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The Remainders are getting right down to the bottom of the barrel now. Withdrawal from even the humblest "EU instrument" (never mind from the EU itself) will bring confusion, disruption and social breakdown. Anyone know what's meant by "Brussels 11a"? Anyone know how many EU instruments there are? Anyone know the name of their MEP for that matter?

They hid their dealings in a file so thick
It burst, and then hit on a better trick
Learnt from a tale of Edgar Allan Poe’s:
You never see what’s right before your nose.
They therefore framed and hung them in the hall,
Still short of space, stuck them on every wall,
Papered them thick on every inch of plaster
In kitchen, lounge, all bedrooms but the master,
Till soon between the cellar and the sky
Nothing but scraps of printing met the eye,
Challenging brains creative or prosaic
To trace a pattern in the mad mosaic.
That fatherly affection artists feel
For their great works they felt for this great spiel.
They had no baby, but this rigmarole
Was, so to speak, their papier-mâché doll,
Their darling, their “Acquis-Communautaire”,
Named for their strange, acquisitive affair
Where idealism was nicely crossed with greed,
Paper with piety, and law with need,
To propagate this unifying creed:
“What’s ours is ours; what’s yours is ours the same,
If we, or Fate, or Justice so proclaim.”
They were celebrities, the Press adored
Their “chemistry”, hung on their every word,
And all the best authorities approved
The mental heights on which they (barely) moved;
None cared, so lofty was their attitude,
If every sentence was a platitude.
“Whatever is, is right” was soon the song,
For Fame, like Wealth and kings, can do no wrong.
Yet still there was a cloud in the blue sky
Of Paradise: fulfilment passed them by.
Only the heads embraced and not the hearts,
Minds, limbs, lips, spirits, or the other parts.
Noble and grand they posed where all might see them
Like two Greek busts escaped from a museum,
Or like two poplars bowing in the breeze
While out of sight the roots run where they please.
If trees could think, they might think it unfair
Their roots should travel while they beat the air.
Our couple trembled for their magnum opus
Lest motives more deep-seated than Europa’s
Should thwart their showier but shallower plans
And leave a huge white elephant on their hands.
[The Europiad ll. 192-238]