Injured stars play on ...and cash in

WIMBLEDON’S prize money row has intensified over claims injured players are turning up and cashing in after withdrawing in the first round.

Under current rules, all players walk home with £35,000. Doubles players claim an extra £5,375 even if they lose. Yesterday Feliciano Lopez, one of eight who have withdrawn from the singles, played in the doubles, losing but earning himself £10,750, which he will split with his partner. Viktor Troicki, who also withdrew, is due to compete today in the doubles. The row has prompted officials to consider cutting the first round fees to £10,000.

THERE is something profoundly distasteful about the way Left-wing campaigners, backed by opportunist Labour MPs, have hijacked the grief of Grenfell Tower blaze victims to pursue a political agenda.

In the latest egregious example, selfappointed groups have turned their vitriol against 70-year-old Sir Martin Moore-Bick, the retired judge appointed to lead the inquiry into the disaster, claiming survivors want him removed.

Leave aside that most who endured that appalling night are preoccupied with rebuilding their lives and little concerned about who chairs the inquiry. Indeed, those who contacted the Mail said they had no opinion on the matter.

The agitators who claim so unconvincingly to speak for them appear to believe Sir Martin is too white, too male, too old and too much of a ‘technocrat’ to understand the council tenants’ plight. Meanwhile, they say the inquiry’s brief should also be extended to cover such questions as society’s treatment of migrants and the disadvantaged. Yet if so, wouldn’t it drag on for years?

The pressing concern must surely be to establish as quickly as possible how the fire started and spread – and how building regulations should be changed, clarified and enforced to ensure nothing like this horror can happen again.

With his long experience of investigating disasters on land and at sea, the technocratic Sir Martin seems eminently qualified for the job. We owe it to the victims to allow him to get on with it – and not let cynical politics get in the way.

AFTER showing admirable impartiality during the referendum campaign, how quickly the BBC has slipped back into its Eurofanatical ways. Yet faced by MPs with a thick dossier of evidence of anti-Brexit bias, the corporation’s director of news hotly denies any imbalance. The Mail has a suggestion. If James Harding doesn’t trust the MPs’ dossier, why doesn’t he switch on the radio or TV – and hear the constant stream of anti-Brexit scaremongering for himself?

IN a contemptuous insult to TV viewers and paying spectators, a string of tennis stars have pulled out of their Wimbledon matches after a few minutes on court, playing just long enough to claim £35,000 first-round appearance money. Is there any good reason why they shouldn’t be fined? How about £35,000 each?