The French attack Maltese racism. What hypocrisy!

Le Figaro the popular French newspaper has attacked the attitude of the Maltese towards the illegal immigrants that land on this island’s shores. They quite rightly detail the plight of these miserable people in their camps. In fairness, they seek to point out that one immigrant landing in Malta is equivalent to 1,150 arriving in Germany or 950 in Italy.

However, by condemning the Maltese as a people who consider the immigrants as “pigeons eating the seeds” it casts them as the racist lepers of Europe. This is amazingly hypocritical from a newspaper that ever fails to condemn the appallingly racism that exists in France.

Mumbai hypocrisy

Many Indian politicians have lined up to criticise the highly successful British film Slumdog Millionaire claiming that it portrays the city in a poor light. However, they know perfectly well that several thousand children disappear each year there.

Less than 10 per cent are ever found, while the rest are believed to be either sold, maimed so they can beg, or even murdered for body parts.

The police are frequently accused of not treating this appalling situation seriously as the concerned parents are penniless. Perhaps the film didn’t go far enough.

Classic Brown hypocrisy

So how goes it in destitute Blighty? Well, just as the Treasury was telling the British public that the economy would start to revive next July and Premier Brown was criticising the Opposition Conservatives for talking the economy down, his Cabinet colleague, the blundering Cabinet minister Ed Balls, told a gaggle of Labour activists that Britain faced the worst economic downturn in “over a 100 years” and that it could last for over a decade. Balls-Up, as he is known to his friends, was Brown’s leading ally for nearly 10 years when Brown was Chancellor — so he should know. An up-turn in July? It’s more likely that David Beckham will leave AC Milan to join Birkirkara FC!

So, with opinion polls suggesting that my dog Bozzy has more chance of winning a general election than Brown, the beleaguered Prime Minister sought to deflect attention from his incompetent decade in charge of the British economy and whip up public opinion against the ex CEO of the Royal Bank of Scotland for accepting a £650,000-a-year pension, which had been approved by the government after he resigned last October when the bank collapsed, and taxpayers were forced to pour billions in to save it.

Brown’s deputy, the shrill and foolish Harriet Harman, even went on BBC television to announce that “the pension might be acceptable in a court of law but it is not in the court of public opinion”. She continued her rant adding that if Prime Minister Brown said it was wrong then it was wrong and the government might have to change the law in order to prevent the banker from drawing his pension. What? Sounds dangerously like Nazi Germany to me.

So the government decided that this man should give up his year’s notice but could keep his pension, and even allowed it to be enhanced by way of compensation. Then it changed its mind but couldn’t challenge its own mistake in a court of law, so it might push a bill through the Houses of Parliament, as a result, on the grounds that the banker had failed to do a good job.

Isn’t this a little hypocritical? I mean what about Gordon Brown himself? If this applies to Sir Fred Goodwin, the banker in question, shouldn’t Brown be made to surrender his £123,000-a-year pension when he is forced out of office next year?

No doubt Mr Brown would be defiant in the face this demand as a result of his own failure, despite the UK government’s annual operating loss of £100 billion, rising to £1.5 trillion when the write-down of its banking assets is taken into account.

I can imagine the UK Prime Minister saying: “I’ve been building up this pension since I became an MP. It’s all completely legal, and now you want to take it away just because I’ve been incredibly bad at my job.”

He might even add: “Yes, I’ve been in charge of financial regulation for 12 years; yes, I encouraged the housing bubble and record personal debt, sold the nation’s gold, buggered up everyone’s pension and yes, I pissed billions up the wall by giving State hand-outs, wasting money on worsening public services, and creating pointless wealth spending jobs for Labour voters, but I fail to see what any of this has to do with me keeping my pension.”

And of course Brown’s £3 million pension pot might also then cast the spotlight on the extravagant retirement packages of other failed politicians including Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling’s inexplicable £1.7 million, and the £1.5 million awarded to former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott for the last 12 years.

Surely, many of the mildly sane people left behind sitting on the Titanic island once known as Great Britain might ask themselves what is the more serious crime, busting a bank or busting the nation?

However, incredibly, this is not the end of the story as more hypocrisy was to follow. Not only will millions of public money be paid to failed bankers, despite a government pledge to stop the bonus culture, now we learn that the men the Treasury appointed to sort out the mess are in line for hideous bonuses too. Hardly surprising though from a government that couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery and seems more concerned with fiddling its own expenses before it finally gets kicked out!

Premier Brown may not be automatically deemed to be a hypocrite, or even mad, when he refuses to accept my severe criticism of this or his general handling of the British economy, even though in recent weeks the IMF, the EC Economic Committee and most European and American newspapers have lined up to agree with me. But will recent stinging criticism from French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Dutch Finance Minister Wouter Bos and leading German economic advisers snap him out of denial, halt his hypocrisy and save his sanity? I think we all know the answer to that!

Prize hypocrisy?

And talking of Germany —a German lady called Irena Sendler died recently aged 98. During the Second World War she got permission to work as a plumber in the Warsaw Ghetto. She knew what the Germans intended to do to the Jews and she was determined to save as many children as possible. She managed to smuggle over 2,500 out before being caught and had her arms and legs broken during a severe beating.

Having kept the names of all the children she had saved, she attempted to re-unite them with their parents after the war. Unfortunately, most had perished in the gas chambers. Undeterred she arranged adoption or foster homes for hundreds of them.

Last year these deeds were finally recognised when she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She lost! The winner? Oh that was AL Gore for making a slide show about global warming.

Disgraceful hypocrisy!

On a recent visit to bankrupt Britain, I watched Comic Relief Red Nose Day on television. The British public, to its massive credit, stumped up £57 million in donations that evening – mainly given to saving children’s lives in Africa. This was some £17 million more than last year, which might be considered as being extremely generous given that unemployment and house repossessions are currently rocketing in Britain.

This reminded me of how much there is to do in Africa and how much might have already been achieved there if world leaders had honoured the pledges they made to fund aid needed to wipe out poverty and disease. I can still remember the watery-eyed speeches these professional politicians made for the television cameras nearly five years ago. What disgraceful hypocrisy!

So well done the over taxed British man in the street. Well done all the voluntary and unpaid workers headed by Prince Charles, Sir Roger Moore and various pop stars etc. And shame on you international politicians who have failed to save the lives of millions of children.

You think I exaggerate? Well let me tell you that over one million children died of malaria alone last year in Africa. How many died of the same disease in Malta? Not relevant do I hear you mutter? Wrong! More people died in Italy of malaria during the Second World than the fighting. But after the war the illness was easily eradicated from Europe and much of the rest of the world.

However, our humanity and money did not run as far as Africa. All of this child mortality could have easily been prevented relatively cheaply years ago if the funds had been provided. Our politicians chose not to – maybe we should ask them why?

Fanatical hypocrisy!

Could Russia be the new Germany?

One incredulous veteran German banker, having surveyed the mess in Britain, told me: “It’s a fascinating dynamic. The British politicians blame the bankers, the bankers blame the politicians, and the ordinary British taxpayer ends up getting screwed.

It’s so typically hypocritical. In the good old days in Germany we would have had this sorted in no time at all. We would have simply shot the politicians, moved failed bankers into slave labour camps, stimulated the economy by building lots of tanks and then invaded Poland!”

I asked him if he had ever considered applying for a job in Vladimir Putin’s Russian government, as they were clearly looking for people like him to save the Russian economy. He popped his monocle back in, pulled on his black leather coat and dashed off to find his jackboots and passport.

And finally, dare

I say Obama hypocrisy?

I have already written many times that Barak Obama has taken on mission impossible as the new President of the United States. The world’s media has driven expectations up to impossible levels. Moreover, he hasn’t helped himself by embarking on the wrong economic policy and this will not assist American recovery and thus, in time, will leave him holding the baby.

However, none of this is hypocritical and Obama remains a nice guy in most people’s minds.

But wait a minute – on one hand the young mixed race President flirts with Africa by talking about his roots there with great rhetoric, while on the other he follows an economic protectionism that guarantees that life in Africa will only get worse. Now that, I’m afraid folks, is hypocrisy.

He must be learning fast from Hillary Clinton.

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