Talk is cheap

It must be the heat, but I listened to Bliar's speech to the European Parliament this morning and found myself agreeing with him on almost everything. If any point has been proven in the last couple of weeks it is that Europe is not a confederation of nation states with a shared vision, but a collection of self serving, protectionist states who will put their own egos and agendas ahead of any real, constructive, unifying policies. Chirac has to stop viewing the EU as an arm of French domestic policy, stop ring-fencing the massive subsidies his farmers get for producing food there is no market for and wake up to the fact that his country is dying on its arse and should no longer be propped up at the cost of sustained development elsewhere. UK politicians have to stop chanting "what about the rebate, what about the rebate" and realise that although £3 billion is a lot of money, it is a drop in the ocean in national budgetary terms. We go forward together or we suffer alone. The text of Blair's speech is here. Talk is cheap. What happens next will be key and although standing up to Europe will not erase the stains of Iraq from Bliar's reputation it will do it some good, domestically at least.

In other European news (and this is to be filed very much in the 'you couldn't make it up' section), the re-enactment of the Battle of Trafalgar being held next week to mark the 200th anniversary, will not be England v France but will instead be between a red team and a blue team and there will be no clear victor. Have you ever heard anything so 'king stupid in your whole life? It's history, it happened for real, we were at war with France, we won, but it was 200 years ago. We mark VE day and Remembrance Sunday every year without either event descending into jingoistic German bashing don't we? We mustn't allow our history to be neutered for short term political correctness. It pays a disservice to the men who fought on both sides. Shame on the faceless bureaucrat who came up with this pathetic sham.