UK News

from Reuters Soccer Blog:

FIFA battens down the hatches as allegations mount

The chill winds of corruption allegations swirling once again around FIFA's Zurich HQ have got world soccer's bosses busy battening down the hatches in the forlorn hope that, if ignored, they will all just blow away.

But if they were to peep out of the windows of their ivory tower overlooking the Swiss financial centre they might see that, in the eyes of much of the world, it is their credibility that is blown and that the process of selecting the hosts of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup finals has been seriously tainted.

Allegations aired in a British television documentary by the BBC that three long-standing members of FIFA's executive committee had received bribes from the body's marketing partners ISL and that a FIFA vice-president had ordered World Cup tickets for himself to sell on to touts were bad enough.

Those claims followed hot on the heels of an entrapment operation on FIFA bosses by London's Sunday Times. The newspaper sting resulted in two executive committee members being fined and excluded from office for indicating their willingness to "sell" their votes to the best bidder in Thursday's ballot.

Though FIFA acted in that case, they did so through gritted teeth, complaining loudly about media practices. They then made absolutely no move to investigate the potentially more serious claims produced by the Panorama programme.

In June this year, a Swiss court found that unnamed FIFA officials had taken bribes from FIFA's former and now bankrupt partner ISL.

Only a few weeks ago former FIFA general secretary Michel Zen-Ruffinen claimed to undercover reporters he knew which FIFA executive members were open to bribes for votes. FIFA, one might have thought, has reached its "Salt Lake City moment".

Echoes of Italy’s Clean Hands revolution

The shockwaves reverberating through Westminster as the MPs’ expenses scandal unfolds have been compared with the “Clean Hands” bribery scandal that effectively demolished Italy’s post-war political establishment in the space of a couple of years in the early 1990s.

If things are going to get that bad, the guilty politicians are going to have an uncomfortable time.

As a reporter in Rome at the time, I remember how surprise turned to anger then just as it has now as the public began to realise the sheer extent of the corruption that was helping to line the pockets of the country’s leading politicians and their parties.

The morning newspapers brought fresh revelations almost daily of how the main political parties routinely demanded kickbacks in return for government contracts. There were the “golden sheets” for example in which invoices for linen and bedding were inflated to thousands of pounds, and the exorbitant demands placed on suppliers to hospitals, which caused particular anger.

People used to demonstrate in the streets wearing white gloves to show they had clean hands. They would try to scare MPs they felt were corrupt by sending them spoof versions of the ”avviso,” the official notice that warned potential offenders they were under investigation. The avviso itself became one of the enduring symbols of the scandal, almost like the guillotine in revolutionary France. Reproductions of it used to sell well as birthday and Christmas cards.

Another favourite amng the angry public, if any disgraced politician dared show his face his public, was to mockingly shower them with coins.

Such was the fate of one of those held to have been most deeply involved in the corruption, Socialist leader Bettino Craxi, who was forced to flee to his second home in Tunisia to escape jail in Italy. Other disgraced politicians and businessmen even took their own lives.

Let’s hear it for the pigs

It’s been a grim time for pigs.

First they were blamed for the swine flu that caused a worldwide stir after it was discovered in Mexico — and now everyone’s likening them to Members of Parliament with their snouts in the trough.

But look at the facts. The genetic make-up of the virus may have been predominantly porcine but the pigs themselves didn’t have it. Even at the supposed epicentre of the outbreak in Mexico they showed no symptoms — things reached such a state that owners of some pig farms in the US were stopping humans coming near them in case they infected their animals. The pigs were innocent OK?

And yet the name “swine flu” stuck, lots of people stopped eating pork and in Egypt they were even culled.

Now this. The image changes from dirty to greedy as all the cartoonists portray our expenses-hungry MPs as curly-tailed pinstriped pigs, shedding wads of notes from their pockets as they pile into the trough.

Experts say pigs are in fact sociable, clever animals. They clear ground, fertilise it, eat vegetable waste and then make the ultimate sacrifice for our bacon sandwiches.

As the fashion of the moment seems to be saying “sorry” for everything, perhaps we should offer our apologies to the pigs — what about a statue of a Gloucestershire Old Spot on the vacant plinth in Trafalgar Square?