Save the planet. Move to Milton Keynes.

I had a crisis of conscience the other day that saw me arm-deep in plate scrapings, filthy nappies and the contents of my Dyson.
My crime was to accidentally throw away a plastic bottle. Now I know I’m meant to put it in the blue bin, not the black one, and if that single bottle was to find its way to a landfill site the entire planet would spontaneously combust, but I must admit I thought ‘sod it’, and walked away.
By the time I had reached the back door (approx 15 steps) I could no longer live with myself and went back to rescue the poor little Fruit Shoot.
There was, of course, also the threat of a council jobsworth diving out from under the bushes and hitting me with a £1,000,000 fine for putting the wrong type of plastic in the wrong type of plastic bin.
He would know this because he had an infrared bluetooth link-up with the pea-sized camera that had been injected into the bin lid to record everything that was chucked in, as well as my movements, which could then be cross referenced with the CCTV camera probably hidden in the lamppost outside my two-year-old’s bedroom window, which can probably see into my office and therefore can see exactly what I’m writing right now.
I can assure them they don’t need to. I know how to spell snoop, so there’s no need to check up on me.
Anyhow, an hour later I read that the University of Phoenix are building a 29,000-seater stadium, complete with roof, that can be entirely air conditioned so the Yanks don’t get hot when they’re running around.
It reaches 100 degrees for the months in Pheonix, so rather than move the football season to suit the cooler weather and inconvenience themselves, they decide to screw everyone else who is trying to save the planet.
I figured I’d have to not recycle around 20 million Fruit Shoot’s before I even came close to wreaking wasting the kind of energy one hour’s of football would use up, so there doesn’t seem much point really, other than doing my bit and, more satisfyingly, sticking two fingers up at the little man from the council hiding in my bushes.
Still we must try. Or so we are told. Because, yes, the planet is dying.
How do we know? Because the white rhino is apparently close to extinction, making the environmentalists, or just mentalists as they are, all weepy.
Poachers are still chasing what little white rhinos are left but the do-gooders have come up with a novel scheme to save them – move them to Milton Keynes. Last month two of the beasts took a plane away from the land of deserts to a zoo in the land of roundabouts.
Given the choice, I think if I was a rhino I’d rather stay and take my chance.

Fans should learn to take what they dish out

I’m fast coming to the conclusion that being a footballer must be a rubbish job. It’s no fun anymore. You go out, leg it around for 90 minutes and invariably end up being booed, belittled or banned.
Emmanuel Adebayor should be applauded, not castigated, for running half the length of the pitch, sliding on his knees and giving the Arsenal fans a mean stare (above, from The Guardian) as a way of ramming the incessant, racist abuse they had taunted him with from the very first whistle.
Instead, he finds himself facing the sort of disciplinary action once reserved for common assault.
When Chris Morgan almost took Iain Hume’s head off with a shameful elbow last year, the FA’s response was the referee had seen it, booked Morgan, and therefore it could not override his decision. This was despite Hume being left in hospital with a fractured skull.
Fast forward 10 months, and we have the same FA charging Adebayor with improper conduct and threatening to ban him for a goal celebration.
So let’s get this straight. In the FA’s book, a celebratory glare is worse than a life-threatening elbow.
Or indded a badge kiss. Gary Neville, who bears the brunt of the Liverpool fans’ hatred, was fined £5,000 in 2006 for planting a smacker on his Manchester United badge after a late winner.
I’m sick of whingeing supporters thinking that by paying their money they are given carte blanche to verbally abuse players in every conceivable fashion.
Racist and vulgar language, paedophile chants, insulting their families; it’s an old cliche but it’s the kind of thing you’d be arrested for if you did it anywhere else outside a football ground. Yet the minute they get some back they accuse the player of incitement.
So the players have to simply sit there and take it. The only way they can respond is by doing what they should be doing anyway, namely going a bit mental when celebrating a goal.
But they can’t even do that these days.
It’s about time supporters learned that if you give it you should take it. If you want to chant that kind of stuff, don’t go whingeing when the player rams it right down your throat when the ball hits the back of the net.

Football. Referees. Glasses.

The most relieved man in football right now must be Stuart Attwell. Yes, he who gave a goal to Reading that didn’t exist and then ruled out one for Derby that did, must have enjoyed watching last weekend’s highlights of the Championship.
The reason for his joy was Rob Shoebridge. He was probably enjoying the summer sunshine at Ashton Gate last Saturday when Freddie Shears, the on-loan Palace striker, barged through the Bristol City defence and smashed the ball in.
Shears and his teammates celebrated, the crowd was silenced and the City defence looked crestfallen and started the trudge back towards the half way line. It was 1-0.
Until, that is, Shoebridge decided neither he nor his linesman had actually seen the ball go in. So he decided not to bother giving Palace their goal and waved play on. Cue pandemonium.
Shears’ mistake was to kick the ball so hard it hit the back of the goal and bounced back out, but even to the naked eye it was clear what had happened.
Which is just as well, because as blatantly obvious as it makes the call for video technology to be introduced, Fifa aren’t interested. They would rather see four refs, bigger goals and kick-ins instead of throw-ins than actually introduce something that might improve the game.
At least the Professional Game Match Officials have learnt from Attwell’s blunders last season. Shoebridge and his linesmen were suspended immediately and an apology issued to Neil Warnock, the Palace manager, which went down as well as you imagine it would have done, especially as Palace lost 1-0 to an 89th minute goal.
How these things can still happen is beyond me. 16,403 supporters saw it. 22 players saw it and two managers plus benches saw it. Yet the people that matter somehow didn’t but, according to the game’s rule makers, that’s okay. It would take seconds to check – less than the time it takes for players to stop haranguing the referee.
Like the Reading players who acted dumb last year, the City players are due no credit for their part, taking the old adage of playing to the whistle way too far. Any hope that comes with a new season that football might show an ounce of self respect disappeared there and then.
Harry Redknapp summed it up perfectly. “Fifa won’t let us have cameras on the goal line, so what’s to stop a fourth official from looking at his monitor for 20 seconds?
“It’s the 21st Century, how long since we had a man on the moon?”
Right now, that’s probably where Shoebridge wishes he was.

Fab Fabio shows English isn't necessary for the English

England’s impressive march towards the World Cup finals in South Africa next year has almost been taken for granted in the latter games of the qualifying campaign.
Think back to November 2007. The Wally with The Brolly. The shambles on the pitch. England down and out, failing to qualify for the European Championships.
Steve McClaren wasn’t solely to blame, but he was appointed to the job amid the hysterical furore for it to be given to an Englishman in the wake of Sven Goran Eriksson’s unexciting reign.
It was a foolish mistake, as history has proven, and one which thankfully the FA had no intention of repeating when they appointed Fabio Capello.
Around world football, like in no other sport, there remains a nationalistic hankering for the international manager’s job to be given to a son of the nation, regardless of whether he is the right man for the job.
It is further proof that although football is a multi-billion pound business, it is rarely run like a business.
In other industries, the man who gets the top job does so because he is the best man for the job, not because his most important reference is his birth certificate.
Argentina boss Diego Maradona was a populist but bizarre choice for a country that wants to win the World Cup. Legend he may be, but he is also troubled and lacks the coaching experience to take on one of the world’s most high profile teams.
Few were surprised when Argentina were so comprehensively outplayed by Brazil in their recent World Cup qualifier, and Argentina’s presence in Africa is now, unthinkably, severely in doubt.
In 2008, when Scotland appointed George Burley, he was on a shortlist of five, all of whom were Scots. After the disastrous Berti Vogts experiment, continuing failure appears to sit easier and criticism less ferocious when a Scots messes it up.
When the FA looked to replace McClaren, they found themselves in a similar situation to Scotland.
There was the usual amount of nationalistic jingoism underlined by the uneasy knowledge that there wasn’t an national really up to the job of winning the game’s greatest prize.
They took a brave decision and have never looked back. England haven’t won the World Cup yet, but look better placed to give it a go than they have for a long time.
For others more concerned about patriotism than football, it is a lesson they should take on board.