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Bush’s European Vacation

by | 21st, February 2005

‘AS many of his countrymen have done, President Bush is spending this week ‘doing Europe’.

‘Meet me in my office in five minutes…’

Today he’s in Brussels, that capital of European bureaucracy, where he’ll be eating the mussels, reading his guidebook’s notes on Hercule Poirot, Tintin and all those other famous Belgians, and learning how to say ‘chocolate’ like he means it.

But after the sightseeing, it’ll be time for the serious business of world leading and, having changed from his voluminous checked shorts into a more sombre suit, Bush will address the united peoples of Europe.

And do not doubt that being united is how Europeans are viewed by Bush – as the Times says, Bush’s keynote speech will centre on the need for a United Europe.

The Times looks at Bush’s opening speech and sees how ‘we [the US] need a strong partner in the hard work of advancing freedom in the world’.

Eurosceptics will not like the idea of the continent being viewed as a single entity, while the paper is right to say how such wording will delight Europhiles.

Of course, the reason for this verbal unity may simply be a comment on the speaker, who just possibly finds it easier to grasp and remember a single thing than so many disparate and unique lands.

But before we get the President of the United States of Europe and so ease Bush’s hurtin’ brain, the Independent says that 11 of the EU’s 25 elected heads of state have been chosen to address Bush on a mater of international importance close to their hearts.

And, as the paper says, the betting is that they will be afforded the less than considerable time of five minutes each to state their case before they are yanked from the stage.

While this is ample time for French President Jacques ‘The Minute Man’ Chirac to comment on his specialist topic of European integration and still have time left over for his secretary, others will struggle.

Tony Blair, for instance, will try to wrap millennia of history into his five-minute solution to trouble in the Middle East.

The Slovakian Prime Minister, Mikulas Dzurinda, will dare to mention Iraq and Austria’s Wolfgang Schussel will get heated about the Balkans.

Later, Silvio Berlusconi will confuse Bush for Simon Cowell and launch into a rendition of Dean Martin’s seminal hit That’s Amore…’



Posted: 21st, February 2005 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink