's stadium at St James' Park on October 8, 2021.
What you need to know:
- The breakdown of ownership of Newcastle United shows the club is 80 per cent owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
- One reason supporters received the change of ownership with such joy was that the purchase process had taken so long.
Rarely can a sports story have hit so many front pages, filled so many columns of editorial comment and brought joy to so many whilst angering others. I refer to the £305 million purchase last week of the Newcastle United football club.
But then this is not just a sports story. The leading Premiership club in the northeast of England was acquired by a coalition of interests, the dominant one being Saudi Arabian, and that has raised red flags about human rights.
Saudi Arabia retains flogging and capital punishment (by beheading), bans homosexuality and is widely charged with repression of women and political dissidents. As for the most sensational charge of all, the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, a UN report declared flatly that “the state of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is responsible”.
In buying Newcastle United, the Saudis, according to Western activists, are practising what is now known as “sports-washing”. This is the practice of corporations or nation states using sport to improve their international reputation by sponsoring or buying teams or clubs.
The breakdown of ownership of Newcastle United shows the club is 80 per cent owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, with 10 per cent each held by the British financier Amanda Staveley and the Reuben Brothers, real estate magnates who already operate in the Newcastle area. The new owners are reportedly worth £320 billion, making Newcastle United the richest football club in the world.
This is a far cry from the club’s experience over the last 14 years under the unpopular ownership of British billionaire Mike Ashley. Fans accused Ashley of failing to spend the money needed for the club to challenge for serious honours. During his reign, Newcastle were demoted twice and rarely rose into the top half of the Premiership.
One reason supporters received the change of ownership with such joy – thousands gathered round their city centre stadium – was that the purchase process had taken so long. An original agreement in April 2020 stalled on the question of who would control the club. The deal went ahead when the Premier League accepted guarantees that the Saudi state would not run the club but that this would be done by Staveley’s own company.
It is Staveley who has been the public face of the new regime, promising investment in players and in the club’s infrastructure, including the training ground and the youth academy. She has indicated an interest in women’s football and in recruiting such icons as Newcastle-born Alan Shearer, the club’s highest-ever goal-scorer, to remove the image of a feeble club of no-hopers.
This will not be easy, with Newcastle currently second bottom in the League and unable to recruit any new players until the next transfer window opens in January.
***
Offering essay-writing services to students for a fee will become a criminal offence under legislation being prepared by the UK government.
There are believed to be more than 1,000 so-called essay mills in operation here, providing pre-written, custom-tailored essays for students to present as their own work. A survey in 2018 indicated that 15.7 per cent of recent graduates admitted to cheating.
***
Ever heard of a UAV? Me, neither! Apparently, it is an Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle, in other words a drone, and the Royal Mail is using one to deliver mail to remote Scottish islands.
In a two-week trial, a large, twin-engined drone carried up to 100 kilos of mail per journey of 56 kilometres between the Orkney islands of Kirkwall and North Ronaldsay. At a speed of more than 90 mph, the trip takes under 20 minutes.
Once the letters arrive at North Ronaldsay (population 70), they are delivered as usual by local postmen. The aim is to improve connections between distant villages and reduce carbon emissions. A UAV can fly in poor weather, such as fog, and, unlike boat services, is not subject to tides.
***
Most moderately well-read people know that the world’s worst poet was the Scot, William McGonagall, whose Victorian-era epics such as The Tay Bridge Disaster, will, in McGonagall’s own words, “be remember’d for a very long time”.
I recently discovered, however, that McGonagall has a rival, another Scot, Walter McCorrisken, who won a Glasgow newspaper competition for bad poetry in the 1970s. The difference is McGonagall believed he was a great poet, McCorrisken knew he was a terrible one.
For your Sunday morning entertainment, here are a couple of McCorrisken’s best efforts:
As you slide down the bannisters of life,
Slide with joy and not dismay!
And I hope sincerely for your sake
The splinters are facing the other way.
***
And another one, a letter to the Editor:
Dear Sir,
Never bite your fingernails,
It makes your fingers lumpy.
Never bite your fingernails.
Yours sincerely,
Stumpy.
