Published: Thursday, 24th July, 2008 10:00
EU gourmet gravy train rumbles on but foot is in the other sock
By Maurice O'Brien
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Maurice O'Brien
IT’S rare to get a belly laugh thinking about Bulgaria. Even rarer is a belly laugh provoked by the European Union.
But put the two together and you’ll reduce yourself to tears.
Bulgaria, you see, is the EU’s most poverty stricken member and is just about to be stripped of 500 million euro of funding because, wait for it, the Brussels commissars say the place is corrupt.
Yup, making free with the allegations is the good old EU, the same good old EU whose Court of Auditors in November next will more than likely refuse to sign off its accounts for the 14th year running, because there’s so much bent lucre swirling around its sewer-like systems that nobody even tries keeping track of it any more.
The same EU which shoots whistleblowers instead of thieves, pays gangsters large fortunes to plant crops on non-existent farms, while coughing up so others can grow tobacco 100 times more lethal than the regular brand fags it pays billions to stop us smoking, and perversely even more billions to handle the consequent lung and heart damage.
The same EU which, every month, takes the pointless and punchless European Parliament on a 280-mile trip between Brussels and Strasbourg. This doesn’t just involve ferrying all those pointless and punchless MEPs 280 miles, but also a 2,500-strong legion of staff, bureaucrats, interpreters, and 15 truckloads of documents.
That, incidentally, generates 20,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually, let alone the volume of more sinister gases produced by Strasbourg’s obsession with all that steaming sauerkraut. But hey, do as we say, not as we do.
This charade is essential, of course, to humour the French who’ve always thought they were at the centre of the universe and are still smarting because the original Common Market really preferred Brussels.
Ever since then France reacts hysterically to any suggestion that the EU might save annual transport costs of 200 million euro by leaving the Parliament in Belgium. So they’ve got themselves a new, luxury train which makes the regular high speed Brussels-Strasbourg service look like a cattle truck, boasts extra wide seats, vintage wines and gourmet food, with a return ticket costing 220 euro. But what the hell, many of the boys and girls in the European Parliament are fiddling their travel exes anyway so they’re effectively getting paid to use it.
And while the unlikely named Meglena Plugchieva has been sent to track down Bulgaria’s lost EU billions, at least when we now refer to the gravy train we’re not just speaking figuratively.
- WHY is it that when you want to buy a decent pair of socks, they only come in packs accompanied by another two pairs in which any self-respecting feet would not be seen dead?
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