Herr Tirana prepares to use dirty tricks as EU buggered

Herr Tirana, one of the EU's several Presidents, confirmed today that "after a little cellar work and a touch of bastinado" all 27 EU leaders have now confessed agreed to the Brussels dirty tricks campaign to be rolled out against the United Kingdom.

"The EU must uphold democracy in Europe, which means agreeing with whatever the unelected officials want. We call it pure democracy because it is unsullied by elections, ballots and the votes of the ignorant and stupid common people.

You can never have too many boats ....

A bit of a fuss in the papers at news that Nick Serota's retirement gift from his colleagues was to be a boat. It's pretty certain that what's intended is something like the Enterprise pictured below rather than an Oyster 82.

These fun boats can still be had for about £600 - and of course you can keep it in the front garden.

Ah, such memories of idle summers spent on the river between Woodbridge Tide Mill and Felixtowe Ferry with a boom tent and a crate of Tolly

Economic war with Germany heats up

AEP in the Telegraph this morning says it all:-

(Berlin) demanded that Britain desist from tax dumping and financial deregulation that would “jeopardize the stability of the union". This demand is almost insulting. British regulators have led efforts to recapitalize banks. It is the eurozone and Germany that have dragged their feet on tougher capital rules.

There is no longer any attempt at diplomatic tact. The document states that the European Commission will "determine" when the UK has made "sufficient progress" as it jumps through the hoops, the way it handles accession talks for supplicants hoping to join. It reads like an imperial curia discussing a colony.

........ What is clear is that if the final document presented to Britain looks anything like the EU papers circulating this week, no sovereign state can accept it.

Sigh. Like the same-old same-old. Like the demands presented by Austria Hungary to Serbia in 1914, Germany's demands are impossible for the British realm to accept. Not even the softest, most accommodating Brexit negotiators could accept such national humiliation under the heel of the Hun. 

I fear it will be full blown economic warfare. 

Turks join with ISIS to attack Kurds

Turkey has launched a new offensive against the Kurds. They now face attacks from Turkey to the north and west, and from ISIS to the south and east. It has been a century since the last Islamist rulers of Turkey slaughtered the region's Armenian Christians in an act of genocide that preceded the later Holocaust, but the Kurds must surely have the Islamist capacity for mass extermination embedded in their cultural history. Their fight against the Islamists of Turkey and of ISIS is one for survival. 

The history of the Armenian genocide will be purged from Turkish history now that Erdogan can rule as a dictator. In Germany and Austria, where holocaust denial is a crime for which residents can find themselves in prison, millions of Turkish migrants who voted for Erdogan's Enabling Act will be teaching their children that the earlier Armenian holocaust never happened. Every effort of the national authorities to teach it in schools will be met with hatred, resentment and disbelief - and demands for more Islamic schools, in which such inconvenient truths can be smothered. 

But one and a half million Christians slaughtered by means as foul as any ISIS have re-invented remind us always why we must resist Islamism with every fibre of our national strength. 

French Toast

As will be apparent, France's electoral system is geared at preventing shock change and powerful leaders. Remember that the French bourgeois virtues include médiocrité, which means something a little different there to our jibe of mediocrity. And having soundly rejected the 'constitutional' parties of right and left for the Presidential election, French voters may not have the same choice for the two-stage Assembly elections on the 11th and 18th of June. Well-oiled local Republican and Socialist party machines may cement support, leaving Macron a lame duck President with no support in the Assembly.

And yes, short of some earthquake shock, Macron will be France's next president. 

Marine Le Pen is not finished - France and Britain will both go to the polls again in 2022, and in political terms that's an eon away. As for what this all means for Brexit, I'll guess little change. The Kermits still hate us and want us to suffer because we're so much more successful than they are, yet we need to co-operate even more closely militarily as the only two armed nations in Europe. It's all French toast - brittle with burnt crumbs. Hey ho.