There are times in life when you feel you must have been born in the wrong place. It's happening to me this week in London. All around me people are shaking their heads and sighing, declaring that it's "sweltering", "baking", "too hot to breathe", that they are "dying from the heat", that they can't sleep at night. The government has issued a Level Three Heatwave Alert. MPs are calling for people to be given time off work because of the devastating heat. And the temperature? A mild and pleasant … [Read more...]
London 2012…Welcome to the maddest Country on Earth!
July 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment
What the hell was that? There were times, watching the opening ceremony to the London Olympic Games, when it was hard to escape the impression that the whole thing had been sponsored by the manufacturers of LSD, or mescaline, or some other potent psychotropic. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to carp or denigrate. I loved it. But it was completely and utterly mad. What must the rest of the world have thought, looking on? At times the whole thing seemed designed to confirm the long-held … [Read more...]
The Diamond Jubilee…and why Britain’s next King should be a Watermelon
June 6, 2012 by 1 Comment
Take down the bunting, put away the flags, Britain's brief holiday from the grim realities of the 21st century into its royal fantasy is done for another year. For the second year running, the country has come to a standstill to celebrate its strange anachronism of a monarchy, and everyone is congratulating themselves on how marvellously we do these things. But I should like to make a humble submission: that when Queen Elizabeth II eventually passes on, we should replace her with a … [Read more...]
Diamond Jubilee…like a wet weekend in Southend
June 5, 2012 by Leave a Comment
So, that was the Jubilee then. A strange time to be back in London, the streets hung with bunting dripping in the rain, Union flags hanging limp, the skies grey, pictures of the Queen everywhere, the air cold and damp. Just across from where I live, the local pub was festooned with red, white and blue balloons, and there was a lifesize cardboard cut-out of the queen with drizzle running down it. The fish-and-chip shop next door was busy. At one point, some one called for three cheers for the … [Read more...]
Distracted by its own din, Europe cannot hear the gathering storm
April 18, 2012 by 2 Comments
The wolves are circling Europe. The emerging economies of Asia and South America sense weakness. Day by day, they are pushing the boundaries, seeing how far they can go, testing a new world order. But inside the camp, the old European economies are too deafened by the din of their own internal squabbles to hear the approaching danger. This week it was Spain's turn, as Argentina nationalised the Spanish-owned majority stake in its largest oil company. The Spanish government warned of … [Read more...]
