HUMPTY DUMPED

“ALL THE KING’S HORSES and all the King’s men/ Couldn’t put Humpty together again” we are told in the nursery rhyme about the fact that once an egg is broken it can’t be put back together. It has an interesting parallel in the statement made by Lord Wolfson, referring to breaking up the Eurozone as “unscrambling an omelette”. He has backed up his belief that this will be impossible to do safely by offering £250,000 of his own money to anyone who can come up with a sensible plan to do so.

FURTHER, THE NEWS THAT HOME SECRETARY Theresa May is drawing up contingency plans to prevent mass migration to the United Kingdom after the collapse of the Euro, announced today in most major newspapers, coupled with the statement by the ever-tanned Christine Lagarde that Greece has “had it good for years” and now it is “payback time”, have together more or less pulled the plug on the future of the European Currency, if not on the European dream itself.

IN ADDITION, THE ADMISSION by the Spanish government yesterday that it dreads a victory in Baku in the European Song Contest tomorrow, as Spain does not have the money to stage the final next year shows that there is not really any point to Europe anymore now that the highest accolade of our culture means nothing.

FRANCE’S THREAT TO REINTRODUCE border controls on its Italian frontiers may also be a sign of the inevitable break-up of the freedom of movement within the Schengen countries, and so, all in all, unless the Germans suddenly come up with the money to pay for the southern European countries to carry on doing nothing for most of the year, turning up late for work and clocking off early when they do work, enjoying an average of 18 bank holidays with extra days taken off when these holidays fall on a Tuesday or Thursday and receiving a full month bonus in December and August I suppose that the game is up, new currencies will be brought in and the only way up will be constant devaluation.

HOW DID THIS ALL GO SO WRONG?, people may ask. How did this wonderful, romantic notion of countries united in their common aim of freedom, truth, justice and equality, based on growth and respect suddenly turn into a nightmare of bitterness, mismanagement and failure?

THERE ARE MANY LONG ANSWERS to this question, but the short one is this: when Europe decided to let itself be run by a parliament of second-rate, second hand political failures who, having been unable to cut the ice and get elected in their own countries, ended up being nominated for the European Parliament. And then the European Parliament itself, with the wisdom only possible to a bunch of useless incompetents, “nominates” two of the most representative fools among it, Humpty Dumpty von Rompuy and Joseph “Stalin” Barroso to run its policies. These two incompetent has-beens then nominate a disgraced Italian economics “expert” to run the European Central Bank, supported by a failed Portuguese finance minister, and, as one can see, the rest is history. Or rather future.

(My photo shows the President of Europe making one of his stirring, rousing speeches)