TRIGGERnometry - Does Politics Belong in Sport? - Simon Jordan

Episode Date: May 19, 2021

Entrepreneur, broadcaster and former Premier League club owner Simon Jordan joins us in the studio. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/  OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.PayPal.me/triggerpod https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I wrote a little song to remind you, Choice Hotels, get you more of the experiences you value. The Can Beah Hotels got it all. A rooftop bar, have a ball. Bring a date, your squad or even your mom. Book direct at Choiceotails.com. Hello, and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster.

I'm Constantine Kishen. And this is a show for you, if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is a businessman and the former owner and chairman of Crystal Palace Football Club. Simon Jordan, welcome to Trigonometry. Nice to be here, boys.

It's great to have you on the show. Thanks for coming on. My pleasure. We've got a big international audience, so some of them might not be familiar with you and your background and your story. Tell everybody a little bit about who are you, how are you where you are.

What is the journey that brings you here sitting and talking to us? Public domain staff. I mean, I was born and brought up in South London. My father started as a footballer, moved into being a printer, and I was born in South London 100 yards away from a football club that I ended up buying.

I started working in a city when I was 19 years of age in computing, felt I was the best thing since I've spread, found out that I wasn't, morphed into doing something in the sales industry, had a couple of businesses, didn't go the way I wanted to, went to America, got some experience over there for two or three years, trying to start businesses over there, came back when I was 24, started to work for Charles Dunstan at the carphone warehouse because the mobile phone industry was something I'd known from a previous incarnation. I had a couple of years, 18 months with him, built him one of the most successful parts of his business, looked at him, thought, there's nothing particularly special about you guys that I can't do. So I went out and started a business, which became the second largest mobile phone retailer in the UK. After five years, 257 shops, 2,000 staff, and huge ambition, I decided there's two ways for me to go. I can float this business,

and I'm not sure that telcos at that particular time were the right propositions to float 20 years ago, or, given the expansion program, given the fact I'd started with 15 grand and built it into the empire that was there with 257 shops I just described, we were undercapitalised, what do I want to do, do I raise some capital, do I want to float, or what do I want to sell? So I took an opportunity to do at the time,

and I still think remains now the biggest private industry sell, and sold it. Took it 78 million plus some stock, and walked away with an ambition to do a variety of other things. One of the things that came onto my horizon was the football club that my father had played for, that I'd been born 100 yards away from, supported all my life, had signed schoolboy forms for when I was a kid, it was in distress. You were quite a promising play yourself?

Yeah, I was, yeah. I'd signed for Chelsea and moved on from Chelsea's to Palace when Terry Venables, who's quite a well-known sports figure at the time, was in his pomp at Crystal Palace. It hadn't worked out for me. Football is not just about talent, it's about mental application and a pure, unadulterated desire to be successful. that doesn't mean it doesn't translate

unadulterated desire to be successful, it doesn't translate into other fields, but football playing wasn't my calling in the end. So I morphed into the other things I've just described, but come back 14 years, and the opportunity, if you want to describe owning a football club as an opportunity, came my way, and I figured,

hmm, this is the next frontier. Sports, not so much franchises, but sports opportunities were becoming more exciting. The broadcasters were becoming more invested, the opportunity was beginning to become what I felt more grown up and mature. And I thought, well, what's the worst thing can happen? It's a bit like the Dr. Pepper moment. Be careful what you wish for.

You know, what's the worst thing that can possibly happen. So I bought Crystal Palace 10 years on my own. It was arduous and financially challenging. 2009, 2010, with a variety of businesses I was invested in, which wasn't just football clubs. It was film production companies. It was restaurant groups. It was car magazines.

It was Spanish properties, American properties. And a variety of non-risky things. brought me to an economic challenge, which involved me ultimately losing the football club, handing it on to others, and then moving on with a different phase in my life, which brings me to writing books and having intellectual capital to invest in businesses,

and now having some fun with broadcasting. So there you are, there's the guided tour, quick as I can get to it. And I used to do talk sport. I used to overnights at talk sport. Did you? Yeah, I did indeed. So, but I've been watching you talk about sport,

and that's the reason we wanted to get you on because we thought you were absolutely brilliant. Thank you. It's a very, very interesting moment for sport at the moment because we see more and more politics and sports start to merge. Unfortunately, that's true, yeah. Yeah, and we'd just like to get your take on it.

What do you think about it? And do you think it's a step in the right direction? When you say politics, I think sport is being leveraged by politicians at times. You know, when you look at the current climate in England, with the landscape of professional football and the government trading off opportunities because there's political capital to be made,

whether it's using sport to rail against the online operators and with the online harms bill being brought in by the governments and sport being very vociferous about abuse, whether it be racial or whether it be any kind of abuse. So the government had been faciferous in that respect. It's also been over the years a stocking feel, If you look at the Labour Party 10, 15 years ago, suggesting that part of their manifesto

was the idea that they were going to enforce football clubs to have an opportunity for fans to have 10% every time ownership changed, not practical. And of course, we've got the societal issues more than the political ones where sports really being, I don't know if you want to say leveraged, but certainly harnessed by good and bad causes, I think.

And of course, we've seen a very challenging year in the last 12th. months for a variety of reasons, you know, for the bleeding obvious of COVID-19, but we've seen some of the aberrations in society. We saw the dreadful events in America with George Floyd, which have then been, you know, afforded opportunities for people to bring certain initiatives forward, right and wrong ones, superimposing some of the things that are happening in America into our country I'm uncomfortable with, but notwithstanding at, equal opportunity and discrimination are two things that need to be looked at very carefully, equal opportunity, of course,

It doesn't mean equal outcome, but equal opportunity is a fundamental right that everybody has. And sport can play a part in that. I don't like, I have never liked, and I've been very facieverous about the sports field being utilized to advance messages, because it's a Pandora's box. You open that box for one cause, you've got to open it for all. And I understand that there's some causes that are more worthy than others. You know, and there are some animals that are more equal than others, according to George Orwell. But we are in a world where sport is entertainment.

The purpose of sport, in my view, is to take people out of grey lives, give them 90 minutes of entertainment in the world of football terms, and then put them back with something that's altered their afternoon, good and bad, not to be leveraged for agendas. So my trouble with the idea that it's been politicised, I think it's been agenderised more than politicised. But there is an element of politics being played into place when you've got movements like Black Lives Matters and other scenarios where sport will try to be leveraged for various advances. And I'm very comfortable for high-profile sport stars to use their platforms,

but I'm not comfortable for the pitch to be used. I'm uncomfortable with that. I'm uncomfortable with the methods that are being deployed at times. And I'm uncomfortable with the manner in which the messages are being imparted by some of the mainstream media that leverage sport and also have their own bias. It's a really, really good answer what you've just said about the agendaising of sport and it's happened particularly very, very quickly

over the past season. What is your opinion of taking the knee? Do you think players should be allowed to do it or do you take the Olympic approach which is there should be no politics, overt politics in sport at all? Well, my view is that there shouldn't be any politics in sports. I think that stars of sport now

have such a platform in a variety of other environments that they can utilise the image that they want and I'm not comfortable with the pitch being utilized or the stadium or whatever you want. Now I know there will be arguments that suggest that there are other causes that are advanced whether you put a poppy on someone's shirt, you're doing the same thing and I hear that argument.

I think they come from a different point of view, but I understand it. I'm also uncomfortable with the... not so much a tokenism of taking the knee. The genesis of that has been... hijacked. It's been hijacked from what Colin Kaepernak did, which started with the fact that he wasn't in the camera line. So he was sitting on the bench, sitting down when the national flag was being celebrated before every single game. And then because he wasn't getting the attention,

he took a need to demonstrate against the oppression and the racial inequality and the abuse of black men and the police brutality. Now, I'm troubled by that because bringing that into an environment in this country where I do not believe. I'm not black, obviously, and I cannot look at the world through the eyes of a black person. I have mixed race in my family. I've been brought up in South London, and I understand some of the dynamics of it, but I can never actually walk through someone's shoes, or have someone's lived experience, is the expression. And if I don't agree with things, of course, unconscious bias will come to play in the minds of those whose opinions I don't agree with. But I was always troubled with the taking of the knee. And the reasons why I was troubled with the taking of the knee

is not because it came from Game of Thrones like one of our moron politicians said or because it symbolized subservience. It's because it represented something that a politically motivated organization had attached themselves to and whether people like it or they don't like it. Black Lives Matters as a statement

is something I'm very comfortable with. Black Lives Matters as a movement is something I'm very uncomfortable with because I think their agendas and their outlook and their destruction or their ideals behind the destruction of society, whether you've got Antifa in the mix or whether you've got a whole range of ideas that disrupt capitalism, destruct society, defund police, and God knows whatever else they want. To have that agenda dropped into a sport by association was a trouble for me. and the reasons why I made certain observations

which people were uncomfortable with, they were uncomfortable within the framework of the broadcasting platform that I use at times, and it was misrepresentation because it was an example in England with a particular football club that has a notorious background or a little bit of infamy

where an issue had arisen that players were taking the knee and the fans were booing it. And I raised the question because I'm very, very focused on mainstream media activity and the agenda rising and the misrepresentation and the lack of nuance

that they want to put on when they want to sensationalise things. And I question the idea that this booing was simply because the fans were racist rather than, after a stable diet had been false fed into our minds about BLM. We had seen people running around in London defacing statues, you know, running around spray painting, Winston Churchill's,

statue with the BLM moniker. And we had also been indoctrinated by mainstream media about the existence of Black Lives Matters as a movement in America and its origins and its thinking. And it was to me unfathomable that people, there wasn't a possibility that people were rebelling against the concept of Black Lives Matters, the political motivation, rather than the statement that, of course, black lives matters. So I was uncomfortable with that. And subsequently, the association with the taking of the knee. The players themselves find it ambiguous. They had to make statements before games,

even though people said, this is very clear. People like you, Simon, are choosing not to understand what this means. You're choosing to select the messages you want to hear. Well, I'm not, because if it was so clear, then the people that were taking the knee themselves wouldn't need to put out statements to reinforce that they were kneeling for anti-discrimination. And then we move into the territory.

of having been a football club owner, been inside this industry, and I'm very troubled with the fact that the allegation is that the football industry is racist, and there's racism within the confines of it, or our society is racist, systemically is the allegation. And I was troubled by these things

because I concur and accept and abhor racism in every form. And I see it on the table, terraces, but I didn't see it in the industry. And just because statistics are the beginning of a conversation, they don't mean they're the end of it. And statistics were being brought up about the football industry being racist because there wasn't enough representation. And I wanted to question the reasons why. I don't want someone to give me a fact without support. I don't need someone to tell me to educate myself. And then if I don't come around to their way of thinking, to go away and educate myself some more, right?

I have my own views, and often they're based upon experience. And having been an owner in a football club, having been an owner of a football club in a multi-ethnic environment, driven by multi-ethnicity, and never having an application from the black community, I'm struggling with the idea that the game is racist at its core. So the issue for me was, what are you actually kneeling for?

You're kneeling for societal issues, and I'm not sure that sport should be held up as the poster boy, or leveraged to be such. It shouldn't be held to a higher standard because I don't think that's fair on sport. I think that's wrong. And those that want to do it are people that are trying to genderize it

for their own endgame and not necessarily for the benefit of those they purport to represent. And see, that misrepresentation that you talk about where you say, I don't support BLM the organization, but I support BLM Black Lives Matter, the slogan. It's actually what people call the Moten Bailey tactic

where you present something, which is defunded the police, abolished capitalism, etc. And the moment anyone criticises it, you retreat to the position, well, you're saying black lives don't matter, which of course is... It's a banish-which. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But, you know, I think one of the... Just to step back a little bit more,

one of the reasons people love sport so much is at least they perceive it as a meritocracy. Indeed. People think, and I don't know, you tell us whether this is true or false, that, you know, the whole point about sport is, if you're good, you're going to succeed. if you're not, you're not going to succeed. That's the ideal.

That's the ideal. Is that accurate in terms of the Premier League and football in general? Or do you think there is discrimination and people from certain backgrounds are kept out, even though they're more talented than others? No, I don't think, I think football is a landscape where, and I don't mean to be flippant, knowing most of the 92 football club owners,

they would have employed Osama Bin Laden if they thought we could win games for them. So they don't prejudice against color. or creed, you know, the only thing that's prejudiced in football is integrity, because there's not a lot of it going on from the pitch upwards, you know, from players cheating through to the current climate of football club owners wanting to do precisely what they want with zero concern about the rest of the ecosystem,

albeit that ecosystem was already destroyed by 20 clubs in the Premier League that couldn't give a monkeys about the other 72 clubs in English football. So there's a lot of hypocrisy in the world of sport. But meritocracy, yes, of course, meritocracy, whether it's economic, meritocracy or its sporting prowess within the confines of football, the economic power and might of the big clubs in English football and the talent that they are able to attract is part and parcel of two things, economic meritocracy and sporting meritocracy. The challenge I have is that sports need governance. It needs to mature and needs proper governance. And the landscape of sports,

those that can affect those that can't, unfortunately, in football because of the collective relationships of how football is held together, how sports like football are held together. So those that can, the argument that football should, oh, football's going bankrupt or clubs are getting themselves into trouble and they should have the Nancy Reagan mentality of just say no to the next player transfer is for the birds because football is a public domain business that's driven by sentiment, driven by momentum, driven by demands, and having been an owner that didn't lose his head, but still wanted to try and satisfy my own ambitions to the fans' ambitions, different forces that come to pass.

And if you haven't got governance in sports, specifically financial governance, and then you've got nation states that buy football clubs that are worth 320 billion quid, and they can buy who they want, when they want, and they drive the price up for everybody else, and then the fall-down effect is everybody else gets affected by it, then it becomes a very challenging landscape.

And those are the things that I rail against in the incarnation I have now, which is broadcasting alongside other things that I do, at the same time as remembering how I railed against it, whilst I was in it. So sporting meritocracy, of course it exists, because the best are clearly the best. The opportunities based upon colour and creed and ethnicity are not denied in sports

because the four corners of the world fling forward, the talents. And the opportunity exists ever more in sport because the channels are far wider open because people are looking for talent across the four corners of the world. So, no, I don't believe, emphatically do not believe some of the nonsense that's trotted out that certain

communities are precluded and excluded from opportunities and that's not because I sit here as a middle-aged white man with a luxury of having white privilege, it's because I sit here not sitting in the world of theory and live in the world of experience and those are some of the things that I find

very difficult with the mainstream media. If you listen to some of the broadcasting, which I know you have done, I spend a lot of my time really teeing off on the mainstream media because I object to the manner in which things are represented. I object to some of the ideas that were advanced when we had these dreadful situations on Clapham Common with that vigil for that poor girl that was murdered.

And then we see the police being brutalised and people piling in and politicians suggesting that we've got to have apologies left, right and centre, because nothing now that you do in life doesn't come with an apology. And even if you apologise for it, it's still not good enough. Yet when we find out the real truth behind these sort of events, we never see the people that made the accusations

of politicians like Kirstama or other people that came out, Ed Davy, that came out and vilified police, never come back up again and say, well, actually, we were wrong, we should be apologising now. So I am very across these things and have very strong views about it, and I just want authenticity, I want honesty.

You know, we can all cope with honesty. We can all cope with the truth being told to us because it's far more compelling than some of the misrepresentations and the danger that we live in in this society is so often, you know, we're through the looking glass. What's up is down, you know, what people want to show you, they don't show you nuance, they show you a binary.

And we're living in a binary world, and it's not right to live in a binary world because everything has nuanced. There is a qualification behind most things, and people have the right to see a little bit more than they do see and deserve better, I think, at times. It's a big part of the success of our show, because we offer that alternative people.

We sit down. Good lads, keep it up. Well, it's good to have you on. But listen, the question I was going to, please don't take this as an insult, but you were a very wealthy man when you purchased Crystal Palace, you're still a very wealthy man now, but you are a pauper by comparison. By comparison to the people who own football clubs now.

Absolutely. The scale of opportunity and the scale of individual that have come in, for a variety of reasons. You know, some would say Roman of Bramrich Port Chelsea is a very expensive life insurance policy, and the motivations behind the Middle Eastern consortiums may well be sports washing, if you want to make those allegations. People buy football clubs for a variety of reasons,

some for credibility, some for recognizability, some for sheer adoration. And you're absolutely right that the association of wealth now is far greater to be an owner of a football club. When I made 100 million quib when I was 31 years of age, I was something special.

By comparison, I'm a waiter now in economic terms. And what do you think the impact of that is on the game? What do you think the impact of that is on the game? Do you think that's been for the benefit? we see the best players in the world playing in the Premier League? Or do you think it's been, you know, Arson Venger famously described it as financial doping? Whilst drawing 10 million pounds of year salary. I think with all money comes an element of corruption and pollution

and the changing of agendas and the changing of motivations. And I don't just mean when it will cost mentality. I mean that, you know, money does take away the age. It does take away the desire. It does take away the fight within you. it softens you and it takes away some of the integrity of the sport because we are seeing a sport now driven by money we're seeing the ugly side of sport specifically and explicitly in the last two weeks with the Premier League and the so-called super clubs trying to find a mechanism to generate

more revenue which by the way I don't disagree with because we've got a situation where the player salaries are so far out of control there's no reset even despite the worst economic landscape that we've seen for the sport probably since the Second World War has not done anything to reset the financial Opportunities for players so these six clubs in England and the six clubs in the rest of the Europe and whether the the the biomeunuchs of the world and whoever else were going to come in at a later stage we'll never know or never know in this incarnation the issue was about the loss of sporting meritocracy but to go to your theme of the financial side of it it is just the reality of the world that we now live in. And when I had a vision 20 years ago, looking at sports thinking,

bloody difficult business, far easier ways to keep my money, let them make some more. But I do believe there's a landscape here. I've been railing for some time about sports, not needing broadcasters like Sky anymore and having the ability to be able to deliver their own content, the Netflix of football idea that I've been mooting around, which I believe was part of the year's sales thinking,

we'll do our own tournament, then we'll build our own platform, then we'll monetize ourselves, and we'll dwarf whatever revenues. But finance, the world turns on finances. Whether we like it or we don't like it, the economics of life from the lowest common denominator to the highest totem pole is about money. It turns the world where the countries invade other countries to preserve oil reservoirs,

or whether football clubs are spending ridiculous amounts of money at the center of most of it is money. So do I like it? Well, I'm a grown-up. I accept it's a reality. I'd like governance. I'd like control over our sport because there's nothing wrong with football clubs making money

and there's nothing wrong with owners making money except according to fans because the only people are allowed to make money are players, agents and managers, which is just for the birds for me. But I'm not trying to. troubled by it. I'm just troubled by the lack of governance and the lack of control. Because sport is unique, we can't forget, I'm, of course I say it's business, because when you're

paying football as $200,000 a week, as almost disgusting as that is, for what they're actually doing in comparison of what some people are doing in society that are far more valuable, as we have seen over the last 12 months. You know, it's difficult to justify it, but we are where we are. We are where we are. And, you know, I don't see that. landscape changing any time soon. We've just got to mature, try and make sure that the industry and protect these football clubs at the same time, because there's a part of me that thinks they should have a blue plaque over the door, you know, a bit like a listed building and have a certain set of protections because they are part of the community. They are part of the unique values of

this country and any country that's got football clubs and sports environments that are very important to them. But we are now moving into the territory in this country where we sell everything, don't we? We're quite prepared to silver under stock exchange not so long ago. So why wouldn't our community products like football clubs be sold? I just, and again, not to be too waxing, lyrical about the value of football clubs. I love football fans. I grew up being a football fan. I value the football fans, but they're part of the problem because they're the ones that scream for the next billionaire to come in. And the challenge for me is how do you. How do you? How do you? How do you? do you deliver back on their expectations when their expectations are unrealistic?

Football started as a working person sport. When you start flying players around the world and private jets, it's a business. And when you start attracting billionaires in there, you have to grow up and realize why these people are there. They're not there because they like Moss Side. And they're not there because they like the King's Road. They're there because there's an opportunity and a reason for them to be there. And it isn't because of the love of the football club.

They may develop an affinity and association with it, but it'll always be a conduit and vehicle for whatever other ambitions, aspirations and ideals of that ilk may have. Hey, Constantine, do you love trigonometry? Of course, incredible interviews, hilarious live streams, hard-hitting satire, plus my handsome jawline. Whatever takes away from your hairline. But if you do love trigonometry and you want to support us, there's only one place to do that, and that's on locals. Yes, Locals is a brilliant platform that has been incredibly supportive to our show and other problematic creators.

The great thing about Locals is that it's a community for people who love trigonometry. That's right, it's a place for you to hang out with like-minded people, share thoughts, memes and discuss the show. You can enjoy it for free, but it also gives you the option of supporting us for as little as $7 a month. And if you want to give more, you can. We have incredible rewards for our higher tier supporters as well. We've got everything for mugs, monthly group calls and one on two chats with me and KK. Get in. Join our community by hitting the link in the description and the pin comment below. See you there, guys.

And Simon, we were talking about just jumping back a little bit to the earlier part of the interview where you were talking about the sport not being racist. I suppose the one consistent argument against that is the issue of black managers. Why there's so few black managers when I think, is it something like 40% perhaps more of footballers are black or mixed race? 128 black footballers in the Premier League out of something like 6,700,

of which 64, or English 64, 65 are from overseas clubs or overseas parts of the world, which means they tend to go back there. You've had 25% of the clubs in this country employ black managers. The problem is they're the same black managers. they're Chris Hewton, they're Jimmy Floyd Hasselbank, they're Paul Inns. Is football responsible for a certain community stepping up?

Is there a blockage? I've asked the question on a number of occasions and I never get an answer because I question it, not because I want to question it, not because I'm a white man that wants to protect his position, because I want to know what the problem is. Once you know what the problem is, you can fix it. I don't want a hyperbole, I don't want the theory, I want the fact.

Why have we got a blockage? I know the football club owners. I know who they wouldn't, wouldn't employ and why they wouldn't employ them. I see them employing Germans. I see them employing Portuguese. I see them employing Italians. So the notion that they wouldn't employ people from the black community, I struggle with. Then I try to get answers.

Say, right, okay, if we are, if this game is racked with institutional racism, because you often hear institutional racism as a scenario as brought out. And people make these sweeping statements. And then they don't justify them. I heard institutional racism is that more black women die in childbirth. Boom. That's an example of institutional racism. My first question after that is, why?

And then I get greeted with silence. Is it because more black women have more children? Is it because there's a congenital defect? Is there a linguistic challenge? Is there reasons behind this so-called institutional racism? Because I thought 27% of the National Health Service were from the black community. I thought there was a leaning towards making sure that there's a correct balance. within the framework of, I've just had a baby boy, so I'm talking from experience.

And institutional racism being trotted out without an understanding of it is something that I find challenging. So when I get into the football world and say, right, okay, you're telling me that there's a systemic races problem in football, I can't see why. I never, and I fired managers for fun, I never had an application from a black manager for a job at a football club, which was multi-ethnic, which had black players, black supporters, and I had black coaches, and I employed people from all communities when people approached me. Oh, well, Simon, you're the exception.

No, I'm really not the exception, right? So what is the issue? I try to get the statistics through, okay, tell me, the channels that are open for black managers to be successful in. How many black coaches have we got that are being qualified and getting their badges, is because part of the ability to be a manager English football is you have to have coaching qualifications.

What are the statistics? Are we producing 30% of the coaches that are coming through from the black community and only 6% of the jobs? Or is it 10% of the coaches that are coming through are black and the statistics are 6%? So there's not this big disparity. But I never get an answer.

I get a central theme. I ask people. I ask questions. about what does institutional racism look like in a country that has 25% of the cabinet from black and minority ethnic groups that has the chairman of the Conservative Party, James Cleverly, being a man from the black community. I look at the mayor of London and see that opportunity from that community. And I say to myself, if we are an institutional society,

an institutionally racist society, how are these situations manifested themselves? and I read up on critical race theory to understand the mechanisms behind it and I speak to educated people for more sides and the answer I get back is these people are Uncle Tom's these people are gateways

from morphing into one community or another and I say well I can't win then because there isn't a critical thinking behind your thinking there is a motivation to suggest that unless I see your point of view I have unconscious bias I have white privilege and I struggle with these things

because I really do believe as a man and as a human being that everyone has the right for equal opportunity but not equal outcome. Jordan Peterson trope, I know, but notwithstanding it, still relevant. And I look at that and say, we are moving into a world of quotas and representation of every single group. So we'll now have a country and a business environment that's made up.

So if you're going to put people on boards because of their colour, you've got to put them on there because of their age because of their sexuality because of their, you've got to put, you know, people that are disabled to represent that quota. So all of a sudden, you'll have a country made up of quotas and we will go to the dogs because talent will be moved to one side and quotas will be the, and if we want that kind of world, then be careful what we wish for. So I have these views, whether they're right or wrong, I don't sit there with a blinked point of view saying, my way is the right way, I have a binary outlook. I want to know why you're saying these things. So go to your point. Do I believe it's a close shop? Do I believe it's racist? Do I believe there's a problem? I think the problem exists much amongst the community that are complaining about it,

not wanting to advance their own opportunity, because I know the argument is well rehearsed. We're good enough to be in the theatre as the actors, but we're not good enough to be the impresarios. I hear that. Nobody is stopping people from any community from buying a football club. You know, anyone's money is the same colour. And I speak to people within the game,

and I ask the question about racism. in football. Trevor Sinclair is a very good friend of mine. Trevor, tell me what racism have you experienced in football? Well, I've been called rude names by the fans. I'm sorry, the fans are societal issues and football clubs have a zero tolerance policy, but what racial issues have you had that have stopped you from advancing and being able to be successful in your field, and there the conversation stops, because I don't want to discredit the arguments. I don't want to not to sit there and say that if you believe it to be true, then I have to accept your views, but I want to be told how it can be fixed.

Because if you live in a world of hypothesis and you don't get to the real issue, then you'll never fix anything because what you're being told isn't a real issue. Of course there's a representation issue. But why? Is it not just a statistic? The statistic is a beginning of a conversation. Now we've got to get to the root cause of the reason for the lack of representation in sports. The reason for lack of representation from the Asian community,

upon a time, Michael Chopra was an Asian football that played for Newcastle that was owned by a friend of mine, St. John Hall. Douglas Hall was a very close friend of mine because we lived together next to one another in Spain. And they felt that Michael Chopra was the beginning of the Asian opportunity to bring young talented Asian footballers into football, to monetise, of course, the other side of it for the eyes on the screen around the world. It hasn't happened and the representation is there. Why? People are not interested in why. They're interested in pointing their finger at it and blaming somebody for it, rather than actually providing a solution. And nobody wants a solution based upon someone being positively discriminated.

Do they? I don't. There's lots of people who do. But it's funny, nor do we. And it's funny you're talking about many other things that we've explored on the show, these Uncle Tom's that you referred to. We've had plenty of them on the show. We've had Jordan Peterson on the show.

But it's interesting to me that you're coming out of it. So to just go back to Francis's question, you've never had a conversation with the owner of another football club. We said, oh, this guy applied, but I don't like them. Nothing like that. And I vehemently believe knowing these guys, because, you know, us football club owners are a certain mindset. And as I said, Slavard of Flippantly, you know, that they would have employed Osama Bernardin if he were alive and could have won games for them. That tells you that it's not about color or creed.

It's not. People that seek to try to justify the while there isn't representation or advanced causes, you know, may well advance that. But I genuinely believe that there are not enough black coaches coming through that are getting their badges. I believe that the actual landscape, when we talk about 30%, because the figure is advanced, 30% of players in the Premier League are from the black or minority ethnic communities, predominantly black. And I know we've got to separate the word Bain now

because there's an objection to that mnemonic. I don't know where it came from in the first place, because I never wanted to use it. I want to call black people black, but we move and we adjust to the times, don't we? But when you actually distill that down and say, well, actually, only 64 of those players are indigenous to this country, it might give you an explanation

because a lot of people live in a country, have a contract, play for a football team, go back to their own countries. So they don't form part of the statistic that we should be really looking at. The representation isn't right, but I'm still not understanding why that is the case. And taking of the knee is a societal stand against anti-discrimination, but I don't believe the national sport is racked with discrimination.

So I believe it's a flawed concept. If you're trying to get rid of racism in football, the zero-tolerance policy that clubs have towards fans is one thing. But to suggest the sport somehow as a discrimination problem, I'm troubled with, not because I want to be troubled by it, because I have no dog in the fight anymore. I don't own a football club anymore. And I'm only interested in authentic,

observations that can affect change, not just being able to be utilised for someone else's agenda that wants to shout the loudest. And we get that a lot. I mean, look, the American football brought in the Rooney rule. Do you think that could be a good idea? I'm not against it. They brought it into the English Football League,

which is obviously the tier below the Premier League, but they didn't do it properly, which is so often the case with football, that they bought a team without reporting mechanisms. it in as a protocol and a guideline, but they didn't bring in reporting to really be able to get underneath the fingernails of how recruitment was being done, how people were being given an opportunity from all communities. I worry that it falls into a quota area, but anything that's fair and equitable that advances opportunity for talent, then I'm for. You know, I build a business

that I was involved in very, very heavily. You don't build a business with 15 grand and in five years sell it for the best part of 100 million quid, never having borrowed a money, never had any investors, and just be different without really being underneath the fingernails of it. And I spoke to every single member of staff on every single induction course and every single trading regime instilling them in the belief that I couldn't care

what they looked like, where they came from, what their colour creed was, what their ethnicity was, what their sex was, all I cared about was that they did a good job. and I gave them an opportunity to have the opportunity they wanted, which was life is about success, irrespective of the measure of success, because we go to work to have a better life outside of it. I'm going to give you the opportunity to be successful. I'm going to demand from you your very best. If you work for me for six days, six weeks, six months or six years, I want your best six days, six weeks, six months or six years, and expect the same for me. And irrespective of what you look like and where you come from, I will afford you all those opportunities. and you will take them yourself and make them yourself. And I believe in that emphatically. So that then translates into my outlook in life. So I believe religiously and emphatically in the fact that talent is a definer.

Talent is a definer. And I rail against the fact that people will genderize certain challenges that they may have and put it down to the fact that people are suppressing them because of their ethnicity. I accept the argument in this country that we have racism in this country and exists on both sides of all communities. And I don't accept that the same issues that happen in America

which has a 40% racial mix towards Latinos and the black community and the Caucasian community whereas in this country it's very different dynamics. And I don't accept the societal issues in America exist here and I'm very challenged by the argument that's advanced

and the regimes that are being deployed to suggest this country is institutionally racist. I don't accept it, not because I don't want to, because I live in this country and I have open eyes. And whilst I'm not black, you know, I've been brought up with most of my friends, and I know that's a token argument that people advance, but my friend's a black person.

I have a black nephew who, or I watch the world through his eyes as well, and I see the opportunities that he does or doesn't have based upon his own way of approaching life. But I do accept, fundamentally accept, that there is endemic racism in this country and in society. What does that mean? Well, systemic means that the whole country, every single institution is rife with it. Endemic means it's localized and it's not specific to, you know, it's not an overall

catch. So there are racist people in the country. Of course they are. Well, no one would deny that. You'd be insane to do so. But, you know, but the argument is not being advanced as a choice, is it? It's being advanced that this is country systemically racist. It's institutionally racist.

And I struggle with that. I struggle with critical race. theory because it's about the construct of the law designed to suppress one race in the advancement of another. And whilst I accept that it was redlining in America and that people were struggling to break out of economic depravity, specifically the black community through the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s and the Italians and the Jews after the First and Second World War were allowed to break out of those and I accept it and I understand it and I think it's deplorable. I do not believe it exists in this country and it's not because I don't want to. I want to see it. I want to see it. I want to see terrible

things where they are, and then I want to make people accountable for them when they really are accountable for them. You're a business owner. I mean, this has been unlike anything that any of us have seen. I mean, what are the challenges that you face? And do you think the government has actually provided enough support for people like you who are running businesses to keep them afloat? And what, to be fair, I think, you know, we're in an uncharted world. I hate to use the terminology unprecedented because it's been flogged to death by everybody that can't find an alternative words. But I think the government has stepped up and done far better than it's being given credit for. 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 look at the reality of what has been done. 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. We're actually in ascendancy. This is not 2008, 2009, where you've got a problem with the constructs of the way that the banks operated. They were undercapitalized. Basel 3 wasn't a part of parcel of the banks thinking. They had fundamental problems with the manner in which they were lending. Wall Street was driving the economics of certain things.

So you look at that and say, when we shut down in 2008, 2009, and a world went to hell in the handcart economically, the situation was broken. We're not broken. We've just committed an enormous act of self-harm, which is shutting the world down. on the basis of, I don't deny, I'm not a COVID-denier, I'm not an anti-vaxxer, I am very troubled by the manner in which the media has created an absolute fear culture around the disease that doesn't seem to be fundamentally different from the Hong Kong flu of 1968, where more than a million people died around the world, but nobody shut the world down.

And I know Rocco Fulti wrote an article about that saying, does anybody remember the Hong Kong flu? Because I was around at that time. No, nobody does, because it wasn't. leveraged the way it has been leveraged by the media. I have a great trouble with the media because I think one of the worst, and that's ironic given fact I operate in it, I understand that. It's not about being in the media, it's about how you are operating within the confines of the media. One of the worst things that's happened is 24-hour rolling news cycles because you need to keep

creating content. That means you get 25 epidemiologists to be able to contradict one another, to be able to keep the news cycle running. One of the most disgraceful things I've seen recently of Sky News, when we had the foresight in this country to have the medical, the MHRA were able to license the vaccines quickly before anybody else. And they flew over Anthony Fauci from New York to give an opinion on our vaccines saying that the standards in America would be higher for the regulatory granting of the licensing of vaccines. And then Sky had the audacity after creating vaccine doubt, had the audacity in the next cycle. to rail against the fact that anyone should be doubting vaccine.

Well, we weren't doubting vaccines until you came along and brought somebody over who had to apologise a week later and then the particular vaccine that he was criticising was then licensed by the Americans. So, you know, I have views about the way in which the media operate, which concerns me. It sounds as if I've got an agenda with the media. I just want people to be given the right information

and people to understand the dynamics of the world we live in. Going to the question of how difficult it is, is I just scaled, you know, I disscaled and moved into capital opportunities. I've got investments in startup businesses that will obviously have been very difficult during this period of time, focused in retail. Retail was always bleeding. A lot of my friends are in retail, Theopepathus, obviously with hundreds and hundreds of stores, they were already getting their backsides kicked by the online guys in terms of the fact

that if you've got retail footprints, you're in a difficult position because you're paying rates, and you've got a cost of sale, which is dwarfed by the cost of sale that the, the online guys, the Amazons of the world have. So the challenges were there. As far as supporting the economics of businesses, you can run an argument that people weren't supported. You can run an argument that there were certain smaller businesses where directors weren't able, who paid themselves through dividends,

weren't able to be able to claim the same money that other people could claim as a result of the furlough schemes. Well, I'm sorry, with respect to you guys, the reasons why you pay yourself through dividends is because you get a tax break for doing it and you declare less of an income, So you can draw less when a crisis like this comes along. You can't have it both ways.

I don't know what you're talking about. But the hypocrisy of certain arguments, I think the government has had, whoever was in situ would have had a bugger's muddle. Because we talk about PPE and the shortage of PPE. I thought PPE is perishable. It is perishable. So how are you ever going to have stocks of PPE?

Because it's perishable. So the idea that we should be fully loaded and fully invested with a whole raft of PPE available to everybody, was unfair. I'm not suggesting we couldn't have done better. I'm not suggesting the Daily Mail didn't prove it by flying a plane out to such and such a place and loading it up with PPE. I was also of the impression that the care service on the whole was privately run. People like my friend Duncan Bannatyne that make lots of money from this sort of environment. So quite why it was a responsibility of government to be procuring and securing their PPE

at the height of this particular challenge that we had at the beginning of it, you know, troubles. me, but the economic landscape, yeah, of course it's brutal, and I think there's been so much indecision and so much, we're being led by scientists, we're being led by clinicians, and the problem with that for me, and I'm not going to like what I'm about to say, is these people live in a world of research and development. They live with the desire to allow you to live with things rather than cure things. They also never seem to have any accountability. You've got back surgery. Am I going to come out of this for 100% okay? Well, there's no guarantee. okay, but you're the doctor, so can I have a guarantee, a cast, no, medicine doesn't work that

way. When you deploy a country into the hands of people like this, then you're never going to get an outcome that's never going to be anything other than never, ever, or yes, it could be this, yes, it could be that, and we could go on forever. So I have great trouble with what's gone on over the last 12 months, as we all do, not just because it's been debilitating for people's mental well-being, not because it's been destructive because the media have run it like a rolling a countdown of how many people are dying, running around like morbid, you know, sort of digital burk and hairs running around the world chasing coffins as if it's something we all want to see. But I'm not sure what else the government could have done besides do the

economics that it's done. And now I don't worry about the national debt because I think the cost of borrowing is cheap. We never could have borrowed more money cheaper. And I think the economy has the ability to power out of it. I'm still on John Cornwall don't agree on many things. having been old sparring partners, but I've seen John, with his narcissically titled Corbill Plan, about the way to power out of this. And Britain is a business model in terms of its economic landscape to be able to power out of the challenges we've got.

The stock market's been a real opportunity that I've availed myself of and taken, invested in a lot of COVID-stock companies, invested in a lot of the Futsi 100 companies that have dropped off the radar with the fundamentals being okay, but the sentiment driving the LSC and various other markets. So I, as a capitalist and a realist, think in every crisis there's opportunity. We're seeing a changing landscape.

We're seeing a change of the way people were going to work. I'm interested to see how that lands, because whether people like it or not, people are more effective when they're in environments where people can see how they're working and can manage their output, you know, and I know people are not going to like that. But when we start to see the development of the live and work environments and the way that residential and commercial is going to morph into one environment,

and out of everything comes opportunity. But I think it's been brutal. How can it not be? Well, Simon, you made a couple of interesting points there. First of all, the one about the scientists, I completely agree with, by the way, which is the whole thing about following the science, is an absurd way for politicians to protect themselves. Abdicate responsibility.

That's all it is, right? Because there's no such thing as following the science. Politicians are supposed to take that information and put it together with information about mental health, policing, the economy, put all that together and make a decision. And risk assess and kind of with the best outcome. But the real point I wanted to pick up out on what you said was the media, because I'm someone who rails against the media as much as anybody else.

But do you think there's actually the public, You, Francis, everybody watching, we have to take some responsibility. I'll tell you why. Because they did a poll recently, which showed that if you poll people in this country about how many people have died, what percentage of the public have died? A lot of the most common answer is 10%. So people think that 6 million people have died, right? They're out by a magnitude of 2, right?

It's actually 0.1%. I know what it is, yeah, yeah. So we've bought into this fear. We are the ones. Died with. died with. Not necessarily all. Let's not get into that because we'll get banned off YouTube,

but I agree with you, right? But my point is, we've brought into that fear. We, the public, I mean, you and I may have not, but the people have brought into, yes, the media, of course, they keep telling us. It's all evil, blah, blah, blah. But we are the ones that got scared.

The public are the ones who watched all that nonsense and actually decided we must be scared. Do you not think that while we try and blame the media and say, they're only giving us what we want? Create the demand and then supply the demand. Right. So which is worse? There is an element of people, you know, this may sound condescending, but it's not meant to.

There are very few leaders in the world. Most people are lemmins. They follow. They look to get their opinions from other people. They follow people's example, whether it's be fashion or whether it's people's opinions. If you've got broadcasters that are constantly pumping information into you, there is an element of people, a proportion of society that will suggest that because it's being put forward by a broadcaster, because it's being advanced by a politician, that it has to have credibility, has to have substance, and so

subsequently has to be believed. Now, other people that are more prepared to kick the can and to interrogate it and to look behind it and to evaluate it without agenda, because people that evaluate things that always not have an agenda, they have their own motivation to be able to change it around to advance the argument they want to at the time. Of course there's an argument that you're supplying people what they want. The Sun being a newspaper that people have vilified over the years, yet still probably the biggest selling newspaper for a variety of reasons. You know, I know people weren't buy that newspaper in Liverpool because of what's happened in the past there, but it still remains to be one of the biggest read newspapers, irrespective of some of the irresponsible,

Piers Morgan and some of the things that he has said, I happen to agree with some of the things he said about Megamarkle, and I happen to agree to some of the things he said about a lot of things, but I don't happen to agree that he's a shining light of merit. especially on COVID. On a variety of things. He's hypocrites. And we had him on our show once and I drove a bus for his hypocrisy.

And I don't know how he's got the audacity to write a book about the council culture when he's a living embodiment of it and spends more of his time scoring points than actually dealing with something more substantial. When you get the health minister on that ghastly show GMB and you haven't had him for six months and rather than talk about the progress of vaccines,

you want to spend 15-minute interview suggesting to him you should apologize for something that Dominic Cummins did, then you're in a clickbait world of news cycles rather than a real broadcasting world that the public are entitled to see. I accept that there has to be an element of show beers or Rasmataz or feel about it that gives people what they want to see at times. And of course there is always the argument that we're only giving people what they want.

But, you know, you create that demand in them and then you feed that demand. And of course there's a proletarian mentality. People can be proles. They can sit there and go more, more, more of that because I like what I've been given. And there is an element of people should find out for themselves. I try to find out for myself. I try to look at the statistics. I try to understand 38,000 people in hospital,

and the hospitals are going to burst, and we've got the nightingales being built over there, and why haven't we got this? 128,000 people have died of this dreadful disease, but how many people have died with it, and I'm hearing statistics being reported that actually the government have a motivation for it. And we hear all of these things,

but I try to put it through a critical lens and understand it, And I have very grave concerns about the manner in which the world is operating and the way that we're being led to believe certain things. But we all must take responsibility for our own thoughts. That's what I'm saying. You know, and if we're all going to be terrible. I mean, I'm personally not terrified.

I've had COVID-19. I've very unwell with it. And I've had members of my family that I've had it. And I don't want a society where we're walking around in masks. I don't want social distancing. I don't want to live in fear in COVID. I want to learn to live with it. I want the actual facts to come through about what's really happening with this situation

rather than some of what seems to be happening. And I do agree emphatically with you that there is an element of if you allow scientists to be the leading force behind what you're making your decisions upon, then you are abdicating responsibility. And I think Boris Johnson and his cabinet are very much guilty of that. But when you've got low-grade politicians that we have in this country in this day and age, some of it could be because of the nature of abuse that you get by being a politician, Some of it could be that you don't pay these people best in class,

irrespective of the ridiculous expenses. But, you know, we pay our politicians. Boris Johnson's a CEO of this country. He's not paid like the CEO, and it shouldn't be about money. And we know that further down the line, he'll monetize it by being able to sell his memoirs and do whatever, you know,

in the speeches that he and Tony Blair can do until the cows come home. But it still doesn't alter the fact that we don't have the best in class, whether you like these people from the past or not, whether you like Michael Heseltine and think he was to be revered. My God, these were,

politicians of stature. These were men of stature. You may not like their politics, but you knew where you stood with them. And we don't have this now. We have lightweight politicians that are half-baked, that are too busy virtue signaling and actually doing what they should be doing, which is running this country and running it properly and having the courage of their convictions. And I know that sounds as a stand-stay from the outside, but that's what leaders should do. That's what leaders should be made of. It shouldn't be something we say, oh, wow, that's special. That's what our politicians should embody. I mean, it's very true. You're hitting all the points that we talk about on the show all the time. Yeah, we had Peter Hitchinson

saying the exact same thing. I like Peter. I like Peter. I don't always agree with his articles, but I think he's got something to say and he says it. If you're going to say something, go strong or go home. Exactly. And on that note, we could have talked for another hour, Simon. It's been absolutely brilliant. It's the end. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. We're going to do a couple of questions for locals,

but for the purposes of now, we'll wrap this up. Thanks very much for coming on, Simon. If people want to check out where you are, your controversial opinions, where do they go for that online? Well, if they like sports, they can listen to what I consider to be the best broadcast in a country, which is trigonometry. Trigonometry, besides Trigonometry in the digital world. But from a sports point of view, listen to Talksball. It's great station.

Great stuff. And the last question we always ask is, what's the one thing we're not talking about, but we really should be? You posed that to me earlier on, and I was trying to think if there is such a thing as we're talking about. I think there is, I think there are very few things off the table right now. Everything is being over-analysis from how much a prime minister spends on his wallpaper through to the state of the nation. So, I think there's very few things. I don't really look at anything out there and say, we're missing a trick here. I'm sure I could have perhaps delve deeper into my psyche and thought of an answer, but I don't have one at the top of my head thinking, I've got a burning question.

My burning question is, do we ask the right questions? Do enough people that have enough intelligence and have the courage of their convictions to advance arguments, get the opportunity to do so? And are we scrutinizing things? Are we allowing things to go on this country? And not having, because we're living in this ridiculous, woke mentality where you dare say something that people don't like, then it all. automatically you're cancelled, I think we're going to see, and we should be lording and applauding

an appreciation of people having different views and learning to disagree without the necessity to be able to destroy one another. Good point. Thank you for coming on the show, Simon. And thank you for watching and listening. We will see you very soon with another brilliant interview like this one. Orr Orr Show, they all go out at 7pm UK time. Take care and see you soon, guys.

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