Well, what do you know!?

There is a UK radio quiz show called "Brain of Britain", a sort of obscure, sometimes very obscure, general knowledge quiz. In the very early days, a voice over would tell us incredibly obscure facts, to be followed by the same voice saying "Well, what do you know!? This was meant to convey astonishment and wonder at the peculiarities of the human world. However, here I'm being ironic, that is, trying the convey the opposite of the heading: as in 'tell us something we didn't already know', said in a bored voice.

So, when I report, according to an article in The Algemeiner, that "Billions of dollars in international aid granted to the Palestinian Authority may have been squandered, lost to corruption, or misspent, a new report by the European Court of Auditors, the Luxembourg-based watchdog, revealed", you are hardly going to be surprised. Rather, you're more likely to say to yourself "what took them so long to find out?" Or, perhaps, if you're feeling really cynical, "why tell us now? We've known this for years".

If only because people like Snoopy have been trying to tell the world for all those years. If only our "rulers" were as much on the ball as we are.

Faint hope.

By Brian Goldfarb.