Ched Evans to sign for oldham

[Askern_reds]

I never said if you don't put up a fight u want it ? n sorry but yes I was on about Evans case,tbh I wish the f**k he'd go play abroard . we might change the subject?

[Wild Rover]

He cant.

[BobG]

Could he even play in Scotland now with the way the world has changed?

BobG

[Copps is Magic]

I never said if you don't put up a fight u want it ? n sorry but yes I was on about Evans case,tbh I wish the f*** he'd go play abroard . we might change the subject?

We're going round in circles here but he can't move abroad without permission from his probation office. He's still serving his sentence.

[Askern_reds]

Yes we are copps you right, wish we would sighn a new striker if he can't go abroard, that might cheer everyone up

[Jonathan]

Surely if he just wants to get on with his life he should just get a job at Argos out of the public eye. He doesn't want to get on with his life he wants to get earning the big dollar again.

Why should Argos be able to employ him but not Oldham Athletic? Or are you suggesting shop workers are not important in society but footballers are? What if Argos wanted to make him their CEO on more money than Oldham would've paid him?

I think the point here was "out of the public eye"?

Yes it was.

So you've no problem with what a convicted rapist does for work, as long as people don't know? Nobody is forced to watch him work wherever he may or may not play, nobody forces the press to report on it. We all have choices available, as does he and as do football clubs. The public eye turns its attention where it wants, or where its told.

[Lipsy]

I don't necessarily agree with this gent, but this is an interesting read: http://ow.ly/H09TY

[BillyStubbsTears]

Surely if he just wants to get on with his life he should just get a job at Argos out of the public eye. He doesn't want to get on with his life he wants to get earning the big dollar again.

Why should Argos be able to employ him but not Oldham Athletic? Or are you suggesting shop workers are not important in society but footballers are? What if Argos wanted to make him their CEO on more money than Oldham would've paid him?

Jonathan

That's a truly disappointing post from you. I thought your level of discussion was higher than that.

Argos shopworkers don't have kids wearing shirts with their names on the back and idolising photos of them on their bedroom walls. That is the issue here. Evans has a legal right to play professional football. Any club in the country has a legal right to employ him as a player. But everyone in society has a legal right to say that they don't want to be associated with a club that puts a player with that backstory forward as a hero.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Will those folk who were not going to Oldham due to the potential Evans signing now be going?

Yes. Of course. Why not?

[Glyn_Wigley]

Surely if he just wants to get on with his life he should just get a job at Argos out of the public eye. He doesn't want to get on with his life he wants to get earning the big dollar again.

Why should Argos be able to employ him but not Oldham Athletic? Or are you suggesting shop workers are not important in society but footballers are? What if Argos wanted to make him their CEO on more money than Oldham would've paid him?

I think the point here was "out of the public eye"?

Yes it was.

So you've no problem with what a convicted rapist does for work, as long as people don't know? Nobody is forced to watch him work wherever he may or may not play, nobody forces the press to report on it. We all have choices available, as does he and as do football clubs. The public eye turns its attention where it wants, or where its told.

Actually it raises an interesting point that I've not seen answered anywhere.

The BBC now refuse to repeat anything with Jimmy Savile and DLT in it because of their activities. Would they now be able to refuse to broadcast any match that Evans plays in in order to be consistent? And would that mean any club that Evans plays for would not receive TV money..?

[bpoolrover]

No as it's not against children at a guess

[Wild Rover]

Neither was DLT,s.

[BillyStubbsTears]

So you've no problem with what a convicted rapist does for work, as long as people don't know?

No. That's silly. there's a whole string of jobs that a convicted rapist with an unspent conviction couldn't hold, from accountant to nursery school assistant.

Personally, I have no problem with anyone with any conviction doing whatever job they want outside those sensible limits.

Nobody is forced to watch him work wherever he may or may not play, nobody forces the press to report on it. We all have choices available, as does he and as do football clubs.

And there's the key. For me, Evans can play for whomever he wants if they will have him. But I will reserve my right to take my own decisions as a consequence of that.

If the pub at the end of my road was taken over by someone with a conviction for say, racially aggravated assault, for which he had never apologised, that'd be fine and legal. But I would never set foot in the place and I'd argue with friends and colleagues that they shouldn't. If his business went bankrupt as a result, I would shed not a single tear.

That's the precise analogy here.

[Bentley Bullet]

The fact that the BBC are treating Jimmy savile's and DLT's crimes with equal contempt by banning both off their screens despite their different order of magnitude can be compared to the media treating Ched Evans like Jack the Ripper.

[Glyn_Wigley]

The fact that the BBC are treating Jimmy savile's and DLT's crimes with equal contempt by banning both off their screens despite their different order of magnitude can be compared to the media treating Ched Evans like Jack the Ripper.

They are treating both equally as sex offenders.

[TommyC]

http://www.spectator.co.uk/columnists/rod-liddle/9410182/the-utterly-ludicrous-and-petty-campaign-against-ched-evans/

Probably articulates far better what I was trying to say on the subject than I managed.

[Bentley Bullet]

The fact that the BBC are treating Jimmy savile's and DLT's crimes with equal contempt by banning both off their screens despite their different order of magnitude can be compared to the media treating Ched Evans like Jack the Ripper.

They are treating both equally as sex offenders.

Exactly!

[acko]

just read that tommy c sums everythjng up niceiy,

[BillyStubbsTears]

Tommy

That's another addition to the arm-long list of Reasons to f**king Hate That Kitson Liddle.

Having failed at the BBC as a serious media operator, he now makes a living writing hate-filled diatribes like this against what he claims to be "political correctness".

He sets up straw men and ignores sensible arguments to the contrary. M

Personally, I don't recognise in my own attitudes to Evans, ANY of the attitudes or beliefs that he accuses people on the opposite side of the argument of having.

And that's because he has no interest in trying to have an intelligent, informed, grown-up debate. He's a hate-filled, spiteful, nasty bas**rd who likes to rabble rouse and stir up the easily stirred up.

A repulsive Kitson. And ugly as sin to go with it.

[silent majority]

Amen to that.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Liddle works on the premise that he's got a readership who respond to the dog-whistle of "politically correct". If you can label someone as "politically correct" then you've undermined their right to have a valid point to make. You ridicule and insult them. He appeals to people who have a fixed mindset in these issues and don't want anything to dilute that mindset.

I'm not surprised at some people lapping this up, but I'm genuinely shocked at you approving of Liddle's rant.

[les@donr]

Didn't Littlejohn use to so the same thing in the Sun?

[BillyStubbsTears]

He does it for the Mail now.

[Jonathan]

Surely if he just wants to get on with his life he should just get a job at Argos out of the public eye. He doesn't want to get on with his life he wants to get earning the big dollar again.

Why should Argos be able to employ him but not Oldham Athletic? Or are you suggesting shop workers are not important in society but footballers are? What if Argos wanted to make him their CEO on more money than Oldham would've paid him?

Jonathan

That's a truly disappointing post from you. I thought your level of discussion was higher than that.

Argos shopworkers don't have kids wearing shirts with their names on the back and idolising photos of them on their bedroom walls. That is the issue here. Evans has a legal right to play professional football. Any club in the country has a legal right to employ him as a player. But everyone in society has a legal right to say that they don't want to be associated with a club that puts a player with that backstory forward as a hero.

So how low do we go before he can get a job that you'll deem is acceptable to society? We've established that Oldham Athletic is too prominent, accountancy is off limits because he'd be struck off, but Argos is okay because people don't wear the shirts. Could Gainsborough Trinity be okay as they don't have many supporters idolising them, or Armthorpe Welfare? Or how about Badminton? Not traditionally much of a spectator sport so he'd be safe without people buying a replica shirt with his name on the back or idolising him for his rape.

Of course I'm playing devils advocate to an extent, but people seem to have very strong views on what he can and can't do and why, so I'm wondering where you draw the line.   

[silent majority]

I was agreeing with you BST, nobody else.

[BillyStubbsTears]

SM. I know. My second post was still addressed to TommyC although I forgot to put his name in it.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Jonathan

I don't know. I'm not telling the rest of society what to think. I'm telling you what I think. I wouldn't want to go and have my kids idolising a convicted rapist. Or a convicted hit and run killer. I wouldn't want to give money to a club who employed him. That's my take. I'm not telling anyone else what to do. Not Evans, not Oldham, not you.

But your post is again a bit disappointing. It's a bit absolutist. Like there is some absolute line of "right" on one side and "wrong" on the other.

I had the first 16 years of my life being taught like that in Catholic schools until I realised it was bullshit. There's a spectrum from totally unacceptable to totally inoffensive from utterly important to utterly irrelevant, and everything lies somewhere on that spectrum.

If you stop and think about it in spectrum terms, you question is daft. There is a spectrum of professional/semi-professional sport. At one end, practitioners are uncritically worshipped by millions. At the other, barely anyone has heard of them. At one end the sport defines lifestyles, attitudes and mindsets. At the other, it's a mild diversion for a few pensioners.

I thought that was obvious.

My take, for what it's worth is that a Division 3 football team in the current era is, for a reasonably large number of people, closer to the idol end of the spectrum than the idle one. So yes,  I think players, their behaviour and the behaviour that we're prepared to accept from them does have societal influence. Look at the effect that Billy Sharp's goal and shirt removal had after his son died. It went viral because it gave an example of a male way of dealing with unbearable grief. Even though he was playing for a tinpot nowt club.

Would he have got that reaction if he'd been playing for Gainsborough? Of course not. Would he if he'd been playing for Hartlepool. Possibly. Possibly not.

There's a spectrum.

My concern is that welcoming Evans back into the fold sends out a strong AND INFLUENTIAL message about male attitudes. I felt the same about Hughes - that it sent out a message about what we thought as a society about scum who kill when driving like a Kitson. But then I've got a personal stake in that one.

[Jonathan]

BST

I don't mind that you find my argument disappointing, as previously stated I'm playing devils advocate to a large extent. Truth is it's making a far more interesting debate than I anticipated.

The fact is, rightly or wrongly, football isn't regulated so there's nothing but opinion to stop him being signed by any club in the pyramid. For every person that can express that opinion articulately and constructively, as you can, there'll be others jumping on the bandwagon throwing out death threats. I think it's a dangerous precedent to encourage mob rule (as the press certainly have) and allow emotion to take precedence over regulation.

There are clubs down the pyramid with fans that idolise them, clubs that attract plenty of media attention (look at Salford for example) so without defining what is or isn't acceptable we're effectively in a situation where propaganda is swaying people to decide where the line is drawn. It's not necessarily based on his right to earn, as there's nothing to say Oldham will pay more than any other, it can't purely be exposure as we can't measure it and don't even have to partake in it (maybe the press could even take on some social responsibility by not glorifying him) and it's not football per se if we agree he could go down the pyramid and play there. One thing he certainly isn't being is "welcomed back," if anything the case has raised the profile of what is or isn't considered to be acceptable behaviour, so can't we just allow employers to make their own decisions, and we can make our own on whether we want anything to do with it or not. To me that makes more sense than trying to force people's hands based on undefined principle and (in some cases) heavy handed method.

Edit - I've just read the article posted by Tommy C. I've no preconceptions regarding the author, and have to admit I think it raises many valid points.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Jonathan

Apologies for the time of the earlier post. When I said it was disappointing, a more grown up thing to have said was that I disagree with it.

Regarding Liddle, he may well make valid points. He does. He's a smart man. The problem is that he is a polemicist. He makes points from one side only and ridicules anyone who disagrees.

I say "polemicist". I mean "nasty Kitson" who thinks it's witty making jokes about smoking at Auschwitz, about blacks having proven lower intellectual capacity, who, when writing about feminist politics in a national newspaper, starts off his article, "So, Harriet Harman. Would you then, eh?" Who wrote an article supporting the accused murderers of Stephen Lawrence during their trial which led to his paper being fined for contempt of court. Etc, etc.

The man is a very clever rabble rouser. He writes articles that dog whistle on issues of sexual and race politics. The articles add f*** all to the debate, but that give implicit support to some of the nastier seams in society.

He could do a lot better in terms of generating an intelligent debate. But he failed at that career. And now he's a bitter, nasty b*****d who turns out nasty bitter polemics instead.

[Dagenham Rover]

I did read that the petition when Sheff U were looking at him and when Oldham started were started by the same person although the same name for both petitions was a pseudonym for the same person, right or wrong I don't know