If it has snowed, and folks are slipping all over the pavements, why is it necessary for the one Belgian who actually made it into work before lunchtime to chip sheepishly away at snow covering grass 18 inches away from the pavement? Do they have grit and salt? Maybe they are waiting for the paperwork to be processed, allowing for snow clearance, in which case we can expect work to begin in early July.

This morning, two headlines grabbed my attention: the first concerned a woman who murdered her husband by setting fire to his penis, the second stated that “Belgian MPs back their new government”. I’m not sure which is the least believable. The BBC website refers to the new Prime Minister, Herman Van Rompuy, as “an old style Belgian politician”. This can mean either one of two things: either he is stupid, or he is permanantly drunk. Either way, we can safely assume that this means he won’t show up for work on Mondays, Fridays, or any day that sits adjacent to a public holiday.

I once had an appointment with a Belgian police officer. I turned up only to be told “He is not here today, he had to go to a funeral yesterday”. After no less than 6 attempts to meet with this muppet, I learned that he had returned all my paperwork to the town hall as I “had not turned up”. Perhaps, when we made the initial appointment, I should have double checked with him that he actually wanted me to go to his office, and not some local bar.

Belgium: if it didn’t exist, you wouldn’t want to make it up.

So off I went to see the remake of “The day the Earth stood still”, half expecting to be back on the street about 20 minutes after the flying saucer landed.

This was always one of my favourites; it had it all, sinister alien, robot, big 1950s cars, guns and tanks, exploding people, the bloody lot. Of course we all know that the 50s Sci-Fi genre reflected the cold war fears of middle America. So how would the remake grab our attention? Easy: there is a new bogeyman on the block, and its called environmental degradation.

In the new version, it is not mankind’s growing threat to our extra-terrestrial neighbours that is causing concern to the rest of the Universe, but our bad attitude to the environment. Klaatu, the alien, has come to destroy us before we get to destroy our planet. OK, so why not? Since the end of the cold war we haven’t really had anything to worry us, except maybe grinding poverty and starvation, but that all happens a long way from America or Europe so why should we worry too much about that? Will this be the first of a new genre of science fiction? Time will tell.

As I’m on the subject, in the hope that some Hollywood big-shot reads this, may I pass on a few personal observations?

Firstly, Michael Rennie was great as Klaatu in 1951- a chilling performance from a terrific actor (Rennie was English, incidentally). Keanu Reeves is a hopeless actor, for goodness sake can somebody please show him how to change his facial expression in time for his next role. Secondly, stuntmen make for great action sequences, computer generated special effects are for kids. If I wanted to see a f***ing cartoon, I would have gone to see Mickey f***ing Mouse. This film is all computer generated, and by the way, “the World” is not just America, although the last time I visited Washington D.C. (the bits real people live in, not that nice picture of the White House we see on tv) it looked as if a mini-armegeddon might tidy it up a bit, so feel free to wipe that out for real in the sequel.

Thats another one off my chest.

I was, at that time, an employee of an EU institution. They could give me a certificate, in theory, but there is a problem. The office that gives such certificates to employees cannot help me, as I am not now an employee. The offices that deal with people in my predicament cannot help, as they do not deal with employees, and the problem relates to the time when I was, indeed, an employee.

I tried to call Luxembourg, where all bucks eventually seem to stop. I got a voicemail message that said “We are sorry we cannot answer your call. All our employees are cruising the Pacific Islands with the Socialist Anti-Poverty Action Group. On our return we are scheduled to take 6 weeks sick leave. We would like to take this opportunity to wish you a merry Christmas, and a prosperous 2005″

Tax in Belgium is high. One would like to think the money will be spent on a better filing system, but I suspect that might not be the case. Some investment is also required in the roads and pavements of Brussels. It has been so long since Place de Luxembourg (in front of the European Parliament) has been ploughed, that some paving stones have been trodden down, and are actually level and flush. No doubt this will be rectified as soon as the paperwork is stamped in triplicate.

I did visit the office for paving slabs, which occupies 18 floors at the Ministry of Unecessary Paperwork, on the corner of Boulevard de héros de Waloonian SS and Rue de la Merde, to complain. Being a Monday, it was closed.

Thank you for letting me get that off my chest!

One prominent sufferer is the media mogul Janus Perdue Bland, of the Socialist Bung Takers Party. Having promoted himself from co-Chairman of Trotters Independent Traders (TITs) to supreme Allied Commander of the European Shining Light Party, he found that ESLP has not yet actually acheived any mandate at all. Of course, voter’s mandates are not the main concern of either TITs or ESLP, but without it, that all important political objective, the expense account, becomes little more than a memory.

And so, today, we witnessed in the European Parliament the spectacle of a number of FMS sufferers strolling the corridors of power, hoping to be remembered, or even praying that a former colleague might keel over or be forced to step down due to scandal, thus opening the way to future employment.

Janus, on the one hand, is hoping in the meantime that his condition might be alleviated by an injection of Punts. On the other hand, his rearguard may be able to mount a hostile takeover of TITs (or at least the TITs slush fund) when its guardians are looking the other way. Again.

To prove the point, today’s Moscow Times carries the headline "Grain Producers Search For Place to Store Bumper Crop".

Apparently Russia has enjoyed its best crop for 15 years. Of course, the storage problems have nothing to do with the failing rail infrastructure that makes transportation so difficult, or the corruption that makes transportation so expensive, or the collapse of the export market that means the state will have to subsidise farmers next year.

Carry on, comrades.

There are some real nutters out there…. The KPLO, a Ukrainian Communist group, has turned on the latest Bond girl, Olga Kurylenko, accusing her of consorting with James Bond, the killer of “hundreds of Soviet people”.

Their statement, carried in the Moscow News reads: “In the name of all communists we appeal to you, Olga Kurylenko, wanton daughter of unclean Ukraine and deserter of the Slavic world. The Soviet Union educated you, cared for you, and brought you up for free, but no one suspected that you would commit this act of intellectual and moral betrayal,” the St. Petersburg-based KPLO group’s statement says, going on to call James Bond “the killer of hundreds of Soviet people and their allies…Your peers are engaged in struggles against NATO and you lounge around on the Cote d’Azur. How could you desert your homeland…? Do you really want Crimean girls to be raped by cruel and stupid American marines?”

I once knew somebody who thought Eastenders was real, but this really takes the blini - it seems that Ukrainian communists are as removed from reality as their British counterparts.

Eurosceptics rejoice! Rules governing the size and shape of fruit and vegetables are to be repealed from July of next year.

The curvature of cucumbers and bananas, a subject that has aroused the wrath of retired stockbrokers the length and breadth of middle England, from Bumbledown-on-Sea to Greater Spiffingforth by the Thames, is now to be left to Mother Nature, in a startling admission by the Commission of the limits of its earthly powers.

Economic meltdown and the forthcoming war in the Congo have been put on the political back burner for the moment: “This marks a new dawn for the curvy cucumber and the nobbly carrot,” said Mariann Fischer Boel, Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development.

And they wonder why people point at them and laugh…..

One of the most important aspects of Obama’s election is the fact that this culture of victimisation has been proven to be outdated.

No sensible voter will ever care again what colour a man’s skin is, or what continent his father was born on. Of course, this is bad news indeed for those who make a good living out of the race relations industry, but the simple fact is that people of all backgrounds have shown that they are quite capable acheiving success on their own merits, and many of us will find Phillip’s words insulting. Does it help black people to be told that they are being held back? Of course not. How dispiriting must it be to an aspirational boy or girl to be told by Phillip’s that they are going nowhere because they are black?

Americans are proud of Obama, Africans are proud of Obama, and considering his father was partly a product of a British colonial system (speaking with an educated English accent, we are told), I think we Brits can claim just a snippet of the glory ourselves.

You’re running with the dinosaurs Trevor, time to find a new soapbox.

After a few problems with a scatty barmaid, a colleague whispered to me “All women are going like this - global warming is affecting their brains….”

But deniers were shuffling with delight, eyes spinning furiously, following last week’s snowfall across Europe:  Ha! So much for global warming!” they announced. Actually, increased precipitation is an inevitable result of rising temperatures. Its why the Polar ice caps are thickening at their centres. As ice melts at the edges, the sea warms up a tad, and it snows more inland.

But I can now reveal the real truth about climate change: Nostradamus stated that “When the wings of the Ford Cortina speak to the brother of the pebble, the eigth one will decide.” To me this is absolutely clear - Its all Hitler’s fault.

One job I took on, with great pleasure, when I arrived in Brussels in 2004 was the distribution of poppies for the Royal British Legion.

Each year, i have been impressed by the generosity of my my colleagues.

This year, a couple of anomalies have sprung up, and I would like to share them with the world..

Firstly, my first ‘hit’ was a Polish MEP whose name I will not mention as he is a modest gentleman. In many years of raising money for charity I never saw such a generous donation.  I thank him on behalf of all us veterans for his astonishing generosity.

Secondly, I approached a mixed group of Irish and English in a bar outside the parliament (I think they were lobbyists) and asked them if they might a contribution. They told me to “P…. Off”.

Draw your own conclusions.