I’m a sensitive soul. Easily offended. Therefore I always try to be as inoffensive as possible. Unless I can get away with it. But the general rule is: say what you want, think what you want, but NEVER PUT IT IN WRITING. Or on the radio, for that matter. Its all about putting things in the public domain. Where they will stay and come back to haunt.

Malky Mackay, a football manager of third-rate teams (sorry to Watford fans, but that’s just the way it is in my ‘offense to no-one’ world) was sacked from his last job for some emails to a mate in which he described Chinese people as ‘chinks’ and referred to a Jewish football agent by saying ‘you know how a Jew gets when he sees money slipping through his fingers’.

So, having served his 6 month sentence in the wilderness as set by the court of public opinion; the standard sentence for disgraced football managers, mps, dodgy policemen, Malky has been given his ‘second chance’ and employed by Wigan Football Club. To much furore. And in his defense, on the radio, club owner, Dave Wheelan actually said that he thought the word ‘chink’ was acceptable. Then, using the same shovel to dig the hole a little deeper, he said: ‘well, jews do seem to chase money more than anyone else’. A wonderful, modern stereotype, not expressed publicly since Shakespeare wrote Shylock into the Merchant of Venice in 1643.

Is David Wheelan anti-semitic? Or just plain fucking stupid?? It really makes no difference to the outcome. Which is that Wigan’s sponsors are now making horrible noises about pulling out and everyone associated with Wigan FC who values public opinion will want to distance themselves from it and from Dave. They’ll be a pariah club. Hitler’s Team.

This on top of the Ched Evans saga in which the convicted rapist has been allowed to return to training with Sheffield United. Yet this debate is more interesting, even though its still really about gobby northerners. This question is: having served his sentence, is Evans not now to be given a second chance? Because once you ‘pay your debt to society’ (sit in a cell taking drugs every day for two years) you are free to re-join that society. But Evans has never apologised, nor shown remorse, nor admitted it was a crime. Which makes him worse than almost every other Welsh rapist in Sheffield. So, after the club have lost most of their directors in resignations of protest, all their sponsors, they’ve finally decided that ‘he’s just not worth all the bother’.

And the final warning about ‘putting stuff out there’ must come from Emily Thornberry, the former Shadow Attorney General, who resigned last night from that post after sending a tweet from Rochester yesterday morning showing this picture. I call the photo ‘white van man goes to UKIP via the BNP’. Emily called it ‘image from Rochester’. And Ed Miliband thought it was patronising, at a time when the Labour leader was showing his understanding and compassion for the folks in that part of Kent as to why they would hook up with UKIP in these troubled times. Never mind, Emily. Give it the mandatory 6 months and it’ll all blow over. Ed Miliband has done much more damage to his party by just eating a bacon sandwich and giving money to a beggar.

Happy Friday; just don’t put it in print.

A xxxx