OT: Spain's Prime Minister Is Mr. Bean Lookalike!

UK's Telegraph has an article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard published yesterday about Spain's "austerity" program. But my eyes were glued to the photograph of Spain's Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. Mr. Bean!


The article is no laughing matter, though. Evans-Pritchard sees the austerity plan as a sovereignty issue:

"...Mariano Rajoy, the conservative opposition leader, said years of ostrich-like denial by the Zapatero team had reduced the country to an EU "protectorate".

"[The European] Commission president Jose Barroso unveiled plans for EU control over national budgets, including an incendiary demand that Brussels should vet budgets before their first reading in Westminster, the Bundestag, and other parliaments. Current account deficits and credit growth will be monitored. Brussels can imposing sanctions on states that let booms run out of control. "We must get to the root of the problems," he said.

"Such a plan would greatly improve the working of the EMU system, but it would also entail a drastic erosion of sovereignty. The intrusive surveillance is a wake-up call for states that have tended to view the euro as a free lunch." [Emphasis is mine.]

Click here for the entire article "EU imposes wage cuts on Spanish 'Protectorate', calls for budget primacy over sovereign parliaments".

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