DON'T MENTION THE WAR - GREEK MUPPETRY EDITION

Last week I asked for a New Year's resolution of not blaming other people and playing by the rules even when we don't like them. I'm not going to get my wish am I?

Well, that's one thing. But it's quite another when the exact opposite happens. No one came closest to breaking all of my resolutions at once than George MUPPET Romaios, in his "letter" to Wolfgang Schäuble, the German Minister of finance. I summarise his argument here:

• Ze Germans are saying we owe people way too much money and they don't want to bail us out
• Well ze Germans can go swivel because we've given them too much money already by allowing them to do business here, by doing them the favour of honouring our treaty obligations as an EU member, and by allowing them the privilege of bribing our state officials.
• Besides, they still owe us reparations from World War II. And they are, like, totally Nazis. Although they're also siding with Israel against us.
• And what's the deal with their economy - they are running a big deficit too! Who are they to lecture us?
• We're too good for them anyway. We've been through worse shit than this and we don't need them. They'll see.

Which is precisely the type of muppetry that got us into this mess in the first place. In fact, it sounds a bit like something out of the Jeremy Kyle show:

"Yeah I kicked her in the belly when she was pregn't, hold my hand up to that, but did she tell you Jeremy that she was smoking dope while she was carryin our daughter LaTrina? An' she cheated on me twice with her own bruvver innit."

My advice to George MUPPET Romaios would be as follows:

1. Don't call the German Finance Minister names, dear. He's your Daddy. Well, one of your Daddies. But don't piss him off, all the same.
2. Your Prime Minister, whom you adore to a cringeworthy extent, is VERY busy kissing this guy's ass along with those of his Eurozone colleagues. Ask yourself- does he know something you don't?
3. Don't worry about the Euro falling a little. It's good for both you and the Germans. 
4. If you don't like all these "sour-faced" foreign commentators you can always tell your hero Yorgo to quit the Eurozone. Just give me a week's notice to get my family out of the country before it implodes like the house at the end of Poltergeist.
5. Try actually sending your "letters" next time instead of throwing hissy fits like a girl. I look forward to the replies.

Technical note:

An interesting LOL fact about the Reparations is that, when the Allies audited our claim for reparations immediately after the war, they found that the amounts we had estimated had been inflated three-fold. That's usually called PWNAGE, but WWII is very serious business so let's call it an EPIC FAIL.

Worse still, if ze Germans were to pay back everything our most belligerent compatriots are asking for in current prices, they would pay back EUR70bn. That would take our debt back down to ca. EUR230bn, and at current rates of spending it would pay for our next three or four budget deficits. But as you guessed this would be a one-off, so in three years, we'd be right back where we are today.