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Using footballers’ wages as an example of excess is patronising and lazy | Marina Hyde

Top-flight football is one of the few engines of social mobility that still works and those who play to the gallery are too lazy or dim to formulate a proper argumentIn one sense, it is not the most enormous shock to find footballers’ pay is something on which Jeremy Corbyn disagrees with himself. A subject on which the Labour leader cannot hold two diametrically opposed opinions on the same day is increasingly a rarity. The problem with the new strategy of letting Jeremy be Jeremy is that – a bit like various football sides of cliché – you never know which one is going to turn up.Last week Corbyn declared that there should be a cap on “grotesque” salaries. And...

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Gregg Popovich sets example but silence of British sport stars speaks volumes | Sean Ingle

Sporting giants are on the front line of setting the cultural tone and they should be praised when they raise their heads above the parapetGregg Popovich began with an apology. “I don’t think my voice is that important,” replied the San Antonio Spurs coach when asked his views on the US election. But then, over the course of six impassioned minutes, one of the greatest coaches in the NBA history sank the verbal equivalent of multiple three-pointers from mid-court. “I’m sick to my stomach,” he sighed, his voice now quivering with anger and a deepening anguish. “Not because the Republicans won but the disgusting tenor and tone and all of the comments that have been xenophobic, homophobic, racist and misogynistic.”The...

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