I awoke yesterday to the unwelcome ‘chirp’ of the smoke alarm in my kitchen which is an indication that the battery is nearing exhaustion and needs replacement. After a frantic search in a kitchen ‘odds-and-ends’ cupboard drawer, I have ascertained that I need to go on the road and purchase a battery of the relevant type – although I can do it myself, I am a little inclined to leave it until my son returns from his visit to his wife’s relatives to get this fixed. The day has dawned with a lovely bright and what promises to be a sunny day so I bestir myself relatively early as it is the re-arranged date for my patio cleaning to commence at about 9.00am. The evening before last, I watched the Canada v. Bosnia World Cup football and this was quite entertaining ending up in a 1:1 all draw. Canada alongside Mexico and the US are co-hosts and the match was played in Toronto so evidently support for the Canadian was almost over-whelming. To my mind, I thought the BBC commentary team strayed from impartiality by making constant references to what they perceived as good play by Canada but were less generous when it came to Bosnia. There are already indications that this World Cup will be a very strange affair. For a start, none of the presidents of the host nations decided that they would attend the opening ceremonies for a variety of strange reasons. The ticket prices have been priced at absurdly high prices – some fans however at the globe’s biggest party will have paid previously unheard-of amounts for what may turn out to be dead rubber games, while forking out roughly the normal ticket price just for the commuter train to get to the stadium. Witness the New Jersey Transit train ticket – normally $12.90 return, but $100 for the tournament. The fans are being squeezed like never before because this is a very different tournament economic model to what has gone before. For a start, it is largely taking place in borrowed American football stadiums (a quarter of the games are in Canada and Mexico), with the US oval ball sport leaving its mark, perhaps indelibly. This tournament turns the beautiful game into the bountiful game, for organisers FIFA. This could be the most impactful World Cup ever in economic terms, but not for the conventional reason of driving economic activity among the host nations or sparking feel-good spending among those back home in countries that enjoy a good run. Even at this early stage, ahead of the 2026 World Cup, many host cities are seeing a collapse in hotel prices as demand falls short of early projections. After initially driving rates to historic highs, hotels and FIFA have drastically slashed prices and released reserved rooms to prevent empty beds. It looks as though the FIFA/USA desire to make money has driven prices to absurd levels and, as such some discussion sites have indicated the financial models might indicate that the USA will make more money by having half empty stadiums at ridiculous prices rather than ensuring that genuine fans can see a game. Already, only 2-3 days into the competition some US hotel chains and airlines are dramatically slashing prices by up to 50% as demand is falling away and the anticipated ways of making money are failing. But this is the USA and I suppose that all of this was predictable. In addition, we have American border officials detaining would-be visitors to the World Cup on the grounds that they may have associated with ‘bad actors’ which could translate into anybody who had criticised Donald Trump in the social media having their comments picked up by AI scouring the internet and this being used as evidence to deny would-be visitors. I am almost certain that as the wrier of this blog who has had less than complimentary things to say about Donald Trump that I would be denied entry to the US under the current regime. I might add that I have absolutely no desire to enter the US for whatever reason but my one visit to New York to attend an international conference when I was busy putting together conference papers for my PhD in 1995-1996 would probably now not be possible.
Being driven slightly mad by the chirping of the smoke alarm, I dashed into town to buy the specialist replacement battery which I knew was needed and then tried to disconnect the exhausted battery but I could not get the fiddly cover off the smoke alarm unit. But then the operative came along to steam clean the patio and he made a magnificent job of it, applying a bleach/fungicide to get rid of those black spots that can eat their way into the stonework. The patio came up in a variety of pastel type colours and I would estimate that at least a dozen colours are represented in the whole area which paradoxically, looks in its best not in the brightest of sunshine but better if the weather is cloudy or even raining. The operative was on his own, his mate not turning up for work in the morning but he then, very kindly, offered to put the new battery in my smoke alarm which he did to my great relief. I then did some tidying up and had the remainder of the curried vegetables from a few days ago which was delicious. Then my American friend came round in the early afternoon and after a rest and some TV watching prepared a tuna salad between us as an early evening meal. We were then enthralled by the YouTube presentation of ‘The Rest is Politics’ when Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell were discussing the topic of whether Donald Trump was the most corrupt president of all time! They were developing the thesis between them that American mega corporations are now so powerful that they have all politicians in their pockets and pay the politicians obscene amounts of money (e.g. $1 billion to a Trump son for giving a short speech), in return for which the politicians will happily award contracts or bend rules so that the mega-corporations can carry on their business activities without any government oversight or interference. Hence the level and scale of corruption is totally unlike anything we have ever seen before and Trump had discerned this trend and exploited it. We are starting to see some developments similar to this in the UK and Alastair Campbell cited the case of the £5 million given to Farage recently in exchange for practically nothing and with hardly any public concern or scrutiny.