TRIGGERnometry - Does Politics Belong in Sport？

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster.

00:00:07.840 I'm Constantine Kishin.

00:00:08.980 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:14.260 Our brilliant guest today is a businessman and the former owner and chairman of Crystal Palace Football Club, Simon Jordan.

00:00:19.260 Welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:20.260 Nice to be here, boys.

00:00:21.320 It's great to have you on the show. Thanks for coming on.

00:00:23.400 My pleasure.

00:00:24.020 We've got a big international audience, so some of them might not be familiar with you and your background and your story.

00:00:29.360 Tell everybody a little bit about who are you, how are you, where you are,

00:00:32.560 what is the journey that brings you here sitting and talking to us?

00:00:35.920 Public domain stuff.

00:00:37.160 I mean, I was born and brought up in South London.

00:00:39.120 My father started as a footballer, moved into being a printer,

00:00:43.020 and I was born in South London, 100 yards away from a football club

00:00:45.880 that I ended up buying.

00:00:47.180 I started working in a city when I was 19 years of age in computing,

00:00:51.540 felt I was the best thing since sliced bread, found out that I wasn't,

00:00:54.520 morphed into doing something in the sales industry,

00:00:56.620 Had a couple of businesses, didn't go the way I wanted to, went to America, got some

00:01:00.280 experience over there for two or three years, trying to start businesses over there, came

00:01:04.040 back when I was 24, started to work for Charles Dunstan at the Carphone Warehouse because

00:01:09.160 the mobile phone industry was something I'd known from a previous incarnation.

00:01:12.900 Had a couple of years, 18 months with him, built him one of the most successful parts

00:01:17.280 of his business, looked at him, thought, there's nothing particularly special about you guys

00:01:20.700 that I can't do.

00:01:22.080 So I went out and started a business, became the second largest mobile phone retailer in

00:01:26.060 the UK. After five years, 257 shops, 2,000 staff, and huge ambition, I decided there's two ways for

00:01:34.840 me to go. I can float this business, and I'm not sure that telcos at that particular time

00:01:38.280 were the right propositions to float 20 years ago, or given the expansion programme, given the fact

00:01:44.540 that I'd started with 15 grand and built it into the empire that was there with 257 shops as I

00:01:49.440 just described, we were undercapitalised. What do I want to do? Do I want to raise some capital? Do I

00:01:53.700 want to float or do I want to sell? So I took an opportunity to do at the time, and I still think

00:01:58.100 remains now the biggest private industry sell, and sold it. Took it 78 million plus some stock

00:02:03.400 and walked away with an ambition to do a variety of other things. One of the things that came onto

00:02:09.420 my horizon was the football club that my father played for, that I'd been born a hundred yards

00:02:15.160 away from, supported all my life, had signed schoolboy forms for when I was a kid. It was in

00:02:19.860 distress. You were quite a promising player yourself. Yeah, I was. Yeah, I'd signed for

00:02:24.320 Chelsea and moved on from Chelsea to Palace when Terry Venables, who's quite a well-known

00:02:29.120 sports figure at the time, was in his pomp at Crystal Palace. It hadn't worked out for

00:02:33.900 me. Football is not just about talent, it's about mental application and a pure, unadulterated

00:02:40.260 desire to be successful. That doesn't mean it doesn't translate, unadulterated desire

00:02:44.400 to be successful doesn't translate into other fields, but football playing wasn't my calling

00:02:48.860 in the end so I morphed into the other things I've just described but come back 14 years and

00:02:53.940 the opportunity if you want to describe owning a football club as an opportunity came my way

00:02:57.980 and I figured hmm this is the next frontier sports uh not so much franchises but sports

00:03:05.500 opportunities were becoming more exciting the broadcasters were becoming more invested the

00:03:11.340 opportunity was beginning to become what I felt more grown up and mature and I thought well what's

00:03:16.200 the worst thing can happen it's a bit like the Dr Pepper moment be careful what you wish for you

00:03:20.660 know what's the worst thing that can possibly happen so I bought Crystal Palace 10 years of

00:03:24.660 owning it on my own was arduous and financially challenging 2009-2010 with a variety of businesses

00:03:31.400 I was invested in which wasn't just football clubs it was film production companies it was

00:03:35.040 restaurant groups it was car magazines it was Spanish properties American properties and a

00:03:39.660 variety of non-risky things brought me to an economic challenge which involved me ultimately

00:03:45.180 losing the football club, handing it on to others, and then moving on with a different

00:03:48.960 phase in my life, which brings me to writing books and having intellectual capital to invest

00:03:54.200 in businesses, and now having some fun with broadcasting. So there you are, there's the

00:03:59.000 guided tour, quick as I can get to it. And I used to do talk sport, I used to do

00:04:04.820 overnights at talk sport. Did you? Yeah, I did indeed. But I've been watching you talk

00:04:09.780 about sport, and that's the reason we wanted to get you on, because we thought you were

00:04:12.680 absolutely brilliant thank you it's a very very interesting moment for sport at the moment because

00:04:18.580 we see more and more politics and sports start to merge unfortunately that's true yeah yeah and i

00:04:24.920 would just we'd just like to get your take on it what do you think about it and do you think it's

00:04:28.620 a step in the right direction when you say politics i think sport is being leveraged by politicians at

00:04:35.240 times you know when you look at the current climate in england with the landscape of professional

00:04:41.820 football and the government trading off opportunities because there's political capital

00:04:46.340 to be made, whether it's using sport to rail against the online operators and with the

00:04:54.520 online harms bill being brought in by the government and sport being very vociferous

00:04:59.260 about abuse, whether it be racial or whether it be any kind of abuse. So the government

00:05:04.840 have been vociferous in that respect. It's also been over the years a stocking filler.

00:05:09.580 If you look at the Labour Party 10, 15 years ago,

00:05:12.220 suggesting that part of their manifesto was the idea

00:05:16.040 that they were going to enforce football clubs

00:05:17.920 to have an opportunity for fans to have 10% every time ownership changed.

00:05:23.120 Not practical.

00:05:24.800 And of course, we've got the societal issues more than the political ones

00:05:27.880 where sport's really being, I don't know if you want to say leveraged,

00:05:31.460 but certainly harnessed by good and bad causes, I think.

00:05:35.860 and of course we've seen a very challenging year in the last 12 months for a variety of reasons

00:05:40.540 you know for the bleeding obvious of COVID-19 but we've seen some of the aberrations in society we

00:05:45.780 saw the dreadful events in America with George Floyd which have then been you know afforded

00:05:51.700 opportunities for people to bring certain initiatives forward right and wrong ones

00:05:55.780 superimposing some of the things that are happening in America into our country I'm

00:05:59.720 uncomfortable with. But notwithstanding that, equal opportunity and discrimination are two

00:06:06.280 things that need to be looked at very carefully. Equal opportunity, of course, doesn't mean equal

00:06:10.300 outcome. But equal opportunity is a fundamental right that everybody has. And sport can play a

00:06:15.380 part in that. I don't like, I have never liked, and I've been very vociferous about the sports

00:06:19.320 field being utilised to advance messages, because it's a Pandora's box. You open that box for one

00:06:24.480 cause, you've got to open it for all. And I understand that there's some causes that are

00:06:28.000 more worthy than others you know and there are some animals that are more equal than others

00:06:32.300 according to George Orwell but we are in a world where sport is entertainment the purpose of sport

00:06:38.200 in my view is to take people out of grey lives give them 90 minutes of entertainment in the world

00:06:44.080 of football terms and then put them back with something that's altered their afternoon good

00:06:48.280 and bad not to be leveraged for agendas so my trouble with the idea that it's been politicized

00:06:56.780 I think it's been agenderized more than politicized.

00:06:59.900 But there is an element of politics being played into place

00:07:03.560 when you've got movements like Black Lives Matter

00:07:06.120 and other scenarios where sport will try to be leveraged for various advances.

00:07:14.020 And I'm very comfortable for high-profile sports stars to use their platforms,

00:07:18.600 but I'm not comfortable for the pitch to be used.

00:07:21.620 I'm uncomfortable with that.

00:07:23.300 I'm uncomfortable with the methods that are being deployed at times.

00:07:26.100 and I'm uncomfortable with the manner in which the messages

00:07:28.980 are being imparted by some of the mainstream media

00:07:30.940 that leverage sport and also have their own bias.

00:07:35.020 It's a really, really good answer, what you've just said,

00:07:37.580 about the agendalising of sport.

00:07:39.440 And it's happened particularly very, very quickly

00:07:42.580 over the past season.

00:07:44.220 What is your opinion of taking the knee?

00:07:47.360 Do you think players should be allowed to do it

00:07:50.380 or do you take the Olympic approach,

00:07:52.160 which is there should be no politics, overt politics in sport?

00:07:56.100 at all? Well, my view is that there shouldn't be any politics in sports. I think that stars of

00:08:03.280 sport now have such a platform in a variety of other environments that they can utilise the

00:08:08.320 image that they want. And I'm not comfortable with the pitch being utilised or the stadium or

00:08:13.460 whatever you want. Now, I know there will be arguments that suggest that there are other

00:08:17.260 causes that are advanced. Whether you put a poppy on someone's shirt, you're doing the same thing.

00:08:20.020 And I hear that argument. I think they come from a different point of view, but I understand it.

00:08:24.140 I'm also uncomfortable with the not so much a tokenism of taking the knee the genesis of that

00:08:33.520 has been hijacked it's been hijacked from what Colin Kaepernick did which started with the fact

00:08:38.280 that he was wasn't in wasn't in the camera line so he was sitting on the bench sitting down when

00:08:43.920 the national flag was being celebrated before every single game and then because because he

00:08:48.320 wasn't getting the attention he took a knee to demonstrate against the oppression and the racial

00:08:53.860 inequality and the abuse of black men and the police brutality now i'm troubled by that because

00:08:59.780 bringing that into an environment in this country where i do not believe i'm not black obviously and

00:09:05.200 i and i cannot look at the world through the eyes of a black person i have a i have mixed race in

00:09:09.760 my family i've been brought up in south london and i understand some of the dynamics of it but i can

00:09:14.080 never actually walk through someone's shoes or have someone's lived experience is the is the

00:09:18.180 expression and you know and if i don't agree with things of course unconscious bias will come to

00:09:22.520 play in the minds of those whose opinions I don't agree with. But I was always troubled with the

00:09:27.280 taking of the knee. And the reasons why I was troubled with the taking of the knee is not

00:09:31.320 because it came from Game of Thrones, like one of our moron politicians said, or because it

00:09:36.100 symbolised subservience. It's because it represented something that a politically

00:09:43.920 motivated organisation had attached themselves to. And whether people like it or they don't like it,

00:09:50.320 Black Lives Matter as a statement is something I'm very comfortable with.

00:09:54.720 Black Lives Matter as a movement is something I'm very uncomfortable with

00:09:59.500 because I think their agendas and their outlook and their destruction

00:10:04.300 or their ideals behind the destruction of society,

00:10:07.260 whether you've got Antifa in the mix

00:10:08.760 or whether you've got a whole range of ideas that destruct capitalism,

00:10:15.160 destruct society, defund police, and God knows whatever else they want.

00:10:19.660 To have that agenda dropped into a sport by association was a trouble for me.

00:10:27.360 And the reasons why I made certain observations which people were uncomfortable with,

00:10:32.920 they were uncomfortable within the framework of the broadcasting platform that I use at times.

00:10:36.620 And it was misrepresentation because there was an example in England

00:10:40.220 with a particular football club that has a notorious background or a little bit of infamy

00:10:45.220 where an issue had arisen that players were taking the knee

00:10:49.640 and the fans were booing it.

00:10:51.640 And I raised the question because I'm very, very focused

00:10:55.000 on mainstream media activity and the agenda rising

00:10:58.020 and the misrepresentation and the lack of nuance

00:11:01.340 that they want to put on when they want to sensationalise things.

00:11:04.220 And I questioned the idea that this booing

00:11:06.840 was simply because the fans were racist

00:11:09.380 rather than after a stable diet had been force-fed into our minds

00:11:14.660 about BLM we had seen people running around in London defacing statues you know running around

00:11:23.700 spray painting Winston Churchill's statue with the BLM moniker and we had also been indoctrinated

00:11:31.440 by mainstream media about the existence of Black Lives Matter as a movement in America and its

00:11:36.740 origins and its thinking and it was to me unfathomable that people there wasn't a possibility

00:11:42.600 that people were rebelling against the concept of Black Lives Matter,

00:11:47.120 the political motivation, rather than the statement that, of course, Black Lives Matter.

00:11:52.880 So I was uncomfortable with that.

00:11:55.260 And subsequently, the association with the taking of the knee.

00:11:58.880 The players themselves find it ambiguous.

00:12:01.620 They had to make statements before games, even though people said,

00:12:05.180 this is very clear, people like you, Simon, are choosing not to understand what this means.

00:12:10.180 you're choosing to select the messages you want to hear well I'm not because if it was so clear

00:12:15.980 then the people that were taking the knee themselves wouldn't need to put out statements

00:12:20.080 to reinforce that they were kneeling for anti-discrimination and then we move into the

00:12:26.020 territory of having been a football club owner been inside this industry and I'm very troubled

00:12:32.080 with the fact that the allegation is that the football industry is racist and there's racism

00:12:38.700 within the confines of it or our society is racist systemically is the allegation and I was

00:12:45.360 troubled by these things because I concur and accept and abhor racism in every form and I see

00:12:55.700 it on the terraces but I didn't see it in the industry and just because statistics are the

00:13:02.300 beginning of a conversation they don't mean they're the end of it and statistics were being

00:13:05.760 brought up about the football industry being racist because there wasn't enough representation

00:13:10.980 and I wanted to question the reasons why I don't want someone to give me a fact without support

00:13:17.500 I don't need someone to tell me to educate myself and then if I cut if I don't come around to their

00:13:23.220 way of thinking go away and educate myself some more all right I have my own views and often

00:13:28.340 they're based upon experience and having been an owner in a football club having been an owner of

00:13:33.240 a football club in a multi-ethnic environment driven by multi-ethnicity and never having an

00:13:38.000 application from the black community I'm struggling with the idea that the game is racist at its core

00:13:44.740 so the issue for me was what are you actually kneeling for you're kneeling for societal issues

00:13:49.660 and I'm not sure that sport should be held up as the poster boy or leveraged to be such it shouldn't

00:13:56.520 be held to a higher standard because I don't think that's fair on sport I think that's wrong and those

00:14:01.300 that want to do it are people that are trying to genderise it for their own end game and not

00:14:05.520 necessarily for the benefit of those they purport to represent. And see, that misrepresentation that

00:14:12.140 you talk about where you say, I don't support BLM, the organisation, but I support BLM, Black Lives

00:14:17.740 Matter, the slogan, is actually what people call the Mott and Bailey tactic, where you present

00:14:22.520 something which is defund the police, abolish capitalism, etc. And the moment anyone criticises

00:14:28.040 it, you retreat to the position, well, you're saying black lives don't matter, which of

00:14:32.900 course is-

00:14:33.400 It's a bait and switch.

00:14:34.400 Yeah, exactly.

00:14:35.580 Exactly.

00:14:36.140 But, you know, I think one of the, just to step back a little bit more, one of the reasons

00:14:39.640 people love sports so much is at least they perceive it as a meritocracy, right?

00:14:44.440 People think, and I don't know, you tell us whether this is true or false, that, you

00:14:48.580 know, the whole point about sport is if you're good, you're going to succeed.

00:14:51.960 If you're not, you're not going to succeed.

00:14:53.660 That's the ideal.

00:14:54.400 That's the ideal.

00:14:55.080 Is that accurate in terms of the Premier League and football in general?

00:15:00.320 Or do you think there is discrimination

00:15:01.980 and people from certain backgrounds are kept out

00:15:05.000 even though they're more talented than others?

00:15:06.480 No, I don't think.

00:15:08.280 I think football is a landscape where, and I don't mean to be flippant,

00:15:12.660 knowing most of the 92 football club owners,

00:15:14.780 they would have employed Osama Bin Laden

00:15:16.720 if they thought we could win games for them.

00:15:19.820 So they don't prejudice against colour or creed.

00:15:22.620 that the only thing that's prejudicing football is integrity

00:15:25.280 because there's not a lot of it going on from the pitch upwards,

00:15:28.320 from players cheating through to the current climate

00:15:30.840 of football club owners wanting to do precisely what they want

00:15:33.440 with zero concern about the rest of the ecosystem,

00:15:36.660 albeit that ecosystem was already destroyed

00:15:39.320 by 20 clubs in the Premier League that couldn't give a monkey

00:15:41.880 about the other 72 clubs in English football.

00:15:44.000 So there's a lot of hypocrisy in the world of sport.

00:15:47.200 But meritocracy, yes, of course, meritocracy,

00:15:50.500 whether it's economic meritocracy or it's sporting prowess within the confines of football,

00:15:55.760 the economic power and might of the big clubs in English football

00:16:00.640 and the talent that they are able to attract is part and parcel of two things,

00:16:05.480 economic meritocracy and sporting meritocracy.

00:16:08.700 The challenge I have is that sports need governance.

00:16:11.980 It needs to mature and needs proper governance.

00:16:14.200 And the landscape of sports, those that can affect those that can't,

00:16:18.320 unfortunately in football because of the collective relationships of how football is

00:16:21.480 held together how sports like football are held together so those that can the argument that

00:16:27.600 football should oh football's going bankrupt or clubs are getting themselves into trouble and

00:16:31.700 they should have the nancy reagan mentality of just say no to the next player transfer

00:16:35.580 is for the birds because football is a public domain business that's driven by sentiment

00:16:40.700 driven by momentum driven by demands and having been an owner that didn't lose his head but still

00:16:46.400 wanted to try and satisfy my own ambitions to the fans ambitions there are different forces that

00:16:51.120 come to pass and if you haven't got governance in sports specifically financial governance and

00:16:55.700 then you've got nation states that buy football clubs that are worth 320 billion quid and they

00:16:59.500 can buy who they want when they want and they drive the price up for everybody else and then

00:17:03.580 the fallback fall down effect is everybody else gets affected by it then it becomes a very

00:17:08.140 challenging landscape and those are the things that i would have i rail against in the incarnation

00:17:13.840 I have now, which is broadcasting alongside other things that I do, at the same time as

00:17:18.180 remembering how I railed against it whilst I was in it. So sporting meritocracy, of course it exists

00:17:24.840 because the best are clearly the best. The opportunities based upon colour and creed and

00:17:31.300 ethnicity are not denied in sports because the four corners of the world fling forward the talent

00:17:36.880 and the opportunity exists evermore in sport because the channels are far wider open because

00:17:42.920 people are looking for talent across the four you know the four corners of the world so no I don't

00:17:48.160 believe emphatically do not believe some of the nonsense that's trotted out that certain communities

00:17:53.040 are precluded and excluded from opportunities and that's not because I sit here as a middle-aged

00:17:58.600 white man with the luxury of having white privilege it's because I sit here not sitting

00:18:02.800 in the world of theory and live in a world of experience and those are some of the things that

00:18:08.180 I find very difficult with the mainstream media if you listen some of the broadcasting which I

00:18:12.080 know you have done I spend a lot of my time really teeing off on the mainstream media because I

00:18:17.780 object to the manner in which things are represented I object to some of the ideas that

00:18:22.700 were advanced when we had these dreadful situations on Clapham Common with that vigil for that poor

00:18:27.520 girl that was murdered and then we see the police being brutalized and people piling in

00:18:32.600 and politicians suggesting that we've got to have apologies left right and center because nothing now

00:18:37.100 that you do in life doesn't come with an apology and even if you apologize for it it's still not

00:18:41.280 good enough yet when we find out the real truth behind these sort of events we never see the

00:18:46.040 people that made the accusations the politicians like Keir Starmer or other people that came out

00:18:50.460 Ed Davey that came out and vilified police never come back up again and say well actually we were

00:18:55.840 wrong we should be apologizing now so I'm I am very across these things and have very strong

00:19:01.400 views about it and I just want authenticity I want honesty you know we can all cope with honesty

00:19:06.720 we can all cope with the truth being told to us

00:19:09.080 because it's far more compelling

00:19:10.620 than some of the misrepresentations

00:19:12.600 and the danger that we live in in this society

00:19:14.700 is so often you know we're through the looking glass

00:19:17.980 what's up is down you know what people want to show you

00:19:21.480 they don't show you nuance they show you binary

00:19:23.620 and we're living in a binary world

00:19:24.980 and it's not right to live in a binary world

00:19:27.260 because everything has nuance

00:19:29.060 there is a qualification behind most things

00:19:31.000 and people have the right to see a little bit more than they do see

00:19:34.720 and deserve better I think at times

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00:20:06.520 It's a big part of the success of our show

00:20:08.320 because we offer that alternative to people.

00:20:10.360 Good lads, keep it up.

00:20:12.700 Well, it's good to have you on.

00:20:14.360 But listen, the question I was going to...

00:20:16.020 Please don't take this as an insult,

00:20:17.380 but you were a very wealthy man when you purchased Crystal Palace.

00:20:20.760 You're still a very wealthy man now.

00:20:22.460 But you are a pauper by comparison.

00:20:25.780 I'm a waiter.

00:20:26.740 By comparison to the people who own football clubs now.

00:20:29.540 Absolutely.

00:20:30.620 The scale of opportunity and the scale of individual

00:20:33.360 that have come in for a variety of reasons.

00:20:35.680 You know, some would say Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea

00:20:37.620 with a very expensive life insurance policy.

00:20:39.440 And the motivations behind the Middle Eastern consortiums

00:20:42.040 may well be sports washing, if you want to make those allegations.

00:20:44.820 People buy football clubs for a variety of reasons,

00:20:46.480 some for credibility, some for recognizability,

00:20:48.460 some for sheer adoration, you know.

00:20:50.100 And you're absolutely right that the association of wealth now

00:20:53.940 is far greater to, you know, to be an owner of a football club.

00:20:58.420 When I made 100 million quid when I was 31 years of age,

00:21:01.240 whoa, I was something special.

00:21:03.260 By comparison, I'm a waiter now in economic terms.

00:21:06.040 And what do you think the impact of that is on the game?

00:21:08.620 What do you think the impact of that is on the game?

00:21:10.560 Do you think that's been for the benefit?

00:21:11.900 We see the best players in the world playing in the Premier League?

00:21:15.460 Or do you think it's been, you know,

00:21:17.080 Arsene Wenger famously described it as financial doping.

00:21:21.200 Whilst drawing £10 million a year salary.

00:21:25.120 I think with all money comes an element of corruption and pollution

00:21:30.060 and the changing of agendas and the changing of motivations.

00:21:33.960 And I don't just mean win-it-all-cost mentality.

00:21:35.880 I mean that money does take away the edge.

00:21:38.180 It does take away the desire.

00:21:39.420 It does take away the fight within you because it softens you.

00:21:43.020 And it takes away some of the integrity of the sport

00:21:47.160 because we are seeing a sport now driven by money.

00:21:49.020 We're seeing the ugly side of sport,

00:21:51.200 specifically and explicitly in the last two weeks

00:21:53.440 with the Premier League and the so-called super clubs

00:21:56.600 trying to find a mechanism to generate more revenue,

00:22:01.880 which, by the way, I don't disagree with

00:22:03.460 because we've got a situation where the player salaries

00:22:06.480 are so far out of control, there's no reset,

00:22:08.280 even despite the worst economic landscape

00:22:10.000 that we've seen for the sport,

00:22:11.560 probably since the Second World War,

00:22:13.620 has not done anything to reset

00:22:15.360 the financial opportunities for players.

00:22:17.840 So these six clubs in England

00:22:19.300 and the six clubs in the rest of Europe

00:22:20.840 and whether the Bayern Munichs of the world

00:22:22.940 and whoever else were going to come in at a later stage,

00:22:24.940 we'll never know or never know in this incarnation the the issue was about the loss of sport in

00:22:31.560 meritocracy but to go to your theme of the financial side of it it is just that it is just

00:22:40.000 the reality of the world that we now live in and when I had a vision 20 years ago looking at sports

00:22:46.340 thinking bloody difficult business far easier ways to keep my money let me make some more

00:22:51.600 but I do believe there's a landscape here

00:22:54.680 I've been railing for some time

00:22:57.140 about sports

00:22:58.380 not needing broadcasters

00:23:00.720 like Sky anymore

00:23:01.900 and having the ability

00:23:03.020 to be able to deliver their own content

00:23:05.040 the Netflix of football idea

00:23:06.840 that I've been mooting around

00:23:07.960 which I believe

00:23:09.340 was part of the ESL's thinking

00:23:11.220 we'll do our own tournament

00:23:12.400 then we'll build our own platform

00:23:13.480 then we'll monetise ourselves

00:23:14.420 and we'll dwarf whatever revenues

00:23:16.880 but finance

00:23:18.300 the world turns on finances

00:23:20.100 everything

00:23:21.200 Whether we like it or we don't like it,

00:23:23.540 the economics of life from the lowest common denominator

00:23:26.360 to the highest totem pole is about money.

00:23:29.720 It turns the world, whether countries invade other countries

00:23:32.560 to preserve oil reservoirs or whether football clubs

00:23:35.620 are spending ridiculous amounts of money,

00:23:38.560 at the centre of most of it is money.

00:23:41.220 So do I like it?

00:23:43.320 Well, I'm a grown-up.

00:23:45.020 I accept it's a reality.

00:23:47.200 I'd like governance, I'd like control over our sport

00:23:49.440 because there's nothing wrong with football clubs making money

00:23:52.260 and there's nothing wrong with owners making money

00:23:55.020 except according to fans

00:23:56.820 because the only people allowed to make money

00:23:58.020 are players, agents and managers

00:23:59.580 which is just for the birds for me

00:24:01.840 but I'm not troubled by it

00:24:04.620 I'm just troubled by the lack of governance

00:24:06.180 and the lack of control

00:24:07.400 because sport is unique

00:24:09.540 we can't forget

00:24:10.420 of course I say it's business

00:24:12.320 because when you're paying footballers £200,000 a week

00:24:15.780 as almost disgusting as that is

00:24:18.100 for what they're actually doing in comparison

00:24:19.720 to what some people are doing in society

00:24:20.880 that are far more valuable, as we have seen,

00:24:22.980 over the last 12 months.

00:24:24.520 You know, it's difficult to justify it.

00:24:28.060 But we are where we are.

00:24:31.280 We are where we are.

00:24:32.880 And, you know, I don't see that landscape changing anytime soon.

00:24:36.540 We've just got to mature, try and make sure that the industry

00:24:41.880 and protect these football clubs at the same time

00:24:44.200 because there's a part of me that thinks

00:24:45.680 they should have a blue plaque over the door,

00:24:47.220 you know a bit like a listed building and have a certain set of protections because they are part

00:24:53.460 of the community they are part of the unique values of this country and any country that's

00:24:57.580 got football clubs that and sports environments that are very important to them but we are now

00:25:02.920 moving into the territory in this country where we sell everything don't we you know we're quite

00:25:06.840 prepared to sell the London Stock Exchange not so long ago so why wouldn't our community products

00:25:10.620 like football clubs be sold I just and and again not to be too uh waxing lyrical about the value

00:25:18.340 of football clubs I love football fans I grew up being a football fan I value the football fans

00:25:23.460 but they're part of the problem because they're the ones that scream for the next billionaire to

00:25:26.220 come in um and the challenge for me is is how do you deliver back on their expectations when their

00:25:34.360 expectations are unrealistic football started as a working person sports when you start flying

00:25:40.000 players around the world and private jets it's a business and when you start attracting

00:25:44.660 billionaires in there you have to grow up and realize why these people are there they're not

00:25:48.680 there because they like moss side and they're not there because they like the king's road

00:25:52.540 they're there because there's an opportunity and a reason for them to be there and it isn't because

00:25:56.600 of the love of the football club they may develop an affinity and association with it but it'll

00:26:01.460 always be a conduit and vehicle for whatever other ambitions aspirations and ideals people

00:26:06.140 of that ilk may have.

00:26:09.520 Hey, Constantine, do you love Trigonometry?

00:26:12.540 Of course.

00:26:13.400 Incredible interviews, hilarious live streams,

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00:26:23.240 and you want to support us,

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00:26:27.260 and that's on Locals.

00:26:28.560 Yes, Locals is a brilliant platform

00:26:30.840 that has been incredibly supportive to our show

00:26:33.480 and other problematic creators.

00:26:36.140 The great thing about Locals is that it's a community for people who love trigonometry.

00:26:40.940 That's right. It's a place for you to hang out with like-minded people,

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00:27:03.220 Get in.

00:27:03.800 Join our community by hitting the link in the description and the pinned comment below.

00:27:08.780 See you there, guys.

00:27:11.120 And Simon, we were talking about, just jumping back a little bit to the earlier part of the interview,

00:27:17.460 where you were talking about the sport not being racist.

00:27:19.960 I suppose the one consistent argument against that is the issue of black managers.

00:27:24.880 Why are there so few black managers when I think, is it something like 40%, perhaps more, of footballers are black or mixed race?

00:27:32.920 128 black footballers in the Premier League

00:27:36.960 out of something like 6-700

00:27:39.800 of which 64 are English 64

00:27:43.080 65 are from overseas clubs

00:27:46.420 or overseas parts of the world

00:27:48.600 which means they tend to go back there

00:27:50.000 you've had 25% of the clubs in this country

00:27:53.760 employ black managers

00:27:54.640 the problem is

00:27:56.480 they're the same black managers

00:27:58.060 they're Chris Hewton

00:27:59.340 they're Jimmy Floyd Hasselbeck

00:28:00.520 they're Paul Ince

00:28:01.460 is football responsible for a certain community stepping up is there a blockage I've asked the

00:28:07.480 question on a number of occasions I never get an answer because I question it not because I want

00:28:12.720 to question it not because I'm uncomfortable with it not because I'm a white man that wants to

00:28:16.100 protect his position because I want to know what the problem is once you know what the problem is

00:28:19.720 you can fix it I don't want hyperbole I don't want the the the the theory I want the fact

00:28:25.680 why have we got a blockage?

00:28:28.060 I know the football club owners.

00:28:30.180 I know who they wouldn't employ

00:28:32.400 and why they wouldn't employ them.

00:28:33.700 I see them employing Germans.

00:28:35.920 I see them employing Portuguese.

00:28:38.040 I see them employing Italians.

00:28:39.400 So the notion that they wouldn't employ people

00:28:41.720 from the black community, I struggle with.

00:28:44.020 Then I try to get answers.

00:28:45.660 Say, right, okay, we've got...

00:28:46.900 If we are, if this game is wracked

00:28:49.260 with institutional racism,

00:28:51.640 because you often hear institutional racism

00:28:53.600 as a scenario it's brought out.

00:28:56.100 And people make these sweeping statements

00:28:57.700 and then they don't justify them.

00:28:59.060 I heard institutional racism

00:29:01.020 is that more black women die in childbirth.

00:29:04.280 Boom, that's an example of institutional racism.

00:29:06.300 My first question after that is why?

00:29:08.120 And then I get greeted with silence.

00:29:10.100 Is it because more black women have more children?

00:29:12.940 Is it because there's a congenital defect?

00:29:15.140 Is there a linguistic challenge?

00:29:16.440 Is there reasons behind this so-called institutional racism?

00:29:18.980 Because I thought 27% of the National Health Service

00:29:21.820 were from the black community.

00:29:23.880 I thought there was a leaning towards making sure

00:29:27.140 that there's a correct balance within the framework of...

00:29:30.580 I've just had a baby boy, so I'm talking from experience.

00:29:33.600 And institutional racism being trotted out

00:29:35.800 without an understanding of it

00:29:37.680 is something that I find challenging.

00:29:39.880 So when I get into the football world and say,

00:29:41.540 OK, you're telling me that there's a systemic racist problem in football,

00:29:45.400 I can't see why.

00:29:47.420 I never, and I fired managers for fun,

00:29:50.180 I never had an application from a black manager for a job at a football club which was multi-ethnic

00:29:57.120 which had black players black supporters and I had black coaches and I employed people from

00:30:02.520 all communities when people approached me oh well Simon you're the exception no I'm really not the

00:30:07.420 exception right so what is the issue I try to get the statistics through okay tell me the the channels

00:30:15.520 that are open for black managers to be successful in?

00:30:19.680 How many black coaches have we got that are being qualified

00:30:22.600 and getting their badges?

00:30:24.080 Because part of the ability to be a manager in English football

00:30:27.220 is you have to have coaching qualifications.

00:30:29.340 What are the statistics?

00:30:30.660 Are we producing 30% of the coaches that are coming through

00:30:34.420 from the black community and only 6% of the jobs?

00:30:38.320 Or is it 10% of the coaches that are coming through are black

00:30:43.360 and 6% of them are getting, and the statistics are 6%.

00:30:46.780 So there's not this big disparity, but I never get an answer.

00:30:50.580 I get a central theme.

00:30:51.880 I ask people, I ask questions about what does institutional racism look like

00:30:56.500 in a country that has 25% of the cabinet from black and minority ethnic groups

00:31:03.360 that has the chairman of the Conservative Party, James Cleverley,

00:31:07.240 being a man from the black community.

00:31:09.840 I look at the mayor of London and see that opportunity from that community.

00:31:15.600 And I say to myself, if we are an institutional society,

00:31:19.180 sorry, an institutionally racist society,

00:31:21.160 how are these situations manifesting themselves?

00:31:23.500 And I read up on critical race theory to understand the mechanisms behind it.

00:31:27.280 And I speak to educated people from all sides.

00:31:29.980 And the answer I get back is these people are Uncle Tom's.

00:31:35.360 These people are gateways from morphing into one community or another.

00:31:39.320 And I say, well, I can't win then because there isn't a critical thinking

00:31:43.080 behind your thinking.

00:31:44.080 There is a motivation to suggest that unless I see your point of view,

00:31:47.280 I have unconscious bias, I have white privilege.

00:31:50.600 And I struggle with these things because I really do believe as a man

00:31:54.440 and as a human being that everyone has the right for equal opportunity

00:31:57.940 but not equal outcome.

00:32:00.940 Jordan Peterson, trope I know, but notwithstanding it, still relevant.

00:32:04.820 and I look at that and say we are moving into a world of quotas

00:32:09.800 and representation of every single group

00:32:13.040 so we'll now have a country and a business environment that's made up of

00:32:16.840 so if you're going to put people on boards because of their colour

00:32:19.220 you've got to put them on there because of their age, because of their sexuality

00:32:21.740 because of their, you've got to put people that are disabled to represent that quota

00:32:26.200 so all of a sudden you'll have a country made up of quotas

00:32:28.700 and we will go to the dogs because talent will be moved to one side

00:32:32.640 and quotas will be the best.

00:32:33.660 And if we want that kind of world,

00:32:35.520 then be careful what we wish for.

00:32:37.780 So I have these views, whether they're right or wrong.

00:32:40.400 I don't sit there with a blinkered point of view saying,

00:32:43.520 my way's the right way.

00:32:44.520 I have a binary outlook.

00:32:45.780 I want to know why you're saying these things.

00:32:47.840 So go to your point.

00:32:48.900 Do I believe it's a closed shop?

00:32:50.320 Do I believe it's racist?

00:32:51.300 Do I believe there's a problem?

00:32:52.400 I think the problem exists much amongst the community

00:32:55.060 that are complaining about it,

00:32:56.960 not wanting to advance their own opportunity

00:32:58.720 because I know the argument is well rehearsed.

00:33:01.540 we're good enough to be in the theatre as the actors but we're not good enough to be the

00:33:06.100 impresarios I hear that nobody is stopping people from any community from buying a football club

00:33:11.600 you know anyone's money is the same colour and I speak to you know people within the game and I

00:33:18.680 ask the question about racism in football Trevor Sinclair is a very good friend of mine Trevor

00:33:22.800 tell me what racism have you experienced in football well I've been called rude names by

00:33:27.780 I'm sorry, the fans are societal issues

00:33:30.820 and football clubs have a zero tolerance policy

00:33:32.800 but what racial issues have you had

00:33:35.260 that have stopped you from advancing

00:33:36.880 and being able to be successful in your field

00:33:39.200 and there the conversation stops

00:33:40.840 because I don't want to discredit the argument.

00:33:44.360 I don't want not to sit there and say

00:33:46.940 that if you believe it to be true

00:33:48.440 then I have to accept your views

00:33:50.040 but I want to be told how it can be fixed

00:33:53.340 because if you live in a world of hypothesis

00:33:56.060 and you don't get to the real issue,

00:33:59.860 then you'll never fix anything

00:34:01.100 because what you're being told isn't a real issue.

00:34:03.560 Of course there's a representation issue,

00:34:05.960 but why?

00:34:06.900 Is it not just a statistic?

00:34:08.780 The statistic is a beginning of a conversation.

00:34:10.840 Now we've got to get to the root cause

00:34:12.220 of the reason for the lack of representation in sports.

00:34:15.660 The reason for lack of representation from the Asian community.

00:34:18.720 Once upon a time, Michael Chopra was an Asian footballer

00:34:21.620 that played for Newcastle,

00:34:23.060 that was owned by a friend of mine, St John Hall.

00:34:25.260 Douglas Hall was a very close friend of mine

00:34:27.360 because we lived together next to one another in Spain.

00:34:29.500 And they felt that Michael Chopra

00:34:31.180 was the beginning of the Asian opportunity

00:34:34.380 to bring young talented Asian footballers into football,

00:34:37.660 to monetise, of course, the other side of it

00:34:39.480 for the eyes on the screen around the world.

00:34:41.760 It hasn't happened and the representation is there.

00:34:43.880 Why?

00:34:44.980 People are not interested in why.

00:34:46.480 They're interested in pointing their finger at it

00:34:48.020 and blaming somebody for it

00:34:49.040 rather than actually providing a solution.

00:34:50.960 And nobody wants a solution

00:34:52.220 based upon someone being positively discriminated, do they?

00:34:56.040 I don't.

00:34:56.660 There's lots of people who do, but it's funny, nor do we.

00:35:00.120 And it's funny, you're talking about many other things

00:35:02.940 that we've explored on the show,

00:35:03.980 these Uncle Toms that you refer to.

00:35:05.820 We've had plenty of them on the show.

00:35:07.420 We've had Jordan Peterson on the show.

00:35:09.920 But it's interesting to me that you're coming at it.

00:35:13.220 So to just go back to Francis' question,

00:35:16.080 you've never had a conversation

00:35:17.440 with an owner of another football club who said,

00:35:19.840 oh, this guy applied, but I don't like them.

00:35:21.740 Never.

00:35:22.220 Nothing like that.

00:35:23.080 And I vehemently believe, knowing these guys,

00:35:25.800 because, you know, us football club owners

00:35:28.060 are a certain mindset.

00:35:29.600 And as I said, Slava flippantly, you know,

00:35:32.260 that they would have employed Osama Bin Laden

00:35:33.800 if he were alive and could have won games for them.

00:35:36.540 That tells you that it's not about colour or creed.

00:35:38.860 It's not.

00:35:40.120 People that seek to try to justify

00:35:42.260 why there isn't representation or advanced causes,

00:35:45.420 you know, may well advance that.

00:35:47.660 But I genuinely believe that there are not enough

00:35:51.180 black coaches coming through that are getting their badges i believe that the actual landscape

00:35:57.340 when we talk about 30 because the figure is advanced 30 percent of players in the premier

00:36:03.020 league are from the black or minority ethnic communities predominantly black right and i know

00:36:07.900 we've got to separate the word bane now um because there's an objection to that that mnemonic i don't

00:36:12.860 know where it came from in the first place i never wanted to use it i want to call black people black

00:36:15.700 but you know we move and we adjust to the times don't we but when you actually distill that down

00:36:20.460 and say, well, actually, only 64 of those players

00:36:23.940 are indigenous to this country,

00:36:25.540 it might give you an explanation

00:36:26.780 because a lot of people live in a country,

00:36:28.100 have a contract, play for a football team,

00:36:29.340 go back to their own countries.

00:36:30.500 So they don't form part of the statistic

00:36:32.080 that we should be really looking at.

00:36:33.780 The representation isn't right,

00:36:35.680 but I'm still not understanding why that is the case.

00:36:39.140 And taking of the knee is a societal stand

00:36:43.480 against anti-discrimination,

00:36:45.120 but I don't believe the national sport

00:36:47.400 is racked with discrimination.

00:36:49.540 so I believe it's a flawed concept

00:36:51.520 if you're trying to get rid of racism in football

00:36:53.600 you know

00:36:55.640 the zero tolerance policy that clubs have

00:36:57.380 towards fans is one

00:36:59.480 thing but to suggest

00:37:01.700 the sport somehow

00:37:03.460 as a discrimination problem

00:37:05.080 I'm troubled with not because I want to be troubled

00:37:07.500 by it because I have no dog in the fight anymore

00:37:09.060 I don't own a football club anymore and I'm only

00:37:11.560 interested in authentic

00:37:13.160 observations

00:37:15.100 that can affect change

00:37:16.860 not just being able to be

00:37:19.480 utilised for someone else's agenda that wants to shout the loudest and you we get that a lot i mean

00:37:24.900 look the the american football brought in the rooney rule do you think that could be a good idea

00:37:29.160 um i'm not against it they brought it into the english football league which is obviously the

00:37:35.100 tier below the premier league but they didn't do it properly which is so often the case with

00:37:40.020 football that they brought it in without reporting mechanisms they brought it in as a protocol

00:37:44.000 and a guideline, but they didn't bring in reporting

00:37:47.520 to really be able to get underneath the fingernails

00:37:50.400 of how recruitment was being done,

00:37:52.880 how people were being given an opportunity from all communities.

00:37:56.460 I worry that it falls into a quota area,

00:38:00.100 but anything that's fair and equitable

00:38:04.720 that advances opportunity for talent, then I'm for.

00:38:08.940 You know, I build a business that I was involved in very, very heavily.

00:38:13.140 You don't build a business with 15 grand and in five years sell it for the best part of 100 million quid,

00:38:17.860 never having borrowed the money, never had any investors,

00:38:20.660 and just be different without really being underneath the fingernails of it.

00:38:23.660 And I spoke to every single member of staff on every single induction course

00:38:27.480 and every single trading regime, instilling in them the belief that I couldn't care what they looked like,

00:38:32.820 where they came from, what their colour creed was, what their ethnicity was, what their sex was.

00:38:36.600 All I cared about was that they did a good job.

00:38:39.060 And I gave them an opportunity to have the opportunity they wanted,

00:38:42.260 which was life is about success irrespective of the measure of success because we go to work to

00:38:50.000 have a better life outside of it I'm going to give you the opportunity to be successful I'm going to

00:38:54.520 demand from you your very best if you work for me for six days six weeks six months or six years I

00:39:00.280 want your best six days six weeks six months or six years and expect the same from me and irrespective

00:39:04.920 of what you look like where you come from I will afford you all those opportunities and you will

00:39:09.340 take them yourself and make them yourself. And I believe in that emphatically. So that

00:39:13.440 then translates into my outlook in life. So I believe religiously and emphatically in

00:39:19.440 the fact that talent is the definer. Talent is the definer. And I rail against the fact

00:39:24.900 that people will agendarize certain challenges that they may have and put it down to the

00:39:33.700 fact that people are suppressing them because of their ethnicity i accept i accept the argument

00:39:40.120 in this country that we have racism in this country and exists on both sides of all communities

00:39:44.640 right and i don't accept that the same issues that happen in america which has a 40 percent

00:39:50.360 racial mix towards latinos and the black community and the caucasian community whereas in this

00:39:56.320 country it's very different dynamics and i don't accept the societal issues in america exist here

00:40:02.700 and I'm very challenged by the argument that's advanced

00:40:06.300 and the regimes that are being deployed

00:40:08.680 to suggest this country is institutionally racist.

00:40:11.980 I don't accept it, not because I don't want to,

00:40:14.960 because I live in this country and I have open eyes

00:40:16.940 and whilst I'm not black, you know,

00:40:19.180 I've been brought up with most of my friends

00:40:21.120 and I know that's a token argument that people advance,

00:40:23.000 but my friend's a black person.

00:40:24.240 I have a black nephew who,

00:40:25.520 or I watch the world through his eyes as well

00:40:27.220 and I see the opportunities that he does or doesn't have

00:40:29.820 based upon his own way of approaching life.

00:40:32.700 But I do accept, fundamentally accept,

00:40:36.040 that there is endemic racism in this country and in this society.

00:40:39.560 What does that mean?

00:40:41.000 Well, systemic means that the whole country,

00:40:42.760 every single institution is rife with it.

00:40:45.680 Endemic means it's localised and it's not specific to,

00:40:48.700 you know, it's not an overall catch-all.

00:40:49.900 So there are racist people in the country?

00:40:51.500 Of course there are.

00:40:52.080 Well, no one would deny that.

00:40:53.120 You'd be insane to do so.

00:40:54.740 But, you know, but the argument's not being advanced as a choice, is it?

00:40:57.720 It's being advanced that this country is systemically racist.

00:41:00.340 It's institutionally racist.

00:41:02.700 And I struggle with that.

00:41:04.340 I struggle with critical race theory

00:41:06.060 because it's about the construct of the law

00:41:09.300 designed to suppress one race in the advancement of another.

00:41:13.780 And whilst I accept that there was redlining in America

00:41:16.220 and that people were struggling to break out of economic depravity,

00:41:19.820 specifically the black community,

00:41:21.240 through the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s,

00:41:23.360 and the Italians and the Jews after the First and Second World War

00:41:25.980 were allowed to break out of those,

00:41:27.280 and I accept it and I understand it and I think it's deplorable,

00:41:30.040 I do not believe it exists in this country.

00:41:31.580 and it's not because I don't want to.

00:41:33.220 I want to see it.

00:41:34.100 I want to see terrible things where they are

00:41:36.300 and then I want to make people accountable for them

00:41:38.060 when they really are accountable for them.

00:41:41.260 You're a business owner.

00:41:42.900 I mean, this has been unlike anything that any of us have seen.

00:41:48.120 I mean, what are the challenges that you face

00:41:51.040 and do you think the government has actually provided enough support

00:41:53.440 for people like you who are running businesses to keep them afloat?

00:41:57.420 I think, you know, we're in an uncharted world.

00:42:01.180 I hate to use the terminology unprecedented because it's been flogged to death by everybody that can't find an alternative word.

00:42:06.780 But I think the government has stepped up and done far better than it's been given credit for.

00:42:12.120 I think we're in a world where it's very easy to sit on the other side of the fence and point your finger at what's not being done rather than looking at the reality of what has been done.

00:42:19.600 I'm not interested in debt costs and how much debt we've raised because I think Britain has the ability to power out of this because there's not anything fundamentally wrong with the economics of this country.

00:42:29.560 We were actually in ascendancy.

00:42:31.960 This is not 2008, 2009, where you've got a problem

00:42:36.380 with the constructs of the way that the banks operated.

00:42:39.640 They were undercapitalised.

00:42:40.680 Basel III wasn't a part of parcel of the banks thinking.

00:42:43.620 They had fundamental problems with the manner in which they were lending.

00:42:47.000 Wall Street was driving the economics of certain things.

00:42:50.040 So you look at that and say, when we shut down in 2008, 2009,

00:42:53.860 and the world went to hell in the handcart economically,

00:42:56.440 the situation was broken.

00:42:58.720 We're not broken, we've just committed an enormous act of self-harm,

00:43:03.160 which is shutting the world down on the basis of,

00:43:06.740 I don't deny, I'm not a COVID denier, I'm not an anti-vaxxer,

00:43:10.640 I am very troubled by the manner in which the media

00:43:13.880 has created an absolute fear culture around the disease

00:43:18.460 that doesn't seem to be fundamentally different

00:43:21.220 from the Hong Kong flu of 1968,

00:43:23.860 where more than a million people died around the world,

00:43:26.960 but nobody shut the world down and I know Rocco Fawlty wrote an article about that saying does

00:43:31.180 anybody remember the Hong Kong flu because I was around at that time no nobody does because it

00:43:34.780 wasn't leveraged the way it has been leveraged by the media I have a great trouble with the media

00:43:39.720 because I think one of the worst and that's ironic given the fact I operate in it I understand that

00:43:44.200 it's not about being in the media it's about how you are operating within the confines of the media

00:43:47.540 one of the worst things that's happened is 24-hour rolling news cycles because you need to keep

00:43:52.800 creating content. That means you get 25 epidemiologists to be able to contradict one

00:43:57.740 another, to be able to keep the news cycle running. One of the most disgraceful things I've seen

00:44:01.500 recently was Sky News, when we had the foresight in this country to have the medical, the MHRA

00:44:08.000 were able to license the vaccines quickly before anybody else. And they flew over Anthony Fauci

00:44:15.640 from New York to give an opinion on our vaccine, saying that the standards in America would be

00:44:20.500 higher for the regulatory granting of the licensing of vaccines. And then Sky had the

00:44:27.280 audacity after creating vaccine doubt, had the audacity in the next cycle to rail against the

00:44:33.760 fact that anyone should be doubting vaccine. Well, we weren't doubting vaccines until you came along

00:44:37.380 and brought somebody over who had to apologise a week later. And then the particular vaccine

00:44:42.300 that he was criticising was then licensed by the Americans. So, you know, I have views about

00:44:48.760 the way in which the media operate,

00:44:51.360 which concerns me.

00:44:52.120 It sounds as if I've got an agenda with the media.

00:44:53.660 I just want people to be given the right information

00:44:55.780 and people to understand

00:44:57.200 the dynamics of the world we live in.

00:45:00.340 Going to the question of how difficult it is,

00:45:02.180 I descaled and moved into capital opportunities.

00:45:06.420 I've got investments in startup businesses

00:45:08.360 that will obviously have been very difficult

00:45:09.960 during this period of time.

00:45:11.220 Focused in retail.

00:45:12.320 Retail was always bleeding.

00:45:13.960 A lot of my friends are in retail.

00:45:15.260 Theopithetus, obviously with hundreds and hundreds of stores,

00:45:17.880 they were already getting their backsides kicked by the online guys

00:45:21.200 in terms of the fact that if you've got retail footprints,

00:45:23.920 you're in a difficult position because you're paying rates

00:45:26.080 and you've got a cost of sale which is dwarfed by the cost of sale

00:45:30.840 that the online guys, the Amazons of the world have.

00:45:33.980 So the challenges were there.

00:45:36.580 As far as supporting the economics of businesses,

00:45:39.980 you can run an argument that people weren't supported.

00:45:41.800 You can run an argument that there were certain smaller businesses

00:45:44.680 where directors weren't able, who paid themselves through dividends,

00:45:47.880 weren't able to be able to claim the same money

00:45:50.500 that other people could claim

00:45:51.680 as a result of the furlough schemes.

00:45:53.760 Well, I'm sorry, with respect to you guys,

00:45:55.640 the reasons why you pay yourself through dividends

00:45:57.280 is because you get a tax break for doing it

00:45:59.240 and you declare less of an income

00:46:00.980 so you can draw less when a crisis like this comes along.

00:46:03.260 You can't have it both ways.

00:46:04.260 I don't know what you're talking about, Simon.

00:46:06.780 But the hypocrisy of certain arguments,

00:46:08.260 I think the government has had...

00:46:11.260 Whoever was in situ would have had a buggers muddle

00:46:14.220 because we talk about PPE

00:46:16.440 and the shortage of PPE.

00:46:18.140 I thought PPE was perishable.

00:46:19.720 It is perishable.

00:46:20.680 So how are you ever going to have stocks of PPE?

00:46:22.820 Because it's perishable.

00:46:24.240 So the idea that we should be fully loaded

00:46:26.860 and fully invested with a whole raft of PPE

00:46:30.380 available to everybody was unfair.

00:46:34.040 I'm not suggesting we couldn't have done better.

00:46:35.660 I'm not suggesting the Daily Mail didn't prove it

00:46:37.280 by flying a plane out to such and such a place

00:46:38.980 and loading it up with PPE.

00:46:40.460 I was also of the impression that the care service

00:46:44.720 on the whole was privately run

00:46:47.260 with people like my friend Duncan Bannertine

00:46:49.340 that make lots of money from

00:46:50.960 this sort of environment so quite why

00:46:53.240 it was the responsibility of government to be

00:46:55.140 procuring and securing their PPE

00:46:56.960 at the height of this particular challenge that we had

00:46:59.180 at the beginning of it

00:46:59.920 troubles me but the economic landscape

00:47:03.200 yeah of course it's brutal and I think

00:47:05.280 there's been so much indecision and so much

00:47:07.300 we're being led

00:47:09.280 by scientists, we're being led by

00:47:11.260 clinicians and the problem

00:47:13.260 with that for me and i'm not going to like what i'm about to say is these world these people live

00:47:16.840 in a world of research and development they live with the desire to allow you to live with things

00:47:22.260 rather than cure with cure things they also never seem to have any accountability go back surgery

00:47:27.500 am i going to come out of this 100 okay well there's no guarantee well okay but you're the

00:47:32.420 doctor so can i have a guarantee a cast iron no medicine doesn't work that way when you put when

00:47:37.660 you deploy a country into the hands of people like this then you're never going to get an outcome

00:47:42.220 That's never going to be anything other than never ever.

00:47:45.080 Or yes, it could be this, yes, it could be that,

00:47:46.520 and we could go on forever.

00:47:48.060 So I have great trouble with what's gone on over the last 12 months,

00:47:53.100 as we all do,

00:47:54.120 not just because it's been debilitating for people's mental well-being,

00:47:58.020 not because it's been destructive,

00:47:59.260 because the media have run it like a rolling countdown

00:48:02.900 of how many people are dying,

00:48:04.080 running around like morbid, you know, sort of digital Birkenhairs,

00:48:07.380 running around the world chasing coffins

00:48:08.900 as if it's something we all want to see.

00:48:11.040 but I'm not sure what else the government could have done

00:48:14.340 besides do the economics that it's done

00:48:16.340 and now I don't worry about the national debt

00:48:20.260 because I think the cost of borrowing is cheap

00:48:23.220 we never could have borrowed money cheaper

00:48:24.760 and I think the economy has the ability to power out of it

00:48:28.340 myself and John Caldwell don't agree on many things

00:48:31.460 having been old sparring partners

00:48:33.140 but I've seen John with his narcissistically titled Caldwell plan

00:48:39.660 about the way to power out of this.

00:48:42.340 And Britain is a business model in terms of its economic landscape

00:48:47.660 to be able to power out of the challenges we've got.

00:48:50.940 The stock market's been a real opportunity

00:48:53.460 that I've availed myself of and invested in a lot of COVID stock companies,

00:48:58.280 invested in a lot of the FTSE 100 companies

00:49:00.620 that have dropped off the radar with the fundamentals being okay,

00:49:04.160 but the sentiment driving the LSE and various other markets.

00:49:09.660 So I, as a capitalist and a realist,

00:49:13.640 think in every crisis there's opportunity.

00:49:17.380 We're seeing a changing landscape.

00:49:19.060 We're seeing a change of the way people are going to work.

00:49:21.760 I'm interested to see how that lands

00:49:23.100 because whether people like it or not,

00:49:25.960 people are more effective when they're in environments

00:49:28.400 where people can see how they're working

00:49:30.600 and can manage their output, you know.

00:49:33.260 And I know people are not going to like that.

00:49:35.760 But when we start to see the development

00:49:37.620 of the live and work environments,

00:49:39.660 and the way that residential and commercial is going to morph into one environment

00:49:43.800 and out of everything comes opportunity.

00:49:46.580 But I think it's been brutal. How can it not be?

00:49:49.660 Simon, you made a couple of interesting points there.

00:49:51.680 First of all, the one about the scientists I completely agree with, by the way,

00:49:54.660 which is the whole thing about following the science

00:49:58.020 is an absurd way for politicians to protect themselves.

00:50:01.240 Abdicate responsibility.

00:50:02.120 That's all it is, right?

00:50:03.200 Because there's no such thing as following the science.

00:50:05.140 politicians are supposed to take

00:50:07.960 that information and put it together

00:50:09.940 with information about mental health

00:50:11.940 policing, the economy

00:50:14.000 put all that together and make a decision

00:50:15.780 and risk assess and come out with the best outcome

00:50:17.720 but the real point I wanted to pick up Adam

00:50:19.760 what you said was the media because I'm someone who rails

00:50:21.880 against the media as much as anybody else

00:50:24.020 but do you think there's actually

00:50:25.780 the public

00:50:27.740 me, you, Francis, everybody watching

00:50:30.120 we have to take some responsibility

00:50:32.120 and I'll tell you why

00:50:32.820 Because they did a poll recently which showed that

00:50:36.680 if you poll people in this country about how many people have died,

00:50:40.380 what percentage of the public have died,

00:50:42.660 a lot of the most common answer is 10%.

00:50:45.760 So people think that 6 million people have died, right?

00:50:48.860 They're out by a magnitude of 2, right?

00:50:51.760 It's actually 0.1%.

00:50:52.860 I know what it is, yeah, yeah.

00:50:53.580 So we've bought into this fear.

00:50:56.540 We are the ones.

00:50:57.200 Died with.

00:50:58.420 Died with.

00:50:59.180 Not necessarily off.

00:51:00.240 Let's not get into that because we're banned off YouTube.

00:51:02.040 but I agree with you, right?

00:51:04.220 But my point is, we've bought into that fear.

00:51:07.740 We, the public, I mean, you and I may have not,

00:51:09.940 but the people have bought into,

00:51:12.080 yes, the media, of course, they keep telling us

00:51:14.100 it's all evil, blah, blah, blah.

00:51:15.800 But we are the ones that got scared.

00:51:17.400 The public are the ones who watched all that nonsense

00:51:19.620 and actually decided we must be scared.

00:51:22.120 Do you not think that while we try and blame the media

00:51:24.620 and say they're only giving us what we want?

00:51:29.220 Create the demand and then supply the demand.

00:51:31.400 Right.

00:51:32.040 Right. So which is worse? There is an element of people, you know, this may sound condescending,

00:51:39.200 but it's not meant to. There are very few leaders in the world. Most people are lemmings.

00:51:42.660 They follow. They look to get their opinions from other people. They follow people's example,

00:51:47.820 whether it's be fashion or whether it's people's opinions. If you've got broadcasters that are

00:51:53.040 constantly pumping information into you, there is an element of people, a proportion of society

00:51:58.280 that will suggest that because it's being put forward by a broadcaster,

00:52:01.600 because it's being advanced by a politician,

00:52:03.120 that it has to have credibility, has to have substance,

00:52:05.320 and so subsequently it has to be believed.

00:52:07.300 Now, other people that are more prepared to kick the can

00:52:11.740 and to interrogate it and to look behind it

00:52:14.400 and to evaluate it without agenda,

00:52:16.840 because people that evaluate things don't always not have an agenda.

00:52:19.860 They have their own motivation to be able to change it around

00:52:22.440 to advance the argument they want to at the time.

00:52:24.760 Of course there's an argument that you're supplying people what they want.

00:52:27.960 The Sun being a newspaper that people have vilified over the years,

00:52:30.680 yet still probably the biggest selling newspaper for a variety of reasons.

00:52:33.800 You know, I know people won't buy that newspaper in Liverpool

00:52:35.600 because of what's happened in the past there,

00:52:37.500 but it still remains to be one of the biggest read newspapers,

00:52:41.140 irrespective of some of the irresponsible.

00:52:42.900 Piers Morgan and some of the things that he has said,

00:52:45.560 I happen to agree with some of the things he said about Meghan Markle,

00:52:47.720 and I happen to agree with some of the things he said about a lot of things,

00:52:50.960 but I don't happen to agree that he's a shining light of merit.

00:52:56.640 Especially on COVID.

00:52:57.520 on a variety of things.

00:52:58.960 He's a hypocrite and we had him on our show once

00:53:00.860 and I drove a bus for his hypocrisy

00:53:02.460 and I don't know how he's got the audacity

00:53:03.700 to write a book about the cancel culture

00:53:05.080 when he's a living embodiment of it

00:53:06.500 and spends more of his time scoring points

00:53:09.840 than actually dealing with something more substantial.

00:53:12.580 When you get the health minister on that ghastly show GMB

00:53:15.840 and you haven't had him for six months

00:53:17.300 and rather than talk about the progress of vaccines,

00:53:19.940 you want to spend a 15-minute interview

00:53:21.760 suggesting to him he should apologise

00:53:22.980 for something that Dominic Cummins did,

00:53:24.740 then you're in a clickbait world of news cycles

00:53:26.640 rather than a real broadcasting world that the public are entitled to see.

00:53:30.240 I accept that there has to be an element of showbiz or razzmatazz

00:53:34.660 or feel about it that gives people what they want to see at times.

00:53:38.560 And, of course, there is always the argument that we're only giving people what they want.

00:53:43.660 But, you know, you create that demand in them and then you feed that demand.

00:53:47.760 And, of course, there's a proletarian mentality.

00:53:49.820 People can be proles.

00:53:50.820 They can sit there and go, more, more, more, I want more of that

00:53:53.360 because I like what I've been given.

00:53:55.360 And there is an element that people should find out for themselves.

00:53:58.420 I try to find out for myself.

00:54:00.220 I try to look at the statistics.

00:54:01.820 I try to understand 38,000 people in hospital

00:54:04.900 and the hospitals are going to burst

00:54:06.620 and the nightingale's been built over there

00:54:08.480 and why haven't we got this?

00:54:11.100 128,000 people have died of this dreadful disease,

00:54:13.500 but how many people have died with it?

00:54:15.480 And I'm hearing statistics being reported

00:54:17.280 that actually the government have a motivation for it.

00:54:19.900 And we hear all of these things,

00:54:21.080 but I try to put it through a critical lens and understand it.

00:54:23.840 And I have very grave concerns about the manner in which the world is operating

00:54:27.420 and the way that we're being led to believe certain things.

00:54:30.420 But we all must take responsibility for our own thoughts.

00:54:33.500 That's what I'm saying.

00:54:34.300 And if we're all going to be... I mean, I'm personally not terrified.

00:54:38.180 I've had COVID-19. I'm very unwell with it.

00:54:41.720 And I've had members of my family that have had it.

00:54:44.560 And I don't want a society where we're walking around in masks.

00:54:47.460 I don't want social distancing. I don't want to live in fear of COVID.

00:54:50.820 I want to learn to live with it.

00:54:52.500 I want the actual facts to come through about what's really happening with this situation

00:54:58.100 rather than some of what seems to be happening and I do agree emphatically with you that there

00:55:03.720 is an element of if you allow scientists to be the leading force behind what you're making your

00:55:09.560 decisions upon then you are abdicating responsibilities and I think Boris Johnson

00:55:12.520 and his cabinet are very very much guilty of that but when you've got low-grade politicians that we

00:55:16.660 have in this country in this day and age some of it could be because of the nature of abuse that

00:55:20.760 you get by being a politician some of it could be that you don't pay these people best in class

00:55:24.600 irrespective of the ridiculous expenses but you know we pay our politicians boris johnson's the

00:55:29.760 ceo of this country he's not paid like the ceo and it shouldn't be about money and we know that

00:55:33.480 further down the line he'll monetize it by being able to sell his memoirs and do whatever you know

00:55:39.020 the speeches that he and tony blair can do until the cows come home but it still doesn't alter the

00:55:44.040 fact that we don't have the best in class whether you like these people from the past or not whether

00:55:47.700 you like Michael Heseltine and think he was to be revered,

00:55:50.480 my God, these were politicians of stature.

00:55:52.760 These were men of stature.

00:55:53.900 You might not like their politics,

00:55:55.100 but you knew where you stood with them.

00:55:56.740 And we don't have this now.

00:55:57.900 We have lightweight politicians that are half-baked,

00:56:00.160 that are too busy virtue signalling

00:56:01.280 and actually doing what they should be doing,

00:56:02.860 which is running this country and running it properly

00:56:05.160 and having the courage of their convictions.

00:56:07.080 And I know that sounds easy to stay from the outside,

00:56:09.320 but that's what leaders should do.

00:56:10.840 That's what leaders should be made of.

00:56:12.120 It shouldn't be something we say, oh, wow, that's special.

00:56:14.580 That's what our politicians should embody.

00:56:16.220 I mean it's very true

00:56:18.440 you're hitting all the points

00:56:19.540 that we talk about

00:56:20.480 on the show all the time

00:56:21.660 yeah we had Peter Hitchens

00:56:22.960 saying the exact same thing

00:56:24.060 I like Peter

00:56:24.580 I like Peter

00:56:25.340 I don't always agree

00:56:25.860 with his articles

00:56:26.380 but I think he's got

00:56:27.120 something to say

00:56:27.580 and he says it

00:56:28.080 if you're going to say something

00:56:29.040 go strong or go home

00:56:30.440 exactly

00:56:30.920 and on that note

00:56:32.300 we could have talked

00:56:33.640 for another hour Simon

00:56:34.500 it's been absolutely brilliant

00:56:35.440 it's the end

00:56:36.040 my pleasure

00:56:36.320 thank you for having me

00:56:37.040 we're going to do

00:56:37.640 a couple of questions

00:56:38.280 for locals

00:56:38.720 but for the purposes of now

00:56:39.860 we'll wrap this up

00:56:40.660 thanks very much

00:56:41.780 for coming on Simon

00:56:42.480 if people want to check out

00:56:44.240 where you are

00:56:44.980 Your controversial opinions, where do they go for that online?

00:56:47.600 Well, if they like sports, they can listen to what I consider

00:56:49.780 to be the best broadcaster in the country, which is...

00:56:51.500 Trigonometry.

00:56:52.340 Trigonometry, besides trigonometry in the digital world.

00:56:55.220 But from a sports point of view, listen to TalkSport.

00:56:58.720 It's a great station.

00:56:59.840 Great stuff.

00:57:00.580 And the last question we always ask is,

00:57:02.460 what's the one thing we're not talking about, but we really should be?

00:57:06.060 You posed that to me earlier on,

00:57:07.520 and I was trying to think if there is such a thing as we're talking about.

00:57:09.880 I think there are very few things off the table right now.

00:57:13.800 Everything is being overanalyzed from how much a prime minister spends on his wallpaper

00:57:18.280 through to the state of the nation.

00:57:20.400 So I don't really look at anything out there and say, we're missing a trick here.

00:57:24.620 I'm sure I could have perhaps delved deeper into my psyche and thought of an answer,

00:57:28.320 but I don't have one off the top of my head thinking, I've got a burning question.

00:57:31.180 My burning question is, do we ask the right questions?

00:57:34.140 Do enough people that have enough intelligence and have the courage of their convictions

00:57:37.800 to advance arguments get the opportunity to do so?

00:57:41.060 And are we scrutinizing things?

00:57:42.580 are we allowing things to go on in this country

00:57:44.720 and not having, because we're living

00:57:46.320 in this ridiculous woke mentality

00:57:47.880 where you dare say something that people don't like

00:57:50.060 then automatically you're cancelled

00:57:51.640 I think we're going to see

00:57:53.220 and we should be lording and applauding

00:57:54.700 an appreciation of people having different views

00:57:57.500 and learning to disagree

00:57:58.860 without the necessity to be able to destroy one another

00:58:02.200 Good point

00:58:03.780 Thank you for coming on the show Simon

00:58:05.720 and thank you for watching and listening

00:58:07.600 we will see you very soon with another brilliant interview

00:58:10.300 like this one

00:58:11.140 or a Raw show.

00:58:12.640 They all go out at 7pm UK time.

00:58:14.420 Take care and see you soon, guys.

TRIGGERnometry - May 19, 2021

Does Politics Belong in Sport？ - Simon Jordan

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