If the Mayan Calendar is right, the world will end on Friday, 21 December. This would be a pity.



It would be pity because, if David Tramba of Lidove noviny is right, CEZ will claim its definitive victory over Czech Coal two days earlier.

On 19 December, according to Tramba’s ‘well-informed sources in Brussels’, which I assume to be Alan Svoboda and Daniel Benes, the Commission will issue its long awaited and favourable ruling on its three year investigation into CEZ’s alleged abuse of dominant market power, an investigation launched on the basis of a complaint by Czech Coal.

If both the Mayan Calendar and Tramba’s sources are correct, it means that we shall have less than 48 hours to celebrate CEZ’s remarkable victory, before Planet Earth is removed to make way for an inter-galactic by-pass, and we are all turned into particles of dust.

Don't Panic!

This is not the first time that we have been warned that the end of the world is upon us. Nor is it the first time that CEZ has told us, through its 'well-informed journalists in Prague', that victory was theirs in the battle with the wicked Tykac, whose “aggressive assault on CEZ cannot pay off" -Tramba's balanced new reporting again.

I have lost count of the times we have been informed that CEZ had crushed Mr Tykac and his malicious EC complaint into coal dust, long before the construction of that inter-galactic by-pass would crush him for them.

The funniest victory announcement was made two whole years before the end of the world, by Miroslav Motejlek, at 14.43 on 8 November 2010 to be exact.

Under the headline, “Complaint by Tykac, Bobela and Pudil against CEZ and EPH rejected by EC.”, Motejlek wrote these priceless words: “The European Commission according to Bloomberg has dropped its investigation into CEZ and EPH. Motejlek anticipated such an outcome.”

Don't you just love that? So Tramba would be in good company if his news report in last Friday’s Lidove noviny turned out to be…well, 'inspired' by AMI Communications. Even if both sides deny it, in energy circles it is generally assumed that David Tramba cooperates with AMI Communications. And we would forgive him. After all, it must be hard to write balanced journalism about two such big dogs -both of them might bite! And if Bloomberg and Motejlek can get it wrong…

Wrong fuel in the wrong region

Can the EC be so dim-witted as to think that an infringement it has itself identified as the blocking of grid capacity for a planned lignite-fired power plant in Northern Bohemia could be remedied by the sale of a hard-coal fired power plant in Northern Moravia: Wrong fuel source, wrong region! Such an outcome would be sublimely ridiculous. And it is hardly what Pish-Tush would call, ‘letting the punishment fit the crime’.

There is a chance, then, that both the Mayan Calendar and Tramba’s 'well informed sources' in Brussels got it wrong. And that both 19 December and 21 December will pass in their usual way -in a frenzy of last minute Christmas shopping and crappy office parties.

And that we shall all still be waiting on New Year’s Eve for definitive news of the dawn of a New Era, both for mankind and for CEZ.

Happy Christmas dear Reader! And a Happy New Era!