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 tierra está llena de lindas mujeres de sangre y de sol...' If that doesn't move your soul, I must wonder if you have one.
21 December 2009 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.
How Britain could abolish entire budget deficit: abolish EU regulations
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.
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