Author’s note: At the Brains Trust we had a wide variety of characters. Lawyers, consultants, lefties, righties, a professional cellist (who was also the son of a very famous author), a married couple who were separating but not separating. What we did not have was anyone who had any interest in sport. So it usually fell to me, to write something. This was a gentle spoof on Labour’s occasional commitment to renationalising things (Railtrack) and the fact that in general the public sector wasn’t terribly efficient.
Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, today announced that the UK government would be immediately nationalising the World Cup squad and putting in place measures to ensure absolute victory in the finals this summer.
Mr. Blair is reported to have become increasingly concerned at the number of injuries sustained by England’s squad and has asked for an urgent investigation as to why regular maintenance regimes were not operating to ensure that a catastrophic failure could not take place. Initial feedback suggests that the maintenance of the team had been subcontracted out to Balfour Beatty who had assigned a number of Golf professionals to the team in the absence of trained football experts. It is also understood that Mr. Blair was concerned at such a priceless national asset falling into foreign ownership and was keen to bring the “Best of British” governance to the team calling on the finest Government skills from all parts of public ownership.
Margaret Beckett, the new England Team manager, outlined her strategy for leading the team to victory. “Initial training will come via our world-class sporting academies. However, as these aren’t projected to be finished until 2009, we have negotiated the use of the Bermondsey Falcons pitch after 9PM on alternate Thursdays although they aren’t able to guarantee that the showers will be working. To ensure peak fitness, we shall be bringing state of the art medical facilities from the Health Service and have negotiated a greatly reduced waiting time of only 3 months for injuries sustained during a game” she explained. “We shall also be equipping our on-site paramedics with the very latest equipment including galvanised buckets, cellulose sponges and super sweet blood oranges, although these will be restricted to forwards owing to the backs having a different prescribing policy”
The team will be transported to the match using Britain’s rail network and, assuming they survive, they will be flown to Japan on a chartered Easyjet flight to ensure no money is wasted. They will also be accompanied by a support team of over 3000 civil servants who will provide vital strategic direction and make sure that the team have targets to reach including number of goals scored, litres of phelgm produced and amount of four-letter advice given to the referee about his Mother. After each goal is scored the Government has devised a simple system of forms for the goal scorer to complete so that they can capture best practice and share the learnings with the rest of the team. These should take no more than 90 minutes to finish.
Mrs Beckett also took the opportunity to outline her new World cup squad. “On attack we have John Prescott who will be bringing his “Right hand of God” to the fore and Stephen Byers will be utilising his excellent defensive skills. His body swerve and ability to bend the ball will be vital in getting the team out of tricky situations. Peter Mandelson will be putting his excellent knowledge of the offside rule to trap unwary opponents and Keith Vaz will be administering what I believe are known as ‘bungs’ just in case any FIFA officials are on hand.
Mr. Blair proclaimed that the new English squad will be a “world beater” but expressed his disappointment that Gordon Brown had declined the opportunity to be head-coach and decided he wanted to go off and lead his own team.
Sex and Drugs and Growing Old 