Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.
Happy 1973 everyone!
Big changes are already afoot, with the French government looking to ban hunting while under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
Hang on, it’s not the 1970s at all, it’s 2023, and you’re telling me it’s legal to wander around the French countryside while armed and off your face on bénédictine?
There will be new fines to sanction “the act of hunting under the excessive influence of alcohol,” as part of a wider government plan on hunting, it was announced this week. That’s because, according to a French Senate report, 9 percent of hunters involved in a severe accident test positive for alcohol or drugs.
The new plan also includes an app mapping out hunting areas and allowing people to “identify hunting-free areas and times” close to their location. Hunters will have to report group events in the app, assuming they aren’t too busy sending drunken dick pics.
And get this, the hunters are furious, with national hunting federation President Willy Schraen telling Franceinfo that such a move would “set rurality on fire.” I’d venture that a pissed-up or high hunter brandishing a firearm is perhaps more likely to set something on fire.
Speaking of drugs, we were all (quite rightly) so busy with Qatargate and wondering if that MEP who always seemed a bit dodgy — no not that one, that one — would be the next to be linked to sackfuls of Qatari cash, that we missed an astonishing story coming out of Albania.
Erisa Fero, IT director for Albania’s state information agency (AKSH), was arrested near the border with North Macedonia while allegedly transporting 58 kg of cannabis. How much is 58 kg, I hear you ask? Well, according to the excellent website Weight of Stuff — it tells you, er, how heavy stuff is — it’s the same weight as two office chairs or a six-piece drum kit with cymbals (do not forget the cymbals), or a bushbuck (which is a small antelope).
According to Vice, police said Fero was using her official government ID to avoid police checkpoints and searches.
Alarm bells should perhaps have been ringing anyway as Fero — and let’s just remind ourselves of her job title, IT director for the state information agency — is a big user of young person’s social media app TikTok, which has, lest we forget, been compared to “digital fentanyl” (don’t tell French hunters!); was told this week to go the “extra mile in respecting EU law” by a European commissioner; and is full of shit videos of people dancing.
CAPTION COMPETITION
“And the successful bidder for auction lot 235 — one of Donald Trump’s old ties — is the German team.”
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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.
“Macron abandons laïcité to offer divine assistance to Ukraine,” by Joel Horowitz.
Paul Dallison is POLITICO‘s slot news editor.
