I don't know about you, but I'm loving this World Cup. I'm old enough to have watched and appreciated eight previous editions of the planet's biggest football tournament, and working on the h2g2 World Cup University Project brought back a lot of good memories. Even so, as the group stage draws to a close, I would say that so far this has been the best World Cup I've seen. It's had everything: skill, excitement, shock results, controversy and a great atmosphere.

And of course, it's a tournament awash with money, even now that some of the most lavishly-paid players have been sent packing. (Au revoir, France! Adios, Argentina!) Vast fortunes have been spent on staging the World Cup, but much more will be generated by TV rights, merchandising and advertising.

In that sense, there is a certain amount of poignancy about it all, because the contrast with English League football could not be more striking. English football outside the elite Premiership league has been thrown into crisis by the collapse of the fledgling TV company ITV Digital, which went out of business in May owing English football clubs a total of £178.5 million in payments for the rights to broadcast Nationwide League matches. There's now an extremely bitter legal battle going on over the question of whether ITV Digital's parent companies, Carlton and Granada, are liable to pay ITV Digital's debts.

The Football League, who represent the football clubs, are demanding that the clubs should be paid the money they'd been led to expect. There's no doubt that Carlton and Granada could afford to settle the debt, but they insist that the League and the clubs
misunderstood the terms of the deal. While the row goes on, the very existence of many clubs is threatened. My own beloved Bradford City has been among the worst affected, and at the moment I don't know whether the club I've followed for over 30 years will still be around to compete next season.

In a better-ordered world, there might be some point in we English football fans appealing to our elected representatives to do something to save our national sport. But these days, asking politicians to do anything that might upset major corporations is almost always a waste of time. And so some fans have decided to fight back in a particularly ingenious way.

The Football Fans' Union has launched a campaign called 'Can The Commercials'. The idea is simple. Supporters pledge that, while watching football on the ITV channels, they'll switch off when the commercials come on. The hope is that enough people join in the protest, advertisers will be worried, and Carlton and Granada's main source of income might be affected. Then, maybe, they just might pay attention to the many fans like myself who are disgusted by the way they've left English football high and dry.

I signed up the moment I heard about the campaign. Taking part in it is no hardship - in fact, it's a blessed relief. The ads during the World Cup games were driving me mad, especially since some of them seem to be in every one of the commercial breaks that ITV
packs into its football coverage. Some of the ads are so irritating that I was planning to boycott the products they promote anyway, and even some of the ones that initially had some charm have become maddening due to the number of times they've appeared.

Experience in America has shown that consumer boycotts can be very effective. The Football Fans' Union's campaign has already got the support of the Football League and the English players' trade union, the PFA. It deserves the support of football fans everywhere.

I love a good political scandal. It is reassuring to have my suspicions about the sort of person who craves power confirmed by foolish, embarrassing behaviour on the part of such people. There is an undeniable thrill of schadenfreude in seeing those who are used to being in control being brought down to earth and exposed as merely very fallible human beings.

So I have to confess that I rather enjoyed reading about Virginia House of Delegates Speaker S. Vance Wilkins Jr, who has admitted that he paid $100,000 to a woman who accused him of sexual harassment, but still denies that he behaved improperly towards her. Amazingly, some of his Republican Party colleagues in Virginia find this rather suspicious, which I think is very mean of them. Couldn't they just accept the obvious explanation: that Mr Wilkins is simply a very kind, generous man? If he happens to read this column, I hope that Mr Wilkins will drop me an e-mail at the address on my Personal Space. I'll then reply with my postal address, and if he sends me enough money I'll be happy to confirm that he's just a sweet guy who loves to spread a little happiness.

One of the stock characters in news stories such as this is the Loyal Wife who Stands By Her Man - the spouse who used to shun publicity, but who starts ostentatiously making public appearances with the accused as the scandal rumbles on. Sure enough, Wilkins' wife Lee has been stepping into the spotlight and speaking out on her
hubby's behalf. Nothing unusual there.

But one thing she has said did strike me as very odd. Mrs Wilkins has declared:

'I know my husband. I have been married to him 19 years. I take him at his word. This is a man who won't even drink iced tea.'

Excuse me, but since when has drinking tea been regarded as a sign that someone might be untrustworthy? I feel rather insulted by that, since I love tea myself, although I prefer mine hot with milk and sugar. Perhaps it's an American thing. Can anyone explain?

And from politicians, we move seamlessly on to the subject of lying.

Psychologist Robert Feldman of the University of Massachusetts has conducted experiments during which he got people to talk about themselves. Some of the volunteers were asked to present themselves as likeable, another group were told to try to appear competent, while a third group were given no instructions as to how they should appear. Feldman found that 60 per cent of the volunteers lied at least once in the course of a 10-minute conversation. A majority lied at least twice. The fibs ranged from the 'white lie' kind - someone saying nice things about a person they actually disliked - to
outrageous whoppers, like that of the volunteer who claimed to be a rock star.

I can't say that I'm shocked by those results, but Feldman was. He has commented:

'It was a very surprising result. We didn't expect lying to be such a common part of daily life.'

One particularly interesting finding from the research explodes several sexist myths at once. Feldman found that men and women are both about equally prone to telling untruths. However, the sexes tended to fib in different ways. Men were more likely to lie to make
themselves look good, whereas women tended to lie in the hope of making the person they were talking to feel good.

After the interviews, the volunteers were shown video recordings of what they'd said, and asked to own up to any inaccuracies in what they'd said. And, according to Feldman:

'People found themselves lying much more than they thought they had.'

I suppose the volunteers must have been lying to themselves about how honest they'd been.

Finally, I know that many h2g2 Researchers have recently been suffering from exams. If you're one of them, here's a story that's not exactly reassuring.

Recently, Stuart Braithwaite of the noted alternative-rock ensemble Mogwai was surprised to receive three large parcels in the post at his Edinburgh home. He was even more surprised when he noticed that they were marked:'Urgent: Scottish
Qualifications Authority Documents Enclosed'.

Sure enough, the parcels contained dozens of unmarked exam papers. Upon realising what had happened, Braithwaite made repeated attempts to contact the SQA, but had a lot of trouble doing so. He had to hang on to the documents for five days before the SQA had them collected.

Understandably, he later said:

'I'm not impressed. I thought that given the bad job they've done of it recently, they'd take more care. They didn't even realise they were missing! I could've chucked them in the bin! I think it's a farce.'

The Scottish Qualifications Authority has launched an investigation into the mistake, but doesn't appear to be overly concerned. A spokesman has said:

'There are currently 1.5 million scripts being sent around the country, so this was very much an isolated incident. We have to get it into perspective.'

Unfortunately, the incident wasn't all that isolated. Recently, there seem to have been a whole series of stories in the UK news about misprinted exam papers featuring unanswerable questions. As recently as last month, the exam board Edexcel sent out exam papers with misprinted information for a question on an AS Level Government and Politics paper. Now, it seems that even when the exam papers are in order, the answers can go astray in the most extraordinary ways. It hardly seems fair to students, who have quite enough stress to cope when exams come around.

Who examines the exam authorities? Some of them are clearly failing to make the grade.

Ormy's 'Notes' and Other
Scribblings

The definitive collection

Ormondroyd

13.06.02 Front Page

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