THAT SUMMER FEELING

DESPITE THE FACT THAT summer is upon us and under normal circumstances we might expect Britain should be more concerned about watching cricket and tennis and the price of strawberries, Portugal and Greece should be roasting sardines and slaughtering goats, respectively, and guzzling wine, in both cases, and Syrians should be doing nothing, as usual, the situation in these once mighty nations is far from easy as the dreaded crucial Thursday creeps towards us.

Que Syria, Syria

Presisent Bashar AL-Assad was elected head of Syria in 2000 after his father, the previous democratically-elected president, died. The job had been democratically lined up for his older brother, who died in car accident, which made the Syrian parliament have to lower the age requirements for being president to precisely Bashar’s age, so that everything would be “legal”. As an ophthalmologist, one might have expected Bashar to have a little more foresight in his policies when he noticed what was going on in the Arab Spring, particularly in Libya, which for many years was a single nation with Syria. Tomorrow the pro-democracy protesters, or “Islamic fundamentalists”, or “paid assassins”, or “mad dog criminals”, depending on how one sees the world, intend to hold their greatest movement of the last 106 days.

Elbow Greece

Minnesota-born Georgios Papandreou, the Greek PM, and son and grandson of previous Prime Ministers of Greece – a fact that shows that remarkable coincidences sometimes take place even in democracies – must have learned something from spending most of his life in the USA, Canada, the UK and Sweden, because on becoming prime minister the first thing he did was to honestly announce the state of Greek finances and debt. This led to the first collapse, and so, in a way, he is responsible for the mess. However, what he did not learn in these countries was a sense of democracy, given that the only member of his PASOK party who voted against his austerity measures earlier today has been expelled from his party and will thus lose his seat in parliament.

Allerta Portugalikos

My pun might be lost on those who have not had the benefit of a classical education, but there is very little I can do about that. Pedro Manuel Mamede Passos Coelho, the debonair, matching-tie-and-handkerchief new Portuguese PM and head of the Social Democrat “orange” Party, appears to possess some dignity. However, in a complete volte-face typical of politicians the world over, even before his government has been fully sworn in, he has just announced a special once-only “austerity income tax”, something against which he argued violently when in opposition, and which has not been used as an emergency measure since the time of the hated former PM and president Mário Soares. The outrage caused by this announcement is a rare case of a political honeymoon being over before anyone got their knickers off.

David and Uriah

Yet betrayal and u-turns are best seen at work in the hands of the recent master of these things, our very own David Cameron, cousin to Queen Elizabeth and direct descendant of King William IV. Cameron is also an unelected prime minister, depending upon the support of Nick Clegg and his lily-livered Liberals to stake his claim to office. Yet Cameron is acting as if Clegg does not exist (as is the Liberal Democrat party), pushing though a raft of ultra right economic policies and only conceding to the LibDems in their more fluffy and wooly demands, such as allowing homosexual men to hold hands in the street and to take away CCTV cameras from the doors of wine bars.

PUBLIC AWARENESS OF THE CYNICISM involved in Cameron’s approach is only just becoming apparent; tomorrow will see the largest anti-government protest in Britain since the 1970s, involving 750,000 public sector workers going on a one-day strike as a reaction to the news that their pensions will have to be cut in order to make them viable. This is after increasing student fees from £3,000 to £9,000 in order to allow students to “get a better deal”; after reducing government grants to local councils to less than 20% of what they were five years ago in order “to allow councils to provide better services”; after threatening to sell half of National Health Service provisions to private companies in order “to streamline the service” and give more efficiency “to everybody”; and proposing to reduce prison sentences by 50% in order to “save money” and “produce fairer justice”.

FORTUNATELY, IN THE UNITED KINGDOM WE HAVE an educated middle-class and a responsible, prying press that will not kowtow to politicians, and so the latter two measures were fiercely contested and the government had to back-track, or “listen to the people and respond”, as Cameron put it. As Cameron likes listening so much he will no doubt have his ear to the ground tomorrow.

IN THE OTHER THREE COUNTRIES facing a difficult Thursday neither of these elements are present. Friends of mine sometimes say I am a little harsh on politicians; by comparison this is true. But one single measure in each case in Greece, Spain and Portugal has been enough to ruin the economy. In each case I believe that the ministers responsible were well-meaning, but were as stupid and short-sighted as any Arab despot. In order to stimulate tourism, in a country with a lot of islands and sea with fish in it, the Greek government reduced taxation on charter boats to almost nothing about twenty years ago. The idea was that many entrepreneurs would invest in this profitable and expanding area of tourism. Am I alone in seeing what would happen?

PERHAPS NOT, AS I KNOW OF AT LEAST one journalist who saw what was coming down the pike. Alike laws in Portugal and Ireland had a similar result: in order to stimulate literary writing, both Ireland and Portugal exempted “writers” or “intellectual workers” from income tax (or reduced it to 5% in some cases). No minister ever bothered to define what a “writer” or “intellectual” was. The result in both cases was that hundreds of thousands of independent professional workers such as doctors, lawyers, dentists, accountants, film directors, actors, real estate brokers, financial advisors and translators – all of whom earning top wages even on a European scale – declared their income as “intellectual work” or “writing” (one article a year in a trade journal would be enough) and were thus spared thousands and thousands of Euros, Escudos and Irish Pounds in tax.

THE GOVERNMENTS OF THESE countries threw away tax income through an ill-thought-out policy. In the Greek case thousands of top-of-the-range yachts have been declared “charter boats” (one paying guest a year will do) and the professionals channel all their tax returns into the “charter business”, even if their main income is being a lawyer. This is a real example of governments getting it wrong; the easy way to recover the lost revenue  and get out of the mess is to increase income tax for the lower classes by 5% or so, or VAT by 11%, or to reduce wages by 20%, as in Greece. Or all three, thereby, whether through error or design, shifting the weight of tax from the upper middle class professionals to the lowest earners. People are protesting on the streets as it is; I imagine that if they knew and understood how their leaders make such stupid mistakes they would be a lot crosser.

BOOZE OIKI

“A WEEK IN POLITICS IS A LONG TIME”, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson famously stated in 1964, but that intrepid leader never had to put up with European politics, after having experience of which he may have said that a week was a long, baffling bore. Current Prime Minister Davy Cameron will now certainly know all about that, having spent a European Union Summit meeting trying to convince our northern European cousins and our other amis, amigos and amici that giving more money to Greece will just make things worse and that any problem is not Britain’s fault.

TODAY’S SUNDAY TIMES, in presenting interesting opinion articles by Rod Liddle and Matthew Campbell, shares Cameron’s attitude towards the current parlous state of affairs in the birthplace of European civilization. Liddle, particularly, points out that giving money to the Greeks is like giving an alcoholic crates of beer and making them promise to stop drinking.

THE GREEKS THEMSELVES SEEM LITTLE CONCERNED about their situation, continuing, as Liddle also points out, to Bouzouki away after lunch and dinner, dancing on the plates they ritually smash instead of washing them and using them again, although I would add that for the less traditional, younger anarchist Greeks, the Bouzouki music has been replaced by this week’s number one in the Greek charts, Jessie J’s “Price Tag” and its anthem-like, ”Why is everyone so serious? It's not about the money, money, money / We don't need your money, money, money / We just wanna make the world dance, ...”

MATTHEW CAMPBELL’S MORE SERIOUS ARTICLE interviews former Greek finance minister Stefanos Manos, who despairs of Greece’s situation and cannot understand why the “Germans” (sic) do not see what the problem is and/or that there is no solution. I will not reproduce his article point by point, but, rather fashionably for me, set out the keywords and expressions: corruption at all levels, unbelievably excessive bureaucracy, well-paid “ghost jobs”, life pensions for members of parliament after only two terms of office, government and local councils building up massive, never paid utility and transport bills, freebies and perks for everyone in public administration, enormous “adaptation” payouts to politicians who return to civil society. The list goes on.

IGNORANCE BY “GERMANS” MAY BE one reason why Greece is not being sorted out by the European union, and I imagine the same lack of knowledge explains why some British politicians also think that Portugal can be saved by an injection of money. When I read this article about Greece this morning I almost believed I was reading about Portugal, as everything written in it applies to this country.

Besides this I would add 18 days of public holidays (including the days taken when a holiday falls on a Tuesday or Thursday, automatically making the previous or following day a holiday), a whole month’s obligatory paid holiday for all contracted workers, fourteen month’s annual salary, universal rights to six months’ paid absence on “sickness” grounds, inability by the state to collect taxes from the professional classes and a black economy that probably outweighs the official one.

WHEN ABSENCE, DISOBEDIENCE, INCOMPETENCE AND LATENESS are not considered justifiable reasons for dismissal one can understand why there is little incentive for the people to work; contrast this with Luxembourg, where the Portuguese are considered exemplary employees, or the States of Jersey, where most workers in the restaurant and hotel business are Portuguese and are extremely highly regarded.

But in these places they are well paid, in the former, and hardly paid at all, in the latter, making their money on tips and productivity bonuses. With an obligatory fixed-wage 35-hour week, with no overtime allowed by law, even taxi drivers have no incentive to work extra hours, as they earn their wage at the end of the month (unless they work with the taximeter off), and waiters might as well look away when they are beckoned to our tables – the best thing that can happen to them is for the restaurateur to go bankrupt, as their redundancy payments would do far more than compensate them.

(My picture is an example of private enterprise at work in Portugal. This is the front door of a furniture shop in one of the busiest central shopping districts in Lisbon, the city with the greatest number of shops in Europe. It may be difficult to read, (I will get a better photo soon) but the timetable states: Opening time - 10 am to 7 pm (Entrada do pessoal, 10.00 horas às 19.00 horas); and underneath, Lunchtime – 12.30 to 4 pm (período do almoço, 12.30 às 16 horas). On Saturdays, when people might want to look at and buy furniture, the shop is open from 10 to 12.30. When I was at the shop recently the owner told me business had been very bad of late. Now why might that be?)

I’LL BE BACK

THE RATHER OLDER ENGLISH meaning of this term is perhaps lost on the youth of today, who, while not fully against a bit of shirt-lifting and sodomy, are not wholly in touch with the term regularly in use at schools such as those attended as children by our present political governors and then and thus meaning “I will take it up the arse this time, and then it’s my go”.

GOOD CHAPPIE KEN “FAG-ASH” CLARKE, who happened to go to one of these bum-snugging schools after receiving a grant because he was “very talented”, seems to have gifted a goal to the dullards in “Mister” Ed Miliband’s Labour Party mish-mash of failed primary school teachers, stuttering union representatives, part-time Scouts leaders, bingo-callers and general charabanc organizers who are keen on a march t’ capital and t’ call order upon t’Tories. In a radio interview Clarke announced the most idiotic proposals for changes in justice and sentencing, and it is suspected that David “the” Cameron was dragged in to plop him out of his self-made plughole.

EVERYONE WHO LIKES A GOOD CONFRONTATION, particularly when one does not have to go to work, will relish the event of the "general" strike on the 30^th of June, when the toothless and long-, level-, and evenly-accented vowel classes of England will come down to give people like Clarke a “duffin’ over”. I will be in my usual haven of toasted crumpets and slowly and evenly spread raspberry jam, watching on TV, or perhaps on my computer on my yacht.

BUT THE TERM stated in the headline, as I have used it here, means that I will be back to this issue soon. In the meantime there are things to which I should grant some care; I’ll pay the due attention to Clarke when I can.

PATER PATTER

TODAY IS FATHER’S DAY IN THE ANGLO-SAXON WORLD and so, at least in theory, fathers should be given a day off to get up to whatever they want without being bothered by their children, although Western consumer society tends to see things in a slightly different manner. Thus we have to pretend to enjoy receiving beer mugs with “The Best Daddy in the World”, “Who’s the Daddy” or “Daddy Cool” written on them, when I imagine that most fathers of decent standing would rather receive these offerings from their young mistresses than their children.

GEOGRAPHICAL CIRCUMSTANCES, if the expression is not a tautology, has seen me possessing the freedom to lounge about in the sun and drink Port and sparkling wine in a café this afternoon, rather than having to comply with the suggestion by my youngest that “on Father’s Day you can take me for dinner at McDonald’s™.

HOWEVER, UNLIKE OTHER FATHERS, our good leader David Cameron has decided to “speak out” in the Sunday Telegraph today, irate at the behaviour of some of the fathers in our nation. He has strongly stated that Britain should be a "genuinely hostile" place for runaway fathers, gentlemen who deserve, in his opinion, the "full force of shame heaped upon them" and are "beyond the pale".

IN DADDY CAMERON’S OPINION fathers who do not support their family are worse than drink drivers. This is an interesting comparison, and if Mr Cameron’s office looks into the statistics a little more clearly tomorrow morning they will find that in the most socially problematic areas of our country as many as half of the children do not know who their father is or indeed what a father is; one imagines that their fathers are in similar ignorance as to the whereabouts – or indeed very existence – of their children.

WHILST CLEVER ANALYSTS may want to point out that Mr Cameron’s well-timed but idiotically patronising remark may smack of racism, I would merely like to state that it once again shows that the Conservative and Unionist Party is always the first to stand up for the rights of bastards.

IT'S MY PARTY (AND I'LL CRY IF I WANT TO)

ALTHOUGH I HAVE BEEN DOING A BIT of globetrotting of late and dealing with professional commitments out of which I have found it unable to get, I have never lost sight of the major issues peaking and shallowing as to the countries in which I live and may be called upon to deliver advice to the good chaps who run these things.

ON RETURNING TO PORTUGAL after three weeks’ absence during which, so it seems, new governments have been elected and there is going to be a “new sweep and broom”, twenty minutes on the TAP plane shows that none of this is going to happen. “We’ve only got one type of sandwich. (…) that’s not my fault. (…) Well you should have took (sic) a different plane.”

YET I SHOULD NOT BE DRAGGED away from my main point. Our chappy friend leaders Nick Clegg and his helpful instructor Mr Cameron went into uncharted waters recently when they visited Guy’s Hospital in London. I imagine that Dr David Nunn, who was the most vociferous doctor involved in the embarrassment of the idiot boy Cameron and his fag Clegg being thrown out of the ward due to their inappropriate dress -- all in front of the cameras -- will be hounded out of the NHS over the coming times. I will be as watchful of his movements as I was of the ticket inspector who fined Cherie Blair for not having a ticket on the train to Oxford from Euston, and the late-duty PC who found Ewan Blair drunk and face down in a gutter in central London. Both of these good gentlemen underwent some traveaux in order to maintain their employment positions. One imagines that Dr Nunn may be over-zealously assessed in the future. That is what democracy under Bullingdon boys and their fags means.