Carolyn, quick, they need you in Britain...Bring your friend and head over there!
vny.com
Analysis: Biblical plagues hit Britain
By MARTIN WALKER,UPI Chief International Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Feb.28 (UPI) -- What has Britain done to offend the heavens? A
plague of Biblical proportions has descended upon the British Isles.
Another train crash, the third in less than a year, leaves 13 dead. The
National Parks, horse-racing and the Wales-Ireland Rugby match are all
closed, and the stench of funeral pyres rises above the bleak countryside,
as slaughtered sheep and cattle are burned by the thousand.
Farmers, vets and the government are grappling desperately to save the
national herd from a new outbreak of foot and mouth disease. Fighting,
rather, to save what is left of the national herd after $10 billions were
spent in compensation for the last great slaughter of British cattle, only
five years ago, to deal with the outbreak of mad cow disease.
Hundreds of motorists spent last night in the cars as blizzards blocked
the Glasgow-Edinburgh auto route. Trains to Scotland were cancelled. And
Ireland and Northern Ireland - while trying to restore power to thousands of
homes --stand united in sealing their ports and gates against the threat of
Britain's latest blight infecting their own herds.
Meanwhile, the schools face closure as teachers go on strike. Train
drivers on the London Underground, probably the modern world's most
unreliable and least comfortable mass transit system, are threatening a new
strike.
It is a bad time to be in Britain now. And it should be a bad time to be a
government, with a general election looming.
Oddly, it isn't. Tony Blair's New Labor government enjoys a 20 per cent
lead in the opinion polls against a dispirited Conservative opposition. This
is not just because Blair enjoyed some useful headlines as the first
European to visit the new American President George Bush, and was even the
first visitor to enjoy a weekend at the President's private retreat at Camp
David. Blair's probable election victory owes almost everything to the fact
that he is presiding over the most impressive British economy in decades.
Britain currently enjoys the lowest inflation rate in Europe, one of the
lowest rates of unemployment, and by far the highest rate of foreign
investment. Blair's booming Britain is enjoying robust growth and high
productivity, having soared past the GDP of Italy and now France to become
the second-biggest economy in Europe after Germany.
And that, ironically, may be the real problem behind the Biblical plague
upon the land. Despite Blair's partiality for American Presidents, he has
been the most pro-European British prime minister since Edward Heath, the
Francophile Tory who led Britain into the European Common Market thirty
years ago. Britain has suffered the psychological pangs and the economic
costs of adjusting to that new identity. Shorn of the old Empire, the
Commonwealth links with Australia and New Zealand casually abandoned,
Britain has become not simply embedded economically in Europe, with sixty
per cent of trade now going back and forth across the English Channel. It
has become obsessed with Europe.
Europe now defines British politics. Margaret Thatcher's political career
was broken by Europe, as pro-Europeans in her own party turned against her
defense of British interests and her sneers at the federalists of Brussels.
Her successor, john major, was also broken by his party's splits over
Europe. The Labor party used to campaign against British entry into Europe.
Now it is the pro-European party, with Blair promising a referendum to
abolish the pound sterling and adopt Europe's new single currency instead.
Not that Blair seems to be getting much in return. Britain's most
important export to Europe was Margaret Thatcher's message, of privatization
and tax cuts, deregulating labor markets and rewarding entrepreneurs. They
were crucial components of the British economic miracle - and one of its
symbols was to privatize state-owned industries like British Rail. And now
the British rail network stands revealed as the most overpriced, least
popular and above all least safe in Europe. Britain's latest rail disaster
is another plausible reason for Europe's left and labor unions to reject the
British case for structural reforms.
And now Europe has turned against Britain again. Europe closed its ports
and markets to British beef during the mad cow panic -- only to find that
its own herds had been infected as well, after some farmers tried to cover
up the initial outbreaks. Today the ports of Europe are sealed again, and
the funeral pyres of British sheep and cattle are rising over Calais and
Zeebrugge and Rotterdam.
Having adapted its farming to Europe's Common Agricultural Policy and its
industrialization of the food chain, Britain finds it is fighting the latest
epidemic virtually alone. Of all the plagues falling upon Britain this grim
winter, that sense of aggrieved isolation may have the longest effect.
The Sun, Britain's best-selling newspaper argues "Those who say that
Britain is the farming pariah of Europe are wrong...the real problem is that
Britain is more honest than most countries. When we have a problem, we don't try to hide it."
-- |
