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Following the inability of their ‘star’ players to practise the simple skill of passing and controlling a football on Friday, I said I would not support England anymore. But like any good addict I will be back on Wednesday for another excruciating performance from England on the world stage.

One measure England do beat Slovenia on is the amount of aid they give. In 1970 the countries of western Europe all agreed to spend 70p out of every £100 they earn on overseas aid. England has never done this; it is currently spending 47p. But according to official figures, Slovenia isn’t giving any.

Slovenia isn’t as rich as England, but it is still well-off in world terms. The eastern European country has an income higher than Portugal.

‘Aid’ is a term which can mean lots of different things. During the Cold War, the western and eastern blocks used ‘aid’ to advance their military aims across the world. The people of Slovenia, then part of Yugoslavia, stood aside from this competition. Whilst Yugoslavia was communist, it was one of the founder-members of the neutral non-aligned movement.

‘Aid’ is also used to win valuable contracts for a country’s companies. In 1994, the World Development Movement won a landmark court case when it proved that UK ‘aid’ for building the Pergau dam in Malaysia had been given to win contracts for British companies, including arms deals, rather than for tackling poverty.

Throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s ‘aid’ has been used to force developing countries to deregulate their economies for the benefit of multinational companies. The Conservative party prior to the 2010 UK election said that aid should be used to privatise public services in developing countries.

Despite all the problems of ‘aid’ the whoshouldicheerfor rankings still list it as positive. Aid seems like it should be a good thing; those with a lot give a little bit away to those with a lot less.

An alternative view of aid is to see it as compensation for past wrongs. From its central role in the transatlantic slave trade to its central and continuing role in causing the climate to change in catastrophic ways, England has a lot to compensate for. Slovenia would have a reasonable case that its compensation payments should be a lot less.

Central to compensation is not to keep on committing wrong. Any benefit from UK aid dwarfs in comparison to the way our unregulated banks increase hunger and the effects of our climate changing greenhouse gas emissions.

This is why I am proud to be part of the World Development Movement which campaigns to abolish the wrongs of the UK which cause poverty, rather than just giving the sticking plaster of aid.

Posted in: England, England-Slovenia, Slovenia

Views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Development Movement.

I am a soft touch when it comes to underdogs: I wear a badge that says: ‘I heart migrants‘; I buy the Big Issue; and I work for the World Development Movement to combat the injustice that is rife through out the world. And now I am faced with a choice between Ghana – the top dog of the underdogs according to Who Should I Cheer For?; and Serbia – the country that shot to fame in the 1990s as an international pariah. So for most people, the choice of which team to cheer for based on ‘underdog’ criteria would be simple. For me, not so simple.

But life, politics and war is never simple. Let me announce my bias: my father’s family is from Serbia, from a city called Kragujevac, which is known for a massacre of up to 5000 people in 1941 at the hands of the Nazis. My grandfather fled the country and walked across Europe with nothing but the clothes on his back.

Massacres and deeply held resentments have been prominent in the former Yugoslavia’s turbulent history for centuries and the war crimes that took place at the hands of the Serbs in the 1990s are clear to everyone. And now to the Serbs themselves, who because of the propaganda pedalled by Milosevic and the closure of independent media, did not know of the true extent of the genocidal war that was being waged in their name.

But what they did know is that they were under attack from sanctions, from NATO bombing and economic collapse. By the year 2000, Serbia was the poorest country in Europe. It was the year that I went to visit my family in Kragujevac and saw the embarrassment and anger in my cousin’s face when admitted that she had been ‘paid’ in eggs that week.

This was also the year that Milosevic was finally forced from power.  The Milosevic regime’s tactics to stay in power were violent and omnipotent, including hundreds of thousands of fake ballot papers, the arrest, detention and ‘diasppearances’ of journalists, opposition activists and judges who sympathised with the opposition. One judge was murdered when he refused to issue an arrest warrant for two opposition leaders. And the disappearance and death of Ivan Stambolic, the former Prime Minister, who turned against Milosevic and gave support to the leader of the opposition party, Vojislav Kostunica.

Kostunica was leading a shakey coalition of 18 opposition parties, and despite Milosevic’s repression, they organised election monitors, mobililsed people, and collaborated with the powerful student movement, Otpor.  After the contested election of September 2000, a month of mass strikes and one million people descended on Belgrade from across the country, including elderly  farmers on tractors and bulldozers. They broke through police lines and faced tear gas and stormed parliament forcing Milosevic’s resgination on October 5th.

The last decade has not been easy for Serbs. The chasm between the rich and the poor has widened. Although, there’s no data available in government numbers for the clever people behind whoshouldicheerfor.com to crunch, inequality has increased after the IMF imposed its usual draconian economic conditions, like privatisation of electricty, education and health care, in return for loans.

The poorest people in Serbia (and Eastern Europe) who have suffered greatly are the Roma population. Roma people are widely discriminated against, are the target of racist attacks and fail to access public services. Currently, in Serbia the situation of Roma people is particularly worrying with 30 per cent of the population living on less than $2 a day; entire communities unable to access health care, education and live in shanty towns. It’s my bet that data for the Roma population is not included in official government stats, because Roma people tend not to have birth certificates, ID or permanent addresses. If the stats for Roma people were available to us the maternal mortality, hunger and life expectancy results would be a lot worse.

So I will be cheering for Serbia: for the Roma people – the underdogs of Europe; for the Serbs who bravely and peacefully overthrew a genocidal dictator; and for my family, and all families, who are still struggling to get by.

p.s. Amnesty International is running a campaign to stop forced evictions of Roma communities in Serbia, please do get involved.

The symbol of Otpor's resistance against the Milosevic regime, it appeared in badges, stickers, posters, banners, graffiti, t-shirts and as a tattoo on my colleague, James' arm!

Posted in: Ghana, Global injustice, Serbia, Serbia-Ghana, Teams, Who am I cheering for?

Views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Development Movement.

Group E

Netherlands

Tipped in the WDM office as possible dark-horse winners, despite injury putting Arjen Robben’s participation in doubt, the Oranje are an attractive bet at 10/1. They can also lay claim to being the ethical punters’ choice, being the most generous aid donor at the tournament and one of only two competitors that have met the long-standing target of giving 0.7% of their gross national income as overseas aid. The Dutch give 0.82% of GNI in 2007, edging out, by a mere 0.1%,…

Denmark

…the other country to receive an overseas aid gold star from the OECD. The Danes have the distinction of winning a major championship – Euro 92 – after receiving a place only as a direct result of a UN Security Council Resolution (number 757, which ended Yugoslavia’s tournament before it had begun). They’ve never come close to repeating the trick and, with a strong Cameroonian challenge for second place, may well fall at the first hurdle for the first time in their history.

Japan

The first World Cup to be held in Africa features both hosts of the first in Asia, the joint Japan-South Korea tournament of eight years ago. The Japanese caused England problems last week, but their one goal was the only one in a four-match warm-up schedule, and their qualifying campaign was none too convincing either. Japan enjoys mid-table security/obscurity in the WSICF? rankings, but it’s hard not to like a country where the Prime Minister resigns because he broke an election promise – especially when that promise was to close foreign military bases. Expect another resignation – from Head Coach Takeshi Okada – before June is out.

Cameroon

With Didier Drogba (Ivory Coast) doubtful and his Chelsea teammate Michael Essien (Ghana) out of the tournament, Cameroon’s Sameal Eto’o could be set to be the continent’s hero in South Africa. Pity he doesn’t have the team around him to make a repeat of their 1990 quarter-final run all that likely. 1990 hero Roger Milla’s criticism of Eto’o – that he has performed well for European bosses but done nothing for Cameroon – would be a rather fairer description of the country’s famous rainforests and shrimp fisheries, both of which have been exploited enthusiastically by Western entrepreneurs while the Camerounais suffer the second-worst rate of chronic hunger in the tournament, with 23% not getting enough to eat.

Group F

Italy

The home of this author’s forefathers, it’s fair to say that La Patria is dodgy at best on both a footballing and social justice estimation. The ageing champions will be doing well to progress beyond the quarter-finals, with the Netherlands their likely opponents.

If Italy’s midfield feel a little past their sell-by date, Silvio Berlusconi’s leadership is positively rancid. With total control of the media, Silvio has shifted the Italian mainstream to the right and encouraged the rise of ultra-nationalist groups such as the Lega Nord. The effect is visible in our rankings: Italy’s overseas aid commitment is less than a third of the OECD target, and its economic inequality is worse than any other European competitors’ – except England.

Paraguay

Known to football fans mainly for the heroics of former keeper Jose Luis Chilavert, who – lest we forget – has scored more international goals than Emile Heskey, Paraguay qualified strongly, finishing ahead of Argentina in the 10-team CONMEBOL mega-group.

That campaign featured only 3 draws – a feast-or-famine record that seems appropriate for the most unequal country at the World Cup. The richest 10% of Paraguayans collect over £65 for every £1 earned by the poorest 10%. I wonder what a similar comparison between the richest and poorest players here would look like?

New Zealand

The All Whites qualified for this World Cup – their second – from a group which comprised Fiji, Vanuatu and New Caledonia. As a native of the Old Caledonia, whose group included the Netherlands and Norway and whose players are therefore not in South Africa but relaxing at home with a pizza supper, this fills me with rage.

How frustrating, then, New Zealand is top of the Global Peace Index and boasts the kind of legislation banning nuclear weapons in her territorial waters that has been proposed, but not progressed, by Scotland’s government.

I’d love to hate New Zealand. But it would be like kicking a kitten.

Slovakia

This may be the Slovaks’ first World Cup but they look good bets to qualify from a weak group. Plus, be fair, they’ve only been a country since 1994.

The country is has experienced rapid economic growth since the break-up of Czechoslovakia, yet enjoys the most equal distribution of wealth in the tournament and enviably low carbon emissions – less per capita than those of the hosts.

Posted in: Cameroon, Denmark, Group previews, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Paraguay, Slovakia

Views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Development Movement.