In recent years a couple of foreign tourists in Aus followed the instructions of their GPS (known in my family as “the Dash Lady”) and drove into the ocean (Moreton Bay).

They could SEE the sea, but they just followed the instructions.

Perhaps the answer – is note to Belgium: ‘the next time some big power plans to use your country as a doormat invasion route – deal with it yourselves’ ??

Its not ‘big power’ invasion that they are experiencing. The invaders are arrriving without weapons and are still being subsidised and nurtured by the erstwhile defenders. The occupation will become evident when they replace the Napoleonic legal tradition with Sharia.

Daniel Hannan – who clearly is no fan of the EU, posts this little observation:

Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the Euro-liberals, is developing an obsession with the British. He really doesn’t like us. And, as you can tell from the applause and laughter in the chamber, nor do many MEPs. It has recently become fashionable, in all the political groups, to sneer at the United Kingdom.

In the above clip, the former Belgian PM pours his contempt upon a speech which he hasn’t yet heard: the one David Cameron is due to deliver on Friday. It is enough for him to know that the speech will be made by the British leader.

He tells us that we – or at least the 80 per cent of us who want powers back from Brussels – are “stupid”. Yet, oddly, he doesn’t want us to leave.

Perhaps the answer – is note to Belgium: ‘the next time some big power plans to use your country as a doormat invasion route – deal with it yourselves’ ??

However, if you think I would let the Hairy Irish Ape have a ‘seductive Irish female’ whispering sweet directions in his ear (he does drive my car sometimes), then you know nothing of the green-eyed jealousy bug. Mrs. JC must be a true angel.

Without adequate reason, I suffer from that bug at times – the polite and ‘submissively womanly’ female (as the ideal that Japanese men desire) was the third voice in our Japanese hire car and sent HIA into enough of a spin for my liking. Fortunately, his car’s GPS has a briskly robust chappy instructing.

Pity me, Nilk, for I also suffer from FND. Guess I am just an oestrogenic mess.

Someone should tamper with Gillard’s GPS. Put a restraining voice into it.

Hmmmm….

Can you imagine a GPS with Gillard’s voice?

“At the next indersekshun, turn left.”

“You have lost your way. Increase speed and keep moving forward.”

“There will be no Google Maps in a vehicle I lead.”

/shudders violently

Plotting our your trip is nearly as much fun as the getting there.

It probably helps that I don’t suffer from FND* and seem to have a knack for maps.

*FND = Female Navigational Disorder.

You have the wrong car. I have a very seductive Irish female telling me what to do.

could a more independent Britain do any worse than it does right now ?

No small question and a huge spectrum of opinion.

For example, there is this one in today’s Oz, where the author states:

Britain, as French officials repeatedly point out, has managed to shape the EU more in its own mould than the persistent national distress with this debate would imply.

Well, Britain has managed to stay out of the euro disaster AND provides a big tranche of the EU budget, so presumably has some influence.

But if you follow some of North’s other commentary about the loss of much British industry due to EU regulation – most especially the absurd energy policies – well. I would be taking French officials’ jaded view on Britain and the EC with a huge grain of salt.

North and his co-author Christopher Booker have pointed out that a lot of the original ‘movers’ on the EU were French and Germans from both sides of the Rhine around Lorraine and the Ruhr – who had seen the armies go stomping back-and-forth in 1870 and 1914, and wanted to find a way to prevent recurrence.

They got a huge boost in the post-WW2 reconstruction, as everyone danced around to ensure there would never be a Fourth Reich.

From the perspective of the anglophone sceptic, instead of hamstringing German ambition, it seems a lot of effort of the EUrocrats now involves taking Britain back down about four pegs, and emptying the Treasury for good measure.

Long memories, some folk seem to still have a chip on their shoulders about Horatio Nelson and the Duke of Wellington ?

The enthusiastic assent of most of the British political class to becoming mere regional administrators in the ever-rolling plan to abolish the European nation states is baffling.