Drugs are bad. The structure of sport and the laws of the land are geared to that premise. Taking drugs is a bad thing and people who do it should be stopped. That is the way we are supposed to feel about urban crack rings, celebrity cocaine-users and athletes stuffed full of steroids.

Why is it bad? Who is harmed? Well, recreational drugs cause all kinds of physical and psychological damage, not only to the users but also to those around them. We know that addiction is a terrible thing and society takes the stance that criminalising users and suppliers is the right way to - well, if not stop drug-use, at least keep it under some kind of control. Drug-users are victims; we believe we should protect people from drugs that will damage them.

We prefer not to dwell on the fact that this is dementedly inconsistent because one of the most dangerous and addictive drugs in the world is on sale in every supermarket. But there you go. People tend not to think rationally when it comes to drugs. “Why trust one drug and not another?” Danny the dealer asks in Withnail and I.

But then the very idea of drugs creates a frisson of horror. As the Dwain Chambers affair rumbles on, it seems, towards the High Court, we should ask ourselves why it has raised such passions, why the sprinter is regarded by so many with such loathing.

The horror that surrounds dangerous recreational drugs is transferred to the drugs used in sport, but in a slightly different form. We don't ban drugs to protect the athletes. We hear no stories of the physical and psychological breakdown of athletes who have used drugs. Therefore, it is clear that we do not seek sanctions against drugs for the sake of the user. The user is not a victim.

No, he is a villain. He is a triumphant, leering cheat. We want to pursue sport's drug-users not for their offences against themselves and their loved ones, but for their offences against us. They have spoilt something - and what they have spoilt is our pleasure in sport.

The question is not whether drugs in sport are dangerous or damaging. That seems quite irrelevant. We pursue drugs-users because they have offended us.

That at least gives us the pleasure of claiming the moral high ground. Well, you wouldn't get the likes of us taking drugs, would you? None of us would dream of taking caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, aspirin, paracetamol...

England's Test defeat an accident waiting to happen

How splendid it is that England now treats its international cricketers as grown-ups, as human beings, as people to cherish, as people who have home lives that matter, as people to whom we have a duty. Players now have central contracts. Schedules are planned to allow them time off. It is a refreshing change of attitude since those days of endless tours and meaningless courtesy fixtures and players treated as servants.

Instead, we now pursue a policy of whizzing in players and teams so that they arrive fresh and eager. It is only a small inconvenience that they are also totally unadjusted to the local conditions or to the rhythms of their own bodies. The guiding policy is to send out a team who are half-baked and then watch them fall apart in the first Test match.

That is what happened in the Ashes series of 2006-07, when England were expected to make Australia fight every inch of the way at the very least. They never recovered from losing the first Test in Brisbane and surrendered the series 5-0; teams seldom recover from losing a first Test in humiliating circumstances.

And now England have done just that in New Zealand, against a team they were expected to dominate. England had a four-man bowling attack in which only two members were properly cooked and the batters were skittled out by a chap called Kyle Mills because they weren't used to the conditions.

Perhaps we should ask the players what they would like most, victory or an extra week at home?

Sepp Blatter talks sense shock

“Some referees have in their mind, 'How long can I let the game go without giving a card?' They think they are good referees if the game flows for 20 minutes without an interruption. But the referees must give yellow cards or red cards in the first three or four minutes if necessary - then the referee will have peace on the pitch.” These words of sense come from Sepp Blatter, president of Fifa. A broken clock is right twice a day; by the same rule, Blatter has been caught talking sense.

Baroness Thatches is football's patron saint

Baroness Thatcher's short stay in hospital had newspapers everywhere indulging in the sordid task of sharpening up the obituaries. At this end of the paper, Thatcher will always be remembered as The Woman Who Hated Football.

In the high days of Thatcherism football was on its knees. The sport was locked into a weekend routine of hooliganism, English clubs were banned from European competition and Thatcher was pursuing a policy of identity cards for all supporters. In those hard times you couldn't give football away with a packet of Rice Krispies and Manchester United were almost sold for £10million to a chancer with a moustache.

What, I wonder, does the baroness make of football now? For perhaps no other industry, and certainly no other sport, has espoused Thatcherite principles so wholeheartedly. Football has followed the Thatcherite vision totally, pursuing prosperity for its own sake at the expense of all else. For surely the point of money is not the sordid matter of what you can do with it. Money is good for itself alone.

Money must be pursued at the expense of the weak; thus the Premier League was established and so the top four clubs have become a league within a league. Money must be pursued because money is a morality all of its own. It should be pursued at the expense of heart and soul and meaning. The entire notion of the Premier League's proposed international round is pure Thatcherism: people who care about fairness and level playing fields and principles that have operated successfully for untold ages simply have not got the point. And the point is, of course, money.

Football revels in its prosperity. Everything else is second to the great pursuit, for money justifies everything. Really, you know, they should make the old girl an honorary president of the Football Association and put up a statue to her in Soho Square. The Woman Who Hated Football is now football's patron saint.

England and the most predictable of shocks

I hate to say “I told you so” - well, actually, I don't. I said that Scotland would beat England in the rugby union Six Nations in this space last week and England duly collapsed, plaintively explaining that they never underestimated the Scots.

Athletes are self-deceivers: why else did they lose? The fact is that English people can never believe the extent to which Scots like to beat England until they find themselves in the thick of it once again and losing.