Britannia Radio

In the post   Sunday 4 August 2013 At Bovington Tank Musuem recently, I noted a pristine example of the French EBR Panhard armoured car. Explaining my interest in this machine, I told North Jnr, who was with me, that it had very great personal significance. When I was a very young sprog, the then North Senior had gone on a trip to France – to take his French exams, I gather. The was the first time he had ever been apart from the family so it was a great event, and even more so when he returned bearing gifts. Impoverished though we were as a family in those days, he brought me my very first Dinky Toy, a pristine model of an EBR Panhard. This, I treasured for many, many years until it was lost under forgotten circumstances. Returning from our adventures in Oslo, I thence found a small package waiting me, courtesy of the Royal Mail. Inside there was revealed a model of that self-same EBR Panhard Dinky Toy. There are time when words are not enough. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 04/08/2013

EU referendum: why is this news?   Sunday 4 August 2013 David Cameron has been privately told by Hollande that France will not go out of its way to help him win key "reforms" of the European Union ahead of a referendum on UK membership. So the Sunday Telegraph has "learned" in the self-important way of the legacy media, telling us simple plebs that any opposition from France will make the process of "reform" considerably harder, if not impossible.  However, there is an element of wilful stupidity in this piece, as it rests on the idea that EU reform was ever realistic proposition, with or without Hollande's assistance. In fact, reform has never been on the cards, so it remains in the "impossible" bracket, making the Telegraph report a non-story. But since there is not going to be an "in-out" referendum by 2017, the story is doubly redundant. It is piling conjecture on conjecture, reading the tea leaves to divine the nature of something that is not going to be. One wonders why this newspaper – and the legacy media in general - thus continues to devote energy to a future non-event, except that there is a certain logic to it. If you are basically in favour of continued membership of the EU – which the media is – then it makes sense to keep people thinking about the prospect of "reform". The moment it is conceded that reform is not possible, that refocuses the debate on the stark choice of in or out, and forces people to think of the consequences of leaving. That, as we have seen, is the last thing the euophiles want. So do we have to be put though the turgid sham of assessing the odds of whether "reform" can succeed, all wrapped up in the trite, lightweight framing of personality politics, so beloved of the political hacks. These earnest commentators, though, are worse than time wasters. They distract attention from the far more important discussions on an exit plan, leaving us gravely unprepared for the day when we must consider how we are going to leave. The sad thing is, to judge from the comments on the Telegraph piece, people are so easily and willingly distracted. You would think that they might want to dictate their own agenda, but it seems that there is a huge constituency out there which is still happy to have the legacy media make the running. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 04/08/2013