Tackling climate change

By flying loads of people out to Spain!

The 18 EU countries that have ratified the bloc's draft constitution have urged the nine other members to help revive the entire beleaguered document.
Representatives of the states, meeting in Spain, called for the other nine members not to scrap the constitution but to help build on it.

Well, at least our government aren't having any of that. Oh, hold on:

The UK, Czech Republic and Poland want the constitution replaced by a new, slimmed-down mini-treaty.

So there will be a new treaty on the cards, oh wonderful government of joy? Were you planning on telling us, or was it going to be another 'tidying up exercise'?

Spain's Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told the meeting in Madrid the constitution was "a magnificent document" that should be "complemented rather than carved up".

Why not both? Carved up, and complemented with a sprinking of petrol and a lit match?

"Is the only way out of the constitutional impasse the wholesale dismantling of the constitutional treaty? By cutting it into little pieces?" he asked.

It seems to be the preferred option - back door smuggling in of possiblyillegal pieces of legislation (for is it not illegal for a government to take power away from our constitutional monarch and hand it over to a foreign power?) Preferred to democracy, in any case.

The new constitution was drafted to streamline decision-making within the growing EU and would create a permanent president and foreign ministry.

WRONG! Thank you for playing. The Constitution is all about a polical superpower. Do we not think that a permanent head with power over the UK Prime Minister and nop longer having our own foreign policy is perhaps a little more than 'streamlining?'

The conservative contender in the French presidential race, Nicolas Sarkozy, was the first to call for a mini-treaty that would be ratified by parliament, not through another referendum.

That would be the Sarkosy whose MEPs sit with the British Conservatives, then? Well, that's not such a big issue when you consider that Tory MEPs paid for 'YES' propaganda to the Constitutional Treaty.

A mini-treaty would cut the existing constitution into bits and preserve only the technical changes that would allow the EU to work more effectively and admit further new members

Like admitting Turkey? Like removing the powers of national veto so there is less debate and democracy, and more shoe/horning through of federalist, Communist anti democratic, anti national sovereignty laws? How convenient.

In a joint article published in a number of European newspapers, Spain's Alberto Navarro and Luxembourg's Nicolas Schmit say that in today's globalised world "a united and capable Europe is more necessary than ever.

Funny, but in India the only reference to any country in the EU in the newspaper I read was the UK w.r.t Big Bother. The trip by Gordon Brown was not covered in any way but to mention that he had condemned racism. What else can he talk about, I suppose? Not trade or commerce. On the other hand, the visit of Putin and his promised gifts of nuclear information and fighter planes was widely covered. But how right you are. We need to be in a backward looking, socialist trading bloc intent on economic and social policies which will drive us all into poverty to be a driving force in a globalised world.

Oh dear.