The Belgian city of Antwerp, renowned for diamonds and dubious fashion choices, has now added 'blazing inferno' to its list of attractions. Five souls are no longer with us after an apartment block turned into a vertical barbecue. And who comes charging to the rescue? Not the fire brigade, but British fire safety experts, emerging from their gin-soaked dens to demand 'EU-wide standards' with the righteous fury of a man whose toast has fallen butter-side down.
Let us paint the scene: it was a tragic fire, the kind that makes you clutch your single malt a little tighter. Flames licking at curtains, smoke billowing like a badly written metaphor, and people, real people with names and dreams, perishing. But death, it seems, is merely the opening act for the theatre of bureaucracy. Because nothing says 'respect for the deceased' quite like a press conference demanding harmonised flame retardant regulations across 27 nations.
Now, I am all for safety. I am a man who once demanded a life jacket on a Boeing 737 before takeoff. But there is something deeply, comically British about watching a tragedy unfold in another country and immediately reaching for the EU rulebook rather than a fire extinguisher. It is the reflex of a nation that has spent decades outsourcing common sense to Brussels. If a Belgian toaster catches fire, we do not say 'bad wiring' we say 'lamentable lack of a unified EU toaster directive.'
Consider the alternative, the doomed alternative. Where were the EU standards when the Grenfell Tower went up like a Viking funeral pyre? Nowhere, that is where. Because Britain, in its infinite wisdom, had already decided that cladding was a fashion statement, not a death trap. So let us hold our hands up. We are not the fire marshals of Europe. We are the bar-room philosophers who, after a few too many sherries, believe we can solve the world's problems with a spreadsheet.
The experts, white-haired men in tweed who have never smelled smoke in their lives, are wheeled out to declare that this 'need never happen again.' It is a moving sentiment, marred only by the fact that it has happened before, is happening now, and will happen tomorrow. Because fires are not a problem of policy. They are a problem of physics. Flames, as any drunk will tell you, are hot and they spread. No amount of paperwork will convince a spark to behave.
But the show must go on. The EU will now form a committee. The committee will issue a report. The report will recommend standards. The standards will be ignored by national governments who cannot afford to implement them. And somewhere, in a bar in Antwerp, a Belgian will raise a glass and mutter something about the British and their obsession with form-filling.
And what of the dead? They will be remembered, briefly, before the next tragedy strikes. In a week's time, we will have moved on to a new outrage. Perhaps a bus crash in Bulgaria or a train derailment in Italy. And the experts will sharpen their pencils once more, ready to demand EU-wide bus safety standards or harmonised rail tracks.
It is the circle of life, for the bureaucratically inclined. We bury our dead, we wring our hands, and we call for rules. And the world continues to burn, beautifully, absurdly, and utterly without regard for our paperwork. Cheers.
