So the Cypriots cop it for having fallen for the honeyed promises of the EU

I had forgotten about Cyprus. I suppose it was lodged somewhere near the back of my mind as a cheap British Mediterranean satrapy usefully divided into two: a southern bit, where our chavs went on holiday, and a northern bit where our criminals hide out from the filth. I was dimly aware that we had allowed them, some time ago, to go their own merry way and that since had followed a predictable descent into barbarism, yet another Ottoman invasion and some sort of coup effected by the useless Greeks. And that’s it, really. I know too that over the years Cyprus has been owned by almost everybody, from the Romans to the Knights Templar and various dissolute rich Venetians, and that almost all of these administrations were preferable to the one they have now, which is as one of Germany’s string of bitch-slapped client states within the democratic, accountable and uniquely successful European Union.