I am delighted by news that the UK will not be getting the World Cup.
I am not being a spoil sport — I rather enjoy football, and for better or worse have been a follower of Ipswich Town for 40 years.
But there’s not a shadow of doubt that the demands for tax exemption made by FIFA for what is, let’s be candid, a private sporting event undertaken for profit, were ludicrous and open to considerable abuse which left South Africa considerable out of pocket and might well have done the same to the UK.
That’s why I am delighted. This is a burden the UK did not need to suffer.
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I am also delighted (although I don’t like football). Quite apart from the dubious activities of FIFA, listening to Radio 5 Live has made me realise that this obsession with sport is just another version of celebrity gossip magazines.
Sport is really the new ‘Opium of the people’! …and more than ever we want a new consciousness about ‘where the money goes’.
Well at least you had last night’s victory to saviour!
I’m also delighted that the World Cup is not coming to England, for similar reasons as yourself. And with the impending financial meltdown of Portugal and Spain, it would have been sick joke if they had been awarded the tournament.
They should have held it in the IOM we already have a 0/10 regime that would meet FIFA’s expectations 😀
Richard,
for better or worse have been a follower of Ipswich Town for 40 years
😆
Georges
No doubt the football-obsessed media will pin the blame on the BBC. The World Cup, like the Olympics, perpetuates the myth of an honourable organisation which has the sole aim to promote sport. The reality is they are run by undemocratic, corrupt officials seeking to tap taxpayers to fund their extravagant jamborees for their personal enrichment.
I’m glad we lost too. Cameron loves the cult of celebrity as it massages his over-inflated ego but really, as this result shows, he’s a lightweight loser.
Doesn’t this snow demonstrate the benefits of investment and planning?
Here in Kent, with over a foot of snow on the ground, the trains have been up the spout for 3 days. We run a third rail system – installed in the 1920s – which simply freezes over in cold weather disrupting the connections.
Listening to a guy from South Eastern talking about this, he whined that “in these Austere times” there is no money for the kind of investment which would see the third rail replaced and overhead lines installed throughout the county – plus hundreds of new engines and carriages.
But isn’t this the perfect time to do that investment? As climate patterns are changing we cannot keep seizing up for perhaps a week at a time just because it snows. The beneficial effect on employment and orders to manuafacturers of train carriages, power lines etc is a fantastic stimulus.
Isn’t this one investment worth considering? Why do we have such myopic cheapskate governments?
I too was extremely pleased, Richard. From what we’ve learned this week from Wikileaks about present day Russian government, and from the BBC and Sunday Times about FIFA I’d say they are ideal bedmates.
“Opium for the people” – I’ll take sport over religon
for what its worth I think there is a strong argument for England (and any other country that wants to) pulling out of FIFA. FIFA (and in particularly the buffoon Blatter and Warner) have shown themseves to be a shambles for years and one can only guess at the “inducements” that may have privately been given by Russia and Qatar in order to be given the tournament.
While I can see that Beckham might be involved – he is a football player after all, Cameron and Prince William really should have set a distance between themselves and FIFA.
If England is not to host the World Cup and it looks as though it will be many years before the opprotunity arises again, the British press is now completely unconstrained by any other vested interests to continue their investigations.
Well, it’s difficult to know which of the above comments to applaud the most, they all seem to be bang on.
I’m damn glad too; like Syzygy I’m sick to death of the money soaked idiocy of contemporary football, and as Richard points out, given the codtions FIFA demands from it’s hosts, we’re probably better off without it in financial terms.
Let’s be frank, FIFA is a corrupt organization, and Russia, to judge by some of the Wikileaks stuff, a corrupt country. The two are well suited.
@BenM – you make a very good point; instead of wasting money on grandiose ego-trips for politicians like the Olympics, and endlessly bailing out the feckless bankers, we could try investing money in an getting the infrastructure you’d expect of a developed country. But that might be of benefit to society as a whole rather than wealthy companies or individuals, so it’s not at all likely is it?