“To celebrate Europe Day” the BBC puffs inanely “the EU's Austrian presidency took over a cafe in each capital to illustrate the continent's culinary richness.”
Europe Day is of course May 9th - the day in 1950 that a European union was first proposed by a German diplomat and a French civil servant. Nul points if you imagined for a second that they were commemorating VE Day. That’s May 8th - a day passed over in embarrassed silence by the erstwhile killers and collaborators of old Europe, who are united in their implacable resentment of those anglophone meddlers who saved them from themselves.
The party starts with an open-air concert in Salzburg, where free Mozartkugel chocolates are handed out – to the invited audience of EU delegates, of course, not the hoi-polloi, who have to content themselves with the honour of paying for them all through their taxes.
Surely no better metaphor for the EU could be imagined that the sight of hundreds of tax-fattened parasites rolling around a palace hoovering up cake. By dinnertime, every one of Salzburg’s emergency wards is clogged with critical cases of severe butterfat poisoning.
Leave it to the BBC to defend the indefensible:
“Europe has been searching for years for something to inspire a new generation of citizens - a generation unimpressed by 60 years of peace and the ending of the continents' Cold War divisions”
…two things that had precisely nothing to do with the EU and everything to do with the US, the Marshall Plan and NATO.
As Austria's Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik put it: "The best way to awaken affections for Europe is to discover the emotional and cultural diversity for yourself."
Ms Plassnik’s most famous contribution to diversity is having served in the cabinet with Austria’s FPO neo-Nazis from 2000 thru 2004. No chocolate in her cake, then.
Austria’s pastry-oriented EU propaganda, yesterday. Seductive, yes, but alas very very bad for you indeed…
14 comments:
It's rather hard for them when the good stuff, i.e. Magna Carta and "We hold these truths to be self-evident . . ." have already been taken.
Cheers.
Perhaps there's hope for some countries where the public health system deteriorated a bit in the last years. When all this fat cats have to wait... No, just a dream, these farts don't wait!
It's rather pathetic to see a mindless high-power bureaucrat trying to shore up sagging support for the Union project by urging a lethargic citizenry to discover the hidden treasures of European pastry. I remember in the 1990s how Jurgen Habermas, the philosophical supporter of the One Europe thingy, was urging us to understand that our common European identity revolves around... social rights (that's entitlement to welfare and all, for you Americans). Now this lamentable Austrian lady yrges us to sample some European chocolate. You know a formerly big idea is in trouble when its lame-ass defenders have to resort to meaningless chutzpah like 'diversity' to defend it.
But I say there's still one good thing in the EU (combine that with NATO for effectiveness): it gives those poor bastards in the East much-needed reassurance that they won't have to suffer again under the red jackboots of the Slavic barbarians. That's something. For that, I'm willing to overlook fatass bureaucrats in Brussels telling me what to eat and what not to drink.
'Europe Day' should be the day of the Eurovision Song contest. The nations of Europe fighting it out for the pleasure of Pope Terry Wogan is more in keeping with European history.
May 8 was VE Day, celebrated herein France with a public holiday, flags, bunting, memorial services and dinner dances.
May 9 was Europe Day, and in honour there was a Europe flag outside the Marie along with all the VE Day stuff still up.
Today the EU flag is gone and the the Tricolours back in place.
Now that summer is here it's time for a new blog id pic . . .
Good point, Stew - the French are far more clear-minded about the purpose of Europe, ie, to serve French national interests. And if you ask them to choose between the European flag and the French one they'll laugh in your face. Our current government, on the other hand, actively despises Britain's achievements and institutions, and ruthlessly erases both wherever it can.
It's puzzling that the French are far more proud of their nationality than they have any right to be, while the Brits are so much less. For all their many, many, many faults, you have to admire them for that...
Nice pic, btw. How do you say "Oooo arrr" in French?
hmmmmmm
Brown does want us to all plant the Union flag in our front gardens...
Whatever else you may say about the man, and his no doubt ordurous reasons for saying it, i think the flag thing flies in the face of standard left wing embarrassment at being British.
'Fraid not, Matty - it's just that, as a Scot, he has every reason to try and wrap himself in Britishness to try and allay the old West Lothian snipes about Labour maintaining its rule over England by means of the votes of Scottish MPs...
Bah, you're just jealous cuz all the good pastries are over there on the ole continent. Your aggression is clear diagnostic evidence of chronic grade IV chocolate-deprivation.
Yup - you've got me bang to rights there. I blame society, guv...
iben - ur right abuot teh negetave corelantion batewen beign allowed to be patroiotic an natoinel atchivment. loook at fucking caneda! theive got teh avro arrow an richardcson screws an poutine an thats it. but they nevar shut up abuot how greate they are.
ykno ther was some germen guy a hunred-odd yers ago who was goin on abuot how histrys losers naturly favor ethics that say winners are bad. its a recuring theame. corparations are evil in drect perportion to how maeny pople they keep employed.
now im not sayign the will topower is all there is in life but if teh garnoudians scolding you for natoinal pride its a complamant! u can bet theyd never scold sweden for it.
I can vouch for your point re corporations, 3H, as I happen to work for an exceptionally evil one, and whenever we have an opening the queue of applicants stretches halfway to Virginia.
Is this another manifestation of that old saw about the Devil having all the best tunes? I'm not sure that there's a valid chain of reasoning to connect the two. But there should be...
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