OBITUARY

My beloved father, Seymour Levin, passed away last week. At peace with himself. At war with the world.

Say kaddish in memory of his soul.


Phyllis Levin

PLUS ÇA CHANGE

Although it has been a long time, South Africa media has the effect of reviving buried memories. For an expatriate like myself, it is most gratifying.

Back then, the Chinese were considered honorary whites. Now, they are considered honorary blacks. In reality, it isn't that much of a change, but, if I were Chinese, I would be honourably confused.

ANCIENT GREEK GODS

In a sense all cultures resemble Greek culture. Men create gods that they fashion after themselves, place them on an altar and then become their slaves.

There is nothing worse than to be a prisoner of your own mind.

MYSTERY SOLVED

Some months ago, in a post entitled Mystery, I asked what, I thought, was a very pertinent question:what is it that Muslim women do to their men that makes them explode so easily?

Having recently read an article in Psychology Today, I now realise how wrong I was to have formulated the question in those terms. I should have rather asked: what is it that Muslim women don't do to their men that makes them explode so easily?

Ah, well! It is often the very obvious that one has the propensity to miss.

ON THE QUESTION OF TAXATION

People often ask me what are my views on taxation. I am not against it. I am for low levels of taxation that are sufficient to support a lean government.

Unfortunately, myopic ideology leads some governments one step further. They widen the scope of taxation to include their idealistic vision of wealth redistribution.

To achieve that lofty purpose, they have to increase taxes, and in doing so, only manage to erode the middle class. The unintended result? The creation of more poverty.

Now, with the tax base reduced, there is no option but to to demand even higher contributions from the taxpayers that haven't yet become poor. So taxes continue going up.

After years of milking the cow, the animal becomes completely dry. After all, you can't have you cake and eat it.

It is at this point that those people who have managed to hold on to their mental sanity begin moving abroad what is left of their savings. The government's reaction? The criminal process.

Finally, tired of being enslaved by an idiotic system, the sane citizens depart for greener pastures. Not without leaving a short goodbye message to the president or the prime-minister: up yours, mate!

SPAIN

This morning I read in a Spanish daily that roughly half of the Spaniards who participated in a survey believe that not enough is being done to combat tax evasion in the country.

Those must be the 50% that live at the expense of the 50% that produce. Otherwise, they would be worried that not enough is being done to curtail government expenditure.

CIRCUS MAGICIANS

Any time a politician opens his mouth, you are never certain whether what is going to be conveyed is information or disinformation.

It was Hitler who said that “by the skilful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise”.

I fear that his deviant mind has left many disciples among modern day politicians. Unfortunately the circus goes on.

THE CONDOM

Good Catholics are, by definition, not promiscuous. Bad Catholics don't listen to the Pope, anyway. For the rest of the world, it will be business as usual.

What is the Pope trying to say? That the Earth is round?

DANGER

In a recent speech, President Herman Van Rompuy suggested that the very existence of Euro may be threatened.

Whew! I thought I was beginning to hallucinate.

THE THREE OPTIONS

Andre Marrou identified three streams in modern political thought. In his own words (and I hope I am not misquoting him):

- Liberals want the government to be your Mommy. Conservatives want government to be your Daddy. Libertarians want it to treat you like an adult.

I insist on being treated like an adult.

ECONOMIC DISTORTIONS

Around 1920, in the United States, a group of self-righteous religious fundamentalists, moved by extreme zeal against what they perceived as sin, achieved the enactment of a law that forbade the manufacture and distribution of liquor.

Of course, nobody ignores the fact that the excessive intake of any substance is totally detrimental to the human body. However, if, by law, you try and forbid an individual from slowly killing himself with alcohol, tobacco or drugs, he will simply jump off a bridge or throw himself under a train. And then, what do you do next? Destroy bridges? Ban trains?

Besides, there is another paramount factor to consider. Many of the ill-conceived laws that aim to change behavioural patterns in society end up having profound and unintended consequences on the underlying economic fabric. That such government interference in the real economy causes distortions of an unimaginable magnitude is something that seems fairly obvious, except perhaps to the mentally blind.

Let's get back to 1920. Prohibition did not prevent people from drinking. Far from it. All it did was to create a flourishing black market in the trade of liquor, which, in a sense, was the free market trying to circumvent government interference. Al Capone almost sounded like a distinguished economist when he said:

- I am like any other man. All I do is supply a demand.

The unintended consequences of the 1920 law were many. The price of liquor went up, adulterated alcoholic beverages appeared on the market with grave health consequences, petty criminals were promoted to gangsters, government officials turned to corruption and violence became a daily occurrence. It took the massacre of St. Valentine's Day to bring people to their senses.

There is no doubt that the 2007-2008 economic crisis has come about as a result of governments around the world creating the conditions for excessive credit at ridiculously low interest rates. The unintended consequences have been the appearance of bubbles in government bonds, precious metals and sovereign debt, as capital seeks to obtain its just reward. If all three bubbles should burst at the same time, we will witness the total collapse of the financial system.

To make matters worse, governments are engaged in currency wars that, if left unchecked, will degenerate into full-blown trade wars. The last option is undoubtedly the nuclear war.

Should it happen, it will be back to barter, and the free market will, once more, prevail.

TRADITION

When you are born, your legacy is a pair of lenses containing the basic values of the society into which you were born.

As you start growing older, society ensures that the thickness of your lenses increases accordingly, and, by the time you reach old age, you are looking at the world through a pair of inverted binoculars. Continue looking through them, and you will die blind.

Have the courage to take off your spectacles, and you will immediately start seeing the world as it really is.That is called independent thinking.

EVOLUTION

Nowadays, a democratically elected government is nothing but a coalition of interest groups intent on earning a good living at the expense of the rest of the population.

IDEALISM

Humanitarian aid workers in Third-World countries are like a well-meaning bunch of school children who decide to help an old lady across the street, only to find out, when they get to the other side, that she didn't want to cross at all.

THE NATO SUMMIT

Nobody told me. I saw it myself on television. In his speech, Barack Obama praised the leadership qualities of the Portuguese Prime-Minister, José Socrates.

It caught me by surprise. I was totally unaware the President possessed such a wicked sense of humour...

BODY SCANNERS

I had a look at photographs taken by body scanners at US airports. I wasn't impressed.

In the public interest, a fellow installs a hidden camera in his young neighbour's bathroom just to ensure that she does not have silicone boobs that might explode in midair. He gets the statute book thrown at him.

Also in the public interest, the government openly and unashamedly feasts its lustful eyes on your privates. The statute book does not apply.

I'm at a loss for words. Is there no longer any room for individual entrepreneurship in this country?

SPACE

A bunch of school children in Hampshire, England, launched a potato into space.

Just shows you how sophisticated modern children are. Next, they will want to become career politicians, which is a covert way of feeling a couple of notches above their fellow citizens without actually having to become astronauts.

In my day, we would simply take the potato and throw it through a neighbour's closed glass window. It required no preparation, it had an almost immediate effect and you could go on laughing about it for weeks on end, humour being surely the healthiest way of living life.

A final advantage of the old way of doings things was that, once the potato had landed, you didn't need a GPS to find it. The neighbour would take the trouble of coming personally to hand it over to your parents. After that, as an adult, you would be too afraid to go into politics, in case somebody found out about your shady past.

Just shows you how a small mischief in childhood can prevent a life of total sin.

COCAINE

Strange things are happening in Italy these days. Such is the report that I read this morning about the drug smugglers who have managed to find a way of hiding cocaine in the baggage trolleys of the Rome airport.

I'd hate to imagine what would happen if, by a stroke of bad luck, you picked up a trolley left behind by an absent-minded trafficker. You could run the very real risk of going on a trip before you even boarded your aircraft. It could be so bad that, by the time you came round, you simply felt that you had just returned from your holiday.

Take my advice. When in Rome, carry the bags yourself.

THE STRANGE CASE OF THE DOLLAR

Isn't it amazing how, in the period leading up to the last G20 meeting and thereafter, the dollar strengthened significantly against most currencies?

Currency manipulation? What utter nonsense! Free market forces. Naturally.

YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS MIND

The other day I watched a strange kind of film. It experimented with the very difficult narrative technique of developing two main parallel plots that only came together at the end. Without a single hint of any possible connection between the two, except for the theme, the spectator was left with a sense of schizophrenia. Most unfortunate, I would say.

I guess that it was a case of art trying to imitate reality. In real life, such situations do indeed happen. All the time. Just that they normally end up in a divorce court. Unlike what happens in the cinema, this spectator feels quite sorry that they are already rolling the credits, the way he was enjoying himself...

To be honest, I will have to admit that all of us are two people simultaneously. One who goes about his daily chores doing his best to look normal. The other, much more adventurous, takes over sometime during the night and couldn't care less about conventions. Most people manage to keep both apart. When you cannot distinguish between the two, you grow a beard, get yourself an AK-47 and go and live in a cave in Afghanistan.

While on the subject of the uncontrolled subconscious.... Last night, I had a very weird dream that I would hesitate to recount, were it not for the fact that I'm sure Freud is no longer alive. I dreamt that the present pope, you know the one with the foxy blue eyes, had decided to resign and that, in his stead, the Catholic Church had elected the unmarried mother of a ten year old boy. Strangely, in Jerusalem, the chief rabbi of Israel had taken the bold step of shaving off his beard. Finally, in Tehran, Ahmadinejad was a much taller man and, consequently, had given up on the idea of conquering the world.

What a sick dream! Couldn't tell you how it all ended. I woke up suddenly with the sound bullets flying around. It was the alarm on my mobile phone.

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

Right throughout my life, I have wondered why ex-prostitutes, more often than not, become extremely religious. For a long time, I believed that they were moved by the fear of death. The other day, I came to the conclusion that Rabelais must have been right: femme folle à la messe, femme molle à la fesse.

Ex-politicians, well, those still remain a mystery to me.

THE LIST

Al-Qaeda announced that it was adding Christians to its already long target list.

Frankly, it does not surprise me. A psychopath will kill just about anybody. A group of psychopaths will embrace any imaginary cause in order satisfy the lust of its members for blood.

What we have to remember is that Al-Qaeda is just the criminal hand. Until we excise the evil brain that makes it move, we will just be boxing at shadows.

UPSIDE DOWN

That's how the world is today, and it's no use trying to convince me of the contrary. China is on the road to capitalism and the US is dying to experiment with socialism.

What an amazing irony!

IMMIGRATION

There was a time when you could express yourself freely by applying to the realities of life their proper designations. Not today, no. Political correctness, you see...

Today you have to use euphemisms, otherwise you are in very serious trouble. That's how the poor came to be the disadvantaged and the cripple became the disabled. And what a tremendous change it brought to their lives...

When I lived in South Africa, I had a good friend who was a fine piano tuner and an excellent pianist. Yet, he was blind. One day, at a party, left alone for a moment, he decided he would entertain everybody with some music. So, he made his way to the piano, but unfortunately sat down on a cream cake that somebody had inadvertently left on the piano stool. He thought it was hilarious. You see, I'm as blind as a bat, he would add, laughing heartily at the incident, years after it had happened.

No, he did not pass away. He would kick my bottom, if he knew I went around saying that. He died. Full stop.

Which brings me to the touchy subject of immigration. Not much you can say about it without some idiot placing himself on the moral high ground and hitting you on the forehead with the rubber stamp of xenophobia. After that, it's a one way street: first you become disabled, then you end up disadvantaged. In some parts of the world, they might even jail you. Or is it incarcerate you?

It is obvious to me that some countries, at some stage, may not wish receive immigrants, which does not mean that they are moved by xenophobia: they may not need unskilled or semi-skilled labour, they may have an oversupply of certain skills, there may be large-scale unemployment. Then, there may be other reasons: the particular person may have a criminal record, may have a history of mental illness, etc.

Right now the US is struggling with a huge immigration problem from Mexico. My suggestion is that we don't go through a lengthy legislative process, which will take forever and cost millions of precious of dollars.

I have a better idea. Why not just place large billboards along the Mexican boarder asking a very simple question:

Would you like to live in a country which is governed by a fellow whose middle name is Hussein?

That ought to scare them away.

CUBA

I used to think of Cuba as a country. No longer.

Recently I have come to realise that it is actually Castro & Castro, a bankrupt family business desperately trying to lay off one million of its workers.

Ah, well, when the business model is wrong, you can't expect good results, can you?

THINKING

Science claims that thinking makes you unhappy. That's something that I have suspected for a long time, but didn't want to take for granted until it had been perfectly validated. Now it is a certainty.

That would explain why one encounters so many people sporting nothing but half a brain and a silly smile.

THE EUROPEAN CONUNDRUM

The cost of insuring peripheral Europe public debt reached a dangerous new maximum.

What should this reality be telling European politicians? That Germany needs a stronger Euro and peripheral Europe a much weaker Euro.

How are they responding to the situation? Bailouts. Bailouts are, of course, as effective as applying a plaster to a cancer...

How did these countries get to this situation? By pretending to have achieved convergence with Germany in order to join the Euro club.

The lie has been exposed. Yet, European politicians continue to be in denial.

So, where does this leave the Euro? Nowhere.

Deal with it!

BERLUSCONI

Has Berlusconi been beneficial to Italy?

Undoubtedly. From a cultural point of view, an absolute giant.

How else would Italians have become acquainted with the Libyan concept of the bunga-bunga?

ON THE QUESTION OF INFLATION

In Venezuela, inflation has now reached the handsome level of 26%.

It's no great economic secret that inflation is a hidden tax, particularly harsh on the poor that all politicians claim to defend. Add to it direct and indirect taxation, and you would come to the conclusion that the average Venezuelan probably takes home no more than 30% of the fruits of his hard labour. Another significant rise in inflation, and he will be close to slavery.

This is what happens when the incompetent govern the ignorant.

RUSSIAN ROULETTE

Having illiterate people vote in any kind of election is pretty much like asking a bunch of lunatics to select, from amongst themselves, a new director for the psychiatric asylum.

PUBLIC HEALTH

The Portuguese Ministry of Health announced recently that the use of antidepressants in the country is alarmingly high.

Well, that depends, of course, on how you look at things. Considering the state of the economy, I reckon it is still amazingly low.

CAREFUL CONSIDERATION

After many years of observing the way the world works, I have come to the conclusion that the Res Publica is something like the Cosa Nostra, but on a much larger scale.

THE CIRCUS

When I was young, I used to go to the circus quite often. Those were magic moments.

Now that I have become a stingy old recluse, I no longer indulge in that pleasure. Why waste money, when I can sit in the comfort of my home and watch politicians perform somersaults all day long?

Granted, it is not the same kind of magic, but it is highly amusing.

WORDS

It is interesting to note that speech, this wonderful instrument that we humans developed both to communicate and organise thought, can also be employed to hide incredible lies and present permanent chaos as order.

I strongly suspect that, unfortunately, it was upon the latter use that much of the edifice of society was built.

IN MEMORIAM

I was shattered by the news from Johannesburg that my good friend Moshe Kaplan was shot dead this morning by a group of armed robbers.

To his wife, Rachel, who, during the apartheid years, belonged to the Black Sash, and who will now most probably join the White Sash, go my heartfelt condolences.

Tanchumay, Rachel.

DEAR MRS. MERKEL

I have just read that your government accuses the US of indirect currency manipulation. On that point, we are in full agreement, and so are many people all over the world, especially in emerging markets.

All is not lost. I have a suggestion to make to you. Why doesn't your government offer to sell a new stolen list of American citizens who have accounts in Swiss banks? Last time, it did not stop the manipulation, but, this time, who knows?

I like you, Mrs. Merkel. You are a woman of strong principles.

IN INDIA

I understand that President Obama is, at present, in India.

I hope he didn't go there for the sole purpose of learning the subtle art of meditation, because, if he did, I fear that he might decide not to run for a second term of office.

LOOK AT IT THIS WAY

A large government is like a beautifully crafted wallet that you decide to purchase for your bank notes. By the time you pay the merchant, and much to your surprise, you suddenly realise that you do indeed have a wallet, but sadly no notes.

OPTIONS

In a recent post called Euroland, I outlined three possible scenarios in the wake of the economic crisis in peripheral Europe.

As I had predicted at the end of August, the German Chancellor announced this week that Germany would not rescue any European country that defaulted on its debt.

I do not question her decision. She is in her right to do so. Nonetheless, her position may lead to three possible unintended consequences: the replacement of Germany by China as the dominant influence in European affairs, the irrelevance of the artificially overvalued Euro and the final demise of the already fragile European Union.

So, my dear Mrs. Merkel, you takes your pick and you pays your price.

LATEST NEWS

It's all over the newswires. China has offered to buy into the public debt of Portugal, a country with an economy brought to its arthritic knees, and in serious risk of defaulting, by years of gross socialist mismanagement – another of the many blatant examples of trying to subordinate the simple reality of the economy to the skewed and obscure purposes of ideology.

Furthermore, a Chinese bank stands ready to acquire 10% of equity in a large Portuguese commercial bank.

Now, this is what I call true humanitarian aid!

INSULTS

There was a time when the worst insults people would wield around like a deadly weapon tied to the wrist were “bloody fascist” and “bloody communist”. Those were supposed to be mutually offensive.

I have never understood what was so insulting in those expressions, seeing that the only difference I could ever find between Fascism and Communism was that the former was National Socialism, while the latter was International Socialism. As for the bloody, that's something that they both unfortunately shared. So, you could easily put both in the same bag.

The latest (and most fashionable) insult is undoubtedly "neoliberal”. Now, let's be clear: I know what a free human being is, although it is something that, like most people, I have only been able to experience interiorly. So, unless someone explains to me the meaning of “liberal”, I guess I will never grasp the offensive gist of “neoliberal”.

THE DEBATE IN EUROPE

I admire people who were born gifted. Unfortunately I cannot be counted amongst them. Instead, I came into this world bearing an enormous curse. Right throughout my now long life, and wherever I go in the world, I have always managed to get into serious trouble by poking holes into people's seemingly watertight arguments. As a result I have never been popular. At least, not for more than five minutes, or what felt like that huge length of time.

So, when, from a distance, I look at what has been happening in Europe, I do not expect people's attitude towards me to have changed much. You see, unfortunately I like to call a spade a ruddy shovel.

Except for Germany, and perhaps France (why is everybody trying to get into bed with China these days?), let us face it, the rest of Europe is plainly speaking bankrupt. Now, it has finally understood that all countries need small, transparent and accountable governments.

However, that realisation came at a cost. Painful austerity measures that do not just simply translate into statistics, but that, behind those numbers, have disappointed and desperate faces. All that after dishonest politicians had, for years, led people to believe that the economic situation was perfectly under control.

Despite the stringent budgetary cuts, for some countries, the cost of borrowing continues to rise. Why? Simply because Angela Merkel has declared that Germany will not stand good for any European country that defaults. Would you lend your precious money to somebody who is unable to offer you sureties? Precisely.

Yet, when I read that some politicians, especially on the far left, attribute this rise to the evils of speculation, I shake my head and take comfort in the thought that there are people in this world who were born less gifted than me.

PERTINENT QUESTION

Mr. Obama, since tea makes you so nauseous, would you rather have a cup of coffee?

MESSAGE

Last night, as generally predicted, the American people sent Barack Obama a very powerful message.

It was short, but hard to ignore: small is beautiful.

EXTREME MEASURES

I read yesterday that, in recent times, the mortality rate in Portugal has been increasing at a steady pace.

Quite unbelievable how far people are prepared to go just to escape from the yoke of high taxation!

THE BUSINESS OF WAR

Battles are won with weaponry. Wars are won with money.

Prolonged wars lead to irreversible economic declines which eventually are the downfall of all empires.

No ideology. Just reality.

SPARE A PFENNIG FOR POOR OLD EUROPE?

The Romans tried it. Charlemagne saw himself as their successor. Napoleon had a go at it. Finally, with his distorted view of the world, Hitler thought he would be able to accomplish what none of the others could achieve. To any great extent, at least. I'm referring to the unification of Europe.

Post-war Germany was far cleverer. It realised that poor people cannot be conquered by the sword. They have to be bribed with the power of money. So, together with France, it worked out a system whereby, in exchange for generous financial advantages, it could export freely to the poorer countries of Europe without any barriers. It worked. The European Union came into being – a political and monetary entity without any form of fiscal harmonisation.

Unfortunately, those poor countries of peripheral Europe were never able to see beyond the immediate financial benefit. Still deeply rooted in post-medieval rural societies, and largely unaccustomed to the principles of democracy, they followed utopian 19th century ideals and set about reshaping their social fabric. Through legislation.

One great flaw of excessive legislation is that it creates excessive bureaucracy. In turn, excessive bureaucracy has two pernicious effects: it secures safe public jobs for all the party faithful, so that you have half of the country's population working for the State, and it promotes large scale corruption.

Now, it is general knowledge that the State is no creator of wealth. With fewer people in the productive sector, and excessive taxation to support huge government, peripheral Europe was a disaster waiting to happen. All it took was the sub-prime crisis in the US for those idiots to shake in their foundations. Germany continued to export its way out of the crisis.

When almost all your tax gathered is absorbed by public sector salaries and social benefits, for the remainder you have to rely on public debt. As economic conditions worsen, borrowing costs escalate and so do economic conditions. It's a vicious circle.

Fortunately, the Chinese have begun buying European public debt. Soon, they will be dictating the rules.

Can you spare a yuan for poor old Europe?

DURA LEX, SED LEX

When I first entered university, I was young and inexperienced. Looking around me at the time, it became painfully evident that I had not been exposed to the shady side of life. The obvious choice was to include a few Law subjects in my curriculum, which I did.

It's is a decision that I shall never regret. I still don't know anything about the Law, but just being able to throw out a couple of Latin maxims at the right time, always ensured that I got invited to the next dinner party. After all, I was reasonably presentable, a frugal eater and I didn't charge by the hour.

Enough of that now. Let me not be distracted by trivial reminiscences that might give you the impression that I regret having aged and that I'm now ready to try and disguise the process with the help of the surgeon's scalpel. On the contrary. I no longer enjoy dinner parties. So it doesn't matter.

Quite early in the introductory course, I had my first disagreement with the Law. It pertained to the test of the reasonable man. Why would the courts always refer to the reasonable man and not to the reasonable woman? That sounded too sexist for my taste.

It is true that they tried to counterbalance the situation by depicting Justice as a woman, but you only had to look at the figure to conclude immediately that it had been conceived by a man. The scales looked right, the sword looked right, but the blindfold looked inappropriate. Have you ever met a woman who goes blindly through life?

My second brush with the Law came when I was introduced to the maxim that clearly states that ignorance of the Law is no excuse. How can it not be an excuse? With parliaments, largely made up of lawyers, creating laws so that the unobservant citizen might break them the moment he sets foot on the street, one would have to be superhuman to be aware of all the crap they throw out to justify their royal salaries.

At that point I gave up on the idea of becoming a lawyer. I decided to lead the life of an honest man. Yet, Latin maxims still amuse me.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Revolutions always take place in order to destroy the old order and establish a new order, seemingly based upon some lofty principle, backed up by incredibly compelling oratory.

The problem with revolutions is that they are always unpredictable. Rosbepierre believed in maintaining the purity of the revolution by having countless people put to death, until, one day, he himself was guillotined.

Moreover, revolutions often lead to counter-revolutions, more revolutions and, sometimes, wars. In fine, generalised and indiscriminate killing.

True revolutions are not a phenomenon of the masses. They take place within the heart of an individual, and, for that to happen, the only head you have to cut off is your own.

SOCIAL JUSTICE

When the greed of governments, institutions and people began to show signs of turning into a full-blown economic crisis, I used to watch a well-known economist appear on several television channels demanding, always in a vociferous tone of voice, that governments around the world should set interest rates at zero. According to him, that would be the solution for the crisis.

Governments are never slow when it comes to doing the wrong thing. Not that they listened to him, in particular, but that is the route they chose. Of course, in economics, a zero interest rate is the heavy artillery in the arsenal. If that fails, as it did, you are only left with the ultimate option of a nuclear bomb called the printing press, and you print money until the cows come home.

With all this new money, central banks buy government bonds, home mortgages and car loans. Now feeling relieved of their debts, investment banks point out to their customers that the currency has devalued, and that therefore it is an excellent time to go into the stock market. Wonderful advice. The small investor does just that and, at best, manages to average low single digit earnings, while the currency continues to devalue at rates reaching the double-digits. Banks themselves cleverly take another route and invest in soft commodities, such as sugar, coffee and soy beans, which sends prices through the roof, and in the currencies of commodity-producing countries, which distorts exchange rates and penalises their exports. This new money never improved the economy, but, nevertheless, provided banks with gigantic profits.

Governments justify this course of action by claiming that they have just managed to avoid enormous social costs. Maybe so, but for the greedy and the imprudent. However, they did so by penalising the prudent, the savers and the retired. Is that social justice? Is that social justice?

From time immemorial, capital has always moved from the inefficient to the efficient. Let the inept fail. That's social justice.

IT'S ALL THE SAME

The other day I was thinking about it and was surprised to realise how, as you go through life, your perceptions change all the time, until, at some point, they begin to stabilise.

As a child, I learnt that right and left had to do with direction. That was enough for me at that point.

Growing up, and probably under the influence of right and wrong, I began to associate right with good and left with bad.

In my early teens, looking at many right-wing dictatorships, I began to feel that right was wrong and left was right.

Then, as the hideous crimes of left-wing dictatorships became known, I became very confused.

Now, to my mind, right and left are all the same, if you don't mind. In fact, it's all in the mind. Except for direction, of course.

TEMPTATION

I know I had promised myself not to do it again, but I'm only human, and I could not resist it.

I must confess that, this month, I did it. I watched Jean-Claude Trichet's press conference. As expected, the cassette was the exact same that I had heard on so many occasions since the beginning of the crisis: “inflation expectations are firmly anchored”, blah, blah, blah!

Weird, though. All this time, I had been finding it difficult to place his accent, and I couldn't. It sounded neither Greek, nor Spanish, nor Irish. This time, it dawned on me. I was hearing distinct nuances of German.

I may, of course, be wrong, but then I'm no specialist in linguistics.

FALLACY

I shudder every time I hear responsible people in Washington claim that, in Afghanistan, the US is in a battle for the hearts and minds of people.

Come on, fellows! Stop kidding yourselves! Winning the hearts and minds of religious fundamentalists is as possible as getting an apple tree to produce melons.

THE FUTURE NOW

The other day, probably a month ago, I heard Barack Obama state categorically that the US was not – and would never be - at war with Islam. Its real enemy was Al-Qaeda. I immediately felt reassured.

Nonetheless, as time went by, I began mulling the subject and, the more I thought about it, the more my levels of confidence dropped.

I pictured a couple thousand bearded men walking the mountains of Afghanistan, and reckoned to myself that they can – and did - undertake a few isolated acts of violence that lead to death and destruction. Defeat the US? Unthinkable! Was that their objective? Laughable!

Then, like all old men who have nothing to do, my mind went back to medieval battles. In those days, attacks of diversion took place before the enemy suddenly found himself encircled by the opposing troops in a surprise onslaught that was often fatal. What if Al-Qaeda was nothing but the tip of the iceberg, the periscope above the submarine, the moving target?

It is a known fact that Iran is the main supporter of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban through sections of Pakistan, as it is also the mainstay of Hizbollah through Syria.

It is a known fact that Iran has been playing cat and mouse with the world regarding its nuclear program, a clear sign that it is playing for time. That would indicate that its intentions are less than honourable and that its real aim is the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

It is a known fact that Iran has vowed to destroy Israel and that it considers the West the Great Satan.

It is a known fact that Iran has recently begun creating banks in Arab countries. That would indicate that it is preparing for financial freedom as soon as it is ready to go to war.

Just this week Hugo Chávez was in Iran for the ninth time since he became president of Venezuela. Many agreements were signed, included one designed to assist Venezuela in acquiring nuclear power. Both leaders solemnly promised to bring about a new world order. Does that sound familiar? The media carried a picture of a Chávez with his hands in a silly position of prayer before a clearly patronising Ahmadinejad.

World War III has already started. The reason we don't realise it is that we have not got to the nuclear stage. Yet.

Now, one month after listening to Obama, I shake my head in disbelief, and I smile. Naiveté is so charming, isn't it?

MYTH AND REALITY

I continue to hear the voices of European extremist politicians and labour union leaders insisting ad nauseam that the recent economic crisis has to be ascribed solely to the reckless behaviour of bankers. It sounds pretty much like some of the kind of science you get these days: mediocre researchers manipulating data to accommodate their a priori view of the world. Right down misleading, not to use any stronger word.

Reality is that, in order to gain votes, Socialist governments all over Europe had to create the illusion of prosperity. In the absence of the real thing, they opted for a gigantic increase in public debt, so they could have an array of free services: education, health, unemployment benefits, etc. Not to talk of the jobs created specifically for the party members. In some cases, the weight of the State on GDP went up to around 48%, if not more, which is hardly sustainable. As the cost of servicing the debt became higher, so did taxation. The erosion of middle-class and the of small entrepreneurship became only too apparent. The economy began bleeding jobs and the State income from direct and indirect taxation consequently diminished, which only came to compound the problem.

Allow me to go back a little. In an environment of general economic euphoria, institutions and people have a tendency to increase their risk tolerance. So they leverage themselves (read take on debt) in the false belief that the economy will continue to improve forever and that they will be able to go on meeting their obligations. Call it greed. People in Africa and South America hear about this prosperity and the migratory flux begins in all earnest.

Eventually reality dawns on everybody. The State increases taxes and cuts back on benefits. Businesses go bankrupt. Joblessness grows. Previous excessive immigration puts an extra burden on unemployment benefits. Foreign lenders demand an extra premium for loans made to the State and to the banks. Chaos ensues.

The deleveraging process has begun. It's a painful. Austerity replaces what, in the first place, should have been economic prudence. Governments print money. Banks cut on loans and try to sort out bad debt. Individuals lose expensive cars and luxury houses which they should have never owned to start with. Everybody is unhappy. Call it fear.

Strikes and riots on the streets encouraged by extremist politicians will not change reality. Time will, if good sense prevails.

You see, Socialism is the light version of Communism. It's a bit like smoking. In the beginning, it tastes good. Eventually, whether you go for traditional cigarettes or their light version, you will still end up with cancer.

STILL THE MODERN DEMOCRACY

Over the years I have had the privilege of following, albeit from afar, elections in many parts of the world. They all have one thing in common: the electoral promise embedded in flowery rhetoric and supported by costly political marketing. Lots of it.

I have also had the opportunity to watch many little snippets of voters' opinions broadcast on national television networks. What surprised me was that they too had one thing in common: atrocious widespread ignorance.

So there you have one of the great wonders of modern democracy: corrupt politicians elected by illiterate voters.

MEMORY

Elephants are credited with incredibly long memories. I don't know. I have never been able to get inside the mind of an elephant. Not that I would want to, either. I would probably be constantly reminding myself to avoid hunters, which, in practical terms, would amount to compulsive behaviour.

Politicians, on the other hand, are known for their amazingly short memories. Once elected, they can never remember an electoral promise, even if it is written black on white in their electoral manifestos. If reminded of it, they will simply claim that it was meant to be achieved over two terms of office. Vague language allows for this type of circus trick. Or they will offer some other type of lame excuse, like the unforeseen international environment. No wonder so many politicians are lawyers.

Normal people are perhaps a little better, but, nonetheless, very forgetful too. They will remember very well what they did thirty years ago, but can't remember what they had for lunch yesterday or the day before.

Political events that took place in a more distant past are trickier, even for those who lived through them. As they were not privy to what went on behind the scenes, unless some honest historian tells it like it happened, what they retain of it is a partial, thus distorted, view of reality.

Take Nazism. How many people know that Hitler was only able to accomplish his evil intents thanks to a secret agreement he had with Stalin to split up Europe between themselves? Or that many of his military undertakings were only possible with the logistic support of the Soviets? Or that Gestapo officers went over to the Soviet Union to learn how to set up and run concentration camps? Or that the Soviet secret police handed over to the Gestapo the Polish Jews that had fled into the Soviet Union?

There is much in common between Nazism and Communism. Of the many traits, one has to be mentioned. They both believed that, in order to bring forth the new man, you have to kill the old one. Sounds almost pentecostal. The Soviets killed 20 million of their own people. Hitler only managed to exterminate 6 millions Jews before he was finally stopped.

Which brings me to South Africa. Have no doubt that the ANC is nothing but the South African Communist Party in drag. It shares the same ideals that were propounded by Hitler and Stalin: the elimination of the old order before the new order can emerge. The “Kill the boer, kill the farmer” song is not an innocent liberation slogan. It is an official racist policy. What makes Malema such a liability is that he is idiotically saying in public what is being discussed privately. Having withdrawn his bodyguards, the ANC hierarchy hopes that somebody will get rid of him. He has become an embarrassment.

Since the ANC took over the government of the country, thousands and thousands of whites have been murdered under the cloak of crime, some even by thugs wearing police uniforms. It's time somebody recognise it for what it is: genocide.

In the middle of all this, where is the International Criminal Court? I know that the Law is blind. Now I have come to realise it is deaf too.

And while we are at it, why don't we award Mandela a second Nobel prize for peace?

WESTERNS

The recent arrest of policemen in Puerto Rico reminded me that not one week goes by without one reading in some newspaper somewhere in the world about cops involved in drugs, prostitution or corruption. Sigh!

How I long for the days in my youth when, in the black and white westerns, you always knew who were the cowboys and who were the crooks!

BODYGUARDS

Police bodyguards for Julius Malema were withdrawn.

Sorry, Julius! Don't let worry consume you! What you will need now is presence of mind and absence of body.

ILLITERACY

Some days ago, the Brazilian clown who is a parliamentary candidate was given exactly a week to learn how to read. It's laughable!

Regardless of the outcome, with his levels of popularity at an all time high, he will be the one laughing. All the way to the bank.

FAREWELL

Julius Malema is to step to down as president of the ANC Youth League.

There was a distinct element of sadness in his statement. Cheer up, my boy! Be positive! While you might stick out as a sore thumb in Orania, there is definitely a bright future ahead for you in Zimbabwe.

POPULARITY

A recent article in a prestigious magazine claimed that, against all odds, Bill Clinton is still more popular than Barak Obama. It then goes to enumerate the reasons. Mostly political.

My explanations are probably more simplistic, but, nonetheless, well worthwhile considering. Firstly, women tell me that Bill Clinton has undoubtedly more sex appeal. Then, the general consensus is that Obama does not appear to be deriving as much pleasure from the Oval Office.

Why do people always try to get a political angle on things?

FAMILY

Once again, in a speech, Fidel Castro lashed out at capitalism. Over the years, I have tried to understand why he, who has obviously seen the devastating consequences of communism on the economies that adopted that utopian system, continues to attack the only system that is capable of generating wealth.

Dinosaur? At first, I thought so. Then, the other day, I remembered that he was the illegitimate son of a capitalist father. I also recalled that he had married into a very wealthy Cuban family. Finally, it came to my mind that, right throughout his life, he disliked work with a ferocious intensity.

I wonder... Could he, at his ripe age, still have an unresolved issue with his father?

CLOWNS

A clown is candidate for a seat in the Brazilian parliament. He seems to have enormous public support, which is encouraging. At least for him.

If he is elected, I'm sure that he will have no trouble fitting in. After all, amongst other things, politics is also a circus.

ANTI-DEPRESSANT

Now it's anti-depressants. Apparently fish given those chemicals lose their sex drive.

Perhaps scientists could enlighten me: is it safe to shake the hand of a fellow who consumed fish that had been prescribed anti-depressants?

NOVEMBER ELECTIONS

Wasn't it a much more business-friendly President Obama that we saw on television this week? I was totally amazed.

It just shows you how election time can change a politician in a jiffy. A chameleon would have a hard time competing.

LESSONS FROM HISTORY

In the 16th century, through a series of sudden deaths in the royal family, a three-year old was proclaimed king of Portugal. His name was Sebastian.

Raised by his paternal grandmother and educated by an old army officer and a Jesuit priest, the young man grew up dreaming of a world that no longer existed. If he had served as model for Cervantes (who, by the way, was his contemporary), the resulting D. Quijote would have not been too different. The end of the story might, though.

A screwed up mind, he yearned to prove his military valour against the enemies of the Catholic faith. The vague possibility of armed action anywhere in the world was enough to raise his hopes of participating in such a conflict.

Finally, opportunity knocked at his door when the reigning Moroccan sovereign, Abu Abdallah Mohammed II, was dethroned by his uncle, Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik I, and asked Sebastian for his aid in asserting his rights.

Against the advice of experienced military men, he decided to lead an army into North Africa. Once there, he stubbornly disregarded the strategic plan elaborated by his staff. The result was the tragic battle Ksar El Kebir. That the young wacko died in the battle would have been of little significance, were it not for the fact that his irrationality had disastrous political and financial consequences for his country.

Many lessons could be learnt from this episode. As far as I am concerned, one suffices: beware of religious fanatics.

TUNES

Just received this interesting piece of news from South Africa: Julius Malema has changed his tune regarding President Jacob Zuma.

What? Does he now expect Zuma to be singing Una furtiva lagrima?

Because, as it is implied, if it is he, Malema, that's doing the crying, I can positively state that I've seen crocodiles do it more convincingly.

ACKNOWLEDMENT

On checking my blog statistics, I could not help but notice that I have faithful followers in Beijing, Moscow and Washington. To all those who, albeit in the fulfilment of their professional duties, read my chronicles on a daily basis, I leave a warm salutation.

HAZINESS

The South African Communist Party and the ANC are like a fat woman on a scooter. Hard to tell where the woman finishes and the scooter begins.

UNCANNY

This morning the Mail On Line reports on an £800bn Mugabe diamond mine being run in partnership with the Chinese.

Let's forget, for a moment, that I had said as much in my posts Diamonds and Change. Sadly, this is what liberation and one man, one vote have meant for Africa.

Call me Seymour.

ACUPUNCTURE

In a recent rigorous study scientists have come to the conclusion that acupuncture can be a plausible treatment for depression.

I think that, this time, they have really hit the nail on the head. Have you ever seen a depressed porcupine?

BRUTUS

The way the political climate in South Africa is evolving I can already hear Jacob Zuma's voice echoing through the corridors of power:

- Et tu, Julius?

NO CHANGE

Despite the recent meteoric rise in the price of gold, I have not changed my stance on the precious metal.

If you consider that the total industrial demand for gold (read jewellery manufacturing) is only about 10% of the total annual output, the present price levels cannot be justified on economic fundamentals.

There is no doubt that market fears have been a factor in the price rise, but, more recently, I have become aware of another driving force: some Central Banks are buying gold in significant quantities.

Now, if I were an impulse buyer, which I am not, I would rush out and buy some bullion in order to take advantage of any further appreciation. That would leave me exposed to wild swings in price levels that would be the result of possible manipulation.

What you have to do is to ask yourself is: if, for some decades Central Banks have shunned the metal, why would they now suddenly have become buyers? The answer is that, in order to remain competitive in the international markets, some countries are switching to gold in advance of some serious currency depreciation.

If you can assess the volumes of those gold purchases, you will have found yourself some currencies that you can short.

Don't be fooled by manipulation! Happy profits!

ASTONISHED

The general secretary of the South African Communist Party, Blade Nzimande, claimed yesterday that a lot of dirty money is circulating in the ANC.

No! I'm shattered! But, if that is the case, why don't they just launder it?

EUROPEAN UNION

Rumours are doing the rounds that, in future, at the end of months when deaths of pensioners exceed the expected average, it is going to become mandatory for ministers of social welfare to kneel for a quick prayer of thanksgiving.

DEFICITS

This morning the European Union started meeting on the question of a regulatory framework to control excessive government deficits. Significant reduction in public debt is the arch-enemy of the electoral promise and, consequently, of the professional politician.

I'm no prophet, and I may be wrong, but I can already see a lot of lawyers having to resort to work for the first time in their lives.

DISAGREEMENT

A person I much admire is Warren Buffett. Notwithstanding, he and I have one permanent, albeit silent, disagreement. He wants to pay more tax. I don't.

I presume that the reason for our major difference is that, whereas he still looks relatively well, I have this appalling anaemic look about me, the way the IRS vampires have been feeding on me. So, I am afraid that this will be the one disagreement that we will both carry to the grave. Much to my chagrin.

Lately, I have been toying with the idea of getting a permanent cure for my illness. First, I thought of committing a minor crime, say, something like throwing a medium-sized rock through the shop window of New York store. I figured that, the way American prison sentences are surreal, I might get 25 years to life without the option of parole, which would enable me to lead a comfortable life at the expense of the State, instead of it being the other way around. Finally, I gave up on the idea, for, with my luck, I might just get 300 hours community service at the local mortuary.

It was at that point that I decided to become more creative. I looked up the tax codes and found out that there is no tax on begging. At my age, I can easily let my beard grow, buy myself some tattered, old clothes, and I will have a morning occupation. In the evening, I'll shower thoroughly, put on my tuxedo and go out on the town.

What's more, if I interpret correctly President Obama's vision of the future, I might still be eligible for social benefits!

FOR CHILDREN

President Barack Obama is to publish a children's book within the next few weeks.

I wish to take this opportunity to congratulate him most sincerely on his excellent initiative. I feel, and many will agree with me, that it is the one activity at which he can really excel.

BANKRUPTCY

I'm losing patience with Fidel Castro. Just as I thought that he was finally seeing the light, he has recanted on the question of Cuba's economic model. He claims he was misinterpreted.

The problem with him is that he has never read the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce. Had he done so, he would have realised two very important things: firstly, that, while the dialectic method functions well in the realm of thought, when applied to History it becomes an aberration; secondly, that, basing an economic model on the particular conditions of Industrial Revolution England, is an even bigger aberration.

It is obvious that he has also not read John Maynard Keynes, a man whose economic theories don't leave me particularly excited, but who, on one question, seems to have been quite right. He argues that Marxism is based on a gross misinterpretation of David Ricardo.

If the Cuban model is such a successful recipe, why is his brother firing, according to some sources, half a million, according to others, one million public servants?

JOHN BULL

In the UK interest rates stand at 0,5%, whereas inflation touches 5%. This means that, should the differential remain unaltered, in 16 years time your money will be worth zero.

I've seen people go to jail for less serious financial crimes.

ORIGINAL

When it came to craftiness, I thought the Greeks were well ahead of any other nation. So much so that, in the past, whenever I shook the hand of a Greek, afterwards I always counted my fingers to make sure they were still all there. Last week I was proven wrong.

You know Japan? One of the countries with the largest number of centenarians? Coral calcium and all?

Pure fiction! The truth is otherwise. Some of the alleged centenarians actually died years ago. In order to continue receiving the state pensions, their families simply kept their corpses at home.

Brilliant idea! Absolutely brilliant! Eventually you get used to the flies.

CONSTITUTION

You and I know that the constitution of any country sets out the powers and duties of its government, but, at the same time, guarantees the fundamental rights of its citizens. In modern societies those rights follow (or should follow) The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Even if, for argument's sake, you were to exclude from the equation façade constitutions (which, in today's world, are in no insignificant number), you would still have to contend with the fact that, in traditionally serious democracies, governments have, over a period of decades, methodically been making dangerous inroads into the rights of citizens. It is undeniable that, in general and with some exceptions, people are less free today than what they were, say, 50 or 60 years ago.

It is erroneous to think that freedom inevitably equals one man, one vote. That would hold true if that curious little invention called the ballot box was not the bosom friend of the electoral promise. When you promise the Moon, you always end up with larger governments. In some countries, the weight of the State in the economy is already half of GDP. The result? Higher taxes. Between direct and indirect taxation, in some parts of the world citizens pay 50% of their income. Now, is that not a form of slavery? Have a look at what Article 4 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has to say about slavery.

You also thought that, with the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall, you would be able to take a deep breath. Wrong! Today there are more government agencies spying on you than at the height of the conflict with the Soviet Union. The excuse? Terrorism and drug cartels. Have a look at what Article 12 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has to say about the right to privacy. Unfortunately, Big Brother is no longer just a television reality show.

At the end of my lengthy discourse, I can sense you asking me: do constitutional courts not prevent this permanent encroachment into individual freedom? Well, my friend, legalese is pretty much like theology: it always has a way of explaining the unexplainable. In the end, it all boils down to semantics. In plain English: deceptive arguments.

Take the UK, for example. If, like his predecessors, Mr. Cameron continues to trash the constitution, albeit in a civilised way, very soon all that there will be left for British citizens to enjoy is the Changing of the Guard. May God save the Queen!

SPY STORIES

I'm sure the story has been around the world several times. Yet, the mystery remains and we are no wiser today than what we were when journalists started putting pen to paper.

By now, you realise, of course, that I'm talking about the alleged MI6 spy found dead in a London flat. Very strange. Or what?

A friend of mine remarked over coffee that, with espionage being that dangerous, he would never not consider taking it up. I pointed out to him that, at his age and with his failing eyesight, no agency would ever employ him, as he would be unlikely to distinguish friend from foe. Furthermore, I added, his arthritis would also not advance his application. That seemed to dispel his concerns. He even had a second cup, this time being able to savour it in a more relaxed way.

We discussed at length the different theories that had emerged since the tragic event, being careful, in each case, to weigh the different arguments. By the time the waitress started to look at us as if we were museum pieces, we had still not reached any conclusion. So we left hurriedly.

Already at home, and far from the aggressive eyes of women whose only objective in life is obviously nothing more than the next tip, I was able to settle on what I consider to be the story behind the story.

Why hide the truth? The man was no spy. He was simply one of Mr. Cameron's new tax inspectors looking for incriminating financial information allegedly hidden in the false bottom of a duffel bag. The fact that the search went wrong and he ended up inside the bag is just one of the hazards of the job.

PROGRESS

Not one day goes by without some news media trumpeting a miraculous advance in medical science. It's absolutely sickening.

Well, if doctors are so brilliant, why aren't they immortal?

TAXATION

Around midday, just as I was about to set my teeth on a very juicy apple that I had finished baptising with the name of lunch, I received a call from my dear old friend Moshe Kaplan, phoning me from the southern tip of Africa.

Needless to say that, in the great scheme of things, and not withstanding the fact that I am a vegetarian, I value Moshe more than any fruit, even if that fruit featured prominently in the Garden of Eden. So, although my dentures fell out, the way I was caught in middle of the action, I did not hesitate to pick up the phone.

Did I know that, in South Africa, only 10% of the population pay taxes? You don't say, I replied hopefully, has the country become a tax haven?

No, man, he fired quickly, those are the ones that carry the burden!

It didn't take me much time to figure out the situation.

Moshe, I said, go get yourself an Afro hair style and move into a shack.

SUNDAYS

I've tried renaming them, but to no avail. Still the same lack of sensory stimuli, the very one that forces you to catch the fast train of thought. People with a one-way ticket are a psychiatrist's sure road to a true experience of heaven on earth. The extraordinary thing is that he achieves it without recourse to meditation or drugs.

As for you, you'll still be on the train, but he will have convinced you that you have already alighted. Whichever way, it doesn't really matter, because, in the end, you'll have no money left for the return ticket.

BURNING TO KNOW

An American pastor threatened to burn the Koran. In South Africa, a Muslim businessman wanted to burn the Bible.

What will these people do when all books become electronic?

REALITY IS BETTER THAN FICTION

I must confess that, at first, it was no more than a vague suspicion. Then, as time went by, it became a nagging thought. Now, at last, I was able to confirm it beyond any reasonable doubt. Downing Street has got MI6 breathing down my neck.

How can I be so sure? Well, the matter is self-evident. Only last week I was warning people to prepare themselves for some serious bricklaying. Just yesterday it was reported that Mr. Cameron had given up on window counting and was ordering tax inspectors to walk in right through your front door. Unexpectedly.

What's the difference? Not much, if you have got a back door. Otherwise, you have no option but to invite them for dinner.

They are entitled to look at any papers that have figures on them. Including your son's arithmetic exercise book, because he too could be cheating on his sums.

What is unclear to me is whether you have actually got to be at home before they walk in, or whether they could just hide in a cupboard waiting for you to arrive. Surprise!

It's not that one does not welcome the odd surprise, but imagine that you are making passionate love to your wife, and a fellow creeps out from under the bed demanding to see your cash receipt for the condoms. What then?

MYSTERY

There is a question that has puzzled me for quite some time now. What is it that Muslim women do to their men that makes them explode so easily?

I can only surmise that living with them must be sheer hell. Why else would those fellows be in such a hurry to get to paradise?

IN THE NAME OF GOD

Today, the 11th September, is the anniversary of another sad day in the history of the world.

Considering the horrendous atrocities which, in the name of God, most religions have committed against Humanity, it is hardly surprising that, these days, so many people thank God they are atheists.

EXPERIMENTS

Every time politicians invent a new economic model which, they argue, is designed to advance the cause of social justice, all they manage to do is throw the world into economic disarray.

Why don't they experiment on rats first?

THE ROAD SHOW

The Lord Mayor of London has taken his road show to China.

I am sure it will not make much difference. The openly anti-business stance of the last Labour government, the excessive deficit, the ridiculously high taxation and the prevailing uncertainty about future financial regulation have all been conspiring to force capital eastwards.

It is now only a question of time before the Mayor of New York decides to organise his own road show.

CHANGE

I consider the 1960 Wind of Change speech by Harold MacMillan to constitute a turning point in the history of the modern world.

Soon thereafter, African nations, carved out randomly in 1884 by the Berlin Conference without any regard whatsoever for ethnic realities, began looking to the Soviet Union for support in their struggle for independence. One of the consequences of that process of close collaboration was the invention of the so-called African Socialism which, together with high levels of corruption and tribal conflict, led the continent into indescribable poverty.

The way the world is evolving now, it is quite conceivable that, within a century, Africans will all be speaking Chinese.

In South America, the process of change has been different. Inspired by his boyhood hero Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez crafted his own model of Amerindian Socialism and is now turning to Iran for strategic alliances. So far, he has only been able to impoverish Venezuela.

For reasons that are probably only obvious to me, I can't envisage the Venezuelans speaking Arabic, but, the way things are going, by the time Chávez is finished with his improvements, it is quite conceivable that they will end up living once more in the Maya pyramids.

FINALLY

In the second part of his interview with an American journalist, Fidel Castro reproaches Ahmadinejad for his anti-Semitism and urges him to abandon his nuclear aspirations.

It's amazing how a man of his age is still able to perform such perfect somersaults!

FINANCIAL RELIGION

I suspect the financial press lives in a permanent state of manic depression. It's either we have never had it so good or the end of the world is coming.

In its periods of euphoria, it dwells in heaven. During its phases of depression, it can see nothing but the flames of hell.

Follow it too closely, and you will be living in a constant purgatory.

ECONOMIC MODEL

In a recent interview, Fidel Castro has finally recognised that the Cuban economic model no longer works for the country.

The truth of the matter is that it never did work. Neither there, nor anywhere else.

THE EUROPEAN SOCIAL MODEL

The argumentation being used by European politicians for the recent changes in retirement age rests on the fact that, while natality rates have decreased, longevity rates have increased. As some of them have described it, in a more down to earth kind of language, there are fewer people at the bottom of the pyramid and many more at the top.

Now I am fully enlightened. That would explain why Ancient Egyptians never built their pyramids upside down.

What I want know is: if it is a pyramid scheme, why isn't our Bernie Madoff running it?

RETIREMENT AGE

Yesterday France was discussing the possibility of raising the retirement age to 62. Other countries in Europe were bolder and have already set it at 65. I understand that, in Britain, while no decision has been reached, the age of 72 is being kicked around.

I must state unequivocally that I am in total agreement with these measures. Nothing raises spirits more at the office than an old employee who brings his own coffin to work in the mornings, just in case. It might even increase productivity, because, in the presence of that powerful symbol of mortality, people will be encouraged to get on with it before they breath their last.

For the civil service, I don't expect these measures to have great impact. The folks there have been dead for years and communicate with the public through mediums, which explains why they only know three speeds: slow, slower and very slow. In fact, having to go into a government department is an experience much akin to attending a spiritualistic séance. Only much more rewarding, because there is a better chance of coming across some of your long dead forefathers who are still waiting for a decision.

All in all, the future is going to be fun.

KEYNES

I strongly suspect that the only place where Keynesian economics ever worked properly was in the mind of John Maynard Keynes.

CONFIDENCE

IBM has recently managed to raise capital for a three-year period at 1% interest rate.

Mind boggling! Why would anyone want to lend money at that rate when a 10-year Treasury Bill is yielding close to 3%?

That's how much confidence investors have in US public debt...

THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

Over the centuries, historians have tried to find an explanation for the fall of the Roman Empire. One of the causes I have seen cited very often is moral decadence. As nobody has been able to explain to me what moral decadence is, I have to assume that it is the lack of divine intervention.

For, indeed, when I look at the economic situation of Rome around the 5th century A.D., I can quite believe that only a miracle would have saved the empire. An abnormally large army (read excessive weight of the state sector in the economy) and the abolition of slavery (read the disappearance of 100% taxation) would have been enough to rock the boat. Excess of expenditure over income, and no way to fund the deficit. Classic.

Naturally, you can try and find many other causes, and I will not argue with you. It's like somebody that suffers from a terminal disease, but whose death certificate points to multiple organ failure as the cause of death. In the end, what difference does it make?

Of course, everybody knows that states do not go bankrupt. Even if they did, I would not be moved to tears. What concerns me is that, through the disastrous economic policies of those that are supposed to know how to govern us, private wealth, which is the motor of any economy, gets reduced to ashes. The victims are always the same – the common people.

Would you trust your barber with a heart operation? No? So, when it comes to economic policies, why do you trust professional politicians? You must obviously believe in divine intervention. For sure.

MODERN DEMOCRACY

The end of the 19th century and most of the 20th witnessed a continuous struggle for political franchise. Thousands of human beings all over the world battled and died for the right to cast a vote in the erroneous belief that the ballot box would solve everything.

Well, it didn't. The only right you acquired was, in fact, to be taxed into oblivion and to have your personal freedom curtailed to an absolute minimum. This would explain how, in modern democracy, we ended up with a State that suffers from morbid obesity,while its citizens are dying of malnutrition.

Social justice, they call it. Disguised dictatorship would perhaps be a more appropriate term, in my opinion. Nothing to die for, though. The Roman Colosseum was probably as equally cruel, but certainly a lot more entertaining.

MARIJUANA

Modern science is making giant strides in determining that marijuana has some health benefits. I'm sure it will soon be legalised.

I'm glad. Not that, at my ripe age, I intend to take up the habit. It has never been my dream to climb the Everest. But junkies will no longer need to take up sport to justify their drug addiction. They can just smoke it on the street and get off my television set.

Furthermore, I feel very happy for President Obama's economic advisers. They must be rubbing their hands at the prospect of a new tax on marijuana production.

If only scientists could find a medical use for cocaine! I imagine the US deficit would then be solved in a sniff.

DISCOVERY

There was a time in my life when, for reasons that are of no particular interest to you, I visited the UK on a regular basis.

On one of those visits I was surprised to observe that, here and there, some houses had bricked in windows. Not wanting to show my ignorance, instead of asking, I quietly assumed that owners had needed an extra bit of wall for purposes of interior decorating. And I never gave it another thought.

The other day, quite by chance, I found the true answer in a financial publication. As people in the 17th and 18th centuries treasured their privacy and were unwilling to disclose the state of their financial affairs, His Majesty's tax officials devised an ingenious way of determining their wealth: counting the number of existing windows in their houses. Taxpayers countered by bricking in some of the windows.

In a way, it sadden me to have found out the truth behind the bricked in windows. Now that the cat is out of the bag, as I write, I can envisage governments around the world appointing armies of new civil servants to begin counting windows.

I am sure that there is bound to be a lot of bricklaying ahead. Yet, I am not hopeful. As it has always been the case in these instances, the man on the street will end up again in a dark cul-de-sac.

GREEN

I've had a good look at Green Parties around the globe, and I have come to the conclusion that they are pretty much like watermelons: green outside, red inside.

That's life. Things aren't always as they appear to be.

CASTRO

The frequency with which Fidel Castro keeps expressing his fears that the US will attack Iran with nuclear weapons you would swear he lives in Teheran.

Or is there something else I am missing here?

HONESTY

One quality I much admire in prostitutes is that, unlike politicians, they don't pretend to be the Virgin Mary.

CHOIR BOYS

In a town, somewhere in Brazil, the police arrested the mayor, the councillors and the management committee for alleged corruption.

Hard to say what went wrong there.

I just hope they are not being held at the local jail. You don't want common thugs acquiring high society mannerisms. Otherwise, they could easily become the opposition at the next elections.

WORRIED

Last weekend Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi was in Rome on an official visit. He took time off from his busy schedule to address a group of 500 women. On the occasion, he expounded at length on his vision for a Muslim Europe.

Am I suffering from Alzheimer's or is this really the year 711?

HOPEFUL

Next week Professor Stephen Hawking is publishing a remarkable work in which he claims that the Universe came into being spontaneously. I don't know. I wasn't present at the event. He obviously was, so I have to trust his testimony.

All the same, with God then definitely out of the equation, I hope that we won't have to continue going to war for religious reasons. At least, we are now free to invoke something different. Come on, fellows, let's be original for a change.

ALL ABOUT A SANDWICH

Recently a newspaper reported that a 41 year-old man choked to death on large ham sandwich.

By now, I can feel you elbowing me in the ribs and I imagine you winking at me in a knowingly way, as from one big liar to another. I can just tell! No need to. I swear it's true, cross my heart and hope to choke!

I agree with you that the story is most definitely a non-starter. To begin with, the title should never have been “Man chokes to death on large ham sandwich”. Only retired people would bother to read such an article. Now, if it had been “Man killed by ham sandwich”, that would have drawn a much larger audience.

Then, having gone through the whole narrative, I was disappointed to find out that the man had actually gone to the kitchen to prepare the sandwich himself. If, instead, it had been brought to him by his wife or by his mother-in-law, you could have there the beginnings of a fascinating plot, worthy perhaps of a prize-winning novel. As it stands, the whole thing falls flat like a cake without yeast. Not even Virginia Woolf, if she were alive, would bother to write about it.

Thus, as the story is presented, the only comment I can offer is: had the man been Jewish or Muslim, he would have never choked on a ham sandwich.

GOLD

Yesterday the price of gold reached new historical highs.

Contrary to the recommendations of the majority of analysts, I hold no gold in my portfolio. To be perfectly honest, I divested some months ago.

I'll tell you why. I agree that a significant percentage of the current price represents the devaluation of the paper currency, but the problem is that an undetermined percentage represents the fear that reigns in the markets. Until such time as I am able to determine what the latter percentage is, I am certainly not a buyer of gold. Why should I take over somebody else's fear?

I'll go further. I'm neither a buyer of exuberance nor of fear. If you are, I feel sorry for you. Unfortunately, in the financial world, if you follow the general paranoia, you do not end up in the madhouse, but you will certainly receive a warm welcome in the poorhouse.

CROSSROADS

In 1971 Richard Nixon abolished the gold standard. Since then the value of paper money has gone down by roughly 90%.

At the same time that this devaluation in paper currency was taking place, credit availability (read indebtedness) was increasing exponentially. Individuals and nations went berserk.

In 2008-2009 the descending line and the ascending trajectory crossed paths. The result was explosive. The world had seen nothing like it since the Great Depression of the last century.

What we are going through, at the moment, is a process of deleveraging. It took us years to get to the crisis point and it will take years to return to normality. We should avail ourselves of this opportunity to rethink our policies.

This morning the IMF warned the G7 that further fiscal tightening is inevitable.

I'm so glad that they finally said something. I was already beginning to feel like the only fool around. And, believe me, that's a very lonely place to be.

CONFESSION

An official in Caracas has revealed that Venezuela is the major arms supplier to the FARC in Colombia.

Why state the obvious? Nobody was so naïve as to think that those drug-dealing terrorists had also invented a way of growing machine guns in between their coca plants.

EUROLAND

I'm always very surprised by how fixated people are on equity markets, and how little attention they pay to the fixed income markets. As far as I am concerned, spread differentials in bond markets are like the flight of a bird that is trying to tell me something about the weather to come. I'd be silly not to heed its warning.

This morning the differential between Irish bonds and German bunds widened once more. But then differentials between the bonds of peripheral Europe by relation to core Europe have been widening steadily for quite some time now, and people just shrug their shoulders. They are busy reading Alice in Wonderland.

To me, this just means one thing: as currency, the Euro is a political reality, but an economic fallacy. The problem is that there is no constitutional mechanism to exclude a country from the eurozone. That being the case, three scenarios are possible.

The first is that peripheral Europe willingly abandons the Euro, so that it may devalue and restructure its debt. Yet, if it does not shrink the weight of the state machine to realistically sustainable levels and does not reform labour laws, the effort will prove fruitless.

Not being able to throw any country out of the common currency, Germany may decide on its own that it is tired of the continual mess, in which case it may readopt the Deutsch Mark and leave the rest of the fellows to sort themselves out.

Lastly, in order to maintain its export market, Germany may take the political decision to continue to pay for the reverie, which would be good, for example, for the Greeks, because that would enable their hairdressers to continue to retire at 50 and their dead citizens to go on claiming old-age pension forever.

So, when I look at the widening bond spreads and consider the three scenarios, I remain extremely pessimistic about the Euro. So much so that I no longer care to listen to the press conferences of the European Central Bank. And why should I? We are not facing a monetary policy problem. We are staring at a problem of fiscal disarray, economic inefficiency and plain corruption. Therefore Jean-Claude Trichet has become totally irrelevant to me. Even when he tries to speak his best English.

NO, HE CAN'T

Yesterday he was going to address the nation from the Rose Garden. After meeting with his economic advisers. Expectations were running high. Television networks kept announcing that he would be coming out at any moment. They had to repeat it over and over, because he was nowhere to be seen. The waiting was unbearable. I thought to myself that this was a bad sign.

Then, he did come out and kept having trouble with the microphone. Another bad sign, I thought. Finally he began to speak, but had to start over several times. I could sense that he was very tense. Another bad sign, I continued to think to myself. What did he say? A bunch of nothing. So, the stock markets were once more disappointed and started to sell off. I fail to understand how seasoned investors still believe in fairy tales, but that's another story.

Well, I shouldn't be unfair towards him. He did say something. He repeated the mantra that he has been stuttering for months: throw money at the economy. He just doesn't understand that, by doing that, is just delaying the final countdown. He was also very conspicuous by what he avoided to say: like a good socialist, he is definitely going to increase taxes. You could read it between the lines. Always the same recipe: go for the income side of the balance sheet, don't address the expense column.

The present crisis is nothing but a credit bubble. Cheap and easily available credit leveraged the economy to a point that individuals began to realise that, although, at some point, they had indeed felt wealthy, their wealth was illusionary and they were just indebted. What was more, the equity they held was nowhere nearly enough to cover their liabilities. Mark-to-maket accounting proved that. On a national level, two very expensive wars had also caused the federal debt to balloon. Do you solve your debt problems by creating more debt? Idiotic. You can only solve it by deflating the bubble.

Contrary to what many think, Mr. Bernanke does know what he is doing. I have read those shrewd little eyes. He has worked it out that, by maintaining interest rates at historical lows and fomenting a little inflation, say 4% (remember money printing, monetisation of debt?), in time the balloon will empty by itself. In fact, that amounts to negative interest rates. He is putting his finger up the rear end of every American, and the average American is sporting a silly smile on his lips. Being a specialist on the Great Depression, Bernanke is only terrified that Mr. Obama, with his little socialist formula of tax and spend, will repeat the mistakes that led to that terrible period.

So, Mr. Bernanke, you can. No, Mr. Obama, you can't. And the reason you can't is that you know nothing. The November mid-term elections will show that.

THE ZIMBABWEAN SOLUTION

Many years ago, Robert Mugabe decided to reward his cronies for their war efforts. The fact that they had won no war was neither here nor there. The truth of the matter is that, after imposing some of the harshest sanctions imaginable, the West finally managed to force Ian Smith to surrender at the Lancaster House. But that's history. So you may put on it whichever spin may fit your vision of the world.

No better way for Mugabe to achieve his purpose than to allow the self-styled war veterans to kill white farmers and rob them of their land. There's an efficient political methodology for you! It worked.

Once in possession of all those farms, those no-goodniks had two problems: they didn't know the first thing about farming and they didn't have capital to start operations. The first problem is easily overlooked. Who is going to hold it against you for having stolen a car and not knowing how to drive? The second one seemed a little insurmountable at first, but Zimbabweans are resourceful people. The government confiscated the foreign reserves of private companies.

The problem with your neighbour's pocket is that it is never as deep as you wish it to be. So, when there was no more money in the kitty, Mugabe looked to the governor of the central bank for some creativity. After all, the party faithful have to be paid to continue to vote for you at every election.

If my memory serves me right, the then governor of the central bank was a whiz-kid called Gono. Having listened to his master's voice, he promptly oiled up the printing presses, which soon were working at atomic speeds. Once more, money was flowing freely.

For a while, some people, those that go through life in a more distracted fashion, even started to feel a wealth effect. That too came to end. According to some sources, last year inflation reached some 500 billion percent, and the currency had to be abolished.

One more piece of useful information. Under Smith, life expectancy was 60 years. Under Mugabe, it has gone down to 44. By contrast, levels of poverty have increased astronomically.

Zimbabwe would be only an episode in History, if it weren't for the fact that it has suddenly become very relevant. Recently, Julius Malema, leader of the ANC Youth League, went to Harare to undertake a thorough two-day study of this model of economic progress with the purpose of applying it in South Africa.

It shows you how a little unintelligent ballot box and a proper printing press are able to go a long way into solving just about every human problem.

HYPOCRISY

I find it incredible that an institution that condoned the enslavement of African and South American populations, that had thousands of Jews burnt alive, that sold indulgences to the gullible, that kept conspicuously silent about Nazism and that turned a blind eye on paedophile priests should now claim for itself the right to stand on the high moral ground.

If the Pope is so concerned about the three hundred Romanian gypsies being returned to their homeland, why doesn't he invite them to come and squat right in the middle of St. Peter's Square?

RELAXED

This morning, at the local coffee bar, an acquaintance of mine asked me in a subdued voice whether I knew that Tchaikovsky was gay. I confessed unashamedly that I did not.

On the way back, I thought a great deal about the matter. By the time I put the key to my front door, I was already feeling quite relaxed about the whole thing.

Why should it concern me? I never turn my back on his music...

IGNORANCE

Last week the Vatican compared France's repatriation of some illegal gypsy immigrants to the Holocaust.

It shows you just how ignorant I am. I was totally unaware that Auschwitz is in Romania.

HARSH SENTENCE

Sometimes I just feel I'm beginning to find it it difficult to understand the world. Mind you, I'm not saying that it is the fault of the world. The world does what the world wants to do. In all probability, the shortcoming is on my side. Maybe fast change is becoming too much for my ageing brain.

Take this incident in South Africa. A Zulu prince is sentenced to three years in prison for killing two people while driving under the influence of alcohol. Do you find that fair? I don't.

First of all, if he only killed two people (peace be to their souls!), why is he getting three years? He should have got only two. Three years is more like the kind of sentence you would impose on a white farmer for refusing to sell his land to the ANC.

Then, there is the question of status. Is there no longer any respect for royalty? Where in world have you heard of sending a prince to jail? What's more, a Zulu prince?

I'm prepared to go along with the withdrawal of his driving licence, but I feel that finding the dead people guilty for being on the road at the time that the prince was driving would have been far more appropriate.

ELECTION

I have just read about a Brazilian prostitute who is standing for election as member of parliament.

Well, I want to take this opportunity to wish her all the best! I hope that she gets elected. She looks bright, so I'm sure it won't take her more than a day to feel at home.

WANT TO KNOW

All dictatorships are odious. The concept of one man or of a group of men enslaving a whole nation for purposes of self-gratification, of some kind or another, is beyond human comprehension. It can only be derived from primitive animal instincts that should have ended with the demise of the Stone Age.

Over the centuries Man has evolved to become more sophisticated in his ways. So, today just about everybody frowns upon the concept of dictatorship, and, except for a few pockets of backward-looking creatures, very few people would accept to live under such a regime. But what I want to know is how do you deal with governments which pose as democracies, but, in fact, are nothing but veiled dictatorships?

DURESS

I can confirm it. It's official. The Swiss government has reached a tax agreement with the US government.

And I can also hear you mumbling to yourself: there he goes again! What is so unusual about two governments signing agreements on any matter upon which they may wish to agree? It happens all the time.

Yes, you are right. Nonetheless, there is something about this particular one that will leave you livid. According to Bloomberg, the US Internal Revenue Service is expected to drop a lawsuit against the Swiss bank UBS in return for the disclosure of data on some 4,450 US clients who held accounts in Switzerland.

I thought blackmail was a crime. Or is it only a crime when it is committed by an individual? I also believed that contracts negotiated under duress were null and void. Or does that not apply to treaties signed between two states?

Did I expect this? Yes, I did. These days I have got accustomed to this kind of behaviour from the US. It's sad, but it is the reality. What's more, I'm prepared to predict today that, if they continue to go down this road, I can envisage a time, in a not so distant future, when New York will no longer be the financial capital of the world. You will get better terms from the Russian Mafia.

On the other hand, I had always thought that the Swiss were known for their bank secrecy and their precision watches. Now that bank secrecy is gone, if the watches stop keeping time, all that they will be left with is their cheese. And, as everybody knows, Swiss cheese is full of holes.

CREDIT

Allow me to take you this morning on short trip to never-never.

Lately, your daily routine has been getting the best of you. Rising at dawn, going to work at rush hour, having to deal with jealous colleagues, facing an unreasonable boss, returning home at rush hour, only to repeat it all the next day. You feel psychologically drained and physically exhausted. Sometimes, at work, you even take your eyes off the computer screen and momentarily let them wander into the landscape outside, only to feel immediately guilty for having afforded yourself the luxury of daydreaming. In that fleeting instant, you wish it could all be different. But how? You can't just quit your job. How would you manage?

Suddenly, as you steal another passing moment from your boss in order to glance outside your prison cell, this time without guilt, you realise that, on account of a public holiday, you could have yourself a very nice long weekend.. Thank God for religion! Where would we be without it? At first, you feel a surge of delight, similar to the one you experience every time you consume a whole slab of chocolate. Then reality sets in and you come back to earth. The truth is that you are bit short of cash and it's no fun spending a weekend alone. This time you go back to facing the computer screen with anger, as if it was the sole cause of your misfortunes.

That evening, at home, you mull your options. Of course, you could stay at home and relax. After all, a man's home is his castle, but your minute apartment feels more like the dungeon than the castle itself. You quickly discard the idea. How could you even have entertained it! It is at that point that you remember that you have a gold credit card and a bosom friend that, for ages now, you have been wanting to get to know better, but who has, ever so slyly, in a very feminine way, always escaped your pedestrian approaches. You pick up your cell phone and shoot from the hip. How would she like to spend a long weekend in the Middle East? Unsurprisingly, she says yes. You have finally risen to her expectations.

Your business class flight turns out to be impeccable, and your seven star hotel is straight out of Arabian fiction. The food is superb and your companion, although not very intelligent, reveals herself to be most stimulating. In fact, unimaginably so. You are on top of the world and start to feel as if your boss has finally begun to work for you. So much so that you could even become unreasonable towards him and treat him like the worm he is. To show how appreciative you are, you brandish your gold credit card ferociously and buy your female friend a pair of diamond earrings and an exotic outfit that will serve as souvenir of the time spent in never-land.

Alas, the flight back is a bit bumpy, and you companion becomes even less talkative, which is unhelpful. At the airport, as you separate, she has that same far-away look she had the day that you met her for the first time. You feel as if you were just the magic carpet that enabled her to fulfil a dream that perhaps she would have never achieved. You shrug it off and catch a taxi home.

Having reached your dungeon, you unpack your belongings and begin to add up the credit card slips. For the first time, you start to see real stars. Many more than those the hotel in the Middle East sported. How on earth are you going to pay for all this? Well, you have another credit card that could save you for a while, but you will definitely have to take a second mortgage on your apartment. You are now in deep financial trouble.

On Monday, as you walk into the office, you greet your boss sheepishly. You dare not take your eyes off the computer screen. The landscape outside does not interest you one iota. You are back to reality. Routine is your world.

That's what credit is about. It creates an illusion of wealth and power. Yet, it is short-lived. And, when you come down to earth, pain awaits you. Mercilessly.

I leave you to transpose my fairy tale to the world of macro economics.

DEAR JULIUS

I have been an avid follower of your pronouncements for quite a long time. Some of them are quite original. Others, not so much. But then, granted, I can't expect you to be reinventing the wheel at every step. All the same, I find that there is a lot of depth in your thought. So much so that, when I try to peer into it, all I can discern is darkness. That's how deep it is.

Recently I have watched with interest your calls for the nationalisation of the South African mines. In fact, I am waiting for their share prices to reach junk status on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange before I start buying them. You, Julius Malema, should do the same.

As for the word nationalisation, after we own the lot, we can safely exclude it from our dictionary. How's that for an intelligent suggestion?

THE MOON

There has been a theory going around for quite a while, according to which you could profit from the stock market by following the lunar phases. They have even devised an algorithm that purports to make it easy for you to do it or something to that effect.

What utter rubbish! I have never heard anything more idiotic! It stands to reason that, if everybody bought on new moon, there would be no sellers on the market at that point, and, if everybody sold on full moon, conversely there would be no buyers. For a market to exist at any time, there have to be two contrarians. You don't have to be Einstein to work that out. Human nature is not reducible to a mathematical formula, and, if it were, it would not be worthwhile being human.

As far as I can tell, full moon nights are only good if you can take your beloved for a long walk on the beach and whisper bewitching words into her ear. And if, at that point, you are at a complete loss for words, I'm afraid no algorithm can save you.

SELFLESS INTEREST

In life, not everything is always as it seems. When you are young you are fairly gullible. As you get older, your hearing becomes more refined, and you are less likely to be taken in by heavenly-sounding, but nonetheless empty rhetoric.

Now, whenever I hear a politician claim that is has got his country's interest at heart, I earnestly believe he is in an adulterous relationship with his bank manager. Either that or he is trying very hard to emulate some dictator he worshipped as an adolescent. Or both, which is not at all that unusual.

Whatever the circumstance, should you start hearing the sweet sound of violins in the distance, don't you believe that you are being invited to dance the waltz. It may be that, without you being aware, you are simply being rocked to sleep, ever so gently.

Why is it that now, whenever I hear a politician, the image that comes to my mind is that of a second-hand car salesman?

WHALES

More State, be it on the Left or on the Right, always leads to an inevitable loss of personal freedom and, in many cases, even to enslavement of some kind or another.

That being said, I have never understood the attraction that some people feel for the abyss. The same way I still find it a mystery why some whales are driven to commit suicide on the beach.

AUSTRALIAN ELECTIONS

As I write this morning, Australia is in a political limbo. Despite a massive swing away from Labour, it is likely that, by doing some horse-trading with independent candidates, socialist Julia Gillard could still hold on to power by the skin of her teeth.

It seems obvious that Australia is still largely crocodile country, and what is so funny about it is that the brain of a crocodile only weights eight grams.

CROCODILES

It's getting absolutely sickening, I mean for people to pretend that animals can predict the outcome of human events. If they were able to that, they wouldn't be animal or even human. They would be superhuman. Like, if God had meant for people to smoke, He would have given them chimneys on top of their heads. The fact is that He hasn't.

In Australia, a crocodile has chosen a chicken with the caricature of Julia Gillard above it. This would apparently mean that she will be re-elected tomorrow.

Well, after reading about it in the press, I took the trouble of watching the actual clip, and I wasn't particularly impressed. Having lived in Africa for many years and having observed their behaviour, I know that crocodiles aren't very picky about what they eat. In fact, they'll snap at anything. And when I say anything, I mean anything. Disgusting!

I would hope that Australians are more intelligent.

PRAYER

Every time I settle down for a quick prayer I always spare a thought for President Zuma who has five mothers-in-law.

I also never forget President Clinton who tried very hard, but couldn't.

Bless their hearts!

REPUBLIC

I have just been made aware that the Australian Prime-Minister has threatened to change the country into a republic. What? The Atheistic Republic of Australia?

Ms. Gillard, you just don't have a clue, do you? Next you will probably announce that you want to marry Hugo Chávez!

From your point of view obviously not a match made in heaven, but, mind you, he is a snappy dresser.