Is there ever a good time to tell the French not to drink wine?

Now this is quite exciting. Generally I don’t go anywhere near the Hello from Hong Kong world on the days known as Saturday and Sunday, as they are designated ‘Uninterrupted Packer-Pies time’, without work or anything else getting in the way.

However, I did have every intention of writing you a posting on Friday, but simply ran out of time – the reason being that I suddenly decided last Saturday to submit an entry into a short story competition, last Saturday being the deadline of course. Upon checking the website where you have to register your details, I discovered that they’d had technical difficulties (don’t we all) and so had extended the deadline until Friday. So although I’d been good and actually written the story, I had to spend most of Friday editing out the 588 extra words (there was a limit of 2000, y’see). By the time I’d finished, it was almost time to start getting ready to go and meet Mr Pies as we had a night of japes planned on board a junk boat for a harbour cruise (free bar, no less), followed by a 10-course Chinese dinner.

Not wanting my witty commentary to go to waste, I’d thought I’d let Pies spend some time with his guitar and post today instead.

Bit of a news review today, chaps. I know, I know, I can hear your groans from here but there were actually a couple of funny snippets amongst all the usual doom and gloom recently. Well. I found them funny, anyway.

You've got to love French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the cheeky little teetotaller and what I can only assume is his odd sense of humour. Otherwise, why on earth would you choose the middle of a global recession, a time when everyone's depressed anyway, to get your Ministry of Health to release the cautionary advice: don't drink any more wine.

Er...excusez-moi? That's like telling the English not to drink beer (even Gordon Brown knows better than that), the Spanish to lay off the sangria and the Italians to pour all the limoncello down the sink. Drinking wine is what makes the French, well, French! But apparently, according to findings from the National Cancer Institute, one glass of wine a day will increase your chance of contracting cancer by up to a whopping 168%.

Now hang on just a cotton-picking minute - wasn't there a study (at some point recently, I can't be expected to know all the specifics!) that said moderate consumption of wine, particularly red, actually helps to prevent cancer? All seems a bit fishy to me. Plus the fact that the eventual knock-on effect of the French drinking less wine, is that they'll not need to produce as much, so less will end up being exported to the rest of us that enjoy a good vin rouge - disaster!

The next item on today's agenda is absolute proof that Americans do not understand satire and really are lacking in a sense of humour. The New York Post published a cartoon on Wednesday which links two of the recent US news stories in a satirical way, which sparked a right old furore, with protesters chanting outside the newspaper's headquarters that it should be shut down. (Slightly melodramatic, methinks.)

The cartoon is based on the following: that weighty tome that is either going to have Obama hailed as a national hero or will kill any chance of a second term as Pres, the stimulus bill; and a chimpanzee which was being kept as a pet in Connecticut, that savaged and critically injured a woman, and had to be shot by the police.

I'm sure the stimulus bill has garnered enough international attention for you to not need me to go into detail, but in case the chimp story didn't make it - 15-year-old Travis (that's his name) was toilet-trained, used the internet, dressed himself and drank wine from a stemmed glass (though lord knows why you would be giving a chimpanzee wine to drink) but apparently he did suffer from mood swings and could be aggressive, as male chimps are prone to being. On this particular afternoon, he got a bit antsy so the woman (we'll call her Crazy Lady) that kept him as a pet (exotic pets are actually banned in Connecticut, but because she had him before the law was passed, she's allowed to keep him. Speechless. I'm actually speechless.) called her friend to come and help her calm him down. When the friend arrived, Travis attacked her. Crazy Lady told police that he might not have recognised her friend because she was wearing her hair up, and that's why he went for her.

After he also attacked the police, one of them shot him several times and the incident was over. Until the cartoon man got out his pencil. And some Americans went crazy, some saying the drawing is tantamount to calling for Barack Obama to be assassinated. Some of the other comments:

"[it's] troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys." (Reverend Al Sharpton, civil rights leader)

"To compare the nation's first African-American commander-in-chief to a dead chimpanzee is nothing short of racist drivel." (Barbara Ciara, president of the National Association of Black Journalists)

"a throwback to the days when black men were lynched" (State Senator Eric Adams)

Erm, no it's not. And is it just me, or are people essentially going out looking for racism in this age of political correctness, so they can show how unracist they are by pointing the finger at everyone else? I certainly think so after reading some of the comments posted in response to the article that The Times ran on the protesting. Though there was no way I was reading them all - there are 152 so far!

These two were more along the lines of what I thought when I read about the uproar:

"get a grip - it was satire," says K Brown, Frankfurt, Germany (notice it's a European that has some sense)

(you can always rely on a Geordie for some straight talking) "grow up," says Phil Mann, Newcastle Upon Tyne

And then there was Anne Craig, from New York City, who seemed to have completely missed the point:

"Bush was often compared, amusingly so, to a chimpanzee (which, by the way, are NOT monkies [sic]) - (yeah, that's the part to focus on, Anne) - ...but never a murdered chimp. What is so horrific in this cartoon is the violence and implication of murder."

Now, I really don't think those coppers would agree to the claim that they 'murdered' poor old Travis - he was attacking everyone! That's what their policemen do - if it had been a human threatening other people's lives, he'd have got a bullet too.

Seriously. The world's going a bit mad, if you ask me. Or maybe it's just Americans and the French. Who were always mad.