And so it begins. . .

Doesn't take long for things to unravel, does it? And the Euro, and perhaps the EU, is starting to look like Fraudley Harrison one minute into the third round with David Haye.

The natives are getting restless in Ireland, which is encouraging as their method of showing displeasure is pretty much the same as ours. Demos in Athens are all very well, but the song has remained the same, it takes a steely determination to change the game rather than hysterical displays.

What is galling in Ireland is that despite Fianna Fail (and how apt that name seems now) managing to wave goodbye to two thirds of their market share, the locals have plumped for Sinn Fein, a party which, as far as I can make out, is as slavishly devoted to the EuroProject as any you care to mention. Just as with the SNP, they demand independence (and will kill for it) so they can hook their wagon up to an even more overpowering organisation. England may have been a bad neighbour in the past, but the EU will not rest until they become completely homogenised Europeans. No more green, no more Gaelic, no more St. Patrick's day, just the blue rag with the yellow stars.

The Portuguese and the Spanish must have very twitchy chocolate starfish. The Swedes, those paragons of social-collectivism have come out and basically said that the piggy bank is now empty. Sky have been pointing out the yield numbers on Spanish and Portuguese bonds heading north at an alarming rate as the crowd, in a panic, sprints from Dublin to Lisbon and Madrid. It will take only one member to refuse to cough up for everyone else to follow suit, although I didn't think for one moment it would be Sweden, I was thinking of the Danes or the Germans. Once a bailout is refused, the gig is up. All the little boys in the gang will get very worried, because they know that when the fecal matter collides with the rotating air-cooling device, the big hitters will sprint off towards the horizon. Indeed the Czechs are already making noises about getting the hell out of Dodge, and the Bulgarians, new boys who must be on their very bestest behaviour in the new school are grumbling as well.

True to form, the BBC are at pains to point out leaving the Euro would be like, really difficult, and y'know, really expensive. Whereas what Ireland and Greece are going through, and what looks likely for Portugal and Spain is a walk in the bloody park and as free as a bird.

Is this how empires end?

Even if this isn't the coup de gras, the EU will be so badly wounded that the merest knock could finish it off. It won't be pretty, and I'd much rather that the EU was wound up by referenda in the individual member states, but we have to be realistic, the powers that be would never allow it. What they can't control is the markets and the markets do not like what they see. This isn't down to a financial accident, it isn't bad luck, the whole show has been built on a foundation of sand and the hope that nobody realises the Emperor is striding around bollock naked. What the EU mandarins want, almost as much as complete, unaccountable power, is cash. Without cash they cannot feather their own beds or grease palms and hand out bribes to their drones.

Make the EU bleed to death financially. I'll not be mourning.

To get all geeky for a moment, this reminds me of the Genesis planet in Star Trek 3. Created by accident when the Genesis device goes off in a battle, Ceti Alpha 5 is transformed in an instant into a habitable planet, only to tear itself apart a few months later because of the instability of the 'ingredients' in the device. Sounds like the EU to me, in geo-political terms it was cooked up in an afternoon and will fall apart just as quickly. It is unfortunate that this result in great discomfort for many people.

So obsessed have the Manadarins been with rushing headlong to the gate marked 'Statehood' that they've built a shack, and what happens to a shack when it suffers a direct hit from a hurricane?