ninme

First, I have to say that Camilla looks fantastic.

Yowsa. Good for her! Second, the fact that this whole production is happening just a matter of weeks after the European Constitution Referendum in France just amuses the heck out of me. Anyway, it’s 200 years since the Battle of Trafalgar:

Telegraph - Queen salutes Nelson’s ‘legacy’

In a written message, the Queen said the presence of such a large international fleet was a mark of the high esteem in which Nelson continued to be held. She said it was also indicative of a special bond that existed between all mariners.

“Admiral Lord Nelson’s supreme qualities of seamanship, leadership with humanity and courage in the face of danger are shared among our maritime community today.

“He could wish for no greater legacy,” she said.

This, from the slideshow:

The Queen and other members of the Royal family are to attend the display, which will be the biggest international show of sea power in British waters since the Normandy invasion of 1944

Yay!

PS. This made me laugh.

Update: Yay!

Not exactly subtle, are they?

The Spectator - Now for the British revolution, by Anthony Browne

For the French the EU was a way of creating Europe in its image, a Greater France, bankrolled by the Germans, who were still doing penance for their grandfathers’ crimes. The French federalist model has not just meant giving the union all the trappings of a state — a president, a parliament, a flag, a currency, a national anthem, a motto (‘united in diversity’), and a constitution which decrees a national day — ‘Europe Day shall be celebrated on 9 May throughout the Union.’

It has also meant apeing the functions of national governments. The EU has policies on domestic violence, accidents at home, racism, maternity leave for adopting mothers, TV advertising, culture, sport, consumer debt, criminal sentencing and smoking. But whether or not these are good policies, they should be decided democratically at the level where democracy works best. When I asked Margot Wallström, the vice-president of the Commission, why the hours that doctors work in hospitals were being decided at Continental level rather than being left to national parliaments or even hospitals, she replied, ‘Are you in favour of doctors being overworked?’ But as the former Dutch Commissioner Frits Bolkestein wrote this week, ‘The error that is steadfastly made is that because a cause is worthy, it must be done by Brussels.’…

One of the contentious issues in the Dutch referendum was that the Commission has been pursuing Amsterdam Zoo for receiving public funds, on the grounds that other zoos, such as London’s, don’t get public money. Whether or not bears deserve subsidies, there is no reason for Brussels to get involved; there is no internal market in zoos. Last month the British government begged Brussels to be allowed to cut VAT on the restoration of listed churches. There is simply no European market in church restoration; the French can’t cart their churches off to Blighty for a quick low-VAT fix. The quest for harmonisation for harmonisation’s sake and the democratic deficit produced the monstrosity of grocers being jailed for selling loose apples in pounds rather than kilos.

Oh man I forgot about the fish issue:

The crisis in Europe has shown just how badly the French model is broken. The single currency is stuttering, its stability pact broken, its members busting their budgets in competitive borrowing. The economy is not up to the challenges it faces from the US, China and India. The ludicrous CAP — which gets German taxpayers to fund French landscape management — is held together by the French veto. The Common Fisheries Policy has succeeded in simultaneously destroying both Europe’s fish stocks and its fishing communities. The EU loses credibility because its parliament has to pay tribute to French pride by decamping to Strasbourg every month. The EU has not just lost the support of its citizens but is destroying support for European co-operation.

I’ll believe it when I see it:

The UK has recently been winning some arguments in Brussels, but it can now go much further. There is a huge appetite among Europeans to ditch the one-size-fits-all philosophy, to swap the pretensions of a United States of Europe for more national democracy, to decentralise rather than harmonise, to enjoy a flexible diversity of countries experimenting with policies to find what works rather than entrenching worst practice.

The polls have shown the size of the gulf that exists between the societies that France, which almost uniquely failed to learn anything from the collapse of communism, and many other European countries want. The only way to accommodate such different views is heavy decentralisation.

If the French want to have high social protection, high taxes and fines for people working too hard, let them — but let the British work as long as they want. Let France set up a low growth and high unemployment ‘inner core’, although I expect they will be lonely. Let them learn from their mistakes, rather than impose them on others. In contrast, the more decentralising, more democratic, liberal, outward-looking British vision would be far more attractive, with support not just from across ‘new Europe’, but from Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, many of the Dutch and others.

A British takeover of the French family firm would mean a revolution in Brussels, and would meet heavy resistance. But necessity is the mother of invention, and the need is clearly there. As William Pitt the Younger said in 1805, on being lauded for saving Europe from France’s previous attempt to unite it under French control: ‘England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, as I trust, save Europe by her example.’

Hail Britannia!

Speaking of Britannia, does anyone else find it at all odd that Britain, who has written quite a few constitutions for quite a few different countries which thrive and profit today, and which originated those other countries who now basically rule the world, was barely, if at all, asked for any input in this constitution-writing?