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Wise advice… Dear “Barmier than most,”
I sympathize. It must be dreadful for a eurocrat of your breeding and position to have to deal with ordinary people like the British. However, their great weakness is that they are, at heart, a nation of shopkeepers. It’s trade they want, so sign a deal that gives them it, and present it to your European masters as a triumph, in which the Brits have been tricked into doing the sordid stuff like buying and selling goods, leaving the far classier Europeans to loftily pursue “the European Project,” making pious homilies about “moving towards an ever-greater union of peoples.” The Brits will fall for it because they are just money-grubbers who have no soul, whereas the Europeans, especially the French, who always found the Brits rather strange, will enjoy feeling superior.
– Agatha Antigone
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The classic satire by A. G. Macdonell ‘England Their England’ came to the conclusion that the English were soldier-poets not shopkeepers. Still a good read if you are in need of a good laugh.
But M Barnier knows for sure that he is, in his dealings with Mrs May, like Molotov negotiating with Otto Kuusinen over arrangements in Finland in December 1939.
Aunt Agatha is such a caution! 😎
This man is irrelevant, what is relevant (as Mr Ed points out) is that Prime Minister May is on the side of the European Union – AGAINST the United Kingdom.
The disputes and outraged speeches are all “sound and fury signifying NOTHING” – the whole thing is a con.
We Are Betrayed.
@tph England, Their England is an excellent read-but what does it satirise? Certainly not the English.
And now the absolute twat Corbyn is heading off to stick his oar in, all the EU will do is use him as a weapon against May, the stupid man doesn’t realise he’ll just get played like a fiddle, if it’s not obvious by now the EU does not have the UK best interests, then there is no point negotiating. The only bit of fun will be seeing the once-arch-anti-EU Corbyn struggle and squirm to convince the EU that the Customs Union is a great idea.
@Clovis Sangrail
It is a gentle social satire of the 1930s society: I haven’t read it for a decade but what stood out was Macdonell was one of the few writers who understood how engineers think:
and:
“the English elect their politicians into office under the strict proviso that they go away and leave them alone for 5 years.”
Something that todays politicians would do well to understand.
@tph
I have to beg to differ. I think it was an attempt at a picture which was accurate in tone and colour if not in facts. That’s not a satire by my standards.
The description of the conduct of British diplomacy at the League of Nations was a masterpice, IMHO.
If anything, I would have said that the real satire was in the description of life in rural Scotland.
The townies v villager crisket match is also one of the funniest pieces of writing in British literature.
@Clovis Sangrail
When Brexit happens we could take an idea from H H Munro’s story “Hermann the Irascible -The Story of the Great Weep” to enable snowflakes to work through their pain.
“The Great Weep was organised: relays of Remainers led by Saint Polly Toynbee of Tuscany and the Blessed Matthew Parris led the mourners ten thousand at a time. They wept continuously in the public places of the Metropolis: they wept in railway stations, in the tubes and omnibuses, in the National Gallery, in Waitrose, in St. James’s Park, at ballad concerts, in wine bars and in the Burlington Arcade. Brilliant left-wing satirical comedies were imperilled by the presence of weeping Remainers in the stalls and the circle and the gallery. One of the greatest ever Billy Bragg concerts was robbed of much of its sparkle by the lachrymose behaviour of the audience.
There are more ways of killing a cat than by choking it with cream but I’m not sure that it’s not the best way.”
I do not believe that some people have “got the message” yet.
The independence of the United Kingdom (“Brexit” if people want to use a silly word that makes the whole thing sound trivial and unimportant) is NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. We are NOT going to be a independent country ruled by our own laws – not the regulations of the European Union.
And this has got nothing to do with Mr B. or any other European Union creature – it is the fault of Prime Minister Theresa May.
I fear Paul Marks has come to the truth. Barnier et al are merely doing their jobs…as any strong, (not necessarily good), negotiator should. The core problem is that Prime Minister Theresa May is also doing their job. Her stance seems to be , “Let’s see how much I can give away before they, (UK citizens), actually wake up and howl”.
I could be persuaded that, even if PMTM had been up against no more than an EU flag she would have given away just as much. This is not incompetence, it is treachery.
We can but hope that, if PMTM is successful in effectively keeping us in the EU, she will not be gifted some fat-cat non-job within the organisation, but will quietly fade away in a cabin on some remote mountain track.