I was at dinner with friends late last year when one of the female guests announced that her husband was taking her skiing 'for her special birthday'. My in-built accountant's abacus went into immediate action calculating the lady's possible age. This took into account the ages of her children, her looks, and the milestones of her…
Spaghetti Westerners
The word around the Roman Forum is that Italy is on the verge of a Renaissance. After three years of recession, modest growth is expected this year. Regular readers may recall Giovanni and Guiseppe, two Italian plumbers who tried their luck in England about three years back. Thanks to improved employment prospects, they have returned…
Brazil gone nuts
The Circumlocution Office in 'Little Dorrit', where everything became bogged down in bureaucracy, represented Dickens's visceral satire on Government. A century and a half later, it might be time for novelist José Sarney to pick up, in his own country Brazil, where Dickens left off. Brazil is a bureaucratic blast, nowhere more so than in the field…
Tax Break 