Since we insist on having different ones for most of our sports Twickenham and Wimbledon for instance and since athletics

Since we insist on having different ones for most of our sports (Twickenham and Wimbledon, for instance), and since athletics ­ we have discovered ­ sits badly with football, putting the spectators miles away from the action, its difficult to run enough events to make the place profitable. Which was one reason why the Chelsea supremo Ken Bates, the man who headed the project for a while, filled the plan with luxury hotels and commercial hospitality areas, at vast additional initial cost. To turn a bob or two the new Wembley needed to be used week in week out.Enter Ken the third. Can the winter of our discontent be made glorious summer by this son of Brent? Why, asks Livingstone, cannot football ­ a wealthy and lucrative business in which single players change clubs for £20 million ­ pay for the stadium? Because English football is run by savage, primitive capitalists, who have organised a cartel (the Premiership), which acts to screw as much money out of the system as it can for individual clubs; whose ethics are displayed in the way they treat fans, referees, smaller clubs and managers; whose horizons are limited to the boundaries of their own stadia; who have acted to destroy the main terrestrial broadcasters public-service coverage of our national sport; and who ­ in the shape of the same Ken Bates ­ run teams in which occasionally not one British player is to be found. The FA only organises the Cup and international matches, so FA really does mean FA. The money is with men who don’t give a damn whether England wins or loses.And the fans go along with it as long as their teams prosper.

Can you imagine English clubs adopting the enlightened American football system of placing the best new young players with last year’s least successful teams? No, they’re happy as long as their clubs poach and steal the better youngsters from other teams. And it’s partly the fans that have stopped Tottenham or Arsenal or Chelsea from doing the bleeding obvious and moving from their cramped grounds into the new Wembley.So we’ve entered a nexus, a gap between public need and private provision, a highly politicised and publicised killing-ground where nothing can survive. And this is not just about structure, but about culture ­ as much of the media as it is of politicians or sports administrators or business persons. We are sometimes, as Roger Daltrey once described us, “The Land of No”, one gigantic Circumlocution Office, dedicated to the stopping of things from happening. Nimby is our national psychology, with its combination of anti-modernity, anti-risk, back-covering, whinging, special pleading and no-can-do.Not always, of course.

The Royal Festival Hall is 50 years old this week, and still going strong. Ask yourself why, Jack.David.Aaronovitch btinternet . On the other side of the world, as far away as can be imagined from the urgent debate surrounding the feeding of pigeons in Trafalgar Square, another controversy concerning man and animals is unfolding. On the other side of the world, as far away as can be imagined from the urgent debate surrounding the feeding of pigeons in Trafalgar Square, another controversy concerning man and animals is unfolding.
Its focus is Fraser Island, the largest sand island in the world, situated off the coast of Queensland. Because of its unusual geological conditions, the place is ecologically important, a World Heritage site which is a mecca for tourists interested in wildlife. The brochures promise glorious freshwater lakes, over 230 species of birds and ­ one of the island’s greatest marketing assets ­ a rare colony of pure-bred dingoes.

Elsewhere in Australia, this species of wild dog has interbred with domestic breeds, but on Fraser Island the original genetic strain lives on.Until the last few days, it was estimated that there were 200 dingoes left on Fraser Island Now there are fewer They are being shot. Last week, a nine-year-old boy called Clinton Gage, playing on a beach with his brother, was killed by a pair of dingoes. The Queensland government acted quickly, ignoring the objections of environmentalists and pointing out that, on such occasions, human life comes first. Marksmen have so far shot 12 dingoes, concentrating in the areas around camping grounds.