That Was The Week That Was 11-15 September 2023
It is bring your purple ink to work week!
We were blessed, blessed, this week with an outbreak of purple prose! Was it the relaxing effect of the summer break, or the late summer languorous heat that stirred the creative juices? What induces purple prose – apart from purple ink, of course? In China, only the emperor was allowed to use red ink. To this day, calligraphy teachers use it to correct and encourage brushwork. Whilst you may think that the line between red and purple ink is fine, this week, the week that was, we were standing clearly on the purple side of that line.
Monday started the week at full throttle, with no-one less than the Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, giving it to the Commission on the fate of the merger of ITA, the artist formerly known as Alitalia, and Lufthansa. Speaking at the G20, she did not hold back: ‘It is weird the Commission is blocking the solution to the ITA problem’. Where to start? There is a PhD waiting to be written on this one sentence. The ITA problem? A solution? It is the Commission’s fault? Weird? This is a remarkable piece of purple prose. Maybe it reads better in the original Italian. In any event, it deserves a purple belt in judo for shifting the weight of the players, as well as the blame, and the costs.
On Tuesday, attention shifted to Strasburg, and for a full week of the European Parliament, now deeply into pre-election positioning. We were peppered with notices that tomorrow (Wednesday) the great and the good of the Parliament were finally going to vote for the RefuelEU package to mandate minimal amounts of SAF etc, just in case you missed it on the day it happened. But that was not purple prose as much as self-indulgent prose. The real winner on Tuesday was the centre right EPP group which campaigned to stop banning cars from the middle of towns and cities. Drivers have rights too you know. Cop this for a very liberal spraying of the most magenta, vermillion-esque use of the language: The EPP Group wants us all to breathe cleaner air. We need ambitious and realistic measures to improve air quality, not populist or drastic ones…The new rules must not lead to shutting down industry… Discussing measures now to shut down certain industrial plants is absolute poison.
So, nothing populist, like, say, supporting drivers and cars over public transport. And as life advice, avoiding absolute poison is second-to-none. Maybe it reads better in the original German. What is relative poison?
I will not bother you with the purple prose of self-congratulation that flowed like a river on Wednesday after the ReFuelEU legislation was passed. There would simply be too many, far too many, links to provide. Google it, if you somehow managed to miss it. But note this. The challenge for us all is absolute zero by 2050 and net zero by 2030. By its own admission this legislation aims at 70% by 2050. Maybe, deep down, the Commission knew all along that Fit for 55 was a target year, not a target reduction for 2030? Just saying…
So, after all that self-consumed purple prose in Strasburg, on Thursday it was nice to go to Geneva, and the offices of IATA, where the A-team must still be on leave. IATA wanted to talk about the decision of the Dutch slot coordinator to comply with its legal obligations from the Dutch government to reduce its slots in the next season, on environmental, mostly noise, grounds. This was always going to see IATA come in off its long run-up, because it is an article of faith at IATA that the Slot Rules Are Sacrosanct. In doing so, the Deputy DG, Conrad Clifford noted that ‘We cannot allow this situation to be “helaas, pindakaas”. Too much is at stake. Jobs today and the prosperity of the Netherlands in the future will be damaged by this decision. This caretaker Dutch government, lacking any democratic mandate, is setting fire to its own shop.’
Hats off! No more cards and letters, we have a winner! Helaas pindakaas means: unfortunately, peanuts but… so that helps the understanding. Maybe this one is better in the original Dutch. But do stop and admire IATA getting into offering gratuitous political commentary about democratic mandates. Illusions of relevance and importance, much? Then, bringing it right home, is the reference to setting fire to the Dutch shop. I am sure that IATA is not attempting to belittle the Netherlands as a nation of shop keepers. That would be much too Napoleonic even for IATA, but if you see IATA’s troops moving towards Waterloo, you have been warned.
You would be entitled to think that nothing could top this burst of purple ink, and you might well be correct, but is it worth taking a minute to acknowledge this example of whatever the opposite of purple prose that we were blessed with on Friday. The petitioner wants a petition mounted to ensure consistency about hand baggage rules across the EU. The Commission staffer who wrote this most beautifully crafted response – you know who you are – deserves a prize. Never has ‘mah, whatever’ been more beautifully expressed.