Double Talking' Jive

There was an incident in the Chelsea-Boro game yesterday which perfectly demonstrates the double standards that get applied to Man Utd and, in particular, Ronaldo.
Remember when Ronaldo got sent off against Manchester City for a deliberate handball? And remember the reaction in the papers? See my post from the day after for recollection.No choice but to send him off, a stupid thing to do, etc.. Yesterday Mohamed Shawky who had already been booked deliberately handled the ball, the referee awarded the free kick and yet failed to send him off. The reports I've read of it today (and I've not been through them all) can hardly be bothered to claim it as a mistake by the referee, no one calls out Shawky for stupidity. And yet when Ronaldo did it (in admitedly more bizarre circumstances, but the essence of the offence was probably worse in the Shawky incident, the ball was in the middle of the park while the game was flowing, he had more to gain by handling it, whereas Ronaldo caught it in the opposition box and certainly wasn't trying to gain an advantage) everyone was so sure it was a definate, cast iron yellow card. And they say all the decisions go for us...
A slightly petty point about The Independent's version of the Chelsea-Boro game, but they do seem to have been particularly against us recently so I might as well point out. Their match reporter was paying so much attention to the game that they didn't even realise what had happened:

Soon after that it was Scolari and Southgate who were rowing over what seemed like a few trivial fouls but it demonstrated just how tense the Chelsea manager was. He carried on the argument as he went down the tunnel at half-time. It had started over a foul by Mohamed Shawky, part of a five-man midfield which Chelsea were struggling to break down.

From what all the other papers said, and from what I saw on Sky Sports News it started over a Shawky handball, not a foul. Quality reporting from the ever dependable Independent...