The Sycophancy Prize dies

The death of the European Parliament Journalsim Prize was announced the day after, in a blaze of puffed up glory, this year's winners were announced and defended.

I tweeted a friend, one of last years winners and I received a tweet back. It had just one word.

Hurrah

When the FT Deutschland is priced in DMs again you know the end is nigh

Thanks to Zero Hedge for this, but frankly wow.

Sign up and demand an EU In/Out Referendum

Ruddy hypocrites

Galileo launch delayed

The launch of that famous flying pig, naty heard of platinum pigs that is the European satelite system, has been delayed according to information that comes to me,

The launch of the two first satellites of Galileo Programme has been postponed for 24 hours

For technical reasons, the launch of the two first satellites of the Galileo Programme from Kourou has been postponed for 24 hours.

The launch is now foreseen tomorrow Friday 21st October at 12h30 CET.

Not weather note, but tech issues.

However this hasn't in any way stopped the celebrations,

Welcome to the Galileo Drawing Competition – this is your chance to have a Galileo Programme Satellite named after you and launched into Space!

To enter the competition you will create a picture that represents ‘Space and Aeronautics’ This includes things like stars, rockets, planets and satellites. What else can you think of that is in Space?

You can create your picture using any drawing, painting, or colouring technique that you like. You can use all sorts of materials like paints, felt tips, pencils, glue, glitter. The main thing is that you use a big dollop of imagination!

Yippee, the EU is so generous

Labour calls for illegal immigrants to get the benefits of the welfare state

Claude Moraes the Labnour London MEP has today called for what he euphemistically describes as 'irregular migrants', you know what you and I would call illegal immigrants, to have full access to schools and hospitals,

Claude Moraes, S&D spokesperson on civil liberties, justice and home affairs, said:

"European Socialists and Democrats urge the Commission to ensure that the rights enshrined in the legally binding Charter of Fundamental Rights, including the right to health and education, are fully upheld for irregular migrants throughout the EU and to promote the ban of the reporting obligation for service providers"

He doesn't get it. To stem the flow of illegal migration, you cannot throw open the doors to the welfare system. We must help countries elswewhere, through trade liberalisation and the spread of wealth to improve the lot of their own citizens at home to reduce the migration 'push factors'. Butr we must also reduce their access to benefits here in the UK to mitigate the various 'pull factors'.

Moraes would create for us a morass.

When democracy dies it dies unheeded

Sarko has his mind distracted from the Crisis, the Germans swing this way and that, rumours swirkl and ratings agencies harrass the centre like a pack of hungry wolves slowly picking of the weakest.

And then we look back down the telescope to Greece. This Reuters report says it all, says too much,

The mood was furious among demonstrators, fed up after repeated doses of austerity and increasingly hostile to both their own political leaders and international lenders demanding ever tougher measures to cut Greece's towering public debt.

"Who are they trying to fool? They won't save us. With these measures the poor become poorer and the rich richer. Well I say: 'No, thank you. I don't want your rescue'," said 50-year public sector worker Akis Papadopoulos.

The boom of tear gas canisters fired by police rang out, and black clouds of smoke from petrol bombs hung over Syntagma Square, scene of violent clashes between police and demonstrators at anti-austerity protests in June.

And then that low tolling sound,

International lenders, who are providing the funds Athens needs to stay afloat after it was shut out of bond markets last year, have expressed impatience at the slow pace of reform as Greece has slipped behind on its budget targets.

There has been growing talk that Athens should be placed under tighter supervision by EU authorities to ensure it meets its reform obligations.

For what it is worth

I  have written to my MP,

Dear Mr Hughes,

As you are only to aware the the Business Committee yesterday timetabled a debate and vote upon the thorny question of giving the people the chance to vote in favour of staying in the European Union by means of a referendum.

As my MP, and as a Liberal Democrat, a party it must be remembered supported the  idea of a referendum on an In/Out question I would ask you to support this motion, by voting Yes to an In/Out referendum. To do so would give the people of this country the chance to dcide on their own future, and it would also allow you to vote along your party's pre-Coaltion agreement stated position.

I look forward to hearing from you before next Thursday, the 27th of October when the debate and vote wil be taking place.

Yours sincerely,

Gawain Towler

I am not expecting much to be fair

That Referendum debate

Ok, so I am a little bit jaded. Yes I do think that having a debate on the issue is a good thing. I would think that if it were around the water cooler, or in the pub, or indeed in the House of Commons. The more that people debate the issue the better, but I am distinctly unenthused by this.


Listen to the statements of  both parties. Please note that neither Cameron, nor Milliband, nor even Clegg have bothered to make a statement but have left it to spokesmen to comment, which tells you a lot abut the whole affair.


Here is the Tory comment,

"I imagine we will establish the whipping arrangements nearer the time but we have a very clear policy on that and that is set out in the coalition agreement.We would expect MPs and ministers to follow the Government's policy."

And here comes Labour,

"Britain should be focused on creating the jobs and growth we desperately need, not cutting ourselves off from major export markets that British jobs depend on.

"The European Union should focus more on supporting growth and jobs, but a referendum on pulling out of the EU is a distraction that would create uncertainty for business and risks much needed investment in the UK."

Its not just the dismal predictability of the debate itself, and worse still the knowledge that it will be lost, and those who would see us remain in the stifling embrace of the European Union claiming that was it, we have had our discussion, now go back to sleep. It is this dull incomprehension from those that purport to govern us that sticks in the craw.

The Tories will put down a fierce whip to show their own party backbenchers who is boss. And Labour shows  the lack of imagination which will ensure that spend plenty of time on the opposition benches. They have a glorious opportunity here to stick one to David Cameron. Outflank him, cause him massive disruption, and at the same time prove that they can read the tea leaves and believe that people should decide their own future. But no, instead they retreat to the idiocies of the past.

Are we cut off from America, from India, from 95% of the worlds population? No of course not, would we be cut off from the markets on the continent, to ask it is to show the utter dullard thinking that emanates from Victoria St.

The only good thing I can see coming out of this is that any sneaking idea the supporters of the three main parties have that their own parties will do something about our relationship with Europe must at last be torpedoed. Any future candidate who claims to be a Eurosceptic in order to head off the threat from UKIP will, if they fail to vote in favour of this measure be seen as wanting. And yes, we will be making that point loud and clear across the country, in surgeries, in letters, in the local press and elsewhere.

They do not deserve you support, as they do not give a damn what you think.

My trips were never this bad

I mean seriously. Mary Ellen Synon reports another propaganda film produced by the EU today in her Mail blog, and it just epitomises quite how awful these people are.

Death of shame: Parliamentarium edition

This is just dreadful. A propaganda piece by the European Parliament about their new shiny 20 plus million visitor centre.

The sadness of irony

But they do not see the irony.

Will it be another twenty years before we see a poster celebrating Re-Restoration of Independence?

"We don't need a referendum - we need a change of Government".

So says Nadhim Zahawi the Tory MP for Stratford and Avon on his website's political priorities page. No Nadhim, we need a referendum, and a change of government.

The chap was up against the boss on the Politics Show today and just repeated the absurbd mantra that we need to stay in the EU because we want to trade with it. "I've just been in a meeting with 400 businessmen", he kept on saying "and they want to export to the EU".

Well yes, and what makes home think that we will be unable to export to and import from the EU if we were no longer members? Has he never bought anything produced outside the EU?

This shibboleth needs lancing once and for all, and to help me do so I offer the latest Civitas pamphlet from Ian Milne, which does it all rather well.

As he points out, it we didn't have the hidden tarriff on all our goods sold to the EU (and bought from it) that is the massive subscriptin change for membership - and the associated regulatory and compliance burden, then we would be able to produce goods at a far cheaper rate, and thus be able to work within a free trade agreement with our continental colleagues in a far more preferential manner.

So Mr Zahawi, please explain to those 400 businesses you met at the Coventry and Warwickshire LEP event last week, that their costs would be reduced if we left, and we would retain a free trade agree,emnt, and ask them again if tehy want to be in the EU. I doubt they would all be clamouring to stay in as you absurdly suggested.

Oh and don't you think that as somebody so net savvy that you were a founder of Yougov, you should change your priorities page?

Questions to which the answer is NO (version 377)

This one from that propaganda money pit that is EuroparlTV

The News: Will the next Steve Jobs be European?

Rather delightfully and with no sense of irony at all, they speak to an Alzhiemers research scientist (obviously the sort of work that is going to become a global science business phenominum) who, while pro research in the EU is rather diplomatic about the temptation to work outwith the failing superstate, by referring to a

"better quality of environment for the scientist"

(read better pay and conditions/less bureacracy/more freedom to work etc.

The point is that of course it wasn't the science, but the marketing that made Jobs such a success, and a pro business environment.

Would Elizabeth Windsor please present herself to Committe Room P4B001

The European Parliament is set to give itself sweeping powers of investigation. In a report penned by David Martin, the Labour Glaswegian MEP named this,

Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament on the detailed provisions governing the exercise of the European Parliament's right of inquiry replacing the Decision of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission of 19 April 1995

What this means in reality is the following,

Any EU citizen could be summoned to testify at request of the committee. Witnesses could be asked to speak under oath...

EU and Member States' officials may also be asked to speak before the inquiry committee, MEPs propose, and the committee would be able to ask the advice of experts during its investigations

They can refuse, but they would have to explain why. What this would mean in practice is that the European Parliament could summon any Prime Minister to explain their economic policy or any pother, renditions say, or security matters, and in extremis it could summon the Queen, as under the EU's own Treaties the Queen is merely another EU citizen.

I can quite see the situation where out of malice a bunch of continental communists could, just out of a sense of malice demand that the Queen appear in front of them to explain the reciept of CAP funds in the Royal Estates.

Of course the Queen would no doubt refuse, but they would be able to create maximum embarrasment for minimum cost.

David Martin should be shipped in through Traitor's Gate just for thinking this idiocy up.

Hesketh shows the way forward

There is a significant amount of chatter out there about the announcement this morning of the defection of Lord Hesketh.

Somwething that hasn't been highlighted was his involvement as Chief whip in the Lords during the passage of the Maastricht Treaty. This has been cited by a number of Tory activists as proof that his position in supporting UKIP is questionable.

To me it shows something else entirely. This is a man who was intimately involved in the machinations during that period and now feels strongly that what he was involved with was going in the wrong direction.

Rather than use this as a stick to beat hinm and UKIP with maybe it should be looked at in a somewhat different way.

Look at it this way. He has had the honour and courage to face up to the reality that Britain's involvement in the EU. A majority of the Tory party feels the same way he has been feeling about how this country's relationship with teh EU has evolved.

Today he comes clean and can look himself in the mirror, how about the rest of them?

What a Walley

Here she is, Joan Walley. The nigh on invisible Chairman of the Environmental Audit Committee. This committee was set up after special pleading by Friends of the Earth, so you can guess what it is like.

The Committee was established in November 1997 reflecting a manifesto commitment on the part of the incoming Labour government. The proposal for a single committee to look at the environmental impact of all government departments can be traced back, through the 1994 Labour party policy document In Trust for Tomorrow, to a submission to the Procedure Committee from Friends of the Earth in 1990.

So what is it doing, well it is terrified lest we drop our frankly mad 80% carbon reduction target.

"The long-term carbon-cutting commitments set out in the Climate Change Act are supposed to provide certainty that Britain is determined to reduce emissions by 80% by 2050.

"Unfortunately, the Government's somewhat schizophrenic attitude to climate change seems to be undermining that confidence.

"The Chancellor's comments last week show that five years on from the Stern report, the Treasury still doesn't get climate change - or the risk it poses to global stability and economic prosperity.

"While the Prime Minister is to be commended for not faltering when setting the fourth long-term carbon budget, he risks throwing the UK's climate targets off course by instigating a review in just three years' time that could overturn the commitment.

"Backtracking on the Government's green promises now would be a big mistake."

It would be a big mistake to drop the most damaging legislation ever passed by a British government, the most expensive, the most job destroying. Oh brother, cannot this government just quitely do away with a Select Committee designed by a lobby group, and rather concentrate on getting this country out of it's defecit crisis?

Please?

To big to fail

First it was banks, then countries and now it seems it shoots down the wrong end of the telescope and it is individual Ministers.


It is becoming quite obvious that Chris Huhne is, in some odd way to big to fail.


While Liam Fox is David Cameron's business, it has become utterly clear that the Prime Minister has absolutely no authority over the activities of the Lib/Dem cabinet Ministers.

And it is equally obvious that Nick Clegg is scared of Chris Huhne. And because of that internal Lib Dem fear the Prime Minister is saddled with a senior Minister who is obviously totally unsuited to the job that he holds. he is a Minister of the Crown, and he behaves like the Student Union cadre he once was.

But Cameron is impotent.

The man in the Berlyamont knows best

Banksy found himself introuble with the EU 'elf Police

This whole business of the Toy Directive is a classic example of the cloth-eared approach of the Euroocrats to the world.


They might well think that they are above politics, indeed they do. But this aloofness from people's day to day concerns leaves them able to do soemthing as daft as banning under eight year olds from bvlowing up balloons and the rest.



To them democracy, public opinion is something that must not register. It is short term, and thus politicians and their attempts to represent the fickle voice of the electorate must also be ignored.

Not being consrained by democracy they plough their lonely furrows, trying to make the world a perfect safe place. This comment from the Telegraph today exemplifies the approach,

"You might say that small children have been blowing up balloons for generations, but not anymore and they will be safer for it," said an official"

As Paul Nuttall, the UKIP MEP on the Public Health Committee in the Brussels Parliament puts it in the Express,

Ukip MEP Paul Nuttall, said: “These idiots in Brussels seem to have a death wish. The euro is falling apart, but what do they concentrate on? Throwing our toys out of their pram.”

Silver, Gold, Diamond... Who cares it's still a party

The Essex Enquirer seems to have decided the Queen is a lot younger, or at least her reign has been a lot shorter than it is,

A ONCE-in-a-lifetime opportunity to protect green spaces under threat of development across the county is being wasted by Essex councils.


As part of the Queen's Silver Jubilee celebrations next year, councils have been given the opportunity to nominate a green space to be protected in their area guaranteeing Essex's outdoor recreational spaces for future generations.

Errrr... Chaps the Silver Jubilee was in the 1977, the Diamond Jubilee is in 2012. Mustn't blame the hack though, at 24 it would be a full 7 years before he was born. Bless.

And kudos to Stuart Agnew for demanding action from the council.

EMS: A legacy of despond

It really is time for some of the old stagers to be put out to grass.

I present that old, often charming, red-veined cove Edward McMillan-Scott, formerly Tory MEP leader, now a Lib Dem, still spouting echos of years gone by. He exemplifies an elderly and tired generation of political elite who, burnt by the slow decline of Britain cannot see anything but a continuation of the same. For him and his sort optimism is restricted to the banks of the Spey.

Here he is in a letter in the Yorkshire Post today,

THE Conservative high command is clearly involved in a concerted damage limitation process over the growing Euroscepticism displayed at the party conference in Manchester.
This disguises a potentially momentous shift in which the UK would slip into an EU hinterland while the core countries develop a deeper relationship around a strengthened euro.

His delusion about the strength of the Euro seems to know no bounds, but that isn't what disturbs me, and to be frank saddens me. It is the voice of a man deeply entrenched in his anecdotage,

I recall a lengthy call to my mobile from Hague – I was at Brussels Airport waiting for a plane – in which he demanded that I sign up to a “Never to the euro” pledge. He had persuaded the leaders of the other Parliamentary groups, Scottish, Welsh, Lords etc to do so and he insisted that I – then leader of the Tory MEPs – now sign. I refused, objecting that to rule out membership in principle was absurd, even if I was not then in favour

Hague’s positioning towards the 120 or so Eurosceptic Tory backbenchers who last week inaugurated their campaign for “localism”’ (that is, repatriation of powers from the EU) was to say that membership was not “career suicide”: hardly helpful to Cameron, who dreads his Right-wing.

The group’s leader, George Eustice, was once a Ukip election candidate. How long before Cameron faces reality over the euro and faces down his Ukip tendency, who are full of passionate intensity for a referendum? And what is the deal he now offers them? Second class membership of the EU for Britain. That is not in the national interest.

What we want isn't first or second class status at the level of the EU, our ambition is not so lowly.

What we want, what we believe we can achieve and what with hard work and self-belief we will regain is first class status in the world. Trading freely and holding our heads up high as a beacon for freedom, tolerance, liberality and economic confidence and success.

Within the confines of the EU straightjacket we would forever have second class status. Even Germany that trading behemoth cannot sit at the top table of the WTO because of its membership of the EU.

The sound of silence does not indicate support Mr Laitenberger

he carnival of delusion that is the Europrean elite's grasp of the realities of the European Crisis has been highlighted yet again.


In one of those classic 'Brussels talking to Brussels' events at the European Policy Centre Barosso's Chef de Cabinet Johannes Laitenberger has gone down a storm. And he has made it clear that there is no reason to panic, the project is on track, everything will be fine. And how does he know this? He knows this because the silent majority has been speaking has been speaking to him (we know not how)... maybe he hears voices (or worse believes what he reads in Eurobarometre).

"The first and best ally that we have in all of this is the silent majority who too often is drowned out by a very vocal minority of sceptics and critics but which is much more solid than we care to think,"...

And how is this silent majority composed?

"I am very confident that there are enough people, enough institutions, enough forces, that can be mobilised. You sense that the tide is turning. Many people who at the beginning of the discussion did not raise their voices are more forceful, more decisive and saying more clearly what needs to be done."

Oh yes, institutions, they are already on your side. You must be tone deaf if you don't know that. And the idea that you could mobilise anything, for crying out loud, what? Where?

Today the only people mobilised are the poor masses in Greece, and I doubt that they will be coming to your aid.

Oh but what if, Mr Laitenburger, just what if that silent majority has finally had it up to here with the undemocratic, aloof behaviour of you and those like you? What if what we are seeing is indeed the wakening of the general public, but as they wake from their subsidy induced torpor it isn't you that they support? They do not look at your minority interest as their own, but instead cleave as they always have to their own countries, to their own lands?

What then?

The subtleties of language

The European Parliament has today passed the legislation in Committee that will create what they call a European Heritage Label. UKIP made a bit of hay with this when it was first presented, and rightly so.

But I have been looking at the legislation and I was struck with the language in which it is counched.

Look at the language here, being part of the EU is part of a 'sense of belonging' whilst diversity is to be 'appreciated'. One is integral to one's very being - that is being a European citizen and one's feelings towards the benificent EU, whereas diversity is externalised and to be appreciated, thus not actually part of us.

The Commission's proposal
The aim of the proposal is to strengthen European Citizens’ sense of belonging to the European Union, based on shared elements of history and heritage, as well as an appreciation of diversity, and to strengthen intercultural dialogue.

Very sly. Because of course it is our diversity that makes us who we are, not our similarity.

Of course this whole program, to cost 650,000 Euros is specifically targeted at kiddies,

The label is not about a site's beauty or its architectural quality, but rather its symbolic value for European integration and the history of the Union. It is not about conservation of sites in itself, but rather about the activities they can offer and their educational dimension, especially for young people.

And my favourite recipient of this glittering honour?

A shoe factory.

Questions to which the answer is NO (version 376)

I well recall those hours in school, leaky fountain pens and inky fingers prominent struggling with Kennedy's Latin Primer.

One of the things that always impressed me as child we that the Romans had a word that make it clear that no answer was required as it was apparent that it would be in the negative.

Nonne Caesar inimicum superavit? (Caesar defeated the enemy, didn’t he?)

Num Caesar inimicum superavit? (Caesar did not defeat the enemy, did he?)

Notice that in the first question a “yes” answer is anticipated but in the second a “no” answer is anticipated. Also note that the Latin word “non” is not needed in the second sentence to indicate the negative construction; “num” is sufficient.

Here is an example of a Num question

Are the Tories the New Lib/Dems

I know it sounds a dumb question. But hear me out.

In the past, what 18 months ago most people outside the Lib Dems were utterly confused as to what they were for. We knew they were for dodgy bar graphs in local election leaflets. We knew they stood for 'Winning here' but we didn't know what it was they were 'winning ' for.

They were pro-European (apart from a few down in the West Country who knew that was a loser at the polls down there). They were for civil liberties in a general way, but supported a whole range of anti-liberal ideas like the smoking ban.

They were free market economists, except when they were fighting inner city seats when they were re-distributive socialists like Simon Hughes.

If they were for anything it was for finding out what their local community wanted and appropriating it as policy. This of course lead them in to all sorts of contradictions but it didn't matter, after all they were nowhere near power.

The Tories meanwhile, well we knew what they were for. Enterprise, business, self reliance and all that sort of stuff. Often caricatured as uncaring they were a party of the independent underdog against organised interests.

But today, who knows. With U-turn after U-turn it is becoming impossible to get a handle on them. Eurosceptic, but not. Pro-enterprise, but in favour of swinging green related policies, in favour of a range of civil libertarian issues, but supporters of greater and greater use of CCTV. Faster on the motorways, slower in towns. Its a dogs breakfast.

Listening to the policy statements and speeches at the conference it is as bad as the Lib/Dems of yore.

Each Cabinet Minister seems to have been set the task of buttering up a different section of society, often in wildly contradictory ways that to be honest I cannot make head or tail of what they are for.

I half expect 'In Touch' leaflets to start including those bar graphs.

14 million Euros to spend a few pennies

That fount of all rectitude, that home of the parsimonius, the Eurpopean Parliament has agreed to spend another 16 million euros on improving office space in the Strasbourg building.

The extra space would allow the building of new offices for MEPs' assistants, many of whom currently share office space with MEPs when they are in Strasbourg, and provision of new communal toilets.

No seriously, we cannot have MEP's assisatnts sharig the same office as their boss, that just wouldn't do. According to the European Voice it appears the money will also be used to knock down some of the intergral MEP loo spaces and build communal loos.

This will be good in that paradise of Presidents I suppose to discover who indeed is the biggest swinging Dick in town. But do we really need to spend another great wad of cash, on loos?

So why did you leave?

David Campbell Bannerman is acting quite oddly. he has just launched a pamphlet that,

Another conference, another pamphlet on the future of the European Union and this one is calling very clearly for us to pull right out, right now.

David Campbell Bannerman, who left UKIP to join the Tories five months ago, is arguing that things could be better outside the EU.

"There's a lot of mythology about the EU," he says.

"This is the ultimate Plan B. It's a much bigger picture, that of our entire relationship with the EU."

It's a fascinating time for Eurosceptics, he told a fringe meeting at the Conservative Conference: "I would argue it is good for many countries to escape the prison of the EU."

David, your (new) party leader has made it quite clear that as long as he is around that he will not countenance any thought of an 'in-out' referendum.

Meanwhile you steal the phrases of your (old) party leader to demand it. So why on earth did you jump ship? Surely it couldn't be anything to do with a careerist reason could it?

Government Guarantees that Olympic track to go after 2012

To be fair to them the headline is slightly different.

GOVERNMENT GUARANTEE OLYMPIC TRACK WILL STAY

But as always the devil is in the details. If I were the IAAF who were given this guarantee I would be very very cautious of it,

The inspectors of London's bid for the 2017 world athletics
championships were today handed a "cast-iron guarantee" by the
Government that the running track will remain in place at London's
Olympic Stadium regardless of whether Tottenham win their court action.

A letter from the Treasury Solicitor making the guarantee was given to
the IAAF evaluation commission, which is headed by senior vice-president
Bob Hersh of the United States, on their three-day visit to London.

The Tory Government are handing out a 'cast-iron guarantee'.

Who will give me odds that the track will be ripped up, just like Dave's last Cast Iron promise?