eurealist.co.uk

Just a snippet from a stunning post
Europhobia: It’s for your own good, you know…:

“having been told by the Law Lords that the detention without trial of foreign terror suspects is illegal, Clarke has interpreted their ruling in such a way as to justify the adoption of a truly wonderfully Stalinist policy. Because, hey - what the Law Lords were obviously objecting to most of all was the discrimination, right? So if you end the discrimination it’ll all be fine!”

More:

Michael Ancram said: “The referendum question seems straightforward.

“But the fact that the Government has slipped approval of this dangerous Constitution, which the great majority of British people oppose, in with the bill to let them have their say, is an underhand trick.

They are two separate issues. There should be two separate bills. It is typical that Mr Blair wants to confuse the two.

This seems to mean that MP`s get to vote for the constitution and our right to have a referendum on the Constitution, on the same vote.

Voting for the Constitution gives us a referendum but allows Blair to say to the country the House of Commons has voted for this by a large margin, thus adding power to the yes side, voting against, no referendum, of course if no then we do not need a referendum so they could argue that the two should be linked. But Blair is denying those MP`s who want a referendum but are against the Constitution a true vote.

Tony Liar Blair has rejected claims that Labour has given up the UK’s powers to set its own asylum laws, saying that Ministers had not given up the UK’s right to set its own laws and control its own borders.

Now I wonder how he can square that with the intervention from the EU Commision on Tuesday that the UK had done exactly that. Saying If a future British government were to enact laws that contravened EU regulations, the commission would begin “infringement proceedings”. Those would be followed, if resistance continued, by legal action in the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

So there you have it, Labour has not given up UK’s powers to set its own asylum laws, just as long as they do not contravened the superior laws of the EU.

More More

A letter from Dennis Cooper
Dear Mr Hannan

Many congratulations on your excellent article in the Daily Telegraph today:

“The EU’s four-stage strategy to reduce Britons to servitude”

However with respect I must take issue with this one statement:

“In reality, though, the Treaty of Rome created a new legal order, directly applicable within the jurisdictions of the member nations.”
Some people, and especially the judges at the European Court of Justice, do advance the claim that there is now “a new legal order” which is superior to the national law of the Member States. Indeed, some of our own judges are now teetering on the edge of agreeing with that proposition. I think it was Judge Morgan who referred to something like “a bold new source of law”, but he was later over-ruled by Lord Justice Laws.

And we have Anthony Aust in a letter to the Times today, going even further and claiming that another new legal order - “general international law” - would prevent a duly elected Conservative government carrying out its manifesto commitment to reform our asylum system.

Why should we give aid and comfort to such people, by agreeing with their politically motivated legal theories?

The British people will quietly obey whatever they are told is the law - now you’ve told Telegraph readers what the ECJ would like them to believe, in essence that we have already surrendered our national sovereignty and that EU laws are intrinsically superior to our own laws.

I know that you also said:

“The judge would act in this way, not simply because judges enjoy overturning deportation orders (although they do), but because he would be obliged, under Sections 2 and 3 of the 1972 European Communities Act, to give precedent to EU rules over our own parliamentary statutes. That is why, for example, the Metric Martyrs lost their case. Although a 1985 Act of Parliament explicitly allowed traders to use either metric or imperial units, an EU directive said otherwise, and our appeal court was obliged to give precedence to the latter.”

which “in reality” is an accurate description of the existing legal position. But that will just leave people confused, given your earlier statement.

Surely we should NEVER admit the claim that the Treaty of Rome has already created a new legal order, which would implicitly be superior to our own national law - in fact we should contradict that notion at every opportunity, and emphasise the huge significance of Article I-6 of the proposed EU Constitution:

“The Constitution and law adopted by the institutions of the Union in exercising competences conferred on it shall have primacy over the law of the Member States.”

which, if accepted, could be cited as our explicit recognition of the EU Constitution as the supreme source of legal authority in our country.

Best Regards

Denis Cooper

When Just before Christmas the law lords drove a coach and horses through the governments Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001I I said….

The point to remember is that our whole system is under threat with the government’s stealth introduction of Corpus Juris. We should also remember that the law lords did not say this particular infringement on the rights of the accused, is itself against the ECHR, only that it was unfair because it only applied to foreigners and not British Citizens. So Ian MacDonald QC and 8 out of 9 Law lords do not seem to be interested in the basic destruction of British rights, they just want them to be evenly distributed to all of us.

It now seems that the government have answered the problem by offering to make the rule fair so that they will now apply to British Nationals as well as foreigners.

In response to a law lords ruling that the detention without trial of 12 foreign nationals was disproportionate and discriminatory, Mr Clarke said the system of control orders intended to replace those powers could now apply to both British citizens and foreign nationals.
Guardian

So we now have a situation where 1000 years of protection against a tyrannical overlord has been undermined by an international treaty which is forcing the Government we elect to remove the basic rights we British people have, not to be arrested and held without the due process of law.

At the same time Mr Clarke is going to allow foreigners who he obviously believes are a danger to this country free under some restrictions, this of course will prevent a further challenge in the courts, so the terrorist suspects have gained their freedom and we the British people have lost ours.

I wonder now if the agitators who took the government to court for 9 terrorist suspects, will be the good upstanding champions for rights and justice they must be, and take the government to court to challenge their right to hold British people without trial. Somehow I have a feeling that is not going to happen.

One further point which has always made me wonder, how is it that a terrorist suspect who arrives as a supposed refugee, fleeing for their lives can escape their own country cross a continent of other safe havens and fetch up in Britain, where once arrested and held, they can then afford the vast amounts of money it cost to bring such an action in the first place, and then to take it all the way to the house of lords.

Martin Stabe: Martin Stabe: Referendum Bill will clarify franchise: “Referendum Bill will clarify franchise”

The Guardian also has an article about the court case and says;

The issue rests on the claim that whereas the two-year delay under which peers could block but not veto a bill had been agreed by the Lords and Commons in 1911, the reduction of the delay to one year by the Labour government of 1949 was not endorsed by peers. Until now, that claim has never been tested in the courts.

The Countryside Alliance says the Parliament Act has always been illegal, but the government is believed to be confident it will be vindicated for using the act for only the fourth time since its creation.

Speaking as he arrived at the court, Mr Jackson said this was “probably the most important constitutional case” the high court had ever heard. “This case has a great deal to do with the constitution of our country and the way in which it works, and a great deal to do with understanding what the rule of law means,” he said.
The high court hearing for a judicial review of the Parliament Act is before Lord Justice Maurice Kay and Mr Justice Collins, and is expected to last two days. A judgment is expected to be handed down on Friday.
However, this is set to be only the start of a long legal battle, with law lords sitting in the House of Lords likely to be required to make the final decisions.

I would comment that if this case is lost then we do have a very serious problem because on the face of it if our system of government that has been in existence for at least 300 years has been changed without approval that undermines a lot of the basic protections we have against an over bearing government, because if they can ignore this law, they can and will ignore others, so no matter what the feelings are on hunting, this is not now about hunting it is about the power of a government to force through its policies against even against the rule of law.

The Anglo Saxon Chronicle

Hunting for MEP’s
The Countryside Alliance challenge to the Hunting Bill today, if successful, could make the European Parliamentary Election Act 1999 illegal too.

The 1911 Parliament Act was introduced to cut the powers of the Lords. They were no longer allowed to prevent the passage of ‘money bills’ The legal status of the Parliament Act, 1949, is questionable with regard to forcing through the Fox Hunting Bill, Some respected constitutional lawyers believe that it is not valid. It purports to enable legislation to be enacted after a year despite the opposition of The House of Lords. But, as Professor Hood Phillips pointed out over 50 years ago, the Act cannot be valid because it was rejected by the House of Lords and no power of amendment was conferred on the House of Commons by the Parliament Act, 1911.

Indeed the Parliament Act 1911 offers no authority to the House of Commons to amend primary legislation at all. And if the Parliament Act 1949 is invalid, so must be much European-led legislation, including most recently the European Parliamentary Election Act,1999. If the Government did use the Parliament Acts to force through this Bill they might come unstuck.

Here I must get down to technicalities. The Parliament Acts consist of the original Act of 1911 and the amending Act of 1949. The former Act said that, in relation to a Bill introduced into the Commons, that House would prevail against Lords disagreement, and the Bill would become law, if it were passed three times by the Commons. The 1949 Act substituted two times. At the time the Lords disagreed with this change, so the 1911 Act in its unamended form was used to effect it Accepting a literal construction, the 1911 Act permitted the 1949 amendment, but in constitutional law “a literal construction of a statute may well be rejected, if to accept it would conflict with the statute’s purpose”.

If only we could find a decent judge?

Comments on Law

EUreferndum

Andrew:
RN
There is a profound difference between a normal international treaty (eg. NATO) and our relationship with the EU as I’m sure you realise: a normal Treaty is NOT part of domestic law (not being passed as an Act by Parliament) but EU law obviously is.
Consequently, your point about “binding successors” misses the point. A new Government is not “bound” by a previous Treeaty in the way it is bound by EU law because the former is not law at all and is an entirely political question (eg. shd we stay in NATO) while the status of EU law means that one is bound in a way that is conceptually different from all previous English law (though new ideas about “human rights” law of domestic origin use the same arguments).
Nobody in the media seems to understand the actual position regarding EU law but it was explained very clearly by the Court of Appeal in the 2002 Metric martyr Case. This made clear that Parliament can amend or repeal the ECA 1972 as it wishes (though such action may be against “international law” in various forms, which raises other questions)…

Denis Cooper:
We’re only bound by these EU measures because Parliament has agreed that they will bind us, and Parliament could still change its mind on that either in one specific instance or more generally.
It’s better to have a convincing case why it’s necessary for us to renege on an international agreement, or people will think that we can’t be trusted to keep our word in the future. But our national courts have agreed that Parliament retains the right to do so.
However if we accept the EU Constitution, it may be more difficult for Parliament to say “We’ve changed our minds on that”, because by Article I-6 we will have explicitly agreed to give primacy to the EU Constitution. It would then be a question of what our national courts said, and whether they decided to defy the European Court of Justice. If not, how the government of the day would react when the highest British court (whichever that may be at the time) told the government that it had to obey the EU Constitution.
The government could then use its Parliamentary majority to pass a Bill re-asserting British sovereignty and directing the British courts to disregard any provisions of the EU Constitution that contradicted British laws. The judges might then conform to that, or they might still say that the EU Constitution was now the supreme source of law and therefore they must continue to defy the government.
In that event, they would have to be removed, which would need a vote in both Houses of Parliament I believe. If necessary, the police would have to be told to keep them out of the court rooms so their successors could take over. So then there’s the question of whether the commanders of the police would be loyal to HMQ and Parliament, or to the EU …..
Article I-6 contains the seeds of a major constitutional crisis, not just for us but for all of the EU member states.

So who are the masters now?

So who are the masters now proclaims the front page of the Daily Telegraph We’ll halt Howard’s curb on migrants”. How gratifying it is to have confirmed on the front page of the Telegraph today who is really in charge of this country.

Is how Richard North begins his post on the announcement yesterday that the EU commission, has “threatened” to block Michael Howard’s “tough immigration controls” if the Tories win the election.

“This really brings home the realities of power in this our former independent nation state.”

What is specially significant is the comment that, “Europe’s intervention in what has become a major issue in the election campaign took Westminster aback. MPs and officials were unaware of how much national sovereignty on immigration and asylum had been transferred to Brussels”.

That is a staggering statement and it takes David Rennie in a page 9 “analysis” to explain what has happened. “How did Britain end up binding its immigration policy to the European Union.

The chilling response to his own rhetorical question is: “…bit by bit, without great public controversy and with the full agreement of British officials led largely by David Blunkett”.

Dr North then drives home the point that this is not an isolated occurrence but works right across the raft of all policies, as indeed Monnet intended with his “Method” and although some would like us to believe this has now been dropped, that is patently a nonsense because we can see its workings on a daily basis;

“That is the way the system works, right across the board… bit by bit. A steady stream of measures, each of them complex and obscure, building incrementally. The final destination is never declared openly and each measure is treated separately, until the project is complete, and the trap springs shut.

Apologists for the EU will claim that the member states have approved the measures, so this is not “Brussels” imposing the measures. It is simply “sovereign nation states co-operating together”.

But what this demonstrates is that a group of officials and one minister can effectively work together to take over the agenda without the bulk of MPs or officials being aware of what is going on.

In fact what is going on is constantly denied and those of us who take the time to explain what is going on are derided as little Englanders or Xenophobes or even Swivel Eyed Loons.

The commission is making it very clear that it is now the master – the general election is an irrelevance.

Now who are the turkeys?

Loose the Delusion has suggested that because the Foreign Office mandarins are full on Europhiles, this somehow confirms the idea that our foreign Policy is going to remain a power of the British Government.

Arguing that the loss of Sovereignty over Foreign Policy would mean the department would become surplus to requirements and turkeys do not vote for Christmas, the question is posed if further integration truly meant a loss of control over foreign policy how is it that these mandarins are so supportive of British membership of the EU.

Already one Blogger has been taken in by the seeming watertight question

Cabalamat Journal says;

I can’t fault the logic. Bureaucracies usually attempt to perpetuate themselves, because the people running them want to keep their jobs. It’s therefore almost certainly true that the Foreign Office don’t think the EU will take over foreign policy.

The very large hole in the argument is that the loss of Sovereignty for the British Government and the therefore the British people, does not as suggested have a knock on effect in the Foreign office, in fact it enhances their role because it removes the power of the British parliament to control the diplomats.
Even if for some reason this was not the case and in this instance the turkeys were voting for Christmas, the whole idea is undermined by the Constitution itself which clearly states that the;

The Union’s competence in matters of common foreign and security policy shall cover all areas of foreign policy and all questions relating to the Union’s security, including the progressive framing of a common defence policy, which might lead to a common defence.

Member States shall actively and unreservedly support the Union’s common foreign and security policy in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity and shall comply with the acts adopted by the Union in this area. They shall refrain from action contrary to the Union’s interests or likely to impair its effectiveness.

Let us just pause at this stage and remember the words of Dennis Cooper who said “As far as the EU is concerned the British rebate is an exception to the rule, and like all such exceptions it will be attacked again and again until it’s eliminated. This is why it’s a mistake to suppose that we can escape any provision in the main body of the EU Constitution by adding a protocol to the Treaty. Yes, the protocol will be legally binding, but only until one British government or another is bullied or persuaded into giving it up”.

The LDT argument not only goes against the principals of constitution but the EU Commision itself, which for someone who supports the EU is a strange case to make.

There is no doubt that this is the case because today we have an announcement by none other than the Commissions external relations commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, who has said that the EU should strive for a single seat in the UN Security Council.

Speaking in Berlin on Monday she said “I think that one should consider a special seat for the EU in the security council given its foreign policy significance”. That the United Nations system is very strongly based on nation-state thinking. She said the commitment to multilateralism is a founding principle of EU foreign relations. Our goal is to strengthen international security through concerted work within the framework of international organisations.

Mrs Ferrero-Waldner said she is aware of the position of member states but added that “Europe must speak with one voice in the Security Council”. she argued, “sovereignties” should be combined

Mrs Ferrero-Waldner, said that she is “not making the case for a European superpower … Europe is not in the act of building up a global empire”.

Her comments were rejected almost immediately by Germany - a country which is itself pushing for a seat in the Security Council once it is reformed.

Speaking in New York on the same day, German foreign minister Joschka Fischer said the idea was “unrealistic”.

He said that Germany would agree to creating a single EU seat if France and the UK would give up their own seats. He added, however, that “this will not happen in the near future, so the debate is over before it has even started”.

That of course is in a round about way arguing for exactly the same thing as the Commision, an EU seat at the expense of the British and French seats.

French to change their Constitution

For those who argue the EU Constitution is no more than a tiding up exercise or will not infringe on our own constitution they should consider that the French parliament is revising the French constitution to allow for ratification of the EU Constitution.

This I would suggest does shine a light on the lies.

But French MPs are demanding of their government the right of a debate in the Assembly before every important European summit, and the government to explain its position, MP Hervé Morin has said European affairs are no longer just international politics.

Well somebody has noticed!

Around 50 socialist opponents of the EU Constitution, led by Laurent Fabius, will abstain. An article in L’Humanité argues that “the aim of the constitutional revision is the total abdication of the sovereignty of the French people” because it creates the illusion that the EU Constitution will have little impact on the French institutions. Whilst Socialist MPs are taking issue with Article 2 which is a requirement for a referendum before each new enlargement of the EU.

I think they will find that the EU Constitution will take care of that point because it allows revision of the text without recourse to national parliaments.

Tim Worstall: Just How Much of our Law Comes From Europe?

Further thoughts to my post below..

So Who Rules Britain?
The EU Commision has confirmed that Britian is no longer a sovereign country, and that our Constitution has already been destroyed by our membership of the EU. The British people no longer have the power to elect a government they want to run the country. If this or any government can sign international treaties that cannot be removed by a following government we have lost any notion of democracy.

We did have a self protecting constitution in this country, much of it has been ignored by the people we elect to protect it, and they have over the years pretended that it was their parliamentary rules which have replaced that it. One of those rules was that one parliament cannot under any circumstances bind a following parliament because to do so would be to remove democratic choice from the people. We can now see the results of this destruction, when a foreign power can dictate to a political party that they will not be allowed to introduce a policy on which they have been elected.

Within hours of the Tory announcement that they would limit immigration to Britain if elected the European Commission said that Mr Howard was too late and they would block a Tory government. The qualifications directive establishes a binding EU definition of who is a refugee. It has been adopted by Britain and other EU governments and comes into full force in September next year, regardless of who wins the election expected in May.
If a future British government were to enact laws that contravened EU regulations, the commission would begin “infringement proceedings”. Those would be followed, if resistance continued, by legal action in the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
Telegraph

What was that Tony Blair was saying about still being in charge of our borders?

For some time now I have had on several occasions to differ with Pro Europeans about the governments rights or otherwise of using public money to promote a yes on the constitution.

For some reason any thoughts of fair play goes out of the window when this subject is aired. It has been suggested that the EU and the Government have every right to use our money to rebut stories in the British Eusceptic Press? No they do not, nobody is forced to pay for any newspaper if they do not wish, so any argument those outlets may decide to promote, does not require the government to spend our money to rebut, that is logical nonsense, and would only make sense if the newspapers concerned were also using public money, in any event government minister have a much greater ability to get their message across to the public, all they have to do is call a press conference, and every media outlet will attend and every medial outlet will subsequently print or broadcast the governments s side.

Each side in the debate will receive public funding to enable them to promote their arguments, there will be an official Yes and official NO campaign who will receive an equal amount of funding the reason advanced for this is to ensure a fair debate. In the 1975 referendum the Yes side backed by the government practically all of the press and the BBC outspent the No side by 10 times. The Political Parties Elections and Referendums Act has made it supposedly impossible for this to happen again, but although it has limited the spending, the official sides can use, (5million each) it has no cap on government or EU spending up until 28 days before the referendum for the government, of course this does not apply to the EU who are free to spend what they like.

What we discovered in the NE Referendum was that government Ministers were campaigning right up to the referendum date supposedly in their capacity as labour party members? This broke their own code of conduct so they said they were campaigning as private citizens and members of the labour Party and not government ministers yet their press pulling power is still that of a Minister, so if someone could explain at exactly what stage a government minister become a private citizen, in the middle of a campaign when their or at what stage their government travel arrangements and their police protection is no longer paid for out of the public purse and becomes their own responsibility perhaps they could explain it to the Electorial Commision who’s job it is to see a balanced debate and who failed miserably in the North East .

For a referendum to have any value, it is vital for the losing side to accept that it was on the whole fairly conducted. That would not be the case if; the government used the machinery of government to promote one side or the other.

What is important is that this is a referendum for a constitution it is not about Labour v Conservative or Liberal Democrats against UKIP, the referendum is not based on party policies, but on direct democracy, the people must agree to give the politicians the power to change our Constitution for the EU constitution. In this debate the EU has no place, it is the supplicant it has set out its stall asking for more power and more control, it is up to us to decide if we wish to grant it that power. We do not need MEP`S explaining the Constitution for us or putting an EU spin on the debate, it will be their fault if they have made their Constitution to difficult to understand. But they have no right to spend taxpayer money on propaganda in order to see their demands met.

A fair and balanced debate is not on the cards, these people have set in train a step in EU integration that has finally been too large for a British government to ratify without a clear mandate from the people. After 30 years of step by step integration we have this one opportunity at to last have our voices heard, but do not for one second believes the EU wants us to have this voice they do not and they will do everything they possibly can to keep their constitution, they will do everything they can to get us to vote yes.

FROM: Philip Benwell MBE
National Chairman
The Australian Monarchist League

TO MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

I am taking this opportunity to write to you with regard to two matters
which are of concern to people here in Australia as well as to those in all
of Her Majesty’s other Realms.

The first matter relates to the proposed Ten Minute Rule Motion by Mr
Jonathan Sayeed M. P. on the issue of the retirement of the Sovereign and
the choosing of Her Majesty’s successor by the House of Commons. Very few
people, particularly in the Realms, are aware that few Motions of this
nature ever proceed further and will undoubtedly be unduly influenced by the
media sensationalizing of this particular subject. May I emphasize that The
Crown belongs to all sixteen Commonwealth Realms and whatever the House of
Commons may debate, let alone legislate, will affect all of Her Majesty’s
subjects outside the Kingdom. It is for this purpose that the Statute of
Westminster requires: “that any alteration in the law touching the
Succession to the Throne or the Royal Style and Titles shall hereafter
require the assent as well of the Parliaments of all the Dominions as of the
Parliament of the United Kingdom.”

The second matter of concern is with regard to voting in the proposed
Referendum on the European Constitution. Many hundreds of thousands, if
not millions, of British citizens who reside outside of the United Kingdom
will be affected by the decision of the Referendum and we ask whether
consideration is being given to allowing ALL British citizens a vote
wherever residing in Britain or not?

Yours sincerely,

Philip Benwell

If in order to attempt to control the outcome of the Referendum on the EU Constitution, Tony Blair were not to allow postal voting for those British people living abroad, either in the EU countries or not, then he would in fact be denying British people a say in their own constitution, and the future of this country.

The Spanish government have rightly in my opinion, said that in Spain the vote is a matter solely for the Spanish people, and are not going to allow British living in Spain to take part in that referendum. Without a postal vote these and others throughout to world will be disenfranchised, if at the same time the government also allows other non British EU nationals to vote in our referendum, which has been mooted, then a close vote will not have a popular mandate from the people.

Time for a real EUMYTH

A particular piece of Europhile misinformation which so as not to cause confusion I will call propaganda, is that “3.5 million British jobs now depend on trade with our European Union partners”

This is presented as if those jobs rely solely on one thing, and that is our continued membership of the EU, the intention being to suggest that if we leave the Union those jobs would be lost.

When a government minister then enhances the statement and says that 3.5 million jobs depend on our membership of the EU that is a lie, the lie is achieved by changing one word “membership” instead of “trade”.

A lie moreover that has one intention and that is to strike fear into the voters to frighten them into voting yes.

“In the time-scale Blair is thinking of, Britain will not love Europe … when the day of judgement comes, fear must stalk the land.” Hugo Young (this on the Euro referendum but could equally apply to the Constitution referendum).

So where did the government and Europhiles get their information that forms the basis for their lie?

Well we know exactly where this came from, in 1999 “Britain in Europe” commissioned a report from the National Institute for Economic and Social Research. The report from that organisation did estimate that 3.5 million British jobs were linked to trade with the EU. But went on to say even if Britain were to leave the EU, few of those jobs would disappear, because we would continue trading with the EU much as we do now (and as do other non-EU countries, such as Norway and Switzerland) or Mexico or the USA or any other country.

When Britain in Europe received the report they issued a press release stating that “British withdrawal would cost 3.5 million jobs”.

However Dr Martin Weale the director of “National Institute for Economic and Social Research” complained that this was false, and described Britain in Europe’s statement as “pure Goebbels

So while the EU and its acolytes are quite happy to describe reports in the British press which are based on provable facts, as Euromyths, with the intention of building on the idea they have created, that Eusceptics are not being truthful and are not to be trusted, they themselves are quite happy to use exactly those same methods to undermine any argument Eusceptics make or to advance their ideas of a United States of Europe.

In my life I have come to accept the reliability of many old sayings, which seem to be based on some basic truth, one such saying is that “people judge others by their own thoughts and actions”

The EU reaches parts others would not dream of!

The EU press release about their so called Euromyths has resurfaced again this time in the Philadelphia Inquirer same old story, same old lies, same old answers.

Don’t these people ever move on? Or do they believe the more they repeat the more of us will be convinced that Eusceptics are liars.

FT.com / World / Europe - Surprise at strength of UK’s ties to eurozone: “Surprise at strength of UK’s ties to eurozone
By Ralph Atkins in Frankfurt
Published: January 22 2005 02:00 | Last updated: January 22 2005 02:00

The European Central Bank yesterday admitted to being ’surprised’ by the strength of the UK’s economic links with the 12-country strong eurozone, as revealed in trade and investment statistics that it had compiled for the first time.

In evidence likely to be seized on by supporters of British membership of the eurozone, the ECB produced figures showing that the UK dominated foreign direct investment into the eurozone. The UK was also the largest export market for eurozone goods, while British tourists visiting the eurozone largely explained the surplus in the bloc’s service sector part of its balance of payment statistics.”

Thanks to Martin Stabe for the link

Citizenship
Telegraph Letters

Sir – The proposal for citizenship ceremonies absolutely beats all, coming from a government that has shattered the constitution, is in effect run by Tony Blair’s private army of unelected “advisers” and is doing its level best to elbow out the Crown, our last line of defence against unscrupulous politicos.

Roger Pierce, Chinnor, Oxon

Sir – Why should I take an oath of citizenship? For most of 400 years, my family worked as blacksmiths in villages around Canterbury, where I was born and brought up.

I am proud of my heritage. In the Royal Tank Regiment, I was taught from the first day the history and ethos of the regiment: that it was a proud regiment whose members had served the country well in the past and our legacy should be not to tarnish its reputation for future members.

As a tour operator, I once took a group of Americans around Canterbury. Afterwards, one said: “I never understood England before. As you take us round, you talk about things that happened hundreds of years ago as though it is part of an ongoing story. I can see now that, to you English, your roots are so deep that you see yourselves as just ‘passing on the baton’ to the next generation.”

Alan Burton, Ipswich, Suffolk