Time To Go Max?

It was interesting, and a bit of fun to be honest, to find on the day that the 42 day limit was being hotly debated on the 5Live board that I should find myself defending Max Mosley. Well not exactly defending him but rather defending the notion that a persons public life and his private life can be kept separately.

I've long found it interesting that in the U.K we cannot distinguish between a man's public duties and what he does behind closed doors, whether what is happening behind closed doors ends up being filmed by the gutter press is another matter. In the USA John F.Kennedy was a well known womaniser, as were most of the male members of Camelot, and yet that didn't stop him becoming elected as the President of the United States and in the process one of the most loved politicians of his country. The French have a 'rule de privee' which strictly forbids the sort of 'journalistic investigation' that Mosley was subjected to. I happen to believe that you can separate your public and private feelings, I have to everyday when it comes to the matter of taxation - putting aside by Socialist principles in order to help clients organise their affairs so that they pay as little tax as possible within legal guidelines.

So what did Max Mosley do wrong? Was it the prostitutes, the Nazi uniform or the cheating on his wife? For female readers it was almost certainly the latter, it doesn't matter how many hundreds of female prostitutes were involved it's the man who strays from the marriage bed who is in the wrong. I have to say I agree on that aspect, as somebody who has been faithful to Janis for twenty five years, twenty two of them married, I certainly haven't felt the need to wander but if I did would that be sufficient grounds for losing my position at work? Was it the Nazi uniform? I doubt it, let's be honest Prince Harry wore one to a party and all the tabloids and 5Live got really excited about it, then Harry went off and became a soldier, served in Afghanistan, came home a hero and the tabloids and 5Live got really excited about it. It can't have been for the prostitutes surely, the tabloids love stories that involve celebrities shagging as many people as possible.

Of course there are those, such as Eddie Jordan and Martin Brundle, who say that Mosley has brought F1 into disrepute. Yes that's right, somebody has bought a vacuous, resource wasting, petty minded, sponsor driven, morally bankrupt sport into disrepute. You know, the sport where if Ferrari don't win they appeal and when Ferrari are found guilty of cheating they appeal. Where drivers can force other drivers off the road in the pursuit of victory, yes that's the sport that Max Mosley has been bringing into disrepute by dressing up as a Nazi and invading a few prostitutes. This is the sport that until recently saw all its cars carrying the sponsors logos of tobacco companies, the unhealthy alternative to dieting!

At todays meeting in Paris, Mosley won a vote of confidence to stay on as president of the FIA. He won 103 of 169 votes. Of course his winning of the vote of confidence didn't please everybody and the USA are said to be considering their membership of the FIA as a result. The Germans, a country known to have a penchant for dressing up and invading people said that they couldn't understand the decision to allow Mosley to stay on as President.

The American, Japanese, French, Australian and Spanish automobile federations all voted against Mosley as did the German motoring federation ADAC - Europe's largest automobile organisation - who said it has now frozen all its activities with FIA.

Former F1 world champion Damon Hill said he was 'astonished' by the result.

"In my position as president of the British Racing Drivers' Club trying to safeguard the future of the British Grand Prix, we really need an organisation like the FIA to help us protect our position so that we can have reasonable terms with the commercial rights holders.

"But it's very difficult when you have a president who is as controversial as Max is to go to governments and argue the case for Formula One.

"Not taking on board the political atmosphere can be a strength sometimes, but in this case it just seems to be inconsiderate for the sport.

"Even Bernie Ecclestone [F1's chief commercial rights holder] has said Max has pushed his boundaries beyond the limit."

Mosley had said that if he won the vote of confidence he would continue to lead the FIA through to October 2009 when his fourth term ends.

Of course what should happen now is that Max Mosley resigns. He resigns not because he dressed-up as a Nazi (something he has denied all along), or that he had sex with half a dozen prostitutes, but because the FIA has to work with countries where these lapses in morals and good taste cannot be laughed off. Those areas of North America where, rightly or wrongly, the (white) moral majority still hold sway, the European countries who feel that he has let down the public face of motor racing through the letting down of his trousers in private and of course the nutty boys in the Far East who are quite happy to see their economies succeed on the back of organised prostitution, criminal gangs, drug smuggling and the abuse of human rights but who somehow feel that being caught on camera by a Sunday tabloid shagging a woman who you have paid to shag is the worse thing that can happen to a human being (or a motoring organisation).