After 40+ years of common EU regulation and compliance, is it odd that the EU suddenly has an issue with UK driver’s licenses?However, his words could be applied equally to any of the numerous stumbling blocks presented by the UK's proposed goodbye wave to the European Union.
By Ian Lang, Leading Technician
All of this sort of bollocks could be sorted out over a couple of G&Ts on a Wednesday afternoon if both sides really wanted to, but no, we have to have these long, drawn-out dramas because bloody career politicians and pundits on both sides want a bit of publicity.
For Christ’s sake. The bloody Yalta Conference only lasted eight days and that was sorting a proper mess out. The Congress of Vienna only lasted nine months; most of the work was done inside a week by little blokes with pencils and it might not have gone on as long as it did if bleeding Napoleon hadn’t slipped out of Elba in February and spoiled things. The Armistice of 1918 took three days. The German surrender at Luneberg took the same.
We’ve got these things we keep hanging around at great expense. They’re called diplomats. Granted, some of the ones at the top might not be any good but behind Sir Rupert Twaittingly-Corpulent KCBE etc (PPE Cambridge) and whatever his foreign equivalents are there are men and women who know how to strike a good compromise for both sides so lock them up in a room somewhere quiet with a pile of sandwiches and vol-au-vents and a tankerful of tea and coffee and let ’em hammer it out.
It’s bloody well symptomatic of our times. In industrial circles it used to be “go and make one of these and we’ll see if anybody’s got a use for it and sell it to ‘em” now it’s five years case study and cost-benefit analysis and worrying about how it fits in to the business model, by which time whatever it is you were going to make has been denecessitated by something else. In government it used to be chaps (hardly ever chapesses but never mind for the moment) had words in French and stuff got sorted that afternoon. It’s not that hard to be a moderately succesful shopkeeper, you buy a load of stuff and if it’s cheap quality you sell it on at a reasonable price, if it’s high quality you charge a premium, and where it falls between the two you judge it and set the right price adding a bit for profit and a bit more for tax. As long as you aren’t selling utter tat, keep your shop clean and you don’t throw cabbages at great velocity and scream “get out you bastards!” at customers as they come in the door they will give you money. But no. We have to have retail professionals running things. If anybody ever tells you they are a retail professional just say “oh, you mean you work in a shop?” and watch their faces. Retail professionals ran Woolworths. BHS. Toys R Us. Maplin. House of Fraser. Marks and Spencer. Need I go on?
It’s the same sort of professional that’s running politics as it is retail. They think they know it all and won’t let the people who do know how to do it actually do it. It strokes their egos but nothing gets done. Then there’s a big old mess to clear up but by that time they’ve had their bonuses and buggered off to ruin something else.
We could have a Brexit deal done and dusted by September and this sort of arsing about shouldn’t be necessary. But no. The politicos on both sides want to grandstand and bluster and in the end all that happens is we do nothing.
Politicos. You’re all bastards. We should have a European-wide rising to give you all a last cigarette before a nice, sunny wall in Madrid or somewhere. That’s the sort of EU I’d back. Then the rest of us could just get on with it. Now take your giant egos and insert them rectally at an oblique angle, you bunch of publicity-chasing charlatans.
No comments:
Post a Comment