Deja vu all over again............

The prospect of a Royal wedding next year will ensure that cheerfulness will break out all over; just what the economy needs, especially for those in the tourist industry. Needless to say, the meeja is wall-to-wall. When I went to ‘Jeff Randall Live’ did I get the business news? Nope. So I switched to ‘Quest means business’ on CNN. And what did I get? That’s right. It is all very good news for the UK. In the space of a year it will have the Wedding, HM’s Diamond Jubilee (that will be the biggest street party of all time), and the Olympics. This will be good both for business and for the country’s morale.

It is also very important constitutionally. Wills and Katie are a more glamorous couple than Charles and Diana ever were. He is tall, very good looking, has an amiable personality, a University degree, and a proper – if somewhat dangerous – job as a search-and-rescue chopper pilot. He also speaks like a normal person. She is beautiful, intelligent (Diana herself said that she was a thick as two short planks), middle-class and seems very sensible. If things go OK the future of the monarchy should be assured for another half-century. If not, I doubt that it will survive Charles. It would be good for the country if Chuck were to renounce the throne. His conduct during the Diana affair showed that he was not fit to be King, but in any case he is too old and too lacking in charisma. Neither is he very bright.

I now have a distinct sense of déjà vu all over again, only this time it’s China-bashing; seems like all America’s woes are down to the evil Mr Chin, who has ‘a carefully thought-out plan to take over America’, according to that well-known anti-masturbator, professional virgin, part-time-witch and no-time politician, Christine O’Donnell. The fact that China’s trade surplus as a percentage of GDP has been steadily reducing and that its current account surplus has halved in three years don’t enter into the Palinista thinking. Neither does the fact that the US has a huge export trade to China in agricultural products, particularly poultry and corn (a billion-plus population takes a lot of grub) or that General Motors has sold 2 million vehicles to China this year, more than in the US.

We are old enough to remember the recession about 30 years ago. As we know, it was all part of a Yellow Peril plot by Japan to take over the world with a politically-motivated economic strategy involving manipulating the yen and paying unfair subsidies to exporters. I remember scenes of laid-off American car-workers smashing-up Japanese cars in parking lots. Reagan was constantly vetoing congressional attempts to build trade-barriers against the evil Japs, proposed by politicians too young or too stupid to understand that it was protectionism that wrecked the world economy in the 1930s. That the Japanese worked harder, saved more and respected education, and built better cars and cameras was neither here nor there.

That the Chinese work harder, save more, and respect education (see what I mean about déjà vu?) and make better and cheaper consumer goods may well have something to do with their success, whilst European workers are not allowed to work more than 48 hours a week.

Still on déjà vu, when Deepwater hit the news months ago we commented on Obama’s foolishness in rushing to blame BP ‘profit before safety’ deficiencies before there was a scrap of evidence of the causes of the spill. We considered that he was in danger of looking a complete prat with his Brit-bashing, macho, gung-ho posturing in front of the cameras. And so it comes to pass. The joys of schadenfreude!

And the originator of our title phrase, the inimitable Dubya seems to have a runaway success with his apologia. At least he was able to have book-signings unlike the Smarmy Swami Blair.

With ‘students’ beating up Tory Party HQ in protest against Labour’s increases in fees, we should be grateful for the opportunities of University education offered to the new generation. They may fit themselves for top jobs in business, industry and the professions by studying ‘Football Culture’, ‘Harry Potter’, ‘Feel the force; how to train the Jedi way’, ‘Robin Hood Studies Pathway’ and ‘History of lace knitting in the Shetlands’, all of which are taught at various universities here. Meanwhile, Dave has decided to pay his ‘vanity’ photographer out of his own capacious bin, so perhaps he’s been reading Heffer’s caustic comments.