It's Summer: Quit Carping And Enjoy It

Happy days should be here again. Summer has arrived and the Moscow sun, reputedly capable of shining for whole hours at a time, has started to put in sporadic appearances. It has even generated sufficient heat to lure millions of city flowers into bloom. They may only be dandelions, but watered by the rains they have gamely pushed their way through a winter's discarded cigarette butts and burst into life.Suddenly, babushkas have been caught smiling, girls are wearing sundresses, picnics are being planned and we can all sit on our balconies sipping sundowners, the calm of the warm evening air broken only by the rhythmic sound of distant semi-automatic weapon fire as another commercial negotiation reaches its climax.Summer is definitely here. You can tell that because nearly all the ice cream sellers have disappeared off the streets.So are we all happy? Well, it appears not. This newspaper's team of dedicated eavesdroppers is reporting a disturbing increase in Westerners' whining. Foreigners who stoically bore the worst the Moscow winter could throw at them seem to be getting grumpier the more the temperature rises.Some of the bellyaches are predictable. They include "the terrible dust," mosquitoes, the heat inside the metro, the proliferation of beggars and the lack of air-conditioning, iced beer and hot water (when would they prefer it turned off? February?).Regrettably, the complaining does not stop there. Some of the more novel moans overheard include the length of the light evenings ("I cannot sleep if it is not properly dark"), the presence of neighbors on their balconies ("I am sure they only do it to hear what I am up to") and the distressingly short life expectancy of the kiosk-bought umbrella. Added to this is our surveyors' report of a rise in non-seasonal gripes: apartment rents, cost of international phone calls, intransigence of the local bureaucracy etc.Now there is a way to stop this incessant whining and it lies in the hands of the government. Aware of the country's need for a broad fiscal base, they should propose a tax not only on Westerners' incomes, but on their moaning as well. Sounds crazy? Well no more crazy than some of the other recent ideas from that quarter. And the Moaners' Levy would of course quietly fall fallow after a few months, just like most other tax proposals and laws.Yet, fleshed out with a few credible details (rumors of plans to distribute forms that people could use to report colleagues' complaints and a surcharge on those who start moaning before they have even cleared immigration) we are confident that it would instantly wipe some forced smiles on to gloomy Western faces -- and give all our ears a summer break.