Hey City Zen!

Nice reminder of all the dangerous cliches that propagate in the European media: The Pigs: the Economist pastiche that's taking on the press. These cliches would be funny in normal circumstances, but they actually cost Southern European nations a lot. Without these prejudices, the approach to the effect the financial crisis had in our nations would have been entirely different. So, I suggest the PIGS nations fight back with our own prejudices, ironically, of course. Keep reminding everybody that without lazy Portugal and Spain figuring out the technology and know-how to navigate the World, Europe and the West would be altogether different. There would have been no America or even a British Empire. Instead of progressive beautiful people living in Ikea-designer houses and Nokia phones, Scandinavia would be populated by illiterate, poor and smelly barbarians. Indeed, without the Portuguese removing the power of the Sultan of Cairo from the Indian Ocean, and the Spanish money from the Americas to feed the Habsgurg nobility, all of Europe would be Ottoman...