It's
fair to say that Christopher Booker is a true eurosceptic. For the
reasons why, you need to read his authoritative book, "The Great
Deception". Meanwhile, here he is on Mr Barroso's recent speech:
"One of the greatest assets of the 'European project' is that it
is so stupendously boring that few people bother to understand how it
really works. This was exemplified by the almost Soviet-length speech
on “the future of the European Union” given in Berlin last week
by José Manuel Barroso, before he steps down from eight years as
president of the European Commission. One cannot imagine that all his
audience were still awake as he neared the end of his 9,000 words. .
. One of the few points in this fog on which he was explicit was that
the EU must now use its common foreign policy to extend its “power
and influence in the world”. But we currently see a perfect
demonstration of what this means in practice in the shambles it has
brought about through extending its “soft power” into Russia’s
backyard, by provocatively moving to absorb Ukraine as yet another
member. This has been as telling an illustration of how the EU’s
make-believe must eventually hit reality as that other monument to Mr
Barroso’s years in office, the chaos created by the euro.
Late
last year I received - with a degree of shock - a water bill of €615,
almost 10 times my norm. The cause was an underground leak which I
hadn't detected. As neither my insurance company nor the water
company would reimburse me, I've initiated a 12-point program to
reduce my consumption of water. The problem, though, is that such is
the fixed-variable cost bias in our utility bill, I figure it'll take
me at least 10 years to recoup my loss. The other problem, of course,
is summer visitors, who can't be expected to be as abstemious as me.
I
caught the middle bit of Eurovision last night but wasn't too
surprised - given the voting pattern - to see this morning that the
bizarre Austrian entry had won. Perhaps the most interesting comment
I read was that "A person who is sick of Eurovision is
either lying to themselves or in the midst of some kind of nervous
breakdown". Hmm. There might just be a few people around with
better things to do. Sticking needles in their eyes, for example.
That
vast, ugly symbol of corruption and administrative/judicial
incompetence - the Algarrobico Hotel - has been been painted black,
at least in part, by Greenpeace. Our local correspondent, David
Jackson, has more on this here.
Finally
. . . Jorge Luis Borges wrote some lovely stuff but you may not have
see this sentiment of his before: Football is popular because
stupidity is popular. Of course, he didn't tend to go round
saying this back home in Argentina.
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