We all have friends of friends who know someone who was once at dinner with the Queen and heard her say: “My goodness, let’s not talk about Mummy’s overdraft” And we all wanted it to be true. It has all the hallmarks of a really great urban myth: the nice old lady who keeps up the middle-class front of cosy family life before shutting the door at Clarence House to feed the corgis on Sevruga.And the other part of it is, of course, that the rest of the Royal Family are such splendid, notorious tightwads. A friend of my brother’s knows someone who knows him.”
The story of the Queen Mother’s overdraft, I always thought, fell rather into this category. But you can bet your life that, if they see a particular Hollywood actor appearing at their local multiplex, they will all turn to their girl and say: “You know, he likes to push hamsters up his bottom. A Chinese tofu-farmer, a Papuan hunter-gatherer or an American undergraduate may be quite unable to indicate Europe on a map of the world. There are some stories which, however intrinsically unlikely or fatuous they may be (such as, say, that two male cabinet ministers in the last government were sleeping with each other), spread to all four corners of the world, simply because people would like them to be true. It probably didn’t come as a surprise to anyone at all; it was always one of those things which everybody “knew”, propagated more by a desire by the whole nation that it should be true than by a sober assessment of its probability.

A GREAT deal of amusement and entertainment has been caused all round by the revelation of the Queen Mother’s overdraft. If the Olympic ideal is to be revived, the process of choosing the host city for the games needs to be made much more transparent and IOC members more accountable.Yet as long as Mr Samaranch remains, so too will the question of whether there is sufficient will in the IOC leadership for reform.The Age, Australia. Total reform, not a whitewash, is essential.San Antonio Express News, USTHERE ARE even murmurings of a European Union boycott of the Sydney Games. While this would be most regrettable, the disgust at the continuing scandals associated with the Olympic movement is understandable. If sponsors pull out, it will be impossible for cities such as this one to stage Olympic-style events in the future And if reform does not take place, sponsors will flee.

Olympic rules are clear; they simply have been ignored and, with them, so have the Olympic ideals of fair play and international good will. But can a corrupted body clean itself? Sponsors, largely US corporations that underwrite the games, do not want to be associated with a tawdry affair. New blood is certainly needed if anything worthwhile is to get done at all Samaranch must go. The sooner the better.
Globe & Mail, CanadaTHE CURRENT IOC has lost the right to lead A purge is needed – that of Samaranch. Second, they begin to confuse their own interests with the high ideals they claim to be promoting The IOC as constituted is probably unreformable.

The bad news is that IOC Chairman Juan Antonio Samaranch is around. The problem with international organizations like the IOC is that they are prone to corruption on two fronts. First, because there is no institutional oversight, members begin to believe that they can get away with anything Until now. THERE’S GOOD news and bad news about the Olympic scandals. The good news is that the International Olympic Committee yesterday expelled six of its members identified as having taken bribes to award the 2002 Winter Games to Salt Lake City. And it would mean that there were some important and accountable figures keeping a stern eye on the Commission..

But it would be a recognition of the infinitely greater role played by the EU in the domestic life of its member states than when the present structure was set up. A semi-permanent session of high-powered European ministers reporting to the national leaders and spending much of their time in Brussels doesn’t, at least on its own, answer the problem. The problem with the second is what you could call the Skinner paradox. The trouble with democratic legitimacy is that it can make the institutions that have it too damned legitimate; suddenly an elected Commission, or a Strasbourg Parliament, with even sharper teeth, will see its power increased relative to, and to some extent at the expense of, the elected national governments to which the EU’s institutions are theoretically answerable.This is the unresolved conundrum of European reform. Transparency and accountability will rule for the next millennium.The problem with the first argument is that no one, not even Michael Portillo, has thought of a better way of enforcing the single market, along with its good old Anglo-Saxon virtues, such as fair competition and subsidy-free industries, than having a supranational body to do it. The other is a breathless rejoicing among the liberal pro-European intelligentsia that a thousand democratic flowers will bloom: the European Parliament, by forcing the Commission’s resignation, has come of age at last and should assume new powers; the Commissioners should be elected by the masses in their own country – a proposal for which the British Prime Minister, at least, is not ready – and candidates for president should fight it out in a pan-European super- election.