Today's agenda, the politico-media establishment have decided, is the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and The Boy goes toddling off to that French city to make an inconsequential and carefully guarded speech on the subject, about which we are supposed to throb with excitement.

Somewhere, the idea of "sovereignty" will get mentioned – if not by The Boy, then certainly by some hacks, but even as they expostulate, that very thing drains away from the entity loosely described as the British nation.

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Even if "our" government were able to implement tighter regulations for cruise ships, it would have little or no effect. Most of them are operated on foreign registers anyway, or would soon be transferred to one. I noticed (when looking at Wikipedia for details of the Costa Concordia and other ships), that even The Queen Mary 2 has been transferred to the Bermudan register (ostensibly to allow wedding ceremonies). I'll bet this wasn't the only reason...

The same thing happens in the aviation world, where more stringent UK requirements make it uneconomic for the majority of bizjet owners to use "G" registrations.

Talking of sovereignty, I was listening to 5Live this morning whilst in the car. Nicky Campbell was up in Edinburgh covering the referendum issue, I know that's boring, I know. But the bit that pricked my ears up, was when he asked the question of some people in a bar, what their thoughts were . These turned out to be what sounded like Public school boys, either doing they Oxbridge degree or having recently done it, can't have been more than their mid 20s.

Their reply was, Ya, if Scotland what independence then that's okay, that's up to them. But I'm against nationalism, it's built on myths and lies of history.

I thought, yep the Marxist/Frankfurt school indoctrination is well and truly routed in the whole spectrum of education, along with a good dose of revisionist history.

Its the "we" bit that confuses,as in "we will take action on isssue x".What our useless representatives in Westminster mean by "we" and what the general populace and media mean by "we" is certainly not the same.

I would add that sometimes we(our government) attempt to surpass regulation passed down from on high.On two major examples,C02 emmissions and banking(Vickers Report)the UK deems it necessary to go further than the internationally set benchmark guidelines....in some sort of huge bravado bluff kind of way.Which probably says more about political gesturing than any sound reasoning

As an independent, sovereign nation, though, we could refuse to allow "flagged" vessels (air and sea) access to British ports. That might present a few problems from British flagged ships, but I am sure we could raise a working alliance to deal with the scourge of "flags of convenience". However, as long as we subscribe to the values of supranational and international government, that is never going to happen.

The picture reminds me of Lady Butler's "The Scots greys at Waterloo".
I rather liked the story of the young lady who was being shown that newly exhibited picture and was bored to tears with regimental history.
"Pray tell me, Willy" she asked her escort "From whom are they running?"