Farage: "What gives you the right?"

While I quite like Nigel Farage, I sometimes wish that the anti-EU movement had picked someone less like a golf-club lawyer. He can sometimes come across as a bit glib and superficial. But this one (h/t to Guido) is a stormer.

"What gives you the right?" indeed.

EUrodemocracy

Funnily enough, I had to go to the Irish Times for this gem. Angela Merkel, in an interview after the Cannes summit:

"What we got in Cannes was the feeling that there is no such thing any more as domestic policy making. Domestic is what's inside the currency area. Greece can no longer decide all by itself the issue of whether it should hold a referendum or not."

So now you know.

A Day of Opposites

Woman On A Raft points out that today is Liberation Day in Jersey, when they celebrate the end of the German Occupation in 1945.

Today is also Europe Day, when we celebrate the Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950.

BY ORDER!

Scores of public buildings are being ordered to fly the European Union flag to mark the occasion.

Officials will be expected to ensure it remains hoisted for a week from Monday. And those that disobey could be fined.

Incredibly, they are even expected to take a photo of the flag and email it to the European Commission to ensure the rules are being observed.

Schools are also being sent instructions from the European Parliament on how to celebrate Europe Day. Recommendations include holding special assemblies with an EU theme.

Funny old world.

Europe Day, 9 May

Referendum.

Now.



***UPDATE***

Forgot to attribute the image :( Thanks to Sue.

That Common Market Referendum

Doing a bit of reading around for the previous post, I came across some statistics on the British referendum on EU membership in 1975.

Of those who voted, 67.2% voted to stay in the EEC, or 'Common Market' as it was known then. (This was before the successive name changes reflecting increasing federalist ambitions, first to EC and then to EU.) Of those eligible to vote, 64.5% actually turned out to do so. I was one of them.

So, our membership of the Common Market was approved of by 17.4m people, or 43.3% of the voting public. Better than most parliamentary elections, but still not a majority of the people. And that's assuming that the basis on which we voted in the referendum was fair, and that people were told the truth about where the whole project was deliberately headed. Which is wasn't, as we now know.

I wonder what the figures would be today?

Green And Pleasant Land

I've never been to Greenland, but I'd like to go. I imagine I would like the people. After all, Greenland is the only country to leave 'Europe', as our masters insist on calling it. They left what was the European Community in 1985, the only country ever to have done so.

Basically, they realised that the EC was decimating their primary industry, fishing, and had a referendum on leaving the EC. The referendum told the government that the people wanted to leave, and the government (servants of the people rather then their masters) honoured the people's decision. Greenland now has a higher average income than Germany, France or Britain.

Fishing used to be a major British industry, too, and we were more dependent on it than any other European nation, for obvious geographical reasons. It is estimated that when Britain entered the EU we controlled 80% of all European fish stocks. This is because our fishermen had carefully managed fish stocks in the North Sea, whereas French and Spanish fishermen had heavily over-fished the Mediterranean and had destroyed most of the stocks. Nowadays, gigantic Spanish trawlers hoover up the seas round the British Isles, and our fishing industry is a shadow of what it used to be.

Incidentally, while the unions and the left were outraged at job losses in the subsidised coal industry under Mrs Thatcher, they were strangely quiet about the much greater job losses in our profitable fishing fleets. Fishermen are tough and independent people (they have to be) and perhaps they weren't the right kind of working class.

Interesting facts for those who say that leaving the EU would be catastrophic for Britian's economy. It could be the best thing we ever did.

Time for that referendum you promised us, Mr Cameron.

H/t Alex Singleton.

Better Off Out

Sue has a nice bit of music to accompany a headline in a major English newspaper that I thought I would never see:

GET BRITAIN OUT OF EUROPE

(Which should, of course, read "out of the EU" - Britain isn't leaving Europe unless there are some pretty powerful tugboats out beyond the Irish Sea.)

The Daily Express has come out in favour of a British withdrawal from the EU. Leading article in the link above. They are also running an online petition, linked in the article. I have signed.

Regular readers will know that I love Europe, meaning the European Nations. As a Brit, I feel part of Europe emotionally, and I believe that co-operation between European nations is a good thing. What I can't stand is the unaccountable, corrupt and profoundly undemocratic European Union. I voted 'yes' in 1975, when what was on offer was membership of a trading bloc. That is nothing like what the EU is today, after 35 years of name-changes and mission creep, and at no point have I, or any other Briton, been asked my opinion on whether I want to be part of it. This is not xenophobia: this is a belief in independence and self-government, democracy and accountability, and a hatred of corruption and self-serving elites.

Perhaps this is the first crack in the dam.