Whether your thing is temporary permanent pensions, socialist neoliberalism, specifically undefined action against US steel tariffs, cutting Italy some Nazi slack or self-serving social anxieties in the Labour and Tory Parties, there’s something in here for you tonight.
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This morning – in the popular French tabloid Aujourd’hui – I read that Jean-Paul Delevoye the commissioner for pension “reform” says the retirement age of 62 will stay the same, “but we cannot and will not guarantee how long that will last”.
So for those French people approaching 62, now you have certainty: the State Pension Age of 62 is here to stay on a flying visit….a sort of “can’t stop, must dash” stay, then.
“The Conservative Party must reform Thatcherite capitalism to win over millenniels who have flocked to Labour, Philip Hammond is to tell Theresa May. Phil the Geek apparently thinks Thatcherism is “no longer fit for purpose because it has failed to keep pace with the “rapid changes in the digital economy”.
If I had to list a hundred reasons why neoliberalism is a cultural cancer, its inapplicability to the digital economy would come in at No 682. But it seems that Mr Hamshank wants more State intervention in companies at the cutting edge of technology. In stating this, I will now probably cause the DTI site dealing with digital to crash as 50,000 cynical internauts do a search on ‘P Hammond directorships in tech companies’.
And at the European Commission, unelected EU President Jean-Claude Juncker has called the new Trumpian steel tariffs “completely unacceptable”. In an obviously tired and emotional speech, Monsieur Drunker told attendees at a mid-morning Cognac tasting, “”This is a bad day for world trade. We will immediately introduce counterbalancing measures in the coming hours”.
Speaking from her sausage-filled redoubt, Geli Merkel said the EU response would be “intelligent, decisive and joint”.
Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, France’s junior trade minister, told reporters that the US move “cannot go unanswered. I’m happy that, in this moment of truth, the EU is united.”
Manfred Weber, the leader of the European People’s Party in the EU Parliament said Europe had “no choice” but to defend itself, adding “We will not accept this highly regrettable decision without reacting”.
So to sum up then, there will be measures that are decisive, there will be firm answers, and we shall see reactions in self-defence. Within hours. And the EU is totally united and as one in not saying what exactly they will be.
US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross commented brielfy to say that “…any retaliatory measures are unlikely to have much effect on the US economy”.
All is well. Sleep soundly. Dormez bien. Schlaf gut. Everything is under control.
The EU’s best friend Bloomberg wrote an article today headed ‘What Europe should do about Italy’. I always appreciate American counsel on Yerp, because the advice never fails to make me laugh out loud in a world desperately short of guffaws.
Bloomberg advises that the EU should show “flexibility and restraint” in dealing with the Italian crisis, these being dipomatic features pioneered by Brussels in its dealings with Greece, Poland, Hungary and the UK. Indeed, one needs flexibility and restraint when dealing with Italians, because as anye fule know, they are jolly excitable and likely to go on a European rampage of unbridled bottom-pinching if provoked.
So let us not provoke the Italians.
Unfortunately, the German media and business leaders are strangers to restrained flexibility. Two days ago, Günther Öttinger, a German EU commissioner, addressed the Press as follows:
“My concerns and expectations are that the coming weeks will show that developments in markets, government bonds and Italy’s economy could be so drastically impacted that they serve as a signal to voters not to vote for populists on the right and left…. financial markets will teach Italy’s voters a lesson”
Ah, right. So that’s what to do with Italy.
Alvayss remember meine Dame under Herren, banker orders vill be obeyt at all timess. You muss alvays schnitzel before you noodle, uzzerweiss you might shitzel in your strudel. Alles in Ordnung und Arbeit macht frei.
It has been revealed today that former Blairite Labour MPs loved Jeremy Corbyn from Day One of his election to the Party leadership. They loved him enough, in fact, to call another election for the leadership within a year, in the best traditions of all Remainoid Lobby fodder. And when he won that one hands down too, they decided they adored him.
The leading psychographics expert Sir Iqbal Spond has just completed a study of Corbyn’s support inside the Labour Party. He concludes that, “there is a very strong correlation between fear of Stalinist deselection involving a sentence of forced labour on a local council in Knightsbridge or similar, and adoration for Josef Corbynvili”.
Things are little better in the Conservative Party, where fears of a Jeremy Rees-Flog leadership victory are rife. The anxiety among backbenchers involves not so much deselection as coming a poor fourth in the next General Election behind Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Home Rule for Scunthorpe Party.
The Slog 