It’s probably of little interest to non-football followers, but Tottenham Hotspur were denied a victory because of a handball decision. It was so outrageous that even the manager of the opposition criticised it and the whole football punditry world joined in. It was not the first time this season that the new handball laws have been questioned. In an effort to clarify things, the lawmakers have added confusion and nonsense to a law that has worked pretty well for decades.
Though their intentions were probable laudable, the tinkering of the powers that be has proved to be a disaster.
And that tinkering is the point. Back in the day when you could open the bonnet of a car and recognise the components contained therein, when you didn’t need a diagnostic computer to tell you that a bulb had blown and four hours of labour to fix it. Back in the day, men would often spend an hour or two on a weekend tinkering with their cars. The outcome of their efforts was not great. The car would still start and function as it was required to do. Tinkering has no effect but to give satisfaction to those who tinker.
But at some point tinkering becomes meddling and it is inevitable that meddling leads to disaster because meddlers usually have no idea about what they are meddling with. So the man that sprayed his carburettor with a bit of WD40 and rubbed off some of the grime and grease was a harmless tinker. The man that dismantled his carburettor and had no idea about how to readjust it was a meddler.
It’s the same in football. If some lawmaker had sat in a room of managers and senior professionals they would have given him the benefit of their accumulated experience and we may have laws that work and don’t leave the football lovers in uproar.
I’m sure you know where this is going. We elect 650 people to represent our views and aspirations, yet maybe four people at the top of the heap (not all of them elected) have been meddling, unchecked and unaccountable, in the health system, the education system, the local government system, the legal system… using ‘the science’ as a convenient scapegoat.
The excuse that they needed to react quickly is lamentable. If I am driving down the road and can see that the vehicle four cars in front of me is using his brakes, I don’t wait to brake until I am about to hit the car in front of me. When every country in Europe was suffering, how could we expect not to?
Having gained ‘peace in our time’ we ignored Hitler’s various annexations until it was too late. However, we made time to debate starting World War One and other conflicts. If we don’t waste time, look at what is going on around us, use the combined talents of the people we elect and employ, then maybe we will be less dependent on the headless chickens currently flitting from one disaster to the next.