As Barak Obama and Mrs settled into 1 A and 1K on Air Force One last night, flicked through the inflight magazine AF One 4 U, chose the Burger, Double Fries and Coke light option instead of all that indigestible European stuff, recycled offal, snails,forcefed goose fat and the like, they will have slowly read through the entertainment guide looking for something more stimulating and intellectually demanding than the soap opera they had been watching for the past 36 hours. Something to ease them back into the real world.
They will have learned a lot on their trip and be shaking their heads at the makebelieve world of a would-be United States of Europe headed by at least 2 leaders, a short French bloke and a matronly German lady plus at least three rival Presidents, a Belgian nonentity, a strutting Portugese and another on a six month rotating work experience scheme, none speaking the same language and each representing vastly different states with totally different cultures, economics, societies and needs. There are states large and small. Some are sort of significant in an old fashioned way and some nobody's ever heard of,-especially in Iowa. Many have a long history of loathing and invading each other or at least passing through to invade someone else. They don't intend to drop the resultant feelings now. Bit of a dejeuner du chien really. In moments of boredom when the Europeans totally hijacked the gathering and its intended resolution of the world's problems to messily concentrate on their own, the Obamas will have fiddled with the EU auditorium audio system and found that it's very clever. It can translate any one of 27 languages, some spoken by almost nobody, into 27 others listened to or understood by almost nobody. Hours of endless fun when nothing much is happening except repeats of a Greek bloke promising to do something, then saying he won't and then he might.
The President will be bemused but glad that he's come away with at least one useful decision:"The Chinese are right,- don't touch loans to these people with a bargepole""
Ah, at last, the inflight entertainment programme has come up with something a bit more stretching. Here it is. "An Hour with Mr Bean".
Goodnight Europe.
