Europe arouses strong feelings. There are those who love it and think Britain should embrace it fully and enthusiastically. And there are those who hate it, believe that Europe hates us (mainly on the evidence of Eurovision Song Contest voting), and consider we'd be best off having nothing at all to do with it.

Once I was in the latter camp. Now I've joined the others, and it's partly because our political masters (who should really act like our servants, because we pay them handsomely out of our taxes) have sold our souls to the United States.

It's like being the school bully's pathetic sidekick. No wonder we're UK No Mates and our neighbours in Europe despise us for it and gang up against us.

Because of America, we're stuck in a disastrous war. Because of profligate lending by banks in America to people who so obviously couldn't afford to repay the money they'd been encouraged to borrow to buy a house, Britain's banks are worried, Northern Rock is in crisis and the British taxpayers are underwriting a billion pound bill. Because US farmers are turning over their land to crops which produce biofuels, so Americans can run their cars cheaply, the cost of grain to feed British farmers' animals has soared, and so has the price of bread in British supermarkets.

The United States is a country on the far side of a mighty ocean where a language similar to ours is spoken but which is otherwise a foreign land.

In Europe, on the other hand, no-one speaks our language as their first language, and it's our reluctance to learn their languages which has set us apart. But we have a long shared history with them and our destinies have been intertwined for centuries. Indeed, most of us carry genes which originated on the far side of the Channel.

I've warmed to our European neighbours in recent years. They've retained a sense of cultural heritage that we've largely lost. They're civilised, and become more so the further south you go. Their family life is closer and stronger. Out on the streets, their young people behave with greater decorum than many of their British counterparts, showing a lot less of the chav culture which is dragging down British society.

And what's more, the euro is now looking to be a good option for the pound to be tied to rather than the shaky dollar.

I appreciate this is going to upset the Europhobes among this column's readers, but I think the day isn't far away when I'd be quite happy to say that while I'm proud to be a Yorkshireman, I'm glad too to think of myself as a European.

Why we're all birdbrains!

The most territorial mistle thrush probably in the whole of England has taken up residence in the rowan tree in our back garden. It regards the fast-dwindling store of berries as its own and guards them ferociously.

If any bird strays into the tree, it chases it off. Sometimes it stands watch in another tree nearby, or on the roof of one of the houses opposite, and if it sees an interloper it streaks back like an Exocet missile.

It's particularly taken against a male blackbird, which it chases not just out of the tree but out of the garden - presumably because it recognises it as a fellow berry guzzler and consequently an extra-special threat to its larder.

However, a pair of blue tits appear to be winding the thrush up. They land in different parts of the tree and as it flaps around frantically from branch to branch not knowing which one to pursue they, being a lot nimbler, keep well ahead of it.

Then they fly off and just when it's calmed down they return and wind it up again. It's great entertainment.

I know we're not supposed to see human characteristics in animals, but there are times when it's unavoidable. We're told that we don't know what goes on in their minds, but I suspect we do. It's much the same as what goes on in ours, only simpler.

Building is a Shire-fire winner...

It's good to see that Shire House that distinctive new office building at the junction of the Shipley-Airedale Road and Harris Street has at last found a tenant. A couple of floors are now occupied, the lights are on and cars are in the car park.

Hopefully other tenants will follow and the building will soon be full. It deserves to be. It's one of the two best new buildings to grace the Bradford skyline in a long while.

The other is Gatehaus nearby. I love it. Drive down towards it from Wakefield Road and it looms there like a black glass ocean liner emerging from Little Germany.

Significantly, these are individual one-offs rather than part of a grand design. This city seems to have problems getting the latter off the ground.

If we had a few more buildings of the design quality of those two dotted around the place, Bradford would surely be attractive enough to win more tenants to the Broadway development.

But can we hang on long enough for them to be built? It'll be 2013 before the 38-storey Citygate tower in Manchester Road is completed, and all has gone ominously quiet about the other planned tower which is due to be part of the Canal Road waterfront development.

By the time they become a reality, will Westfield have long since despaired of signing up the number of businesses it reckons it needs to make Broadway viable and have gone elsewhere, leaving tumbleweed to blow around between the piles of rubble forever?