Here’s one to make the Health Nazis ponder. The South Americans are showing their solidarity with Argentina by trying to starve out the Falklanders via a trade blockade. Other parallel examples of such underhand tactics by incompetent bullies would include West Berlin in 1948….with which this situation has other similarities, because Russia too has a history of dictatorship and worthless currency.

Because of the blockade, some things have virtually disappeared from el regimen Malvinascimento. You see, there are no trees on the Falklands, so they’ve had little or no fruit for some time. The wind is so cold and strong – and the soil so poor – that few vegetables will grow. And the only animals that can survive on the poor quality grass are sheep.

So to sum up, the Falklanders have been existing for some time now on a steady diet of high fat protein, in which fructose and Vitamin C play little or no part. But the BBCNews website reported today that ‘they are an unflappable lot, the Falkland Islanders. They keep calm and carry on. They also seem strikingly egalitarian, unimpressed by status or rank.’

What they don’t seem to be is ill.

Rudely healthy folks with lots of grit who believe in pricking the pompous and fighting off invaders? Hmm. I think this could be the answer to Blighty’s ills: fewer pinched Health goblins and more lamb roasts. Sounds like a winning combination to me.

Either way, what I do know is that, if the Falklanders would rather eke out an existence on this ghastly outcrop than enjoy a life of plenty under Argentine rule, it’s not saying much about life in the Peron-Galtieri culture of missing persons now, is it?

As they used to sing on the terraces in 1966, before The Mad Handbag* put in all those bourgeois seats:

‘You can stick yer f**kin’ corned beef up yer arse….’

*Note to passing Trolls: Yes, I know Thatcher inspired the resistance to the Argies, but she also told some porkies about Belgrano-sinking, and did try to impose the first Tax on Existence since King John in 1204. This is a humorous article: it is not my outline for a forthcoming book, Argie Bargey: The Compleat History.