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Its not Cricket – August 3rd 1986 It must be one of the most interesting entries ever in a cricketing score-book – in fact probably unique :- “RAF Akrotiri Station Commanders Cup Cricket semi final Ops wing 24 all out … Continue reading
The Clones Porker
Pig What Pig?
Christmas Eve and we were getting tooled up to carry out the nights patrol activity. We were officially “Interdicting and disrupting the supply of terrorist material from the Republic”. In reality, we would be harassing the Taigs as the Catholics were disparagingly called, coming back from midnight mass. Int reminded us of the long standing smuggling rings in the area. Operational Areas and Vehicle Check Point locations were suggested as were routes in and out of the areas. Radio frequencies issued, however, as we all knew the patrol areas were so far away from base and the range of the steam driven radios we had was so limited that contact would intermittent at best and usually like being on the dark side the moon, in other words you were on your own. Then came the big surprise of the night, we were deploying two teams in conjunction with the RUC B Specials. And for once I would not make take my place as the Flight Sergeants driver, I was to command the second element of the patrol. We operated with a 4 man team of ours and a 4 man police team at a specific location. With me I had Dennis the purve, Brummy Frank as Sigs and another lad who could have been young Bill the plumber but may not have. This was our usual team except for FS BBB. He was not to be trifled with as he stood over 6th 3ins tall in his socks and had served in all three of Her Majesties Services. As a Royal Marine commando, he had been the Home Fleet heavyweight boxing champion in 1944 and the Home Fleet was a very big organisation then. He was a pathfinder with the Guards Independent Para Company and had served 18 years in the RAF Regiment with a BEM to prove it. One of the best men I ever served under. He would shepherd the other 4 man team, some miles detached from us, with another group of B Specials. This team we could contact by radio if anything went pear shaped. At the end of our int brief we got another warning about smugglers not gun runners which didn’t surprise us at all seeing as what little intelligence we had from the area was supplied by the RUC and was very crime orientated with any terrorist int being years out of date.
Enforced rest from 3 to 5:30 was the order of the day and we duly had a quick ziz on the bunk beds we lived in for 6 weeks at a time. My luck was to have a bottom bunk with Dennis the purve was above me where I could keep my eye on him. I also found out that the troops get more sleep that the commander with all the admin stuff to do. After a luscious mean of pork chop pasties and chips (don’t ask it casts aspersions on the skills of RAF cooks, but where else have you seen a whole pork chop including the bone encased in a pasty case and served, and the cook wondering why he had to move beds every night in case the guy who had bent his knife and lost a tooth trying to eat this, found him), we headed south east the 25 miles for Newtonbutler and then on towards the Cavan road. The main area if interest was the concession road that ran from Clones through Northern Ireland and then back into the Republic. The trick here was that duty on taxable items was not levied as the goods were deemed to be in transit between two locations in the Republic and technically not in Northern Ireland at all. Well, even us intellectually challenged Rocks could spot the flaw in that one. How do you know it goes south again if you don’t check it all the way? Of course this was the smugglers route and they smuggled everything especially farm produce and diesel. To us intrepid sons of Albion, this was a mere bagatelle, a distraction of getting to grips with the main task, the IRA. Our B Special comrades agreed wholeheartedly and followed us eagerly in their small ford estate car. Now despite what was written about the B Specials in later years they did their stuff to the best of their training and capabilities. The problem was the training started with the mantra “shoot first and then ask for their ID” and then degenerated swiftly – not the way we did it.
So back to the start and the cold moonlit night west of Clones at around 23:30 hours. Our Land-rover was parked in the on coming lane for vehicles coming across the border and the police vehicle behind it on the opposite side of the road creating a chicane of sorts which would not allow a speeder to race through the check point. We had the two red faced farmer’s lads of the B Specials lying in the ditches on either side as a last resort if someone actually did crash the road block. I and the sub Inspector occupied the middle of the road block with responsibility for stopping and searching cars, Frank was in the back of the rover on Sigs and Dennis was roving around looking for anything that took his fancy. The Sub Inspector carried a Mark 5 Sten gun, seen in wartime films but not since then, with his lads with old single shot rifles. He also carried a very small lamp who’s glass was almost completely blacked out with tape only allowing a pinprick of light to emerge. When I asked him about this he stated that it was there so when (not if but when) the Papists didn’t stop they could open fire with justification. This fed a faint twinge of alarm to my nervous system as I recall and all the memories of my Jesuit teachers and their lurid tales of Black and Tans flooded back in spades. I told him we would use our super sexy 3 colour traffic torches which seemed to dampen his morale a little. Nevertheless from around 12:30 onwards we started to get a steady stream of traffic coming from Clones after Mass. The guys did the stuff and we logged them in and took names etc classic example of fighting men doing policeman’s duties and the Specials seemed to know everybody. “Don’t bother searching that one Sor”, would be the word. “He’s one of us” and one didn’t have to be a PhD to deduce what that meant as they all strangely had Christian names like William, and Ian, not a Padraig or Declan to be seen.
Around 2AM things closed down completely and I got to thinking that we were probably the only people in Northern Ireland up at that time and was on the verge of calling it a day when another set of headlights lit up the hill in the distance. “One more guys then we’ll call it a night”. This cheered everyone up. The car approached on a weaving trajectory that could have taken it to Dublin one minute or into the front of the Police car the next. Making sure we could get out of the way quickly we flagged it down and surprise surprise it stopped. A very old Ford Popular (immediate post war equivalent of today’s Focus) with a single occupant, a thin badly shaven individual of indeterminable age in somewhat tatty clothing. The patois for this sort of meeting is standard
“Good evening sir this is a British Military Roadblock can I see your driving license please?
pause
Is this your car sir?
pause
What’s the registration number ?
pause
Would you mind getting out of the car so I can look in the boot?”
Simple really except when I looked at him I saw that the driver’s door was held on by a piece of string. One of the characteristics of the Popular was the fact that their doors all hung from the central pillar. This is the same as the rear doors of modern cars but their front door opened backwards unlike today. This meant he had a length of string stretching across the front of the windscreen hooked onto both doors. It was also apparent that this guy was unimaginably drunk, pissed as a fiddlers bitch, 3 sheets to the mind, gassed to the wide, call it what you will, if he had breathed into a breathalyser he would have set it on fire.
On the back seat of the car, as I looked in to its gloomy interior, were about 40 pint bottles of Porter, bottled Guinness. This was looking decidedly dodgy and not according to the script. So I tried again to get him out of the car and again he shook his head and dribbled. Well, it was always hammered into us that the quality of the fighting man is determined by what he does when it doesn’t go according to the script, and our friend had committed the fatal error in opening the window slightly to hear me better. Despite the alcoholic fug that was pure Bushmills wafting out of the window, I managed to get my hand inside the car and asked him once more if he would get out. Another incomprehensible diatribe as he attempted to shut the window.
Well by this time I was becoming a pretty peed off teddy and the old Celtic blood was beginning to rise. I pulled off the string that was keeping the door shut and opened it intending to extract the drunken leprechaun from the vehicle when I got another shock. The string was there not just to keep the door closed, but as the hinges of that door had completely rusted through, it was there to keep the door on. As soon as I opened it, it fell off, and onto the toe of the sub Inspector who promptly howled with pain and danced around like a whirling dervish in the middle of the road (to be honest he was a better actor than some preening Spanish midfield player). So there I was in the middle of this road freezing my nuts off, a broken car door in one hand and an RUC sub Inspector sounding like a gut shot water buffalo. Logically I should have taken a deep breath in and counted to ten but it never goes like that and our friend, the fume breathing dwarf, found himself grasped and seized by the lapels and lifted out of the car where I said to him quite gently, “show me your f*****g driving license sunshine or I will break your arms and legs ….slowly and with malice”. Reasonable in the circumstances I thought. He managed to find a dog eared license from somewhere and he produced it with a giant burp that produced enough vaporized Alcohol to have poisoned half the population of County Cavan. It transpired he was a local from Clones. And further questioning revealed he was on his was to his mother’s house in the Republic to spend Christmas Day with her.
I now wanted shot of this comedian as soon as I could rid myself of him, so did the last part of the ritual, the look in the boot. His face became a mask of fear when I asked him to open the boot. “ Can’t do that, can’t open the boot” Reasonably again I asked him what was in the boot, beginning to think we might have a live one here to which I got a shake of the head and some more Gaelic mumbling , or at least I think it was Gaelic. So I did what any well trained military man would do – I growled at him. I have a decent growl and it has frightened more than its fair share since that day but on its first operational deployment the growl produced some results. “There’s a pig in the boot and you canna open it.” A pig, I thought is just the sort of lunacy that would fit here and that’s why it doesn’t fit, how the hell he could get a pig in that small boot.
This went on for some minutes with me asking “ What’s in the boot?” and him answering “ A Pig” So I committed another cardinal error, I opened the boot lid myself. The good book says you should always let the punter open their own boot, something to do with chain of evidence. Tiredness was getting to me, however, and I opened up the slanting boot lid. Lo and behold, sitting in a cardboard box in the boot, was a small, round, pink pig. Only it wasn’t there for long, sensing a way out of what must have been a very smelly boot, it made its dash for freedom and was away through the hedge into the field adjoining the road. You might then have thought I had inflicted some form of horrendous torture on the driver as the wailing and whooping suddenly increased in volume and tempo to the top of the Beaufort scale. All that could be heard for probably 5 miles around was “ Ma Pig, Ma Pig, Ma Pig”. Discretion is the better part of valour and I gave the hand signals to the troops to lift the VCP only to run into the nationalistic solidarity of the Sub Inspector who politely informed me that unless the vehicle and its cargo were restored to its previous condition, he would be forced to make a complaint against the squadron and me in particular. At the same time, the drunken linty refused to sign the indemnity form. It became obvious that we would have to apprehend said pig and stuff it back into the boot. So Dennis the purve, myself and Frank the Brummy went into the field to catch the pig. Simple job, I thought, just corner it, there are three of us, and close it down. Have you ever tried to catch a small pig in a large field when its aroused? Not one of life’s easier tasks, herding cats would be simpler. After an hour of useless effort, the FS’s vehicle pulled up and he cast a sage eye over things. A large grin on his face as was on the face of his driver, my best mate Rick. He remarked that he was pleased I had everything under control and he would make sure that soup and a sandwich would be ready for us when we got back to base. With that he leapt into the vehicle and away they went, accompanied by roars of laughter. I was then more determined than ever to catch this pig, but after another 30 minutes of trying and having made no greater impression, I decided that drastic actions were justified and that if we could not catch the pig alive then a bacon joint it would become.
The driver and the sub Inspector had been getting along famously whilst we had been slaving away in the field, primarily because the punter had broken open the porter and was sharing it with the Specials whilst sitting on the running board of the car watching us lot cavort around the field like the back markers in the National on the second circuit of Aintree. I told the guys to get back to the truck and walked towards the pig. As I did so I jacked a round into the breech of my rifle and I guess the pig and its owner saw the writing on the wall. As I raised the rifle to aim, the old geezer reeled off some strange noises and whistles and the pig legged it, through the gap under the hedge next to the gate, to the back of the car and leapt into the boot and into its box whereupon it promptly lay down.
Nonplussed is a way to describe my feelings at that moment, I didn’t know whether to breath a sigh of relief or shoot the pig and its owner on the spot. The Sub Inspector closed the boot and got the old git back into the vehicle and on its way, having a signed indemnity form. As he drove away, the old fella left us 4 bottles of porter and his heartfelt thanks for the cabaret. I gave it up and closed things down. I would like to say we all recovered to base in good order but no – the police car would not start and we had to tow it back with the only tow rope available – our jointed rifle slings. So ended the tale of the Clones Porker on a cold Christmas morning .
Well not actually, some years later whilst engaged in waiting to down to Belfast during the Ulster Workers Strike we were passing the time murdering a bottle of Highland Park in the Royal Military Police Barracks at Aldergrove, Alexander Barracks or Ally Pally as it was known, and we got to talking about experiences with some of the Special Branch guys and the RMP SIB. We talked about Enniskillen and how it had changed and one of the guys asked if we had not come across Mr W ****** on our ops there. He and his family had run a successful smuggling racket for years and that his main trick was to distract everyone from his cargo of contraband butter and fags by using his tame pig. I would be lying if I said I didn’t change the subject very very quickly.
…to be continued Christmas in the Garage and jock Steels amazing mechanical Sausage
The Clones Porker, Christmas in the Garage and Jock Steels Amazing Mechanical Sausage
Clear cold and brightly moonlit – the crossroads just over the border to Clones, glistened with a thick layer of hoar frost. This was the first Christmas of the latest batch of troubles that Ireland had had to endure. The early part of the troubles as they are known have not been documented in any great detail but bore little resemblance to the ensuing bloodshed in Belfast and Derry, in fact they bore a greater resemblance to Ballkissangel but always with an edge to the comedy. The trip to the border lands of Fermanagh was the second of the excursions to the Emerald Isle that year. The first was a relatively benign trip that had encompassed Derry and then Aldergrove. The first bit was only remarkable by the fact that when we drove into the city with our blue coloured land rovers the crowds of rioters who had been bashing the exhausted contingent of RUC men to their knees would cease and desist, part their ranks to allow us passage to the small air sea rescue station that was one of our assets, wait patiently until we checked that the place was secure and then returned to our base at the top of the hill. Once those rituals had been observed, like a Hanna Barbara cartoon, they immediately clashed together in titanic terminal struggle again. The Aldergrove end was only remarkable because of the two hangers on the airfield which could have given any terrorist organization drooling mouths as they contained a high value target indeed -124 F4 Phantoms straight out of the McDonnell Douglas factory destined to be deployed with the RAF and RN, once their engines had been up rated and a new avionics suite had been fitted. The task was to stand on the door of these two enormous concrete upside down dustbin lid type hangers with a loaded rifle and 20 rounds of ammunition and defend these aero planes to the last man and the last round. The highlight of this was one unfortunate soul, being new and young and inexperienced, managing to put 3 rounds through a bank of self flushing public urinals located behind the open door where he had been sheltering from the wind off Lough Neagh. He told me later, once the shock of his two weeks wages fine for discharging his weapon in a dangerous manner had worn off ( how can you not discharge a weapon dangerously, they are supposed to be dangerous, otherwise why have them), that all the while he was pulling the trigger his brain was saying to him “No don’t do this you should not be doing this” but his trigger finger just kept working. He could have made some form of case for demonic possession but in truth he was a bit overly blessed in the stupid department.
We returned to the Province some two and a half months later after completing that four months there. This time it was to be the good stuff, the first time a complete wing of the RAF Regiment had deployed as a wing since the big 6 year exercise in 1939. Because we were Strategic Reserve we would deploy onto the border between The Irish republic (The 26 Counties) and Ulster (The 6 Counties). We would have squadrons at Enniskillen, Armagh,Tyrone and Londonderry, with our HQ in Omagh in one of the few existing army bases. I suppose in need to put in some explanations here about the organisation and it’s structures. So for all of you who know what the RAF Regiment is, tune out for a paragraph or two while I fill in some blanks.
The RAF Regiment is a separate corps within the RAF, created in 1942 to seize and defend RAF assets. Wel,l we didn’t get much seizing these days so we get to defend lots. We have also acted as infantry in support of the Army or the Local Government wherever we happen to be. This means we tend to get around a lot more than your average pongo or to some extent marine. We seldom operate in groupings of bigger than squadron size (about 160 strong). These are slightly larger than your average army or marine company and much more heavily armed and equipped. Additionally, the longer than usual infantry training means that the skill levels of the individual tends to be higher than the basic level grunt
It also meant that we could cover more ground than the average infantry unit and so, faced with a huge manpower deficit, the Army asked for and got the Wing to seal the border.
Early October saw us sailing into Belfast Lough and splitting up our various sub units from there. Our squadron,16 deployed to Fermanagh based at Enniskillen, 37, went to Tyrone, the Iron Triangle, based at Dungannon and Pomeroy and our attached army unit deployed to Armagh based in Armagh itself. The wing was based in Omagh with the HQ squadron, 48 minus it’s SAM launchers. They were linked with the resident army unit 17/21st Lancers the death or glory boys giving us some armoured car support. This mixed bunch looked after County Londonderry right up to the outskirts of Derry itself. Also at Omagh we had the Wing reserve, composed of one flight (about 30 guys) from each of the forward squadrons. This was done on a rotational basis 2 weeks at Omagh and 6 weeks on the Border. It was supposed to be Rest and Recuperation for the tempo we were working at 24 hours on camp guard, 36 hours on patrol duties and 12 hours off then start again was killing.
Things did not get off to an auspicious start. On each of the squadrons there was always a pecking order of flights. We were organized into HQ, 3 rifle or field flights and a support weapons flight. Support Weapons was always the flight to be on as it was composed of the squadrons crème de la crème whether that was as a professional mortar man, heavy machine gunner, all round basic infantryman, criminal or blagger. If you were good then you would be “encouraged” to apply. I got chosen because I was recognised as a good trooper and bright, as well as being a fairly useful centre half. The first unit from 16 to go into reserve was SW Flt. The fly in the ointment was I did not travel with the rest of the flight directly to Omagh as I had to drop some clerk off at Enniskillen. The drop off was of no moment and I needed an escort to take me back to Omagh. This was organised because a junior officer was detached to the Wing as a watch keeper and he would travel in a separate vehicle with his driver. Problem was they didn’t have a map, I did and, trusting soul, handed it over to them. It took all of 2 miles for them to lose me as we exited the county town of Enniskillen. So I was lost with only the vaguest idea of direction of travel. Why don’t you come across signposts that say if you go here you will be on your way to Omagh? As I plodded on, ricocheting across the map of Ulster like a demented pinball, it grew darker and the petrol gauge of the land rover began to slip towards the empty. This would be a problem, I could always stop at a local police station except that a) there were none and b) we had been warned that on no account were we trust the locals as we, as a Regiment, had a stigma attached from the previous troubles in the fifties. All this was a problem but not show-stopper for a man of my calibre. What was show stopping was the 4 x 81mm mortars I was carrying in the back of long wheelbases land rover. And if that was a problem it was nothing compared to the 164 rounds of high explosive ammunition for those mortars in the trailer. considering that a medium mortar like the 81mm can lob a round with very credible accuracy for some 4 and a half miles. They would have been Christmas come early to those republican groups on the border. Well as you guessed, because I am writing about this, I survived and eventually rolled into the main gate at Lisanelly Barracks in Omagh at around 7:30 PM that night , having been missing for some 6 hours to find that the entire Province searching for me, and of course my mortar cargo. All I was interested was if any of my gang had thought to order me a late dinner as I was starving not having eaten for some 13 hours. Instead I got the grand inquisition in a process that would have done Torquemada proud. All sizes and manner of loonies went as far as to personally accuse me of trying to bring down the government because of my thoughtless actions. The young officer who was going there as well had not told anyone he had lost me and disappeared into his room at the mess. When he was rootled out and grilled he stuck to his story like a good patsy completely unknowing that his driver was one of my best mates, hated the little turd and could not wait to tell the truth and show them my map with my name plastered all over it. Ah my another fine military career nipped in the bud – off he went the next day with a little sticker on his forehead – ” send back to civvie street not wanted on this or any other voyage”
There were more adventures in Omagh; the great flood where we assisted the population and brought food and drink to them whilst they blithely urinated on us from top floor windows – “Nothing personal you see lads but you’re British Soldiers” called one especially productive dwarf. I learned a valuable lesson that day and that was if you go fast enough down a street flooded up to waist level in a land rover the bow wave then created was strong enough to smash in said dwarfs front door and on the second pass liberate his colour TV, last seen surfing the wave into the river. The next day was clean up and we got assigned to cleaning up a pair of apartments, personal friends of the Mayor we were told so “Do a good job lads and it will be good for the squadron”. We were nothing If not dutiful and diligent, armed with brooms and shovels we set to to clean up these very smart flats. Well all except Denis, the squadron perv. Everywhere has one and Dennis was ours. I suppose he just had an overly imaginative mind coupled with a hypersonic sex drive but Dennis could be relied upon to see the hidden perversion in any situation. It, therefore, came as no surprise when he came out of one of the flats bedrooms twirling a leather harness around his head for all the world, the image of one of Ghengis Khans Golden Horde after the sack of Samarkand. The sound that accompanied it was, however, pure Northumberland triumph. Having told us all that he had known all along we were mere pawns in some capitalist game and that we were clearing up a knocking shop so the Mayor could………well you catch my drift.
There was also the minor frisson when the aforesaid donkey wallopers (Cavalry) 17 / 21st lost their prized battle flag. Some evil git had misappropriated this in the dead of night. I am sure it was pure circumstances that it went missing the day we deployed back to Enniskillen. As our counterpart Support Weapons flight from 37 San were also off to Dungannon that day, I remain convinced that it went with them – evils swine to man best suited to a Caribbean privateer of the 15th Century. However, I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but cannot for the life of me understand why OC 37 should have given it to our CO to hang in his office, I sometimes wondered about our officers!
Well Enniskillen was crowded and uncomfortable and fun. We did lots of patrols of which one day I shall write more. It was also tiring and mind-numbingly boring – a state of affairs I was, in later years, to appreciate as the norm and the safest. The weeks rolled by with little respite. We went to the furthest reaches of County Fermanagh even to the edges of the Atlantic, well almost map reading being what it was then. Before one knew it we were into December and watched in silent glowering jealousy as the inhabitants of Fermanagh, never ones to shirk a party, began getting down and dirty and enjoy themselves. The last few days in the run up to the big day were spent on patrols for us but with a small deviation from the norm. A squadron Christmas party had been organised at a hotel just outside the town. A posh hotel but no one had told the Sqn officers that as well as booze and a good dinner what the troops needed at a party like this was women. Sadly, none were provided and of course the inevitable happened, they had no where to let off steam and tried to agitate the locals into a punch up. Not even Enniskillen’s locals were that daft and so it degenerated into amass brawl the likes I have not seen since and which would have been entirely in place in a John Wayne western. Trouble was, as we were on patrol duties on Christmas Eve, the next night, I along with the Wolf had been nominated as bouncers or security in today’s parlance. We had completed the most of the night with nothing untoward at all. The manager of the hotel invited us into the staff pantry just before midnight and had some cakes and sandwiches and coffee there. Barely had we got in then one of the staff came in and said there was some trouble in the hallway. Up we went and opened the door into the main corridor through the hotel and it was absolute carnage people were thumping people for fun, for revenge, to prove they weren’t that drunk yet and a million other reasons. The manager had called the riot squad from our stand ins for the evening 37 Sqn and the boys managed to divest them of shields rifles helmets and flak jackets in a shorter time than it has taken me to type this.
Most of the rest of the morning was spent conveying slightly and in one or two cases moderately battered bodies to the local infirmary. if the IRA had wanted to attack that would have been the day and the time……to be continued
Well, since Friday, one could be excused for looking for a very high rooftop and having found one, either, hurl oneself to a soggy end because the UK was to be excluded from all the decision making at the EU and crumble away to the the new Albania or find a soapbox and trumpet the resounding nationalistic anthem of pulling away from Johnny Foreigner and his tricks and coming back home to take charge of our own destiny. The reason for this was David Cameron chucking his veto at the Merkel inspired rescue plan for tighter fiscal oversight and regulation for Euro zone countries. Her objective was clear and understood, her method was overly urgent and hence prone to longer term errors. The French dwarf positively revelled in his put down of the “perfidious” British – a pay back that stretches from Crecy to Normandy and beyond. It merely illustrated the paucity of intellect and leadership at theElyséePalace, although Cameron’s own response to the snub was hardly a worthy successor to Pitt, in fact as a PR man in what was essentially a PR battle he lost – badly!
The reason why he lost is that it became such a big thing in the UK. In reality when Merkel announced that this was one of the most important summits of all time for the EU, the British media misinterpreted her. In fact, she meant it was vital for Germany and France and the Euro zone countries. Vital for Britain it was not. In fact despite Cameron’s assurances, at the dispatch box, this afternoon that he had acted solely in the Country’s best interest, it really didn’t matter one way or the other. He was never going to get the assurances he said he needed because in the real world he didn’t actually need them. The City is the largest financial clearing house in the world despite New York’s protestations. It is the access point to the single biggest market in the world. Europe is our biggest trading partner and we are the second or third largest economy in the EU ( depending on how you measure it). Over 70% of inward investment comes in through the City. And where would BMW, Mercedes Benz, and Siemens etc be without the lucrative deregulated UK market? After years as a single market, the issue is clear; all of the EU member states are dependant on the others. So the perception of having Britain “bobbing about in mid Atlantic not having influence in the American or European sphere” is for the birds, or the tabloid press. By simple virtue of its expertise and unique position in the financial markets,London will remain pre-eminent and most Europeans know it.
The great debate revolves around the sceptics in the Tory party and their commitment to pulling back powers from Europe. Have we lost influence, will the Americans, Japanese, Chinese and Indian investors still love us? How can we expect there not to be a two speed Europe now? – the dwarf from the Elysée has already trumpeted it from the rooftops in a characteristic display of Gallic arrogance, it in his speech today. In fact, the British veto is a sideshow. The main issue, and the one which still has not satisfied the markets, is saving the Euro and with it the possibility of default on sovereign bonds by a number of big economies. A simple equation, can the economies involved service the loans all governments take out to keep their countries going? The degree of credibility on this by investors is measured on the level of yield the investor will demand to lend them money, the higher the yield the more risk of them losing their investment. In other words, its about risk.
Germany’s yield is around 2% yield and the UK’s is not much worse compared with others paying 5, 6 or even 7% for their money.The greater the yield, the more the government has to pay back. The more it pays back, the less it has to run its country and help its banks out should they fail. The Angel Angela wants to make sure there is fiscal discipline with automatic fines should targets not be met. In exchange she will be looking at underwriting some of the guarantee funds the markets will demand to continue operating. All this is to do with the BIG issue – the world economy and the fears of a second recession.. UK is not involved in the Euro zone and it is only of consequence if it collapses so Cameron will not stop anything except something which will impeded trade links in the EU – restrictions on the City of London. This is the crux of the other main point – UK is a member of the single market. The city is involved in trading, in the single market. Britain will not pull out of the single market, nor do the Europeans want us to. Will we lose influence in the single market? No, because its about business and trade not fiscal controls.
There are two separate but interdependent issues, the future of the Euro and the future of the single market. The second is not in doubt, the first is very much so. As the rumours seep out of Germany tonight that the German Government is talking to the Commerzbank with a view of shoring it up, it was, and is, right for Angela Merkel to concentrate on that. Cameron is incidental to this except that he is stuck between a rock and a hard place now with another major split between the coalition parties. As for Angela, she is fuelled by history,Weimar and the subsequent rise of the right in Germany makes for her desire for a timid European Central Bank, exactly what Europe doesn’t need. The French leprechaun has his own problems with the peculiar opaque relationship between the French Government and its banks.
It reminds me of Charles Upham who dies in 1994 – for those who don’t know him he was one of those rare breed of people who have won the VC twice. A New Zealander with all his countries virtues he shunned publicity after the Second World War, farming close to Christchurch. In a nation like New Zealand the cachet of having 2 VC’s was incredibly powerful but despite successive entreaties by politicians he only spoke out twice – in 1962 and 1971, both times against the European Common Market and he warned that the British way of life would be ruined by the Market because our politicians were dominated by money. His verdict in 1971 was even more scathing – “They’ll cheat you yet, those Germans”
What price in the days to come the British Commonwealth once more being pushed as an alternative to the Single market – god help us!
And a good bye and thank you to the great Jonny Wilkinson – the drop goal in the 2003 final ensures you will be immortal
twozeroalpha 