As an alternative to the fake news, non stop diet of Trump and Brexit bashing that is the BBC, our hotel offers up DW News, a German channel presented in English which offers up a non stop diet of Trump bashing and explanations of why the EU is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Today's winner was a story about a farm in Southern Italy run by a yuppie ancient history graduate which farms donkeys.
The young lady took over the place from her father and now earns an income by selling donkey's milk either as a drink or having turned it into soap or shampoo. The trouble is than donkeys do not yield much milk, just over half a litre per day per animal when in season.But fear not, the yuppie classics student turned farmer sells her milk at 14 Euro a litre. But even this is not enough to cover her costs so, the report, conceded that the farm is reliant on heavy EU susbsidies.
So in real world maths poor folks across Europe pay taxes so that the EU can employ officials to check out a donkey farm and then hand over slugs of cash so that a yuppie can ear a straw hat and designer jeans having a great lifestyle and sell her product at only 14 Euro a litre. Rich folks are the only ones who can afford to pay that and are delighted that the price is not even higher thanks to that EU subsidy. So rich folks get to save money, a spoiled princess gets to play farmer with her donkeys, men in suits are paid great salaries to organise this and poor folks pick up the tab through their taxes.
Naturally DW described this arrangement as "another European success story." Oddly I suspect that I am not alone in not viewing it quite in that manner.