EUNATICS & EUNUCHS: We need more media balance about unpaid lenders and unrepentent invaders

The Slog

by  John Ward

Nearly nine out of ten Greeks believe the Athens government should pursue Germany over the outstanding issue of Second World War reparations, according to a new survey carried out by Marc for Alpha TV. Close on 90% of respondents felt that Greece should seek damages from Germany. Last week, when the Telegraph’s Ed West tweeted to the effect that this pursuit “is new”, I was moved to point out that it isn’t. Wolfie in dem Wheelchair lies happily that the issue “was settled long ago” but it wasn’t. Most of Berlin’s leaders, in fact, insist that Germany’s inherent triumphalism was buried in 1945 along with Hitler. But there are increasing signs of a flaw in that assertion; and the flaw is prone to revelation on both macro and micro bases.

Sitting in a very traditional southern European restaurant last night with a delightful new friend, we watched as a tall, German woman and her fat-backed bloke held an animated conversation about something. What drew our attention to them was the woman’s expression (which I described quietly to my guest as one of “manic intensity”) and within that visage, her eyes which – as my chum knows Mancunian slang) I whispered were “stickin’ out like two chapel ‘at pegs”.

It is the law throughout the EU now that nobody must smoke in a restaurant. It is a decision which (while I am opposed to all tobacco marketing) I know to be based on very flakey evidence about the effects of passive smoking: but given the nature of Belgian Nannies, it has passed onto the statute books from Anglesey to Zagreb. However, the eaterie was a down-and-dirty cellar comprising huge barrels, and customers even more ancient than me – complete with guitar serenade. Pretty much all of them were smoking.

We ate an asonishing selection of traditional appetizers, drank some ordinary barrel-wine, and had a thoroughly nice evening. My partner at table is a smoker, but it doesn’t bother me: her cough does, but that’s an entirely different issue. The evening was almost ruined however when, on leaving, the Brunhilde across the way from us handed my copaine a No Smoking sign she had about her person (the way you do) and growled, “You are in a European country” before flouncing out in a huff of tressled hair and Wagnerian self-righteousness.

Legally of course, she had right on her side. But given that this particular European country I’m visiting has been anally gang-raped by a dozen new Brussels-made German yard brooms in recent years, one might have expected the storm trooprette to be a little more – shall we say? – sensitive.

Over twenty years ago, a sniffy Los Angeles maitre d’ handed me a card offering the services of Alcoholics Anonymous, following a dinner during which two friends and myself ordered a second bottle of Pinot noir wine. He clearly had no more commercial sense than the Brussels-am-Berlin caucus currently running Clubmed into the ground.

There truly is something about alpha Germans and Americans that renders them unable to resist saying, “That’s not the way to do it” in an aggressively patronising, chest-poking manner. Sadly, they are pretty much running the global show in terms of money-love, material obsession, power cravings, hypocritical preaching, and duplicitous bollocks.