ALL RIGHT-THINKING PEOPLE would under normal circumstances find today a reason for celebration, as it is the last day that the inhabitants of the European Union will have to put up with the ten-year tenure of the smarmy, unelected José Manuel Durão Barroso, surely the most prominent of the "leaders" of Europe over recent years in their inexorable progress towards establishing a fully-fledged dictatorship.
BARROSO HAS CELEBRATED HIS DEPARTURE by giving out a luxury 616-page publicly-funded coffee-table book entitled European Commission 2004-2014 - A Testimony by the President with Selected Documents. This is, if any more were needed, further testimony to how these people love themselves and take their worth to the world so seriously.
BLURB ON BOOKS IS CUSTOMARY at this time of year, when everyone who has ever been famous for more than 15 minutes comes out with an autobiography in time for Christmas, so I thought it might be elucidating to report on how some of those who have been given the book have reacted to it. In future print runs Barroso may consider putting these comments on the back cover.
"A DELUSIONAL AND SELF-SERVING MEMOIR", "a vanity project", "a ridiculous propaganda stunt" and "a slap in the face for taxpayers" (Grant Shapps, Chairman of the British Conservative Party)
"IT'S GOT SOME NICE PICTURES OF THE G8 SUMMIT IN IT, but we've got plenty of those already" (David Cameron, British Prime Minister)
THE DELUSIONAL ONE MAY HOPE that this work will serve as his legacy after ten years of interfering with other people's lives in ways that they do not want, reducing almost a third of the population of Europe to a state of poverty not known for forty or fifty years and making the threat of a European Civil War a reality. The latter event, however, will pave the way for the European Super State governed by a dictator, surely the ultimate aim of these people.
MANY, HOWEVER, WILL REMEMBER him by his reply to the accusation that nothing involving this European project is democratic: "Decisions taken by the most democratic institutions in the world are very often wrong". But I myself imagine him singing the following in a snazzy pair of lederhosen, soon to go off and join the ranks of the marauding storm troopers:
So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye;
I hate to go and leave this pretty sight
So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu
Adieu, adieu, to you and you and you
So long, farewell, au revoir, auf weidersehen
I'd like to stay and drink some more champagne
So long, farewell, auf weidersehen, goodbye
I leave and heave a sigh and say goodbye
