Thanks for the Turkish proverb, BwM. Number Ten Downing Street, under de Pfeffel's misrule, deteriorated into the sort of eternal piss-up that'd shame a US frat house. And the bar steward still protests he was hard done by.

Meanwhile, back at the point, last week's New European featured an article by Matthew D'Ancona under the headling American Caesar. I've been thinking awhile that we've been through the reigns of Caligula and Claudius, and are now starting that of Nero. The entirety of the Old Man Log poem bears reading, including the sub-refrain "It was an emergency measure only" tolling like a funeral bell, but it ends:

Yet I am, I must remember, Old King Log.
I shall lie inertly in the stagnant pool.
Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud catch out.

       -- Robert Graves: Claudius the God

But I may be wrong: we may all be in for a time of Domitian.