Crosswords2 mins ago
Did She Mean It?
'The EU’s final words to the UK as it departed the union after nearly half a century were “thank you, goodbye, and good riddance”.
'The misspoken farewell, spoken by the Croatian ambassador to her UK counterpart Tim Barrow last week, perhaps sums up 47 years of the Britons being lost in translation in Brussels.
Irena Andrassy, the Croatian ambassador, was chairing the UK’s final meeting of EU envoys as a member state because her country holds the six-month EU presidency. She assumed “good riddance” was akin to “good luck”, said diplomats present in the room.
Despite some feelings running high towards the UK over Brexit, the goodbye was not a barb in disguise, they insisted. '
Oh really?
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An interesting read below.How will Croatia feel in the next two
years ?
The UK economy is bigger than the 18 smallest EU countries combined. This means in economic terms that the EU will lose not just one member state — but shrink from 28 members to ten.
On a purely fiscal level, the loss of Britain's contribution will have huge implications for the EU's budget.
·
Alexander von Schoenburg is editor-at-large at BILD, Germany's biggest-selling paper. He wrote:-
The truth is that Brexit — so often sneered at by the federalists — has shone a harsh spotlight on Europe's deep-seated structural problems.
Here in Germany, our economy has long hovered on the brink of recession, with growth at its most anaemic for a decade.
Manufacturing is looking increasingly outdated as exports and capital investments suffer.
Our car industry — the backbone of our economy — now faces perhaps its biggest crisis since Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz invented the automobile in the 1880s.
Yet in the face of this darkening picture, Merkel — now in the last full year of her tenure — seems astonishingly complacent and impotent.
At that Champagne reception in Berlin, she boasted of her achievements, then went on to do something most unusual for a Western politician: she quoted the Russian revolutionary Lenin, who referred to the political principle of 'one step forward, two steps back'.
No one seemed surprised that Merkel uttered the name of this mass-murdering communist in front of an august group of U.S. academics.
Meanwhile, the difficulties of other European countries are even worse.
Next door in France, President Emmanuel Macron is fighting a losing war in his attempt to reform the vast and creaking French state, especially its array of unaffordable pension schemes.
A glimpse into the rotten nature of France's sprawling civic bureaucracy was provided a few years ago by Aurelie Boullet, who wrote a book about her experiences as an employee at Aquitaine Regional Council.
'I was getting destroyed by my job because I had nothing to do,' she said, explaining that her actual work as a mid-ranking administrator amounted to between five and 12 hours a month.
In this culture of institutionalised idleness, she was once told that she had produced a report in the wrong typeface. She was given an entire week to change the font, though the task took her only 25 seconds.
Spain is no better and has no chance of economic renewal now that, after eight months of bickering and paralysis, the country has a socialist government propped up by the radical Left.
It is a similar story in Italy, which is stuck in perma-recession and where the state machine is hopelessly inefficient. There, as in France, attempts at reform have floundered.
Only this week, in an extraordinary judgment about a case that symbolises the mess Italy is in, an Italian court sided with a portly policeman who had been caught on film in 2015, clocking on for work in his underwear.
The case was brought as part of a crackdown on skiving officialdom, but the policeman, who lived in a flat above the station, successfully argued that actually putting on his uniform was part of his working day.
That kind of nonsense is typical of Europe, where too much of the state machinery is a self-serving racket.
A glance across the Channel to Britain is enough to make me sufficiently envious to reach for an aspirin — invented a long time ago in Germany — to quaff with the Champagne.
I see a government with a solid, one-party majority, compared to all the fragile coalitions of Europe. I see a nation with a strong sense of purpose, built on trust in its own capabilities, and a powerful economy. Indeed, according to the International Monetary Fund, Britain will be the fastest-growing G7 economy in Europe over the next two years.
I see a vibrant, open place that can attract huge amounts of foreign investment, has an unrivalled record on business start-ups, is a global pioneer of scientif
continued from above.
//I see a vibrant, open place that can attract huge amounts of foreign investment, has an unrivalled record on business start-ups, is a global pioneer of scientific and genetic research.
I see a country that has an unrivalled financial services sector, enjoys a vast cultural reach through language, music and the arts and contains several of the world's great universities.
At times, when I consider Britain, I am reminded of the bullish atmosphere that prevails in the fast-growing Asian economies.
all the best talent is rushing to England, where the Premier League is the most attractive in the world.
While Britain is going through an astonishing cultural renaissance, reflected in the huge popularity of your entertainment industry and the expansion of major art galleries like London's Tate Modern, in Germany a new socialist law on national heritage is so heavy-handed on transactions of valuable art and antiques it is effectively killing the market.
The most interesting person I spoke to at the award ceremony in Berlin was Andrew Gundlach, scion of one of Germany's most famous banking families, the Arnholds, and now President and co-CEO of Bleichroeder LLC. He is a shrewd man with a deep understanding of the geopolitical scene.
Did he think the outlook is grim for post-Brexit Britain? He laughed at the question.
'The whole point of Brexit was to align with the high growth of America and China and not low-growth Europe,' he said.
What sends cold sweat running down the spine of European policy makers, he added, is a vibrant, talent-attracting economy right on Europe's doorstep, with rule-books more liberal than the EU's.
The last time I visited Britain to gauge the spirit of your country for my newspaper BILD, I travelled north, to Teesside.
To my surprise, I found local politicians and businessmen talking of low-tax 'freeports' and new opportunities, and people in pubs ridiculing the doomsayers in the south. Decades of EU membership had seemingly done little for prosperity there.
More than one person told me that things might well get better, 'once we're out'.
They could well be right. Europe fears a truly global Britain.
Diehard Remainers still cling to the belief that Britain will stumble, that the forthcoming negotiations on a trade deal will prove tortuous.
I am not so sure. With only ten months of talks left, Britain is in a far better position than most here on the continent dare to admit.
In Boris Johnson, you have a charismatic, election-winning Prime Minister who has forced through Brexit partly thanks to the sheer force of his personality and his ability to outmanoeuvre his opponents.
In the process, he has repeatedly defied his critics. They said he would never persuade the EU to re-open the Withdrawal Agreement, drop the Irish backstop or reach a new deal.
He achieved all three — and I believe he can do so again with a trade accord.
European politicians used to push around Johnson's predecessor, Theresa May.
Now they are confronted with a leader who really is too 'strong and stable' to be bullied.
The eminent historian Niall Ferguson recently said: 'I think Brussels has not really adjusted to the new situation, but they will adjust when they realise that Britain isn't about to be rolled over the way it was because of the way May was negotiating.
'We will see a very different tone to these negotiations.'
The Champagne at these self-congratulatory diplomatic receptions is starting to leave a sour taste.
Your future looks bright. I'm not so sure about mine.//
//I see a vibrant, open place that can attract huge amounts of foreign investment, has an unrivalled record on business start-ups, is a global pioneer of scientific and genetic research.
I see a country that has an unrivalled financial services sector, enjoys a vast cultural reach through language, music and the arts and contains several of the world's great universities.
At times, when I consider Britain, I am reminded of the bullish atmosphere that prevails in the fast-growing Asian economies.
all the best talent is rushing to England, where the Premier League is the most attractive in the world.
While Britain is going through an astonishing cultural renaissance, reflected in the huge popularity of your entertainment industry and the expansion of major art galleries like London's Tate Modern, in Germany a new socialist law on national heritage is so heavy-handed on transactions of valuable art and antiques it is effectively killing the market.
The most interesting person I spoke to at the award ceremony in Berlin was Andrew Gundlach, scion of one of Germany's most famous banking families, the Arnholds, and now President and co-CEO of Bleichroeder LLC. He is a shrewd man with a deep understanding of the geopolitical scene.
Did he think the outlook is grim for post-Brexit Britain? He laughed at the question.
'The whole point of Brexit was to align with the high growth of America and China and not low-growth Europe,' he said.
What sends cold sweat running down the spine of European policy makers, he added, is a vibrant, talent-attracting economy right on Europe's doorstep, with rule-books more liberal than the EU's.
The last time I visited Britain to gauge the spirit of your country for my newspaper BILD, I travelled north, to Teesside.
To my surprise, I found local politicians and businessmen talking of low-tax 'freeports' and new opportunities, and people in pubs ridiculing the doomsayers in the south. Decades of EU membership had seemingly done little for prosperity there.
More than one person told me that things might well get better, 'once we're out'.
They could well be right. Europe fears a truly global Britain.
Diehard Remainers still cling to the belief that Britain will stumble, that the forthcoming negotiations on a trade deal will prove tortuous.
I am not so sure. With only ten months of talks left, Britain is in a far better position than most here on the continent dare to admit.
In Boris Johnson, you have a charismatic, election-winning Prime Minister who has forced through Brexit partly thanks to the sheer force of his personality and his ability to outmanoeuvre his opponents.
In the process, he has repeatedly defied his critics. They said he would never persuade the EU to re-open the Withdrawal Agreement, drop the Irish backstop or reach a new deal.
He achieved all three — and I believe he can do so again with a trade accord.
European politicians used to push around Johnson's predecessor, Theresa May.
Now they are confronted with a leader who really is too 'strong and stable' to be bullied.
The eminent historian Niall Ferguson recently said: 'I think Brussels has not really adjusted to the new situation, but they will adjust when they realise that Britain isn't about to be rolled over the way it was because of the way May was negotiating.
'We will see a very different tone to these negotiations.'
The Champagne at these self-congratulatory diplomatic receptions is starting to leave a sour taste.
Your future looks bright. I'm not so sure about mine.//
That's quite a piece Retro, thanks. Bild is of course rather like ' say, The Sun, but it is a well written & argued case. I could add to it regarding Germany that it's not only the car industry which is in trouble, it looks bad all round, The Deutsche Bank once the strongest bank of the EU is in dire straits due to mis-management. The electrical giant, Bosch is in a bad shape & sacking thousands, the huge pharmaceutical company Bayer owes billions in compensations through its purchase of Monsanto, & the list goes on.
The imaginative predictions on here of the multifaceted demise of the EU, contemporaneous with the return of global importance, even greatness, for the UK, is a fascinating read but they are an utterly unconvincing wish list. Did she mean it ? Just as the UK is at last letting the mask and general facade drop to reveal the hitherto hidden real UK, so she almost certainly meant it knowing that that, by now, that is the widespread thought among EU officials and citizenry alike.
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