Henry, quelle con

One cannot help but have a certain regard for the French - jammy, cheating bastards they may be. Which other country, having sneaked into the World Cup through a blatant bit of robbery would turn to their philosophers to make sense of it all?

They hauled a star philosopher onto the radio this morning to expound on the implications for the national soul. "There was cheating," said Alain Finkielkraut, a specialist in moral matters. "We are faced with a real matter of conscience," he said on Europe1. "From the moral point of view I would almost have preferred a defeat to a victory in these conditions. We certainly have nothing to be proud of." The key word there is "almost".

Quite. At least the Irish know how to respond when on the receiving end of a blatant injustice. If the roles were reversed I'm not certain they would know how to cope. Just as if, to give a prediction now, England go out on penalties in the quarter finals and the Germans go on to the final, we'll all know how to behave. For it to happen the other way round would be strange indeed.

Curious fact about this World Cup - of all the nations that lie on the Eurasian land mass between Korea (both bits) and Greece, not a single one has qualified.

Severe Burns unit

Poor old Robert Burns. It's bad enough that in his lifetime that "heaven taught ploughman" was patronised and sentimentalised in the drawing rooms of Edinburgh – the kind of treatment that dulled his creative edge. It is, however, a particular misfortune that he's suffered from a similar fate in death too.

Much of his legacy - in the Anglophone world at least - has always been locked in the prison of kitsch nationalism, bound with tartan fetters and caged with bars of shortbread. This year, the 250th anniversary of his birth, has caused an especially severe outbreak since this anniversary forms the centrepiece of the Homecoming -

Homecoming Scotland 2009 is an events programme celebrating Scotland's great contributions to the world. In 2009 join us to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Robert Burns’ birth, Scottish contributions to golf & whisky, plus our great minds and innovations and rich culture and heritage. [all bits in bold sic]

Just give me the whisky and let me blot out the rest of it please. It's a sorry fate for any poet to become the focal point of some type of vainglorious national branding effort. Burns suppers, which should be reaching their apogee tonight, are fair enough if you like that sort of thing (I can't really criticise anything that's mainly an excuse to knock back the single malts, though if people are foolish enough to eat haggis just because Burns wrote a poem about it then that's their look out); but it can all so easily become overly sentimentalised.

It's not that Burns is Scotland's only, or even its pre-eminent poet. (After all, one could make a decent case for Byron, born just three decades later, as being a type of Scotsman. Certainly he was the superior writer, though no one really holds Bryon suppers in which people drink wine from monks' skulls and fornicate wildly, do they? Nor for that matter does anyone think to commemorate Burns's peers like Blake or Coleridge by sitting naked in the garden seeing visions of angels or lounging around in an opium-induced paralysis of existential despair). As for other unquestionably Scottish poets, the anonymous balladeers who wrote the likes of The Daemon Lover, Sir Patrick Spens and the Twa Corbies are, to my mind, the country's greatest.

But that's hardly the point. Of course there is an overt patriotism to some of Burns's poems, although it's pretty anachronistic to use an 18th century writer as a vehicle for modern-day nationalism. It's little wonder that for some the temptation to sneer becomes overwhelming: whether it be Simon Heffer's cartoonish Jock-bashing (although all credit to him for spotting the merits of Dunbar and Henrysoun) or Michael Fry's recent complaint that Burns was a drunken, racist philanderer and is no role model for the Scots. Fry's mistake, confusing the worth of man with that of his art, is a common enough one but it's no less annoying for that. Worse, it is akin to the pernicious idea that Burns's contemporaries held that his humble origins gave his lyrics a sort of authenticity or realness that gave them an especial merit.

It was probably his misfortune to coincide with the first flowerings of the Romantic movement; it was an era when works like the Lyrical Ballads attempted to simulate the type of earthy, natural qualities that were seen as being innate to Burns. It was nonsense, of course, the effect and not the origin is the important thing.

The same applies, especially so, to Burns. That his poems are the work of a humble Scots ploughman writing in a form dialect are incidental to his true worth as a poet. It is the power and directness of his lyrics, an artform that requires simplicity and directness, that make his poems live in the imagination of the reader. That it was what won the hearts of his early readers, it is why his poems are still worth bothering with today.

Oh wert thou in the cauld blast,
On yonder lea, on yonder lea,
My plaidie to the angry airt,
I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee;
Or did misfortune's bitter storms
Around thee blaw, around thee blaw,
Thy bield should be my bosom,
To share it a', to share it a'.

Or were I in the wildest waste,
Sae black and bare, sae black and bare,
The desart were a paradise,
If thou wert there, if thou wert there.
Or were I monarch o' the globe,
Wi' thee to reign, wi' thee to reign,
The brightest jewel in my crown
Wad be my queen, wad be my queen.

In that spirit, if people wish to dress all this up with the tartanry, the sentimentality and petty nationalism then fair enough, even if the man o' independent mind looks and laughs at a' that. However, I think we can all agree that the bright idea someone had 100 years ago – of holding a teetotal Burns supper – is the worst of all possible worlds.

How to improve the Olympics

You might have noted that the Olympic games have started; you might also have spotted the two biggest flaws in them: the rather overblown ceremonial aspect, with its undertones of totalitarian and nationalistic showing off, and the fact that most of the sports are far more fun to take part in than to watch.

Anyway, since London is hosting the thing next time around, I'm sure the organisers would welcome my advice on how they can put on a better show next time round. With regard to the opening ceremony my advice is not to bother.

It's not that as some of the more cringing and foolish commentators have suggested that Britain given nothing of value of to the world. However, understated modesty is one of the more appealing aspects to the British national character and I'd far rather showcase this than the rather less attractive jingoism and pomposity. Of course, the organisers could indulge themselves in royal-style pomp and ceremony and showcase all sorts of achievements in literature, philosophy, science etc, but why bother? The United Kingdom spent the 200 years between 1757 and 1957 rubbing its superiority in the face of the rest of the world, so there's probably no real need for any more vulgar boasting.

Better, by far, to let the athletes troop in the the stadium in a dignified and calm fashion. Get the Queen, or Prince Charles, or President Blair, or whoever is in charge by then to read out an exhortation to the athletes to play the game. Wish them all luck. Let them file out. Remember halfway through that they've forgotten to light the flame, bring them all back in. Light it. Give the president of the IOC a firm handshake. Wish them all luck, again, and get on with it.

(Alternatively: if anyone could top the famous Australian prank in which a pair of burning underpants atop a wooden chair leg were substituted for the real Olympic flame then that would be most welcome).

As for the sports themselves, darts and snooker should certainly feature. They might even help boost GB's medals total, but what really counts is the sports in which drinking and - in an ideal world - smoking feature heavily ought to be encouraged. Some other traditional British events like cheese rolling would help in this regard.

Olympics past also offer a number of events (pretty full list here) which sound like far more fun to watch than the stuff currently on the TV. Given that this is the rationale for including sports like beach volleyball (I note there is no GB team at present; I'm happy to offer my services as a selector for 2012 by the way) I don't see why the duelling pistol event, swimming obstacle race or bicycle polo shouldn't be added to the list.

This BBC blogger makes a good start with his observation that a revival of live pigeon shooting would be most welcome, but there are so many other animal events which could be included: fixed and moving bird target archery or running deer shooting*, for instance. But it's the equestrian events that offer the most appealing prospects. The 1900 games featured an equine high jump and long jump and a return of these events would certainly be welcome. However, what would be most impressive would be to introduce a triple jump for horses: for skill, artistry and athleticism it would be unbeatable.

Except, perhaps, for chessboxing.

*NB: they didn't use real deer and I think the bird target archery was similarly cruelty free. However, they did shoot real pigeons. Good. We should hold it in Trafalgar Square.

Trollied Tuesday: A splendid little country

Does beer bring us together? In general, one would say: of course. But I ask specifically because of the news that once again the Belgians cannot agree on a form of government and may be thinking of going their separate ways.

This would be a worry, primarily because of fear of what would happen to all those Belgian beer vendors one finds around the world (in London, I especially recommend the Dovetail in Clerkenwell); would they be obliged to divide the bars into Flemish and Walloon sections?

In truth, while a surfeit of Belgian beer might lead to a sudden collapse, I'm sure that the Byzantine complexity of Belgium's political system – to say nothing the question of what to do with Brussels (raze it the ground, then plough it over with salt in order to ensure the continual fraternity, co-operation, mutual esteem and liberties of the peoples of Europe, of course) – will ensure that the dissolution of the country is a slow and protracted affair.

Of course, whether or not Belgium survives is a matter for the Belgians alone; but the point about beer is not a wholly trivial one. At least not if you take the view that slow and protracted dissolution is a topic of great interest or that drink captures the soul of a nation. In either case, the beers of Belgium repay close attention. They may be celebrated the world over (even if the best-known one is wife-beater) yet there is no real nation there.

Arguably, only Germany – another collection of statelets, which only became a country thanks to that oaf Bismark in any case– has such a variety of beers. In the case of Belgium, what a dazzling multiplicity of human ingenuity, brilliance, devilment and contradiction (oh and regionalism) there is. Fitting enough for what has been, variously, the heart of the Duchy of Burgundy (a state that never became a nation), the bit of the Netherlands that the Spanish clung on to, a geopolitical headache and the place where other Europeans went to kill each other.

At least one cannot say there is no soul – the Trappist beers are superlative (though I suspect one would perforce live a life of contemplative silence if you were to drink enough of them); so too the Abbey beers (Leffe and Grimbergen, for instance). There is even a counterpart, if you like, in the form of such formidable brews as Mort Subit – fine stuff, even if the name is only a small exaggeration. (On the other hand, the latter's whimsical, literal cousin, Delirium Tremens, takes this does what it says on the bottle approach a bit too far).

However, there are so many other sub-categories – light beers, dark beers, red beers, wheat beers – and, of course the regional styles (Flemish lambics or Walloon saisons, for instance), so many so that it would be dizzying – and rather less fun than drinking the stuff – to keep on with the lists.

In any case, it's tedious to start dividing beers along linguistic and ethnic categories – and equally dull to start uttering pities about how wonderful it is that we can accommodate these differences in one over-arching structure no matter the wishes of those being so accommodated.

Belgian beer should instead be enjoyed as a reminder that life's complexities cannot be fitted into whichever neat little form best suits our inclinations (what is the Dutch for 'vive la différence' anyway?) Instead, I recommend you enjoy a glass of one of the aforementioned beers and enjoy the efforts of the quintessential Belgian genius above – a French-speaking Flemming singing about those sophisticated continental drinking habits to which we should all aspire.

Lolist cat

Or Quis separakit.

So many silly puns, none of which really answers the question. What on earth was the Irish News about when it published that picture?

(Via Slugger)

2,500 years of oppression is no laughing matter

This is not, apparently, an April Fool. Ireland's Eurovision entry, Dustin the Turkey, has been asked to alter the lyrics of his entry in case his reference to Macedonia upsets the Greeks (via politics.ie)

The EBU reference group have requested that the official name of the country "FYR Macedonia" be used rather than just "Macedonia" in the lyrics of the song Irelande douze pointe for all Eurovision Song Contest related performances.

This does illustrate something which could well be developed into a good rule of international affairs. No matter the causes and length of a dispute, the more people start taking offence at incredibly petty things like this, the harder it will be to resolve.

It's hardly worth bothering with April Fools when you get such glorious absurdity from people who should know better. Two other recent examples:

Exhibit A: Nick "Shagger" Clegg - I've slept with 30 women, and am okay in bed. I was once arrested for setting fire to a collection of rare cacti in Germany. (He's got a long way to go before he lives up to Lloyd George's standards).

Exhibit B: Son of famous fascist caught in five-hour Nazi orgy with five hookers. (Note to journalism students. If you can get "Nazi", "orgy" and/or "hookers" in the headline, it really doesn't matter what else is in the story, people will read it. Throw in whips and some unintentional comedy – "He converses in German with one girl throughout the torture, loving every minute of death camp role-play, while the other girl pleads: 'I don't know what you are saying, so I don't know what to do'." – and you have the perfect tabloid story. ) Ve hav vays of making you torque.

Besides, these pranks rapidly get so complex it would be far easier to arrange a Moseley-style blow-out. Here's an example, involving one my favourite politicians, Jackie Healy-Rae – a man who renders satire redundant – and the formation of the Kerry Independence Party. (Actually, Kerry politicians in the main make satire redundant). That the story was originally 'broken' on a wesbite on March 31 and subsequently lifted and carried without any checks by one of the main independent news stations – scooping Radio Kerry's tongue in cheek variant on the day itself – draws the whole thing into an Alice In Wonderland world.

UPDATE: Another thing which looks like a parody. George Galloway's website which would be the perfect send-up of a meglomaniac who has lost all touch with reality had Craig Brown or the like published it. It includes gems such as this photo, comments like "having shaken up the US Senate, with your help, I can do the same in City Hall", oh and his bank details available for all to read.