Bernie Ecclestone

The structural barriers put up by the very same Brussels gang that now calls for more start-ups is what makes the whole thing such a bad joke. Immigration policies that attract uneducated poor people from North and Central Africa do not help. Ditto for tax rates that discourage risk. Who would want to start a business that if successful might see him paying 75% to the French taxman? I know the French are unpleasant, but they are not stupid. Job creation has been killed by excessive Brussels legislation, yet these same clowns are now paying for an expensive advertising campaign”€”with our tax euros, of course”€”urging the suckers to come up with more vigorous investments. It’s a bit like Al Capone taking out an ad urging for more police in Chicago.

And it gets worse. Brussels now wants more European oversight over national governments”€™ budgets. It wants a single supervisory mechanism for eurozone banks and more power for the European Parliament. It claims that the biggest danger to Europe is a resurgence of nationalism and populism, i.e., the fact that people are waking up to the Brussels dictatorship and are demanding more controls over their lives by their own kind. To illustrate the kind of arrogance these crypto-dictators practice and their total dismissal of European peoples”€™ aspirations of self-determination, I refer to Greece, a moribund nation in hock to the EU, and what the latest Greek government is doing.

Antonis Samaras, the prime minister of the three-party coalition, talks a good game trying to prevail on his EU partners to give him more time. In the meantime he has squeezed the Greeks as much as possible by cutting pensions. He has totally failed to eliminate corruption or fire civil servants from the bloated state sector that is mainly responsible for Greece’s condition. Starting a business in Greece means getting around a labyrinthine bureaucracy of bribe-taking officials, the same officials whom Samaras has failed to eliminate. In the meantime he has bled poor Greeks dry, leading to despair and suicides.

The arrogant Brussels gang knows this but will do nothing about it. Keeping the euro and the union intact is all that matters. The electorate’s wishes are immaterial. Such are the joys of being a European nowadays, and there will be plenty more joy to come.