“I explained that to May,” Verhofstadt said. “I said, You have a problem, you try to solve it. We on the Continent are different. We need first a concept. If we have a concept, then we are going to try and put every problem that we have inside that concept.”

“There are two kinds of European nations,” Kristian Jensen, the Danish Finance Minister, said last year, referring to Britain’s situation. “There are small nations and there are countries that have not yet realized they are small nations.”


EU folks talking to/about the UK on Brexit (in The New Yorker)

I'm just an aging political officer.  Coffee is fuel, travel is opportunity.

In response to an old friend

All information is imperfect.

Jacob Bronowski 

He admitted the possibility of a central intelligent cause, while being unable to identify that cause, or understand why its designs should be brought to fulfillment in such roundabout and often terrible ways.

Julian Barnes, Arthur & George