Will Afghan Plastic Bag Kid Get To Meet Messi?

[Hypognosis]

Messi, famously, sent him a couple of signed shirts. I shook my head at tge time and, sure enough, his family were threatened by gangsters, making threats over the phone, expecting "their share" of the money, they imagined was sent too. The family had to flee to Pakistan but the press won't leave them alone their, either.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-36192300

The kid wants to meet Messi, in person. Do you think this will ever go ahead? Will Messi follow through on a look-good-on-social-media move?

Optional question for cynics:- What request do you think he (the kid) or they (the family) will make, soon after that?

[Jackdaw33]

Call me a cynic if you like, but how about, "Can we all come and live in England? iI would like to meet the Leicester City team".

[Svejk]

I thought the top picture was his plastic bag shirt and was going to say 'fair play to him'.
Scrolled down then. God Almighty. ;o)

[Hypognosis]

@Jackdaw

Now Messi has got himself stuck in a fork, here? If ge lets the kid come and see him, it will mean mailbags full of requests from every other fan on the planet (a hideous "cute kid contest", if ever there was one) or else face questions of "why the special treatment?"

But, if he turns the kid down - a perfectly reasonable move, imho, given this hazard of celebrities being swamped by fan requests - then imagine the flak he'll have to face, now that this family is being hounded *as a consequence if his kindness*.

What a complete pig's breakfast!

[Jackdaw33]

Ah, yes. Morton's Fork. (Google it if you are not up to speed with Tudor history).

[stuey]

Is that something like "The Curate's Egg"?

[Hypognosis]

Even in league two, he'd far out-earn what I could get.

http://www.sportingintelligence.com/2011/10/30/revealed-official-english-football-wage-figures-for-the-past-25-years-301002/


Makes me wish I'd skived off skule a lot more and polished up my football skills…

(give or take that I'd have been put out to grass 15-20 years ago and missed out on the telephone-number salaries).

[Jackdaw33]

No. Morton was in charge of taxation under Henry VII. His argument ran thus:

People who lead luxurious lives can well afford to pay their taxes.

People who lead frugal lives must have hidden their money away so they can equally afford to pay their taxes.

[Jackdaw33]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morton%27s_fork

[Hypognosis]

There's also the fork, as in Chess.

Here's how TV Tropes weighs up Morton's with others, resemblant of it.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MortonsFork

(I could waste hours on that site. I like its sense of humour. Impressive for a group effort).

[stuey]

An interesting theory, nothing has changed: Squeeze the serfs.

[Jackdaw33]

The basic principle of Morton's fork has been stated above.

You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. Similar to being on the horns of a dilemma.

[Hypognosis]

To headline writers' dismay, the Dalai Lama never gets caught in any dilemmas.

[Hypognosis]

Ancilliary question:

If this had been an AOG thread and not posted at such an unsocial hour, how many pages do you think it would run to, in 2 hours?

[Jackdaw33]

Sorry, I don't do hypothetical questions.

[Hypognosis]

Except when it involves hypothetical Turks?

[Jackdaw33]

Now, now, let's not go off topic.

[Hypognosis]

@jackdaw33

//"Can we all come and live in England? iI would like to meet the Leicester City team".//

As far as I can determine, Messi lives in Spain.

A lot of brand new, but empty, apartments in Spain, by all accounts. No idea if that was EU money, frittered away. Press stories about their migrant intake are pretty thin on the ground (of no interest to the Murdochian press, no doubt) but the climate would suit middle-easterners to a tee.

Except there's a lot of history in that neck of the woods...