Apologies my arse!

The most meaningless, abused and pathetic word of the English language, must be, by far, the word apology and all its various derivates, such as apologies, my deepest apologies, please accept my apologies (what if I don't?), please let me first apologise... used countless of times by the most incompetent companies that I had the misfortune to deal with.

Recently, I went to Woolworths where I have asked for a Virgin phone card but I got a Vodafone card instead. I complained to the cashier about it but she replied to me in a I am not bovvered attitude that I have asked for a Vodafone card in the first place. Her manager was incompetent as much as her colleague, so I forwarded a letter of complaint to the Head Office. What did I get? An apology, you guessed right. Did I get my money back? Of course not.

Secondly, I have asked the Southwark council to shut down the hot water in my block for a few hours so I could carry out some work in my flat. I have sent an email and phoned the department in charge of this and I was told I would get an answer in a week.

A week passed and nobody called me, so I decided to speak with the council in person. Guess what? Apparently, the email I have forwarded them didn't reach the person in charge ... how crap service is that? And you guessed right again, they did apologize for the inconvenience. Wow, I felt so much better, all of a sudden, instead of wishing to have a machine gun with me, I would happily swapped it for a tiny machete.

The clerk didn't admit it was a crap service, no no no, apologies yes, admitting to be a bunch of underdeveloped human beings unable to send an email from A to B, no way. Did I get then the work carried out straight away? No. Did they speed up the process? No, again. Did they get the person who screwed up (Carly , I wrote her name down when I made my first enquiry) and kicked her in the shins? The clerk immediately replied that we don't know where it went wrong. Ignorance is blessed, always will be.

But the most horrible thing in this supposed customer service apology rubbish is that you cannot raise your voice because otherwise they don't want to deal with you. And why is that? They are the ones that screwed up in the first place and you have the bloody right to raise your voice, clinch your fist and tell them to go where the sun does not shine.

But no, instead you have to keep your calm and use the only weapon allowed: sarcasm. They can't do anything against sarcasm because it is an indirect, childish, silly and apparently perfectly gentleman's way to deal with a situation. I don't know why sarcasm in this country is so overrated, I guess it's another side of the politically correct culture that is intoxicating our society.

So I asked the Southwark council clerk: "How long do you reckon it would take to sort out my enquiry? She replied that it was difficult to say.

"A week?" She shrugged her shoulders.

"A month? A year? Before or after London 2012?" I re-asked.

Silence.

She was just waiting for me to go away, satisfied with her word APOLOGY stuck right up my arse.

Thank you Silvio

I am not being sarcastic here. I really mean it: thank you, Silvio Berlusconi. Now I remember why I like you, and why I am still proud to be Italian.

"Young, beautiful and suntanned" was not a racist joke, unless by racist we mean anything said by a white man to a black man. If that's the case, and for many people it is the case, please let's just admit that and forget once and for all about freedom of speech and equality rights.

What Berlusconi said was a compliment. After all, would you feel angry if someone had called you young? Or beautiful? Or... suntanned?

Now, the Politically Correct brigade was outraged by that word, "suntanned". For them it was a reminder of Obama's different colour of skin. Really? Oh, but dear Politically Correct hypocrites, it's been months that you are moaning a black man should be in the White House! or White Americans are too racist to vote for a black man... It's been months you were talking about race, so why Berlusconi can not make a simple joke then?

And apart from that, the word suntanned is indeed a compliment in Italy. Italians get fake tan in winter as much as they can, and in summer, if you are not suntanned you are either a vampire or an Englishman.

The most outraged people in this story were politicians from the Italian Left (still pissed off to have lost the election) and silly Italians abroad scared to be judged as racists by the so called more advanced countries regarding immigration but... not Obama! He didn't make a fuss about what Berlusconi had said because he has more brains than all those idiots who were feeling sorry for him. More brains than the media too, insisting that Berlusconi had made a gaffe and should be apologizing.

Berlusconi has all my admiration for not apologizing to the media or to Obama. I am sure that the day the two will meet, they will have a laugh about it.

And now blame Obama (if you dare)

The US has elected the President the world was waiting for, or so the vast majority of the media have told us to believe. He is The Change, they say, the Hope, the New America. On top of that he had more money to spend for his campaign than McCain (income equality anyone?) and he is younger (ageism anyone?) and... this is the best part of it... he is not another God damn white asshole.

From now on, until January, the media will bombard us with Obama, they will convince us to believe that he is the right man to make the world a safe place again, like it used to be (before Bush they mean). But regardless of the stories the media is going to say, there are only two possible outcomes: either Obama behaves like a True Leftie, or he steers to the centre and sometimes, God or Allah forbid, to the Evil Right.

Let's not forget that President Obama has been voted for by many Lefties, and sooner or later, unless he transforms the USA into a new Soviet Dream, he is going to disappoint many people.

Imagine, if Obama does a Bushy thing, like fighting terrorism for instance, what the anti-American brigade will do? Who are they going to blame for the problems in the world? China? Still red. Russia? Too scared. Al Qaeda? Yeah right... Sooner or later America will return to be the enemy number one. But this time they will not have the easy target of the redneck cowboys such as Reagan or Bush, they will have to aim their anger towards... a black man, son of an immigrant... have they got the guts to do that?

I can only think they will invent a "white conspiracy" of some sort. Or focus their anger on Berlusconi, you know, that showman talking about Change, full of money (to run a campaign) white ass-hole...