Paul the Octopus Says Bring Back the Duchy of Cleves

I didn't want to do this, I swear I didn't. The World Cup was silly enough, I thought, without joining everybody else in the universe and making a blog entry about Paul the Sodding Octopus. But it is no use, like a car accident it draws me to it and I just have to do it. So, with deep reluctance and a certain amount of self loathing, here we go.

How about that octopus huh? Right every single time. I know a hedge fund or two that would probably make it the highest paid invertebrate in the world if it cared to wander along for a job interview. And it isn't just the octopus, the whole animal kingdom seems to be getting in on the act. Over in Australia we have Hugo the Tortoise. Hugo is a Galapagos tortoise which apparently selected Spain to win the World Cup as well. For sixty odd years Hugo slumbered in well deserved anonymity and then, for reasons I can't really explain, the Today Show dragged him out of obscurity and asked him to pick the winner of the World Cup. It goes deeper than that however. Just last Friday a team of paleontologists working in a remote area of Belize unearthed a fossilized tyrannosaurus rex skull with a placard reading "Spain 2010" clamped between its teeth.

I may have been lying about one of the above but you get the idea. Everything that crawls, flies, wriggles or humps your leg at inappropriate moments was backing Spain to win the World Cup. Sounds like a pretty fair description of their support base to me. Apologies to Edgardo if he reads the above.

Meanwhile in Barcelona delight at winning the World Cup has been made a little embarrassing by the fact that they are currently agitating not to be part of the country that won it. Catalan independence, or autonomy or whatever is something that crops up from time to time to remind us that no matter how small the countries in Europe get there are always people who want to make them smaller. Belgium is always on the verge of splitting in two despite the fact that if somebody extended their bathroom they'd create a border incident. Even Britain is not immune. I read one commentator after the recent election who suggested that the Tories should just cut Scotland and Northern Ireland loose and rule England where they actually won a majority. His point seemed to be that both those places essentially live on welfare and that England would be financially better off without them. Possibly true but if the English got rid of the Scots and the Irish who would win their wars for them?

As for creating smaller and smaller countries, we can't keep doing that forever. What are they going to do? They can't all become tax havens. If you think the EU is a mess now just wait until Germany splits into its component parts. At its height (or depths depending on your point of view) the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation had over a hundred independent self governing bodies. Some of them didn't have a hundred bodies of any description living in them.

This rush to separatism does have one useful advantage. It can provide gainful employment for Paul, Hugo and the anonymous t-rex until the next World Cup. They can be presented with the flags of all the hopeful would be nations and the ones they select get a seat at the UN. The rest just have to go back to being part of Spain or Belgium or Great Britain or Germany. Paul, who lives in Oberhausen may well decide to give independence to the Duchy of Cleves which I think encompassed the area he now lives in. It's difficult to tell as Germany had states the way a dog has fleas and Oberhausen didn't exist at the time but I think my geography is accurate (or to put it another way, I don't really care).

Now that Catalonia, Cleves and the Bits of Belgium That Don't Speak French are independent countries just imagine how much more exciting the World Cup is going to be. Or on the other hand don't. I have been waiting for the end of the World Cup for one simple reason. I want to see a FIFA official shove one of those damn vuvuzelas up a supporters arse. On a somewhat sadder note it is almost certain that Paul won't be around for the next World Cup as his type of octopus only lives for a couple of years. Pity we can't say the same for people who blow vuvuzelas. Although since they live in South Africa perhaps we can.

My prediction for the next World Cup; the Duchy of Cleves to win on penalties against whatever is left of Serbia once the Serbians decide they want independence too.