Loose cannons

Business as usual

"It's true I expect controversy. But on the other hand, we have capitalism now. We're in business. This is money." Polish entrepreneur Ryszard Stunzo, who plans to open a restaurant in Gierloz (the site of Hitler's Wolf's Lair) featuring waitresses dressed "in Nazi-like uniforms".

Comeuppance

David Irving, the right-wing British "historian", was fined $12,000 in a Munich court for claiming that Jews did not die in the gas chambers at Auschwitz, reports the Guardian Weekly. The court dismissed his appeal against conviction and tripled his original fine.

Dickie

Romantic novelist Dame Barbara Cartland, defending Prince Charles' right to the throne, said it was nonsense to talk of succession passing to Prince William: "He's a little boy. We don't know what he's going to turn out like. Charles will make a fine king. His uncle Dickie said so."

And profits up

"The message of course is — let's keep our heads down." — British Petroleum internal memo on the Braer oil tanker disaster, leaked to Greenpeace.

Who's a racist?

"Of course he was British to the bootstraps. Would we have wanted him to be Asian to the thongs?" — Bulletin journalist and social reactionary David McNicoll on Robert Menzies.

Modesty

The Times described Winston Churchill at the time of his death in 1965 as "the greatest Englishman of his time". Robert Menzies might have disputed this assertion, but Churchill would have concurred. Faced with the prospect of being killed in battle as a soldier, Churchill said he could not believe that "the Gods would create so potent a being as myself for so prosaic an ending".

Let me rephrase that ...

"A white picket fence." — A US admiral's description of US ships surrounding Haiti to prevent refugees fleeing by boat to the United States.

From GLW issue 85