IT’S a national disgrace, moaned BFP sports reporter Andy Carswell this week, barely even joking, as he heard there was to be a ridiculous £90 price tag for this year’s replica England shirts.

I don’t love football quite as much as Andy does, but it’s hard to argue with his sentiment.

It’s not as if they have any high tech computers or MP3 players cleverly sewn into the fabric – no, they are just plain old football shirts.

For years football fans have been ripped off left, right and centre thanks to often-extortionate ticket prices and absurdly high merchandising costs.

There are cheaper versions of the shirts, its true – £60 for ‘stadium’ shirts and £42 for children’s sizes. All of which, however, still carry the stink of fleecing about them.

And with the rate at which the kits change, there are likely to be new ones set for release by the time you finish reading this.

Football is our national game, like it or not, and it greases the wheels of our society at all different levels – whether its kids making friends over playground kickabouts, easy conversation in the pub, actually playing the game itself, or the communal activity of simply watching it.

For all the poor behaviour and thuggery it has become associated with, both on and off the pitch, it is still valued by huge numbers of people in the UK.

But it shouldn’t be valued to the tune of £90 per shirt. Such rampant greed only serves to cheapen the whole sport. And even the price of cheaper versions puts families with football-mad kids – particularly families without much cash to burn, as so many are these days – in a very tricky position.

And, without wishing to sound like the voice of England doom, on current form it is not even as if they are likely to be wearing them for very long once the World Cup does get underway this summer.

IN what can only be described as a moment of truly inspired social planning, Glasgow this week announced it would blow up five tower blocks as part of its Commonwealth Games opening ceremony this summer.

Gone will be all but one of the Red Road flats which have formed part of the city’s skyline for nearly 50 years in one fell, celebratory, swoop.

It seems a perfect blend of mindless summer blockbuster-style mayhem and long-term housing regeneration planning. And you can’t say that about many things.

And think of the cash that will be saved on fireworks. Perhaps other parts of the world should follow the city’s lead when they kick off major sporting events of their own.

The odd part of Wycombe could arguably benefit from a bit of carefully orchestrated demolition. Perhaps, for instance, we could finally bid farewell to the bleakest bits of Frogmoor to mark the launch of this year’s half-marathon.

Or perhaps we could just agree to level stockists of football shirts that cost £90 apiece.