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…
Greecing the wrong palms
Sneak, snitch, grass - those one syllable words do not convey an aura of approval. In school, where we imbibe the morality that plagues us for the rest of our lives, a telltale can expect a bigger punishment than the class-mate he is squealing on. The sheer number of synonyms (I have just used five)…
A drop of golden sun
From Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to Adolf Hitler to Conchita Wurst, little Austria has always punched above its weight. It is ironic that the country that gave the world half its great classical music and, so far, all its World Wars, should be almost exclusively associated today with one kitch movie.Fifty years ago this week,…
Trying to keep the relationship platonic
Following the recent news of Greece's continuing woes, and thinking about what to write, I soon realized that very little has changed since I penned the two Posts below in 2012. The country's new whacko Government has won a reprieve from a fatal dose of international hemlock by promising to come up with alternative measures…
The spotlight beside the golden door
Fifty years ago today, the New York Times announced that Elizabeth Taylor had failed in her attempt to renounce US citizenship. Required to disavow 'all allegiance and fidelity' to the United States, she found herself unable to do so. Now, allegiance and fidelity are terms Ms Taylor had a lot of experience disavowing - eight lots…
Cry for Argentina
Any professional Opinion Letter writer knows that the invention of the footnote was a godsend. Enabling the eternally cautious tax lawyer or accountant to throw caution to the wind in the main body of his document, the footnote can be stuffed with endless bits of what the paying client calls 'fudge' and the expert refers to…
The Gentle Tax
There was a time when the mere mention of the name Germaine Greer - pioneering feminist author of 'The Female Eunuch' - made grown men (and only grown men) adopt the Direct-free-kick-defensive-wall position favoured by all modern footballers. I had no such reaction when, the other day, I turned on my car radio and was sucked…
Telling it like it is (?)
Alan Coren, the late editor of Punch, once wrote that, while touring Europe he climbed to the top of a hill to get a panoramic view of Luxembourg - only to find there was a tree in the way. The first time I flew into Luxembourg airport a few years ago, was also the first…
And now for something hardly different
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…
Tax Break 