One of the most popular features of The Spectator is High Life by Taki (Taki Theodoracopulos). His views on the situation in Greece are usually blunt, but probably more informative and authoritative -and certainly more entertaining- than the usual bland reports from the European Union media.
..Prince Nicholas Romanoff…
Writing from his home in the fashionable Swiss resort, Gstaad, he begins his column of 19 January, 2013,with this provocation:
“The sub-primate level of conversation, as prevalent as the snow up here in the Alps, took a turn for the better last week while a select few celebrated Prince Nicolas Romanoff’s 90th birthday.
"Yes, most people who live up here are illiterate, but they sure know how to count, some even up to ten billion. None of the counters was present at the birthday, however, given at the yacht club by Dino Goulandris for the head of the tragic Romanoff house, just many old friends who included some of Europe’s oldest and most royal families.”
“No camel drivers, thank you very much, no Russian oligarchs, just Former People, as Douglas Smith named his heartbreaking book on the final days of the Russian aristocracy.”
…Greek republic…
Taki says he sat "with King Constantine and his sister-in-law Princess Benedikte, and the Greek King gave a very good speech, pointing out that Nicolas was the first Romanoff to reach the age of 90, just as in his family, the first ever to reach that great age is Prince Philip.
“King Constantine’s story is also one of survival and accommodation, of overcoming the psychological wounds inflicted by the loss of his world, a golden period as far as I’m concerned, and if you don’t agree, all you have to do is look at the brothel that my country has become today.
"Without a higher authority to keep them honest, the politicians robbed the country blind, then stole all the EU money the thieves in Brussels were sending them to prepare the country’s infrastructure as a German outback.
..granting themselves immunity…
“Just for starters: the 2011 finance minister and present leader of the socialist party, Evangelos Venizelos (a famous name this bum adopted as his own), is a fat slob who is responsible for the law granting broad immunity to government ministers. Namely many of the crooks. It’s like trying to clean up Chicago without touching Al Capone and his gang. But Venizelos is the darling of the EU mandarins.
“ That sun-tanned Christine Lagarde ( head of the IMF) slipped Venizelos a list of 2,000 Greeks with a Swiss bank account, a Javert-like gesture of denouncing people, most of whom had every right to have a Swiss bank account. (No, I am not on the list.)
“ Now there are midnight knocks on totally innocent people’s houses while the greatest crooks of all sit on their fat asses in parliament enjoying their immunity. This is not a country, it’s more like a circus, and a flea circus at that. (Lagarde is a typical EU leech, winking and slipping lists on the quiet; she would have been perfect in the Stalinist system.)
“Greece is beyond help because the same old crooked system and the same old crooks are at the helm.
…how they robbed The King…
"Take the King’s case, for example. The state expropriated his land and houses and its contents, all three bought and paid for by his great-grandfather, George I, who insisted on separating his private properties from those of the state.
” The King went to Strasbourg as a court of last resort, and guess what the EU crooks gave him? Less than one hundredth of what the properties were worth. (They were valued at close to $600 million, and the Ali Babas in Strasbourg offered 12 million. The King gave that away to Greek charities.)
“ So now all those valuable lands and houses have been taken over by the crooks, a perfect ending to a perfect crime, one Brussels was in cahoots with.”
His final advice is about the United Kingdom Independence Party , Ukip, which campaigns for a withdrawal from the EU.
" So try to keep that in mind next time someone makes fun of Ukip. Unless you vote Ukip, your house may one day go to someone in Brussels or Strasbourg, especially if you’re royal.”