Sometime
during the (phoney) boom years, I commented to a Spanish friend that
Spain's new roads and motorways were quite magnificent. Just wait, he
said, until they start to deteriorate and we'll see whether the money
is there to repair them. This article suggests his pessimism was well
founded. Sadly.
The
ex Chancellor of the British Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, champions the
growing view that Safely
removed from effective democratic accountability, the EU has become a
bureaucratic monstrosity. This imposes substantial economic costs on
all member states. These are perhaps greatest in the case of the UK,
not principally because our own dear bureaucracy is inclined to
goldplate the regulations that emanate from Brussels, but more
because we have a tradition of precision in law-making and respect
for the law that is less pronounced in much, if not most, of the rest
of Europe. That is not going to change, nor should it. Rather Mr
Lawson feels Britain should manage an amicable – well, as amicable
as possible – exit from the EU.
As
to where the EU is right now, here's the view of the Berlin
correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph": As
the quarrelling voices in the eurozone grow louder, Germany once
again finds itself at the centre of conflict. From Italy, where
voters have resoundingly rejected austerity measures, to Greece and
Cyprus, where Angela Merkel has been caricatured as a Nazi, to Paris,
where members of François Hollande’s party accuse the German
chancellor of “selfish intransigence”, the project intended to
bring Europe together has been stirring up animosity. Germany
wants a more powerful Europe to have the last word on national
budgets. But other countries are giving this short shrift. In the
showdown over austerity, it is Germany that has blinked first.
Berlin, which has overseen Europe’s austerity policy since the
start of the debt crisis, is now indicating that it is relaxed about
eurozone countries failing to hit their deficit-cutting targets. In
the case of France – Germany’s key partner in Europe – Mrs
Merkel is now offering an alternative prescription: economic reforms
that will reduce labour costs in the long term. But the pain has only
been deferred. Germany has made no secret of its view that the French
workforce, in particular, is far too cosseted. . . The forthcoming
[German] election campaign, then, will be rather unusual. For the
first time, there are loud voices from both Left and Right calling
for an end to the euro. . . [Germany's] policies during the debt
crisis are fuelling a revival of nationalism elsewhere in Europe –
and within Germany itself, from taxpayers alarmed at the mounting
costs of rescuing the euro. As a result, a country desperate to keep
Europe together, in order to escape the ghosts of its own history, is
now risking the prospect of a European departure from the global
stage.
It
seems situation in Syria is even worse than I cited yesterday. There
are fears that the internecine Sunni-Shia war could yet engulf Iraq,
where the Shiites, despite being in the majority, have long had to
play second fiddle to the Sunnis. As someone has asked – Could
Syria, Iran and sectarian fury destroy a hard-won peace? - Allah
forfend. Surely He can knock a few heads together, if He wants to. We
must assume that He doesn't.
Finally
. . . Like me, you might not know what an evil digital camera is.
Having just googled it, I can tell you it's an 'electronic
viewfinder with interchangeable lens'. Or EVIL.
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