Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.
First, some non-congratulatory self-congratulations… This week marks the 5th birthday of this little column. To celebrate, I doubled my weekly order of Jean-Claude Juncker-branded gin.
In classic journalistic fashion, on September 6, 2019 (the day Robert Mugabe died. Coincidence? Yes!) I was given a good hour’s notice before the deadline and we had no names after my initial suggestion was “I hate the following …” vehemently denied.
The first column was all about Brexit (as were many that followed) and the second was about the stupid job titles given by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to her team of commissioners, which is fine and dandy because she’s going to do it all over again. Anyway, we’ve had a full European Commission term (and as we all know, Commission years are like dog years), half a Trump presidency and almost 28 British Prime Ministers (not gonna lie, Liz Truce was scoring spectacularly. Batshit crazy). index before it explodes) but not Emmanuel Macron, who bravely soldiers on despite being as popular with the French as putting extra butter on a croissant.
Anyway, enough nostalgia and on to this week’s Shower of Bastards (another rejected title for this column).
Social media wags have suggested that Ticketmaster and Ryanair merge to create the worst company in the world but the former needs no help in that regard. After thousands of Oasis fans were fleeced out of their hard-earned cash thanks to its “dynamic pricing” system, the ticket-selling firm’s reputation for being awful has been pulled back into the public eye.
“The goal is to give fans fair and safe access to the best tickets, while enabling artists and others involved in staging live events to price tickets closer to their true market value,” the ticketing website said.
Translation: “Money. give me the money I am motivated by money.
Suspended Labor MP Zarah Sultana said the “nationalisation of Ticketmaster”, not unreasonably, after horror stories emerged of people spending thousands of pounds/euros to stand in grounds and watch some man in the park for two hours.
Artists are of course involved in ripping off their fans. That said, I suspect Liam Gallagher (who once said: “The Big Bang Theory? Not really a theory, is it? What, an explosion and that was it? Boring boring if you ask me”) dynamic pricing.
And yet, thanks to Spotify (“Did someone say Ticketmaster is the worst company on earth? Grab my beer”), artists no longer make any money by selling their work so they need to monetize by playing live.
Anyway, thanks for reading for the past half century. General Service (by which I mean Donald Trump “mangled apricot hell beast“) will resume next week.
Caption Competition
“Putin is visiting, so these talks will be intense.”“Did you just say ‘in the tent’?”
Can you do better? Email [email protected] or on Twitter/X @pdallisonesque
Last time we gave you this photo:
Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best of our postbags — no prizes other than the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is worth more than cash or booze.
“We’re quite Liam and Noel, yes?” By Michael McLaughlin
Paul Dallison is Deputy US Editor of Politico.
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