Off the keyboard of John Ward
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Published on The Slog on December 31, 2014 & January 1, 2015
Discuss this article at the Kitchen Sink inside the Diner
The Belles of St Trillions
As 2014 closes, let us celebrate those of the other gender fashioned from Adam’s rib who finds themselves at the centre of the global storm: the Belles of St Trillions.
Cristina Elisabet Fernández de Kirchner, commonly known as Cristinnza Kirchner referred to in Argentine media as CFK. Reelected President of Argentina. Prime supporter of Argentian onwnership of islands where less than 0.2% of inhabitiants want to be Argentinian. Total national debt of Argentina: £1.3 trillion.
Christine Lagarde, first ever female leader of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). A French lawyer who took up the post after Dominique Strauss-Kahn was stitched up on a sexual abuse charge of which he was innocent. Currently due to be indicted in France on charges of gross corruption and misuse of public funds. Widely quoted in 2012 as saying that French banks are “as safe as houses” just a week before they sold their investment in a major Greek bank for 1 euro. Total national debt of France: £1.7 trillion.
Angela Merkel, Bundeskänzler of reunited Germany, formerly a Youth Leader in the Communist DDR and daughter of the only senior German official ever to defect from West to East Germany. Total national debt of Germany: £1.9 trillion.
I fancy this might be circumstantial evidence suggesting that it isn’t just men that waste money, don’t know how to provision, and can’t understand domestic budgets.
Next year: why men are more fun in supermarkets.
GREEK MYTHS: OH WHAT A DIFFERENCE A NEW YEAR DOESN’T MAKE.
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The appalling horrorscope of the Barclay Twins’ power to mislead
We have a New Year that promises interest in the Chinese sense. But fear not…for nothing has changed: if necessity be the mother of invention, then money is the father of convention. And the contemporary convention is that greed is good. Except when it isn’t. After the Christmas blowout, anyone for metaphors?
A tragedy, and yet a New Year’s message for anyone prepared to see it: another year, another number, another twelve months spent drowning in denial. Mind you, things have moved on slightly at the DailyTelegraph, where Android Evan-Elpus’s schizoid condition has been formalised. The most recent offering gets this introduction to AEP’s shock-horror OMG take on things:
So then, lots of people likely to suffer along with those nasty smelly Greek lazy hairy oily fatsos if the Red Brigade led by Beelzebub incarnate Alexeivitch Trotpras seizes power. But below the main picture a mere five centimetres later, we learn:
The use of the word ‘rebels’ there is an appalling insult to the Greek electorate; but the abrupt 180 degree U-turn on interpretation is a record even for Ambrose. However, both these signs suggest to me that after AEP left the office, one of the Barclay twins’ quisling bumboys emailed the Odd Couple in the Channel. Either they both have the consistency associated with all card-carrying newsbending fascists neoliberals, or (I’d imagine more likely) the Teletubbies couldn’t agree on the ramifications. At the age of 80, perhaps they’ve finally become doolally. But once again, I am forced to ask here whyTF these two clowns are allowed to turn out this bilge of self-interested and near-deranged news manipulation using a national institution as their vehicle. And the answer is, of course – just as with Newscorpate Austropathicus – they are way beyond any law that counts.
But far be it from me to be holier than they: I feel terrible. I don’t know how it happened, but I forgot to send the Baby Jesus a birthday card. What am I like?
At the End of the Day
The year opened with the momentous news that The Slog has passed 13 million views since being launched in 2009.
This evening’s filmic offering on ITV2 was the James Bond epic Live and let Die Another Day only Not Twice Forever. I tried to follow it for the first five minutes, and then I gave up. My guests spent the next two hours asking whether the black love interest was CIA, whether the Chinese agent had undergone plastic surgery, and whether M was really angry with Bond, or just spurring him on to new heights.
‘The country is on course for a brighter future…Over the past five years we have gone a long way to restoring our fortunes, but letting Labour into power risks throwing it all away.’ This is what the man I still find it difficult to think of as our Prime Minister, David Cameron, wrote in the Maily Telegraph today. On reading it, I was struck by how the plot of Live and let Die Another Day only Not Twice Forever was far more believable. It involved swimming for hours through ice-cold waters that would kill anyone within two minutes, disappearing cars, and harnessing the sun purely for the purposes of killing one of Bond’s assistants. But compared to the idea of Greece staging a recovery and Italy staying in the eurozone, it was clinically true-to-life. And when put alongside the idea that the UK’s economy is anything other than a manufactured bit of paper drivel and housing bribes, Live and let Die Another Day only Not Twice Forever was a painstaking documentary.
Earlier in the day came The Wizard of Oz – and this too was an inspired choice of reality television. Ed Miliband was well cast as the lion with no courage, and Jeremy Hunt played the tin man with no heart to perfection. But outstanding for me was Antonis Samaras as the scarecrow with no brain. Christine Lagarde as the wicked witch of the west was certainly believable, and the decision to hand the role of Dorothy to Tony Blair was, if nothing else, courageous.
We kicked off with eight degrees of frost this morning,the temperature soared to minus 4 by mid afternoon, and tonight it’s ten below. So far this winter, this has to be game and first set to Vladimir Putin.