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This.
TORY activists are preparing to down tools and not campaign in next year’s European elections in a row over the selection of Giles Chichester as the region’s number one candidate, the WMN has learned.
Sections of the party’s rank and file are so concerned about the South West MEP’s re-selection that they are preparing to call on Tory HQ to intervene.
The split stems from Mr Chichester’s admission that he wrongly channelled EU funds through a company he helped run – but was later cleared of profiting from the breach of the rules.
EU watchdogs found that the £400,000 had been correctly used for secretarial and assistant services, but the practice contravened rules on MEPs using companies they are connected with to handle the money.
There’s more of course:
The rebels are keen not to be publicly seen as divisive but fear Mr Chichester being top of the Tory selection list will not only hit the vote in the EU poll, but also undermine campaigning in county council elections in the region, which take place on the same day, June 4.
Leading activists, including parliamentary candidates and senior councillors, are understood to be so unhappy with Chichester’s inclusion they are threatening to down tools and not campaign or even vote for the party.
Always happy to see a federast being unhappy….
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Can we please just get this straight?
We want to run the economy for the benefit of consumers, not the benefit of producers.
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This is good news (however despicable his actual ideas are):
The Holocaust denier, Frederick Toben, has been released from custody after the German government gave up its legal battle to extradite him from Britain.
This was all under the European Arrest Warrant of course. Sadly though, it’s not really cleared up the law, rather, it has muddied it.
“I said, ‘We will go all the way to the House of Lords with this and let the House of Lords decide’. But when the draft extradition Act passed through the House of Lords in 2002, one of the questions was what would happen if someone was arrested on a European arrest warrant to be extradited to a country where Holocaust denial is an offence.
“The response was, ‘No, that will never happen’.”
This was a political deal: this particular person will not be extradited. But we’ll still be liable to being extradited for things which are not an offence in this country, things which lack dual criminality. It’ll depend rather on whether the person accused has enough political (or financial) weight to fight it and that isn’t justice as we either know it or want it to be.
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Good couple of pieces of press coverage of Gerard Batten’s report on the costs to us of the European Union.
Here in the Mail, here in The Sun.
I’m told that he’s on LBC in the morning discussing it too (but sorry, I don’t know when).
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What is it about these people?
Women are to be banned from returning to work within six weeks of giving birth under new EU plans.
They seem to have no concept of what the point of all this government actually is, to maximise the amount of freedom and liberty that we the people enjoy. They also seem to miss the meaning of the word “liberal”. That is, the aim to increase the amount of liberty that, again, we the people enjoy.
It might be that having a law that allows women to have 6 weeks maternity leave after the birth is a good idea. I’d certainly not fight against such a law nor I think would many others.
But there’s a huge difference between “allows” and “insists”. The first is an increase in liberty, the second a diminution. That is, it’s profoundly illiberal because it reduces peoples’ choices.
OK, this isn’t that much of a shock, but it is further evidence that the EU is an illiberal institution.
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Bob seems to have a letter in the Swindon Advertiser (no link, sorry).
“Little realising one would suspect that all EU Parliament sessions are recorded on video, Christopher Beazley MEP for the Tories, has rather let the Tories policy for our continued membership out of the bag, and staggeringly disclosing the Tories real intentions over the pound. Readers should go to my site at www.freedom2choose.co.uk and watch for themselves what he says. He concludes by saying this: ” I look forward to the next Conservative Government applying to join the Euro Zone really quite shortly.”"
Good work that man!
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This is what happened. Yes, really….
As the nation mourns the apparently voluntary departure of John Sergeant from Strictly Come Dancing because he says, he was worried he might win (how bizarre is that?), we’ve come up with a solution: Peter Mandelson, who has said he quite fancies a twirl for Bruce and the Judges
Send for Mandy: It seemed to have worked for Gordon Brown!
But our light-hearted idea appears to have taken a very odd twist: A conspiracy theory, no less, courtesy of UKip.
In an internal memo, they talk of “dark forces at work” - blaming Alastair Campbell (really) of forcing the BBC to create a vacancy on the show for Lord Mandelson who “has already proved to be nimble on his feet as he hot-footed it from Hartlepool then Brussels and waltzed into the House of Lords”.
They say he also “skipped away” from answering any awkward questions about his relationship with a certain Russian billionaire and, they point out, “not by chance Mr Sergeant’s dancing partner is from the former USSR”
It ain’t much as conspiracy theories, even humorous ones, go - but we thought we’d share it with you anyway.
We thought it was pretty good as a humorous conspiracy story but then taste in jokes really is rather fickle, isn’t it?
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It does this, doesn’t it? Say it all?
UKIP leader Nigel Farage said: “It says it all about the BNP that so many of those on their database seem to be worried about being revealed as members. Who would join a party where membership is a social and professional embarrassment?”
Well, quite.
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Yes, I like this, I like this.
LOLGriffins.
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Slightly concerning to see this this morning.
Many are now looking nervously towards next year’s European elections. The absence of UKIP, which squeezed the BNP vote in 2004, means that Britain’s first BNP Euro MP could be just months from taking office.
Absence? That makes it sound like we’re not going to be fighting the election!
Yes, we have been on to him and yes, he does say that the sub-editors mangled what he meant to say. More like “in the absence of UKIP’s strength of 2004″ and a correction or clarification will be run tomorrow. Even that’s wrong of course, for no one at all has done any polling at all about how people are likely to vote at the euro-elections, so no one can make any informed comments upon relative strengths.
But just to set minds at rest, yes, we are fighting the elections, no we’ve not all gone home.
As you’ve been told, you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the newspapers……