Ok, the football season ends; same difference.

The penultimate game of the entire season, Arsenal had a lucky win over Villa at Wembley to retain the FA Cup and to celebrate it they caused an almighty traffic jam round the whole of Islington, parts of Haringey and half of Hoxton. Or, ‘an open-top-bus-parade’ as they call it. In which thousands of non-Arsenal fans had to endure hours of gridlock just because of a football match.

I went west instead. To Richmond Park. And it stopped raining for long enough to pop into the Isabella Plantation and see the last of the fantastic rhododendrons still in bloom. Pretty heavy traffic going that way too. And I’m going to blame Arsenal for that as well.

The last remaining match is the Champions League final next saturday. Juventus against ‘my’ Barcelona. That’s exciting. And then, because its an odd numbered year, we have no wonderful international tournament this summer. Just cricket. And a bit of tennis. And lots of scandal.

The FIFA ‘thing’ goes on and on. They should just burn it down; I’m bored with it now. Shut down the whole organisation and start again. And try to do a bit better next time.

In the latest development, Sheikh someone-or-other, a former prime minister of Qatar (did you know Qatar had prime ministers? Implying some kind of democratic process?? Who’d’a thought…) has pulled the somewhat inevitable ‘racist’ card. Accusations of corruption when Qatar won the bid are ‘racist’ and ‘Islamophobic’. Well, it had to happen. And this person also bemoaned that ‘such accusations aren’t levelled at Russia’. Well, actually, they are. Russia should never have won a world cup bid either. Hateful nation, cut off from the rest of the world due to their excessive actions and extreme genocidal tendencies, the subject of sanctions and embargoes and yet they get to host the most prestigious sporting event in the world. Nonsensical. Or about as ‘sensical’ as playing football in 50 degrees of Qatari desert.

Qatar is a poor choice of venue because the massed football fans from across the world cannot drink alcohol there. Nor can they kiss other men on the street without getting arrested.

Its nothing to do with ‘racism’ but everything to do with what’s right. 2000 workers on the Qatari stadia have so far died due to the complete lack of health & safety considerations or just from the heat. They reckon that will double by 2022. The previous record (oh yes, there are records for everything) for deaths in World Cup preparations is 6. So Qatar’s winning massively on that score.

Happy Monday

A xxxx