“IF you want me to summarise, in one word, we are not ready.”

So said FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke during a radio interview this week, his disregard for basic maths being thankfully, one of the smaller slip-ups on the path to the football World Cup Finals in Brazil.

The four-yearly soccerfest is a mere 68 days away from kick-off, but if Valcke’s downbeat assessment of the situation relating to at least two of the host stadiums is correct, fans will be advised not to come into contact with any surface other than the floor - if there is a floor - just in case the paint isn’t dry.

And as for sitting down, well, best check first, just to make sure there is a seat.

We’ve had these ‘will they/won’t they be ready?’ stories before concerning major sporting events. If I recall correctly, the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi cut it a bit fine, ditto the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

But the forthcoming World Cup finals feel different. This time, there is a real sense that Brazil, or parts of it, won’t be ready.

The two aforementioned stadiums, in Sao Paulo and Porto Alegre, look nowhere near finished. We’re not just talking a few doorknobs and corporate seat covers here – we’re talking whole sections.

Add to this the fact that Porto Alegre has threatened to drop out unless more funding is made available to complete facilities for the media, sponsors and fans, and the sense of mounting chaos deepens.

All of this won’t stop the show from going on, of course, and we probably won’t be able to spot the unfinished bits when Sao Paulo stages the opening fixture – Brazil v Croatia - on June 12.

But this is a tournament that should already leave a bad taste in the mouth of any discerning football fan.

Once again we are being treated to the spectacle of vast, it has been claimed obscene, amounts of money being spent on an event being held in the midst of crippling poverty.

But if that is too vague or distasteful a concept to consider or grasp, it might be worth just focusing on the number eight.

That is the number of construction workers who have to date died whilst helping to build the stadia in which Brazil’s global showcase will take place this summer.

Eight. It is a much smaller number than that which would encompass those living in the aforementioned crippling poverty in Brazil. But it is still eight too many.

England manager Roy Hodgson has this week announced that the wives and girlfriends of England players wishing to travel to Brazil must do so independently, and will have only limited access to their men during the tournament.

Don’t worry girls, it will only be three games. They’ll be on the plane home after June 24.

Seriously though, that will mean there is likely to be more room in the players’ suitcases for the trip out to Brazil. More than enough room to include a black armband in among the underpants and training gear.

Wearing those during the opening match - in honour of those eight construction workers who gave their lives to help build the arenas in which these multi-millionaires will ply their sporting trade - would help make that bad taste just a little more palatable.

What's the UKIP line on Euro-pollution?

WHILE I’m on the subject of bad taste, it may have been that the mixture of Saharan dust and European pollution that has hit these shores this week has not been as nasty as predicted – but it is still a cause for concern.

Anything that causing that sort of residue to muck up your windscreen has to be bad for you, and there has definitely been something unpleasant in the air. I’ve been able to taste it.

It’s not so much the Saharan dust that worries me, as the ‘European pollution’. What exactly does this contain?

I’m surprised UKIP leader Nigel Farage didn’t refer to it during his ill-tempered debate with Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, as another example of why we are better off out of Europe.

“Look at that pollution, coming over here, making us cough and splutter,” he might have said, conjuring up a vision of a Britain with its borders closed even to the micro-particles from some under-developed Eastern European fertiliser factory.

But he didn’t, which is a shame because it might have added a welcome touch of the absurd, the daft, to a frankly depressing political sideshow.

In keeping with the situation, Both should have been made to wear protective masks while speaking, to set a good example and spare us the polemic.