Congratulations Wayne and Coleen

How can a footballer spend £5,000,000 on their wedding? This just shows that there is enough money, it’s just in the wrong place. How can it be that someone who plays a game, and kicks a football for a living, can earn more money than a surgeon who saves lives?

I saw this on the news this morning (by accident). £50,000 on fireworks, £400,000 for Westlife, and £500,000 for some rapper called Diddy (which was always slang for tits when I was a kid).

In the mean time people are still in trouble in China after the earthquake, are still starving around the world, are still homeless here.

A total spoiled waste of money.

Don’t get me wrong, I wish them well in their married life together, but that kind of excess just sums up so much of what is lousy in this modern world.

11 responses to “Congratulations Wayne and Coleen”

  1. Totally agree – there is something VERY warped going on – whilst imoprtant jobs such as care work get paid peanuts for doing a job that should be urning them not only more money but the respect of a nation that will be relying on them in years to come. I truly cannot understand how this sort of thing can happen – this country is so obsessed with ‘easy money’ and easy heros!

    It’s all gone ‘Diddy’ up 😉

  2. I first saw your thread and thought “yes that’s terrible”… but then I started to consider how else it could be considered.

    Wayne and Coleen (and the others like them) are really “world celebrities”. The fact that a small child can buy a football T-shirt with his name on the back in a market nowhere near England proves that. If you give a football to a group of children (even adults) in an inner city expanse, when they play they aren’t simply Bob, Jim or Sue – but are either world class footballers or at a quality of a world class footballer. They escape from this world – this real, grey, concrete world – to one of grass, spotlights and adulation from others.

    I agree with janeyb that there are people who are more deserving of getting the money – but they of course are poignant reminders that the world is gritty, dirty and horrible – so they wont be advertised in the popular magazines.

    So looking to the cost of the wedding – It’s unlikely that the couple will have to find all the money – OK or Hello will have stumped up much of that – which also means that the designers will have thrown in a little of their own products for product placement. Hello in turn will recoup their money from the people who buy their magazine globally in their droves – to provide their escape from this grey world. (and if the sales of a magazine is in it’s millions worldwide, it’s easy to see how a money pot could be derived from publishing pictures…

    Also – this wedding will have provided employment to a whole host of people – not just the popstars listed (I’d never heard Diddy mean that though… :))

    I won’t disagree that there is an apparent warped shift of funds in this world though… perhaps there is a need in the world for a single, global economy – not bound by countries, politics, or boundaries…

  3. Hmm, quite agree. I can almost hear the words and chords humming through your head as you work this one up into song…

    It’s an issue of familiarity and contempt though. I am guessing of course, but having access to such overwhelming amounts of cash must devalue it in the eyes of the rich. Where I might suck air through my teeth when spending a small wedge on a meal out, the rich might throw thousands at a meal which funtionally serves an identical purpose. That seems to imply their money is worth far less than mine…

    However, I remain unfamiliar with such largese, and remain somewhat contemptuous of such flippant use of it. 😉

    /| bish

  4. Thanks for the comments. I’ve already got this into a song – the opening lines of Only Human:

    Isn’t it crazy, isn’t it cruel,
    That a man can earn millions from kicking a ball,
    While for other countries we roll a dice,
    For a little clean water and a bowl of rice,
    Politicians’ empty promises help lessen our pain,
    It’s Only Human.

    I thought I’d got it off my chest but this morning brought those feelings of injustice back.

    I’m sure they are inspiring to children. But children know them through their celebrity, and it’s this cult of celebrity that confuses me. Is there so little hope in peoples’ lives that they have to live their fantasies through others? If so, why? Hello paid £1,500,000 for the exclusive, so people really are interested. I just don’t get it. So much money for sod all really.

  5. Diddy is the latest evolution in a long line of names a man named Sean Combs has used. He started out Puff Daddy (variously know as Puff and Puffy), then changed it to P. Diddy, and eventually to just Diddy. I don’t listen to rap music at all, as I find it grates on my ears after about 45 seconds, but this particular rapper is very well known here in the US.

    And for what it is worth, I agree with you about the money. This is an issue I’ve always felt was just incomprehensible – how someone who plays a game for a living can earn so much more money than someone who does life’s “dirty work” of cleaning, patching, fixing, and soothing the ills of the world.

  6. I don’t understand this cult of celebrity either. I find it totally obscene that so called celebrities are paid so much. What a bloody waste !
    Every winter, when I was nursing, the ward would be full of elderly people suffering from either malnutrition or hypothermia & in some cases both. These people had worked hard all thier lives, paid into the system only to find that it was a case of pay the heating bills or eat. I used to find it heartbreaking. By the way I gave up nursing about eight years ago and went to work in a call centre, it paid more !

  7. Damh
    As always, comments which inspire and cause one to think.

    In regard to the cult of celebrity though – and your point Damh “Is there so little hope in peoples’ lives that they have to live their fantasies through others?”.

    I could comment on how I could save my money (and make the celebrities less rich by not going to a concert or buying their next CD – but who actually loses if I enjoy those activities? Unfortunately I know that my money to them (being global celebrities) will make them rich – and that they will spend their money how they want (in the same way I will spend mine how I want); the difference is that the world doesn’t care how I spent mine.

  8. Blimey! How much?
    Congrats and all the best to them – I just hope they’ve made as much of an “investiment” in their marriage as they did their wedding day.

  9. You Hit the nail on the head there mate. The one thing that always gets to me about the sport is how ADULTS are willing to fight each other and kill for this sport??

    Well life is a funny thing and harmony can only be placed in people’s harts by the tireless efforts of people like yourself.

    Love and blessings to all

    Lee @ paganboynuneaton.com

  10. Quite agree with Damh, there is a terrible imbalance but as long as people pay to watch and read about the so called A List the press will continue to pay them millions for their “stories”.

    I also cannot understand the celebrity culture but it affords many people a lot of pleasure, so I suppose it is horses for courses!

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