According to the Open europe blog, I am “extremely chirpy” – does this count as them saying something positive about Europe? They also say I use too many exclamation marks – a fact of which I am well aware (I also use too many hyphens and brackets as well). Still, nice to know someone’s reading! <– HA!
Was at the launch of the NT’s Watch This Space festival on Friday. It started with a meeting with all the cultural attaches of the different member states and people from the UK’s various arts councils, which was really interesting. For the launch, we watched Tango Sumo and then headed back to the Deck area at the top of the National for the reception. Angus had lined up two of the acts – Mala Sangre, a flamenco group and a couple who juggled and danced. Sounds weird, but was amazing. Highlight of the evening for me was meeting Nicholas Hytner, who directed the best thing I’ve ever seen in a theatre, His Dark Materials. More being starstruck, after Thursday.
Weekend was fun, with the goodbye party of the people whose house I will be renting on Saturday, so I met loads of new people, then recovery and Wimbledon final on Sunday – what a game! I was just so glad I didn’t have an emotional investment in either player, cos I think I would have expired long before the end.
Got in early today as I’m leaving early, so I did the daily video-conference with Brussels. Found out that we are negotiating with the UK Government so that people can write to the Commission in Scottish Gaelic and Welsh, like we already have with the Spanish government for their non-Castilian languages. Also some nonsense written by Terry Wogan of all people about an EU directive on how many holes salt-cellars have to have. I can only assume (hope?) that it was a piss-take, but the way it is written I’m sure there are people who will believe it is true.
I also followed up a comment written on Mark Mardell’s blog about the healthcare plans, when someone wrote that “Not once in their 50-year history has the EU Commission ever proposed to return a power previously acquired by them back to the democratic arena of the nation-state”. Not true. The marketing standards for fruit and veg is a recent example. Today we proposed a block exemption which would return a lot of state aid decisions to the Member State level. We have undertaken a whole bunch of simplifications, recasts and repeals of legislation to decrease the administrative burden on business in particular. And that’s just a morning’s work – I’m sure there are many other examples to be found.
This post originally appeared on my euonym blog which has now been merged into this site.