British Military in Bed with French Poodles ? 
2 Nov 2010
Tuesday 2 November 2010
email ashley.mote@btconnect.com
So now, for reasons of expediency and a desperate lack of funds, we are going to share our defence with the French…a bunch of no-hope military poodles.
Has today’s crop of young British political pygmies no knowledge of history at all?
Agincourt? Waterloo? The Somme?
Dunkirk? Not long after that near disaster, which was made much worse by the utter ineptitude of the French command, and long before D-Day, Churchill spelled it out : “The heaviest cross I have to bear is the Cross of Lorraine”
Then came Indo-China, remember? The French had to be rescued by the Americans, who were finally beaten out at great cost to themselves.
How many years was it that the French refused to share the burden carried in Western Europe and elsewhere by NATO?
Where were they in Iran? Where are they in Afghanistan?
The French book of military heroes is almost as small as the Italian edition.
The French idea of cooperation is wholly one-sided, whatever the issue at stake. They know what they want. They regard the agreed terms as merely a basis for future discussion when things go wrong.
Evidence? The French attitude to EU directives and regulations. If they don’t like them they ignore them. They then ignore the fines too, until they are so enormous the EU quietly forgets them. With large numbers of French career bureaucrats in key positions in Brussels that is not a surprise.
Such wimpish flexibility is a much tried-and-tested negotiating technique. It works for the French, and that is all that ever matters to them.
As I saw for myself during five years in the EU lunatic asylum, the French regard with contempt the British attitude to honour and integrity. They openly pour scorn on our gold-plating of EU regulations. They think we are complete idiots.
If this absurd risk to British defence interests goes ahead, our senior military should know they will be shaking hands with a wet fish. He may be Hungarian-born, but Sarkozy comes out of the same mould.
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