FIAT LOOKS

ALTHOUGH MANY PEOPLE may believe that the present state of affairs in Europe is somewhat unpleasant, with thousands of (presumed) innocent people in countries caught in the hiatus of the “pre-post Euro” zone freezing to death in their vehicles as they attempt to drive to town to beg for food as we simultaneously witness the coldest Winter on record and the most serious financial collapse strike chill in the hearts of good people everywhere, there are still those who consider this a blessing.

A BLESSING BECAUSE we may finally be saying farewell to a few of the most irritating myths that have been getting on everyone’s nerves over recent years. (Well, at least mine and those of Baron Nigel Lawson of Blaby.) Now surely those people who harp on about overheating our planet can relax a little – or perhaps we should send some of these bearded pessimists off to dig up snowdrifts to uncover the frozen villagers in the Balkans, the Ukraine, and the Crimea and tell them to stop using hairspray and eating meat because we risk increasing the temperature of the planet by 1ºC over the next fifty years.

THE OTHER ANNOYING MYTH was that the Euro would bring equality to the member states of the EU who joined it. Nothing of the kind is possible in a million years, and surely we will now hear no more of the absurd rhetoric of the defenders of a “united” Europe and their lunacy in suggesting that one day Greece and Portugal we be on a par with Finland and Germany. Perhaps when people in southern Europe start turning up for work on time, start working and stop fiddling the books we might have a shot at this ideal, even though I am not sure I would like to live in a world where everyone acted like Germans.

HOWEVER, THE MAJOR ISSUE OF THE MOMENT for me involves the fact that my 100-watt light bulbs are all starting to pop. Having installed them all into my city residence in Lisbon at the time I moved here, some six years ago, they are dropping like flies, and my world is becoming darker as I, due to a European Union directive which was a personal project of our glorious leader José “Stalin” Barroso, can no longer buy 100 watts, but only 60, or else those ludicrous “energy-saving” light bulbs that only really start to light up my study or my living room after a couple of hours, when it is time to go to bed. And reading in bed is out of the question with my new “4w = 55w” “long-life”, energy-saving bedside lamp. Now I use a halogen torch to read in bed.

THIS FOOLISH POLICY finds some sort of symmetry in what has been going on this year at the CERN “Hardon” Collider as our scientists continue in their commendable search for the Higgs boson particle. In September last year these good people happily announced that they had managed to get neutrino particles to travel faster than light. At the time I wrote, and I quote, “‎30 seconds faster (than light) over 800 miles. And measured in Italy. In the afternoon. That doesn't impress me much.”

WE HAVE TODAY DISCOVERED that our world had not come to an end after all, as the discrepancy was due to “a bad connection between a fiber optic cable that connects to the GPS receiver used to correct the timing of the neutrinos' flight and an electronic card in a computer." At the time, however, Antonio Ereditato, the Italian scientist responsible for “breaking the speed of light” stated, “We have checked and rechecked for anything that could have distorted our measurements but we found nothing.” Why does this discourse remind me of so many Italian car mechanics?

ARSE AKIMBO

ANYONE WHO WISHES TO TAKE a look at the history of the most recently designated “Liberal Democrat” Party, also known as the SDLP, SLP or simply “Liberals”, will know that the history of this political agglomeration is one of bringing together miscreants of all bents who seem to think that the mere fact of not being Conservative and of hating Communism (both capitals are deliberate) should afford them some truck in the sphere of the perceived vacuum in the “middle ground” of United Kingdom political debate.

YET THE FACT THAT SINCE JEREMY THORPE, the last “pure” Liberal leader, who was more or less forced to stand down from office after his political career was “damaged” when it was alleged that he had raped and threatened to kill an acquaintance, Norman Scott, at a time when they were supposed lovers, we have had a list of misdemeanours from the Liberal camp (no pun intended), including MPs found to be paying (public) money for homosexual prostitutes on a regular basis.

OUR LATEST LIBERAL EVILDOER appears to be the slimy Chris Huhne, who has been vilified over recent times in the press not simply for the fact that he managed to lose a free-vote, two-choice election to Nick Clegg, which should surely make anyone with a smattering of intelligence realise that he is in the wrong career, but also has lost the plot in terms of doing the “decent thing” in politics, which many Liberals have never understood.

YOU DRIVE TOO FAST, YOU GET FINED, YOU ADMIT and you pay. This tends to be the way in Britain. Of course in Portugal, where I am as I write this, none of this would happen. No policeman would dream of taking a politician to court. Mister Huhne, however, does not live in a country where uselessness is accepted as ability; lies need to be punished in the UK. And arrogant Huhne still seems to think that he can contest this issue and “return” to politics.

HUHNE MAY THINK THAT HE IS ON the side of the common man, like other Liberals, when he puts two fingers up to the police, but the fact is that he belongs to a party of grey-suited chaps who have two fingers up each others’ arses as soon as they get the chance to slip back to their little bed-sits in south London and put the kettle on and turn their phones off so that they can’t be bothered by their wives back in the sticks.

(My picture shows the future of Liberalism in the Western World)