You put 23 intelligence agents in, you pull 23 intelligence agents out, ya slag off the president, shake him all about, ya do the Hokey Kremlin and ya suffer from gout, that’s what its all abaaaart… (repeat til you get bored or are murdered by ex-KGB agents).

We’re taking ‘sanctions’ against those horrible, nasty, evil, sarcastic, wicked Russians because we’re… fairly sure… 92% convinced… 88% certain, that they were responsible for the attempted murder in Salisbury the other week. The lingering doubts, which the Russians express daily, are that basically there is no proof as yet that they actually did it. Someone else might have murdered 2 Russian official ‘enemies of the state’ with a nerve agent never manufactured anywhere except Russia. So in theory, anyone could’a done it. The check-out girl at Tescos, ISIS, someone building a basement in Kensington, any Arsenal fan, Prince Harry, anyone.

So after the first wave of tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions of each other’s spies, we are now considering what happens next. Who blinks first. And the latest suggestion is to withdraw from this summer’s world cup. Hmmmm. Sport, politics, ne’er the twain. Unless we do. I would actually withdraw the England team from the following world cup in Qatar, as a protest against the Russians. In some respects it makes no sense, but the world cup should never be in Qatar, its too hot, too unfootbally and too stupid to even consider. That’d show Putin.

We banned all sports in South Africa for years, when apartheid was in place. But we’d banned all trade, all commerce, investment, everything between the two nations. Its different to isolate one single sport to use as a punishment. And who, exactly, would be most punished by it? The Russians wouldn’t give a shit as there’s still every other country going. They would barely notice the loss of income from the (inevitable) 3 matches played by the England team. And the fans would suffer because we’d be deprived of spending the entire summer moaning about how shit our national team is and agonising on why it always performs so badly in the major tournaments. And how likely is it that the French (now, temporarily onside again) and the Americans and Italians and Germans will follow the boycott? That would produce a much greater problem for the hosts but really is quite unlikely.

Jeremy Corbyn’s plan is a good one. That we take the opportunity to just declare ourselves part of Russia. If ya can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Embrace our inner communist. Except most people don’t have one. Twin St Petersburg with Islington. Oh, and shoot the Queen. Useless fucking rich bitch.

I just don’t know… anything!

Happy Saturday

A xxxx