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.