Beeker, from the Muppet Show, does a wonderful rendition of the European anthem here.
David Morris recently posted the following in reply to my post about UKIP:
Whilst perusing Eurosceptic websites ( I know, I know. And amazingly, I do have both a life and a pretty, funny and very tolerant girlfriend.) I wandered across this neat summary from UKIP of what they’re about as a party. Whilst I didn’t agree with much of it, I liked the succinctness of it, so enjoy. The comments in blue are mine.
It looks here like the Commission on Taxation is to propose both property and water taxes. Whilst not liking the idea, I can see the logic. In particular, having seen the way Irish people waste water compared to Australians, it makes sense if only as a means of making us cop on about our child-like approach to resource management.
Sometimes, listening to the opinions of those who slate the PDs is like listening to someone describe a cartoon baddy, like Dick Dastardly. After all, they tend to talk about the PDs as a far right Thatcherite villian-of-the-piece when the party just wasn’t like that.
There has been a certain glee in particular taken by some who attempt to equate the current economic crisis with the policies of the PDs, pointing fingers at the party’s perceived obsession with free markets and competition at all cost. And yet, the worst aspects of the country’s woes are not the result of PD policy, but the party’s own failure not to vigourously pursue those policies more.
Take our public finances: The ranting about “rightwing” cutbacks misses the fact that the reason public spending was allowed get that high was because the PDs weren’t that rightwing in government. Same with benchmarking and public sector pensions. They were allowed reach their current unsustainable heights under a PD government. If only the PDs had actually been as ideological as their enemies state, we’d actually be in a better place than we are now.
Very interesting article here I stumbled across in the Daily Mail (By accident! I wasn’t reading it, honest.) about the British Prime Minister’s letters of last resort. These are the four handwritten letters that every new prime minister must write which are sealed in the safes of Britain’s four Vanguard nuclear submarines, to be opened if Britain has been destroyed in a nuclear attack, ordering the captain what to do. And we think Brian Cowen has to make hard decisions?