I wish I didn't. Unfortunately I can recognise him because I have spent enough time staring at him at Council press conferences that his rodent-like Belgian features are burned into my brain. He is of course -- 96 percent of readers of this blog will already know this -- Herman Van Rompuy, the unelected president of the European Council. But there is hardly a German alive who knows his name. This may make the highly-paid, low-tax, long holidays press propaganda officers working for the 'president' go into P.R. overtime, but I don't care: the people of the biggest, richest, most important country in the EU are treating this unelected Belgian symbol of the Lisbon Treaty with the indifference he deserves. Fantastic. Thanks to Eurointelligence for translating the Frankfurter Allgemeine report of the Allensback Institute poll which turned up the figure. Also of interest in the poll: the percentage of Germans who say they have no confidence in the EU has gone up from a pre-crisis level of 51 perent to 63 percent. That means Germany is now two-thirds against further EU integration. If only they would If the Germans did that, one could forgive them everything. Well, almost everything. There are still questions to answer about the murderous guards at the Berlin Wall... So it is all the more interesting to hear his reply to the accusations made last week by José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission. Barroso claimed that Ireland's problems are entirely Ireland's fault. Listen to his attack and you'd think Ireland's banking disaster and economic crash had nothing to do with membership of the EU or the euro or indeed anything the EU had done. (See my post of January 20, in which Barroso makes these accusations as part of his attack on the heroic Irish MEP Joe Higgins). The commission president insisted the EU was only 'part of the solution.' Yet speaking to an Irish Sunday newspaper, Dr Somers said that in lending money to Ireland the EU 'were only supporting themselves.' Dead right: all the money in the huge and high-interest loan the EU has forced Ireland to take is being handed over to the banks to repay the German and other bondholders who were reckless enough to lend to the high-property-speculating Irish banks. Dr Somers contrasted this with the way in 1978 the then-EEC had given subsidies to Ireland to encourage the country to join the European Monetary System, the forerunner of monetary union. He told the Sunday Independent: 'I remember very clearly when the major countries in Europe were trying to set up the European Monetary System [Dr Somers has been in this game a long time]. They actually offered us interest rate subsidies at the time.' 'They were so anxious for us to break the link with sterling and join the EMS that they gave us loans with an interest subsidy attached to them because they knew it would be difficult for us due to the close links we had with the UK.' 'It was important for them politically to have credibility by having as many countries join the EMS as possible. Now when we get into this spot of bother, instead of giving us subsidies to help us get out of trouble, they charge us this huge penalty of 3 percent. I mean it's not exactly the behaviour you would expect of your European partners, that they make a profit from the help they give you.' That is because, Dr Somers, they do not intend to be your 'partners.' They intend to be your rulers. 'Despite the degeneration we now face,' writes Peterson, 'let us have "excellent courage" and "excellent heart" as Prince Hal did, and go into the fight "nobly bold," as, without question, did our fathers of old.' Reading Peterson's note it occurs to me, and not for the first time, that certain Americans have a better idea of the worth of Britain's history than do the British themselves; and perhaps, too, a better idea of the dangers Britain now faces. OUR FATHERS OF OLD EXCELLENT herbs had our fathers of old - Excellent herbs to ease their pain - Alexanders and Marigold, Eyebright, Orris, and Elecampane - Basil, Rocket, Valerian, Rue, (Almost singing themselves they run) Vervain, Dittany, Call-me-to-you- Cowslip, Melitot, Rose of the Sun, Anything green that grew out of the mould Was an excellent herb to our fathers of old. Wonderful tales had our fathers of old - Wonderful tales of the herbs and the stars - The Sun was Lord of the Marigold, Basil and Rocket belonged to Mars. Pat as a sum in division it goes - (Every herb had a planet bespoke) - Who but Venus should govern the Rose ? Who but Jupiter own the Oak ? Simply and gravely the facts are told In the wonderful books of our fathers of old. Wonderful little when all is said, Wonderful little our fathers knew. Half their remedies cured you dead - Most of their teaching was quite untrue - "Look at the stars when a patient is ill (Dirt has nothing to do with disease), Bleed and blister as much as you will, Blister and bleed him as oft as you please." Whence enormous and manifold Errors were made by our fathers of old. Yet when the sickness was sore in the land, And neither planets nor herbs assuaged They took their lives in their lancet-hand And, oh, what a wonderful war they waged ! Yes, when the crosses were chalked on the door - (Yes when the terrible death-cart rolled!), Excellent courage our fathers bore - Excellent heart had our fathers of old. None too learned but nobly bold Into the fight went our fathers of old. If it be certain, as Galen says - And sage Hippocrates holds as much - "That those afflicted by doubts and dismays Are mightily helped by a dead man's touch," Then be good to us, stars above ! Then be good to us, herbs below ! We are afflicted by what we can prove, We are distracted by what we know. So - ah, so! Down from your heaven or up from your mould, Send us the hearts of our fathers of old ! Here is an account of the moment, from Simon Schama's 'Citizens': 'At ten o'clock the procession arrived at the scaffold. Beneath the platform Sanson [the executioner] and his assistant prepared to undress the King and tie his hands, only to be told by the prisoner that he wanted to keep his coat on and have his hands free. He evidently felt so strongly about the last matter that it appeared for a moment he might even struggle, and it took a remark from Edgeworth [the priest who accompanied the King] comparing his ordeal to that of the Savior for Louis to resign himself to whatever further humiliations were to be heaped on him.' 'The steps to the scaffold were so steep that Louis had to lean on the priest for support as he mounted. His hair was cut with the professional briskness for which the Sanson family 'Louis was strapped onto a plank which when pushed forward thrust his head into the enclosing brace. Sanson pulled on the cord and the twelve-inch blade fell, hissing through its grooves to its mark. In accordance with custom, the executioner pulled the head from the basket and showed it, dripping, to the people.' Today ought to be a day of mourning in France. Instead it is largely ignored. The French, led by the likes of Nicholas Sarkozy, wait until July 14th and then celebrate the slaughters, tortures and rapes of the revolution. Draw your own conclusions about what kind of principles such Frenchmen have introduced to Europe. Over at the on-line journal EUobserver.com, the excellent Bruno Waterfield has been blogging about Baroness Ashton's bad record of attendance at commission meetings. It is a good story; but what really caught my eye was this picture of the £313,000 a year EU foreign policy boss. Waterfield's caption tells us it was provided 'courtesy of the European Commission.' Which makes me ask: just how much must the commission hate Ashton to release a picture like this? And by the way, that is the noble baroness on the left. Apparently. Cheers for my colleague, Joe Higgins, an Irish Socialist member of the European Parliament and fellow-columnist for the Irish Daily Mail. Yesterday in Strasbourg Joe ripped into José Manuel Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy in the way the wimpish British Cameron Tories should be doing but don't. You can see the clip of Joe's attack below, and Barroso's reply. Now, Barroso is always emollient, like a greasy headwaiter rubbing his hands together. This apparently-angry reply by the commission president is getting some mileage as a 'rare moment' when he was moved to 'visible anger.' I don't think the anger was genuine. Check the first time the Portuguese ex-Maoist-turned-Liberal pauses for breath. He gives a fleeting little grin, a kind of signal to his mates of 'Watch me now, chaps.' Still, Barroso's fakery has helped call attention to Joe's attack, so I'm delighted about it. I should add to my last post about Rome that I was there to meet up with a pack of paleo-conservatives gathered by Chronicles Magazine in America. The palazzo was designed in part by Michaelangelo. It is now the French embassy and possibly the finest palazzo in Rome. My scholar-friend had forgotten he was carrying a knife. We were all very embarrassed for him because, with his politics, he should not have been carrying a knife: he should have been carrying a gun. Later at a big dinner up on the Gianicolo, I was at a table where a retired US Marine Corps officer, an artillery field commander during the first Gulf War, was playing host. Last time we'd met we were in Paris, where he'd been visiting the battlefields of the Hundred Years War ('The thing about Joan of Arc was, she really knew how to place her artillery.') This time the ex-Jarhead was sitting next to a very tall exotic looking man in his twenties, a green-eyed Asian. It turned out he was a half-Chinese, half-German America conservative. He called across the table to me: 'I understand you cover EU affairs from Brussels.' 'Yup,' I replied. 'Tell me,' he asked in some excitement, 'Do you know Nigel Farage?' Before I even had a chance to say 'Yup' again he was already quoting lines from Farage's 'Next time you see Nigel,' said the Chinese-German-American, 'tell him he has fans in America and a waiting audience.' The UKIP leader it seems, has gone global. Youtube may have a lot to answer for. Okay, there's been no blogging here because I've been in Rome. But I'm back in Brussels now, so I'm ready to post on EU topics such as the spread on Portuguese debt or the possibility that the EU may require an increase to 6 percent in tier one requirements or Wolfgang Schauble's insistence on more German-directed fiscal control across the EU in return for an increase in the European bail-out facility. Or we can talk about the only European story in which anybody outside this euro-village is interested, which is, Silvio Berlusconi and the hookers. We'll go with Silvio. What you have to understand before you read coverage by any Anglo-Saxon reporter about the women seen at Berlusconi's parties is that many Italian women, and Roman women in particular, dress like hookers. Or what look like hookers to anyone used to British women. (As for acting like hookers, we could get into what happens outside any British nightclub after closing, though that perhaps is for another blog. But I will say I've never seen an Italian woman drunk.) So while Berlusconi's friend, the, ahem, 'teenaged nightclub dancer' Karima El Mahroug, seen here above on the right, may look hooker-ish, so, let's face it, does local politician and Berlusconi's dental hygienist, Nicole Minetti, below left, and quite a number of senior female members of parliament. Here on the right is Berlusconi's parliamentary ally, Michela Brambilla, seen showing the As for the Berlusconi dental hygienist, I did a double-take when I saw her picture because she looks in very much the same style of my own dental hygienist when I lived in Rome: pout, tousled hair, the mouth, the lot. It's the way they look. And they all look rather splendid: add the permanent tan, the relentless jewellery, the stitched-on half-unbuttoned dresses, stiletto heels and year-round bare legs, and you can understand why Italian men are so content to live in Italy. Run a survey in Britain on where the British would most like to live and at least half the men have dreams of a new life in Spain, France or Australia; run the same survey in Italy and you will come up with 99 of 100 men who cannot imagine living anywhere but in Italy. The only place any Italian man prefers over the city in which he lives is the nearest beach; and only because on the beach the photocopy bodies are wearing little more than bikinis made out of dental floss (perhaps it's that dental hygiene look again). Which again makes me wonder if the 'shock' at reports that some women at Berlusconi's parties were topless is a little over-egged. I've queued at a cafe in the Cinque Terre behind a 20-something girl with a bum entirely naked except for the dental floss. I mentioned to the Italian man I was with that I'd say any place more than ten metres from the beach and she ought to cover it up. The Italian replied that in general he agreed but if the bottom is that good, it ought to be bare anywhere it wants to be: and this man was no Berlusconi, merely a healthy Italian. So how shocking can it be for an Italian man to party with a pack of topless girls? If the party is at Berlusconi's place in Sardinia, the girls have most likely spent the entire day topless on the beach or on the boat, so, what's new and where's the shock? 
26 January 2011 9:44 AM
Van Rompuy the Invisible Man: Germans fail to recognise top eurocrat
Satisfying poll statistic of the day: 96 percent of Germans cannot identify the man shown here on the left. They don't know who he is.
force their Chancellor to stop propping up the euro -- indeed, if only they would force her to pull out of the single currency and re-establish the d-mark -- then this whole ever-closer-union would fail.
23 January 2011 10:18 AM
Getting Ireland to break with sterling: how the European Union manipulated 'support'
One of the few people at the top of Irish finance who have come out of the country's debacle with their virtue intact is Dr Michael Somers. He is the former head of the National Treasury Management Agency, the State agency which handles Ireland's national debt.
22 January 2011 4:58 PM
Rudyard Kipling on the courage of 'our fathers of old'
Following my post on the courage of Prince Hal -- if you missed it, the post was an account of the way the future Henry V endured an arrow shot through his skull at the 1403 Battle of Shrewsbury, and the way ancient medicine saved his life -- Dan Peterson, a Northern Virginia lawyer specialising in firearms law, has sent this. It is a Kipling poem, new to me, called 'Our Fathers of Old.'
21 January 2011 12:04 PM
The Martyr-King Louis XVI: this blog remains in mourning
Today is the 218th anniversary of the execution of Louis XVI by the butchers of the French Revolution.
had become famous, and Louis attempted finally to address the great sea of twenty thousand faces packed into the square. "I die innocent of all the crimes of which I have been charged. I pardon those who have brought about my death and I pray that the blood you are about to shed may never be required of France..." At that moment Santerre [a Jacobin leader] ordered a roll of drums, drowning out whatever else the King might have to say.'
20 January 2011 4:04 PM
European Commission pictures Ashton: the resentment is delicious
Strasbourg: an Irish Socialist shows British Tories how it ought to be done
19 January 2011 3:20 PM
Rome II: Nigel Farage goes global
Things were going pretty smoothly, until one of the group, a classical scholar and noted political writer, got caught by security as four of us went into the spectacular Palazzo Farnese.
speech in the European Parliament, when the UKIP leader demanded of Herman van Rompuy ('you have the charism of a damp rag') soon after his appointment as permanent president of the European Council: 'Who are you? I'd never heard of you. Nobody in Europe had ever heard of you. Sir, you have no legitimacy.' And on through the whole Farage rant.
Bunga-bunga: maybe a little something lost in translation
tops of her sheer black stockings on 'Porta, Porta,' Rai Uno's flagship current affairs show. The display was no accident (I saw the show). She crossed and uncrossed her legs throughout the discussion, especially whenever an opponent was making a serious point: at which moment, guess to which guest the cameras cut away? This girl's got legs and she knows how to use them.
Indeed, it is so much the look that Italy has been turned into the plastic surgery capital of Europe. Everyone from Berlusconi's estranged wife down to his dancing girls to the beautiful and half-dressed starlets on his television stations has been at it: getting surgeons to give them what is known as the 'photocopy face.' One could add, the 'photocopy body.'
As for whether the prime minister of Italy is paying for the girls for the night, there is no hint that any payments are coming out of state funds. Berlusconi is one of the richest men in Europe. He is almost 74 years old, living away from his wife, and so embalmed he already looks like his own corpse. If he doesn't pay, he doesn't get. For more than 2,000 years, the Romans have built statues to men who have done far worse.
Sunday, 30 January 2011
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