I'll just nip into Belgium...

Following my 8 November post about Stanstead, Quebec, I have had a blog comment from Alethia and a private e-mail from Watson. Both helpfully point out that the frontier between Belgium and the Netherlands is pretty similar (as the photograph suggests), particularly at Baarle-Nassau. Indeed, it is so complex that it merits a special Wikipedia entry. And now I vaguely recall stories about Belgian postmen driving to enclaves in the Netherlands to deliver letters. But although there may be houses with the frontier running through them, nobody has yet found me a public building in Europe that was deliberately constructed to straddle the frontier as a way of symbolising cooperation (as was the Haskell Free Library and Opera House).

‘History in the making’ is a hackneyed phrase, but like all people of a certain age I have been lucky to witness several genuinely historical events as they unfolded, German unification being perhaps the greatest. I have kaleidoscopic memories about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the iron curtain. One reported image, though, summed it all up. A Commission colleague, sensing what was about to happen, raced to Berlin and returned a day later with fragments of the wall, which he distributed generously to all of his colleagues (there was a scare, though, when it was reported that the wall contained large quantities of asbestos!). He told us how he had walked up and down the wall on both sides of the city and everywhere, all night, he saw the same scene; people, ordinary people, from both sides of the divide, chipping away with hammers of all shapes and sizes, from toffee hammers to sledge hammers, determined to reduce the monstrosity to rubble. The physical wall no longer exists but, in a way, you could argue that we are still chipping away, twenty years on, determined to reduce to nothing the final remains of the monstrosity that had so disfigured our continent.

Like many British and Commonwealth citizens, I have been wearing a poppy in my lapel for the past few days and will continue wearing it until Armistice Day (11 November). As a result, quite a few members and colleagues have asked me about its significance. It comes from a poem, In Flanders Fields, written by a Canadian doctor and Lieutenant Colonel, John McCrae, on 3 May 1915, after he’d witnessed the death of a close friend, just twenty-two years old, the previous day. You can read about McCrae and read the poem here.  The poppy which, like the cornflower, had bloomed across some of the worst battlefields of Flanders, came to symbolise the bloodshed and sacrifice of trench warfare. From there – and I quote from the Wikipedia account – ‘an American YMCA Overseas War Secretaries employee, Moina Michael, was inspired to make 25 silk poppies based on McCrae’s poem, which she distributed to attendees of the YMCA Overseas War Secretaries’ Conference. She then made an effort to have the poppy adopted as a national symbol of remembrance, and succeeded in having the National American Legion Conference adopt it two years later. At this conference, a Frenchwoman, Anna E. Guérin, was inspired to introduce the widely used artificial poppies given out today. In 1921 she sent her poppy sellers to London, England, where they were adopted by Field Marshall Douglas Haig, a founder of the Royal British Legion, as well as by veterans’ groups in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Nowadays, we wear the poppy to commemorate all the war dead, whenever and wherever they fell.

Making the Union more human

This afternoon, at my invitation, the European Ombudsman addressed a meeting to which all EESC staff were invited. I feel strongly that each and every official is a part of the European Union’s overall communication team. Most European citizens have difficulty in distinguishing between the different institutions but most if not all of them have in mind the idea of a European public administration. Therefore, each contact that we have with the public, wherever it may be and with whoever it may be, will have an effect on the cumulative image of the European Union and of the European public service. The current European Ombudsman, Nikiforos Diamandouros, entirely shares that vision and indeed sees himself not so much (and certainly not only) as a policeman of the Code of Good Administrative Behaviour but as a pro-active member of the same EU communication team, standing alongside the other institutions and seeking to give the EU a more human and humane image. Professor Diamandouras informed us that we are relatively good pupils – 29 cases concerning the Committee’s administration out of the 30,000 the Ombudsman has dealt with so far – but he also underlined the need to go ‘beyond legality’, by which he meant that there can be maladministration even if an institution or body has not acted unlawfully. I would go further. I think we need also to get beyond formality. All too often we restrict ourselves to polite but completely unhelpful replies… hence the emphasis in the Code, in Article 12, on courtesy.

One day this August we were visiting Morbegno, a pretty town in the Valtellina. We stopped for a light lunch in a bar selling re-heated pizza. The radio was playing. ‘Ah!’ I said, catching the distinctive opening chords of Jean Genie, ‘David Bowie!’ The next track was also Bowie – Ashes to Ashes. And the next – Let’s Dance. And so on. And the interlinking commentary made it clear that this was a major retrospective. ‘I hope nothing has happened to him,’  I said. Now, I hastily add that David Bowie is very much alive. The latest proof is that just five days ago Jonathan Ross paid £20,000 for one of Bowie’s iconclastic self-portraits, done for his 1995 album Outside, and Bowie sent Ross a ‘cheeky’ congratulatory message (not to mention recent photographs like the one to the left). So why my Morbegno morbidity? Well, the simple truth is that, as a performing artist, Bowie has all but disappeared and there has even been some ghastly speculation on the net that he might be suffering some sort of illness. The more prosaic truth is that since he suffered a heart attack in June 2004 the profile of Bowie, who is now 62, has been steadily diminishing. There was a brief comeback of cameo performances (notably with Arcade Fire) but those rapidly petered out. Bowie is, in effect, in a much deserved retirement. As if to confirm this, Le Monde ran a recent retrospective article and in the 26 October edition of the New Statesman Graeme Thomson wrote a paean to this ‘singularly talented singer and musician’: ‘Nobody writes songs like Bowie, strange affairs with unconventional chord patterns and bizarre, unpredictable melodies, held together by that imperious voice, leaping across keys or slipping into a meticulously contrived sarf Lahndan twang.’ And that’s the shame of it. We want more and find it hard to believe that there might not be any… In the meantime, there are plenty of immitators and spoofs, the latest from Flight of the Conchords. To see that and more recent photographs of Bowie visit this blog.

Publisher

No, not Van Gogh but Eaton. Vincent was the founder of the writers’ group and now he has left it to concentrate on his recently set up indie publishing company. He has also started blogging and you can read an account of his decision here. See that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

Different speed limits, maybe?

We had a Canadian guest to dinner yesterday evening and she told us all about her fascinating hometown of Stanstead, Quebec. The Tomifobia River runs through the town, at times delineating the U.S./Canadian border. Along portions of Canada’s Rue Canusa, houses on the southern end of the street lay entirely within Vermont, while their driveways direct northward, and connect to the street in Quebec, as the northern portions of their properties are within Canada. These residents’ backyard neighbours are American, while families living right across the street are Canadian, though no noticeable boundary exists between the two (the street itself is entirely within Canada). In other places, the international border runs through individual homes, so that meals prepared in one country are eaten in the other. An entire tool-and-die factory, once operated by the Butterfield division of Litton Industries, is also divided in two by the border. Nearby Rock Island is known for the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, opened in 1904 and deliberately constructed on the international border. The original owners were a couple with dual nationality; Mr. Carlos F. Haskell was an American businessman from Derby Line who owned a number of sawmills, while Mrs. Haskell was born in Canada. The intent was that people on both sides of the border would have use of the facility, which is now a designated historic site. All over Stanstead and Rock Island there are lines to indicate where the frontier goes (I found a picture of a road). Now, closer to home, I know about the road which is half in Luxembourg (and therefore full of petrol pumps) and half in Belgium, but do we Europeans have anything quite like the Haskell Free Library and Opera House?

Sad, drunk or wise?

Before I forget, that Slovenian translator, Vlasta (see post about bees!), told me in passing something that I think well illustrates Europe’s cultural diversity and richness. If I say, in English, that I’m feeling blue, it means that I’m feeling sad. But in German, if you say somebody’s blue, it means that they are drunk. And if you say the say thing in Slovenian, it means that somebody is wise. Europe, endless!

In you all come

So that’s it; the end of another heavily-charged and very productive week. Earlier today I sent a heartfelt message of thanks and congratulations to all staff for their professionalism. Simply put, everything went well. As I start to pack up on this Friday evening I have a genuine sense of accomplishment on behalf of everybody. All of those ‘planes’ that I wrote about at the beginning of the week, strung out in the sky, waiting to land, have all come in, landed perfectly and taxied off to the terminal.

Brenda King

The plenary session is over. A large number of opinions were adopted and it’s always invidious (and dangerous for an SG!) to start singling out any particular opinion for special note, but here goes – just one or two to give a taste. One exploratory opinion (which means that the Swedish Presidency asked the Committee to draft it), on social inclusion (rapporteur: Brenda King, Employers’ Group, UK), was closely linked to the previous debate on the Lisbon Strategy. The words still ring in my ears of a Finnish colleague who pointed out that some victims of economic crises – the poor, the old, the low-skilled – can easily become permanent victims, who never manage to join the productive economy again. the opinion quite rightly argues that we must be particularly attentive to this risk.

Joao Pegado Liz

Another, own-initiative opinion (which means that the Committee itself decided that it should draw attention to a particular issue) on the impact of social networking sites on citizens and consumers (rapporteur: Joao Pegado Liz, Various Interests Group, Portugese) coined a new term or, at least, new to me; ‘poor digital literacy’.  This closely-argued and well-documented opinion demonstrates just how inadvertently vulnerable we can all be to exploitation of various networking sites; it’s not just those who are poor in digital literacy, though they are of course most at risk.