World

No line has been repeated more often during the Fifa scandal than the instruction that football should follow the example of the International Olympic Committee. In 1998, the received wisdom goes, artful Mormons offered all kinds of bribes in cash and kind to committee members. An Olympic official revealed their plan to buy the right to host the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, and the movement purged itself of corruption. ‘We also know that putting everything on the desk can be a painful experience,’ said the International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, as he advised Fifa yesterday. ‘But it is absolutely necessary to do this as we have

Sorry was not the hardest word in Gloucester last night after Sir Elton John lost it live on stage with a lowly crowd steward, yelling: ‘You f–king stewards, who do you think you are? This is my f–king concert, who are you? …. especially you with the f–king blonde ponytail, you’re a f–king c— … Yes you, this isn’t f–king China, now piss off. My fans have paid good money and if they want to wave their f–king arms they f–king can. Do you hear me? Now piss off!’ The charming singer was soon apologising for his tantrum, welcoming said female steward to the stage by way of an apology:

A spectre is haunting the world: the spectre of Tony Blair’s ego. Mr Blair has wasted eight years pretending to solve the problems of the Middle East. He has also wasted millions of pounds, and achieved nothing. He has exposed his own total ignorance of history and his megalomaniac overestimation of his own powers. Throughout this time, he also earned large sums on the American lecture circuit, speaking to rich audiences so naive as to believe he is someone worth listening to. Rarely has shallowness been so profitable. One might have thought that his failure in the Middle East would have taught him a lesson. Not so: this man is unteachable.

In an information sheet on its website, the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association draws a link between the illegal cigarette trade and prostitution, arms trafficking and terrorism. Given the number of people killed by their trade, it’s hard to believe that the TMA is motivated by altruism. So why do these companies campaign against black-market cigarettes? One answer is that they eat into profits. But the scale of the problem also allows Big Tobacco to argue for lower taxes on its products. From the TMA’s website: The UK’s high tobacco tax policy has provided economic incentives for criminals to meet the demand that exists for cheap tobacco products. This has implications for Government revenue and for

There he was, doing his lovable leader act: the little father of all the world, humble and slightly dishevelled. The great suit was back before the world: but this time the clothes have no emperor. It was time for farewell. Sepp Blatter has resigned as president of Fifa. He was able to keep on for 17 years on a mixture of dazzling effrontery and the fact that so many people in Fifa were actually in favour of a corrupt system. It’s so much easier to deal with people when you can price their degree of self-interest with complete precision. Many, many people had been happy with the corrupt system of

The campaign against Qatar’s plans to host the World Cup is racist and Islamophobic, according to the former prime minister of the oil-rich absolute monarchy where Indian workers are treated like serfs and leaving Islam is punishable by death. Maybe worker health and safety is just a Eurocentric construct and there are no objective truths about how many people die on building sites? Momentum is building against Qatar, with pressure on the corporate sponsors to pull out, and for UEFA to lead a European boycott. The case against Russia is also pretty strong, too, but at least Russia can physically hold the tournament in summer. One of the main political problems

Action on Sugar, the bastard offspring of Consensus Action on Salt, has noticed that dried fruit contains sugar. As with every utterance from the pressure group, the BBC thinks this is newsworthy. Based on an unpublished undergraduate research project, Action on Sugar says that 85 per cent of fruit snacks’ contain more sugar than 100 grammes of Haribo sweets – ‘with some containing over 4 teaspoons of sugar!’, as the excitable press release proclaims. In these intellectually stunted times, a teaspoon of sugar is rapidly becoming a unit of harm that requires no further explanation. To be clear, a teaspoon of sugar only contains 16 calories. As an adult male, I

The attempt to implicate Cardinal George Pell in the Ballarat child abuse scandal is a virtuoso display of score-settling by Australia’s left-leaning journalists, who have hated Pell for many years. This morning, however, The Australian broke ranks by publishing a column by Gerard Henderson that helps set the record straight. I’m simply going to quote extracts from it because you can be damn sure that they aren’t going to penetrate the liberal Aussie media’s firewall. On Pell’s record in tackling child abuse: On all the available evidence, Pell was among the first Catholic bishops in the world to address the issue of child sexual abuse by clergy. He was appointed archbishop of

It is probably safe to say that the negotiations with Iran aren’t going very well. As the 30 June deadline for a final agreement looms America’s top negotiator Wendy Sherman has just announced that she will resign shortly after, telling the New York Times that it has been ‘two long years’ in that position. Meanwhile the Iranians are now saying that they want the deadline for reaching an agreement extended, with the Obama administration insisting that’s not an option. To make matters worse unconfirmed reports have recently emerged claiming that a delegation of North Korean nuclear weapons experts have been paying regular visits to Iranian military facilities. These being the same

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/defeatingisis/media.mp3″ title=”Andrew Bacevich and Douglas Murray discuss how ISIS can be crushed” startat=39] Listen [/audioplayer]War is a contest of wills. Although determination alone does not guarantee final victory, its absence makes defeat all but inevitable. Way back in the 1770s, Britain lost most of its north American colonies because rebellious Americans cared more about gaining their independence than George III and his ministers cared about preserving their empire. Today, if Isis fighters care more about creating their caliphate than Iraqis do about preserving their country, then Iraq may be doomed. At Saratoga in 1777, a scratch force of American Continentals and militiamen defeated 7,000 regulars under the command of

With the BBC’s self satire W1A proving to be one of the corporation’s most popular shows, much has been made of whether the comedy is too close for comfort given that they are up for charter renewal next year. Indeed Alan Yentob was mocked in March after he was photographed with a bike which bore a striking resemblance to the one owned by Ian Fletcher – Hugh Bonneville’s fictional BBC ‘Head of Values’ character. Then, in the most recent episode, Fletcher sported a newer model of fold-up bike, which bore an even closer likeness to Yentob’s own £1,000 Brompton bike. When Mr S caught up with Yentob at the annual GQ and Land Rover

Last month, 700 migrants attempting to sneak into Europe drowned when their rickety vessel capsized in the Mediterranean. This week, the European Union announced a naval initiative to crack down on migrant smugglers. It won’t work. These tragedies are going to recur endlessly, as long as a steady fleet of unsafe boats are able to set sail from Libya. The country has become a political vacuum which no longer deserves to be identified as a sovereign state. The civil war has left no functional state; in many parts, nobody is keeping the electricity running or schools open, let alone policing the coastline to stop illegal migration or the flow of jihadists. Halting human trafficking to Europe

After the first earthquake we were told that the chance of another one was 200 to 1. A fortnight later, when we were just beginning to recover, the second one hit. Perhaps I’m getting better at this, because this time I was able to control my body enough to run outside and join the crowd in the street. Standing with my family, looking back towards our home, I could see dust billowing from the foundations of the houses. They seemed to be dancing back and forth. The chances of a third strike, we’re told, are minuscule. Should we believe this? No one feels ready to relax. Nearly all of us