Money is the reason we performed so badly at the world cup.   Put simply, neither the manager nor the players have any financial incentive to shine.

Why the FA agreed to give Capello a new contract which means it will be even more expensive to fire him is beyond comprehension. He, like the rest of us apart from the FA, must have seen how unconvincing England were in their warm up games and thought, “unlikely to get very far with this lot…I’ll probably get the sack…I’ll see if the FA are daft enough to agree to keep me on longer so it costs more to fire me.”

Foreign managers don’t take their teams to world cup success because the national pride is not there to motivate them. They understand that money is what drives their players to perform so well at club level, and share with them almost an indifference about how well they succeed on an international stage.

English football is dominated, and will be dominated, by the big clubs that can afford to pay, or think they can afford to pay, their players obscenely huge wages. Smaller clubs who try to compete are now in financial crises or are the playthings of foreign billionaires.

After their holidays, the England players will come back to their clubs, their paymasters who will treat them like Gods.  They won’t complain of being bored while serving their country or the manager being too strict in the hope that they might put in a half decent performance if focused on winning a few games.

No, once the domestic seasons starts, Rooney, Lampard, Terry, Cole(s) etc will be feted by their club fans, their world cup failures forgotten and forgiven.

The corrosive commitment-sapping effect of being financially over-rewarded can also be seen in the French and Italian teams’ failure, while the opposite – pride for playing for your country and desire for recognition on the international stage – is probably why the smaller South American countries and the Asian/Australasian teams have over-achieved.

While money is at the heart of English football, and the big clubs have more power and influence than the FA, we won’t get very far in international competitions against players whose motivation is to win for their countries and not their bank accounts.

It is not an accident that player for player, the English team is worth, in financial terms, several times that of the German team that so comprehensively outfought and outplayed them.  You can’t buy passion and you can’t buy commitment.

On Armed Services day, we should take stock of the situation in Afghanistan.

The four soldiers who drowned when their Ridgeback vehicle rolled into the Nahr-e Bughra canal brings the number of British servicemen killed in that country to 307.

Eighteen UK personnel have died this month, with nine of these deaths taking place in the past seven days.  Our losses are getting greater while at the same time there is growing uncertainty about what we are fighting for, and for how long.

It is clear we are losing the war.  It is a war we should not have started fighting.

Who really believed that by clearing the Taliban from one or two provinces in Afghanistan, the streets of Britain would be safer? The Taliban are not an homogeneous, identifiable army. They are a loose coalition, sometimes very divided, of fundamentalists, bandits, tribal and ethnic clans and the disaffected.

What unifies the Taliban is a hatred of what is an occupying force from countries who have for generations supported Israel in its unfair and illegal treatment of their co-religionists.  This occupying force, in the eyes of most Afghans, is bolstering the unpopular, corrupt and incompetent regime of President Hamid Karzai, universally despised by most Afghans.

The Taliban are not linked in any real sense with the growingly sophisticated cadres of militant Islamists spread around the middle east that we call Al Qaeda.  However, Taliban deaths and those of the innocent we are also killing in increasing numbers give those often professional and well educated Muslims the justification their misguided views require to join an Al Qaeda cell and plot terrorist attacks on the West.

Tellingly an American commander this week described the Taliban as hobbyists.  ”Killing our troops is their hobby. They merge back into the people…we don’t know who our enemy are.”  Forty years earlier, the US military described the Viet Cong in the same way…and left Viet Nam a defeated force.

History too should have told us that no invading power has been successful in Afghanistan.  What does success look like? Why are our brave, honourable and loyal young men dying for?

Our national interest is not affected by whether Afghan girls can go to school, or if farmers replace poppies with another crop.  The more Taliban deaths, the more hatred against our troops and those who collaborate with them, and the more recruits to their cause.

We have destabilised the middle east for several decades, but most obviously by invading Iraq. Is it any wonder that Iran wants to be able to defend itself when the countries to its east and west have been invaded and occupied by Western powers?

How can we be proud of what we achieved in Iraq? The infrastructure has collapsed, electricity all but vanished, the results of an election have left the country in chaos and various factions are reverting to suicide bombings.

Is it any wonder that Islamic fundamentalists born in this country or the US can’t take any more the images of dead and injured innocent women and children in Gaza, in Baghdad, in Helmund and decide to extract an evil revenge?

Mr Cameron, don’t talk about leaving Afghanistan by 2015.  Get our troops out by the end of the year and please don’t ever again get involved in a conflict that has nothing to do with our security…despite what the military leaders or a gung ho US President tell you.

Too many of our brave soldiers, and too many innocent civilians have died already.

Advice I never forgot: I was 17 and had finally plucked up courage to ask a lovely student nurse to come to a local dance with me.  To my surprise and delight, she accepted. That Saturday evening I spent a lot of time on my appearance…I was after all a mod, and everything had to be right. I came downstairs looking pretty sharp, and dad gave an appreciative look.

“Got a date?” was his rhetorical question. I told him I was going out with a student nurse. He made sure mum was out of earshot and said to me: “Son, there are only three certainties in life.”  He paused for effect and came close to lower his voice…”tax, death and nurses.”

I won’t tell you whether he was right or not. But I will tell you that since that evening I have had an everlasting admiration  for nurses, not as girlfriends, though I’ve had one or two since then, but for the quality of care they give to their patients.

I have particular respect for the nurses who look after the patients at a care home in Streatham where a friend of mine has been looked after since her stroke five years ago.  But their level of dedication, their strength, kindness and patience is replicated in care homes, hospitals and hospices up and down the country, and includes those who visit their patients in their homes.

It must be particularly difficult to care for and nurse patients who are suffering the late stages of dementia, when there is so little communication between patient and nurse. The patient is usually just a shell of a person, and that shell can be very difficult given the sometimes aggressive behaviour, or if medicated, someone with little or no response to any stimulus.

Late stage dementia patients have no short term memory, but can often recall things that happened  many years ago.

The section in the Vault within My Last Song for favourite fives – where subscribers can list their favourite five of anything (examples could be cars, operas, authors, Motown songs…) could be something that is particularly useful for prompting the memories of later stage dementia sufferers.

A close family member could give the printed out favourite five pages to the care home so that the nursing staff, and other medical professionals, have a prompt that could stimulate some meaningful communication, experiences that mean so very much to the patient…the rare but special moments when they come alive again.

And if this makes the experience of the nurse that much more rewarding and fulfilling, so much the better.

I’m just not sure about hymns. By that I mean I have launched a website called My Last Song which encourages people to plan the funeral that best matches their beliefs, values and the individual lives they all, we all, lead.

The idea for the website came when I attended two funerals of contemporaries who were music lovers and yet their funerals where what I call  ’cut and paste’ …same hymns, same eulogies, same ritual as everyone else, just the names changed.

But my friends were not ‘everyone else’, and at the very least the music played at their farewells could have reflected their musical tastes and talents.

Like the majority of the UK population, my friends didn’t go to church and had no religious views.  Their funerals nevertheless featured hymns.

People inside the church knew the hymns and there was something cathartic about the mourners – family and friends of very different ages and backgrounds still shocked and grieving – singing together. We were unified in creating a shared emotion, each recognising it was part of a traditional, if anachronistic, way of saying goodbye.

At both wakes, people commented upon the paradox that they enjoyed singing the hymns while accepting they didn’t have any significance to the lives of our friends we were remembering.

Would secular, contemporary songs have had the same affect?

I have also attended humanist funerals when the contemporary secular songs selected gave very specific messages to some, but not all, of the assembled mourners.

The affect on this group was profound – some smiled, some nodded knowingly, some broke down, and most joined in the lyrics.

Others at these funerals, however, were rather left out,  didn’t get ‘the message’ and must have felt less able to say goodbye properly.

Even so, on balance, I believe that choosing hymns because they are an ‘easy option’ and that all age groups and backgrounds will join in (less and less the case in our diverse society where an increasing number of  people will have close friends of different faiths or none) is a less satisfactory choice than selecting music and readings that are true to our beliefs and lifestyles.

At My Last Song we are interested in what others think and have a poll on the type of music you want played at your funeral on our home page.

Please take part.

We’re waiting here in the offices of My Last Song to see what the Chancellor has in store that will affect the advice we give.  Will inheritance tax change? How will pensions be affected? And will  Gift Aid, the tax efficient way of giving money to charities, be diluted.

As soon as we know, our experts will advise on what to change on the financial planning area of the website.

In such uncertain financial times, the benefits of pre-paid funeral plans become even more clear…as long as it is the right plan. What are the benefits?

• Your family do not have to worry about your funeral arrangements;
• Your family does not have to pay for the funeral;
• Your family won’t second guess your the funeral wishes;
• You pay at today’s prices rather than the higher price when the funeral is required;
• You can pay by installments; and
• You can transfer it if you move to another part of the country.

Before taking out a plan it is advisable to take as much time as you need to think about the funeral ceremony that matches your life, your values and your personality.

My Last Song empowers people to be better informed about funeral planning, as does the recently published The Good Funeral Guide.

The launch of My Last Song and the publication of the Guide, highlights the change in how society is now thinking about death and dying.

The baby boomer generation that 40 or 50 years ago redefined youth culture is now redefining death culture.  The traditional funeral is dying (pun intended), so ensure the funeral plan you purchase reflects that.

And if that means hard talking to your local funeral director, so be it.  They are providing a service to you, the customer, and if that service has to reflect what the customer wants, so be it.

The launch of my website, My Last Song, and the publication of the Good Funeral Guide highlight the change in society’s view of funerals and planning for death.

I started My Last Song because I believe people should plan their own funerals, not leave it to grieving loved ones or to funeral directors who are likely to make the wrong choices.

The Good Funeral Guide, like My Last Song, empowers consumers with information.   “It is the first independent consumer guide and shines a spotlight on the secret world of the undertakers,” says author Charles Cowling, who also makes the following perceptive remark which has the added benefit of being an excellent sound-bite:

“The baby boomer generation reinvented youth culture; now they are reinventing death culture by reclaiming funerals from the undertakers and ministers and re-casting rituals for their dead.”

I hope the traditional one-size-fits-all funeral is finished, for it is a poor way to say goodbye to a loved one, or to be remembered by.

Instead we should recognise the virtues of the new funerals for a secular age.  As Charles points out the ‘new’ funerals should have some or all of these five features:

• celebratory – preferring gratitude to gloom, laughter to lamentation;
• personalised – a funeral as unique as the life lived;
• participative – the involvement of family and friends in caring for the body and creating their farewell ceremony;
• secular or spiritual – rejecting orthodox religious rituals; and
• iconoclastic – quirky music choices, outrageous dress codes.

Charles rightly argues that people attach little or no value to a traditional funeral because they get so little out of it and “resent paying what it would cost them to buy a decent second hand car.

“Only when they experience the transformative powers of a more relevant and personal funeral will they embrace a more positive attitude to death and how a person’s life is commemorated.”

Traditional religious funerals are less likely to achieve this if chosen by the family of the departed loved one because it seems the ‘right thing to do’, or it is the assumed default of the funeral director.  A decreasing proportion of our society have religious beliefs so it makes little sense to assume that a religious funeral is an appropriate ceremony around which family and friends mourn and remember a loved one.

As I argue in Honesty At The End, it is dishonest to organise a religious funeral for a dead loved one who had no religious beliefs to appease other members of the family.

The best way to avoid this is to plan your own funeral and ensure your family and executors know your wishes.

Which  is what the Vault section of My Last Song is for…safe storage of the details that the family will need once you have died, and for much longer if you want future generations to have an insight to the sort of person you were and the life you led.

Charles agrees: “Planning ahead is a responsibility we shouldn’t duck. To ignore death means we won’t have the ending we deserve, and our loved ones will be left to sort out the mess at a time when they are shocked and grieving.

“But if the funeral is a positive, unique and memorable event, the family will feel they are getting financial, emotional and spiritual value.”

Two weeks ago I was invited to a debate, chaired by the lovely Gabby Logan, ‘Can the FIFA World Cup Re-define a Country and a Continent?‘

Sponsored by SAB Miller (who will make a lot of money through the additional consumption of alcohol in South Africa) it was a predictably myopic self-congratulatory discussion with speakers and contributors seeing only the good it will do South Africa. The rest of the huge continent was conveniently overlooked.

For while South Africa will gain from the World Cup with an improved image, better facilities and increased income from tourists, football in the rest of the continent will benefit not one jot.

For Africa as a whole to gain from the increased popularity and awareness of African football, the large cities should be developing sustainable football clubs, with appropriately good facilities for players and supporters, and suitable internal league infrastructures to encourage and support clubs to be successful off and on the field.

With this more developed football structure, common in the developed world, would come much needed improved transport links, increased local economic activity cascading from the wealthy clubs and, importantly, revenue generated by international tv coverage of what would be wonderfully entertaining football matches.

But, of course, this will not happen.

No, football is another example of ensuring Africa stays poor and underdeveloped. European clubs will continue to take the most talented players from the continent as youngsters who are encouraged to leave by their families only too pleased to have the initial payment  and continuing remittances from their children.

Once on the books of the European and other developed world clubs, the youngsters – the raw material – are trained and developed to be, more often than not, exceptionally fine players. A good outcome then for the clubs, and excellent for the players.

But for Africa? Just another example of colonial exploitation. Walk down a dusty village path in Nigeria…the kids will be wearing tee-shirts supporting Manchester United or Arsenal, clubs part of whose income comes from selling merchandise in developing countries.

It is a colonialism encouraged by the attitudes of Africans who, for example, believe their national teams will only succeed if managed/coached by a European.

But hasn’t colonialism always worked this way…encouraging the oppressed to believe their oppressors know what’s best for them, a practice perfected centuries ago by the unholy alliance of Christian missionaries and traders.

Sadly football is just another example of how the valuable raw material of Africa, its people, its minerals, its food, its timber, are taken by external powers at a shamelessly low cost, to be ‘processed’ and then sold back to Africa at a hugely inflated price.

Previously the Europeans were masters at this game but now the Chinese and Indians are the chief exploiters, running the companies that are taking Africa’s raw materials for a fraction of their true worth. These materials are then sold back to Africa as manufactured goods and processed foods at a far higher price.

This model applies to football…the sport is re-exported to Africans in the form of televised European, South American and Asian games available if they have the money to watch.  That money goes where?  The people who own the clubs and the satellite  tv channels.

No, don’t lets fool ourselves.  The 2010 World Cup has no chance of any lasting benefit to Africa.

Several months ago I wrote some lyrics…the song title was My Last Song I Sing For You. The purpose was to record a song that would increase awareness of My Last Song.

I asked my friend singer/songwriter Leonie Casanova to write the melody which she and her collaborator Richard Bignell delivered to me a few weeks later. All I needed now was a vocalist as Leonie’s contract prevented her from recording it.

At this point, my friend Marlene Forde, who runs a small south London charity that gives voice coaching to disadvantaged teenagers, introduced me to Raphael, known to his friends as Raph.

He was an articulate, charming, polite and enthusiastic young man. It mattered not a jot to him nor to me that he walked with the aid of crutches, a result of contracting polio when he was a baby in Nigeria.

More important was the quality of his voice. The impromptu audition was a revelation…an ex-choir boy, he sang the last verse of How Great Thou Art without any false starts or any hint of embarrassment. His warm, strong tenor ended confidently on the high note, his eyes looking into the middle distance.

In the next few months, I organised the recording of My Last Song I Sing For You with Raph as the vocalist.  I hired session musicians and backing singers, one of whom, Mabel, is Jools Holland’s daughter.  Richard Bignell put the various tracks together at his Acton recording studio, and the result is a great song for which I take little credit, now available to download on iTunes.

During this process, I was in Raph’s  company for many hours.  He never swore; didn’t use ‘like’ or ‘kind of’ when speaking. His sentences were well formed and delivered with just a hint of a south London accent.

I found out that he joined the South East London Army Cadet Force when 12 finishing as Company Sergeant Major, marching at the head of the cadets on crutches.

He had successfully completed the outward bound stage of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Gold Medal award which included a four day expedition on foot (and crutches) over Dartmoor National Park.

He attended Archbishop Tenison’s School in Vauxhall where he was Head Boy and Captain of the School.

For three years he helped to organise Tate Forum events for young people including Loud Tate, an art/musical performance day at Tate Britain.

He had just left school with three A’ Levels and was enjoying the first year of his degree course reading Astro Physics at Lancaster University.

During his Easter vacation he came back to London and we filmed the video that is now on YouTube.  An easier person to work with would be impossible to find. He won over the crew without trying.

In some ways Raph’s an exceptional person.  In others, he’s a typical product of Nigerian, and more generally African, parenting skills and attitude. His mother and father instilled in him the value of education, good manners, perseverance and regular church going. It was certain that Raph would be a choir boy and equally certain he would become head choir boy.

Raph hasn’t asked for any special treatment or favours because of his disability. He has just been determined to succeed in every thing he as put his mind to.

That is why he spent hours rehearsing the song before going into the recording studio and why he insisted that several scenes in the video were re-shot until he was happy with his performance.

Thank you Raph.