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For some 500 years now, alehouses have played a pivotal role within British public life. But now pubs are closing at the rate of 40 a week and we are haplessly bearing witness to an extraordinary process of cultural self-immolation. Around the corner from me, in Hornsey, North London, the Earl of Shaftesbury has recently shut its doors and, with it, not just a community drinking-hole but a deeper civic connection to a sense of place and past. Sir Liam Donaldson is not a little to blame for this: his ban on smoking in public places has driven drinking back into the home, where social safeguards are absent.
So what we really want from the Chief Medical Officer is not a one-size-fits-all tax on alcohol (which the Government is already suggesting it will not support) but specific policies to encourage more people to drink more beer in more pubs. That is called working with the grain, or yeast, of history.
As indeed we in UKIP suggest. Lower duty in traditional cask conditioned ales and the ability for a landlord to offer a well ventilated smoking room if they so wish.
Pretty simple, quick to do and would achieve the desired aim.
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During our recent bout of British gloom, many of the usual suspects were crawling out of the woodwork to make again the case for joining the euro. Now, they say, the exchange rate is right and we should lock it in. Yet they also wanted us to join some while back, when the exchange rate was 30pc higher. The truth is they always want us to join the euro. They must be mad. The issue is not about the right rate, which is changing all the time, but about flexibility.
In the current crisis, we in the UK have two major things going for us: first, we are able to enjoy a competitive exchange rate; and second we are able to set our domestic monetary policy in pursuit of our own interests. Heaven help countries like Italy which have no such way out. We should thank our lucky stars that we have managed to escape the budding economic and political disaster across the channel.
Sums it up rather nicely I think….
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In fact, the most recent Nobel Laureate in economics speaks out:
How does Spain get out of this? No devaluation is possible — and no, I don’t think exiting the euro is feasible. So it has to do it with relative deflation, hard enough in normal times, when at least costs and prices elsewhere are rising a few percent a year. In the face of a depressed and possibly deflationary European economy … this is going to be ugly.
Because Spain is in the euro they face years, if not decades, of grinding deflation.
That’s what we’ve avoided by not joining the euro ourselves. Worth remembering.
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This really rather puzzles me:
Anyone departing the UK by land, sea or air will have their trip recorded and stored on a database for a decade.
Passengers leaving every international sea port, station or airport will have to supply detailed personal information as well as their travel plans…….. Even swimmers attempting to cross the Channel and their support teams will be subject to the rules which will require the provision of travellers’ personal information such as passport and credit card details, home and email addresses and exact travel plans.
A fairly terrible idea I think you’ll agree?
For where we go, as and when we wish to, is no business of the government’s at all. We are still a free people are we not?
What we all actually want is that the government check those coming into the country, to ensure that they have the right to do so.
But, typically for a government, they’re implementing something hugely expensive and intrusive which doesn’t in fact address the desired problem. What use is checking those going out, spying upon us all, instead of checking upon those coming in?
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I do like this analysis.
“When Farage wrote on politics.co.uk that Ganley is “very much a supporter of the [EU] project, just wishing to change very slightly the direction it’s going in”, he’s not lying. Libertas is essentially an EU democratisation project. Ganley’s comments say it all: Europe is “arguably the most successful peace process in the history of the world” but “wouldn’t it be better if we could ensure the EU was democratic, was accountable?”
It’s a legitimate viewpoint, and there’s no reason for the debate to be polarised between those calling for total withdrawal and those who want the UK right in the middle of things. The Lisbon treaty was formulated to streamline decision making, and help the EU function as a governing body. You only have to look at its fractious reaction to the global downturn to see why officials might be keen for this to happen sooner rather than later. But streamlined decision making is sometimes just another word for lack of democratic input, and there are strong arguments for saying the Lisbon treaty would further bypass already weak democratic structures in the Union.
UKIP is a far simpler animal, calling for total withdrawal. It wants Britain’s membership of the EU to be replaced by a host of trade and cooperation agreements. It hoovers up a great deal of support by sticking to this simple line. It’s described as unpractical, but it reflects its members’ interests in a way most other parties consistently fail to. They are reliable, and that means a great deal in the murky and emotive world of Anglo-EU relations.
It’s a lesson the Tories could learn from. Anyone with a decent idea of the Conservative position on Europe must have access to information no-one else does.”
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THE WHIP is contacted by a source who works for the company involved in the G20 Summit being held at Excel in London’s Canning Town next month.
�Although smoking is banned within work places in the UK and has been a vigorously enforced Labour policy, it is being allowed at the G20 summit – indeed, there is a smoking lounge,� he reports.
And I get an email explaining a little more:
The smoking ban legislation in force since 1 July 2007 in England is being amended for the G20 Summit being held in April at the Excel Exhibition Centre in Docklands, London.
It has been revealed that smoking rooms will be allowed at the venue.
I cannot explain my feelings about this sort of thing in language polite enough to use on a blog like this.
There’s one law for the rulers and another for the ruled. The politicians aren’t being held to the same rules and regulations as the rest of us. I’m sorry, but this sort of contempt for us, the people, by those who set themselves up over us has me boiling with rage.
I’m afraid you’ll have to imagine the language I’d like to use to describe this.
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Caroline Flint in Parliament:
Mr. Francois: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what EU job centres are based in non-EU states; what the expected total projected costs of these offices is for 2009; and whether there are any plans to open more such offices. [258914]
Caroline Flint: There are no EU job centres in non-EU states, and there are no plans to open any such offices.
And she’s quite right but extraordinarily misleading. For:
CIGEM is not an EU Job Centre but a Migration Information and Management Centre, funded through resources under the ninth European Development Fund.
There are no EU job centres, they’re called Migration Information and Management Centres.
H/T Dizzy.
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To be honest, this list of things that cannot be carried as hand baggage on an airplane because they could be used as weapons isn’t all that strange:
baseball bats, clubs or batons, cricket bats, golf clubs, hockey sticks, lacrosse sticks, kayak and canoe paddles, skateboards, snooker cues, fishing rods, martial arts equipment.
They all can indede be used as weapons.
But where we get the true lunacy, so symptomatic of the entire EU project, is here.
The European Commission has been forced to reveal the contents of the confidential memo to airlines outlining which everyday objects were considered a potential terrorist threat.
Security staff have used the list to stop passengers carrying skateboards, fishing roads and canoe paddles from taking them on-board – despite not being told they were banned.
Yopu see, the Commission’s position was “Yes, there is a law, but we’re not going to tell you what it is”.
That’s really not the way to run a continent, is it?
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Nigel at the politics.co.uk site. On the launch of Libertas and what distinguishes them from us in UKIP. And what doesn’t distinguish Libertas from the Tories.
Libertas launches in the UK this morning and it’s going to be interesting to find out whether people understand the basic point about Declan Ganley. He’s not against the European Union, far from it. He’s very much a supporter of the project, just wishing to change very slightly the direction it’s going in, that’s all.
There’s a rather bewildering assumption that because Declan campaigned so successfully for a No vote in the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty that he’s therefore against further integration, ever closer union and the rest of the federalist claptrap. We in UKIP stood alongside him in that campaign and thoroughly admire what he achieved. However, we’re also very much aware that he’s in favour of much of what makes up the European Project. It’s really just the Lisbon Treaty he doesn’t like.
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One of the things that makes politics such a great spectator sport is watching as people stick the boot in to one politician or another. It’s even more enjoyable when it’s someone as annoying as Harriet Harman on the receiving end.
GAFFE-PRONE Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman, derided for trying to snatch back Sir Fred Goodwin’s retirement package, has been branded a “hypocrite” after it emerged she is sitting on a taxpayer funded pension pot of £1.5million.
….the Leader of the House of Commons has amassed a small fortune in pension rights during her 27-year stint in Westminster, allowing her to retire next year with an annual pension of £50,000…….It means that Labour’s so-called “golden couple” are likely to rake in a joint retirement income of about £100,000 a year……Lord Matthew Oakeshott, the Liberal Democrats’ pensions spokesman who calculated Ms Harman’s retirement package for the Sunday Express, said: “She should accept the verdict of the court of public opinion and look at her own unaffordable fat cat pension pot. She will be a hypocrite if she doesn’t.”
Wonderful to watch, isn’t it?