Has The Alonso Curse Been Lifted?

Has The Alonso Curse Been Lifted?

In July 2017 this writer asked a simple question in the article: Is Alonso Cursed?

Recently, that article has been viewed on a regular basis, presumably as people take to search engines looking for all things Alonso following his switch to Aston Martin. Early signs (just two races and a promising pre-season) indicate the Spaniard has finally timed the transfer market correctly.

His move from Alpine had a few factors which made it a key story in F1’s transfer circus. The pre-cursor was four-time World Champion Sebastian Vettel announcing his retirement from the sport. He appeared genuinely at ease with the decision. To such an extent, I doubt he looks upon this year’s AMR2023 with much envy. It wasn’t dissimilar (using that phrase with Germans could open up a Gary Lineker moment) to the way his hero Michael Schumacher stepped aside at Mercedes when they were in the hunt for Lewis Hamilton.

When the itch has been scratched, the fire inside resembles ambers, it’s time to leave the paddock behind.

This is where Alonso differs. His passion continues to bleed into every career choice. Critics will point out he’s played a large part in his own misfortune. It’s acknowledged he’s demanding. His new boss, billionaire Lawrence Stroll, has said he embraces this aspect of Alonso’s character. Drive and focus is great for an emerging team who lack championship experience. It proves problematic when Fernando’s frustrations kick-in.

Alpine may have endured all they could stomach of Alonso’s demands. They offered a one-year deal. This was like playing a game of chicken. It shows they were prepared to call his bluff, and were happy with the risk if him leaving. This was when they thought it was possible to replace him with their rookie reserve driver Oscar Piastri.

A lesson here in checking the small print and finer details of contracts: Piastri signed for McLaren, a move confirmed as legitimate by the FIA’s contract recognition board. This condemned the likeable Daniel Ricciardo to a year as Red Bull’s reserve driver.

Alonso claims the major aspect in deciding to move was the feeling of being wanted. Could this be the first time he felt personally sought after? Teams in the past have needed his raw speed and have been willing to manage his personality. At Aston Martin, Stroll sold it as a new home where his character traits were welcome.

For Alonso, who must have been confident he wasn’t moving down the pack, the longer contract and better personal connection sealed the deal. He must be aware time is now his main enemy if he’s to join the other five men who are in the history books as three-time F1 World Champions. He wasn’t getting a ride at Red Bull or Mercedes, so signing with Stroll’s affluent outfit made sense.

It was Lawrence Stroll who took the biggest gamble. Alonso arriving at a project – for all his undeniable talent – usually places a hex on that year’s car. Sure, he extracts every last millisecond from its potential, but usually they are seconds away from the podium spots in terms of performance.

And then there’s the strong personality. Much is made about how Lawrence’s son, Lance Stroll, has been gifted his drive in Formula 1. Nothing will expose any flaws in his ability like being paired with Fernando Alonso. Surely, Lawrence will have to favour Alonso’s requests over his own son’s. But iron sharpens iron, and Lance has already silenced some critics following his Bahrain effort. He drove with injured wrists, defying advice to rest and skip the race.

It’s a long season. Two races can’t provide enough information to state the Alonso Curse has been lifted. Ferrari and Mercedes will be working hard to close the gap to Red Bull, let alone Aston Martin. It does appear he’s starting a new team from a strong position for a change. As he secured his one-hundredth podium in the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, he’s sent a strong signal he’s finally back for one last shot.

What was notable, was how relaxed he appeared in interviews when that podium was initially rescinded. Is there going to be anything more dangerous than an in-form Alonso, in a fast car, who keeps his emotions in check and doesn’t get rattled? 

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OKX: Manchester City’s Next Finance Scandal

OKX: Manchester City’s Next Finance Scandal

A lot has happened since this writer took to these pages. Manchester City FC has faced further Financial Fair Play charges, to which they will no doubt respond to as forcefully as the UEFA case. At this point, we shouldn’t lose sight that FFP itself is a corrupt, broken system. Created to keep new teams changing the old status quo. I make no apologies for stating this for the thousandth time: its proponents – or those who believe everything the agenda in the mainstream media prints – pivot away from this key point.

Manchester City’s biggest crime with FFP was trying to prove compliance within its ever-changing arbitrary rules instead of hiring lawyers to disassemble the system. FFP being removed entirely should have been the Bosman case for this generation.

With so much spotlight on Manchester City’s financial dealings, the club could do itself a few favours. A controversial area of finance is the crypto world. Often seen as the Wild West to the traditional banking system. In the United States, there is now a steady march forcing crypto companies into regulation. A catalyst for this has been the FTX scandal, and more recently, the collapse and bailout of SVB, a FinTech bank which held the real-world deposits for crypto firms. 

What the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would like to do is declare all cryptocurrencies (aside from Bitcoin, which doesn’t meet the criteria in the Howey test) a security. It should also be noted, all the concerns the SEC has surrounding crypto sounds like concern for the consumer, but the allegations about its harmful potential are nothing the traditional banking system hasn’t already done or continues to do on a daily basis. It’s about keeping control of your money.

Admittedly, the United Kingdom appears less concerned with this type of crypto clampdown, so Manchester City may feel less pressure to examine the practises of its key business partners. But they won’t be able to claim it completely blindsided them like the Mercedes F1 Team, who were quick to remove FTX sponsorship from their cars last season.

We’ve had several warnings recently that not all crypto exchanges can be trusted.

With all this fully established, Man City display OKX as one of its key sponsors. OKX’s signage is burnt into the grass at The Etihad Stadium. Its advert scrolls around the stands, claiming to be your new favourite exchange. Its logo features on every background as Pep and the players take interviews. There’s no doubt advertising works. Eventually, after months of seeing OKX on match days, I took the plunge and visited the exchange.

None of this is financial advice – let’s make that abundantly clear – in my opinion, while someone still has a mortgage, that’s a better place to put disposable income and pay it off sooner. The idea of putting money into a cryptocurrency, to me at least, is akin to putting money on a football accumulator.

At first, there wasn’t anything that grabbed this writer about OKX. But with the relentless exposure at The Etihad, I went back to the app. I appreciate this is all freewill, but as a City fan, I have a couple of simple rules regarding sponsorship: if a company has been the main shirt sponsor for Manchester United, I can’t use them ever again (which means my dream ride of a Chevrolet Matiz will forever elude me; if someone is associated with City, I give them first dibs. Which is why I buy all my fax machines from Brother.

OKX offers a high APY (the yield or return on your investment) in its Earn section. The stablecoin Tether USDT currently offers a 16% return. No savings account will get anywhere near this, and being a stablecoin it should – as the name suggest – avoid price fluctuations. They are supposed to be pegged to the associated fiat money. With Tether USDT, it’s the American dollar. These sometimes lose their peg, but that’s an article for a different day. So, converting British pounds to USDT should be no different than converting money before a holiday.

Every crypto exchange adds a degree of “slip” at the point of sale. All cryptocurrencies are volatile. In the thirty seconds it takes to process the payment, it may jump a percentage. If they say they don’t add it, they’re liars (OKX said they didn’t). You wouldn’t expect any slippage on a stablecoin. Only the movement of the dollar against pound sterling should affect the conversion.

Deciding that a little bit of savings in a stablecoin sounded too good to be true, I forgot the golden rule: if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. And this is aside from the fact all crypto kept on an exchange – “stable” or otherwise – isn’t really yours, they’ve just written an IOU that the FCA can ’t retrieve. I placed a deposit into USDT, with the sole intention of using the Earn feature.

OKX were transparent with a 2% fee – this was the last time they were open and honest regarding the transaction. There was 6% of the money missing. It was clear to see, as the value of USDT was also displayed in pound sterling. After two lengthy (because of the amount of hold time) chats on the in-app customer service, they claimed the missing money was a charge by my card issuer.

The card issuer denied this and has previously – and to this day – displays all card fees on the transactions page. Going back to OKX, I worked out that the “missing” money was because OKX added a 6% slip to USDT. 6% would be high for something like Bitcoin, it’s ridiculous for a stablecoin. The next in-app agent I spoke to agreed, and admitted this was where the money had gone. That person was the last to acknowledge the obvious. They said the relevant team would email. This never happened.

I emailed them instead. At this point, I added Manchester City to the email thread. The club should know unsavoury practises of its business partners. It was only because GBP to USD is a clearer conversion the 6% was noticed. I was using the Lite version of the app, where the slip can be added to the less experienced user without detection. On the Trading version of OKX, this couldn’t have occurred so easily. There are undoubtedly hundreds (maybe thousands?) of City fans, using the Lite version in OKX, buying a coin like Ethereum for the first time, have no idea how much £20 is represented as a fraction of that coin, and OKX takes its 2% fee and 6% slip every time.

Neither the club nor OKX responded to the email.

This week, OKX issued the same copy and paste response – they added no slippage, the card issuer took the disputed amount. This is a blatant lie. In the Wild West of the crypto world, the last thing a club like Manchester City needs is to be associated with a company that lacks transparency with its financial operations.

OKX can’t be trusted, and Manchester City shouldn’t encourage – by agreeing to a sponsorship deal – its fanbase to trade on such an opaque platform. It’s not like investigators won’t be taking a keen interest in this relationship. In addition to the aforementioned sponsorship agreement, OKX made a $20M deal to become City’s training kit sponsor. In a sense, every fan who gets hoodwinked on the exchange platform is paying for this directly out of their own pockets.

Manchester City accepted the unfairness of FFP, it shouldn’t expose supporters to the whims of a dodgy crypto exchange.

Silver Lining?

Silver Lining?

Is it in bad taste to say some good can come from the loss of life?

When those deaths are in excess of 450,000 plus One is there any reason or outcome that offers justification?

When the plus One was the murder of a black man by law enforcement, should the suggestion come from a white person who may accidentally litter each paragraph with his privilege?

It all sounds a bit of a stretch. Decency and common sense say it’s best to stop typing now. But that decency has come from a background that prevents my neck being pinned down by a cop for eight minutes, forty-six seconds. The white idea of decency is turning the other cheek. Remaining silent now would be the most indecent act of all.

Before we get to the plus One, the number of deaths that will soon reach half a million needs to be considered. Everything requires context. It’s always cause and effect. The largest protests seen in thirty years didn’t come about just because of the plus One. People were primed, had been brimming.

It was coronavirus that saw the daily death rate rocket to nearly half a million. In response, the world went into lockdown. Daily life changed and may never return to a replica of before. Economies tanked by twenty percent. Families sat at home, wondering if their incomes would still exist after furlough schemes. Students couldn’t take exams. Doctors and nurses were used as frontline fodder.

It wasn’t a spring of renewed hope; it became a period of deathly stasis.

With the servitude to the rat race suspended, people became more opinionated, passionate about all causes and views. With each of those coronavirus deaths, people took a step closer to creating unified voices. Examining the government’s response to a never seen before situation was never going to satiate this newfound appetite.

Everyone in the room became restless.

Different sides had already formed—across all political lines—the pandemic just primed them for action. All participants were expecting something akin to the Brexit or Trump debate. The expected arguments would be how the half-million could have been reduced to something much less if only…

Each “If Only” could be argued and countered enough times to last an infinite number of lockdowns. Then those eight minutes and forty-six seconds happened. If there was no lockdown, there would have been widespread condemnation from families around the world. They’d have settled down after a long day at work, shook their heads at the television screens and made comments about how nothing has changed in America.

That America still has a race issue.

No senators would have taken the knee for a photo opportunity. Any protests would have been localised and quickly quashed. Marches in the UK would have been counted in double figures—if there had been marches at all. The world would have been too busy to stop for the murder of one more black person by a police officer. Everyone’s senses would have been dulled by the pressures of the day-to-day.

Lockdown was oppressive and liberating in equal measure, in immeasurable ways.

With each passing week, increased frustrations were harder to suppress, impossible to keep bottled. Eight minutes and forty-six seconds was the length of time it took the fuse to burn.

The murder of George Floyd was a bomb beneath the existing structures of systemic racism.

Thousands flocked to demand change. To chant in the clearest voice: Black Lives Matter.

It took nearly half a million deaths to make the world take stock. To put movie stars and heavyweight boxing champions front and centre, speaking from the heart at protests instead of condemning the situation in sanitised interviews during promotions for their product.

No one is born racist. It is usually taught. But people are born ignorant and that can grow. Worse still, it can be manipulated by those with agendas.

People using the counter chant All Lives Matter, haven’t understood the core issues. It’s a big part of their privilege, believing a universal view is the fix for isolated problems they’ll never face.

They need guidance. They’ve never spent a day in the shoes of a person who is pre-judged, looked at suspiciously, treated as a second class citizen, just because of their skin tone. They don’t see a problem because they’ve never personally witnessed one.
They don’t know what they don’t know, because they don’t know it.

Counter claims that America is the land of opportunity, that they’ve had a black president, underlines the ignorance. Just because you can make it, doesn’t mean you won’t face unequal hardships on the way. Doesn’t mean you won’t still be perceived as second class once you’re there.

The protests then became a magnet for the opposing view.

They didn’t need a fuse to be lit. The far-right are more like a jack-in-a-box, outdated and always ready to spring into action. The problem is, both extremes—right and left—further the other’s cause.

The left breeds hypocrites, the right produces honest liars.

Everyone needs education.

But with each confrontation, ears are closing.

Openness faces a new lockdown. The half a million will have died for no reason if reasonable people become obstinate in their opinions.

Should removing historical monuments occur when they have links to slavery?

The world has been taught to see in black and white, when it operates in a permanent state of grey.

To erase history means we can never learn from it; appearing to champion wrongdoings halts progress.

There is no easy answer. Here in the UK, there have been calls to remove Sir Robert Peel’s statues in Glasgow, Tamworth, Manchester, Bury and his monument on Holcombe Hill. He has fifteen statues around the world. A former Prime Minister and creator of the modern day police force. He had a patchy record on the slave trade. It appears he profited from it but did eventually vote for its abolition.

Peel is one case that needs examination. It’s not clear cut. People are of their time.

A future generation’s harsher standards will judge the presumed principled people of today. There is something uncomfortable about watching a young person fervently protest, and attempt to deface war memorials, based on the cultural oppression that led to a man’s murder while wearing branded trainers. The Nike tick and Adidas stripes are the modern day motif for slavery. But no one is pulling their stores down and placing them in rivers.

Women are trafficked and forced into sex slavery. But no one calls on the government to track each gang and give these women freedom.

Black Lives Matter, and that movement shouldn’t be hijacked or diluted by another. But the emergent voices for change can carry multiple causes going forward. Those ignorant to Black Lives Matter will always take a myopic view. This has been made more difficult with overreactions which further underline the lack of understanding.

When the middle of the road white man sees a classic comedy axed—one which its creator John Cleese defends—it incites a new type of division. A debate he had no facts for to start with, has just been changed into a talk about something else. He’s no longer thinking about those eight minutes and forty-six seconds. He’s blaming political correctness.

He may even begin to harbour feelings for a return to “better times.” Those times are just a construct: a part of the white collective’s imagination. They were never better times. It was a time Black Lives Matter could only be a whisper, not a chant.

Not the loud cry for help which now resonates around the globe.

Can over 450,000 deaths plus One ever be considered a silver lining?

The cloud that accompanies the lining is large. It blocks the sunshine of progress at every given opportunity.

Heading toward half a million is a big number but that single plus One stops a bigger count. It has paved the way for lasting change. The uncountable loss and damage racism produces every day. Utilitarianism states the most ethical choice is the one which is best for the largest number of people.

The plus One represents all people.

A chance for lasting change.

Everyone left behind has a debt to pay to those who have been taken. A vow to turn their passing into a positive action.

If you carry on as before, you’ll take your turn pressing a knee into a neck for eight minutes, forty-six seconds.