By Patroclos

PRESIDENT of European Commission Jean Claude Juncker may have thought he had brokered a halloumi deal between the two sides, after 24 hours of soul-destroying negotiations during his July visit.

An agreement was announced at the time, regarding the application for a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) for halloumi/hellim, prez Nik eventually ignoring the objections of the foreign ministry’s hard-liners who felt the sovereignty of the Republic would be undermined.

It seems the patriotic nagging by the guardians of our state sovereignty at the foreign ministry eventually paid off, and according to a report from Brussels in last Sunday’s Phil, Nik has asked for four changes to the agreement. The office of the permanent representation in Brussels submitted a request for “substantial amendments” to the agreement, after receiving instructions from Nik, Phil reported.

You have to wonder whose advice Nik follows before making these decision. What credibility would he have when he is seeking changes to an agreement he reached two months ago in the presence of the EU chief? Will he do the same when he signs, God forbid, a settlement?

Was it his government spokesman Mr Nice Guy Christodoulides, who maintains the indestructible foreign ministry mindset that luxuriates in trivial triumphs? After all, it is Mrs spokesman who is handling the hellim issue at the foreign ministry and when the July agreement, that Nik has gone back on now, was reached she did not hide her dejection.

At the time, she reprimanded the agriculture minister Nicos Kouyialis who was involved in the agreement, telling him ‘the trouble with you politicians is that you say ‘yes’ to whatever they ask of you.’

I HAVE NO intention of boring readers with the four changes being sought by Nik, but will just mention some of the issues at stake as reported by Phil’s correspondent Pavlos Xanthoulis, who thinks just like the foreign ministry officials he gets his information from.

The Commission, he wrote, wanted to commit Nicosia to a “bi-communal motif” for all other applications for PDOs, “thus politicising a strictly technical matter and circumventing the obvious sovereign rights of a member-state.”

A worried Xanthoulis then posed the broader issue: “Reasonably, someone could ask what role the Commission would play in the Cyprus problem, if for halloumi, it is ready to sideline the legal State of the Cyprus Republic?” Someone else could ask, reasonably, is not linking halloumi to state sovereignty a case of politicising not just a technical matter, but also a dairy product?

Our foreign ministry’s other concern, reported by Xanthoulis, is that, as the certification of hellim would be done by a foreign company, the Turkish Cypriots might be able to export it from their illegal ports, which would put into practice ‘direct trade’ and thus upgrade the pseudo-state. We want hellim to be brought south and exported from legal ports.

The answer would be a PDO application for pseudo-hellim that is only produced in the pseudo-state by pseudo-sheep and goats and is exported from pseudo-ports. This would prevent the politicising of a technical matter.

THE CAMPAIGN to persuade us all that Mustafa Akinci is a grey wolf in sheep’s clothing was stepped up after his remark about the hydrocarbons, which was interpreted as threat of war by our bash patriotic warriors.

Ethnarch Junior, who noted “Mr Akinci is threatening us with war over natural gas and still President Anastasiades, DISY and AKEL continue to advertise the ‘good climate’ in the peace talks,” was the only party leader who arrived at this conclusion. Not even Lillikas, who has advocated the “deconstruction of Akinci’s picture of saintliness,” jumped to this conclusion.

This was Phil’s line in its Wednesday edition when it had a story headlined, “Akinci: natural gas cause of war.” In its leader the following day the paper advertised its post-modernist worldview. “We do not believe there are many readings, interpretations to the things Mr Mustafa Akinci said, briefing the ‘society of citizens’ about the Cyprus problem.”

Simerini’s Lazarus Mavros agreed: “Mr Akinci spelled out the Turkish war threat over the EEZ and natural gas, succinctly and very clearly.” The paper’s leader article, poured scorn on Nik’s assertion that he and Akinci had the same vision, and asked the prez: “Does he have the same bloodthirsty vision as Akinci, regarding the declaration of war on the Cyprus state if it exploits its natural wealth?”

I just hope the bloodthirsty Akinci does not threaten another war over Nik’s failure to honour the halloumi agreement.

THE HELLENIC Bank Running Under the Moon event, which is scheduled to be held on October 10 had not been well-received by everyone. Although it is difficult to believe that a running event that plans to raise money for charity could spark opposition, the fact is that it has angered a leading figure of our society.

The woman that has been behind the establishment of the Cyprus branch of Europa Donna – the European Breast Cancer Coalition that works to raise awareness for breast cancer and campaigns for improved care – DISY deputy Stella Kyriakidou was apparently furious when she heard about the rival event.

This was because it would be held on the same day (October 10) as the annual Europa Donna walk, which organisers hope would boost support for the establishment of a specialised breast centre in Kyproulla. A fun run followed by a party in Athalassa Park could attract people who would have otherwise have gone to the breast cancer walk.

Kyriakidou, who has become synonymous with Europa Donna after all the work she had done to establish it, felt that her worthy cause should not have to compete for attention on its big day with some superficial, fun event that would conclude with a party and angrily made her feelings known to one of Hellenic’s head honchos.

Her approach was of the ‘how dare you’ type and she forcefully demanded the date of the run was changed, preferably to another month, as October belonged to breast cancer.

TOUGH cookie Kyriakidou, who obviously has mean streak, despite her saintly, do-gooder public image, promised to crush the Hellenic event if the date was not changed, but the head honcho refused to budge, claiming the evening run would not affect the afternoon walk.

Having failed to secure the date change, steely Stella then demanded that Hellenic did not give the funds it would have raised to a cancer charity. The honcho refused to budge on this either, as the bank had already arranged for money raised to be given to PASYKAF, the Pancyprian Association of Cancer Patients and Friends.

This was not the end of the row however. A few days later, the bank received a letter from PASYKAF that the said the charity could not accept any money raised by Running Under the Moon and did not want its name associated with the event.

Has this ever happened before – a charity turning down an offer of money? It was a respectable bank that was offering the dosh, not the pancyprian association of cabaret owners and pimps from its immoral earnings. Anyone wanting to make a donation to PASYKAF next month better clear it with the saintly Stella first.

OUR CHURCH may have fallen on hard times, suffering the indignity of being forced by the banks to sell some of its prime real estate in order to pay off its non-performing loans, but our leading priests remain pretty sharp operators when it comes to money.

A local businessman managing foreign funds found out about this when he tried to buy a big sea-side plot in the Limassol district for a development project. He had the money available and was happy to pay the asking price, but the bishops kept stalling him, claiming that the plot was the subject of negotiations with the bank, which was in the process of evaluating it.

He thought the bank would be more than happy for the land to be sold directly by the Church as it would be spared the hassle and cost of evaluations, the public invitation for tenders and so forth. A priest informed him subsequently there was a very good reason the Church was insisting that the bank sold the real estate – it would not have to pay capital gains tax.

Apparently if a property is sold through the foreclosures procedure by a bank, no capital gains tax is paid by the owner. But if the Church sold it directly it would have to pay a few million in capital gains tax, something the priests, quite rightly, believe is not smart business practice.

COMRADE Tof was back in the news this week as he felt obliged to issue a statement about the passing of Costas Papacostas, who had served in his government as defence minister and was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in the Mari explosion.

Papacostas, a decent and honest man, was the fall-guy, taking the rap for Tof’s blunders and ending his life serving a prison sentence, albeit in a clinic. The shameless comrade said, “Papacostas paid a heavy price for the mistakes committed by others and despite his huge health problems he was sentenced to prison.”

He did not say who these others were. But if Papacostas had paid the price for the mistakes of others, why did the comrade not take the witness stand during his former minister’s trial and give testimony to avert the miscarriage of justice and the conviction of an innocent man? Is it because apart from a village idiot he is also big fat coward?

I READ this somewhere, but cannot credit the source because I cannot remember where. Before Nik left for the Big Apple, he invited comrade Tof to the presidential palace to brief him about the Cyprob. Don’t ask why, because I can’t even think of a stupid answer. For the first 55 minutes of the meeting Tof engaged in a monologue about what Nik should be doing. After briefing him for five minutes, Nik told Tof he had to leave because he had another engagement. The comrade was taken aback and complained that he was given only five minutes. Nik had allocated a whole hour, but it was not his fault Tof spent 55 minutes talking instead of listening. And of course, it was not Tof’s fault either.

I AM FEELING doubly embarrassed now, for suggesting two weeks ago that our good friend the Rector of the University of Cyprus had bowed to the unions and the parties on the issue of admitting students from private schools to the university.

Christofides did nothing of the sort and this week, responding to an invitation to attend a House education committee meeting on the issue on Tuesday, suggested the discussion would be better-served if representatives of the secondary school teachers union Oelmek were not present. How right he was. Oelmek’s leaders are bunch of self-serving bullies who never answer for the poor standards of state education but feel they have a God-given right to dictate the university’s admissions policy. These guys should be kept as far away from education policy as possible, not be invited to give their views.

UNION member and Limassol DISY deputy, Andreas Themistocelous – a political thug – proved the correctness of the rector’s position. The abusive comments on his Facebook page directed at the rector and parents said it all really. He labelled Christofides the “rector of illegality, lawlessness, amorality, nepotism…” but reserved most of his vitriol for the parents who backed the university’s decision.

“What you are praising is shameful! It is denying these seats from students who coughed blood to sit the Pancyprian exams,” Themistocleous wrote. “It is a blatant theft from children of heroes, missing persons, casualties or children that life or nature was unfair to. What you are praising, dear organised parents, is a sin, for which you should be ashamed of for the rest of your lives.”

MAINTAINING the religious tone, I had to laugh hearing the CyBC report that prez Nik told the American Jewish Committee that Cyprus and Israel had been “blessed with manna from the skies.” He was referring to the natural gas that is as far away from the skies as possible and is not very nourishing food for hungry people.

By Patroclos

HAVING heard the news about the excommunication of celebrity theologian and former MEP Andreas Pitsillides by a committee of five bishops, I was wondering what a person had to do in order for the beards to excommunicate them.

Do you fill an application form, listing your worst sins, examples of moral weakness and calculated misinterpretations of the Bible? Do you have to behave very inappropriately during a church service or would a sacrilegious article in a newspaper suffice? What do you have to say or do to become eligible?

Excommunication is as rare as an admission of fallibility by a Cypriot politician – it never happened – which suggests that our Church is much more liberal and tolerant than most people think. Perhaps we are witnessing a change of business model, now that our Church has fallen on hard times and is facing severe liquidity problems.

It might hope the fear of excommunication would bring more people back to church and persuade Christian bankers to be more flexible when negotiating the restructuring of its NPLs so as to avoid suffering Pitsillides’ humiliation.

THE BEARDS in black included a whole list of theoretical sins committed by Pitsillides to justify his excommunication such as “calculated misrepresentations, mocking references to the faith, customs and traditions and disrespectful attitude towards the Holy Synod.”

He was also accused of exhibiting “vanity and self-regard”, which nobody could dispute – he is a bit narcissistic – but what were his real sins? It seems a bit harsh to excommunicate someone for a mistaken interpretation of the scriptures when convicted murderers, rapists and paedophiles remain in the Church and compulsive liars remain in politics.

Pits also spoke contemptuously about issues such as abortion, confession, divine thanks and homosexuality, said the committee. Half the population of the country is guilty of expressing such sentiments so why have we not been excommunicated? I am considering filing an application to the ECHR against the Church for violating my right to equal treatment. It cannot just excommunicate celebrity theologians and pretend the rest of us do not exist – it is very unchristian.

THE EXCOMMUNICATION was also very stupid, because Pits is very articulate, has an innocent look and is good on TV. It will be a piece of cake for him to turn public opinion against the beards.
On Friday he was on the Sigma TV news alleging the committee had lied to him – taking him to the meeting on false pretences – denying him the right of reply and repeatedly accusing the unlikeable Bishop of Paphos of fascistic behaviour during the proceedings.

Pits may be vain, he may misrepresent the scriptures, mock customs and traditions, but he was not kicked out of the Church for lying. If that was an excommunication offence, our Archbishop would have been working as an estate agent in Paphos a long time ago.

ANYONE feeling disappointed with our Church should tune into Mega TV’s Star Kypros 2015 show tonight, just after 9pm and feast your eyes on scantily-clad, Cypriot bimbos taking part in a studio beauty contest.

This is pure entertainment for heterosexual males of all ages, even though I felt sorry for the two young women, in micro bikinis, standing in front of the cameras, anxiously waiting to be told which one would be excommunicated by the show. This was the first scene of the wonderfully sleazy show I saw.

I admit being a bit shocked that the Church station was showing so much naked flesh that was bound to cause very sinful thoughts among its male viewers, even if they were devout Christians.
The titillation was stepped up, as the nubile participants then had to parade in incredibly sexy underwear. Some wore suspenders and stockings, others lace body-suits and some just a bra and panties (the thong type, fully exposing their shapely posterior). Sadly, no sinful thoughts entered my mind watching this sleazy flesh-fest, because I kept thinking how many members of the Holy Synod were watching the Church station’s effort to lead us not into temptation.

THE ONLY disappointing aspect of the show was the patronising and condescending attitude of the ‘critics’ towards the girls. The critics would ask each girl an idiotic question to maintain some pretence that it was not just their legs, bums and sex appeal that was being judged but also their intellectual powers.

It seems cruel and sadistic to expect these girls to display intelligence when everyone, apart from the judges it seems, knows they are on the show because they have not been blessed with great amounts of it. I am sounding as condescending as the judges now, but Star Kypros is a beauty contest so what is the point of testing the intelligence of the participants by asking dumb questions like, ‘what would you do if you were president for a day?’ and then haughtily telling them their opinion was unsatisfactory.

To the contestant that said, as president, she would fill planes with tourists and build hotels and clubs in a day, the self-important, female judge said: “I think we have much bigger problems than tourism.” Says who? Some sad loser who has nothing better to do than be a judge on a beauty contest?

IS THERE any other country in the world which takes a speech given by its head of state to the world talking shop that is the UN General Assembly as seriously as we do in Kyproulla? Although I have not conducted a survey of the UN member countries, I suspect there is not.

What makes our case one of the basket type variety is that our president has addressed the UN General Assembly every September for the last 41 years, saying more or less the same things every year – the only variation being the intensity of the attack on Turkey’s intransigence, depending on who is president – and our politicians and journalists still get excited about it.

That anyone could get worked up about meaningless speeches of zero consequence they have heard thousands of times before must be a reflection of the sad, empty and dull lives we lead on the sunshine isle. Sadder still was that the media tried to get people excited about this non-event in advance, solemnly forecasting that Prez Nik would be setting three ‘red lines’ in his speech, as if the red lines were a new concept in the Cyprob discourse.

The worst was still ahead. On Wednesday, the day after Nik sent the world to sleep, despite the excitingly original reference to the red lines, the opposition leaders attacked him mercilessly for his ‘tragic’ speech. I will not bore people by repeating their childish criticism here, because I think nobody apart from politicians and hacks gives a damn. If you do, my advice is, get a life or watch Star Kypros tonight, because the contestants will be asked what they thought about Nik’s UN speech.

LAWYERS representing the administrator of Laiki Bank submitted a compensation claim worth billions against the Greek government at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes in Washington on Wednesday, the deadline for such applications.

According to reports, the claimant is demanding compensation in the region of €4 billion from the Greek state because of the haircut of the government bonds (Laiki held bonds worth €2.8 billion) and the unfair treatment of its branches in Greece. A foreign law firm is handling the case.
Many in Cyprus would be rooting for Legacy Laiki, given the billions our banking system lost because of the Greek economic meltdown, but if it wins where would the Greek government find the billions to compensate it? Would Mrs Merkel be asked to pick up the bill?

SPEAKING of banks, as we had predicted two weeks ago, the attorney-general’s opinion about the dispute over managerial appointments at Hellenic Bank was a disaster for the union ETYK which had insisted it should have say.

The AG opined that the union violated the constitution by interfering in an employment agreement reached between the bank and an applicant for the job. ETYK has avoided commenting on the opinion, but accepted defeat and in its meeting with the bank’s top brass on Wednesday was ready to discuss a face-saving solution.

Hellenic’s head honchos offered a face-saving compromise – drafting a job description for any managerial vacancy and advertising it internally as well – which the union seized even though it would no longer have a say in the process. Hellenic even offered to make the deal public on Wednesday, as an honourable compromise.

ETYK’s representatives turned down this offer. They said they wanted to have another five or six meetings with the bank’s head honchos before the deal was announced. Presumably, this is so they could tell their members that they secured the deal after weeks of tough negotiations. So Hellenic’s head honchos have to keep their Wednesday mornings free for the next six week to take part in the union’s theatre.

THE POLICE last week returned the hard-drives it had confiscated from the office of the Central Bank Governor last May. The hard-drives were taken as part of the police investigation into the leaking of the list of deputies’ NPLs, after a complaint from loud-mouthed deputy Zacharias Koulias, claiming this was a violation of the protection of personal data.

Despite holding on to the hard-disks for exactly four months (an ECB official had to be present when the disks were checked because they contained classified information) police found nothing incriminating against Crystal. She was not the source of the leak. However the cops said their investigations into the leak would continue. It is not only the union bosses that like to engage in a bit of theatre.

THESE Akelites really have a nerve disparaging the government over high unemployment, considering it soared to its highest ever levels under the incompetent rule of comrade Tof.

The comrades laughed at the government for gloating over a one percentage point fall in the jobless rate in the second quarter of the year.

A columnist in the AKEL mouthpiece Haravghi cited Karl Marx, the “German philosopher of the 19th century who said that capitalism without high unemployment cannot exist.” The funny thing is that unemployment in Kyproulla was just 4 per cent when we elected our first communist president and when he left office, five years later, it was 15 per cent.

On a more philosophical point, why is AKEL constantly demanding that the government takes measures to reduce unemployment when it knows that “capitalism without high unemployment cannot exist”? Have the younger comrades not read Marx?

Premier perks from a very bad bank
Today our establishment is inaugurating a new feature – a guest column. This week’s guest writer is M.E.

WILL someone please tell me who was responsible for the Bank of Cyprus’ new ad and marketing campaign?

I am not sure if I want to smack them or take them out for coffee… and then smack them.

On the one hand the ads are not half bad, but (and it’s a big but) on the other they seem to have forgotten which bank they’re representing.

Let me remind this genius (or group of genii?) that it’s the bank that took people’s savings and then proceeded to hire a company of arrogant morons, whose only job is to hold a long list and call unsuspecting customers and very rudely ask them when they intend to pay their loans… and threaten them with a transfer to the ‘bad bank’ if they did not (to which a friend replied: but YOU are a very bad bank.)

It’s the same bank that froze people’s accounts and wouldn’t let anyone take what was left of their money because the whole economy would have collapsed if they did.

It’s the same bank that conned people into converting their hard-earned money into bonds which turned out to be worthless…

That bank is now trying to give people (me, for one) heart attacks by paying for spots on TV showing a man threatened by a loan shark (resembling The Godfather) who is then rescued by – yes – the BoC’s quick pay scheme. Seriously.

The second (of many) heart attack inducing moments, again courtesy of the BoC Marketing Department, came in the form of a beautiful envelope which an unsuspecting elderly relative (and survivor of the haircut) opened, only to find that they were a member of the BoC’s Premier Club. This is the bank’s scheme for customers it robbed blind but – wait for it – wanted to show its appreciation of by giving them free tickets to the Paphos opera.

Yes. Thank you. We stole your savings but please travel for an hour-and-a-half to Paphos and watch Cinderella. And while you’re at it, use our beautiful envelope to cut yourself and pour some lemon juice on the wound.

By Patroclos

EUROPEAN Commissioner for Regional Policy Corina Cretu did not only go on a tour of the buffer zone on Thursday during her visit to Kyproulla this week.

On Friday Cretu and two MEPs attended a ceremony in their honour at the grandly named Mega Synodiko (a functions hall, presumably) at the Archbishopric. The Commissioner and MEPs Renate Sommer and Reimer Boge were awarded the Gold Medal of Apostle Paul, the highest honorary distinction of the Church of Cyprus, by Archbishop Chrys II.

At the ceremony Chrys praised them all, according to CNA, on whose report I had to rely because I was not invited. He described Cretu, as a “woman sensitive for human rights and a politician, who greatly loved our people and was fighting with frankness for the restoration of the rights of our people and their political freedoms.”

Referring to Sommer, he said she was “a subtle soul who was following the Cyprus problem for many years and experiencing inside her the great injustice, which for more than 40 years was hurting our suffering people.” Boge, “expressed special sensitivity and love for Cyprus and was active on issues like the missing and the protection of the cultural and religious heritage of Cyprus,” said Chrys.

I fear the Gold Medal of Apostle Paul may have been wasted on Commissioner Cretu as in her address she was very careful to hide her love for the Archbishop’s people. On the contrary, she noted “the European Commission’s commitment to a Cyprus settlement and re-unification of the island” and commended the government for its efforts in this direction, views that could not have gone down very well with anti-settlement fundamentalists and other patriotic guests attending the ceremony.

THE ARCHBISHOPRIC, was desperate to present the Commissioner and the MEPs as great supporters of the Greek Cypriot side – not only to justify the awarding of the gold medal – but because it ran into problems from the moment it sent out the invitations for the ceremony.

The first invitation, sent out by the Holy Archbishopric of Cyprus, said the awarding of the medals was “for the support to the struggle of the Cypriot people for the restoration of their human rights and the liberation of their country.”

A few days later, a second invitation was sent out, titled “corrected invitation” explaining the Commissioner and MEPs would be honoured “for their support to the Cypriot people and their devotion to the implementation of human rights.” There was no mention of liberation or the restoring of our human rights.

Cretu’s office had obviously complained about the wording of the invitation, as a European Commissioner could not be seen siding with the Greek Cypriots so Chrys’ grandiose event ended up honouring her and the MEPs for supporting the Turkish Cypriot people as well.

MANY will be wondering why the Church decided to honour Cretu, whom hardly anybody in Kyproulla had ever heard of. I suspect our fearless, female, freedom-fighter and MEP Dr Eleni Theocharous may have put in a good word for the Commissioner at the Archbishopric with which she has very good relations.

Dr Eleni, who also harbours big presidential ambitions, is one of the Church’s favourite politicians, thanks to her self-promoting, uncompromising, super-patriotism, and would have had no trouble persuading Chrys to honour her friends.

By sheer coincidence, Cretu, Sommer and Boge were also invited to the wedding ceremony of the ambitious doctor’s daughter that was held yesterday afternoon at Ayios Ioannis Cathedral and conducted by Chrys himself, but we had not established whether they attended.

In the wedding invitation, printed on European Parliament headed paper, Dr Eleni also invited her guests to the medal-awarding ceremony – presumably as an added incentive – that would honour the Commissioner and two MEPs for “their services to Cypriot Hellenism.” The uncompromising Eleni did not send out a corrected invitation like the Archbishop had done.

I KNOW it is none of my business, but I cannot help asking the MEP, who makes so much political capital out of her Greekness, is constantly pontificating about Hellenism and signed the wedding invitation letter as “Eleni – Ellinis (Greek) Euro-MP of the Cyprus Republic”, one question. Why did she name her daughter Julie, which does not sound very Greek? At least Julie chose as her husband someone with a good old-fashioned Greek name – Kyriacos – that her ‘Ellinis’ mother would approve of. We wish the couple all the best.

UNIVERSAL outrage was provoked by the inaugural ceremony held yesterday in the north, in the presence of President Erdogan, for the project that would transport water from Turkey. Everyone did their gig about the legality of the project, the foreign ministry declaring the project “in breach of international law”.

House president Yiannakis Omirou was more forceful, describing it as a “flagrant” breach and a “continuation of the unlawful behaviour against the independence, sovereignty etc…” while hacks and politicians moaned, as they always do, about Erdogan’s “illegal visit”.

Meanwhile, the CyBC’s hacks, to underline their patriotism, yesterday kept referring to the inaugural ceremony as an “illegal event”. If we did not fear communication with the pseudo police would lead to an upgrade of the status of the pseudo-state we could have asked them to break up the illegal event and arrest the illegal visitor.

GREEN leader and all-purpose moraliser, Giorgos Perdikis was a bit hysterical, speaking about the illegal visit yesterday. Fortunately, his hysteria is always fuelled by green energy and causes no harm to the environment.

He not only condemned Erdogan’s illegal visit, but also said the transportation of the water “constitutes, in essence, another act of invasion by Turkey in Cyprus, a new Attila.” This calls for the filing of an immediate recourse to the UN Security Council asking it to condemn the invasion by the Turkish water, or should we wait to see which parts of the country the water occupies, before doing anything.

OUR TURKISH Cypriot brothers and sisters were not too happy with the illegal visit and the water invasion but for different reasons. Afrika newspaper claimed that the invitations to the illegal event had been sent out by the Turks – Erdogan invited Akinci and Ahmet Davutoglou invited the pseudo-PM – as a reminder of who was in charge in the north.

Some Turkish Cypriot parties and organisation looked the proverbial gift horse in the mouth, protesting yesterday about the arrival of the water and using the slogan “if Turkey cuts the water we will die of thirst.” Do they not know that their Greek Cypriots brothers would give them water if such a thing happened?

The bigger dispute is over who will be managing and cashing in on the water. Cash-strapped municipalities in the north want to be in charge of the supply and the issuing bills in order to generate some money. But the project has cost more than half a billion bucks and the tight-fisted Erdogan, who hates the north’s milking of Turkey, might not be so generous.

ONE OR TWO stories found their way into the press about how we would not agree to the opening of chapters in the EU’s accession negotiations with Turkey as a way of obtaining Ankara’s co-operation in dealing with the refugee crisis.

This claim seemed particularly idle after Thursday’s EU summit which agreed to give political support to Ankara in a desperate attempt to secure Turkish co-operation in stemming the flow of refugees into Europe. This political support would include €3 billion, visa-free travel to Europe for Turks and according to The Guardian, “the resumption of frozen negotiations on Turkey’s EU membership bid.”

Was it because Prez Nik was in China and did not attend the summit that our EU partners took for granted that we would have no objection to the opening of chapters? Worse still, as Perdikis pointed out in his Saturday morning rant in Aglandjia, Cyprus would have to contribute to the €3 billion that would be given to Ankara for the refugees.

YOU HAD to laugh hearing the triumphal talk that greeted the ECHR decision which found that the law granting refugee status only to the offspring of refugee fathers was discriminatory. The court found the law violated the right to equal treatment as it treated the genders differently.

Christoforos Christofi, the lawyer who represented Maria Vrountou, who applied to the ECHR for the violation of her human right waxed lyrical about this great legal victory, which was a bit meaningless, given that the law was changed in 2013 and the children of refugee mothers were also entitled to have refugee status. According to mathematical forecasts, this will ensure that by 2080 all Greek Cypriots will be proud holders of a refugee ID.

Christofi said the “Vrountou case proves that every citizen has the power, when they will it and persist to be vindicated in the end. My client and her husband believed from the start the justness of their case, considered that the state was violating in a blatant an unacceptable way their rights and prepared to struggle for 13 years until the final vindication.”

You would have thought Mr and Mrs Vrountou had been making big personal sacrifices and putting their lives at risk for 13 years, to achieve something great for their country, the way the lawyer presented the matter. But when you cut through this flatulent lawyer-speak, all they did was go to court, demanding their human right to be given money for a house and subsidised loans by the state was respected. In our entitlement culture securing money from the state is considered a heroic act.

LAST WEEK our establishment had reported that Greek Cypriot negotiator Andreas Mavroyiannis, during his three week stay in New York last month was living at the same luxury hotel as Prez Nik. We have received a letter from a lawyer and friend of Mavroyiannis informing us that the report was inaccurate and would like to put the record straight.

We were informed that for the whole three weeks, Mavoryiannis stayed at the residence of Cyprus’ permanent representative at the UN, “without burdening the taxpayer with a single euro.” In addition to this he did not take a euro as per diem and did not claim any expenses from the state despite the “significant hospitality expenses he incurred” and would have been entitled to have been reimbursed.

It is just as well he is not claiming any expenses because the state will now have a lot of money to pay out to the vindicated kids of refugee mothers.

THE CROSS-DRESSING, gay Cypriot who was sentenced to one year in prison by an Egyptian court for offering sexual services online, after being visited by an Egyptian cop, appears to have quite a following on social media. Many people have been posting messages of support, which is quite peculiar for our homophobic little country.

A skettos drinking customer offered a theory for this but we have been unable to check its veracity. Apparently the cross-dressing man is an Akelite and all the messages of support were from party comrades. If this is the case, it would be the first time AKEL would be entitled to describe itself as a progressive party. Supporting cross-dressing gays in our conservative and backward society is not just progressive, it is very advanced.

By Patroclos

COMMERCE, Industry, Energy and Tourism minister Giorgos Lakkotrypis will soon have spun more myths than Aesop. The only difference would be that in contrast to Aesop, his myths and fables are pretty one-dimensional, offering the same moral lesson every time which is – when you sell hot air you eventually get found out.

Not that this has persuaded Lakkotrypis from exiting the fantasy world he has been living in since becoming minister. On the contrary, the unfailingly positive press he receives thanks to his youthful good looks and the authoritative tone of his voice, has made him think he can carry on feeding us with his unnatural gas yarns forever.

He started by asserting that the government would build a gas liquefaction plant, that would cost about €10 billion at a time when the state was bankrupt and only the troika would lend it money. There was also the minor matter of us not having the quantities of gas to make such a huge investment viable, but Lakkotrypis has never allowed rationality get in the way of a good yarn.

Then he peddled the myth about joint exploitation with Israel of our natural gas resources which the Israelis never gave a serious thought to. He even told us about the grand idea of building a pipeline to take our tiny quantities of gas to Greece, as if there was any company in the world insane enough to undertake such a project. But it was ambitious, pandered to nationalistic sentiment so nobody commented about the big dose of stupidity it contained.

BIG HOPES that he would deliver on his Egypt promises – he had once said the Egyptians were so desperate to secure gas they were ready for a purchase contract – were dashed at the end of August when Italian energy giant ENI found massive quantities of natural gas (10 times what Kyproulla had found in the Aphrodite plot) in Egypt’s EEZ.

It was a shame because some 10 days before the find Lakko had announced that the study about the transportation of gas from Aphrodite to Egypt would be ready in a few days. Yet after the find Lakko informed us that he had contacted his Egyptian counterpart and, he reportedly said that plans to transport gas from Kyproulla to the land of the Pharaohs remained on track. This was as likely as Saudi Arabia buying crude oil from Kuwait.

I am sure Lakko was not telling lies, but I suspect his Egyptian counterpart was crediting him with as much naivety as he credits the Cypriot public.

WHAT you cannot help but admire in the man is his persistence with the myth-making that verges on the heroic. Last Sunday he told Kathimerini in an interview that after the massive find at Egypt’s Zohr gas field there was a Plan B.

Rather than laying a pipeline from Aphrodite all the way to Egypt, we would lay one to Zohr, which was only 90km away and from there our gas would be transported to Egypt in the Zohr pipeline. He told the paper that he had discussed this alternative with – believe it or not – his Egyptian counterpart.

The counterpart must have told Lakko that he would ask ENI to allow the use of its pipeline to pump a little Cypriot gas to Egypt as long as we get the gas to Zohr. The only snag is that Zohr will not be ready by 2018, the year Lakko had said we could start selling gas to Egypt, assuming his counterpart ever signs the purchase contract.

By Monday, Lakko found a new straw to clutch. ENI had announced it was discussing with the Egyptian government the possibility of setting up an energy hub in the Eastern Med for the transit of natural gas within the region. On Tuesday he told reporters that ENI’s gas hub would include Kyproulla, which put paid to another one of his grand plans – to make Kyproulla a regional energy centre.

Instead of being the hub we were now desperate to be part of someone else’s hub.
The good news was that he did not hear this from his Egyptian counterpart, but from the CEO of ENI, who, at a meeting he had with Prez Nik, said the company’s “vision for the region includes Cyprus”. Only time will show whether Lakko has finally got something right, but I would not bet on it.

SOCIALIST dermatologist and leader of EDEK Dr Sizopoulos was unable to keep his cool after the report in Politis that he had been importing cosmetic drugs from Greece – Botox and Dysport – that were not licensed in Cyprus and using them to treat his patients.

The revelation was made by pharmaceuticals saleswoman who was bringing the medicine from Greece in her suitcase for Sizopoulos, who explained, with the moral superiority he discusses every issue, that he had not broken any law as doctors are allowed to bring in drugs from any EU country for their patients. Selling these was not permitted.

He even found the opportunity to boast about his pioneering spirit. “I am, in fact, the first dermatologist to have used Botox in Cyprus, since 1999.” What a pity that the names for the Nobel Prize for medicine have already been submitted.

SIZOPOULOS, I am certain is innocent, but this story will not be good for his image. A doctor who makes money out of cosmetic treatment, catering to people’s vanity, cannot have any credibility as a socialist leader and a warrior for freedom.

You just cannot take seriously the revolutionary, socialist credentials of someone who offers Botox treatment to the vain rich, wasting his qualifications on useless branch of medicine rather than on helping poor people with serious health problems.

Che Guevara was also a doctor and a socialist like Sizo but he would never have given Botox treatment if it existed in his time. I wonder what Sizo’s mentor and Che admirer, Dr Faustus thinks about all this? Being vain and rich, has he ever gone to his protégé for some Botox?

WE HAVE to show some respect to Sizo for turning this ridiculous affair into an excuse for advertising his courage and defiance. The story was part of a plot to silence him by political rivals, he claimed before heroically stating:

“This voice that speaks will not be silenced; I state it openly: if some seek conflict and war, they will get it. I do not give in and I do not back down and they should know this very well by now. What they must understand is that I, too, have information on many others.”

This threat to retaliate by throwing dirt on others has been used by every Cypriot politician when he is under a bit of pressure and has become rather boring, especially as the threat is never carried out. But the real negative for Sizo is that people will realise that his real expertise is Botox and not the liberation of Kyrenia.

WITH ELECTIONS only six months away, the legislature is become more absurd by the day. Last Monday several deputies of the House ethics committee were indignantly slamming the Central Bank because it had failed to provide data about the transfer of money abroad in March 2013 just before the haircut of deposits.

The Central Bank embarrassed them by announcing that it had provided this data, the last time the committee had discussed the matter, more than a year ago. Chairman of the committee Nicos Nicolaides, member of the Botox party, tried to cover up the stupidity by claiming the data on the lists provided needed processing. There were no ID numbers next to the names, he said. Why did they need ID numbers?

Was he going to pass the information on to his leader Sizo so he could use it against those who tried to harm him?

THE BEST story from the legislature was the submission of the DISY bill for raising the threshold for party entry to parliament to 5 per cent. All the small parties like the Greens, EVROKO, Alliance of Lillikas that would be excluded from parliament if the new threshold was introduced, were on the warpath claiming this was an attack on democracy and liberty.

The truth is Kyproulla would not be any less democratic if Perdikis, Syllouris and Lillikas were excluded from the House. In fact our establishment would support the raising of the threshold to 10 per cent because then EDEK and DIKO would also fail to get a seat, which would be a great triumph for our democracy.

THE NEW Sunday paper Reporter came out last Sunday. I did not see it but it featured an interview with Prez Nik that was picked up by other media. The first issue of a paper and it featured an interview with Nik, who has been interviewed to death by all the papers several times and is in the news every single day airing his views. Do we need another paper to carry interviews with the president?

However I am grateful to the Reporter website because it carried photographs of two weddings that took place last weekend. It had a picture from the wedding ceremony of Eleni Theocharous’ daughter Julie. More interestingly there were a couple of photos from the wedding of AKEL deputy Nicos Katsourides, who has done very well for himself. The new wife is too pretty, too young and too elegant for the short, chubby commie, though he certainly has a well-preserved face for his 63 years. I wonder whether he has ever visited Sizo’s clinic?

YOU HAD to laugh at the study prepared about the privatisation of the Electricity Authority by energy and environment consultants Exergia SA. It recommended exactly what Nik’s government had been suggesting as a compromise to the EAC’s unions which are totally against privatisation.

Exergia suggested that the authority would be split into two companies in which the state would have the controlling state. The minority shareholding and management would be given to the private sector. This is the same ownership model that led Cyprus Airways to bankruptcy.
What are the chances of finding any investors prepared to spend their millions to go into partnership, as the minority partner, with the government, the political parties and the unions?

I WAS informed by a regular that after last Monday’s meeting, the two amigos had pseudo-dinner at a pseudo-restaurant and nobody protested about this blatant upgrading of the pseudo state by the president of the internationally recognised Republic.

What was even more suspicious was that nobody reported this. I had tried to check the veracity of the regular’s information but I did not find any reference to the pseudo-restaurant in the media. A Tass news agency on Monday night said that the talks were “being continued at a working dinner” without mentioning the venue.

The papers also mentioned the dinner without giving any other information. After Thursday’s meeting press reports said that the two amigos had dinner at a fish tavern and I assumed it was at Nicosia’s internationally recognised Paragadi, which I know prez Nik is very fond of.

Monday’s venue remains a mystery, raising suspicions that it may have been a pseudo-restaurant housed in a Greek Cypriot property or run by a Turkish settler or both. Our prez has been keeping us in the dark about the talks so he could at least inform us the name of the pseudo-restaurant he ate at with his buddy and the nerdy Norwegian.

THERE is a compelling national reason for wanting to know. The morning after the suspected pseudo-dinner Nik spoke at The Economist conference and expressed the hope there would be a deal before the May 2016 parliamentary elections.

Until that day the prez dismissed any suggestion the talks could be concluded by May. When his buddy Mustafa mentioned May as the target, he immediately put him right, arguing that the issues being discussed were complex and would take a long time to be resolved. His spokesman took the same line, repeating the official mantra about suffocating time-frames.

What made Nik suddenly express such optimism, the day after a meeting at which the authoritatively negative Phil reported “it transpired that the chasm in the property issue remained the same, without the slightest hint of progress”? So how could there be a deal by May given Phil’s assurances of “continuing deadlock” on the property issue?

The only explanation is that at Monday night’s dinner the Turks slipped some newly-developed drug into Nik’s food or drink that numbs the part of the mind that regulates national resistance levels. This is why it is of critical importance for us to know where he ate.

ESPEN Barth Eide was also at the dinner and although he displayed even greater optimism than Nik when he spoke at The Economist conference it is doubtful he was drugged by the Turks. The nerdy Norwegian, privately, makes no secret of his plan for a deal by December and a referendum by March.

He told the conference that we need to prepare for a solution because “it could happen sooner than you think.” He added that the two leaders should have the backing to “get through the last kilometre.” If there is just one kilometre left, the two amigos must have agreed most things while fobbing off hacks with talk about “continuing deadlock”.

But we should be pragmatic. The kilometre might never be covered if Nik suddenly decides to start walking backwards, cheered on by Junior, Lillikas and the Botox pioneer.

NEWLY-ARRIVED Ambassador of the US Kathleen Doherty also spoke at the conference and revealed that before she joined the diplomatic service she had been a journalist “writing about business and economics”.

She said: “And in my dreams, I hoped to write for the Economist. I even went to the London School of Economics, thinking somehow I would be discovered by The Economist’s editors… and if the Economist didn’t work out, I would set my sights on the New York Times, my ‘home town’ paper. Well that didn’t happen either.”

She eventually sat the exams for the US foreign service, passed and “found a career that I love.” She should be warned that many senior diplomats posted to Kyproulla come to hate their job after dealing with the Cyprob for a couple of years. I sincerely hope this does not happen to her, but if it does, I think there is an opening for a business journalist at the Cyprus Mail. It is not in the league of the Economist or the NY Times but it will help her deal with the soul-destroying effects of the Cyprob that had caused many a diplomat to fall out of love with their career.

THE HALLOUMIFICATION of the Cyprob appears to be gathering momentum if the report from Brussels by Phil’s halloumi correspondent Pavlos Xanthoullis is anything to go by.

Last Sunday, under the inspired banner headline ‘Akinci warns Commission of ‘impending crisis’ over halloumi,’ he reported that Akinci had written to the Commission complaining about its halloumi proposal that followed the July high level agreement in Nicosia with Jean Claude Juncker.

The halloumi correspondent objectively wrote: “Adopting the tone of a member state of the EU, the document of the pseudo state demands, among other things, that the occupation authorities approve the certification organisation of halloumi in the occupied area, categorically rejecting the authority that the Cyprus Republic (recognised member-state of united Europe) has on the issue.”

The letter, excerpts of which were published by the paper, also included a ridiculous threat. “Unless the Commission refrains from furthering both of these processes, it will destroy its chances of playing a constructive role in the island and make it unable to contribute positively to the current settlement negotiations.”

The Turks must be totally nuts to think the Commission will be bothered in the slightest if it were excluded from the settlement negotiations. They will be doing it a favour. But Phil failed to see the ridiculousness of the threat, warning in its sub-heading ‘EU in danger of losing its role in Cyprus problem.’ The alarm bells must be ringing in Brussels.

CONCLUDING his report, Xanthoullis wrote: “It is obvious the proposition of the T/C side to Brussels takes on the character of a naked threat aimed at satisfying the conditions it has set.” He did not mention Akinci, which made you wonder if he had actually written the halloumi letter.
In his report, the halloumi correspondent, who had a copy of the letter, said the following: “The letter of the pseudo-state, which was prepared by the advisors of Akinci, after consultation with the Turkish Cypriot leader at the end of July…” How could Xanthoullis know this? Why has he ruled out the possibility that Akinci might have had nothing to do with the letter?

Officials at the foreign ministry of the Cyprus Republic (recognised member-state of a united Europe) also opposed the halloumi deal struck by Nik and Mustafa and wrote to the Commission demanding amendments were made. All this proves is that there are morons on both sides promoting the halloumification of the problem, which can only be good news for the halloumi correspondent.

Sizopoulos bringing Botox into the Cyprob arena

BOTOX pioneer and freedom fighter Marinos Sizopoulos does not subscribe to the halloumification theory. Speaking in Limassol yesterday, he warned that the Cyprus talks “are not related to the finding of a democratic solution, but the imposition of a Nato solution of Bosniafication (sic) and dissolution of the Cyprus Republic.” The good doctor should know that this is nothing the administration of a little Botox could not put right. We would then have the botoxification of the Cyprob.

JUNIOR and his DIKO followers must have been livid on hearing that the government had decided to name Larnaca airport after Glafcos Clerides. DIKO had in the past proposed to give the airport the name of one of its own presidents, but there was too much opposition to the idea and it was abandoned. One stadium is named after Spyros and another after Tassos.

The attempt to push the idea of naming the airport after Tassos was particularly forceful but there was no way the Tof government, which was in power when he passed away, would have sanctioned such a move. For the DISY government, giving the name of its founder and former president to the airport was very easy to do. It did not even put the idea up for public discussion.

The Papadopoulos family should not feel aggrieved because I hear if there is a settlement as a show of goodwill the Turkish Cypriots might agree to name Ercan after Tassos.

WE MIGHT just be a kilometre away from a solution but according to a report in last Sunday’s Simerini an announcement about the “purchase of a boat with increased military capability” was imminent. The paper said the decisions had already been taken and “procedures are at an advanced stage.”

The hot favourite to land the deal was Israel as “the move is linked to the deepening of the strategic co-operation of Cyprus with the neighbouring country,” said the paper.

It added that another three military boats would be ordered from European countries. There was no mention of the cost, nor any indication of what we would do with boats “with increased military capability.”

Perhaps we could use them to blockade the north if it attempts to export its halloumi from illegal ports and without the necessary certification.

By Patroclos

ANOTHER tripartite alliance is in the making, after Prez Nik’s official visit to Jordan. On the completion of his talks with Jordanian PM and King Abdallah he announced the building of a three-party co-operation on natural gas, involving Greece, Cyprus and Jordan.

This is the tripartite, gas alliance/co-operation Nik has undertaken during his presidency having set up one with Egypt and been striving to persuade Israel to do the same. The third party in these diplomatic threesomes is Greece which has no natural gas and is not in our region but Nik always includes in his regional gas domination plans. It is doubtful whether he even asks the Greek government before he volunteers its participation, but it appears he would never join a threesome without Greece by his side.

What’s even funnier is that he organises these diplomatic threesomes, talks them up as if they would change the course of history but nobody ever has any sex (metaphorically speaking of course). So far, only Egypt has signed a threesome agreement, which only exists in theory as nobody is in any hurry to explore its practical side, if it has any.

AS AN INCENTIVE for joining his diplomatic threesomes, Nik promises the country he is trying to lure that he would act as its ambassador at the EU. On Wednesday he told King Abdullah that Jordan had “a special place in our hearts as well as in our foreign policy,” adding: “You can consider Cyprus as one of your ambassadors to the EU.”

He said the same thing to his friend Bibi Netanyahu (also presidents Putin and el-Sisi), when he visited Israel, adding other sweeteners. Not only will he act as Israel’s ambassador and arrange for Bibi to be invited to the European Council, he also offered to act as a mediator between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in order to help the peace process.
Tass news agency reported on Friday that Nik had taken a message from the Authority’s leader Mahmoud Abbas to Bibi and in the afternoon, when he was to meet Abbas he would take a message back to him from Bibi. Could the next step be the announcement of a three-party regional, gas co-operation involving Cyprus, Israel and the Palestinian Authority?
Unlikely, because, as was mentioned above, the eastern Mediterranean ambassador to the EU and Middle East peace mediator, does not do threesomes without Greece.

THE ONLY issue of substance to come out of Friday’s Nik-Bibi meeting, if the Tass news agency report was accurate, was that our strategic ally Israel can’t wait for a settlement of the Cyprob so it can start selling its natural gas to Turkey.
This has turned out to be another colossal miscalculation by the the great brains at our foreign ministry, who have for years been claiming that a strategic alliance with Israel would strengthen our position against Turkey. Alas, now that Egypt has found huge quantities of natural gas Israel has decided its only option is to sell its gas to the Turks and for this to happen they need a Cysolution.
Tass agency reported: “As regards regional co-operation in the field of energy, the two men agreed that the benefits for the region would be many, if everyone involved in the region co-operates.” Could they have meant Turkey?

A DAY earlier, referring to the unitisation agreement between Cyprus and Israel (which Israel has been refusing to sign for several years) a senior fellow at the Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies and former ambassador Dr Oded Eran, told Globes website the following:
“The unitisation agreement between Israel and Cyprus will be signed if the internal political dispute in Cyprus is solved and if gas from the countries can be exported to Turkey.” Without the unitisation agreement it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for Cyprus to exploit the gas in the Aphrodite plot.

Our strategic allies, who were going to protect us in our dispute with the Turks according to the morons posing as our politicians and diplomats, are pushing for a settlement so they can start selling their gas to Turkey via Cyprus. And they can carry on preventing us extracting our gas – to sell elsewhere – by refusing to sign the unitisation agreement.
Not the sort of behaviour you’d expect from a country with which we enjoy friendly ties and in January are hoping to formalise our strategic threesome.

THE PATRIOTIC fundamentalists that protect our national interests and identify our potential enemies made nothing of this, indicating that they have given Israel the ‘untouchable’ status enjoyed by Mother Russia.

They were too busy bad-mouthing our tradition foes, the Europeans and the Yanks, to notice that Israel was toying with our sovereign rights. This was the week the unprincipled European Commission “acquitted” Turkey in its annual progress report, and the new US ambassador invited occupation army officers to a reception in the north.

The hysteria against the Commission was sparked by Phil, the standard bearer of ultra-patriotic negativity, whose halloumi correspondent in Brussels had secured an advance copy of the progress report. It was on the front-page on Monday, under the idiotic headline “Complete acquittal of Turkey”, the outrage being that the Commission had not found Turkey guilty of its occupation.
And of course all bash-patriotic parties recycled their announcements about the failure of the government’s foreign policy. Special mention should go to DIKO for its commendable hypocrisy in complaining that the draft report was “very negative”. Only DIKO was entitled to be very negative and the Commission was threatening its monopoly.

ONLY last Sunday our establishment had warned the new US ambassador Kathleen Doherty about the danger of falling out of love with her diplomatic career when serving in Kyproulla. She was given an idea of what we meant the following day as the fundamentalist mob laid into her for playing host to uniformed Turkish army officers at a reception she gave in the north.

“Mega-tonnes scandal and stab in the back” screamed the Greens; DIKO said Doherty, who had “acquitted Turkey of its ongoing crimes”, should be reported to the UN Security Council; the Lillikas Alliance said Nik’s policies had “upgraded the occupation regime”, and Euroko demanded the government did more than make “a pointless diplomatic demarche”.

Maybe Nik should seek the imposition of sanctions on the US at the next EU summit. It would be fully supported by Phil which advertised our delusions on its front page on Tuesday, under the banner headline, “Almost a crisis with the US.” The crisis “Doherty managed to provoke was averted by Nicosia which chose to play things down.”

Washington must be grateful to the cool heads in Nicosia that spared the US having to deal with another international crisis.

STAR of the “almost crisis” was the leading fundamentalist, freedom fighter and poet Eleni Theocharous (MEP), who saw the issue as another opportunity to promote her uncontrollable presidential ambitions. She seized the chance to pose as a proud defender of our national dignity, issuing a statement in which she said Doherty “offended the Cyprus Republic” and had to be kicked out.

She added: “Ms Doherty, with her actions, has rendered herself extremely unfit for the position her country has trusted her with; with her actions, as an individual, she has rendered herself an enemy of the country she is accredited to and undesirable by the Cypriot people.” The presidential hopeful has not yet been elected but is expressing the wishes of the Cypriot people, including the Turkish Cypriots. If she were president, Phil would not be reporting “almost a crisis with the US”.

THINGS seem to be going from bad to worse for the dictatorial leader of the Greens, the self-righteous and morally superior Yiorgos Perdikis.

While he has been fighting to save his parliamentary career – for the good of democracy – that is threatened by the plans to increase the vote threshold for entry into parliament, he has also had to deal with a defection from his personal vehicle, also known as the Green Party.
The vice chairman, Andreas Masouras, resigned from his post attacking the great leader for turning the Greens into a family concern and a “tired,” old style party that “moved away from the fundamental principles of Political Ecology”.

This was how Paphite Greens felt after a meeting of their branch with the great leader last week. All he talked about was the election threshold while turtles, trees and birds did not get a look-in. Protecting the environment is of secondary importance when Perdikis’ monthly salary is at risk.

MASOURAS’ resignation seems to have been Cyprob-related. He had dared to question Perdikis’ cartoonish rejectionism on his Facebook page, arguing that the party should support the settlement efforts.

Perdikis, displaying his Stalinist streak, decided Masouras would have to appear before the party’s political committee to give explanations for his unacceptable views. Rather than sit in the dock to be humiliated by Perdikis and his toadies, for daring to disagree with the positions of his omniscient leader, Masouras chose to resign.

This farcical episode highlighted Perdikis’ role as a defender of democracy, which is being threatened by the raising of the election threshold.

THE HOUSE managed to pass the law enabling the banks to sell non-performing loans to hedge funds by a majority of one – 26 to 25 votes – on Thursday. This, according to AKEL, which voted against the bill, would open the way to the “hedge fund vultures” to take the homes of the poor and destroy small businesses.

There is one thing during the voting on the bill that was difficult to understand. AKEL deputies voted in favour of several proposed amendments to the bill which they opposed and had decided to reject. How can you vote for amendments to a bill that you will reject on the grounds it would be catastrophic for the country?

MINISTER of communications and works Marios Demetriades was very impressed with the new Nissan Leaf, the electrically-powered car launched in Nicosia on Thursday. He told guests this was a very economical car that was good for the environment (no emissions) and he would do all he could to ensure government services used it. He stopped short of suggesting that the Leaf could replace the petrol-guzzling, environmentally unfriendly limos that ministers and other state worthies are driven around in.

A MEMBER of the Omonia committee responsible for hiring a new first team coach explained that one of the reasons the Serb Vladan Milojevic was chosen was because he was a Greek speaker. How could knowledge of Greek be considered an advantage when Omonia’s first team squad is made up of foreigners? Only a fourth of the squad’s players is Greek speaking.

WE FOUND out at which pseudo restaurant in the north prez Nik and his buddy Mustafa had dinner the Monday before last, in the company of Espen Barth Eide. It was at Niyazi’s in Gonyeli which is just a few minutes’ drive from the Ayios Dhometios checkpoint.

The restaurant owner is a fellow Limassolian of the two amigos, and before the invasion run one of Limassol’s most popular kebab taverns, situated close to the port. He left after the events of 74 and set up a pseudo-restaurant opposite the Dome hotel in Kyrenia and subsequently also opened a pseudo-hotel. It has been suggested this was because he enjoyed the favour of the Denktator, known for his love of a plate of succulent lamb kebab.

The Nicosia pseudo-restaurant, at which the two amigos ate, was originally known as The Mirage and was later taken over by the Niyazi family whose businesses are now run by Ahmet Niyazi, the son of the Limassol tavern-owner.

It was here that Nik is suspected of having consumed the newly-developed drug that numbs the part of the brain which regulates national resistance levels. Only a day later, he spoke about a settlement before May. If only we could now find a drug that de-activates the part of the brain that craves diplomatic threesomes.

By Patroclos

THE COFFEESHOP has never been a fan MEP Eleni Theocharous, who on Thursday announced she would be quitting her party DISY, because it was unpatriotically supporting the effort that would lead to an unjust settlement favouring the Turks.

I am pretty sure we have never written anything remotely positive about her and this was not because of her cartoonish mega-patriotism, her ruthless exploitation of the Cyprob or her relentless self-promotion and publicity-seeking in the service of her colossal ambition. She is neither the first nor the last politician to act in this way.

What made Dr Eleni so unlikeable to our disreputable establishment’s customers was her deadly seriousness, pomposity, moral superiority, colossal self-importance and, worst of all, her humourlessness. The woman takes herself far too seriously, having not been genetically programmed to laugh or see the lighter side of life, let alone display any sign of human weakness such as self-doubt.

And to top it all, she is about as attractive as Erato Kozakou Markoulli, even though she plucks her eye-brows.

BEFORE the feminists accuse us of sexism, for judging female politicians on their looks rather than their personality and policies, we would like to break our long tradition and say something positive about Dr Eleni. She has done more than any other woman in promoting gender equality in male-dominated world of Cyprus politics.

She has shown that a female politician can be as blindly ambitious, arrogant, opportunistic, scheming, self-promoting, driven, deluded, cartoonishly patriotic and as much of an egomaniac as the male of the species. Feminists might criticise her for suppressing her feminine qualities to achieve her objectives, but as the great James Brown sang, “This is a man’s world.”

And like so many men before her, La Theocharous has been using the crude exploitation of the Cyprob in the service of her presidential ambitions. It is all very boring and tedious, hearing yet another politician marketing their uncompromising stance on the Cyprob and vowing to fight against the unfair settlement, even if she wears dresses.

ANNOUNCING the reasons for her decision to leave DISY on Friday, La Theocharous showed great originality in saying: “I radically disagree with the political stance taken by the party on the Cyprus problem, the policy of concessions and painful compromises,” expressing fears that we could be led to irreversible situations.

“If the convergences, so far, are accepted by Turkey, then I consider that Turkification has already arrived,” she said, avoiding explaining what she planned to do as a self-proclaimed national saviour to reverse the irreversible situation of our Turkification. If it has already arrived would she retire from politics and focus on her poetry or would she set up guerrilla groups under her command to fight it?

The thought that we will have yet another insufferable armchair warrior, uttering the same mind-numbing platitudes as Lillikas, Junior, Sizopoulos, Perdikis and competing for the title of greatest bash-patriot of Kyproulla, is quite depressing. I would urge Nik to sign the Turkification agreement today, just to spare us from having to hear them any longer. At least we do not understand Turkish.

LA THEOCHAROUS has cleverly marketed her idealistic values and high principles, a ploy that worked very well for her as in last year’s elections for European Parliament she received more preference votes than any candidate. She fooled quite a lot of people into thinking she is different.

But she has always working to a plan aimed at making her president. She had discussed joining EDEK, but realised her ambitions would not be served, so she joined DIKO and when she understood the leadership was a family affair jumped ship to DISY for which she was deputy from 2001 until 2009. Despite her patriotism she never saw it fit to leave the party when it backed the Turkification plan of 2004, like several other of its deputies had done.

She still needed the party to build her profile before moving to higher things. In 2009 she was elected to the European Parliament, thus keeping a safe distance away from her pro-Turkification party and occasionally issuing statements about how she had heroically defended our interests in Europe by asking tough questions of Turkey and changing the wording on resolutions. That is all it takes to attain hero status in Kyproulla.

ALTHOUGH she was supported as a candidate of the small parties in the last presidential elections by the Church she was not wanted by the parties so she bided her time, winning a second term to the European Parliament last year.

She stepped up her criticism of her party and spoke about the need for a new movement to fight corruption and adopt a more assertive policy on the Cyprob. On Friday, when she announced she was quitting DISY, she said she would set up a movement that would be called Solidarity, presumably in the hope she would become the Lech Walesa of Kyproulla, but without the moustache.

Solidarnosc will not contest the parliamentary elections and Dr Eleni will continue to keep her seat she won as a DISY candidate at the European Parliament because she is not so idealistic and principled that she would sacrifice a cushy job that pays 100 grand a year plus expenses. Who would defend our national interests in Europe if she gave up her seat?

And for this week’s ‘Where Is It?’ competition, here is the first clue, and in case it is illegible in the photo, according to the Paphos-based monthly The Cyprus Reporter: ‘The Limassol Marina is located near the Limassol promendade in the city of Limassol within the Limassol District of Cyprus’

RELIGIOUS faith appears to have become all the rage for the newspapers trying to tackle their flagging sales. For the last two weeks, Phil has been heavily advertising on radio its new pious offer of books and icons on the “Holy figures of Orthodoxy”, informing us that the first book in the series would be on the Virgin Mary. I loved the ad’s punch-line – “the Virgin Mary with Phileleftheros”.

The paper also carried a full page ad on “A publication of faith from Phileleftheros”, while on its front page it urged readers to “Create a wonderful shrine and bookshelf in your home.” The paper had piously decided that the offer would coincide with the Virgin Mary’s holy day which was yesterday, while next Sunday, the eve of Apostolos Andreas’ holy day it would offer his icon plus book.

I tried to find out what the paper would be charging for its sacred money-making offer but the price was not mentioned in the ads out of piety. The paper must have felt it would be disrespectful to publicise fact that it would be making money out of the “holy figures of Othodoxy.”

IF THERE is a God this commercial venture would be a flop, because even atheists find it rather distasteful, especially from a newspaper that for years championed faith in consumerism and materialism with its glossy lifestyle rags that told its readers how to be cool and hip and informed them how the rich and decadent lived.

Those were the good old days, when the rags were jam-packed with advertising and the cash kept flowing. Now the consumer advertising has plummeted and the only lifestyle choice for most is survival the paper decided to market the lifestyle of piety and religious faith.

Phil got the idea from the Zeus group which had also peddled lifestyle rags with its newspaper Simerini. Some weeks ago, Simerini had offered a book on the life of Ayios Paisios – Orthodoxy’s latest saint – for an extra €5 with its Sunday edition and all 5,000 copies of the book were sold. It supplied the market with a few thousand more copies to satisfy demand.

Today Simerini is offering a “momentous” 480-page book on Apostolos Andreas “plus CD dedicated to the memory of the saint, with church psalms…” God help us.

EVERYONE united in a collective fit of moral outrage to condemn to “brainless” students that attacked three Turkish Cypriots cars last Monday. Students were out on the Nicosia streets to condemn the anniversary of the unilateral declaration of independence by the Denktator which led to the virgin birth of the pseudo-state.

The police would probably have ignored the incidents, as they had done in the past regarding attacks of Turkish Cypriots, but such was the condemnation of the “brainless” kids – even Lillikas and Junior took a stand against them – they decided to act. Some 15 teenagers were eventually arrested, charged and released.

Meanwhile, the neo-fascists of ELAM denied they had anything to do with the incidents, which was quite sweet. You only had to listen to the patriotic head of the teachers’ union Oelmek, Demetris Taliadoros, speaking on radio last week to realise that ELAM was speaking the truth. If the rest of the state school teachers are anything like Taliadoros, it is incredible there were only 15 “brainless” kids on the streets last Monday, seeking to intimidate Turkish Cypriots.

A fitting punishment for the kids would be a few weeks of community service at the Home for Co-operation, making them serve coffees to Turkish Cypriot at bi-communal events.

THE WASTING of money on public parasites has begun in anticipation of our exit from the assistance programme in March. The government sent a supplementary budget bill to the House seeking the creation of an additional 14 positions for colonels in the National Guard.

If these are approved, it would take the number of colonels to 71, which is beyond absurd for a standing army of a few thousand conscripts. In its explanatory notes the government said “the creation of the 17 new positions is aimed at facilitating the promotion of staff and are expected to be abolished gradually in the next four years.”

It is not that the Guard needs more colonels – it probably already has 50 more than it needs – but 17 lieutenant-colonels have been demanding promotion so our kindly prez has decided to help them out. Soon there will be more officers than privates in the national joke.

APART from increasing the number of serving colonels the ministry of defence is also preparing other big money-wasting reforms for the national joke. According to Phil the NG planned to employ “professional soldiers,” moving “at last in the direction that all modern armies of the world moved a long time ago.”

So by putting more public parasites on the public payroll – this time in public fatigues – the national joke will become a modern army? No, an administrative reform would also have to be completed – the defence ministry and the General Staff would be housed in the same building “in line with the model followed by most modern countries”.

Not only will we join the most modern countries, we will also boast a modern army, with professional soldiers and 71 colonels with nothing to do.

IS THERE a reason that the UN has designated November 19 as World Toilet Day and World Philosophy Day? Is it because toilets and philosophy have more in common than we actually think? Or is it perhaps because many philosophers do most of their thinking on the toilet? No, as one regular pointed out, suggesting any connection between the two is a load of bull….

THE REASONING for the colonels should perhaps be applied to the presidency. There are currently at least half a dozen people, including Dr Eleni, who want to become president. Could we not change the constitution so we would have six serving presidents and thus facilitate their promotion? This would also ensure a smooth transition to the rotational presidency given that Turkification is just round the corner.

ANGER and outrage at the downing of a Russian warplane by the Turks gave way to national pride on the sunshine isle as Mother Russia hit back and turned the screw on Ankara with a host of retaliatory measures. Everyone enjoyed seeing Turkey lose its trademark arrogance, experiencing the type of bullying it regularly subjected us to.

We stopped short of bringing out the Russian flags, only because there were none available in the shops, but the newspaper headlines said it all. “Russia grinds its teeth at Turkey,” said Alithia while Simerini identified a “War fever between Russia and Turkey.” Phil’s unfunny cartoonist drew the Russian bear lording it over a tiny, terrified puppy on two consecutive days.
The parties also joined in the fun, angrily denouncing the shooting down of the plane and using the incident to indulge in the traditional NATO-bashing and bad-mouthing of the unprincipled West which backed Turkey’s act of aggression. Our principled parties and column writers were in shock because Western countries stood by their ally Turkey, when it was so blatantly in the wrong.
They forgot we did exactly the same when mother Russia invaded, occupied and annexed a big chunk of the Ukraine, not that our stance was noticed by anyone. We did not condemn it – our president publicly defended Putin’s expansionism – even though it ranked much higher in the league table of acts of aggression and caused much more human suffering than the shooting down of a single plane, because we consider Mother Russia our ally.

GREEK Orthodox fundamentalists were praying Turkey’s provocation would lead to the war that Ayios Paisios – the monk recently made a saint and whose biography offered by Simerini sold out a few weeks ago – had predicted in his writings. He forecasted that the “fair race from the north” would liberate Constantinople from the Turks. The internet was full of this nonsense in the last week.
Bash-patriots saw the downing of the plane as another argument against a settlement of the Cyprob. The Alliance of Lillikas urged Prez Nik to seriously re-consider his policies. “Is it with this country he is negotiating the dissolution of the Cyprus Republic and the creation of a partnership state?” it asked.
Hysterical columnist Costakis Antoniou warned of deadly dangers for Cypriot Hellenism. A federation would not be with Turkish Cypriots but with “the Turkmens and the jihadists of Ankara.” Politicians that backed a settlement “would bring the jihadist regime of Turkey in the ranks of Cypriot Hellenism.”
And this is not all. When the bizonal federation was set up, “Cyprus would become a staging post for jihadists, Turkmens and other fanatical Islamist terrorist movements, with the full support of the Turkish state.” We should give Paphos to the Turkmens.

BEING an establishment that has always warmly embraced what the comrades describe as “sterile anti-Akelism” we have to express our unadulterated disgust at hearing the commies give us lessons in human rights and individual freedoms.
These are the guys that worshipped and took orders from one of the world’s most repressive police states – the Soviet Union – which should disqualify them permanently from preaching about human rights. Not in Kyproulla, in which AKEL vociferously campaigned against a bill that would allow the authorities to use electronic correspondence – email and SMS – as evidence in a court case.
It also served a big lie to back its campaign, claiming the law would be used by the state to keep personal records on “unsuspecting citizens”. Such is commie commitment to individual rights that in the AKEL offices nobody dares to speak openly about anything because they know all conversations are being recorded by the party command. But they understand this is for a good cause, as it was in the Soviet Union.

Co-operative spirit: Aristos Damianou

THE REAL reason for the freedom-loving commies’ opposition to the bill, which was approved on Thursday, was revealed by Politis. The bill would allow the Attorney-General to use emails, in the possession of police investigators, that proved AKEL was paid a couple of million by Andreas Vgenopoulos, via Focus Maritime, something the party has vehemently denied. It could also land AKEL’s accountants who arranged the cover-up in a spot of legal bother.
This was why Akelite deputy Aristos Damianou, in a spirit of co-operation, had offered for the party to back the bill on condition that the law would apply to electronic communications sent after it was passed. The comrades did not mind if the state kept files on unsuspecting citizens and violated individual freedoms as long the illiberal law did not apply to old cases. The commies almost fooled us into thinking they cared about individual freedoms.

‘STERILE anti-Akelism’ knows never to take the commies at face value, even on the smallest things. This week it championed the protests by AKEL-controlled student organisations against the government’s plans to tighten the income criteria for grants to university students, so that only the genuinely needy would receive help.
The headline of the relevant report in the party mouthpiece Haravghi was “Students mobilise again and demand dignity.” The fact is they were demanding money not dignity. Call me a reactionary neo-liberal, but I really fail to see any dignity in demanding money from the state like beggars, especially when you consider students from low-income families will carry on receiving their grants. As AKEL has managed to make scrounging from the state a quest for dignity, I will also demand some dignity from the state, preferably in 50-euro notes.

IT IS GOOD to see that a modern type of political correctness has arrived in our backward regional centre. Cyprob and trade union political correctness have existed for decades and their respective, fascistic custodians continue to terrorise those who dare step out of line.
But we never had any of the modern forms of this correctness, equally as insane that blight places like the UK and the US where people now can be crucified on social media by the thought police for expressing an honest opinion about a social issue.
I mention this because last week Patroclos became a target of feminists in the social media for committing the crime of commenting on Dr Eleni Theocharous’ looks. I did not see these comments, because I am not on social media, but a concerned customer informed me about them. There are however two letters in today’s Letters to the Editor, which give an idea of why I should feel deeply ashamed of what I wrote and ask forgiveness of the local thought police.
The general conclusion was that the comments were ‘vile’, ‘sexist’ and a ‘disgrace’; a ‘right on’ male customer described it as ‘misogynist’. I was very disappointed with this reaction as I thought last week’s article would have made me the darling of feminists.
I wrote about a female politician in the same way I have been writing for years about the males of the profession, including making silly comments about their looks. Why am I sexist when I make similar jibes about a woman politician?
I am not complaining because I enjoyed my two minutes of social media notoriety, vilified by holier than thou feminist thought police.

NO CHANCE of Kyproulla’s gays taking the moral high ground and dictating what we are permitted to

Chief gay basher Andreas Themistocleous

write like feminists and the Cyprob fundamentalists have been doing.
Although on Thursday the House approved the bill on civil partnerships (but no adoption of kids permitted) our gays do not yet have the social acceptance and clout to impose moral correctness as gay communities love to do in America and Britain. Kyproulla is still a homophobia-friendly place in which gay-bashing is not unknown.
Reactionary DISY deputy and gay-basher-in-chief Andreas Themistocleous, who has likened homosexuality to bestiality in the past, was still banking on the homophobe vote, vowing, in his speech to the House, to fight against civil partnerships if he was re-elected. The majority of Dikheads, with the exception of Junior and Athina, voted against or abstained, but the bill was passed with a big majority.
Present at the legislature was Alecos Modinos, the man who fought for the de-criminalisation of homosexuality on his own, taking on our repressive, socially backward, Church-dominated society, despite being subjected to abuse and public ridicule. He is a reminder that courage has a personal cost unlike the cheap courage of empty words and career advancement of our manly politicians.
I hope this has endeared me to the gay community which would put in a good word for me in the social media today and counter the nasty abuse of the feminists.

LA THEOCHAROUS was in the news again this week again exchanging insults in the newspapers with former rector of the Cyprus University Stavros Zenios in what could be described as a showdown of the super-sized egos. It was a match made in heaven as Zenios is the equal of Dr Eleni in pomposity, humourlessness and moral superiority.
Unfortunately the exchange, as you would expect, lacked any humour, Zenios taking exception to Dr Eleni’s remark that he was not a worthy replacement of her. He would be in line to take her seat in the European parliament if she stepped down but she could not do this she said because her replacement “did not take even a fifth of the preference votes I received and his political positions are the opposite of mine.”
Zenios’ objection was that Dr Eleni’s maths was poor – he received more than a fifth her preference vote, a point graciously conceded in her response – and that she was being unethical in claiming their political positions were completely different as both supported transparency, horizontal voting, a clean-up of public life etc.

ZENIOS’ rant about ethical behaviour was used by Dr Eleni to promote her moral superiority. She agreed with many of his political positions but not on the number one issue – the Cyprob, on which she wrote there was drastic disagreement.
She wrote self-importantly: “But the people do not send MEPs to the European Parliament to solve problems of horizontal voting. It sends them to defend their country from possible dissolution.” It is the first I hear of the European Parliament threatening the dissolution of our country, but if La Theocharous says it, it must be the truth.
And she did not give up her seat in parliament because Zenios would not defend our national interests in Brussels and Strasbourg as tenaciously as she does. The money she would lose – in excess of 100 grand per annum – had nothing to do with her decision, even though the European Parliament also pays the salary of her parliamentary assistant and advisor Dr Charalambides, whom she would have to pay out of her own pocket to write responses to her critics, if she gave up her seat.
Money is not important when you are defending the interests of your country, which is why the heroic Dr Eleni has chosen to maintain her dignity by fighting against a Cyprob settlement in Brussels rather than in Nicosia. (I hope the feminists have not identified any sexism in this).

YOU HAVE to admire the way Phil gets others (usually the Bank of Cyprus) to pick up the bill for the events it organises. The bank and OPAP paid for that awards charade for the great Cypriots and now it is co-organising something called the ‘Naked Party’ with the Phil group rag Downtown.
This will be “the absolut(sic) underground pre-Xmas party” at which “50 well-known personalities will take off their clothes for a good cause.” The €10 entrance fee will go to a charity. There is no mention of which personalities will be disrobing, but if the Phil publisher will be among them I will buy 10 tickets.
You have to question the wisdom of the B of C in associating itself with such an event. A sick mind could think this was black humour – having taken all your assets the bank would also take the clothes you are wearing, but in fun way at the Naked Party for the good cause of reducing its NPLs.

MANY welcomed the news that B of C CEO John Hourican has rescinded his decision to resign. This is a very Cypriot thing to do, raising suspicions that the Irishman has gone native. This could also be the explanation for his agreeing to the bank being a co-organiser of the Naked Party – he may have thought he was leaving and didn’t care.

By Patroclos

POLITICIANS and hacks of the Cyprus Republic came under a magic spell as soon as Mother Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov set foot on the island, transformed into euphoric peasants of the remote Soviet republic of Arslikhan being visited by a big-shot Kremlin official in the good old days of the USSR.

By Wednesday night when Lavrov departed they had run out of plaudits for the wonderfulness of Mother Russia, and of ways to express their gratitude… and of saliva. There were a lot of parched, dry mouths on Thursday, which may explain why CyBC television’s political correspondent with the eighties hairstyle, Stella Michael, did not give US Secretary of State John Kerry the same gushing treatment when reporting his visit and contacts.

On Wednesday night’s TV news on the CyBC there was mention of Russia’s “principled positions/stand” 10 times in the first 10 minutes and in case anyone missed this point there was also a sub-head on the screen for several minutes which read, “Crystal clear stand on principles from mouth of Lavrov.”

You could not help thinking RIK was engaging in brainwashing rather than news reporting, a bit like the public broadcaster of a totalitarian regime.

THE SHOW started with news headline that “Russia reconfirms its stand on principles on the Cyprus problem.” It then covered the statements made by Lavrov and Ioannis Kasoulides after their meeting. Kasoulides said the government “expressed its appreciation for the unremitting principled position of the Russian Federation.”

During the lunch at the presidential palace Prez Nik expressed his “gratitude” to Russia for its “commitment to international law” and said it was “a privilege” to have Lavrov as a “close friend.”

Emotional House president Omirou felt “deep gratitude and respect for the support in our struggle to solve the Cyprus problem,” thanked Lavrov for Russia’s “perennial support” and also paid tribute to the Soviet Union for selling us guns in the 1960s. All this led him to the conclusion that Russia “is a true friend.”

Nobody expressed any gratitude to John Kerry when he arrived nor was the US described as a friend, as neither he nor his country have ever taken the principled positions Russia has taken on the Cyprob. The unprincipled Yanks, have stupidly tried to help and encourage the two sides to reach a settlement, and have been relentlessly abused by us for their efforts.

If they did nothing except take principled positions, we would kiss their ass just like we do to every Russian official that sets foot in Kyproulla.

THE PARTIES of Arslikhan did not restrict themselves to kissing Russian ass they also drew moral comparisons between the Yanks and the Ruskies. EDEK which has upped its moralising since being taken over by the Botox pioneer Marinos Sizopoulos said in an announcement:

“Mr Lavrov, with crystal clear positions, with a stand of non-recognition and non-upgrading of the pseudo-state gave clear messages of confirmation of the unchanging, through time, position of Russia for support of the Cyprus Republic and the solution of the Cyprus problem within the framework of international law and the European acquis.

“In stark contrast to Mr Kerry, who confirmed the stance and behaviour of the USA for indirect recognition of the pseudo-state and deviation from international legality. The Kerry visit constituted, in substance, the continuation of the US policy of undermining the Cyprus Republic.”

What was astonishing was that EDEK’s brown-nosing did not once mention “principled stand.”

THE BOTOX socialists thought of a more idiotic way of proving that they love Russia more than the rest of the hard-line parties. Siz wrote to the Prez to urge him to offer military facilities to Mother Russia.

EDEK also set up a poll on its website asking people to vote on whether “Cyprus should offer the same military facilities that it offers France to Russia.” Of the 890 morons who voted 90 per cent agreed that a country’s defence alliances should be decided by public demand.

The green demagogue Perdikis also sent a similar letter to Nik but did not claim ownership of the idea. He asked the prez to examine the suggestion of some Micky Mouse group calling itself “Cypro-Russian association of culture, entrepreneurship and Orthodoxy” which, demanded “the granting of facilities to the Russian navy, air force and special forces in exchange for defence protection and/or liberation of our country if conditions permit it.”

Perdikis is so stressed by the prospect of losing his seat in the House now the election threshold has been raised, he is prepared to champion the most ridiculous group for the promise of a couple of votes.

YOU HAVE to question the wisdom of offering military facilities to countries fighting the Islamic State. It is as if we want our Kyproulla to become a terrorist target.

It is bad enough having Britain now sending bombers from Akrotiri to hit IS targets in Syria – after its Parliament approved the strikes on Wednesday night another eight warplanes were to be sent to here – without bringing the Russians in as well. Thankfully, the French turned down Kasoulides’ offer, a few weeks ago, to use the sunshine isle.

And the Brits, instead of showing a bit of gratitude to Kyproulla are now trying to cause problems to our tourist industry. On Thursday, the day air-strikes begun, the Daily Express carried an article under the headline, “Is it safe to travel to Cyprus? The terror threat REVEALED?”

The story did not reveal much of a terrorism threat, reporting that Cyprus was “ranked relatively low” by the Foreign Office in a map it released detailing which countries faced the highest threat. But I doubt the headline endeared the paper to Cypriot hoteliers who are expecting another cash bonanza next year, now that nobody wants to go to Sharm El Sheik.

They will be praying that no other UK paper decides to do a similar story.

WHAT is going on at the state-owned Co-op Central Bank? Last year the taxpayer paid €1.5 billion for its re-capitalisation and now the government has gone to the legislature seeking approval for the expenditure of €200 million for another re-capitalisation.

And some say this will not be enough because its capital needs are much higher. This is what happens to a credit institution with a human face as our politicians liked to describe the corrupt co-ops. We are now paying for their human face.

What the government wants to avoid is the involvement of the European Central Bank in Co-op Central Bank’s recapitalisation. From 2016 all systemic banks of the eurozone will be under the authority of the ECB which could decide that the Co-op would have to re-capitalise through a bail-in of deposits, a prospect the government wants to avoid at all costs, even if these run to several hundred millions.

THE GOOD news is that the government will take this money from the other banks. There was a tax on deposits imposed by comrade Tof in 2011. The idea was to use this money to prop up banks in difficulties, but all the cash raised was used to prop up the state which won the bankruptcy race.

Now the government wants to re-activate the deposits levy to re-capitalise the co-op, but the banks, quite rightly, are protesting. They would be funding a rival bank that is competing for business with them. A banker, who visits our establishment occasionally, said that the reason the co-op needs new capital is because it has lowered its loan rates in an attempt to take business away from the other banks.

Meanwhile the Alliance of Demagogues which takes a populist stand on everything said it would not object to government assistance so long as the co-op was not privatised next year. If only that were possible – we could also charge a premium for its human face.

POOR old Nik got a lot of stick from the uber-patriots for failing to block the deal between the EU and Turkey aimed at tackling the refugee crisis. There was mass outrage when it was revealed that negotiations would open on five chapters which Cyprus had blocked because Turkey refused to recognise the Republic.

According to our mole at last Sunday’s EU-Turkey summit Nik expressed no objection to the opening of the chapters. He had adopted a constructive approach, quite rightly, not wanting to scupper the EU’s plans for dealing with the refugee crisis. And as the Commission’s head honchos said, by the time accession negotiations begin there would probably be a settlement in Kyproulla. Their optimism is the direct result of not taking a principled stand on the Cyprob like Lavrov does.

WHAT riled the uber-patriots more than the opening of the chapters was the fact that Nik was filmed exchanging pleasantries with Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoglu after the summit, as the leaders gathered for the obligatory photograph. What was worse was that Nik stood next to Davutoglu for the picture, even though protocol dictated he should have stood next to the Romanian president.

This was what Simerini’s uber-patriotic columnist and Putin devotee Costakis Antoniou wrote about the photo-op: “In brief, Putin-Anastasiades: For a downing of a plane and the death of a pilot, Vladimir Putin refused to meet Erdogan. For the slaughter of a people, the colonisation, the seizure and occupation of half the territory of his state, Nicos Anastasiades begs for a picture with the slaughterer…”

WE OFTEN joke about Kyproulla acting like a Russian satellite, but this is a bit too close to the truth to be funny. Ten days ago, Cypriot police accompanied by two Russian investigators raided the Nicosia law office that represents Bill Browder and the Hermitage Fund and seized a host of documents.

The Russians sought legal assistance from the servile Cyprus government in relation to the posthumous prosecution of Sergei Magnitsky, who was jailed and tortured to death in a Russian prison after uncovering a $230 million tax fraud in 2007, and his employer Browder who now lives in the UK.

No other country has granted legal assistance to Russia for this case as the Council of Europe had conducted a two-year investigation and found that Magnitsky and Browder had been prosecuted on trumped up, politically-motivated charges. The Russian authorities have now re-opened the investigation claiming that Magnitsky, who had made the tax fraud public and paid with his life, had actually stolen the money.

Of course the satellite state could not refuse the request for legal assistance from its bosses in Mother Russia that is always re-confirming its principled stand on the Cyprob.

INTERESTINGLY, Browder had also reported to our useless, anti-corruption unit MOKAS in 2012 that some 30 million bucks from the tax scam had been laundered through banks in Cyprus, providing it with documentation to support his claims. MOKAS, needless to say, has done nothing since then, except pass on the information to the police which has also done nothing. But on Tuesday, when the Cyprus Mail published the story, there was panic at the police unit in charge of the investigation. Cops had dropped everything and begun an internal investigation to establish who had leaked the information to the Mail. Our government was happy to help the Russian authorities prosecute a man they had sent to the grave, as long as nobody found out about it.

FORMER EDEK deputy and minister of justice in the Ethnarch’s government Doros Theodorou was always a bit of buffoon. Last week he decided to show off his literary sophistication by penning an article about the need for pluralism in the media and the danger of monopolisation of information. He warned of a Big Brother taking over our lives, just as Franz Kafka had written in his book. He was so certain Kafka had written about Big Brother he kept referring to the author in the article.

The article is posted on the EDEK website under the headline, “Big Brother came to Cyprus before he was discovered by Franz Kafka.” The truth is that Kafka never discovered Big Brother, but how was Doros, who is not the bookish type, supposed to know this?

By Patrolcos

THE LONG wait is over and it looks like we will live to see it. The upgrading and transformation of Eleftheria Square into Concrete Square (Platia Tsimentou) made big progress last weekend when a couple of hundred trucks invaded the area and poured some 3,000 cubic metres of cement into the moat.

It was a bit like war-scene with the trucks, waiting like battle tanks to enter the area they had been ordered to destroy. The mission was accomplished ahead of schedule, but unfortunately there was no concrete left in the trucks that could have been poured in another part of the old town to make it look as pretty as Platia Koungriou.

Call me an old reactionary, but I swear the moat area looked much more aesthetically pleasing before last Sunday when renowned architect Zaha Hadid’s ‘beautification’ plans took shape. I found myself agreeing, for once, with Anna Marangou, a do-gooder with strong public opinions, who had unsuccessfully campaigned against this architectural monstrosity.

In the architectural competition held more than a decade ago, the evaluating committee chose Hadid’s plans, presumably because, they liked the idea of associating the project with an architect of international acclaim. The design proposal and whether it matched the surrounding area were ignored for very concrete reasons.

THE COMPETITION, oddly, was held at a time when the construction industry was booming and cement factories could not keep up with demand. This ruled out the cement companies being behind the plans for Cement Square, as they were not to know that 10 years later construction would be suffering the worst slump in its history.

In stark contrast to comrade Tof, who at around about the same period urged us to ‘vote no in order to cement the yes vote,’ the evaluating committee voted yes in order to cement the square, and unfortunately was much more successful than the loser commie. Even after five years as president the only thing he managed to cement was state bankruptcy.

The good news is that Platia Tsimentou will be open to the public by the summer allowing people to enjoy a stroll in the sweltering July heat on the burning hot concrete which will offer an authentic oven experience in the heart of the city, completely free of charge.

IN KEEPING with the spirit of the week, Prez Nik was in Athens on Wednesday cementing the tripartite co-operation of Cyprus, Greece and Egypt which is his brainchild. The threesome involving Israel, Greece and Cyprus has not been as big a success because Nik’s pal Bibi refuses to buy the idea.

Apart from photo-ops and joint declarations about its intentions, the third tripartite summit in a year failed to come up with anything concrete (perhaps it needs Zaha Hadid as a consultant), but the threesome expressed hopes of a breakthrough. “We have decided to establish a standing joint committee of co-operation which will develop, formulate and promote practical projects of trilateral interest,” said the joint declaration.

Our energy expert Giorgos Lakkotrypis revealed what the leaders had in mind the following day on state radio. Egypt would be given know-how and assistance for setting up fish farms, particularly from Greece and more importantly growing olives. President Al-Sisi wants to turn Sinai into an olive growing region. Does he really need assistance for this?

So the “fullest exploitation of the potential” of the “strategic nature of this tri-lateral co-operation”, that the declaration spoke about, passes through fish and olives.

AT THE FIRST summit last year in Cairo, the threesome agreed to proceed “at the soonest with negotiations for the delimitation of their maritime zones.” This was repeated, almost word for word, in the joint declaration after the April summit in Nicosia.

So it was no surprise to read in Wednesday’ declaration that the three amigos “agreed to speed up negotiations with regard to the pending issues of the delimitation of adjacent maritime zones of the three countries.” What was holding them back asked an anxious mega-patriotic columnist, implying they did not want to piss off Turkey and would rather wait for the settlement of the Cyprob before speeding up negotiations?

What’s the betting the speeding up of negotiations will be included in the declaration of the fourth summit in Cairo at a date to be arranged?

THE NEXT stop in Prez Nik’s never ending world tour was Kiev where he surprised us all by taking a stance that many back home could have seen as a betrayal of Mother Russia.

He said Cyprus supported the positions of principle for the independence and sovereignty of the Ukraine. He hoped that through dialogue a peaceful solution would be found that restored human rights, the independence and sovereignty of the Ukraine. He did not name the country that violates human rights, independence and sovereignty, just as our mother never mentions Turkey when she takes her principled stand on the Cyprob.

Credit to Nik for showing everyone that small Kyproulla can be as principled as Mother Russia in international relations. We are now waiting for Russia’s local cheerleader Yiorkos Lillikas to issue a statement censuring Nik for his lack of gratitude to the country that always supported Kyproulla.

SPEAKING of our principled mother, her ambassador in Kyproulla, Stanislav Osadchiy has recruited another party leader to market Russia’s interest to the natives. He must have decided he cannot rely exclusively on Lillikas to campaign for Russia’s interests so he has also sought the help of EDEK leader and Botox pioneer Marinos Sizopoulos.

Last Monday he met first Sizo and then Lilli. After his meeting with Osadchiy, Sizo said that Russia should be given military facilities like those granted to France and the ambassador agreed, saying the matter was being discussed with the Cyprus foreign ministry.

Lillo, to ensure he remained the number one local spokesman of Russia, said after the meeting that he had written to all parliamentary parties asking them to pass a resolution urging the government to grant military facilities to Russia at the ports and the Andreas Papandreou air base. He also expressed his objection to the possible renewal of EU sanctions against Moscow and urged the government not to consent.

OSADCHIY repeated the issue of military facilities was being discussed with the foreign ministry and hoped to have an agreement signed soon. This forced Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides to issue a denial saying that talks were underway between the two countries for the granting of “facilities for humanitarian purposes and in emergency instances”.

Why had the ambassador failed to spell this out when he was speaking to the press with his protégés allowing the suggestion of military facilities to linger when he knew it was out of the question? Perhaps he did not want to shatter Sizo’s and Lilli’s hopes and dreams of a Russian military presence in front of the cameras, as he did not know how they would react to such a bitter disappointment.

DR ELENI Theocharous abandoned the front-line at the European Parliament, where she has been bravely defending the Republic from the threat of dissolution, to attend several important meetings in Kyproulla regarding her political ambitions.

Last weekend she met Junior to discuss the possibility of her one-woman Solidarnosc movement joining forces with DIKO to contest the parliamentary elections that might not be held in May, according to Nik. On Friday she also met Sizo and Lilli but the meetings focused on Eleni sharing her anxiety about the possibility of Cyprus deal with them, rather than any electoral co-operation.

Lilli mentioned his visionary proposal idea of all anti-settlement parties uniting into one grouping and La Theocharous said she liked it. Asked from what position she would join, she diplomatically said as “leader of Solidarity”, but avoided saying she did not want the leadership of the group, as the devious Lilli had done, pretending he puts the national interest above his personal ambitions. La Theocharous is more honest in that respect. She believes the national interest can only be served with her as our leader and saviour.

Her meeting with Sizo concentrated on their shared anguish about the future of the country. “The co-operation that concerns us at this moment derives mainly from the anxiety that consumes us about the future of the country and the imminent cataclysmic developments which can happen at any time that cannot be foreseen.”

She is a doctor so why does she not prescribe herself some drugs to ease the anxiety?

THE GOOD news is that the executive office of DIKO gave its approval to start talks with Dr Eleni about co-operation. The bad news is that voices in DIKO are expressing opposition to letting her into the party for fear she will insist the new group is called Solid-Dik.

Son of Spy Kyp, Markos, who has been keeping a low profile since the Mari blast and his subsequent court case, is working his way back into the political scene and has expressed objections to the deal with Dr Eleni. Markos’ newly-found courage to take on Junior could be traced back to a tete a tete he had with Nik immediately after the National Council meeting last weekend.

Nik the stirrer encouraged Markos, who is pro-settlement, to undermine Junior who will now have a second front to deal with in the party apart from Garoyian’s. But with Theocharous by his side he has nothing to fear, until she turns into a third front.

NOBODY could have thought it possible a few years ago that the supporters of Akelite football club Omonia would turn against the leadership of the party. It happened on Monday when a few hundred of them gathered outside the AKEL HQ demanding “Freedom for Omonia” and chanting “Down with the party junta.” The sheep had turned into hyenas.

The club is plagued by financial problems and has not been doing well in the league for years now. Some of the smarter Omonia fans have realised that the club is suffering because AKEL has been running it as incompetently as it ran the economy. The tragedy is that Omonia cannot be rescued like the country was by DISY politicians and the troika. The club is condemned to stay indefinitely under commie control, a guarantee of mediocrity on the football field.

THE COMMIE leadership was very upset by this unprecedented show of dissent, which could spread through party ranks like a virus. It hit back at the rebellious fans, labelling the protest “unacceptable and deplorable”.

Efforts by a small group of fans to target and damage AKEL “for issues it has no involvement in, is the result of actions orchestrated by known circles with ulterior, self-serving and nefarious motives,” the party said in a statement. I was rather disappointed the party did not accuse NATO and greedy neo-liberals as being behind the revolting Akelites.

Comrade Andros, meanwhile, insisted the party had no involvement in the running of Omonia and it was wrong to blame AKEL for the decisions taken by the club’s board. What he failed to mention was that only true-red Akelites, clueless in management, become members of the Omonia board.

A CHINESE madam was sentence to four months in prison by Nicosia district court on Wednesday after pleading guilty to charges of living off immoral earnings and maintaining a brothel. The hypocrisy of our courts was illustrated once again, even the judge mentioning that this was not one of the worst cases he had encountered.

As he said in passing sentence, the two women offering sex in the madam’s apartment did so of their own free will and were not forced to do so by the defendant. They also got to keep the larger part of their earnings. In short, they were paying the madam rent, just like all other professionals do when using someone else’s premises for their work.

To justify the prison sentence, Judge Korfiotis said “of course, the moral dimensions of the offences, can on no account be ignored.” Are we still living in the 1950s?

YOU HAVE to applaud the DISY deputy Evegenios Hamboullas for his vote-seeking publicity stunt, featuring him at a dining table on which there was a dish containing pourgouri and ambelopoulia. His childish act of rebelliousness may have angered many people but it also provided some welcome light relief at a time of dull and boring news.

You had to laugh at the guy’s crude, but effective self-publicity, which we all thought had disappeared when Dr Madsakis quit politics and became a recluse (we are hoping he will make a comeback if and when the two amigos agree a deal). Nobody had heard of Hamboullas until last Sunday but by Monday he had become an instant celebrity, the law-breaking lawmaker everyone was talking about.

His instant notoriety illustrated the power of social media and also earned him repeated mentions in the foreign press. All hell broke loose after he posted his picture in front of the ambelopoulia and pourgouri dish on his Facebook page with the caption “Soon in our restaurants; happy holidays.”

He did not have to write, ‘I just ate two dozen ambelopoulia, and they keep bringing more,’ or post a picture with a bird on his fork on the way to his mouth to cause uproar. A photo at a table with ambelopoulia in front of him was all that was required to earn his infamy.

As parliamentary elections approach, don’t be surprised to see other Famagusta district candidates desperate for votes doing a Hamboullas being photographed picking a pickled ambelopouli out of a jar as the birds will be out of season in spring.

THE STUNT worked perfectly for Hamboullas. He could not make time to satisfy all the interview requests by TV and radio stations, but he tried to be on as many shows as possible. He had to exploit this golden opportunity and did so very well.

Not only had he given a two-fingered, defiant salute to the hypocrites of the EU that had imposed the ban, but he was also patriotically defending a proud, centuries-old tradition of the country (honour killings next?). He did not stop here in his effort to secure the ambelopouli vote.

He also proposed the repeal of the law and derogation from Brussels, implying we would be successful. This was the message of his caption, “soon in our restaurants,” which was a pretty impressive, empty election promise. He has to say and do everything he can to get elected come May because he cannot again rely on the help of prez Nik, who was instrumental, according to reliable rumours, in Hamboullas’ entry into the legislature.

In the last elections the ‘legalise ambelopoulia’ campaigner failed to win a seat, being edged out by the current defence minister Christoforos Fokaides. Palace insiders claimed that Nik appointed Fokaides defence minister not because he thought he would turn the National Guard into a fearsome liberation army but so he would vacate his parliamentary seat which would go to the next in line – Hamboullas.

The reason Nik did this, according to the scurrilous rumours, was as a favour to his daughters who were good friends with Hamboullas. If this is true, it was very sweet of him and shows what a doting father he is.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL Costas Clerides came under fire from some quarters for failing to prosecute the law-breaking lawmaker especially as the latter had admitted his offence on air and openly invited the authorities to prosecute him. He would not be using his parliamentary immunity to avoid prosecution, he bravely declared.

Clerides thought it was not worth the trouble, telling Tass news agency “the behaviour of the specific deputy is reprehensible and will be judged by the public and not by the court after the lifting of his immunity.” The police had contacted the AG’s office for instructions and was told not to start a criminal investigation.

No explanations were given, but I suspect Clerides did not want the hassle of initiating procedures for the lifting of parliamentary immunity over such a matter, especially as it would be difficult to prove the offence. Could he prove that things in the dish were actually ambelopoulia? They could have been sparrows or models made with play-dough.

And what proof was there that Hamboullas had eaten any? He was not at a restaurant so he would not be culpable if his host served the illegal birds.

Imagine how stupid the AG would look if he went to the trouble to prosecute Hamboullas only to find that things pictured in the plate were not actually ambelopoulia. Unless Hamboullas pleaded guilty in court, becoming a martyr and Paralimni folk hero and thus securing his re-election in May.

Superstar auditor Odysseas Michaelides

PREZ NIK felt duty-bound to become personally involved in the ongoing Odysseus-Socratis scrap. It was not enough that the council of ministers, chaired by Nik, issued a statement on Monday censuring the auditor-general for overstepping his constitutional powers and interfering in the work of the executive, he still felt he needed to contribute personally.

On Tuesday, speaking to hacks about the matter, he adopted a softer line sounding like a benevolent uncle offering his nephew Odysseas some friendly advice. Ultra-sensitive Nik was hurt by the party criticism and attacks in the press over the cabinet statement and decided to tone things down. He also realised that Odysseas is Mr Popular and therefore not a good target for a president that wants to be loved.

There was no question of lack of confidence in the auditor general, he assured the hacks; nor was he interfering in his work. Someone must have whispered to Nik that it would not be good for his public image to fall out publicly with yet another independent state official – he has already rowed with the Central Bank governor and the attorney-general – he had appointed. People might start questioning his choices.

THE AG was also reluctantly dragged into the dispute after Hasikos decided to forward three cases he felt proved that Odysseas was exceeding his powers. The government wanted the AG to give an opinion. What was the point, considering the council of ministers had issued its verdict before having forwarded the cases to the AG?
Now the government faces the embarrassment of being told by Clerides that Odysseas had done nothing wrong.

Odysseas, who issued a long-winded response after the cabinet statement, is also becoming a bit insufferable, perched on his moral peak and acting like he is on a divine mission, answerable only to a higher power.

He takes himself so seriously, he complained in his written rant about ministers’ remarks that “tend to mock the auditor-general personally such as references to superstars, emperors, cannibals, etc.” He should lighten up and be grateful that he has attained superstardom and imperial status from auditing, one of the most unglamorous and boring jobs imaginable, invariably performed by nerds.

THE UPGRADING of Kyproulla’s geo-strategic role that has been peddled by our illustrious foreign ministry officials as a major advantage in need of exploitation has not lasted very long. The news that Turkey and Israel are heading for normalisation of their relations will also have disappointed the newspaper columnists and rejectionists who argued that our developing alliance with Israel would alter the power balance in the region.

There were even reports that the two countries discussed the possibility of Israel selling gas to Turkey, which must have come as a big blow to our regional energy designs and plans. The next step must be for Prez Nik to organise a tripartite summit of Israel, Turkey and Kyproulla in order to preserve our upgraded geo-strategic role in the region.

NIKOS Katsourides, the veteran Akelite deputy who was indefinitely suspended by the commie

Will Kats forgo his retirement bonus?

leadership last May for reasons that were never made public made a speech about the Cyprob during the House budget debate. More of a hardliner than his comrades, Kats did not toe the pro-settlement line of the party in his speech, which is probably why Phil gave it such extensive coverage.

This was the last budget debate for Kats as he will not be standing for re-election. However we hear that his suspension from the party will end in April and there are sound financial reasons for this. By returning to AKEL, the party would be able to take the retirement bonus that would be paid to Kats for his service as a deputy. It will be a hefty amount, probably in the region of 300 grand as he has been a deputy for a couple of decades.

The party always takes its deputies’ retirement bonuses as well as a part of their monthly salary. Whether crafty Kats would agree to surrender his bonus after the way he was treated by his comrades remains to be seen. What can they do to him if he does not? Suspend him again?

WE SAW the human face of the co-ops once again this week when staff staged a 48-hour strike Thursday and Friday to protest against management’s decision not to sign the collective agreement it had agreed in principle with unions.
The strike was called by the militant bank employees’ union ETYK and was publicly attacked by everyone including the PEO and SEK unions. Apparently some ETYK members have sued the Co-operative Central bank demanding wage increments and CoLA for 2014 and 2015 when a wage freeze was in place. Management fearing that if the workers win the case it would have to pay all staff, has refused to sign the new collective agreement.

The co-op workers have a nerve. The taxpayer paid €1.5 billion to save the bankrupt co-ops, no employees were sacked and pay cuts were much smaller than those imposed on most private sector workers, but still they feel hard done by.

THE GOOD news is that the government will put the co-op bank up for sale in order to recoup some of the taxpayer’s money. This has provoked a big reaction from all our state-control-supporting parties which have vowed to fight the ‘sell-off’ of the co-op central bank. However they have mentioned nothing about selling off the “public wealth” as they have been doing in the case of CyTA and EAC. Their concern is that the co-op will lose its “social face” if it is taken over by an investor. It is this social face that cost us €1.5 billion.

WE SHOULD not complain because it is our fault bank employees are so hideously greedy and selfish. Three banks were bankrupt in 2013. Laiki was beyond saving, the Bank of Cyprus was saved by bailing in its shareholders and its customers’ deposits while the co-ops were given 1.5 billion by the taxpayer.

None of the employees of these banks was made redundant and they suffered the smallest cuts, on high wages, in the economy. Their union even forced the government not to impose a hair-cut on the bank employees’ provident fund money that was deposited in Laiki and BoC.

Now contrast this treatment with the Helios tragedy orphans that lost most of the money from insurance payments that was deposited in Laiki and BoC. There were no exemptions for the orphans as there had been for bank employees.
Now the government has decided to pay some of the money lost by the 30 orphans in the haircut but it has not decided how much. I bet if the unfortunate children were bank employees they would have been fully reimbursed.

By Patroclos

HAPPY NEW YEAR, even though I fear it is not going to be happy for many of us living in Kyproulla.

First and foremost there is a very real danger of the two amigos, agreeing a Cyprob solution that would be unfair and unjust for the Greek Cypriots, as it would dissolve the Cyprus Republic and give way, through virgin birth, to the Unites States of Kyproulla that will be nothing more than a Turkish protectorate masquerading as an independent state.

Then we have the departure of the troika in March which would mean the lunatics will take full control of the economy again and put it back on the road to destruction. The only hope is that the virgin birth would create another 10,000 public sector jobs – to ensure a more efficient mismanagement of the protectorate – which would necessitate the return of the troika in a couple of years.

To help our customers approach the leap year with a minimum of stress and anxiety we decided to recruit the services of a gypsy fortune teller named Fifika, who specialises in the future of countries rather than individuals. She had done work for several prestigious think tanks in the past, and had successfully predicted that AKEL would have hailed the Christofias presidency as a big success, long before it happened.

However, we did not rely exclusively on Fifika. We then had our own in-house coffee-cup reader, Vathoulla, carry out scientific testing of all the predictions to ensure Fifika had used the internationally accepted methodology and had not made them up. In the cases where she had described rather than named a personality we have guessed who she was referring to and put the name in brackets.

JANUARY
The two buddies from Limassol (Nik and Mustafa) will meet three times this month in the presence of an earnest-looking Scandinavian, wearing over-sized spectacles (Barth Eide). At the end of third meeting, they will have announced an agreement on the property issue and estimated the total amount needed for the compensation of owners who will not have their properties returned would be €40 billion.

This sparks celebrations by Greek Cypriots with property in the north as they are more than happy to stay in their homes in the south and get rich for doing so; they see it more as a reward than compensation. They even hold a demonstration demanding that their right of return must not be respected.

The IMF warned that if the compensation was paid out in one go it would cause hyper-inflation and create the biggest economic bubble in the history of Kyproulla bubbles. However this danger is only theoretical because the money for the compensation-payments does not exist. When this is revealed refugees hold a protest outside the presidential palace demanding their right to return is fully respected by the settlement.

The Scotch-drinker (Nik) meets representatives of the workers’ co-operative (EAC) and agrees a plan to fool the troika into giving the last tranche of assistance money, which is conditional on the privatisation of three SGOs. Nik promises the workers that as soon as the government receives the money, he would send a bill to the legislature cancelling privatisation and declaring all SGOs the property of their workers.

FEBRUARY
A new movement is created by politicians who fear their dreams of becoming president of the Republic would be thwarted by a settlement of the Cyprob (we can only guess she was referring to Lillikas, La Theocharous, Junior, Odysseas, Dr Lyssarides). The aim of the movement is to block a settlement at all costs and its slogan is ‘Better the president of half of Kyproulla than the rotating president of all of it’.

The movement wins the public backing of an ambassador who wears white jackets with epaulettes (Stanislav Osadchiy) after it campaigns for the establishment of a Russian military base in Paphos as a show of gratitude for Moscow’s principled stand against a settlement.

Kyproulla enters the Guinness Book of World Records for having the biggest number of cafes in the world as a proportion of its population. This is hailed as a big step forward after gaining entry thanks to the biggest sheftali and the biggest tashinopitta.

In his 35^th exclusive interview with Phil, since being appointed health minister last July, (Giorgos Pamboridis) declares that there is no turning back on the national health scheme and its implementation will continue at the normal, snail’s pace favoured by nurses’ and doctors’ unions. The cancellation by the Tenders Review Board of the latest tenders’ procedure for the design of the scheme’s database software was considered a blessing in disguise by government sources.

Bad news from Brussels as the application for protected designation of origin for halloumi has stalled, because both sides want to change the agreement reached last July in a way that is unacceptable to the other. It is decided that the differences will be resolved at the talks with halloumi becoming another chapter in the negotiations.

All chapters of the Cyprob talks have been agreed and a conference with the participation of the guarantor powers has been arranged for April to discuss, territory and guarantees.

On the diplomatic front, the Talleyrand of the 21^st century (Nik?) arranged another tripartite alliance, this time involving Jordan, Kyproulla and Greece, with the summit scheduled to be held later in the year.

The name of the new virgin birth state is announced. It would be called the United State of Kyproulla, even though there were reservations over its international abbreviation USoK, people could mockingly pronounce it as ‘you suck’. Young people love it as it would be a cool answer when someone asked them ‘where are you from?

MARCH
The guy with the thespian qualities (Nik) celebrates the completion of three years in office and the departure of the troika by promising public parasites big pay rises and a reduction in working hours at the end of the year, in recognition of the great sacrifices they had made when the state was bankrupt.

Political unrest is brewing in anticipation of the Cyprob conference. A member of the Alliance of Citizens douses himself in petrol and lights himself up in protest against the unfair settlement that would prevent his leader from ever becoming prez. A blonde with a husky voice (Dr Theocharous) keeps warning that the deal would lead to Turkification and deprive Kyproulla of ever having a female president.

Meanwhile a spoilt arrogant brat (Ethnarch Junior) has been crying whenever he appears on TV over the imminent dissolution of the Cyprus Republic. He was following the formula of his father who had saved the Republic with his TV tears in 2004, but it does not seem to work this time round. A former prez with a fat behind (comrade Tof) has also joined the fray, boasting that when he was prez he had never agreed to five-party conference.

The Supreme Court issues its ruling about shop opening hours which finds that the members of the legislature are too immature and frivolous to have a say in any decisions of the executive. It listed a series of measures decided by the legislature that proved the inadequacy of its members, the overwhelming majority of whom had an Akelite mindset, which, according to the judges hid countless dangers for the country and our sanity.

Talleyrand of the 21^st century was on an official visit to Syria where he tried to establish whether President Bashar al-Assad would be interested in him arranging a tripartite alliance of Greece, Kyproulla and Syria.

APRIL
The conference takes place in Glion, Switzerland and the foreign ministers of Turkey, Greece and Britain are present as are the two friends from Limassol. There is a lot of haggling on territory and in the end Nik offers Paphos to the Turks in exchange for the Karpas peninsula which is unspoilt territory for our developers to destroy. The Turkish Cypriots have tried to, but have not been very successful. The compromise is accepted.

On the issue of guarantees there was major disagreement and for a while there are fears there would be no agreement. The Turkish Cypriots want Turkey’s full guarantee of the agreement, while Greek Cypriots will not hear of it. The British propose a 10-year guarantee, renewable for another 10 years, if at the end of the first decade the behaviour of Greek Cypriots was marked at below 8 out of ten by international observers. In the end something very complicated and as difficult to understand as an electrical appliance warranty, was agreed and it satisfied neither side, which was considered a fair outcome. There was a deal.

Back in Kyproulla, a crazy doctor with caveman’s beard (Marios Madsakis) came out of hiding to join the campaign for the ‘no’ vote as he had done in 2004. He camped out on the roof of the Shacolas building in Ledra Street and has promised to jump off if the Greek Cypriots voted ‘yes’ to the plan in the referendum scheduled for June, even if the Turkish Cypriots voted ‘no’. Dr Eleni visited him to show her solidarity, but told newsmen she would return to Brussels in the event of a ‘yes-vote’ and carry on serving the USoK as MEP.

EDEK members have been dousing themselves in petrol and lighting themselves up to show their opposition to the unjust settlement plan while Dikheads have been wearing t-shirts with the slogan ‘Save the Republic – Save rusfeti – vote no to dissolution’.

MAY
A political opportunist from Paphos (Lillikas) argues that we can avoid the unjust settlement and save the Republic from dissolution by offering to make it a province of Russia. Union with Mother Russia would be the best guarantee of our future, as it would preserve Hellenism on the island. He had talked about the option with Ambassador Osadchiy, who said that if our government asked Moscow to annex the Republic, he was certain President Putin would oblige.

A Botox expert (Sizopoulos) also thinks this a great idea and offers to throw in a free Botox treatment to Putin as part of the deal. The village idiot (everyone knows who that is) calls a news conference to express his disagreement with AKEL’s support for the settlement, urging everyone to ‘vote no to cement our unification with Mother Russia.’

A minister with a moustache (Hasikos) was reported to have physically attacked an independent official with a beard (Odysseas) outside a fashionable Nicosia restaurant. The moustache apparently had thrown the beard to the ground and was punching him until his chauffeur intervened. Hasikos had lost it as soon as he saw Odysseas, because a day earlier the Supreme Court announced that his complaint that the auditor-general was overstepping his powers was groundless. He won the brawl against the younger man, but Odysseas reported to incident to the papers, informing them that Hasikos had violated the procedure for punch-ups and would be investigated by his office.

This is where our scientific predictions for 2016 end. Fifika demanded more money than the initial fee agreed to do the rest of the year, calculating that we would be willing to pay extra to get the result of the referendum. But she was wrong in thinking we cared.

WITH 2016 having been unofficially declared the year of the settlement, our hard-liners have stepped up their bash-patriotic rhetoric. In some cases, like that of Mega TV’s ultra-nationalistic presenter Pavlos Mylonas, you would not have thought this was possible but he proved us wrong this week when he declared on prime time TV everyone who spent money in the north was a mongrel (koprites was the Greek term).

It was a scathing sermon by Mylonas, TV’s leading patriotic preacher whose moralising could easily pass as self- parody because it is so over the top. His sermon, in which he spitefully referred to people as ‘mongrels’ four times in 60 seconds (‘low-lifes’ got only one mention) caused offence and the station forced him to make a half-hearted apology on the next show he hosted.

What inspired his tirade was the death, at the age of 103, of a man who still wore the traditional Cypriot vraka. Mylonas informed viewers that in the old days our grandfathers bought locally-made cloth for their clothes because the boycotted the products of the British occupiers (a tweed vraka would just not look right anyway). But despite his patriotism and love of tradition he could not remember the name of the local cloth.

It was called aladja but I am not claiming to be more patriotic than Mylonas because I knew its name. Incidentally the boycott was not very successful as only small minority joined it but the facts should not be allowed to interfere with our myths of heroism.

AFTER his intro, the sermon commenced: “Every kopritis goes to the occupied area to buy cheap cigarettes, cheap car tyres, cheap fuel. These koprites should think that their grandfathers who were hungry – they had no internet, no sofas, no fireplaces, no heating, they were in the cold – and toiled hard farming, but they had souls which these koprites sold in the name of money – five, 10, 20 and 100 euro – to go and have fun where they (presumably the Turks) were raping and the occupiers conquered our country killing the brothers, uncles, grandfathers, friends. These koprites dominate today, unfortunately, because there are many who go for five, 10 euro to the occupied area, and I will not mention the low-lifes that go there for the casinos and the bordellos.”

Even the managers of the church-controlled station found the sermon a bit excessive so the next day the pure-breed Hellene Mylonas was forced to make a so-called apology to his penny-pinching, morally inferior, mongrel countrymen.

Those visiting holy sites were exempted

MYLONAS did not call it an ‘apology’ but a ‘clarification’. He then started telling us who he did not call koprites, to assure them that they need not have felt offended by his abuse.

He said he did not call ‘koprites’ the people who went to the occupied area for religious worship (God forbid), nor the Famagustans (I bet mayor Galanos called to complain) who went the other day for this purpose and trumpeted their desire to return to their homes; he did not call ‘koprites’ the refugees who visited the north, nor the people who had social dealings with the Turkish Cypriots, which he magnanimously declared “perfectly normal”.

He added: “My position was so clear that it could have left a shadow on those who buy tyres and petrol because may have sent me messages abusing me – and good for them – because they were poor buying medicine they cannot afford in the free areas or were unemployed and had needs. You understand they cannot go in the same category.”

The ‘koprites’ group kept shrinking during his clarification, as he exempted one group after the other. “Even the big businessmen who buy land from poor Greek Cypriots or co-operate with Turkish Cypriot businessmen or many others who go to the casino or other disreputable areas cannot be called koprites either. They are something else.”
Are they pure-breeds like Mylonas or something worse than mongrels?

IN CONCLUSION he repeated that he was not referring to those people going to the north for religious reasons. “That is certain and I think most people understand it, but such is the misinformation, such is the anger and fanaticism during this period that most pretend they cannot understand.” Mylonas can say whatever he likes, being a pure-breed, morally superior Hellene but to complain about fanaticism and misinformation was a bit rich coming from TV’s leading fanatic, after making clarifications of the misinformation about mongrels he had angrily lashed out against the previous day.

Question: I bought a pack of fags in the north once when I had gone to worship at an occupied church and run out and would like to know if that would be enough to make me a kopritis. I will send Mylonas an abusive message in the hope he will issue a clarification on his next TV show, forgiving nicotine-addicted churchgoers.

ANOTHER of the patriotic preachers, Phil’s holier than thou columnist Michalis Ignatiou, who is perched on an even higher moral peak than his fellow-freedom fighter Mylonas, is becoming a bit hysterical about the prospects of a settlement and warned prez Nik not to rely on his friendship in last Sunday’s article.

“With all due respect to the friend Mr Anastasiades – friendship is one thing and positions on the national problem quite another….” The self-important Ig will not hesitate to give up his friendship with Nik for the national cause. His views published in the Athens paper Ethnos on the same day were not very friendly to Nik.

“The resistances of the politicians are being tested in Cyprus, but also in Greece… In Cyprus the corruption of the politicians is threatening their resistances. They are subject to continuous blackmail.” So is his friend working for a settlement because he is subject to continuous blackmail because corruption has destroyed his resistances? Just asking.

Ig fears Kyproulla would be “lost” if there was a settlement but assures us he was not being alarmist. And Mylonas is not a fanatic.

IN HIS article in this paper last week Alper Riza argued that the two communities in Cyprus should avoid siding with their respective motherlands in the “lukewarm war that has broken out between Turkey and Russia” – “Mother Russia in the case of the Greek Cypriots and Islamic Turkey in the case of the Turkish Cypriots.”

Such is the slavish devotion of Greek Cypriots to Putin’s Russia that a serious, sensible writer, like my friend Alper, thinks nothing of referring to it as the motherland of the Greek Cypriots. This is the reality today – Russia has replaced Greece as the motherland even though we have nothing in common apart from religion and a love for the Porsche Cayenne.

It does not reflect well on our character but we have unceremoniously cast aside weak, struggling, bankrupt Greece and have given ourselves up for adoption by Mother Russia (does this make all of us koprites?). And the irony is that the most nationalistic of our countrymen are the ones that have turned their backs on Hellas and led us into the Russian bear’s not so cuddly embrace.

Whereas in past, these bash-patriotic nationalists were demanding Greece’s military backing they are now urging our government to offer Russia a military base in the absurd belief that she would also defend us. When foreign minister Sergei Lavrov visited last month these politicians and journalists treated him like the national saviour who would offer us the false hopes and empty promises that we are suckers for.

YOU ONLY have to look at the embarrassing grovelling to Russia’s meddling ambassador Stanislav Osadchiy to understand how Greece has been sidelined. Whereas Osadchiy has become a local celebrity thanks to his many well-publicised meetings with party leaders and endless interviews by newspapers and television stations we do not even know the name of Greece’s ambassador to Kyproulla.

He is not a household name like Stan, even though he has been posted in Nicosia since last April. His name, by the way, is Ilias Fotopoulos, which I found out by checking the Greek embassy’s website and not from any interviews or reports in the media. Our bash-patriotic brigade seems to have no interest in our former mother’s ambassador, indifferent to his existence and what he might have to say.

I have not heard of any of our party leaders meeting him. If they had, they did not ask the TV stations to send camera crews to cover the post-meeting comments as they do whenever they meet Stan the man. In the last few weeks Stan was interviewed by both Simerini and Phileleftheros. Simerini, once the bastion of Greek nationalism and guardian of Cypriot Hellenism, has turned its back on our real mother and taken on the role of Russia’s cheerleader.

A week after the interview with Stan it published the findings of an opinion poll, which asked people “should the Cyprus Republic offer military facilities to the Russian Federation, within the framework of the operations it is conducting against terrorism?” Some 73 per cent answered ‘yes’, the paper reported triumphantly.

IN FAIRNESS, the Zeus group which publishes Simerini is not Russia’s biggest cheerleader. That role has belonged to Phil since the sixties when the paper was praising the Soviet Union to high heaven for its imaginary support of the Greek Cypriots. It has maintained this proud tradition to this day, transferring its support from the hideous communists of the Kremlin to Putin’s democrats.

Its Christmas Day interview with Stan was followed, three days later, by a leader article on “The role of Russia in the Cyprus problem,” in which it praised the ambassador’s wise words and concluded that “it is clear Nicosia not only needs but considers it essential for Moscow to have and to play a role in the Cyprus problem.”
What role the paper had in mind it did not say, but given Phil and Sim are the two most hard-line, anti-settlement papers, I can only deduce that the role they want Moscow to play might not be very helpful to a settlement. This could also be the reason freedom-fighters Sizopoulos and Lillikas are constantly sucking up to Stan.

LILLIKAS I hear will be one of the main speakers at Wednesday’s presentation of some ‘scientific’ study

Lillikas

by the Open University of Cyprus which showed that the Turkish Cypriot newspapers viewed Greek Cypriots negatively. Four TC newspapers were monitored, one being the Grey Wolf mouthpiece Volkan, which has since closed down.
The scientific survey was carried out in July 2014, which makes it a bit out of date a year and half later after so much has changed but if the purpose of the Open University is to poison the climate with some help from Lillikas then we could say the end justifies the scientific means. And we await the OUC’s scientific survey on how positively the Greek Cypriot newspapers presented Turkish Cypriots.

AT LEAST the commies of AKEL are not fearful of the closure of the Cyprob in 2016. On the contrary they are trying to jump on the settlement bandwagon. This is why comrade Andros will be flying to Turkey later this month at the invitation of foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu for a meeting.

We can reveal today that the invitation was expedited by AKEL, which had asked TC negotiator Ozdil Nami to arrange the meeting. The two are more than likely to hit it off as both follow faith-based ideologies which they embrace with religious fervour.

Speaking of AKEL, I was very disappointed not to see my name among AKEL’s 19 candidates for the May parliamentary elections. I had hoped the Central Committee would have looked kindly on my application, but I was wrong. One candidate stood out for his typically Akelite surname – Michalis Tchitsiekkos.

A REGULAR sent us the following report: “Biking past one of the old part of Nicosia’s last remaining brothels mid-day today I observed the red lights were on signifying business yet the doors were closed. Inside, leaning against the glass outer door, was a sign, in Greek and English. “Coming soon,” it said.

Putting things into English is not as always easy as it seems. A seedy establishment on the same road as the Cyprus Mail offices had a handwritten sign on its shop window a few months ago which read: “Girls wanted for bar.”

By Patroclos

THE BIGGEST threat to the economy, all experts tell us, is the 50 per cent non-performing loans on the banks’ books. But nobody ever tells us that the biggest threat to the country is the 80 per cent non-performing brains (NPBs) on the books of the political parties, because that would be considered a bit rude.

One could have been very rude and said the threat was posed by the 80 per cent non-existent brains in the parties, but that may have been a bit more difficult to prove scientifically in court if there was a libel action. There is not much chance of that happening because no politician would claim the remark about a non-existent brain referred to him. If he did, it would prove the claim as correct.

Those of us with the thankless job of following the Kyproulla news are constantly reminded of the abundance of NPBs, not only in politics but also in the other public opinion-forming sectors such as the media, academia, coffeeshops and barber-shops.

The other day I was given a lecture about the lunacy of the mini-national health scheme by my chemist, who vowed not to pay the contribution, but I think it would be rash to include pharmacies in the opinion-forming sector, as they do not express patriotic views about the Cyprob for fear of alienating unpatriotic customers.

NPBs gave a tour de force in the last week when they focused on the dangers posed to the status of Republic by the meetings Prez Nik will be having at the World Economic Forum in Davos in the coming week.

The debate centred on the potential upgrading of Akinci and the inevitable downgrading of our prez if Nik ill-advisedly attended any meeting in the presence of his Turkish Cypriot buddy. But even if the meeting did not take place, an anxious Dikhead spokesman warned on Tuesday that the “upgrading of Akinci to co-president continued,” because “the forum of Davos is attended only by heads of state.”

Are there 2,000 heads of state in the world, because that is an estimate of the number of people attending this year’s forum? There will be academics, business leaders, members of governments and representatives of organisations attending and only 40 heads of state.

So the Dikheads should relax and stop asking, conspiratorially, “who invited Akinci” because he could have been invited as an academic, a business leader or as a representative of the international association of heads of pseudo-states with moustaches.

But the Dikheads did not relax. On Friday their spokeswoman was at it again, bemoaning the fact that instead of the president “using his presence in Davos to promote the Cyprus economy and present investment opportunities, he chose to promote the political upgrade of Mr Akinci and the pseudo-state.”

BOTOX pioneer and EDEK leader Marinos Sizopoulos was gravely worried about the meeting in Davos, because it was part of the efforts (of the international conspiracy against Kyproulla?) for the “systematic upgrading of the pseudo-state”. He disagreed with the Dikheads on one point though.

“Any meeting would not be a downgrading of the President of the Republic but an upgrading of Mr Akinci, as representative of an alleged state entity.”

All this upgrade-downgrade stupidity was the lame excuse used by the NPBs of the opposition parties to argue against Nik meeting Mustafa in Davos. Even if the UN Secretary-General invited the two to a meeting Nik should refuse to go, they argued, to ensure there was no upgrade. So now Nik must stop seeing Akinci in the presence of Ban Ki-moon because it constitutes an upgrade.

Although Nik accepted the invitation to the Akinci upgrade meeting with Ban, he agreed with the irrationality of the NPBs and ruled out attending a meeting with the prime ministers of Greece and Turkey and Akinci. He spurned the opportunity of talking with Ahmet Davutoglu and establishing the degree of Turkish intransigence on the Cyprob because that would be too much of an upgrade.

WE HAVE been hearing our politicians rabbit on about the upgrade of the north and the downgrade of our president for decades.

I suspect this nonsense was first thought up by the great brains at our foreign ministry, who still make the most fuss about the potential the upgrading of the north to create the impression that they are doing very important jobs protecting the status of the Republic.

But if 10 per cent of the upgrades and downgrades that have been reported over the years had any basis in reality, the pseudo-state would be a fully recognised member of the UN by now, while the Cyprus Republic would have become a municipality run by a mukhtar.

Only in Kyproulla are upgrades and downgrades used in a political context. Normally you upgrade software, an internet connection, an airline seat, a maintenance service while the only thing you downgraded was Windows Vista because it was crap. You don’t downgrade presidents just as you cannot upgrade a non-performing brain.

THE UPGRADING of Akinci was not the only thing that caused sleepless nights to Sizo. He also had to deal with an “organised campaign of dirt” against the honorary president for life and beyond of EDEK, Dr Faustus. Someone on social media had been writing that the nonagenarian freedom fighter was taking multiple pensions from the state.

The party issued a statement saying this was blatantly untrue, but this provoked more abuse on social media forcing Sizo to step in and act as Dr Faustus’ spokesman. He did not receive a pension of 15 grand he said but of €4,572 before deductions plus a grand allowance for secretarial services – not bad for someone contributing nothing to the economy.

Sizo also referred to the claims that Faustus had been staying in a government house (behind the presidential palace) for free. His mentor paid €450 rent per month (not exactly market rent) he said, and he moved to the house in 1971 to provide “protection to Archbishop Makarios and the presidential palace”. He did not say who Faustus has been protecting in the 39 years since Makarios’ death.

Even when they are benefiting financially from an arrangement, socialists still feel obliged to claim they are motivated by a patriotic sense of duty. It’s never for the money.

IS YIORKOS Lillikas preparing for another political metamorphosis? Many have been wondering whether he is getting ready to jump on the pro-settlement bandwagon because the the Alliance of Lillikas has not only toned down its anti-solution rhetoric, but has also reduced its frequency.

The comments he made after Friday’s meeting with Nik at the palace seem to support these suspicions. He said his party “has every desire to help the president, as long as he helps us by keeping us informed about what is going on so we can submit to him our own alternative proposals.” In a press release that followed, he was quoted as saying that “we believe the solution of the Cyprus problem concerns all of us and cannot be handled by the president on his own or by a small team.”

His fears about the dissolution of the Republic, the upgrading of Akinci, and the guaranteed majority in the north did not get a mention, because now he wants to help the president. It would be no surprise if he did switch camps because he has always been consistent in his opportunism. As for the Alliance of Citizens, it will dissolve like the Cyprus Republic if and when the principled opportunist joins the pro-solution camp.

PERHAPS Dr Eleni Theocharous’ fledgling Solidarnosc movement, which presented its founding declaration on the same day Yiorkos saw Nik, would benefit from possible dissent in the Alliance. Things have not turned out as planned for the fearless, female freedom fighter since she decided to leave DISY and set up her own shop.

She has attracted hardly anyone to her fledgling movement, which was evident at Friday’s presentation. An earlier statement against the privatisation of CyTA and EAC was a desperate attempt to attract some custom as nobody seems too keen to buy her courageously defiant patriotism and fiery rhetoric. Could this be a sign we are maturing and have no time for self-anointed national saviours any longer?

Lillikas may have realised this, having failed to have an impact as a national saviour, and is now looking for a new role, but Dr Eleni, I fear has many disappointments ahead of her before she discovers that nobody is interested in her selfless offer to save us.

THE SENIOR US Treasury official who visited Kyproulla last week turned out to be a messenger of bad tidings. But we did not see fit to kill the messenger or at least abuse him in the press as we would have done in the past. Maybe we are maturing.

Daleep Singh (not a very American name) informed both sides to forget any idea that the US would be giving billions to finance a settlement of the Cyprob. Some cash would be given, but we would have to find the moollah (€30 billion was the last estimate) to compensate property owners. This may explain why nothing was said about the content of Singh’s meetings.

SPEAKING of money, the environmentalists who are railing on about allowing no development in the Akamas peninsula would have to come up with lot of it to make their dream come true. The government has decided to allow some development within the Natura 2000 boundaries (which it has every right to do) because it does not want to pay any compensation to property owners. As a taxpayer I find it hard to disagree with it.

Predictably though, it has come under attack from Akelites for not protecting the Akamas and doing favours to big landowners. The Tof government, they inform us, prohibited all development as part of its 2009 plan. What they have not told us was that they undertook to compensate all owners that would not be able to develop their properties. There were about 3,000 owners and the total cost of the compensation was estimated in the region of €1 billion.

I love the way the commies were going to squander one billion of the taxpayer’s money (if it existed) in order to pose as protectors of the environment.

THE UPROAR over the ‘koprites’ outburst by Mega TV’s presenter Pavlos Mylonas may have died down but the trouble is not over for the patriotic preacher. The Broadcasting Authority had received a couple of dozen complaints from the public and will investigate, as will the Journalistic Ethics Committee.

The latter is also investigating a complaint against Mylonas lodged by Antenna TV. Mylonas had disparaged an opinion poll presented by Antenna claiming it was a sham because it had given politicians he did not like a high approval rating. But all this publicity may turn out to be to his advantage, as I hear he could be standing in the parliamentary elections for DIKo.

In such a case his ‘koprites’ outburst may have helped him win the backing of many voters with NPBs, which are a very sizeable portion of the electorate.

THE GREAT religious sale by our newspapers in their efforts to make a bit of money continues. Today Phil is offering the remaining three CDs of the 6-CD set about the life of Ayios Paisios which also feature him talking. This “unique collection” was about the life of the “wise old man who devoted his life to God and became the blessed bridge between Him and people,” says the paper’s pious promotion of the CDs which cost only €6. Once Phil runs out of saints’ biographies to boost its revenues it could start selling its readers forgiveness for their sins. Amen.

By Patroclos

THE SETTLEMENT of the Cyprob is not the only thing we have to look forward to this year. In a little over six months, the memoirs of Comrade Tof will be published. Tof said he has almost finished the book, but its content would be discussed with his friends and advisors before it is edited and sent to the printer.

“In the book I will say a many truths based on my 50 years in political life,” Tof said in an interview he gave to Sigmalive. The interviewer did not ask if he would also say a few lies, preferring instead to ask “what truths?” The smug, smirking comrade refused to take the bait, showing that he has some marketing savvy.

“I would destroy the book’s prospects, if I told you,” he said indicating that despite his commie beliefs he wanted to make some cash from it to supplement his state pension of a paltry five grand a month. It is a pity as he would be barring the poor that could not afford to buy it from reading about the many truths he will say.

What truths, would the Tof opus contain, that he hasn’t already said – truths about his favourite food, his sex life, his sham PhD in history or his rusfeti record? The truths about his infallibility, statesmanship, undying love for mother Russia and delusions of adequacy we already know about.

MANY TRUTHS were said during his interview as well. He expected AKEL – “the most democratic party in Cyprus” – to have a very good showing in the parliamentary elections as long as the leadership “managed to reverse the distorted view created among the people about the five years of my government which was very good for the Cyprus problem and socio-economic issues.”

He had no doubt that “we could have got out of the crisis if it had not been for the unacceptable theft of the banks.” The distorted view was down to the “crippling” criticism he faced from the media which “played a very negative role during my government.” They saw “nothing good,” but it “was big capital and big banking capital which has a huge responsibility for the bankruptcy of the country and not my government.”

Like all the infallible, he had no regrets. He said: “I want to say I feel proud for my contribution to the party and the country and everyone will be judged… I said history would vindicate us and it has started to vindicate us. It is happening.

“People have started to understand who was to blame for the crisis and how we handled the Cyprus problem and people. We brought in social and economic rights for people and others are taking them away.”

Asked about the “success story” the current government was boasting about he said: “Do you know what their success is? To take the bite of food from the mouth of the ordinary man and give it to the banks and businessmen.” There will be many more such truths in his book.

THE ONLY new thing he said was about his recently re-married comrade Nicos Katsourides who was expelled from the party last year. Tof explained that “whoever violates the principles of the party or turns against the party” was dealt with mercilessly. “The party is a steamroller that passes over everyone” that ignored its principles, he said.

“If Nicos wanted to continue he should have respected the principles of the party,” he added before explaining what principle he had violated. “He saw it fit to be the cause for the imprisonment of a totally innocent comrade and he knew this very well. This says a lot.”

He was referring to Venizelos Zannetos, AKEL’s financial controller, who was sentenced to jail for his role in the Dromolaxia CyTA scam.

AKEL have always maintained he was innocent because the backhanders he took through blackmail were for the party (stealing for the party is another AKEL principle) and not for himself. But if Tof knew that an innocent man went to jail because of some trick pulled by Kats (had he framed him?), why did he not inform the police or the attorney-general?

Surely the principles of AKEL dictated that he should have gone to the police to prevent a miscarriage of justice and the imprisonment of a totally honest comrade, while the cause walked free.

FOR AS long as he was party boss and president the comrade was the loyal promoter of Soviet/Russian interests in Kyproulla. Now that his political life has ended his role appears to have been taken over by the illustrious Yiorkos Lillikas, who has the professional advantage of being a marketing man.

The principled Paphite regularly meets up with mother Russia’s ambassador Stanislav Osadchiy and makes statements to the press with him, he has campaigned for military facilities, he constantly demands closer relations and has urged the government to vote against sanctions at the EU.

Last week, Lillikas met up with his fellow traveller in the north, Afrika publisher, Sener Levent to tell us what kind of settlement the island’s Russia fans dreamed of. Levent dreams of the same settlement as Lillikas – the type that would never happen because he is the only Turkish Cypriot who supports it.

All Russia loyalists in Kyproulla are opposed to a settlement that is achievable, because the maintenance of the status quo suits their mummy better.

SOVIET-EDUCATED Levent has remained loyal to the Kremlin, still repeating the Cold War rhetoric with which he was brainwashed when living in socialist paradise. So after meeting his fellow-fighter last Tuesday, Levent gave the Soviet line on the Cyprob that not even Akelites use nowadays.

“The solution of the Cyprus problem is not in the hands of Turkey, Greece or the Cypriots. The key to the solution is in the hands of America and Britain. All our problems are because of these two big states. For 42 years they are keeping Cyprus divided. Despite the many changes internationally, in Cyprus there is no change because they are happy with the regime they have imposed.”

The long-lasting effectiveness of the brainwashing administered by the Soviet Union on all the foreigners it educated at its universities is really impressive. Despite the collapse of the USSR 25 years ago, the anti-West programming of Levent’s brain remains intact.

THE UPGRADING of Mustafa Akinci at Davos was also the result of a conspiracy, according to Ethnarch Junior, although he did not specify if it had been plotted by the Anglo-Americans. All he was prepared to say was that the “stage was set in Davos for the upgrading of Mr Akinci.”

To be fair to Junior, Mustafa looked very upgraded – almost as upgraded as an iPhone 6S Plus – on the podium he shared with prez Nik and the chairman of the World Economic Forum Klaus Schwab in Davos. It was as if he were a real head of state just like our Nik.

What should have worried us more was that Espen Barth Eide pointed out that they were on the panel as leaders of the two communities. Now that was a blatantly provocative downgrade of Nik. It was scandalous that the president of a recognised state was introduced as a leader of a community – our iPhone 6S downgraded to an iPhone4 – in Davos.

None of the defenders of the Republic said anything about Nik’s downgrading, even though this was what the stage had been really set for in Davos, according to a spokesman for the Association of Anglo-American Conspiracies against the Cyprus Republic.

JUNIOR, despite being upset about the upgrading, made a positive contribution to the efforts for a settlement on Friday, when he came up with a quite brilliant proposal that would eliminate the need of €30 billion as property compensation.

If all the properties were returned to their rightful owners, nobody would have to be compensated and we would not need all those billions, he pointed out. All refugees would thus be able to return to their homes even if they did not want to.

His brilliant plan left one question unanswered. If on the land someone had illegally built a house, a hotel or an airport what would be done? We could demolish anything built after 1974 so the refugees could be given back their land as it had been before the invasion.

I am certain, in the coming weeks, Junior will provide details of how his proposal to turn Kyrenia into a tiny town again could be implemented.

AT THE MEETING with Ban Ki-moon and Mustafa, Nik took a four-page document which reportedly contained all the points he wanted to make. Apparently there were still many unresolved issues at the negotiations which Nik wanted to inform Ban about. If there are as many difficulties as people are claiming it might be an idea to do what the government has done for the national health scheme. We could have a mini-settlement as a start and hope the real one would follow in a decade or two.

HAVING investigated the collapse of the economy and the banking system our deputies are now investigating the collapse of Cyprus Airways. It is unbelievable that there are people in Kyproulla, and especially in the legislature that do not know why the national carrier went bankrupt.

It was being plundered for decades by the unions and the parties, run by boards of self-serving and clueless party appointees and served as a source of well-paid jobs for party loyalists who could not get well-paid work anywhere else. And when the state could no longer pump money into it, it went bust.

In its heyday, the airline had about 4,000 employees and 10 planes. Compare this with Ryanair which today has more than 300 planes and about 10,000 employees. Cyprus Airways had 400 employees per plane and Ryanair about 33.

TOURISM benefited from the closing down of Cyprus Airways, despite the oft-repeated claim that Kyproulla’s tourism would suffer without a national carrier. Without one in 2015, we had the biggest number of visitors for 15 years, because there are now more airline seats available to and from Cyprus.

The CTO has tried to take credit for the increase in arrivals playing down all other factors such as the strong sterling, terrorist attacks in rival destinations and the problems of the Greek economy. Such an opportunity for the CTO to claim it knows what it is doing could not be allowed to pass unexploited.

But the CTO, being a party run organisation, has similarities to the national carrier. Recently it decided to re-open an office in Brussels, which had been closed down a while earlier because the head honchos had decided there was no need for it. Recently the CTO management decided there was a need for a Brussels office because some well-connected individuals wanted to work in Brussels.

The under-secretary to the president stopped it from happening, which is something. If tourist arrivals decline this year it would because the CTO does not have a Brussels office.

WE SURE love a good fairy-tale in this country. We swallow them up like four-year-olds, asking no questions and displaying no doubts, which is why our politicians serve them to us so frequently.

No newspaper questioned the fairy-tale related by Thursday’s “historic” tripartite summit of the prime ministers of Greece and Israel and Prez Nik. In fact it was the main front page story the following day, as newspapers love a bit of fantasy based on Kyproulla’s geo-strategic importance.

The summit declaration said: “We express our strong support to the export of eastern Mediterranean gas to continental Europe. In this context we reiterate our readiness to further explore projects such as the EastMed Pipeline.”

Hacks rejoiced about the news and welcomed the idea that we would be selling our natural gas to Greece rather than Turkey, with our powerful new ally Israel, presenting it as a done deal, especially as the establishment of a permanent ministerial committee that would look into energy co-operation was also announced.

They all ignored the wording of the declaration. All it said was the countries would “further explore projects such the EastMed Pipeline.” They would explore it, deem it unfeasible and then call the Turks to ask them if they wanted to buy some cheap gas. According to reports Israel is already discussing supplying Turkey, but there is no harm in exploring some fantasy alternatives.

The only way we could take our gas to Greece is not through a pipeline but through a pipe-dream and the ministerial committee should explore that possibility.

YOU DO not have to be an energy expert to realise that the idea is a fairy-tale. First the distance from where gas fields are to the south of Greece is about 1,000km. The company that would invest in a 1,000km under-sea pipeline, which would take many years to build, is the same one that would have become a “strategic investor” in Cyprus Airways. It exists only in fairy-tales.

But even if there was a madman to undertake this project, the cost of the pipeline would make East Med natural gas too expensive to buy, as much as continental Europe would want to become our customer. Everyone knows this, just as they know that selling to Turkey is the only economically viable option; a pipeline to its south coast, passing through Kyproulla would be less than 200km and the Turks would buy the entire supply.

So would the Israelis, who are already talking to the Turks, even consider the ultra-expensive option that would price their gas out of the energy market when there is a customer ready to buy all their gas because one member of the threesome does not want to sell to Turkey for political reasons? It is a no-brainer really, but there are a lot of them about.

OUR ISRAELI allies are big supporters of a Cyprob settlement now because a pipeline passing through Kyproulla is the cheapest way of getting East Med gas to Turkey. And despite our threesome love-in they are still refusing to sign the unitisation agreement on Block 12, which is adjacent to one of Israel’s blocks.

Without Israel’s signature we cannot sell our gas. The Israelis have told our government they would sign when there is a settlement, causing our officials to wonder why our allies were being so difficult over an issue from which they had nothing to gain. Could they have given assurances to Turkey they would not sign before a settlement, as one Turkish newspaper reported not so long ago?

Incidentally, Greece’s ambassador Elias Fotopoulos told Tass news agency yesterday that Greece could be a distribution hub for natural gas for the area that was delivered to her “either through a pipeline or in LNG form.” So is the LNG plant we ruled out as too expensive (more than 10 billion bucks) back on the cards? It would be cheaper than a pipeline but not as cheap as the pipe-dream, the only option we can afford.

ANOTHER fairy-tale was reported on the same day by the CyBC. “Russian battle for Cyprus,” announced the news-presenter before explaining the battle had taken place at the meeting of the UN Security Council in New York.

Its New York correspondent, another zealous Russia cheerleader, reported how Moscow’s permanent representative had insisted during the discussion of the resolution for the renewal of the UNFICYP mandate reference was made to Turkey. The evil Brits who had drafted the resolution were opposed to the reference as were the Yanks because it could have a negative effect on the talks.

Our new mum’s perm rep said the resolution did not reflect “the presence in Cyprus of not only the two communities, but of another player, Turkey, which has a huge military presence on the island, and whose relation to the settlement of the Cyprus problem is not yet clear.”

In the 41 years of resolutions on the situation in Cyprus, Turkey has not been referred to by name once and Russia never made an issue. Now that its relations with Turkey have soured it has decided Turkey must be named in the resolution. So strictly speaking its battle was not for Kyproulla and never has been.

Are we to deduce that in the previous 41 years, Moscow did not want Turkey named in the resolutions because it was taking the fabled “principled stand” on the Cyprob that was centred on not upsetting the Turks?

Lillikas’ Alliance seized the opportunity

RUSSIA’S zealous local mouthpieces EDEK and the Alliance of Lillikas, like the CyBC, seized the opportunity to engage in some more promotion of the mother country the day after the battle given by its perm rep at the UN.

EDEK welcomed the “friendly and constant support” given to the Cyprus Republic and said the government should “utilise more effectively the role of the Russian Federation in the efforts for a democratic solution of the Cyprus problem and must not repeat the grave error of not offering military facilities to Russia.”

The Alliance was satisfied with the “principled stand” and repeated that Russia “is the constant ally throughout time” of the Republic, urging the president to “deepen relations and secure a bigger involvement of Russia in the peace talks.” It also brought up its proposal to offer Russian military facilities at our ports and air-base.

The two announcements were so similar I am beginning to wonder if the parties receive instructions what to say from the same source.

THE WORSHIP of Mother Russia takes on different forms. In an article published last Monday former EDEK deputy Doros Theodorou wrote that as we “did not dare” offer military facilities to Russia we could do something else to ingratiate ourselves to Vladimir Putin. We should give the plots in our EEZ, which had not been licensed, to Russia.

“What prevents us from doing so?” he asked. In the granting of the plots “it is not only economic criteria that are taken into account, but also those relating to the national-public interest.” It’s a no-brainer really, just like Doros, who could set an example by offering his house to Mother Russia.

THERE is nothing more nauseating than the pontificating of AKEL which we were subjected to last week after the AG released his report that found no Focus Maritime funds had gone directly to the party of the comrades. Some €880,000 had been paid by Focus for air tickets for students to come and vote for comrade Tof in the 2008 presidential elections but the money never went to AKEL.

Some of it went to the party’s student organisation Proodeftiki and the party had a nerve to claim it had been “vindicated” as it had received no funds. Anyone with half a brain knows that the Tof election campaign benefited from the 880 grand and that AKEL is good at using front companies to take donations so the comrades could pose as the virtuous virgins of politics.

Of course the propagandist moralising of AKEL was directed at those without half a brain – its supporters. Parliamentary elections are approaching and it had to find ways to round up the sheep that had lost faith in the party and had been wandering all over the place since Tof drove the country to bankruptcy.

The only danger is the sheep may have developed half a brain while away from AKEL fold.

BLUE-EYED comrade Stefanos Stefanou, Tof’s propagandist-in-chief, was placed in charge of the PR

Blue eyed comrade Stefanos Stefanou

campaign. AKEL, which had been the victim of mud-slinging and persecution by the authorities, had been “vindicated” he declared triumphantly before appealing directly to the sheep. “We call on the people of AKEL to rally and protect their party,” he urged.
“When AKEL was speaking about the problems at the banks the people who today accuse AKEL were laying red carpets for Mr Vgenopoulos,” said AKEL’s Goebbels. It was AKEL who arranged for the taxpayer to give Vgen’s bank, Laiki, €2bn to save it from collapse.

And it was AKEL puppet, governor of the Central Bank Panicos Demetriades, who asked consultants Alvarez and Marsal to investigate only the Bank of Cyprus after the bailout. He did not deem it necessary for Laiki, which had been bankrupted by Vgen, to be investigated. Was this bizarre decision his own or was he acting on instructions from his comrades?

A WORD of sympathy for Dr Eleni Theocharous, who appears to be losing it since quitting DISY in order to singlehandedly save the country from Turkification and becoming president. There is no other way to explain last Thursday’s comment made at the end of a doom and gloom lecture in Athens about Kyproulla becoming a province of Turkey if there was a settlement.

Out of nowhere she told her audience as a parting shot “if setting oneself on fire in Syntagma Square (Athens) is what it takes to secure union of Cyprus and Greece, then I will be the first to do it.” Is union with Greece a remote possibility? And even if it were, would it be formalised by people setting fire to themselves? She was promising a heroic act of self sacrifice the need for which would never arise.

And if chopping off one’s head with a chainsaw is what it takes to have the pipeline taking our gas to Greece built then I will be the first to do it.

ODYSSEAS the auditor-general might not have promised to set himself ablaze, but one of his screws may also need tightening. If it were not loose he would not have made such a fuss about the new limos, ordered for ministers, not being the colour stipulated in the purchase order.

This “constituted an amendment to the agreement that should have been approved by the Committee of Changes and Claims,” claimed Odysseas’ office. Does anyone care if some cars were tornado grey metallic and others moonlight grey metallic?

Interior minister Socratis Hasikos, who has repeatedly fallen out publicly with Odysseas, quite rightly asked whether the auditor-general had nothing more serious to deal with than the paint on the ministers’ cars. This was a pretty trivial issue.

Odysseas’ inflated sense of self-importance and constantly growing ego were so badly hurt he responded with a post on Facebook like some neighbourhood gossip accusing the government of illegality and lambasting Hasikos of driving around in petrol guzzling limo.

Yesterday he issued an official announcement accusing Hasikos of employing intimidation tactics. He also did his own intimidating, telling the minister that “the more he tries to intimidate the audit service the more intense would be its effort to pass the message to citizens that nobody is above the law.” Odysseas’ holier than thou attitude is getting a bit scary.

NOBODY will miss the motor-mouth Marios Garoyian, the former leader of DIKO, who announced he would not be standing for re-election to parliament because he disagreed with the values of Junior’s leadership. In his moving farewell address to Dikheads he said “our common course does not end here” He added: “I will still be present as a foot-soldier of DIKO in all the struggles that are ahead of us, serving unwaveringly our principles and values, as I have fought all my life, for national vindication, economic development, social justice and the clean-up of public life.” Nobody does bullshit more eloquently than Marios, not even Dr Eleni.

WHEN Giorgos Pamborides was appointed health minister last July, one metrios drinker that knew him was greatly puzzled by Prez Nik’s choice as the guy was known to be opinionated, confrontational and rather blunt; he did not suffer fools gladly as they say.

All commendable qualities for a minister, but in consensus-crazed Kyproulla, in which governments give a say to every fool and union loser as a matter of policy, a minister that does not shy away from a fight, like Pamborides, was bound to be trouble.

How could Nik, who has lost all appetite for a scrap since his election and wants to please everyone, have chosen such a guy to manage the most problematic ministry and introduce the national health scheme which was being opposed by unions doggedly fighting to preserve the privileges of their members?

What made his choice even more puzzling was that the minister Pamborides replaced, Philippos Patsalis, had stepped down because the Prez sided with unions in one of the disputes regarding the NHS. And Patsalis was no confrontational type, regularly backing down when the unions made a fuss.

In his first months at the ministry, Pamborides kept a low profile, but since the turn of the year and after announcing his plan for the introduction of a mini-NHS – sparking a hostile reaction from everyone involved in health – he has been displaying all the traits the metrios drinker spoke about, picking fights with anyone that crosses him.

The first-ever minister with a shaved head has balls, but how long he will dodge the attempts by government doctors to castrate him remains to be seen.

THE PREVIOUS week government doctors announced they would set a quota on the number of patients they would see each day (20 to 30) as a reaction to the introduction of mini-NHS. Doctors from the private sector were also moaning because they would not be part of the mini.

Pamborides publicly wondered why the doctors never protested over delays in introducing the NHS, but as soon as a decision for action was taken by the government they were up in arms trying to block it. He also brought up the issue of government doctors clocking in, which they were refusing to do, even though it was obligatory throughout the state sector.

Was this because they were cheating on the state and skiving off work or because they felt such a work practice was beneath the dignity of exalted professionals like doctors? Pamborides did not ask this, we did.

On Sunday, in an interview with Kathimerini, he then questioned the opposition of private doctors to the NHS, suggesting that this was because many were making a lot of money which they did not declare. Under the NHS all income would have to be declared.

It was a bit rich for a member of the legal profession, whose members are not renowned for refusing under the table payments or filing accurate tax returns, accusing doctors of not declaring their income, but who cares.

ON THURSDAY he then had to deal with public criticism of the head of the ministry’s medical services Dr Petros Matsas, who said state hospitals were understaffed because of an exodus of doctors leaving to join the private health sector. Vacated positions were not filled because of budgetary restrictions, which meant waiting lists became longer, while a third of staff were on contracts which meant they were demotivated.

Matsas spoke like a union rep rather than as a senior ministry official, but he is a government doctor and felt obliged to point out that his colleagues were leaving the hospitals because the pay was not good enough. Only in Kyproulla’s dictatorship of the proletariat, do union reps rise to top positions, in the state, the banks and SGOs. In a normal country these guys would be penalised for their union activity and have been ineligible for any promotion.

Pamborides was obviously livid, giving data that showed state healthcare staffing levels had not been cut since 2012, before laying it on Matsas, speculating that his claims were “related to his anxiousness to stay in his position after his 65th year”. He was due to retire next year, the minister helpfully suggested on a radio show.

THE minister then had a go at employees who abused sick leave. The problem was not that the government was not filling positions vacated because of pregnancies or long-term sick leave, as a union man, Matsas claimed. It was because there were about 140 cases of long-term sick leave at hospitals that were signed off by doctors, no matter how unreasonable many were.

You just have to admire the guy taking on the entire health sector – self-interested doctors disobeying the law and refusing to clock in, hospital staff abusing sick leave, private doctors cheating the tax authorities and the head of the medical services looking after number one.

The Prez intends to have a broad meeting with all reps of the health sector this week, which cannot be a good sign, as he will most probably suck up to everyone his minister has so commendably pissed off in the last few weeks. His mantra, after all, is “we aim to please everyone.”

ABUSE of sick leave is endemic in the parasitic sector and on Wednesday the Council of Ministers approved the creation of a new medical committee for examining the applications for state school teachers who are notorious for taking months off work for minor ailments.

Medical examinations would be more thorough while an education ministry official will also sit on the committee to brief it about possible reasons for a teacher’s illness. Many teachers that are given a transfer they do not like simply go sick for months, but from now on the ministry rep will inform the committee if the teacher is simply suffering from an unfavourable transfer virus.

Perhaps it will also do something about the female teachers who, as soon as they are knocked up, apply and are granted sick leave for the entire duration of their pregnancy. Combined with the four months they are entitled to by law, this gives them at least a year off work.

APART from a good fairy-tale, we also love a good mystery yarn in Kyproulla, which is why everyone got so excited about leaking of the Cyprob document which Prez Nik handed to party leaders at last Monday’s National Council bash, after making them promise they would not make it public.

At least one of the participants betrayed Nik as a few hours after the meeting, the document was posted on the Sigmalive and Phil websites. It was just as well, because the actual leaking was a much sexier story – mystery, betrayal, double-crossing – than the content of the document, the only value of which was as an insomnia cure.

It was so bland and boring, not even the opposition parties found anything in it to get angry about and use as an excuse to attack Nik. I suspect it was drafted by his Mr Nice-Guy spokesman Nicos Christodoulides, whose unrivalled talent for blandness in the spoken word could easily have been transferred to written form.

What made the leak such a compelling mystery was the large number of suspects (more than in an Agatha Christie novel) and all with a motive. The only weakness of the yarn was that no crime had been committed and all the fuss made was about nothing, but it still beat focusing on the actual document.

THINGS are definitely not going well for our latest saviour, Dr Eleni Theocharous, who eight days ago as studio guest was given a real roasting by the news presenter of Sigma TV. It was peculiar to see such hostility towards the saintly Eleni on a friendly station.

Had Zeus Hadjicostis, the supreme ruler of the media group controlling Sigma, not told the presenter that he was a big fan of the MEP and fully supported her efforts to save the country from Turkification and become its president? I will check tonight if the feisty presenter, who does the weekend shows, still has her job.

THE BOAST about setting herself alight for Enosis in Syntagma Square, was just a case of “poetic licence”, she said before blaming the disparaging comments this elicited on social media on DISY, the party she walked out of last month because it was not patriotic enough.

“Since I left DISY, there has been a war against me, a war that has no logic,” she said, playing the victim card in the hope it would win a bit of sympathy.

Of course DISY’s war has logic. Dr Eleni left her party accusing it of being unpatriotic, ready to sell out to the Turks and of covering up corruption among other things. If she really expected the party to praise her heroic action and disparaging words, she must have defected to cloud cuckoo land.

THE DAY after Nicosia’s historic summit of Bibi, Nik and Alexis, our prez received a telephone call from US Vice President Joe Biden, which, according to deputy government spokesman Victoras lasted half an hour.

Victoras told Tass news agency that Joe had briefed Nik about his visit to Ankara and the talks he had with the Turkish government about the Cyprob. But this was not the information that was leaked to us from our source in the palace, the identity of whom we cannot reveal because our journalistic ethics do not permit it.

Biden apparently was concerned about the threesome’s declaration to “further explore projects such as the EastMed pipeline”, which would supposedly take our gas to Greece. He had reportedly taken the declaration about the EastMed pipeline seriously, just like our media, and felt Nik was going back on their understanding (reiterated at their Davos meeting) that Kyproulla’s and Israel’s gas would be sold to Turkey.

We have no other info, but can only guess that Nik assured Joe that mention of the EastMed pipeline was not meant to be taken seriously and its inclusion was only intended for domestic consumption.

THE HIDEOUS propagandist-in-chief of AKEL Giorgos Loucaides accused Nik of “beautifying the state of the economy not realising that this approach provokes the feelings of the citizens and especially those that suffer the most.

“Without being aware that the subservience, humiliation and impoverishment of our people might be a necessary pre-requisite for government policies to appeal to the troika and rating agencies, this in no way makes them beneficial for our people.”

These Akelites really do have a nerve. I will just remind Loucaides that in 2011, with Kyproulla excluded from the markets, Comrade Tof arranged to borrow €2.5 billion from Mother Russia, so he would not have to make spending cuts. According to the agreement he made, we should have paid the full amount back this year. It was the Troika which arranged the restructuring of the loan, after we signed the memorandum.

And our humiliation and impoverishment would have been 10 times worse if we had to find €2.5 billion to pay off Mother Russia this year, when Vladimir Putin is being obliged to sell off state industries to raise one trillion roubles for his struggling economy’s needs.

THE VIRGIN birth is back on the cards I hear. Some comment made by Akinci’s spokesman Baris Burcu about the new state had all our freedom fighters pulling at their  hair and beating their breasts about the latest Turkish provocation that would lead to the demise of the Cyprus Republic and the virgin birth of the new state.

The provocation was reported by anti-settlement mouthpiece Simerini which reported on its front page on Friday: “The statement by the spokesman of the occupation regime Baris Burcu, who made it clear that the Turkish Cypriot side does not accept the evolution of the Cyprus Republic was a ‘bomb’ at the foundations of the negotiations.”

You would expect Simerini to celebrate such a ‘bomb’ at the foundations of the talks. After all, ever since the Nik-Mustafa meetings began, its reporters and comment-writers have been trying to blow up the talks on a daily basis with their incendiary articles.

ANOTHER attempt to buy gas for the Electricity Authority’s power stations flopped spectacularly, as the government cancelled the tender for an interim gas supplier last Sunday. It was the third tender procedure in five years that was not concluded, giving our Natural Gas Public Company DEFA a perfect hundred per cent failure record.

DEFA was set up eight years ago as Kyproulla’s natural gas monopoly. A decree by the Council of Ministers appointed it the sole importer and distributor of natural gas on the island. It is probably the only absolute monopoly in the world that has failed so miserably to exploit its monopolistic power that is protected by the law.

After eight years of existence, it has not even come close to fulfilling its ‘mission’, which the state-owned company’s website described as follows: “DEFA’s mission during the initial phases of it operation will be: To secure sufficient quantities of natural gas supplies, at the lowest possible prices, to cover the needs of Electricity Power Generation (Phase ‘A’) and subsequently to supply Industries, Hotels and Households.”

It would also “develop the necessary Gas Network Infrastructure,” which would seem a bit pointless given it is not even capable of buying gas and fulfilling its ‘scope of work’ as per the articles of association of the company which includes “Buying, Importing, Holding, Using, Distributing, Selling, Supplying Natural Gas in any Form” (their underlining).

DEFA has consistently chosen natural gas of the non-existent Form, which, it has to be said is the most economical option.

THE REASON for this abject failure is because the great brains in our government instruct DEFA to ask for the supply of gas over a period of time that is not long enough for any supplier to recoup the big investment needed to set up the supply operation.

The government has always referred to the purchase of natural gas as the “interim solution” because the plan is to eventually take gas from the Aphrodite block, even though nobody really knows when the well will start pumping gas and whether supplying a tiny market like ours would be viable for the companies managing it.

The earliest it would allegedly start production, according to blundering energy minister Giorgos Lakkotrypis, who gets everything wrong about gas, would be 2020, but some say 2022. Matters are not helped by the current very low price of oil, which would not make the use of gas more economical than the heavy fuel oil currently used, the government said.

The potential supplier VITOL had reportedly wanted increase the quantity to be sold by 25 per cent so the deal would be viable, but the government said ‘no’, because this would have violated the specs of the tenders’ procedure and paved the way for legal action by other companies bidding for the contract.

The specs were drafted by DEFA, which seems as terrified of agreeing a solution as DIKO and EDEK, even if it is of the interim type and would not involve the demise of the Republic.

NO INTERIM solution, means even less work for DEFA’s employees, who have not exactly had very much to do in the last seven-and-a-half years other than draft tenders specs and reject offers made by oil and gas companies. Now they will not even have that to do because there will be no new tender procedures.

Even if there were, I doubt there would be any company wasting time and money on preparing an offer that would be rejected by the jokers of DEFA. So will the taxpayer carry on paying DEFA staff to do absolutely nothing until 2020, ’22 or ‘30? If the government keeps it going, I will most certainly apply for a job, because I have always been very good at doing nothing.

THE PRACTICE of inviting tenders and never awarding a contract will not advance our grand ambition to become a regional energy centre, as nobody can take us seriously. This ambition was dealt another blow by last Monday’s decision by the Larnaca municipal council to turn down the request for a six-month extension to the use of Larnaca port by two big oil companies – ENI and Total.

This was another illustration of the weakness of democracy, allowing a bunch of upstart, provincial councillors – kidding themselves that Larnaca would become the Monte Carlo of the eastern Med if they got rid of the oil companies – to overturn a government decision.

What was even more ridiculous was that the government said it would respect the decision of the Larnaca hicks, which was guaranteed to frighten off any company considering bringing its operations to Kyproulla. With our loony actions and dysfunctional democracy we are writing the manual of how not to become a regional energy hub.

IT GETS better. Employees working for the oil companies were up in arms after the council’s decision, justifiably fearing they would lose their jobs. Their unions organised a protest taking the workers to the Larnaca town hall and then to the ministry of communications in Nicosia which had nothing to do with the decision.

One of the unions leading the workers was PEO, the AKEL union. Speaking on behalf of the union’s Larnaca branch a certain Nadia Kyritsis (do not know if she is the mother, wife, sister, cousin or daughter of PEO’s big boss Bambis) said workers should be protected, but she did not blame the neo-liberal policies of the right wing government for threatening the jobs.

How could she, it was the votes of AKEL’s Larnaca councillors which defeated the proposal for the extension of the use of the port and put the jobs at risk. But the union did not take the protesting workers to AKEL’s offices to protest when it brought them to Nicosia, because as Ms Kyritsis said, she was sure the position the party took was for good reasons.

And there can be no better reason than adding another 100 labourers to the ranks of the unemployed.

NEXT TIME Prez Nik goes to the legislature to brief the deputies about the peace talks he should get his flunkeys to install some powerful floodlights inside the building so the opposition leaders would not be able to claim that he left them in the dark.

It was a bit boring hearing all the negativity salesmen make the same criticism of poor old Nik, moaning that they heard “nothing new” and were “none the wiser” because he had given no details about what was going on at the negotiations.

It was a bit rich of the EDEK spokesman Costis Efstathiou complaining, considering his party boss, Botox pioneer Marinos Sizopoulos knew exactly what was happening in the talks. Had Costis not heard the radio advert inviting people to attend a meeting at the Holiday Inn on Monday evening at which “EDEK briefs people about what is being discussed in the Cyprus talks. Come and find out the things they are not telling you; speaker Marinos Sizopoulos.”

I hear he will reveal, among other things how often Mustafa has Botox treatment and Nik’s favourite brand of hair dye.

ETHNARCH Junior used the lack of information from Nik to introduce his latest crazy idea. In a heart-rending performance on a Friday radio show he said demanded the whole population to participate in the negotiations, because it was unacceptable “in the 21^st century, in a European country, in 2016 to have a president telling us they would give us ready-made constitution they would prepare behind closed doors.”

He angrily asked on a radio show: “Will the people not participate in this procedure? Should we not have a say about the constitution that will shape our future? I do not trust Nicos Anastasiades (NA) because in 2004 he accepted the Annan plan and would like to participate in the procedure for shaping the constitution.”

The anguish of the sensitive and compassionate Junior was primarily for the refugees. “NA will prepare a plan behind closed doors by which hundreds of thousands will lose their homes. Should the refugees not know how they will lose their homes?” It was outrageous that “NA will decide behind closed doors, with his parea (coterie) issues affecting hundreds of thousands of our countrymen and they tell us we must not participate in the shaping of this proposal?”

SO HOW should Nik satisfy Junior? Ask the UN to keep the doors open at its headquarters at Nicosia airport when Nik and Mustafa met and invite the hundreds of thousands of our countrymen to participate in the talks so they could have a say in the shaping of the constitution?

As space is limited and there is not enough room at the airport for sandwich vans to park, perhaps the venue of the talks should be moved to Nicosia’s GSP stadium, even though it cannot take more than 30,000 people. Big screens and powerful loudspeakers could be installed outside the stadium so everyone could listen to what was being decided.

Giving a say to the hundreds of thousands of our countrymen participating in the constitution talks might prove problematic, but Junior’s other proposal could offer an answer. “The fact that the president does not want to discuss these things (constitution, property) with us, but only with the Turkish side, behind closed doors,” was wrong he said.

Nik could start parallel negotiations about the new constitution with the Greek side, with Junior acting as the representative of the hundreds of thousands of refugees. All that remains is to write to Ban Ki-moon and ask him to send another special envoy to mediate.

LAST September we had written about the Central Bank employee who managed to land the job as the finance ministry’s representative at the European Commission in Brussels.

We had also mentioned how his wife, a primary school teacher, but more significantly, a member of the DISY political bureau, had used her connections to get a job at Kyproulla’s permanent representation in Brussels so she could be with her hubby.

The post is only going to be vacated now, but we have been informed that the well-connected, teacher Despo Sergiou has been in Brussels since December 1^st of last year when she received a secondment to the office of education minister Costas Kadis. According to our education ministry mole, Mrs Sergiou has not been showing up for work at the minister’s office since her secondment, because she is in Brussels with her other half, presumably still receiving her state salary because technically she is working for Kadis.

She reportedly made an appearance at the ministry this week because there is a week’s holiday at the Brussels school her daughter is attending. The minister, for reasons only he can explain, has not thought it necessary to report his absent employee, let alone ask why she had not been showing up for work. After all she is member of the DISY political bureau and can go to work whenever she likes.

OUR MOLE at the ministry claims that the post that Mrs Sergiou has been eyeing at the permanent representation office is soon to be vacated by the current education ministry representative, but has not been advertised. The reason – it could be claimed that the post was vacated “unexpectedly” and an appointment would have to be made “urgently”. There would be no time to advertise the vacancy which would be filled by Mrs Sergiou.

This is the sort of scam Auditor-general Odysseas should be investigating. If interior minister Hasikos was involved Odysseas would be on all the TV shows and in all the newspapers talking about the scandal, but it would appear he is on good terms with Kadis.

TOTALLY committed to its mission to poison the positive climate and prevent a settlement, the mouthpiece of Kyproulla’s deep state, Phil, has found another compelling reason to oppose and agreement with the expansionist, intransigent Turks. For two days running its lead story was the cost of a settlement.

“Cost of a settlement a Golgotha” lamented its banner headline last Sunday, while the next day it climbed down from Golgotha, declaring “The cost unspecified”. Despite contradicting itself a bit its new message was clear – we cannot afford a settlement. We should accept partition because it’s cheaper. But have they asked Junior whether he would agree for hundreds of thousands to lose their homes?

YOU HAVE to congratulate the ultra-nationalist turtle-lover Perdikis for his commitment to recycling. This commitment is not restricted to conventional recycling – cans, paper, clothes – but also covers rubbish, scare-stories and myths.

How many times has he recycled the alarmist myth about the chemtrails, allegedly being sprayed by the British planes? Since 2010, at least half a dozen times, but the last two times he has not just recycled it, but also repackaged and refined it, attributing new, more credible motives to the back-stabbing Brits.

In its original, crude form, Perdikis’ theory claimed that the chemtrails were sprayed by Bases’ aircraft to change our weather and poison our environment, as part of the ongoing conspiracies against Kyproulla by the duplicitous Brits. The theory was that as the British government had run out of ways to stab us in the back in the Cyprob it decided to use chemtrails to secretly mess up our lovely weather.

Perdikis kept repeating his theory, which was based on his gut feeling, but realised that if he was going to recycle it for his election campaign he had to refine it and make it a bit more plausible to a broader audience than just the few simpletons that believe him.

THE RECYCLING went very well, Perdikis finding some slightly more believable reasons for the chemtrails. Bases aircraft could be spraying particulates to prevent the formation of clouds so as to facilitate visibility for bombing sorties en route to Syria.

OK it is not the most convincing reason, given that it would make more sense to leave chemtrails over the country the planes were going to bomb instead of over Vryssoules. The second reason, which links the aerial spraying to surveillance by the British radar systems in Kyproulla, is a bit better. Apparently the particulates scattered in the air boost radar detection.

This might be complete nonsense but it was taken very seriously by farming organisations and deputies that rely on farmers’ votes. The House environment committee was also deeply concerned and discussed the chemtrails at a meeting on Wednesday.

Perdikis, however, dismissed claims by internet conspiracy theorists that chemtrails were used for mind control experiments as “far-fetched”. I think there is more truth in these claims than Perdikis concedes because I would not put it past the Brits to use chemtrails for mind control of Greek Cypriots to make us vote in favour of an unfair and unjust settlement.

THE HOUSE committee meeting was told that agriculture minister Nikos Kouyialis had written to the farmers’ union EKA, which reported the aerial spraying by Bases planes, informing it that he would ask our foreign minister to seek explanations from the Bases administration.

Kouyialis, pandering to the farmers, said he would order an investigation. “At first glance, although there is no corroboration, it appears that these actions could alter the climate of the region, since they might potentially alter the composition of the earth’s atmosphere…” he said in his letter to the farmers.

He had obviously forgotten that there had been an investigation into the same allegations less than four months ago. Responding to the demand of Perdikis, last October rainwater and air were tested chemically by the Metereological Department and it found nothing. As Kouyialis told the House on October 30 last year, “according to the results of the tests, it cannot be concluded that any spraying was taking place in the Cyprus atmosphere.”

So why is he ordering more testing now? Is there going to be testing every time Perdikis wants attention or a bunch of famers looking for new excuses to claim state compensation demand it?

THE CyBC jumped on the chemtrails bandwagon, featuring a debate on its lunch-time news show on Thursday, featuring two guests who admitted they knew little about the matter but their instinct told them there was something wrong. The chat was headlined “Are they spraying us?”

The surnames of the two guests went very well together, suggesting the dourly boring presenter Paris Potamitis may have a sense of fun. We had Hambas and Hamboullas, the former being the leader of EKA and the latter being the ambelopoulia-devouring DISY deputy, spraying their ignorance all over the studio.

Hambas and Hamboullas gave assurances they did not want to frighten people, but Hambas believed “extreme weather conditions” we have experienced were proof of the spraying. I expected Hamboullas to protest that the chemtrails were killing ambelopoulia and that those that survived did not taste very good, but he did not.

Members of the public also called in to give their testimony, Kyrios Elias from Ayios Nicolaos pointing out that a few years ago the fig trees in his village lost all their leaves, while his daughter’s eyes burned whenever planes flew over the village. With such emphatic proof why are we even bothering with atmospheric tests?

Maria Zakharova

WORSHIPPERS of Mother Russia experienced multiple orgasms on Friday morning when they read Phil’s front page lead story about an announcement by a spokeswoman of Russia’s foreign ministry criticising Turkey’s supreme ruler Erdogan for “grossly interfering in the Cyprus negotiations process and putting Turkey’s interests first.”

Maria Zakharova had expressed her views to Sputniknews, commenting on what Erdogan had reportedly told a delegation of Turkish Cypriot pseudo-parliamentarians at a meeting in Ankara. Zakharova and her ministry were outraged because Erdogan “is openly inciting Turkish Cypriots to take a hard and uncompromising line during the continuing negotiations in Cyprus, including on the touchy issue of territorial adjustments.”

Her comment referred to press reports that Erdogan had told the delegation not to return Morphou to the Greek Cypriots. In 41-plus years since the invasion neither the Soviet Union nor the Russian Federation that followed ever issued a statement that was even slightly critical of Turkey’s role in Kyproulla, but since the shooting down of their fighter by Turkey, Mother Russia has been using us to have a dig at her new enemy.

Our mum is now even happy to comment on hearsay as a way of having a dig at the hated Erdogan, making her adopted children in Kyproulla ecstatic with joy.

IT IS DOUBTFUL the comment was even directed at Erdogan, because foreign ministries do not comment on rumours circulating in the press. It is much more likely it was intended to mobilise Moscow’s worshippers in Kyproulla. The statement worked like a trigger for Russia’s local spokesmen to start repeating their usual demands.
Within a few hours of the report, having composed themselves after the multiple orgasms they experienced, the politicians were all issuing statements demanding the immediate granting of military facilities to Russia. Apart from this, EDEK also urged the government to donate plots in our EEZ to Russian companies.

The Lillikas Alliance reminded us that Russia was a “friendly country and trustworthy ally,” and always took a “principled position” on Kyproulla, unlike the other members of the UN Security Council. Junior wondered on Twitter whether the government would welcome the statement or “condemn it because it ruined the good climate,” but he stopped short of offering military facilities.

All this euphoria was triggered by a statement of zero value to us – practical or theoretical – that everyone outside Kyproulla would ignore and that would not help efforts to find a settlement. But another statement like this and Sizopoulos and Lillikas will be calling for the annexation of Kyproulla by the Russian Federation.

RUSSIA’S main propagandist in Kyproulla, Phil, which broke the news, was incensed that foreign minister Ioannis Kasoulides maintained some seriousness when asked about Zacharova’s statement and failed to react like the rest of Moscow’s cheerleaders.

Kasoulides “kept a distance from the hard and aggressive statement by the Russian foreign ministry giving his stance a colour of neutrality,” Phil’s disappointed political correspondent reported on Saturday. And this despite the fact “he knows better than anyone that when Cyprus is under pressure at the UN it asks Moscow for support,” the correspondent pointed out.

In Phil’s view, Kasoulides should also have had a multiple orgasm after hearing the “hard and aggressive statement,” but instead he showed “a tendency of neutrality and asked not to be involved.” In contrast, the report said, government spokesman Nicos Christodoulides said what was mentioned in the statement “is the common conclusion of all those involved, in one way or another, in the Cyprus problem.”

The reporter failed to mention that Christdoulides is a member Kyproulla’s deep state, which does not want a settlement and secretly is turned on whenever mother Russia tries to undermine the talks.

THE GOVERNMENT decided to a proceed with a third licensing round for oil and gas exploration in our

Prez Nik

EEZ because everyone from the oil industry that Prez Nik met at the World Economic Forum in Davos was asking him when there would be a new licensing round.

It is difficult to believe this story about great interest, which everyone reported quoting unnamed government sources (if it were true, why had no-one spoken on the record?), at a time when world oil prices are at rock-bottom and oil companies would be reluctant to invest in new exploration licences. Has Nik not thought that in a market with suppressed prices the bids would be very low?

Phil, did not seem to think so, triumphantly declaring, “Third round a check-mate move,” on its front page. It said: “Yesterday’s decision by the Council of Ministers to proceed with a third licensing round for hydrocarbons was a check-mate move on the chess-board of deposits.” Unfortunately, the article did not reveal who was on the other side of the chess-board and lost thanks to our check-mate move.

Interestingly, the Turks expressed no threats or disapproval about this decision. Is it possible that Nik secured their approval before his check-mate move? Hopefully he will leave a couple of blocks out of the licensing round to give for free to Russian companies and keep Sizopoulos happy.

OUR FRIEND the rector of Cyprus University, Constantinos Christofides, had a dig at the fascists of teaching union OELMEK who are opposed to the new admissions policy that would allow entry to public universities to private school students.

OELMEK chief Demetris Taliadoros complained that his union had not been invited to the meetings with the education minister that agreed the new policy. Christofides pulled no punches in his response. “I want you to tell me in which country in the world unions have a say about who will be admitted to the universities of their country,” he said.

The answer is ‘in Kyproulla.’ Apart from OELMEK, all other teaching union support excluding private school students from public universities and they have been joined by the Pancyprian Parents’ Association and the ludicrous, secondary school students’ union. Students and parents are as qualified as self-interested teachers to decide which student should have access to our universities and promote state-sponsored policies of exclusion.

SIMERINI analyst/columnist/smartass Dr Yiannos Charalambides has never exhibited anything remotely resembling a sense of humour or light touch in his writings, probably because these would undermine his colossal self-importance and his ambition of being seen as a powerful intellect.

Nevertheless, the headline on his article of last Sunday had me laughing, making me think I had misjudged him. It was titled ‘The fertilisation of the virgin birth’ and of course referred to the state that would replace the Cyprus Republic.

After reading the first few lines I realised I had not misjudged Dr Yiannos and, despite the headline, he was his normal pompous self. I jumped to the last two paragraphs to see if there was any connection with the headline and there was but it was, as expected, non-ironic.

Apparently all those who support a federal settlement “without wanting to realise, it is not even a compromise, but a Turkish strategic objective,” wrote the good doctor, “contribute to the fertilisation of the virgin birth.” He should not be so disparaging about his countrymen because the virgin birth may have been fertilised by seed from a Turkish sperm bank, which would have made an even better headline – ‘Turkish sperm in virgin birth fertilisation.’

HAVING run out of saints’ biographies and monks’ speeches to boost its sales Simerini, which celebrated its 40th anniversary last week, has turned to the 16th century seer Nostradamus. It is offering a 400-page book with the true prophecies of Nostradamus, who I am sad to say never prophesied whether there would be a settlement of the Cyprob. But I hear there are a few lines about chemtrails in his prophecies.

UNIONS have been back in force over the last couple of weeks reminding us all that the three year adjustment programme, during which they kept a relatively low profile, was just a brief break and that the dictatorship of the fascistic union bosses will be re-imposed.

They could not have chosen a better time to make their point. With parliamentary elections less than three months away, there is no way any party will challenge their bullying and blackmail. Here I have to praise DISY chief Averof, who has been railing against union lunacy and disproving our scientific theory that all Paphites are uncivilised cavemen.

Our establishment’s other scientific theory – that 90 per cent of Cypriots are Akelites in their mentality, thinking and actions, without realising it – however, has been confirmed. This is the percentage that not only approves of union rule, but believes it is an essential part of a functioning democracy even if it eventually leads to bankruptcy.

The ideas of a big state, offering fat salaries and pensions to as many people as possible, of unions having a say in all government decisions, of every union demand being satisfied, of lazy unproductive workers having the right to promotion, of voluntary retirement (instead of redundancy) are all from the AKEL manual of economic mismanagement.

OBNOXIOUS CyTA union bosses, applauded by the Akelites from all parties, on Monday lashed out against the government, after Finance Minister Harris presented the CyTA privatisation bills to the House finance committee. Even the government behaved like members of AKEL offering a range of employment choices to the employees in the vain hope of securing their approval for privatisation.

All parties, except DISY, will do as the unions have demanded and reject the privatisation bills. Harris pointed out that labour costs were 30 per cent of CyTA’s total operating costs compared to the average of 18 per cent for similar companies in other countries. So why would workers want to leave the authority that covers them in gold for their entire working life? It has to stay in state hands so that they can carry on plundering it.

There is another option which the government has not explored. It could sell CyTA to its workers, whose union pension funds have assets worth hundreds of millions of euros. The workers can manage it, modernise it, make it more flexible and take the profits. They can also take the losses, instead of enjoying all the benefits of ownership, while leaving the business risks to the state.

And of course worker ownership would bring us closer to the establishment of a communist paradise.

ON THE SAME day bosses of the nursing union Pasyno were given the opportunity to have a slanging match with the Health Minister Giorgos Pamborides outside his ministry, where striking hospital nurses had gathered to push the demand for higher entry level wages.

The higher entry wage is being demanded because nurses now get their training at TEPAK which is a university and gives its graduates degrees, instead of diplomas like the nurse training college. As degree holders, nurses want to start work at state hospitals on degree-holders salary, even though they would be doing the exact same work.

The state is being asked to hire them at almost double the salary, at an extra cost to the taxpayer of €30 million a year according to Averof to do what a diploma-holder did as well, if not better, for half the money. Pasyno is also demanding a ‘hazardous’ work allowance, as if nurses were working in the mines or in an explosives factory. You’d think now that nurses have university degrees they would be sensible but this is Kyproulla.

ONLY IN our union-run, basket-case country would the state pay a wage based on the qualifications of an employee instead of the work he does. Yet it is the policy of the public sector to hire a person with a degree at a higher salary, thus rewarding his qualifications rather than his work.

For 90 per cent of the work done in the public service – filling forms, shuffling documents, drinking coffee and speaking rudely to members of the public – a degree in any subject is completely unnecessary. Would a philosophy graduate do a better job of processing applications for farm subsidies or checking forms for student grants than a school-leaver?

HEAD HONCHOS at the Bank of Cyprus are in a bit of quandary over how to lay off staff. It might not be a state-controlled bank, but the union has been calling the shots there for decades and does not seem like surrendering power any time soon.

Being under union control, it could not possibly lay off workers that are surplus to requirements as companies routinely do all over the world, even though it recorded a loss in excess of €400 million last year. The B of C has therefore introduced an early retirement scheme in the hope that some 300 grossly overpaid employees will sign up for it, because in Kyproulla staff redundancies have to be voluntary.

The company does not even have the right to get rid of the unproductive, waste of space employees, by giving them big compensation packages, if they do not volunteer.

The problem facing management now is that only about 30 have volunteered for the scheme, as they are not threatened by redundancy. CEO John Hourican, once considered a tough cookie, has obviously gone native. As for Yank main shareholder Wilbur Ross, he must feel this is the Soviet Union. Would he have invested a few hundred million bucks in the bank if he had known the unions would be calling the shots?

TEENAGERS showed that their state education in union militancy is also going very well. On Thursday, tomorrow’s militants, walked out of school classes in order to protest against education ministry plans to introduce exams twice a year.

The kids, who have a joke union called Psem, object to this and as one of their leaders said on a radio show the method of exams must be changed to become “more humanist” because schools should not be turned into “exam centres”.

Students, he said must come to “a more human space”, from which, presumably, inhuman exams must be banned.

This is what happens when you give a say on how the education system should be run to 15- and 16-year-olds. I blame the super-wimp Education Minister Costas Kadis who had invited the kids to his office to discuss the exam proposal with them. He felt betrayed that they were taking action after he had briefed them, and on Thursday blamed AKEL for instigating the walk-out.

I am certain AKEL is behind the kids, but what kind of moron consults a bunch of teenagers about how to run education and boasts about it as well? It gets worse. The head of the parents’ association confederation complained on radio on Thursday because the kids of Psem, “accept too easily what is discussed with the minister”.
The parents’ union wants more militant teenagers if we are to upgrade our education system and do away with inhuman exams.

PREZ NIK is fast turning into a jet-setting natural gas salesman. On Monday he was peddling his vision of supplying all of Europe with natural gas we have not found yet to his Bulgarian counterpart Rosen Plevneviev. This is why he is also offering to sell Israeli and Egyptian gas.

It must have been a good sales pitch because after their meeting Plevenviev said Bulgaria could act as a corridor between northern and southern Europe securing the interests of Poland and Croatia and building a regional distribution centre for energy sources.

The grand plans were confirmed by our Energy Minister Giorgos Lakkotrypis, who declared that “Bulgaria has a special role in our attempt to establish a new natural gas corridor from the eastern Mediterranean to Europe, either through existing or planned infrastructure.”

And we thought our gas would only be going as far as Greece. The pipeline that will supply all of Europe with our gas, via distribution centres in Greece and Bulgaria, could be named the Nikstream.

YOU HAD to feel sorry for Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides, who became the target of all the bash-patriotic columnists for the neutral stance he took over Mother Russia’s verbal attack on Turkey and President Erdogan.

In Russia’s cheerleader, Phil, two columnists had a go at him, one saying his neutrality “was provocative and insulting for Russia”. The other wrote the government “does not want Russia to support us, preferring being in the hands of the Anglo-Americans, who make a habit of tripping us over and then we call the Russian to help.”

Simerini’s hysterical columnist Costakis Antoniou asked whether Kasoulides was acting as the “press spokesman of the sultan”.

MILITARY service will be reduced by 10 months for all new recruits the government announced on Thursday morning taking everyone by surprise, especially the patriotic parties which could not risk opposing the move for fear of losing votes. The decision is a super vote-winner, but only DISY will benefit from it in May’s parliamentary elections.

The vote-winning does not end there. The government plans to hire 3,000 soldiers on contracts to cover the needs of the National Guard at an annual cost of about €35 million. But will it find 3,000 male Greek Cypriots willing to join the army as privates? Probably not, which was why Defence Minister Christoforos Fokaides said the posts would also be advertised in Greece.

There is a big risk in this plan. Once 3,000 are hired, they will become unionised, demand more money, a hazardous work allowance and refuse to leave when their contracts expire.

THE FUNERAL of Solon Triantafyllides, the former chairman of the Bank of Cyprus and its driving force during the golden years, attracted all the great and the good of the capital. Solon, who passed away at the age of 84 last weekend, had been chairman of the bank from 1988 to 2005, overseeing the expansion in Greece, the arrival of Russian money and years of high profitability.

He committed one big error. On leaving the bank, he made Andreas Eliades CEO. The megalomaniac Eliades led the bank to its eventual collapse and the wiping out of all its shareholders, the old money of Nicosia. Many of these former shareholders, now known as the nouveau pauvre, were at the funeral to bid a final farewell to Solon.

Eliades was not there to pay his respects to his benefactor, the man who had believed in him and gave him the opportunity to destroy Kyproulla’s biggest and wealthiest business. He was probably afraid to make an appearance, as the nouveau pauvre, despite their good breeding, could easily have turned into a lynch mob on seeing his face.

IS THERE any good reason why the taxpayer is subsidising small television stations? Four such stations, Plus, Extra, Capital and Mad are each receiving 90 grand from the government. The money goes towards covering the 50 per cent of the €180,000 annual fee they each have to pay the Velister television platform.

Not satisfied with just this, the owner of Mad TV, who is also the owner of Kathimerini newspaper, has been pressuring the government to exempt his station from paying the annual fee of €51,400 to the Radio Television Authority. He wants the new broadcasting law being drafted to exempt Mad TV, which just re-broadcasts music videos of the similarly named Greek station, from paying a licence fee.

The owner has not had his way yet, but it would be no surprise if he does. The taxpayer could be lumbered with 140 grand bill just so someone can play the TV big-shot. And he does not even belong to a union. What is our world coming to?