Anthony Slessor

World Cup

Well, our over-paid prima donnas failed again. Two planes landed back in England on 29 June. One with 23 under-achieving, spoilt footballers, the other with 7 soldiers in boxes. Like our footballers, British soldiers are alpha males but they know how to work as a team because, if they don't, it isn't just a case of looking ridiculous in an international competition. They get blown up or shot.

Perhaps the whole football team should have taken a week out to visit Afghanistan (as Beckham did) where they would have witnessed 18 year olds going out on patrol and some coming back on stretchers without limbs. That might have put their over inflated egos and wage packets into some sort of perspective.

And while I’m talking about footballers, the whole Wayne Bridge/John Terry/Veronica Peroncell thing has opened my eyes to an aspect of our culture that I have been slow to recognize. To me the tawdry affair is really about JT and his wife, Toni, on whom he cheated. But no, all the tabloids and their readerships care about is that JT infringed some residual property rights that Bridge retains over his former girlfriend. I know they have a daughter together but that still does not give this man the right to dictate Peroncell’s private life. This seems to me to be an insult to her autonomy. One caveat on this: if Peroncell and Terry adversely affected the daughter in some way then, yes, Bridge does have the right to exercise paternal protection. But, that is not the media point because the daughter gets minimal coverage. The outrage is the supposed betrayal of Bridge by Terry!