Thieving sausages in European parliament
By Flipaisimo on Monday, March 3 2008, 20:07 - Permalink
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Thieves and Polices (Pic: Dukal)
Brussels are going classic in their fashion collection this spring. Whilst eighties styles are currently screaming out of all high street windows, the European parliament seems to have opted for something a little more out of the middle ages. On 27 February a secret audit was leaked, revealing that MEPs dispense of their salaries rather suspiciously. But no need to spread panic – they themselves decided not to make this public, via a democratic vote. Seems the juror and his court have become the same person – in beautiful ‘vintage’ fashion.
It was a Danish MEP who apparently made this move; being the most modern person in the parliamentary commission, he asked his colleagues to vote in favour of publishing the confidential report. The latter details how some of this money has gone to saving lumber yards or citizen centres for the elderly. How generous our MEPs are, putting themselves out so that our aged don’t feel alone, stressing about our forests and European fauna …
The report also confirms that our representatives are so splendid that at least one gave his or her assistant a special ‘Christmas bonus’ which was nineteen times the official salary allowance (to give you an idea, an assistant can earn up to 17, 000 euros per month). But how strange – the report also details that some of the salaries of said assistants are debited directly from the MEPs own bank accounts.
Not very classy is it…we’re not feeling a general indignation that our politicians are robbing us, I mean, we’re beginning to get used to that. But at least do it with a bit more elegance! I’d ask them to leave all voting and transparency aside and rob us directly, slip off those masks. Or even better, I’d recommend they watch the film below and take notes. I’ll start by offering them just the opening credits, so that they can be taken away by the sound of the deceitful piano.
Cinema has provided us with many resourceful heroes of the crime caper genre. Some of my favourites include the shameless conmen played by Ricardo Darín and Gastón Pauls in Buenos Aires-set 9 Queens (‘Nueve Reinas’, 2000), Alfred Hitchcock’s beautiful but compulsive Marnie (1964) played by Tippi Hedren, or the strategic, swank Ocean’s Eleven (2001) team, with George Clooney at their head, inspired by Frank Sinatra’s original crowd from 1960.
But if I had to choose one iconic thief, it would without a doubt have to be the charismatic coupling of Robert Redford and Paul Newman in The Sting (1973). The suited and booted twosome - Redford with his flowers and Newman with his cigars and sombreros - have much more style than our own euro-diddlers. But the latter are so damned good at their EU-sting that you start to love them for it, like we love our chorizos (in Spain we call thieves ‘chorizos’, after the spicy Spanish pork sausage which sounds like the Spanish gypsy word chorar, meaning ‘to steal’). Of course, in fiction, we shouldn’t forget the undesirables from Brussels.
”I just wanted my souvenir”
Seems like the week has been full of pilfering, some cases funnier than others. Take British mayoral candidate, the shock-headed conservative MP Boris Johnson . On 29 February, he confessed to having nicked a red leather cigar case from Saddam Hussein’s former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, after the latter’s house was bombed in May 2003 in Iraq. ‘To take the cigar case of the deposed number two of a deposed tyrant was hardly the same as swiping a 2, 300BC bronze statue of a squatting Akkadian king,’ Johnson later scribbled in a national newspaper , after British police wrote to him asking him to return the cigar case to its owner, currently in US custody.
Come on Boris. You probably didn’t make away with that statue yourself because it wouldn’t fit in your pocket, clever clogs. Allegedly Johnson had written about his ‘little souvenir’ in The Daily Telegraph back when he committed the crime. Seems he couldn’t make do with a standard postcard from the Iraqi city – you know, the one depicting the misery in the streets, the destroyed houses and the bodies adorning the ground. Mr. Johnson is now piping on about the coincidence of this police enquiry-cum-political conspiracy coming about five years later and three months before he could be elected London’s next mayor. In any case, if you’re passing through the British capital, watch your bags!
Such golden moments pass us by. But too much entertainment on this level can’t be good. I leave you and your good mood with the worst thief in the history of cinema; after all, it’s a wise idea to enjoy fictional characters than follow real-life thieves.
Translation: Nabeelah Shabbir
The report also confirms that our representatives are so splendid that at least one gave his or her assistant a special ‘Christmas bonus’ which was nineteen times the official salary allowance (to give you an idea, an assistant can earn up to 17, 000 euros per month). But how strange – the report also details that some of the salaries of said assistants are debited directly from the MEPs own bank accounts.
Not very classy is it…we’re not feeling a general indignation that our politicians are robbing us, I mean, we’re beginning to get used to that. But at least do it with a bit more elegance! I’d ask them to leave all voting and transparency aside and rob us directly, slip off those masks. Or even better, I’d recommend they watch the film below and take notes. I’ll start by offering them just the opening credits, so that they can be taken away by the sound of the deceitful piano.
Cinema has provided us with many resourceful heroes of the crime caper genre. Some of my favourites include the shameless conmen played by Ricardo Darín and Gastón Pauls in Buenos Aires-set 9 Queens (‘Nueve Reinas’, 2000), Alfred Hitchcock’s beautiful but compulsive Marnie (1964) played by Tippi Hedren, or the strategic, swank Ocean’s Eleven (2001) team, with George Clooney at their head, inspired by Frank Sinatra’s original crowd from 1960.
But if I had to choose one iconic thief, it would without a doubt have to be the charismatic coupling of Robert Redford and Paul Newman in The Sting (1973). The suited and booted twosome - Redford with his flowers and Newman with his cigars and sombreros - have much more style than our own euro-diddlers. But the latter are so damned good at their EU-sting that you start to love them for it, like we love our chorizos (in Spain we call thieves ‘chorizos’, after the spicy Spanish pork sausage which sounds like the Spanish gypsy word chorar, meaning ‘to steal’). Of course, in fiction, we shouldn’t forget the undesirables from Brussels.
Seems like the week has been full of pilfering, some cases funnier than others. Take British mayoral candidate, the shock-headed conservative MP Boris Johnson . On 29 February, he confessed to having nicked a red leather cigar case from Saddam Hussein’s former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, after the latter’s house was bombed in May 2003 in Iraq. ‘To take the cigar case of the deposed number two of a deposed tyrant was hardly the same as swiping a 2, 300BC bronze statue of a squatting Akkadian king,’ Johnson later scribbled in a national newspaper , after British police wrote to him asking him to return the cigar case to its owner, currently in US custody.
Come on Boris. You probably didn’t make away with that statue yourself because it wouldn’t fit in your pocket, clever clogs. Allegedly Johnson had written about his ‘little souvenir’ in The Daily Telegraph back when he committed the crime. Seems he couldn’t make do with a standard postcard from the Iraqi city – you know, the one depicting the misery in the streets, the destroyed houses and the bodies adorning the ground. Mr. Johnson is now piping on about the coincidence of this police enquiry-cum-political conspiracy coming about five years later and three months before he could be elected London’s next mayor. In any case, if you’re passing through the British capital, watch your bags!
Such golden moments pass us by. But too much entertainment on this level can’t be good. I leave you and your good mood with the worst thief in the history of cinema; after all, it’s a wise idea to enjoy fictional characters than follow real-life thieves.
Translation: Nabeelah Shabbir
Flipaisimo
Nabeelah
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