S. w.
When I first,
properly, heard of Manuel Barroso I kind of liked him. It was 2004 and he’d just
become the president of the European Commission, after a few years' stint as Prime
Minster of Portugal where he had the balls to introduce some painful reforms. Even
when I learnt of his Maoist youth, I was still ready to give him the benefit of
the doubt. He came from the country behind my second* favourite fortified wine, unlike
most of the E.U. establishment he wasn’t rabidly anti-American and he could be,
vaguely, associated with a curious E.U. document called ‘the Lisbon Strategy’. Although it was, predictably, merely a jet of hot air not even worth the paper it was
blown onto**, at least it showed some signs of the
understanding of the depth of the anti-developmental bog that Europe was
driving itself into***.
However, with the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty,
i.e. the renamed and unchanged ‘European Constitution’, I realised that the
venture had moved from mostly
ideological, partly irrational and largely immune to signals from the real
world, to completely ideological, wholly irrational and fully immune to the real world – and I lost
all interest in the leftist project, not to mention the guy nominally in charge of it and left them there (i.e. all over the continent) slowly to kill themselves,
and ruin most of the place in the process.
True, Barroso had energetically promoted the disgraceful treaty, but he was as bad as the rest of the bunch, so I didn’t take his sins too personally. Maybe some of those unsettling psychological laws were at play too (like the one claiming that your lasting opinion about a person is formed in the first few seconds of your first meeting) and even quite recently if someone had asked me about the Portuguese, I’d probably have said: basically, a decent chap that sadly got demoralised and derailed by Brussels.
The other
day , though, I felt that I had to modify my opinion. I'd just heard excerpts of his 'State of the Union' speech, caught a scrap of an exchange he had with a Tory MEP, Martin Callanan and decided to devote more reflection to Barroso. I gathered some additional information, conducted a more rigorous, less emotional analysis and concluded that I'm in need of something better that a vague expression of my decade old first impression: I needed a better, more precise, more fact-based and more neutral label for this prominent figure, which I promptly produced:True, Barroso had energetically promoted the disgraceful treaty, but he was as bad as the rest of the bunch, so I didn’t take his sins too personally. Maybe some of those unsettling psychological laws were at play too (like the one claiming that your lasting opinion about a person is formed in the first few seconds of your first meeting) and even quite recently if someone had asked me about the Portuguese, I’d probably have said: basically, a decent chap that sadly got demoralised and derailed by Brussels.
Stupid wanker!
*actually, I’m
torn: I love port, but am smitten by sherry.
**either I’m
overdoing things here or I’m out of my linguistic depth. Or, most likely, both.
However, that’s not what this footnote was supposed to be about. I wanted to
give you a taste of the hopeless E.U.-speak it featured: “[to make Europe] the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in
the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and
greater social cohesion” kind of tripe.
***see: the
foreword to the previous footnote.
The photo of the s.w.: dpa;
The photo of the bottle of Niepoort: well, I was so less emotional, so fact-based and so neutral at that moment, that amidst all this coolness I simply forgot to make a note...
The photo of the s.w.: dpa;
The photo of the bottle of Niepoort: well, I was so less emotional, so fact-based and so neutral at that moment, that amidst all this coolness I simply forgot to make a note...
