janus

Y’gorra laff

Twice this weekend Backside has laughed out loud. And I’d like to share – as they say in LA.

Wayne Rooney was thinking of naming his race horse Norfolk Enchants.

A cheese review was entitled Grate Expectations.

Not so immaculate huh?

canterbury

Even a Primate can’t choose his family, it seems.

It turns out that that there was quite a lot of monkey business in Churchill’s corridors of power – and an ocean of alchol (hic) to wash away the detritus. So Justin’s mother, Mary, managed to conceive only days before her marriage but it has taken her 60 years (allegedly) to find out that Justin’s father wasn’t the man she wed. Despite the clear facial resemblance between her paramour and her son. She blames the booze.

I suppose if Justin had stayed in the oil biz nobody would have taken much notice, but you’d think the Lord would have arranged things a bit more decorously, wouldn’t you? Or perhaps it’s another of his little jokes.

Just another Canterbury Tale really.

A different world

As our music editor has opined, the world has changed since the digital revolution.

Remember Kim Philby, who spied for the USSR? Fiendishly clever? Ahead of the technological game? A modern spook whose expertise led his British masters up the garden path?

Well – no. A filmed master class he conducted in the DDR in ’81 shows what an amateur affair it was. He ‘borrowed’ paper files every day, took them home to be copied and returned them the next day! No fancy equipment, no 007 tricks, no subtlety at all.

The Beeb has the story. Fascinating.

Offshore squalls

So Wikileaks now confirms what we have suspected for ever: rich, powerful people hide their money from tax authorities.

No names, no pack-drill but I often ask myself how the head honchos of big corporations (in DK for example) manage to work here and pay the taxes demanded. And how come the allegedly ever-vigilant tax folk don’t seem to do anything about it?

We shall now witness governments issuing their usual lip-service responses to the ‘news’, much sighing and tutting and promises of crack-downs, all lasting the requisite nine days; whereupon business as usual.

The people of Iceland will perhaps spill some blood but there’ll be no volcanic dust and the storms will be confined to tea cups around the world.

The europlot thickens

The story so far:

Negotiations for Cameron’s Stay campaign ended in stalemate. The Tories started to fall apart, as ever unsure what Europe has to do with real life. Cameron shows signs of panic, faced with his own party’s schizophrenia. The Leave campaign shows clear signs of winning the battle, with so many reputations at stake.

Enter the IMF, the perennial prophet of economic doom, to announce that the UK’s referendum will coincide with a very relevant event: another Greek default! Mama mia! (Sorry, my modern Greek is shaky, like their economy.)

That should liven up the debate, nicht Wahr/n’est-ce pas?

Bottom
Decent golf
Everybody
Hinder
Hastened
Danish boy conqueror
Clippety
French egg
Per ardua ad astra
Skin for no. 6

Now that didn’t hurt, did it? Answers please on Cadbury’s chocolate eggs asap!

Kiwis show the way

nz flags.png The anti-colonial era is over! There is a new pride in belonging to the British worldwide club – which rejects the demands of envious foreign cultures.