It is piquant to observe that the country which houses the Commissioners of
a 'United' Europe is itself dividing into two halves. The decades-old
cultural division between a dynamic, secession-seeking Dutch-speaking
Flanders in the north of Belgium and an economically lagging
French-speaking Wallonia in the south is now growing so wide that Belgians
have been unable to form a government for the past eight months, only a
caretaker committee. Already downgraded for this reason by Standard & Poor
from AAA credit status to AA+ (a euphemism if there ever was one!), it is
going to be downgraded further unless they buck themselves up in the next
six months. Under this threat they'll probably manage to for the time
being, but when the super nation-state of the European Union itself starts
breaks up not too long hence, Belgium will follow pretty quickly one
imagines. (And what about Spain, too, with its Basque and Catalan would-be
separatists? And other European counties with strong devolution tendencies?
And, now that the UK has hived-off Scotland and Wales, increasing numbers
of English people now want their own Parliament!)
Keith
P.S. And I can envisage America dividing into an English-speaking and
Spanish-speaking halves in due course. And has Canada quite solved its own
problem?
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
<http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2010/12/>http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2010/12/
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