My Christmas Irritant List

Quentin Letts, writing in the Christmas Spectator compiles a page-full of his current irritants.  Whilst I do not disagree with any of his selections, particularly Tim Farron, I do think that he may have overlooked the following:

Anna Soubry

Lewis Hamilton

The entire C4 News Team

Jeremy Clarkson

Will Self

Nicky Morgan

Arsene Wenger

Sting

Classic FM

Krishnan Guru-Murthy (notwithstanding his colleagues mentioned above - he is in a league of his own).

Whilst Quentin Letts compiles his list in no order I feel it would be unfair on the others if I were not to award my special prize for irritation to the preposterously awful Anna Soubry.

Happy Christmas!

Brexit Negotiations

Michel Barnier has been appointed to the post of chief Brexit negotiator.  European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said he "wanted an experienced politician for this difficult job.”  Quite so.

As an experienced European Politician, Jim Hacker would have observed that, “he has the organising ability of the Italians, the flexibility of the Germans, and the modesty of the French topped off with the imagination of the Belgians, the generosity of the Dutch and the intelligence of the Irish.”

So good luck to the British team!

Abrogate! Abrogate!

Philip Collins writing in The Times 18 October 2016, admonishes us for being very silly to have voted leave the EU and even sillier for trying to do so. He makes another, depressingly familiar and defeatist, pitch that since it is going to be very difficult to leave we had better stay after all

He paints a picture of a “fabulously complicated” situation but I think he means “complex.”  A driverless train is a complicated system but riding it, if you can find a seat, is simple. On the other hand, the EU is a complex organisation in which there are multiple stakeholders and considerable interdependence.  In the EU, a single universal course of action, one size fits all, is unlikely to provide a practicable solution.  Adapting a complex system such as the EU would require truly visionary insight of all the laws, procedures, practices, protocols which have progressively taken over our lives and from which we have voted to divest ourselves.  I would not say it could not be done but maybe not in current lifetimes.

Which is why his “half-way house,” suggestion of interim membership of the EEA is so illogical.  Creeping for the cover of the EEA merely postpones tackling the real issues, the reason for which we voted to leave. We need a clean break and a clean sheet of paper. As the Daleks might cry, “abrogate, abrogate!”