De Gaulle once told Churchill's wife Clementine, "France has no friends, only interests". This could have been the motto for his great creation, the Fifth Republic or - for that matter - the Fourth, Third, Second or First. Nicolas Sarkozy is at it again. Spurred on by the threat of his presidency being guillotined at the French elections…
Lies, damned lies and tax rates
Romney 25%! Gingrich 12.5%! Santorum 17.5%! Perry 20%! Remember the old Fair Ground game where you had to guess the number of candies in a jar? If you got the nearest number you won a massive, totally inflammable, furry toy that Mum and Dad refused to take home in the car but relented when they couldn't find a big…
Irish blarney
I have always been skeptical about the rave reviews on the covers of books. "I just couldn't put this book down", may have been the first part of a sentence that concluded, "the kitchen sink disposal unit"; "His best novel yet" , could have ended, "which, given his other semi-literate offerings is no great achievement". So,…
La dolce vita
A headline on the front page of today's International Herald Tribune caught my eye: "Fighting anti-tax mind-set, Italy deploys new tactic: Shame". Given that this was Italy and that Italy is populated by Italians, the first thing that crossed my mind was, "Yeh..Shame they got caught". On viewing the accompanying photograph of a class full of angelic children…
The best of times, the worst of times
As 2011 prepares to hang up its boots, closure is finally coming to one of the finest specimens of legislative panic in recent Israeli history. With the coalition government resembling a concoction of weird and wonderful characters from the Complete Works of Charles Dickens and the middle-classes appealing “Please sir, we want some more”, the…
Tax Break 