Belgians Deploy in Libya

And now for the news.

Belgian aircraft yesterday launched a strike in Libya. The Army is expected to come out in sympathy, as are Belgian post office workers, who will take industrial action for three days each side of the Easter holidays.

Two Belgian F-16s, borrowed from the Royal Netherlands Air Force and  piloted by Germans, are known to be in-theatre. 

Belgian politicians with stakes in the nation's arms trade have approved the supply of arms to the value of €20 billion for the NATO operation, although there are no plans to actually deliver them. The bill has already been sent to Washington, and there is a proviso for any unused weapons to be supplied to the Congo at preferential rates.

Senior Head of the Army, General Jaqueline de Smedt, aged 23, told journalists from her hotel room in Paris, "We have plans to deploy 200 Group 4 security guards on the outskirts of Tripoli, but it is highly unlikely that this will actually happen. We will also be sending a detachment of Special Forces just as soon as we assess exactly what their special needs are".

The Belgian navy has agreed to deploy a submarine, U-251, in Libyan waters. This is expected to arrive in Honolulu in September after training exercises off the coast of Atlantis are completed.

Several Belgian Prime Ministers were unavailable for comment, or indeed for anything else.

British War Memorial in Doel Dismantled

In Doel, in East Flanders, the British war monument at the yacht basin has been pulled down. This happened at the request of the local authorities.

The monument was erected in 1948 to commemorate the British soldiers who protected Antwerp and East Flanders against German V1 and V2 attacks at the end of the war. The municipality of Beveren wants to move the monument to the Prosperpolder, as the future of the polder town of Doel, near the port of Antwerp, is uncertain. The local pressure group concerned with the future of Doel, Doel 2020, is angry. "The monument is pulled down before a public investigation has been started into the future of the village. This again shows how people deal with legal procedures, public investigations and zoning plans", Jan Creve of Doel 2020 explains.

"It's a pity that it happened in a sneaky way", says Alain Heyrman who represents a local group to protect the monument. "We will continue our petition and we hope that the monument can keep its place on the banks of the Scheldt, between the windmill and the nuclear plant."
Pressure groups have asked the Flemish minister Geert Bourgeois (Flemish nationalist) to protect the monument and say that they are not giving up the fight.

An unfortunate acronym...

I was thrilled to learn of the existence of an armed political organisation that calls itself MILF. Now this is a highly unfortunate acronym, but one that has brightened up my day no end.

The joy continued when I checked out their website, which declares that "The MILF is the vanguard of the Islamic movement in the Bangsamoro homeland in Mindanao and the neighbouring islands." This conjures up some pretty special imagery, but whilst I want it to be so, I know that it can never be.

MILF is, in fact, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which operates with a small force of soldiers in some islands I never heard of before.

Ben Ali is coming..........

Zin El Abidine Ben Ali is the deposed 74 year old former president of Tunisia. He is not too popular at the moment, and there are fears for his safety. And so he is planning to move to Belgium.

It appears that he has a distant relative in the village of Rellegem, a few miles outside Brussels. In the interests of security, BelgaPlod are not divulging the identity of person concerned, but should Ben Ali rock up in Rellegem it probably won't be too difficult to work out where he is staying.

Actually, he should do quite well here. It didn't take me too long to realise that the North African community, which is huge in these parts, is the nearest you will find in Belgium to a thriving economy - it is certainly the only community in Belgium that understands the concept of good customer service. Indeed, should he decide that a drastic career change is not what he wants, he could always apply to become Prime Minister here - we haven't had a real one of those for ages.

French Opinion Polls - bad news for Sarkozy



Nicolas Sarkozy : Trailing in the Polls

 This week we decamped to Strasbourg for the monthly round of meetings and events that I alone seem to enjoy so much. Everybody else in the eurosceptic camp claims to hate it here, but I find it a beautiful city, and I love to be here. And the work is never dull. And during these weeks I tend to ponder (uncharacteristically) on matters French. And so I note with interest that Marine Le Pen is now favourite to take the French Presidency.

This makes me feel a little more important than I was last week, and I will tell you why. I know this is a tenuous link, but.....

If she wins, then I will be able to say "The French President's dad is in my old office"!

I told you it was tenuous, but Jean Marie Le Pen has indeed taken over what was my first office when I arrived in Brussels.

I know we have been here before, with JM Le P himself getting close to the presidency on one occasion, but I don't think it will happen for his daughter either, but it raises questions about what turns people towards nationalist politics.

I don't actually think that this is about immigration this time around, but more likely a reaction to the economic crisis, and the tendency for folk to close ranks during times of trouble. The fact that Fonzie - sorry, Sarkozy - is languishing at the bottom of the opinion polls bears out my theory. In fact, I suspect he will be returned to the Presidency when the time comes, not least if he learns the lessons of this week's polls and adapts his presentation accordingly.

Service as Usual - Virtually Non Existant!

"Not in Service"

Today is a nice day. The roads were clear this morning, and traffic was flowing freely. There were also fewer people on the pavements, and best of all, not a single bus to be seen. The buses of Brussels are a menace - drivers are surly, ignorant, and appear to have no idea what their mirrors or indicators are for. Imagine a driver who recently escaped from Alcatraz, a bus that doubles as a recycling dump for vomit and cigarette ends, and roads that resemble the Congo before the aid arrived, and you will have a pretty good picture of a bus journey through the city that likes to think of itself as the "capital of Europe".

The respite on the roads this morning is because there is something of a general strike in Belgium today. They strike a lot in Belgium.

In terms of industrial output this will have a negligible effect, as very little work is ever actually done here on a Friday anyway. It appears that the unions are unhappy about a new legal framework for pay and conditions in the private sector. It does not affect the public sector workers, but isn't it nice to take Friday off anyway and have a long weekend - there are plenty of expats here to get on with the work and keep Belgium's tiny little economy ticking over.

Speaking at the University of Kent



L-R Dr Marat Terterov, Ambassador Vladimir Rakhmanin, et Moi.








I was delighted to be asked to speak at the first of a series of lectures on EU External Relations at the University of Kent recently.

The key speaker was Ambassador Vladimir Rakhmanin, Deputy Secretary-General of the Energy Charter, and former Head of Protocol to President Putin. So I guessed I might have a tough act to follow. I was right.

I led on my thoughts about the polar development of Europe. We not only live in a multi-polar world, we live in a multi-polar Europe. The EU is not as dominant as it would like to be, at least not in political terms. The other two major actors exerting influence are Turkey and Russia. In the case of the former, the alternative to the EU membership that is denied to the Turks is to build their own powerbase, which they are doing very effectively. In the case of the latter, I speculated on the emergence of a Sino-Russian pact, and the economic and security implications that may have for the EU.

The Ambassador disagreed with me about the likelihood, but I remain convinced that we are already seeing the emergence of such a pact. Since Putin first took power in 2000, Russia and China have become very close indeed. In fact, the two nations have always been close, it was only after the ideological divergence following the Second World War that the two clashed. The rift appears to be healed now, and I believe that the re-election of Putin next year will bring about a number of re-alignments in Europe and in Central Asia.

We did both agree on one thing: Fukiyama was spectacularly wrong when he proclaimed the End of History. Liberal Democracy, he argued, became the one dominant ideology after the fall of Communism. We now have to take into account Sovereign Democracy, whatever form of democracy develops in the wake of the welcome fall of the Arab regimes, and the Command Capitalism of China. The latter two, incidentally, are stronger politically than the former.

We live in interesting times.

Trains, Pains, and Automobiles.

Picture the scene - a busy square (Place du Luxembourg), always vibrant, packed with pedestrians, lined with bus stops and a taxi rank. What sort of a person, whilst driving through all this, would suddenly stop his car, and for no apparent reason, and without checking his rear-view mirror, throw his car into reverse? You guessed it -  A Belgian!

As I am recovering from a broken knee, I really didn't need an Audi A6 slamming into my leg. The good thing is, I got to teach the driver and his young lady some choice words of old Anglo Saxon. The people waiting for a number 38 bus probably picked up something new as well.

Subsequently, the Audi did a 3 point turn before driving onto the crowded pavement. It moved backwards and forwards a bit, and then reversed into the path of a bus. All this happened yesterday lunchtime.

This morning I came to work on the Metro. As the train arrived at the station, I could see that the driver was sending a text message on his mobile. During the 10 minute journey, the train made two emergency stops, with passengers being thrown around, and lucky me, I got a pushchair and child hurled into my leg, which now hurts like hell. The driver was clearly not seeing red lights, and so the auto-pilot was kicking in and stopping the train for him.

Everything in this posting is absolutely normal in Brussels. Nobody bats an eyelid.

Ice City

I saw something truly wonderful yesterday when I left my office. As I like to give the maximum effort on behalf of the taxpayers, I often work late. Last night was one of those occasions, and I left at about 9.30pm.

A thick fog descended on Brussels, and this, combined with a sudden drop in temperature and some weird atmospheric conditions, led to everything being coated in a thin film of ice. Roads, walls, even the grass. It looked like something from a fairytale.

Belgian Customer Service

This could really apply to any Belgian institution or company. I once had a problem with my internet connection, which Belgacom were able to trace remotely to the failure of a piece of kit. They sent an engineer, telling me that the replacement would be free. They then added 70 euros to my next bill, and when I complained they told me "Yes it is free but you have to pay for it to be done"....

When I moved into my apartment I had to spend an afternoon at home waiting for the Electrabel engineer to come and connect me. It took him all of 15 seconds to throw a switch in the cellar. I then got a bill for his services....

Goodbye to the Nimrod.

Having spent £3.25 billion on the new Nimrod MRA4, HMG is scrapping it before it enters service. The cost of scrapping the nine aircraft will add an extra £200 million. This is apparently how the British Conservative government defines "saving money".

Not just in London, but across the world, security agencies are extremely concerned about the terrorist threat to next year's London Olympics. The new Nimrods have a superb electric intelligence gathering capability, and would be key to the security operations. But we won't have them.

A personal anecdote.... back in 1977 as a young cadet, I spent time at RAF HalFar in Malta. At nearby Luqa there was a flight of Nimrods, and we got to have a good look around them. I remember one crewman showing the onboard computer, and proudly informing me that "this computer is so advanced, I can actually play chess against it!"

Times have changed, in more ways than one. Sadly, our priorities appear to have become a little confused.

HMS Ark Royal - the end of an era.

Today there was a parade to mark the early decommissioning of HMS Ark Royal. Is nothing sacred, I ask myself? I remember how proud I was, as a schoolboy, when the first of the Invincible Class was launched in the 1970s.

Perhaps we should decommission our entire political elite? They seem to have lost the will to govern, having enthusiatically handed over as much sovereignty as possible (and here I accuse the Conservative Party above all others!) Perhaps the Tories are 'clearing the decks' for the new Fleet carriers that they are building, with our money, on behalf of the EU navy....

A good friend of mine (and London UKIP members will know who I am referring to) literally lost the will to live a few years ago. He was so despondant about what had happened to his country. Sadly, this likeable gent took his own life. There are days when I get a wee glimpse into how he must have felt.

Is it time for a revolution?