Dan Jones: F1 is already a soap opera, England won't win the World Cup and I struggle to feel all that offended by a song that goes F**k the IRA

The first rule of writing a good soap opera is that you build towards the Christmas special.

You know: the episode where Den hands over the divorce papers. Or Pauline karks it under the Christmas tree. Or the one where Kath from Pobol y Cwm leaves Cwmderi to go to Spain for a bit.

Well, Formula One, which knows no lack of melodrama, silly characters or preposterous scripting, is building nicely towards its early Yuletide special this weekend. It has an exotic setting (Abu Dhabi) and there is an improbable plot device (the double points shenanigans) set to bring matters between Lewis and Nico into a life-changing showdown. With luck, there will also be a subplot in which someone has finally had their fill of Bernie Ecclestone and belts him upside the head with a frying pan.

Bernie! You slag! You spoiled Christmas! I have no doubt that there will be a long queue of candidates from Marussia, Caterham, Force India, etc, who’d be up for that one.

Before we get on to politics, however, there is the business of the racing. There has been a looming sense all season that inserting the absurd manufactured jeopardy of double points for the final race, while designed to keep the contest spicy until the last day, is in fact just as likely to throw up a deeply unsatisfying end to the world championship that doesn’t reflect the way the season as a whole has gone.

Or, to put it another way, it means that Lewis Hamilton — who has this year proven himself, by most measures, to be the better driver in the best car on the grid — could still be runner-up in the Championship: his ambitions choked on a combination of Nico Rosberg’s low-emission exhaust fumes and one of the more noxious ideas from Bernie.

This is not to boo-hoo overmuch on Lewis’s behalf, by the way; to be completely sure of winning the championship he has to finish first or second in Abu Dhabi, which has a sort of elemental sporting justness to it, at least.

It is more to say that this nitwitted rule-meddling is the sort of reason that casual fans and F1-heads alike find the sport so infuriating at times. Yes, it was a bit dull when Sebastian Vettel won the trophy with four and three races to spare (2011/2013). But that’s sport. Sometimes people win a lot. I don’t recall the Premier League deciding to award double points for the last game of the season after, say, Manchester United waltzed the title in 2010-11. (If they had done so, incidentally, United would have been champions again in 2011-12, instead of Manchester City.)

I am not sure whether it is a consolation that Formula One will most likely abandon the double-points thing after this season, or whether that just serves to highlight the governing bodys’ make-it-up-as-you-go-along autocracy.

Anyway. Having said all this, I suppose the best thing that could happen to Formula One from a really cynical, PR point of view, would be for Hamilton to suffer some sort of desperately unlucky technical failure and for Rosberg to be proclaimed champion.

In that instance the injustice, the pouting and the intra-Mercedes loathing would eat the end-of-season headlines to such an extent that the sport might be able to take a breather from everyone scrutinizing the broader, off-track problems that it is cooking up for itself.

The war on the smaller teams would appear to be reaching a critical point this weekend, in which only one outcome seems at all likely: the dissolution and eventual death of the smaller teams. Marussia and Caterham are already gurgling down the toilet; Force India, Sauber and Lotus can feel themselves slipping off the rim. Have they been financially imprudent — as Eccelestone argues? Or is the division of spoils such that the teams cannot hope to stay afloat in the hybrid-engine era?

Either way, it doesn’t make much difference. It feels like the writing is on the wall for all of them, and the future of Formula One is plainly one in which CVC Capital Partners, the FIA, the big five teams and their diffusion label cars run the sport and everyone else looks on. That is a much bigger deal than double or single points, Lewis or Nico. Or to return to our original analogy, there is more to this soap than the Christmas Special. Keep watching.

We all know Fifa are a joke, who could turn an Under-11s kickaround in Battersea Park into an international scandal merely by the taint of their association. But will European nations really be persuaded to boycott a World Cup in protest against Fifa chicanery? I doubt it. Football governance at all levels is defined by bluster and cowardice. I’d love to see Uefa or the FA take a serious moral stand. But I fancy there’ll be a cold snap in Hell before it happens.

All this crisis talk surrounding England’s rugby team is a bit over the top, and would have been avoided if anyone had been realistic in their assessments of Stuart Lancaster’s team over the past two years. A decent, solid, respectful, unspectacular, quintessentially northern hemisphere side? Yes. Among the best four teams in the world? With a good run at home, they should be. Likely World Cup winners? Really? This is all suddenly feeling very ‘England football’, isn’t it?

Fair play to Andy Murray for returning to the O2 last weekend for the professional set against Novak Djokovic that replaced the banjaxed ATP world tour final. After that near-double bagelling against Roger Federer ended a long, long season, I’m sure the last place Murray wanted to be was in another game against an in-form great. But there he was, stepping up for the fans. With that sort of commitment to entertaining the public, Murray could make the next season of Strictly. Or maybe not…

I struggle to feel all that offended by a song that goes F**k the IRA, any more than I would about one that went F**k Islamic State or F**k Traffic Wardens or F**k That Thing When Ocado Is Late And You Miss Your Spinning Class. All of these are bad and reprehensible, so why not F**k them? On the other hand, if there is an excuse to ban the England football team brass band, I’m behind it. Yeah! F**k the brass band! (Wait. Is that offensive?)