After their humiliating 9-1 hammering by Tottenham, Wigan Athletic's players have agreed to compensate the fans who travelled all the way to London to witness the debacle. About 450 people will be offered a refund of their travel costs and the price of their tickets.
The cost to the players is nugatory -- no more than £10,000 in total -- but the principle that useless people should voluntarily forfeit some of their earnings is an intriguing one. I'm not thinking only about footballers, though Messrs Berbatov and Pavlyuchenko might want to take note; there are applications in the wider world too....
* The Duke of York (Prince Andrew) in his role as "special trade envoy" has cost taxpayers a fortune. I've never heard an exporter say "we only got that deal thanks to good old Andy", so I think we should be offered a refund.
* ditto Lord Sugar in his role as "enterprise czar". Other than pissing off everyone he's met in Whitehall, what has he achieved?
*ditto ditto Tony Blair in his role as Middle East peace envoy. Truth to tell, he's probably totally useless in his ambassadorial role for Zurich Insurance and JPM as well, but at least they can afford him.
* ditto ditto ditto Alan Greenspan for almost wilfully steering the global economy onto the rocks. Now he has the chutzpah to get paid all over again for pontificating about it.
With only a modicum of effort, this could get to be a very long list, and we haven't even started on the managements of HBOS and RBS, Michael Grade at ITV, Martin Johnson of the England rugby team, Sven-Goran Eriksson in every job he's had for the past five years.....
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