Jerome a Paris is killing me softly with his words

How eloquently our renowned and revered Frenchman Jerome a Paris writes about the French referendum on the proposed new European Constitution. If you want detailed and well expounded information, then read his diary.

What you will get here in this diary is a classic rant. Because I am a European and people like Jerome are killing the European ideal in me.
Firstly. let me address you Tribbers directly. I know you all recognise that the growth of Europe as a united force has relevance to the shape of your future world. Beyond that, there is no real need for you to kid me that the French voting on some poxy 138 page document has any real meaning to you. Don’t worry. Armed with this limited knowledge, come to Stourbridge in the heart of the Black Country in the West Midlands in the UK  with me, mate , and you will find you know more about it and have a higher interest in it for your future in Ohio than they do, who are going to live under it.

Jerome is a Frenchman, dammit, a citizen of that most passionate of countries. You would never believe it reading his diary about one of the biggest events in European history. That is because his highly educated L’Ecole education (OK, Polytechnique or whatever) has overcome his heart. Like it has removed the heart from those thousands of elite French civil servants who shared the same excellence of tutorship.

Did the Students not rise up in France magnificently in 1968? Was their passion wasted on the next generation that Jerome represents?

Jerome is a friend. A man I admire. We believe in the same things and we share a hunger to see a new Constitution bind Europe closer together.

But I despair when I look at what mon ami Jerome has written:

What? These grey suited, grey haired old men democratically represented Europe? An unelected, all powerful bunch of overpaid and sometimes corrupt, and certainly over influential European Commission, represent the people of Europe? The grubby dealing, national aggrandisement and self-interested, and politically fearful government ministers, represent the people? The politically compromising, desperate to ingratiate, ex-soviet countries leaders represent their people?

Jerome, where are you coming from? This is a progressive liberal blog, not a civics class in a faith-based school in the mid-west.

What did these men, these sad old geezers who love their big cars, big salaries, hidden mistresses and pomp give birth to when they charged that retired, elegant former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing to produce something at the Laeken summit in December 2001? Over the next 16 months, with countless political manoeuvres and by use of that camel-producing,  so-called consensus method, the elderly politician managed to draft most of the text for a bright new Europe with a potential membership of 28 or more states. One hundred and thirty-eight or more pages on how that future should work.

That is what the men of Marseilles and Stourbridge will be asked to vote on. Don’t go to that football match, put down your wine. Read it, absorb it, understand it and be prepared to answer questions on it.

Well one, at least. “Yes” or “No”.

Too much to ask? O.K. The same grey suited men that wrote it can be trusted to tell you which is the right answer. can’t they?

Vote “Yes”. they say.

Jerome says so. and Jerome is an educated man. Welshman says so, but Welshman is a Brit and not so easy to deal with and his vote “yes” comes with a resounding rebuttal that the people of of Marseilles and Stourbridge and the rest of Europe should not be asked to answer such a question.

Look, the Constitution is a pig’s ear of a document. The compromises are those of countries seeking to maintain sovereignty and those which recognise the incompatibility of doing so with a United Europe. They are the compromises of those who see France and Germany wanting dominating influence and resist it. They are the compromises of those who see France and Germany hamstrung by their social security commitments and want a freer, more liberal and perhaps more exploitable people, but certainly more flexible workforce, if the trading bloc is to survive.

What a mess.

Jerome wants people to vote on it and say “Yes”? What, when it comes into implementation, is the ordinary man, woman and child buying into?

Is it any wonder that the argument in France has descended into a ridiculous question of vote “Yes” if you want to break the rights of French citizens to the finest and most economically ruinous social security protections in the World or “No” if you want to maintain these and sink ever further down the economic ladder. Quelle! What a choice to present.

So Jerome. We agree about where we want to see Europe go. So why did you screw it all up? For goodness sake don’t mislead Tribbers here like we are all misleading our own people that Europe is about this damnable document.

No, this is what the people of Europe should have been asked to vote on, backed by the already agreed European Convention on Human Rights.. It is contained in the first couple of pages of a document that should never have been produced, let alone let loose amongst the politicians upon which to base a referendum.

Now I could vote for that! The students of Paris would rise up for that! Jerome would be right there alongside us.

Damn these grey suited politicians, damn these French bureaucrats and damn all those who have no ideals left from when they were young enough to dream and hope.