If Kinnock thinks it's good, it must be bad

So we need to change all our road signs from miles to kilometers do we? And why is that? We hear again today that the Commission say that the UK will not reduce it's budget deficit to under the 3% target before the end of the year so what a good thing to spend yet more money we don't have on changing road signs just for the sake of harmonisation.

Alastair Darling MP last night on question time said that he didn't think it was necessary but when Nigel Farage MEP said that the EU Directive due to come into force by 2010 was going to ban imperial weights and measures he called him 'nasty' and 'anti European'. Darling, please try come up with something convincing as an argument and try not be hypocritical.

Whilst we have our heads in the sand...

Yet more proof that this idea for a Single European State will press ahead regardless of what people in Europe really want. The French and Dutch said "no", the Commission went "la la la, we're not listening". The majority of people do not want Turkey to join, so negotiations opened. The Parliament repeatedly reject the Port Services Directive (for different reasons, because countries are not the same, Mr Barrot)the COmmission keeps on trying to get it passed.

EUobserver.com
Verheugen predicts political union in 20 years
20.02.2006 - 09:53 CET | By Mark Beunderman

EU industry commissioner Gunter Verheugen has predicted that some EU states will
in 20 years form a political union.

In in an interview with German daily Die Welt, the commissioner was asked how he
sees the EU in 20 years' time.

He responded by saying "I believe… we will have a political union, but maybe not
with all states that now form part of the EU."

"Certain European states will agree to have common competencies in foreign,
economic and financial policy as well as in judicial policy," he explained about
his long-term vision.

The remarks point to the possible creation of a "core" Europe of EU states
further integrating policies, with other states opting out.

This vision emerged in the 1990s in German conservative political circles, and
has since won supporters mainly in France and Belgium, with the Belgian prime
minister Guy Verhofstadt recently suggesting closer co-operation between the
eurozone states.

The commissioner also appeared to predict predicted a further enlarged EU
encompassing the western Balkans, Turkey, Switzerland and Norway - but excluding
states like Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Russia.

"In 20 years all European states will be members of the EU, except the
post-Soviet states that do not yet form part of the EU now," he said.

Mr Verheugen served as the EU's enlargement commissioner in the previous Prodi
commission from 1999-2004, succesfully managing the bloc's 2004 expansion while
championing further enlargement, including with Turkey.

© EUobserver.com 2006
Printed from EUobserver.com 20.02.2006

Unless we actually do something solid about it, and elect people to power who aren't bribed with nice positions in a new central government, we will no longer have national identities. But the people of Britain appear not to care - they act as though if they ignore it, it will go away. And slowly, they accept the creeping changes until they are used to seeing the EU pirate flag hanging from buildings in Brussels, and being waved at the last night of the Proms (an event which is full of patriotism and national pride - I bet the BBC paid someone to wave it about). It won't go away, we can't ignore it so hello media, can we have some coverage on what is going on over here. Hello people, stop saying you hate the EU and don't want Britain to be a part of it, and do something about it!

slimey creatures

Fish are. scaley and odd colours. Still, as much as I don't particularly like them, they aren't anywhere near as slimey as Tory politicians! I grant you, many of the other denominations are bad - but their hypocracy never fails to astound me.

The reason I mentioned fish was because this new gut wrenching tory comment is about fish, fishing, the Common Fisheries Policy and a stable. At least, that's what the Shetland box sounds like.

The Tories, in particular Struan Stevenson, have been slagging off UKIP MEPs for voting against the preservation of this Shetland box because they say that we should be happy that we are allowed 40% of fish stocks as long as the Germans, Norwegians and some others could come along and fish too. They don't seem to understand that according to UNCLOS III, that area is part of the British Exclusive Economic Zone and selling our fishing rights away has not only caused havoc for fish stocks but also cost British fishermen and their communities greatly. The EU allowed Spain to sue each and every fishing village under the CFP because they were fishing in British waters and they weren't allowed to!

We should have 100% not 40%. So Mr Stevenson, you are part of a party which has already lied about the CFP when you said the Tories would renegotate, and now you lie about this being a good deal. Tories jumping into bed with Labour - continual evidence for this centerist politics we have now. The Commission themselves, when they were asked by Nigel Farage years ago, and by Catherine Stihler a few weeks ago have said that if you withdraw from the CFP, you leave the EU. And the Tories don't have the backbone to come up with a sensible policy such as withdrawing from this hideous, economically retarded dictatorship.

I am enjoying this

Over the last two six nations championships, England haven't really done that well - because they had lost key players from injury and resignation after the 2003 World Cup win. I had a plastic Taff boyfriend some time ago, and last year, even though we had split up (his fault) I still had to endure his triump of Wales over the 'hated Saes'. Hated, I think, because the English were successful in the Empire. I noticed yesterday when Chelsea were beated 3-0 to Middlesborough? that people wanted to see success brought down: it was these people who were happy that Chelsea lost who were also supporting Italy against England, even though they were not Italian.

But, ha ha, we won. AGAIN. Maybe not with such pizazz as we would have liked, but we did. And I sincerely hope that Scotland beat Wales today, because to see the table lead with England and follow with Scotland, and have Wales at the bottom would make me supremely happy.

What's wrong with selection?

Am just listening to a programme on the education proposals and yet again I wonder where this country is going to. Well, that country, since I am not there at the moment.

Ma main gripe is that political correctness has gone mad, and when it affects how well children are educated, this really, really bothers me.

Only yesterday someone told me that in AS level economics text books they are promoting the euro and in exam papers, they ask for one sided opinions on why the euro is good. This is not acceptable.

But why are schools not allowed to select their pupils? I went to a school where I had to pass an exam to get into and we had streaming in certain subjects. And guess what, the results were excellent. Higher with the internal streaming than without because the school was open in admitting that some children are more clever than others, and some children were good at things that other children weren't.

Why can't schools be allowed to select pupils? Why should really bright children be held back by children who need a different teaching method? Why should parents who encourage their children do their homework, and read and learn more have their efforts thwarted by people who don't care how their children behave and feel that someone else should do it for them?

I am simply not intelligent enough to be a brain surgeon, and I hate the sight of blood too. I accept that, it's fair enough - and those who are clever enough and dedicated enough: I applaud them. If you refuse to allow children to be taught in ability groups and in different methods then you will increase the illiteracy rates to higher than they are now (and now, they are higher than in Victorian times) and you will polar the system as parents who can and care enough to, send their children to private school.

How far will Richard Corbett go?

He first incurred my wrath when he accused me of lying about being attacked in the European Parliament: I was protesting peacefully about the EU Constitution (his baby -literally) when I was pounced on by 4 security guards and then in the forthcoming investigation, they failed to interview the one member of staff who was acutally involved in it (me). Corbett in his deepest, wildest fantasies came out and accuse me of being a liar, without ever having met me, asked me about what happened and not evenbeing a spectator to the incident.

He seems to spend his time following everything to do with Godfrey Bloom; one can only guess he is in the pursuit of a personality. He has now decided to openly accuse UKIP of being racist.

Now, the OED (it's produced in England, Richard, not Belgium so you probably won't have read it) describes racist as:

discrimination against or antagonism towards other races.

When you google UKIP, and actually bother to research anything about, it rather than get in a small hyperactive fit about a party saying that the forcing together of nations who want to be individual is anything other than a good thing, you will find that UKIP is a non racist party. Yes, honey. Wanting control over your own borders doesn't mean you hate people from other countries. Saying that the embracing of cultures that are different doesn't make you racist. Saying you want trade, rather than aid (in the spirit of education I point you in the direction of any book containing the 'lost decade of development') doesn't mean you are a racist. Quite the contrary. In fact, saying someone or a party is racist without actually checking any facts is actually an offense.

May I suggest, angel of the north - or wherever you live - that you spend a little less time exerting your considerable energies over your obesession with UKIP, and more time trying to so something useful. I would not be so bold as to suggest what that could involve.