Insular activity

I despair. Slowly. Britain's Labour Party for no other reason than to strike a blow that actually hits David Cameron on the nose, betrays whatever political principles it pretends to have to join forces with the rabid right-wing nutters in the Tories and vote for a cut in EU spending which it knows the Prime Minister, who has increasingly isolated himself from whatever allies Britain used to have in the EU, cannot possibly achieve. It is clever politically if you don't mind giving the impression of the purest cynicism, as the result will surely be for Cameron to be more isolated from the bulk of his party. But in terms of Realpolitik it is flawed. Sadly, sadly nobody in British politics, except perhaps Nick Clegg - who has tarnished his own reputation beyond hope of recovery - sees that Britain's attitude towards the rest of Europe (people in Britain no longer say that as we did 20 years ago, instead today everyone says 'Europe' as if it were somewhere far away instead of our own continent) means that it may inevitably drift apart and become a global irrelevance, with nuclear missiles!

Come to think of it that old joke about needing them to 'protect us from the French' may start to be what people really think: to the extent that some Tory europhobe actually threatens to fire them at Calais. The never have understood fallout.

So 'Silly Billy' Hague has gone off to Brussels to tell the EU 'we' back in Britain have had enough of Europe. Why does he think that he as a supporter of a supposed democracy barely not yet 100 years old in granting universal suffrage and has fixed, often gerrymandered constituencies that guarantee 'safe seats' to members of one party or another, and give five years of almost untrammeled power to a a party with substantially less than 40 per cent of the vote (ignoring the up to 30 per cent who don't even vote because the system is so biased) think he has the right to claim to represent the 'British public'. Let's got for a referendum on the EU, Bill, and let's do it at the same time with a 'referendum' on your government. This time, even under our fallible corruptible system, you might not like either answer.

Scotland the Brave

Spent an evening in a bar in Frankfurt during the Book Fair teasing a couple of Scots (obviously while posing as a German) about why they don't have a proper country of their own. It's the sort of conversation that would end up in a fight if they thought I was a fellow Brit, but only because of the built-in inferiority complex.
Given the chance to explain to a foreigner, most Scots genuinely want to make their position clear. On this basis the group of three lads in their 20s came out 2-1 for remaining within the Union (which is more or less what current opinion polls show), but only because they fear for the economic consequences. Every sentence was preceded by "I don't like the English but..." There is obviously a fear of the new and unknown, but if their economic future was secure it seems most Scots would vote for their own national sovereignty again. The problem is largely now self-esteem. Salmond has a battle on his hands but I get the feeling he enjoys a battle. What happens in Catalunya may be hugely important.
Meanwhile the British imperialists keep threatening Scots that they will need a passport to venture south of Berwick-upon-Tweed, totally ignoring the fact that UK already has a passport-free agreement with the Republic of Ireland. Of course, it would be difference of Scotland joined Schengen, which of course it won't while the rump Uk remains paranoid about its already permeable borders shielded by an army of bureaucracy and inefficient technology - always destined to be futile while the open frontier with Ireland (indispensable for peace in Northern Ireland) remains, though no doubt some Tories would like to have British officials guarding the 'frontier' at Dublin airport too.
Scotland can go it alone, as a member of the EU, and will be able to choose to adopt sterling or the euro as its currency at will. Again there is much misunderstanding about this: any country can effectively choose any currency it wants, with the proviso that it accepts that the issuing central bank, be it Bank of England or European Central Bank is in charge of its exchange rates. Montenegro, for example, split from Serbia in 2006 and adopted the euro even though it is as yet not even part of the EU.
Most of the English big sticks being waved are hollow. It's a question of whether or not 'Scotland the brave' is just a saying.

A New Europe is a faint possibility

The Norwegian Nobel Committee's decision to award the Peace Prize to the EU received the usual withering comments from the British press, almost none of them aware that they were all locked in copycat land. Since when do so-called 'controversial' columnists such as the Sunday Times' Rod Liddle think they are reinforcing their reputation by saying what everybody else says? Yawn.
Meaningless as it may be in some ways to give prizes like this to institutions, it was a well-timed gesture to draw attention to what has actually been achieved in Europe over the past 60 years. It is easy to draw attention to the financial problems and bickering, but at least there is a framework within which to resolve them. The EU was a magnet for the post-Cold War states of Eastern Europe; it has stopped the world becoming a place of polar antagonisms between the superpower USA and its Chinese and Russian rivals. It may not be an example of perfect harmony (what is?) but it is a model for another way of doing thins. I hate to say it but if the British cannot work with anyone else, they should leave. Although come 2014 a solitary England-Wales non-Schengen paranoid customs and frontier zone may not be an attractive place either to live or invest in.

Stale Frankfurters

In Frankfurt for world's biggest book fair. Enjoyed dog end of evening playing my sad old game on nice visiting Scots: 'Why you belong to England still?" Sort of stuff that would get you killed if said in English accent but if they think you're German, they give you high five for every time 'we' stuffed England in international football. Don't mention the war means nothing to Scots, except possibly Culloden, But they still by and large are scared of independence; 'We cannae do without England" (So you are like beggar who afraid to work?) Now now. But it's one hell of a way to make them think about it.

Lord West lives up to his name: we're not European, he says.

Just listened to the preposterous Lord West of Spithead (who will rid us of these ridiculous barons?), a former first Sea Lord (think King Canute in a suit) telling Channel 4 news that the proposed merger between British Aerospace and the French and German defence industries is dangerous because it might "make the Americans think we're Europeans, which we're not." You have to ask if he has ever looked at a map!!! Even Admiral Nelson would have acknowledged Britain as a European power!!!
But no, the great Lord West wants us to be an American lackey to the end of time. He talks as if Germany and France were still potential rivals, even enemies, rather than our partners to whom we are tied by more treaties than ever bound us to the Americans, a country we have also been at war with twice (1776, 1812) but then modern ex-admirals have no sense of history.
As far as his lordship goes, our history begins and ends with 'the war' - don't ask which one! Sure he knows about more recent conflicts, all of which (save the Falklands) we have been dragged into by the United States. Sure, again, we might not have won that one without US help, but that remains a small war along way the importance of which was in helping Mrs Thatcher win re-election and restoring temporarily a sense of overblown martial pride.
The real thing on West's mind, it was soon revealed was that he fears cuts in defence spending. He and his old mates live only on 'power projection', the macho thrill of big aircraft carriers. He complained our European partners spend 'next to nothing' on defence. I haven't noticed either being invaded recently I haven't noticed either facing a greater terrorist threat than we do, rather less in fact.
The only good thing is that he is now Chancellor of Southampton Solent University. I suspect his power to do harm there is much diminished. Shame on Channel 4 to give him the limelight, but I dare say they couldn't find anybody else.

Going like a bomb?

At last a flicker of common sense - sadly one that had to be lit by poverty - in that the ludicrous, unnecessary and disproportionate billions due to be spent on Trident, buying an American weapons system that we don't need, would never use and is only intended as a so-called deterrent against a threat that no longer exists, is to be put on the back burner.
For far too long a nuclear 'deterrent' - i.e. a big stick not hidden behind our back but waved in public like knuckleduster rings on the hand of a classroom bully - has been considered the sole means of Britain being able to 'punch above our weight'. Has anyone ever thought what that means? William Hague punching above his weight. Is that what you really want? Giving macho cojones to a man who still hasn't come up with a convincing reason why he shares a room with a young male aide when travelling on government expenses. Not that I care tuppence about what he does after hours, but I think such a dodgy attitude to the truth ill-befits someone we license to go around waving nuclear missiles!
I would have been happier when Robin Cook was foreign secretary - not in the least (ha ha) because I would have trusted his prime minister Tony Cojones Blair to make the right decisions (did he ever) but because he would never have used them, never have threatened anyone with them and probably had doubts about the need even to possess them.
None of our politicians in my lifetime have been people I would have trusted with atomic weapons. Come to think of it, who would I trust to have atomic weapons? They exist. Somebody some day may use them again. But if they do, I doubt very much that it will be somebody rational, in other words somebody for whom there is even such a concept of deterrence.
As for 'punching above our weight', why should we? Why should we by punching at all, except in self-defence? Who are 'we' anyhow? If there's a real sense of national identity these days, it largely eludes me. Unpatriotic? If you mean 'my country right or wrong', too right! Some Germans reluctantly thought like that in the late 1930s. We have not yet forgiven them.

Oxford English or Real English

SO, the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) is looking for origins of 'neologisms' over the past few decades. One of these is 'disco' which a number of contributors bizarrely think referred originally to a short dress!?!?!?!?

This is just silly. Remember: the word is an abbreviation of 'discotheque' - a place where they have a lot of discs (records), like a bibliothèque is a place where they have a lot of 'biblios' (Greek for books) i.e. a library. It came from the French!!! The Sixties and Seventies were decades when Britain realised it was part of Europe and always had been. Something our US-centred politics and xenophobic politicians and media have sadly since forgotten.

Bye Bye Blighty?

So, David Cameron is about to give in and hold a referendum on Britain's future in Europe. Maybe. Maybe he's just scared shitless by his party's decline in popularity which is fuelled by the extreme Conservative Right: the same people who want nothing but austerity, lower taxes for the rich, a squeeze on 'benefit fraud' and to take the UK out of the EU. Cameron thinks (rightly) that Tory voters are defecting to the xenophobic nutters of UKIP, but doesn't see that those who are, are not the centrist sensible voters whom he attracted with his New Conservatism (à la Blair's New Labour) but the far right who think he is too soft. So, it may just happen, and if it does we must fear the worst: that the old imperialist Britain that thinks itself a world power while drifting into orbit as a US satellite might prevail and the UK will exit the EU. This is not even what Cameron wants.

There are those in the EU mainstream, and I am almost tempted to be one of them if the decision wouldn't leave my country on the outside, who would welcome this as the best chance we have of realising the hope of a Europe that is beyond the divisive and in the past explosive rivalries of mutually distrusting nation states, a Europe where collaboration (it means working together, not necessarily cosying up to the enemy) is natural and competition restrained to commerce and sport. As long as the British people believe that their politicians, however much they distrust them - and right now their dislike of our own political class could hardly be hight - are better than anyone else's (just because they speak a different language, as if Cameron and co didn't speak a different language amongst themselves), then the old xenophobia (the fear of foreigners) will remain.

Last night in my local pub by Tower Bridge, I watched as droves of British drinkers cheered and cheered as 'Europe' beat the USA in the Ryder Cup. It doesn't have to be a dream.

In the end was the beginning...

As Europe starts looking like it's falling apart this is the time to remember what it was all about in the first place. And to make sure the idiocy of individual politicians' power lust doesn't allow the achievements of 55 years to be destroyed. Europe is not just the EU, and certainly not just the €. What is it? It is where we live (yes, including you my fellow Britons); it is what defines us; it has been for five centuries at least - though maybe not much longer - the most important continent on our planet. It has committed mistakes and sins and in the last hundred years nearly committed suicide, but it has achieved great things and it is still one of the most beautiful places in the world to live. But it is a big place, with lots of people (and peoples) living in it. The more we know about one another, the better; the more we travel to each others' countries, the better; the more we work together, the better. I have lived in Ireland, England, France, Belgium, Poland, Germany (East and West as was) and Russia. I speak more than a couple of European languages so let's talk.
OK that's enough implausible optimism. This is a blog that will discuss big things and little things. Silly and serious. And I hope provoke debate. And promote understanding. Feel free to disagree. That's the most European thing of all!