Greece with the help of Goldman Sachs “cooked the books” to gain entry into the European Union. Very early on Brussels discovered their shenanigans but political correctness dictated that it would be better to live with the lying trickery of the Greeks than to throw them out. Today Greece needs $60 billion (a drop in the bucket for America these days) to pay the piper. The Greek government is literally doing nothing about reining in its expenses and expects its E.U. partners to come to the party. By the time Brussels gets around to slapping Greece on the hand they will need another $60 billion to bail them out. The cost of government and the social programs within the European Union makes President Obama look like a miser! The most outrageous fact about the E.U. is millions of people are employed by governments with little oversight and certainly no accountability.

Example of bureaucracy gone crazy; the closing down of airspace in northern Europe, because of a little steam and ash belching from a volcano in Iceland. It seems that Great Britain and Germany were competing for the village idiot of the year award when their bureaucrats unnecessarily disrupted commerce and peoples’ lives by shutting airports across their countries. Although in the last fifty years three jet aircraft have lost power for a short time flying directly over erupting volcanoes, not one aircraft has fallen out of the sky nor has one life been lost. Everyday a near miss is recorded at busy airports around the world because of antiquated air traffic control systems.

To shut half the world down for a week and cause so much chaos when the facts were there was literally no safety issue involved whatsoever, to me demonstrates what a ridiculous world we now live in . The political leaders of Great Britain and Germany in particular are nothing but gutless wimps bowing to bureaucracies they both helped expand, when common sense should have prevailed. The shut down was absolute overkill and those morons responsible should not only be fired but also thrown behind bars for creating so much misery to so many innocent victims. I bet you dollars to donuts, nothing will happen; in fact I suggest the European Commissioners will probably create another layer of bureaucracy based in Italy to monitor the world’s volcanoes.

Now I am a believer in saving the whales and I am concerned about the depletion of stock in the world’ fishing grounds, but when it comes to idiots telling me that cow farting is going to ruin the ozone layer it puts much into perspective for me. The world is going nuts listening to these university types who seemed to get paid to seek publicity instead of teaching students to become productive citizens. Battery driven cars pose more problems to the environment once their batteries reach the end of their life and need to be disposed of than a gasoline driven car with its emissions. Just like old computers, they will be exported to the rubbish dumps of China for “recycling”. There we will see children standing over Bunsen burners separating all the chemical elements that make up a lithium battery.

This carbon trading nonsense is just nonsense. I would love to claim the cowboys Wall Street were behind it, but it was the liberal left wing tree hugging loonies who convinced European and other socialist governments it was a great idea. I cannot think that by rewarding a company/country for converting from gasoline to ethanol is a good deal for the world. Converting grazing land into corn fields poses more environmental risk than sucking oil out of the ground. What’s more the cost of ethanol (unless it is government subsidized) is such most of the world could not afford top fill their cars with it!

When are we going to see common sense prevail in our desire to protect the world’s environment? I say we start by boycotting all crap that comes out of China. That would solve 50% of the problem virtually right away. If it means Wal-Mart goes out of business, then great. I couldn’t wish for a better casualty in the fight to reduce pollution.

Kraft is half the size of Cadbury’s and who is buying who? It makes no sense whatsoever. Over the last few years with the new Stitzer leadership, Cadbury’s has gone from being a British-based confectionery manufacturer, where their original and main plant in Bournville (their own village outside of Birmingham) employing 30,000 plus just thirty years ago to where it is now less than 2,500. Of the worldwide workforce of 45,000 only 6,000 are in England. Cadbury’s confectionery was renowned for its hearty content. Real sugar and cocoa butter was used exclusively in their chocolates for nearly two centuries. In the quest to reduce costs, plants all over England have been closed down under Stitzer and third world countries like Poland and Thailand have benefited from the change. Palm oil, a cheap alternative to cocoa is now the major ingredient in a Cadbury’s chocolate bar.

Quite frankly the fit is now perfect for Wall Street; Kraft with synthetic cheese and other junk food and Cadbury with its phony chocolate and a merged company laden with huge debt. What was wrong with Cadbury’s as it used to be? It had a global reputation for excellence, it had nearly two centuries of tradition and while many of its factories were built in the nineteenth century, tens of thousands of English families benefited from a family business which was a model for top corporate governance. As a kid arriving home from school in those bleak New Zealand winters, I remember well being greeted by mom for years with a cup of hot Cadbury’s Bournville cocoa made with milk and two slices of marmalade toast.

So what do we have to look forward to? No doubt, “re-engineering” to reduce costs will quickly take place. The remaining Cadbury factories will probably be shut down around the world except Asia and China will be the biggest beneficiary. We will be able to look forward to candy full of anti-freeze for flavor, melamine to give us the false protein reading, and contaminated local Chinese milk powder to make us puke! The thought of the “new” Kraft makes me want puke without trying their new range of products!