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Although this entry is also political, my main thrust is about life and having a sense of humour. I will start it with a few things that cause me great amusement and I feel that I might try and share. In the 80′s when Maggie was PM, she was apparently very found of a BBC TV series called “Yes Minister” which was a comedy centred around a Tory Minister “Jim Hacker” and his two closest Civil Servants. Of course Hacker was a total duffer and his Civil Servants ran rings around him at every turn. Having a number of the series on DVD, I have been watching them again recently and although they are slightly dated in most ways, in others they are totally current and over 20 years later, little has changed including many of the specific topics !

A ‘device’ often used in the scripts is based around “Jim Hacker” being a bit stupid, is his Senior Civil Servant Sir Humphrey explaining to him how things actually work in Government. To me or anybody interested, Sir Humphrey explaining to Jim Hacker just why the UK is involved with the EU (aka Common Market), is hilarious and for the moment please just hold that thought, I will return to it shortly.

Now I will admit that I don’t care too much for Gordon Brown and his Government, but there are two people I find slightly less than comprehensible: “The Miliband Boys”, one is Foreign Secretary and the other isn’t, he is a Cabinet something or other who will write the next election Manifesto which will be purged of any references to EU Referendums or why Gordon bites his nails at his age. However the thing I find odd is the existence of this pair in Government and given that Ed Balls also has his wife Yvette Cooper (?) in the Cabinet, has Brown gone for an “Heir and a Spare” as a principle of Cabinet selection ?

However, I must return to the Brothers Miliband and whilst I agree none of us can choose what we look like because it is all down to the gene pool apparently, I cannot believe that they are real people who could transform into “politicians”. Although I cannot say with a certainty, either they have escaped from a Circus Troupe of Trapeze Artists, or are left overs from Thunderbirds or worse still, are glove puppets. Why worse still ? During the 1950′s there was a radio show called “Educating Archie” and I had an “Archie hand puppet” clearly made by a psychic glove puppet head maker because it looked like Miliband, painted on hair, flat eyes and no expression or engagement in the “topic”.

Now let me put this altogether !

The other evening (15/11/2007), Miliband the one who is Foreign Secretary rather than the “other one”, gave a speech at the “College of Europe” in Bruges about the way forward for the EU, how it is not and never will be a super state and should keep enlarging and so on. In the process I suspect, equally trying to justify the oddest decision in recent British political History by Brown, not to hold the Referendum promised in a Labour Party manifesto at the last General Election on the EU Constitution and the name apart, it is still the same document. The whole rationale behind his speech was lifted from “Yes Minister” when Sir Humphrey explained British involvement in the Common Market to Jim Hacker, which was basically to screw it up, from the inside.

A Final Observation

Leaving aside the rights and wrongs, the benefits and costs of being part of the EU, the thing that I find strange is the way sensible people in Government, both in the UK and many other countries within the EU, who are totally aware of the scepticism of their electorates and yet, just attend one EU Conference and they become totally deaf to any concept of democracy. What happens I ask ?

• Is it some kind of Free Mason secret ceremony where people wear aprons, do funny handshakes and are told “the secret” ?
• Do their brains get sucked out of their skulls by body snatchers ?
• Are they fed mind altering drugs so that they become Stepford Wives ?
• Is there an EU secret service, STASI trained that kidnaps their families to ensure “good behaviour” prior to every EU Summit ?

The simple fact is that regardless of what country they come from, they don’t even attempt to sell the concept to their electorate and at every possible moment, blame “EU Laws & Regulations” for anything they don’t want to do domestically. This is a very silly way to behave and inevitably, stores up problems for the future so that when the Dam bursts as it will, the fallout will be far greater.