Speaking after Danuta Huebner, the Polish EU Commissioner for Regional Policy (who gave bureaucratic lecture of mind-numbing stupefaction on the virtues of ERDF as a politically-correct means of social engineering), the Mayor electrified (and/or woke up) the audience with a stream of consciousness which certainly (and perhaps fortunately) went over Ms. Huebner's head.
Starting with a review of the the bounty of the Roman Imperium in endowing, when the Emperor visited them, outlying parts of the Empire with architecture such as 'arenas in which thousands of Christians were massacred', he then commented that all the Romans left us with was a wall, 'but at least it kept the Scots out'. The ERDF, as the bounty of the contemporary Imperium, offered some improvement on this. However there remained a serious shortfall between Britain's contribution to the EU budget and its benefits, not least because of the iniquities of the CAP; the Mayor opined that the remedying of this should be left to Gordon Brown who in years of opposition had railed against this gap with a 'Thatcherian' intensity. He stated his hope that the ERDF would provide support for the Mayoral policy of developing London as a centre for eco-technology, and (apparently) committed London to backing a 'new generation of electric car' so that he could replace his Toyota 4x4. He finally commented on Ms. Huebner's mention of the new EU initiative JESSICA [Joint European Support for Sustainable Investment in City Areas], suggesting that she (Jessica) would in future be the most important political female in London, as Gordon had fallen out with Prudence.
As most of the audience were public and 'voluntary' (i.e. grant-aided) sector drones dependent on Ms. Huebner's handouts, they seemed somewhat agonised. The rest of us were greatly heartened by - what is perhaps unknown in the experience of Ms. Huebner - a politician with a sense of history, a sense of objectives, and a sense of humour.
Marvellous stuff.
12 comments:
Wonder how Boris would have got on in Warsaw and speaking in Polish? He'd have been hilarious probably.
But is this just another deflection from Boris Johnson's loss - presumably of yet another significant adviser?
Or from that Populus Poll that shares the Times front page with the Fall of the Mosso?
Slightly off topic, but did anyone else hear Cameron's disastrous performance on Today this morning? I'm convinced that he simply didn't understand the - very good - questions.
Why on earth you guys went for Cameron rather than Davies I simply don't understand. Cameron is all spin and no substance: certainly not the sort of person you need in a crisis.
Once the election campaign gets going Broon and Co. are going to make mincemeat of your aspiring PM and Chancellor. You do realise that, don't you?
I speak from a completely apolitical point of view, obviously. Like most people I know, I think that the whole idea of party politics is dead in the water, fun though you may find it.
Surely someone has to put on youtube. Please!
You seem to have some tiresome plants on here today Mr Dale.
"I speak from a totally apolitical point of view"
Of course, Dolly, of course.
Tiresome dolly I may be, but listen to Cameron at the Today's web page and tell me what was good about that performance.
I sincerely don't want Brown re-elected, but I can't see that the opposition are in any way viable.
Drop the party politics and think, why can't you?
The current mess is way too serious to be left to party politics to sort out, isn't it?
Andrew, I just did listen to it. Your description of his performance is laughable.
Party politics is about being adversarial. That's the meat and drink of debate. We want deeply adversarial debates with strong arguers on both sides of the argument. What New Labour has been very successful in doing is closing down the debate.
The current dire situation with the public and personal finances due to Gordon Brown's stupid policies that were not properly challenged by an effective and adversarial opposition. That lack of intellectual scrutiny - on party political lines - is vital to a strong democracy.
And waht are party politics? It seesm to me that these can now be categorised as -
* New Labour - Statist, bureaucratic, Fascist, Big Government, unsound money and nannying
* Tories - Unclear. (They aught to be Small Government, individual responsibility, anti-bureaucratic, freedom and sound money).
So, no, I think that because the situation is so dire, in large because of partisan political failure, this politicalness needs to be rebuilt.
'Laughable', eh? Did you understand the questions, Iain? Meanwhile your man hangs out with spivs like this. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5312770.ece
David Davies would have been a much better bet. Surely you agree, Iain? Too late now, though, sadly.
Don't feed the trolls.
I once had a set to with a book club - bear with me this is relevant. I kept getting letters form 'people' with different names chasing me. Luckily I knew the local trading standards chief very well and he got on to them. Turned out that all the 'names' of all the 'people' that had been writing to me were fake. They were computer file names as far as I could make out.
Seems to me that 'Andrew Cooper' may fall into this category. No link to a real person on the blogger site at all. Mind you it wtites like a regurgitated comment pre-prepared by a spin doctor so.....
So Boris is going to take the ERDF silver?
Shame. On. Him. He will be on the Eudenrat teat and once he and London relies on the income, it will be dependent, suckered in and bought.
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