Off with their heads!

Have cleverly thought up a title which encompasses both subjects I wish to get off my chest.

1) People who don't use the stairs. I will explain. I work on the 11th floor of the parliament, and I have to use lifts generally to get to and from the doors / restaurants / hemicycle to my office. This I can cope with, because I have a beautiful view from this floor.

However, what does irritate (and confuse me) is the 'logic' which makes someone stand around and wait for a tediously slow lift when they are only travelling a few floors. There are plenty of staircases one can use and not wait for, so why, WHY take the lift down one floor and slow everyone else who has to use the lift up?

2) Informal summit at Hampton Court: (you see, you see?)

There they all are, traitors to the UK standing in such a beautiful royal palace, owned of course by the first English (before the union, don't forget) eurosceptic. How Blair can let them in there, how Blair can be in there when they wish to rub out our history and culture, and make us ashamed of our past is astounding. They want a political union where great and mighty England would be a couple of regions in the United States of Europe.

What is there to discuss, I ask? They mustn't talk about the budget. The rebate, therefore, cannot be sorted out. The Constitution is legally dead - even though they try to implement it through the back door.

What they could discuss is the frightful state of the European Economies: EU25 unemployment is at 8.7%. The predicted growth rates for 2006 have been cut again, from an already pitiful 1.6% to a teeny weeny 1.3%. I can run faster than that. In my heels. Combine that growth rate with inflation of 2.6% and you have a dire situation of stagflation, where growth is going backwards and prices that are rising. But what are they going to do about it? Cut back regulation? Let countries have their own currencies which can float on the global markets? Have countries control their own interest rates? Stop restricting small businesses and allow people to work what they want to work?

No. We will have to stick to a socialist model of high tax and regulation, a 35-hour working week and endless bureaucracy and regulation which stifle development and innovation. Europe isn't working. We know you want a political union, but at any price?

3)ukipwatch. Nuff said.

When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail

You may remember a few months back that Farage instigated a Motion of Censure on 'President' Barrosso, to try make him answer a few simple questions. Well, he did come to the Parliament as enough signatures were collected, but the story which emerged from it was regarding Roger Helmer and the direction of the Tories in the EP.

Let's not forget that in the UK, Conservatives get votes from the Eurosceptic population: people who say they believe in what parties such as the UKIP stand for, but who still think the only way out of the EU is through the Tories. Can this truly be the case when they are members of the federalist EPP, who vote for the Consitution and the EMU (I will note here that the Conservatives did vote no to the Constitution although they funded the YES campaign through their secretarial allowances) and their leader, Timothy Kirkhope, removes the whip from MEPs who stand up for transparency and accountability?

Below is a link to the website of the esteemed Roger Helmer - the Tory who, despite being bullied to remove his name from the motion of censure, held strong.

http://www.rogerhelmer.com/reviewmeeting.asp

http://www.rogerhelmer.com/tjkletter.asp

http://www.rogerhelmer.com/tjkreply.asp

Happy reading, and well done Roger!

Look what Godfrey found behind his fridge!

UKIP MEP, Godfrey Bloom. You may remember him as the chap who made headlines last year, for saying - on joining the EU's Equal Opportunities Committee - that modern women "don't clean behind the fridge enough". Yesterday, he brandished a copy of Busty Beauties at a meeting of the same committee. He'd earlier purchased it from the parliament's own newsagent. "I don't think I've sat through an equal opportunities meeting, ever, without them spending an hour talking about the exploitation of women," Bloom tells me. "They drone on and on about it, and sneer because I'm a man. And then their own shop is selling this ... It's the hypocrisy I can't stand. This is another example of the double standards that pervade at the EU."
http://news.independent.co.uk/people/pandora/article319512.ece

And he's right. This place talks so much shite, and then does exactly the opposite. Like Brüner, the guy in charge of the anti-fraud office on the EU who has in 5 years, never investigated and charged a single EU official for fraud. Even the Eurostat case - the EU equivalent of the great train robbery - was brushed under the carpet. The EU is in charge of a budget of €90 bn, and huge amounts of this budget go missing each year. This is an institution where the accounts have not been signed off for 10 years, and if an auditor does his job properly, and whistle-blows on cases of fraud and embezzelment, he is sacked.

This is a place where our ears are bent until they bleed about helping out LDCs - and yet it is a customs union which refuses to trade and help these countries, and instead gives them aid. Anyone who remembers or has studied the 'lost decade of development' in Latin America particularly will be able to recall that this was brought about through a complete disincentive effect due to such 'aid'. Their hurry to help these people is, unfortunately, not matched by their desperate aim to show people that the EU is a good idea: that becoming a 'United States of Europe' (and that's what the plan is, chaps, and it's a case of in or out) is the only way for the new world order of equality ensured by regulation.

Count me out. I'd rather live in a world where the truth is prevelent, and where arse-licking, banal and deliberately misleading press releases don't get published. A place where propaganda is something children learn about when they study dictatorial regimes such as Communist Russia, Nazi Germany and the European Union, rather than an every day situation where we are told what to think, in order to keep the dream of the super state alive. And I'd certainly not live in a world where people look like Liz Lyn or RIchard Corbett, and where Peter Mandelson is i charge of anything other than keeping shoe-boxes in a neat line.

So much to say

So little time to say it. Or write it.

Haven't been posting for a while for a few reasons

1) Have a job. Not a new phenomenon for me, but recently there has been lots and lots of lovely things to do and see. Like committees, for example, where I sit there, probably more qualified to make decisions than those who can and do, and listen to MEPs talking flannel. The most common thing I hear is 'may I congratulate the previous speaker, with whom I agree with. I don't want to repeat what they have said, or speak for a long time, but...' which is followed by 10 minutes of useless drivel where they then repeat exactly what the person before has said.

Why? It was a pile of shit the first time round: please, please don't make me listen to it again! Maybe they think the more they say it, the more credible it will sound. Possibly, outside of the European Parliament, but since what they frequently talk about is trying to make the EU more competitive by following the 'Lisbon Strategy' - a strategy which, as far as I can tell, is about strangling people with red tape and them fining them for being unemployed - we can safely assume that it will only be credible inside a meeting of 'Old Labour recovering LSD users'.

2) I went away for conference, which was rather exciting. Only one heckler, though. Our glorious leader made a very good speech, which included a quick summary of why voting Tory will never lead to Britain coming out of the EU - in short, that they are spineless and a divided party.

However, Shipley MP Philip Davies has come out and said that the UK must withdraw from the EU. So he agrees with me, then, and UKIP that 'in Europe and not run by Europe' is about as likely to happen as Kilroy leaving home without his bottle of San Tropez tanning lotion. How can you be in a customs union which wants to become a federalist superstate, and not relinquish power to their pretendy government? You think they will really let one country get away with not following their damaging rules and pointless pieces of legisation but still be in their club? DOn't be stupid. They want to absorb your country, and they are doing so more and more each day either through their institutional mechanisms, or through the back door. Brussels has published over 2000 pieces of legislation since the summer, and they aren't going to stop because some divided quasi-eurosceptic party over the water can't make its mind up.

What annoyed me the most was the banal statement of Denis MacShane, saying that withdrawing from the EU would be disastrous for Britain. WHy? because we would only have the Labour government to blame for the low growth, increasing unemployment and falling standards? You're right it will affect our balance of payments. We can start trading freely with the rest of the world instead of being bound by this antiquated customs union. Our average weekly shopping bill on food alone will drop by £20 per week and we will be helping those in Less Developed Countries, instead of patronising them with aid packages which only help their military dictators. YOu're right it will affect the economy - maybe we will be able to move away from this economic downturn, with growth for the Q4 projected at 1.5%. That's practivally backwards. We used to have a thriving economy, but now we are tied to the Brussels Titanic, the only way is down.

I suppose there will be some unemployment if we leave the EU. 84 MEPs each costing the tax payer about £1m a year will have to find somethjing productive to do with their time, as will their assistants. Peter Mandelson will have to be found another job in Government - fourth time lucky? The same, of course will have to happen for Denis MacShane - although I am sure that's not a reason for his statement on why withdrawal is a bad thing...