My good friend Simon pointed out that on Question Time the other night they were discussing the issue of whether Sheffield United should allow their former player Ched Evans to resume training with the club (and maybe even re-sign for them) now that he’s served his prison sentence for raping a girl – a verdict he intends to contest it seems.
Now the issue for Simon was not so much the debate about whether the guy’s done his time and should be allowed to resume a career path, nor the feeling most of us would share that here’s yet another ill-educated sleezebag footballer with the morals of an alsatian and a neolithic attitude towards women who simply doesn’t deserve a second chance from any sports club which values respect. I happen to know Simon is a follower of the latter pov.
That said the thing which had got really got my mate’s goat was the sanctimonious attitude of the politicians on the show who were queuing up not just to slate Evans but to point out that his attitude and behaviour was simply unbecoming of someone who is a role model. Whoa. Pots and f*cking kettles. Even a non-viewer like me can see that a bunch of people who, as our elected Parliamentary representatives, have been found to be expenses grabbing, property exploiting, secretary shagging, child abusing (allegedly) are the very last people to preach to us about propriety. F*cing hypocrites.
Their hubris is astonishing. And it just alerts me to today’s announcements about the outcome of the FIFA investigations into the corruption scandal around the 2018 World Cup bid. I won’t bore you with the full details because they are so predictable. But it seems that FIFA, and the World Cup Quatari and Russian bid processes have been exonerated from any judgement that they might be tainted, heaven forbid, by corruption. However the English bid process was singled out for criticism because our fuckwit FA leader Lord ‘trousers down’ Triesman was indulging the discredited FIFA ExCo member Jack Warner with handbags, family appointments etc. So England’s bid backed by PM David Cameron, Prince William, Lord Coe and the almighty David Beckham gets castigated whilst FIFA, and the Quatari and Russian bid processes get white-washed.
In fact the President of FIFA since 1840, Sepp Blatter was praised by the report into corruption because ‘he deserves credit for the co-operation of FIFA’. Ah that’s nice. And rich as fuck. You couldn’t make it up…
pp
Pasta Paulie 