The surviving members of the Monty Python team must be cock-a-hoop over the cover of the (just about) current issue of The Economist. Under the headline: 'Europe's Economy', a parrot lies dead receiving an infusion, while Angela Merkel comments, 'It's only resting'. No further explanation required. Forty-five years on, the Parrot Sketch is part of the lingua…
Maintaining The Berne Rate
Sorry, sorrowful Switzerland. This pious country, which has been supplying the Vatican with its psychedelic army for the last five centuries, has been forced to take heed of the words of Handel's Messiah (with apologies to Isaiah): 'Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be laid low.' After hundreds of years where, thanks…
Make it a double, Paddy
The scene in Disney's Snow White, where the wicked witch entices the heroine with a poisoned apple, has fueled the nightmares of generations of kiddies since it first saw the light of day (or should that be 'the dark of night'?) in 1937. I had double the reason to be terrified as my parents had…
Tax Break 