Job Swap 11

‘Borisov’ Category

  1. Job Swap 11

    January 20, 2013 by Christopher Buxton

    The story so far: As part of a European Union Inclusivity Initiative, British Prime Minister David Cameron and the GLB (Greatest Living Bulgarian) have swapped jobs. 

    David Cameron writes

    For the love of Boris will someone tell me what this word chalga means.  My cocktail party was completely ruined by beardy theatre folk and otherwise hot ballet babes accusing me of orchestrating the chalgafication of  Bulgarian society. Someone suggested that I was more interested in silicon enhanced tits than the Nessebur sand-dunes. Did we survive the Turkish yoke, Fascism and Communism to be smothered by boobs and arses?

    Scandals in Bulgaria are like the number 11 bus.  You wait and wait and then three of them turn up at once. You can be sitting by the steamy indoor pool in the Boyana residence for weeks, thinking that being in charge of Bulgaria is a doddle,- just like Boyko said it would be and then bang, bulldozers are demolishing sand-dunes in historic Nesebur, there’s a referendum on nuclear energy that’s worded in a way that no-one understands and your finance ministry has awarded a massive EU grant to a company called Piner that plays folk music on two TV stations.

    Now I quite like folk music. I remember quite fancying Maddy Prior, before I met Sam. And wasn’t Bulgarian folk music very much in vogue in the eighties? I can’t get enough of Kate Bush. So I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about.

    Reluctantly I consult my shadowy minder, Tsvetan. He looks apologetic, mutters something about Bulgaria’s pride and offers me his ipod.  I give it a listen and I get warbling ballad after ballad that would get 5 points on a Eurovision night. “Is this chalga?”  I demand. “No it’s Vesselin Marinov.” “So what is chalga?” But he’s done one of his vanishing tricks.

    I phone up Boyko. He gives me his dirty laugh. “You’re on your own there, Dave!” He does offer me an address of a nice matska who’ll teach me a dance called kyuchek. Very clean, very reasonable, very discreet. I say “No way Boyko, learning the horo was bad enough”

    He changes the subject to Europe. “Why are your MPs getting in such a lather? The EU normally sends me to sleep.” I know Boyko.  I saw the picture of you at the Nobel ceremony. His final words are:  “Don’t worry about referenda Dave.  I know a way of wording them so that nothing changes. Europe is a big pie.”

    Europe is a big pie. Typical!  I must remember to check Boyko’s waistline against Ken Clarke’s when I get back.

    Meanwhile the chalga debate is getting hotter. My minister of culture made a comparison with rap.  Gangsters, sex, drugs.  But as he points out a really vital part of Bulgaria’s economy and a driver for ethnic integration. I remember chatting with Prince Charles about rap. He always wears earplugs when he visits one of his youth projects. I say it’s a shame black people didn’t stick with blues and jazz. He shrugs and says he’s always liked Elgar.

    On the advice of my new media expert a Mr Trifonov, I consulted two experts in the field. But Aziz and Martin Karbovski didn’t hit it off.  They hit each other.  It ended up with them both grappling on the floor, calling each other pederasts. Mr Trifonov suggested they should be stripped to their underpants, greased and locked in a telephone box together.  It would make great TV.

    Talking about TV spectacle, I’ve just seen some bloke in a shiny suit trying to shoot Ahmed Dogan. It just goes to show the need for strict dress code rules at party conferences.


  2. Job swap 9

    October 2, 2012 by Christopher Buxton

    The story so far: As part of a European Union Inclusivity Initiative, British Prime Minister David Cameron and the GLB (Greatest Living Bulgarian) have swapped jobs.  In London Boyko Borisov is having to deal with Conservative Chief Whip, Andie Mitchell who is alleged to have sworn at a Downing Street Policeman.  In Sofia Cameron is feeling bored.

    B.B writes: There’s nothing more dangerous than a wolf with a full tummy.

    I know what they all think of me, but they can just get their mothers to form an orderly queue. The latest is this ex Public School millionaire Dave foisted on me. Rides a bicycle to cabinet meetings and then swears at a policeman because he won’t let him through the gate reserved for my BMW. Apparently he calls the policeman a fucking pleb. And before you ask, I know what a pleb is.  Daddy Toshko explained it all to me when I was his bodyguard. So I don’t need Latin or that goggle eyed Education minister to understand the principles of class struggle. If this man calls a policeman a fucking pleb, what’s he going to call an ex-fireman like me? Fight fire with fire.  I call the Sun.  They can take some topless shots of me digging a hole in the lawn at Chequers and then tucking into pie and chips. Headline: Boyko digs grave for Andie’s political career.

    Talking about their mothers, the Party Conference is just round the corner, and I have to keep a tight grip on my belt and trousers. Those conservative women! I swear they can unzip you at twenty paces just with their eyes; and as for their tummy busting fancy cakes! They’re obsessed with class too. After a couple of sherries at the Oxfordshire County Fair, Lady Whatshername told me she’d always fancied a burly working man in her four poster. I’ll give Christo a ring. We have to keep up our Bulgar reputation for virility. It’s all in the yoghurt.

    I swear Nick Clegg is like Stanishev on some Liberal watered down version of speed. Blink and he’s in the charts, singing he’s sorry; and now he wants to tax the rich. I can’t wipe him off the TV screen. It was bad enough competing with Boris on the fifty metre camera dash all through the Olympics. Find me a motorway to open or even an airport runway.

    I had a kick about with the Chelsea team on Tuesday – made sure the Press were informed. Roman’s well pleased with British justice. I told him it would have been even cheaper in Bulgaria – with half the risk.  Any friend of Vladimir’s. But as Roman pointed out the damages he’d have got wouldn’t have paid for a Chelsea Season Ticket. Out on the field, I went in for a crunching tackle and one of Roman’s overpaid stars called me a fucking Bulgar cunt. I joked that I’d get Vince Cable to look at his tax returns. I may be a pleb but I won’t take abuse from other plebs. I said the same to Volen. And look what happened to him.

    As we say in Bulgaria, even fleas have a spleen.

    Dave’s just rung.  I must save this Andie character’s skin. After all he didn’t go to Eton, but some dump called Harrow. Dave says it’s important that the Cabinet’s seen to be inclusive – part of what he calls the big tent. I say the man’s so far out of his skin he’ll be pissing out on to the bobbies outside the tent flaps. Well set a Bulgarian to work. I invite the Chief Constable round and before you know it he issues a press statement saying that all’s forgiven and forgotten and we can draw a line under everything.

     

    DC writes: George sent me an email. Everything’s tickety-boo in Blighty, he tells me. Such a brilliant wheeze – having such an egregious pleb at the head of our party. Brother Boyko just runs from photo shoot to photo shoot. The Sun loves him. The Guardian’s comparing him to Eric Cantona on account of the puzzling Bulgarian proverbs he keeps coming up with. Every day it’s a battle between Boris and Borisov, who gets the biggest headlines, which is fine by George. As he says the Great British Public have lost track of what we’re up to.

    I have to admit I’m finding it pretty dull here. Life is just a series of anti-climaxes. One day I shiver and find mournful Tsvetanov standing next to me – he tells me that there’s been another lot of spectacular arrests – this time of Muslim militants in Pazardzhik.  I’m jolly pleased as I’ve had Benjamin Netanyahu on the phone every day – usually when I’m playing tennis – and that Karbovski character has been writing more articles about veiled women than wild dogs in Sofia. Next day, I read that the Pazardzhik trial has turned into a farce. There’s no evidence – just a few Saudi books and old scores being settled by the Muftis. I remember Brother Boyko telling me: we arrest them; the judges set them free. I turn to give Tsvetanov a few choice words about the importance of evidence, but find as usual that he’s disappeared.


  3. ‘Nuff police serials says the President

    October 15, 2010 by Christopher Buxton

    President Purvanov – that Dorian Grey of world statesmen – has delivered a veiled rebuke to his arch rival, every Bulgarian’s fantasy-drinking-companion, Prime Minister Boyko Borisov.

    In an address to a local government conference in Albena, Purvanov has said that ordinary Bulgarians have no need of “police serials”. They need calm and reassuring government.

    What he means is that Boyko Borisov and his morose looking Home Secretary should draw back from their sensational highly publicised but so far ineffective campaigns against organised crime and concentrate on the task of making Bulgarians feel better about themselves. Why should ordinary Bulgarians be concerned by extortion in high places when health and education systems seem to be going to hell. As many of the Mayors in his audience may have been feeling the heat of criminal investigation, I’m sure the applause was hearty.

    Some might say this is rich coming from the svelte sophisticated President who has not escaped accusations of corrupt business links over his long reign. Now nearing the end of a second mandate he has worked alongside three improbable Prime Ministers – the barely articulate ex-Tsar Simeon Saxekoburgotsky, the anally retentive pursed lipped Socialist Sergei Stanishev, and now the absurdly populist Boyko Borisov.

    In the first months of Boyko Borisov’s government, not a day passed without headlines reporting arrests of significant criminal gangs along with corrupt high ranking civil servants, magistrates, police and customs officers. The most trumpeted arrests were those of the chief of the National Security Agency and of a band of kidnappers known as “the Blackguards”. Meanwhile highly publicised trials of colourfully named gangsters were roared on from the sidelines.

    A year on and as Boyko takes time out to be filmed lumbering around the football field with his role model, former football star and greatest living Bulgarian, Hristo Stoichkov, it is left to his the sad-faced balding Home Secretary to comment on the fact that hardly any of the previous year’s spectacular arrests have led to satisfactory prosecutions and sentences.

    Lumbering police investigations, incompetent prosecutors, compromised evidence, shaky witnesses and sharp defense lawyers have been key factors in court’s decisions to release suspects on bail pending limitless delays of legal process. Home Secretary Tsvetanov accuses the courts of being in league with organized crime. The Judges in turn fault Tsvetanov’s lack of manners. The vulgar Bulgar has not understood the necessary constitutional separation of Administration and Judiciary. They parrot the textbook constitutional rights of any advanced civil society – just because the whole nation fervently believes the accused are guilty, these wealthy powerful men and women should still have the right to obfuscate and delay, to plead illness and enjoy the comforts of home, in the hopes of eventually establishing their innocence – or at the least the state’s inability to prove their guilt.

    Purvanov’s judgement that the Bulgarian people have no need of such “police serials” is yet another attempt by the fastidious aristocratic Socialist to gain the moral high ground over the right wing bull in a china shop/man of the people.

    Police serials take two forms. They either reassure a trusting public that however dastardly the criminal, the forces of law and order will always win and so justice will prevail. Or (like the successful American series The Wire)they flatter a skeptical audience by demonstrating the complex Dickensian links between criminal gangs and powerful social structures. In either event, police serials are entertaining and satisfying fictions that bear some relation to real life.

    The problem for the Bulgarian public and its self elected spokesmen, is that Borisov’s police series are far from satisfying. In a recent article, Martin Karbovski describes the thin layer of mire that sticks to all aspects of Bulgarian life. Ageing Bulgarians are encouraged to believe that this mire is not so bad. Bulgaria is not Greece or Sicily. But according to Karbovski, the inability of government and judiciary to deal with this mire promotes a feeling of hopelessness in the young and accounts for their mass migration to the west.

    Meanwhile Boyko Borisov picks up a tennis racquet. His press people are showing that he is at least trying to bring criminals to justice. Is that superstar Pironkova around? Fetch up the cameras! Anyone for tennis?