The UK has lurched this week between rain, just grey and shine. Last month's faux summer has long gone and this looks more like the reality and pretty much reflects the national mood as well.
First the shine. Just as it looked a little better and as if Britain's unwanted and ungrateful long term guest, Abu Qatada,might be on his way back to Jordan where he has long been invited to assist the police with their enquiries a mixup over what did and did not constitute three months slammed on the brakes again and Mrs May took a header into the brown stuff. Clearly the advice from the Home Office functionaries, whose prime purpose must be to keep her out of such a place was either deficient or recklessly ignored. Seemingly advice from other quarters urged a day or so's caution too but the lady ship of state sailed on. Tnere had been enormous pressure for a good news story to come out of the Government to offset all the nonsense about pasties, granny taxes and wealthy donors to charity wailing that they couldn't now divert some of their income tax into causes they rather than the Treasury preferred, be they cats' homes or art sanctuaries seldom open to Joe Public or more useful things like medical research. Possibly driven by this and the desire to be the Minster who came up smelling of roses, Mrs May announced proudly the the national guest was back inside prior to taking a one way trip to Heathrow. "Not so fast" said his lawyers,-We've still got a few hours to lodge an appeal" so appeal they did and the whole plan is in danger of embarrassingly unravelling. Like Mr Qatada's quarters, it gave an open goal to the Opposition front bench and one which Mrs Balls/Yvette Cooper naturally found irresistable, much to the squirms of Mrs May. Oh dear.
Next came the Brighton meeting of the EU's finest on the subject of the powers of the European super-court in Strasborg. Dave had promised tough action to rein it in, show that national courts and parliaments are boss and put a stop to the nonsense of Euro power extending into every legal corner on the back of human rights law never intended,-at least by Britain,-to have this effect. Sending Ken Clark along to invoke such tough action was never going to produce anything involving fisticuffs. As result this very expensive south coast out-of season Awayaday achieved nothing other than nice warm , comfortable and totally ambiguous weasel words which pretty much allow EuroPower to also sail on unimpeded and therefore inevitably grow. For those who grew up in university Union bars or rugby clubs one can only quote the immortal song which went something like:
"Enough, enough I( in this case the more conscious EU member states)'m satisfied" followed by..
"And now we come to the sorry bit, ho hum, and now we come to the sorry bit, there was no way of stopping it, ho hum, ho hum..."
And why is there no way of stopping it? Simple. The whole apparatus is run by unelected, highly paid burocrats whose future lies only in it taking over more and more powers, not less nd less. In theory the Members of the European Parliament are there to rein these folk in and give the whole thing democratic legitimacy. On day one of their appointment they, many of them rejects from or no hopers in their home political hierarchies, may ernestly believe this and be determined to fight the good fight. Once they have done their induction tour of their impressive new surroundings and been taken through the prodigous list of claimable expenses appropriate to matching high class restaurants and hotels, any thirst for rocking the boat quickly disappears. With that the will to challenge the grey army who spend their lives dreaming up ever more and ever more expensive mind numbing rules and restrictions on the normal functioning of human endeavour disappears. Game over. The artifical creation rolls on. Pending a giant of European leadership who really does say "Enough, enough" and a way of stopping it,(could this eventual saviour be a woman?)the monster will grow and grow
Finally on the sporting front,at the 11th hour and 59th minute, knowing that here is something which probably is unstoppable but for they will be able to blame the unfortunate Government, Ed Minor and Mrs Balls, both full of righteous rectitude, demanded that the Government should pull the British drivers out of the Bahrein F1 contest this weekend. True, the Bahrein Government's handling of the protest movement has been extremely unpleasant, but the fact is the British Government is not driving in the race and decisions on participation are nothing to do with it. If it were to get into this quagmire, what would happen to the Olympics? There are far less pleasant countries taking part in those and some very undemocratic leaders may well be in town to watch their national teams, or to just enjoy the IOC's hospitality. What would we do about those? Late July through to the end of August in London could become very quiet
Again,back to the Union bar. Songs about activities on the planking, crossing or in the rigging come to mind. The UK really does need its two day break this weekend.
