We know now that Hollywood’s portrayal of Nero may have been
an exaggeration, but you get the point. In fact if you look for some of the
background – in this case lifting from www.history.com
- on the phrase ‘fiddling while Rome burned’ the parallels become even more
apparent.
“The expression has a double meaning: not only did Nero play
music while his people suffered, but he was an ineffectual leader in a time of
crisis”. But Nero was only rumoured to have sung about the destruction of Troy while watching Rome burn, with
no eyewitness confirmation. “When the Great Fire broke out, Nero was at his
villa at Antium, some 35 miles from Rome. Though he immediately returned and
began relief measures, people still didn’t trust him. Some even believed he had
ordered the fire started, especially after he used land cleared by the fire to
build his Golden Palace and its surrounding pleasure gardens. Nero himself
blamed the Christians (then an obscure religious sect) for the fire, and had
many arrested and executed.”
So we don’t really know whether the great fire,
which destroyed 70% of Rome, was instigated – even ordered – by Nero, whether
it was a plot by a group of zealots intent on seeing the city fail, or whether
it was just an accident. What we do know is that by the time the fire happened
Nero had already so burned his bridges (as it were) by his previous actions
that nobody believed him, that the people he tried to blame for the disaster
went from being an active minority to dominating the Western world for a long
time, and that Nero’s experimental efforts to recreate Rome in his own image,
including a 100ft-tall bronze statue of himself, ended in abject failure. And
just four years after the fire Nero’s incompetence and arrogance saw the
Pretorian guard and the Senate turn against him, declaring him an ‘enemy of the
people’. Nero opted for suicide rather than arrest and execution. Apparently
his last words were “what an artist dies in me”. Fast forward and we could
instead have “what a scientist, politician and football visionary ...”
We read that the regime is to “begin consultation
with fans on a potential restricting of the club’s Fans Forum”. You have to
admire the efforts of our expensive PR team to justify their existence. The
statement declaring this dramatic initiative refers throughout to ‘the club’,
with no mention of Meire. It claims that at the start of the season the club
made a commitment to engage with the fans “more than ever before” and that
after “well-attended” meetings with “points noted and changes made”, apparently
unbelievably “despite this, some supporters don’t feel fully engaged and some
supporters have raised questions about the Fans Forum”. Don’t feel fully
engaged. Only a PR person could write such BS when considering the situation of
our club.
It’s been said many times before. The Fans Forum is
a worthy and well-meaning body, albeit one with limited objectives, which has
been usurped by the regime to support the pretence that it fully engages with
the fan base. Because of this, for the time that the regime remains it is
better discontinued and its meetings not attended. The statement says that at
the latest Forum meeting the options of an independent chair and a fully
elected group were discussed. It’s the regime that has devalued the Forum, not
those who have given up their time and effort to help our club. Tinkering with
it now will serve no purpose, just ask Nero.
On the subject of asking Nero, to my lasting shame
I don’t think I can make it to Belgium on 4 March. Those who do will in the
years ahead be able to look back with pride on their contribution to the ending
of the Duchatelet years and the subsequent rebuilding of our club. I doubt that
Nero will be around for their visit, but that’s fine. If he’s chased out of
attending his home town club’s matches and events, just where will he go for
his post-match dance?
As a philosophy graduate, I always have the upper
hand (morally and intellectually) in discussions with friends of a more
scientific bent. After all, when scientists are not scrabbling around to try
and come up with some thesis based on empirical evidence which makes what we
know loosely explainable and (possibly) predictable, only for that theory to be
replaced when other facts contradict it, and instead embark on theoretical work
they are actually doing philosophy. Some might suggest that scientists have made
a more meaningful and practically beneficial contribution to humanity than
philosophers, but that is a discussion for another day. The point here is
evidence and what a good scientist makes of it.
Football is a zero sum game: our success is someone
else’s failure (or rather vice versa). To succeed you have to outperform your
peers. There are many ways this can be achieved: pouring ever-larger amounts of
money into buying the best players, having an outstanding manager, a great team
spirit etc. The contribution of fans can be said to be necessary but clearly
not sufficient. It just goes without saying that if you have an alienated fan
base you cannot succeed as a football club. All the available evidence supports
this. Any intelligent scientist would consider the evidence and draw the
necessary conclusions, follow the argument as they say. ‘If I want my club to
succeed I need the fans on board; the fans are not on board, can I get them on
board?; yes, but only by making real changes (getting rid of Meire, apologising
for the mismanagement of the club etc). So if I don’t want to make the changes
I can’t succeed, so should I end the experiment? It is one option, or perhaps
otherwise I just really don’t care after all.’
Just a hunch on my part, but I doubt that Karl
Robinson’s position is under threat despite recent results, our current
standing, and our owner’s propensity to look for Christians to blame for his failings.
After all, Robinson seems to have bought into (or rather been bought) the youth
fish-farm approach, whether or not he has any personal financial interest in
the on-sale of our players (that issue of his shareholding in Deli Ali’s agent’s
company seems to have gone cold but will no doubt resurface unless answers are
given). So unless for some reason of his own Duchatelet really wants to get Chris
O’Loughlin in charge I can’t see the benefit in getting rid of Robinson. Only
cost more money to pay him off, attract yet more ridiculing of the club, and
won’t impact on which division we will be playing in next season. Of course,
this is to apply logic rather than to look at the empirical evidence, so we
shall wait to see just what is Nero’s pleasure.
