The dishonest, dishonourable Mr. Johnson

On the face of it I have no business discussing UK affairs, as I am neither a UK passport holder nor do I come from from one of the nations forming it. Having lived and worked for a large part of my adult life in England, however, I feel I am entitled to opinions about the UK and its future, especially as my currently estranged offspring is a citizen.

Boris Johnson is an intensely ambitious man whose every action seems to be based around the gratification of his needs. As Mayor of London he seemed to excel in the PR aspect of the job, portraying the eccentric Londoner to the world and en route gathering much-needed publicity, though I'm told that he was less than perfect regarding the practical side of the job; I have no way of evaluating this retrospectively, but I do like some of the things that became reality during his tenure like the 'Boris bikes' and the 'Boris buses'. As an MP he has not really had to work hard - he was initially handed a safe Tory seat which he gave up for the mayoralty - then took on another safe seat so he could ply his trade.

He has been proven to be dishonest in his career as a journalist, and has been fired from jobs for so being. While exuding charm and bonhomie he appears to have no moral compass whatsoever, routinely distorting facts to suit his purposes. His political positions seem to depend entirely on what would produce a result for him rather than anything so complicated as the future of his country and the people he represents. His support for Brexit is typical of this, as up to that point he had portrayed himself as a supporter of the European ideal, quickly swapping sides on spotting an opportunity to strengthen his prime-ministerial ambitions. Indeed Boris's charisma played a big part in the result of the Brexit referendum, swaying undecided voters with charm and dubious facts. His subsequent elevation to the post of Foreign Secretary was, if not a complete disaster, certainly not a success, with Boris raising peoples' hackles around the world with his tactlessness and lack of gravitas, achieving little or nothing where his personal input was needed.

Boris is attempting to make Brexit his great policy, his moment of history, his great achievement, yet it is unlikely that he actually believes in it. He makes big pronouncements but with little conviction and shows no sign of actually knowing how to realistically achieve an agreement with the EU; rather, he is playing word games as if he was in an Oxford debate being clever. Though I am personally against Brexit, believing it to be damaging to a country I love but have no vote in, I would welcome being shown a plan with a realistic way forward rather than slogans, empty words and references to 'doing trade with the rest of the world', something which was never a problem in my direct experience, with my UK manufacturing company exporting as far as Japan and New Zealand, the USA and Turkey (nothing if not up on the news, your scribe...!). But are we seriously talking about importing, say, tomatoes from a Commonwealth country half way around the world, rather than from Spain next door, in today's carbon footprint dominated world? Really?

While Boris is disappointingly similar in his treatment of facts to the orange person - you know, the one with the amazing brain, all the best words, the super rich one, running the show across the ocean - he seems to at least have a tiny bit of humanity and a sense of humour; perhaps I am politely saying that he hides his nastiness under a veneer of sophistication and civility, though I sincerely hope that his nastiness is at a lower level than that other man, the one across the pond, who astounds us every day with his bullying behaviour towards anyone not offering him 'respect', much like a 'Godfather' would expect.

Stop Press: Now Mr. Johnson has taken to attempting to blackmail Parliament, showing behaviour so far beneath of what is expected of a British Prime Minister as to be practically subterranean! A place in history indeed!

Giannis Antetokounmpo - why I feel proud

There is an amazing young man making waves in the NBA world over the last few years.  He is called Giannis Antetokounmpo (is that really the way he should be spelling his surname?) and though he originally hails from Africa (Nigeria) he grew up in Greece, now holds a Greek passport and identifies as Greek. Some of his brothers appear to be more or less as talented, and the young Antetokounmpos are shaking the basketball world to its core.

First of all I would like to apologise on behalf of all Greeks for forcing these talented young people not only to struggle, together with their parents, for a significant period of time, but also for making them spell their family name in a most peculiar way - this is the way that the Greek state seeks to latinise all names without reference to sense of any sort. Their family struggled to survive and, while individual Greeks helped them in their struggle, the state was largely indifferent until they started reaching their amazing individual achievements on the world's basketball courts.

So how dare I, a complete bystander, claim pride in the achievements of these singular boys, and Giannis' in particular? Everything they have done has been down to their talent, their efforts and the sacrifices that they, their family and those close to them made - where do I come in?

You misunderstand me, as my pride is not in Giannis' (or his siblings) achievements, significant though they may be. None of us looking on from a distance had a hand in these, even if we want to stake a claim - we would be ridiculous if we tried. No, what makes me proud is that this kind young giant, this superbly talented young black man from Nigeria, identifies himself as Greek and, indeed, is proud to be thought of as the 'Greek Freak'. He is now successful, rich and famous and could choose to identify with any part of this world, yet he appreciates something that my country of birth gave him, enough to feel Greek - it makes me immensely proud.

When I see programs on the telly, when Giannis seeks out souvlaki somewhere in North America to feel at home, when I see him promoting his feeling of Greekness my chest swells. His achievements are his own, for sure, but I am grateful for the love he has shown for our little patch of dirt that is modern Greece - with all its problems - and it feels me with pride.

Long may the Antetokounmpo boys, and Giannis in particular, reign. I will feel proud for the love they display towards my - and now their - unimportant little country, a country that offered them solace, perhaps not initially generously but just enough, a strange country that is struggling to accept Greeks when they are not successful, never mind non-white Greeks. Well done Gianni, well done the whole Antetokounmpo clan, thank you for making us understand that feeling Greek can be a state of mind, independent of colour or anything else, thank you for wanting to be Greek.

A thankfully rare animal - the Orange Ignoramus

It is amazing to watch the person in charge if the affairs of the most powerful country in the world, a person whose decisions affect more or less all of us, and to realise he is completely ignorant of people, of world affairs, of anything other than money and his own self-importance.

A couple of days ago, following the outcry of his sudden decision to let Turkey invade Northern Syria and establish a 'safe zone' - for whom, one wonders - which went against his country's policy up to that moment, he issued a ridiculous statement. In this statement he warned Turkey that if they did anything which, in his great and unmatched wisdom he didn't agree with (phrased only slightly differently), he would destroy their economy as he had done before. shock and awe. He understands that part of the world so little so as to assume that his statement meant anything to anybody; alas Turkey has now launched a full scale attack on the Kurds residing in the desired area.

It is impossible to explain the folly of this man's actions, his ignorance, his disinclination to listen to experienced advisors and international relations specialists, the destruction he is wreaking with his 'money is everything' way of operating - I decline to call it a philosophy - and his leading by social media. Now if the USA needs to intervene in Syria it will cost a hell of a lot more not only in lives lost but lots of his favourite cash as well, with the Turks also against him - they will be bemused as to how he gives them the green light one day, then attacks them the next. Statements, such as the unmatched wisdom gem he made the other day, are widely disregarded as empty words in these situations - they are most certainly not taken as statements of intent.

It is being said that his cosying up to the Turks is because of a Trump Towers building project in Istanbul, but I cannot believe that even he can be as corrupt as that. Should anything like that be proven he would deserve not only impeachment but a long prison sentence as well; I hope for America's sake this is not the case, that all this is down to ignorance and stupidity, but nothing would surprise me.

His idiocy, though, is truly unmatched and unstoppable: recently he made a pooh-poohing statement about the Kurds, implying that they fought with the US and their allies against IS to protect there own lands, so only for self interest, and said 'They didn't help us in the Second World War'. Well Mr. Genius, guess who else didn't - yes, your friends the Turks, who were fighting on the side of the Axis powers...

Everything for this man seems to come down to whim, or dollars and cents now. There is no sense of the long term, no sense of honour, no sense of obligation - and he is the most powerful man in the world, supposedly. Wow!

Ding dong the alarm bells go

If you had a friend who told you how clever they were you'd certainly be slightly concerned, especially if you could see little evidence of either humour or veracity on their part, but perhaps you would write it off as a bit of eccentricity.

If the same individual kept telling you that he had the best words and how nobody had better words than him, then kept mixing things up when speaking and saying oranges when he meant origins etc. etc., you might have felt that he was sometimes easily confused, strange for such a clever fellow.

When instead of talking he would start making peculiar bing- bong sounds to illustrate a specific point, leaving those listening to him shaking their heads in bemusement, you might start losing a bit of confidence in your friend, but put it down to a bad, perhaps very bad, day.

When you friend shortly thereafter started insisting that black was white, day was night and that what really mattered - reality - was how he saw things, you might have felt that perhaps he was in need of professional help, prompting you to start a search on the internet.

If your friend then denounced you and your actions in doubting his mental stability, asserting that he was in fact a stable genius and that everyone was in agreement with him on that, you would have started seeing that the situation was a lot worse than you had originally imagined, that your friend faced a serious problem.

But the moment he announced to all the world on social media that something was subject to his opinion in his 'great and unmatched wisdom' (his words) the warm bells would start ringing in earnest and you would be looking not for a helpful psychiatrist but for the men in white coats to come and take your friend to a safer place, maybe even a space with padded walls.

Ding-dong America, ding-dong.

USA and the Kurds - a serious betrayal!

Donald Trump's government is making a colossal mistake by abandoning their erstwhile allies in the Middle Eastern arena, the Kurdish people, to their fate in the hands of Turkey and its ambitious President Mr. Erdogan. This astounding backtracking - not long ago Trump had insisted that anyone who harmed the Kurds would be punished severely, especially in economic terms - will leave the reputation of the USA even more in tatters than anyone thought possible. Furthermore, it will disqualify the US from involvement in any regional peace settlements so desperately needed, leaving anyone still a US supporter shaking their heads and crying with frustration.

It is even more appalling that the strongest world power is stepping aside to allow Turkey to invade a foreign country and establish a zone according to its preference in Syria - paraphrasing Greta Thunberg, how dare they? This is blatant empire-building by an aggressive regional player who is ignoring any rule of law in the area, tries to force allies to do their bidding and constantly makes war-like pronouncements against its neighbours, often fellow NATO members; this aggression also overshadows the good that may come out of this operation, namely the repatriation of a large number of Syrians, maybe up to 2 million, currently in Turkey. Is Turkey vying to replace the ridiculous IS Caliphate with one of its own, trying to reawaken an Ottoman Empire, long consigned to the dustbin of history, but in the form of a modern, Turkish state or what? This operation does not have the hallmarks of a peacekeeping move.

Why is the United Nations security council not acting? How is this so different from Kosovo when the world stepped in to stop the annihilation of a minority at the hands of a dominant majority, indeed willing to invade another country to do so? Is the supposed good being done enough to allow the part extinction of the Kurds? Shame, shame, shame.

Not that President Tump is familiar with the sentiment - to me he seems incapable of shame - as he has a long history of selling out allies when they no longer fit his personal agenda. And the decision is based on political posturing and - would you believe it, money considerations - so the fate of the Kurdish people must be immaterial! Boy, even Dubbya, of whom we thought he was the worst possible President, would never have behaved this way.

In my opinion the USA has a long history of doing good around the world, often thanklessly, regularly helping where help was needed with cash, with arms, with military assistance. As the world's biggest superpower, certainly for the last eighty years, they have of course also been guilty of misbehaviour, miscalculations and even crimes, but to my mind the scale up to today was in their favour - for all their faults and mistakes the 'Yanks' were the cavalry, the good guys, until now. No credibility after this, no trust, a pariah superpower in my eyes. Will the rest of the world sit by and watch this happen?

If this sounds like a rant, it's because it is - I'm very angry that anyone, never mind the USA, can behave like this. Make America a disgrace? The world is watching anxiously.

Homemade wine

Having been involved in wine as an amateur since the early 1980s and professionally shortly thereafter, I have had a lot of experience tasting everything, from priceless 1st growth Bordeaux to everyday drinking wine. Though I have always specialised in selling wines of exceptional, in one way or another, pedigree, I have tried and drank lots of middling or indifferent stuff, with one horror always lurking at the back of my mind - a friend's home-made wine.

Uninformed people like to kid themselves that somehow a little person on their own with no facilities and little real knowledge can make a better, a more honest wine, than the dastardly commercial producers, out for what they can get with little regard for purity and real quality. It is a wonderful, innocent idea that seems rational until you know a bit more about it, when if you have any sense you realise that this is all a bullock would deposit not long after a good meal - the average Joe or Josephine has no suitable equipment, little knowledge and, quite frankly, limited understanding of what makes a good wine. Not to labour a point, most homemade wine is mediocre, sometimes embarrassing and, more often than not, undrinkable by anyone with a trained palate.

You, my regular reader, remember clearly that back in May I took a ship and visited old friends on the beautiful island of Kos, friends that I had known since before my teens and that I had lost touch with until relatively recently, life being what it is. After spending a few days on the island, encountering the same warmth that had bound us as children from entirely different backgrounds all those years ago, I had to leave and return to the Greek mainland. One of my kind friends insisted he give me some of his family's homemade olive oil and a bottle of their family wine, both of which I accepted with outward pleasure and inner apprehension; the wine especially worried me.

Over the last few months the olive oil has been in regular use in my sister's household, where I am thankfully a guest, enhancing many a salad but also, despite my friend warning against it - don't waste this in cooking, it's too good - I used it in a handful of yummy dishes. The wine posed more of a problem - what if it was awful? - and I was more circumspect in sharing it, not wanting to embarrass neither my friend in Kos nor the sharer, so I kept it in my wardrobe.

Well, today became the moment of truth and, as my sister went out for the evening, I indulged in some basic cooking and a glass or three of wine, choosing my friend's wine from Kos as the victim. And - and I can hardly credit this myself - I was bowled over, for this was a terrific red wine, serious and concentrated in nose and palate, intense strawberries with a touch of brandy dominating everything. Rich and pleasing, it was the exact opposite of what I had feared and exactly what my friend had loosely promised me... Oh ye of little faith!

With all my preconceptions shattered, my simple meal tonight fittingly involved some of his olive oil as well, giving me lots of satisfaction in more ways than one and proving to me how stupid prejudice is - yes, most homemade wine is shite, but some can be very good indeed. As a little egomaniac I may not enjoy being taught lessons but, on the other hand, I do so enjoy learning! The pleasure from this unexpected surprise was such - and I was fully prepared to have to flush the wine down the sink, if I'm honest - that I polished off the whole bottle and it left me wanting more.

I do not know when my next time in Kos will be, though I hope it may be soon as I yearn to spend more time with my lovely friends there, but it will have to include a bit more of this lovely wine, made with love and surprising skill and offered with affection for a friendship that, incredible as it may seem, has transcended the years - I feel so amazingly blessed.

Beauty and Beastly behaviour

Greece is my country of birth and, despite spending a large chunk of my adult life elsewhere (mainly in London) - you, my loyal reader, well know that I consider myself a passionate Londoner - I am currently due to circumstances beyond my control spending most of my time enjoying the Greek summer and autumn.

Recently my wonderful friends T. and T.  K-S came from Finland to spend a week visiting a country that they had never seen before, giving me the opportunity to show them some of the sights of this, most touristy of countries. My kind nephew allowed me to us his little car and off we went, hurtling around the Greek countryside, up mountains and down dales, for there is a lot to see in terms of ancient sites, but also lots and lots of countryside unknown to most. And let me tell you - and some of these roads and places were new to me too - that a lot of it is magnificent, not at all like the tourist pamphlets showing arid Aegean islands and lots of beaches.

Sure, Greece has many islands, not all of them arid and most of them worth visiting both for natural beauty and in pursuit of a good time. Most everyone knows this, as lots of publicity has been generated internationally about the Greek Sun, the Greek Sea, the Greek Beaches. Hardly anyone outside Greece, however, and not many people within either, know all the fabulous mountains, forests and attractive towns and villages that abound. There are many unspoilt or not over-spoilt places to visit, modernised with sensitivity, alive with locals and not just tourist traps, waiting to welcome the lucky traveller heading their way. A new wave of good quality hotels has also sprung up, often unfortunately nicknamed 'boutique hotels' that offer good quality hospitality and prices that reflect this, but not unduly.

Partly by luck and partly by judgement we stayed in a nice hotel fitting that description nestling on the bottom of Dimitsana, a lovely large unspoilt village in Arcadia, in the heart of the Peloponnese. Our hotel was perched above a ravine with a swirling river (not visible but audible from the hotel) and offered dramatic views, clean mountain air (we were at 1000 metres altitude approx.), comfortable rooms and was close to a network of amazing, if confusing, mountain roads. These roads, sometime through thick forest, others hanging on the sides of the mountains, were a driver's dream - empty, curving and largely in ok condition for fast driving. We had a great time driving hither and thither.

Alas in the middle of nowhere, often in pristine countryside we, more than once, were unfortunate enough to encounter rubble and rubbish discarded without a thought for the environment. As some of the stuff dumped was clearly household stuff or builder's rubble it had to have come from local people or businesses. How can individuals live in the midst of exquisite beauty and think nothing of dumping their rubbish wherever it suits them?

Of course the excuses are many, and some of them may even be valid to a point, but it upsets me no end to witness this carelessness and cavalier attitude with the environment, particularly as large swathes of Greece have been ruined beyond redemption by humankind and progress. Is it not enough that we have brutalised our seafronts in the name of enjoyment and holidays, do we really need to destroy our mountaintops as well? Yet most Greeks can be heard proclaiming that they live in 'the most beautiful country in the world!' but there seems little interest in preserving and taking care of this beauty.

Careless, selfish, stupid, destructive behaviour is not a Greek prerogative, of course, and can be found all over this world of ours. I resent it, will never accept it as somehow inevitable and will try to oppose it wherever and whenever I encounter it and am able to. Perhaps you, dear reader, would care to help?

Greta Thunberg, my appreciation

A 16 year old Swedish girl has been upsetting the world recently, turning things upside down wherever she goes, shaking the status quo and generating lots of publicity. She is called Greta Thunberg, has Asperger's syndrome, and has been making a nuisance of herself on the international stage, even at the United Nations... is she a pest, a hero or a misguided individual manipulated by the adults in her life for their own ends?

Greta has generated immense amounts of good publicity for the problem of global warming, for the case the scientists have been diligently researching, proving and promoting for the last few years; she has invented nothing, nor does she lay claim to anything of the sort. She is not a scientist and probably, as a 16-year old, is not deeply scientific, but she appears reasonably knowledgable. What she most certainly is is passionate - what her critics like to call disturbed - about what is happening to the environment of our planet and, unlike most children her age, she is actually doing something tangible about it in her own, perhaps naive, way. She is, after all, still a child - out of the mouths of babes - and this is obvious if only you care to look without your prejudice getting in the way, though her detractors find conspiracies, with concealed adults everywhere supposedly manipulating her and controlling everything. This all appears to be untrue, with most conspiracy theories debunked by those in the know (yes, she appears to write all her speeches by herself!), which doesn't seem to stop the emergence of new ones all the time - even a fake tie-up with good old George Soros has been attempted!

What I find remarkable in this little girl is her courage and willingness to stand up to the world and its leaders, grown-ups all, perhaps made easier by her Asperger's (her, as she says, superpower). A friend of mine said the other day that there was nothing courageous in what Greta is doing, that she is put up to it, that she is coaxed but I beg to differ - even if it were so,  for a child, however passionate, to stand up (or in Greta's case sit down) and address world leaders in a foreign country takes great commitment and, yes, bravery! Remember school things where we had to get up and read things in front of everyone and how hard that was, anybody?

Greta is criticised for somehow not having done anything special herself other than not to go to school on Fridays, but in so doing the critics are missing the point entirely: this is not about Greta Thunberg or anything she has achieved, and she has laid claim to nothing for herself. Where is she at fault for promoting a message we need to hear, the whole world needs to hear? She is fighting to put across that message only, that our environment is in peril, that we are running out of time and that we should listen to the science; in this she is, quite literally, an angel, as the real meaning of the word in its original greek does not involved winged creatures, but rather simply means messenger.

Some dispute he's style, others her lack of knowledge or experience, more yet like to pretend she is part of some conspiracy - for what, pray? - with others pulling the strings. As far as I can see she is just a passionate young girl - yes inexperienced, yes awkward, yes imperfect - but in focussing on that we are blinding ourselves to this angel's message: do something about our world now, for tomorrow may be too late. It is a simple enough message which has nothing whatsoever to do with the person of Greta, so if you disagree please talk convincingly about that and not about her clothing, her presentation of her manner of speaking.

And do you know what? Should we fail to act soon, I don't think that the young should ever forgive us!