So yesterday, sunday morning, glorious, sunny, fab. Came downstairs, put the kettle on (because I’m English and that’s just what we do, without thought, pause, delay or consideration) and opened the front door to retrieve the papers. Ahhhhh. That pesky paper boy had transgressed. Had defied one of Mel’s rules. He put the newspaper on the doorstep. Ahhhhh. Well, he doesn’t have a key, funny enough, but knows to put the papery bits of the Times through the letterbox, because whilst its fine to leave the plastic bagged magazine bits on the step, leaving the ‘bare’ newspaper can see it infested with all manner of pestilence within seconds. And being sunday morning, one minute you’re sipping tea in bed whilst enjoying the rugby report, the next there’s a biblical plague of fucking locusts eating the bedclothes!!!! Ok, whatever, but Mel has a ‘thing’ (one of sooooo many) about anything dirty on the bedclothes. Other than me. So I took the outer bit of the paper off and left it downstairs, where the insect problem can be contained, if required. And never got round to reading it.

And it was in fact, the front page of the Sunday Times, in which the whole Qatar World Cup corruption thing was (sort of) exposed. So even though I’d made accusations of corruption and cheating, that was prior to the present shit-storm. Prophetic? Not really. If you spend as much time insulting everyone as I try to do, occasionally you get one jump ahead of reality.

Yet the corruption allegations aren’t new anyway, they’ve just now found those guilty and the financial mechanisms by which bribes were distributed and money passed around. Because really it makes no sense otherwise for Qatar to win hosting of a World Cup. Its a tiny country, with a population of about 2 million, only about 300,000 of whom are ‘citizens’, the rest are workers, servants, slaves, hookers and people to wash the Lamborginis, the usual middle eastern stuff. And Qatar has no massive love or history of football, yet will have to build 8 brand new, mega, fuck-off stadia to house the event. And after the World Cup, once the fans have left, the alcohol been once again moved out of sight, the mess cleared away, what do they do with those stadia? It would be like me building 8 fantastic tropical fish tanks in the house. I fucking hate fish.

Then there’s the heat. Problem. In fact its a problem for camels stading in the shade during Qatari summertime. For actual humans, standing in that sun leads to dehydration, third degree burns, death. So running around for 90 minutes is a great idea. Really great. Though obviously, those with good complexions like Rooney, Paul Scholes, its less of a problem…

And finally, Mr Blatter, you useless, worthless heap of Swiss former-wedding-singer slime, there’s what Qatar represents elsewhere. Like the place where the 5 Taliban leaders just realeased from Guantanamo in exchange for the American soldier, the place they went. The place they call ‘home’. The place where terrorists are welcomed like heroes.

So Qatar 2022; good idea?

Happy monday

A xxxx