The Spectator - Therapy speak is turning us into sissies

 

(personal underlines)

https://spectator.com/article/therapy-speak-is-turning-us-into-sissies/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=LIFE%20%2020260726%20SUN%20%20SG+CID_66331dc2c212988a86d5dccf2877185e

Therapy speak is turning us into sissies

I'm just boring old ‘neurotypical’

24 July 2026, 5:01am

(iStock)

As one who’s always been keen on putting their hand up and admitting to their faults (a perverse form of boasting, I suspect) I was always suspicious of the medicalisation of character flaws which apparently render us helpless in the clammy hands of Fortuna. It was bad enough when friends who’d generally always seemed highly capable jumped on the ADHD bus in later life, suddenly flinching at loud noises when they’d spent a good deal of their lives dancing to ear-splitting techno. But it was another sort of annoying when ex-friends who were merely awful people started blaming all their past ghastliness first on ADHD and then – still not feeling special enough – on autism, a serious condition which affects a tiny amount of people.   

But if you want to create ‘conditions’ where previously there were simply personalities, fill your boots; everyone benefits from having a hobby. Where I draw the line is when they attempt to drag me on to the bus with them. No, I am not a ‘narcissist’ who is ‘on the spectrum’ – I’m simply a self-adoring show-off with a tendency to fidget. ‘We’ll relax and take our time!’ I invariably tell my restaurant companion, and if they know me well, they smile sceptically. I’m already catching the waiter’s eye and planning the next watering hole. But I don’t have Attention Deficit Syndrome – I’m just greedy for the next thing.  

So it’s a real relief to have psychologists come out and call a halt to this new dance craze. In the Times this week, Charlotte Alt writes: ‘Therapy-speak, which is the casual use of psychological jargon, has made its way into everyday conversation and is thrown around in millions of videos on social media purporting to explain how to spot if someone is “toxic” or if something is “triggering”’. Experts warn that casual use of terms which have specific meanings in clinical contexts risk diluting their significance and ‘over-pathologising’ everyday human emotions’. Or, as the clinical psychologist Marianne Trent put it: ‘One of the trickier aspects of being a human is to feel awful, but it doesn’t mean that every uncomfortable feeling we have is a mental health condition. In the same way, not every difficult person has a personality disorder.’  

When I was young, people got drunk because they enjoyed it. When I was a young adult, people caught on that they could wriggle out of responsibility for things they enjoyed but which were taking over their lives (such as drinking) by blaming their mothers. Now, like the writer Caitlin Moran, you’re probably a binge-drinker because, like her, you have ADHD. Am I very bad for wishing that people still got drunk for no reason more complex because they enjoyed it? Life was so simple then. Some people were straight; some were eccentric. But unless you were actually hearing voices, your mental health was not an excuse to be a bore – or a boor.  

It’s not just me. The similarly jaded journalist Katie Glass recounts: ‘People turning up late/forgetting plans/not answering texts – and blaming their “neurodiverse brains”.’ One friend’s ex claims to have  ‘Oppositional Defiant Disorder’ which means he gets angry if she asks him to do anything with their children. Another one has a funny line about dating self-diagnosing men in which mental health is the new ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ because they all blame their selfishness on it now: ‘I’m autistic, I can’t help behaving badly!’  

Since the turn of the century, autism diagnoses are up a whopping 640 per cent and ADHD almost 1,600 per cent. According to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), one in four of us are now ‘disabled’ – this is driven not by people who are physically unable to walk, like me, or suffering from life-changing illnesses, such as cancer, but by people who are feeling a bit mis. Forgive me if I’m not overflowing with the oat-milk of human kindness here, but I’d advise anyone feeling that they can’t get out of bed because they failed to score their dream job to confine themselves to a wheelchair for a week, or to walk around with their eyes closed for a day – and see how that messes with your precious, special mind. As someone who is disabled, if I was on a desert island, I’d be done; if someone with ADHD was, they’d pull themselves together and get on with the business of building shelters and catching fish.  

Britain already spends more on health and disability benefits (£83 billion) than on defence (£63 billion) according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. With the arrival of John Healey as Chancellor, perhaps we can at last hope to see this ludicrous situation reversed. But what are we defending? A growing population of people – mostly young and who should be at the peak of rude health – who are the modern equivalent of those Victorian maidens lying on fainting couches, too enervated to engage with or enjoy life? ‘Self-diagnosis’ is merely hypochondria dressed up in some sassy pseudo-scientific drag; in fact, it’s not going too far to say that some doctors give out diagnoses to get patients off their backs.   

As Michael Simmons wrote here recently: ‘We live in a society in which disabled people must be described as merely “differently abled”, while apparently requiring more state support than ever before. It is a society in which autism is idiotically advertised as a “superpower” – a slogan particularly galling for those families caring for people who cannot speak or live independently. Doctors know this but few speak out. Many privately describe the visible “exhilaration” on the faces of patients they have just diagnosed with in-vogue conditions such as ADHD. They’re gobsmacked when they see the same patients announce the news on social media as though they’ve won the Lottery rather than received confirmation of a lifelong disorder.’ 

The ‘Worried Well’ have become the ‘Smug Sick’ – sensitive flowers so complicated and precious that we ‘neurotypical’ (the narrow-minded Normies who are only good for paying the taxes that enable the ‘neurodiverse’ to put their feet up) can never begin to understand the exquisite torment of being in their very special shoes. I can’t wear proper shoes any more as my feet are so vulnerable to pressure sores, but I drag my old carcass out of bed at dawn because I can’t imagine not making an effort. I have tenacity and I have talent – but I have just as many vices as virtues, and they’re all mine, the good and the bad. Regrettably, there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that severe spinal cord injuries do affect the brain, so at some point I may literally become ‘neurodiverse’ – but I won’t be running around boasting about it as if it’s a new handbag. Because, to me, stubbornly sticking to one’s guns and refusing to identify as anything but an ordinary person with ordinary character flaws is the most original and brave choice one can make in this crazy world.  

So I’ll continue to fidget, interrupt and be distracted by bright, shiny things – but let me state here and now that anything which annoys or repels you about me, IS me – not some cod-condition I’m hiding behind. On that basis, feel free to accept me or shun me, free in the knowledge that I won’t have a meltdown as I don’t have ‘Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria’ – ‘a condition characterised by extreme, overwhelming emotional pain triggered by the perception of being rejected, criticised, or having failed.’ In fact, I’ll be moving on to the next watering hole in no time.   

The Spectator - The unspoken truth about wildfires

 

(personal underlines)

https://spectator.com/article/the-unspoken-truth-about-wildfires/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=WEEK%20%2020260730%20%20AL+CID_656692ccfe9aa88dd4ee2e5a52d204da

The unspoken truth about wildfires

Matt Ridley

Bordeaux and Madrid are threatened by flames. In Sicily, arsonists tied burning rags to the tails of cats to spread fires. Here in Britain the Cairngorms and Peak District national parks are ablaze. It’s the climate Armageddon, say the greens. If only we had built more wind farms and eaten fewer cows this would not be happening.

Hot, dry spells undoubtedly make fires more likely, but awkwardly for those blaming climate change, wildfires are getting less frequent worldwide, not more, as the globe warms. The acreage burned has decreased steadily since 2000, according to Nasa’s satellites, and is thought to have almost halved in a century. The great fires of 1871 in Wisconsin and Michigan burned more than a million hectares long before anybody drove a car, before even Joseph Swan’s first light bulb, when the world was cooler.

It is not just the trend that is surprising. Hard to believe, but this year is an unusually quiet year for wildfire: so quiet it is breaking records for lack of fires by this date, even in Europe. If you don’t believe me, check the figures produced by the Global Wildfire Information System: as of last week, the world had seen 106 million hectares burn this year, the lowest at this date since these records began in 2012. In Europe, just 3.6 million hectares have burned – less than half the average for this date. That’s cold comfort to people driven from their homes in France, but it is nonetheless a fact.

The real issue is that climate change is a handy excuse for politicians who have failed to take precautionary measures to prevent wildfires. They can just shrug: it’s global warming, innit? It has been known for many decades that in fire-prone habitats, the longer you go without a fire, the worse the fires will be. So preventing the build-up of tinder by controlled burns is the most important factor.

The California filmmaker Gabriel Mann’s hard-hitting 2023 documentary Hotshot showed in detail how fire suppression has made today’s fires harder to control. He has no patience with those who use climate change as an alibi. ‘They tell you the sky is falling and it’s all the fault of our modern, shitty climate,’ he says. ‘But when was the climate not shitty?’

Here in Britain the government has consistently and relentlessly demanded less ‘cool’ burning – low-intensity, controlled fires – in winter on heather moorland, Britain’s most fire-prone habitat. Such fires have been used by farmers and gamekeepers for generations to create a mosaic of short and long heather. This encourages fresh young heather shoots for sheep and grouse to feed on and makes open areas for rare birds such as golden plover and curlew to nest in. If done in winter it can burn off the rank heather plants while leaving the moss underneath barely touched, as demonstrated by a famous video in which a gamekeeper places a Mars bar in the moss, lights a fierce fire over it, then picks up the unscorched, unmelted chocolate bar, unwraps it and eats it.

Natural England argues that regular cool burning harms the habitat; researchers at York University and elsewhere argue the opposite: that it encourages the growth of sphagnum moss and other species by letting light in. But both sides agree that regular cool burns can dramatically reduce the risk of much more damaging wildfires, which burn down through the moss layer and into the peat. Cutting heather instead is less effective but better than nothing. Yet Natural England has banned heather burning on deep peat altogether and is pushing hard to limit it further everywhere – or at least tie it up in complicated licensing rules. As a result, the fuel load on heather moorland has been increasing; in places the heather is now waist-deep. The National Fire Chiefs Council warned last year that such restrictions on heather management would increase ‘the danger to firefighters and the public’.

Unlike private owners, bodies such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and the National Trust are refusing to burn and reluctant to graze heather moorland, as they join the cult of ‘rewilding’. With the support of government, they plan to mitigate the fire risk by ‘rewetting’ moors with leaky dams to hold back rainwater. But this approach is useless in a drought.

Case in point: the Tintwistle fire in the Peak District spread from a wild camp in woodland on to a heather moor owned by United Utilities and managed by the RSPB. This moor had been extensively ‘rewetted’ yet it went up like a torch and the fire spread, drowned Manchester in smoke, burned deep into the peat and was only contained – for now – when local gamekeepers and Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue used two diggers and a bulldozer to create a firebreak on its northwest flank on the neighbouring Stalybridge estate. But so quick is Natural England to prosecute landowners and gamekeepers for even inadvertently breaking rules about managing habitat that they were anxious they might be punished for doing this.

Richard Bailey, coordinator of the Peak District Moorland Group, estimates that the past month’s firefighting by gamekeepers would have cost the taxpayer millions of pounds if done by the fire service. Many long, hot, hard days and nights have left gamekeepers and their families under severe mental strain, alleviated a little by generous food drops from Micklehurst cricket club. You can imagine how much it sticks in the craw for these gamekeepers that they have been working to save land managed by an organisation that makes the risk worse.

The nearby Dovestone fire was also started on RSPB-managed land after a man drowned in the local reservoir and his friends commemorated him with fireworks. The Cairngorms fire too began on land owned by the RSPB at Abernethy. The irony is not lost on locals that the very same people who tell us that climate change is an existential crisis are also the ones urging us to stop using the one tool we know helps to mitigate the problem. If your view is that climate change is a massive threat, why are you pursuing policies that increase fuel load?

The North York Moors fire last year affected 2,500 hectares of moorland, smouldering for more than a month in the peat and releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide. Yet no Defra minister bothered to visit. The cost of fighting these fires does not fall on their department, so why do they care, says Jamie Blackett, founder of Ground Cry, a new organisation campaigning on behalf of ground-nesting birds like curlews.

The authorities know their policies increase the fire risks. Here is what the Cairngorm National Park says in its Integrated Wildfire Management Plan about plans to increase shrubs and other vegetation by reducing deer and stopping burning: ‘These habitats will take many years to develop and during the intervening period fuel loads will increase, as will the corresponding need for fire risk mitigation.’ So they knew the risk was increasing. But little was done. John Kirk, a board member of the Cairngorms National Park Authority, told the Strathspey Herald: ‘Everyone is furious… the entire Abernethy forest has no firebreaks.’

Andrew Gilruth, chief executive of the Moorland Association, says: ‘While Scotland has a clear plan to manage the excess vegetation, in England the authorities are obsessed with rewilding and restricting all commonsense measures for reducing fuel loads.’

In May, before the drought, Gilruth wrote to MPs who represent moorland constituencies to point out that the number of firefighters is down by a quarter over the past seven years and that the fire service relies heavily on gamekeepers’ vehicles, water bowsers and other equipment. Banning the burning of heather means fewer keepers can justify having such equipment. He described Defra’s refusal to change policy on heather burning as reckless.

Sadly he was proved right. So was I. After I warned in these very pages last year that government policy was worsening the fire risk on moorland, it gives me no pleasure to say: ‘I told you so.’

Observador - Para lá de Luís Neves (Nuno Poças)

 

(sublinhados pessoais)

https://observador.pt/opiniao/para-la-de-luis-neves/

Para lá de Luís Neves

O que o ministro da Administração Interna, ex-director da Polícia Judiciária, e toda a trupe que o defende dizem é que o próprio Estado reconhece não cumprir a lei. Nunca fora dito tão frontalmente.

Nuno Gonçalo Poças 

04 ago. 2026, 00:24

Não era nada mau sinal se todos os contornos do caso de Luís Neves fossem apenas mais um caso de alguém que, chegando a ministro, visse mediaticamente destapadas as suas falhas de homem médio que, à semelhança de todos os portugueses, tem de viver enquanto se tenta desenlear da tenebrosa rede de legislação, burocracia e imobilismo públicos. Infelizmente, não é bem disso que se trata. Luís Neves não é só ministro da Administração Interna, o homem forte da segurança do País, tutela das polícias. É também ex-director da Polícia Judiciária. E aquilo que nos foi dado a conhecer, em primeiro lugar pela imprensa, e depois pelo próprio, na derradeira conferência de imprensa em que reconheceu as suas falhas, mas que, enfim, elas foram feitas em prol de um bem maior, é, segundo o que me é permitido concluir, o fatal desmascaramento de como o próprio Estado faz as coisas: informalmente, ilegalmente, despudoradamente. A consequência evidente e final de tudo isto não pode ser outra: o ministro da Administração Interna, ex-director da Polícia Judiciária, e toda a trupe que o defendeu e defende neste caso que o envolve, o que estão a dizer ao País é isto: o Estado deixou de ter legitimidade moral para exigir o cumprimento da lei aos seus cidadãos, na medida em que é o próprio Estado que reconhece não cumprir a lei. Não é que isto não fosse sabido. É que nunca tinha sido tão frontalmente assumido como agora.

O problema não é Luís Neves, ainda assim. O desastre ultrapassa-o de sobremaneira. O problema é que Luís Neves nos fez olhar para o sistema de janelas e portas quase escancaradas, e pode ajudar a compreender as razões que têm levado tantos portugueses a traduzir em votos a sua raiva contra esse mesmo sistema que parece cada vez mais de uns e não de todos. Sejamos francos, não existe em Portugal um sentimento colectivo de cumprimento da lei, e ele existirá menos ainda quanto maior for a confusão legislativa em que vivemos. O que nos assusta não é a corrupção, mesmo que tantos vociferem contra ela. É, antes, o facto de o sistema se ter democratizado – no sentido em que vive dos seus concursos públicos, da sua transparência, do seu escrutínio judicial, da igualdade das condições de acesso a isto ou àquilo – mas apenas para os de baixo, e de se ter mantido opaco, feito de cunhas e favores mútuos, para os de cima.

O Estado Novo sobreviveu décadas sem sobressaltos de maior graças a mecanismos de favores que chegavam a toda a gente. Um analfabeto filho de alguém que tinha um primo que se tinha feito chefe de finanças, podia facilmente tornar-se funcionário público de um dia para o outro. Esse mundo só terminou para as classes com menos acesso aos patamares mais cimeiros da Administração Pública ou dos centros de poder do Estado – que são, na verdade, os grandes centros de poder do País.

Os partidos colonizaram boa parte dessa camada intermédia do poder. E quando não a conseguem colonizar, elas não deixam de estar ocupadas e fechadas em círculo, imunes às decisões dos Governos, às vontades dos ministros. Os mecanismos de intermediação elitizaram-se, no fundo. E esta oligarquia burocrática não serve o poder político democraticamente legitimado: condiciona-o, com o beneplácito da comunicação social, que influencia as percepções públicas e as, como se diz agora, narrativas. A burocracia já não é um mero instrumento da democracia; tornou-se um centro autónomo de poder que vive praeter legem, sem controlo, sem escrutínio, sem fiscalização, como num sub-mundo de onde se destroem ministros e onde se sobrevive na inércia frentista de um País inteiro. Isto seria literário, se não fosse dramático. Mediaticamente, vivemos obcecados com quem ganha as eleições, quem forma Governo e com quem, discutimos sondagens, comentamos debates, como se o destino do País dependesse disso para alguma coisa. É uma ilusão confortável a nossa, quando os poderes reais não vão a votos e nós não os discutimos. Se isto não é um regime apodrecido, não sei o que será – e não serve de consolo o facto de não ser um problema exclusivamente português, mas europeu.

Algumas almas poderão acenar com a ideia de que alimentar a polémica é destruir a democracia. Não creio que a democracia, neste momento, careça de ajudas à sua erosão. A menos que acreditem mesmo que a democracia é isto, um sistema entre sub-mundos de opacidades e gente mediana. Terei de discordar também. A democracia existe para impedir a tirania, não para consagrar a mediocridade. Mas neste tempo, em que a democracia vai sendo cada vez menos capaz de ser ela mesmo não tirânica, tudo parece susceptível de ser posto em causa. E é por isso que o caso de Luís Neves nos podia levar a uma outra conversa que, eventualmente, ninguém quererá ter. É que, em democracia, o titular da soberania ainda é o povo. Mas talvez tenhamos chegado a um novo tempo em que se deve voltar a perguntar que qualidades devem ter aqueles que exercem o poder. Talvez o século XXI tenha de redescobrir uma palavra amaldiçoada e injustamente condenada: a aristocracia. Não do sangue, dos títulos ou da riqueza, não como uma elite fechada, mas permanentemente aberta, onde qualquer cidadão possa entrar e de onde qualquer um possa sair quando tal se justificar. Entre a implosão do Estado, que é necessária, e a reconfiguração do sistema e do regime políticos em que vivemos, não me parece má ideia abrir a discussão sem preconceitos.

The Spectator- Make the Royal Navy great again

 (personal underlines)

Make the Royal Navy great again

Andrew Lambert

It’s all very well for Andy Burnham and John Healey to say they want to fund defence, but are they aware of just what a perilous situation the Royal Navy is in? Policy failure by successive governments, more focused on election appeal than security, means the state has lost sight of the basics. Ensuring the free movement of global shipping has been a priority for centuries because Britain cannot produce enough food, fuel or raw materials for itself. Along with the nuclear deterrence, shipping routes form the existential core of our national security. These routes – vital in world wars against Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler – depended on a powerful, globally deployed navy. The current force is not up to the task.

The place of the ocean in national life and culture has also declined. Seafaring roles and shipbuilding have been outsourced. Essential ships are registered by nations without warships, or even a coast. In the past, the connection between a powerful navy, the interests of the City of London and the economic health of the nation was acknowledged by governments of all parties, and managed by the Admiralty, a great department of state located not 100 yards from Nelson’s Column. The Admiralty built, maintained, crewed and directed the navy in war and peace, stood up to the Treasury and co-ordinated with the War Office on strategy. It worked with Lloyd’s of London to manage wartime convoy systems from the 18th century to 1945, securing ocean trade and destroying hostile economies.

After 1945, Britain sacrificed the navy’s wider roles and focused instead on the Cold War defence of West Germany. We relied on America’s immense forces to plug the gaps. In 1964, politicians desperate for more defence cuts abolished the Admiralty, merging the three service ministries into an amorphous Ministry of Defence that lacked any sense of commercial links, cultural prominence and national dependence on the sea. The new arrangement expanded the dominance of the Treasury, which cut major programmes, notably new aircraft carriers, within months of the change. Not only did the MoD ignore the centuries-old priority of maritime security, but it sacrificed critical non-military roles, including acting as the central clearing house for maritime messaging that ensured Britain understood why the sea was central to national security, identity and prosperity. After 1964, British strategy was no longer shaped by the realities of geography and oceanic dependence. Instead it focused on Nato, dismissing other commitments as being ‘Out of [the Nato] Area’. These included the Falkland Islands.

The Falklands War in 1982 demonstrated the limits of Nato support, most of all American – a constant concern as long as Britain is weak. The navy rapidly assembled and dispatched a taskforce, recovered the islands and upheld international order. The success reflected the fact that the navy still owned and ran the maintenance facilities – but only just. They were about to be privatised. Thankfully, because of the swift and effective response to Argentine aggression, plans to cut the navy were reduced, ensuring a strong national response to the tanker war of 1987-88.

Despite the post-1964 decline, when the Cold War ended the navy was still in just about reasonable order. The contrast with today is painful. We need to know who decided to reduce national defences to their current state. Who halved the Type 45 Destroyer build? Who failed to order new frigates to meet the end of life expectancy of the Type 23 class? There have been several times in recent years when the navy has not had a single attack submarine at sea – why were new ones not ordered in time to avoid the fiasco?

Having forgotten why and how this country took such a large role in world history, politicians treat defence as a question of percentages. They do not appear to understand that solutions that work for most Nato partners will not necessarily meet British needs. In this regard, the Nato defence spending goal of 3 per cent of GDP is an unhelpful incentive. It encourages a standardised assembly of capabilities, when the intelligent thing to do is to create defence systems that deliver national security both within the alliance and outside it. Nato would not act if the Falklands were attacked tomorrow. Furthermore, the 3 per cent target fails to recognise specific priorities. For instance, since Germany is building a serious tank force, Britain can focus on the sea, instead of rehashing veteran vehicles.

If Britain were to restore the navy, that would require a consistent long-term building plan to keep the fleet at full strength. It would mean no more Treasury-led funding gaps and quick fixes that leave the navy with massive repair bills for old assets, a shortage of new ships and submarines and a maintenance crisis that private industry appears unable to address. Returning maintenance to nationally owned facilities would be an obvious answer. Private industry has long had a major role in defence, but the Armed Forces and national security are the government’s responsibility and should not be privatised for profit.

Earlier this year, there was a small example of what the navy can still achieve. On 14 June, British forces seized the Cameroon-flagged ‘shadow’ tanker Smyrtos, which had sailed from the Baltic. The operation was legal, swift and effective. Russia’s war economy relies on the illegal movement of oil, gas, fertiliser and grain to fund the Ukraine war. Does our navy have the resources to do something about this at the scale required?

The new government has an opportunity to sort this out before it gets any worse. Wes Streeting, the Defence Secretary, has already said he will resign if not enough is spent on defence. If the government can restore the deterrent fleet, securing more new frigates and much else, then Britain can return to the classic maritime strategic model. Without a fleet upgrade, our interests will be ignored by friends and foes alike.

Observador - Será que o Sanchismo vai morrer na praia de Ceuta? (Tiago Dores)

 

(sublinhados pessoais)

LBC - Brilhante!

https://observador.pt/opiniao/sera-que-o-sanchismo-vai-morrer-na-praia-de-ceuta/

Será que o Sanchismo vai morrer na praia de Ceuta?

Marrocos levou a mal o flirt de Sánchez com a Argélia e, numa variante do clássico “malas à porta”, despejou um carregamento de gente em Espanha, só com a roupa do corpo.

05 ago. 2026, 00:20

Se ainda for a tempo, começo por uma sugestão de férias: Nova Iorque. Têm é de ir o mais depressa possível, se querem testemunhar aqueles cinco, sete minutos em que um supermercado público tem produtos nas prateleiras. O mayor da cidade, Zohran Mamdani, confirmou o arranque deste projecto e é a vossa oportunidade de fotografar esse fenómeno ainda mais efémero do que o eclipse do sol do próximo fim de semana.

Só podem mesmo é fotografar, esqueçam comprar os produtos supostamente 30% mais baratos do que nos supermercados normais da cidade. Para ir às compras no supermercado de Mamdani é preciso uma identificação de residente em Nova Iorque. Ou seja, para estes democratas — no sentido de “militantes do partido democrata”, jamais no sentido de “apreciadores da democracia” — comprar um molho de brócolos deve exigir documento de identificação, mas votar num fã do Hamas para liderar a capital financeira dos Estados Unidos da América dispensa por completo essa maçada, num volte-face tornado racista e colonialista.

A propósito de colonialismo, o que nunca foi uma colónia espanhola foi Ceuta. Como é óbvio para todos, especialmente para os geringonços ibéricos e afins, pois se Ceuta fosse uma colónia, isso faria do governo de Pedro Sánchez mais um braço armado do colonialismo, certo? Só para garantir que estamos todos de acordo e celebrar esta ocasião tão rara como haver pão no estaminé do Mamdani.

Não estou com isto a comparar Pedro Sánchez a Zohran Mamdani, como é óbvio. Até porque um é um bonitão e bem-falante comunista apostado em destruir tudo o que de mais fundacional existe no mundo ocidental por forma a alimentar a sua sanha de poder, de signo Peixes, e o outro é de signo Balança. Não, Sánchez é, como nos explicou há meses a jornalista do Público, Ana Sá Lopes (numa demonstração de perspicácia que só encontra paralelo na épica sagacidade da jornalista de investigação, Fernanda Câncio, que jamais desconfiou haver alguma coisa esquisita com José Sócrates), o Churchill dos tempos modernos.

O que depois deste episódio de Ceuta até faz, tenho de admitir, algum sentido. Afinal, houve presciência de Ana Sá Lopes. Quem é que disse que a Sonae está a deitar dinheiro à rua?! Quem diria que o enorme estadista Pedro Sánchez iria ter direito ao seu momento Gallipoli no norte de África. Em termos de tragédias marítimas para os lados do Mediterrâneo, o presidente do governo espanhol está ali, a pedir meças, a Winston Churchill e à sua catástrofe na Primeira Guerra Mundial.

Na verdade, Sánchez é, isso sim, um melting pot de tiranetes sul-americanos, de António Costa obreiro da geringonça e agora, com esta tragédia de Ceuta, do xexé Joe Biden. Que, se estão lembrados, nas vésperas da invasão da Ucrânia por Putin regurgitou a célebre gafe da “minor incursion”, ou seja, proferiu uma frase com o efeito de “se entrar só um bocadinho não conta”.

Enfim, a frase terá tido um efeito ligeiramente menos gráfico do que a minha versão, que serve, no entanto, para lançar o que parece ser a explicação mais simples dos acontecimentos em Ceuta: Marrocos levou a mal o flirt de Sánchez com a Argélia e, numa variante do clássico “malas à porta”, despejou um carregamento de gente em Espanha, só com a roupa do corpo.

E Sánchez ficou pior do que estragado, claro. Não por desdenhar — como é óbvio! — mais umas largas dezenas de milhares de marroquinos — é o desdenhas! — prontos a substituir os empecilhos nativos que teimam em não querer viver na Venezuela. Não, o que não foi simpático para Sánchez foi a forma de entrega deste novo pacote de votantes.

Que este tipo de “encomenda” não pode ser atirada, assim, por cima do portão. Este tipo de entrega tem de ser feita com a discrição que depois estende a passadeira ao clássico “mas como é que estas pessoas aqui chegaram? Bom, agora é humana, financeira e até fisicamente impossível recambiá-las para os seus países. Não resta alternativa senão dar-lhes casa, comida, subsídio e cartão de eleitor para irem às urnas para a semana.” É assim que este tipo de entrega tem de ser feita. E não num cenário que dá ideia de ser o próximo projecto dos criadores da Casa de Papel, uma co-produção hispano-marroquina do novo World War Z.

Resumindo: a culpa é dos judeus.

Livro - História do Abastecimento de Água a Lisboa (Luis Leite Pinto)

 

Reflexão - LBC

 

Eis as razões do que se passou em Ceuta, em 20 segundos...

The Spectator - The rise and rise of Australia’s Nigel Farage

 

(personal underlines)

https://spectator.com/article/the-rise-and-rise-of-australias-nigel-farage/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=WEEK%20%2020260618%20%20AL+CID_738c15f753ed2186122565b134187606

The rise and rise of Australia’s Nigel Farage

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For three decades, Australia’s political Establishment has been predicting Pauline Hanson’s demise. But whenever critics tried to administer the kiss of death to the flame-haired firebrand, it somehow functioned as mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Today her One Nation party is polling at levels once thought unimaginable. In recent polls, it even surpasses support for Australia’s centre-left Labor government and centre-right Liberal-National party opposition. Last month, One Nation won its first lower-house seat. Whatever happens next, Hanson has become one of the most consequential figures in modern Australian politics.

To British readers, Hanson is often described as Australia’s answer to Nigel Farage. The reverse is closer to the truth. Hanson emerged in 1996, two decades before Brexit, long before Donald Trump’s rise, before Reform UK and before the resurgence of nationalist and populist parties across Europe. Australia encountered populism before populism became fashionable.

Hanson’s maiden parliamentary speech that year, in which she said that Australia was in danger of being ‘swamped by Asians’, triggered outrage among metropolitan sophisticates and offended an entire region. The Australian left responded with its customary restraint and moderation by comparing her to Hitler. She even served time in prison on electoral fraud charges that were ultimately overturned on appeal.

To much of educated Australia, Hanson appeared less like a politician than an embarrassing historical artefact. The assumption was Hanson would eventually vanish. I should confess that I was among those who believed she had reached her peak years ago. So were many others. Hanson has spent much of her career proving us wrong.

Why? The answer is not that Australians suddenly became racists or extremists. Nor is it that Hanson was always right. Rather, many of the issues she raised never disappeared. Concerns about mass immigration, housing affordability, national identity, energy security and affordability, and the widening gap between political elites and the general public remained potent long after commentators declared them settled.

For years, much of Australia’s media and political class treated these questions as beyond respectable debate. It was not so much their opinion and her opinion; it was their opinion – and she’s stark raving mad. Hanson wanted to reopen questions that the Establishment considered closed. That helps explain her extraordinary longevity.

The Establishment has often mocked Hanson as a simpleton, a former fish-and-chip shop owner who had somehow wandered into parliament by mistake. Yet her supporters see a profoundly patriotic politician who speaks plainly, appears authentic, and seems less interested in impressing elites than representing voters who feel ignored by them.

In an age of growing distrust toward institutions, authenticity has become a formidable political asset. Hanson and One Nation have benefited from a simple perception shared by many supporters: whatever her faults, Hanson says what she thinks. This also helps explain why repeated attempts to destroy her politically often backfired. Critics attacked Hanson herself rather than addressing the concerns which were driving voters towards her. The more she was denounced as beyond the pale, the more some Australians concluded she must be touching subjects others preferred not to discuss.

Recent events have reinforced that lesson. The landslide defeat of the Voice referendum in 2023 – the proposal that a selective group of Indigenous Australians should be granted a special place in the national parliament – revealed a substantial gap between elite opinion and public opinion. The result demonstrated that Establishment consensus is not always the same thing as popular consensus. The same institutions that expected a comfortable victory for the Voice have repeatedly underestimated the depth of support for Hanson and the causes she represents.

The same dynamic is evident in the immigration debate. Over the course of a generation, large parts of urban and outer-suburban Australia have been transformed by rapid population growth. Many residents worried about housing shortages, congested roads, overstretched hospitals and crowded schools felt their concerns were either ignored or dismissed as prejudice. But they were genuine anxieties, and many voters continue to believe that neither major party is prepared to address them.

The coalition behind One Nation therefore includes not only traditional conservatives who think the Liberal party has lost its way under a succession of wet and weak leaders, but also working-class voters who believe Labor has become preoccupied with identity politics. In that respect, Hanson supporters resemble many of those drawn to Farage, Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen. They are willing to disrupt conventional politics not because they know precisely what comes next, but because they have lost faith in what already exists.

None of this means One Nation is destined for government. Under Australia’s preferential voting system, Hanson may never become prime minister. But that may be beside the point. Farage was not even an MP when Britain left the European Union. Political influence is not measured solely by office. Some politicians govern; others make the weather. Hanson belongs firmly in the second category. The more important question is whether Australian politics continues moving onto terrain that Hanson helped define. On immigration, energy policy, cultural identity and distrust of political elites, that process already appears well under way, especially at a time of stagnant living conditions and a productivity drought.

The real surprise is not that Pauline Hanson survived, but how many of the issues she raised now dominate politics across the democratic world.

Desporto - Sumo (Torneio de Julho)

É notável a subida de nível destes últimos torneios! Mesmo com a lesão no pé, conseguiu ganhar depois da finalíssima com o sekiwake Atamifuji e o ozeki Kirishima. 

Classificações antes do torneio de Julho de 2026

The Spectator - Why did Anthony Fauci take the Fifth?

 

(personal underlines)

Reflection - (LBC): Sorry, but I thought there was someone (important, I must say...) that insinuated this, and once again, they ignored him. I can't remember his name...

                                                                 

https://spectator.com/article/rare-startling-silence-anthony-fauci/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=BOCH%20%2020260801%20%20AL+CID_75627ed8bd2e892944e83caa2b2dac00

Why did Anthony Fauci take the Fifth?

John Fund30 July 2026, 9:24am

Dr. Anthony Fauci is sworn in during a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee hearing on Capitol Hill (Getty)

In his final hours in office, President Joe Biden issued a preemptive, blanket legal pardon for Dr Anthony Fauci, the most visible US health official during the Covid pandemic, for any and all actions he took from 2014 on, the same kind of pardon he granted his son Hunter Biden. Fauci, like Hunter Biden, thus literally rose above the law.

That’s what made yesterday’s decision by Fauci to take the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee so shocking.  

After Fauci repeatedly invoked the Fifth, chairman Rand Paul told Fauci he would face ‘repercussions’ for refusing to answer questions based on a valid congressional subpoena. Fauci attorney David Schertler then tried to address the committee but was cut off by Senator Paul, who said he was not recognised to speak. Paul then ordered security to remove Fauci’s lawyer from the committee room.

Yesterday, Paul had responded to a reporter’s question about how he would respond to arguments he was trying to put Fauci in a position to perjure himself.

‘There’s no risk to perjury if you tell the truth,’ Paul said. ‘In fact, he can even admit to not telling the truth in the past. He can admit destroying records. He can admit to not adequately presenting both sides of equations, which isn’t really a crime. He can admit to anything. The only thing he can’t do is lie again.’ He stipulated that Fauci had no right to obstruct a congressional inquiry.

But the story is much bigger than that. Fauci was appearing under subpoena to address grave questions of government accountability during the pandemic. In April, a federal grand jury indicted Fauci’s former senior adviser, David Morens, on felony charges for allegedly circumventing public records laws to conceal internal Covid emails.

As proof that Morens may have had something to hide, over the weekend Paul released a trove of pandemic-era diary entries by Fauci that document his thoughts as he dealt with the crisis and marinated in his new celebrity status as ‘America’s Doctor.’ As early as January 2020, the dawn of Covid, Fauci wrote that early infections were ‘not connected to the [Wuhan wet] market’ which he said was an ‘amplifier’ rather than the source.

Fauci then repeatedly rejected the theory that the virus had been engineered in the Chinese government’s Wuhan laboratory, which had been conducting the kind of research that would risk the leak of man-made viruses. In 2021, Fauci testified under oath in the Senate that neither he nor the National Institutes of Health funded that research – only to be contradicted by NIH’s principal deputy director Lawrence Tabak. Perhaps that explains why President Biden granted Fauci a preemptive, blanket pardon, placing him above the law.

Fauci claimed he had nothing to do with school lockdowns, which did great damage to the education of millions of children. ‘I didn’t shut down anything,’ he said on Fox News in 2022. ‘Show me a school that I shut down,’ he said on another occasion. But in his diary, Fauci bragged that he personally convinced top officials in New York City and California – which contain a seventh of the US population – to close their schools.

For six years, Fauci has fended off his critics by deploying slippery answers and arrogant self-regard. He has scoffed at criticism, calling it ‘noise,’ and asserted: ‘They’re really criticising science because I represent science. That’s dangerous.’

But the new scandalous behaviour revealed in the Fauci diaries is that which cuts closest to the vanity, self-importance and unaccountability of DC’s elite media. The diaries raise profound questions about insider power and the dangers of the media not questioning authority.

The 1,141 pages in the diary provide exhaustive detail on how the Beltway media bought into Fauci’s storyline, promoted him and covered up for his mistakes. Fauci clearly loved every minute of the ride: ‘My national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable. It is not hyperbole to say that today I am the most famous and talked-about person in the country.’

Dr. Anthony Fauci speaks at the III International AIDS Conference Washington, DC, June 1987 (Mark Reinstein/Corbis via Getty)

Along with fame came the opportunity for Fauci to engage in cosy collaboration with his many media friends. He enjoyed several dinners with CNN anchor Jake Tapper, including a ‘relaxed’ evening at Fauci’s house in October 2020 – just a week after he told Americans to ‘sacrifice’ Thanksgiving that year. Earlier in 2020, Fauci wrote that Tapper had called him after an appearance on CNN: ‘Jake wanted to make sure the interview did not cause me any problems.’

Fauci notes interactions with other journalists he referred to as his ‘media friends.’ ‘Yasmeen Abutaleb [of the Washington Post] has agreed to write a story trying to uncover the source of this organised effort to discredit me,’ Fauci wrote in October 2021. The next day he wrote that Abutaleb was ‘getting very worked up about the fact that she realises now that there is an organised effort to discredit me and she wants to use the investigative reporter capabilities of the Washington Post to try and find out if they can track funding for this effort to the Republican party or to any other organisation that is trying to discredit me. Let us see how this turns out.’

Mark Halperin, a former political director of ABC News who now runs the interactive media platform 2Way, says the diaries reveal ‘the Dominant Media’s years of protection’ of Fauci, despite his chequered track record during previous pandemics such as AIDS and his tendency to offer advice while citing no hard evidence. He questions why, even today, ‘so many of his former defenders continue to coddle and champion him… Have they reckoned with just how badly they got the story wrong?’

Halperin’s response is an emphatic no: ‘Now that the undeniable truth is staring them in the face they’re just saying “I love what the emperor is wearing”… How are you going to restore credibility to my profession for behaving in this crap way?’

The answer is that the media’s reaction to the Fauci diaries shows they are still either shovelling crap or whitewashing the revelations in them. Brian Stelter, CNN’s media critic, dismisses yesterday’s Senate hearing as ‘predictable’ and sniffs the Fauci diaries merely focus on his ‘documenting the objectively wild speed at which a government immunologist became internationally famous.’

There are some dissenting views. John Tierney, a former science columnist for the New York Times, was never impressed by Fauci. He told me ‘he was an amazing manipulator – had reporters eating out of his hand.’ Fauci knew what gullible, ambitious reporters wanted to be fed – analysis that created a sense of crisis and bolstered their own biases. Tierney says Fauci even produced a 2024 memoir that was ‘a masterclass in how to get away with it. For Anthony Fauci, fearmongering was always an excellent career move.’

Now that their Covid superhero has been exposed, Washington’s media enforcers have decided that their best career move is to ignore the furore until it dies down while continuing to discredit Fauci’s critics.

Observador - Ceuta e a esquerda (Miguel Morgado)

 

(sublinhados pessoais)

https://observador.pt/opiniao/ceuta-e-a-esquerda/

Ceuta e a esquerda

A esquerda deixou de possuir uma dimensão política do seu pensamento e da sua acção. Cada vez mais, tudo se reduz ao enfileiramento numa vaga ética da semelhança humanitária

02 ago. 2026, 00:24

As reacções ao desastre de Ceuta deixaram totalmente transparente a posição política que a esquerda europeia ocupa em matéria de imigração. Ceuta foi o caso extremo, o exemplo-limite, que tornou o implícito perfeitamente explícito.

O inefável Pedro Sánchez chamou-lhe “invasão” e “ataque”. No entanto, é questionável que alguém como ele, como os seus ministros e parceiros de coligação, possa descrever aquelas dezenas de milhares de pessoas como “invasores”. É verdade que o raciocínio é mais subtil. Os invasores são, afinal, outros – para o governo espanhol, todos menos Marrocos. São as “máfias”, os Estados Unidos e, para celebrar o anti-semitismo candente na esquerda extrema e na outra assim não tão extrema, Israel. Diz esta tese que as dezenas de milhares de pessoas, na sua esmagadora maioria homens jovens, que se atiraram à água para pôr pé em solo europeu foram apenas carne para canhão, por assim dizer, instrumentos de poderes maléficos. E temos de dizer solo europeu porque, ao contrário do que a mesma esquerda quis fazer crer, ora para pôr em causa a legitimidade geográfica do Estado espanhol no continente africano, ora para produzir cortinas de fumo a propósito das subtilezas do regime jurídico do espaço Schengen, o sentido da migração foi inequívoco.

Mesmo com estas explicações a dificuldade mantém-se. Como é que a mentalidade infantil da esquerda, de que Sánchez é uma manifestação particularmente embaraçosa, pode classificar como “invasão” o que todos vimos acontecer? É que no mundo da esquerda, integralmente governado por palavras de ordem feitas para cantigas de música ligeira ou divisas para as redes sociais, os guias de orientação são coisas como “diz não aos muros que dividem” e “não há pessoas ilegais, apenas sem documentos”. Em Ceuta, os muros abriram-se e caíram. Por que não foi isso motivo de regozijo? Se tivesse sucedido junto do Rio Grande, no sul dos Estados Unidos, o local onde os governos americanos com mais ou menos publicidade vão estendendo um muro, o aplauso seria garantido.

Em Ceuta, durante todas aquelas horas, os muros deixaram de dividir. Devíamos abraçar o resultado, como o fez aquela rapariga que, de inevitável telemóvel na mão, foi chamando os homens que se precipitavam a correr para a cidade de Ceuta. Se não há pessoas ilegais, porquê chamar “invasores” a estas que apareceram em Ceuta, ou sequer tê-las como carne para canhão? Será apenas uma questão de escala e de tempo? Se forem 60 mil (?) em 24 horas, é invasão, mas se forem 48 mil ilegais e em processos fraudulentos ao longo de meses é o “dever humanitário” a funcionar? Se forem encorajados pelas “máfias” é invasão, mas se o forem pela operação conjunta de ONGs “humanitárias” com as ditas “máfias” já corresponde à realização sublime da consciência moral?

A verdade é que, depois de um período fundacional em que a esquerda política republicana se fez justamente guardiã do Estado moderno, os anarquismos e marxismos do final do século XIX, reavivados sob uma forma burguesa mimada, no Maio de 68, introduziram na esquerda um conflito terrível entre a afirmação do Estado e a sua negação como aberração moral. Depois disso, uma longa e gradual deriva de dissolução das instituições da ordem política foi-se tornando cada vez mais apelativa na família das esquerdas democráticas. A estratégia foi ir denunciando o “fardo moral” produzido por cada uma dessas instituições, desde a família até ao Estado – não o Estado “social”, ou o mecanismo geral de socorro previdencial e redistribuição, mas o Estado como pilar da ordem pública.

Apesar de tudo, a queda não foi súbita. Se, nas suas fabulosas meditações em torno da “globalização”, a literatura e a acção da extrema-esquerda pós-soviética se renderiam definitivamente à negação do Estado, a esquerda democrática reinventava-se naquela altura com um renovado apelo à conservação e protecção das estruturas do Estado. O keynesianismo, precioso nessa tarefa de renovação, não deixou de ser um alicerce importante dessa reafirmação, com uma teoria económica global que funcionava ao mesmo tempo como crítica dos delírios neoliberais de um mundo sem fronteiras.

Mas as migrações e a extrema vulnerabilidade à colonização intelectual da extrema-esquerda deram força ao outro pólo da tensão. A esquerda hoje já não acredita no Estado. É pouco relevante que prossiga a sua retórica piedosa de defesa do Estado. Desde que lhe negue um seu pressuposto fundamental e um legado indesmentível da sua formação histórica moderna – as fronteiras fixas, estáveis e guardadas –, as consequências são as da negação pura e simples. Não existe Estado moderno sem fronteiras, tal como não existe Estado político sem a possibilidade de decidir quem é cidadão, quem não é e o procedimento de aquisição dessa cidadania plena – não como algo que seja devido ao resto do mundo, mas como uma deliberação própria da comunidade política.

O horizonte moral em que a esquerda se deixou enredar, e debaixo do qual pretende arrastar o Estado para a dissolução, confessa que as fronteiras são moralmente arbitrárias. Admite, no fundo, que nenhum Estado, e, portanto, nenhum corpo de cidadãos, nem sequer os seus eleitores, pode decidir nada ao arrepio das reivindicações do resto do mundo tal como estas são interpretadas pela esquerda indígena. É que, no resto do mundo, nenhum outro Estado tem esta visão do que são as suas fronteiras e regras de acesso. Daqui decorre a proibição moral de se impor limites à imigração – sejam estes quais forem. Visto de outra maneira: nenhuma imigração é suficiente, nenhum ritmo de entradas, por elevado que seja, pode ser determinado politicamente. Nenhum argumento que sirva para justificar essas restrições tem cabimento moral. Para a esquerda, o seu mandamento moral de radical despolitização verga-nos a todos a esta resignação – independentemente das consequências.

É sem surpresas, portanto, que vemos a esquerda “autêntica” do nosso tempo, ao contrário do que acontecia até há 30 ou 20 anos, a ter de se esconder atrás de formulações vazias que invariavelmente sussurram “nenhum Estado está moralmente autorizado a formular outra política de imigração que não seja a da imigração potencialmente ilimitada”. Freneticamente amarrados a vociferar acusações de xenofobia – e mais recentemente, com uma notável traição aos princípios que fundaram a esquerda política na Europa, de “islamofobia” –, de racismo, de frieza imoral perante os “deveres humanitários”, a esquerda lida assim com quem for que se atravesse na sua corrida para o penhasco. Tudo o que não for a coroação da imigração ilimitada tem evidentemente de ser cognomeado “extrema-direita”, mesmo que o protesto venha de governos socialistas, como o da Dinamarca.

A esquerda deixou de possuir uma dimensão política do seu pensamento e da sua acção. Cada vez mais, tudo se reduz ao enfileiramento numa vaga ética da semelhança humanitária que não dá qualquer espaço às considerações fundamentais da ordem política. Com essa aniquilação de espaço natural, extingue-se também o Estado e o próprio Estado de Direito, em nome do qual, paradoxalmente, tribunais e legisladores se combinam para impossibilitar políticas de imigração realistas. O reino do Direito sem o Estado é uma ficção perigosa; o Estado sem fronteiras, e sem a sua substância política fundamental, está condenado à morte.

Almoço- Escola Alemã

 Almoço em 24.07.2026, na antiga Casa Marítima com João Leite, Manuel Ribeiro e Carlos Medeiros.

The Spectator- Is the World Cup rigged for Argentina?

 

(personal underlines) 

LBC: and if? Just if?...

https://spectator.com/article/is-the-world-cup-rigged-for-argentina/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=BOCH%20%2020260711%20%20AL+CID_c5cf61e3f98612c70d97ec3e71ea1f40

Is the World Cup rigged for Argentina?

Sam McPhail10 July 2026, 5:30am

(Getty Images)

To be on the cusp of their nation’s greatest triumph and see it collapse in ten minutes was too much for many of the Egyptian side that lost 3-2 to Argentina on Tuesday. ‘It is clear that this tournament has been fixed,’ said winger Mostafa Ziko, whose goal was chalked off by the video assistant referee. The Egyptian FA wants the referees banned from the remainder of the tournament. Manager Hossam Hassan suggested it was a Fifa conspiracy ‘to keep the world champion in the competition… Perhaps they wanted Messi to stay in the running.’ Are they right?

The main point of contention was the disallowed Ziko goal that would have put Egypt 2-0 up in the 59th minute. Winger Haissem Hassan received the ball in his own half and weaved through the Argentine defence before squaring it to Ziko, who stabbed it past the keeper. It should have been one of the goals of the tournament, but the VAR referee deemed there had been a foul at the other end of the pitch 17 seconds earlier: an Egyptian defender had accidentally stepped on Lisandro Martínez’s toes, so no goal.

Worse still, Argentina’s winner in the 93rd minute was almost a play-by-play repeat: the ball recovered in their own box, Lautaro Martínez charged forward and crossed it to Enzo Fernández. In the build-up there was a clear foul on Egypt’s star forward Mo Salah – arguably a penalty – but VAR did not budge.

So Twitter investigators and pub pundits lit a conspiracy that already had plenty of kindling. After all, this is the Fifa that fudged Ronaldo’s ban to let him play Portugal’s opening game and folded when Trump leant on them to cancel the suspension of USA striker Folarin Balogun. (Fifa denies that Trump had any sway over the decision.) They added hydration breaks to allow US broadcasters to run extra adverts (worth some $250 million in the US alone and perhaps $1 billion worldwide), raised ticket prices higher than at any previous World Cup, and then stuck their hands into fans’ pockets a second time by taking a 30 per cent cut of any ticket resale.

In the Egypt game, observers said, Argentina received no yellow cards despite committing more fouls than their opponents. Across the tournament, it looked as though referees were going soft on the Argentinians, who received only one booking for every 20 fouls, versus a booking every five fouls for poor Egypt. Is this a sign of the conspiracy? I doubt it, given how rough a metric that is: it doesn’t account for bookings for dissent, or players penalised for taking their shirts off in celebration. Spain and Germany are on 18 and 17 fouls per booking respectively – are they in on it too? Germany were booted out by Paraguay, and Spain have simply been consistently strong throughout. Would 2018 winners France also be looked on kindly, given their star line-up? In the France-Paraguay game the referee was unduly lenient on the Paraguayans, who were kicking and hacking at any player in a blue shirt: he called only 13 fouls against them and gave no bookings. Argentina, like every team, have had a different set of referees officiating each of their games. They can make, and have made, some awful decisions, but a genuine conspiracy would require consistency.

It’s the same with penalties. Critics say Argentina have won more than any other team in recent years, so it must be the referees giving them the upper hand. The problem is that the team still has to score them (Argentina have missed two of their three this tournament), and that Argentina win more penalties because of their style of play: rather than slinging crosses into the box, they play quick, short passes around the edge of the area, inviting more challenges. Argentina have the lowest cross rate of any remaining World Cup team, at about half that of England, Spain and Belgium.

We can blame the referees for shoddy decision-making and the hopeless use of VAR despite some of the Egypt side’s insistence that the tournament is rigged in Argentina’s favour. Coach Hassan said: ‘We looked better than the reigning champions – better in everything.’ That's true for most of the game, but it cannot excuse Egypt’s collapse in the last ten minutes. They were hard done by, but there is no grand conspiracy, as appealing as the story may be.