bleungberg.com

Investors, magalomaniacs and economic brains gathered at the Swiss ski resort of Davos last week to warn us that Greece, Portugal and Greece are pretty much fucked, and will drag the rest of Europe down with their economic collapse.

Whilst Bleungberg won’t dispute Greece or Portugal’s economic woes - they were always the weak links due to a lack of proper system in place safeguarding their economies, weak central banks and an economy reliant on very few sources of capital like tourism and minimal fisheries - Spain is nowhere near as bad as the other two.

Yes, Spain’s unemployment is at an all-time high of just over 4m, or 17.4%, and its national debt is huge. But, unemployment has always - always - been high in Spain, particularly amongst the young.

Its national debt has now ballooned to such a scale that is unacceptable to the EU - but what about the United Kingdom’s astronomical debt?!

Spain is in a massive economic black-hole because it chose to invest its billions in renewable-energy research and constructions abroad which do not return profits quickly.

Its banks were left largely unscathed by the credit problems experienced by its rivals in Britain, Germany, Belgium, Ireland, Iceland, the US, Hong Kong and Japan.

Instead, they were undone by the property boom which grossly distorted the housing-market, and then failed to be sold off, thus leading to idle new homes and many lay-offs at construction sites.

This came about partly because the frivolous Spanish population started holding onto their capital rather than spending it, coupled with a massive retreat by those poor British expats along the Costa del Sol, causing a property crash.

Yet, somehow, Spain has been lumped in the same sentence as economic basket cases such as Greece and Portugal.

This is grossly unfair.

Yes, Spain’s been a little reckless in the last two decades in letting in immigrants, placing a huge burden on social costs to an ever-increasing and  ageing population, but to compare them to the likes of the other two is not fair on the Spaniards.

Their economy is not going to go under; it’s too big to.

Greedy investors love bad-mouthing peripheral economies in the EU in the hope of making a quick buck from their predictions.

If Spain’s debt is to be defaulted, then it’ll be strictly down to malicious gossiping on the investors’ part.

They tried to do the same with Turkey and Latvia last year, and haven’t yet been proved right.

Yes, Latvia is still in trouble but its economy is of little significance to the wider world, whilst Turkey’s economy has posted strong growth over the last year.

So, when investors predict apocolypse is about to envelop the Iberian peninsular, they are right - but only in the extreme western section: from Porto all the way down to Faro.

Britain, meanwhile, here comes the double-dip…

Although the slippery French cheated defeated Ireland to win a place in this year’s World Cup, they have virtually no chance of regaining the trophy they last won in 1998.

Many blame their coach for being shit. Some blame their players for being rubbish. Many blame that cheatin’ scumbag Thierry Henry for being a smug cunt.

And the one small chance that they have in eliminating one of their fiercest rivals long before the kick-off has already disappeared - and the French football association did nothing about it.

The woman who aborted John Terry’s baby, the vampishly attractive but ’sad-looking’ Vanessa Perroncel, will not now sell her sex-history to the highest-bidding tabloid, says her PR super-guru Max Clifford.

It’s presumed that ‘JT’ has bought her silent in order to avoid further humiliation to his family at a cost of £400 000.

Many had feared that any further revelations would sour the team-spirit in the England camp, and drive an even bigger wedge between former best-buddies Terry and his teammates, notably Ms Perroncel’s former fiance, Wayne Bridge.

Those dopey bastards at the FFF have therefore completely missed out here.

By out-bidding JT for her to sell her life-story, those cheatin’ froggy scumbags could easily destroy England’s central defence before they’d even left for South Africa, and give themselves a bit of a chance during the knock-out stages.

Now, with a gagging order in hand, JT and England can breathe a sigh of relief.

When will the French ever, ever learn?!

England coach Fabio Capello limped into London to sack that philandering, roast-spitting, racist, nightclub-urinating, bottle-throwing, money-loving super-cunt John Terry as England captain, and replaced him with the dim-witted and unintelligent, equally-philandering, drug-cheating, prank-calling, orgy-loving sex tape threesome star and well-known sword-crosser Rio Ferdinand.

What’s wrong with Steven Gerrard?! He got acquitted of affray last year!

If England fails to win the World Cup, the number of people they can now blame is endless, starting with Capello, then JT, then Rio, then Vanessa Perroncel, Eidur Gudjohnsen etc etc etc…

Two wealthy power-hungry presidents, with a combined age of nearly over 150, both with a penchant for hair-dye/plugs and cosmetic surgeries, controlling newspapers, television, using football as a diplomatic tool, are the best of chums, and are probably most upset that they are separated by the Mediterranean.

So, which one do you hate more?

Hosni, or Silvy?

Bleungberg arrived here a fortnight ago, and will remain here indefinitely. We’ve rented an office, and at the moment, Cairo is rather ‘nice’ – warm during the day, cold at night and very chilly indoors all day. And no sign of cockroaches (or geckoes) yet – thankfully – but they WILL come. (By the way, cats are really scrawny here, and plenty of dead ones around on the streets, too.)

Anyway, this is our first time in Cairo, and we decided to move here upon others’ recommendations, our own intuition and past experiences in the Middle East, and the prospect of getting some random jobs/challenges/studies. So far, it’s been fine, and Cairo is totally unique – it feels like a city on the brink, and looks like one giant mess; a catastrophe on an epic scale. When we saw the TV pictures from Haiti last week, we looked out of my window and thought, “it looks the same!”…Cairo’s like a bombsite. For us, the most comparable place to Cairo that we’ve visited is Seoul: both are massive, very cheap, grey, horribly polluted, immensely dirty, with unbelievable traffic jams and really confusing to walk around. An associate of ours here argues that at least the Nile makes Cairo pretty. We retorted that one can only see the filthy Nile if you live by the river, and not anywhere else! However, none of these has come as a surprise, so there’s no culture shock or anything as yet. These are also the reasons why we’ve chosen to live near the city centre instead of the nicer, plusher feel of the suburbs miles out (where the air is definitely cleaner), as downtown is where all the action is, however hideous they might be. One thing we weren’t expecting though is seeing 90-95% of the women wearing a hijab or a niqab (just the eyes, and sometimes, just the glasses!); we were expecting 65-70% at most. Anyway, like 20 million others here, we are doing our best to cope admirably in the presence of merciless drivers, occasional power/water-cuts, lack of pavements and some of the worst food ever in the world.

Yes, unlike Seoul – where the food is superb – Cairo’s is beyond shit. we thought Havana (food shortage and ration books!) was bad but Cairo is seriously taking the piss. It’s easily the worst place that we’d ever been to for food. Now, some of you would have followed our travel entries over the years, and we can guarantee you that McDonald’s and Asian food do not figure prominently – if at all – on our itinerary even in the Third World. That’s because no matter how unpromising a place looks, there’re always a few tasty dishes to keep Bleungberg going. We once spent 21 days in lamb-loving Iran, and loved the food there by completely avoiding all lamb-related dishes. Likewise, Turkey – rubbish seafood, but nice veggie bean stews and gorgeous chicken dishes to neutralise the evil lamb kebabs. Six weeks in Central America – rice and peas (gallo pinto) everyday…mmm…loved it. And so, it is with great sadness to report that our first-ever meal in Cairo was spent….at McDonald’s (which was very nice, by the way). As was the third (less so). The fifth came at a Chinese restaurant called ‘Le Peking’, followed by a Japanese meal. So, you get the general picture here. For sure, we’ve found a few nice local specialties (koshory, stuffed pigeons, chicken kebabs, molokhiya) but on the whole, Cairo’s a cruel place. And we can’t even begin to tell you how horrible those Chinese and Japanese meals were. Texas in 1990 and Havana in 2008 were, until last week, the nadirs of Bleungberg lifelong experience of Chinese food (yes, we here at Bleungberg bear ‘food’ grudges). But ‘Le Peking’ has now beaten the disgusting ‘Tres Dragones’ in Havana’s Chinatown into last place. At ‘Le Peking’, the lowest point came when the Egyptian waiter(s) ‘lectured’ us on the sauces available: soya, chilli and sweet & sour. Sweet & sour?! There’s no such thing called sweet & sour as a dipping sauce! We were mildly outraged/bemused, but was later seething when we took a bite out of the single worst piece of tofu we’d ever, ever had in my life. It was powdered tofu!! POWDERED!? At a Chinese restaurant?! Yuk. As for the Japanese, we badly needed pork only for the Japanese owner to tell us that swine flu killed off their pork supply six months ago. So, unagi (Japanese grilled eel) it was, and we can guarantee you that we’ll probably never ever have another fillet of unagi that was as tough and as salty as this ever again. To sum up, these meals were so bad that we wouldn’t even feed them to a cockroach.

OK. Food-rant over. we had fish and chips at a pub tonight, so we’re happy. There are also fresh fruits everywhere, which is fantastic. But, thank goodness our office has a kitchen. However, that’s all for now. we love Cairo, really – grocery shopping trips at 3am have never been more fun, as is crossing the road. Just not so sure about the people here yet…..
The words ‘ulterior’ and ‘motives’ spring to mind.

Regular followers of this blog will have noticed the obscene mileage Bleungberg has accrued over the past few years.

And given the number of times Bleungberg has flown in or out of London, it may come as a surprise that we have patronised British Airways just TWICE since 2003: a one-way flight from Stockholm, and a one-way flight to Istanbul.

The truth is, British Airways is rubbish. The planes are old, the air hostesses are ugly, tickets are more expensive, and they have a habit of losing one’s baggage. Crucially, they are just not as good as their rivals - in particular to go Transatlantic, or to other parts of Europe. Now, with charges for seat-allocation, stingy luggage allowance, no hot food, rubbish in-flight entertainment plus much more, there’s simply no reason to fly with BA.

Similarly, Iberia is equally rubbish. Bleungberg had to fly with them once to Casablanca (via Madrid) and frankly, the London Underground was nicer.

The two airlines’ merger is interesting. Not least because things couldn’t possibly get any worse.

Or could it?

Mind you, both still have a long, long way to go before they can match Alitalia’s crapness.

‘Popera’ star Katherine Jenkins breaks down in tears when she recalls the horror of almost getting raped during a TV interview with Piers Morgan.

Ms Jenkins has a new album out now, available at £9.99.

Has she got the same PR as Katie Price?!

In the least appetising election since the great French farce of 2002, when le worm Jacques Chirac faced off and won against the racist Jean-Marie Le Pen in the presidential race, we now have the sickly ultra-corrupt incumbent Harmid Karzai going up against the equally ultra-corrupt Abdullah Abdullah in the second round of the Afghan version.

Quite how the UN and rest of the international community can accept both these men’s candidacies is beyond Bleungberg.

Everyone knows how fucking useless and corrupt Karzai has been as president so he should’ve been barred from running again at the outset. It’s as if the international community is endoring his SEVEN years of FAILURE!

Abdullash x2, on the other hand, is somehow portrayed as the ‘clean’ candidate, when his own record in government is shady at best, whilst his henchmen have been conducting cash-for-votes with tribal leaders during the first round - often surpassing Karzai’s own corrupt practice.

With men like these, Afghanistan is and will be fucked for decades to come. Pakistan will then be fucked, and the whole world will suffer as a consequence.

Once again, well done UN(!). Fucking twat of an organisation.

And President Obama - you can start writing your LBJ-esq speech now for August 2011!

Lightweight/underachieving US President receives the Nobel Prize for twitching, whilst in Copenhagen, the ever-corrupt and perennial-spineless IOC pandered to the Americans and allowed golf to be voted into the Olympic programme at Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

Barack Obama and Tiger Woods - two not-quite-black dudes who seem to have a hold on a whole bunch of Caucasians in Scandinavia.

When did the ‘Aryan’ race become so pathetic?

Nose-picking Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is world-famous for being a Holocaust denier.

But is he really? Or is he doing it for publicity?

Bleungberg reckons it’s the latter.

When asked whether the Holocaust took place, he doesn’t actually give an answer. Instead, he yaps on about the Zionists and how they ’stole’ the land from the Palestinians.

He never gives a yes or no answer to that question, and would say anything to avoid answering the question.

He doesn’t even go into great details about the Holocaust, and merely says it is a European conspiracy - BECAUSE HE KNOWS THE HOLOCAUST TOOK PLACE AND THAT HE IS LYING FOR THE SAKE OF LYING IN ORDER TO WHIP UP ANTI-ZIONIST SENTIMENTS FROM HIS OWN FADING FAN BASE.

So, there. He’s not actually a Holocaust denier - but a Holocaust denier AS and WHEN it suits him - preferably on national TV, and at the U.N.

Nose-picking, hypocritical Persian cunt.