While it is very true what you say, only a few people ever work in jobs which would class them as heroes. However, it doesn't mean that their contribution to society should be treated with any less value. So the premiership players earn stupidly high wages, but they pay tax on their wages like the rest of us. That amount of tax (more in a week what you or I would pay in a year...) goes into the pot that pays that surgeon's wages and keeps the hospital open in the first place. If all the priemiership players did get sacked tomorrow, what would fill that multi-billion pound hole that suddenly appeared in the budget? Maybe a nice big tax hike - the equivalent of halving your take home pay? What about the nurses, doctors and support staff that are all needed to run a hospital, living on the breadline then? So the money that would have been paid to the clubs now stays in the pockets of those hundreds of thousands of people that no longer have anything to do on a saturday afternoon - so what do they spend it on? Booze? Drugs? Cigarettes? No we have an even bigger nation of addicted adults that all require treatment, but no money to keep the hospitals open. You might recoup some money from the duty and tax on booze and fags, but will it be enough? An extreme example, but remember that things are not always as simple as they first seem, and you have to look at the bigger picture! People need heroes in their lives to help them learn a sense of what is morally right and wrong, to help build their own lives and maybe give them guidance. George Best will long be a controversial hero for the simple fact that he went from one extreme to the other. Maybe Bestie has served his purpose in other ways, such highlighting to the youth of today that attaining fabulous riches is not the be-all of life, but that having your health is more important? Sorry if this is a bit heaving for a monday morning...! |