Morally bankrupt sport fans will forgive any abuse

The death of Zac Cox is more than a horrible industrial action but a metaphor for modern sport: the scale of its corruption and the readiness of  its fans to tolerate the intolerable as long as we are entertained.

Mr Cox was 40 and working on a World Cup stadium in Qatar when a catwalk collapsed underneath him. He fell 130 ft and didn’t stand a chance. To the authorities he was a nobody, and his death was an embarrassing inconvenience. A report into the accident was completed within 11 days, but the firms building the stadium did not pass it on to his family in Britain. One of the contractors, the German firm Pfeifer, had the brass neck to tell the Guardian it was an internal document and therefore a private matter.

That’s the way it rolls in the Gulf. Qatar, Bahrain and the rest of the monarchies operate a modern version of Apartheid.