We have already had the obligatory ‘raising concerns about the sporting tournament before the sporting tournament’ edition of Panorama which reported on the potential problem in Eastern Europe with racist football hooligans.

There have already been reports that there were racist chants targeted at Black players in the Netherlands squad when the Netherlands held an open training session on Wednesday.

Racism is repugnant & racism should be seriously tackled whether its hurled from the football terraces or loudly espoused down the local pub. As for hooliganism, well I’m not an expert on football hooliganism; but my solution for football hooliganism is allow hooligans to beat 10 shades of shite out each other if that’s what they want to do, just make sure innocent passers by aren’t involved.

The police should escort any gangs of football hooligans wanting to fight each other to the derelict land you always get at the edge of any large urban combination & let them get on with beating the crap out of each other. I seriously doubt you’re going to lose any future captains of industry or any future rocket scientists, so let football hooligans beat the shite out of each other; in fact you sell the television rights to Sky Sports or any cable sports TV channel needing fill hours of broadcast time & you could get Michael Love to make documentary film about it as Michael Love only seems able to make films about geezers doing violent things to geezers.

Regardless of any problems with gangs of racist football hooligans in Eastern Europe, Amnesty International has raised concerns of the Euro football championships being held in Ukraine as it could be seen as endorsing the Ukrainian government which is jailing political activists who don’t agree with the present government in the Ukraine. The governments of several EU countries said that no government representatives will be attending games being held in the Ukraine; the British government have said that no government minister will be attending England’s 3 group stage games being played in the Ukraine in protest to the politically motivated imprisonment of former Ukrainian prime minster Yulia Tymoshenko.

I know some might as why was such a prestigious sporting tournament awarded to Ukraine consider the government there having a dodgy human right record? Well in answer I’d point out that the Olympics which is most prestigious of all sporting events was awarded to China & China has one of the worse human rights records when it comes to jailing & killing political activists.