RICHARD LUTZ rubs his hands with glee with news from the grubby greedy world of international football

Well, only a handful of days before my presents are displayed ‘neath the Christmas tree.

But a couple of gifts drop early.

The first is Sepp Blatter (see above) getting kicked out of FIFA for eight years. After years of lying, deceit and grubby monumental self delusion, the cowards at the football private club have finally booted the egregious buffoon out of the organisation.

His failing? Well, the one they picked out of a hat is that he breached some arcane rule or another by handing over £1.3 million ($2 million) to top floor desperado Michel Platini (a former footie hero)  or something so arcane no one really understands it. Basically, it was a bribe not to leave FIFA. They are pals by the way.

So one down.

Straw dog

Then comes news in the British media that the television station Channel 4 has been cleared of stitching up two seedy politicians. Journalists filmed them undercover as the pair, Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind, thought they were secretly tying up a deal to get paid for representing China in the UK – even though they were still democratically elected Members of Parliament. It has to be said in mitigation that Straw (a former Foreign Secretary) admitted he had to wait to rub his snout in the trough until he left Westminster.

It is especially noteworthy that Straw  is a man with some other purple patches in his career. As Foreign honcho under Blair, he had a finger or two pointed at him for allegations of knowledge of ‘rendering’ during the Iraq war. Rendering, by the way, is an obscure evasive word for torture. Of course he denies everything including any crimes linked with deceiving the British public over the need to invade and bomb Iraq during Blair’s stewardship.

Blatter and Straw (an odd combo of words, don’t you think?) join my other shitlist of other Brit creeps who got what was coming to them.

Jail-bird

Pulp novelist and political hack Jeffrey Archer (see right) was sent to jail after being found guilty of perjury over a sex scandal. He lied in court in a libel case he won. He was sent down for four years and had to repay the libel settlement of £500,000 and £1.3 million in court costs to the equally grubby Daily Star rag. Tee-hee.

Then there was Tory poster-boy Cecil Parkinson back in the ’80s. He was Thatcher’s matinee idol toyboy. But when he was found out to be the father of a child by his lover (though espousing strict Thatcherite family values) he had to step down from his Cabinet post. Then things got worse when he was found to be embroiled in a shabby row with the woman over child maintenance fees. Nice dad. He, by the way, seemingly never met his daughter, who now is in her thirties.

So two more for The Creep List who got what they deserve.

I will pound the table and say, despite the lubricious nature of some of these sordid tales, it was down to a dogged British media that shone the spotlight on these characters..these dicey Foreign  Secretaries, these shabby luminaries of the Tory Party, these peacock strutting losers who ran international football like it was a jewel encrusted medieval fiefdom.

Keep it coming.