Europe, A Dying, Inbred, Old Style Aristocratic Family

This has been a strange trip. It really has, more than in other years, shown the decaying corpse that is Europe. China, India, Brazil and others look out to the world in the way we did decades ago. Whereas Europe, thanks to the European Union, is inward looking, self obsessed and has the very real whiff of death about it. Like an ancient aristocratic dynasty it is deluded and senile, only the left leaning, pinko liberal establishment can't see what the real people can.



Hotel de Ville, Lyon

 We have mixed business and pleasure this year and met some old and new political pals, culminating in an informal gathering in Lyon for a couple of days. It seems that Eurorealism is gathering apace in many European countries thankfully, but more of that anon.

While we were in Lyon I checked emails and found a request to link up on Linkedin with a nutty politico in the UK, a certain MT Gradwell. He's an obsessive wally who sends nasty and abusive emails, becomes obsessed (or is that the other M Gradwell, his little brother who can't fight his own battles?), then wants to be pals. Just to remind us I suppose, that not all the nutters are in Strasbourg and Brussels.

Those of us in Lyon all observed with interest how few German and Dutch tourists there are in France this year compared to previous years and the Irish, visible a couple of years ago for arriving in the flashest 4x4s or supa-dupa motorhomes, are conspicuous by their absence. Instead we have seen more Swiss, Danish and Swedish tourists this year. Can you see a pattern?

Those of us who met up in Lyon are considering forming a campaigning group. There were only a few of us from a handful of EU countries, but all were of the opinion that existing anti-EU parties in our own countries have failed miserably. It's time for a peoples' movement maybe? Who knows, it would be ironic if a group of people from various EU countries, working in harmony should hasten the end of the hated EU.

That's it, off to get ready for tonight's feast of snails in garlic followed by beef bourgignon. Well, it would be wrong not to in Beaune wouldn't it?