On a knife-edge… zzzzzzzz

Definitely in the category of WGAD, the little groupescules are still getting excited about the fate of Barroso’s commission, whether Rocco "gay-basher" Buttiglione is going to survive the wrath of the EU parliament, whether the dismal lot are going to exercise their "nuclear option", and whether Prodi is going to resuscitate his team from the political morgue in order to run as a "caretaker commission".

With various news agencies excitedly reporting that "Barroso's new commission team faces a knife-edge vote", with the outcome of the vote "impossible to predict", the only sensible response is: "who gives a damn?"

What is particularly laughable, though, is talk of there being "a power vacuum" if the Barroso commission is voted down. Readers of earlier Blogs on the Hague Programme will have noted that it is a five-year "multi-annual programme". The budget is also "multi-annual" – so it the research framework programme, the CAP – and even fishing.

The machine goes chuntering on regardless, and it makes not one whit of difference what commissioners the parliament approves – or for that matter which MEPs are elected. We could do without them for five years and no-one would notice the difference.

I might have mentioned this before, but I recall that one of the interpreters in the parliament once told me that the MEPs were so predictable in what they said that the staff up the boxes, having to spew all their garbage out in the many different languages, felt that, given the titles, they could deliver their speeches for them.

That would probably be the best outcome for this little faux crisis – get rid of the plonkers and let the middle-men take over. At least then we could cut out the crap of them posturing about being democratic and save a bit of money.