The West needs to get the stomach to take on Putin and take the World Cup away from him
WHAT further outrage must Russia perpetrate before it is stripped of the 2018 World Cup?
Consider the charge sheet:
The slaughter of families in Aleppo.
The invasion of sovereign Ukraine.
The cyber hacking allegedly aimed at skewing the US Presidential election.
The secret, systematic doping that made cheats of 1,000 Russian athletes and sullied the memory of London 2012.
Vladimir Putin deserves pariah status for any one of them. And let’s not forget too the murky circumstances by which Fifa, under the grasping Sepp Blatter, handed Russia the tournament.
The West has no stomach to take on Putin militarily. But he would hate to lose the World Cup — and many other nations could host it at short notice.
Does Fifa’s new president have the backbone? We doubt it.
Wrong track
RENATIONALISING the railways would make them immeasurably worse.
It can be tempting to think that taking them back into public hands would resolve the chaos on Southern Rail.
But this is precisely what the unions seek. After nationalisation, strikes would be nationwide. RMT and Aslef militants wouldn’t hesitate to wield their new power to cripple the entire network.
Look how little they care about the distress of Southern Rail’s customers.
Besides, no one should delude themselves trains were better under British Rail. They were filthy, slow and late.
The problem with our privatised franchises is that they are not in competition. They are regional monopolies.
There SHOULD be a shake-up to cut fares and improve services, but nationalisation is the exact opposite of what’s needed.
Hit ’em for Six
THE full extent to which energy firms fleece customers is jaw-dropping.
Almost 20million pay over the odds on standard tariffs and could save a fortune moving to a cheaper one. SSE allegedly overcharges nine in ten punters.
We hope Ofgem’s new league table of shame encourages more people finally to switch. But the Government should compel the Big Six to shift customers to cheaper tariffs themselves.
For all Business Secretary Greg Clark’s sabre-rattling, he cannot yet claim to have taken any real action to end this scandal.
End the waste
WE can see the need to raise council tax, with social care funding in such disarray.
But the proceeds MUST be ring-fenced for that purpose alone. Councils still splurge millions on six-figure salaries, politically driven whims and PR.
Cut waste, keep the hikes to a minimum and spend the lot where it’s really needed.