The Entente Frugale: Britain and France Sign Military Agreements

Britain and France signed agreements on increased military co-operation including the joint use of aircraft carriers and nuclear facilities.

The agreements have already been called 'entente frugale'.

They are being forced by budget cut-backs to co-operate more closely on defence, writes Paul Reynolds, the BBC world affairs correspondent. They both want to be global players but increasingly lack the resources to remain so. So a series of measures were formally agreed at a summit in London on Tuesday, 2 November, between Prime Minister David Cameron and President Nicolas Sarkozy. And to judge from a phrase used by Mr Cameron this co-operation might in due course develop quite significantly. He said of one of the measures - the mutual use of each other's single aircraft carrier - that this might lead to an 'integrated strike force.'

Considering the historical rivalry between Britain and France, which largely shaped the modern world, the agreements are unprecedented - and overall positive. There are serious questions that were brushed aside though, including ‘the Falklands scenario’. And the history of previous joint Anglo-French military attempts isn’t that encouraging. The Crimean War against Russia, though won, drained both countries enormously. The first world war lead to America emerging as the superpower and the intervention in Russia in 1918 collapsed. Britain and France lost to German onslaught in 1940 and the Suez crisis of 1956 was a fiasco. 

The USA wasn’t consulted in 1956, but this time, it is reported, America was informed and approved of the agreements. Anglo-French accords may be seen as part of the general trend in the West towards multilateral approach with NATO gaining an increasingly important role. 

These are new times, but it’s worth staying cautious, even if optimistically. 

Here’s Tom Lehrer’s take on ‘multilateral force’:

Tom Lehrer and His Russian Fans

It was to be expected that Tom Lehrer's 'Vatican Rag' would crop up in the wake of the Pope's visit to England and Scotland. And of course it was played on the popular BBC satirical programme 'The News Quiz'.

I blogged about Tom Lehrer and the 'Vatican Rag' before, but I didn't realise that he has a small, but passionate following in Russia (or rather russophonia) - over 20,000 hits in a google search. This Russian wikipedia article mentions 'The Elements Song' (the periodic table being discovered by Mendeleev) and 'Lobachevsky' as having direct appeal to Russian.

Here is his 'Lobachevsky', all with Russian-Yiddish accent, some Russian phrases and obvious folk motives:




Commenters on YouTube say their chemistry teachers use Tom Lehrer's Elements song in class. See if you can spot Polonium, the secret assassin's new favourite weapon, in this clip of a student trying to memorise the table:

The Vatican Rag, or Selling Indulgences to the English

The Church of England is upset by the Pope's sneaky inivitation to English protestants to switch to catholicism. 

The bone of contention within the Anglican Church seems to be the imminent decision to allow women bishops in the Church. It may seem ridiculous to non-religious people, but the protestant drift towards common sense and common decency, still stirs emotions among the hard-liners who, this is my opinion now, are simply too scared to talk to God themselves and rather have the Pope and a few other robed celibate men to do that for them.

I was a little boy when I lived with my parents in New York in the 60-s and I am not sure if they really took me to Tom Lehrer's concerts. What I do remember clearly from those days is his Vatican Rag. Many years, scandals and a Dan Brown book, which outsells the Bible, later I would like to republish here a remastered video of Tom Lehrer performing the Vatican Rag.