We found a pic …

Sunday, October 26, 2008

We found a pic …

… of George's favourite airline. 

COMMENT THREAD

Life is a cabaret, old chum …

I would take all this hyperventilationabout Mandelson more seriously if the media had shown the slightest bit of interest in the Barroso/Latsis affair.

But, while the media seeks to dress up its obsession in clothes for concern about "corruption in high places", that – as we all know – is not the real reason for the vast expenditure of time and effort being devoted to this story. The media hasn’t the slightest interest in "corruption" – especially its own. It is playing a game at our expense, having set itself the "target" of engineering a third resignation of Peter Mandelson.

Should it ever win its "scalp", we will see an orgy of triumphalism, following which the story will be dropped like a hot potato and the media pack will move onto its next "kill".

Meanwhile, as the prattlers preen and twitter, luxuriating in their own orgies of self-righteousness, what should be on the front pages, all the front pages, is this.

Europe is on the brink of a currency crisis meltdown, writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard.

The financial crisis spreading like wildfire across the former Soviet bloc threatens to set off a second and more dangerous banking crisis in Western Europe, tipping the whole Continent into a fully-fledged economic slump... Currency pegs are being tested to destruction on the fringes of Europe's monetary union in a traumatic upheaval that recalls the collapse of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992.

Yet, this is down page in the business section, competing for attention with the greater space afforded to a report headed How recession-proof is British sport?. Talk about "bread and circuses"!

These stupid, blind, empty, vapid, decadent fools will be the death of us all. But, even as they come hear the music play, if you listen carefully, you can hear the distant clatter of tumbrel wheels on the cobblestones. They are still a long way away, but they are coming …

COMMENT THREAD

Rectifying an omission

A correspondent takes me to task on my previous post and my reference to WEF meetings being little more than "high class piss-ups for over-paid inadequates", pointing out that I had failed to name names.

He draws my attention to page 19 of the parliamentary declarations of interest, and this entry:

Overseas visits

23-25 January 2008, to Davos, Switzerland, to attend and participate in the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, where I was invited to speak. The World Economic Forum provided my conference pass, occasional car use in Davos (including airport transfers) and some hospitality. (My flights and accommodation were paid for by the Conservative Party.)

You have to spool up to page 18 to discover the author of this commendable piece of candour. As for me, I couldn't possibly comment.

COMMENT THREAD

Has everyone gone completely mad?

No, this is not a posting about thehystérie du jour. When adjusting the clocks in the house I dialled 123 on my phone as I do twice a year to check the exact time, expecting to hear a measured male or female voice telling me in stately tones that "at the third stroke the time sponsored by Accurist will be....".

Instead, I got an excitable teenager with a transatlantic accent squawking: "Hi, this is Tinkerbell. At the third bell the time will be ...". Tinkerbell? Tinkerbell? Has everyone gone stark raving mad?

OK, "Peter Pan" is my least favourite children's classic and Tinkerbell is a nauseating little madam. Luckily for all concerned I did not spend my childhood in England and, therefore, avoided the yearly ritual of having to clap my hands so that Tinkerbell could live. Ugh. But that is not the point.

Even if the voice had been the honeyed tones of Long John Silver from what is undoubtedly a great classic and possibly the greatest adventure novel ever I would still spit with fury. What possessed BT to decide that we are all so infantilized that we cannot cope with simple information without it being conveyed by excitable transatlantic teenage squawking? I wish I could blame the EU for this but, sadly, I cannot. The madness is on this side of the Channel.