Monitor; The News of the World

ENGLISH FOOTBALL HOOLIGANS

Reactions to the rioting by England supporters at the World Cup

Le Monde

France

The World Cup began with dreams of goals, great football and fair play. Little did we know before the weekend was over, the dreams would have evaporated. Football hooligans were back.

u

The Express

UK

Why stage a football match against Tunisia in a city which is known for its gangster violence and its clashes between North African migrants? Is this another example, along with the ticket fiasco and the transport strikes, of French inability to handle the World Cup?

El Pais

Spain

In strictly sporting terms, England won 2-0 against Tunisia. In social terms, it lost many points against the whole world because of the racist hooliganism of hundreds of drunk and over-excited English fans. Britain's hooligans have been sowing panic wherever they pass for the last 20 years. It is surprising that with so much painful experience, neither the World Cup organisers, nor the French or British police, were capable of controlling this alcohol-soaked rabble.

New Statesman

UK

Any match that threatens trouble should be cancelled on public-order grounds, or, alternatively, played behind closed doors at a secret location. On that basis, England should not play again in this World Cup. But it won't happen because too much money and political street-cred is at stake.

We'll just have to be grateful, instead, that Tony Blair keeps apologising on our behalf.

The Scotsman

Scotland

Scotland's world cup dream still flickers, but at least the team has not dishonoured itself or its country. But let us not overlook the 60 Scottish hooligans who were stopped by French police on the border with Spain. This incident shows that the hooligans can be stopped.

u

The Sun

UK

This morning, sadly, the England team's great performance is overshadowed by hooliganism. We wish we could suggest a solution. But we can't. Like you, all we can do is weep.

PAULINE HANSON

After the electoral success of the racist One Nation party in Queensland

The Australian

Australia

Originally, Hanson was an electoral phenomenon. All she passionately believed in and all of her fears and resentments were electoral data. What she felt was what numerous ordinary Australians felt. Genuinely. Fitfully. Bitterly. Australians are now asking: how did this electoral phenomenon turn into a dozen seats in the Queensland Parliament? Phenomena are supposed to remain as blips on the radar screen. They are not supposed to win elections.

u

Japan Times

Japan

Hansonism is a potentially destructive phenomenon. In identifying multiculturalism and immigration as the roots of Australia's current economic and social ills, it encourages the classic hard-times gambit of scapegoating. The country's tiny Aboriginal minority is one target. The United Nations, that bugbear of the far right, is another. And, yes, Asians a third.

u

Spectator

UK

The former fish-and-chip shop owner's message is indeed racist, but it cannot be dismissed as a protest from the political fringe. Outside the metropolitan centres that cling to the seaboard of the world's largest island, a spreading virus of race hatred threatens to engulf Australia. This moral and cultural catastrophe is the result of the failure of policies that have guided the country for a generation.

u

The Melbourne Age

Australia

Where is reconciliation now? I see it being as far away as it has ever been. All the old prejudices and fears have been re-awakened, and all Australians, indigenous and non-indigenous, are the losers.

MISCELLANEOUS

The Voice

UK

It appears that Trevor McDonald is under threat from BBC Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman in the race to present ITV's new flagship current affairs programme. Apparently Paxman has got "current affairs credibility" while McDonald enjoys the support of the ITV audience. If Trevor loses the battle it will expose the lie that Black people are making major inroads into the media, for if Trevor cannot succeed, who can?

u

Nando Times

Internet

A lone Argentine pilot who flew his small plane to the disputed Falkland Islands with gifts of tea and oranges landed back in Patagonia on Thursday after being detained in the islands as an illegal immigrant and expelled. Ernesto Barcella, who caused a brief diplomatic headache for Britain and Argentina, landed in the Argentine town of Comodoro Rivadavia to a hero's welcome from the media. He told television by radio from his cockpit that he had planned the flight for 18 months. Asked about his gifts for the islanders, Barcella said "the English like tea" while he had also taken oranges and flour "because neither fruit nor wheat can grow in the islands."

u

Times of India

India

The cost of the world's cuppa may no longer be entirely safe from the storm-tossed waters of the international market, what with the Kenyan drought and the Inonesian crisis. The recent confusion in the global tea market comes after years of static lateral growth. In the West, nothing has changed for years except the shape and design of tea-bags. But tea- bag geometry may matter little when tea is buffeted by the gales of supply and demand.

JAPANESE YEN

Analysis of the economic problems facing Japan

South China Morning Post

Hong Kong

It is regrettable that it took a series of increasingly blunt warnings from Beijing before the US and Japan were finally willing to take action to prop up the yen, so stemming the most dangerous element of the regional crisis, at least for the moment.

Having contributed to the yen's slide last week, through US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin's ill-judged remark that there was little point in such intervention, Washington had a responsibility to help undo some of the damage of those comments. But the responsibility rests even more heavily on the shoulders of Tokyo, which has come perilously close to dragging Asia into an economic meltdown.

u

Globe and Mail

Canada

The chief source of economic rot in Japan is the intertwining of politics, banking, business and corruption. The politicians protected this cosy system in the time-honoured manner: they bribed their voters. The average member of the lower house of the Japanese parliament spends about $2m a year to secure re-election, virtually all of which comes from business people for favours rendered. The petty corruption that this engenders, however, is nothing compared with the extravagance that government members lavish on their constituencies, such as multi-lane highways almost devoid of traffic.

Unfortunately, the crisis does not yet seem deep enough to have persuaded Japan's leaders to mend their ways. The international community must both give better advice to Japan and be more demanding that it accept the responsibilities that go with its economic status.

u

Sydney Morning Herald

Australia

Japan continues to assure the world that it will reach this year's 1.9- per-cent growth target. Many, including some who have been ready to blame Japan for precipitating the whole Asian meltdown, will not be moved by such assurances. Japan will remain under pressure to stop the slide of the yen, to stimulate domestic consumption and work on structural reforms. It is true that Japan, as the world's second-largest economy, has the fate of many others dependent on it. But in all cases, including Australia's, it would be unwise to depend for economic salvation wholly on Japan to do all that is now demanded of it.

u

Business Week

USA

Propping up the yen is a stopgap measure that does nothing to solve Japan's deep-seated problems. With the Japanese economy slipping ever deeper into recession, and the banking system weighed down by hundreds of billions of dollars in bad loans, immediate structural reforms are necessary. If Japan collapses, even a vibrant US economy will suffer, along with the rest of the world economy.

u

Investors Chronicle

UK

Will imported deflation from Asia offset domestically generated deflation? That is the main issue for investors. What is certain is that we are only beginning to see the full extent of imported deflation. Unfortunately it may not be enough to quell the UK's home-grown inflation problem.

LAWRENCE INQUIRY

Reactions to the police apology for their bungled investigation of the Stephen Lawrence murder

The Daily Mail

To lawyers it must look like throwing yourself on the mercy of the court; for priests it would be akin to confession. Yesterday one of London's most senior police officers offered his apologies to the parents of murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence. But the murderers of Stephen Lawrence stay tight-lipped and strut free. It is enough to make justice weep.

u

The Mirror

The Met shouldn't expect thanks for apologising over its handling of the Stephen Lawrence case. It has taken five years for it to say sorry - and it comes near the end of a devastating public inquiry. What we want to hear is how the Yard - and other police forces - will prevent anything like this happening again.

The Evening Standard

Since the McPherson inquiry got under way, senior officer after senior officer has given reluctant evidence which has dug the Met into a hole which seems to grow deeper by the day. The Stephen Lawrence inquiry is an unmitigated disaster for the Metropolitan Police. Never before has a murder investigation been so minutely dissected, and never before has such a catalogue of police fecklessness been exposed.

Daily Star

Scotland Yard's apology to the parents of black teenager Stephen Lawrence could hardly have been more humbling. Assistant Commissioner Ian Johnston freely admits to a catalogue of police blunders and inaction. But just because he's had the guts to grovel publicly doesn't mean a single officer involved in the scandal should be let off the hook. Seldom has a case been more botched. There's a long way to go yet before justice is done.

BOOK REVIEW

`DIANA' BY JULIE BURCHILL

Evening Standard

Whatever you think of Julie Burchill, she's written some great putdowns in her time. Her slushy, gushy book about Princess Diana is currently being put down by readers throughout the land and I wish she'd stick to creating acerbic one-liners, like her telling comment about Camille Paglia: "The g is silent - the only thing about her that is."

u

Sunday Telegraph

It is difficult to believe such a gifted and sophisticated writer could have been capable of producing a book so exceptionally bad as her new biography of Diana, Princess of Wales. It is not enough to say it is overstated, cliche-ridden and sentimental; it is irrelevant to say it is in some ways unfair or sometimes a republican rant; it is a hagiography which, in its hysterical adulation and partisan vulgarity, is an insult to its beloved subject.

Sunday Times

It is heady stuff, simultaneously persuasive and distasteful, a blend of shrewd, sensible and silly empathy with the plight of the Princess and a hate-filled, bitter insensitivity to the other tragic protagonist in the drama, the Prince of Wales.

u

Daily Telegraph

Burchill articulates the feelings latent in many hundreds of thousands of men and women and it would be dangerous to ignore them or to assume that they have no reason to exist.

She has some valid points to make, and the Royal Family and its advisers need to take them into account in considering their future policies.