Category: current affairs

Today is the 75th anniversary of Bognor being granted the Regis suffix by King George V. Having strolled along the seafront this weekend, I can vouch for the cleanliness of the beach – on a glorious sunny afternoon, you can see its attraction. The town, however, is as shabby as ever.
You have to wonder, though, why the powers-that-be in the town have done "bugger"-all to celebrate the anniversary. Surely this would have been an excellent opportunity for some positive publicity for the place, an excuse for a minor royal visit perhaps?

… for heated sock spam.

Felix Unger, RIP.

Devonshire, RIP. Not sure about his patronage of UKIP and his support for the entirely questionable "Right to Roam", but you have to admire the way he held together an ancient estate and made it a successful and profitable business in the face of terrifying inheritance taxes (a tax that I think is thoroughly indefensible – as if the relatives of the recently deceased need to have massive tax worries to consider).

Firewall up. Download update.
Up. Down. Up. Simple really.

Of course, if Microsoft could sort out their software in the first instance…

Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia – welcome to the EU.

Worth reading:

• EU becomes "normal" – Paul Reynolds, BBC
• Norway braced for EU expansion – Aftenposten
• Advice for a successful marriage – Budapest Business Journal
• Mixed feelings – Anke Bryson, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
• Impact of expansion on Russian-EU trade "cut by half by new deal" – St Petersburg Times
• Fireworks fail to fizz as expansion fatigue takes a heavy toll – John Lichfield, Independent
• Europe’s biggest gamble – Peter Fray, Sydney Morning Herald
• Thatcher’s EU vision becomes reality – Anton La Guardia, Telegraph
• New "Europeans" struggle to define that title – Sarah Lyall, New York Times

Twenty five years ago today, Charles de Gaulle resigned as a result of losing a referendum over constitutional reform. Essentially, CDG had linked the referendum to his own position as president of the Fifth Republic, turning what should have been a straight-forward referendum into a vote of confidence.
Somehow, the whole situation reminds me of what is happening now with Tony Blair and the referendum on the constitutional treaty for the EU. I fear that the campaigns will not be about the treaty itself, but more about Europe as a whole and also a vote of confidence in TB – something that I reckon he would be unlikely to win if it happened tomorrow. Let’s face it, the constitutional treaty is not exactly fun-packed or really that interesting to the populace in general – they neither know or care about it, but they like to have a go at something simple like moaning about the French, the Germans or the PM. A product of our shorter attention spans, I fear.
You switched off already?!

There’s nothing like a heated argument about the EU constitution to set you up for the afternoon.

On the Today programme yesterday morning, I heard Michael Howard say that the EU didn’t need a constitution because nations had constitutions and the EU was not a nation. He didn’t say this just once. He repeated it. His campaign seems to be based on the premise that no constitution is required for the running of an organisation like the EU.
Clearly stuff and nonsense. Corporations have constitutions. Charities have constitutions. All sorts of organisations have constitutions. A robust and transparent framework for the running and operation of an organisation is a fundamental requirement. The greatest shame about all this is that it shows how deficient the founders of the EU were in not creating a constitution at the outset.

If the Tories can not come up with a stronger and more believable argument for voting down the constitution (and I can’t believe that even if the British vote "no" and everyone else that has a referendum votes "yes" that the constitution will be torn up anyway), then I think they will lose the vote and lose heavily.
Unless they play the xenophobia card, of course. And they wouldn’t do that, would they?

Either way, I don’t believe that the proposed treaty needed a referendum anyway. I think that HMG, or, more precisely, the PM, has given into external pressure unnecessarily. The Maastricht Treaty didn’t need a referendum and nor did the Single European Treaty, both of which gave many more powers to the EU than the reforms in the current draft treaty. Even when we joined the EU/EEC, we didn’t have a referendum – it was only afterwards that Labour called a referendum, and that was convincing in its result.
But we know that Mr Murdoch doesn’t have that sort of influence really. After all, he hasn’t spoken to the PM on the subject "recently".

BBC handy notes:
EU constitution FAQ.
What the draft constitution says, including, usefully, what it doesn’t say.

You couldn’t make it up.

Sergei Gorbunov messes with journalistic minds. Full report here.