TRICOTEUSE HOLLANDAISE

LIKE ANY OTHER SENSITIVE human being, I am in a state of dismay over the recent events in Paris, but am even more moved by a concern over the fact that this is the sixth time this year that (apparent and alleged) terrorists have been able to pierce the protective sheath around the French state and slaughter innocents willy-nilly.

SHIFTY FRENCH PRESIDENT FRANÇOIS HOLLANDE may have a nice line on poetic discourse, as well as being excellent at keeping a low profile when the chips are down, but it is clear -- as it should have been to the French people when he was elected -- that he is simply not up to the job of looking after the most pervious nation on the continent.

I AM PREPARED TO ACCEPT that the French do not mind having a leader who is an out-and-out thief, as has been the case with most of their recent presidents, because this seems to satisfy their Latin ancestry, but to my mind it is to say the least unorthodox to expect a man who cannot decide which of his mistresses he wishes to shag to be able to direct a war.

A WAR, AS HOLLANDE pointed out in a flowery albeit badly delivered speech yesterday, which France would once again win. Hollande is a lawyer by training, has never had a proper job in his life, and obviously knows nothing about history.

IF HE DID, HE WOULD KNOW that when France threatens war no one is shaking at the knees. France lost World War II; France lost World War I; France lost the Franco-Prussian War; and France even managed to lose the French Civil War shortly after the French Revolution, when they ended up being governed by a Corsican who turned the Republic into an Empire.

WE ARE HEARING A GOOD DEAL about France's absurd, and never implemented, claims to egalité, liberté and fraternité prevailing over the terrorists and their aims at destroying civilisation. Anyone who has been on the streets of Paris in recent years knows that, far from being the "city of lights", it is light years away from civilisation. And that it is about time we had a little more securité and CCTVé 

THIS EUROPEAN FASCIST GROOVE THING

WHEN SOME TIME AGO I POSTED a short text entitled 'Doing Things the European Way', which was bannered with the slogan "European Union: It's not Fascism when we do it", it was produced as a light-hearted joke. Although it had been apparent for some people and for some time in early 2014 that the European Union had been behaving rather like a dictatorship, I imagine that what has been taking place recently was far from even the most fletched of imaginations.

THE EUROPEAN WAY AT THE TIME was simply the heavy-handed, ham-fisted approach of Commission leader José Manuel Barroso, who, along with his grimacing puppet henchman Herman von "Humpty" Rumpoy, had on different occasions bullied the Republic of Ireland, France and the minnow states of the EU into accepting the Union's top-down rule in order to receive financial handouts, in the process ignoring popular opinion on individual matters in the respective countries.

WHAT HAS BEEN GOING ON over the last summer in the Union has been of such a greatness in incompetence, foolhardiness and overstretching of political reach and will that I have not felt it useful nor sensible to comment. The criminal actions of Angela Merkel in Germany in announcing that her country would accept as many as a million refugees-read-migrants-read-Balkan citizens-read-vote-winners without ever thinking this through is as I write leading to babes-in-arms at risk of freezing to death on the streets of major European cities or by the wayside as their families trundle from Syria to the Tyrol, utterly unprepared for what lies ahead.

THIS SAME HEAVY HAND AND DISRESPECT for the will of the people was shown in the dealings undertaken by Merkel et alia in relation to the good folk of Greece. Voting in a left wing government, in some way disrespectful to the idea of a centre-right European centralised bureaucracy, would only result in the centralised powers bringing Greece to its knees. This was a soap-operatic event which dragged on through the summer holidays, long after most onlookers had given up caring. And so the EU won again.

NOW, HOWEVER, IN PORTUGAL, we are faced with something entirely more sinister. The elections held on the 4th of October resulted in a clear vote against the pro-austerity government of photogenic Passos Coelho, of the Social Democrat party, and his elegantly-coiffured sidekick Paulo Portas, of the right-of-centre-right CDS party; beaming Socialist leader António Costa then presented his projected coalition of leftish parties to form a government.

THE SAME THING HAD HAPPENED in reverse in the UK in 2010, when Gordon Brown's Labour Party, despite being the most voted of the parties, was unable to present a viable government, thus leaving the door open to David "Dave" Cameron and his alliance with the Liberal Democrats under Nick Clegg.

A SIMILAR SITUATION SHOULD now take place in Portugal, whether under the D'Hondt system of elections, majority rule or the first past the post method. Unfortunately, President Aníbal Cavaco Silva of Portugal, himself a former Prime Minister with a minority government, has decided that a "leftish, anti-austerity" government would "at this time" be against the better interests of the European Union project.

I AM THE FIRST TO AGREE with Mr Cavaco Silva; yet I would urge him to venture one stage further in this desire for both fiscal and economic restraint and the wider European interest. Why, when we are undergoing such pain financially, should there even be such a costly diversion as elections? Would it not be better for countries to simply submit a list of parties and a (brief) summary of what each party would like to implement if elected and then Merkel, Schulz or Juncker (or someone appointed by them) could decide who wins? Think of the money we could save.

(My photo shows Cavaco Silva, President of Portugal, merrily addressing his people)

TAKE ME TO YOUR LIDL

AS MENTIONED PREVIOUSLY, Lidl Global Supermarkets, originally called called Schwarz Lebensmittel-Sortimentsgroßhandlung (Schwarz Assorted Wholesale Foods), and run by Lidl Stiftung & Co., KG, has, since 1973, managed to become the fifth-largest retailer in the world with sales of $82.4 billion (2011), and is now invading the United States.

MANY SOURCES HAVE FOUND FAULT with the unethical methods employed by this company, but I suspect that this flak is only from those who are not in touch with the zeitgeist; the fact is that in the machtpolitik of world domination the supermarket floor is today's front line, thus meaning that the foot soldiers working for Lidl should be treated as inferior beings, sacrificed to the greater good of a weltanschauung that believes that everyone will benefit from German control, and that these workers are even lower than the lumpen who buy their delicacies off Lidl's palettes.

WITH VOLKSWAGEN CARS, German industry had taken Henry Ford's maxim for the Model T of "you can have any color you like as long as it's black" one goosestep further as it produced the no-frills VW beetle. It looked bad, sounded bad, felt bad and was bad. Yet given the utterly incredible poor taste and lack of money of those who bought VWs it became a massive hit. The vehicle itself is still a star possession in the eyes of those who love revivalist kitsch.

LIDL IS EQUALLY UNFORGIVING IN ITS GLEICHSCHALTUNG approach towards the politics of ethnic minority immigrants. Lidl in the United Kingdom allegedly banned Polish (or any other) staff from speaking in a language rather than English while in the workplace as, this might "upset customers", although they were quick to deny the ban ever took place after Welsh MPs and the Polish ambassador complained.

HOW THIS WILL AFFECT FUTURE LABOUR RELATIONS in the fatherland is anyone's guess, but there is no doubt that Merkel's decision to allow up to a million migrants into Germany is, if it works, a master stroke. Germany's future plans for economic expansion into the lebensraum to the East envisaged Turkey entering the European Union, with plans to open as many as 800 Lidl's in the country already set out. Austria's veto put a stop to this idea a few years ago, but now Germany seems to have found a solution.

INSTEAD OF GERMANY INVESTING IN THESE COUNTRIES, the people in the new markets of Turkey, and then Syria, Iran etc., are now going to be in Germany, to shop and work in Lidl, and work in car factories, presumably after there has been a triage period to decide which refugee/migrants are which. This will help bring down wages, increase productivity, make German products cheaper and increase exports. Germany's generosity will also help us all forget the "bad Germany" that reduced Greece's economy to rubble.

AND WHEN THE DUST DIES DOWN in the Middle East the "new" Syrians will be extremely welcoming to their Teutonic friends in order to help them in the rebuilding process, perhaps slipping in a few German car factories and Lidl outlets as they go. After all, Germany will not be seen like those nasty French, British and Americans, all of whom, in relation to the Syrian crisis, showed nothing but Schadenfreude.

(My photo shows a projected site to be cleared to make way for the new MegaLidl mall in Palmyra)

TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER

EARLIER THIS WEEK I WAS SURPRISED one morning, as I munched on my granola with dried pomegranate, to see that what I imagined on television to be Syrian refugees queuing in desperately cold and drizzly conditions to enter yet another railway station in Austria or Hungary en route to "freedom" in Germany were in fact fans of Star Wars, the Disney company's children's entertainment franchise, who were prepared to undergo such hardship in order to be among the first to purchase plastic toys depicting aspects of its latest moving picture film release.

INDEED, IN MANY WAYS, THE REAL news about what is being called a "migrant" or "refugee" crisis mirrors scenarios from science fiction productions of recent times. One of the most popular pieces of serial television amusement now on American TV involves the drama facing a group of seemingly "normal" people who are more or less incarcerated within their several dwellings due to the dangers presented to them by hordes of starving individuals wandering aimlessly yet menacingly about and preventing the protagonists from going about their daily affairs.

SUCCESSFUL HORROR FICTION derives its impact from a capacity to strike a chord in the hearts and minds of its recipients. Never have I been more frightened by hearing a banging hatch in the attic in a film more than when I watched one alone in my house with a banging door in the attic above me. 

AT THE MOMENT EUROPE AND AMERICA is afraid of, as usual, the outsider, or, as philosophers like to put it, the "Other". At the moment the "Other" is banging on the latch on the door in the attic and we are developing a form of paranoia instead of sitting comfortably pretending that the crisis in Europe is just about to go away.

THIS REMINDS ME OF THE PARANOID WAY of seeing the wider world in nineteen fifties and sixties humorous fiction, often involving some forms of parody. In many of these science-fictional scenarios aliens, often pointing what were at the time called "ray guns", would emerge somewhere on the planet and, in sometimes broken English, demand "take me to your leader".

I DETECT A FULFILLING OF THE PROPHETIC elements occasionally present in Science Fiction with the current situation of the aliens arriving on the borders of the European Union. These people, rather than being content to remain in Malta or Cyprus, or even Greece or Italy, are demanding to be taken to our leader in Germany, someone they know will take care of them correctly. 

UNFORTUNATELY, THE DUBLIN REGULATION (Regulation No. 604/2013; sometimes the Dublin III Regulation; previously the Dublin II Regulation and Dublin Convention) is a European Union law that determines that the responsible Member State for treating asylum seekers or other distressed peoples will be the state through which the asylum seeker first entered the EU. Thus these good people are not allowed to travel to Germany.

YET FORTUNATELY, DESPITE one of the so-called "golden rules" of the European Union stating "No treaty change can be made without the agreement of all the member states", our leader Merkel has unilaterally decided to suspend the above-quoted regulation. Thus in my view, and in the line of the United States Constitution, the European Constitution could also have an amendment: "All rules apply unless Germany decides otherwise."

COMING NEXT: TAKE ME TO YOUR LIDL

THE LORD IS NEAR TO THE BROKEN HEARTED

MANY OF MY READERS WILL HAVE been present earlier today at the Eucharist Service for Sunday Trinity 11, at which, like myself, they may have noticed a sort of symmetry between today's Responsorial Psalm 34, and the day's second reading, from Ephesians 5, a Letter from St Paul, and events taking place in modern British politics involving Mr Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (above), a man who wishes to lead the Labour Party and Britain to a "New Jerusalem", and Lord John Buttifant Sewel (below), recently filmed snorting cocaine off the breast of a prostitute while wearing her bra and prior to that a Labour minister.

MAKING THIS LINK MORE OBVIOUS was the return of Mr Gordon Brown, formerly of this parish, as they sometimes say, who felt it his duty to advise members of the Labour Party on the thorny issue of whom they should choose as their future leader.

BROWN WAS AT HIS IMAGINATIVE BEST, with his speech suggesting he had also been at church this morning, as he stated that "our hearts can be broken" if Labour was not in power and was unable to do anything to change the world. Brown was relatively clear in his message, without actually venturing Corbyn's name. Indeed, when he stated that the party should be careful not to choose someone "unelectable" I detected some confusion among his no doubt carefully chosen audience: might he be referring to himself? We shall never know.

MEANWHILE, IN HIS LETTER to the Ephesians, St Paul, ever full of advice and in this aspect so similar to Gordon Brown, told us about the ways of the Lord: "be careful how you live", "do not be foolish" and "do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery" are certainly wise pieces of counsel that Brown might well have imparted to his former cabinet colleague Lord Sewel, whom I imagine to be rather heartbroken himself at the moment, now that he can no longer walk the way of a Lord.

HOME FROM THE HOLIDAYS

ONE OF THE OCCASIONALLY INTRIGUING aspects of taking a holiday is that of wondering whether all will be well on one's return; this is sometimes turned into an understandable worry on the part of those insecure people who fear that their world may have either changed beyond recognition in their absence or at least have managed to get along perfectly fine without them -- indeed not noticing their absence at all.

ON RETURN FROM MY OWN restful fortnight or so on a secluded beach, with occasional forays into the local hills, beyond the reach of electronic devices of any kind, I am pleased to see that nothing much has changed in my absence.

THE COUNTRIES IN EAST AFRICA and the Middle East continue on in their several different manners of attempting to turn themselves into unpopulated stretches of skeleton-strewn rubble; the United Kingdom and the European Union are still at loggerheads; and immigration is still the prime issue on the table in the offices of The Daily Mail.

INDEED, A MORE DISTRACTED LOOK might allow one to believe that the world and time have moved back a generation, given that the Labour Party is about to split itself again over whether to choose a lady or a left-wing lunatic in order to lead it to certain defeat for the next fifteen years, the transport unions are on strike, Cilla Black is in the hit parade and Greece is on the verge of revolution.

"BEING HOLIDAY, THE BEGGAR'S SHOP IS SHUT," announces Romeo in Act V Scene 1 of Shakespeare's turgid and unlikely soppy tragedy Romeo and Juliet, but although it is holiday time in Greece the begging knows no end; nor does the patience of the kind-hearted naïve politicians who continue to give money to a country full of mendicants that hasn't invented anything since geometry. 

AS THE POLITICAL COMMENTATOR GARY GULMAN has wisely pointed out, a civilisation that managed to invent maths, science, astronomy and democracy must surely be a good investment. Unfortunately this activity stopped around two thousand years ago, when the leaders of Greece seem to have held a meeting in which it was decided that all this inventing was hard work and they would keep to one simple project called "salad". Although in principle salad was never going to be as profitable as the above-listed sciences it may in all fairness have looked like the Greeks were onto a winner, even if they were putting all their cubes of Feta in one basket.

I HAVE A JAR OF FETA in my fridge at the moment, along with a quart tub of "Greek-style" yoghourt, their latest capital venture, but -- alas! -- both of these products were bought from my local branch of the supermarket Lidl, the modern equivalent of the German storm troopers trampling across Europe.

OKI DOKI

DESPITE BEING FORCED, AT GRAMMAR SCHOOL, into studying Latin for seven years, Greek for three and Sanskrit for two, I am unable to understand what on earth the population of Greece will be voting for today. The questions being posed defy intelligent attempts at understanding what the meaning of the referendum is, and then even those who vote "Yes" or "No" are not totally sure of what this decision will mean; it thus falls heavy on the limits of my tolerance to imagine that the Greeks will know what they are doing when they vote later on after they have managed to shuffle themselves out of their hovels, find and fix their dentures and go off to vote in their pyjamas and flip-flops.

IF INDEED IT MEANS ANYTHING AT ALL, now that we know that "noises off", as it is sometimes said in these circles, are 'pointing to' allowing Greece to carry on in the Eurozone even if they do not have Euro as their currency.

 

THIS IS THE MOST BIZARRE OF A SERIES of utterly bizarre 'deliberations' made by the unelected people who for some obscure reason are running Europe. As I write (03.03 GMT) I am watching a gentleman on television stating that the European Union will have to 'remove' the Greek government if the result of today's referendum does not go in the correct manner. This man is Dutch. I presume he was elected by someone at some stage in his lifetime, but I have no idea why he should be 'deliberating' on the present or future of Greece.

 

IT IS UNUSUAL FOR ME to watch the television channel Euronews, but I happened to be watching it this afternoon when the charmingly-named journalist Symela Touchtidou went about the streets of Athens chatting to people on these pressing issues.

 

SKY NEWS AND THE BBC were equally out and about, interviewing gentlemen in their late forties, defined as 'pensioners', who were sitting smoking at tables outside cafés drinking coffee and ouzo, bare-chested, complaining that the European Union had cheated them, and that the Germans should send them some more money.

PERHAPS I AM A BIT OF A SNOB, but I would like to think that a person who wants to be on television would prefer to be wearing a shirt, rather than resting a double chin on a fat beer belly, with the whole picture rubbed in oily sweat. No wonder they vote for people who promise never to wear a tie.

MY BIG FAT GREEK DIVORCE

(PG - Parental Guidance. Cinemas throughout Europe from July 1st)

Starring: Alexis Hoplys, Angela Mercilys, Yannis Motokyklos, Kristina Lagartixis, Jannis-Clotys Junkys, Davos Kameponys, Giorgios Osbronusuponus and Jeroen Dijsselbloem. 

TROUBLE WAS ALWAYS GOING TO HAPPEN when a Greek marries a foreigner, and when penniless Tò Portakabinos (played by Hoplys) gets hitched to German heiress Tamara Würgegriff (played by Mercilys) one can imagine that despite their obvious initial attraction, this will all play out on a downhill route to tears and breaking plates.

WHEN WÜRGEGRIFF ONE EVENING is tidying up the living room she accidentally finds some of Portakabinos's Visa receipts, where she discovers that he has been making mysterious payments to an agency run by a French woman known only as "Madame Fouet". She confronts him over this.

HE STATES THAT THESE BILLS were for his friend and one-time best man Lederjaketos (played by Motokyklos), and indeed this is corroborated by Lederjaketos when he roars up to the family home on his Harley-Davidson to defend his companion, with the perhaps unfortunate explanation of "That's just the way we Greeks are... You can't expect us to behave like Germans!" A wonderful scene is when he confronts Fouet and threatens to blackmail her.

NEVERTHELESS, WÜRGEGRIFF IS HAVING none of this, and immediately announces that she will be consulting her lawyers, played by Osbronusoponus, Kameponys and Junkys, and then finds solace in the arms of an earlier lover of hers Jan van Dykhead, played by Dijsselbloem.

Sunday Morning rating: 3/5. Better than the last good Greek film, "Exzorbitant the Greek".

THE ARTIST FORMERLY KNOWN AS PISS

THERE IS APPARENTLY A GREAT DEAL THAT CAN be said in favour of what the children nowadays call "rap" music or "hip-hop". Unfortunately I am not personally aware of what these positive aspects may be, unless it is an encouragement being presented to young people from challenged backgrounds to invest in gold so as to adorn their sporting outfits.

ALTHOUGH, OVER FIVE DECADES NOW IN WHICH I have seen myself as fashion conscious, I have never wanted to wear apparel that makes me look like I have just come from having or am just about to go to have a 'shower', rather than a bath, nor do I wish to present myself in footwear for the training track when about to go for dinner at a respectable restaurant. Perhaps I am old fashioned. 

YET I FEEL I MUST COMMENT on the latest developments in the life of curiously much-respected singer Sean John Combs, who has latterly been known, as if he were some form of criminal, as Puff Daddy, Diddy, and P. Diddy, in his position as a role model for a vast swathe of our young people in challenged backgrounds and who would wish to find some way to better themselves, given that the education system in the UK and the USA is horrendously biased in favour of people with blond hair, blue eyes and bank accounts.

THIS STATE OF AFFAIRS MAKES IT even more imperative for the Puffs and Diddies of the world of entertainment to behave themselves correctly rather than simply amplifying schoolboy behaviours into fully-fledged crime: a bit of a smacking in the playground at the age of ten, followed by a music career leading to eight million dollars per annum in music royalties, will not, it appears, lead to sensitive, thoughtful enjoyment of this money, but rather to a real "goodstyle assault with a deadly weapon" smacking of a college teacher after an altercation over how the said teacher was talking to his son, and inevitably leading to a 'stretch' indoors. As if that were supposed to be the way.

 

BUT I AM MAINLY INTRIGUED BY THE NAME changes involved in quite a few 'rappers' as they pursue their path through the travails of trying to avoid being arrested on a series of drug crimes, illegal possession of and misuse of firearms, and or domestic violence charges. Some argue that there is a form of deliberate attempt by the authorities to arrest those such as 'Snoop "Doggy" Dogg', later 'Snoop Dogg' and then 'Snoop Lion', as a sign of how maturely he now smokes his joints, in order to make an example of them. Perhaps the policemen who arrest them may be struggling with cases of mistaken identity. But in any case, the example isn't being made by the United States Police Departments.

YOU BETTER SHAPE UP

LIKE A GREAT MANY PEOPLE WITH TIME on our hands, I always enjoy a visit to London in the summertime to take in a show, and each year I am more than pleased to take in a revival of a production I enjoyed some years ago when it was first performed. One such festival of brightness was enjoyed by myself and my good lady wife last Sunday afternoon.

"TIME", AS THEY SOMETIMES SAY, "WAITS FOR NO MAN", and the cast of the musical 'Grease' have certainly aged over the years, but, to my mind, are still able to put on a decent show, even though in the original moving picture version I was somewhat concerned about the age difference between the main characters. The relationship between 'Angie' and 'Alexizuko' may have seemed odd at the time, but they have now comfortably grown into their roles, suggesting that this will run and run as they grow into deafness and dementia together.

OSTENSIBLY, ANGIE AND ALEXIZUKO would have nothing in common, she being a prim and proper 'piano teacher type', while Alexizuko is a drug-snorting Anarcho-Marxist member of a motorcycle gang whose main desire is the end of civilisation as we know it and who spent a large part of his youth hurling Molotov cocktails through the windows of banks, hamburger restaurants and branches of small mutual lending companies.

HOWEVER, THEIR FIRST KISS CHANGES EVERYTHING, after a meeting in Paris, with Angie then weeping on her pillow while singing the beautiful ballad Hopelessly Devoted to EU, as she thinks deeply about the now absent Alexizuko and whether tomorrow his feelings will remain the same.

ANGIE'S WISHES ARE DASHED, HOWEVER, when she hears news of a possible rival, after Alexizuko does not turn up for an arranged meeting with her, instead perhaps falling into the arms of the mysterious "Putzie", about whom extremely little is known except that he too enjoys a bit of dogging and biking. (He is included in the cast list for the moving picture production, but no one of this name appears in the final cut.) News reaches Angie of this "Putzie" and some hangers-on serenading Alexizuko with the song Business School Dropout.

NEVERTHELESS, ALEXIZUKO, TORN BETWEEN two lovers and agonising night after night as to what his future should be, sings the haunting Summer Nights, on Midsummer Night in homage to the midnight meetings held behind the backs of his biking community friends and during which he has sold everyone who previously trusted him down the river.

THE TOUCHING FINAL ACT ENDS with the song that brings both together in a harmony that indicates that all will be well forever. This is You're The One That I Want, the happy end that makes the whole audience go home satisfied; until we get to the sequels "Greece 2", "Greece 3", "Greece 4" and so on.

OUT OF AFRICA

AT THE TURN OF THE 21ST CENTURY when journalists were asking all and sundry for predictions about what might come to pass in the hundred years to come, many political voices seemed to favour the idea that this was finally going to be "Africa's turn", as it was so put at the time. A brief glance at the history of statements about Africa will show that nothing was new about these statements: indeed, as long ago as 1960, the somewhat ill-fated British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan stated that a "wind of change" was "sweeping through Africa".

 

THIS WIND OF CHANGE OF MACMILLAN'S may perhaps be likened to what was said only a few years ago about the so-called "Arab Spring", which would apparently bring democracy, happiness and general lovey-doveyness to nations which had previously been run by tyrants with a taste for the noose, garrotte, lash, scimitar, stone pit, cauldron of oil and, when feeling generous, the firing squad.

 

ALAS, IT WOULD APPEAR THAT THERE has not been a great deal of democratic advance in the North African and Middle Eastern countries covered by the term "Arab", nor has Africa stepped up to the plate to claim its so long announced new dawn of prosperity, with only Tunisia attempting to cut the mustard as a democracy while the other Mediterranean-bathed states have been using pepper spray to stave it off.

 

ONE WONDERS WHETHER THIS IS BECAUSE the African Union, a parallel to our own, much-beloved, European Union, might not be fully enacting its stated aim to "bring peace, prosperity and welfare" to the nations of Africa. The Union in its early days was run by people we now know to have been less than honest, when it is now apparent that its leaders ran a coach and horses through the spirit of its aims. Fortunately it is now in better hands, as my picture shows.

THERE ARE MANY REASONS BEING put forth as to why so many Africans and citizens of the Middle East are fleeing in such numbers, most of whom are relatively well-off males who have paid vast sums of money to smuggler chaps to transport them, instead of staying in their own countries, investing in an AK-70 or any of the easily-available weapons with which the African continent is awash and setting forth to storm the palaces of the disgraceful people who are subjugating them. If someone tells me that 60,000 healthy young men have left a country and spent two years trudging over savannah, Sahara, sea and Italian bureaucracy in order to get a job plucking turkeys in Suffolk, leaving eight children behind with their wives, then I can only see this as an acceptance of the regime in their country of origin.

 

IT HAS BEEN SOME TIME SINCE I HAVE dealt with one of my themes from the past when I wrote columns about the state of the world for a newspaper of some repute, but I feel obliged to return to the issue of the hamburger. In my columns several years ago I mentioned the pernicious effects of the hamburger, and particularly of hamburger gas, a scent released into the air wherever one of the main hamburger-producing "restaurants" were active.

 

I NOW BELIEVE I HAVE EVIDENCE of an even more destructive effect of the hamburger in world migratory terms. Countries which do not have any "franchise representation" for McDonald's include Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia and Libya. Countries which have their full allocation of McDonald's restaurants include Cyprus, Malta, Lebanon, Jordan, Greece and Italy.

 

TO MY MIND THERE IS NO DOUBT that the hamburger gases are being wafted over the waves and air routes to the Middle East, encouraging these young men to want to move to Europe and work as slaves, with no contracts, and in permanent fear of being sacked and deported. Yet playing their part in the great new economic success that is the European Union.

ANOTHER REMINDER

RECENT EVENTS ON THE ISLAND OF BORNEO involving photogenic Eleanor Hawkins, 23, and nine other youngsters atop the sacred peak of Mount Kinabalu have set off an intelligent discussion about whether or not the Malaysian authorities, and more particularly the Dasun tribe, for whom the mountain is the home for the souls of their dead ancestors, have overreacted in punishing these youths for playfully getting their kits off.

THE MORNING CHAT PROGRAMMES throughout the week have involved debate about whether or not there was any wrongdoing involved, and, although I tended to detect a certain smugness from some of the invited beardies about a tribe that still sacrifices buffaloes to the gods and believes that an earthquake was caused because of this behaviour, the general consensus of opinion was that we should tolerate other people's beliefs and respect their traditions when in their countries.

THIS SMUGNESS IS RIDICULOUS in the sense that our own sacred and fundamental texts in Western society, such as the Torah, the Christian Bible and the great Graeco-Roman works, suggest a God who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for indecent activity and that Mount Olympus was the home of the gods, a mountain one could presumably not climb, lift up one's cloak and show a bit of hairy Greek arse without causing ire.

MILLIONS OF WESTERNERS LISTEN TO READINGS from these texts every weekend, and I imagine there is little laughing in either church or synagogue. And there is not a lot of sniggering when studying classics at university, where the Roman and Greek belief systems are treated with great respect. The system is so much a part of our heritage that our days, months, planets and other matters are still named after them.

BUT THE SERIOUS PARALLELS TO THIS EVENT involve what happened recently with equally photogenic Stephen Fry, 57, and his young husband Elliott Spencer whilst on honeymoon in Honduras, where, according to Spencer, the couple were forced to abandon the country because of intolerance towards a married couple of the same sex. This has not been the subject of the same sort of morning television chatter, although several commentators have lamented the event, with Sebastian Shakespeare in The Daily Mail even referring to the issue as "gay-hating locals" ruining Fry's honeymoon, although homosexuality is not illegal in the Honduras.

APART FROM THE USUAL RABID reactionaries and radicals who write on message boards, I have yet to see anyone come out and defend the devoutly Catholic locals of the Honduras in the same way as our good and great defend the Dasun tribe and their own beliefs.

THE SAD MESSAGE IS CLEAR once again: if a small tribe on a remote island believes that girls taking their bras off above the clouds where no one can see them can cause a deadly earthquake then we must respect their culture, obey their rules and pay a fine so they can buy and kill eight buffaloes and sacrifice them; but if a devoutly Catholic people refuses to accept our own rules about same-sex marriage then they are just backward, gay-hating Nazis.

ONE WONDERS WHAT SORT OF OUTRAGE would be provoked if the people of Malaysia, and particularly the Dasun tribe, were referred to as "girl-hating retrogrades". It is simply another reminder that if one wishes to espouse the mainstream values that have been the foundation and are still the bedrock of our society one is lamentably in the wrong in the eyes of the Media.

BELLEND, BOOK AND BACKHANDLE

SENSITIVE AND KIND-HEARTED PEOPLE will no doubt share my sportsmanlike attitude towards recently re-elected elderly president of FIFA Joseph S. Bellend Blatter, the victim of a cruel campaign by the United States government and the British media over allegations that, as he himself termed it, "wrongdoing" had been enacted by members of the governing body of the world football association.

NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH, as we all know now, and, as he stated yesterday, if it had been the case he would not have known anything about it but has nevertheless been doing his best to stop it happening, although it wasn't happening, over the last four years, and has this morning announced that he has a plan to stop what wasn't happening happening anymore within the next four years.

WHILE THIS IS EXCELLENT ALBEIT PUZZLING NEWS, it should not be allowed to overshadow the recent announcement by former British Prime Minister the Right Honourable Anthony Charles Lynton "Tony" Blair that he is standing down as Middle-East special peace envoy after successfully completing his mission.

ALL DECENT PEOPLE WILL SURELY JOIN with me in congratulating Mr Blair for his good work over the recent years, now that we have arrived at a situation of peace in the middle east that is unprecedented in its scope. I must admit that although I have not been an assiduous visitor to the region in the past, I am now tempted to take my good lady wife on a relaxing shopping trip to Syria later in the year.

YET EVEN MR BLAIR pales in comparison with the achievements of former Portuguese socialist prime minister and electrician António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres, who was appointed in 2005 as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. His ten-year tenure as the single and most highly-paid official in charge of solving the problems of refugees throughout the world has been a resounding success.

THANKS TO THESE GOOD PEOPLE, it is clear today that there has never been a better time to be a refugee, a citizen of a Middle-Eastern country or a member of a football confederation in a third world country. Or perhaps more specifically, to be one of the three gentlemen mentioned above, with a collective, undeclared, but estimated earning capacity of over 600 million US dollars per annum. Tips not included.

NOT SO GAY ON THE WESTERN FRONT

MANY COMMENTATORS ON THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS last week have correctly attributed this past weekend’s events as being something of a ‘gayfest’, as popular parlance deems it today. Very rarely do we have the Eurovision Song Contest, the Chelsea Flower Show and a referendum on same sex marriage taking place over the same 48-hour period. On the face of it, this would certainly be a reason for celebration for those good people among us who like their liberty to be liberally spread.

 

ALTHOUGH EUROVISION SONG CONTEST RESULTS hardly ever go the way of what would be sensible in the mind of any discerning adult with an ear for music, this time the race between Swedish Mans Zelmerlow, a singer who does a very good impression of a guide at a pony trekking club, and Russian Polina Gagarina, who does a very good impression of a girl who hasn’t eaten for a year, kept excited Eurovision fans on the edges of their pouffes almost to the last minute.

 

HOWEVER, DARKER RUMBLINGS MAY perhaps be at play judging by other, somewhat less newsworthy, activity over the same period. Germaine Greer, the famous one-time spokesharridan for the "women's lib" movement in the sixties and seventies, has come out to criticise cuddly former pop star Elton John because his husband David Furnish is named as 'mother' on birth certificates of their two sons. According to Greer, the freedom granted to homosexual men to indulge in marriage and then adopt children should not extend to one of them being allowed to call himself a "wife" or "mother".

 

ALSO SOMEWHAT DISTURBING FOR FREEDOM LOVERS is the fact that the Russian singer Gagarina is apparently in trouble back home for having "hugged and kissed" the bearded Austrian Diva Conchita Wurst, thus, according to some sources, having given a good image to homosexuality.

 

NOR IS ALL WELL IN THE EMERALD ISLE if comments broadcast on one of the major news channels are an indication of popular feeling. Two bearded motorcycling gentlemen interviewed on Monday, fiancés "Ginger" Monahan and Frankie O'Tèardrop, proved that the motivation behind the changes in Irish law are perhaps more sinister and vengeful than one thinks. Said O'Tèardrop, "Thirty-five years ago Catholic priests could shaft you up the arse and you were afraid to tell your mother. Now we've shafted them."

EUROVISION NEWS 2015

ONCE AGAIN, ANNUALLY AND DESPITE the fact that I have more to do on my plate than countenances average understanding, I feel it is my duty to inform my readers about the import and outcome of tomorrow's Eurovision Song Contest, which, barring sport, is without any doubt the most important media production of the year, should viewer figures and production costs be an indication.

ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT aspects of this year's festival is the somewhat unusual inclusion in the umbrella term 'Europe' of Australia, a country which, if history tells us anything, will wipe the floor with the Europeans and win the competition without having to include cripples in wheelchairs, tattooed vampires, manic street preachers, bearded ladies, dwarfs or women so obese they would probably not even make the cut for the last song in an Italian opera for fear of breaking the stage.

YET, I HAVE BEEN GIVEN TO UNDERSTAND, the major talking point of the event this year is the fact that very few of the countries who have entered will be singing in what one used to be able to call their "native tongue". English seems to be the language of choice for those who (presumably) wish to jolly up our lives tomorrow. Nothing, of course, is wrong with this, as anyone who listens to what the children call 'pop' music nowadays, knows that this is generally produced in English. However, some countries have decided to buck the trend, and will be performing in the languages of the countries in which they were born. What follows is my own personal guide for those who may not understand these languages, thus, I believe, doing my own bit to aid mutual understanding among nations.

LUXEMBOURG -- JOHNNIE JUNK

FRESH-FACED JOHNNIE will be hoping to emulate his success in his domestic career with the sparkling, witty ditty "Taxevasiöhaven", telling of the tribulations of someone desperately in love with money, a love which is unrequited, forcing the singer to seek out more and more money until, perhaps, albeit an unlikely event, true money can be found.

BELGIUM -- LUKE NUTTER

IT WILL BE VERY DIFFICULT for this year's entrant to manage to go beyond the result of Sandra Kim, with J'aime la Vie" in 1986, but, more importantly, there is the enormous shadow hanging over Belgians after the phenomenal success of crooner Herman Humpty von Dumpty Doo, who remained top of the charts for almost five years with his Belgian cool jazz dialect song "Udontnohuaiam".

PORTUGAL -- KIKA CUNHA E CUNHA

UNFORTUNATELY FOR KIKA, PORTUGAL has not managed to enter the final stages of the competition, despite great efforts from the internationally-renowned designers Panasque et al., who managed to cover her in a latex tube in an attempt to win the competition if it had been held in the nineteen eighties. Portugal's Eurovision situation will no doubt be problematic for several years to come, with them finding it extremely difficult to follow on from the major star Duran Duran Barroso and his hit "Robiustilchitfulufucustitchiupe", which resonated throughout Europe for so long.

ON THE MATTER OF WHO MAY WIN this event, given that it would somewhat embarrassing to award the prize to Australia, I am minded to opt for Hungary, a country which, through machinations beyond my intellect, has managed to persuade Catherine "Kate" née Middleton Cambridge to sing for them.

THE LABOUR PARTY

WHEN IT WAS ANNOUNCED earlier today that Catherine Elizabeth "Kate" née Middleton, nowadays the Duchess of Cambridge, had gone into labour there were whoops of joy from those involved with the media throughout the countries who care about such matters. The atmosphere in front of the Lindo Wing of St Mary's Hospital was that of a party; more specifically that of people who had been sitting around in the cold and drizzle for two weeks waiting for a party to start.

 

FIRSTLY, OF COURSE, THERE WAS the fact -- almost explicitly admitted live on Sky TV by a fruity, girly journalist from a French glossy magazine -- that news outlets worldwide would now be able to call their correspondents back to their desks instead of allowing them to carry on with their exorbitant expenses while they look into blank lenses at closed hospital doors and spend money in London cocktail bars.

 

SECONDLY, THIS MEANT THAT we would soon be able to see the appearance at the same doors of dapper, balding Prince William and his wife, the Duchess of Cambridge, giving a much-needed boost to two of the most relevant campaigns in recent history: fresh calls for the succession to skip the mentally-challenged Prince Charles in favour of his son, and a welcome fillip to the British fashion industry as half of the young 30-something ladies in Britain and almost all of the same type of women in France go out to buy whatever she is wearing, or at least a copy of it, hurriedly produced by Primark and cobbled together in Hindustan.

 

BUT THE HAPPIEST FOLKS this morning in the run-up to next Thursday's General Election will no doubt be the members of and those who follow David Cameron's Conservative and Unionist Party. The birth of something royal, with the subsequent unfurling of the Union Flag and Standard, tends to naturally make people feel more British. This will certainly put the dampers on the campaign being waged by the Scottish Nationalist Party, and may adversely affect Ed Miliband's anti-nationalistic, pro-European stance.

 

WHETHER, HOWEVER, ONE SHOULD agree with David Cameron's absurd statement that "the birth of a royal baby makes the whole nation feel happy" is rather more questionable. And even if many people who were feeling depressed suddenly do feel happy about babies being born, then I am sure that Cameron will find ways to return them to their current state when he introduces cuts in children's benefits after he is returned to office next Thursday.

ORGY NEWS

BEING A GENTLEMAN of some standing and knowledge of the world, people often come to me and ask, "David, have you ever been involved in a sex orgy?" The short answer to this is, of course, "Yes", although it was only once, a long time ago, when I was an undergraduate at University College London. (Nothing of this sort ever took place during my later time in Magdalen College, Oxford.)

 

THE OCCASION WAS SOMEWHAT DISAPPOINTING, as one of the ladies fell asleep after drinking too much cider, and the other, who was my ladyfriend at the time, refused to have any sex because we had had a flaming row earlier when I had informed her of the impending party, to which she had not previously agreed.

 

IT IS THUS WITH GREAT ADMIRATION that I hear testimony today in a court in Lille, France, from Dominique Gaston André Strauss-Kahn, a former potential future president of the Republic of France and one-time Director of the International Monetary Fund, thus someone to whom one should look up, about his attending of "sex parties" involving as many as thirteen men and "at least" seven girls, more or less "four times per year", which is, in his words, "not very often at all".

 

I IMAGINE THAT EXPRESSIONS such as "often" can only really be comprehended in relation to what one expects "very often" or "seldom" to mean, and in that case M. Strauss-Kahn must be comparing to what he knows about other people's sex parties and how often those took place.

 

THERE IS SOMETHING BERLUSCONIESQUE in the unfortunate Strauss-Kahn's complaints that he did not know that the women involved were in fact prostitutes and that he was not sure where they came from, although the offices of the French prosecutor today announced that Strauss-Kahn knew what was going on when what was going down went down, as the children say today, and was actively involved in the procurement of ladies willing to participate in return for money. This is perhaps only one of the diferences between young students who can only afford bottles of cheap cider and multi-millionaires who have been living off the public purse for their entire lifetimes and have no idea what money really means.

UN VALLS A DEUX TEMPS

 

FRANCE HAS ALWAYS STRUGGLED to keep up with the more advanced countries in their pursuit of democracy, modernisation, equality and the well-being of their populations. I am not, of course, going to include the expression "pursuit of happiness" here, as the last thing any French citizen would ever wish for is happiness, given that they would be left with no raison d'être if a need to complain was removed from them.

 

BUT IN THE ABSENCE OF THE REALITY of being a modern cosmopolitan state, French statesmen have always had the inspiring ability to create an illusion of a modern cosmopolitan state, much in the manner of how the morose philosopher René Descartes managed to reduce the world to nothing and then build up a simulacrum of the same world and pretend it was real. Without ever leaving his bedroom. Which is an ideal state for a large number of Frenchmen, preferably when in the company of someone young and with whom to indulge in a little amourette.

 

IF FRENCH SOCIETY has been turning its back on the real issues de nos jours for some time now, then that time, it appears, has come to an end, as we now see that recognition of the déraciné condition of so many of those who live in France and should thus feel French is no more than an idée reçue that never became based on fact.

 

CURRENT FRENCH PRIME MINISTER Manuel Valls spoke valiantly last week in the wake of the murderous attack on a Parisian satirical magazine, stating "France is one nation (...) one republic". The determination he showed, as a semi-anonymous politician, was to appear to be a statesman of the first water, which is extremely rare among French prime ministers, whose names are often unknown even to the population of France.

 

EARLIER TODAY, HOWEVER, M. VALLS seems to have suffered an attack of realpolitik as he stated that France had collapsed into a state of "apartheid" in which the country was divided into ghettoes and leaderless ethnic enclaves. This remarkable volte face could possibly suggest that France is coming to accept itself as it really is rather than pretending to be a liberal democracy, or that M. Valls would like to become better known than most French prime ministers. I suspect neither will come to pass.

GOODBYE MY LOVE GOODBYE

IT WOULD BE FAIR TO STATE that at the moment the eyes of the world are firmly on Greece now that the country has the scruffy heathen Alexis Tsipras as its Prime Minister. Although it appeared, as recently as a few days ago, that there were those who doubted his ability to run a country, there can no longer be doubt in anyone’s mind that Mr Tsipras is a man of his word.

 

THE PROMISES HE HAS SO FAR managed to keep may only be that he swore he would never wear a tie, sounding like some petulant teenage boy who is being forced by his parents to attend the wedding of a distant relative, and that he would never swear on the Bible, but at least he is sticking to his guns, as they sometimes say.

 

YET IT MAY PROVE SLIGHTLY MORE DIFFICULT for him to live up to his promise to treat the hated Angela Merkel “the same as anyone else” and to speak to her only if and when he “feels like it”, given that Mrs Merkel is the real person calling the shots (just to continue the metaphor) under the skies of Hera nowadays.

 

BY A STRANGE COINCIDENCE the election of Mr Tsipras as the saviour of the most debt-ridden corrupt country in the inept European Union took place only mere hours before Artemios Ventouris "Demis" Roussos passed away. Although Mr Roussos was not Greek strictu sensu, if I am allowed to mix my classics, he, along with Nana Mouskouri, the bespectacled Greek singing sensation, gave the more serious countries in Europe a view of what Greece had to offer.

 

THEY WERE ALWAYS EXTREMELY POLITE on television and to journalists, and deferent to their betters who were giving them a chance to make a bit of money in hard cash such as the Bank of England issues on a regular basis. Not so, however, with the modern Greeks, who may end up, once again, slipping into the realm of the "soft currency unit" so enjoyed by countries which cannot feed their own children. Let alone buy them such dignified apparel as a tie. But now for those of us who live in the real world it may be goodbye, not to Berlin, but to Greece.

RANDY ANDY

BEING SECOND IN LINE FOR A THRONE, as indeed being runner-up for anything in particular, must be rather disappointing, as it invariably leads to behaviour that is abjectly beyond the pale even according to the lax standards of human decency displayed by the current dynasty forming the royal family of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

 

THE BEHAVIOUR OF PRINCE HARRY in our former colony of the United States of America, to take a readily available example, when playing pool naked in Las Vegas in the company of ladies to whom he had not been formally introduced at Court, has become so commonly expected that it was no doubt at the base of the 2014 Fox network television entertainment show called "I Wanna Marry Harry".

 

GIVEN THAT I BELIEVE FEW of those who occasionally read what I write will know of this "reality show", as the children call these productions nowadays, I feel it necessary to point out that it involves bringing twelve young ladies described by the makers of the programme rather like Indian food, as "hot" and "tasty", to meet a person they imagine to be Prince Harry. "Prince Harry" then spends "quality time" with each of these empty-headed girls, trying to find out how much like a good curry they are, before revealing he is in fact not Prince Harry to the girl he finally chooses.

 

THE SHOW IS OF LITTLE interest other than to demonstrate how it is possible for these ladies, and, by implication, the audience of this absurd afternoon television show, to believe that a royal prince of the United Kingdom might feasibly get himself involved in "recruiting" ladies to see who is the "best kisser", no doubt among other skills, before proposing marriage. The depths to which the image of our royals has sunk.

 

DEPTHS, WE SHOULD REMEMBER, which have been plumbed in the past by a previous second-in-liner. We are now seeing how a court case in the United States may end up involving Prince Andrew as a participant in underage sex events bordering on rape. Andrew has, of course, "form". His relationship with New York actress Kathleen Dee-Anne 'Koo' Stark had to be broken off when it was discovered and revealed that she had made a lesbian sex shower scene in the 1976 film "Emily".

 

SENSIBLE THINKING GENTLEMEN might consider that Andrew was clearly on the right track in this choice, perhaps being able to spend evenings reliving the scene with his new bride instead of ending up with the toe-sucking, corrupt Sarah Ferguson, whose main claim to fame is that she has brought a bit more ginger to the royal family. But now we see that our present Duke of York has been embroiled in what looks like a legally complex sex-and-money scandal and once again we should look to history to see the lessons no one ever seems to learn.

 

NEW YORK CITY was so named in honour of James, Duke of York, a second-in-liner who unexpectedly became king to disastrous results. All historical reports suggest he liked spending his spare time entertaining a variety of mistresses. He was often insulted and once called "the most unguarded ogler of his time", with Samuel Pepys lamenting, when visited by the Duke, that he "did eye my wife mightily". Nothing really changes.

A RIGHT CHARLIE

LIKE MOST PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE in the freedom for others to do whatever they want and think whatever they like as long as they do not harm others, I am alarmed at the recent events in Paris involving the cold-blooded murdering of cartoonists at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, although perhaps not as surprised as I should be, given the parlous state of Parisian society nowadays.

 

I SHOULD POINT OUT THAT I am not a great fan of this publication, and on the few occasions when it has come to my notice I have found it childish, as indeed I find a great deal of French humour. But being slaughtered at one's easel or keyboard for expressing one's rather limited and at times disrespectful view of the world must never be seen as a fair way to air our grievances.

 

BUT INDEED UNEXPECTEDLY, THE EVENTS have shown me something far more alarming over the last couple of days, and this is the utter inability of the French authorities to deal with such a crisis, suggesting, rather worryingly, that if indeed the merde ever hits the fan on a large scale in France then we would all do well to hope that proper police forces can be brought in from abroad to deal with it au sérieux.

 

TODAY I WENT TO LUNCH with the intention of finishing my reading of the amusing novel The Visiting Professor, by Robert Littell, which deals with the activities of a middle-aged university professor who almost accidentally discovers the pleasures of oral sex with a 23-year-old girl hairdresser he meets on his arrival in the university town he is visiting. Being a middle-aged university professor myself, I confess that I have found this novel rather gripping, to say the least, and expected to finish it over lunch in the peaceful town of Sintra today.

 

ALAS, THE CURIOUS EVENTS on the television news kept me from my reading, entranced as I was by what I was watching. Yesterday I watched for over an hour as policemen walked up and down a street in Paris, changing clothes, putting helmets on and taking them off again, loafing about and now and then remonstrating with citizens of the Republic who were crossing their paths carrying supermarket bags full of baguettes.

 

TODAY I WITNESSED SIMILARLY-DRESSED policemen walking up and down an embankment to no apparent purpose, slipping and sliding and falling over each other and arguing amongst themselves, while hostages were at risk of their lives in a supermarket and two terrorists were "holed up", as the television reporter put it, in a printing factory. Thousands of officers were involved, I was told.

 

RARELY HAVE I WATCHED anything that pre-announced so clearly that these events were going to end in disaster. This was at lunchtime. It now appears, according to the authorities, that the situation has come to an end, as the imbecile President Hollande has drawn a line under the matter with his speech some minutes ago. However, other sources suggest there may be "further gunmen" on the loose, and that several of the hostages have been killed by the police.

 

WITH A GOVERNMENT AND POLICE FORCE LIKE THESE, the main enemy facing freedom in France is not random hot-headed Muslims who can't take a joke, but Charlies like those in power who have no idea how to run a multiracial country, how to keep order when it breaks down or how to make anyone feel safe. The only absolute to come out of all of this lamentable business is that the extreme right in France are closer than ever to getting elected into power; and that means trouble for leftwing atheist cartoonists and Muslims alike.