I had a publisher some years ago accuse me of ‘relentless cynicism’. I wonder how he feels today in the light of world events, and also about the book he turned down: A Year in the Merde…..only, three years before A Year in the Merde appeared and became a global bestseller.

“America cannot turn a blind eye to events in Iraq,” said President Obama this morning – an observation that will stand forever in the annals of mind-boggling hypocrisy. In my lifetime alone, the US has turned a blind eye to everything from Pinochet to the Greek Colonels, via the Muslim Brotherhood, native American massacres, the odious Diem, Tianamen Square, and Hosni Mubarak.

Maybe my cynicism has been relentless in an effort to counter the equally relentless lies we get told every hour of every day, month after month, year after year.

Meanwhile, a chimpanzee trappist monk the Australian PM Tony Abbott said at a memorial service yesterday that there would be “time to judge the guilty” when it comes to the shooting down of MH17. Truly, the thought of this idiot making a judgment call on where his backside is fills me with anxiety: the idea of him being able to unravel the four-dimensional spin machine that is Ukrainian geopolitics, however, is close to being an argument for never again letting the populace of a nation state decide anything.

In Greece, the Government spending ‘surplus’ continues to be trumpeted….but what we mustn’t do is mention how this is being achieved – viz, by not doing its duty to the citizenry.

Outstanding payments owed by the main public healthcare provider shot past the 2-billion mark
at the end of June. Payments overdue to the country’s hospitals total 790 million. Government welfare and tax-relief payments rose to 5.2 billion euros at the end of June, having been 4.9 billion at the
start of the year.

And in this, the year when Samaras told us the Greek exit from intensive care would be complete, the unemployment rate dropped by a miniscule 0.4%, from 23.7% then to 23.3% now. The night of Greek suffering has a thousand blind eyes.

The ‘surprise’ remains a major weapon of the truth-stranglers. Germany’s one-off fall in exports during May has in turn been followed by a further ‘surprise’ fall in June….twice as big as the one in May. The main cause, it seems, was a 10.4% fall-off in orders from within the eurozone. My oh my, I wonder why on earth that might be?

In the planet’s most over-hyped “recovery” – my almer mater the UK – manufacturing growth has fallen well below what the City expected. This has a lot to do with the fact that the City and its Chancellor don’t have a clue how manufacturing works – and how to encourage entrepreneurs….for the simple reason that most of them are paper-shuffling mathematically braindead derivative freaks who have never had a functional socio-economic idea in their largely pointless lives. The National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) says that UK factories are producing 7.4% less than they were at the time of the pre-recession peak in early 2008.

I highlight that stat because it is what we commonsense economic observers call a f**king big number. Does the Government have an answer about why it’s there? Of course not. Is the Opposition on the ball enough to spot and exploit it? Are you kidding? Ed has told Dave that he’s “got it wrong” on Gaza, and is in Scotland campaigning for a No vote against Scottish Independence. The only thing the British media have to say about Ed Moribund today is that he seems to use the F word quite a lot.

So there you are: he is Our Friend in Tough Times. Just like Barack Obama says Yes We Can….turn a blind eye to whatever the f**k we want.