DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME

THE MEDIA JURY IS STILL out on the issue of what “happened”, or what “went wrong” in the extremely sad case of what will apparently now forever be known as the “Batman Shootings” in Denver, Colorado earlier today. The miserable ramblings of guest “experts” today on all of the rolling news channels, with their potted theories about “what could have made anyone do this” and other such banalities ignore the simple fact that Batman himself, or rather “The Dark Knight” is really the one to blame.

WARNER BROS IS SO POWERFUL that last week it shut down negative comments about the latest film in its Dark Knight franchise on www.rottentomatoes.com  (which it also owns) because of negative comments about the movie and death threats to critics who denied the film its (apparent) status as a classic.

WHEN I WAS A LITTLE BOY my friends and I used to play out in the street, with toy guns, and we used to go “bang bang” when we were supposedly firing them. Some of the more, I suppose, “sensitive” among us would pretend we had been shot and fall down and play dead, but most of us would say “you missed” and then there would be an argument, which usually led to no conclusion, and then we would go off to play something else.

IN THOSE DAYS BATMAN was on TV and everyone of my age used to watch it on Sunday afternoons, with Adam West and Burt Ward. The whole thing was camp, colourful and delightfully over the top. And no one ever got killed.

WHEN WE COMPARE THIS WITH THE WAY BATMAN movies have gone nowadays, with more killings than a video game, we have a ready-made answer as to “what could have made anyone do this”. But I have to confess that I suspect that this is a phenomenon confined to the United States of America, Finland, Norway and the two Germanies, where even people who have not finished their PhD can buy firearms. When this type of violence takes place at the Odeon in Oxford, where indeed a large number of undergraduates wear black capes already, then I will believe that the end of civilization is in sight.

DIAMOND GEEZER

THERE ARE MANY ADVANTAGES to being a senior lecturer in a liberal arts course at a university in an extremely relaxed country. The most obvious one is the fact that my teaching responsibilities are reduced to two days a week for twenty weeks a year, which is the plan set out by the absurd pan-European “Bologna” agreement, a method set up primarily to keep students at university for as long as possible in order for them not to inflate the unemployment figures.

ANOTHER ADVANTAGE IS THE FACT that I do not have to spend much time with my colleagues – or indeed with anyone – due to our timetables being mutually independent of each other.

THE NEXT STEP in this cadency is that when I do have to mix with my liberal, woolly-headed colleagues I have no need to discuss anything of any true importance with them. Most of them have no idea about, for example, the recent Euro 2012 football tournament, the Chinese programme to colonise space, the banking crisis or – the issue of the day – the first ever divorce between Thetans, as Tom Cruise prepares to be skinned by Katie “Earthling” Holmes.

INDEED, FOR THOSE COLLEAGUES of mine who teach subjects such as “Intellectual History of the Identity of Cities”, “Philosophy of Landscape”, “Culture of Analysis of Linguistics” or “Echoes of the Fox in Early English Literature”, the most important matters of the moment mean nothing. And the financial matter most discussed today would never pull them out of their ethereal complacency

“BONUS” BOB DIAMOND, head of Barclays Bank, resigned today in the wake of the Libor interest rate fixing scandal and selling of anti-interest rate fluctuation packages against rate increases. The first misdemeanor (as it is not yet a crime) probably negatively affected hundreds of thousands of people who are buying property worldwide; the second has sent at least (as far as is known) two hundred small businesses into distress and liquidation.

NOW THAT “BOB” HAS RESIGNED, he will be free, tomorrow to say whatever he thinks is true as he faces an investigation into false Libor submissions. Whatever happens during this inquest, and whatever subsequently takes place with Marcus Agius, helmsman of the bank that has “stiffed up” so many of those who rely on interest rates, this will not deflect my happy, giggling colleagues or my morose, introspective ones, from their way of looking at the world. And, as one sometimes thinks (or even says, in the right company) when visiting the zoological gardens, perhaps they are really happier than we are.

SENSE AND VINCIBILITY

ALMOST DIRECTLY ON CUE, David “Dave” Cameron and George “Boy George” Osborne seem to have come to the modicum of whatever senses they have and decided that enough is enough over Europe. Whether this has to do with events heralded in this very blog on the 28th of June – the day when the Eurozone became a centralised state awaiting pan-Eurozone taxation – remains to be seen; nevertheless, the moment has seen Cameron and his fellow Old Etonian prankster change from a softly-softly warmish approach towards Europe and the dreaded European Union to a mildly cool one.

ADDED TO THIS, THE EMERGENCE of former defence minister Liam “After the” Fox with an outright anti-Europe speech this morning, calling for a referendum about “leaving Europe without pain”, shows that the Conservatives are just about getting their act together. And they are doing so in a manner swifter than anyone might have imagined last week. Perhaps, cynics might suggest, as it is becoming clear that no other Conservative policy is going to be a winner in the next election and the anti-Europe vote is a guarantee of an extra 10 %.

NEVERTHELESS; WITH A BIT OF LUCK this sudden faith in good sense will last long enough for Britain to be able to leave the hideous European Union permanently in the near future, hopefully before the European Federal Superstate is established, something which is far, far from the “common market” that we joined in 1973 under hapless Ted “Grocer” Heath. Unfortunately, summer break is at hand, and after this our good leaders will come back and will probably have found some other “hot” issue to discuss, such as obligatory carrying reflecting jackets or triangles in our cars. Or whether killing badgers should be banned.

EUROALPHAVILLEBADSTADT

WHEN THE CURIOUS LOOK BACK at important moments and movements in history they seem to find some solace in their own ability to establish patterns, sequences and, most importantly, dates. The latter are often considered to be of paramount significance to mark the beginning of the shifts and nuances that signal the great changes that are to come.

THUS EVENTS WITH FAR-REACHING CONSEQUENCES are justified as depending on “key dates”, rather than really important matters such as the fact that Napoleon Bonaparte suffered from haemorrhoids and couldn’t bear to sit on his horse at Waterloo or the fact that Julius Caesar’s hard-on for Cleopatra led to the split in Rome that pointed to the end.

OF COURSE I AM BY NO MEANS SUGGESTING that bowel problems or other people’s erections may have any bearing on the policies followed by our good leader Angela Merkel as she guides the jolly ship of Europe onto the rocks or into the clear blue water of Euro-heaven.

BUT WHAT IS CLEAR IS THAT future nerdy historians will end up discovering that Thursday the 28th of June, 2012 was the date when the dream (or nightmare) of the European Union finally moved into fifth gear and made it impossible for any reverse shift.

EVER SINCE THE INCEPTION OF THIS HIDEOUS IDEA there has been the worry that at some time the European Union would take control of our banking system and would start to introduce taxation, “stealth” taxes at first, but in the end taxes removing power from the lesser, so-called “peripheral” countries, and putting it all in the hands of Germany.

TO BE HONEST, I AM NOT SURE whether, living in Portugal, I would rather be governed by Berlin. For the moment, despite all the warnings and lessons in the past, it seems safe to state that Angela Merkel, the ubiquitous, photogenic German Chancellor, does not present a danger to our freedom; yet to take a snippet of referential quotes from Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville (above) and then from that by the marvellous The Monochrome Set, we might say “she’s a movie star, she’s a little bit touched; (Don’t look now) She’s so wünderbar, all gears and no clutch”. And so where is she taking us?

LAGARDE THE CYNIC

THERE MAY NO DOUBT be good reasons for Greeks to be outraged and insulted by Christine Lagarde’s statement suggesting that they are less than law abiding. Indeed, the announcement by burly Evangelos Venizelos, the leader of PASOK, that Greeks are honest and that the history of Greece is one of decency, aestheticism, art and literature may ring true today even on the sidewalks of Athens, where thousands of pot-bellied, bare-chested men sit getting drunk and spitting pistachio shells all over the place every day.

YET AS A RENOWNED INTELLECTUAL and someone well versed in current and past political and social philosophy, people often come up to me and ask, “David, why is Greece doing so badly and why is that fruity French lady in charge of the IMF saying that Greeks are dishonest?”

THE SHORT ANSWER IS THAT BOTH political figures are correct. The history of Greece is indeed a source from which we may take lessons about the Greece of today and Lagarde does have a point. The issue revolves around what part of Greek history and philosophy we should cast our eye upon.

THE COUNTRY’S MOST RECENT contribution to European culture upon which I have cast my eye was the song “Aphrodisiac” by Eleftheria Eleftheriou, described by at least one commentator of the programme as the lady with the most “approachable” rear end in the competition; but Greece’s history is replete with excellent examples of figures that should be followed closely.

DIOGENES THE CYNIC (404 BC – 323 BC) was a major figure in Greek and European philosophy. His father was a minter of currency, and somehow Diogenes “debased” it, and was then punished with exile. He ended up in Athens, where he decided to set himself up as a moral leader, seeing that Athens was a corrupt society. He took it upon himself to show extreme austerity, seeing true virtue in being poor. He thus begged for his food and slept in a bathtub in the street.

THE MOST FAMOUS OF HIS MANY public actions was when he wandered around Athens for days and days on end carrying a lamp. Whenever anyone stopped him and asked what he was doing he would reply that he was looking (in vain) for an honest man.

MY TOP PICTURE SHOWS THE PAINTING “Diogenes Looking for an Honest Man” (c. 1780)(probably) by JHW Tischbein, one of the remarkable moments in Greek history that Greek philosophical historians apparently choose to ignore, and the second one, “Diogenes” by Jules Bastien-Lepage (1873), depicts what most Greek people will look like if Lagarde has her way.

HUMPTY DUMPED

“ALL THE KING’S HORSES and all the King’s men/ Couldn’t put Humpty together again” we are told in the nursery rhyme about the fact that once an egg is broken it can’t be put back together. It has an interesting parallel in the statement made by Lord Wolfson, referring to breaking up the Eurozone as “unscrambling an omelette”. He has backed up his belief that this will be impossible to do safely by offering £250,000 of his own money to anyone who can come up with a sensible plan to do so.

FURTHER, THE NEWS THAT HOME SECRETARY Theresa May is drawing up contingency plans to prevent mass migration to the United Kingdom after the collapse of the Euro, announced today in most major newspapers, coupled with the statement by the ever-tanned Christine Lagarde that Greece has “had it good for years” and now it is “payback time”, have together more or less pulled the plug on the future of the European Currency, if not on the European dream itself.

IN ADDITION, THE ADMISSION by the Spanish government yesterday that it dreads a victory in Baku in the European Song Contest tomorrow, as Spain does not have the money to stage the final next year shows that there is not really any point to Europe anymore now that the highest accolade of our culture means nothing.

FRANCE’S THREAT TO REINTRODUCE border controls on its Italian frontiers may also be a sign of the inevitable break-up of the freedom of movement within the Schengen countries, and so, all in all, unless the Germans suddenly come up with the money to pay for the southern European countries to carry on doing nothing for most of the year, turning up late for work and clocking off early when they do work, enjoying an average of 18 bank holidays with extra days taken off when these holidays fall on a Tuesday or Thursday and receiving a full month bonus in December and August I suppose that the game is up, new currencies will be brought in and the only way up will be constant devaluation.

HOW DID THIS ALL GO SO WRONG?, people may ask. How did this wonderful, romantic notion of countries united in their common aim of freedom, truth, justice and equality, based on growth and respect suddenly turn into a nightmare of bitterness, mismanagement and failure?

THERE ARE MANY LONG ANSWERS to this question, but the short one is this: when Europe decided to let itself be run by a parliament of second-rate, second hand political failures who, having been unable to cut the ice and get elected in their own countries, ended up being nominated for the European Parliament. And then the European Parliament itself, with the wisdom only possible to a bunch of useless incompetents, “nominates” two of the most representative fools among it, Humpty Dumpty von Rompuy and Joseph “Stalin” Barroso to run its policies. These two incompetent has-beens then nominate a disgraced Italian economics “expert” to run the European Central Bank, supported by a failed Portuguese finance minister, and, as one can see, the rest is history. Or rather future.

(My photo shows the President of Europe making one of his stirring, rousing speeches)

EURO 2012

LIKE A GOOD MANY PARENTS, I am indulging my younger son in his desire to collect the Panini stickers to be inserted into his album of the Association Football national teams involved in the forthcoming UEFA Nations Challenge Cup competition, this year held in the unitary state of Ukraine and the Republic of Poland.

THE MAIN REASON BEHIND my attitude is somewhat like my approach to having had him baptized; it is a matter of social insertion. The youngsters at his schools collect these badly-photographed stickers of footballers who will never play in the final competition, as well as omitting some who will, and the exchange of “swaps”, with the ensuing bargaining process, will bring him into contact with the basic rules of capitalism. Or so I had thought.

ON THE ONE OCCASION when he took a similar album to school he returned minus most of the “star” players from the teams of Everton, Liverpool and Manchester United. I, shocked, pointed out that this was not the intention of the game. “I gave them,” he told me, “to other children. Who needed them.”

IF THIS IS THE SORT OF COMMUNISM allowed to go unchecked in our schools nowadays then I can easily see why our countries are on the road to ruin, which brings me to the real “Euro 2012”.

IN THE FUTURE, when one refers to this competition, “Euro 2012”, the term will be clouded in acknowledgement to the events of 2012 which led to the debasement of and ultimate eradication from our collective shopping experience of the chirpy “Euro” as a spendable monetary issue.

IT IS MORE OR LESS COMMON knowledge now that Germany is having Deutschmarks printed in secret at mints in Switzerland, Greece is producing new Drachmae, Portugal is soon about to come forth with a totally new currency, still shrouded in secrecy, and that the Euro is doomed, but for many people the “Euro” may still be saved.

AND THE ONLY WAY THIS CAN HAPPEN is if the England team play to the best of their abilities, thrashing all those in their way and managing (I do not know the logistics of the competition) to come face to face with Germany in one of the later stages of the tournament. The toss-up before the game, which could easily be the final tie, should be over whether Germany accepts the free market economy or the United Kingdom leaves Europe altogether. And then it will probably go to penalties. (My photo shows England warming up before the European Union)