I am suggesting that the posters objections are a result of football club rivalry not that there is no other basis to appose the sale.
If the poster would like to show me the instances in which he as apposed all the other businesses the PIF have invested in or show me evidence of all his past vocal campaigns against sport washing I am more than happy to apologise to him.
If however as I suspect his outrage at the PIF being allowed to invest in western business begins and ends with acquisition of shares in NUFC then I'll call it as I see it and call sour grapes.
This is laughable. Just in general, any right minded human being would be against any, and I mean ANY takeovers or investments made by or on behalf of the Saudi state, with the purpose of whitewashing their absolutely atrocious human rights record. This goes well beyond football.
I just had a quick skim through bin Salman’s Wikipedia there as I was typing this, and it’s hardly laudable is it? Let’s take a look:
He has led several successful reforms, which include regulations restricting the powers of the religious police (wow),
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the removal of the
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in June 2018 (how progressive),
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and in August 2019 (who said chivalry was dead?). Other cultural developments (obviously using the term loosely here) under his reign include the first Saudi public concerts by a female singer, the first Saudi sports stadium to admit women (!), an increased presence of women in the workforce (all praise his holiness bin Salman),and opening the country to international tourists by introducing an e-visa system, allowing foreign visas to be applied for and issued via the Internet. His program aims to diversify the Saudi economy through investment in non-oil sectors including technology and tourism. In 2016, he announced plans to list the shares of the state oil company .
And those are his achievements! Making Saudi Arabia slightly less medieval, but still leaving them at least a hundred years behind some of the less civilised countries in the world. I mean, whoopity-f***ing-do, thanks to his kindly nature, women in Saudi Arabia are now allowed to go to work (something women in pretty much every other country in the world have taken for granted for decades upon decades if not centuries or millennia), not to mention those same women have for aeons taken for granted the fact they can attend a pop concert let alone sing at one. And if you think that graciously allowing a woman to attend a gig in 2020 is an achievement, then you’re operating on pretty f***ing shaky moral ground to begin with.
Now let’s look at the even worse stuff:
Despite praise for his strides towards the social and economic liberalisation of Saudi Arabia, international commentators and human rights groups have been vocally critical of bin Salman's leadership and the shortfalls of his reform program, citing a rising number of detentions and alleged of human rights activists, his in which war-induced could cause 13 million civilians to starve, the escalation of the , the start of the , the start of a , the in November 2017, a ,and the .
Suffice it to say, no person in their right mind would want people with such backwards mediaeval mindsets as this anywhere near ANY business or organisation they had any remote affiliation with. But sure, carry on believing it’s all just sour grapes.
And I’m not just referring to you when I say this, you lot are not just defending the indefensible here, you lot seem to be actively celebrating it. Disgusting. Go crawl back under the rock you came from.