'Save the environment and fly to Puerto Rico'

It's up there with 'Lose weight, eat pie now', or 'New Treaty? Why not put it up for a referendum!'.

Many thanks to a tree-hugging BM reader who sent in this (oxy-)moronic campaign.

The National Geographic Society has announced a competition called "Combat Climate Change!" (exclamation mark included).

In line with the eco-concerns at the core of the contest, the press release stresses submissions "are ONLY taken online" (capitals included).

It's open to students in Europe, and invites our continent's yoot to submit a project stating a climate change problem and a proposed solution.

But the prize is a place for two on a trip to the Puerto Rican rainforest.

What is unclear is whether that expedition includes a mission to plant the 46 trees needed to offset the 3.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide expended for the two lucky winners to take the ten thousand mile round-trip from Europe to San Juan and back ...

Don't miss this incredible offer!!!8!!!8!

Has ever a brightly tacky 'Download Now!' been so misleading?

Granted, it's nice to see some - notably not the Commission - making an effort, but think of those poor, lost, depraved souls working late in the Berlaymont, trawling EU news sites during the long, lonely, rainy nights in Brussels, searching for a quick burst of shameful but deeply satisfying euro-jargon.

Seduced by the flashy imperative and bright colours, and with one careless and capricious click of the mouse, they download, only to be desperately let down by the dull white pages and classic font (with strategically placed italics) which result. Not even a glossy colourful cover with a coquettishly victorious and pouting Giscard d'Estaing. The disappointment, the confusion, the...protocols.

Surely an oxymoron for our media-savvy EU age: a 336-page Consolidated 'Reader-Friendly' version of the Lisbon Treaty.

EU aid causes a public convenience

BM can confirm the long-held British tabloid belief that EU funds are going down the toilet.

Here is a photo of a lovely pooper in Hull, subsidised by EU regional aid.

The verdant washroom is, we learn from the European Commission's website, 'award-winning' and co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund.

And the aim of the subsidy: to promote "regional competitiveness".

Quite how a spic-and-span Victorian crapper-cum-conservatory can help regional competitiveness escapes BM for the moment.

But it proves the EU is 'flush' with 'loo-t' ... erm ... and is 'basin' its regional aid distribution on ... erm ... [toilet ... poo ... other lavatorial references ...]


Thanks to avid BM reader 'Florence' for the tip...

Are you sitting comfortably?

Then I shall deliver my Opinion in C-132/07 Beecham v Andacon (pending)

The European Court of Justice's in-house storyteller and neon-lit 'intellectual' has been parading his prose and erudition again.

Advocate General Damaso Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer is known for his extravagant flights of fancy in his legal recommendations to the court, spiraling off without due care and attention on bizarre cultural tangents.

Some years ago he was distracted in his legal analysis of whether DaimlerChrysler should be allowed to market a car called 'Picaro' given a similarity with Citroen's Xara 'Picasso'.

Straying wildly from the trademark law at hand, he fulminated at length on the debasement of the great artist's name, saying it was "sad to note that the most remarkable legend of the 20th century, a patron of humanity, has been reduced to a commercial object, a commodity."

And this week Colomer has surpassed even his own standards of non-sequitur pontification and superfluous intellectualism.

In a recommendation to the ECJ on a dispute involving counterfeit drug investigations and efforts by Glaxo to keep out cheap African imports, the legal adviser spends the first three pages of his opinion waxing lyrical about 'pirates', like a Stephen Fry let loose on the subject on Just a Minute.

Below is Colomer's introduction, complete with footnotes. The translation is 'Monster's own from the French. The hifalutin flourishes are, we stress, not an embellishment, and are every bit as florid and pretentious in the original:

The number of meanings of the word 'pirate' [from the Greek 'peirates': bandit, plunderer] cannot fail to surprise. As a noun, any child would be able to describe this archetype, by simple enumeration of his most characteristic traits: the wooden leg, the hooked hand, the fullsome beard and eyepatch, tribute to his choice of hazardous lifestyle, full of adventures and dangers.

This representation has been prevalent at least since the romanticism of the 19th century*; even an author such as Balzac, sheltered from any suspicion of following the precepts of this literary style so anchored in the first half of the 19th century, wove a yarn of piracy into one of his novels, no doubt as a device to amplify the drama of the travails Madame D'Aiglemont suffers her whole existence.**

By extension, the noun is used as an adjective, notably when added to a product, in that instance alluding to its lack of authenticity or to its introduction on the market by less than orthodox means. But this meaning contrasts with the true spoils of these characters, as it was not the stolen treasures that were considered illegal, but their appropriation by violence from their legitimate owners. One poet contemporary to the age of piracy, in an ode to rebellion, described the boat itself as the pirate's most precious belonging, superior to the fabulous plundered treasures.***

In the juridical debate the present conclusions must confront, one could compare, with a bit of imagination, the companies dedicated to parallel trade to the pirates and those defending their intellectual property rights to the corsairs, those with a licence from their government to hunt down the vessels of powerful enemies. However, in European law the terms are turned around, because, while the previous comparison applies to exchanges with third countries, in intra-community trade the parallel importer is acting within the law, enjoying corsair rights to pursue the companies trying to harm this freedom of movement. It all depends on the point of view, because, for these big companies, the 'free riders' or commercial traders constitute real-life 'filibusters'.****"

footnotes:

*Hollywood transformed the depiction of these lovable renegades, in filming the adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow and his acolytes in the films entitled 'Pirates of the Caribbean', in which any resemblance with reality is purely fortuitous.

**Balzac, H. de, La femme de trente ans, editions Flamarion, Paris, 1996, particularly p.217, describes how Helene, daughter of Madame D'Aiglemont and her husband, unites with a corsair to start a family on board his boat The Othello; following various tribulations and a skirmish with the Saint-Ferdinand, commanded by the General, Helene's father, she is washed up on the coast of Cantabria and only manages to save one of her children.

***Espronceda, J. de. (1808-1842), author of 'La cancion del pirata (the song of the pirate), reproduced in Las mil mejores poesias de la lengua castellana (The Top 1000 poems in Catalan), edition Ibericas, 31st edition, Madrid, 1995, p.302-303, composed the following lines: “Que es mi barco mi tesoro, / que es mi Dios la libertad, / mi ley la fuerza y el viento, / mi única patria la mar” (for my boat is my treasure,/ my God, is freedom,/ my law, the strength of the wind,/ my only fatherland, the sea).

****This denomination applies to a type of pirate operating essentially in the Caribbean, with carte blanche to plunder at will. In his Histoire des Aventuriers qui se sont signales dans les Indes, Olivier de Oexmelin gives the curious details of the lives of these buccaneers, for example the sum they received in compensation for a mutilation suffered in combat: one hundred piastres for an eye and six hundred for the right arm. Melegar, V., Pirates, Corsaires and Filibusters, translation in Spanish by Fermin Munoz, edition Bruguera, Barcelona, 1998, p.82


Then, and only then, does Colomer feel cerebrally braced to tackle the legal niceties of illegal pharmaceutical trade in the 21st century...

Slovenian Presidency Logo

is it just us or does ...

make you think of ...

EU solves global warming!

Brussels' snow proof global warming no longer an issue, claims Dimas.

The European Commission has taken the unprecedented step of claiming to have "solved" global warming. In a press release, Stavros Dimas, commissioner for the environment, states "It is thanks only to joint European initiatives that Brussels has seen snow this weekend. We can say with conviction that Europe is no longer affected by the issues around global warming and the greenhouse effect."

When contacted by the Berlaymonster for a comment, Mr. Dimas looked slightly bemused and said "is this a joke?"

A spokesman from DG Development was sure it must be. Speaking under the condition of anonymity, he said "it's all very well claiming that Europe isn't suffering from climate change any more, but what about our neighbours elsewhere in the world? In Australia at the moment it's summer. They'll be scorching hot. Can we spare some snow to send them, I ask? I fear the answer is probably no."

Neelie Kroes' speechwriter? Please f*** off!

Neelie Kroes harbours Australian in exile

Brussels is left reeling at the discovery that competition commissioner Neelie Kroes has hired an Australian speechwriter by the name of Ryan Heath to prevent repeats of her finest moments.

He certainly has pedigree. Not only is a real heart-throb (see picture) but he's fled his homeland, running scared, after the publication of his book "Please Just F*Off: It's Our Turn Now" in his native Australia.

It's not the first time that Brussels-based authors have written provocatively-titled books, presumably to relieve the boredom of living in Belgium, but whereas Crofts upset a handful of Telegraph readers, Heath seems to have rubbed a whole nation up the wrong way.

Who's he telling to f*** off? The baby boomers, apparently, the bastions of Australian society, industry owners and media moguls. No wonder he's on the run. The book's now out of print, but BM found the following review, which we haven't linked to in order to save the author's blushes:

"Ryan Heath, can you Please Just F*** off? You’re the perfect poster boy for everything that’s wrong with my generation ... " (and it continues in a similar vein).

So thank the good Lord God and Neelie Kroes for sending us this sizzling piece of Antipodean Angst, may we forever keep him safe from the wrath of his compatriots ...

Revue review

'Monster editorial is still recovering from the Brussels Press Revue this weekend. The annual bunfight, put on by an unlikely ad hoc group of hacks and friends, regularly baffles the organisers with its popularity.

And as with all top-flight sell-out stage events, dodgy blackmarket privately-recorded clips have already started appearing on the interwebsuperhighway.

Here's Teresa singing Stranglers hit Golden Brown, except with the lyrics cleverly rewritten to ... wait for it .... 'Gordon Brown' ...

It must have hit the mark though, as one unnamed senior British civil servant present was reported to be 'laughing like a drain' throughout. He'd have also enjoyed chief scribe Geoff Meade's take-off of Tony Blair applying for the post of EU Council President in the former PM's infamously ropey French: "dans moi, vous gettez ... non .... vous 'getteriez'..."

Champagne moment, however, must go to seasoned lobbyist and Press Revue stalwart John Robinson. His Shakespearean monologue bewailing the European Commission's 'Transparency' initiative was already a feat of writing and performance far beyond the usual level. But it was all the more piquant for being performed in front of the very author of the Transparency initiative, commissioner for administrative affairs Siim Kallas.

Sat provocatively in the front row the moustachioed EC VIP and VP was right in John's sightline.

Thankfully, then, having grinned uncomfortably initially, the commissioner beamed and chuckled as Robinson weighed in with:

"Alas, poor Kallas, There are more things in heaven and earth, commissioner, Than are dreamt of in your Transparency."

On a far less cultured level, this is one submission that didn't make it in Saturday's show, given the commissioner's presence ... flanked by his missus:


'Tis said that commissioner Kallas,
Is endowed with a very large phallus,
Ask his wife if it's true,
She'll say "How dare you",
And strike you with forethought and malice.


Finally, to the Berlaymonster fans present who whooped at the mention of 'kuñardocz' during one sketch: thanks to both of you.

A l'annee prochaine.

BM

Brussels jumps to aid of IT nerds

European tech commissioner Vivian Reding has intervened to rescue the sad existence of computer geeks the world over, with a clarion call for more women to enter the sector.

"Women wanted in Europe's ICT industry"! she blurted by press release today, ahead of Global Chicks' Day this weekend (see also story below).

And BM is sure the message will have support - albeit a bit nervous - from IT departments across Europe.

But how, we wonder, will the techie fraternity react to Reding's oestrogen-fuelled army sachaying into their domains?

Will they expect their new colleagues to wear hotpants and guns?

Will they be able to converse in something other than film references?

And separately, why did the commission deem it suitable to call the campaign to get female students into computer sciences, 'IT Girls'.

Please...

Ladies who lunch

EU commission president Jose Manuel Barroso has found an inspirational ruse to surround himself with high-flying lovelies this week.

Making the most of International Women's Day falling at the weekend, he has invited Embassadrices from around the world for a spot of lunch this Wednesday.

All rather laudable, but too rich an opportunity to let pass without some ribald bordering-on-sexist nods, winks and barely-excusable post-modern quips at the expense of half the population.

Such as this pearler from stand-up comedian Milton Jones:

"Militant feminists.
I take my hat off to them.
They hate that."


Happy Chicks' Day.

BM.