WINTER OLYMPICS

WHY WE HAVE WINTER OLYMPICS is something of a mystery to me, given the fact that the "Olympic spirit" was born out of an idea of keeping people healthy in mind and body. And how four men lying on top of each other in close-fitting latex suits on a piece of oiled plastic, hurtling down a thousand yards of packed ice can contribute to the health of either mind or body of any of these gentlemen remains something that I need explaining.

NOR WOULD ANY DECENT GENTLEMAN be seen wearing the outfits that these people put on to go about the scenarios of the "games". The gaudy colours are bad enough, but the tight-fitting spandex makes everyone look like a Durex condom in sunglasses. Which, I am forced to believe, is what some people want to be.

THE MAIN EVENT, of course, in the Sochi games, was the small bore shooting competition in which the electrician who ruined the opening ceremony when the lights did not come on properly was taken out into the woods at dawn and shot in the back of the head.

IN THE MEANTIME UKRAINE wants the right to some form of independence. Does it really matter to anyone? And even if Crimea becomes an independent state will it make any difference? And why does Vladimir "Ras" Putin want to maintain a union that has always been tense? My vote is that the future for the Ukraine, which will no doubt be governed by one of the boxing Klitschkos, could be solved by a good ice-hockey match, putting Putin helmet and stick-to-helmet and stick against Vitali. This could be shown live on TV. The revenue might even save the dire Ukrainian economy, given that they haven't been able to produce a marketable product without Russian help for the last six centuries.

NOT TONIGHT JULIE GAYET

THE RECENT SCANDAL INVOLVING the photogenic President of France, François Gérard Georges Nicolas Hollande (above) and his possible bonking relationship with actress Julie Gayet (sic) and subsequent hospitalisation of his partner Valérie Trierveiler due to grief and stress, has once again served to show the Anglo-Saxon world the depths to which the European Union has plummeted.

ONCE UPON A TIME we in Britain considered that French gentlemen had a certain savoir-faire and panache, and that French girls had a je-ne-sais-quoi that we did not know what it was until these same girls did it to us, bringing us a joie-de-vivre that was unusual to find on our home shores.

EQUALLY, IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN ASSUMED in England that French men enjoyed the idea of dipping their wick in foreign vulva, never managed to get the job fully done but went about the ville bragging about the shagging. So the fact that socialist Monsieur le Président Hollande was caught with his pants down and then refuses to admit he did the dirty, then threatening the press with court action is revealing of what Europe has become.

WHEN DECENT BRITISH POLITICIANS, such as Labour's Robin Cook and John Prescott, and the Conservative Party's John Major, Boris Johnson and David Mellor can openly admit to having a bit of afternoon relaxation with their secretaries, yet the French refuse to admit that this goes on, we can see how the effect of the Euro currency has reduced that once proud nation to a state of wussiness. And once a French wife used to give her errant husband a good smacking, throwing suitcases into the street. Now they check into hospitals.

DOING THINGS THE EUROPEAN WAY

THE RECENT UNPLEASANT SPAT between PM David Cameron and António Guterres, former Portuguese Prime Minister, President of the Socialist International and current United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees proved interesting for more than the obvious reasons.

FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT KNOW, Mr Guterres criticised Cameron's plans for restricting immigration into Britain from the rest of the European Union. Cameron, of course, knows full well that nothing will come of these announcements, as unless Britain leaves the EU it will just have to put up with the vast numbers of people arriving in the UK every day, leaving the Republic of Ireland, Portugal and Greece virtually without any young people. The same will happen soon to Romania and Bulgaria.

THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY RESPONSE through its vice-president Bob Neill, was, “We are not going to accept lessons on how to manage our borders from a failed Portuguese Socialist transformed into an unelected UN bureaucrat”, and MP Douglas Carswell said Guterres’ remarks were “foolish” and should be “immediately filed in the waste paper basket”.

GUTERRES MAY BE A LITTLE UPSET by these remarks, despite the fact that they are completely correct, but what seems of more importance to me is the fact that British Conservatives do not seem to understand the European way of playing politics.

UNDER THE SO-CALLED D'HONDT METHOD, invented by the Belgian Victor D'Hondt in 1878, and widely used throughout Europe, rather than the "winner takes all system" we in Britain and our colonial cousins in Canada, the USA and India use, no one is truly "elected". In this system the grandees of the parties sit down at a table and draw up a list of their friends to be elected. The "people" have no choice in this matter, and simply vote for their favourite party without knowing who the candidates are. Those "elected" by the people have no responsibility to the voters, but only to the members of the party with political clout.

THIS IS NOT TOO FAR FROM TOTALITARIANISM, as Mr Cameron should understand, having criticised the system when Nick Clegg wished to introduce it to elections in Britain. But Europeans love it: it means they don't have to think; they don't have to remember anyone's names; all they have to do is tick a box next to a picture -- they don't even have to be able to read. (Which makes one wonder how they digested the party manifesto.)

THE EUROPEAN UNION EMBRACES this system and takes it one step further, through the "nomination" system by which the three most important people in the European Union were chosen. Catherine Ashton, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, was nominated the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission; Herman von Rumpoy is President of the European Council, and was elected by a secret ballot that is so secret that nobody knows who is allowed to vote; and the much-hated José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, was "invited" to take the position. None of them seems very worried about not having been elected.

 

THE TRUE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS

ONE OF THE PROBLEMS ABOUT CHRISTMAS over recent years has been the delicate matter of trying to understand what it is all really about. When the modern idea of Christmas was expanded into its current form during the reign of Queen Victoria, who imported it from Germany and then exported it to many countries throughout Europe through her dozens of children and grandchildren who married into royal households, the spirit was simple, albeit a radical change from the past: the Christmas period was one for being with the family, eating well, exchanging modest gifts with those who came to visit and sharing in moments of peace.

THERE STILL REMAINED A MODICUM OF THE RELIGIOUS element, particularly for the poor, but it was soon cast into second place with the arrival of the Coca-Cola-Company-designed Santa Claus, a figure far more interesting than a little baby sleeping in a barn, particularly as hardly any urban young children had an idea of what a manger was.

SINCE THE NINETEEN-FIFTIES Christmas has morphed into a sort of shopping fever festival, in the early days mainly involving buying toys for children, but by the eighties this had boomed into buying at least one present for every member of the family, including close relatives whom we see every single day of the week. The notion of “peace” among men, however, has dwindled to the point that most Christmas meals involve a family row. This may be due to alcohol, the fact that we have to mix with relatives we hate or the fact that we didn’t get the present we wished for (as for some reason this has become a secretive business).

BUT THE LATEST TWIST IN CHRISTMAS is reflected in the joke made by the late American stand-up comedian George Carlin: “The main reason why Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.” Christmas has become a time for selling sex. In the old innocent days of TV perfume ads the selling point was a scene when a husband would say to his wife, “Honey, you smell so good”, and she would wink at the camera and a picture of a bottle of Chanel Nº 5 would appear at the bottom of the screen.

NOT SO TODAY. One brand shows us a semi-naked woman in a bath and then in bed with an answering-machine (do they still exist?) voice-off begging her for more sex “after yesterday afternoon” (sic); another shows a young couple stripping each other on the stairs on the way to an apartment and having sex before they even manage to open the door; one shows an elegant blonde walking through crowded halls and peeling off her clothes as she goes; a girl is pursued and (presumably) raped by a wolf in another, etc.

CHRISTMAS HAS BECOME LEATHER pencil skirts, black stockings with a line up the back, patent leather stilettos and desperate, violent, hurried sex sessions in any place or position except in a bed. And so, once again at this time of year, I would like to wish all my readers the very best for Christmas, hoping you enjoy it in the true spirit of Christmas 2013.

(Post Script. One chap has electronically mailed me asking whether this means that my desire is for everyone to get a good "shagging", as he put it, at Christmastide, and I suppose that is true. Happy holidays, except for students, who have to go home to their parents, and that is when the shagging stops.)

WHAT DOES THE EUROPEAN UNION SAY?

ONCE AGAIN THE UK is involved in a little spat over what the unelected European commissions and committees think they should be allowed to apply to a legal system that has been in some form "elected" or "chosen" by the people of England for over a thousand years.

 

NO ONE ELECTED DURÃO BARROSO, the much-hated leader of the European Commission (above). No one elected the putty-faced and brainless leader of the European Union, Herman von Pussy-Dumpty. And yet elected governments such as the UK, in this case in a country in which the representation by voter is the most simple and direct in Europe, have to put up with weird rules established by the European Court of Justice.

 

THE LATEST ISSUE WITH THE UK GOVERNMENT has to do with the right to vote by serving prisoners. Prime Minister David Cameron has said this will not happen, and I will personally protest if the idea is accepted by the British Government and the law in England and Wales.

 

IF EUROPEAN COUNTRIES WISH TO HAVE their laws made by criminals then that is their business. And I could, without any consultation, reel off a list of French, Spanish and Italian presidents, prime ministers and deputies who have all been found guilty of embezzlement, robbery, thuggery, corruption, pimping and sundry minor crimes of robbing the public purse.

 

SO PRIME MINISTER DAVID CAMERON has asked for clarification on this matter of the voting system, something incompatible with our "first-past-the-post" system. The language used by the European Union documentation is always difficult for us to understand due to the double-talk and off-key translations used by the Brussels authorities. When Prime Minister David Cameron asked the European Parliament about the issue of voting for prisoners, the response was:

 

 

Yaki-yaki-yaki-do Yaki-yaki-yaki-do Yaki-yaki-yaki-do Umm-baba-umm-baba

THE NEW KAISER CHIEFS

I AM FULLY AWARE of the fact that when one writes about the recently deceased Nelson Mandela without swelling fulsome with praise there will be a flurry of criticism similar to what happens whenever I write stating the fact that the absurd "global warming" protesters are just that: absurd.

 

NO ONE CAN DENY that Nelson Mandela suffered for his beliefs and stood defiant in his wish to see a new Republic of South Africa, and his acts were in many ways on the level of those carried out by the great Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who was also given a hard time in South Africa by the obscurantist chaps who ran the country in the nineteen forties.

 

BOTH GENTLEMEN, so I am led to believe, went on to "improve things" in their countries and approached something near to sainthood in the eyes of those who grant credit to such entities as saints and angels.

 

SO WHY DO I SEE, when watching the week-long "celebrations" of Mandela's passing, images of young black children barefoot in ghettoes? Why did I see hardly any white faces in the 90,000 stadium which is the jewel in the crown of this "rainbow nation"?

 

AND WHY IS MANDELA'S natural heir, Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, now President of the Rainbow, booed each time he appears in public? When even the true hero of the liberation of South Africans, President Frederik Willem de Klerk, was not given any prominence during the ceremonies? As I write, it looks like the nation may slip back into something worse than Mandela may have envisaged or even lived through. The time of the dictators seems to be returning.

THE BASHAR STREET KID

I HAVE BEEN MORE OR LESS UNABLE to keep up with my commitments of late due to a series of factors involving excess of work, illness to my good lady wife and a lack of anything out of the ordinary to write about, given that government incompetence and economic failure have become our daily bread, No one in their right minds expects to see a "recovery" (whatever that might be) for the next twenty years or so and so most of us who are living off accrued income and investments are forced to simply watch our income be reduced.

 

HOWEVER, ON THE FOREIGN FRONT, I have been paying some slight attention to the activities taking place in Syria. When, when what seems years ago, the soi-disant Arab Spring began, there were foolhardy journalists in the left-wing press in the United Kingdom, the openly socialist BBC, and the occasional article in the United States press (just to show balance) who heralded a "new dawn" of democracy in countries that had previously had a dearth of rights for the common man.

 

THE CURRENT SITUATION SEEMS to suggest that the new aurora has not been a great success. Tunisia has no apparent government at the moment, Libya is utter chaos with the only law being dictated by firearms, Egypt is a mystery even more unfathomable than Russia used to be, and Syria is, as I suppose everyone knows, a disgrace beyond belief in present times.

 

PHOTOGENIC BASHAR HAFEZ AL-ASSAD, the current leader of Syria (above), is relying on the fact that there has to be some limit on how many 19-year-old boys the United States of America and the United Kingdom are prepared to sacrifice in order to depose vile despots. This is particularly sensitive after we have seen over the last ten years that "the new guys" in power are usually not much better than the ones that we sacrificed thousands of our soldiers to replace.

 

YET, WHAT HAS PROVOKED me into writing this is the fact that Bashar stated last week to the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar that he deserved to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after it was granted to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) watchdog currently destroying his regime's massive chemical arsenal.

 

AFTER THIS STATEMENT, EYEBROWS WERE RAISED, as we sometimes say, but not mine. I cannot see any reason why the bloody hands of Bashar should not be given a Nobel Peace Prize. After all, last year it was given to the European Union, a much-hated organisation that has been destroying the lives of over a hundred million people through its idiotic Euro currency and common policies on agriculture, condemning most of southern Europe to poverty, misery and -- increasingly -- suicide or emigration to Germany, which is more or less the same thing.

 

BASHAR, IN MY OPINION, WOULD BE a worthy successor to the sinister Barroso, the vague and incompetent Von Rumpoy and the hated Angela Merkel at the EU, although at least Bashar and his assassins put their victims out of their misery very quickly.