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As a student of the politics of developing countries, I couldn't help noticing the striking similarities between the way QPR is "governed" and the way many countries in Africa, Latin America and the former Soviet world are run, particularly those with natural resource wealth. Similarities...
1) There is a dictator in charge with whom you have to curry favour or you're out
2) The dictator and his cronies enjoy the heights of luxury as the peasants endure discomfort
3) Former channels for fans' representation have been closed or disregarded and so the peasants have no real influence in the decisions taken at the top
4) The peasants face an increasingly large tax burden to pay for the dictator's excesses
5) Any forms of dissent or rebellion are dealt with mercilessly
Of course, it's a football club in London so we're talking about sacking not imprisonment, torture and death; cramped seats and crap football not shanty towns, subsistence farming and poverty; and our sudden enrichment has not come from discovering oil, but I think you get the analogy.
In conclusion, like most of these countries, QPR is now an authoritarian state posing as a democracy. Ultimately, all dictatorships fall when their citizens mobilise and revolt.
It was crap living in a poor democracy and it's possibly worse living in a rich dictatorship where unattainable wealth is flaunted. We need to fight for our right to establish a wealthy democracy in W12! Who's ready to protest?
1) There is a dictator in charge with whom you have to curry favour or you're out
2) The dictator and his cronies enjoy the heights of luxury as the peasants endure discomfort
3) Former channels for fans' representation have been closed or disregarded and so the peasants have no real influence in the decisions taken at the top
4) The peasants face an increasingly large tax burden to pay for the dictator's excesses
5) Any forms of dissent or rebellion are dealt with mercilessly
Of course, it's a football club in London so we're talking about sacking not imprisonment, torture and death; cramped seats and crap football not shanty towns, subsistence farming and poverty; and our sudden enrichment has not come from discovering oil, but I think you get the analogy.
In conclusion, like most of these countries, QPR is now an authoritarian state posing as a democracy. Ultimately, all dictatorships fall when their citizens mobilise and revolt.
It was crap living in a poor democracy and it's possibly worse living in a rich dictatorship where unattainable wealth is flaunted. We need to fight for our right to establish a wealthy democracy in W12! Who's ready to protest?
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