Of mice and men: how Robbie Burns predicted the demise of the EU. Oh, and two silly jokes, just for the craic

I have never read a poem by Robbie Burns and quoting him here might give the impression that I am quite well-read when all along I have been perfectly honest by admitting that given a book, I would need written instructions on what to do with it (and those instructions would, in any case, have to be read out aloud to me slowly). But given the most recent development on the combined euro-crisis/EU endgame/end of the world situation, a line from Burns came to mind. (Incidentally, I was reading up about the latest fuck-up - the Germans are demanding an imminent British surrender or else they will shoot us out of the skies - in the Guardian rather than the Telegraph or the Mail because I was keen to read a sober account of what is going on, whereas the Telegraph and the Mail are so apt to overegg the eurosceptic pudding.)
When I say ‘a line from Burns came to mind’, what I mean is that a saying came to mind, which I then googled and discovered is from Burns’s poem To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough. It begins Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie / O, what a panic's in thy breastie! and in it are the familiar lines The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley. That sums up very neatly indeed the situation the European Union finds itself in. And when considering what looks increasingly like the EU’s undignified slow disintegration, the phrase ‘overreached itself’ comes to mind.

At the heart of it all is the eternal truth that you cannot legislate sentiment. You can’t by law oblige the common man to love his king. Well, you can try but you have as much chance of succeeding as you would have of nailing jelly to the wall (US: gello to the wall). It’s all very well for assorted bien pensant social democrats to wax lyrical about an end to war in Europe and a common purpose through the pan-European institution, but unless you carry the people with you, you’re pissing in the wind. Most certainly the EU was popular in the days of milk and honey, but even at the first squall of trouble - and that was long ago, we now have gales blowing about our heads - national self-interest rules supreme. Funny that.

The EU overreached itself by trying to evolve from what almost everyone was happy with - a common economic community - into a political union, with which rather fewer agreed. In those fabled days of milk and honey, those who were caught dragging their feet were roundly castigated for their lack of enthusiasm and the charge of ‘not being a European’ was sufficiently serious to dragoon most politicians into line. No more. It is only a matter of weeks, if not days, that there is quite open talk of the EU as we know it coming to an end, whereas even two months ago any such suggestion would have been regarded as the raving of a mad man.

I always thought the starry-eyed wouldn’t-it-be-wonderful if we all got together and really, really, really tried awfully hard to find a universal cure for cancer and brought about peace on Earth was a load of cack - and, dear reader, I am only slightly exaggerating - but on the other hand I am

always wholeheartedly for co-operation, pulling together and seeking out the common good. And as I touched upon the central difficulty of the EU - that allegiance must come from the heart - I should add that my inclination to work together with others for the common good does, in my case, come from the heart. But as I have got older, I have also realised that in any decision the head should - must - also be consulted. And that is where the EU went wrong. Too many blind eyes were turned to too many problems.

Not least of these, of course, was that although everyone knew the Italians and Greeks had cooked the books in order to qualify for membership of the precious euro, they chose to ignore it. All for the common good. I mean, we were about to enter Heaven on Earth, so why let an inconvenient detail or two spoil the party?
We’re not there yet, of course. The EU hasn’t collapsed and it will trudge on for a while yet. But I’m certain that the EU those who supported the project knew and loved for these past few years will be a completely different animal in, say, five years time.

. . .

Apropos nothing at all, no not even the euro shambles, Germany’s alleged attempt to take over the universe or the origins of World War III as they are now taking shape in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Saudi Arabia – pray the Lord I’m wrong – here are two jokes I’ve remembered from way back. They're not original, you might well be familiar with both or either, but what the hell:

An Englishman, a real Major Thompson type, is sitting in a bistro in Paris when he spots a fly in his soup. Appalled, he calls the waiter.
‘Garcon, garcon, ici. Guardez, le mouche dans le soupe,’ he declares in his heavily accented French.
‘Non, monsieur,’ the waiter replies, ‘la mouche.’
‘Good God, man,’ says the Englishman, ‘you’ve got good eyesight!’

Or how about:
Q. Why does President Sarkozy eat only one egg for breakfast?
A. Because one egg is un oef!

Awful, I know, but it’s 6pm on a Wednesday night and I am about to hit the road for my four-hour drive back home.

A sign that I am, indeed, getting older. Oh, and a perfect cliche finds its sneaky way into this blog

I assume I was weaned on vinegar because I don’t think there is a sentimental bone in my body and I loathe anything which is twee (which might account for the fact that as far as I am concerned in inordinate number of Hollywood films are total bollocks).

But it has to be said that a certain sentimentality and tweeness is one of the stocks in trade of my industry and most certainly accounts for a substantial number of sales for the newspaper for which I have given the best minutes of my life. It is, for example, for the umpteenth time selling a collection of DVDs which extol Britain’s performance in World War II, and the bravery and courage not only of its enlisted men (mainly, it seems cheerful Cockneys, stoic Scotsman, lovable Scousers, dour Ulstermen and cheeky chappies from Lancashire) but of the ‘Home Front’, the women and children who stayed at home and kept alive by whistling Vera Lynn and George Formby numbers.

Or, at least, that is the picture we are asked to accept (while whoever produces these DVDs makes a pile by cashing in on nostalgia).

In fact, as I have grown older, I appreciate ever more the sacrifice of several million servicemen and women who marched into battle in the certain knowledge that they might well be among those who would never come back. And as I have grown older, I get increasingly irritated by those who attack servicemen and women, often physically, as warmongers. No, dear hearts, it is the politicians back home who take the decision to go to war who we should be attacking, creatures such as Tony Blair and George W. Bush, not the poor saps who had enlisted and who had no choice but to to their bidding. But I have lost my thread.

As I say, I do rather loathe all things twee, and that would include four out of the five cartoon strips which appear daily in the paper for whom I work. And one of them is Garfield. But, it would seem, there is an exception to most things, and the cartoon below, which appeared last Monday, did make me laugh, especially the expression on the dog’s face. It is suitably very silly indeed.

© 2011 Paws Inc. All rights reserved

. . .

Years ago, the BBC screened The Great War, an in-depth, not to say interminable, documentary of the origins, causes, course and conclusion of the Great War. I am, perhaps, being a little unfair in calling ‘interminable’, but that was how is seemed to me, a lad of about 13. Oddly, the bit I remember most was footage from, I think Brighton beach (that’s Brighton in Sussex, England, not the Russian mafia hangout in Brooklyn, New York) taken in the late summer of 1914.

Folk were out and about enjoying the sun and their free time and the mood was markedly lighthearted. Despite all the sabre-rattling around Europe, they obviously had no idea what they were in for. Well, how could they? And even when the war started, the public in Britain were assured that it ‘would all be over by Christmas’.

I have been thinking of that footage many times over these past few months and if our British summer in 2012 is in any way ‘glorious’, I shall fear the worst. I dislike clichés – I am obliged to deal with too many in my professional life – but were I told to use one under threat of death, I think I would resort to a ‘perfect storm’. Because it all seems to be stacking up to one hell of a ‘perfect storm’.

The news overnight was that Iran ‘could’ be working towards developing a nuclear bomb. But don’t feel heartened by that ‘could’ which optimists will interpret as ‘could’ or ‘could not’. It is only there because when we are close to leaving the frying pan in the direction of the fire, those responsible for the kind of report which makes the warning like to be as circumspect as possible. Yes, it’s very serious indeed when the threat is consciously played down. And if Iran does produce it’s nuclear bomb, then, the fear is, everyone else in the Middle East with more than two pennies to rub together will decided to get some of its own.

That would be great news for no one were it to happen. In the same neighbourhood is Syria which has not only fallen foul of the ‘international community’, but has now fallen foul of its nominal friends in the Arab League, who are not at all happy with what has been going on. Many of them might be a pretty unsavoury bunch, as it happens, but any pressure which can be exerted to stop Syria killing its own people can never be a bad thing.

Then there is, of course, the ongoing farce which is the Eurozone crisis. More bad news overnight is that bond yields on Italian bonds have breached 7 per cent which conventional wisdom claims is the limit beyond which the whole sorry house of cards will slowly implode. And when that happens – not ‘when’ not ‘if’ it will be bad news not only for countries in the Eurozone or for countries in the EU or for countries in Europe, but for any country which does business with Europe. And that is most of the world. Given all that, it would seem to me that one of the best places to live in right now is in one of the South American countries. So I’m off to learn a little Spanish.

Oh, what a piece of work are snobs

One film I am looking forward to seeing is Anonymous. It suggests that Shakespeare did not write the plays which were published under his name but that they were, in fact, written by a member of the English nobility, Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford. I must immediately stress that not only do I not subscribe to any theory that Shakespeare did not write the plays, I don’t give a tinker’s cuss whether or not he did. At the end of the day it is the plays that matter (not that I have read them all, which is perhaps the impression I am giving, or that I am in any way ‘passionate’ about the plays. I am merely pointing out the obvious: that who wrote them, why, when, where and what he - or, I suppose, she - was drinking at the time are not necessarily relevant). The director of Anonymous is Roland Emmerich, whose film The Day After Tomorrow, was as close to total bollocks as on can get on a rainy afternoon in mid-week with nothing on the telly. So on that score Anonymous is not particularly recommended. It has also been criticised for its thesis - that Oxford was Shakespeare - and for its preposterous ‘plot’, in which Shakespeare is something of a buffoon who is hired by the bashful Earl to masquerade as the plays’ author because he, a noble, can’t be seen indulging in theatrical productions. But all that rather seems to miss the point, so I was pleased to come across a review of the film a few minutes ago in the Daily Telegraph which simply describes the film as hugely enjoyable. It has Rhys Ifans as Oxford and Rafe Spall as Shakespeare, and both are always very good value. It is also said to be very good on using computer generated graphics to recreate Elizabethan London, and I do go for that kind of thing. (In fact, for me the one redeeming feature of The Day After Tomorrow was its special effects, although even those weren’t enough to stop me stopping watching the film halfway through at the point where Dennis Quaid, the ‘scientist’ drops all and is about to set out on a 200-mile journey through winter hell on earth in order to find his son.) Purists have also been getting very angry about the portrayal in the film of the young Good Queen Bess as a right old slapper who is incapable of keeping her legs together. Me? I’m just looking forward to watching an outrageous piece of old-fashioned entertainment.

. . .

For the record, I can’t see what all the fuss is about. Given that it is the existence of the plays that matters, I feel it is irrelevant whether or not they were written by Mr William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon. What I do find rather irritating is some of the evidence put forward for suggesting that he is not the author (as opposed to evidence put forward for others being the author). So, for example, we are asked to scoff at the notion that the son of a mere glovemaker and wool trader who didn’t ‘go to Oxford’ could have been capable of such learning as the plays’ author seems to possess. Some even describe the historical Shakespeare as ‘illiterate’, but that seems particularly wide of the mark. We know that the Stratford in which Shakespeare grew up had a grammar school at which Greek and Latin were taught, and we know that his father, the mere glovemaker and wool trader, was comparatively prosperous and that it is likely he would have wanted the best education for his son, so although there is no direct evidence that Shakespeare attended the grammar school,

it is more likely than not that he did. But what most gets up my nose about the claims that the historical Shakespeare did not write the plays is the snobbery which surrounds them. This could be caricatured as it being impossible that such great works of art could have been produced by a lower to middle middle-class oik such as Shakespeare. The author of the plays has a good knowledge of military matters and would seem to have travelled a great deal in Italy. We don’t know (the critics say carefully) that Shakespeare ever fought in the army or went to Italy. The critics are, however, careful on this matter, because we know little about Shakespeare’s early life and it is not impossible that did acquire military experience and down a pint or ten of wine in Ravioli or wherever it was the young blades of the time used to go to squire the local talent and get their rocks off. The ‘it certainly could not have been that oik Shakespeare wot rote the plays’ gang are also rather put out that the man we know as William Shakespeare was something of a hard-headed businessman who co-owned a theatre and was rather keen to get whatever money he felt he was owed. Such a grubby money-making nature does not square, in their minds and hearts, with the kind of lofty, high-minded, sensitive and exquisitely sensitive type who wrote Hamlet, Coriolanus, The Tempest and the rest. So, dear chaps, sorry, but it could not have been Will Shakespeare from Stratford. To which I simply respond: why not?

Greece comes clean: ‘Fuck off’ (it tells the rest of the EU) ‘we don’t want your money.’ (For which, perhaps, read ‘we want easier conditions’) And war in Europe: how one rag reckons it could come about…

Amid all the hullabaloo of EU summits, eurozone crisis meetings, oh-so-clever ‘leverage’ schemes to turn the four and tuppence nest egg the EFSF has into one trillion euros to save the world (or something), I bet no one, but no one, could have predicted the latest development. It is this: Greece’s socialist government, which has largely been paralysed by a series of strikes by its civil servants, has more or less told the EU and everyone else involved in ensuring the European economy doesn’t go tits-up ‘Fuck off, we don’t want your money’. Not in so many words, of course, and with the sensibilities of my male readers in mind, I have sanitised their message. But that is what it amounts to.
At the moment, all those Greeks not rich enough to afford a spiv accountant and the necessary bribes to avoid paying their taxes (of which there are quite a few, I gather – it’s not as though there is no money in Greece, it’s just that those who have it take the attitude that the government and everyone else can go hang) are facing ruin. Their salaries are being cut, their pensions are being cut, the working week is being extended to four day, a great many, especially young people, have no job and almost everyone has been taking to the streets to riot in protest. But the money the government is saving is still not enough to get on top of the national debt. As it is all those Greece owes money to are being told they will now only get back 50c in the euro, but still that isn’t enough and Greece has been told to double its austerity measure. So far, so bloody stupid. How do you take another drachma of a chap who doesn’t have any? Now – I shall ask you to sit down in case you haven’t heard the shocking news – the socialist prime minister George Papandreou has decided that, given the anger over his government’s austerity measures and given that is told he must make more if he want any more moolah from the EU to bail him out, he will hold a referendum to ask the voters what they think. The question will be simple: do you want to have your wages and pensions cut even more and do you want to pay more taxes? To which I think no one expects a resounding Yes! Pile on the misery, please!
For once that old cliché of shockwaves resounding through the chancelleries of Europe is apt: no one could or can believe the stupidity of it. The stock markets have been plummeting (again – how often are stock markets allowed to plummet before we are obliged to seek out new clichés?) and it seems pretty obvious to everyone that the whole euro project as it now stands is a dead duck. The referendum isn’t likely to be held for another two months, so there is even more time for a disaster to turn into a catastrophe. The only halfway sensible explanation I have heard is that Papandreou is playing one huge – and hugely dangerous – game of bluff. He knows that the Greeks will kick out any more austerity measures. And he also knows that Germany and France are desperate not only to save the euro but, more important, to save face. So the theory goes is that he thinks they will do anything to avoid disaster, including handing over the moolah with far less stringent strings attached. In as far as what is really going on, it might be completer cobblers, but at least it has the virtue of being plausible. And the Greek reputation for producing good businessmen isn’t just hearsay. But it doesn’t say much for the spirit of brotherly and sisterly live which is supposed to underpin the EU.

. . .

I am well aware that all my ramblings about ‘the euro’ and the ‘euro crisis’ is making this blog unfeasibly boring. I suspect that because of the euro shambles conditions for everyone in the West (given that the U.S. has problems of its own), the next 20 to 30 years will be far less comfortable and prosperous for us all, that, as Angela Merkel has warned, we should not take peace for granted, and that for the time being the days plenty are over. China is about to go phutt and given that the some of the people there are living in conditions just as bad as they were before the Communists came to power, that might also get rather hot before it cools down again. But surely that is no reason for boring a reader? Surely not. So if it is all getting to you a little, I suggest a little escapism, some dumb romcom or other which Hollywood is only glad so supply. That should take your mind of it all.
Talking of Merkel’s warning that we shouldn’t take peace for granted, the Mail, bless their cotton socks, subsequently commissioned pop historian Dominic Sandbrook to write an outline of War In Europe. Overall, the piece was utterly

ridiculous, although there were some scenarious which were rather less ridiculous than others. For example, he had Russia’s Putin marching troops into the Baltic states on the pretext of protecting the several million indigenous Russians who live there. Could happen, though it is pretty unlikely. Far, far sillier was the suggestion that the Walloons would go to war with the Flemish, that Nicolas Sarkozy would march troops north to pretect the Walloons, that Britain would honour a promise made to the Flemish to protect them and that thus Britain would once again find itself at war with France. Bollocks or what? You can read it all here. At least the Mail admits Sandbrook has let his imagination run riot. That’s about right.

Euro crisis: and yet more talk of fairies at the bottom of the garden

I can’t think of anyone who likes being treated as a moron, yet apparently several of the most important bods in the European Commission seem to believe we’re not that fussed. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has declared that Europe is ‘closer to resolving the eurozone crisis’. Oh no it’s not. The shit is deep and getting deeper by the day.

Last night various heads of government and finance minister got together and cobbled up some deal or other - suitably obscure on the principle that if the public don’t understand it, they won’t worry so much - then gathered, all smiles, for a photo opportunity and buggered off home. I would like to give you the details, but they are meaningless. The eurozone crisis - or rather the underlying shambles which is the eurozone - has not been resolved. All that has happened is that another layer of sticking plaster has been imposed on a festering wound in the hope that ‘the markets’ can be ‘calmed’. Yes, that’s the name of the game. Bugger that Greece still owes more money than it can make in one year, that Italy and Spain are also in the shit; that everyone assumes Greece’s creditors will be quite happy to settle for getting back less than half of what they lent; that both Ireland and Portugal are getting very fucking annoyed indeed that Greece should be let off half of its debts while they diligently and honestly imposed horrible austerity on their folk to pay off their debts; that when all is said and done the Greeks are still retiring far earlier and getting larger pensions than the folk who are paying of their bills; that the whole sunshine scenario of ‘resolving the crisis’ depends on steady economic growth in Europe, which absolutely no one believes will happen; and that the utterly stupid arrangements which lead to this shambles are still in place.

Bugger all that: at least ‘the markets are being calmed’.
Ten years ago when every bloody left-of-centre trendy in Europe was toasting the EU’s new currency as though it were the Second Coming, others were warning that unless there were fiscal union - taxes imposed from the centre - it would all end in tears. And that is exactly what happened. So now our esteemed leaders - well, as a Brit, not mine - are urging just that: a fiscal union. And given the mutual suspicion in the eurozone, cobbling that together has as much chance as making a snowman in hell. But that doesn't dampen all the brave talk of the 17 eurozone members about forming a fiscal union and imposing the necessary uniform taxes throughout the eurozone area. This is certainly what eurosceptics pointed out ten years ago - and were proved right - that unless the eurozone area was a fiscal union, the whole bunfeast would end in disaster.

Given that among the 17 at present tax raters vary widely, that Ireland has always done well and attracted investment because of its low corporation tax and would do badly if this were raised to the level prevalent in other countries, and that in Italy and Greece tax evasion is the order of the day, successfully establishing such a fiscal union is the pipedream to end all pipedreams. Here's just one brief scenario: uniform taxes are imposed, the traditional tax evasion in Italy and Greece (and elsewhere for all I know) carries on, the protestant, fair-haired, hardworking Northern Europe members of that fiscal union, who are diligently paying their taxes as the Bible demands, get terminally fed up and their voters tell their leaders that unless the fiscal union is ended, they will vote in folk who will end it. Result: end of fiscal union, end of the eurozone and, most probably, end of the EU as we know it at present. So why wait? Why not bite the bullet?
Then there is the ‘one trillion’ euros which will boost the stability fund. Where exactly is that coming from? Because it is most certainly not coming from the banks, who will soon be out of pocket to the tune of half of everything they lent Greece.

There is brave talk of getting the Chinese to cough up on the grounds that if the eurozone goes phut, the world’s economy will go phut and the Chinese will be just as badly hit as the rest of us. True enough, but I can’t see the Chinese putting any faith in a gang of eurozone finance minsters who have so far shown themselves to be economically illiterate. So that leaves you and me - well only up to a point me as Britain stayed well clear of the eurozone despite Tony Blair’s best efforts to involve us (I believe he described it as ‘our destiny’). Welcome to higher and heavier taxes over these next few years.

. . .

What is left entirely out of the equation, of course, is that an electorate utterly fed up with the halfwits that got them into the mess in the first place might well - with apparently nothing to lose - put their faith in the kind of political gangsters who operate on the fringes. Let me see: Hungary, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, the Baltic states and The Netherland all have parties which tend to the far right waiting in the wings. Given an economic depression and attendant widespread unemployment, they might feel Lady Luck is finally shining the light their way.

There is this touchingly naive belief that just because a touchy-feely hug-your-neighbour liberalism has been the order of the day for the past 30 years, that it is well ensconced in our psyche, and that anyone predicting that several nasty would-be hard men might step into the limelight over the coming decades is a Mauser short of a right-wing coup. I wonder. Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany no less rather than some hack blogger with time on his hands - that’s me - has warned as much. The reasoning might go thus, to be soaked up eagerly by das Lumpenfolk who always makes such adventures possible: you jobless, homeless, you have no future and a great many darker-skinned foreigners are taking the bread out of our mouth: look where our precious democracy has got you. The trouble is that after a few beers and a row with the wife, quite a few too many might be tempted to agree, especially in those ‘former Soviet bloc’ states where democratic instincts are what you read about in textbooks. Mahlzeit.