Roman Abramovich

[1964]

See the guardian are having a little go, comparing the war in Yemen to the war in Ukraine 

[gbandit]

It’s fair enough, there’s not nearly enough discussion about the horrors going on in Yemen 

[Joey Linton]

4 minutes ago, 1964 said:

See the guardian are having a little go, comparing the war in Yemen to the war in Ukraine 

Drawing attention to the situation isn't having a go. It should be done. Pinning it on football fans for them to put a stop to isn't on. 

 

Nick Harris was at it again during the week because we'd beaten his football team. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Rompe]

51 minutes ago, RS said:

Proof that sportswahing works. Chelsea fans now “pro putin” as their club is negatively affected. 
 

It's the way it always goes with these type of things.

Give a club a bit of success and hope and you'll see the fanbase defend the owners, no matter the corruption and atrocities they are committing.

[Hovagod]

If only there were some profession dedicated to investigating things.

[1964]

Agreed, I didn't actually mean have a go in that context, I meant having a go at conflating the two issues 

[leffe186]

6 minutes ago, Kid Icarus said:

 

Aye they're definitely not pro-Trump. The Mearsheimer quote is similar to what I'd say about him with TPP (his ignorance or pettiness resulted in an unexpected net win) but it doesn't mean I support him or that I don't think that he's a dangerous megalomaniac who should be anywhere near power.

 

The John Pilger comments are pretty standard fair on the left and fairly accurate imo.

 

 

 

Yeah, I’m really not sure why someone would think that Mearsheimer is pro-Trump after that interview

 

I didn’t realize Pilger had said that stuff about the Skripal poisonings though. And to applaud Brexit voters for refusing to be bullied by their “presumed betters” in the media (among others). Oof.

[Klaus]

3 minutes ago, Rompe said:

It's the way it always goes with these type of things.

Give a club a bit of success and hope and you'll see the fanbase defend the owners, no matter the corruption and atrocities they are committing.

 

I can't see myself supporting Wahhabism any time soon tbh

[UncleBingo]

18 minutes ago, 1964 said:

See the guardian are having a little go, comparing the war in Yemen to the war in Ukraine 

Failing to mention that the UAE are part of the coalition fighting the Houthis. Fancy that. I'm not going to defend the Saudis but the comparison between Yemen and Ukraine are a stretch. We're talking about a coalition fighting an Islamic insurgency at the behest of the legitimate Yemeni govt....pretty much when the US/UK coalition was  doing against ISIS/Daesh in the Middle East for years. I think there are far more things to attack the KSA for than this.

 

To he fair, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that a Labour government comes gets elected in a couple of years and decides to stop selling arms to and sanctions KSA, leaving us in the same position as Chelsea.

[Kid Icarus]

10 minutes ago, leffe186 said:

Yeah, I’m really not sure why someone would think that Mearsheimer is pro-Trump after that interview

 

I didn’t realize Pilger had said that stuff about the Skripal poisonings though. And to applaud Brexit voters for refusing to be bullied by their “presumed betters” in the media (among others). Oof.

 

He's just saying what fueled the votes in the minds of those who voted leave. That it was a rejection of the a status quo that had failed them. I don't think he's so much applauding it as pointing it out.

 

I can't say I know about the Skripal poisonings enough to comment on whether there's anything credible in what he's saying or whether it's the conspiratorial nonsense that it appears to be on the surface.

 

 

 

[Groundhog63]

Makes me laugh all the belated handwringing over gangster oligarchs and despotic regimes. People were warned when Abramovitch first bought Chelsea.

By none other than Corbyn, for one, and many others. Julian Assange is rotting away in a UK  prison for being an international whistleblower ffs.

We do £billions of war sales to the Saudis. They, like their Russian counterparts, own half of London.

An equally criminal oligarchy, the US, has undermined our "democracy" since WW2. Tufton St. being the control centre of their activities. 

China, Israel, they're all "at it" here.

Up front it's called lobbying but it's basically corruption of power. That's why brexit happened. To isolate Britain completely.

 

So we exist in a country embroiled in dirty money and there's fuck all, barring a revolution, we can do about it.

 

This so called sanctioning of Abramovich is a fraud. Christ they gave him and the banks 30 days notice man. Johnson, under pressure to sanction his paymasters accidently named Abramovich in the HoC. He was then forced by the Russian Don to retract that statement the very next day so he could continue shipping his wealth.

They may let Chelsea suffer/be sold and/or let Everton crumble. In the wider scheme a couple of billion is small beer and clubs folding looks like they've gone hardball.

 

Whole things a joke.

 

 

Edited March 12, 2022 by Groundhog63
spelling lol

[Rompe]

Just now, POOT 2.0 said:

For me...this is a PR stunt by the government to show they mean business. Which they don't. They're just going after a high profile Russian to cover their bullshit.

 

The bottom line is: They're crippling a business and punishing normal people in order to make this point. Freezing the company's bank accounts is fucking over the 1000s of employees who are living pay check to pay check. Like millions of others in this country.

 

Eg. There's a man, or women, who has a job at Chelsea FC. It's a modest job, paying just above minimum wage. They slog it out in order to have an income. They have a super tight budget, including a set price for their weekly shop, and if they deviate from there budget, even a few quid, the snowball effect will fuck everything up. They don't get paid this month and it's fucking devastating! People who have never sailed that close to ruin will never understand...but it's hideous.

 

The freezing of Chelsea's cashflow is our government saying "fuck you, too" to everyone. They need to grow up and go after the right things in the right way. If Roman is one of those right things...fair enough. But the 1000s of low paid Chelsea employees are not that. The government are a bunch of amateurs. 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it isn't just Abramovich facing sanctions right? It's quite a lot of the russian oligarchs no?

So are the people who posts in "defense" of him (not defending him, but you know what I mean), against these sanctions in general or do they think he should be exempt because he owns Chelsea?

[Stifler]

7 minutes ago, Rompe said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it isn't just Abramovich facing sanctions right? It's quite a lot of the russian oligarchs no?

So are the people who posts in "defense" of him (not defending him, but you know what I mean), against these sanctions in general or do they think he should be exempt because he owns Chelsea?

I think the point is that Chelsea and other legitimate businesses he has should still be allowed to operate, but he shouldn’t have control over them or be able to gain money or transfer money via them.

 

If they are really concerned they could just nationalise Chelsea and then sell them on, amazing to think that the Tories haven’t done that.

 

In reality though, he and other Russians have probably paid the government previously, and they are looking for a way to look tough with the intention of letting him have his stuff back once things have settled down.

 

 

Edited March 12, 2022 by Stifler

[Stifler]

40 minutes ago, UncleBingo said:

Failing to mention that the UAE are part of the coalition fighting the Houthis. Fancy that. I'm not going to defend the Saudis but the comparison between Yemen and Ukraine are a stretch. We're talking about a coalition fighting an Islamic insurgency at the behest of the legitimate Yemeni govt....pretty much when the US/UK coalition was  doing against ISIS/Daesh in the Middle East for years. I think there are far more things to attack the KSA for than this.

 

To he fair, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that a Labour government comes gets elected in a couple of years and decides to stop selling arms to and sanctions KSA, leaving us in the same position as Chelsea.

That’s not going to happen. Even with a Labour government they will still want that money from KSA. They like to look different, but largely they aren’t.

[madras]

13 minutes ago, POOT 2.0 said:

I don't care how they handle the Oligarchs. They can drop them off a cliff, for all I care. My post is how they've frozen Chelsea's accounts which fucks over the normal person in a massive, life-changing, way and doesn't destroy or harm him at all. 

 

Take Chelsea from Abramovich: "Meh, I can afford to lose a few billion"

 

Take the wages of a Chelsea employee away: "I'm ruined". 

Agree with this. I can't see why the club couldn't still trade as normal but the proceeds are kept within the club and can't make their way back to Abramovic. 

 

On a side note I wonder how much he's managed to siphon away while our government decided what to do ?

[leffe186]

44 minutes ago, Kid Icarus said:

 

He's just saying what fueled the votes in the minds of those who voted leave. That it was a rejection of the a status quo that had failed them. I don't think he's so much applauding it as pointing it out.

 

I can't say I know about the Skripal poisonings enough to comment on whether there's anything credible in what he's saying or whether it's the conspiratorial nonsense that it appears to be on the surface.

 

 

 

It just sounded peculiarly misguided in that he conflated the “apologists for the Remain campaign” with those who dismembered the “socially just civil life in Britain”. It’s the first time I’m seeing these quotes, but that struck me as at best extremely disingenuous.

 

It’s hard because, y’know, it’s John Pilger. I read a fair bit of his stuff as a kid because I’m English/Australian with hippy liberal parents who were very politically engaged. I don’t know the full context of his Brexit quotes but the juxtaposition of all that stuff on his Wiki reads painfully like a contrarian apologist for Russia and Russian interests. I don’t think that’s his angle (his angle is usually anti-UK/US/Aussie foreign policy, and rightly so) but you could understandably infer that.

[Manxst]

22 minutes ago, POOT 2.0 said:

I don't care how they handle the Oligarchs. They can drop them off a cliff, for all I care. My post is how they've frozen Chelsea's accounts which fucks over the normal person in a massive, life-changing, way and doesn't destroy or harm him at all. 

 

Take Chelsea from Abramovich: "Meh, I can afford to lose a few billion"

 

Take the wages of a Chelsea employee away: "I'm ruined". 

The government haven’t- Barclays have, which is temporarily. 

[Whitley mag]

1 hour ago, UncleBingo said:

Failing to mention that the UAE are part of the coalition fighting the Houthis. Fancy that. I'm not going to defend the Saudis but the comparison between Yemen and Ukraine are a stretch. We're talking about a coalition fighting an Islamic insurgency at the behest of the legitimate Yemeni govt....pretty much when the US/UK coalition was  doing against ISIS/Daesh in the Middle East for years. I think there are far more things to attack the KSA for than this.

 

To he fair, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that a Labour government comes gets elected in a couple of years and decides to stop selling arms to and sanctions KSA, leaving us in the same position as Chelsea.

Agree with the UAE argument why the fuck has Dan Roan not mentioned Man City aswell this morning in another sly dig at us. 
 

Labour spout a load of shit, if the looney left like Corbyn had got in we might have problems. But no chance, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are our biggest trading partners in Middle East.

 

 

Edited March 12, 2022 by Whitley mag

[christ]

I do find the recent handwringing over Abramovich faintly ridiculous given I don’t think being mates with Putin is by any order of measure comparable with funding illegal Israeli settlements to the tune of millions of pounds. One is financing the breaking of international law, and the other is a bit tasteless.

 

9 minutes ago, leffe186 said:

It just sounded peculiarly misguided in that he conflated the “apologists for the Remain campaign” with those who dismembered the “socially just civil life in Britain”. It’s the first time I’m seeing these quotes, but that struck me as at best extremely disingenuous.

 

It’s hard because, y’know, it’s John Pilger. I read a fair bit of his stuff as a kid because I’m English/Australian with hippy liberal parents who were very politically engaged. I don’t know the full context of his Brexit quotes but the juxtaposition of all that stuff on his Wiki reads painfully like a contrarian apologist for Russia and Russian interests. I don’t think that’s his angle (his angle is usually anti-UK/US/Aussie foreign policy, and rightly so) but you could understandably infer that.

 

Pilger has, unfortunately, went a bit odd in recent years like. I don’t see a lot to disagree with in his comments on Brexit though.

 

 

Edited March 12, 2022 by christ

[macphisto]

15 minutes ago, madras said:

Agree with this. I can't see why the club couldn't still trade as normal but the proceeds are kept within the club and can't make their way back to Abramovic. 

 

On a side note I wonder how much he's managed to siphon away while our government decided what to do ?

What happens when sanctions are lifted?

[Smal]

“Sportswashing doesn’t exist!!!”

 

”Thank goodness we don’t have the loony left in charge otherwise we might not have our precious trading partnerships with KSA and UAE!!!!”

[macphisto]

If you allow the club to trade as normal then you may as well not bother with sanctions.

 

If the club trades as normal then two things happen.

 

1) Value of the club more or less remains the same.

 

2) The business will continue to accrue profits. OK, maybe not in Chelsea's case but in theory it could turn in a profit by selling players.

 

Once sanctions are lifted then Ambramovich would have been mildly inconvenienced at most. He wouldn't materially be any worse off.

 

 

Edited March 12, 2022 by macphisto

[Manxst]

9 minutes ago, macphisto said:

What happens when sanctions are lifted?

Can you see that anytime soon? Won’t they continue whilst Putin is in Ukraine? I can’t see him withdrawing any time imminently. 

[macphisto]

8 minutes ago, Manxst said:

Can you see that anytime soon? Won’t they continue whilst Putin is in Ukraine? I can’t see him withdrawing any time imminently. 

When it happens is immaterial. If the business continues to trade as normal then eventually, say 10 years from now, the club would revert back to him once sanctions are lifted.

 

The value of the club wouldn't have significantly decreased and he would be eligible for profit accrued during that time.

 

 

Edited March 12, 2022 by macphisto

[Manxst]

4 minutes ago, macphisto said:

When it happens is immaterial. If the business continues to trade as normal then eventually, say 10 years from now, the club would revert back to him once sanctions are lifted.

 

The value of the club wouldn't have significantly decreased and he would be eligible for profit accrued during that time.

 

 

 

But that is immaterial as the business isn’t allowed to trade as normal.