UK’s not scared of the Brussels bunny boilers who reacted to Theresa May’s calm Brexit plans with hysterical, irrational fury
OUR jilted EU partners are increasingly behaving like the Glenn Close character in Fatal Attraction.
Can’t we still be friends? Apparently not.
Our decision to end the relationship has left the EU hurt, humiliated and mad enough to boil your bunny.
Hell hath no fury like a Little European scorned.
And like the Michael Douglas character in Fatal Attraction, we can only contemplate what awful punishments now await us.
Europe reacted to Theresa May’s calm, rational plans for Brexodus with hysterical, irrational fury.
The front page of German newspaper Die Welt, sneered “Little Britain”, even though every line of our Prime Minister’s majestic speech spoke of a UK that was ready to embrace the world.
Surely Little Britain would be a country that lacked the bottle to strike out on its own, cowering for warmth and security with those other self-doubting EU states?
In our nation today, there is a growing awareness that leaving the European Union will restore us to our historical role as a global trading nation.
We have been in the EU for decades. But we have traded with the world for CENTURIES.
It is why the harbour in Hong Kong and the waterfall on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe are both named after Queen Victoria.
It is why they play cricket in India, rugby in South Africa and football in Argentina.
Brits have wandered this planet and sometimes never come home.
It is why so many of us have family links to Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Future generations will see our membership of the EU as an aberration. Our country ALWAYS embraced the entire world.
As the first nation to have the confidence to leave the EU, it is inevitable we should face bitter resentment from the Continent — just as Michael Douglas was asking to get his car vandalised when he told Glenn Close he was going back to his wife.
Yet the hysteria of the Little Europeans is still shocking.
French rag Liberation accused May of “blackmail”.
Spain’s El Pais described her approach as a “ferocious Brexit”.
And even the respected German magazine Der Spiegel had a picture of our PM on the cover with the mocking line: “I want, I want, I want.”
Most sane observers would surely concede that Theresa May struck the perfect confident yet conciliatory note in her big Brexit speech.
RELATED STORIES
We want to be friends with our European neighbours and wish them nothing but peace and prosperity.
We are not asking to retain the best bits of EU membership — “cherry picking” in the sneering argot of Brussels. We are not asking to be done any favours.
But we will not be threatened. We will not be bullied. And we prefer no deal to a bad deal.
So what’s the problem? The problem is that Theresa May has made it clear we are really and truly leaving.
No fudge, no compromise, no gutless sell-out of the biggest democratic vote in British history.
Despite all the obstacles that lie ahead, all the tough negotiations, and all the unknowable turns of fortune, we are off.
Like the husband in Fatal Attraction, we have finally come to our senses.
No wonder the Little Europeans are so mad.
SO farewell, Barack Obama. We always admired you in this country — despite suspecting the feeling was not entirely mutual.
You had grace, intelligence and charm. But when it came to race relations, you certainly took America to the back of the queue.
THE reason the Labour Party is finished for ever is because nobody has a clue where they stand on any of the great issues of the day.
It says a lot about Labour that their most popular figure is Ed Balls – a man last seen with a Russian hoofer’s legs wrapped snugly around his neck.
Final act for circus cruelty
AFTER 146 years of entertaining the public with exotic animals doing tricks, Barnum and Bailey Circus is closing this spring, blaming changing public tastes.
The announcement comes in the same month that Tilikum, a killer whale at Orlando’s SeaWorld, died aged 36. Barnum and Bailey Circus was the product of another age – as was keeping a giant orca in a glorified fish tank. I enjoyed circuses as a child. I visited SeaWorld with my daughter. But I have long believed that one day we would all understand that it is horribly cruel to remove animals from their natural habitat and teach them tricks in return for food. With the circus packing its trunk and a captive orca dying, it looks like that day has arrived.
Education is in a jam
A HEADTEACHER cheesed off with Year 11 girls using social media sites during lessons has been told jamming their phones would be illegal.
In a futile attempt to educate her wayward students, Julia Polley of Wensleydale School & Sixth Form College in Leyburn, North Yorks, planned to buy technology that would disrupt the local 4G network.
She has been informed such a move would be illegal because it could disrupt emergency services and she could face a fine or even prison. But why should a concerned headmistress have to invest in complicated technology?
Why can’t she just tell the little blighters to turn off their wretched phones?
Or would that be a violation of their human rights?
In this sad little story, we see the tragedy of state education in this country. For far too many children, education is simply not cool. So they will spend a lifetime without ever fulfilling their true potential. And that is the definition of true ignorance.
Notably, the students who had a bust-up with Julia Polley were all Year 11 girls – the year you take your GCSEs.
Do you think the students in Year 11 at Eton, Westminster or any of the other private schools in the land are on Facebook during their lessons? Me neither.
And that is why they will run the country while those Year 11 girls at Wensleydale are drawing benefits.
—THE faces of the 30 British tourists murdered by a terrorist in Tunisia in June 2015 are heartbreaking.
They could be your relatives. They could be mine.
Now the inquest into their deaths at the Royal Courts of Justice has been told local police “deliberately wasted time” in reaching the scene of carnage. Shame on them.
Tunisia doesn’t deserve a tourism industry.
George's drift to tragedy
NOBODY will know what really killed George Michael until the toxicology reports come back after the first post-mortem tests were “inconclusive”.
But it is disturbing to hear that Andros Georgiou had no contact with George for the last 18 years of his life. Andros was a friend who was as close to George as family.
They grew up together. George always called Andros his cousin but they were more like brothers.
Whatever that toxicology report says, I believe this is what really killed George. He drifted apart from those who loved him the most.
SCIENTISTS at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, Austria, say that dogs increase the risk of damaging their joints when they run, jump or carry things in their mouth.
There are around 8.5million mutts in the UK. They have been our guard dogs, gun dogs, sheep herders and rat hunters.
These days, their day job is usually as the family pet.
But almost every dog retains their historic love for fetching small things, although now it is more likely to be a chewed tennis ball than a shot pheasant or mill rat.
Dr Barbara Bockstahler warns that dogs risk hurting themselves if they pick up a stick or ball because they put too much pressure on their front legs.
But I am on stroking terms with an elderly labrador called Leopold, who I meet every morning proudly carrying what looks like a small tree in his mouth.
And Leopold is the happiest creature I have ever met.
Baby-gate
CONGRATULATIONS to Dame Julia Peyton-Jones, Britain’s oldest first-time mum at the age of 64.
And commiserations to the poor little baby, who will have a mother in her eighties when she is doing her A-levels. And that is the best-case scenario. It is an act of mind-blowing selfishness to bring a child into the world when you are 64 years old. Parenthood is a marathon, not a sprint.
SCULPTOR Alfie Bradley, just 25, has created a work of genius with Knife Angel.
It is a statue made from some of the 100,000 knives surrendered to police in a two-year amnesty. Alfie’s piece helps us understand kids don’t carry knives because they are tough. They carry knives because they are scared.
Off to China
OUR country is giving China £3million of foreign aid to help them promote football.
Meanwhile, Carlos Tevez just touched down in China, where Shanghai Shenhua will be paying the Argentinian striker £615,000 every week. And the real obscenity? This kind of grotesque stupidity gives foreign aid a bad name.