Bernard Ingham: Cry foul about overpaid footballers - and not the real wealth-creators

What he did not do in this “make or break year” was to identify a national problem that could be characterised as ignorance, blindness, inconsistency or just plain hypocrisy.

It is a problem that has afflicted governments for as long as they have chosen to intervene in the economy and develop the welfare state.

It is perhaps best illustrated by all those tycoons who used to tell Margaret Thatcher what she should do to make Britain great again: increase incentives and cut taxes. The penny never seemed to drop that, other things being equal, raising incentives required higher 
taxes.

Incidentally, I used to wonder why 
they needed incentives at all, given that they paid themselves handsomely. 
Wasn’t doing a good job for their 
company and the nation enough? Apparently not. Beware “patriots” demanding incentives.

But let’s not be too hard on tycoons, even if they have less excuse for their inconsistency, or whatever it is, since they are supposed to be cleverer than the hoi polloi who welcome lower taxes with open arms but are all against cuts in their welfare.

This is why governments find it virtually impossible to get a grip on the welfare state, at best reducing benefits as a proportion of the national product but actually doling out more cash in the process.

It ought to be the iron rule of responsible government – as distinct from Corbyn’s fantasies – never to introduce a new benefit or incentive. Otherwise, we are all saddled with the cost for ever and a day.

Cecil Parkinson used to expound the first law of good national management: Ministers should face the inescapable fact that, once the government intervenes in anything, the price goes up. The HS2 rail project and the proposed new Hinkley Point nuclear power station in Somerset perhaps make the point.

Everybody seems to recognise that others will spend their brass with gay abandon but seldom seriously to revolt against governments for wasteful spending of the money they have appropriated from them in taxes.

In short, ignorance, blindness, inconsistency or hypocrisy – call it what you will – is rife in Britain today and 
keeps us poorer. It is one very good reason why you should never even contemplate a Corbyn government. It will exploit your malady to your greater impoverishment.

The ailment also applies to football. The more television money is poured into British soccer the more ordinary chaps are priced out of taking their children to matches and the fewer Anglo-Saxon lads are included in the teams.

Yet hardly a shout is raised against the vast sums paid to mostly foreign players, a lot of which must be going abroad. Should this not count against our £11bn overseas aid fund?

Football’s immunity to British wrath – leave aside Fifa – is wonderful to behold. Indeed, last week the press contained the implicitly critical news that top executives had already earned by the afternoon of January 5 more than the average UK annual salary of £27,645.

But not a word about football players raking in more in a single day.

Dammit, Wayne Rooney reputedly coins £7,000 more per day than the average worker does in a year.

It would not be so bad if the average player looked reasonably normal like Rooney. It must now be impossible to secure the services of hairdressers and tattooists for the queue of footballers outside. If we are to judge people by their appearance, this crop of players is awfully common.

We see everything from the artificially bald with luxuriant beards to the Rastafarian; the lavatory-brush to assorted Mohicans; the effeminate ponytail above designer stubble to flowing locks all tied up with ribbon or string; and the short back and sides with profuse lawns on top in various stages of falling off the scalp. And shaved-in partings are all the rage. These vain beggars are too lazy to comb their hair.

I thought the end of the world was nigh the other day when I saw a chap removing his diamond ear-rings on being called up from the bench.

None of this conspicuous consumption, complete with top-of-the-range cars and mansions to delight a Hollywood star, seems to raise an eyebrow.

Inconsistency, or whatever, has become a national disease. After all, company bosses do at least provide jobs instead of just preening themselves in the Colosseum and dying an agonised death when felled by a peroxide blonde with a topknot.