Media coverage 2018/19

[M18CTID]

I’m amazed at the blitheness on here mate. The decision to give Matthew Hedges a life sentence yesterday is a PR disaster, and we (City) are going to cop for some serious shit because of it. Quite honestly, if another club were owned by Sheikh Mansour and not us, I’d probably be sticking the boot in too

I'm sure everyone on here will agree that, whatever has gone on, it's a poor show and he deserves a fair trial. No one is going to argue otherwise. However, the issue for many of us is why should City and City alone be getting it in the neck? This weekend sees the climax of the F1 season with the final Grand Prix being held in Abu Dhabi but I don't see any of these pontificating fuckers in the media pointing fingers at the FIA and the 100,000 or so F1 fans who will be in attendance. Not to mention all the clubs who have Emirates have a sponsor.

Also, as someone else has stated, there's a huge British ex-pat community living and working in the UAE and these people are all too happy to take UAE money. Again, I don't see anyone calling those people out. Not that they should be of course, but I'm just pointing out the imbalance. I'll also add that on a personal note my links to that part of the world go way beyond football and long pre-date the takeover of our club, given that I've worked in oil and gas for all but one of the last 29 years and the company I work for does some business - both directly and indirectly - with the UAE. The previous company I worked for also had the National Iranian Oil Company as one of it's customers at the height of the Iran v Iraq war in the 1980's.

 

[casserole of nonsense]

I'm sure everyone on here will agree that, whatever has gone on, it's a poor show and he deserves a fair trial. No one is going to argue otherwise. However, the issue for many of us is why should City and City alone be getting it in the neck? This weekend sees the climax of the F1 season with the final Grand Prix being held in Abu Dhabi but I don't see any of these pontificating fuckers in the media pointing fingers at the FIA and the 100,000 or so F1 fans who will be in attendance. Not to mention all the clubs who have Emirates have a sponsor.

I won't be holding my breath waiting for rabid media calls for Lewis Hamilton to be stripped of the 2014 F1 title that he won at the "sportwashing" GP.

 

[cheekybids]

I'm sure everyone on here will agree that, whatever has gone on, it's a poor show and he deserves a fair trial. No one is going to argue otherwise. However, the issue for many of us is why should City and City alone be getting it in the neck? This weekend sees the climax of the F1 season with the final Grand Prix being held in Abu Dhabi but I don't see any of these pontificating fuckers in the media pointing fingers at the FIA and the 100,000 or so F1 fans who will be in attendance. Not to mention all the clubs who have Emirates have a sponsor.

Also, as someone else has stated, there's a huge British ex-pat community living and working in the UAE and these people are all too happy to take UAE money. Again, I don't see anyone calling those people out. Not that they should be of course, but I'm just pointing out the imbalance. I'll also add that on a personal note my links to that part of the world go way beyond football and long pre-date the takeover of our club, given that I've worked in oil and gas for all but one of the last 29 years and the company I work for does some business - both directly and indirectly - with the UAE. The previous company I worked for also had the National Iranian Oil Company as one of it's customers at the height of the Iran v Iraq war in the 1980's.

You are George Bush & I claim a tenner ;-)

 

[M12Blue]

It is perhaps not surprising that 'academic investigation of a country's internal and external security systems' by a foreign national
and espionage, terrorism and subversion etc are likely to be associated by governments in that deeply troubled part of the world.

Correct

 

[Armchair Supporter]

Jeysus Christ,
And the media wonders why it is dying on its arse...

 

[HelloCity]

Wonder if the BBC will cover this?

 

[schfc6]

I’m amazed at the blitheness on here mate. The decision to give Matthew Hedges a life sentence yesterday is a PR disaster, and we (City) are going to cop for some serious shit because of it. Quite honestly, if another club were owned by Sheikh Mansour and not us, I’d probably be sticking the boot in too

How do people suspected of espionage get on in this country? The States? Or any other a western State?
Us in the UK are in a very big glass house.

If a Muslim were suspected of espionage in the UK he’d rapidly be whisked off to a black site somewhere in North African or similar and certainly wouldn’t be afforded fair trial.

Guantanamo is by all accounts full of innocents, Doctors & aid workers detained and tortured without trial.

In the West, it appears a Muslim is presumed guilty without trial, yet on the reverse we’ll all assume this guy is innocent. As you say, if he’s not guilty of espionage he’s guilty of being a fool.

The fact that the UK & the UAE are in dialogue together, that there’s rumour of a appeal shows the UAE is actually far more liberal than the way we would conduct ourselves?

 

[laserblue]

Unbelievable that
a. The university cleared the thesis.
b. That he went to an Arab country not speaking a word of Arabic.
c. That he thought he could walk into a 'foreign' country and cover an 'academic investigation of a country's internal and external security systems'?

It is no wonder he was arrested. How on earth did he think he wouldn't be.

I feel very sorry for the bloke but he and other people involved with him have been unbelieveably naive.

It's very reminiscent of train spotters and plane spotters getting arrested in eastern Europe in the 1960s and 1970s simply because the only reason those governments and their security apparatuses could conceive of for writing down train and plane numbers and having a CB radio to eavesdrop on cockpit conversations was spying.

 

[Exeter Blue I am here]

I'm sure everyone on here will agree that, whatever has gone on, it's a poor show and he deserves a fair trial. No one is going to argue otherwise. However, the issue for many of us is why should City and City alone be getting it in the neck? This weekend sees the climax of the F1 season with the final Grand Prix being held in Abu Dhabi but I don't see any of these pontificating fuckers in the media pointing fingers at the FIA and the 100,000 or so F1 fans who will be in attendance. Not to mention all the clubs who have Emirates have a sponsor.

Also, as someone else has stated, there's a huge British ex-pat community living and working in the UAE and these people are all too happy to take UAE money. Again, I don't see anyone calling those people out. Not that they should be of course, but I'm just pointing out the imbalance. I'll also add that on a personal note my links to that part of the world go way beyond football and long pre-date the takeover of our club, given that I've worked in oil and gas for all but one of the last 29 years and the company I work for does some business - both directly and indirectly - with the UAE. The previous company I worked for also had the National Iranian Oil Company as one of it's customers at the height of the Iran v Iraq war in the 1980's.

I don't disagree, but whereas the FIA are pretty much a stand-alone body, we are a direct competitor to the dozen or so most powerful clubs in the world's most popular sport, and one with the financial wherewithal to blow them all out of the water, and the opportunity to sabotage us permanently is one that they will inevitably fall over each other to seize [QED].

My own initial inclination was to raise an eyebrow at the suggestion that anyone would genuinely seek to "study" national defence systems in just about the most volatile region on the planet, and not be either horribly naive or put up to it by either our government or a foreign government, but whether Matthew Hedges is a bona fide student or not, you can bet that he ain't likely to receive a fair trial in the sense we would understand it. And coming straight on the back of Der Spiegel's focus on our owners, a life sentence for the lad, and Jeremy Hunt standing outside parliament denouncing the decision as a travesty and promising repercussions, is like painting a big fat bullseye on our back and handing our enemies a loaded gun. It isn't going to stop me going to watch a team that I've supported for 50 years, but quite honestly I wish we were owned by someone else. The constant attrition wears me down

 

[Exeter Blue I am here]

How do people suspected of espionage get on in this country? ThevStates? Or any other awestern State?

If a Muslim were suspected of espionage in the UK he’d rapidly be whisked off to a black site somewhere in North African or similar and certainly wouldn’t be afforded fair trial.

Guantanamo is by all accounts full of innocents, Doctors & aid workers detained and tortured without trial.

In the West, it appears a Muslim is presumed guilty without trial, yet on the reverse we’ll all assume this guy is innocent.

The fact that the UK & the UAE are in dialogue together, that there’s rumour of a appeal shows the UAE is actually far more liberal than the way we would conduct ourselves?

I'm not denying the hypocrisy involved, just attempting to assess the likely damage