Just give us the names, Louie
I like countries. I don't mean I like the people in them, or anything soppy like that, and I have no desire to go to any of those hot, smelly, foreign places, I just mean I like the husks and labels: rulers, flags, arms, colonies, and so on. And names. In fact I've got a wee bee in my swollen bonnet about names, and you'd think the United Nations of all people could get their names right, but oh no, Moldova begins with R and Macedonia begins with T and North Korea begins with D and Tanzania begins with U.

Now there are one or two genuine problems with names. 'United Kingdom' looks like a prefix and a naive UN flag-setter-upperer might expect us to figure under G, because that makes sense. So we inform them that, no, we do use the U name by itself quite regularly, in fact more so than the G one. East Timor want to be under T for Timor-Leste even though their official English name is still East Timor: well I'm not too happy with that, but they've had a rough time so let's indulge 'em. El Salvador goes under E but The Gambia goes under G, not really correct, but you can see the reasoning.

But as for the rest! I spose it's not really the UN's choice, but they're being spineless and appeasing. They should have stood firm against the various megalomaniac delegates who wanted loony things done. I imagine Moldova's representative as a Marty Feldman character, pointing out they want to be next to Romania, brushing aside weary explanations of alphabetical order and suggesting they could be Republic of Moldova. The UN finally agree just to make them go away. Then have to deal with Iran wanting '(Islamic Republic of)' after their name, and pointing with a bony finger at the place where the official has been pretending to add it in as they say 'yes, yes' and eventually having to do it for real.

And why oh why is Laos the Lao People's Democratic Republic, who cares?? What on earth is this rubbish about Libya being the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya? They haven't been that for ages, Colonel Quackbiscuit changed it to SPLAJ first then decided that wasn't impressively loony enough so upped it to the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.

Why I'm on this quivering bent is that I heard the Olympics are being attended by 202 countries, and I wanted to know which ones. I mean, that actually interests me. I don't care about the silly people throwing things at each other or breaking into a sweat, but a list of 202 countries is interesting. As there are 191 UN members there must be 11 non-independent countries taking part (or perhaps Vatican City is as well) and I want to know who they are. Or if Nauru aren't taking part, that's 12 others I have to identify, and so on.

No, Athens 2004, a drop-down list is not a list, it is just a nuisance. How am I supposed to do painstaking manipulation on that? And yes I realize there's a special case with Taiwan, so we need some creative naming there, but what are some of these other nonsensical non-countries you've come up with?

I.R. Iran
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Virgin Islands
People's Republic of China (separating it from 'Chinese Taipei')
People's Democratic Republic of Korea (separate from the joint 'Korea')

So anyway, non-independent countries taking part: American Samoa, Aruba, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Taiwan ('Chinese Taipei'), Cook Islands, Guam, Hong Kong ('Hong Kong, China'), Netherlands Antilles, Palestine, U.S. Virgin Islands ('Virgin Islands'), total 12, which fits 191 minus one for a joint Korea. But why none for Guernsey, Jersey, Isle of Man, and Gibraltar; why none for Faroes, Greenland, New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Tokelau, Niue, Wallis and Futuna Islands? Harumph.