Reaching across generations

This week has brought with it three events that have dragged my brain into the past, allowing me to muse on history and life (my abiding pleasure).

-- The 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 taking off for the moon. I was a teenager in England. My father and I dragged mattresses into the the "television room" and sat up all night watching Armstrong and Aldrin walk on the surface and forget about poor old Collins circling around above. It was a great family moment. The evening involved TV telling us how astronauts peed and pooed. The BBC was splendid.

It dawned on me this week that we watched the event on a black and white television with rabbit ears. Looking around at current technology around me only made me realise what a feat it was. There were no VCRs or touch tone phones, let alone DVDs, laptops or iPhones. How did they do it?

-- The death of Walter Cronkite. He meant more to my American friends than to me. But his passing away brought back memories of Watergate, the Vietnam War and the demise of Richard Nixon, all of which he presided over as a God of Journalism.

I am not entirely sure that the America that emerged from those years of turmoil is headed in any more of a right direction than it was at the time. But I do know that instead of a Cronkite telling it like it is, poor Americans are now plagued with biased, misleading and self-serving news reporters. It would have been great to really know what Walter thought of the evil crazies on Fox and the trash talk shows that surrounded his final years and pollute the minds of a nation that deserves and needs better.

-- The passing of Henry Allingham, aged 113. It surprised me how sad I felt when I heard that the "twice teenager" had gone. I guess it was because I liked the idea of someone going on and on participating in a war that so few remember.

The death of Mr Allingham (at his age, the "Mr" is obligatory) reminded me of once meeting a Boer War veteran. He was a Chelsea Pensioner and I was about eight. I have always liked the idea of reaching across generations by chance meetings. The same idea goes, for example, with shaking the hands of someone who once shook hands with Churchill etc.

Soggy with nostalgia, this week. Silly, really. But then life is, isn't it.

How EU worked for Britain over Iran

No one in Britain ever points out the benefits being in the European Union. So I will. Just one small example more or less ignored by the country.

When Iran started arresting employees of the British Embassy in Tehran, the EU acted with one voice and called in all the Iranian ambassadors, country by country, to complain. It is what partners do.

It may be stretching it a bit to say that this turned the Iranians around on its own. But they cannot afford to alienate all of Europe. Britain, the not-quite-great Satan, yes. But not 27 countries representing almost 500 million people. 

As of this post, only one is still being held out of the estimated nine who were originally taken. Thank you, EU.

Telling the truth about Euroscepticism

It is one of the irritations of being a pro-European Briton that no one ever stands up for the EU in this country. The nearest you get is some barely known Liberal Democrat on a television programme like Question Time arguing that without it the UK would be in worse shape. Other than that it is Eurocrats this, crazy regulations that, we won the war etc. 

So it is with a degree of pleasure that I recently came upon a paper from Simon Tilford, chief economist at the rather thoughtful British think tank, the Centre for European Reform. Tilford does not exactly defend the EU, but he does attack those who attack it, saying they are not telling the truth. British Eurosceptics, he says, are not being honest about what retreat from full membership of the European Union would mean. 

A newly 'emancipated' Britain would not remain part of the EU's single market, at least not on the terms the Eurosceptics claim. It would not reduce the regulatory and compliance costs facing UK business and it would end our ability to shape the EU's single market.

Essentially, Tilford argues that Britain's anti-EUers -- who range from idiots who talk about independence, to tabloid nationalists and Tories who yearn for an England long gone -- would give up any say in their own affairs in exchange for being able to say that they were not actually in the EU.

Britain needs to step up its involvement in the EU, not leave the playing field in a huff. It needs to strive to ensure that EU financial regulation is -- as far as possible -- proportionate and reconcilable with the UK approach. More generally, it needs to make common cause with other economically liberal member-states to ensure that the EU evolves in a direction that serves British interests.

Tilford unfortunately thinks in terms of what Britain can get out of the EU rather than what the EU can achieve as a body. He also focuses too much on financial matters (but, then again, he is the CER's chief economist).

But at least there is someone with a bit of intellect out there trying to tell Britons that the EU is more than just a faceless body that demands that all bananas be straight and that it would be a unmitigated disaster for Britain to disengage.

We need more of this kind of argument. Britons must not be allowed to slide out of the EU in a state of blissful ignorance created by lazy journalists and ignorant politicians.