Gstaad
It was far, far worse than the Rodney King El Lay riots of 20 years ago, and it made last year’s London summer fires look like a kindergarten’s Guy Fawkes party. This was our Kristallnacht, and then some. They had hard faces, harder than a hedge fund manager’s when told a good corner table is unavailable. They came early and there were lots of them. Squat and dark, tall and wide, their fists at the ready, their firebombs hanging like war medals off their badly cut coats. They had pickaxes aplenty, but few brains to accompany them. They screamed abuse, their foul-smelling breath escaping like radiation from a nuke, and just as deadly.
Four billionaires were instantly hacked to death, among them Bernie Ecclestone, whose small size made it impossible to find any of his remains. Seven multimillionaires were also lynched. I fought like a tiger but had both arms broken by the mob, and am typing this with my nose. More than 100 chalets have been torched. I am sending my report to The Spectator plugged into an emergency hospital unit. Gstaad no longer exists. The last thing I remember was their hyena-like laughter as I was passing out. And the horrible smell of burned money. God help us poor little rich people. This is the end.
Well, not quite. Not for the first time I have allowed my imagination to run a bit wild. There were reports of city slickers from Berne coming to Gstaad to demonstrate against us so-called foreign tax-avoiders, but then no one showed up, a bit like finding a beautiful naked woman in one’s bed who happens to be dead. If I sound like a poor man’s Raymond Chandler, it is on purpose. I was looking forward to interviewing some of the demonstrators — there were rumours of Greek communists being flown over — but there I was with my notebook, in the middle of the main street, and the only danger I felt was when a couple of Arab women covered from head to toe emerged from Cartier’s loaded down with goodies.
My buddy Raymond would have described them as having eyes as ‘narrow and as shallow as enamel on a cafeteria tray’. Never mind. To some degree the rich have always secluded themselves from the gaze of the common herd, but this is ridiculous. No one could tell for sure if they were even women; they could have been undercover (no pun intended) demonstrators, even bearded Greek communist undercover demonstrators. One thing is certain, we will never know.
But enough jokes. Chances are that I might have been hurt if there had been a demonstration — protecting the protestors from the wrath of the locals, that is. The natives are not only angry, they’re ready to reach for their pitchforks and teach the city busybodies a few hard truths. Which are the following: the only local employer is the foreign contingent, however indirectly, and the only wealth comes from the taxes foreigners pay to the community. The farmers are subsidised but the rest of the denizens earn their living from us. We buy their food products, spend good money in their restaurants, hotels and shops, and are the engine of the booming local construction industry. And contribute a hell of a lot to the local hospital and philanthropic institutions. A foreigner even buys a school, rebuilds it and donates it to a foundation. There are no locals out of work in the region because of us foreigners. We pay our federal and local taxes, and smile politely while doing it.
So why the beef in Berne? Easy! City busybodies, mostly socialists who think like Balzac — all great fortunes derive from great crimes — believe that foreign residents should pay higher taxes, totally ignoring the fact that we not only pay high Swiss federal taxes in the form of a forfait, as it’s called, but also local ones. A forfait is a deal struck between the Swiss and the foreigner. The Swiss tell you how much they think you should pay, you try to argue a bit, then a deal is struck. The city slickers want to break the agreement, hoping to outHollande that great French clown Hollande.
When I speak with the village people, their reaction to those who wish to change the system is not one I can accurately report in a family magazine. I have yet to find one local who fails to froth at the mouth when I mention Berne and its interference. Here we thought we were enjoying democracy at the village level, with peasants and artisans and innkeepers thinking they were masters of their own destinies, and suddenly Karl Marx emerges from the ashes and is about to ruin a just about perfect little society. I am among the few who reported the harm Bernie Ecclestone did when he bought the Olden hotel, a very old and traditional local inn, and turned it into a boutique hotel for the rich and very ugly. The locals were priced out and some of us older hands made sure the dwarf knew it. (He’s just bought a second chalet for his rather unattractive daughters.) But that is neither here nor there. Gstaad would not exist in its present form without the foreigners. Everyone would be unemployed overnight and would have to move to the cities on welfare. It’s as simple as that. Yet there are those who need a map to find Gstaad who know what’s better for the locals and were ready to come and demonstrate on their behalf. The fact that no one showed up proves the slimness of their argument: better unemployed and on welfare than earning a very good living off foreigners. Go figure, as William Tell never said.
Comments