Throw Away Lines

It is often the throw away lines that say the most, in case you think I am nit picking, I suppose I am, but I do get annoyed at the simple acceptance of basically untrue assertions, which gain the veneer of truth just by the process of repeating them often enough.
What has got under my [...]

House of Lords debates

House of Lords debates
Friday, 15 December 2006
European Union (Information, etc.) Bill [HL]

Lord Dykes (Liberal Democrat) Link to this | Hansard source
My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. We have just had a most important and lengthy debate on a crucial subject, to be followed by an [...]

Concern expressed over EU Democracy

President of the EU Commission is very concerned about Democracy freedoms and the wishes of the people.
EU chief concerned about Zimbabwe election delay
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso says he is very concerned by delays in the release of results of Zimbabwe’s presidential election. He told reporters in Brussels that one thing [...]

A Meaningless Opt-out

What is the point of our government acquiring an opt-out from EU legalisation and then transforming our national laws to fall into exact alignment with the original EU legalisation?
It would be reasonable to assume that the opt-out was negotiated in the first place because the EU laws were not acceptable to our government, it [...]

Instead of Democracy

Headlines make the point that polling has taken the place of democracy, instead of allowing us the people a real voice we are inundated with the results of polls conducted and financed by the EU.
The EU relies on the results of polling to pretend that it is listening to the people, several times this [...]

Tory MEP defends trip to sons wedding

The Daily Mail reports that Tory MEP Sir Robert Atkins has been forced to defend his fact finding trip to the USA. His claim for £2,500 was approved by the EU parliament

I have a long-standing interest in US politics which goes back to 1972

That’s alright then, I have a long standing interest in New [...]

Referndum Monkey

I have been reading and exchanging some views with NM on his blog, Nose Monkey`s EUtopia my blog being almost dormant.

I should say that on many issues I do tend to agree with the views as presented on the blog, until that is it comes to the EU, there I am afraid [...]

Why Europe’s National Politicians Sign Away National Sovereignty

Why Europe’s National Politicians Sign Away National Sovereignty
From Brussels Journal
Well worth reading for a good explanation of the problem we face, it is not only the EU but our own elected leaders who are scheming towards the destruction of our nation state.

Security Council Seat

Security Council seat
Sir – The replacement of our seat on the UN Security Council with a single EU seat (report, August 7) would seriously hamper our ability to form alliances with other non-EU nations or take unilateral action to defend British interests.
We could even find ourselves engaging in a conflict opposed by our [...]

Abolishing the Regions

John Redwood has replied to some comments about abolishing the regions;

I want to see all unelected regional government abolished.
The Conservatives will not be abolishing the three elected regional governments in the UK that have been endorsed by referendum, nor the elected tier in Northern Ireland if that is in operation.
The fact that Brussels likes regional [...]

My 50 Reasons to loathe the EU

On this day when the Euro enthusiast are gathering to celebrate the 50th birthday of the European Project by patting themselves on the back for a job well done, whilst in the real world the real people of the European nation states have indicated in recent polls that they are not as enthused with the [...]

Ownership Unbundling

Just for those who still like to belive the EU is somehow democratic because the Commision is only after all a glorified civil service at the behest of the member states through the Council.
Senior EU officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Brussels will table a piece of legislation which would force [...]

Another Tory leader Leader Bites the Dust

Oh dear! David Cameron suddenly decides the Conservatives do “do the EU” after all. In a long batch of waffle in the Telegraph Mr Cameron assisted by the Prime Minister of the Czech republic sets out the Conservative vision for the future of the EU, a vision based on the formation of the new political [...]

In the Region of Propaganda

Doing a bit of Surfing based on my own draft folder in which I put links that to posts and article and sites which grab my interest, I came across this letter on the Labour Movement for Europe Site
Written by an Administrator and subsequently locked to prevent any chance that someone might [...]

I didn`t know that

Christopher Booker informs readers of his Notebook in the Telegraph that “In terms of meeting the EU’s targets, the moment when waste disposal counts as “recycling” comes when it is collected and registered for that purpose.”

After that it can be and in many areas, often is simply dumped in landfill sites, there would [...]

New Police Power Undermines Human Rights

Well it’s taken a couple of years but finally the British government have had to cave into the EU Commissions demand that the British people must be subjected to Random Breath Tests.
Even though giving our police this power undermines one of our basic rights; that strange concept of the Presumption of innocence.

Back in 2004 [...]

Unilateral withdrawal from the EU! How Else?

On his blog John Redwood wrote that the Conservatives failed yesterday in the House of Commons to get a commitment to a referendum on part of the Constitution, if they decide to smuggle some of it in by the back door. Mr Redwood says it is typical of this government’s approach. It is also typical [...]

Discuss Charlie Bolton’s attitude

A new teaching pack on the EU has been introduced for use in Key Stage 3 and 4 “citizenship” classes that claims to offer a balanced view of the organisation and its role. Officials responsible for the pack say “The resources have been designed to offer a balanced introduction to the European Union and the [...]

Eurosceptic who would belive such a thing!

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 [...]

Let`s Turn off the Tap

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 [...]

The Taxing EU II

Brussels flags common corporate tax

An article in the FT says the EU’s tax commissioner Laszlo Kovacs said he would introduce legislation if necessary to improve tax co-ordination between the the EU’s 25 member states.
Mr Kovacs also set out papers on co-ordinating exit taxes for people who move to another member state. At present their [...]

What did the EU do for me in 2006?

IP/06/1835
Brussels, 19 December 2006
What did the EU do for me in 2006?
The European Commission is launching a new multimedia product, the European Union Yearbook, which sets out 10 major policy actions undertaken by the European Union this year and is available in 22 languages. “Europe and you – a snapshot of EU [...]

Brussels Bureaucrats Eat Babies

Richard Corbett up to his usual histrionic verbalistic form in his post about the affect of the new EU driving licence, which must be renewed every 10 years. nb.I do not link to Corbett because he is far to grand to  allow comments,
He complains of the Express and Mail’s predilection for publishing at [...]

Good News Bad News

 
“The constitutional treaty is no more – it is a diseased dead parrot,”

UK home secretary John Reid said
http://euobserver.com/9/23024

Finland ratified the EU constitution on Tuesday adding one more country to the list of member states having given the nod of approval to a document whose fate is still undetermined.

European Commission president Jose [...]

The Cost of Red Tape

An excellent article by Jeff Randle in the Telegraph on the cost of doing business in the EU.
I love some of the thoughts:
“For the sad souls who cling to the fast-disappearing hope of that headline ever becoming true, it has been another miserable week. Facts are stripping away the Eurofanatics’ clothing.
Very soon they will stand [...]

Thinking oustide of the Box

Anatole Kaletsky says the Dave’s not the Tory party “The Conservative Party has not just moved to the left, abandoning Margaret Thatcher and leapfrogging Tony Blair and Gordon Brown on to what David Cameron described as the liberal, progressive mainstream of British politics. No, the Cameron project appears to be far more audacious. He [...]

Tossing Away the Veto on Justice and Home Affairs

THE spin machine is playing the resignation of Hartlepool MP Iain Wright as a matter of principle. This might be true, but the principle has more to do with his political career than with the best interests of the people of Hartlepool.
Not a single Member of Parliament, including Mr Wright, has enough [...]

Furthering the EU Ambitions

Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph tells us that The European Union is a solution in search of a problem. Whatever the question, the answer is invariably “more Europe“. War in Lebanon? We need to be able to deploy an EU army. A breakdown in the World Trade Organisation talks? Let’s have a more integrated European [...]

The new EU treaty putting British sovereignty at risk

Hat tip to Tommy English for the link to this essay

…Our next general election should be about much more than schools and hospitals. Britain’s sovereignty is at stake. And although the Government wants to pull the wool over our eyes, we need an elevated debate on Europe…
Brian Durrant – Other articles
Mon 17 Jul, [...]

The Anti-democratic Transnational Progressivism

The challenge to liberal democracy can also come from new and more insidious threats. John Fonte of the Hudson Institute notes that “transnationalism” and “Multiculturalism” are presented as unstoppable forces of history, but in reality they are “ideological tools, championed by activist élites.” He suggests that the end of the Cold War has intensified an [...]

Government is failing to preserve rights of citizens

From Dennis Cooper
He may be VP of the EPP-ED, but at least this is one Tory who’s mentioned the EU Arrest Warrant.
The Scotsman
‘NatWest Three’ case shows government is failing to preserve rights of citizens
The extradition of the “NatWest Three” has rightly stirred the awareness of the public that the Labour government has no [...]

Power Struggle in the EU

Some time ago Eureferendum pointed out that there is a power battle going on at the heart of the EU between the Commision and the heads of states in the Council and that it would be a mistake to belive that the unelected Commision was the real power in the Union. (I paraphrase)

 Perhaps this [...]

EU exit

Sir – While the group with which Conservative MEPs align themselves in the European Parliament is important, the more pressing issue surely has to be that roughly two thirds of all laws that take effect in this country come from Brussels, not Westminster.
It is very helpful that David Cameron allows backbench Conservative MPs to campaign [...]

EU Maritime Policy

Why did the British need the EU Constitution to explain where the Falkland Islands stood as regards THEIR overseas territories. Did ‘todays’ people not understand why we went to war, or so many of our young people lost their lives in so doing?

Perhaps this re-inforces my reasoning re the EU’s [...]

We are on our way to a European Army

From Eureferendum
At a meeting in Brussels today, Claude-France Arnould, Director of Politico-Military Affairs at the European Council declared that the EU Battle Groups were more a tool for political integration than to attain military objectives.

Only Half the Truth

Like Regional Assemblies, HIPs have nothing whatsoever to do with the EU. Oh, and I saw Heath on TV a few years ago,
arguing on the same lines as Yvette Cooper, below, about metrication – it was nonsense to suggest that it had anything
to do with Brussels, because we started before we joined the EEC. Why [...]

“It’s Time We Governed Ourselves”

PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE USE FROM THE U.K. INDEPENDENCE PARTY Office of Graham Booth, M.E.P. Member for South West Counties
“It’s Time We Governed Ourselves”
Geoff Hoon, the latest Minister for Europe believes that we should have another “debate” ( * ) about the EU, so that the people of the UK can learn to know and [...]

Vision for the Oceans and Seas

A European Vision for the Oceans and Seas: A ‘Roadmap’ for the Motorway in the Sea. Anne Palmer 16.6.2006.

I have always hoped that the people we elect into ‘power’ in this seafaring nation of ours, and yes, pay their wages, would take on the mantle of responsibility in looking after our own [...]

Why didnt they tell the Truth in 1972-5

I have no idea whether treason was committed in 1972/3 when we joined the then European Community, or at a later date, but the people were indeed told lie after lie on what the Community was about, it was “just a Common Market”, “about trade” and there would be “no loss of sovereignty”. Now [...]

A Total Lack of Mandate

I raised the question of Solana’s status in a written question to the Council last October.
They are supposed to reply within six weeks to all questions, but we MEPs have no sanctions available if they don’t.
As you can see from the attached file, the answer was answered in April and finally reached me on 1 May.  [...]

European Defence and EU Foreign Policy.

From Anne Palmer 20.4.2006.

Without doubt, one of the most important jobs of a Prime Minister and His/Her Government is to ensure that the Country is always ready, able and willing to defend itself. To ensure their military staff has adequate supplies and that the forces that have to use [...]

EUsceptic comment

The Telegraph hits the jackpot with EUsceptic comment this Easter Monday, with this article
below Daniel Hannan`s comment that you might as well vote for Duck a for all the diference it makes and David Rennie report on Blairs dishonesty over the EU Budget
Impoverished by the EU
(Filed: 17/04/2006)

A billion [...]

Nothing More Than Hot Air?

There are two MSM articles that coincide with two separate themes this blog has referred to recently,
The first was in yesterdays Telegraph “There IS a problem with global warming… it stopped in 1998
By Bob Carter”
For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the [...]

MEP`s fight for more power

Members of the European Parliament have stepped up pressure on the European Commission and the Council of Ministers to give them more say in rewriting implementing legislation.
The Parliament is withholding funding from the so-called comitology committees – the groups of national experts who are brought to Brussels to draft implementing rules, which are often [...]

Are we to be a nation or a province of Europe?

Sir – When Daniel Hannan says "we are fantasising about the kind of EU we might ideally like to have", he is highlighting the dilemma faced by Britain as a result of its membership (Opinion, March 20).
We are swimming against the tide of European integration, which is the raison d’être of the whole project. [...]

Eurocrats’ Contempt for the Voters

Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan writing in the Telegraph 
Two years from now, the European constitution will be in force. The Eurocrats have worked out a deft way of getting around them. Around 85 per cent of the text can, with some creative interpretation, be implemented this way.
True, there are one or two clauses that will [...]

Consumer rights day

I did not know that there was such a thing as “consumer rights’ day”
The Brussels Journal

Chresten Anderson
Today the Austrian EU Presidency is organising the 8th European Consumer Day, in cooperation with the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC). The date marks US President John F. Kennedy’s declaration to the US Congress on [...]

With Friends like these…

Telegraph | News | With Friends like these…: “With Friends like these…
Posted at: 12:40
Still befuddled by the tail-end of flu, I wondered for a moment if the following press release was a parody. Then I read it again slowly, and realised – no, it’s just another day on Planet Brussels.
The press release, from the think [...]

Labour Movement for Europe

Last week I put a link on my blog that cunningly tells readers of other web documents referring to the blog. I was intrigued to see one such web site called the Labour Movement for Europe.
Not being a member of the Labour Party, this pro-Euro organisation working within the Labour Party has passed me by.
LME [...]

The EUSSR

From The Brussels Journal, an interesting comparison between the structures and ideologies of the EU and the former Soviet Union.
Vladimir Bukovksy, the 63-year old former Soviet dissident, fears that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union. In a speech he delivered in Brussels last week Mr Bukovsky called the [...]

Devolution and EU Regionalisation

A Comment on my deconstruction of Professor Hazels report on The English Question suggests that there is no linkage between the devolution and EU Regionalisation.
I must agree that this is a much argued contention by those who oddly are recipients of EU largess, who œincidentally also support and promote the devolution process, including the [...]

Blair`s Nightmare Government

How I woke up to a nightmare plot to steal centuries of law and liberty
From the Times
By
Daniel Finkelstein
THE POINT IS, I don’t want to seem like a nutter. It’s a very common human emotion, that — not wanting to stand out for thinking something hardly anyone else thinks. Best keep your head down [...]

ID Cards

From the letters page in the Times some voices of concern.
This ID card infringes fundamental freedoms
Sir, Most unusually, you have allowed yourself to be misled by the Government’s spin and misrepresentations concerning the ID Card Bill — principally by swallowing its contention that the privacy concerns of many people in the UK are “in [...]

A defence of Trial by Jury

Simon Jenkins is again having a go at Trial by jury in the Times today he says;
Jury trial has outlived its usefulness. To pretend that it delivers justice is absurd. This archaic theme park democracy is expensive, a waste of time and adds nothing to fair trial. Abolish it.
He cites as evidence for this [...]

Towards a Political Union

Arguing for the return of the EU Constitution has become the objective of the past week or so, ever since the presidency past from Britian to Austria in fact.
Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel told a news conference in Vienna Monday “The constitution is not dead,” “The constitution is in the middle of a ratification process.” Well [...]

The Exit Clause and British Sovereignty

This from appeared in the Scotsman this morning and was sent by e-mail from Dr Cooper with a note above the letter.
Mrs Rolls writes very anti-EU good letters, but I have to disagree with her on this. The editor has deleted “Irrespective of the pretensions of the European Court of Justice” which I had put [...]

Wake up America !

Thanks to Dr Cooper who sent this to me by email and said;
Many people in Washington still haven’t woken up, apparently. Like Mr Pantucci, with his letter in the Independent yesterday.
Business Platform
Washington still blind to true nature of the EU
By : John Blundell
January 08, 2006
HISTORY is little but an inventory of errors. Even the [...]

WE CAN’T AFFORD SUBSIDIES FOR ALL

This Is Devon from Graham BoothWE CAN’T AFFORD SUBSIDIES FOR ALL
Your columnist Kate Ironside seems to have her morals all mixed up in her recent article. If you read my speech to the EU Parliament last month its contents may straighten out her muddled thinking.
It is very tempting to offer all of Europe’s poorer regions [...]

Some Moments of Fantasy

Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schssel on taking over the Presidency of the EU this month wants to resurrect and redefine the EU Constitution; he said “Europe needed “some moments of fantasy and flexibility and new thoughts.” He said he would restart efforts to draft a new constitution at an EU conference on European identity to be [...]

Blair selling UK down the river

By : Fraser Nelson – Political Notebook December 04, 2005
SAY what you like about Jacques Chirac, but he knows how to handle the European Union (EU). The President of France has a strict negotiation strategy: if it doesn’t benefit my country, forget it. I won’t sign.
If the EU tells him it’s illegal to [...]

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