The government's plan to build an elite sports training centre in London just so our athletes can improve their athletic performance by getting better acclimatised to cold weather is surely one of those monumental jokes fully deserving of haloed status in the Ultimate Book of Lunacy.

A fair and accurate eulogy befitting such landmark logic should also include a notation on the fate of the RM490 million set aside for the project, just in case the joke has expired its usefulness and no one's laughing anymore. Not that it's such a great secret, but it's still worth reassuring the average Malaysian that the coffer-keepers of our national treasury have decided to put to the money behind causes that do not demand such a high degree of frivolity of thought.

Besides, we all know that Malaysian sports, in and of itself, is an exercise in futility, no matter what we do. Our failure to produce world-class athletes is because we are simply not made for it. There are many other factors, of course, but seriously, natural predisposition by way of genetic heritage has not been exactly generous with us in this department. And that's just putting it mildly.

In truth, there's a divine conspiracy designed to ensure that we first focus our efforts on breaking our backs to clean up our streets and rivers before we think of breaking our backs to break Olympic records. So let's not waste our time, energy and money breaking our backs for an outright lost cause.

Since we're on the subject of monumental jokes, here's another one from the helms of our sports-minded government, which is the state of readiness of our national football team to take on the World Cup by 2018. But that's for another day to tinker around with. Still, no harm in a little investigative work. Someone hand me the phone, please ...

"... Hey Fergie, Old Trafford up for grabs yet? Our Malaysian footballers need to get used to the windswept-cold coming in from the Arctic North before they can learn how to dribble ..."