I blame the scapegoats (23 page)

But with fox hunting successfully banned, the
solution to Britain's rat problem seems obvious. Could there be a more pleasing
sight in the English countryside than dozens of huntsmen, resplendent in their
bright red tunics, disappearing into the sewers and getting covered in crap?
What could do more to gladden the heart of an Englishman than seeing the master
of the hunt clambering out of a manhole, wiping the brown sludge from his
jodhpurs? Soon we can look forward to our towns echoing with the sound of the
huntsman's horn telling us that a traditional rat hunt has begun in earnest. It
will be a signal announcing that the rural upper classes have just clambered
into our sewers; a noise that says 'Right - everyone flush now!'

10
August 2002

Today
is the first day of the English football season. Up and down the country will
be heard that traditional cry of non-fans: 'Already? But it had only just
finished!' In recent years the popularity of the sport has mushroomed beyond
all expectations; violence is down, racist chanting is rare and the quality of
the matches is significantly better. But still some commentators go all
misty-eyed about times gone by: 'Oh it's not the same these days. I mean, when
I were a lad, you'd be packed into the terraces behind a seven-foot chain-smoker,
unable to see your team draw nil-nil after the defenders kept passing back to
the keeper, and then on the way home you'd get beaten up for wearing the wrong
scarf by that bloke who'd been shouting racist abuse. Ah, happy days . . .'

But a decade on from the formation of the
Premier League, the majority of clubs that were left behind are now in trouble.
The collapse of ITV Digital and the subsequent resignations have left the
Football League in crisis. Supporters watching games this afternoon may already
notice the lower-division clubs making one or two economies. Unable to afford
proper kits, players will be wearing embarrassingly tight shirts and huge baggy
shorts from the lost-property basket. The ball will be a plastic one from
Woolworth's with Harry Potter on the side, and when it's kicked out of the
ground, the rush goalie will be forced to go round and ask that grumpy old man
next door, 'Excuse me, can we have our ball back please?' Final score two-nil.

'It wasn't two-nil, that second one was a
post - it went straight over my jumper.'

'No, it would have
gone
in-off!’

Another
worry for the Football League is that while arrests are down in the Premier
League, according to tables published yesterday they actually increased in the
first division. It's no wonder ITV Digital went bankrupt; the broadcasters
boasted that their interactive coverage made it just like being at a real
match. So when you leapt off the sofa to celebrate your team's goal they
supplied a couple of opposing fans to beat you up. You have to question the
wisdom of publishing-league tables for football arrests. Did they imagine the
perpetrators would weep with remorse at being brandished the worst troublemakers
in the land?

'I'm so dashed upset, Tarquin. We've really
let down the vast majority of genuine peace-loving sports fans at our club.'

'Yes, Julian, the shame of it! I'll never be
able to show my face down at my men's anger-management workshop again.'

Or is there perhaps an outside chance that
the Neanderthals might take some sort of perverse pride in being top of the
arrests league? Maybe the police could arrange a pitched battle between the
fans that finished third and fourth to decide who gets a play-off place. They
might at least have printed the tables the other way up, with the clubs with
the most arrests at the bottom. It's the best chance I've got of seeing Fulham
at the top of the Premiership. With Tony Blair helping to set up a new football
league in Afghanistan, maybe other problems in the region could be solved with
British football know-how by sending Stoke City and Millwall supporters to
Iraq.

In fact, football violence roughly fits the
Marxist analysis of war between capitalist economies. While working-class fans
are beating-each other up, the real enemy, football's ruling class, remains
safe in their corporate boxes and chairmen's suites, becoming multimillionaires
as they bring poverty to the poorer clubs. Well, this season it's all going to
change. Suddenly aware of their own strength, the supporters of the world will unite
and throw off the chains of having to pay
£45
for a replica shirt that cost lOp to produce in some
sweat shop in China. Instead of pointlessly attacking each other, the newly
politicized fans will storm the Manchester United Directors' Box, declaring the
people's first socialist soccer soviet. The super-rich chairmen of the big
clubs will be lined up and shot, but they'll survive because Andy Cole is doing
the shooting. But no more will the big clubs grow ever richer off the players
they have taken from the lower leagues; no more will the ordinary fan be priced
out of the ground. At last it can be said, 'Chelsea fans are revolting!'

A
supporters' revolution would slightly change the game, of course. 'Quick,
pass!' 'Sorry, comrade, but such a move would have to be ratified by the
people's executive committee!' But by bringing Marxist doctrine to the Premier
League we'll prove that socialism is the only way forward for the rest of our
society. 'The workers! United! Will never be defeated - because frankly a score
draw is always the fairest result!' And imagine the thrilling climax to the
season when you know every club will finish with exactly the same number of
points and identical goal difference. Er, hang on -1 think I'd better think
this out again . . .

30
August 2002

All
week a conference centre in Johannesburg has been host to many of the most
important people in the world. The security has been incredibly tight. One man
who was thrown out is still hanging around outside the compound insisting that
he is a bona fide delegate. 'I'm not making it up! There is such a country as
Turkmenistan!' Meanwhle the girl on the reception desk has been having a terrible
time trying to deal with all the complaints from the Western leaders who jumped
at this chance to fly away in August. 'What do you mean it's winter in the
southern hemisphere? It's just not good enough . . .'

In reality, this convention is not much
different to any conference of middle managers taking place in the Jarvis Hotel
on the A508 near Kettering. The reps all file in, collect their little name
badges and then excitedly check their hotel rooms.

'Ooh, a trouser
press!' says a thrilled Gerhard Schroeder.

'And look, miniature packets of cashew nuts
in the mini-bar!' exclaims the Russian delegate, as he pops the free shower cap
and little sewing kit into his suitcase.

During the first session all the world
leaders sit there with anxious faces. Not because they are worrying about
global ecology, but because they're all privately thinking, 'If I watch the
adult channel tonight, will it come up on my bill as "Pay Movie" or
"Pervy Porn Flick"?'

The first talk is done by a Scandinavian
Environment Minister using Microsoft Powerpoint. 'So you see that within fifty
years, Earth will be unable to sustain life and we will all be dead.' On the
screen a little animated graphic shows the world expand and then go 'Pop!' and
everyone gasps and turns to the delegate beside them.

'Ooh, that's clever,
isn't it!'

'Yes, I can't do
anything like that on my computer . . .'

After the coffee break there's a talk on
teamwork and motivation from Will Carling and then in the afternoon they've
arranged for some workshops.

'Right, if you chaps from the Balkans could
get into small groups . . .'

'We already have
done.'

'And if the South Americans can choose a team
leader - no, don't use the army to install him.'

Soon they are all ready for the trust
exercises. 'The Israeli minister here is going to fall backwards and these Arab
leaders are going to catch him. You look a bit worried, Binyamin?'

By the end of the day they can't wait to get
out of there and sit down to the evening meal, especially with the promise of a
professional comedian as an after-dinner speaker. 'Oh no, who booked Jim
Davidson?' say the African delegates, sitting there stony faced while Jim does
his best West Indian accent for all his gags about 'my mate Chalky'. The whole
dinner might have been more tactfully arranged. The Western leaders had a huge
slap-up five-course feast, while over on the Third World table the waiters just
dumped a sack of dried milk powder and left them to fight over it.

Back
at home the ordinary voters remain cynical about their leaders' ability to
change anything. People need to see their representatives getting stuck in,
really making the best of a difficult situation, and so next time the gathering
will take a completely different format. Coming soon on ITV1 is a brand-new
docusoap:
I'm A World Leader, Get Me Out of Here!
In
order to understand the problems of the environment more fully, presidents and
prime ministers will be forced to live in poverty in a hostile tropical
setting, while Ant and Dec laugh at their efforts and dish out the next
challenge. 'Oh no! The Canadian President has got dysentery from drinking that
polluted water! And now he's got to go to the toilet in front of everyone!'
they will chuckle. 'Whoops! Jacques Chirac has been bitten by a mosquito and
now he's got malaria! I bet now he's wishing he hadn't cut back French medical
aid to Africa!' they'll giggle.

Of course George Bush won't turn up again.
Just like the original TV show, only D-list celebs will be available, and
viewers will be left saying, 'Who on earth is that?' as the Prime Minister of
Bhutan flirts with the President of Luxembourg. But that is the trouble with
the whole Johannesburg conference: the people who really count aren't even
there. Not just George W. Bush, whose country alone is responsible for a huge
proportion of the world's greenhouse gases, but all the unaccountable people
who run the global corporations and multinationals which are now more powerful
and damaging than many nation states. So perhaps the only really effective way
to help the environment and developing countries would be to get all the
corporate billionaires to Johannesburg. If they saw the security they would be
reassured of their own safety. 'That should keep people out,' they'd say,
looking at all the razor wire, the lines of electrified fences and the heavily
policed concrete barriers.

'What are you talking about?' would come the
reply. 'That's to keep you in here.'

7
September 2002

Yesterday
panicking crowds headed for the hills, holding up flimsy umbrellas and
clutching handkerchiefs over their mouths. The newspapers had carelessly
printed the terrifying headline: 'Britain's Nuclear Industry - Collapse
Imminent'. It turns out that British Energy, which runs Britain's eight nuclear
power stations, is on the brink of insolvency. Apparently the Sellafield
Visitors' Centre Gift Shop is not selling quite as many Chernobyl shaky-snow
fall-out scenes as they'd hoped. The sealed nuclear waste paperweights just
aren't shifting and the kiddies' glow-in-the-dark plutonium bars are down to
half price.

Although
we are not about to be poisoned by a Chernobyl-style explosion, to listen to
the shareholders in Britain's nuclear industry you'd think the reality was even
worse. On yesterday's
Today
programme,
British Energy shareholder Malcolm Stacey was incandescent that a government
rule change had resulted in a 20 per cent drop in electricity-prices for the
consumer. Cheaper electricity for the masses or greater profits for
shareholders, hmmm, that's one of those really tricky moral issues, isn't it?
The sort of thing that would have kept Keir Hardie wrestling with his
conscience for years.

Mr
Stacey called on the government to bail out investors whose shares had fallen
in value. On hearing this Gordon Brown must have leapt out of bed and straight
into action. What greater priority can there be for a Labour government than
compensating speculators who've lost money on British Energy shares? 'You know
all that money we were going to give to schools and hospitals?' says the
Chancellor. 'Forget all that;
this
is
the reason I went into politics, to compensate nuclear shareholders!! These are
the real heroes of our society. Sorry, nurses! Sorry, teachers! I need that
money to hand out to City speculators who gambled and lost.'