Blair's band of jokers

The Lottery could still be wheeled in, but it's been nobbled already by the Government, who are now raiding the till for grandiose New Opportunities schemes, which is just their deceitful spin for a ramshackle wish-list of projects that should be funded by central or local government, not the Lottery.

And it's been easy for them to do so because no one seems to care that the original purposes of the National Lottery have been set aside, least of all the Opposition.

Their new man Tim Yeo (I'd better tell you his name because otherwise you'd have no reason to know or care) comes from the Agriculture brief. I suppose the journey from foot-and-mouth to foot-in-mouth over Wembley and Picketts Lock isn't as long a one as it ought to be.

And ministers have repeatedly put their foot in it over these World Championships. All manner of pledges were made, one by Caborn as recently as last month when he told the IAAF the Government really would deliver London for 2005.

He then booked a meeting with an IAAF official in Bristol this weekend, presumably to break the bad news personally. Instead, he's going to the football. Still, it's better than doing another Radio 5 Live quiz.

The Picketts Lock debacle threatens to blight the prospects of us hosting any significant sporting events for a generation. The other day a prominent personage asked me if I would join a team of people to campaign for London as the Olympic venue for 2012.

I think I should find something more useful to do with my time, like watching TV, so long as I avoid the programmes where yet more empty promises are made by a Government that should feel thoroughly ashamed of itself this week.

Not because hosting the World Athletics Championships is the most vital thing to do in the midst of a world crisis, but because, given competence and commitment, it should have all been so easy.

It's depressing because here is a young player who is injury prone and who had spent the day undergoing treatment, and apparently couldn't train the day after the drinking session. Even assuming that lay-off was not down to drink, again one has to enquire, what was wrong with a good night's sleep?

Back comes Andy Cole, almost certainly. For me he's no international striker, as one goal in 14 starts confirms, but to be positive, he's less likely to spray chances all over row Z at Old Trafford than anywhere else.

With Robbie Fowler's head in all kinds of strange places and Emile Heskey all too prone to drift out of games, the England strike force looks decidedly iffy, doesn't it?

Not iffy enough, I hope, to fail to get past the Greeks, but sufficiently problematic to worry if Owen's hamstrings choose to play up again next summer.

So it's only fair to report that while Peter Taylor still enjoyed a good press last season on the back of his Gillingham and England Under-21 successes, sensible, measured Leicester fans were ringing my midweek show saying he had to go.

His purchases were all wrong (true) and once the influence of Martin O'Neill waned, they said, the team would go to pot and it was beyond Taylor to put it right (also true).

No one will take any pleasure from Taylor's demise, but it's good to know the fans aren't always wrong.