Why are the Metropolitan Police not feeling Tory Lord Sebastian Coe’s collar and trawling his hard drives? I blogged recently about his involvement in awarding the World Athletics Championships without a vote to the hometown of his long term paymasters and sponsors, Nike. Plus the £12 million his promotions company made from VIP hospitality packages for the Olympics, the VIP tickets for which were allocated by the Organising Committee of which he was the £600,000 pa chairman.
Now we have this, from the person Coe works closest with in the IAAF and who he has now promoted to head the President’s office since Coe assumed that title:
« Dear Papa,
Following our discussion earlier I have already had some thoughts and believe that we need to do the following, in the strict confidence and control within a small circle of senior IAAF staff only. This must be very secret.
(…)4. Finally, as soon as possible, and ‘unofficially’ PR campaign to ensure that we avoid international media scandals related to the Moscow Championships especially in the British press, where the worst of the articles is coming from. This will require specialist PR skills (working only with me directly) from London, but I believe that if we consider using CSM we can also benefit from Seb’s political influence in the UK. It is in his personal interest to ensure that the Moscow World Champs is a success and that people do not think that the media of his own country are trying to destroy it. We can work extremely hard in stopping any planed ‘attack’ on Russia from the British press in the coming weeks.
5. Finally, I need to be able to sit down with the Anti-doping department and understand exactly what Russian ‘skeleton’ we have still in the cupboard regarding doping. I think that the time to have unveiled the various athletes was a long time ago and that now we need to be smart. These athletes, of course, should NOT be part of any Russian team for these World Championships and Valentin should be pressurised to make sure this is the case. If the guilty ones are not competing then we might as well wait until the event is over to announce them. Or we announce one or two BUT AT THE SAME TIME as athletes from other countries. Also we can prepare a special dossier on IAAF testing which will show that one of the reasons why these Russian athletes come up positive is that they get tested a lot !!! In the same way, we can make the point that the WADA laboratory is the responsibility of WADA not IAAF and that if WADA decides there really is a problem, we have a plan B to do the tests in Lausanne instead (Gabriel confirmed this to me yesterday).
Papa, as soon as I have an idea of the price of this unofficial PR campaign I will let you know, but I will do everything in my power to protect the IAAF and the President.
All the best Nick »
So what does the Establishment now wish us to believe?
a) As long-term Vice President of the IAAF, Coe had no idea the organisation was massively corrupt and the President was taking huge bribes to cover-up doping scandals.
b) Coe had no idea his close associate and now head of his office Nick Davies was writing to the son of the President proposing that Coe’s company and Coe’s “political influence” be used to keep doping scandals out of the British media.
c) Coe’s meeting, while Vice President of the IAAF, with executives of his sponsor Nike, to discuss awarding the World Athletics Championships to Eugene, had no bearing at all on the decision of the President of IAAF to award the games to Eugene without a vote.
All that is even less convincing than Sepp Blatter’s declarations of innocence. Yet there is an utter difference in the British media’s treatment of Blatter and of “Lord” Coe.
I wonder why?
Craig – Can’t fault your logic. On a related matter of establishment corruption, it filled me with seasonal cheer to see Straw and Rifkind sblattered across the front page of today’s Telegraph;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/12061593/Jack-Straw-and-Sir-Malcolm-Rifkind-cash-for-access-investigation-not-unjust-or-unfair-says-Ofcom.html
Coe is British – so he CAN’T be corrupt. Only foreigners are corrupt.
“All that is even less convincing than Sepp Blatter’s declarations of innocence. Yet there is an utter difference in the British media’s treatment of Blatter and of “Lord” Coe.
I wonder why?”
.
Why?
What is unbearable smarm to the rest of us is honey to the Establishment in general and vaseline to the higher echelons of the Tory party in particular.
Smooths the wheels of corruption like no other.
Because we are British!!!
Corruption is a Johnny Foreigner thing and with our dear Coe whose credentials are those of the deity and the nearest to perfect race there could be no doubt that he has not knowingly mislead the people!!!!!!!!!!!!! (fell off my chair laughing there) Nice boy like Seb will always do the right thing and see that his dues are paid to the right persons/organisations
So obviously those bitter and twisted individuals like yourself who believe in Justice propriety and that kind of claptrap cannot understand that Uncle Sam has got in for the Russians and it is open season season on all thing Russian!
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I am sure you have heard that Danish police and border guards have been authorised to confiscate any gold/jewellery/valuables/cash from the Syrian Refugees in the way of keeping the government expenditure down! Escapes my mind where and when this happened in the past circa 1940s?
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Aw for feck’s sake! It’s only about sport! Re-instate Blatter. Let the the dumb athletes shoot up with whatever they think works. After all they do lots of other weird stuff (‘training’). And it’s all such fun to watch — the corruption I mean!
Conalboyle: “Aw for feck’s sake! It’s only about sport! ”
No no no, Conalboyle. Don’t you understand, sport – football particularly – is of such dominant importance to every aspect of the life of _everyone_, it requires acres of newsprint, high proportion of news coverage on all media.
Indeed, you or I might think that a change of management at FIFA has little impact on our day-to-day lives, but we’d be wrong. It is of such great moment that it clearly should be the top world news item, all day long.
Not content to having entire radio and TV channels devoted to professional sports, it has to leak onto every other channel. I was particularly fascinated to learn, yesterday, that Blatter had a sticking-plaster on his face, for some unknown medical procedure (but which – dishearteningly – was apparently unrelated to football).
If some football club changes its manager, it is our national duty to be aware of it at the first opportunity, hear about it all day, and receive plenty of speculation from every pundit willing to provide the media a quote.
I’ll go with Conalboyle. No, further. Let’s make performance-enhancing drugs compulsory – which would guarantee a, er, level playing field. There’d be just as much genuine competition, at any rate between pharmaceutical companies, and it would encourage an interest in chemistry among the young aspirant generation. I look forward to the first two-minute mile.
I also look forward to Lance Artmstrong, screwed to the eyeballs on crystal meth, spontaneously combusting during the next Tour de France…
Very droll. But sports corruption is important not least because it touches government at many levels. The denial that sports corruption is at all important is of course a favourite meme of the putinbots.
Glenn fret not, the plaster was due to Seppie boy falling down the stairs in the police station whilst talking about the football scores on Saturday!!!!
Whilst our Iron chancellor is busy borrowing more all the while making sure he spends zilch on services that we the
poorpeople depend on and call it tightening of the belt and austerity, all the eyes are on the ball and who is doing what in the bathroom or boardroom?BTW does this Papa thing mean any kind of familial relationship or is this pointing to the daddy dom little girl practices of those highly paid and pretty much idle bunch presiding in the seats of power? Also yes, I cannot be arsed to search it so will await others input to see what is this Papa about?
Not being a putinbot (check) but being absolutely up to here with the prolefeed that passes as (incessant, insistent, omnipresent) sports coverage, I am more of the view that the unimportance of sports corruption derives wholly from the unimportance of commercial sport; it’s part of a far wider picture, and if I were able to concentrate any effective fire it would be at the patronage, nepotism and corruption institutionalised in our government. If MP’s and ministers weren’t able to get away with it, I doubt very much if anyone else would be allowed to be.
Example, today:
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/dec/21/rupert-murdoch-david-cameron-christmas-party
Never mind that shit, how about engineering companies and exoskeleton addendum? We then can look forward to two hops a mile or even less! Going further into the quantum field we can declare the winner even before the race has been set to be taking place somewhere in the future! There agina they do that now, so best strike that out!
“Very droll. But sports corruption is important not least because it touches government at many levels. The denial that sports corruption is at all important is of course a favourite meme of the putinbots.”
Hasn’t there always been corruption?
I remember in my youth America and the USSR walking away with all the medals because their “amateur” athletes were in the armed forces and paid to train with first class facilities.
This all rushes past over my head. If you have a headache, take an aspirin. If the baby cries, give it Calpol. If you’re feeling down, drink some beer with your friends. If you want to run faster, munch this pill.
Oh, wait, that last one is wrong. Why?
The decision to award the contract to Eugene had nothing to do with ignorant Lord Coe’s attendance at the meeting to award it?
Seems to me his:Lordship being there had everything to do with what happened.
Personally, I wasn’t saying that sports corruption wasn’t important. After all, Putin hasn’t sent me a cashable cheque for months now.
What I do find rather maddening is the assumption that everyone in Britain (if not the world) is breathlessly excited about professional sport, and cannot imagine anything in life more compelling. This assumption is made by the media in general, government planners, authorities, to the extent that society appears geared around professional sport to a degree no other non-essential activity comes within a small fraction.
This is despite a vanishingly small proportion of society having personal involvement with professional sport, or even having more than a passing interest in one particular team.
On the odd occasion I’ve looked in the sports section of a newspaper, instead of binning it immediately, there is one shot after another of some bloke triumphantly punching the air or yelling in victory. Page after page, rarely any women, certainly nothing we have not seen thousands of times already.
Some people, like dogs, never get over their fixation with balls.
If it’s about keeping us fit, invincible warriors, ready to defeat the invading hordes of Them, why are they at the same time trying to kill us all, from birth, in ever more interesting, novel and profitable ways at the same time? Why also then aren’t ‘professional’ sports-persons the first sent off to paint foreign fields red, with their most useful skills, whilst the armed forces have a day off eating chips and smoking fags.
Its nothing that cant be resolved by a small judo bout with Hague.
Glenn it is part of the circus and bread diet mate! So what you see is a provision for those of the populace whom are not fluid enough to acquire relief through the use of exotic substances to seek some kind of a respite in watching their favourite millionaires (players/participants) indulging in their favourite hobbies and pastimes.
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This one takes the cake;
The new offence of celebrating Xmas carries a five year sentence!
This is the best of the Oligarch Owned Media;
When the Sun was caught printing a front page full of lies
After a lot of complaints the pooh bah in IPSO found:
Thus the Oligarch Owned Media complied:
Needless to point out that Express sporting the front page headline of;
Special Investigation; Classrooms where English language is starting to die out
DE of course has the same attitude, do the Oligarchs have bumper sticker; “Won’t stop for any fucker” too?
Sports are an important part of the circuses half of bread and circuses.
And we do seem to be getting less and less of the bread half.
Brunei followed an earlier example in prohibiting celebration of Christmas: Christmas in Puritan New England:
Not quite a prison sentence, but five shillings was a lot of money for most people in those days.
I suspect Dickens meant us to surmise that Ebenezer Scrooge’s original hostility to Christmas sprang from the attitudes of the dissenting Protestantism then prevalent in financial houses.
I suspect Dickens meant us to surmise…
I suspect he was cashing in on a sentimental stereotype, and even reinforcing the debatable notion that financiers were human, with meltable hearts. By that time, the really rabid Protestants had long gone to colonise America, anyway. And good riddance.
Lysias: “And we do seem to be getting less and less of the bread half.”
From the look of a lot of people around here, they seem to be getting plenty of cake…
Obesity is often a result of poor nutrition. Fattening food is often the cheapest. Hence the prevalence of obesity among the very poorest here in the U.S.
Dickens had little reason to have a sentimental view of financial activities. His own father was forced by his creditors to go to debtors’ prison, which resulted in great suffering for the family and in Dickens himself being forced to leave school and start a soul-deadening job in a warehouse at the age of 12.
It is amazing how the poor proletariat have been getting the shaft from the word go, and are still subject to the same five quantity of fines and punishment?
Agreed about the poor diet and the cheaper diet to be fattening.
The less of the bread most certainly has meant the dog and pony show of Seppie boy and his fantastic scams!!!
The IAAF, FIFA, the UN, NATO, CIA, FBI, MI5/6 Mossad, the FSB, the whole bloody worlds corrupt, why should we be surprised, that an ex-middle distance runner is any different.
Seeing as we’re on sport (Vlad is a big admirer of Sepp Blatter by the way. Must be his ability to hang on to power whilst engaging in massive corruption), a lot of people are saying the Sports Personality of the Year awards the other night were rigged by the BBC to prevent Tyson Fury winning. I’m no fan of Fury (I would rather have seen Klitschko retain his title), but I tried five times to vote for him, mostly because I wanted to see the luvvies and PC types implode with self-righteous anger. Each time my call went dead. Many people are reporting the same thing.
Instead, the Scot with no personality won, who doesn’t even believe in the country he was playing for. It makes a mockery of the whole contest.
Why doesn’t the queen speak up about the corruption of MPs and Members of the house of so called Lords. The official website describes her duties and limitations, but I can’t see anything there to stop her pausing at the end of her speech at the opening of parliament, or at Christmas, to say that she is displeased by the amount of dishonesty, deceitfulness, corruption, sexual promiscuity, which seems to be a permanent feature of the behaviour of too many of their numbers. If anything, as Queen, and as head of the Church, it seems to me that she is duty bound to comment. It would not be politically partial-they are at on all sides! She must simply be disinclined to get involved.how wonderful it would be if she were to say on such an occasion,” Now listen you lot, I expect better of you, this has to stop”