Gibraltar and Eurovision.

The British seem to insist on hanging on to ridiculous tokens of their bygone global supremacy. British sovereignty over Gibraltar and those islands off the Argentinian coast is anachronistic and clumsily out of place in these modern times of a Spanish company owning a British bank whose real estate probably amounts to an area larger than Gibraltar. Britain was a canny country back in the day. By luck and a lot of funky inventions we got a priceless head start in globalisation.  To cut a long story very short, with the dominance of the seas came the spread of the ultimate communication tool:  English, and eventually we were to create the first world-wide web of interconnected networks  – the telegraph cables laid by the Great Eastern that linked our Commonwealth colonies to themselves and the motherland. And in dominating the seas the Brits got the hang of strategic assets. Inhospitable lumps of rock in inhospitable seas typically had the union flag hoisted above them but Gibraltar was the number one top drawer top spot for the Empire. Whoever sat pretty on  The Rock  had a big say on who went in and out of the Mediterranean. Luck would have it, then, that we were still sitting on the rock during the Spanish civil war in the mid thirties. Spain was then ‘neutral’ during WW2 but with a strong leaning to the Fascists. Had The Rock been in Spanish hands during that war I’d have just come back from the dry cleaners with my steel grey Nazi uniform in preparation for my afternoon compulsory goosestep around the Central London parade ground.

If the Spanish were to get The Rock back are they aware of the responsibilities and costs involved in running a rock? It isn’t cheap. If the Spanish don’t want the Eurovision ‘cos it costs, then they should let the UK continue to pour its own money down the drain on the upkeep of The Rock.