Stop calling it the Czech Republic! It’s Czechia! Just like Slovakia.
Yeah, right. And Holland? Or Taiwan? Or Belarus? And Cologne? Or Calcutta! Not to say Copenhagen.
I know we can’t say Ayer’s Rock any more but p-lease! Potayto, potahto, tomayto, tomahto – who cares? Unless you want to talk about scones.
Margrethe Vestager, the crusading EU Commssioner, seems to have inspired her countryfolk to go after tax evaders at home. And how!
The tax minister is buying extracts from the Panama Papers which name and shame over 600 Danes who have been squirrelling away their kroner and cheating the system.
Typically of Denmark this is being done quite openly – not, as one might expect in other countries, through secret channels. Refreshing, huh?
So the UK was ‘wrong’ to vote for Brexit – according to Obama.
Setting aside the philosophical question whether a majority of a country’s citizens can be ‘wrong’ in any meaningful sense, maybe the sanctimonious President could answer this:
Would the USA join any club which suborned its sovereignty to the club’s management?
Would even the Democrats agree to the club deciding on US immigration?
Would the US fancy Juncker more than Trump or Clinton as its figurehead?
No no no, as I thought. Obama wins the headlines with his judgement but loses all credibility.
It’s meant a lot of work and determination but worth every ounce. I refer of course to a grandparent’s input to a grandchild’s GCSE results, published yesterday!
My most senior of ten did all the requisite academic subjects and (Jazz note) the really useful Textiles Technology, well suited to the distaff side methinks. 😷
So I can relax again until next year when another young lady shows her paces.
Rio 2016 is not the last word in organisation or commercial savvy – thank goodness! What I’m enjoying is a feeling that the local volunteers and the Olympians are in it together, win or lose. Perhaps the best example is the golf competition. Pooh-poohed by many of the famous pros as small beer, beneath their notice, OL golf has proved to be a crowd-puller, with the skills we all admire but none of the big-money shenanigans. In fact show-boating by the big names in sport has been absent from most of the events I have seen, both on and off the running track. Even the Yanks are subdued. But the performances in general are superb, with hundreds of new, young talents coming to the fore.
So well done, Rio!
Some of the meeja hacks are getting hot under their cyber collars about Cameron’s parting gestures to his loyal colleagues. A K or two and a few MBEs. For people who, remember, had to work unreasonably long hours in old buildings whenever Dave and his Mrs needed them. And what else can a departing grandee do these days? He can’t sequester half of Yorkshire or the plate from a couple of monasteries on their behalf. And I wonder what Angela and le petit Hollande can do when they step down? The English honours system is very convenient, full of traditional meaning and cheap to implement. No, I’m afraid it’s raw envy that drives the criticism, and a persistent ignorance of The English Way of politics: it’s about Devil take the Hindmost. And none the worse for that.
I’m not a gourmet but I have been known to toy with a few grenouilles and more frequently a dish of escargots, suitably lashed with garlic butter of course. And Backside reckons that’s a case of matter over mind, given my aversion to garden slugs.
But I was surprised to see only today that if your delicate skin requires pampering you can invest a mere twenty quid for 50 ml of snail salve, the mucus of more than a dishful of the critters, collected allegedly from the glass over which they have slimed their merry way.
Not for you? No, I quite understand, preferring a rub down with an oily rag.
By the end of 2016, we can expect the world to be changing. Oh yeah, I hear you say, you Januarians always say that kind of thing but nothing really happens.
Well, try this for size:
The confused EU will suspend Shengen without admitting it and immigration via Turkey will virtually cease, following the disappearance of Erdogan and Co.
The UK, led by its Intrepid Triumvirate, will announce a formula for Brexit which safeguards trade with individual Euromembers and drives a coach and four through the EU’s ‘four freedoms’.
President Trump will put the USA into lock-down, by limiting relations with the real world, diplomatically, militarily and commercially. (That will of course exclude his private business interests.) Guns will be issued to the few households not yet/no longer sporting them.
In the wake of the disaster that was Rio 16, international sport will become a rarity, with only football teams going abroad, employing their own armies for protection.
And President Putin will still be missing.
Your friendly, neighbourhood contemporary culture editor is back again. (Stop groaning at the back)
The only show me the money to be made in Hollywood today is in Superhero flicks. The Days of Wine and Roses are gone replaced by spandex and CGI. Even a devoted Marvel Man like me is getting tired by the regurgitated clunkers that have been produced recently.
The latest shlocker is by our Distinguished Competition (That’s DC, folks!) and is called Suicide Squad. It has been hyped to the gunnels and expected to break all box office records. One thing going for it is it features an up and coming starlet from Australia named Margot Robbie. She’s currently at the cinema appearing as Jane in The Legend Of Tarzan. (Still think Maureen O’Sullivan is the ultimate Jane. That time she started the fire with a couple of twigs in Tarzan and his Mate. Yodel-Lodel-LEEEE)
Margot, naturally, cut her teeth in Neighbours. That soap opera has produced more studs and mares than the Darley Arabian. Here’s a wee photo of Margot as a super baddie.
Boadicea's Chariot 
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