Happy Friday dear readers and it’s here. It’s finally here. Yes the World Cup kicked off in Russia yesterday and, for the next month or so the world will be gripped by the spectacle of endless permutations of teams of men from different countries kicking a ball. While Diary has yet to see any Saint George’s Cross bunting, the tournament is young.
Speaking of football, this week in charity sector satire: a bookmaker and betting company has launched a World Cup LGBT+ donation campaign, seemingly hell-bent on annoying Vladimir Putin, and the President of the United States is being sued over his personal charitable foundation.
Poking the bear
Oh, yes. Oh, sweet Jesus, yes! The World Cup is here. It’s happening. It’s all (quite literally) kicking off. Name a better invention in the history of humanity than the World Cup; Diary will wait. The wheel? Yeah, that was alright. Fire? Technically not really an invention, more a discovery. Language? More evolution, less an invention. Medicine? Ok, maybe. The airplane? Computers? The dishwasher?
Ok, point made… definitely the dishwasher. And pizza delivery, come to think of it.
The World Cup is still in the top ten though.
Anyway, Diary is incredibly excited at the prospect of a full month of thinking, talking, watching and dreaming of nothing but football (and, maybe, a bit of Love Island). Because, let’s be honest, there’s nowhere near enough football on the rest of the year. August to May is simply too short a time!
In what is either an incredibly savvy/cynical marketing move, Paddy Power has pledged to donate £10,000 for every goal scored by the Russian football team at the World Cup to “initiatives that make football more inclusive to the LGBT+ community”.
The bookmaker has teamed up with Attitude magazine, and Paddy Power have guaranteed a minimum donation of £50,000. A minimum donation that has already been met, given the fact that yesterday the Russians went absolutely mad against an utterly woeful Saudi Arabia team in the 'No Human Rights Derby', to win 5-0 in the curtain raiser in Moscow.
AND ANOTHER! Russia have scored five. #RainbowRussians pic.twitter.com/UfFvdN2UUx
— Paddy Power (@paddypower) June 14, 2018
Paddy, of Paddy Power, said: "Given they invented Russian Dolls, you’d be forgiven for thinking Russia wouldn’t have an issue with women being into other women.
"Likewise, their appreciation for bears is one shared around the world by the LGBT+ population, so it really is astonishing that they have not used their stewardship of this tournament to champion LGBT+ inclusivity.
“When Russia 'Put-in' a goal, we’ll Put-in £10,000 to Attitude magazine’s Foundation, who will use the funds to make football more LGBT+ inclusive. I cannot wait to see the LGBT+ community get behind the Russians – or the Russians’ baffled reaction."
Back of the net (income)!
While we’re here, what does the summer hold for England?
As this column has already pointed out, World Cup fever has not yet quite swept the nation – well, certainly not the parts of London that this column tends to frequent. And yet, there’s still so much time – a few weeks at least, until the quarter-finals roll around and our boys; our big, beautiful boys! Our Lions! Having topped their group, they then scrape through the first knock out stage, and all of a sudden it’s July and the hopes of an entire nation soar with the temperatures.
Then? Well, it’s written in the stars already. Across the heavens in gossamer teardrops. Our BEAUTIFUL BOYS play out a 0-0 over 120 minutes in which they're comfortably the better team and then go out on penalties to either Germany, Argentina, France and, or even Iceland. And, let’s say it’s Harry Kane who misses the kick, and his beautiful, stupid, beaming face – cracked in his moment of personal agony, of national suffering, broadcast to billions around the world – is blown up 100-foot high on every tabloid in the land, and you spend two weeks cradling yer da – he just really though they’d do it this time – as he sobs into his real ale and summer turns slowly to autumn, and the Premier League will come back and all will be forgiven, if not forgotten.
Bookmark this page, and return when all of Diary’s predictions come jarringly true. This column is like that oracular octopus, but with opposable thumbs.
Tangerine dream
To the United States of America next and the freshly breaking news that the city of New York is suing Donald J. Trump and three of his spawn – Ivanka, Don. Jr and the other one, whose name we forget, the one with the incredibly punchable face – over the president’s charitable foundation.
Long, LONG story short, New York’s attorney general has reportedly ordered a state judge to dissolve the Donald J. Trump Foundation and to ban Trump and the more execrable of his progeny from holding leadership roles in New York charities, according to the Washington Post.
This comes after a 21-month investigation found that the foundation had had “extensive unlawful political coordination” with Trump’s presidential campaign, as well as “repeated and wilful self-dealing” which benefited his Trumpiness’ “personal, business and political interests”. Basically, if a charity could do something wrong, this charity did it wrong.
The lawsuit (which was, fun fact, filed on Trump’s 72nd birthday) “seeks $2.8m (£2.1m) of restitution plus penalties, a ten-year ban on Trump serving as a director of a New York nonprofit, and one-year bans for his children”.
Barbara Underwood, the attorney general, said: “As our investigation reveals, the Trump Foundation was little more than a checkbook for payments from Mr. Trump or his businesses to nonprofits, regardless of their purpose or legality,” Underwood said in a statement. “That is not how private foundations should function.”
No, indeed. That’s definitely not how a charitable foundation is supposed to function. Also, apparently the board of trustees for the foundation had not held a meeting since 1999.
1999! THE BOARD OF THE DONALD J. TRUMP FOUNDATION HAS NOT MET THIS CENTURY!
Breathtaking, really.
Needless to say, the most presidential president since Abraham Lincoln has taken the news of this latest pending lawsuit against him completely within his stride. He absolutely didn’t spend most of yesterday fuming about it on Twitter… well, maybe he did, just a bit.
“I won’t settle this case!” he tweeted, before writing that the whole thing had been cooked up by “sleazy New York Democrats”.
To be fair to Donald J. Trump, he’s more than qualified to talk about things being sleazy.
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