Last Monday, Savvas Kakos, president of Anorthosis football club, issued a statement strongly attacking the Cyprus Football Association (KOP). He stated that his team is the victim of an orchestrated attempt to deprive them of their chance of winning the league. He concluded, “Anorthosis will provide very shortly audiovisual proof that shows football results are not determined by how a team performs on the field as game officials appointments, penalties, red cards among others, are all made ‘on demand’.”

Every now and again reports surface about the creation of casinos in Cyprus. Over the past couple of months the frequency of these rumours has increased considerably with various ministers (finance, communications) being quoted and billionaire investors itching to be the first to acquire the much coveted licence.

This goes against our President’s anti-gambling principles who stated a couple of years ago that as long as he is in power there will be no casinos. However an Akel MP (Mouskallis) said around the same time that AKEL will favour the creation of a casino provided the time is right. It appears that the recession, rising unemployment, shortage of liquidity are the pre-requizites for such a venture.

The air traffic controllers (ATC) refusal to accept the government’s austerity measures and their subsequent strike action has brought government and all political parties in unison for the first time in years. Even the PASYDI union chief, Mr Hadjipetrou seemed a bit annoyed by the controller’s stance and this is no mean feat. Given the circumstance it’s quite hard to side with the controllers as their main argument is that if their salaries are reduced then the inflow into the state’s coffers will also be reduced.