US Politics | Wags at the World Cup is a Baden Baden move… just ask then-captain David Beckham
IMAGINE a gynaecologist inspecting your nether regions while her husband watches spellbound from the corner. Or a plumber bringing his wife and kids along to watch him fix your leaking cistern? Ludicrous, right? 
Grealish's glamorous girlfriend Sasha Attwood makes up part of the bunch of Wags milling around as their other halves do their jobGetty 
It brings to mind the huge focus on Wags in Germany in 2006Rex Features 
Just one glance at HMS Wag and it's easy to see why the wives and girlfriends want to make their way to QatarGetty So why, pray tell, do the Wags have to trail along to Qatar when their other halves are supposedly there to do a professional job of hopefully winning the World Cup? Just one glance at their luxurious accommodation, and it's easy to see why the wives and girlfriends themselves would make the trip. HMS Wag, as it's been dubbed, is a £1billion cruise ship docked off the coast of Doha, complete with Swarovski chandeliers, 33 restaurants, designer shops, owner suites with hot tubs on the balconies and 24/7 butler service. Equally, it's a no-brainer for ship owner MSC which is getting invaluable publicity for its latest, 11-storey vessel and the squillion berths it will need to flog to star-struck punters once the World Cup is over. READ MORE ON WORLD CUP WAGS 
WAVES & GIRLFRIENDS Inside 'HMS Wag' where England's partners will stay at World Cup But what does England manager Gareth Southgate and his team have to gain from their headline-grabbing loved ones being moored nearby? Anyone old enough to remember the 2006 tournament in Germany's Baden Baden will tell you they're a distraction from the important task at hand. Just ask then-captain David Beckham, who said earlier this year: "There was more spoken about the Wags than the football. At that time, for the players, you want to focus on the tournament rather than anything else." Most read in The US Sun DANGEROUS OVERSIGHT Delphi murder cops 'forgot suspect's huge admission five years ago' BIG MISTAKE Family Feud's Steve falls & completely 'shuts down' after player's NSFW answer RHO-NO Teresa Giudice mocked as she posts unedited and filtered version of the same pic THE NEW JANELLE Sister Wives' Janelle 'drops 100lbs' & shows off body after dumping Kody IS AL OKAY? Today star Al Roker's wife explains host's continued absence from morning show DEADLY PLAN UVA 'shooter waited until return to campus before fatal attack killing three' And his team-mate Rio Ferdinand recalls: "If I'm honest, we became a bit of a circus in terms of the whole Wag situation . . . it was like watching a theatre unfolding and football almost became a secondary element to the main event." Varnished toe Indeed it did. Making Gareth Southgate's decision to welcome their presence for the entire tournament all the more baffling. Why not just fly them out for the final (she said optimistically)? 
Why is Gareth Southgate choosing to entertain Wags like Marcus Rashford's girlfriend Lucia Loi?Getty 
Raheem Stirling's fiancee seems to be one of the Wags ready to use the World Cup to boost her Instagram followingInstagram Also, it's been reported that the Wags will be surrounded by private bodyguards providing a "ring of steel" during their stay. Given that they'll probably be the poorest people there and there's a low crime rate because personal threats or theft in Qatar are punishable by up to three years in prison, it's unclear why this level of security is required. Perhaps it's to protect them from the inevitable wave of photographers who will dog their every step the second they set a highly varnished toe on dry land for the prerequisite Wag shopping trip to a designer mall. They'll pretend the attention is a nuisance, but we all know they'll secretly love it because it will boost their Instagram followers. For if the Wagatha Christie trial between Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy taught us anything, it's that the Wag pecking order is based on perceived level of fame. Victoria Beckham was Queen Bee in 2006 before passing the mantle to Coleen Rooney until 2014. It remains to be seen who'll be the standout star of this year's World Cup, but let's keep everything crossed that it turns out to be a player, rather than a Wag. TONY TOOK A DIVE TONY ADAMS retired from Strictly at the weekend after sustaining an injury that prevented him from doing the dance-off. He had performed his jive just an hour earlier, then found himself in the bottom two with superb dancer, DJ Tyler West – a showdown the former Arsenal defender would have lost. 
As footie fans might put it, Tony Adams dived from Strictly before he was pushedPA So rather than put his body through any more angst before facing the inevitable eviction, he bowed out and garnered "Tony retires from injury" headlines instead. Or as footie fans might put it, he dived before he was pushed. Parental guilt NEW research shows that career women suffer more "parental guilt" than men. Probably because, unlike men, we constantly get asked if we suffer it or not. CAN'T TRUST TRAINS THE push for us all to go green continues apace. But it's all pie in the sky while our public transport is so shambolic and expensive. On Thursday, I had to get to London's Marylebone train station but there was a Tube strike. So I hopped on a Lime bike and cycled the 6.4 miles from my house to the station – at a cost of, gulp, £11.81. I was on my way to see A Christmas Carol at the RSC (excellent, by the way) in Stratford-upon-Avon, changing at Dorridge in the West Midlands. But when I got there, the connecting train had been cancelled because of "lack of crew" and the only way I could make the start of the show was to fork out £25 on a cab for the rest of the journey. No wonder people still use their cars. Heating or eating INDEPENDENT pubs, cafes and restaurants are struggling to survive and many families are choosing between heating and eating. Meanwhile, new stats show certain councils have raked in millions from parking fees/fines. So why not use it to pay all the above eateries to help feed all the above families until the recession is over? Name hero like Zelensky. Um, Harry & Meg? JUST one nanosecond after forming their Archewell Foundation, Harry and Meghan are to be honoured with a prestigious human rights award in New York. Even more ludicrously, they're sharing it with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a man whose heroic actions define courage in our time. 
Just a happy coincidence that Harry and Meghan have been awarded a prize by an organisation that's tied to someone they've hired for their Netflix docu-seriesGetty 
Do we really dare to compare Harry and Meghan to the President of Ukraine?Rex Features The award is being given by RFK Human Rights, set up in honour of Bobby Kennedy and run by his daughter Kerry. Yesterday, Kerry's brother RFK Jr perhaps spoke for us all when he said that the choice of Harry and Meghan was "bewildering". But if he glances further down his sibling food chain, the decision might become a little clearer. For Kerry and RFK's youngest sister Rory is co-founder of a company called Moxie Firecracker Films, that covers "human rights issues, broader social ills and extraordinary individuals who have greatly influenced their era". And her co-founder is a woman called Liz Garbus who has been hired by . . . drum roll . . . Harry and Meghan to produce/direct their new docuseries for Netflix. Of course, it could all just be a happy coincidence . . . Time for business 
PPE bought for just over £13million has been flogged off at auction for just £400,000 because it would be too costly to store. And no doubt, if and when the next pandemic hits, it will be sold back to us at £13million again. Isn't it time to start running the country as if it's a business, rather than a bottomless pit of other people's money? SEE A GP? NO HOPE BRITAIN'S top A&E doctor made headlines on Monday by saying he is desperate to keep elderly patients out of hospital for fear they'll never come out. Likening hospitals to "lobster traps" where it is easy to get in and hard to get out, Dr Adrian Boyle, new president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, says hospital crowding and bed blocking is killing hundreds every week. 
Dr Adrian Boyle says hospital crowding and bed blocking kills hundreds every week He cites the crisis in social care as one of the primary reasons, saying it has left 13,000 patients stranded on wards. GP failures are contributing to the problem too. Last week, my elderly mother needed fairly urgent medical attention so I called her GP practice to get an appointment. In pain They said they no longer made appointments in person "because of Covid" or over the phone (no idea why), so she would need to register on their website, fill out an online form and someone would call her within 48 hours. As she is virtually blind, can't use modern technology and was in pain right now, I insisted she needed to see someone urgently and was told to call at 8am the next day to secure a "same-day emergency" appointment. I rang on the dot of 8am and got a recorded message to say all appointments had gone. It's easier to get Adele tickets. So I kicked up a stink about the severity of the situation and finally got a doctor to call my mother and prescribe what she needed. But what hope is there for an elderly person with no family nearby? Chances are, they'd either pitch up at an overstretched A&E and enter the lobster pot of potential doom or fail to get treatment at all and potentially die at home far earlier than they might have if they had managed to see their GP. What has become of this country that it treats its vulnerable so shabbily?
Grealish's glamorous girlfriend Sasha Attwood makes up part of the bunch of Wags milling around as their other halves do their jobGetty It brings to mind the huge focus on Wags in Germany in 2006Rex Features Just one glance at HMS Wag and it's easy to see why the wives and girlfriends want to make their way to QatarGetty So why, pray tell, do the Wags have to trail along to Qatar when their other halves are supposedly there to do a professional job of hopefully winning the World Cup? Just one glance at their luxurious accommodation, and it's easy to see why the wives and girlfriends themselves would make the trip. HMS Wag, as it's been dubbed, is a £1billion cruise ship docked off the coast of Doha, complete with Swarovski chandeliers, 33 restaurants, designer shops, owner suites with hot tubs on the balconies and 24/7 butler service. Equally, it's a no-brainer for ship owner MSC which is getting invaluable publicity for its latest, 11-storey vessel and the squillion berths it will need to flog to star-struck punters once the World Cup is over. READ MORE ON WORLD CUP WAGS WAVES & GIRLFRIENDS Inside 'HMS Wag' where England's partners will stay at World Cup But what does England manager Gareth Southgate and his team have to gain from their headline-grabbing loved ones being moored nearby? Anyone old enough to remember the 2006 tournament in Germany's Baden Baden will tell you they're a distraction from the important task at hand. Just ask then-captain David Beckham, who said earlier this year: "There was more spoken about the Wags than the football. At that time, for the players, you want to focus on the tournament rather than anything else." Most read in The US Sun DANGEROUS OVERSIGHT Delphi murder cops 'forgot suspect's huge admission five years ago' BIG MISTAKE Family Feud's Steve falls & completely 'shuts down' after player's NSFW answer RHO-NO Teresa Giudice mocked as she posts unedited and filtered version of the same pic THE NEW JANELLE Sister Wives' Janelle 'drops 100lbs' & shows off body after dumping Kody IS AL OKAY? Today star Al Roker's wife explains host's continued absence from morning show DEADLY PLAN UVA 'shooter waited until return to campus before fatal attack killing three' And his team-mate Rio Ferdinand recalls: "If I'm honest, we became a bit of a circus in terms of the whole Wag situation . . . it was like watching a theatre unfolding and football almost became a secondary element to the main event." Varnished toe Indeed it did. Making Gareth Southgate's decision to welcome their presence for the entire tournament all the more baffling. Why not just fly them out for the final (she said optimistically)? Why is Gareth Southgate choosing to entertain Wags like Marcus Rashford's girlfriend Lucia Loi?Getty Raheem Stirling's fiancee seems to be one of the Wags ready to use the World Cup to boost her Instagram followingInstagram Also, it's been reported that the Wags will be surrounded by private bodyguards providing a "ring of steel" during their stay. Given that they'll probably be the poorest people there and there's a low crime rate because personal threats or theft in Qatar are punishable by up to three years in prison, it's unclear why this level of security is required. Perhaps it's to protect them from the inevitable wave of photographers who will dog their every step the second they set a highly varnished toe on dry land for the prerequisite Wag shopping trip to a designer mall. They'll pretend the attention is a nuisance, but we all know they'll secretly love it because it will boost their Instagram followers. For if the Wagatha Christie trial between Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy taught us anything, it's that the Wag pecking order is based on perceived level of fame. Victoria Beckham was Queen Bee in 2006 before passing the mantle to Coleen Rooney until 2014. It remains to be seen who'll be the standout star of this year's World Cup, but let's keep everything crossed that it turns out to be a player, rather than a Wag. TONY TOOK A DIVE TONY ADAMS retired from Strictly at the weekend after sustaining an injury that prevented him from doing the dance-off. He had performed his jive just an hour earlier, then found himself in the bottom two with superb dancer, DJ Tyler West – a showdown the former Arsenal defender would have lost. As footie fans might put it, Tony Adams dived from Strictly before he was pushedPA So rather than put his body through any more angst before facing the inevitable eviction, he bowed out and garnered "Tony retires from injury" headlines instead. Or as footie fans might put it, he dived before he was pushed. Parental guilt NEW research shows that career women suffer more "parental guilt" than men. Probably because, unlike men, we constantly get asked if we suffer it or not. CAN'T TRUST TRAINS THE push for us all to go green continues apace. But it's all pie in the sky while our public transport is so shambolic and expensive. On Thursday, I had to get to London's Marylebone train station but there was a Tube strike. So I hopped on a Lime bike and cycled the 6.4 miles from my house to the station – at a cost of, gulp, £11.81. I was on my way to see A Christmas Carol at the RSC (excellent, by the way) in Stratford-upon-Avon, changing at Dorridge in the West Midlands. But when I got there, the connecting train had been cancelled because of "lack of crew" and the only way I could make the start of the show was to fork out £25 on a cab for the rest of the journey. No wonder people still use their cars. Heating or eating INDEPENDENT pubs, cafes and restaurants are struggling to survive and many families are choosing between heating and eating. Meanwhile, new stats show certain councils have raked in millions from parking fees/fines. So why not use it to pay all the above eateries to help feed all the above families until the recession is over? Name hero like Zelensky. Um, Harry & Meg? JUST one nanosecond after forming their Archewell Foundation, Harry and Meghan are to be honoured with a prestigious human rights award in New York. Even more ludicrously, they're sharing it with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a man whose heroic actions define courage in our time. Just a happy coincidence that Harry and Meghan have been awarded a prize by an organisation that's tied to someone they've hired for their Netflix docu-seriesGetty Do we really dare to compare Harry and Meghan to the President of Ukraine?Rex Features The award is being given by RFK Human Rights, set up in honour of Bobby Kennedy and run by his daughter Kerry. Yesterday, Kerry's brother RFK Jr perhaps spoke for us all when he said that the choice of Harry and Meghan was "bewildering". But if he glances further down his sibling food chain, the decision might become a little clearer. For Kerry and RFK's youngest sister Rory is co-founder of a company called Moxie Firecracker Films, that covers "human rights issues, broader social ills and extraordinary individuals who have greatly influenced their era". And her co-founder is a woman called Liz Garbus who has been hired by . . . drum roll . . . Harry and Meghan to produce/direct their new docuseries for Netflix. Of course, it could all just be a happy coincidence . . . Time for business PPE bought for just over £13million has been flogged off at auction for just £400,000 because it would be too costly to store. And no doubt, if and when the next pandemic hits, it will be sold back to us at £13million again. Isn't it time to start running the country as if it's a business, rather than a bottomless pit of other people's money? SEE A GP? NO HOPE BRITAIN'S top A&E doctor made headlines on Monday by saying he is desperate to keep elderly patients out of hospital for fear they'll never come out. Likening hospitals to "lobster traps" where it is easy to get in and hard to get out, Dr Adrian Boyle, new president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, says hospital crowding and bed blocking is killing hundreds every week. Dr Adrian Boyle says hospital crowding and bed blocking kills hundreds every week He cites the crisis in social care as one of the primary reasons, saying it has left 13,000 patients stranded on wards. GP failures are contributing to the problem too. Last week, my elderly mother needed fairly urgent medical attention so I called her GP practice to get an appointment. In pain They said they no longer made appointments in person "because of Covid" or over the phone (no idea why), so she would need to register on their website, fill out an online form and someone would call her within 48 hours. As she is virtually blind, can't use modern technology and was in pain right now, I insisted she needed to see someone urgently and was told to call at 8am the next day to secure a "same-day emergency" appointment. I rang on the dot of 8am and got a recorded message to say all appointments had gone. It's easier to get Adele tickets. So I kicked up a stink about the severity of the situation and finally got a doctor to call my mother and prescribe what she needed. But what hope is there for an elderly person with no family nearby? Chances are, they'd either pitch up at an overstretched A&E and enter the lobster pot of potential doom or fail to get treatment at all and potentially die at home far earlier than they might have if they had managed to see their GP. What has become of this country that it treats its vulnerable so shabbily?
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