Breaking the code

You may have heard of the John Terry affair; the England football captain now stripped of the captaincy because he had an affair with the ex-girl-friend of a team mate. The question going through my head running today was: "what's the big deal?"

With all due respect, we are talking about a small group of filthy rich, physically supreme, socially idolised yet not so well educated guys who are known more for getting pissed on Crystal and shagging page 3 "models" than for kicking a football. With all due respect, did anyone really expect anything else?

And here's the thing. The answer is yes. Let me explain.

Remember the Osborne v Mandelson affair? The shadow chancellor and a leading government figure spent a holiday together on a Greek island as the guests of a billionaire hedgefunder and / or a Russian oligarch. Sitting on a yacht, they drank untold number of bottles of Dom Perignon and dished out the dirt about their party colleagues. Obviously nothing wrong with that I guess. The Osbourne affair had nothing to do with accepting gifts from people who may want a payback if one ever came to office. The affair began when Osborne leaked Mandelson's comments to the press. His actions were deemed so unacceptable that the said billionaire wrote an open letter to the Times threatening Osborne into retracting his statement.

The reason for the reaction to both Terry's and Osborne's indiscretions is not, dare I say, the immorality of their actions. It was the fact that they broke the strict social codes of their respective groups. You can cheat on your wife six ways from Sunday, but not with your team-mate's ex. You can accept inappropriate hospitality as long as you don't disclose what was said by the other guests.

Footballers, like politicians, are special. The code of their respective privileged groups is above the morality we mere mortals live by. When they break these codes, they are duly punished. And if this, I say, is what it takes to unite the thug from Barking common and the lad from the lush grounds of Eaton, so be it.