22 December 2009 10:25 AM
Mario Lanza, of course
It's Christmas on this blog, so it's time for Mario Lanza.
Last year's clip was Lanza singing Gounod's Ave Maria, from the 1956 film Serenade. This year it is the great man singing Augustin Lara's Granada, in a scene from the 1952 flim Because You're Mine.
The Ave Maria was of course right for the spiritual celebration of the Nativity. I can make no such claim for Granada, especially not Lanza's rendition of it. What we have in this clip is the celebration of the physical passion of singing. So perhaps this is more Saturnalia than Christmas.
Still -- 'Granada tu tierre está llena de lindas mujeres de sangre y de sol...' If that doesn't move your soul, I must wonder if you have one.
2:24 PM
The Channel: it's there for a reason
This disruption in trains getting through the Channel Tunnel may be causing big misery for thousands of passengers -- and I am one of them -- but I find that, even as I shred my ticket for tomorrow morning's 9.29 Eurostar out of Brussels, there is a certain satisfaction in it.
Anyone who ever imagined Britain could be pulled into a genuine Europe Without Frontiers forgot about the English Channel.
Like Napoleon, Julius Caesar and the Duke of Medina Sidonia before me, I can't arrive at will. What has stopped me now, what has stopped Europeans for 2,000 years, is no mere 'frontier.' Storms and waves decide where Europe starts and Europe stops. Those of us in Brussels can change none of it.
Send the bill to those cretinous politicians in the Commons who voted Yes to Lisbon: Open Europe research just out shows that the top 100 existing EU laws will cost the British economy £184bn between 2010 and 2020. That is just the cost of the existing euro-regulations, even before all the new Lisbon powers let Brussels start piling on new EU laws.
As Open Europe points out, that £184bn could allow Britain to abolish its entire budget deficit.
Here are the top four euro-regulations which will cost the United Kingdom most in the next ten years:
1. The Working Time Regulations. These are calculated to cost £32.8bn by 2020, besides causing massive problems for the public sector, in particular the NHS.
2. The Climate Change Act 2008. Cost by 2020, £28.2bn, a big chunk of which will bet added to the energy bills at your home and business premises.
3. Energy Performance Certificates for buildings. Cost by 2020, £20.2bn. This particular regulation is responsible for the creation of the ludicrous Home Information Packs, which any estate agent (or, any estate agent who is not in on the scam) could tell you are a waste of time and money.
4. Temporary Agency Workers Directive. Cost by 2020, £15.6bn. Just the sort of expensive bureaucratic interference that is going to make employers avoid hiring temporary workers.
Slide on down the rest of top 100 and you will find billions more in costs because of euro-regulations covering everything from disposal of old electrical equipment to food hygiene to insurance mediation.
In other words, you will find the top 100 most expensive examples of how successive British governments have agreed to allow the infantilisation of Britain -- pretending that the British people couldn't possibly know how to get rid of an old toaster or keep food clean or deal with an insurance dispute if they didn't have some eurocrat to draw up directions for them.
Cameron: time to get legless
Peter Oborne has a piece on the Debate page today about David Cameron andthe question that is troubling the Tory leader -- why isn't he doing better in the polls? Gordon Brown is an unpopular prime minister in charge of a tired, sleazy and incompetent government, yet Cameron and his Conservatives can manage a lead of just 10 percent.
Oborne identifies some reasons why Cameron fails to win support: Brown's resilient character, the weakness of the Tory front bench team, his kamikaze U-turn on Lisbon, and so on.
All true. But I'd say Cameron's weakness can be put down to one thing: his failure at the one-legged test.
The test comes from philosopher Ayn Rand's early days, when she had to pitch her book to the publishers at Random House. One of the executives at the meeting couldn't quite grasp Rand's talk of 'Objectivism.' So he asked her if she could stand on one leg and explain her philosophy. The point being that if you have a clear vision of what you believe, you will be able to sum it up in the few moments in which you can manage to stand on one leg.
It was no problem for Rand. She stood up and, balancing on one high-heeled foot, she said without hesitation: 'My metaphysics, objective reality. My epistemology, reason. My ethics, self-interest. My politics, capitalism.' Foot down, contract signed. the rest is multi-million dollar publishing history.
Cameron however has given no indication that his philosophy -- if he has any coherent set of beliefs at all -- is so clear. What does he stand for? None of us knows. All we know is that he stands for getting elected, and being careful to be insulting to no one except those who think Britain is being damaged by membership of the European Union. Beyond that, he appears to stand for nothing.
If he wants to convince me, and all those Britons who refuse to give him their support in the opinion polls, that he is worth electing, he had better start expressing the right philosophy, and doing it flamingo-style.
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