Seldom in the course of European negotiations has so much been surrendered for so little. It is amazing how the Government has moved miles while the French have barely yielded a centimetre.
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Seldom in the course of European negotiations has so much been surrendered for so little. It is amazing how the Government has moved miles while the French have barely yielded a centimetre. Charles Crawford, the British ambassador to Poland, is in hot water for an e-mail which says several entire true things: He describes the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) as “the most stupid, immoral state-subsidised policy in human history, give or take Communism”. He also ridicules French leader Jacques Chirac for “nagging the British taxpayer to bloat rich French landowners and so pump up food prices in Europe, thereby creating poverty in Africa”. He also suggests Blair gives EU leaders one hour to make up their minds on the budget because “If anyone says no, we end the meeting. The EU will move on to a complete mess of annual budgets. Basically suits us – we’ll pay less and the rebate stays 100 percent intact”. Oh, but he was only ‘joking’ of course. Riiiight. Yes, this guy should indeed be fired from his job as an ambassador… he belongs in 10 Downing Street doing Tony Blair’s job! Britain’s government surrenders billions of our money to the EU in return for… nothing much… and that has left the UK government ‘isolated’ because more was not surrendered. The gall of the Gauls at insisting Britain’s taxpayers stump up even more when they are massively greater beneficiaries of the EU’s largess than the UK is breathtaking but far from surprising. Britain is not even nearly isolated enough from the EU for my taste. The US Constitution begins, famously, “We the People…”. The European Constitution begins, “His Majesty the King of the Belgians…”. That gives you a fair idea of the different spirit of each document. (Hat tip to Taylor Dinerman for pointing out this gem) Unbelievable. Blair is actually going to fold on the EU rebate for the UK? Why? What possible advantage could it bring him politically to give away even more of our money to the parasites in Brussels? What ever happened to:
We were told that the British rebate would only be negotiable if the monstrous EU agricultural subsidies were also negotiable. Yet France et al have give up nothing whatsoever of any consequence, and yet the halfwit in Downing Street is going to give them want they want anyway? WTF? I must be missing something here. Eurostat has concluded that sixteen percent of the population resides in poverty. At a first reading this appeared quite a high figure, perhaps mitigated by the enlargement process in 2004. On closer examination, this statistical sleight of hand concerned the level of social inequality in each Member State. Poverty was measured as that proportion of the population who had less than 60% of the country’s median disposable income. Hence, these startling results:
And is there a greater absurdity than this?
William Heath has another example that even when governments set out to do a Good Thing, it’s not necessarily worth it.
Predictably enough this was no contest.
Euro-lib sounds a bit sleezy, doesn’t it? Anyway, William then picks on the Euro efforts to develop a search engine called Quaero widely seen as a potential competitor to Google. (!) Oh dear.
We hear you… Note: William has started another Ideal Government project, this time about Europe, Ideal Government Europe. I meant to blog about it and others already beat me to it. In the sidebar blurb William asks:
The answer to his questions is a resounding NO from where I am standing and I am not holding my breath at William’s or anyone’s chance to affect anything to do with the EU, however, can’t blame the man for trying to voice his objections when he gets the opportunity to make them to the EU audience and add the bloggers voices to his own. The EU Courts have just given themselves the power to impose European criminal laws, by which I mean to decide itself if an offence against an EU regulation is now a criminal matter, even against the wishes of an EU states own government and legal system. How anyone who is even a casual observer of the EU could not have predicted this was on the cards is a mystery to me. So next time you hear someone tell you that the real power remains, and will always remain, at the national level, perhaps you might like to ask them if deciding if something is, or is not, a criminal matter is a core function of a state’s legislative and judicial structures. If people like Tony Blair and Ken Clarke want to dismantle Britain and make it a European province, well would it not be better if they just said as much and argued why that was the best course of action?
Any time you hear ‘Foreign Office sources’ say something will not happen ‘in practice’, of course that means the opposite is usually true. I expect within 18 months or so Britain will indeed be enacting criminal legislation imposed by European Courts on a regular basis. Anatole Kaletsky, the economics journalist who, despite a fondness for Keynsianism, is one of my favourite columnists, believes Italy’s departure from the euro and possible re-creation of the lira is a real possibility, one that needs to be taken with deadly seriousness by financial markets. He says the financial fallout from an Italian divorce could be disastrous:
I think he is correct. As I said in my last posting about Hayek’s idea of competing currencies operating inside the same country, it is folly to imagine that the cult of the all-wise central banker will not come a cropper some time or later. Many Italian entrepreuneurs might be very glad indeed of an alternate store of value if that country does indeed pull the plug on the euro. Some scare stories deserve to be ridiculed but I think Kaletsky is on to something. Between now and the Italian national polls next year, it would be smart to keep a very close eye on the euro zone financial markets indeed. (Thanks to the Adam Smith Institute blog for the pointer. It reaches pretty similar conclusions). UK authorities may be faced with a bit of a struggle in extraditing a man, now in Rome, for his alleged involvement in the failed July 21 terrorist attacks on the London transport system, according to this report. So could some nice person remind me what the EU-wide arrest warrant is suppose to achieve, exactly? Oh, er, wait a minute… More from the “You couldn’t make it up” department. David Carr is fond of saying that the satyrist’s trade is hard these days, because reality has a habit of being so very much more satirical. This is presumably the kind of thing he means:
The history of the USSR is repeating itself as farce. EUSSR. And the USSR was pretty farcical to begin with. Speaking of David Carr and the EU being farcical, whatever happened to Bertrand Maginot. I miss him. The imposition of environment-friendly port facilities on landlocked countries sounds like something he would understand perfectly. It would be interesting to hear his view on this issue. It is good to know that in these troubled times, when we feel under attack from terrorist nutters, that those considerate folk in the European Commission have refused to take their eye off the ball. Vitamin supplements will become more expensive and many health food stores will be closed as a result of an EU directive being upheld. I find it depressing, but not the least bit surprising, that Brussels regulators should feel that ordinary folk are too thick to figure out the risks and benefits of vitamins for themselves. It is a setback for people who want to take charge of their health, and must send a funny message to people who are also constantly urged by our regulators and politicians about the dangers of obesity, smoking, booze and driving too fast. Even if you are a sceptic about the benefits of so-called alternative medicine, it seems a fairly basic point that the substances one chooses to ingest are none of the State’s business. Period. |
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