I have written something for Telegraph Blogs about Trust in Europe (and scorpions). I’l put up the link when there is one.

It refers to this piece by Matthias Machnig, which, strive as I do, I simply cannot understand:

Economic growth has reached the limits of what is ecologically viable. The financial industry is now decoupled from the real economy, and the financial markets have mutated into a self-referential system. The splitting of labour markets into well-paid jobs and casual employment is creating a serious social divide. And in the face of this development, democracy is entering a crisis of legitimation and confidence.

We need a new understanding of global and social progress. We have to reinvent the idea of progress. It must become a project for hope and for the future again. Where progress fails to deliver hope, prosperity for all, a better quality of life and more participation, democracy and progress soon find themselves on a collision course. I firmly believe that new progress is possible as a new, forward-looking project, which can succeed provided we imbue progress with its productive, liberating power again and define the direction it must take.

The future lies open before us. This is an opportunity to change our existing model of progress. Progress of any kind is always new: but not everything that is new counts as progress.

That last point seems to make some sense. But there’s more. Much more:

Only in such a democracy, founded on solidarity, can the idea of a society committed to the new progress be taken forward and developed. The strengthening of co-determination rights in business and industry, the establishment of direct democratic mechanisms in legislation, the extension of the rights of the European Parliament and the guarantee of equal opportunities based on sound social and education policies – these are just the beginnings of a comprehensive democratization of society, of a society committed to the new progress.

In this way the new progress can become a project for hope and for the future, a cause for which it is worth entering the arena of political debate. It rejects the conservative belief that all we need to do is to nurture the status quo and develop it further. It rejects the liberal belief that the hope of upward mobility and social participation is a matter for the markets to sort out. It distances itself from “green” thinking, which preaches self-denial from a position of material security. And it distances itself from “left” thinking, which persists in lamenting the present sorry state of affairs instead of taking the initiative and fighting for a better world.

He uses the empty exhortatory word must six times, and need five times.

Ghastly.

This sort of exhaltation of the power of the state to correct its own messes as they get bigger and bigger always reminds me of the podgy Slovenian Marxist Kardelj, whose rambling ideas created the jungle of socialist self-management jargon and process which so enchanted sundry Western useful idiots before Yugoslavia crashed. Oh – and David Miliband too:

Crawford’s First Law of Bureaucracy: The capacity of a Ministry to do anything useful strategically is in indirect proportion to the amount of time it spends preparing its strategies.

A Yugoslav joke about the endless and pointless rearrangements of the communist self-management system by chief ideologue Kardelj.

Kardelj was asked how to cure a sick cow. He advised cooling it right down with ice-packs. The cow got worse.

He recommended heating it right up with blankets and electric fires. The cow got worse.

He recommended feeding it masses of extra food. The cow got worse.

He recommended starving it. The cow died.

"Boze boze, what a tragedy! I am a skilled vet and I had so many more cures to propose…!"