A new axis of evil spoils birthday celebrations

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.

First up, some unasked-for self-congratulations … this week is the 5th birthday of this little column. To celebrate, I’ve doubled the weekly order of Jean-Claude Juncker-branded gin.

In classic journalistic fashion, on Sept. 6, 2019 (the day Robert Mugabe died. Coincidence? Yes!) I was given a good hour’s notice before deadline and we had no name after my initial suggestion “I hate the following people … ” was harshly rejected.

The first column was all about Brexit (as were many that followed) and the second was about the stupid job titles given out by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to her team of commissioners, which is nice and apt seeing as she’s about to do it all over again. Anyway, we’ve outlasted an entire European Commission term (and as we all know, Commission years are like dog years), half a Trump presidency, and approximately 28 British prime ministers (not going to lie, Liz Truss was scoring spectacularly on the Batshit Crazy Index before she imploded) but not Emmanuel Macron, who soldiers bravely on despite being about 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 world’s most evil company but the former doesn’t need any help in that regard. After fleecing thousands of Oasis fans out of their hard-earned cash thanks to its “dynamic pricing” system, the ticket-selling firm’s reputation for being awful has been pushed back into the public eye.

“The goal is to give fans fair and safe access to the best tickets while enabling artists and other people involved in staging live events to price tickets closer to their true market value,” the ticketing website said.

Translation: “Money. Give me money. I am aroused by money.”

“Nationalise Ticketmaster,” suspended Labour MP Zarah Sultana said, not unreasonably, after horror stories emerged of people spending thousands of pounds/euros to stand in a field and watch some men in parkas for two hours.

The artists are of course complicit in ripping off their fans. That said, I doubt Liam Gallagher (who once said: “The Big Bang theory? Not really a theory, is it? What, one explosion and that was it? Bit fucking boring if you ask me”) is up on the nuances of dynamic pricing.

And yet, thanks to Spotify (“did someone say Ticketmaster was the most evil company on the planet? Hold my beer”), artists no longer make any money through sales of their work so they need to monetize playing live.

Anyway, thanks for reading for the past half-century. Normal service (by which I mean calling Donald Trump a “mangled apricot hell beast“) will be resumed next week.

CAPTION COMPETITION

“Putin’s visiting, so these talks will be intense.”
“Did you just say ‘in tents’?”

Can you do better? Email pdallison@politico.eu or on Twitter/X @pdallisonesque

Last time we gave you this photo:

Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best from our postbag — there’s no prize except for the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is far more valuable than cash or booze.

“We are quite the Liam and Noel, ja?” by Michael McLoughlin

Paul Dallison is POLITICO’s deputy EU editor.