Author: Max Frances
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Knee Jerk
Reportedly, Gareth Southgate is to hold urgent talks with the England squad about taking the knee. In all truth, he’d be better off talking to them about taking the piss. That performance versus Austrian opposition would have had Neville Chamberlain’s paper fluttering in the wind. In elite football terms, we’re not waving but drowning. As…
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Southgategate
When I was a lad, parents would buy their kids pet hamsters in order to introduce them to the crushing reality of bereavement. Nowadays, parents whip up excitement around England’s football tournament campaigns to the same end. Yes, it’s that time again when for a few weeks we can deceive ourselves that incompetence and cluelessness…
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Porto Ball Bug
It’s the UEFA Champions’ league final today – an all-English affair, which is taking place in Porto. Fewer than three weeks ago, it had been decided to switch the event from Istanbul because Turkey is on the UK’s travel ‘red list’. So, let me get this straight. In the midst of a pandemic when this…
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Brass Neck
President Biden has been banging on about George Floyd’s legacy and has invited the multi-millionaire Floyd clan to the White House for canapés and blather. Apparently, one of the members has snubbed the invitation because they are ‘not happy’ with the proposed policing bill. You couldn’t make it up. It’s like the Veruca Salt scene…
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Fact Off
Dominic Cummings has blown the lid off the transparent Tupperware container that is Government. Apparently, the COVID era was characterised by chaos and crap decision making. Tell us something that we don’t know. Tellingly, pundits are now self-servingly seizing on DC’s perspective. Government supporters who had previously lauded Dom as a genius have fallen back…
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Long Shot
In 1978, an episode of The Professionals concluded with an aeroplane carrying an international terrorist being diverted to a hostile Arab nation after one of the passengers had faked a coronary. We can hardly now take the moral high ground with Belarus, because this ruse was conceived by one of our own, George Cowley. It…
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Beat Beeb, Yeah!
Princes William and Harry have been steaming into the BBC this week, which is fair enough. They’re having a pop at those who had deceived their Mum. Martin Bashir still hasn’t surfaced, which is also fair enough – he is a bottom-feeder after all. He’s still struggling with the long-term effects of COVID or, as…
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Pro Test
After yesterday’s match against Fulham, Paul Pogba and Amad Diallo unfurled a Palestinian flag and paraded it around Old Trafford. I thought political statements were banned in football? So sensitive about this were FIFA that the home nations were once punished for displaying a remembrance poppy, which is arguably not a political symbol at all.…
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Every Cloud
Every cement-dust cloud has a silver lining, and that is arguably the case for Jeremy Corbyn this week. For many years, he has lived under the intangible spectre of antisemitism allegations and to this day remains suspended by the Labour Party for that very reason. Of course, anybody with a scintilla of cerebral vim must…
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Ooh, Ooh – The Israelites
It looks like the handbags are out in the Middle East in a simmering conflict that is going to go on and on until the planet finally overheats and dies. Predictably, Israel is the object of international condemnation for its ‘disproportionate’ response to Hamas rocket attacks. The logic seems weird: the Palestinians are going to…
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