Recently, I was prompted to recall a conversation I had as a child with my parents during the ‘Cold War’ period in which my parents explained to me and my siblings the differences between the oppression that once existed in Nazi Germany and which still existed in the Soviet Union and the freedoms that we enjoyed here, in pre-war and early post-war Britain. Key among those differences were freedom of belief, freedom of expression and…

Putting aside my lament of our folk still wasting their time, money, and effort on the meaningless inter-racial love-fest that is modern-day football, I’m moved to comment on the galling hypocrisy of FIFA. In an ultimate affront and dishonour to the war-dead of both European civil wars (WWI and WWII), FIFA has banned the wearing of poppies because football’s world governing body prohibits “political, religious or commercial messages” being displayed on the pitch. FIFA rules,…