The people really are stupid

Well at least that is what our Government in Brussels thinks of us. Jens-Peter Bonde MEP, Co-President of the Ind/Dem Group in the European Parliament happened to be in the room as the Heads of Government signed the Treaty of Lisbon (that is apart from Macavity Brown of course).

Next to him was one of the functionaries who drew up the Lisbon Treaty. This fellow was unaware of the political sympathies of Mr Bonde and was disarmingly dishonest. At one point he chuckled and said,

"You know how we made the Treaty smaller than the Constitution?"....

"We changed the font size..Hah ha, so the Treaty is now truly shorter than the Constitution".

I checked this, and having gone to the Council website I can say that this is not entirely true. They did not change the font size; they changed the line spacing. So here is Exhibit one, from the Constitution of 2004, p.11

And here is the same text in the Treaty p.12

So I checked a couple of other things, like the word count of the two documents. The Constitution comes in at 67,850 words, and the Treaty 76,250, a full 8,500 words longer. And the page total?

The Constitution has 349 pages and the Treaty has 287.

So it stands to reason that, despite being 8,500 words longer the Treaty is 62 pages shorter and is therefore the much vaunted Mini-Treaty so beloved of Mr Sarkozy.

Is Hain thick? Or merely dishonest

Peter Hain, the permatanned, boyo from South Africa has been off my radar for a while. After all it has been a while since he was wittering about how wonderful the EU Constitution. But today, today I am almost forced into the venerable community of swearbloggers by his astonishing claims.

"Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Peter Hain today revealed that his commitment to see more people move from benefits into work was strengthened by seeing statistics from a number of countries around the world showing that being out of work is not only bad for the health and well being of parents, but of their children as well".

Well bend me over and fire pellets at my posterior.

"Since taking up this job, I have been shocked by the statistics I have seen about the impact that living in a household in which the parent or parents do not work. The notion that life without work - whatever the level of income through benefits - is a stress-free experience is not just wrong, it's dangerous".

No Mr Hain, people like you are dangerous.

"A study published in the British Medical Journal showed that the death rate from all external causes for children of parents classified as never having worked or as long term unemployed was 13.1 times that for children of professionals".
"Also the prevalence of psychiatric disorders among children in families whose parents have never worked is around five times greater than those with parents in professional occupations.
"And while overall the rates of deaths from injury and poisoning in children have fallen in England and Wales over the last 20 years, they have not for children in families in which no adult is in paid employment.
"This is shocking and underlines for me even more starkly why our crusade for full employment in our generation is so important".

And Mr Hain gets paid by the taxpayer! It took a study in the BMJ to wake him up to this basic fact of life. So how about making being unemployed just that little bit less of a lifestyle choice? Hows about cutting regulation on small businesses, rather than making employing people more expensive. If you really cared about the unemployed you would do something that would allow the market to employ more of them rather than tie its hands with increased costs and more and more absurd regulations. But no. What is it you plan to do?

Oh yes, increase the public sector, your client state. Further leaching off the wealth generating aspects of our country into the dead hand of intervention. Damn it, Mr Hain, but you are either thick, blind or dishonest. I have met you; I am sure you are not blind. I have heard you before; I am sure you are not stupid. So by a simple piece of deduction you must be dishonest.

Now where do I find a number for the local tumbril service?

Wriggle wriggle

They must think it is a soporific term. Yet again the Government is hoping that by endlessly repeatingthe mantra from the Council mandate people will end up believing, "The constitutional concept, which consisted in repealing all existing Treaties and replacing them by a single text called 'Constitution', is abandoned".
Thus, flying in the face of what we all know to be true we have junior Foriegn Minister Lord Malloch Brown respondingto UKIP peer Lord Pearson this week,

"Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP) Hansard source
asked Her Majesty's Government:

Further to the Written Answer by Lord Malloch-Brown on 18 July (WA 26), whether, when they signed the European Union Constitutional Treaty in 2004, they agreed that the United Kingdom's existing labour and social legislation, common law system, police and judicial processes, independent foreign and defence policy and tax and social security system could have been changed by the resulting constitution, had it come into force.

Lord Malloch-Brown (Minister of State (Africa, Asia and the UN), Foreign & Commonwealth Office) Hansard source

The constitutional treaty contained many sensible changes, which the Government supported, and which would have helped an enlarged EU deliver more effectively. But as the mandate for a reform treaty states clearly: "The constitutional concept, which consisted in repealing all existing Treaties and replacing them by a single text called 'Constitution', is abandoned".

The reform treaty not only amends the existing treaties but also better safeguards our national control in key areas such as labour and social legislation, police and judicial processes, foreign and defence policy, and social security policy.

Hague speaks with forked tongue

So William Hague makes his great conference speech. He bangs the drum for a referendum, he accuses Brown of deception. All good stuff
But then goes on to do the same thing himself.

"We will go further: the next Conservative Government will end the 1972 European Communities Act, so that if any future government agrees any treaty that transfers further competences from Britain to the EU a national referendum before it could be ratified would be required by law."

Please note that he says "any treaty" not any revision of the Treaty. He knows about Article 33, the simplified revision treaty. How can I say that, because here he is in the Daily Mail of the 2nd August a brief two months ago saying, about the so called 'ratchet clause'

"All vetoes other than over defence can be abolished by agreements between European governments in future, without having to go through the whole process of negotiating a fresh treaty or ratifying that in any formal way"

So why is he saying something that he knows is not the constitutional guarantee that those in the hall, and those who will read the papers tomorrow believe it to be.

Let it be said once and for all, there will be no need of a new EU Treaty after this one. There is the procedure in place to ensure that they will never have to put everything on the line again. In the future it will be piecemeal, and this promise to amend the European Communities Act, though good in its own way does not do what he suggests. Further amendments, which the government of the day support - with or without the support of the British people - will still go through Parliament under the current Westminster procedure and this safeguard is as much use as a phoning the local police in the event of a burglary.

Update

Seems like somebody liked the photomontage. Hague at Blackpool

Self denial in impotence, or latest Tory promise

How is it that the Tories think that they can get away with abolishing the much reviled Home Information Packs (HIPs)?
After all as was pointed out by their own pet think tank, Open Europe,

"an EU directive agreed in 2002, “The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive”
required that homes and other buildings should have an energy efficiency survey when they are bought, sold or rented. This would then be used to produce the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC), which would give homes an efficiency grade from “A” to “G” (with A as the most efficient). This was supposed to encourage people to adopt more energy efficiency measures. The Government decided to bundle in the new EU energy certificate with the old idea for a Home Information Pack. However, the legislation has been revised several times, and in practice when the “pack” comes into force on 1 June this year it will contain little other than the EU Energy Performance Certificate".

So how is it that Grant Shapps, the Shadow Housing Minister can today claim at the Tory conference,

"The experts ridiculed them. The industry doesn't want them... and I can announce that the next Conservative government will scrap them".

After all it isn't up to him or indeed a Tory Government, thye would need to get the unanimous agreement of the EU 27 at Council. Which, as I have pointed out before would be rather unlikely.