Greek elections bringing about pretty much the same stuff as before, education changes, coalition splits, more chuntering from Ed Miliband, and a Syrian Civil War that people have stopped caring about. It’s been a busy week so it’s time to get started. Although I hope this column won’t include most of that stuff, if I’m lucky!
Political Oops of the Week
Away from Syria and the same old stuff from the Eurozone, we now move to Egypt once again. It’s been a long time since much of relevance happened in Egypt, but after the military rulers dissolved the entire parliament last weekend things started to move forward again. So this week they then introduced new powers for themselves. To put it simply, they can now control the budget, implement new legislation (as governed by themselves), and the president now doesn’t really exist in any real capacity despite the fact the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood won fair and square.
This pretty much reminds me of how most dictatorships are created. The military tends to always back a dictator and this is how they do it. The only difference is that the military happens to have a ruler from its own brotherhood, as opposed to an outsider leading it.
On the plus side, at least that bed-ridden bastard Mubarak is about to go to the great hospital bed on Satan’s right nipple.
The Painful…
This was quite a recent YouGov poll conducted in the US. It basically said that 63% of all high level Republicans still believe that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) when they invaded it in 2003. This was compared to 15% of Democrats. So you’re telling me that the most powerful country in the Western world should be governed by a party like the Republicans who have a majority of people that believe that WMDs existed in Iraq in 2003? And this is despite the fact that solid evidence consisting of first-hand accounts are arguing for the opposite.
I don’t like to believe that all Americans are complete and utter morons, but the politicians certainly are. Not only do they operate a system that favours only the multi-millionaires, due to the lack of any controls on campaign spending, but it’s an example that a lot of rich people really do live sheltered lives. I hope for the sake of the entire Western world that Obama receives a second term in the White House. But the problem is I honestly do think that he will get voted out, and we will all be left regretting that.
…And the Pointless
Zimbabwean MPs have decided to undergo circumcision as part of a campaign to reduce the prevalence of AIDS in the country. In 2009 Unicef reported that around 14% of the adult population had either HIV or full-blown AIDS. I can understand that the National Trust says that you can reduce AIDS by up to 60% by getting circumcised. However, what gets me is how we prevent the same problem in the West. We don’t mutilate our own cocks in order to prevent it. It just seems to be extreme and unnecessary. Surely a better idea to reduce those Unicef statistics would be to just use a little common sense and just stop having so much sex with strangers? Those statistics will go down by themselves if people just use a little responsibility and common sense.
Oh wait, common sense is in short supply these days isn’t it?
The So Outrageous that it’s Borderline Hilarious
Jimmy Carr is the subject of this section this week as his story really is fitting. Let’s look at the facts. Jimmy Carr utilises a legal yet slightly unethical loophole to bring his tax bill down to single figures, when realistically it should be nearer 50%. For those who don’t understand how he did this, I’ll explain the general process. This scheme, which many figures like the members of Take That are using, is all about creating an off-shore company. The way it works is that they send the money to the company and they then have it loaned back to them immediately. When it comes to loans there’s no tax attached to them so he’s essentially getting the same amount of money without paying any tax at all.
So this week he apologised. I watched his shows and he did get heckled quite a bit, but the most surprising thing is that he was actually being cheered for everything despite the fact that what he did was still blatantly wrong. He never had to pay back any of this money and now the matter is supposedly closed.
It really does amaze me how fickle some people are. We’ll complain about bankers and multinational companies doing this sort of thing for hours and hours on end, but when Jimmy Carr does it then all it takes is a crap apology and that’s the end of the matter. Come on!
Anyway, maybe next week won’t be as bleak and irritating after all…