Skip to main content

FIFA foe, fum... I smell the blood of a Swiss man.

Nursing a sprained ankle, I am finding it a little tedious to get about- hobbling across the cobbles of the Old Town of Tallinn, I wonder if the large number of Finnish tourists drinking beer for breakfast in the the Town Hall Square are simply used to Quasimodo impressions. Although it is said that swearing releases the pain, I think that this is a frankly rather debatable point. Mind you each time I jar my ankle I certainly test the theory. One thing is for sure, I am in a rather irritated mood.

I suppose this is why instead of finding the spectacle of Sepp Blatter lying and cheating his way to re-election as leader of FIFA amusing, I find myself cursing at the television as well as at my ankle. It certainly takes a large dollop of delusion for Blatter to think that the inevitable corruption scandal that has exploded under his watch is not any kind of crisis, just "some difficulties". I noted at the time that Mr. Blatter's humiliation of the English FA over the right to stage the World Cup in 2018, combined with the frankly bizarre decision to stage it in Qatar in 2022 would eventually come back to haunt him. In fact, Mr. Blatter's absurd pretence that FIFA faces no crisis- and even if it does, and although he is its leader, he is nonetheless not to blame- is now leading to a meltdown as scandal after scandal destroys the institution. It is a fantastic example of hubris facing nemesis, and while I find it bleakly satisfying to see such humiliation piled on the old crook, I can not feel more than irritation that he is still in his job. As with Gadaffi who too lingers on in his increasingly crumbling capital, one can not help wishing that he would just go, and the news cycle could pass on to something else.

Although it has been the British press that- for what they probably feel are justified reasons of revenge- has lead the attacks, it is now quite clear that Blatter has a case to answer, and the clamour has now gone way beyond the feral British tabloids. If Blatter cared about more than his own flabby hide, he would have led a compromise, but his untrammelled power within FIFA has allowed him to think that he can get away with anything. Perhaps he can for a while: but he will destroy FIFA with it, and maybe that would be no bad thing.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Concert and Blues

Tallinn is full tonight... Big concerts on at the Song field The Weeknd and Bonnie Tyler (!). The place is buzzing and some sixty thousand concert goers have booked every bed for thirty miles around Tallinn. It should be a busy high summer, but it isn´t. Tourism is down sharply overall. Only 70 cruise ships calling this season, versus over 300 before Ukraine. Since no one goes to St Pete, demand has fallen, and of course people think that Estonia is not safe. We are tired. The economy is still under big pressure, and the fall of tourism is a significant part of that. The credit rating for Estonia has been downgraded as the government struggles with spending. The summer has been a little gloomy, and soon the long and slow autumn will drift into the dark of the year. Yesterday I met with more refugees: the usual horrible stories, the usual tears. I try to make myself immune, but I can´t. These people are wounded in spirit, carrying their grief in a terrible cradling. I try to project hop

Media misdirection

In the small print of the UK budget we find that the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the British Finance Minister) has allocated a further 15 billion Pounds to the funding for the UK track and trace system. This means that the cost of the UK´s track and trace system is now 37 billion Pounds.  That is approximately €43 billion or US$51 billion, which is to say that it is amount of money greater than the national GDP of over 110 countries, or if you prefer, it is roughly the same number as the combined GDP of the 34 smallest economies of the planet.  As at December 2020, 70% of the contracts for the track and trace system were awarded by the Conservative government without a competitive tender being made . The program is overseen by Dido Harding , who is not only a Conservative Life Peer, but the wife of a Conservative MP, John Penrose, and a contemporary of David Cameron and Boris Johnson at Oxford. Many of these untendered contracts have been given to companies that seem to have no notewo

Bournemouth absence

Although I had hoped to get down to the Liberal Democrat conference in Bournemouth this year, simple pressure of work has now made that impossible. I must admit to great disappointment. The last conference before the General Election was always likely to show a few fireworks, and indeed the conference has attracted more headlines than any other over the past three years. Some of these headlines show a significant change of course in terms of economic policy. Scepticism about the size of government expenditure has given way to concern and now it is clear that reducing government expenditure will need to be the most urgent priority of the next government. So far it has been the Liberal Democrats that have made the running, and although the Conservatives are now belatedly recognising that cuts will be required they continue to fail to provide even the slightest detail as to what they think should guide their decisions in this area. This political cowardice means that we are expected to ch