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Janet Street Porter on her being on question time and Nigel not:
It is my second insult in a week. When Nigel Farage, the head of UKIP, a party with big aspirations and limited success, was bumped off Question Time, he told newspapers that I only appeared to give the show “gender balance”. Female voters, please take note.
There is indeed sexism there of course. It emanating from the BBC who both told us that was the reason the Janet S-P was to be on the program and Nigel not and, of course, took that decision solely on the basis of the sex of the two individuals.
And if that ain’t sexism then I’m a banana.
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Yes, yes, we do. A fight, a fight!
Firstly we have a certain Mr. Helmer talking about why he wouldn’t appear at the Brgues Group meeting with Nigel Farage.
Essentially, no one told him not to speak, they didn’t tell him that three weeks before and anyway, it isn’t true that if he had spoken nasty things would be done to him because no one had in fact….well, you get the message.
Then Trixy tells us a little more of what happened. Her sources say that that nice Mr. Helmer was threatened with deselection from his seat if he did in fact share the platform with Nigel.
Odd party, the Conservatives really. Exercising your rights to free speech mean that you could lose your seat while funnelling your expenses through your family company means that you get it confirmed. Strange way to run things….
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A fine post here which I would urge you to read in full. But the basic point is worth reiterating.
There’s a lot of people out there insisting that the current problems are “the end of capitalism”.
Hmm, it might be a hiccup, it might be heartburn, but it ain’t a fatal heart attack. The [people claiming the end of it seem not to realise what capitalism actually is:
….there is a certain silly gloating in the press, and commentators who should know better labelling this crisis as the end of capitalism. The Guardian seems particularly smug. But don’t take predictions of ‘a new world system’ to replace capitalism too seriously. If the entire world financial system crashed tomorrow, wiping out every bank and making currencies worthless, by the end of the week someone would be striking silver coins in a local mint as a means of exchange; by next month some individuals would have acquired a surplus of coins and by next year capitalists would be back, evaluating risk and investing in merchant ventures.
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It seems a little odd to find that some of the local press have a better grasp of international issues than the nationals at times.
Most people in the UK will be breathing a huge collective sigh of relief that EU bureaucrats have decided not to attempt to meddle in the current meltdown. If the federalists had had their way and every member state of the EU had been dragooned into the single currency, then the European Commission and the European Central Bank would have been in the box seat and taken action on behalf of the 27 member states.
Quite.
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Gawain has the news over here.
There’s a bulletin board where you can go and discuss the EU. But, it being run by the EU “discussion” means that you can modify how you praise the EU rather than anything so unkind as actually to discuss or, heaven forfend, actually criticise it.
No, I can’t say that we are surprised actually.
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We knew this, you know this, but some people seem still not to get it.
(Reading Evening Post, 6 Oct): “Dr Caroline Lucas, newly elected and first ever leader of the Green Party in the UK, is also a Member of the European Parliament for the South East, which makes her one of Reading’s MEPs. The Evening Post asked half a dozen passers-by who she was and at first no one had a clue…When it was suggested to her that not many people knew who she was Dr Lucas said: “Well, it isn’t any real surprise given the lamentable way the media covers the European Parliament.” When it was suggested that people did not really care about the EU, she said: “People should care about it because 90 per cent of the environmental legislation that affects this country comes from the EU.”
Yup, 90 % of our environmental laws come from the EU….as do some 80% of all of them. Which is exactly what we’re all complaining about of course. We simply want to be able to work out ourselves what our own laws should be on such vital international matters as landfill, recycling, rubbish collection and the rest.
But there’s good news in there as well of course. Not knowing who Caroline is will preserve the sanity of many of our fellow citizens.
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Yes, I like this.
Oh, and he also pretended to be ‘tough’ on the European Union. But the reality is very different. Two Tory Euro-MPs who are genuinely critical of the EU last week withdrew mysteriously from a fringe meeting where they would have been speaking alongside people calling (rightly) for withdrawal from the EU.
In the Tory Party you can posture about Brussels, but in the end you must support it, as Mr Cameron enthusiastically does.
If you want to get out you’ve got to be part of the only party that is actually arguing that we should get out, that is, us.
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Chris Huhne has been getting all teary eyed about how the European Arrest Warrant means the end of Englishmens’ freedoms, the intorduction of thought crimes, Magna Carta, did she die in vain (cont. pg 94)…
As, of course, we’ve been saying ever since the idea was first mooted. And as, umm, Chris Huhne hasn’t. Indeed, he voted for it as an MEP, as did Nick Clegg, and the man organising the whole thing is now the leader of the Liberal group in the European Parliament.
How bone headed do you have to be to take 7 years, to realise that the EAW was a damn fool idea?
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But the Tory MEPs who will go into battle on Mr Cameron’s behalf are not a happy bunch Already forced to sign up to new rules on expenses, they are now under orders to withdraw from the centre-right coalition that dominates business in the European Parliament.
This was a promise Mr Cameron made to his Eurosceptic Westminster party when he was fighting David Davis for the party leadership. But insiders warn that it threatens to reopen the fault lines on Europe within the Tory party at large and could also undermine Mr Cameron’s hopes, should he become prime minister, of a fruitful working relationship with Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France….
The fault line they’re talking about is that whatever the Tory Party says to us here in the UK makes no difference to anything. Almost all of the MEPs they send are in fact federasts of the worst order. There are a couple of exceptions of course, but it’s true of the vast majority of euro Tories, that they’re a great deal more euro than they are Tory.
It just doesn’t matter what Dave or anyone else in the UK Tory party says about Europe. The part of the Tory party that actually deals with Europe is thoroughly integrationist.
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No, they are, hobbies are good for you. In fact, everyone should have a hobby. As Prodicus does.
Much better than miniature trains, or building cathedrals out of matchsticks, isn’t it?