Shitty Arabs

Dubai was amazing: the place where the natives and indigenous are known as incredibly lazy slackers and untalented morons, is a playground for the world's top architects to display their fantasies and adventurous creations, some more than 200ft tall. But, as much as the useless local tribes are unable to let it snow sometimes, the location is bare of any hint of class and culture. Whatever - or whoever - makes the region work is foreign.

A quick stop-over in Rome on Sunday and Monday consoled me for the four days in hell.

Tonight we are off to a concert of Florence and the Machine at the Casino de Paris; not hard to guess where that is... LOL

Channel Islands Forced Into Line

The VAT scheme for C.I. shut down by Treasury
Unfair tax advantages for GY and JY are history


The Channel Islands have finally lost their legal challenge to stop the UK government  terminating a VAT loophole that has enabled retailers to ship tax-free goods including DVDs, greetings cards and vitamin pills from the territories. The exemption, known as low-value consignment relief, has enabled companies based in the islands to escape VAT on goods sold to the UK. It will now be scrapped in the Budget next week.

Narky Sarky

OPPORTUNISTIC SARKOZY: Temporary Insane

Le petit homme at the Elysée Palace resembles with each day more of "General Ripper" in the movie Dr Strangelove. As Sarkozy spews out his newly discovered xenophobic tirades, he invokes the images of Ripper, rambling on with his paranoid belief that there is a Communist conspiracy involving water fluoridation and contamination of everyone's "precious bodily fluids". The parallel of the mad general with the president-for-six-more-weeks is that Sarkozy wants to maintain the purity of his fancied European Union, advocating now a "Made in Europe (only)" campaign to promote products from his fantasy land of milk & honey called Eurozone, and to erect an invisible wall around the Gallic state to prevent dark-skinned intruders (immigrants) from contaminating French bloodlines. That's the basis for his announcement yesterday that France may leave the Schengen area, which has abolished passport controls within its borders.

"Temporary insane" means to adopt the irrational fears and hysterical reflexes from the Front National in the 1980's and 1990's. Ironically, Sarkozy's appetite for closing France and the EU to outsiders, creating the much anticipated Fortress Europe, follows his own presidency that allowed more than one million immigrants into France, most of them now derelict and depending on social handouts. Pure madness, that!

Greece: No way out

Debtors accept Greek extortion,

default expectations fully intact

There is nothing even remotely resembling a "good deal" as described by the EU Commission for Greek bondholders, nor was the news of the agreement struck last night "extremely good news" as the Greek finance minister told the press. When adding up all the ingredients of the "bond swap" agreement, investment firms stand to lose on average 72% of their Greek engagements. That helps explain that Greece in de-facto default status, and is being shut out from the financial markets for up to 10 years now. Without further help from ECB and Eurogroup, Greece will go bust within six months.

Dump the prez

FRANCE: Looking beyond Sarkozy

The incumbent president sounds more resigned to be ousted in the elections than ever. Sarkozy encouraged the French people to vote against him by promising to abandon politics altogether in case he'll lose the election.
Over the weekend Sarkozy was desperate enough to trumpet the extremist right message, "enough foreigners in France!" The lamenting over the deluge of... undesirable immigration comes at the heels of his presidency that has opened the floodgates to Africans invading Europe, hence it is rather hollow and late. Sarkozy's calculation to drain support from the Front National will not work. Instead he will lose people appalled by this attempt to lure extremists to vote for him to his foe Hollande.

In this race of two pathetic candidates I cannot fathom why French voters don't swarm the only decent candidate in this race: François Bayrou.See More

Britain's Top Ten

The 10 worst cities to visit or live in Britain
(on my hate list from 1-10)

1. Glasgow (positively the worst city in Britain, Europe, Eurasia)
2. Liverpool
3. Manchester
4. Leeds
5. Birmingham
6. Sheffield
7. Middlesbrough
8. Sunderland
9. Nottingham
10 Belfast

The most desirable cities in Britain
(the crème de la crème on my list)

1. London
2. Edinburgh
3. Brighton
4. Cardiff
5. Oxford
6. Newcastle-upon-Tyne
7. ran out of ideas...

I FEAR THE GREEKS, EVEN WHEN THEY BRING GIFTS

Virgil

WIR ORFlöcher

WIR ORFlöcher

Inspired by the TV programme "Wir Staatskünstler" on Austria's state broadcasting company ORF, I have embarked on a satirical mission of my own. "Wir ORFlöcher" takes a good look, and an equally thorough swipe, at the dumbest headlines this network for illiterates produces. Or when headlines contradict the ensuing story, or when the ORF clearly misses the point of facts and reality, or when its translation team fails them to put the story right in their local lingo.

Taking into account the peculiarities of the German language, and its Austrian derivative, the feature "Wir ORFlöcher" necessarily has to be in German language only. Sorry guys in the rest of the world!

TODAY'S ORF-LINES:

Mars deuxième

PELLÉAS ET MÉLISANDE
Claude Debussy
7:30pm


Celebrating birthday in style, followed by midnight dinner.