Rescuing
Democracy in the United Kingdom from our current Elected
Dictatorship
|
Spin,
not face-to-face confrontations with the voters, is the
Government's chosen method of communication. Ordinary people
are dangerous. Ordinary people might ask a question which
throws a politician 'off message'; the Cabinet member might
reveal himself or herself to be a human being like us, and
not a programmed android. Worse still, he or she might tell
the truth.
Ann
Leslie - Daily Mail, September 16, 2004
Blair
wants to leave his mark on history - looks more like a stain
to me.
Peter
Thorndyke, Diss, Norfolk - Daily Mail, May 23, 2005
|
May
11, 2005 (741 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 1,610 US - 88 UK - >6,164? Iraqi - >17,300 civilians
- 25 media
May
31, 2005 (761 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 1,657 US - 89 UK - >6,164? Iraqi - >17,300 civilians
- 25 media
Britain
has traditionally been one of the biggest net contributors
to the EU because we do not get as much money back from
Brussels in farm and regional subsidies as our rivals.
According
to Treasury figures, between 1995-2002, Britain's average
contribution taking the rebate into account, was £2.6billion,
or £43.55 per head of population.
The
French - the biggest recipient of farm subsidies - contributed
£1billion a year or £16.08 per head of their
population.
|
Forget
the French . . . . it is now more vital than ever that we British
have our say
At
least we all know n0w who REALLY runs Europe
Commentary
by Simon Heffer - Daily Mail, May 31, 2005
There
is no point in understatement. The crisis in which the European
Union - or more specifically, the European Commission that so
ineptly runs it - finds itself after the French referendum is,
quite simply, the gravest in its entire history. Even after the
'period of reflection' for which the Foreign Secretary has called,
nothing will have changed.
The
people of the most pro-European country of all will still have
said NO by a thumping margin, and the idea of a federal Europe,
where the interests of individual nations are subjugated to the
decisions of unelected bureaucrats, will still be in ruins. The
significance of this for Britain goes far beyond simply allowing
Mr Blair to wriggle out of his promised referendum on the constitution
- something that seems a foregone conclusion, and which will be
settled by a Dutch NEE tomorrow.
He
is about to take over the presidency of the Council of Ministers
for the rest of the year: the mess will be his to clear up. Mr
Blair can achieve nothing unless he puts an end to delusions about
the future of the EU, whether his own - the constitution was,
let us never forget, in his view nothing more than a 'tidying
up exercise' - or those of other nations. He and his fellow heads
of government must own up to why the French, of all people, voted
NO.
Certainly,
the free-market aspects of the treaty displeased a people used
to protectionism and over-generous welfare. They sought to punish
Jacques Chirac for his mismanagement of an economy stricken by
low growth, with more than three million unemployed.
However
these were manifestations of a feeling common to other EU countries.
There is, despite the rhetoric of Jacques Delors and Valery Giscard
d'Estaing, still no such thing as 'the common European home'.
There is still no such thing as a common European identity. The
sense of national interest Europeans have always had has not been
eliminated, and it exploded in France on Sunday.
The
French know they are suffering from the Maastricht Treaty, ratified
by a hair's breadth in a referendum in 1992. One of its legacies
was the Euro, which has kept interest rates at a level that is
boosting unemployment and killing growth. If the French had economic
sovereignty, they could adjust interest rates and the value of
their currency to aid prosperity. So, too, could the Germans,
who are in an even worse state - just under 5million unemployed
and the government of Gerhard Schroeder so hated that he has thrown
in his hand and called a general election a year earlier than
planned, for this September.
The
Dutch, meanwhile, are heavily influenced in their own referendum
by what they perceive as the inability to control immigration
policy. There have been two assassinations in the last three years
of prominent public figures - politician Pim Fortuyn and television
producer Theo Van Gogh - by Islamic extremists. As Michael Howard
found when he promised to tighten up Britain's border controls,
the EU wouldn't let him. The Dutch know this. A NEE vote tomorrow
will be a defiant challenge by them to any further robberies of
their sovereignty.
The
final defeat of the OUI campaign in France was aggravated by statements
by the Euro-elite after the last opinion polls were published
on Friday: that if France voted NO it would just have to have
another referendum until it did what it was told. It typified
not merely the arrogance of European bureaucrats, but also their
utter incomprehension that people of Europe have democratic rights.
Mr
Blair must warn other leaders that Europe will implode unless
it closes this gap between rulers and the ruled. The basic idea
on which the old Common Market was founded - association of nations
freely trading together - is one Europe now must pursue. It is
in everybody's interests that fantasies about a European superstate
are abandoned.
An
attempt to resurrect the now-defeated treaty would only hasten
the collapse of the EU. It would also confirm the irrelevance
of the European project in dealing with new realities of globalisation
and other more efficient and productive trading blocs - notably
China, the Pacific rim economies and the slumbering (but not for
much longer) economic giant called America.
Mr
Blair likes to pose as a statesman. He is about to encounter the
greatest test of his statesmanship, in seeking to ensure that
a trading bloc that has the potential to be the most powerful
in the world does not lose its way in a maze of regulations, centralisation
and bureaucracy. To make such a future will require the telling
of home truths. It will also require nations to be allowed to
act in their national interests within the trading bloc of Europe.
Yet
even if Mr Blair belatedly found the guts and the vision to argue
for a dynamic Europe of sovereign states such as this, the obstructionism
and self-interest of the utter corrupt European commission would
bar his way. Any plan for the future of Europe must deal with
the fact that the EU is the author of its own misfortune, and,
after Sunday, still in deep denial.
The
French, on Sunday, said enough was enough. The Dutch seem set
to follow them. Sadly, it will probably even then still not be
clear to Europe's elite what a mess their arrogance and corruption
have made. If the EU is to have a future, the architects of Europe's
crisis must acknowledge the wishes and hopes of more than 400
million people.
But
for this arrogant elite to admit at last that their old, undemocratic,
discredited ways have finally failed would, to judge from the
sad history of the European project, be too much to hope for even
now.
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