Oh my dear, sweet Jesus.  This morning the BBC News leads with the story that the owner of Sports Direct, Mike Ashley, has bought out the struggling store chain House of Fraser for what is, in corporate terms, a pittance of £90 million.

I don’t pretend to understand why it is that companies buy out other companies when the chips are down, so to speak; what is it that the buying company gains financially if they do that?  Anyway, that’s not the point.

The point is that Ashley, boo hiss, is the current owner of British Premier League soccer club Newcastle United, a club of which I counted myself a fan of until he took over – no, more accurately it was when he put 20,000 of his employees at Sports Direct on zero hour contracts.

Zero hour contracts take us back to the dark ages of 18th & 19th-century factory employment; the days when workers had no rights, children were sent down mines, all that sort of thing.  No notice period, no sick pay; there’s the famous story of a female Sports Direct employee forced to have a baby in the toilets at work because she was too frightened to take the time off in case she was never allowed back.

It emerged in July 2013 that Ashley had 90% of his workforce, around 20,000 people, on these zero hour contracts. Furthermore, many were working below minimum wage and it took the intervention of a programme made by Channel 4, Dispatches, to highlight it and force the company to begrudgingly make some of the changes.

I cannot in all conscience support this man or anything he is involved with, much less anything he owns.  He only improved some of his employees’ working conditions because he got found out, and even then the changes were so tightly and temperamentally made that it was obvious there was no interest or love for his workforce.  What a dreadful human being.

Thus, I no longer support Newcastle United until the day he and his cronies are long gone from that club, and his continued efforts to drive the club into the ground are investigated and dropped.  I do not, and will not support any other club in its place, but I do look for a ‘guest team’ each season to support, usually a club local to me and struggling in its own way.  The day Ashley is gone and the rotten smell he has left behind is cleared, trust me, I will be back with Newcastle.  But until then, and for this season at least, my ‘guest team’ is Cheltenham Town, currently 17th in the S** B** League Two, for alphabetical reasons.  I won’t mention who the sponsors of Leagues One and Two (the old Third & Fourth Divisions), but they are sponsored by another evil corporate swine.  Cheltenham lost their opening fixture of this new season (2018/19).

Another team I still look out for, despite not having lived there for more than a decade, is Boreham Wood, the Hertfordshire club who play a pre-season friendly with Arsenal every year.  Ironically, “the Wood,” as they are known locally, made it to the second round of the F.A. Cup in 1999, only to lose 2-0… to Cheltenham Town!  Life is funny that way sometimes.  The Wood hover about in the National League, one step below the main four divisions of the Football League – last season they were defeated in the play-off final at Wembley Stadium to make that league.  What a day that must have been for the players, despite the loss!  A game at Wembley Stadium!

But…

Mike Ashley is evil.  He is a billionaire, and a typical one at that.  All he gives two shits about is making money for himself.  Today he bought House of Fraser for £90 million but is still quibbling with employees over pay rises totalling less than £10 million, that were supposedly awarded in 2015.  Furthermore, the 20,000 or so employees were not included in the pay rise.  As the late, great Rik Mayall would have no doubt said, Mike Ashley is a total bastard. x