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.

All your bailouts are belong to us

Alice Cook asks some pertinent questions:

The head of the European bailout fund - the EFSF - is on his way to China. He is looking for cash from the Communists.What does this say about the eurozone? At a minimum, it looks desperate.

Do you think eurozone leaders will be raising any human rights issues when they next visit Beijing?

What is the price for silence?

Whatever the price, it will be huge. Never raising the subject of Tibet or Taiwan ever again, perhaps.

When I Want Your Opinion I Will Give It To You

It is as well to remember that the Parliamentary debate on Monday is not over whether we should be in or out of the EU. It is about whether the British people should be asked their opinion on the matter.

According to Cameron, Hague and the rest we should not be asked - presumably because there is a danger that we might give the wrong answer.

This tells you all you need to know.

Natascha Engel, me like

Better-looking than Ken Clarke, too

Natascha Engel, the Labour MP who is Chairman of the Commons Backbench Business Committee has spoken, and she has spoken remarkable good sense.

The e-petition to demand a referendum on Britain's relationship with the EU reached the required 100,000 signatures and, as promised, it has gone before the Committee and will be debated in Parliament. I am cynical about the whole process - after all, debating something is not the same as passing legislation that the public actually wants - but it is a start. And it's the Daily Mail that is reporting it, so a reality filter needs to be applied to that too. But what really struck me was what Ms Engel said about it.

Committee chairman Natascha Engel, a Labour MP, said: ‘Given the crisis in the eurozone, this issue has become more relevant than ever. There is a clear majority of backbench MPs who want to debate this and we have to respond to that.

‘The EU today is completely different from the one the British people voted to join in 1975. It is time to examine the position again. For years it has suited successive governments to avoid debating whether Britain should leave the EU. The whole purpose of my committee is to make sure the big issues of the day are aired in Parliament. People in pubs and shops all over Britain are discussing our membership of the EU and it is time MPs openly debated it too.

About time this was said. And from a Labour MP, too. Colour me gobsmacked.

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.

EU - the real story 2

More stuff to boil your blood.



Spead the word.

EU - the real story

Seen over at Sue's place, and it needs to be seen by as many as possible. Watch it, and feel angry.

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.