Another "Bolivarian" farce!

You can always tell the summer is almost upon us by the stories that start appearing in the press. The Metro reports:

Scratch-and-sniff cards loaded with the scent of cannabis are being handed out by police to help residents identify dope farms in their area.

Today’s drive, the second phase of a campaign launched last year, aims to educate the public about how growing plants smell so they can alert police.

This news certainly brought a smile to my face at the thought of students and hippies making good use of these items as "roaches" as they roll around the floor stoned and laughing! 

This brings us more amusing news of the antics of the "Bolivarian" socialists, named after some Venezuelan socialist called Simon Bolivar. He was an inspiration (if you can call it that) to the late and unlamented President of Venezuela, he was the one who took over the TV stations for his personal rants plus a song or two for the masses all in the name of...socialism.

Chavez also banned The Simpsons as being "bad for family values" (go figure) and was too "anti-authority", aah, that's sound more like the comrades fears that we have come to love. Not.

Still, Chavez is dead, though his (cough) heir, Nicolas Maduro says he still keeps in touch with the people:

Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela, claims that his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, has appeared on the wall of an underground construction site.

"My hair stands on end just telling you about it," Maduro told Venezuelans on Wednesday, while holding up the photo. "Who is that face? That gaze is the gaze of the fatherland that is everywhere around us, including in inexplicable phenomena."

Construction workers were digging a new subway line in Caracas in the middle of the night when they came across the eerie apparition. Since his death in March, Chavez has taken on a mystical role within the mythology of the country's ruling socialist party. Maduro claims he has seen the spirit of his predecessor multiple times, including in the shape of a bird.

That was a while ago, but madness seems to be compulsory for the followers of Bolivar as The Times (no link £) reports today:

President Morales of Bolivia has made a career from theatrical mistrust of the established order..

His latest wheeze is to design a clock that goes backwards! In a move by the comrades to "set itself apart from the mainstream" visitors to La Paz:

...will be doing double-takes when they look at the clock on the front of the Congress building: its hands move anti-clockwise and the numbers are set in reverse.

How did the working class react?

Locals in La Paz said that most people who saw the anti-clockwise clock failed to grasp its revolutionary potential and simply thought it was broken.

That's socialism for you.

Back to the drawing board, eh comrades!