It is terrible what these journalist people do, you know. There was England all set to host the soccer World Cup in 2018, and suddenly they get knocked out in the first round of voting. It is all, apparently, the fault of the BBC. You would have thought that the fact that FIFA executives were openly taking bribes would be in the public interest, but no, not when national pride and a high profile sporting event is at stake. It won’t be long before right wing politicians and tabloid newspapers are calling for Clive Edwards to be executed for treason, mark my words.
Tsk! Surely other countries have more respect for free speech and journalistic integrity, don’t they?
You’re saying exactly what I’m thinking here. The ways the Murdoch press attacks the BBC are becoming ever more mouth foamy… And surely it would be shaming to have won the world cup, given the pretty reasonable assumptions most people would make about bribery as a result. Of course, I’m not saying that Russia… That would be totally uncharacteristic of Putin’s mafia state, after all…
Tsk! Surely other countries have more respect for free speech and journalistic integrity, don’t they? Shirley, you jest…
… and don’t call her Shirley! 🙂
I see Murdoch’s behavior on your side of the pond isn’t any better than over here. I’d like to give that boy’s house of cards the digitus impudicus…
The big thing the Beeb has going for it is that it *is* publicly funded and yet independent enough to publish a story like that… I don’t see NPR breaking something that big. You see what happens when a juggernaut corporation takes over the news… especially when the controlling directors are a rogue Ausse, a Rothschild banker, and a Viet who was the master architect of the USA-PATRIOT[sic] act…
Delenda est Diurnarii sociis
“It is all, apparently, the fault of the BBC.” Of course it is. If the license fee had been siphoned off into an even bigger bribe England would have won!
Yes, the Murdochs are obviously pretty anti-BBC, though not necessarily all of their journalists. But in this case it would be odd of the Murdoch press to blame the BBC excessively as it was The Sunday Times who did front page stings on Fifa.
Corruption issues (and apparently a lack of stadia) aside, why shouldn’t Russia get a crack at hosting a world cup? I’m no great football fan, and personally am quite happy it is somewhere else than here (mind you, I was 8 in ’66 so have had my domestic tournament!).
What’s odd is 2022 in Qatar. I travelled there in the 80s; from googling I see it, like the UAE, has built more stuff since then, but it is still a small place and there are only 350,000 citizens out of a total population of about 1.7m. It is very hot in summer – I read that at least five new stadiums will be built, with air conditioning to reduce the temperature by 20degC, which doesn’t sound very sustainability-minded. And I wonder if they’ll change their alcohol laws to allow public drinking?
The Arab world is keen on football and Qatar is a kind of pan-Arab bid, but Egypt would make more sense. Maybe 12 years is too soon after another “African” state got it in 2010, even though their capitals are 4000 miles apart.
I’m in Aus and obviously there’s much calling of foul, but it’s not hard to see what. Each of the other bids (Aus, US, S. Korea and Japan) would have made a better choice.
About the only pro for Qatar is the time zone between the EU and Asia. Everything else is pretty much a con: proximity of all their stadia, alcohol laws, lack of any real potential for the expansion of the game and heat.
Actually, apparently the stadiums (12, not 5) will be solar-powered and carbon-neutral, and dismantlable for shipping to worthy 3rd-world countries. But still.
That makes it even more laughable – the tech they said they’d use for that AC doesn’t exist yet.
I must admit I chuckled on learning today that the England bid was first into the waste bin, and chuckled much more on seeing some of the indignant reactions by various grandees – including all the hilarious guff about “but they promised us they’d vote for us!”. Wait.. what? Why did they promise? Was it because it was the only way to get you to shut up and stop pestering them? Was it because you gave them stuff? Who knows. It doesn’t surprise me the whole thing is blatantly corrupt (I’m astonished at how little Panorama seemed able to find out, actually – most of their revelations seem to be based on six-to-ten-year-old information), and neither does it surprise me that England proved incompetent when it came to dealing with said corruption.
Frankly the comment someone made that “England are perceived as arrogant” is spot on and probably the prime (non-corruption-related) reason we were dismissed so summarily. Our press DO have much to answer for in this instance, but it isn’t the BBC that’s jingoistic and eternally dismissive of foreigners – it’s the news media owned by… now, what’s his name again? 😀
And if some of the (ring fenced) overseas aid budget doesn’t go to the countries whose FIFA delegates assured Darth Cameron they would vote for England and then very obviously didn’t . . . Of course, Darth wouldn’t be so petty. Of course not.
Having a better bid and losing to Russia is annoying, but there’s no obvious reason why Russia shouldn’t stage the tournament (other than it being a gangster state run – once again – by the boyars) The bids from Holland/Belgium and Spain/Portugal were – I understand – better than Russia’s too. But Qatar? WTF? This isn’t a good time to be an Australian sports fan.
The peoples’ game?