On the eve of England’s euros football tie against France, Roy Hodgson has exclusively revealed his bombshell pre-match team talk to the Sunday Mirror: ‘Roy Hodgson has told his players on the eve of England’s Euro 2012 opener: “Don’t let us down.”’. Right then, that’s clear enough, now gerrout there an’ enjoy it, lads. I’d imagine that if, at half-time, the Boys are letting us down, Hodgson will shift the tactical emphasis of his pep-talk, more towards “Don’t let us down any more”. But I’m not the England manager, so I couldn’t possibly comment.

The Mail on Sunday tells us that two tourists were given the fright of their lives at Rotterdam Zoo when a polar bear threw rock at the glass separating the animal’s enclosure from the pair causing the entire pane to crack. It’s the start of the Polar Bear fightback, and while not a mad ecologist, I’m with the polar bears on this on. In the soaraway Sun tomorrow: Ten things you never knew about polar bears, how polar bears could take over the world, was Madeleine McCann abducted by an alien polar bear?

The MoS has a real story for once today, and an important one: the political class does nothing about immigration for forty years, and then introduces a draconian law – far too late – that will make little difference. The proposal, to be announced by Home Secretary Theresa May, will make it illegal for any British person to marry a foreigner (who then gets residency) earning under £20,000. It’s expected to cut immigration, currently standing at 250,000 a year, by 10%, and individual liberty by 240%. There would’ve been no need for this had Westminster acted earlier. But like I always say, those things put off by howls of mock horror today will involve concentration camps further down the road.

Matt Chorley at the IoS (a decent man with an amusing line in wit) tries manfully to be more serious today, employing the headline ‘Eric Pickles tells IoS he will pay councils to end the ‘it’s not my fault’ culture by targeting truants and jobless.’ I’ve tried joining up the dots being scattered over the landscape by Mr Pickles here, and it’s beyond me. I’m all for ending the ‘it’s not my fault’ culture, but I rather suspect one does that by, um, ending the ‘it’s not my fault’ culture. That starts at home (where the parents are usually dyfunctional) and at school (where many teachers actively encourage kids in their belief). It also takes a long time to do, so Eric has plumped – and that is the appropriate verb, I think – for targeting truants and jobless.

I suspect unable himself to figure it out, Matt notes that ‘[Pickles] will announce tomorrow that all 152 top-level councils in England will be incentivised to send in troubleshooters to confront difficult families in their area, as part of a £450m payment-by-results scheme. The form of confrontation isn’t entirely specified, although Mr Creosote suggests, “there will be a little less understanding….the programme will be more forceful in language, a little less understanding. Sometimes we’ve run away from categorising, stigmatising, laying blame.”

Right, now I see: stigmata, eh? Watch the Left catch on to this. ‘Tories to crucify jobless in new drive to wipe out working class’. But setting the Red Demonisation Faction aside for a minute, the Pickles idea is superficial Westminster bollocks. Another social problem created by the political class is to be treated using big blokes incentivised to shout at kids who are more than likely to knife them in reply. The solution is far simpler: we just need Eric the Human Lead Balloon to sit on them.

The Irish Times deals with Tony Blair’s lasting legacy this morning, recording that a group of youths attacked police as they dealt with a security alert in Craigavon, Co Armagh last night. Police officers dealing with a suspicious device were attacked with missiles including blast bombs, but there were no injuries – and it turned out to be a hoax. Look at the IT’s archive on Armagh, however, and you can see that what we’re talking about here is long-term social damage caused by brainless extremism and an obdurate imperial power. The two highest-profile extremists are now running Northern Ireland. It makes you think.

You have to hand it to Draper Osborne, nobody slips off the hook with quite his acumen and aplomb. The Telegraph’s Sunday issue has him laying the blame for his failed policies (too little, too late, too narrow, too economically sectarian) on the meltdown across the Channel. ‘Osborne: UK recovery being ‘killed’ by eurozone crisis’ is the header for this one, and in the piece itself, the Man in No 11 ‘warns that failure to quell maelstrom gripping euro could lead to at least a decade of lost growth.’

If I can just put into words what George is saying, his Party’s failure three times in 27 years to keep its promise to give the British people a chance to get the hell out of the EU is the chief reason why this mael is stromming around us with such force. But its grip (do maelstroms have grips? I didn’t know they even had limbs) is merely accelerating our progress over the cliff, thanks to -yawn, yet again – the failure of the political class to launch a reasoned critique of Thatcher-Friedman econo-social drivel before it was too late. A much bigger reason for austerity’s failure is that the Tories – like every politician I’ve ever met or studied – are utterly clueless when it comes to taking the necessary action to rejuvenate manufacturing, agriculture and creative new business sectors.

But if Osborne is a bit of slippery Toff, the Wapping Liars are still pulling out all the stops to exact revenge on George for not ignoring the whingeing Milly Dowler family, and passing a Royal Edict to give Murdoch BSkyB plus the BBC tax free, and preferably for nothing. To this end, the Sunday Times headlines ‘Leveson to question Chancellor over NewsCorp parties’. Whether we are looking at pyjama, political, sex, or garden versions is not available without paying yet more money into the Digger’s den of iniquity, and I have no intention of doing that. What I can tell you on good authority is that we’ve heard it all before, and it’s just another recycled story as Rupert milks it while looking around for some mug to buy his Times titles. It’ll be in Monday’s Times tomorrow, an identical piece under a different headline. Fair play though: if nothing else, Roop’s attitude to the news is fiercely Green.

Turning left now towards Kinks Place, the Observer’s York Way is very much in evidence today. Hidden away far down the website Home Page is the news that Unite union London bus drivers have voted 9 to 1 in favour of striking over the refusal to grant them a £500 bonus during the London Olympics. Gord, doncha hate the endemic greed of them f**kin’ Toffs, eh?  Let’s Unite and see if we can grow long arms too, and drag our knuckles in a manner guaranteed to ape them to the full, the bastards.

There are two key elements to this story, neither of which attract qualitative comment from the Observer. First, the turnout was only 38%, suggesting that for nearly two thirds of the membership, the issue wasn’t worth turning up to vote about. Union leaders blamed staff shortages for the abstention. And second, the rationale is the same finger-in-the-fire sheep-herding we’ve had from these Fred Kites since the 1950s: ‘The union is seeking the bonus, which will cost £14m, for the 20,000 bus workers it represents, claiming that all other transport workers are being paid a premium for working during the event.’ See those arseholes over there? Well, I demand the right to be just like them, uvvwise snot fair.

While all this crap is going on too quietly for the Yorkies to bother Observing it beyond a cursory glance, the behaviour of bankers in general (and the mendacity of Lansley in relation to Tory NHS plans) has given all these ‘organiser’ clowns a mandate to demand an equal right to be anti-social. Two wrongs will never make a right, but this is human nature. Such a pity that socialists seem unable to accept that reality.

And finally, the Sunday Express breaks the news that the Queen has saved the Countryside. She gets around a bit for a bird of her age does Her Maj, but the headline is over-egging things a bit. As always, the difference between expectation and actuality is likely to create humour, and this instance is no exception. ‘There are even hopes that a bird bearing all three colours of the Union Flag, the white-spotted Bluethroat, will be attracted to our shores at a new Jubilee Marsh at Wallasea Island in Essex from its nesting areas across the Channel’ the Express suggests. And there are lots of reasons why old Bluebeard probably won’t. But never mind all that frippery, because this is The Big One: ‘likely to bring a smile to the Queen’s face is a scheme to restore 2,500 acres of sterile conifer forest in the Scottish Flow Country to its former glory as blanket peat bog.’ I know peat is important and all that, but if your former glory was being a blanket peat bog, you’d have thought that the only way was up. Apparently not.

Tucked into the piece, however, is the reasoning behind  it: ‘The call to create natural places to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee went out from the Sunday Express seven years ago.’ Hip hip hooray.