ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN

NO MATTER HOW HARD ONE TRIES THESE DAYS to concentrate on other pressing issues, there is a constant “bubbling under”, as Guinevere, my Girl Friday, tells me is the term, of disturbance in the Arab kingdoms that may at some stage affect one’s portfolio of investment.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS involving Colonel Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, the sweet-toothed leader of the Libyan revolution “under way since 1969” suggest that this is the time to get one’s Datsuns out and sell one’s timeshares.

HAVING STATED THIS, it might scrape out some sensibility from those among us who are not completely hedonistic and stupid to watch al-Gaddafi at the window of a nineteen fifties truck, carrying an umbrella and looking like Deputy Dog, distressed in the rain. We know how he got there; why do we now, only now, think he is a bad guy? He knows perfectly well that he has no place to hide. Put up your hands if you vote in favour of his death; and think about why you haven’t put your hands up over the last forty years.

THE RHUBARB RUB

WHATEVER ONE MAY THINK of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Mayor of London, it has to be acknowledged that he is as much fun as a barrel of monkeys. Although technically on the right, Mr Johnson was for a long time the most entertaining guest host of Have I got News for You, a television extension of the satirical magazine Private Eye, which spends a good deal of its time ridiculing people in power, like Johnson, including Johnson himself. To his eternal credit, Boris has never held any grudge against anyone making fun of him, particularly as he is the first to do so.

NEW YORK-BORN JOHNSON, a descendant of Turkish intelligentsia, German aristocracy and English, German and Scots nobility, has every reason not to have a clue about who he is, but anyone who knows their onions expects a good laugh whenever he has a microphone thrust upon him.

TODAY WAS NO EXCEPTION. At the opening of the utterly futile waste of money deemed the London Velodrome, in anticipation of the equally wasteful London Olympics 2012, his comic speech in praise of the building suggested a subtext revealing what Boris thinks when he is at home, away from the public eye.

“THE ROSY HUE”, he informed us, as if quoting from Homer, “of the building is due to it having been rubbed with rhubarb juice.” “Thus”, we were told, “the velodrome has been a great boost to England.” (my italics). English rhubarb growers have benefited greatly, and a new craft has been born: that of rhubarb rubbers, a profession which, stated Johnson, has a rosy future.

IF IT IS NOT CLEAR TO THOSE RESPONSIBLE for staging the Olympic Games that Johnson thinks the whole affair is no more than ego-masturbation, just as was the case when he insulted the Chinese authorities four years ago with the underlying joke in his famous “ping-pong is coming home” statement at the changing of batons over the Olympics, then I judge that the egg on politicians’ faces needs more than anti-subtext tissues for it to be removed.

MIERDA ON THE NILE

IT APPEARS THAT IT HAS TAKEN less than a day for trouble to break out in the “new” Egypt, with distressing images of the army beating protesters with batons being shown across the media this morning. While there is nothing intrinsically evil about allowing the military to rule us – indeed for many countries this would be an improvement on the pisspoor civilians trying to maintain a grip on chaos – one cannot expect soldiers to behave like normal humans.

ONE MUST NEVER FORGET that underpinning military training there is a simple dictum of “tell them what to do and if they don’t do it kill them”, and thus whatever the final aim of soldierly action may be – even if it is giving water to a man dying of thirst – one either obeys or gets shot.

IN THE MIDST OF MILITARY ENCOURAGEMENT towards democracy, many of those being encouraged are asking themselves about future candidates. “Who will the “new” leaders of the “new” Egypt be?” one can almost hear them whispering into their hookahs and narghiles. Thus I imagined that, as a public service, I might present some of the potential candidates that “all Egypt” is talking about.

Colonel Massa Murderah. The official Egyptian army candidate. Murderah would like to see a more tolerant attitude taken towards those who, as he terms it, have “blood on their hands”.

Herman van Husia Dadi Momi. Seen as the darling of the disaffected, Dadi Momi would restore Ali-G as Egyptian Prime Minister and try to make Egypt a member of the European Union.

Issa Wayah Tellem. Often ridiculed for his old fashioned approach to clothes, Wayah Tellem would reintroduce street magic and sand dancing.

Rah Rah Ugagugah. An unlikely candidate, being a woman. Claims that Egypt was at its best when Cleopatra was in charge. Promises to allow women the freedom to express themselves in spandex and spray-on latex costumes.  

David  "Dave" El Camel-on-Wayout. The only Christian candidate. Hopes to legalize same sex marriages in church and bring the "big society" to Egypt.

President Hosni Bumarang. Promises to return order to the country, give power to the military, execute all students and take all of his money out of the Nile Basin.

STARGATE TROOPERS

NOW THAT MUHAMMAD HOSNI SAYYID MUBARAK, the best friend to the United States of America until last night, when his decision to stay on for a “little bit longer” made Muhammad Barack Hussein Obama look a bit of a tool after having given a prepared speech to dumbfounded university students about how “change had come” when it hadn’t come yet, has finally stepped down and gone on holiday, Egypt can get on with a bit of democracy.

IT HAS BEEN EXTREMELY INTERESTING to listen to the outpourings throughout the day by the six-journalist-strong Sky News team in Cairo, Heliopolis and Alexandria, all desperately trying to hide their bitter disappointment today about the fact that they had had to spend nearly three weeks in the dismal, alcohol-free surroundings of a lifeless desert without getting the chance to see any serious terrorist attacks and thus win themselves some journalistic awards.

YET, KNOWING EGYPT, ONE DOES TEND TO SUSPECT that there may be some high jinks, if not jinx, to come in the not too distant future.

SCIENCE FICTION FANS, IT SEEMS, are already predicting new twists in the coming episodes of Stargate, the bizarre US TV series which suggests that ancient Egyptians came from outer space, built pyramids and organized our society into something sensible ten thousand years ago. This race was called the “Ra”, and its evil, despotic leader was banished to outer space by the overpowering popular uprising of “a simple desert-dwelling race”, with help from America in the figure of Richard Dean “MacGyver” Anderson.

THE REST, AS THEY SOMETIMES SAY, is history; or, rather, science-fictional futurology, which on American TV and in American politics is more or less the same thing. In order to see just how a-gley the whole shebang gangs after “liberation”, one would have to watch countless confusing episodes of Stargate. But anyone intelligent can imagine that no one really feels any better after the dust and hashish smoke have died down on the social upheaval.

I AM, AS USUAL, RACKED with questions and doubts. If Mr Mubarak was so horrendous, why did it take thirty years for a relatively insignificant group of students to come into the town square and complain? If the ancient Egyptians could fly through hyperspace, presumably having learnt how to move faster than the speed of sound, why was their writing made up of pigeons, cats, football boots, people with the heads of hyenas, and beetles? Was that the best they could do?

OTIUM FROM THE PEOPLE

PRESUMABLY ALARMED BY TODAY’S “ANTI ISLAM” march in Luton, at which something in the region of 6,000 members of the English Defence League and various other “anti foreigner” organizations are expected to attend, or perhaps worried that even the Daily Mail is beginning to be a little critical of his policies, David Cameron yesterday delivered one of his most traditionally Tory speeches since he was wooing the Conservative Grandees to become leader of their shell-shocked party.

IT IS “TIME TO GET TOUGH”, Dave tells us, on immigrant communities who refuse to accept the British way of life, suggesting that they would have to accept “British core values” such as freedom of speech, the English language, the rule of law and democracy in order to “belong in Britain”. This, of course, while sounding remarkably like something we heard last year from the ever-popular Nick Griffin, the handsome and charismatic leader of the British National Party and Member of the European Parliament, is what decent Conservative chaps like to hear, and what the Daily Mail likes to put on its front pages. So we basically have some more Dave já vu.

AND ONE IS FORCED TO WONDER, at this time when upper class multi-millionaires like the eighteen Cameron dears who are members of his government, either “running” companies that own factories which have never even been visited by their Conservative MP owners (and which employ large numbers of cheap immigrant labour), or like most of the rich ConDems who are still idling about while their fathers run their offshore investment banks for them, whether this is not just an attempt to keep our minds off the swingeing benefit cuts and stinging tax increases announced by the hapless Clegg yesterday, damaging the middle-classes who tend to feel most resentment towards immigrant communities.

STATISTICS WILL SHOW THAT AT NO PERIOD since the useless government of Andrew Bonar Law in 1922, which included seven Lords, four Earls or Viscounts, one Duke and one untitled member, has there been such a bunch of leisure-driven, out of touch, lay-a-bout, useless children of nobility running a democratic society. As long as the middle-classes keep voting for them and immigrants keep working for them at low wages they will remain merrily in otio.

SO PHAROAH WELL, BARACK

ALTHOUGH I HAVE BEEN EXTREMELY busy over the last week with issues relating to my activities as a pedagogue and translator, nothing is too important for me not to read three newspapers a day and watch TV news ad infinitum. And so I am forced to state that as to the events in Egypt, which had promised to be “televisually”, as my new American Girl Friday put it recently, “a treat”, none of this has happened. Not even after two consecutive Fridays promising the wrath of Allah.

PERHAPS THIS BRINGS HOME THE TRUTH of what was once stated by a prominent Israeli public figure in defence of Israel’s occupancy of the shifting sands and silt of the Nile that, “Egyptians like being occupied. It saves them the bother of having to rule themselves.” Indeed, never has a “revolutionary” crowd seemed more content to stand around aimlessly than these good citizens of the most ancient civilization still standing.

NEVERTHELESS, AFTER HAVING TO WATCH CRICKET for a good period of the Christmas holidays, the fate of having to watch a few more days of people standing around in public squares in Cairo is enough to make me consider switching channels and spending time watching “Top Gear” on “Dave”.

BUT, ON A MORE SERIOUS NOTE, there is a great deal one can learn from recent events: we now know that Egypt will soon be losing a president and, more importantly, that the USA does not have one at all. The question now is who will go first, Mubarak or Barack (pictured above after been sworn in as Pharaoh).