Tabloid money… you’ll need silly money to afford a round in London

⬤ Qatar has done it, says Oliver Holt in The Mail on Sunday. Last Friday, the draw was made for the group stage of the World Cup. That was the final frontier after which Qatar cannot be stripped of holding the tournament later this year. “No going back now.” But that doesn’t change the fact that this was a £200bn “heist”. It was stolen from the rest of the football world by the “crooks and charlatans and hoodlums of Fifa 12 years ago”.

Of the 22 executives of world football’s governing body who voted, “at least 16 have either been banned, accused of or indicted for criminal corruption, involved in FBI cases, or accused of ethical violations but not convicted”. More than 6,500 migrant workers have died in construction. We are complicit in all this “because we didn’t have the will to say ‘no’” when we could have.

⬤ “Respect for public money is a depressingly low priority in the world of subsidised officialdom,” says Leo McKinstry in the Daily Express. “There is a culture of profligacy, waste and extravagance, where managers are largely judged not by their effectiveness, but by the size of their budgets and their bureaucracies.” Public spending has risen to £1.1trn this financial year, but much of it is wasted, with “chronic mismanagement, vanity projects, low productivity, ideological self-indulgence and widespread abuses”, from the £8.7bn spent on useless kit in the pandemic to errors in the benefits system that cost £8.4bn last year and the 675 NHS officials earning over £150,000. “Empire-building is rife” and it needs to stop.

⬤ A while ago in London, “I went to pay for two glasses of white wine, one of red and a large VAT with two £20 notes,” says Rod Liddle in the Daily Mail. But 40 quid didn’t cover it. “I just started laughing… The cost of drinking in London soared way beyond silly” years ago. The other punters, in their 20s and 30s, “simply pointed their iPhones and flexible friends in the general direction of the card reader and waited for the ping, without checking the amount or asking for a receipt”. They will be in for a nasty shock when their credit-card statements arrive. In some cases, they’ll discover “they’d blown the thick end of a week’s take-home pay on a couple of hours’ dedicated drinking”. No wonder personal debt has soared past £2bn.