FREE MARKET FAIRY TALES: Comrade Brown, Oliver Reed & China from the back of an S-Class Mercedes

Have been enjoying what is euphemistically known as ~~the fleshpots of Asia~~ a little local colour for the last week, you find me snug in my bed as not a bad bottle whisks me westwards in a haze of brandy fumes & carbon dioxide emissions. In fact I thank my lucky stars that that I am going home tonight because even by the standards on one of the former Crown Colony’s rather stinky sewers things have been getting just a smidge out of hand, our local partners having just decided to go on another forty eight hour binge. As the knurled old cock doc that diagnosed my damn near total pancreatic failure earlier on this morning pointed out when his hand finally stopped trembling, the condition can be brought on by an excess of marathon running or a little too much enthusiasm at the bar: when I told him that I would immediate cut down on my weekly mileage, he produced a colour chart & declared that my deep purple nose has reached that particular hue known in certain circles as the Oliver Reed.

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That is why I have been sent home & why I am currently self medicating with ever increasingly aggressive doses of Dr Free Markets Five Star Restorative.

As we taxied across the tarmac at Chep Lap Kok earlier on, I had cause to peruse the UK broadsheets for the first time since last Tuesday & it really does appear that in my absence, Comrade Brown as got himself into the sort of bother that is normally only reserved for overly ambitious Tory MPs & Liberal Democrats with a penchant for rent boys. Now before everyone gets all snotty – this is my bandwidth & if anyone is going to canter around the moral high ground on his hobby horse, it is going to be me – there is absolutely nothing wrong in cutting shabby deals with homicidal despots ... as my partners in China pointed out over dinner the other night. & do you know what, we were all laughing so much at the very thought of an ethical foreign policy that I nearly forgot to let them have briefcase with the bearer bonds in it when they handed over the end user certificates.

Later the very same evening as Zhong, my usual driver when I am upcountry very correctly pointed out, the Chinese government probably cares more about what their public thinks of them than any of the pondlife in the Westminster Village worries about what its electorate is thinking. Of course once the gentlemen in Beijing know what you are thinking, you are more than likely to have the six o’clock knock from the paramilitary security police followed by an early morning appointment with the business end of a Kalashnikov down at the local quarry. Mr Zhong didn’t have a chance to expand upon this theory any further & instead set about demonstrating how the suspension in the new S-Class copes with those who have been bypassed by China’s economic miracle. I must say that when we drove over the old crone that was begging outside the Club Big Boss I was at first a little disappointed by the rear axles rebound damping until I realised that by mistake I had turned on the seats massage function. I gave me quite a start I can tell you, mind you not as much of a surprise as the karaoke girl who was sitting on my lap got. Cost me another 500 bl**dy Yuan.

Still, at least while Comrade Brown is hiding behind a bunch of Scottish incompetents, leaving the unelected Mandy to get on with trying to make an even bigger mess of the country, at least the former Iron Chancellor’s current state of complete denial precludes him from any further Keynesian heroics with our money – see, there is an upside in everything. My joint venture partners on the other hand have a much quicker way of dealing with failed politicians as a Party leader in Western China found out this week. As Dave Copperfield once said, the question we must ask ourselves is what can we learn from other cultures?