Skip to main content

Dinner at 8...

I am just about to go and watch Andrus Ansip, the Estonian Prime Minister, deliver a lecture at the London School of Economics.

The title of his speech: "The European Union: a Positive View" should be a bit of a wake-up call to those, like the paleo-Conservative Anti-European faction, who believe that the UK will have friends if it continues its dog-in the-manger anti Europeanism.

When even the Uber-Liberal Estonians believe that the EU has some qualified success to report, then surely it is time to speak up for Reform within the EU. It is certainly a lot less negative than the isolationist wackiness that the Tory Primitives and their UKIP allies put forward as the centre of their half-baked policy "platform"

I look forward to hearing more of the PMs views over dinner later...

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hope the speech went off better than his aeroplane... Perhaps suggest to him the joys of an independent Cymru (providing that Lembit and Cheeky #1 are not present!). Head isu!
Bishop Hill said…
You should at least wait until you've heard the speech. The title might be sarcastic. ;-)

What do you make of this?
Jens Winton said…
Us? Negative? Perish the thought! Britain first and foremost. Our friends overseas could never be real if they resent us pursuing our own self-interest.

If you agree, I can sign you up for membership!
Anonymous said…
Marcus,

you are a travesty of your pseudonym.
Cicero said…
When Estonian Air breaks down it is never going to be a short delay... they were flying back to Helsinki, first thing.

Meanwhile I am on the Estonian flight to Tallinn tonight.. groan...
Cicero said…
Bishop- Good to see you here- I comment on the need for deregulation in my next piece.

Jens- I absolutely agree that we should pursue our National Interest, but I believe that our interests are best served by staying as members of the EU. :-)

Popular posts from this blog

Concert and Blues

Tallinn is full tonight... Big concerts on at the Song field The Weeknd and Bonnie Tyler (!). The place is buzzing and some sixty thousand concert goers have booked every bed for thirty miles around Tallinn. It should be a busy high summer, but it isn´t. Tourism is down sharply overall. Only 70 cruise ships calling this season, versus over 300 before Ukraine. Since no one goes to St Pete, demand has fallen, and of course people think that Estonia is not safe. We are tired. The economy is still under big pressure, and the fall of tourism is a significant part of that. The credit rating for Estonia has been downgraded as the government struggles with spending. The summer has been a little gloomy, and soon the long and slow autumn will drift into the dark of the year. Yesterday I met with more refugees: the usual horrible stories, the usual tears. I try to make myself immune, but I can´t. These people are wounded in spirit, carrying their grief in a terrible cradling. I try to project hop

Media misdirection

In the small print of the UK budget we find that the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the British Finance Minister) has allocated a further 15 billion Pounds to the funding for the UK track and trace system. This means that the cost of the UK´s track and trace system is now 37 billion Pounds.  That is approximately €43 billion or US$51 billion, which is to say that it is amount of money greater than the national GDP of over 110 countries, or if you prefer, it is roughly the same number as the combined GDP of the 34 smallest economies of the planet.  As at December 2020, 70% of the contracts for the track and trace system were awarded by the Conservative government without a competitive tender being made . The program is overseen by Dido Harding , who is not only a Conservative Life Peer, but the wife of a Conservative MP, John Penrose, and a contemporary of David Cameron and Boris Johnson at Oxford. Many of these untendered contracts have been given to companies that seem to have no notewo

Bournemouth absence

Although I had hoped to get down to the Liberal Democrat conference in Bournemouth this year, simple pressure of work has now made that impossible. I must admit to great disappointment. The last conference before the General Election was always likely to show a few fireworks, and indeed the conference has attracted more headlines than any other over the past three years. Some of these headlines show a significant change of course in terms of economic policy. Scepticism about the size of government expenditure has given way to concern and now it is clear that reducing government expenditure will need to be the most urgent priority of the next government. So far it has been the Liberal Democrats that have made the running, and although the Conservatives are now belatedly recognising that cuts will be required they continue to fail to provide even the slightest detail as to what they think should guide their decisions in this area. This political cowardice means that we are expected to ch