Europhobia: 05/21/2006

Friday, May 26, 2006

Even before devolution, one of the most confusing parts of Britain's relationship with the EU was the postion of Scotland - different legal system and all that. Since devolution, the confusion has only escalated - Bondwoman provides a handy overview of the issues aver at The Sharpener.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Iraq and the need for the left to move on

A new, probably ill-considered, and certainly rather rare piece from me on Iraq over at the Sharpener. Although it's not really about Iraq at all.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

The shorter Gordon Brown

"Yeah, man - I'm cool! I'm hip, daddy-o! I'm down with the kids! I watch all that 'reality tv' on the picture-box wireless! And look how virile I am with my pregnant wife and young child! When was the last time Tony got his missus up the duff, eh? I'm skill, he's whack, daddy-o! Yeah... Groovy, innit? oh, and I WANT TO BE PRIME MINISTER, YOU BASTARDS! Word."

Free this morning? Tim Ireland wants you to risk arrest in the rain. (Hey, at least that way you'll be grateful when they bundle you into the back of the van...) Here's why.

The future of Europe (again)

As Serbia accepts Montenegrin independence, and the EU makes encouraging noises, is it true, as an interesting OpenDemocracy article has it, that "in much of east-central Europe, the European Union tends to be seen as an updated version of an earlier communist utopia ("From each according to their ability, to each according to their need"), but – for better or worse – the carrot of European integration is the best hope anyone has for long-term stability in Europe's troubled deep south"?

Certainly the potential for EU membership has helped inspire Turkey to push forward with liberalisation, and has been cited as a positive force in countries throughout the former Soviet bloc (irritating Russia no end), but how long will it take to get our eastern neighbours up to an acceptable standard - both economically and socially?

Can the promise of future EU membership overcome the highly localised identies - not usually national, more based on clan systems, language, religion, ethnicity and myriad other differences - that seem endemic throughout the eastern half of the continent (including the tiny Montenegro)?

Having already failed to prepare existing EU members, institutions and procedures for the 10 new member states that joined two years ago (the ongoing constitutional dilemma), as well as an internal rethink, should the EU also look again at its apparent policy of hinting that membership is possible for anyone, or is the ideal just as important as the reality? Would it even be possible to come up with a coherent EU enlargement policy with such diverse countries - and would it even be sensible?

Either way, something needs to be done.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

The end of an era

Norman Balon, landlord of the infamous Coach & Horses in Soho, has retired.

Shame. Shame, I say. For those unfamiliar:

"Mr Balon, 79, has told more people to drink up and leave than Jeffrey Bernard drank large vodka-ice-and-sodas at his barside during the decades he wrote Low Life, his celebrated Spectator column... [Bernard] had to compete in conversation with, among others, the unshameable Daniel Farson; Tom Baker, popping in from a voice-over; Conan Nicholas, the man who invented cat-racing; or with David Wright, the poet...

"Norman Balon was really invented by Richard Ingrams, when editor of Private Eye, from which William Rushton and Peter Cook and the rest came over the road for lunch each day... For 40 years, Private Eye has held its fortnightly lunches for informants and prominent people in a chill room upstairs... Immortality came in 1989 with Keith Waterhouse's play Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell, a sell-out with Peter O'Toole in title role and the pub interior as the set."

The Coach has been the hub of some of the most fascinating fringe characters of journalism and the arts for decades - there can be few who have aspired to a bohemian lifestyle who have not drunk there during Norman's tenure. Me? Yep, I aspired. I went for a job there once while I was a student – was offered a pint during the interview with Norman, but nerves were such that I spilled it all over his suit. He was, shall we say, unimpressed. I left forthwith, and didn’t dare return for three years...

Considering the ongoing tensions between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus, the breaking news that the've been getting their military aircraft to play chicken with each other, resulting in the loss of two planes in a collision, is somewhat concerning...

Monday, May 22, 2006

Those lovely chaps at the Hansard Society want our opinion on Labour bright young thing and government minister David Miliband's blog.

Take the survey - but be nice. It may not have been the most interesting in the world, comments may have been censored to remove material deemed party political in the broadest sense, and it may have cost insane amounts of money to put up (£6,000? mine's cost me nothing...), but if you can get over the dislike of our overlords that most people have these days, it was at least a positive step.

Eurovision - promoter of unity, promoter of discord

It's no secret that Eurovision voting patterns say as much about international relations as they do about the quality of the songs.

Although occasionally - as with the UK's dire 2004 entry's failure to pick up any points at all - politics is blamed when it's actually the fault of the music, there are certain definite patterns: former Soviet states have a tendency to vote for Russia; former Yugoslav states vote for their neighbours, as do the Scandinavians.

When these voting patterns are not followed, based as they are upon the votes of the people of those nations, they can often reveal much about the shifting attitudes of European to their neighbours. Although sometimes - as when Portugal unusually failed to vote for its neighbour Spain on Saturday - they can just indicate that the music's utter rubbish.

This year, however, some have pointed fingers at the song contest itself for inspiring a real-world political crisis, rather than acting as the focus for the European public's political attitudes.

Serbia & Montenegro was the only former Yugoslav republic not to make it through to the finals, and the free national publicity they can provide. The reason? The inability of the Serbs and Montenegrins to agree on a representative.

After a Montenegrin boy band won the vote, the Serbs threw a strop - hurling bottles at the poor saps and forcing them to flee for their lives from the stage (a tactic we should have used on this year's God-awful British entry) - and demanded a new contest. The Montenegrins refused - and after a heated spat the country was forced to withdraw from the competition in an ongoing argumentative stalemate.

Yesterday, the day after the song contest itself, there was a referendum on Montenegrin secession - and on a record turnout of over 86%, it seems that Europe will now have a new country on its hands.

Yet another new country from the wreckage of the former Yugoslavia after its bloody and vicious civil war.

Yet another new country from the former Yugoslavia which has been born with some fairly serious issues with its next-door neighbours and erstwhile fellow countrymen.

Now who was that idiot who blathered on about how "if music be the food of love, play on"? Then again, if we're unlucky and this seccession provokes a fresh outbreak of the kind of violence we saw in Yugoslavia during the 1990s, the full quote could prove prescient:

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.

The appetite for unity beween Serbia and Montenegro, it would seem, has already died - and music appears to have been one of the crucial catalysts in its sickening.