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“TV Agony Aunt, Denise Robertson has slammed the Yes Campaign for attributing misleading quotes to her.
Denise has always been a supporter of a Yes vote, but was very concerned that it might lead to the break up of the country.

It now appears that she and her name has been well and truly used by the Yes Campaign who have now been forced to apologise. To read the story please click here Neil Herron: Sunderland born Yes ‘Celebrity’ furious about Yes Campaign Leaflet:

A little window of the thinking behind the Yes campaign run by the EU backed Professor John Tomaney. Whether by accident or by design the Electorial Commision has given the professor’s campaign a boost by designating the Tory baked no campaign as official opposition. As the Tories are not liked in the North East, this has allowed the Yes campaign to use the Electorial Commissions inexplicable choice, as a big stick to use against anyone who opposes their plans to breaks up Britain into smaller units.

We should all be watching these machinations of the Yes campaign with concern, if these people find these tactics successful in the North East, we can expect a repeat in the rest of the country. This is also likely to be the proving ground for the EU Constitution Referendum this is just a foretaste of what we can expect from this government and their EU backed henchmen.

The Friends of Europe (is it the whole of Europe or just the EU one wonders)

Have issued a 35 page report http://www.friendsofeurope.org/pdfs/Can_EU_hear_me-FINAL-A5.pdf

Can EU hear me?

How to get the EU’s message out

According to the report itself

“It takes a very original approach to the familiar problem of how the EU and its institutions can better connect with Europe’s citizens. It is part opinion poll, part survey of political leaders and opinion makers, and part study group findings.

The ideas that have emerged from this year-long project have been distilled into 10 overall recommendations, each of which is backed by three sub-recommendations. These 30 practical ideas are presented at the beginning of this report in the form of an Open Letter to Margot Wallström, the incoming Vice-President of the European Commission whose task will be to improve the EU’s Information and Communications. (If not vetoed by the EU Parliament first)

Dr Richard North EU Referendum commented

“However, as to the question on how the EU could improve its image, it clearly did not appreciate my response, which was along the lines of “abolish itself”.

We can clearly see how very important and fully inclusive the Gallop poll was and how openly it was conducted when we have a look at the professions of the people it questioned (I assume Dr North was one of the 19% unknown)

Respondents’ professions

For the first Gallup Survey, 12% of respondents worked directly for EU bodies

(European Commission, European Parliament and other institutions), 10% for EU

governments at different levels, 8% for media. Around 18% were from NGOs, 18% from

the corporate sector and 15% from the education and research sectors (19% unknown).

So there was obviously a clear attempt by the “Friends” to ask the views of ordinary people.

The recommendations of the report for Margot Wallström were (with my own interpretations)

During your first six months visit each EU Member State,

In each country, hold public forums to hear what people have to say about

the EU.

• Use local third party endorsers – groups of beneficiaries or supporters – to

describe how the EU has helped them.

• Meet the most important national media editors and the leading politicians.

Rush around all twenty five EU states only meeting those people who agree with the “Friends” and gain an insight of what those people want, and then tell everybody else us that this is the same as we all want.

Promote the benefits of EU Membership

Carry out surveys in each Member State to find out the impact of the EU on people’s lives and the losses they would suffer if their country withdrew from the EU. Then Publicise the results widely by engaging a professional communication agency with a pan-European network to devise a tailormade strategy in each country.

Or on the other hand keep very quite about it when you realise that we would all be a lot better off if we did leave the EU.

Make the EU news message more interesting

Don’t turn people off with too much detail – keep the message down to three

key points at most.

Adapt your message to your audience. Always give specific examples of how new policies affect ‘the person in the street’. If you can, have such a person on hand to talk about their experience

To much detail will expose the faults with the system and we do not want that now do we and any way the people out there are too stupid to understand what is going on.

Tell different lies in each of the states In Britain for example you could say everything is going their way, and the other states are going along with us and what is good for Britain. In Germany you could tell the workers that Germany in an industry leader only because of the EU and not because they are much better at it than everybody else and would be world leaders in any case.

React faster to news

Set up a ‘rapid response’ unit to react quickly to events – have press releases

out within 4 hours after something important happens in a Member State.

Make sure that the EU Spin machine is up to speed and only good news gets out, and also claim EU responsibility for all the good and blame something else for all the bad.

Adapt the media channels to the story and the Member State

• Carry out a media survey in each Member State to find out the relative size,

popularity and penetration of each national and regional media channel (TV,

radio, press or internet) for the different audiences you may need to reach.

• Set-up “Reporting the EU” scholarships to bring young journalists to

Brussels for intensive training courses on how the Union’s political

machinery works, and on the major issues confronting the EU.

• Before you release a story, decide which medium in each country is the most

appropriate – TV, radio, press or internet, or a combination thereof.

Find out which media outlet can be relied upon to report the EU line favourably, and then bribe the reporters of those outlets with freebies, or offer the outlets bribes which you can describe as loans or grants. Then feed these EU outlets with the EU line so that they then will disseminate it in a favourable manner, and will not allow inconvenient questions to arise, or will ignore those questions as being the outpourings of a ranting Xenophobic association of misfits.

Change the prevailing culture towards communications in the EU

institutions

Force through more integration of the EU media operations.

• Get rid of the administrative hurdles between different EU Institutions that

prevent them from collaborating on media campaigns and cut down on the

bureaucracy that stifles the freedom of press departments to do their job.

• Bring in more professionally trained staff to the EU press offices, both

journalists and other media specialists and give proper media and

communications training to Commissioners and EU officials.

Control all media outlets and train everybody to stick to the same lines and sing from the same hymn sheet Spin Spin Spin. Remove any inconvenient clauses in law which could have the effect of ensuring that news paper reporters can keep their informants details private, n.b. Eurojust can be relied upon to help in this regard. At the same time remove any necessity to comply with any laws which could inhibit the free reporting of the EU in a favourable light.

Use business and events media to reach specialised audiences

• Motivate business and events media to get involved in promoting EU ideas,

policies and benefits.

• Further use independent audiovisual and internet companies to strengthen

news distribution and increase the number of co-productions with TV

stations.

• Set up a database of specialist and national media in each country, that may

be called upon to publicise EU events.

Offer big business anything to get them on side and then use their own media outlets to promote the EU. Set up a database of all the media outlets that will only report the EU line (see the previous two recommendations).

Get the message out to people in Member Sates

Give Member States more responsibility for publicising new policies, which have an effect in

their country. Evaluate and compare countries’ communications performance annually.

Make EU officials and Commissioners more responsible for telling their own country nationals

about the benefits of the EU. As Commissioner for Communications Strategy, you should visit

each EU Member State as often as possible – this will greatly help to increase Europe’s

visibility in each country

Set up a ‘Communications Task Force’ in each Member State to bring together EU officials,

politicians and journalists to discuss how to get the EU message out nationally. This Task

Force should report regularly with concrete recommendations.

Continue the process of spinning the EU line by spending more money on various institutions which will help when given large grants but ensure that each country shares in the costs of advertising the EU.

Use ‘CCC’ – Citizens Convince Citizens – to transmit the EU message

Use people who have benefited from EU policies as EU ambassadors, and provide them with

the relevant communications tools to do this.

Oblige organisations and people who have benefited from EU support, for example Erasmus

scholars or researchers, to spread the word in their own countries.

Use local business and civil society organisations to promote the benefits of EU Membership.

Provide them with EU materials in their national language or encourage them to adapt the

texts themselves.

Insist that all organisations who gain by being given EU money, must then pay back in kind by unreservedly promoting the EU, do not give any grants to any organisation which is not prepared to promote the EU. Bombard these EU supported organisations with EU propaganda material.

Make a special effort to reach young people

Push for every country to include EU-related material in the secondary school curricula.

Use new technologies (MMS, SMS, etc) and young people’s media like the internet or TV

stations like MTV or MCM to pass on the message.

Concentrate on reaching young people when a new programme that particularly affects them

is set up.

Continue the process the ongoing policy of bombarding all schools with propaganda material, insist that teachers use this material and offer them bribes or freebies to assist in brainwashing the young in their charge. Oblige/ force member states governments to allow time within the school curriculum for the teachers to fully implement these brainwashing techniques. It might be a good idea to replace history and or geography lessons with brainwashing periods for the very young. Of course these periods would include the history of the great EU and its revered saintly founders and the geography of Europe which will extend as more people in more countries see the light.

Note to Ms Wallström; It does not matter if a member state, as is the case in Britain, have laws against this sort of thing, EU law takes precedence in these matters, so inconvenient local laws may safely be ignored. Further; legality does not matter in your case, because you will have immunity from prosecution should some upstart local government have the temerity to ask you to answer for your actions at some later date.

Bribe TV stations like the BBC to carry programming to enhance the young persons feeling toward the EU as an intuition and EVENTUALLY AS THEIR COUNTRY, and also bribe these stations with extra grants to make programs with a cross border dimension and play down any nasty nationalistic aspects of such things as sporting events.

Neil Herron:

“Multiple Breaches of Purdah Period as Labour get desperate

As more Government Ministers pile into the region in a desperate attempt to save the face of the Labour Party in a referendum which is looking more like a loser by the day, the Electoral Commission are conspicuous by their absence.

Why aren’t they checking who is paying for Ministerial visits?

Why aren’t they recording the statements made by Ministers?

Why aren’t they advising local press and media to preface Ministers statements with ‘I am speaking as a Labour Party member and not a Minister…’?

Why aren’t they pulling out more stops to get people to return their ballot papers? The response so far has been sluggish to say the least so come on Electoral Commission…get some of that £41m spent. Not sure whether they are aware of where the North East is yet, especially after all the other clangers they’ve dropped. They might be booking advertising space in the Manchester Evening News.

However, the No Campaign is very grateful for the visits of these Ministers and luminaries. Jack Mc Connell from Scotland today will simply highlight the great expense of the Scottish Parliament building.
Ken Livingstone’s visit yesterday served to illustrate how council tax has risen in London. Gordon Brown’s visit was another sign of desperation, but with no substance.
David Miliband’s understatement’ We are going to have to work hard to convince people of our case for an Assembly,’ is one of the best yet. Where have you been David?

As for the purdah period…it seems like there is no-one to even raise the issue…except the No Campaign.

Today’s and yesterday’s breaches ‘London Will Back You’ read about Ken Livingstone’s visit, ‘Brown’s Visit Boosts Yes Vote Bid’ ‘Labour Won’t Screw Up This Time -

and ‘Miliband Supports Yes Vote’ can be read:

here:

“The what it`s Program”

Britain took the “political” decision to give up the veto in the Amsterdam Treaty, which came into force in 1999. Now five years later we are seeing the results of that agreement, although Britain has retained an opt out, (if Tony cares to or dares to use it) once something becomes accepted in the EU, the pressure is on to force everybody to comply. Mr Blunkett said “Britain will not try to resist long-standing plans to abolish the national veto over immigration when the issue arises over the coming months”

Of course they won’t they have already agreed (I do get fed up with the argument that because a plan is long standing i.e. Agreed behind closed doors without any publicity some time ago, that it is non controversial, and we should just go along with it).

The Amsterdam Treaty set new objectives for justice and home affairs in the EU covering policing, customs, legal cooperation, visas, immigration and asylum. The intention was to put “justice and home affairs” at the centre of the EU agenda.

This could of course be described as another power grab by the EU, but who could be so crass as to suggest anything of the sort; no really it is for our own good.

The agreement in the Amsterdam Treaty was followed up by the “Action Plan establishing an area of freedom, security and justice”, a detailed programme for the Council and Commission. The Action Plan contains 51 specific objectives with target dates of two and five years. These objectives were measures to equip the EU with a full justice machinery. And are know as Tampere 1 Tampere 11 they were agreed at a special EU Summit meeting in Tampere, Finland in October 1999, which was used to make the so-called “Area of freedom, security and justice” one of the primary objectives of the EU – and its Conclusions have been used in numerous instances to legitimise proposed measures.

From the Telegraph

“These fast-track measures include a committee on internal security made up of Europol, Eurojust and national police chiefs, formulating policy outside any clear parliamentary control; and moves to press ahead with the “establishment” of a European public prosecutor’s office, or EU attorney-general, to take charge of fighting serious crime. They also in some cases appear to pre-empt future EU powers under the European Constitution”.

Which of course has yet to be ratified in all 25 member states, but that of course will not stop the EU apparatchiks, who believe the only rights we the people are to be allowed, is to agree to accept what we are told.

Following on from the Tampere agreements we now have the next instalment, which goes by the name of “the Hague Programme”. This program is yet another five-year plan which, aims to have in place a common EU asylum system in 2010, it cannot be a “common system” if we retain our opt out.

The Hague Programme plans for the establishment of a common European office for asylum and joint processing of asylum applications inside and outside the EU. By 1 May 2005 a common frontier agency will be set up and a rapid reaction force of national experts tasked to manage control of external borders.

Except for Britain which although wants to be “at the heart of EU sitting on the top table” will somehow archive this whilst at the same time “standing on the side lines”, “watching the train go by” and missing the boat or bus or what ever term they are using at the moment to describe the fact the British government does not have the backing of the people for any of this, and will have to wait until they can sneak it through.

The eventual creation of a European corps of border guards will however also be subject for further discussion at the EU’s November Summit. Which is shorthand for saying they could not agree but they will just keep on trying until the federalistas get their way. This agreement, when reached, will probably be named, something or other “Program or Agreement” and will probably contain yet more integration policies, which we will not hear about for another five years, when the then home sectary, will tell us all there is absolutely nothing to worry about “this was agreed five years ago so it is obviously right, and anyway we already decided to give up your sovereignty in these matters twelve years ago, were you not paying attention why did you not say something then”.