Dear mister Verhofstadt, - Van Dievel Consulting

Louis Van Dievel kijkt als marketeer, "verkoper van gebakken lucht", met een guitige blik naar de kleine en grote actualiteit van de week.

Dear mister Verhofstadt,

Enclosed you will find the speech that I wrote as your ghostwriter. I think it will wave a lot of dust when you give your usual lap on it. The Turks will not be happy and the European headpieces even minus.
The fee is 10.000 euro. Please note that VDC does not accept Monopoly money. You tried that "joke" last time, remember? And do not say that you can do it evengood or even better and for less money with Google Translate because that is faint kul.

Yours perpetually,
Louis von Dievel
CEO of VDC, worldleader in baked air

ps. I don't know why I mail to you in English, it must be besmettelijk.

'Mister stoolman or seatman, as you prefer, dear colleagues,

Here I am again with an historical speech for the European Parliament. You remember what I said about the Greeks less than a year ago, don't you. How I made Tsipras smell a poepie. People on the streets came to felicitate me. Good said, mister Verhofstadt, they told me, those lazy ouzodrinkers need a bolwashing.

But now I want tot talk about the Turks. They are the neighbours of the Greeks, so this is all very logical. The Turks drink raki, I know that, mister seatman, I am not from yesterday. And I hear say that you yourself don't spit in a good glass of raki, hahaha, I am only joking.

So Europe has made some kind of agreement with the Turks about the fugitives. When I was a boy, there was a serial on the Flemish television that was called The Fugitive, so I know what I am talking about. The agreement is that Turkey stops the current of fugitives from all these far away lands and that we accept some of them later. A few hundred, maybe. Then they may come with Jetair or Ryanair, which is safer than a little boat on the big see or a walk through all these countries that like not fugitives like Hungary and Austria. And in the meantime, we pay for their food and shelter, so that they die not from hunger or cold.

What we really do, mister stoolman and dear colleagues, is that we outsource the problem. I have looked that word up in the dictionary so I know what I am talking about.

We push the problem over our borders so that we don't have no more the last of all these thousands of fugitives on our streets. They are bad for kusttoerisme, they scare our women and they are not proper on themselves from not washing of course. And they are muslim, which is not a popular religion in our regions.

What we really do is give the big keys of the gates to Europe in the hands of the successors of the Ottoman Empire. I have also looked this up on Wikipedia so don't tell me I know nothing. We give the keys to mister Erdogan, the Sultan of Swing. The sultan may decide who gets a ticket to ride tot Europe. Giving him the keys of our Europe is like giving the keys of the Belgian schatkist to the socialists, that is maybe a comparison that you will understand better, mister seatman, you yourself being some kind of socialist.

Do we think that the Turks are nice people? No we don't. Of course I am not a racist but we have reasons enough not to trust the Turks. How do they treat the fugitives? Do they say, come in you are very welcome here is some hot soup and a cosy and warm little house for you and your family and a school for your kids because it is so cold outside with all this snow. No, they don't. They let them verkommer in nasty camps on the border or let them be exploited by house milkers and people smugglers.

I have seen the images of these poor fugitives bibbering in the snow. Poor buggers. The wheelriders in Paris-Niece may give up racing for a bit of snow on the roads. What must the Syrians think when they see that on Sporza, I ask it you!

The Turks wipe their *** af with the Convention of Geneva. They don't respect human rights, not in the general and not in the particular. They kill the Kurds, they secretly play friends with IS, they say this and they do that, and they want money from us, billions, every time more.

Is Turkey a democracy, mister stoolman and respected colleagues? No no no! They bridle the free press, they intimidate journalists, they put journalists in jail. I have done some intimidating in my time as the Belgian prime minister, I agree, but that was because they did not understand my genious and I have never gone so far as to kill a journalist. Not literally, no.

Shoving the problem on the plate of the Turks will not stop the people smugglers, like you think. You must be seeing blind to believe that. You think, like the Belgian minister Jambon and his skinhead buddy Francken, that closing one gate will stop the flow. That they can now rub their hands in innocence and say that Erdogan is not such a bad guy when he sleeps and that he will take care of our troubles. For he's a jolly good Sultan and so on!

Not at all, say I you, because the smugglers will find another way, another route. Lampedusa will be back in business, may there will be a Maltan route, of an Albanian route, or a Bulgarian route. And who is going to control what the Turks really do with our sourly earned money? Buy weapons, buy women for the harem, buy judges?

About that you had not thought yet, give it but too. I have, mister seatman, because I am a visionary! Like in the old times, when the future was read in the insides of a not too fresh fish or an old chicken.

I hear you already say. it is easy for you, Verhofstadt, to criticise Europe, but what do you do yourself? Well, I had foreseen that question and this is my answer: I have six Syrian fugitives in my nice house in the town of Ghent, where they make themselve useful wit cleaning and walking the dog; I have twelve Afhans in my nice villa in Tuscany, where they make wine (Afhans are known for their wine); and, mister stoolman, I keep four Kurds in my office here in the European Parliament in Straatsburg.

Youmay have noticed them with their big moustaches and their AK-47 guns. Don't be afraid, they are not dangerous, unless they think you are a Turk. And mister chairman, I warn you, you have something of a Turkish pasha, especially when you put that funny fez on your bald head.

I have said.
Now please a big applause or even better a standing ovation, like last year in june.
Thank you very much!'