Belgium 2

Come to think of it, the story in Belgium is quite interesting, and my Belgian friends will forgive me if I remark that that in itself is an unusual state of affairs.

Belgium has become the archetypal European state. It has devolved so much power upwards to the EU, and downwards towards the regions that it had no need for the layer of government in the middle, national government.

Of course ‘regions’ is what Belgian politics are all about: there are two, of similar size and population, Dutch speaking Flanders in the north and French speaking Wallonia in the south, plus the bilingual or multilingual Brussels district in the middle.

But 'the regions' is exactly what Eurocrats' policy is about, too, splitting Germany up into Laender, France into Régions and Britain into artificial constructs like the North East. People have found maps in Brussels without 'The United Kingdom', 'France' and 'Germany', but with 'Wessex', 'Aquitaine' and 'Rhineland-Westphalia'. They want to get rid of national government.

The problem is the decision making on important things: going to war (done in Belgium by Yves Leterme’s caretaker administration), taxation (of course the unelected want to be in charge of that, and there are already plans for a Europe Tax being proposed), and, most of all, dealing with something proposed by the European Union which one didn’t agree with. Without a government you are powerless, which is exactly how they want you.

I need hardly add that we need to fight this. The Eurocracy, an unelected bunch of what we used to call civil servants but which are now civil masters, wants to arrogate powers to itself such as European budgets, criminal law and justice, health and safety, agriculture, and it wants an army of its own. Any democrat’s sense of justice must be offended by this: we want these important matters to be discussed among elected officials.

My previous statement, that perhaps there was something to be learned, was in jest. We should pity the Belgians, who through petty squabbling have thrown away their democracy. The slack will be taken up by the unelected.

Are politicians necessary?

Today Belgium marks a year without a government. For most of us this is an extraordinary state of affairs, but for the Belgians apparently not: they go to work every day, the streets are swept and the economy is ticking over nicely. They even managed to participate in the Libya 'no-fly' zone.

Perhaps there is a lesson for us all here.

Belgium doesn't speak (but no one listens)

I feel I could not mention the Dutch elections without covering the Belgian ones, too. Belgium goes to the polls tomorrow and the result will be ignored throughout the whole world, and probably in Belgium too. Last time it was nine months before a government was formed but they soldiered on, run by functionaries with no mandate from the people. Their system is, if anything, crazier than the Dutch one, for Belgium is regarded even by its own population as two separate countries: the Flemish, hard working, industrialised North and the French, overspending, unemployed South.

The economic plans of the two semi-countries match this stereotype: Bart de Wever in the North wants an independent Flanders and doesn't want to pay any more to the South. Elio di Rupio in the South has published an expansionist draft budget (ie more money coming from the North).

The problem is that under their system the two sides are supposed to form a coalition.

Such is the insane union we British joined in 1973: a cover-up of democracy, no trial by jury, bureaucratic rule.  We should at least take a good look at what is going on in Europe and debate it.

Ban the Belgians!

Unable to decide on who should run the country, Belgium has at least decided on one thing. It wants to ban the burqa and the niqab. The lower house of parliament voted almost unanimously in favour: there were two abstentions and no one voted against.

Astonishingly, Daniel Bacquelaine, the MP who introduced the legislation said "It's not about introducing any form of discrimination," whereas I should have thought it was just a little discriminatory agaisnt people who want to wear the burqa or niqab. Bacquelaine is the head of the Francophone liberal Reformist Movement (MR) party: Belgium is one of the few countries applying segregation even to political parties. He said the ban was against clothing "aimed at stopping people from being identified."

But of course it doesn't apply to motor cyclists, so that is clearly nonsense. I should have thought the only way you could logically achieve this would be to ban all religious identification, including crucifixes, nuns' habits and the yarmulka.

Now the Muslim groups will go to the courts and Europe will drown in a stream of pomposity and self-righteousness. It would perhaps be better if Muslims decided Belgium was a nasty place to live and left, but that is what Mr Bacquelaine wants.

Belgian PM resigns shock

In fact it's not really a shock at all. It's the third time he has resigned since July 2008. Belgium recently went for three months without a government.

Yves Leterme, you recall, is the French speaking Prime Minister who couldn't sing the Belgian National Anthem, in fact didn't even know what it was, believing it to be the Marseillaise.

Belgium is a country created by the British in the 19th century to serve a particular purpose. That purpose has expired. I think everybody knows what the solution is, except the Belgians.

Belgium's stint as the European Presidency begins on 1st July. It is good news for everyone who hopes nothing further will take place on the European stage to make a nonsense of our democracy. Perhaps we could have Cyprus after that.

Rude about Rumpy and Belgium

I suppose I must take some small responsibility for this in that I recruited Nigel Farage to what was then the Anti-Federalist League (which changed its name to UKIP in 1993).

He is actually quite good company and serious, but in a speech in the European Parliament welcoming the visit of the President of the EU, he described Belgium as 'pretty much a non-country' and the President as having 'the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low grade bank clerk'.

I wasn't going to report on this since it wasn't one of Nigel's best speeches but I now read he is to be fined nearly €3,000 for being horrid. As he himself says 'Free speech is expensive in Brussels'.

It is a shame Rumpy didn't go to the defamation courts. We could then have heard the fair comment defence as to whether he did indeed have the charisma of a damp rag and the Public Interest Defence, as to whether we should be entitled to know that the President of 500 million people has the appearance of a low grade bank clerk.

But Belgium? Belgium? You can be fined for being rude about Belgium?

I should like to go on record as stating that Belgium is an unnecessary country and that it would be better for it and for Europe if part were reattached to France and the other part to the Netherlands. Its political system has collapsed, with no governemnt being formed after the last election, and it has an inordinately high incidence of paedophilia.

It seems that the recent fatal train crash was caused by one official not understanding the language spoken by another, in a country about as wide as the M4.

I think that Farage was wrong, though, not to mention that the chips are good.

Eurovision

Belgium is, as we know, a country divided by language and culture, and so I was interested to read on the BBC website about its Eurovison entry. It is in a made up language. The ‘words’ include "O julissi na jalyni, O julissi na dytini, O bulo diti non slukati, Sestrone dina katsu..." which doesn’t mean anything at all, in any language but is, I suppose, inoffensive.

I rather hope it wins: it seems to symbolise the whole event.

The War again

Belgium: the BBC reports that the Belgian government and banks have agreed to pay 5,000 Holocaust survivors, their family members and the Jewish community 35m euros, plus another 75m euros to a trust fund. The money is to compensate Belgian Jews whose property or goods were looted during the German occupation of WWII.

A couple of questions, then.
Firstly, 5,000 claimants are getting an average of euro 7 thousand each. A flat in central Brussels costs around a million euros. In what way is this compensation?

Second: if they weren't paying everyone what they lost, what is going on here? have they just found a low figure, where no one managed to prove they had lost a flat or house but some claims for missing kitchen equipment were accepted? Or did they ignore most of the claims and just paid out a figure they thought was large enough to let them get away with?

Third: the second world war ended 63 years ago. If this money was due why wasn't it paid after all the courts, enquiries and so on?

Fourth: 25,000 Belgian Jews were murdered during the war, not counting the hundreds of thousands who went through in transit, consigned to death by the then Belgian government. Nothing for their families in this amount , I suppose

Fifth: almost all Belgian taxpayers were born after the war ended. In what way are they guilty? Why do they have to pay?

This amount is either not nearly enough, or far too much. In my view there should have been a statute of limitations of at most 25 years. There is no case for the Second World War coming back to haunt us in this way.

And, I've mentioned before, it never seems to be the Germans or Japanese who are guilty, have you noticed?