The Bewilderness

French socialists show women their place

The French President has a girlfriend and telling her that she should "know her place". For she has broken a fake royal vow that is supposed to bind all political spouses in France: act like the Queen of England and stay out of politics. The pack of socialist dinosaurs, wreathed in the hypocrisy of positive feminism until, god forbid, la femme decide to speak. Then we have a Gallic outbreak of misogyny.

Socialists have form on this, especially French ones. But the criticism and lazy assumptions over the desire of President Hollande's partner to support the opponent of his former girlfriend and mother of his four children in an election is telling. Must be jealousy as no other motive can be imagined... 

Would it not be pleasing and right if the partner of an elected politician states her own mind, keeps her own life and isn't boxed into a treadmill of photo opportunities masquerading as good works.

Narrow casting the Euro

The post that I undertook yesterday on the proposals of Duff do beg the question of how a generational cohort can construct a complete perspective divorced from political and economic reality. The situation does remind me of Barbara Tuchman's book, "The March of Folly", where leaders marched towards the cliff as rapidly as possible, never flinching from the fall.

Often, the ideological commitment has welded the identity of the participants and overridden sensible concerns. Or the information received is filtered through a series of precepts that prevents a true picture of disaster emerging. A good example is the need for Rome to always pronounce its superiority even whilst it was being overrun by barbarians.

The vulnerabilities and perverse outcomes of the Eurozone have been predicted. The illogicality of adding debt to debt (extend and pretend, kicking the can etc.) has been exposed to all. Yet we have a ruinous attachment to austerity and a dysfunctional currency union: left hand versus right hand, no unifying alternative to overcome this lemming pathway.

So simple to explain this as an ideology of Europe, but a whole generation born to the dream and the institutions have been blinded to economic reality and seem unable to discard these constraints. It is not clear why there are not more defections. Such narrow casting dooms the Eurozone.

Duffed up by reality

Andrew Duff, the arch-federalist Liberal Democrat MEP, has circulated a paper to selected journalists, setting out his updated views on achieving political union. With reality and economic disunion slicing huge gobbets of guts out of the federalist dream, Duff tries to shore up his goal, before the economic abattoir slices the EU salami style. Forced to abandon so many at the gate, Duff redefines the core as Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium and France: all the rest are too Eurosceptic or too endebted to make the grade. The Federalist has to return to small acorns and takes the proffered solution for economic governance. 

Duff does not represent the radical restructuring of the union: just a smaller foundation for fiscal union amongst a group of likeminded countries. All of the flaws embedded in the European Union (elite decisions, technocratic incompetence, and disenfranchisement) will be replicated. 

Even in the extreme emergency of debt and disunion, the federalists are unable to think outside of their current framework. Their limited dreams reflect in madcap format the very restraints preventing European elites from recognising economic verities. These nutters have even made Nigel farage and Ken Livingstone agree.

Obama polishes off a death camp

Obama gets to speed read a speech and makes a mistake. The President requires good staff like any manager. It is not just his own inability to correct a no-no in realtime, but the fact that he has not appointed people who could ensure that this mistake would not occur. Poor risk management.

With this level of ignorance, is the White House immunised to Godwin's Law?