European Union is sinking just like the Titantic
BLAZING June we call it and it is upon us. This one will also feature a blazer – the row with the EU as we seek with diminishing hopes to find a commercial, legal and mercantile modus vivendi to put the seal on our departure from the EU.
In our corner Sir David Frost; facing him Michel Barnier. The poor Gallic negotiator is bewildered. He cannot understand how one nation can oppose 27 and hope to prevail.
But what he also fails to understand is that over the past five months the landscape has changed completely. He now stands amid a field of rubble.
Right across the continent every rule and system is breaking down. The Schengen agreement is dust as Covid-stricken countries reimpose the old borders.
Mutual economic back-up with mega-wealthy Germany as universal bail-out auntie is history. Like passengers on a sinking liner everyone is fighting for the lifeboats. At least on the Titanic the band kept playing. Across the Channel Ode To Joy is well off-key and the orchestra is now a tin whistle.
London has made plain the transition will not be extended. Add to that a repeated pledge that we will not return to subservience to the EU Court. If we did, our already drained resources would assuredly be pillaged by biased penalties aimed at bailing out the rest.
It looks like World Trade Organisation rules and so what? Canada and Australia trade with the EU and prosper without bowing and scraping. So that will do us nicely.
■ A COMMENT in the letters column of a daily paper amused me. “Boris Johnson very much resembles Churchill. Alas, I refer to the nodding rubber bulldog in the TV ads.”
■ WHAT A truly bizarre climate we have. Six months ago it was raining so hard and so constantly we thought we would never be dry again. Now we scan the skies yearning for even a small white fluffy thing that might deposit a drop or two on to our parched gardens.
The hoses are fine (now this old codger’s daily chore) but a ban on those cannot be long delayed without some real rain.
The CO wants to order a large water butt but I cannot carry bathloads of the wet stuff to tip in the top of it.
If only I knew a few Sioux, they might offer me a rain dance.