C:\My Documents\My Football Club

I first read about this site in an article on the BBC Sport website.

The idea of the website, My Football Club, is that members sign up and pay £35 a year to buy an equal share in a football club.

What makes this idea different to a club owned by a Supporters trust is that each member gets an equal vote on almost every aspect of the running of the club, from picking weekly formations, transfers to staff appointments, all backed up by reports from the head coach, videos of training and matches etc.
There won't be a manager as the members will in effect be both the manager and chairman (in a Football Manager kind of way).

The driving principle behind the idea is for football fans to be more involved with football in an age where some fans feel alienated by millionaire footballers, expensive ticket prices and hostile take over bids for clubs.

The site is waiting for at least 50,000 people to commit to paying £35 (which will give a purchase fund of £1.375 million) and when this is received members will vote on which club to try and purchase; the most popular choice at the time of writing is Leeds United.

I've already registered for the site as I think it would be an interesting project to the involved with.

So far 31,479 people have registered an interest - will you be 31,480?

Links
My Football Club website
BBC Sport article: Fans given club takeover chance

Ban on gay men giving blood? WTF?!

I learnt an interesting fact today: Despite the shortage of blood donors, gay men (or men who have ever had intercourse with another man) are discouraged in the UK from being blood donors and are actually banned in the US.

From what I've read, the reason is that men who sleep with other men are a high risk for HIV.
While on the surface this seems to be a sensible and valid argument, it ignores the fact that HIV is now widespread in the general population and not just limited to the homosexual community; this isn't the 80's any more.

Screening for HIV these days is supposed to be very accurate and can take just a matter of days to test, so the risks of getting infected blood is probably very small.

Personally I feel the ban is an example of institutional homophobia.

What do you think?

If you want more information follow the link to an article on Gaylife.About.com in the references which has more information (though does seem biased towards the gay view point).

References:

Nation Blood Service information on who can't give blood
Gaylife.About.com article: Gay Blood and Bone Marrow Donors