By the time you’ve added up the world’s more than two hundred leagues with back-of-the-envelope calculations, added all the intentional club competitions in, accounted for the huge aviation consumption of the football business itself and factored in a football-sized chunk of the carbon footprint of the sportswear industry, that’s a carbon footprint the size of another small nation.
I’m not in love with my body. We have a low-commitment, no-strings relationship. We get on well, we serve each other’s needs – but that’s it. There is nothing romantic about our entanglement. And there needn’t be. I am okay with my imperfections.
It recently occurred to me that there are several similarities between my experiences of my maternal Irish family and those families detailed within the Homeric epics. At the very least, having such an extensive family means I’m not bad at keeping track of the countless names and relationships between characters in the Iliad and Odyssey.
In order to remain at university, we’re required to pass: nothing more, nothing less. With this most basic incentive, why would anyone sacrifice social or extra-curricular activities in order to come out with anything better than the lowest pass mark possible?
When something disrupts the world’s most popular sport, the impact goes way beyond supporters being left bored twice a week. Coronavirus stopped football in its tracks, jeopardising the eco-system that nurtures the livelihoods of thousands of people, both inside the footballing world and its periphery businesses.
Regardless of the fact that the final withering of football’s heart appears to be a foregone conclusion, we should hardly take it lying down. Every concession granted to economic and political tyranny should be polemicised against with sharp invective by our media, our bureaucracies, and ourselves.
It wasn’t enough to simply dislike the film, to sit patiently, wait until the end and later inform your friends, ‘alas, not really my cup of tea!’. We couldn’t just let CATS be. We had to destroy it. It became a game to see who could leave the most scathing review, who could launch the most ruthless attack.
You may have heard of a symposion, a drinking party on couches, usually with 7 people where literature, philosophy and politics are discussed. In other words, not unlike essay/problem sheet procrastination in someone’s room, but instead of wine drawn from an elaborately decorated krater in the centre of the room, we have boxed wine, and instead of couches, we have the floor.
Language is not just a means of communication, but also the expression of an entire nation’s identity. There will always be a trade-off between valuing and preserving a people’s native language, and the return of an investment in human capital that learning a dominant or common language provides.
Surely most of the figures complicit in the corruption behind Qatar’s bid are gone from the sport. What’s the point in raging over closed cases, especially when the Qatari World Cup is so close? One may query. Well, I would answer, FIFA is a very seedy operation and you aren’t thinking big enough.