eurealist.co.uk

The FT Reports that EU legislation is making it harder for local government to outsource tasks to the private sector and is creating a “mountain of red tape”

Ruth Coleman, the chairwoman of the Local Government International Bureau (LGIB), said a “whole raft of ever-encroaching rules” threatened to “drive a wedge between the public and private sectors and to create a mountain of red tape” “The extra hoops that councils and businesses may increasingly be forced to jump through risk slowing down the procurement process, holding up important public works and costing the taxpayer.

Jeremy Smith, secretary-general of the Council of European Municipalities and Regions, warned that the stricter regime kept councils from doing their job. “Ever greater intervention in relatively low-level contracts is impinging on the way councils do their business,” he said, adding: “This places yet more constraints on local authorities from providing services in a way which they consider to be in the interests of their area, and undermines the principles of local democracy and local self-government.”

This is about EU procurement rules, which seek to ensure that public contracts are awarded in an open, competitive and pan-European bidding procedure. But the regime’s complexity is unsuitable to smaller, local contracts, and has delayed “the awarding of contracts totalling millions of euros a year”.

Denis MacShane (Matyjaszek)  Who still advises the government on European affairs (I think ePolitix must mean the EU) has said the Conservatives’ foreign policy is a "disastrous blow" to Britain’s national interest. In relation to the Tories’ ambition to split from the European People’s Party grouping of centre right parties, MacShane said: "David Cameron once said to me: ‘Denis, I am much more Eurosceptic than you realise.’ 

MacShane is not alone, not many of us realise Cameron is EUsceptic in the slightest. In fact Cameron is treading the same old path many of our politicians follow trying to appear EUsceptic at home without actually putting any meat on the bones, then when elected he will continue to put EU aims and aspirations above those of the people who elected him.

The ePolitix article allows Denis to put a few more lies before the public;

The Tories under Cameron are now further to the right than they were under Michael Howard or Iain Duncan Smith.

Firstly this is an outright lie, secondly MacShane is equating EUsceptics with the right wing which is nonsense.

The Tories’ rupture with political parties in Europe is a disastrous blow to Britain’s national interest,

 Well the Tories are not creating a rupture with the political parties in Europe, they are going to leave a particular grouping in the EU parliament because that group forces the Tories to agree to policies the leadership see as detrimental to Britain’s national interests.

 
if we want to solve many of our problems from crime and terrorism to immigration and the environment then we have to do it with Europe

There might be a need for our government to enter into some cross border agreements, but solving these problems does not require passing ever more power to a central government in Brussels. We the British people should decide what we want to happen in this country and not have to await the nod from either the EU Commision the ECJ or the ministers of 26 other countries we do not elect.

It is international agreements that have forced our government to release onto the streets of our cities foreigners who they belive are a danger to our society, it is EU agreements which prevents our government from choosing who will and who will not be allowed in the country, it is EU an agreement which are creating the problems with our waste disposal.

It will take only 15 seconds: long enough for Britain to hand over another £6,000 to the EU. What are you waiting for?

Daniel Hannan begs in the Telegraph; he is of course writing about the BBC Christmas Repeal Which law should be tossed into the dustbin of British history?

Hannan says we should blowtorch all of the six finalists the Dangerous Dogs Act, the Hunting Act, the Human Rights Act, the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, the Act of Settlement and the European Communities Act.

But theses six should be a mere apéritif. What about the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act, which spawned that slavering manticore, the Health and Safety Executive? Or the 1972 Local Government Act, which destroyed our traditional counties? How about the 1989 Football Supporters Act, the 1997 Firearms Act, the 2000 Financial Services Act, the 2006 Identity Cards Act?

Hannan would like to raze them all; to hack away the brushwood and prune the undergrowth, leaving the glassy-smooth lawn of the limited state.

But we have to start somewhere. Before baling out the tub, let us at least turn off the tap. And that means voting for the 1972 European Communities Act:

For that Act is not like any other piece of legislation. It does not simply lay down what we can and can’t do. Rather, it creates a new legal order, that of European law, and gives it primacy over our own statutes. To put it another way, it creates a mechanism whereby EU laws are automatically given force in the United Kingdom, with or without an implementing decision by Parliament.

In 1972, few of us understood this. If we did, we tended to assume that the supremacy of European law would be confined to cross-border issues, such as trade, competition and pollution. We didn’t imagine for a moment that Brussels would one day become the main source of legislation in this country, decreeing what hours we work, what taxes we pay, what we plant in the ground and fish from the sea, who settles on our territory, what we buy and sell, and in what units.

The tendrils of Euro-legislation curl into even the tiniest crevices, regulating matters that you’d have thought couldn’t possibly have an international dimension. The ban on mineral supplements and herbal remedies? Brussels. Car seats for 12-year-olds? Brussels. The rigmarole you have to go through to open a bank account these days? Brussels.

In fact, the EU is responsible for 80 per cent of the legislation in the member states. (We owe this awesome statistic to the German government; our own refuses to name the figure.) Which raises the question: why bother voting? What is the point of placing your cross next to the name of this or that candidate when four out of every five laws adopted in Britain are proposed, not just by people that you didn’t vote for, but by EU officials whom nobody voted for?

The countryside alliance are urging their supporters to use this opportunity to make known to the government yet again, their dislike of the disaster the Hunting Act has become, but I would beg them to consider that first and foremost they are British voters. The huntsmen and women have mounted an outstanding defence of their sport and have already made a nonsense of hunting act and have already a promise from the Conservative party to repel the act. Just as the countryside alliance brought together different countryside concerns under the one banner, now we all now need to make it clear to the political and media elite that we all want our power to elect and dismiss our own law makers returned to us the people. The countryside alliance slogan is “love the countryside” how about just this once “love the country” and do something to return the power to our own elected politicians.

So please put aside all of your own special interests and please vote to “Turn of the Tap” then we can begin to reverse the disaster our membership of the EU has wrought in this once great country.

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