The Aged P

So the Cypriots have given Angela Merkel and the EU the finger – instead they have turned to Putin’s Russia

Cyprus turned to Russia for help on Tuesday night after the country’s parliament overwhelmingly rejected a tax on the deposits of bank savers.

Despite warnings from the EU not to touch the Russians with a barge pole Cyprus is looking for help from the KGB men who now rule Russia and have been using Cyprus as a “helpful” venue for laundering investing their hard earned “profits”

It could be seen as a smart negotiating ploy – calling the EU bluff. I would imagine there might even be a bit of panic in Brussels because if just one Eurozone member decides to go it alone politicians in Athens, Rome and Madrid will start having second thoughts and the whole Euro farce might start to unravel.

Prepare to add another notch for UKIP…

UKIP’s leader Nigel Farage has a letter box mouth, eyes that look as if they will pop out on stalks at any moment and a face that seems to pull in different directions on the cusp of every grin. When he speaks he sounds very much like an on course bookmaker shouting the odds. His views are disdained by the media elite and the political class and you are unlikely to find him at any North London dinner party. He is a PR consultant’s nightmare….

….and yet he and the party he leads, long dismissed as a collection of nutcases, fruitloops and pub bores is edging near to 20% in opinion polls. When he appears on BBC Question Time, for years the graveyard of right wing pundits thanks to its chattering class chairman and an audience carefully selected to skew leftwards, he always goes down well. He also proves more than a match for the great and the good on the panel who discover much to their chagrin, that he is remarkably articulate and skilful in debate.

It’s not so much his euro sceptic views that win him support (though that must never be dismissed as a factor) but his very lack of smoothness, his everyman persona that immediately detaches him from our ruling class, the wealthy, soft figures like Cameron, Milliband and Clegg who have never really had long term experience of work outside politics and who began their rise to the top three quarters of the way up the ladder thanks to influential families and friends.

It is these characters and their cheerleaders in the media who paint Farage and his party as buffoons who could never be trusted to make tough decisions and run the country in an effective and efficient manner – as if their years of governing have not been years of failure consisting mainly of short term, short sighted and flashy “initiatives” threaded with lies and undelivered (and often undeliverable) promises.

Farage is an outsider, he is not of the political class and is not constrained by the conventions of that class. Have a look at this video – unlike many featuring Farage it is not a two minute sound bite designed to make public impact. Forget the cartoony face and the odd diction – just concentrate on what he is saying and then ask yourself if this man is speaking for you rather than speaking at you.

You might be surprised at your reaction.

This man may be political gold.

The euro-mafia is already hailing the Greek election as a turning point, hoping that conservative New Democracy and their socialist rivals Pasok will form a coalition which will implement the austerity measures demanded by Germany. Their micawberish expectation that something will eventually “turn up” is not, however, shared by all observers..

Both parties, which have ruled Greece for 38 years, are widely blamed for a crisis that has taken the country to the brink of economic collapse. Between them they won only about 40 per cent of the vote. By contrast, parties that opposed the bail-out increased their share of the vote to over 46 per cent, with Syriza, the radical Leftist coalition that wants to discard the agreement, almost winning outright.

Has the Greek euro maiden been untied from the rails and carried away before the locomotive thunders down the track?

I think not.

Settle down, folks, for the longest running death scene since the days of Victorian melodrama….

No more lifeboats on the EU Titanic – so instead they’re busy rearranging the deck chairs…

Thank goodness the leadership of the USA is much more competent….ROFLMAO!!!!!!!

Nigel Farage mocked the Eurocrats with his usual panache by this tongue in cheek encomium to Europe Day (May 9th). Good knockabout fun, as usual, but, towards the end he makes reference to a spectre of civil war and revolution in the wake of the EU’s self serving attempt to defy gravity by forcing savage austerity policies on counties like Ireland, Italy and Greece in order to shore up the Euruzone and, more importantly, protect German banks from the consequences of their drunken sailor lending policies over the last two decades.

The established Greek political elite unwillingly submitted to the austerity package demanded by EU. But a few days ago the people of Greece were able to voice their opinion via parliamentary elections.

The result? A total collapse of support for the mainstream parties and a large swing to the extremes of left and right – exactly the same thing as happened in the German election of 1932…and we all know what came out of that….

Of course I am paraphrasing Goering’s famous quote about “culture” – and I also recognise that in a personal capacity I am usually willing to trust the doctor who repairs my hernia or the plumber who fixes my boiler because the chances are they know more about hernias and boilers than I do for they are dealing with them every day.

No, the “experts” I would love to threaten are the ones beloved of the media because they need a gap filled in the programme or on the page. Moreover the “expert” is usually produced to push an agenda favoured by the editorial team – to pimp a company or a political viewpoint or a questionable scientific “theory”.

The “experts” usually dress up their presentation with an impressive display of certainty buttressed with “facts” which on the surface appear ultra convincing. These “facts” are then often machine gunned out with a degree of rapidity that discourages in depth analysis. Certainly the host or editor rarely has the time or inclination to find someone who could present a contrary view.

The result? An initially rather shaky position is offered a framework of reinforcement by inertia and becomes an accepted wisdom. Very often the purpose is to agitate to change something that has worked efficiently and effectively, often for centuries with a view to provide opportunities for a whole tribe of leeches who cannot find gainful employment in the normal world.

Fortunately the “experts” are frequently proved wrong by subsequent events. Unfortunately so often a large amount of time and money has already been wasted in a fruitless search for each specific unicorn.

So – bring on the “experts”……

Less than two weeks ago our UK “experts” were saying this

contingency plans are being drawn up as the Environment Agency confirmed the drought is likely to last until Christmas.

Today they were saying this

The Environment Agency issued flood warnings in the South West and South East as drivers battled torrential rain on the motorways.

Why do we even listen to them. Switch on any TV news programme and there will almost certainly be an “expert” droning on about some topic and usually blaming us, the ordinary everyday folk, for being ignorant.

Remember which company was being singled out for praise by financial guru Gary Hamel in 2000?

extraordinaryaspirations, a willingness to listen to new points of view, flexible organizational boundaries. The managers of —- concentrated on the growth of new markets and industries, andindividual entrepreneurship is highly encouraged

You guessed it…Enron…yes that Enron….and he wasn’t alone in pimping it…

At roughly the same time a certain UK banker was being lauded as a business superman but a few years later the media changed their tune

Remember all the great and the good who really did think money grew on trees….until the recession? I wonder why they got it wrong?

And those brilliant minds who were telling us that those who opposed the Euro were Neanderthal doomsayers totally out of step with the times?

Well now James Lovelock, who as a “scientist”was always treated with due reverence as a top level “expert”, says he got it wrong about global warming when he issued dire warnings in 2006.

There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now … The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time

Thanks a bunch, you silly old fool – can I have my taxes back, please?

Don’t get me wrong. Every man and woman is entitled to express an opinion and, being human, will sometimes be mistaken. But for self proclaimed “experts” it is never sufficient to “express”…..they must PRONOUNCE as if they have descended from Mount Sinai with tablets of stone. They exude authority and turn a fierce and disapproving eye on any who dare question the validity of their utterances…and we fall for it every time. Even when they are proved wrong “experts” shamelessly slough off their mistakes as a snake sheds it’s skin. Like whores they are forever turning new tricks.

So next time you are watching TV and an “expert” is wheeled in to pontificate on some burning issue remember

1. He/she is getting paid for it and traffic will expand earning potential…everyone will want to go Al Gore

2. So many “experts” have got things wrong every future pronouncement should be accompanied with a large dose of salt

Somebody once defined the etymology of the word “expert”

In mathematics X is an unknown and in plumbing a spurt is a drip under pressure

Sounds good to me…..now, where is my Smith & Wesson?

h/t for violin cartoon

Over the last months there have been regular marches and demonstrations against the massive cuts in state spending being forced by the EU in Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece. Indeed in Greece these protests have frequently escalated into full scale riots.

The BBC has, of course, reported on these protests but in a strangely disconnected manner. The levels of anger and frustration are made obvious and the fact that the austerity programmes are the result of pressure from the EU (aka Merkel/Sarkozy) is clearly noted.

But that’s where it ends. There is little background or follow up – the journalism is very two dimensional. Now this is odd because there is nothing more that the BBC likes to do than to dig deep into any protest/riot. G20, Tottenham/Croydon August 2011, Occupy and Syria…..the agitation is lovingly filmed and often carefully choreographed for the cameras, just in time for the evening news. Individual protesters (usually young and photogenic) are interviewed with a hushed and reverential air and over the days there springs from out of nowhere a veritable tsunami of in depth analysis which is usually skewed against the powers that be. Within a fortnight or so there appears the Panorama documentary and six to twelve months later the play/film/opera dramatising the whole event with a cast of heroes…and villains.

The villains – they are always central to the whole performance. Bankers, Oil companies, government ministers – all wheeled out and deconstructed in the name of truth and journalistic rigour. Yet the script has been changed for these Mediterranean protests. There are no villains in this epic – no shadowy figures to abuse, excoriate or condemn. No implication of a deep laid conspiracy to suppress freedom.

Nobody to blame.

Of course you and I know only too well who to blame. They are the cartel of bureaucratic bunglers and con artists who cobbled together the gigantic scam that is the Euro a decade or so back. They are the guilty men and women. In any other situation the BBC would be hunting them down with mike and camera, confronting them in their glittering taxpayer funded offices in Brussels, metaphorically tarring and feathering them in the name of justice and revenge.

But the BBC could never perform that function against the EU, not in a million years. For it is essentially the PR arm of the EU. It has shamelessly pimped this raddled harlot across our airwaves for decades. It would be like the pope flourishing a condom. To admit this monumental failure on the part of the EU elite would demand a degree of honesty and conscience that is simply beyond the pale for any BBC chattering class apparatchik.

Sorry, people…move along there, nothing to see here. Why not look over there at Tesco or that travellers site or the anti capital protest – we’ve already got scores of reporters and the whole team of Today and Newsnight presenters covering those much more important stories…
You see all that criticism of the EU is simply not…helpful….it undermines the narrative and we at the BBC always appreciate the big picture….

The BBC shows us how, just before Greece entered the Euro, Goldman Sachs and the Greek political elite cobbled together a dodgy deal to cover up the huge elephant in the room that was Greece’s debt and then how the EU financial “experts” looked around and pretended not to see it.

Their fingerprints and DNA are all over the room but, you see, it was all a misunderstanding and anyway it’s water under the bridge.

That sound? It’s Al Capone, turning in his grave out of sheer envy….

Or, as Adam smith might have said

Investment Bankers, politicians and EU officials seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public

Sarkozy & Merkel discuss plans for their new ship while the Titanic is sinking under them

Never upset a swordfish

After you have argued with someone it is never advisable to invite them to tattoo your back…

Misogynistic sadists with a medieval mindset doing rather well in some parts of the UK

Am I alone in not caring a fig about Sarah Jessica Parker’s insecurities?

Teachers in Ghana go on strike over students’ “Bowel Protest”

Austrians demand less theory and more practice when it comes to sex education in schools…

Whereas in France if you don’t regularly satisfy your wife in bed a judge will be very displeased…

Five minutes of pure, unadulterated pleasure as a pompous, self important weasel from the media elite (a former editor of The Financial Times, the UK equivalent of the WSJ) and a robot from the propaganda division of the EU get hung, drawn and quartered over the Euro…..

Tags: EU, euro, Guilty Men, media elite, Peter Oborne