FIFA FO-FUM

SEPP BELLEND BLATTER has been no stranger to Sunday Morning as he goes about his selfless task of bringing happiness and joy to a considerable number of people through his promoting of the beautiful game of football. Unfortunately, of late it has once again become fashionable to accuse Mr Blatter of corruption over becoming elected head of FIFA (again) and over the methods of choosing the host nations for the coming world cup competitions.

THE CHOICE OF QATAR, that renowned footballing nation, with an average temperature of 45º Centigrade in the summer months, is said by some to have been facilitated by bribes, something which Blatter has defended by stating “I knew that people said they were going to bribe the delegates, but I have no knowledge that they actually did so.” Meaning that he is innocent. Blatter is no doubt correct when he states that football is bigger than these corruption charges and that the happiness it brings makes everything worthwhile; in this opinion he is probably joined by eight FIFA representatives who have been made extremely happy over the years and especially happy by voting for Qatar to hold the 2018 world cup.

QATAR, THE RICHEST NATION ON THE PLANET, and one of the few countries to still allow slavery under the kafeel system, is an inspired choice for football, particularly in the light of a couple of statements recently by the enlightened Mr Blatter. Firstly, when in a country which executes homosexuals, Blatter has suggested, gay footballers should cease all sexual activity; one also wonders, considering that Blatter has stated that women footballers should look a “bit more sexy” by wearing low-cut sweaters and tight shorts, “like beach volleyball girls”, whether he is prepared to allow all these tits ‘n’ asses to go on show in Qatar, where female footballers (and indeed beach volley girls) would be raped, flogged and stoned to death (presumably in that order). However, as in 1998 and 2002, Blatter will probably be elected again tomorrow and life will go on.

THE COMFORT

UNUSUALLY FOR ME, THIS MORNING, being a Saturday, involved a little bit of work at the University Chancellery, the good offices of which have for some reason granted me the responsibility of looking into issues of plagiarism and copying by those good lads and ladies who wish to join our establishment. This morning I had to take a signed declaration banning an individual I have never met from studying at university in Portugal for the next five years. This is upon the recommendation of people I have known for over twenty years and whom I would willingly ban from the country for ever, were the chance given to me.

WHEN I LEFT MY HOUSE this morning there was a syncopated empty echo in the air – a sort of vacuum – hanging under the hackberry trees that line my street; often this indicates a crack in the weather. However, when I was taking coffee and reading The Times in the Jardim da Parada gardens it looked like the threat of rain, or hail, might be only that. There was, indeed, a little more of a sway in the maidenhair trees and the royal palm, but I couldn’t see any condensation on the leaves of the Japanese grass.

I SAT FOR A LITTLE WHILE looking at the garden before I got into the taxi. This is the Teófilo Braga garden, named after a statesman who, I imagine, “did the right thing” when called upon to do so. I was sitting on a bench by the children’s playground, looking at the giant hairy redwood and cypresses, and watching the flower sellers set up their stands. Today is probably the first day of the major sales of the Portuguese tradition of courting couples giving a manjerico, or sweet basil, plant to each other, expressing love and trust.

AND THEN I GOT INTO THE TAXI and went off with my little envelopes with the little pieces of paper with my signature on them. Somewhere, someone I do not know will be affected by this. Next week there will be elections in Portugal, and at that time I will not be here. Yet I wonder if the people who are going to be elected, or those who are going to elect them, or indeed anyone involved in the event will ever sit down in a garden and think for a little bit about whether they are doing the right thing.

THE STORM BROKE SHORTLY after I came back to the neighbourhood. I felt the shuddering weight of the impending onslaught as I walked to the fish market; nothing was actually dropping from the sky, and the temperature had increased considerably, yet mothers were rushing their babies to safety and older men lounging about outside cafés and shops were pointing to the deep, rolling, dirty leaden sky, to each other’s grim faces, and coming out with statements such as, “We deserve this”.

KISS MY ASH

NORDIC PRONUNCIATION OF THE ENGLISH language has always involved one particularly difficult sound that is apparently beyond the reach of Swedes, Norwegians and Danes, something which, among other factors such as melody and lyrical content, has more or less ruined my appreciation of pop songs by Abba, A-ha, Aqua and Bjork Gudmumsdottir, to name a few from the beginning of the alphabet.

THIS INVOLVES AN APPARENT INABILITY to deal with any of the possible inflections of the terminal “s” sound as it sometimes glides into a “z” or a “sh”, and, as can be seen in the list above, it extends into Iceland. I often shuddered when one of the girls from Abba sang “Can you hear the drumce, Fernando?” or “Sheece a dancing queen…”, and the obligatory pop song word “kisses” was always “kissess”. It may be that in these languages any final “s” sound is simply pronounced as an initial one, always as a double hiss, which makes one wonder how they might deal with ordering sheesh kebabs and whether they have drug pushers or sellers of hashish in these countries.

IF THIS IS TRUE, then it was either unfortunate or deliberate of Sky News to interview an Icelandic TV2 journalist, ankle deep in “ash” and holding a microphone in his hands like they used to do on British TV in the nineteen sixties, and ask him, “So tell us about your ash, Mr Gudmumsson.”

“WELL,” HE BEGAN, “OUR ASS IS EVERYWHERE, ass you can see. If I bend down,” he said, indicating the ground, “you see ass which is quite thick.” One could almost hear Sky News at Six presenter Andrew Wilson sniggering into his microphone as our Icelandic expert went on to tell us that, “We are used to ass in Iceland, but not normally such dense ass, and not usually from 10,000 metres. Our animals have ass all over them…” After the gentleman had told us that the “only way to deal with such bad ass” was for farmers to “take their sheep into the barns” I began to wonder whether I was watching a joke report, but, Alash!, it was real.

IN THE MIDST OF YET ANOTHER SAD CRISIS involving those oh-so-clever-we-had-the-first-parliament-and-the-first-democracy-and-the-first-grammar-book-in-Europe Icelanders and their inability to solve a simple problem of dealing with their volcanoes, this was one of the few things making me laugh as I looked at my printed-at-home boarding card and a map of dust floating over Britain on my computer screen.

My photo shows the volcano Gudvolcanosdottirson and its bad ash.

FORTY SHADES OF GREED

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 17 years old, my English teachers took me and the other members of our English Literature class off to see Waiting for Godot, by the Irish playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett. I had not been to see many plays until then, although, curiously, I had written and directed quite a few. Watching these actors performing this absurd comedy in the Neptune Theatre in Liverpool was a revelation. A revelation in the sense that nothing would ever be the same again for me – you are expecting me to write that from that day on I have loved the theatre and spent all my hard-earned inheritance on watching plays, but this is not the case. I loved the performance and realised that very little could ever be as good. That was, as they sometimes say, as good as it gets, and I have more or less hated theatre since then.

BUT I MADE IT MY AMBITION to direct the play and make it just a touch better. The evening at the Neptune involved most of us getting a little bit drunk, but not drinking too much so we could not last a two-hour show with a fifteen-minute interval. As far as I remember, my teachers were also a little drunk, as were the five actors on the night, and as was Samuel Beckett, I imagine, when he wrote the play.

IN 1992 I DIRECTED THE PLAY and my production went on tour both in the United Kingdom and Europe, playing to full houses and making a lot of money. It was a crack. Some of you will not know the play, and will in fact at the moment be bored “shitless”, as I believe is the term used by people who are unable to read three paragraphs without losing the plot, so I should perhaps summarise what goes on in this literary pearl.

A COUPLE OF IRISH VAGABONDS are lazing about eking out an existence eating shoelaces and fish-bones, hoping and trusting that one day they will be saved by some miraculous benefactor; there appears a character who tends to fit into this definition, Pozzo, along with his servant, Lucky, who nevertheless is of little use to these Irish morons. But the Irish vagabonds are convinced that help is at hand. And so they wait, do nothing, and wait some more.

I AM NOT QUITE SURE WHY the unprecedented visit of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to the Republic of Ireland has brought this theatrical event back to my mind. But I suspect it is one of the most important moments of the play, when Pozzo says to his servant, “Will you look at the sky, pig!”

FRENCH NICKERS

IT IS NOT ONLY OCTAVE MIRBEAU, with his “Diary of a Chambermaid”, and the myriad French writers and filmmakers who since the days of this pervert have written about and/or filmed the dream-cum-fantasy of the chambermaid who surprises us in our hotel bedrooms by opening the door with a pass key, apologises and then says to us, preferably in a French accent, “I have come to turn down the bedclothes, monsieur”, that arouses a certain je me amuse of curiosity in our lower members. It is also the power of knowing we can get away with it.

YET CONTRARILY, DOMINIQUE STRAUSS-KHAN, the French President of the International Monetary Fund, is now more a victim of erotic fantasies vis-à-vis femmes de chambre that have led him, once again, but this time in a country with a proper legal system, to interfere physically with a chambermaid simply because he can due to his enormous wealth, individual power and protection behind the obscene system of French law which protects VIPs because they are VIPs. In France he would be absolved of rape just by stating that the maid was in maid’s uniform, this being tantamount to incitement to rape in the eyes of any French judge.

ON BEING DRAGGED OFF A PLANE about to take off from JFK New York to France, Strauss-Khan allegedly stated, “You can’t arrest me. I’m a VIP.” Mr Strauss-Khan is about to see how the law is equal for everyone in the United States of America. Now he has been refused bail, we will soon be able to hear about the many cases of “similar assaults” carried out "on at least one other occasion".

THE NOW UNAVOIDABLE PRISON SENTENCE for this overblown, arrogant buffoon will be a matter of tabloid and rolling news matter over the coming months. Perhaps we might feel sorry for his four children and his wife; we might wonder whether someone who pays $3,000 per night at a hotel needs to rape a chambermaid. Whatever. Or we might want to think about the lady involved, whom he "sexually assaulted and attempted to forcibly rape", and "when he was unsuccessful, he forced her to perform oral sex on him.”

My picture shows Mr Strauss-Khan, the gentleman in charge of the International Monetary Fund and its programme to solve the world’s economic problems. Until today over thirty countries depended upon his signature for them to be able to start their economies afresh. Many of these countries are desperate for help. 

EUROLAND TRASH BASH

FOR OUR EUROPEAN FRIENDS this is no doubt the most important week of their musical year. Although our German, French, Austrian and Russian brothers and sisters have often been excellent in past centuries when writing music for orchestras, the continent as a whole – Abba apart -- has been abysmally poor in its efforts to imitate us and our Anglo-Saxon post-Elvis pop or rock music. But nothing seems to be able to convince them to keep to their folk songs and traditional pastoral music and leave the modern compositions to us.

THUS WE HAVE THE ANNUAL Eurovision Song Contest, a spectacle which is so gauche and kitsch that it is actually phenomenally interesting in entertainment value as it never fails to surprise one with the depths it manages to plumb. This year appears to be no exception.

FOR SOME REASON EUROPEANS actually take the show seriously, and so of late people have been asking me which country I think will win. Therefore, and as a public service before Saturday’s “grand finale”, I thought it would be useful to share my thoughts on the possibilities of who might “strike gold” this year.

AMONG THE FAVOURITES THIS YEAR has to be France, with the husband and wife duo Les Sarkosis and their surprisingly charmant political ditty “Salud, M. Le Pen”, which will certainly receive great support from the Northern European countries. Germany weighs in heavily, with cuddly hippy singer Angie Merkel and her English language lament, “Where has all the money gone?” One of the early hot favourites, the Portuguese entry from Os Filhos do Socas, with a revolution-inspired retro song entitled “Putice é Alegria”, has already been eliminated at the semi-final stage. As usual there is a “green” entry; this year being fresh-faced environmental studies graduate Nikki-Nik Biscuit, from Nerdland, with his tuneful “Da-do Bomb-bomb”.

PERENNIAL FAVOURITES ITALY are also in the running with the stunning Egyptian-born adolescent sensation Sasha Bungabunga and “Il Duce me face piu piu”, but the smart money has to be on 80s revivalist punk group from Spain Yo no la tengo and their haunting lament “La generación de los bocadillos”. Still in the running, however, are the Former Russian Republic of Vulva, with The Vice Girls and their stylish “Titti-titti Bum-bum”, which they are threatening to sing totally naked, and The Token Busty Blondes, from Catatonia, and “Bummy-bummy Titti-Titti (feat. Leggy-leggy)”; Greece is banking strongly on “Lukres Agape” from dashing 20-year old swarthy hunk Petros Anarkos, and who can rule out Ireland’s Jedward, with “You think we’re mad (at least we get paid)”?

YET IN ALL OF THIS EUROFEST there can only be one winner in this celebration of Euroland. And for my prediction it has to be charming boy sensation Davy Cameron, from Belgravia, with his chanting, mantra-style marching song “Pound, Pound, Pound”.

TROIKA BALAKLAVA

THOSE OF US WHO HAVE FINANCIAL interests in Portugal may well be keen to understand what has gone on in the recent past to allow the nation to fall into such teeth-grinding debt that decent, able, honest politicians such as Mr Socrates, leader of the ruling Socialist Party, has allowed the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Commission to come along and tell them how to do their business “properly”. This is surely a misunderstanding of a nature unknown since the nineteen-eighties, when Socrates’ socialist mentor, Mr Mário Soares, also led the country into a spiralling abyss which led to the IMF coming in to bail out Portugal, a debt which has never been paid.

THE TROIKA, AS THE LOCALS have determined the triumvirate might be called, rather than a “triad” or “trio”, have been snooping about Columbo-style and poking their noses into issues that really are “none of their business”, as one senior government official stated on RTP State TV last night.

YET IN THE UNDERSTANDING OF MOST PEOPLE who would like to know how Portugal has gone from being a possible breakthrough economy into a disaster, the “business” is clearly theirs. Only two years ago Mr Socrates was announcing that it had never been so good for Portugal, they were selling a computer to Venezuela, everyone seemed to be buying a house and even the broken-winged national airline, TAP, often termed “Take Another Plane”, was “only” 400 million Euros off the mark.

“COLUMBO”, AS I PREFER TO CALL the tripartite commission, has been looking at other figures, and asking those irritating, “just one more thing” questions that can prove so distracting and time-wasting when one wishes to dash off to a golf or tennis match, have dinner at an expensive restaurant or do a little tête-a-tête a trois with those sexual partners who won’t take non for an answer.

AMONG THESE QUESTIONS, and I am reminded of the gravity of the issue should the comparison be anywhere near the truth, is the overblown civil service. Of course this is an issue dear to the heart of the Portuguese leaders, yet they never imagined that the “civil service” might apply to themselves. Our good Columbo has sussed out that 230 members of parliament for a population of 9 million, as compared to 650 to 70 million in Britain or 435 in the USA to 330 million, could easily be trimmed down to “about 80”, as I overheard.

BUT THE WORST ABUSE IS IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT, where statistics discovered by Lieutenant Columbo and published in a prestigious newspaper today show that at local level there are 12 elected, paid representatives for every 1,000 people. Given that among these 1,000 there are children and old people, at a rate of three to four per family head, this means that every earner is subsiding a local government employee at a 40:1 ratio. In Britain the ratio is one local politician per 10,000 people.

ON THURSDAY THE TOOTHLESS PRESIDENT, Mr Cavaco Silva, decided he ought to give a speech to the nation after Columbo had gone home. He was followed very quickly by Mr Socrates. Socrates said that none of this was his fault, and that he should be re-elected, as he is a good guy. The message from Cavaco Silva was that the Portuguese people should all show “union” in these difficult times, and that the people should “export more and import less”. He quoted the fact that the final of the UEFA League would be between two Portuguese teams and that this was a sign of the “capacity Portugal has” to “overcome difficulties”. Just one more thing: “Are these players Portuguese? Sir”

SALMONDELLA

NOW THAT THE DUST HAS DIED DOWN on the multiple elections that took place on Thursday, news agencies and journalists spanning the media franchises are vying to discover who the “real” winner happens to be. Of late, with the spin applied to political delivery, the custom tends to have become that everyone ends up winning, even in the face of an abject electoral pounding, after politicians have taken into consideration everything ranging from the weather to the price of fish, resulting in statements such as “although it is true we only received 10 votes countrywide and lost all our MPs, when one takes into account the fact that there is a war in Libya, this is really a good result for the Liberal Democrats and shows that Britain has faith in our policies.” Not so this time.

MY “MAKE CLEGG HISTORY PARTY” was unable to stand for local elections in Newton Ward in Chester this time round due to the slight inconvenience that I was not in the United Kingdom, let alone the ward itself, for any time during the obligatory forty-eight hours preceding the vote due to my concerns abroad; however, the results show that my party was the real winner on Thursday. Albeit physically unable to vote for me, the good British public heard my message and turned out en masse to thrash Nick Clegg to within an inch of his political life. And this was in the local council elections, the Scottish Parliamentary elections, those for the assemblies of Northern Ireland and Wales, and the absurd referendum to decide whether to change our voting system to the confusing and useless Alternative Vote system.

YET ALMOST TO A MAN AND WOMAN the British media have decided that the real winner is “Bonny” Alex Salmond, a man who, as a politician, is an excellent, if repetitive, standup comedian. (Above, sharing a joke with the audience) In a system designed to prevent absolute majorities, Salmond and his Saltire-waving, guttural-voiced McKilties have managed to inspire greater Scottish feeling than anything since the Jacobite Rebellions of 1715 and 1745 and thus they feel able to announce a referendum on independence “in the short term”.

FOR MANY THIS IS A VICTORY for the Scots, but there is every reason for Englishmen to dance around with glee at the result. Although no one in their right mind imagines that the Scots will actually vote for independence, as when sober they may be canny, the mere thought of this brings tears of joy to the oaken-hearted. This would automatically put the British economy back into the black after we stop subsidizing the Scots, paying for their beer, deep-fried chocolates, cigarettes and firework displays, and then paying their consequent medical bills. If someone could persuade Salmond to teach his slick techniques to the rest of the Celts we could be rid of Northern Ireland and Wales. And Cornwall could go with them, taking their idiot Duke and Duchess as they go.

SO FAREWELL THEN AND WELCOME

AFTER THE DEATH OF OSAMA bin LADEN, the FBI website has wasted no time in promoting Ayman al-Zawahiri, the psychopathic eye-surgeon and paediatrician, personal physician to bin Laden and blatant violator of the Hippocratic Oath, to the top of its most wanted web page. Interestingly, his profile has now been upped to the point where we are told that he is the “cunning mastermind” behind Al-Qaeda. Helpfully, anyone wishing to claim the $25m reward on offer for information leading to his capture is advised to “approach him with caution”.

BUT THE MAIN BATTLE facing Obama (no relation) and his diplomatic team at the moment is the wrangling over the wording of any statements about the events leading to the detection, pursuit, engagement and killing of bin Laden in a leafy middle-class suburb 45 minutes away from the capital of Pakistan and living in a house in the shadow of the country’s major military academy and installations.

READING BETWEEN THE LINES, it is obvious that Pakistan was of no help whatsoever in these events, whether due to laziness, incompetence or perhaps even collusion with Osama and his merry men, but the USA cannot be seen to believe this, let alone state it, for fear of Pakistan clamming up again or even being deliberately obstructive during the hunt for al-Zawahiri, who might feasibly be living in a hotel suite in the Islamabad Hilton, receiving a subscription from Time magazine under his own name, paying his bills with a Mastercard or Visa and bowling the first ball at ceremonial international cricket games, none of which might arouse the suspicion of the Pakistan authorities.

WHEN THE WHITE HOUSE informed us yesterday that the Boeing Chinook downed in the raid was destroyed “so as not to fall into enemy hands”, this could only mean the Pakistani forces, and the twittering classes and online newspapers have already carpet-bombed the ether with stories about Pakistan shooting down the US helicopter so much that it has almost become true simply by weight of argument. Once again, this leaves diplomats in the West no better off in the “war against terror” than they were last week, or indeed in 1948: if you are nice to Pakistan, India gets annoyed, and vice-versa.

BUT PERHAPS THE FBI can breathe a sigh of relief: no longer do they have to try to find alternative spellings of Osama to post on their most wanted page (Usama or Usma were their favourite ones) for fear of any bright young American confusing Obama with Osama, shooting their own president and turning up at the nearest FBI field office and asking for a cheque for a hundred million dollars – which I suspect the FBI would secretly be prepared to pay.