Look.
I don’t care about Sport.
Sure, I appreciate the physical and mental skill, the coming together as a team to work on a common goal, the social bonding – all fine and dandy, but for me we were kicking, catching and throwing balls around the cave fire in prehistory times.
It’s basic level stuff eh?
My heroes are artists, writers, thinkers, scientists, philosophers and activists.
Not sportspeople.
So I don’t care about male rugby, and don’t see why I have to care about Womens rugby.
I’m still pissed off that the news ‘hour’ has 30 minutes taken out of it for fucking sport.
Which brings me to the horror abortion of human rights that is the ghoulish FIFA World Cup in bloody Qatar!
Let’s put aside the utter corruption of FIFA in being bribed to give it to Qatar in the first place (and the bizarre gibberish by the boss to justify it), let’s put aside the appalling human rights abuses of Qatar’s regime and let’s put aside the jaw dropping homophobia of Qatar and let’s just focus on the staggering number of migrant workers killed building these fucking stadiums!
An investigation by The Guardian in 2021 found over 6,500 migrant workers from South Asian countries such as India and Pakistan had died while working in Qatar since the country won its bid to host the World Cup in 2010.
6500 migrant workers dead to build for the World Cup?
What the fuck?
I mean one person would be tragedy, a dozen careless – but 6500 dead?
What were the Authorities doing?
Shooting Migrants workers against the stadium walls???
You can’t watch these football games knowing the stadiums were built with blood!
You can’t watch these football games knowing that gay people are persecuted.
You can’t watch these football games knowing the human rights abuses Qatar is involved in.
Qatar hosting the World Cup would be like Russia hosting the Oscars.
If sport demands us to turn a blind eye to 6500 migrant worker deaths and human rights abuses, then why give it any attention in the first place?
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“The beautiful game” has looked like a shit show for many years with FIFA corruption etc. But I guess millions of ordinary people and kids still like kicking a ball around, but those of those that don’t do not have to join them, or have anything to do with the multi billion professional sporting business soccer football has become.
A country that allows horrific punishments and torture, demonises women and gays, but won’t allow footy fans a few litres of piss–oh how sad. Boycott the bastards, hit ’em where it hurts I say…in the pre sales, sales and travel and accommodation.
The Guardian article linked to requires a little parsing with lots of obfuscation going on from the Qatar authorities and others. It seems heat stroke is a major cause, rather than say falling from a great height.
At this level it’s not sport it’s money, it’s disgraceful.
Money must be made. Money is being made. And that is all that counts.
That is just tragic.
Not only was the awarding of these games corrupt but now FIFA and it’s filthy bent directors have blood in its/their hands as a direct result.
NZ is right up there with the best when it comes to migrant exploitation but at least they generally get to live another day in our workers paradise!
… not always though in NZ… think of some of the port workers crushed to death (tornedo last year I think even), meat works horror injuries, forestry deaths were quite bad for a while, kiwifruit worker lost a leg last season… suicides due to gaslighting at work…just off the top of my head… NZs pretty useless when it comes to health n safety where it counts. But we don’t normally execute people on purpose in the workplace at least, certainly
I used to quite like a lot of sports but the relentless, rabid, commercialisation of sport has just left me disillusioned, disgusted and disinterested.
Nurses working hard for how much pay why some superstar footballer earns millions a week? Fuck off!
What I don’t get is how many working class/poor people still look up to these multi million dollar athlete.
Professional sport sold it’s soul and integrity for money imo
Agree there is a lot of money in sport, but let’s not blame sport or the athletes for successive governments under paying nurses and teachers etc. It’s laughable when Key talking about multi nationals, and Ardern talking about bank profits, both reference moral license and doing what is right……as they under pay nurses and schoolteachers etc.
Such a large number of deaths has to be looked at. Did 6,500 people really die building World Cup facilities? To quote you, “6,500 migrant workers died to build for World Cup”. As you say, that would be 650 each year, basically 2 a day. It is not a credible figure for construction related accidents.
As it happens that is not what was reported in the Guardian. Apparently 6,500 migrant workers have died from all causes since 2010. Health related deaths, natural causes, motor vehicle accidents, suicides, criminal violence as well as construction deaths. The 6,500 deaths relate to people from the Indian sub continent, (who are concentrated in construction) so the total number of migrant deaths is actually higher.
There are in fact about 2.5 million migrant workers in Qatar in all sectors, including many people who have lived in Qatar for many years. Many will die in Qatar for all sorts of reasons.
I imagine, if you took the 200,000 typically on work visas in New Zealand and then looked at how many died from all causes over a 10 year period, it might be quite a substantial figure. I would not be surprised if it was well over 1,000.
The Qatar governments says 37 people died building the World Cup facilities. OK, that is probably an underestimate, but they won’t have turned 6,500 construction deaths into 37.
Comrade – my understanding is that the vast number of those deaths were heat exhaustion and while not all those deaths will be attributable directly to the stadiums, they sure as hell were part of the infrastructure upgrade and investment winning the World Cup triggered.
I stand by my sweeping and hilarious statement.