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Any acts of hospitality, such as Mandelson’s stay on the Queen K yacht owned by the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, are not declared. Inexplicably, under the commissioners’ code of conduct, we have no right to know who entertains them.
And guess who drew up this extraordinary code? No, not Mandelson, but his old boss, the Welsh windbag himself, Lord Kinnock. The code was Kinnock’s considered response when the European Commission was plunged into yet another corruption scandal under Jacques Santer in 1999.
It’s true: holidays, stays on yachts, meals in expensive restaurants…..these simply don’t have to be declared by EU Commissioners.
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The extradition case of Andrew Symeou was finally decided yesterday. He’s to be dragged off to Greece on the basis of very dodgy information indeed and to be tried for manslaughter. This is under the european Arrest Warrant, which assumes that because we’re all lovvy dovvy in this European Union then of course all of the courts work to the same standards of evidence, to the same standards of protecting the innocent.
Which, to put it mildly, isn’t true.
Gerard Batten has a nice piece in the New Statesman explaining it all.
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Lordy, it’s bad enough that we’re ruled by foreigners, but do we have to be ruled by ignorant ones as well?
The European commission has given leading players in the £380tn derivatives market until the end of the year to come up with “concrete proposals” to reduce the risks these complex products pose to the financial system.
Charlie McCreevy, the EU internal market commissioner, is pressing the industry to agree to central clearing for credit default swaps (CDSs), the instruments viewed as being at the core of the financial turmoil.
There is already central clearing for CDSs.
Here.
So what is Charlie wittering on about?
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This is one of those little things that seriously annoys me. OK, so they’re going to spend some money of electric cars. Wonderful, I hope they have fun. One of the justifications put forward is this:
Building on an announcement made by Prime Minister Gordon Brown in July this year, Monday’s plans could lead to the creation of 10,000 new British jobs and help preserve many thousands more.
“Creating jobs” isn’t a good thing. Jobs are a cost of whatever it is that you’re doing. We could create lots of jobs by banning tractors and insisting that farmers use teams of chavs to pull their ploughs. But I think we all agree that this would make our food cost more, said people needing more money to run than a tractor does?
The same with 10,000 jobs with electric cars. We’ve got to pay those 10,000 people each and every week. So their wages are a cost to us of this scheme. “Creating” 10,000 jobs just means 10,000 more people we’ve got to pay.
And to go a little further into hte economics, it also means that we lose whatever else it was that those 10,000 would have done if they weren’t checking the acid level in our batteries. This is what economists call opportunity costs. If they’re working on our cars then they’re not building windmills, or wiping babies’ bottoms, discovering the cure for cancer or lagging our roofs.
Time for everyone to grasp this simple fact….creating jobs is a cost of a scheme, not a benefit.
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Well, of course I like what he’s saying.
LORD Tebbit will tonight call for a referendum asking whether Britain should quit the European Union……..
Baroness Thatcher, 83, is expected to be a guest at the event hosted by the Tory Euro sceptic Bruges Group in her honour. Lord Tebbit will say: “I hope that the Conservative Party will set out a negotiating brief that the next Conservative government will take to Brussels early in its next term, and that it would within two years of the next election, present to the British people the outcome of its negotiations.
“Then in a referendum the British people would decide whether to accept what was on offer – or simply to leave the union.
It’s a useful political test actually. I’ve long argued that there are two groups in politics. There are those who pursue a specific idea or ideal. Then there are those who are more tribal.
Those latter we know about, those who would only ever vote Labour or Tory. In a way they’re not so much interested in ideas as in it being their tribe doing the ruling.
I put myself in the former group…..and I think that most of my fellow members of UKIP are as well. It isn’t so much that we should be running the country, that our tribe should be on top. Rather, we’re united by the idea that Britain should rule Britain.
And the usefulness of the test here? This idea is being proposed by a Conservative, yes, but is it a good idea? Would I support it? I can only speak for myself of course, but yes, I’d support a call for an in or out referendum whoever it came from.
Yes, even if it were Richard Corbett calling for it, which I think shows my attachment to principle, doesn’t it?
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No, really, it will.
THE World Health Organisation recently reported that Andorra, that little pocket tucked in the Pyranees, has the highest life expectancy of any country in the world. One can speculate on the many reasons why this would be so: in addition to the mountain air and lifestyle, being well-situated to pick and choose from the best of French and Spanish culinary influences (all in moderation, of course) can’t hurt.
It turns out that other little places do pretty well in the life-expectancy league tables too. Another ranking puts Macau, Singapore, San Marino and Guernsey in the top 15 globally. This would seem to bode well for other places in Europe: Malta, Liechtenstein, San Marino, Monaco and the Vatican City are all smaller than Andorra.
You see, people who live in smaller political units, in small countries, live longer than those in larger countries and political units.
And as we know, the aim of the European Union is that we should all end up livingin one large political unit, one large super state, all 500 million of us. Which of course will mean that we will die younger than if we had been left to go our own sweet way in nation states.
See, it’s true! The EU will shorten your life!
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Maurice Golden, a 28-year-old campaign manager for Keep Scotland Beautiful, was asked by a political magazine which one law he would repeal, if given the chance. “European Communities Act 1972,” he told the Total Politics website, without a moment’s hesitation.
The act took Britain into the European Economic Community and its repeal would entail withdrawal from the EU. Cameron declared only a few months into his leadership that MPs advocating withdrawal would be barred from serving on his front bench.
After Mandrake informed the Tory leader, who was campaigning in Glenrothes yesterday, about his candidate’s remark, the pair appeared to have had a frank exchange of views. “David has spoken to Maurice and there is no question of him wanting to pull out of the European Union,” said his spokesman. “Maurice believes that there should be changes to the act, but not that it should be repealed.”
What a wonderful modern Tory Party we have here.
You can’t even speak your mind any more.
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Mr Sarkozy said the state would take dramatic action in all fields of economic management to head off the worst crisis since the “franc fort” deflation of the 1930s. “We will intervene massively whenever a strategic enterprise needs our money,” he said.
The fund managed by Caisse des Depots – the investment arm of the French state – will be used to buy shares in any company falling prey to sovereign wealth funds from Asia and the Middle East, hoping to snap up Europe’s crown jewels on the cheap after the stock market crash.
“We mustn’t be naive and leave companies at the mercy of predators. Europe must not be the only one not to defend its interests. There is no reason why we shouldn’t do what the Chinese do, and the Russians do. There is no reason why France can’t have an industrial policy worthy of the name,” he said.
Actually there is a reason why you can’t do this.
It’s illegal.
Far be it from me to back the European Union, but if you’re going to be in hte club then you do have to obey the rules. And those rules say that you’re not allowed to have national champions, nor an active industrial policy, nor benefit French firms over others.
Now if you want to do all of that, well, good luck to you. I happen to think it’s a bad idea, certainly, but I’ll not insist that you don’t do it. However, if you are going to do that I think I would rather want to insist that you’ve got to leave the club to do so. And the thought of us being free from the influence of France in the EU is just so delicious that I’ll even hold the door open for you on the way out and make sure that it doesn’t hit you on the bum as it closes.
No, not au revoir, rather good bye.
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Just a small insight into what it is that I do all day. This story turned up in The Telegraph:
Drivers who display national flags face a £60 fine and also could find they fail an MoT test because of an illegal number plate. It is thought thousands of motorists have chosen number plates with their country of origin flag, but exact numbers are not known.
Jim Fitzpatrick, a transport minister told MPs of the restrictions when replying to a parliamentary question from Bob Spink, a the United Kingdom Independence Party’s only MP at Westminster.
According to Mr Fitzpatrick regulations which came into force seven years ago only allowed the display of the European Union symbol of 12 yellow stars on a blue background.
Mr Spink, MP for Castle Point, raised the issue after being contacted by motorists who had been fined for displaying national flags.
Many people were unaware of the regulations. He said: “No one believed it. This is outrageous.
“Europe is gathering around itself the trappings of a country because only countries can have a flag. Europe is becoming the country and Britain is just a region. This is just not acceptable.”
Well done Bob for asking the question in the House and getting the answer.
But, but, couldn’t this story be taken further? Well, actually, yes it could, for we’d had a contact from a party supporter asking us about this law. His daughter had just been given a ticket for having a Cross of St George on her plate. Surely this wasn’t right, was it?
Sadly, as above, I had to tell him that it was, that really is the way the law is (badly) written. But did he think that his daughter would be interested in talking to a newspaper about it?
You know, show the ticket, show the number plate with distraught maiden etc etc. Yes, me too, we can all think of several papers which would love just such a story and indeed we had one raring to go. Something on a Sunday it was, large circulation sort of thing, would have been great.
Sadly, the young lady in question (and there’s certainly no blame attached here, keeping clear of the hounds of the press is usually a good move) decided that her employers might not be all that keen on her appearing and thus declined.
So, err, that’s one of the things a press officer does. Expends great effort to get nothing at all achieved. Just so you know like……
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Philip Bushill-Matthews had a letter in The Guardian about the European Arrest Warrant.
All about how the Tories had said that it would all lead to tears from the start.
Nigel wrote in in response:
Philip Bushill-Matthews (letters, October 23) tells us the Conservatives in the European parliament warned of the troubles to come with the European arrest warrant. Why didn’t they vote against it then, as my Ukip colleague
Jeffrey Titford and I did?
Nigel Farage
Leader, UK Independence party
Rather heavily edited unfortunately, but the point gets across, no?