NOT AS BAD AS IT SEEMS

Pavla's husband, that vulture (I think he used to be part of some private equity fund - Cannibal Capital or the like)has been looking at last minute holiday deals in Greece. You can buy a whole island in exchange for food, apparently. "Beware Greeks bearing gifts" was a famous epithet coined by the Trojans, well the six of them who survived getting Fallujah-ed by Agamemnon. (Come to think of it, General "Surge" Petraeus sounds a bit Greek.)

The maxim still applies it would appear, since it turns out those gifts were never actually gifts but loans that now need to paid back. As a socialist and internationalist of course I feel solidarity for those scruffy tax-evaders who seem to retire before they have even stopped growing. So my brotherly advice is: default on your debts. All of them. Let the usurer/casinoes (aka banks) take a haircut instead of the tax payer. Subsequent Europe-wide financial collapse? Bring it on. I guarantee it will have far less effect than threatened, worse than German E-Coli perhaps but not as bad as Mexican Swine Flu.

Other "not-as-bad-as-it-looks news" is the appointment of Ayman al-Zawahiri to the recently vacated top position at al-Qaida. Not as bad as it looks. Initially this promoting from the inside would suggest a guarantee of continuity. However, according to experts, the former Number Two is "more confrontational" than bin Laden was!! Hopefully this means he will invest in fewer project proposals made to his homicidal Dragon's Den. It is further said that al-Zawahiri is "less of a unifying figure" than Osama. Well, we all know what happens when you lose the dressing room... So more good news for al-Qaida's opponents aka "the living".

I also learnt that the old Egyptian surgeon was allegedly elected by AV and that nobody actually voted for him - he just scoopped up a lot of second preferences. Apparently
Sam al-Lardyce was the early front runner, so let us be at least thankful al-Qaida didn't give the job to a long-ball terrorist - that sounds particularly dangerous.

Lastly, the depressing news of plucky Brit, Katie O'Brien going out again in straight sets in the first round at Wimbledon (this time to a 40-year old from that temple of tennis, Japan) could be a cloud with a silver lining. Hopefully she will now give up tennis for good.

Better still all female British tennis players will retire. And we will be spared watching an entire generation of misguided fools plunge defenceless into Russian cannon like the Light Brigade with racquets for sabres; stop being forced to witness their slow, inevitable expulsion from the draw like a shoal of porpoises gradually falling extinct. Plus, Virgina Wade was raised in South African, Anne Keothavong's parents are Laotian, Elena Baltacha is Ukrainian and Laura Robson is Australian, what are all these foreigners doing playing tennis for Britain?

They should be playing cricket for England.

Who have just prevailed over the war-ravaged islet of Sri Lanka. The summer is full of hope after all.

FC Naylor