Quote:
BRUSSELS (AFP) - A euroskeptic British EU lawmaker has raised eyebrows in the European Parliament by aiming an anti-Hitler war song at Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel.
"Who do you think you are kidding Mr Schuessel?" trilled UK Independence Party deputy Gerard Batten, replacing the **** dicators's name with that of the Austrian government leader, who currently holds the presidency of the Eureopean Union.
"We are the boys who will make you think again. We are the boys who will stop your little game," he added, recalling the soldiers' song made famous by a long-running British television series, 'Dad's Army."
His intervention Tuesday came after Schuessel, briefing EU lawmakers on a Brussels summit he hosted last week, said that the bloc's leaders agreed there will be no "substantial" change to the disputed EU constitution.
The EU is battling to keep the pact alive despite its rejection by French and Dutch voters last year.
"The message is loud and clear: the political elite knows best, full steam ahead with the constitution, and do not listen to the people," Batten told the Brussels EU assembly.
Batten, whose party made significant gains in 2004 EU-wide elections, drew laughter when he protested that the EU's anthem, Ode to Joy, was by Beethoven, a "fervent opponent of European political integration under Napoleon."
To demonstrate his knowledge of it he read out, in heavily accented German, the Schiller lines to which it is set.
He then turned to the British wartime song -- also including the line "who do you think you are kidding Mr. Schuessel, if you think old England's done?" saying its words "sum up the attitude of Britain towards the European Union."
"Who do you think you are kidding Mr Schuessel?" trilled UK Independence Party deputy Gerard Batten, replacing the **** dicators's name with that of the Austrian government leader, who currently holds the presidency of the Eureopean Union.
"We are the boys who will make you think again. We are the boys who will stop your little game," he added, recalling the soldiers' song made famous by a long-running British television series, 'Dad's Army."
His intervention Tuesday came after Schuessel, briefing EU lawmakers on a Brussels summit he hosted last week, said that the bloc's leaders agreed there will be no "substantial" change to the disputed EU constitution.
The EU is battling to keep the pact alive despite its rejection by French and Dutch voters last year.
"The message is loud and clear: the political elite knows best, full steam ahead with the constitution, and do not listen to the people," Batten told the Brussels EU assembly.
Batten, whose party made significant gains in 2004 EU-wide elections, drew laughter when he protested that the EU's anthem, Ode to Joy, was by Beethoven, a "fervent opponent of European political integration under Napoleon."
To demonstrate his knowledge of it he read out, in heavily accented German, the Schiller lines to which it is set.
He then turned to the British wartime song -- also including the line "who do you think you are kidding Mr. Schuessel, if you think old England's done?" saying its words "sum up the attitude of Britain towards the European Union."
Godwin's law ftw.
